The Man of Bronze (5 page)

“Look out,” Reuben said. “He’s going for the gun.”

The man was indeed crawling toward the Uzi I’d knocked from his hand. Obviously, the icy armor allowed him to see things outside. But the chap moved as ponderously as a giant tortoise. I couldn’t tell if he was being slowed by his protective shell or just from being on his knees after getting shot, operated upon, dropped off a table, and partly strangled. Either way, I had no trouble rolling off the table and grabbing the pistol before the man reached it.

“You want it?” I said. “Here you go.” I ejected the ammo clip and emptied the chamber—safety first, always safety first—then swung the butt of the unloaded gun at the man’s silverized head. I didn’t expect my attack to have much effect, but maybe the more I stressed the glossy shell, the faster it would dissipate.

The Uzi struck with a jarring thud I felt all the way up my arm like swinging a sledge hard into granite. Part of the gun butt fractured. I pulled away fast as the man darted his hand up to grab the weapon. He could have the gun for all I cared. It had no bullets . . . and if the man and I fought over it, I might literally freeze my fingers off.

As soon as the thug seized the Uzi, a coating of frost sprang up around the gun’s barrel. I thought,
Didn’t I see that effect in a Batman film? Or was it Bugs Bunny?
I enjoyed it more in films than in real life. Three seconds after the man grabbed the pistol, he squeezed and the weapon fell apart in his hand. Fragments of brittle metal showered to the floor like hail.

“So why did the gun go all frosty,” Reuben asked, “but the guy himself isn’t iced up at all?”

“Reuben,” I replied, “this is hardly the time to quibble about physics. That silver stuff looks more like magic than science.”

“Even magic has rules. So how does it work? Maybe like a self-cleaning freezer?”

“If you really want to know, we could try an experiment.”

The OR had a large double sink where the surgery team could wash the blood-specked tools of their trade after an operation. The sink sported one of those spray attachments, a nozzle on a hose, for aiming jets of water at stubborn bits of human tissue that wouldn’t come off the cutlery. I grabbed the hose, turned the water on full, and aimed the squirt nozzle at the mirror-clad hoodlum on the floor.

Instant ice: a white crust froze hard around the man as soon as water came close to his frigid exterior. I had time to think,
Brilliant, we’ll immobilize this thug in his own private glacier . . .

Then:
crack!
The sound reminded me of my last trip to Antarctica, when a crevasse had ripped open under my feet. The ice that had just solidified around the silver shell exploded outward in a barrage of diamond-like pellets. I shielded my head with my arms, as others in the room screamed. Glass shattered, a nurse fell, and a metal bedpan clanged like a bell . . . but I suffered only a few modest stings. No worse than getting shot with a dozen BBs at point-blank range.

However, note to self:
DON
’
T SPRAY MORE WATER.

“Huh,” Reuben said, “it
is
self-cleaning.”

The man began to get to his feet. I’d been afraid of that. As long as he stayed on his hands and knees, people could dodge quickly enough to keep away from him. Once he was standing, however, he’d move faster . . . unless he collapsed from pain when he tried to put weight on his ankle. Such a collapse was unlikely. Before the operation, Dr. Jacek must have anesthetized the lower part of the gunman’s leg; furthermore, the armor might serve as a splint to support the damaged leg bones. In the long run, frisking free and easy on a broken tib-fib might leave the mercenary hobbled for life. In the short run, though, he could cause cryogenic chaos, lunging about the OR and giving freezer burn to anyone he touched—not to mention raising such a ruckus that the thugs upstairs would hear. If I tried to intervene, I’d just get gelatoed myself . . .

Unless . . .

Okay. New strategy.

I whipped off one of the Uzis I still had strapped around my shoulders. “Stay down,” I told the rising bad guy, swinging my gun at his head, eye level. It wouldn’t have hurt him if he’d let it make contact, but reflexes are reflexes: he ducked automatically and—thanks to his ankle—awkwardly. A nanosecond later, I brought the pistol back on a return arc. The man was already off balance and perhaps distracted as he realized,
I didn’t need to duck.
When the Uzi came back, maybe part of his mind was saying
Don’t flinch
while his combat training shouted
Dodge! Dodge!
and his ankle chimed in with
Hey, remember me? I’m still broken.

The upshot was that the man fell down. Sloppily. The impact of his fall did cold, messy things to the floor, leaving sections of the linoleum looking like shattered glass.

The Uzi I’d swung had never actually made contact with the ruffian. I handed the pistol to Reuben. “Take this.” I whipped off the other Uzi too. “Here’s its brother. If our friend tries to stand, keep clubbing him on the head as long as the guns hold out. Don’t shoot, and avoid too much noise. We don’t want our chums upstairs coming down to investigate.”

“What are you going to do?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my own shiny silver grenade. “Fight fire with fire. In an absolute-zero nothing-at-all-like-fire sort of way.”

I pressed the grenade’s two buttons and waited.

Silver rose ticklishly up my arm, reminding me of being swallowed by a boa constrictor. That may sound unpleasant, but it actually brought back fond memories of the Amazon rain forest where I encountered a dashing man from Her Majesty’s Secret Service . . . sorry, can’t tell you more without violating the Official Secrets Act. But a boa constrictor featured prominently, so I confess to being distracted as the silver continued to spread. At the very last moment, I remembered to take a deep lung-filling breath; then I was enveloped in airless silence, the mirrored shell muffling all outside sounds.

I tried to inhale a little deeper. I couldn’t. As I’d expected, the armor was entirely impervious, shutting me off from the outside air as effectively as it shielded me from bullets. Now I only hoped that my other supposition was correct: that the shell would dissolve on its own in a minute or so, before I began to suffocate. If my guess was wrong and I stupidly smothered inside the silver container, wouldn’t my face be red? Or blue, as the case might be.

The armor—or was it a force field?—might have kept out all air, but it let in light easily enough. I could see as if looking through gray-tinted glass. Reuben was just stepping away from the mercenary, both Uzis reduced to crumbled ruins. Farewell to the last of our firearms . . . but the pistols had served their purpose, distracting our enemy until I was armored up. Now it was my turn to deal with the hooligan: mano a frigid mano.

He began to stand. I let him. Then I punched him in the face.

It was more an experiment than a serious attack. I doubted my strike would penetrate his protective shell any more effectively than the Uzis or the Kaybar knife. Still, one shouldn’t take anything for granted. Since the silver barrier stuff had already displayed properties that defied my understanding of physics, I chose to regard it as magic in accordance with dear old Sir Arthur’s law. Why not test the nature of its mystic power?

So: up with the fist and out with the fist, full strength into my opponent’s nose.

Have you ever wondered what happens when an irresistible force, my armored fist, meets an immovable object, the gunman’s armored face? Turns out, the result is an earsplitting bang. By which I mean,
BAAAANNNNGGGG!!
with as many additional exclamation points as you care to append.

The noise was hemorrhagingly loud even with silver muffling my ears. To others in the OR, it must have been deafening: a bona fide sonic boom. I imagined all Warsaw echoing with the thunderclap. Within seconds, half the city would be calling the police to report someone shooting off a howitzer.

So much for keeping quiet. All the gunmen upstairs would come running immediately. So would the MI6/CIA/Interpol agents no doubt investigating a mysterious car explosion near the airport. I fervently wished to be elsewhere before those agents arrived. Otherwise, I’d end up “helping police with their inquiries” . . . then “detained pending further investigation” . . . then “taken into protective custody” . . . and even though the spooks knew I was no criminal, they’d threaten to put me in jail unless I did them “a few little favors.” Next thing I knew, I’d be paragliding into Beijing to steal the Sacred Sword of Sinanju or some such nonsense.

No thanks. After that mess in Mauritius, I was sick of playing errand girl. Which meant I had to finish things off fast and vamoose before the Sweeneys arrived.

My first obstacle: the ruffian in front of me. He turned in my direction, putting up his fists as if ready for more sonic-boom boxing . . . then suddenly he dropped his feint and bolted for the door. Coward. Then again, the man didn’t have many options left. If I was right, and the silver armor held up only a minute or two before dissolving, my opponent’s mirror shell must be close to shutting off. By the time that happened, the thug would want to be elsewhere—back with his fellow mercenaries. They were his only protection, now that his Uzi was reduced to frozen frass.

I caught the gunless gunman just as he reached the corridor. This time, I didn’t punch him—I had no desire to trigger another thunderclap. Instead I thrust my arm around his neck and gingerly pulled back with a basic forearm choke hold. There was still a
whomp
as our silver shells made contact, but much softer than the first time. That could have been because the shells didn’t smack together with the pile-driving force of a punch . . . or maybe the silver force fields had blown off most of their energy the first time they collided. Now, they had far less “juice” to power sonic outbursts. Every moment they remained in contact, they seemed to drain each other more. After five seconds, both the mercenary’s silver lining and my own winked out with a soft
whoof
of air, like two fires that have burned up each other’s fuel.

For an instant, nothing happened . . . but my arm was still bent around the man’s neck, pressing in on his throat, and now there was no shell preventing me from cinching up on his esophagus. I did so. The mercenary attempted to respond with a standard escape move—turning his head toward my elbow to reduce the constriction on his windpipe, grabbing my wrist to loosen the grip, and stepping into a lower stance in preparation for a release maneuver—but partway through, his injured ankle snapped from exertion.

Nothing sounds so
meaty
as a leg bone breaking. It’s the crack of mortality.

The man would have fallen if I hadn’t been holding him around the neck. He ended up dangling from my choke hold, making urgent gargling noises. I could have proceeded to kill him . . . but why? I whispered in his ear, “If I let you live, do you promise to be good?”

He gagged out something I took for a yes.

“Fine.” I dropped him to the ground and stepped away. He lay on the floor, gasping. I considered whacking him a few times to knock him out, but the thought of pummeling an injured man into unconsciousness turned my stomach. In his weakened condition, any more damage could kill him. I made do with poking my foot lightly into his ribs. “Help the poor,” I said. “Find a cure for cancer. Do something useful with your life so I don’t regret letting you live.”

The man didn’t answer. He might not have understood what I’d said. But he looked so dazed—close to clinical shock—I was certain he wouldn’t cause any more trouble.

I turned to Reuben. “We’d better get ready,” I said. “The bad guys will be here any moment. Time for our last stand.”

We had half a minute to scour the OR for implements of defense. The place had exactly what you’d expect: an abundance of bandages and penicillin but a dearth of firearms, Tasers, and antipersonnel devices. I improvised what I could, then ran to the door as I heard combat boots drawing near.

The corridor outside the OR was just wide enough for a gurney . . . and since we
had
a gurney available, I’d asked a nurse to wheel one out. With its brakes locked, the gurney formed a simple barricade between us and the oncoming horde. It wouldn’t stop our enemies for long, but it would slow the first arrivals. We’d also moved the emergency light into the hall to illuminate anyone approaching. Enough light spilled backward that the OR wasn’t completely dark, but we could see the gunmen more clearly than they could see us.

Such little advantages were important. The assault force had started with sixteen bad guys. Dr. Jacek said the doorman had killed one with a lucky shot to the head and had disabled another with an ankle shot. The ankle victim was, of course, the man sprawled on the OR floor. I’d eliminated another three scoundrels upstairs, reducing the opposition to eleven less however many had been taken out by flying oxygen tanks. There was no way to guess the number of men who’d charge the OR, but even one hooligan with an Uzi was a serious threat—we had no guns of our own.

Of course, we weren’t
entirely
unarmed . . .

I took a position in the doorway. Reuben stood behind me, ready to pass armaments as needed. I saw a ruffian begin sneaking up the corridor and I held my hand out to Reuben. “Scalpel.”

“Scalpel.” He slapped the scalpel’s handle into my palm.

The approaching mercenary had almost reached the gurney. He was farther away than my favorite dartboard in the Fox and Trotter, but I thought I could still hit the bull’s-eye.

With light from the emergency lamp shining in his eyes, all the man might have seen was my arm in the doorway, cocking back and throwing. Then he stopped seeing anything at all . . . at least with his right eye. He screamed for a moment, then fell silent.

One down.

I held out my hand to Reuben. “Forceps.”

“Forceps.”

Surgical forceps come in many sizes. The biggest are huge tongs for gripping a baby’s head during difficult births. The smallest are tweezers that can delicately manipulate blood vessels and other tiny tissues. Between those extremes are a multitude of variations. I’d chosen a set like the tongs used to lift hard-boiled eggs out of hot water. With rubber surgical tubing tied between the outstretched prong arms, the forceps made a nice little catapult . . . or what American weaponry catalogs call “a high-powered hunting-grade slingshot.”