Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (2 page)

Hagen was right; they shouldn't be going in without backup. But could they wait? What mischief was their quarry up to in there? Might he have some way to escape the tunnel that they didn't know about? Going in wasn't bright, but given what they knew about the quarry, not going in might be considerably less bright.

There were other reasons to get this operation wrapped up. The Mamba had put on quite a show in the last few minutes. People had noticed—how could they not? If a bunch of ver-ries had been buzzing the airspace over Charley's district,
he
would have been poking his nose into things, wanting to know what was going on. Lights were winking on in residences up on the hill. Calls were undoubtedly being made. The district's police would be here soon, looking for answers. The university cops, too. Mooks from probably half a dozen private forces, as well; there were significant corporate interests in the neighborhood. There would be matters of protocol and procedure.

And Quetzal would escape while they were answering questions. No justice there! He didn't like it, but there seemed only one thing to do.

"Let's go get the bastard," Charley said.

He rushed toward the crack in the wall, trying not to think how stupid he was being. From the sounds of the footfalls behind him, Hagen was being just as stupid. Could it be that Charley had fallen in with a corporate with a conscience and the guts to back it up?

Charley's shadow raced ahead of him, disappearing into the dark of the entrance. But instead of following it into the tunnel, he crossed in front of the entrance and flattened himself against the retaining wall. He covered the opening with the muzzle of his assault rifle. Nothing reached out of the darkness of the tunnel to grab him. No arcane light lanced out to spear him. Had he really expected it to?

Yeah, he had.

Hagen put himself against the wall on the opposite side of the narrow opening. The corporate's visor was down now. Charley couldn't see the man's eyes. Was he as scared as Charley?

Hagen was making no move to be the first one in. Keeping his hand on the trigger and his muzzle pointed into the dark, Charley signaled to Hagen that he would go first. Hagen nodded agreement and crouched in position to provide covering fire. The little guy wasn't a long-time reliable partner like Manny, but he seemed to be trained in this sort of thing. Well enough trained? Charley would probably learn too soon. He hoped he'd like the answer.

He went through, into the dark.

The helmet's circuitry made day of the tunnel's night. A hazy, dark day, but enough for him to see the shantytown of discarded boxes. A lot of streeters could be squatting here. God, Charley hoped not. He couldn't see anyone, but he didn't know if that was good or bad. He and Hagen began a sweep through the makeshift "homes." They found no one.

It turned out that the streeters hadn't set up their squats very deep into the tunnel, just ten yards or so, near enough to the opening that some light might filter in. The tunnel took a bend not far in, stretching away into deep darkness. There, at the fringes of the shanty sprawl, they found the first squatters.

When Charley saw the corpses, his first thought was that they were the two streeters he'd seen go into the tunnel. A second look told him that they weren't. One of those two had been a woman. Despite the condition of the corpses, Charley could see that these two were both men. The bodies looked rickety, hollow somehow, almost as though they had been sucked dry of the life that had once filled them. They looked like some of the pictures in Charley's Modus 112 file. Myocardial infarction was what the medical examiner would say, heart failure. Nothing more than that.

Like hell.
This was the work of Quetzal. The monster had to be stopped.

The other two streeters—and maybe more people—were in here somewhere. He hoped Quetzal wouldn't be using them as hostages. It would make doing what had to be done harder, and he couldn't let Quetzal stop him by threats to innocents. Quetzal wasn't the type to let hostages go after he dealt with Charley and Hagen. Everyone would end up dead, unless Quetzal died first.

Charley didn't intend for that to happen. He liked being alive. Any streeters that got in the way of taking down Quetzal would have to take their chances.

They left the squatters' pitiful hovels behind and moved deeper into the tunnel. The light leaking in from the hovering Mamba's beam was cut off by the bend, its glow fading away as they advanced. The helmets' circuitry was good enough that they might have been walking through a dark night rather than utter darkness. Still, they had to spread out to keep both walls under observation. Using their under-barrel lights would have made the going easier, but it would have shouted their presence to anyone lurking in the darkness ahead. Besides, the lights were supposed to be a weapon against Quetzal, and there was no sense in warning him that they were carrying such weapons.

Without warning Hagen halted, scanning the space around him in apparent consternation. "Do you feel—"

Charley did. The earth beneath his feet was shaking. The air was suddenly colder. A rumble, deep and ominous, filled his ears and reached into his bones. The East Coast wasn't supposed to have earthquakes, but it seemed that the rock around them hadn't gotten the word. Dirt and grit pattered down from above. Were they about to be buried alive?

The entrance to the tunnel seemed very far away. Too far to reach, too far to run. Hagen was standing his ground. Charley did too.

The tremor stopped. And though the air was full of dust, they weren't buried.

Hagen switched on his light. The beam speared past Charley, illuminating an archway in the tunnel's wall. Gritty clouds billowed out from the choked opening, fogging down Hagen's beam. Charley added his. Rocks and debris continued to spill from the opening as the shifting stone ground itself into a stable mass. The sound and vibration died away, and Charley began to believe that the whole tunnel wasn't .about to come down on his head.

Hagen leading the way, they moved toward the rockfall. Something dripped sluggishly among the rocks, forming a small pool. Charley put his light on it. The dark stuff shook and began to roil. "What's that?" '

"Look's like blood," Hagen said.

Blood? The color was right. "But it's bubbling."

"Take the light off it," said Hagen, shifting his own away.

Charley did the same. Seen by the helmet's circuitry, the liquid lost its color. When the direct glare of their lights was no longer on the liquid, the bubbling ceased.

"Quetzal's blood," Hagen said.

The monster had shown an adverse reaction to light; that was why the actinic lamps were a weapon against it. This blood boiled in the glare of the light. Could it be true? Could the monster have been killed in the cave-in? There was a lot of blood. Had Quetzal done himself in, and saved Charley and Hagen the trouble? "Think it was in there?"

"Seems likely," Hagen said.

"You're not sure."

"Are you?"

"Nothing human could survive losing so much blood," Charley said, trying to convince himself.

"You know what we are dealing with here."

No, he didn't, but Charley did understand Hagen's point. Quetzal wasn't human. They couldn't be sure that the monster had been trapped and crushed in the cave-in. It seemed a reasonable conclusion, but they just couldn't be
sure.

Hagen advanced to the face of the rockfall to examine it more closely. Charley didn't see what the man could learn; it would take a major excavation to unchoke whatever passage had led from that archway. No one would be finding Quetzal's body anytime soon.
If
it was even there to be found. Charley played his light over the loose debris around the edges of the rockfall, looking for anything that might offer a clue to what had happened.

He caught a glimpse of motion at the edge of his searching light—something long and sinuous that seemed to squirm. Thinking
snake,
he took a step back and put the beam directly on it, weapon ready. It wasn't a snake. It wasn't moving, either. In fact, it didn't seem to be quite there.

"Hagen?"

"Find something?"

"You tell me."

They found that they could see the thing best when the light wasn't fully on it. It appeared to be a sculpture of some sort, a serpentine shape faceted into segments. Charley had never seen anything quite like it.

"Quetzal's?"

"Likely." Hagen restrained Charley when he reached down to pick it up. "Not wise."

"This some kind of magic thing?"

"A powerful one, I think. Quetzal wouldn't have let it go. He must be dead."

Charley didn't see that the connection was inevitable. "What do we do with it?"

"I don't think that's going to be our problem. Look."

Charley looked back the way they had come, as Hagen was doing. There were half a dozen men with lights advancing toward them. In the backglow, Charley could see that they were wearing federal-issue field rigs. Charley and Hagen turned to face the newcomers. Light swept across them.

"Freeze!" an amplified voice ordered. "Put your weapons down!"

Very slowly and carefully, Charley and Hagen did as they were told.

A trio of suits came up behind the field agents. Two of them were cookie-cutter feds, but the third wore clothes too fancy to be government. That guy wore a corporate affiliation lapel pin, but Charley couldn't make out the logo. The fancy suit pushed his way past the field agents and went straight to the artifact, crouching down to examine it.

One of the fed suits stepped forward. "I'm Inspector Fletcher, and I want answers. We'll start with who you are."

"Charley Gordon, NEC Special Investigations Unit."

"Hagen, Yamabennin Security Services."

Charley was glad to see that Hagen understood that there was no messing with these kinds of guys.

The fancy suit looked up. "Gordon, eh?"

"You know him, Van Dieman?" Fletcher asked the man.

Van Dieman shrugged. "Heard the name before." He went back to examining the artifact. Fletcher didn't seem perturbed by the minimal response. He indicated Charley's shield and held out his hand. Charley handed the wallet over. The fed pointed his comp at the shield and flashed the code.

"Badge checks out," Fletcher said as he handed back Charley's shield.

No reason it shouldn't have.

"Your captain know about this operation?" Fletcher asked. "The aircraft outside belong to Yamabennin Security Services."

"This is an emergency pursuit situation," Hagen said. "To the shame of Yamabennin and all our corporate family, the detective discovered one of our clients in the commission of a crime. The detective called upon us to aid in the pursuit of our client, an armed and dangerous person. In compliance with statute 232 of our incorporation papers, Yamabennin is supplying supplementary personnel and equipment to Detective Gordon in performance of his duty. It is a community service."

Fletcher looked down his nose at Hagen, easy enough given the disparity in their heights. "You're pretty heavily armed for a public relations lawyer."

"Yamabennin prefers well-rounded employees, Inspector," Hagen said almost cheerfully.

"Yeah? Well, be a good employee and get your corporate butt back to your protected turf and out of here. I don't see any more need for 'supplementary personnel.' "

"Yamabennin is always pleased to cooperate with the authorities." Hagen gave Fletcher a corporate bow.

"I'm sure," Fletcher said, with exactly the same amount of sarcasm that Charley would have used if that line had been handed to him.

"You may as well go with him, Detective Gordon," Van Dieman said. "You're not needed here anymore either."

Charley looked to Fletcher. "This isn't a federal matter."

"Just remember to file your report," Fletcher said. "We'll be expecting to see a copy. We're in charge now."

Part 1

TIME FOR THINGS TO CHANGE

CHAPTER
1

"Master Jack," piped the three voices, all off-key and out

of sync.

Sleep-fuddled, John didn't realize at once that the voices were calling for him. John Reddy didn't use his real name much anymore. On the streets of old Providence he was known as Tall Jack, Lanky Jacky, Mucho Blanco Jacko, or just Jack. Street names for a street life. His mainline straight-line life was behind him, his old home in Rezcom Cluster 3 a memory.

"Master Jack!"

Some called him that, too, but plain, unadorned Jack was what John preferred, although he had to admit that there was a certain attraction to the air of mystery that having a multitude of names gave him. Only Faye still called him John, but most of the people who could hear Faye were John's friends, so he didn't worry about it too much.

"Waken, Master Jack!"

Something snatched away his blanket, exposing him to the chill of the morning air. Hidden by the purloined mound of cloth, the thief scooted for the far side of the loft that John had claimed for his bedroom. The frenetic mound was the right size to be one of the bogies, and the voices were shrill enough to fit as well. They were being uncharacteristically bold, to disturb him.