Kane struggled to strap his Sin Eater's power holster to his forearm, at the same time watching Breeze Castigleone drop his derringer and kneel beside Tashlyn, cradling her head in his hands. Belevedere, blinking around in a daze, took up position behind him as if his huge body would serve as a bulletproof bulwark.

  Tashlyn, her lips working as she mouthed silent pleas, stared up at Breeze with pain-glazed eyes. Her hands cupped her lower belly, blood bubbling out between her fingers.

  Kane secured a buckle of the holster, a swift glance showing him that Tashlyn had only disconnected the spring cable from the electric motor. She had lacked the knowledge to do more extensive damage to the weapon. It was the work of only a few seconds to reconnect the cable, and he did so with feverish haste. While he worked, Baptiste kept the Magistrates penned up inside the Deathbirds with short bursts from her Copperhead. At the same time, Grant unzipped the carrying case for the Barrett.

  Kane reconnected the cable in the holster mechanism and the tiny electric motor whined as he tensed his wrist tendons. Sensitive actuators activated flexible cables in the holster and snapped the Sin Eater smoothly into his waiting hand.

  He felt about five times better almost immediately. Turning to Castigleone, he said, "We've got to find cover before the Birds—"

  The remainder of his words were swallowed up by the sharply-pitched drone of the chopper engines as they hit high revs. First one Deathbird, then the other, lifted off from the deck of the barge, the vanes beating at the air furiously. Both inscribed high and fast trajectories across the sky. Kane fired one round apiece, but knew his snap-from-the-hip shots missed both helicopter gunships entirely.

  The boatman made a shambling, clumsy run for the area on the barge where he had moored his dinghy. He hadn't crossed more than fifteen feet of deck when one of the Deathbirds rotated in the air, its chain gun opening up with a rattling roar. Little spear points of flame flickered from the spinning, multiple barrels.

  A hailstorm of .50-caliber lead pounded into the man, breaking his body open, tearing away chunks of clothing, flesh and bone. Flying ribbons of blood mixed with fragments of exploding deck. As his maimed body fell, the chopper's spinning rotors carried it swiftly out of weapons range.

  Grant cursed as he brought the Barrett to his shoulder. "We're their meat now."

  Kane stepped over to Castigleone and Tashlyn, casting a shadow over the woman's face. She gazed up at him, started to speak, then began to vomit all over herself. She tried to turn her body to ease the spasms but she was unable to move. Castigleone held her head until the sickness passed. She gasped fitfully, and Kane knew the woman wasn't going anywhere ever again. Her spinal cord had been severed by the bullet.

  "I asked you a question, Castigleone," Kane said quietly.

  Breeze blinked up at Kane, tears brimming in his eyes. In a voice so choked by rage and grief it was nearly incomprehensible, he replied, "Next barge over. Get to that. You'll find all the merchandise I have left under the tarps."

  Kane reached down to drag the man to his feet. "Show us."

  Castigleone slapped his hand away. "I won't leave Tasha."

  Looking at Tashlyn's face, Kane could only assume her complexion was ashen underneath the coating of cosmetics. However he had no difficulty reading death in her eyes.

  "If you don't come with us," Kane stated flatly, "you'll die with her."

  Breeze shrugged. "I'm a dead man anyway, Kane. I can't ever go back to Snakefish and I sure as shit don't want to try my luck scavenging in the Outlands."

  Kane saw the two Deathbirds hovering and rocking on air currents like a pair of angry wasps. "At least you'd be alive."

  "I'm not interested in just surviving," Castigleone retorted. "Even leeches can do that. Quality of life is more important to me than quantity."

  Grant slid closer to Kane, rifle still at his shoulder as he tracked the gunships through the scope. "If that's the case," he rumbled, "then your quantity is about to get pretty damn low."

  Brigid picked up Grant's Sin Eater and joined them, anxiously eyeing the black choppers as they kept well out of firearm range. She was all too aware of the absence of anything to put between her and her friends and the FLIR lenses of the Birds.

  "We need to start moving," she announced tightly.

  Breeze nodded toward the vessel tethered to the barge. "That's your best, your only, hope. For whatever it's worth, I hope you make it."

  Kane glanced dubiously toward the makeshift bridge stretching over the water, then back at the Deathbirds. They circled in a wide, figure-eight pattern, the standard prelude to a strafing run. To Castigleone he said, "They won't ignore you to follow us, you know."

  "Believe it or not," Breeze Castigleone replied, "I' m not sending you ahead as stalking horses, to lead them away from me and my people."

  Kane thought his words over for a moment, then stated, "For some reason, I believe you."

  Grant said gruffly, "You and Brigid get going. I'll cover you."

  Kane hesitated, then wheeled toward the heavy anchor chain between the two barges. The links of the chain were as thick as Grant's wrists and scabbed with rust. He hoped it would provide a degree of traction. Brigid followed at his heels, holding both her Copperhead and Grant's power holster. "Do you want me to go first?" Kane asked her.

  Brigid looked at the chain, gauging the slack, then over her shoulder at Deathbirds. "After you."

  Kane didn't argue. Running on the balls of his feet, he crossed the chain bridge. It sagged only a little under his weight, but he made it to the next barge without a misstep. Brigid followed him swiftly, the sun striking flame-colored highlights from her mane of hair as it streamed out behind her.

  Neither Grant nor Kane displayed much apprehension about the black choppers circling high overhead. Brigid supposed both men had been through so many harrowing experiences, as Magistrates and after, that life-threatening situations no longer upset their emotional equilibrium. But she knew her assessment was a false one, despite the fact they were hardened veterans of dozens of violent incidents. They had been raised to be killers, after all—to kill anything or anyone that threatened the security of Cobaltville.

  Once she joined him on the deck of the barge, Kane shouted, "Grant! Come on, Goddammit!"

  Before Grant could answer, much less comply, the helicopter gunships swooped down out of the sun, rotors thundering, machine guns hammering.

  Chapter 5

  One of the Deathbirds took a fifty foot lead on the other. The slugs spit by its minigun scooped foaming spray out of the water in geysers. They struck the deck plates, glancing off with constellations of sparks. The rattle of impact was like a steady drum roll against tin.

  Grant chambered a round from the Barrett's box magazine into the breech. His left hand cradled the thirty-three-inch barrel, while his right curled around the pistol grip backing the trigger guard. He placed his eye against the scope and centered the crosshairs of the Barrett on the Deathbird's tinted foreport, above the flickering, rotating chain gun. He preferred a clean shot at the fuselage since the massive wrecking power of the .50-caliber round would obliterate the delicate inner workings of the machine But, under the circumstances, the cockpit and the pilot therein would have to suffice.

  The second Deathbird swooped lower, pinpoints of fire rippling in a rotating sequence from the chain gun in the chin turret. The staccato reports sounded like stuttering thunderclaps. Fountains of water burst up all around the barge. Taking a deep breath and holding it, Grant called on his training, achieving a form of auto- hypnosis known as the Mag mind, a technique that emptied the consciousness of nonessential thoughts. It allowed his instincts to take over. The sounds around him faded to nothing, and he closed his awareness even to the presence of the steady jack hammering of the minigun.

  The image of the Plexiglas port behind the scope's crosshairs leaped into clear, sharp focus. Grant carefully squeezed into the trigger pull. The crack of the sniper rifle shattered the bright morning air. He moved his shoulder expertly, taking the recoil, not otherwise shifting position. Through the sniper scope Grant saw a white, stellated star appear on the Plexiglas and the pilot's body jerk.

  The gunship performed an abrupt, almost frantic figure eight from west to east, banked sharply to starboard, veered wildly up, then sharply down. The Deathbird's companion was forced to execute a clumsy evasive maneuver to avoid a midair collision. Engines whining with stress, it rose quickly.

  Grant couldn't be sure if the steel-jacketed bullet had penetrated the pilot when it pierced the cockpit, but the black chopper performed a clumsy pirouette, listing from side to side. Vanes and rotors beating the air, it lost altitude, hung motionless for a moment, then dropped.

  It nose-dived into the ocean at a forty-five-degree angle, barely ten yards away from the stern of the barge, the smashing impact sending up a cascading wave of foam-edged water. Two of the vanes snapped from the turboshaft with a sound like gongs being struck. The blades pinwheeled crazily in opposite directions.

  While the sea still roiled and splashed over the side of the barge, Grant spun and ran across the bridge spanning the water between the two vessels.

  "Bagged another Bird," Kane said with a wry smile. "Another notch for you."

  "Don't buy me a drink yet," replied Grant worriedly. "One Bird can still blow the shit out of the place and us with it."

  Kane eyed the circling chopper speculatively. "He may not want to risk it. His orders were to bring us in alive, not lose his machine. He could just decide to cut his losses."

  "I guess it depends on how angry we made him," Brigid interjected. "Or scared."

  "Hopefully he's thinking about all the awful stories he's heard about us," murmured Grant, settling the stock of the Barrett against his shoulder, but not peering through the scope. "Maybe that'll be enough to drive him off. Or he could be calling for ground support."

  Looking over at the other barge, Kane saw Belevedere lift Tashlyn into his arms as if she weighed no more than a child. He followed Breeze Castigleone to where the dingy was moored. "He wasn't sending us out as stalking horses," Kane commented sourly, "but he's not about taking advantage of the window of opportunity we opened for him."

  "Under the circumstances," inquired Brigid, "wouldn't you?"

  Kane considered the question rhetorical, so he didn't answer it. Instead he gave the deck of the barge a quick visual inspection, noting the various shapes humped up beneath tied-down canvas coverings. He strode quickly toward the nearest one. Grant and Brigid followed him, Grant walking backward, rifle at the ready, his eyes still on the distant Deathbird. It was so high, the chopper looked like a black speck, a water beetle floating on the surface of a calm pool.

  The canvas covering was attached to bolts screwed into the deck, lashed down by rope drawn through eyelets at the corners. "Let's see what kind of merchandise Breeze was selling," he said.

  Pulling her folding K-Bar knife from the snap-button sheath on her belt, Brigid slashed through two of the ropes. Kane pulled the canvas away and saw what he expected to see—an array of drab, military-green plastic crates stacked on the deck. Most of them were stenciled with the insignia of the Magistrate Division.

  Kane toed a long, narrow case that appeared to be the standard dimensions to contain a pair of LAW rocket launchers. He was a little surprised when it didn't budge, since most of the launchers he had handled were fairly lightweight. Taking the knife from Brigid, he inserted the point into the seal and pried. The lid popped open with surprising and suspicious ease.

  Kane stared down at the contents of the case, not really understanding what he was looking at for a long moment. The container held a collection of stones, all of them about the same size, ocean-smoothed rocks obviously taken from the beach.

  Kane picked one up, then another and gaped at them in angry disbelief. He husked out, "That lying son of a bitch—!"

  Grant, alternating his gaze from the Deathbird to Kane's actions, snorted in derision. "Imagine that—a Pit boss who doesn't tell the truth. That's a new one."

  Kane didn't respond to Grant's sarcasm Dropping the rocks, he glared toward the other barge. Castigleone, Belevedere and Tashlyn were nowhere in sight. Faintly he heard the cough of an outboard motor coming to life.

  "Castigleone wouldn't hand everything he got from Chaffee over to Zakat," he said angrily. "We saw what he brought to Thule. It didn't amount to a quarter of what would have been in the Snakefish armory."

  Brigid impatiently brushed a strand of wind-tossed hair out of her face. "Breeze has the rest of it stashed someplace else, obviously. He never had any intention to selling it to us, remember."

  She sounded infuriatingly calm about the double- cross, even slightly amused. Kane was not inclined to seek out the humor in the situation. Raggedly, between clenched teeth, he snarled, "We wasted nearly two weeks setting this up! The couriers we used to contact Castigleone could be in custody right now."

  "They don't know the location of Cerberus," Brigid replied, not sounding very self-assured. "We used two levels of intermediary."

  "Let's argue about it once we're out of here," Grant declared curtly. "I think the Bird finally made up its mind."

  The three of them looked to the sky. The Deathbird swooped down over the graveyard of derelicts, its blades chopping through the air. Its landing skids were barely twenty feet above the surface of the sea, the vanes whipping wide ripples in the water.

  The gunship zeroed in on the dinghy holding Breeze Castigleone and his two people. Bullets from the helicopter's chain gun sent up miniature water spouts all around the boat, then a missile scorched from the aircraft's portside pod. The air thundered and shook and lit up with a brief flare of red light. The explosion gushed upward, shooting bits of metal and wood in all directions.

  "I think Breeze has been paid back for tricking us," Brigid said grimly. "Hope that makes you feel better."

  Grant, Kane and Brigid watched as the Deathbird curved back around for another pass. This time the pilot skimmed even lower, the rotors beating up spurning waves across the ocean surface as it swept in to attack.

  Grant brought the rifle to his shoulder, but before he squeezed the trigger, a rocket streaked from the Bird's starboard stub swing, seemingly propelled by a wavering ribbon of spark-shot smoke. He and his two friends dropped flat to the deck.

  The missile fell a little short, impacting against the side of the barge instead of its deck, but it carried an incendiary warhead. It exploded in a gushing bloom of red and yellow flame. The concussion slammed painfully into their bodies and the intense heat washed over them, as if they had just opened the door to a blast furnace on full capacity.

  The three of them climbed to their feet, retreating from the blaze eating hungrily at the hull of the barge. The gunship swerved up, inscribed a short but sharp parabolic curve and dived down again, chain gun hammering.

  Bullets snapped all around them, sparking from the deck plates, chunking into canvas-covered cargo. Instinctively the three outlanders scattered, running in different directions. They knew that by separating, the pilot would pause for a couple of seconds while he decided which target to pursue.

  Kane reached the far side of the barge and hesitated at the rail long enough to cast a glance over his shoulder. He glimpsed the gunship arrowing directly for him and he growled under his breath, "Figures."

  He vaulted overboard, entering the surprisingly cold water feet first. Helped by the weight of his Sin Eater, he sank quickly, his ears registering the muffled, multiple thumps of bullets striking the water. He opened his eyes, the brine stinging them, but he saw bubble-laced streaks of the slugs punching into the sea around him. Highlighted by the jeweled glitter of sunlight, the patterns looked almost pretty.

  He swam up close to the sheltering hull of the barge, scraping his shoulders against the barnacles. The Commtact hissed with a squirt of static, and Brigid's breathless voice suddenly sounded inside his head. "Kane, you need to—"

  The barge suddenly shuddered brutally, shock waves travelling through it and into the water around him. He heard the thunderclaps of detonating missiles, and the suffused sunlight acquired a flickering orange hue. The pilot of the Deathbird was apparently taking out his frustration over losing Kane against the barge—or he simply intended to flash-blast Brigid and Grant.

  Pushing the fear for his friends from the forefront of his mind, Kane stroked toward the shadow of another derelict, a half-submerged sailboat. He swam under the surface, pushing jetsam and debris aside. When he reached the overhang of the boat's prow, he slowly rose, raking his hair out of his eyes.

 

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