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Brigid Baptiste waited for them in an alcove across the main street at the end of the alleyway, the TP-9 cradled in her hands, partially hidden by the shadows. The whole shantytown reminded the three of them of the Tartarus Pits back in Cobaltville, the ghetto level that sat at the base of every ville structure, both metaphorically and physically, supplying cheap labor and offering dire warning to those who disobeyed the baron.
The whole ville stank of human waste, and people watched warily as they made their way into the light. None of the street people looked well fed. By contrast, the physically powerful Cerberus warriors had to have looked like gods to their eyes.
“We got a way out of here?” Grant asked as he mentally checked off the people milling in the street, reassuring himself that no one was taking any undue interest in their progress.
“Our best bet is to head for the docks and pick up a boat there,” Brigid said.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Kane asked her.
Brigid smiled, tapping the side of her head with her empty hand. “I saw satellite recon photos before we came,” she told them. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of the layout of this rathole. Soon as we get back on the main thoroughfare I’ll find us the right route.”
Kane pushed Carnack between the shoulder blades again as they rushed through the narrow streets. “Keep moving,” he growled, his finely tuned senses alert, warily watching for signs of possible attack.
“Oy,” Carnack yelled behind him, “careful, fella. I can’t see, remember? What the bleeding eff was that thing, anyway?”
“Just keep quiet and keep moving,” Kane told him sullenly. “Your eyesight will come back soon enough.”
“That’s reassuring,” Carnack muttered, rubbing at his eyes as he rushed forward. “Right now it sounds like everyone’s underwater, too, you know? You’re a bunch of frackin’ idiots.”
They had reached an intersection and Brigid had stopped, looking down each of the routes, trying to fit them together with the map in her mind.
“Come on, Baptiste,” Kane urged as he glanced over his shoulder, checking for pursuit, “let’s hurry it up.”
“This way,” she decided, her long legs kicking out as she raced off to the left.
Carnack just stood there, refusing to move. Kane shoved him once more while Grant covered their backs with the Heckler & Koch.
“All right,” Tom Carnack yelped, “keep your hair on. I’m disabled, remember?”
“About that,” Kane said, checking his wristchron. It had been three minutes since they had exited Carnack’s lair, almost five since Brigid had unleashed the flash-bang. Ample time for Carnack to recover, at least enough to see shapes and blurs. “How’s your vision?” Kane asked him.
“Completely scragged,” Carnack complained.
“You’re faking,” Kane told him. “You should have recovered by now. If you’re deliberately slowing us down I’m going to shoot you in the foot and carry you the rest of the way.”
“Genius,” Carnack said, snidely. “That’ll only slow you down more.”
“That’s my problem,” Kane growled, whipping out his .44 Magnum pistol and pointing it at Carnack’s stumbling feet.
There was a loud report as he pulled the trigger and buried a slug in the ground between the trader’s feet. Carnack leaped aside, pulling his hands over his ears.
“That’s your warning shot,” Kane told him. “The next one hobbles you.”
“All right,” Carnack cried, hands up in the air. “I can see colors and shapes. It’s still a bit messed up, though, so I’m going to go slow. Okay?”
“Speed up,” Kane responded, “and keep moving.”
They turned another corner into a wide thoroughfare, stepping past a man with a burned face and a begging bowl who was lying in the middle of the street. Between the tightly packed shanty buildings Kane saw a glint of sunlight reflecting off water.
Brigid waited while her companions caught up. “We’re close,” she told Kane as he grabbed Carnack’s collar to halt him. “There’s a series of jetties down there. It’s where the ville folk fish from. Or they used to.”
Kane nodded, peering behind and checking to see if anyone was following.
“There’s an unmanned motorboat off to the left,” Brigid pointed when Kane turned back. “Just a little way along from the pier.” Her finger pointed to a small fishing scow with a tiny covered bridge.
“You’ll never make it.” Carnack laughed fiercely. “My people will ex the lot of you the second you step out there.”
Brigid grabbed the man’s stubbled chin. “Sorry, Tom. We’re home free,” she told him. “Didn’t you hear—they’re not coming for you. There’s no honor among thieves.”
“Scratch that,” Grant chided from the rear of the group. “We’ve got company.”
Brigid and Kane looked in Grant’s direction and saw four dark shapes weaving along the narrow street at high speed: three motorcycles and a quad bike followed by a billowing plume of dark exhaust.
Carnack looked at Brigid and laughed. “Before the end of the day I’ll have you right where I want you, red,” he said, “bunny hopping across my lap.”
“Keep moving,” Kane said, ignoring the man’s vile comment.
More people were milling where the streets opened up onto the waterfront, and Brigid looked back at Kane as she took them in. “It’s too crowded, Kane,” she told him. “Someone’s going to end up getting hurt.”
Kane checked behind him for the approaching gang members, then shoved Carnack toward Brigid. “Cover him,” he instructed. “I’m going to clear us a path.” With that, he strode forward and raised his pistol in the air, pumping three shots into the sky in quick succession. “Everyone get out of here,” Kane shouted over the frightened cries of the crowd.
They didn’t need to be told twice. Everyone ran to the edges of the ramshackle street, ducking into doorways and clearing a path for Kane and his team.
Behind him, Kane heard gunshots as Grant began firing at the approaching marauders. He refilled the chambers of the .44 Magnum pistol and turned to face the enemy.
Beside Grant, Brigid raised her TP-9 pistol and blasted off a stream of shots down the street as the motorcyclists and quad riders approached.
Seeing his chance, Tom Carnack took a step away from her, his bloodshot eyes fervently looking around for an escape route. Suddenly, he felt Brigid’s elbow slam into his gut and he doubled over, his breath exploding out of his mouth in a coughing whoop.
“Stay still,” she told him, thrusting her free arm around his throat and holding him against her hip in a headlock. Carnack continued to cough and splutter as Brigid pumped the trigger of her pistol, firing shots at the approaching gang members.
Their attackers were the same guards they had seen in Carnack’s trading pad. The velvet-coated Señor Smarts sat on a motorcycle behind one of the guardsmen from the main room, a spooky-looking man wearing a bandanna across his head and goggles over his eyes to protect them from flying grit. Beside him, his partner was riding alone on his own motorbike, spinning a chain in one hand as he powered the throttle. A pace behind them, the dark-haired dancing woman rode her own bike. There was a scabbard attached to the side of the bike, the shining hilt of a sword sticking out beside her right knee. Bringing up the rear of the group, the two large guards from the anteroom shared a quad bike that belched a thick cloud of black exhaust into the air around them. While one drove, the other raised a Kalashnikov autorifle and aimed at the Cerberus field team. The muzzle flashed as the guard launched a stream of bullets into the narrow street.
Kane, Grant and Brigid each pulled back, finding what little cover they could at the sides of the street, backs against the walls, with Brigid and her prisoner standing close to Kane. On the other side of the street, Grant took careful aim and his bullet clipped the shoulder of Velvet Coat, almost toppling the bike as he reeled in pain.
Then the vehicles were upon them.
Kane held the .44 Magnum pistol in a two-handed grip, steadying his aim as he blasted three shots into the driver of the quad bike. The man slumped in the saddle and the bike veered off to the side, crashing through the flimsy walls of one of the ramshackle huts that lined the street.
Brigid took aim at the second bike, the one with the guard wielding the chain, as it bore down on her. Carnack’s struggling tipped her aim, and her shots skewed wide. Suddenly, the bike was next to her, zipping past at a ferocious speed, the guard’s chain spinning through the air with an audible thrumming. She ducked back as the bike passed, and her eyes widened as she saw the chain whip out and snag Grant’s ankle, pulling the big man off his feet.
“Eyes front, Baptiste,” Kane’s bellowing voice warned from behind her as Grant was dragged off onto the pier. She looked back and saw the dancing girl’s sword cleave the air at waist height, just barely missing her while the other bike skidded to a halt a few steps ahead.
As the sword cut the air beside him, Kane’s empty hand shot out and tangled in the woman’s long brown hair. In a fraction of a second, the motorcycle tipped up as the dancing girl was yanked from the saddle, still clinging to her sword.
She appeared to be falling backward, but her momentum dragged her ahead, pulling Kane into a stumbling run for a moment before her snagged hair ripped from her scalp and he let go. She crashed to the ground, slamming hard against it on her back as her bike sped away, the distinctive note of its two-stroke engine rising as it raced out of control.
She was quick; Kane acknowledged that much. She had hit the ground hard, but she rolled and was standing before him in less than two seconds. She stood low, adopting a fighter’s stance as she held the heavy sword behind her, readying for attack. There was blood in her hair, and she gritted her teeth in a fierce smile as her eyes met with Kane’s.
The bandanna-wearing guard had pulled his bike around, kicking up dirt as the tires tore against the makeshift road surface. Brigid struggled to target him with her TP-9 while Tom Carnack squirmed against her side in the headlock. She seemed only able to watch as the motorcyclist pulled a revolver from his jacket’s inside pocket and aimed it directly between her eyes.
Meanwhile, already thirty yards away, racing down the rough wooden slats of the fishing pier, Grant found himself dragged behind the rider of the other motorcycle, his right ankle caught up in the chain that the man held. His back slapped the splintering pier beneath him, tossing him in the air before dropping him back down hard against its surface, knocking the breath out of him and giving him no time to recover.
Realizing that the slats were evenly spread, Grant timed his breaths and tried to focus his vision on the jostling view of the rider. He was momentarily tossed into the air once more, and as his shoulders took the brunt of another hard landing, Grant raised the pistol in his hand and aimed down the length of his body at the motorcycle, praying he would manage to avoid shooting his own foot off.
The Heckler & Koch spit, and three bullets flew through the air. The first one hit the rider just behind the ear, causing him to turn the handlebars violently and forcing the motorbike into a skid. The second shot went wide, flying over the top of Grant’s target, but the third bullet hit the bike beneath the saddle, drilling through the chassis and into the fuel tank.
With a blossoming explosion, motorbike and rider caught light as it sped off the side of the pier with Grant still dragging behind it.
The motorbike and its flaming rider hit the blue-green waters of the ocean with a splash, before sinking immediately beneath the waves and pulling Grant along with them as the flames were extinguished.
“Oh, crap,” Grant snarled as his head ducked beneath the water and he felt himself plummeting toward the bottom.
Back on the pier, Kane watched as the bike caught fire and Grant disappeared off the side of the wooden structure, dragging behind it. But there was no time to react—the dancing girl was already upon him, swinging the wide blade of her sword in a sweeping arc intended to rip his chest in two. Kane leaped backward, barely an inch out of reach.
“Looks like we get to dance after all, Magistrate man,” the dark-haired woman announced, her eyes flashing.
“I’ve got two left feet,” Kane replied, raising his pistol and targeting her head with the heavy Magnum handgun.
And then, with no warning, the ground started shaking, rocking the whole, flimsy ville of Hope. Kane and his beautiful opponent staggered before falling to their knees.
Chapter 3
Pulled down by the weight around his ankle, Grant held his breath as he sank beneath the waves. He opened his eyes, feeling the salty sting of the ocean press against them as he plummeted from the surface. Beneath him, the rider and the motorcycle were sinking rapidly, and the rider still clung to the length of chain that was wrapped around Grant’s ankle. The ex-Mag fought for a moment, trying to swim away from his sinking adversary, but the chain was cinched tight and he would have to disentangle himself before he could escape.
Grant looked back down the length of his body, watching the darkness of the ocean envelop the bike and its rider. He discarded the Heckler & Koch, letting it drift away from him on the current as he twisted his body in an effort to reach for his trapped ankle.
The darkness was closing around him now, and his chest was starting to yearn to take its next breath. Soon it would be hard to see the chain.
As he scrambled over himself, plunging his arms toward his weighted foot, Grant felt something slam his body beneath the water, as though he had hit a solid wall. He was thrown about in the ocean depths, spun and shunted, as the wall of pressure hit him. Light followed by darkness, then light again, his breath blurting from his mouth in a rush of bubbles, and suddenly Grant could no longer tell which way was up.
Beneath him, or at least at the end of his foot, the rider clung to the chain as his motorcycle was wrenched from under him, and Grant watched in astonishment as the heavy two-wheeler seemed to dance around then disappear over his head.
Suddenly another wall of pressure collided with Grant’s body, and he seemed to pirouette in the dark waters of the Pacific. He felt something pull at his foot as he was tossed around, and suddenly his assailant’s face rushed before his eyes before spinning away.
THE MAN IN THE bandanna and goggles was about to pull the trigger of his Beretta when the first tremor hit, shaking the ground violently and throwing Brigid and her prisoner into a staggering, graceless dance.
Brigid heard the gun blast, watched the bullet speed over her head as she toppled over, releasing her headlock grip on Tom Carnack. A moment later, the dirt track of the ground was rushing toward her face and she thrust her hands forward, still clutching the TP-9, and braced for impact.
When Brigid let go, Tom Carnack found his feet wrenched from under him and suddenly he was in the air, sailing across the width of the street. His brief flight was cut short as his frame slammed against the side of one of the makeshift huts, knocking a thin, plywood wall into splinters before he caught the structure’s metal support pole in midstomach. His breath spluttered out of him as the brigand leader sank to the floor inside the ruined little hut.
The gunman, meanwhile, found his bike and rider, Señor Smarts, dragged away beneath him, and the handlebars clapped into his pelvis, sending a wave of sudden agony through the top of both legs before flipping him to the ground. His jaw hit the dirt road with a resounding thud, making his ears ring once more.
The motorcycle still beneath him, Señor Smarts became tangled with the vehicle as it flipped over itself, again and again, sliding along the street as though at the top of a sharp incline. Smarts’s head cracked repeatedly into the ground as he was dragged backward.
Close by, at the entrance to the pier, Kane and the sword-wielding dancing girl were brought to their knees by the sudden shock. Kane reached forward, his left palm slapping into the wooden slats of the pier as he tried to halt his fall. Beside him, the dancing girl rolled forward, taking the brunt of the fall on her shoulder before turning to face him, still kneeling.
Kane saw the startled look in her eyes, and he was about to question her when a second tremor ran through the pier and he felt the ground shake where it touched his legs and steadying hand. Before his eyes, the dark-haired swordswoman toppled over and rolled down the pier. All around, people and loose items were being tossed about, and Kane heard the crash as several of the poorly constructed buildings collapsed.
Kane clawed the ground as it rumbled beneath him, throwing him onto his side. He lay there, facing the pier as the shock wave thundered through the ground. Abruptly, the pier beneath him disintegrated, and Kane reached frantically behind him to secure a grip on the ground as the whole structure crashed into the ocean, the dancing girl and a handful of fishermen dropping with it. As the pier fell, Kane saw the rising wave behind it, growing from twenty to a monstrous forty feet as he watched, rolling toward him with unstoppable force.
Kane braced himself as the wave crashed over him, the weight of water blocking out the sunlight for a moment before the surge of water crashed down and smothered the seafront buildings.
Kane’s grip was broken as the wave swelled all around him, and he found himself being shunted along the street before being pulled backward toward the ocean along with several dozen locals and their belongings as they were caught up in its ferocious torrent.
GRANT FOUND HIMSELF caught up in the immense wave as it crashed down on the buildings that lined the beach. It was like flying, the water streaming all around him, pushing him unstoppably onward as it tossed him high in the air. He gasped, gulping in air and seawater as he hurtled ever onward, and he saw the motorcycle and, separately, its rider, race away as they were caught up in other parts of the colossal wave.
Suddenly, the wave lost integrity and the ground was rushing beneath him, fifteen feet below. Grant looked ahead and saw sunlight glint off of the corrugated tin roof of one of the huts, and, quicker than he could acknowledge it, he was shoved into the roof and sent rolling over and over until the whole single-story structure collapsed in on itself.
BRIGID WATCHED AS, caught up in the huge wave, Grant’s familiar form sailed overhead and crashed into a wide hut a little way along the street. She held herself low to the ground as the tremor subsided, remaining there for a few seconds until she was certain that the shock wave had passed.
When she looked up again, she saw that the structure that Grant had hit had collapsed in on itself, and a number of the ramshackle buildings along the street were in a similar state of disrepair. Whatever had hit them had hit hard, like a heavy stone being dropped in a pond, the ripples spreading across its surface until its energy was finally spent.
Carefully, Brigid got back on her feet and, steadying her grip on the pistol with her free hand, checked the street. The motorcyclist who had pointed the gun at her head was nowhere to be seen, nor were his bike and passenger. Tom Carnack lay amid the rubble of a building that now stood on the beachfront, where a minute earlier it had been three buildings back. His eyes were closed, and blood was oozing from a wound around his hairline above the right eye.
The street itself was three inches deep in clear water, swells of foam bobbing along here and there as it ran back toward the ocean.
The pier was gone, and Brigid checked the faces of the shocked and wounded who were recovering all around, trying to locate Kane. Neither he nor his lithe opponent were to be seen, and Brigid tamped down the urge to rush to look for him. Grant was just down the street, and she needed to ensure that he was okay first. Plus, assuming he was all right, the two of them could cover more ground in the search for their teammate.
Still clutching the TP-9, Brigid jogged along the street, her boots splashing in the carpet of flowing water, until she reached the collapsed building that she had seen Grant thrown through. Her hearing was coming back now, after the colossal crashing of the huge wave had briefly deafened her, and she could hear screaming and crying coming from all around. The burned beggar was gone; he and his bowl had presumably been washed away. Children were running around in the street, a naked toddler wailing as he stumbled through the road, looking for a friendly face.
Brigid leaned down and scooped up the unclothed toddler, lifting him to shoulder height and looking to make sure that he wasn’t wounded. “There, there,” she told him quietly, “it’s okay now. It’s okay. Hush now.”
Carrying the child over one shoulder, Brigid kicked rubble aside and made her way into the remains of the collapsed hut. “Grant?” she called, raising her voice. “It’s Brigid. Are you here?”
She listened for a moment, watching the rubble for signs of her partner. Grant’s familiar voice came rumbling from across to the right, and Brigid saw the wreckage move and his hand appear above the mess. She rushed across the rubble, taking care not to trip as she balanced the toddler close to her chest, and leaned down to help shift the debris.
A moment later, Grant was struggling out of the shattered remains of the building, water pouring from his coat and his skin caked with pale dust. He wiped a hand over his face and smiled at Brigid. “What the freak just happened?” he asked her, a snarl replacing his smile.
Brigid shook her head, rocking the toddler in her arms. “I don’t know,” she told Grant. “Felt like maybe a bomb blast, but I didn’t hear the explosion. Earthquake maybe?”
“You think?” Grant asked.
Brigid shrugged. “The San Andreas Fault runs through here,” she speculated. “If you look at the old maps, you’ll see that it pretty much wiped out most of the West Coast a couple of centuries back, after the nukes fell.”
Grant nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll see if I can raise Lakesh and get some intel,” he told her. Then the huge ex-Mag looked around. “Where’s Kane?” he asked.
“He was on the pier when it dropped into the sea,” Brigid said, clambering over the rubble and back onto the waterlogged street.
Grant shook his head angrily as he followed her. “This day just keeps getting worse,” he growled. With that, he activated the Commtact that was embedded subcutaneously behind his right ear and patched through to Cerberus headquarters.
“This is Grant in the field, Lakesh, Donald? Are you guys receiving me?”
There was a brief pause and then Donald Bry’s friendly voice came to Grant, uplinked to a satellite from the operations room in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana. “Hey, Grant, how are things? Mission accomplished?”
The Commtact units were top-of-the-line communication devices that had been discovered in a military installation called Redoubt Yankee several years before, and they had become standard equipment for the Cerberus field operatives. Commtacts featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was subcutaneously embedded against the mastoid bone. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were picked up by the auditory canals, and dermal sensors transmitted the electronic signals directly through the user’s skull casing. Theoretically, if a wearer went completely deaf he or she would still be capable of hearing, after a fashion, by using the Commtact.
Permanent usage of the Commtact would involve a minor surgical procedure, something many of the Cerberus staff were understandably reticent to submit to, and so their use had stalled, for the moment, at field-test stage. Besides radio communications, the Commtacts could be used as translation devices, providing a real-time interpretation of spoken foreign language on the proviso that sufficient vocabulary had been programmed into their data banks.
