Matrix Man (19 page)

The present situation was made even more complicated by the fact that HoJo was faced with three different targets. Ah well, such difficulties were to be expected and must be overcome.

HoJo blotted his upper lip and returned the handkerchief to its pocket. The laser-sighted Weatherby rested on a shoulder-high tripod. HoJo embraced it like a long-lost friend, allowing his cheek to touch polished wood and his right hand to seek the custom-contoured pistol grip. With the sight on "Optical" he checked to make sure that the cross hairs were centered on Bethany's back and switched to "Laser." HoJo took a deep breath, let it out, and pressed a button with his right thumb. A red dot appeared between Bethany's shoulder blades. HoJo squeezed the trigger.

Kim was standing to Corvan's left when he saw the wink of red light. "Sniper!" He had Kim in his arms and was already diving toward the floor when his brain registered the sound of breaking glass and the meaty thump of a slug hitting flesh. The sound of the shot followed a fraction of a second later. It was loud, an unsilenced hunting rifle of some kind, and damned close.

These thoughts came automatically, just as his army instructors wanted them too, the result of a thousand repetitions.

Bethany fell facedown—dead before she hit the floor. Corvan and Kim landed side by side inches away. "Stay down and roll toward the wall," Corvan yelled, and immediately followed his own advice.

Bullets began to thump into the walls and floor as HoJo laid down a carefully calculated pattern of lead.

Suddenly the overhead light went out as Kim hit it with a book.

"Good shot," Corvan called. "Crawl through the door! You'll be backlit otherwise."

Kim did as he'd suggested, wiggling across the floor, doing her best to ignore the bullets which whapped into the wall a few feet away.

As he followed Kim through the door Corvan heard distant sirens and knew time was getting short. He squirmed through the door, rolled right, and scrambled to his feet. Kim was waiting.

"I called the chopper," she said, holding up her remote. "A few minutes from now the street'll be full of cops."

Corvan nodded his agreement. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Together they ran down the hall to the stairwell and started up toward the roof. Startled by their sudden appearance and desperate expressions, a middle-aged woman screamed and ducked into the third-floor hallway.

Legs working, heart pumping, Corvan took the stairs two at a time. How tall was this building anyway? Ten stories? Twelve? If it was fifteen, he might as well surrender right now. Too many days spent sitting on his can eating good meals had taken the edge off his conditioning.

Much to his annoyance, Corvan saw that Kim was not only keeping up, she wasn't even breathing hard. She even smiled as she passed him by. News Network 56 had a fully equipped exercise facility for their employees, and she'd been using it every day for the last nine months.

Nine floors down and one to go. Or so he hoped. Corvan heard a fluttering roar and knew the helicopter was somewhere overhead. What if the pilot saw an empty roof and took off?

Corvan's legs pumped even harder as he raced up the last flight of stairs, his heart beating like a trip-hammer in his chest, each breath a long, searing slice of pain.

As he hit the top landing Corvan saw Kim kicking at a closed door. The damned thing was locked! Outside the chopper was a roaring storm of noise. How long would it wait?

Kim stepped aside as Corvan raised his right leg and kicked with all his might. He visualized his foot hitting the door, wood splintering into a hundred pieces, and light shining through the wreckage. What he got was less dramatic but just as good. The lock broke and the door swung open.

The chopper was already lifting as they burst through the door and ran toward it. Seeing them, the pilot stopped, hovered as they scrambled through the open door, and pulled up the second they were aboard.

Just as the power-assisted door closed, two large-caliber slugs slammed through the cabin and went out the other side. As luck would have it, they left everything untouched. Down below, HoJo watched the helicopter lift and turn away. He swore softly and turned away from the window. You can't win 'em all. As he removed the rifle from its tripod, HoJo thought about Dietrich and the man called Slovo. Maybe the time had come for a little vacation down Mexico way.

It was dark outside, and as Corvan and Kim fastened their seat belts, the city lights swung around in a dizzy dance. They put on their headsets. The pilot sounded tense.

"Welcome aboard. Fasten your seat belts and hang on. This might get a little hairy. You can't see him, but there's a blue bird on our tail, and he ain't the blue bird of happiness either. Let's see if we can lose him in traffic."

Kim wondered what the pilot meant and looked Corvan's way, but the reop shrugged. He didn't know either. Then the bottom dropped out as the chopper dived down between high-rise buildings and roared through a man-made canyon.

Buildings whipped by on either side, an endless wall of lighted rectangles, surprised faces looking up as the helicopter roared by.

Because of the way the chopper was designed, Corvan couldn't see behind. He could look ahead, though, and he didn't like what he saw. A tracery of sky bridges blocked the way: some high, some about halfway up, and none at street level. The chopper went down, just barely scooting under the lowest of the bridges, causing the multitude below to look up.

The pilot banked right, taking a corner, and Kim saw a huge electronic billboard flash by. It said, "THE WORLD PEACE ORGANIZATION. WE'RE FOR ONE PEOPLE, ONE GOVERNMENT, AND ONE WORLD. WHO NEEDS ANYTHING MORE?" Then it was gone, replaced by another wall of lighted squares. There was a flash of light and something exploded up ahead.

"Holy shit!" the pilot said. "They're using missiles!"

As they flashed by the point of impact, Corvan saw that the pilot was correct. A missile had missed them and hit the side of a high-rise condo. It was incredible. The conflict had escalated another notch. Now it was public. Corvan smiled grimly. Horrible though it was, the missile might break the story wide open. You can't do things like mat without offering some sort of explanation, and whatever the government said, the press would question it.

The pilot began to jink back and forth to throw off their aim. His voice was tight with fear. "I hope you can swim 'cause that's the only chance you've got. I'm going over the bay. When I say 'jump,' you do it. I'll try and lead them away. A boat will pick you up."

Then they were out of the high-rise maze and out over the bay. Up ahead Corvan could see lights which represented a barge farm and a scattering of smaller boats. The chopper was low now, so low that the aircraft was almost skimming the waves. A blast of cold air slammed into the cabin as the pilot opened the door.

Corvan unbuckled his seat belt and looked over to see Kim do likewise. Two streams of red dots slashed overhead and disappeared into the darkness of the bay. Tracers! The bastards were using machine guns!

"Now!" the pilot yelled. "Jump now!"

Kim went first, Corvan right behind her. It was a short drop and the water was shockingly cold. As darkness closed around Corvan, he kicked for the surface. Kim! He had to find Kim. Could she swim? He didn't know.

As his head broke the surface Corvan realized that the electro-goggles were gone. A helicopter roared by fifty feet overhead, and the down draft from its rotors feathered the water as lines of orange-red tracer probed the darkness ahead.

Suddenly a red fireball lit the surface of the bay as the Underground's helicopter exploded and hurled pieces of metal in every direction. Corvan felt a shock wave and heard a loud boom. A distant part of his mind grieved for the pilot and wondered what his name was.

As the light from the explosion lit the surface of the water, Corvan saw Kim's head forty or fifty feet away. "Kim! Over here!"

She waved and swam in his direction. Thank God, at least she could swim. As they came together he wanted to hug her, but settled for a smile instead. "Come on! Let's put some distance between ourselves and the explosion!"

Together they swam away from the still burning wreckage and toward the waterfront. Behind them the police helicopter hovered over the pool of burning fuel and started a spiral search. A spot light speared downward to light up some wreckage.

Did they know someone had escaped? Or were they simply being careful? Corvan didn't know and wasn't sure that it made much difference.

Then he heard the throb of powerful diesels off to the right. It was a boat, a fairly large one from the sound of it, but whose? The pilot had indicated that someone would pick them up. Was it them or the police?

Unsure of what to do, they treaded water and tried to see whatever was headed their way. Strangely enough, it came right at them as if it knew exactly where they were. Then Corvan saw it, a white hull low in the water with a stripe of darker paint running down into the water. A Coast Guard launch!

Kim saw it too and they both swam in the opposite direction. It was hopeless. Within minutes the launch towered over them, two men wearing wet suits splashed into the water beside them, and they were herded toward a ladder. Corvan considered putting up a fight, but changed his mind when he saw that the divers were armed with spear guns. As they climbed up and over the boat's side, men grabbed them and pushed them into the wheelhouse.

Harsh white light bathed the patrol boat as the police helicopter arrived overhead. A man in a Coast Guard uniform stepped out into the light and looked upward. Raising a hand-held radio to his lips, he said something and waved. The chopper rocked back and forth and headed away.

"This way," a voice said, and someone pushed Corvan toward an open hatch. He stumbled on the coaming, took three steps into a well-lighted cabin, and caught himself on a table. Turning, he prepared to fight.

A pleasant-looking woman in her late fifties or early sixties held out a cup of hot soup and smiled. "My cooking isn't that bad. Welcome aboard."

As Corvan and Kim accepted cups of hot soup, warm blankets were placed around their shoulders, arid they found themselves seated in a comfortable galley.

Kim gestured around. "I take it you aren't with the Coast Guard."

A hundred wrinkles appeared when the woman laughed. "Heavens no! But we put on a pretty good act, don't we?"

Corvan smiled. "You sure do. How did you find us so quickly?"

"I can answer that," a voice replied as the man in the Coast Guard uniform stepped into the galley. His long, homely face had a serious cast, as if he'd examined the world and found very little to celebrate. "One of you is carrying a homing beacon."

Corvan thought for a moment and reached for his sodden jacket, which had been wrung out and hung on a chair to dry. And there it was, safe and sound in a side pocket, the remote which Saxon had given him. He pulled it out and everyone laughed. Everyone but Corvan, that is, because he was busy comparing the Underground's power to that of the WPO, wondering which scared him more.

Three hours later they were back at the safe house. As they entered the living room, Corvan realized that he still didn't know where it as or what it looked like from the outside. Once again they'd driven inside a sealed van.

Saxon was waiting and waved them over toward a portable holo projector. Corvan started to say something, but the other man shook his head and pointed toward the holo.

A commercial faded away and an Asian American appeared, the blackness of the bay a backdrop behind her. In the distance helicopters could be seen, their searchlights crisscrossing the water. There was a key in the lower left-hand corner of the frame which read "
Lia
Law Live"
and the reporter held a BAYSCAN microphone in her right hand. She spoke in clipped sentences:

"That's about it, folks. We'll wrap this BAYSCAN special report in just a moment. First, however, the police ask that you be on the lookout for two suspects, both accused of murder."

The reporter vanished as a shot of Bethany Bryn's apartment appeared. Only it was different now, nicely furnished and neat as a pin. A well-scrubbed and nicely dressed Bethany sat watching an old movie as the doorbell chimed—the doorbell which Corvan knew from personal experience didn't work. The reporter continued her narration as Bethany got up to answer it.

"Like many urbanites, Ms. Bryn had authorized her landlord to install a security cam in her apartment. Though this shot was not being actively monitored at the time, what you're about to see was recorded by the security system's computer and provided to BAYSCAN by the San Francisco Police Department. We warn you that what you're about to see is extremely violent and not appropriate for children."

At that moment Bethany backed into the shot from camera left, one hand to her mouth, the other held straight out. "Please! I'll give you whatever you want, don't hurt me."

Then Corvan appeared, a machine pistol in one hand, his eye cam gleaming evilly in the light. Strangely enough, there was no sign of his blonde hair or electro-goggles. His voice had a gravelly quality. "Want? We don't want anything. We're going to give you something!" And with that he opened fire, the slugs literally ripping Bethany apart, pieces of her flying in every direction until the entire room was splattered with blood.

And then, when the machine pistol clicked empty, Kim stepped into the shot, looked down at Bethany's body, and laughed. Corvan noticed there was something strange about Kim, a certain lack of definition, as if she were only partly there. On top of that her facial tattoo had disappeared, she was wearing a totally different outfit, and her hair still hung down to her shoulders.

Then the picture changed and Lia Laro was back. She shook her head sadly. "I'm sorry you had to see that, folks. Some of you may recognize the man as Rex Corvan, a well-known reop, sometimes referred to as the Man Cam. Police are at a loss to explain why Corvan has suddenly turned to murder, but say that he has recently associated with 'known nationalists' and may be opposed to a single world government.