Survivalist - 23 - Call To Battle (21 page)

“You’d be surprised, miss.” He gave her a wink and jerked Yuri out of the car and onto the sidewalk, Yuri just managing to stand. “Good night!”

“Good night” she said. Full lips, wide mouth, killer smile.

Shaw told her, “It sure would be.” And he slammed shut her door and she pulled the Chevy into the street.

Yuri said, “You gonna pay-“

“No, I don’t like payin’ for information. You’re gonna give it to me for free. And then maybe, just maybe, I won’t croak ya.” Shaw started propelling Yuri toward the car. “Go rabbitin’ on me and you’re whacked.”

“Whatchya want, man?”

“Nazis, the mothers that hit Sebastian’s Reef Country Day School today.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about no Nazis, man!”

They were at the middle of the street. It was a quiet neighborhood as far as street traffic went. Shaw grabbed Yuri by the collar and turned him toward the corner. “Walk.”

“Where you takin’ me, man?!”

“Walkin’s good for ya, Yuri. And after a good walk, there’s nothin’ more relaxin’ than lying down for a good rest.” “What?”

They reached the corner and Shaw stopped Yuri. Time to lie down.” “What?”

“Down!” Shaw shoved Yuri to his knees. “Flat on your face in the street! Now!”

Yuri went flat. Shaw took his radio out of the pocket of his raincoat and flipped it on. “Patch me through to the Fire Department.”

“Fire Department? What the-“

“Shaddup!” The Fire Department dispatcher’s voice crackled back at him. Shaw spoke into the radio. “Yeah, this is Inspector Shaw with Honolulu Tac. Who’m I talkin’ to?”

“Bill Bradley, sir.”

“Bill, I need a Commander. Get me one on this frequency, okay?”

“Sure thing, Inspector. Stand by.”

Shaw put the radio under his arm, fished out a cigarette and lit it, the muzzle of the .45 still in line with Yuri’s head. “Whatchya want the damn Fire Department for, man?”

“Relax, Yuri. Do I look like the kinda guy who’d set ya on fire?”

Yuri didn’t answer and before Shaw could say anything else, the radio crackled. “This is Commander Irving.”

“Yeah, Commander. This is Tim Shaw, Honolulu Tac. Look, for this operation I got goin’ down here, I need a fire truck, see.” He gave Commander Irving the address. “I need a truck to come right around the corner fast as it can, comin’ right down Brixton Street, make that turn, plenty of speed, plenty of sirens. You guys do that?”

“I need authorization, Mr. Shaw.”

“It’s Inspector. And I run the friggin’ Tac Team. That enough?” “Well, yeah, I guess.”

“Faster your guys can make that turn, the better.” “I’ll dispatch trucks right away.” “How soon before they get here?” Two minutes or a little over.”

That’s perfect; consider yourself owed one, Commander.” “Right.”

Shaw clicked off the radio and dropped it back in his pocket

“Hear that, Yuri?”

“What the hell you need some damn fire truck-“

“I don’t need a fire truck. Any truck’d do. See, you’re gonna keep lyin’ here in the street and when the fire truck turns the cor-ner-a buddy o’ mine used to call ‘em drunken painters ‘cause they’re always runnin’ around and haulin’ ladders-anyway, when the fire trucks turn the corner, they’re gonna run right over ya, Yuri. Tragic, huh?”

Yuri started to get up. Shaw put a bullet into the street right next to Yuri’s head and Yuri froze. “You crazy, man!”

“Well, to tell ya the truth, Yuri, that thing at the school really upset me, ya know? All those kids and everything? I gotta take it out on somebody. If I had the Nazis that did it, Td kill them. But, all I got’s you.”

Yuri passed gas again, long and loud. “Lemme up, man. I don’t know shit.”

“Sure ya do, Yuri. It’s that brown stuff that’s gonna be fillin’ your pants soon as ya hear the first fire truck comin’ around the corner. Probably gonna be a hook and ladder, the real big long ones with all those axles and those big truck tires, ya know?”

“I don’t know no Nazis, Shaw!”

“Golly, what a shame. And I’ll probably feel real guilty after those trucks grind ya into the pavement just thinkin’ about that.” “Then lemme up!”

“Get up and I shoot ya; you’d be just as dead either way.”

“Man, I don’t know no fuckin’ Nazis!”

Shaw flicked ashes from his cigarette into Yuri’s hair. “I don’t really care what the Nazis’ sex life is like, Yuri. I just wanna know where to find ‘em.”

Yuri stammered. “Okay! They got a place at the waterfront on-“

“I don’t think you’re sincere, Yuri. Doesn’t sound like where these guys’d hang out. You’re lyin’.” “I ain’t lyin’!”

Shaw snapped his cigarette butt to the pavement, a couple of inches away from Yuri’s face. “Wow, I’m gonna feel real bad, I go down to the waterfront and find ‘em then, you run over by aH those trucks and everything.” “It’s the damn truth, man!”

Sirens could be heard in the distance, growing louder. Shaw didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know where the hell them Nazis is, man!”

Shaw didn’t move the .45, didn’t say a word. The sirens were loud now. As Shaw figured the time from the sound, the first fire truck would be coming around the corner in about forty-five seconds. “Yuri, look, I’ll wait on the curb, huh?”

Yuri visibly filled his pants.

Tun Shaw stepped up onto the curb. “Where are they, Yuri? And if it doesn’t sound like the truth, you got the choice of a bullet or a fire truck.”

“Stayin’ with Stroud, over in immigrant village, in the condos Stroud owns. There’s twelve of them and they got a special assignment, ain’t tied with none of the other commando groups. All they do is terrorist shit, man. Got guns, explosives, all the good shit. Heavy hitters. The big building on the corner across from the fish markets. I don’t know no address, man. Lemme up!” Yuri was screaming in order to be heard over the wailing of the sirens.

There wasn’t time for Shaw to let Yuri get to his feet. At the far left edge of Shaw’s peripheral vision, there was a blur of motion, a streak of red. Shaw was already jumping from the curb, grabbed Yuri by the shirt collar and dragged him back. The first fire truck rounded the corner almost in the same instant, its slipstream ripping the black fedora from Tim Shaw’s head, the sound of its siren momentarily deafening.

Yuri was crying, screaming, holding onto Shaw’s leg.

Tim Shaw shook him loose. Yuri stayed there, on his knees, eyes turned up toward Tim Shaw’s face. Shaw held the muzzle of the .45 inches from Yuri’s right eye. Despite the evening’s breeze, the smell from what Yuri had done to himself was almost overpowering. Shaw whispered, “Go and sin no more; or next time ya die.”

Tim Shaw upped the safety on the .45 and walked the few paving squares to where his hat had landed, picked it up, struck it against his thigh a few times and snapped down the brim. He looked back at Yuri and told him, “Sorry I messed things up with you and the babe.”

It was ultramodern here. There were no bars, but if he attempted to pass through the ordinary doorway leading from his cell-it was more like a very small apartment-he would be stopped. There was a powerful electrical field there that would shock, stun, or kill, depending on how one interacted with it. A touch, a shock. A partial body contact, a stun. If he threw himself through the field, the voltage would likely stop his heart permanently.

The power of the field was demonstrated to Martin Zimmer when he was “locked” in. An old tennis ball was used. After passing through the plasma energy field, it was half disintegrated, what remained of it blackened, crisped.

Martin Zimmer was adequately convinced. He stayed where he was put. Since he was a VIP, the accommodations, however Spartan, had some amenities. There were books (he hated reading), there was radio (he found music boring) and there was television (the news bored him and he hated most of what was broadcast, particularly the westerns, which seemed to dominate dramatic programming).

He played solitaire and watched soap operas throughout the day. After dinner-filling but bland-he continued playing solitaire and paid halfhearted attention to a documentary on the life of Nathaniel Darkwood, scientist and explorer, one of the founders of Mid-Wake. Martin Zimmer cared not a whit for Darkwood from a biographical standpoint, but the underwater photography was diverting enough.

When it came to the part about how, through the efforts of

Darkwood and others, Mid-Wake the underwater scientific research station became Mid-Wake the city state, surviving the holocaust of the surface, Martin Zimmer, despite his dislike of music, turned to MTV. As far as he was concerned, it would have been better if Mid-Wake had perished on The Night of The War. There would have been no United States, no Pearl Harbor Naval Base, no jail cell in which to be incarcerated.

Martin Zimmer suspended his game of solitaire; he couldn’t find a red nine without prying beneath the rows of face down cards and that took concentration in order to do it artfully. And his favorite group was on television with their latest video, Gimme Head and the BJs doing “Deep Penetration.” He read all the fanzines from New Germany, the United States and Australia-books were a waste of time-and he knew everything there was to know about Gimme Head and the BJs. He’d been planning to have them do a private performance at Eden City before all this with the Rourke Family had come up; and, someday he’d still have them.

This particular video was filmed inside an atmospheric insertion jet specially rigged out with all the seats removed so when the jet intentionally went to zero gravity-that was unnecessary in atmospheric insertions, of course-they could all roll around and play their guitars at the same time. And the girls with them in this video were so gorgeous-looking that Martin Zimmer got an erection just looking at them and fantasizing himself with Gimme Head and the BJs and the girls weighdess and flying naked.

When the video was over, he started searching for his red nine …

The radio transceiver was exceedingly artful. It was hidden inside his left cheek where, if he’d still had a wisdom tooth, that would have been. It slipped in and out easily. Natural acids within his saliva powered the battery. Voice quality for the receiver was always poor, however, since much of actual speech occurred in combination with tongue, teeth and lips. But, when one whispered carefully, the transmitted speech was intelligible. Sound, when receiving, was transmitted along the jawbone direcdy to the inner ear. Built into the system were compensators which would prevent a sudden high-decibel incoming noise from stunning the ear.

The members of the commando team were in place, some by the guard station at the helipad serving the Fleet Admiral’s base headquarters, others near the brig, still others near the motor pool synth-fuel dump located on the far side of the base.

His driver-young Rauph-beside him, Croenberg, his Naval Commander’s dress whites sparkling, approached the two fatigue-clad Marines who stood guard at the doorway to the Pearl Harbor brig.

They saluted.

Croenberg returned the salute and started for the doorway.

“Begging the Commander’s pardon, sir, but I’ll have to ask for a palm print check, sir!”

Croenberg had not expected this, because it was not usual base security procedure, nor had this practice been instituted as litde as two hours ago.

Croenberg started to move his right hand toward the palm print identifier panel, set like a plaque beside the doorway. The young Marine Lance Corporal stepped back. Even though Gruppenfiihrer Croenberg had not anticipated this, he had planned ahead for the unexpected.

The concept of a weapon carried up the sleeve of a garment was nothing new. Nor was the principle of mechanically assisting the retrieval of such a weapon. In most cases, to actuate some sort of spring-loaded device, some sort of arm movement was required. The inherent difficulty and danger, of course, was that somehow such movement would be performed inadvertently and the weapon released; conversely, to prevent such from happening, one might even subconsciously avoid a certain range of movement, thus attracting the attention of the curious or detail-minded.

The device Croenberg wore, in order to guard against both such contingencies, required two rather irregular movements to be performed in sequence. As he moved his right arm now, as if to touch his hand to the panel, Croenberg cocked his right wrist back to maximum extension, thus performing the first motion and moving his hand out of range. Croenberg wheeled toward the nearer of the two Marines, rotating his arm downward and outward, then up and in.

At the instant he completed the rotation, the 7.65mm single shot pistol-it was about the size of an ordinary carpenter’s mechanical tape measure, the barrel just under six centimeters in length-fired. The bullet struck the young American Marine at the bridge of the nose, glanced along the bone and into the left eye. The barrel was surrounded by sound baffles, absorbing the expanding gases, muffling all sound above that of a light cough.

At the same instant, Croenberg heard the sound of Rauph’s knife ripping fabric and flesh and the second Marine started to fold.

Croenberg grabbed the body of the man he’d shot before it fully hit the level of the small synth-concrete porch. Rauph was already trying the door as he clutched the second dead man’s body against him.

The door swung open. Croenberg shoved the body through the doorway and drew his pistol. Then Croenberg stepped through the doorway after the dead man.

As expected, there were no guards in the antechamber between the exterior and interior doors. Croenberg shoved his dead man in the nearest corner, relieving the body of its energy rifle. Rauph had already done the same. One of them on either side of the interior doorway, Rauph turned the knob.

As expected, it opened.

There were two guards on the other side, both of them seated at desks, one on either side of a narrow, sterile-looking green corridor. They started for their sidearms but never made it, Rauph firing his suppressed pistol, Croenberg doing the same, Croenberg and Rauph firing across each other.

Both Marines went down, the one on the left whom Rauph had shot slamming into the wall, slipping down along its length leaving a blood trail from the bullet’s exit wound at the back of his neck. The one Croenberg shot-a neatly placed bullet above the right eye-fell against the wall, then jackknifed forward over his desk.