The Phoenix Code (31 page)

"I'm running models," Ander told her. "Give me input."

She spoke fast. "Van too hot, wrong project head, calluses like guard in farm house, too fast on the computer—" She broke off as the man behind clamped his hand over her mouth and put his other arm around her neck, cutting off her air.

"You want me to snap her neck?" he asked.

Raj froze in the process of reaching toward them. "No."

"Then put your arms down," the guard said.

Raj lowered his hands, his dark gaze furious. Megan sat as still as possible, straining to breathe. Black spots danced in her vision.

"Let her go," Hiltman said.

Mercifully, the pressure against her neck eased. As the man removed his arm, she drew in a ragged breath and rubbed her neck where he had pressed her windpipe. Sweat sheened her forehead and trickled down her neck.

"Running models?" Hiltman asked. "What did that mean?"

Raj ignored the question. "A lot of people knew we were in that inn. They will be looking for us."

"They won't find you," Hiltman said.

"Any system can be traced," Ander said. "You're taking us to a house twenty miles from here, a place with a robotics lab hidden under the barn."

"Turn off the damn android," Hiltman told Raj.

"Turn yourself the hell off," Ander said. "I'm running calculations to model your behavior. You won't shoot. You want me working."

"You can't hide us for long," Raj said. "People will swarm all over this area."

"We're leaving the country," Hiltman said.

Megan almost swore. Once they were across international borders, their chances of escape plummeted.

Then Ander moved.

With enhanced speed, he thrust his hand into the jacket of the guard next to him and yanked out the man's semiautomatic. A human could never have lunged fast enough to take the weapon. Even Ander didn't pull back fast enough. As the guard grabbed his wrist, Ander's arm gave a violent spasm. His hand jerked—

And the gun fired.
 

The shot cracked like thunder—and the guard's torso tore apart. Shreds of material from his shirt and coat whipped through the air as if sliced by knives. Megan gasped, her arms coming up to ward off bits of debris she didn't want to identify. What kind of nightmare bullets were in that gun?

Still gripping Ander's wrist, the man collapsed against the seat arm and fell off, yanking the android forward. Then his hand slipped off Ander and his body thudded to the floor.

Knoll was shouting an order, twisting around in the driver's seat as he drew his gun. In her side vision, Megan saw the guard behind her pulling out his weapon. He said something—but she heard only thunder as Knoll fired at Ander.

The scene seemed to slow down, as if it were happening under water. Megan ducked behind the seat and Ander dropped to the floor. Raj was lunging toward the guard behind them. In the same instant that Raj struck the man's wrist with his forearm, the man fired. The bullet hurtled by Raj's waist so close that it almost grazed his jumpsuit. When it slammed into the armored door and embedded itself, Megan glimpsed three bladelike fins with serrated edges projecting from its sides. She had seen the design before, though she didn't remember where.
Blood was splattering out Raj's side, mixed with shreds of jumpsuit. With dismay, Megan realized the bullet had passed so close that one of the fins had sliced his waist. A fraction of an inch closer and the hypersonic bullet would have torn Raj apart.

Raj was still moving in the controlled dive he had started before the man fired. He grabbed the barrel of the man's gun with his right hand and brought his left fist down on the man's wrist. Pressing down
hard
with his fist, he gave the weapon a twist. As the crack of a bone splintered the air, the guard's index finger snapped back and he lost his grip on his gun.

"Get down!" Ander yelled at Megan. He pushed her onto the corrugated floor in the cramped area between the seats. While Raj struggled with the guard, Ander rose to his knees behind the seat. He blocked Megan's view as he turned toward the front, lifting his stolen gun—

Another shot roared, and Ander's body jerked as if someone had slammed a door against him. He fell across Megan with a grunt. She had no idea if he had been hit, had lost his balance, or had thrown himself over her body in protection. She looked up—and saw Raj with the other man's gun.

Raj was stepping back now, one hand gripped over the wound in his side. She didn't want to see, didn't want to watch, but it happened too fast. Clenching the weapon, Raj stretched out his arm—and shot the guard at point-blank range.

The man's body flew apart like a rag doll. He collapsed across the back seat, his face frozen in shock, as if he couldn't believe Raj had disarmed him. Megan couldn't absorb it yet; the deaths were too much, too fast.

Raj fired again, this time toward the front of the van. He jerked with the recoil and grabbed the back of a seat. Then he spun back to the first man he had shot, his face pale. Letting go of his side, he reached toward the guard, as if to offer help. His hand dripped blood, his blood, onto the dead man.

"God, no," Raj whispered.

Ander rolled off Megan and came into a crouch. As Megan pushed up on her arms, her sense of time returned to normal. The entire fight had taken only seconds.

Knoll lay with his legs caught under the steering wheel and his body sprawled across the divider between the bucket seats. Hiltman had crumpled in his seat. Neither man was moving. The van hummed down the highway, untouched by the storm of violence that had swept through its deceptive shelter.

The clatter of metal on the floor broke the silence. Megan jerked around to see Raj standing with his arms folded across his torso, his body swaying with the van's motion, one hand protecting the gash in his side. He had dropped his gun, but his hand remained clenched, unable to release its grip.

He spoke in a numb voice. "We have to make sure they're dead."

"I'll do it." Ander rose easily and braced his hand against the roof. Then he made his way to the front.

Megan climbed to her feet. She blanched when she saw the blood soaking Raj's clothes. "You should sit down."

"It looks worse than it is." He kept staring at the man he had shot. His face had a hollow look.

"It was self-defense," Megan said. "You had no choice."

He didn't answer. Watching him, she knew that nothing she could say would fix this.

Ander came back to them. "They're dead."

Raj managed a nod. "So are the two back here." He didn't look at Ander.

"Raj needs a hospital." Megan realized then the upper arm of Ander's pullover was also ripped. Dusky blue lubricant oozed out of a shallow gash. "Did you get hurt too?"

"I cut it when I rolled on the floor." His voice sounded muffled in the quiet van. "I'll be fine. My skin heals fast."

"We have to get control of this vehicle," Raj said. "We can't have much time before it reaches that house."

"We could jump out," Ander said.

Megan looked out the front window. They had to be going at least sixty miles an hour. "You're probably the only one who would survive." She stepped to the door. It took only seconds to verify they were locked in. Even the nightmare bullets hadn't broken through the armor. "We can't get out anyway, unless we break into the computer."

"I hacked it before," Ander said. "I can do it again."

"You work on Hiltman's palmtop," Raj said, "I'll do the van. Megan, can you drive if we free up the computer?"

"No problem," she said, trying to exude a confidence she didn't feel.

They made their way to the front. When she saw where Ander had laid Knoll and Hiltman on the floor, bile rose in her throat. It was the first time she had witnessed any death, let alone ones so violent.

Megan forced herself past the bodies and slid in behind the wheel. She took a breath to calm her surging pulse. Raj climbed into the passenger's seat and turned his attention to the light screen on the dash. His face had gone so pale, the circles of fatigue under his eyes looked dark purple in contrast. Ander sat on the barrel between the two seats, facing backward, the palmtop in his hand. Although he seemed the least bothered by what had happened, Megan wondered. Every few minutes, his head or arm jerked.

While Ander and Raj worked, Megan tried the van's controls. The headlights responded and she managed to free up the windshield wipers, but that was it. Outside, quadra fields rippled by in golden-red profusion.

Absorbed in his work, Raj let go of his side. The flow of blood had slowed, but red soaked his jumpsuit from chest to knee. The fins had ripped the cloth into tatters, and she also glimpsed tatters of skin. She wanted to find a bandage for him, but she couldn't leave the driver's seat. She didn't dare risk losing valuable time by being unavailable to drive if—no, when—he released the controls.

"Have you found out anything about these people?" she asked.

Ander looked up. "They're professionals. They supply weapons or mercenaries to their clients, like the two crackers at that farm house. They want me. They could sell me for billions, or sell the tech that makes me."

"You don't seem
fazed
," she said.

He shrugged. "I was made to do this. Special operations. Yes, I need more training, but I have what it takes, as you say." His face turned contemplative. "I'd rather make maps, though."

Suddenly Raj said, "I got the doors unlocked." Then: "Megan, can you disengage the cruise system?"

She went to work, trying various switches and buttons while she pressed the gas pedal. The van continued along as if nothing had happened.

"Can't find it," Raj muttered. "That one—no, not there ... Pah. What a kludge. Okay, Megan, try it now."

This time when she gunned the van, it leapt forward with gratifying acceleration.

"Yes!" Raj gave her a thumbs-up. "Get us out of here, pilot."

"Oh, shit," Ander said.

"What?" Raj asked.

"I found a log of their Internet communications." Ander's voice was grim. "They had time to warn their people about us."

Megan slammed her foot on the brake. The van skidded to a halt, swerving in the road. The highway stretched out in both directions, with the distant specks of approaching cars glinting in the early morning sunlight. She careened across the divider in the center, jolting over the uneven ground, and headed back to Alpine, praying they had time to reach the real FBI agents.

The computer spoke. "Good morning. You are driving outside allowed safety limits. Please release control of this vehicle to my guidance system or reform your driving."

"Go blow," Megan muttered.

"I have more of their Internet log," Ander said. "According to this, another van left to meet us when the shooting started."

She floored the accelerator and they jumped forward. Sixty. Eighty. When she hit one hundred, someone drew in a sharp breath, Raj probably. She doubted Ander cared how fast she went. At 110, she stopped accelerating, afraid to lose control of the van.

After about five miles and an inordinate amount of nagging from the van's computer, her surge of adrenaline eased. She let up on the gas, dropping down to ninety.

Raj was staring at her. "Where did you learn to drive that way?"

"Montana."

"Remind me not to go to Montana."

"A van is headed toward us from Alpine," Ander said.

Megan saw it coming down the mountain, its glossy black body reflecting the sky. Could this be the real FBI? She had expected the kidnappers to come from the other direction.

"It might be innocent," Ander said.

"Right," Raj said. "That's why it looks just like this one."

A window was opening in the other van—

"No!" Megan hit the brakes and the tires screeched as they lost rubber. She couldn't be sure from this distance, but that "window" in the other vehicle looked like a gun port. She had only seconds to decide: try to outrun them or leave the highway and go through the quadra fields. If she stayed on the road, she could go faster but so could the other van. She might lose them in the quadra, but there was far more uncertainty about what could happen.

Megan had no time to weigh the risks. She shoved down the gas pedal and swerved off the highway. The van roared through a flimsy fence and onto a dirt road between two quadra fields. It shook as it sped over the ridged ground, tearing up stalks of grain on either side.

"If they have guns, this van probably does too." Raj was bent over the computer, his fingers flicking through its holos as if he were a pianist who played images in the air instead of keys.

Ander clicked his wrist jack into Hiltman's palmtop. As the van rocked back and forth, he needed his hands to hang on to the barrel where he sat, and verbal or wireless commands could interfere with Raj's work.

"There!" Raj said.

Megan glanced over. All four screens on the dash now showed views of the surrounding land: one ahead of the van, one on either side, and one behind. The other van was lumbering after them, jouncing along the rutted lane they had torn up with their passage. Mounted guns projected from either side of its hood, swiveled forward in their ports.

Gripping the wheel hard, Megan accelerated again. The van hit a rut and swerved into the grain, smashing the big stalks. She managed to pull back into the lane without losing too much speed, but they were going too fast now for her to maintain full control on a road this bad. They had no choice. She couldn't slow down; that lurch into the quadra field had let their pursuers gain on them.

A resounding crack thundered through the van, accompanied by a wave of vibrations. Several more cracks followed, making the vehicle shudder even more. Megan gritted her teeth. So far the armor had protected them, but it couldn't hold up forever.

"I can't find the code that activates our guns," Raj said.

"This palmtop has backups." Ander had turned forward, straddling the divider between the two seats. Holding on to the dash, he stared out at the fields. Grain rippled everywhere, like a solution to the wave equation in physics.