CONROY SWUNG The blue Fokker off the eroded ribbon of prewar highway and throttled down. The long rooster tail of pale dust that had followed them from Needles began to settle; the hovercraft sank into its inflated apron bag as they came to a halt.
"Heres the venue, Turner."
"What hit it?" Rectangular expanse of concrete spreading to uneven walls of weathered cinderblock.
"Economics," Conroy said. "Before the war. They never finished it Ten klicks west of here and theres whole subdivisions, just pavement grids, no houses, nothing"
"How big a site team?"
"Nine, not counting you. And the medics."
"What medics?"
"Hosakas. Maas is biologicals, right? No telling how they might have our boy kinked. So Hosakas built a regular little neurosurgery and staffed it with three hotshots. Two of them are company men, the thirds a Korean who knows black medicine from both ends. The medical pods in that long one there" he pointed gotta partial section of roof."
"Howd you get it on site?"
"Brought it from Tucson inside a tanker. Faked a breakdown Got it out, rolled it in. Took all hands. Maybe three minutes."
"Maas," Turner said.
"Sure" Conroy killed the engines. "Chance you take," he said in the abrupt silence "Maybe they missed it. Our guy in the tanker sat there and bitched to his dispatcher in Tucson on the CB, all about his shit-eating heat exchanger and how long it was going to take to fix it. Figure they picked that up. You think of a better way to do it?"
"No. Given that the client wants the thing on the site. But were sitting here now in the middle of their recon foot-print..."
"Sweetheart" and Conroy snorted "maybe we just stopped for a screw Break up our trip to Tucson, right? Its that kind of place People stop here to piss, you know?" He checked his black Porsche watch. "Im due there in an hour, get a copter back to the coast."
"The rig?"
"No. Your fucking jet. Figured I handle that myself."
"Good."
"Id go for a Dornier System ground-effect plane myself. Have it wait down the road until we see Mitchell heading in. It could get here by the time the medics clean him up; we toss him in and take off for the Sonora border . . ."
"At subsonic speeds," Turner said. "No way. Youre on your way to California to buy me that jump jet. Our boys going out of here in a multimission combat aircraft thats barely even obsolete."
"You got a pilot in mind?"
"Me," Turner said, and tapped the socket behind his ear. "Its a fully integrated interactive system. Theyll sell you the interface software and Ill jack straight in."
"Didnt know you could fly."
"I cant. You dont need hands-on to haul ass for Mexico City."
"Still the wild boy, Turner? You know the rumors that somebody blew your dick off, back there in New Delhi?" Conroy swung around to face him, his grin cold and clean.
Turner dug the parka from behind the seat and took out the pistol and the box of ammunition. He was stuffing the parka back again when Conroy said, "Keep it. It gets cold as hell here, at night."
Turner reached for the canopy latch, and Conroy revved the engines. The hovercraft rose a few centimeters, swaying slightly as Turner popped the canopy and climbed out. White-out sun and air like hot velvet. He took his Mexican sun-glasses from the pocket of the blue work shirt and put them on. He wore white deck shoes and a pair of tropical combat fatigues. The box of explosive shells went into one of the thigh pockets on the fatigues. He kept the gun in his right hand, the parka bundled under his left arm. "Head for the long building," Conroy said, over the engine. "Theyre expecting you."
He jumped down into the furnace glow of desert noon as Conroy revved the Fokker again and edged it back to the highway. He watched as it sped east, its receding image distorted through wrinkles of rising heat.
When it was gone, there was no sound at all, no movement. He turned, facing the ruin. Something small and stone-gray darted between two rocks.
Perhaps eighty meters from the highway the jagged walls began. The expanse between had once been a parking lot.
Five steps forward and he stopped. He heard the sea, surf pounding, soft explosions as breakers fell. The gun was in his hand, too large, too real, its metal warming in the sun.
No sea, no sea, he told himself, cant hear it He walked on, the deck shoes slipping in drifts of ancient window glass seasoned with brown and green shards of bottle. There were rusted discs that had been bottle caps, flattened rectangles that had been aluminum cans. Insects whirred up from low clumps of dry brush.
Over. Done with. This place. No time.
He stopped again, straining forward, as though he sought something that would help him name the thing that was rising in him. Something hollow.
The mall was doubly dead. The beach hotel in Mexico had lived once, at least for a season
Beyond the parking lot, the sunlit cinderblock, cheap and soulless, waiting.
He found them crouched in the narrow strip of shade provided by a length of gray wall. Three of them; he smelled the coffee before he saw them, the fire-blackened enamel pot balanced precariously on the tiny Primus cooker. He was meant to smell it, of course; they were expecting him Otherwise, hed have found the ruin empty, and then, somehow, very quietly and almost naturally, he would have died.
Two men, a woman; cracked, dusty boots out of Texas, denim so shiny with grease that it would probably be water-proof. The men were bearded, their uncut hair bound up in sun-bleached topknots with lengths of rawhide, the womans hair center-parted and pulled back tight from a seamed, wind-burnt face. An ancient BMW motorcycle was propped against the wall, flecked chrome and battered paintwork daubed with airbrush blobs of tan and gray desert camo.
He released the Smith & Wessons grip, letting it pivot around his index finger, so that the barrel pointed up and back.
"Turner," one of the men said, rising, cheap metal flashing from his teeth. "Sutcliffe." Trace of an accent, probably Australian.
"Point team?" He looked at the other two. "Point," Sutcliffe said, and probed his mouth with a tanned thumb and forefinger, coming away with a yellowed, steel-capped prostho. His own teeth were white and perfectly even. "You took Chauvet from IBM for Mitsu," he said, "and they say you took Semenov out of Tomsk."
"Is that a question?"
"I was security for IBM Marrakech when you blew the hotel."
Turner met the mans eyes. They were blue, calm, very bright. "Is that a problem for you?"
"No fear," Sutcliffe said. "Just to say Ive seen you work." He snapped the prostho back in place. "Lynch" nodding toward the other man "and Webber" toward the woman.
"Run it down to me," Turner said, and lowered himself into the scrap of shade. He squatted on his haunches, still holding the gun.
"We came in three days ago," Webber said, "on two bikes. We arranged for one of them to snap its crankshaft, in case we had to make an excuse for camping here. Theres a sparse transient population, gypsy bikers and cultists. Lynch walked an optics spool six kilos east and tapped into a phone . . ."
"Private?"
"Pay," Lynch said.
"We sent out a test squirt," the woman continued. "If it hadnt worked, youd know it."
Turner nodded. "Incoming traffic?"
"Nothing. Its strictly for the big show, whatever that is." She raised her eyebrows.
"Its a defection."
"Bit obvious, that," Sutcliffe said, settling himself beside Webber, his back to the wall. "Though the general tone of the operation so far suggests that we hirelings arent likely to even know who were extracting. True, Mr. Turner? Or will we be able to read about it in the fax?"
Turner ignored him. "Go on. Webber."
"After our landline was in place, the rest of the crew filtered in, one or two at a time. The last one in primed us for the tankful of Japs."
"That was raw," Sutcliffe said, "bit too far up front."
"You think it might have blown us?" Turner asked.
Sutcliffe shrugged. "Could be, could be no. We hopped it pretty quick. Damned lucky wed the roof to tuck it under."
"What about the passengers?"
"They only come out at night," Webber said. "And they know well kill them if they try to get more than five meters away from the thing."
Turner glanced at Sutcliffe.
"Conroys orders," the man said.
"Conroys orders dont count now," Turner said. "But that one holds. What are these people like?"
"Medicals," Lynch said, "bent medicals."
"You got it," Turner said. "What about the rest of the crew?"
"We rigged some shade with mimetic tarps. They sleep in shifts. Theres not enough water and we cant risk much in the way of cooking." Sutcliffe reached for the coffeepot. "We have sentries in place and we run periodic checks on the integrity of the landline." He splashed black coffee into a plastic mug that looked as though it had been chewed by a dog. "So when do we do our dance, Mr. Turner?"
"I want to see your tank of pet medics. I want to see a command post. You havent said anything about a command post."
"All set," Lynch said.
"Fine. Here." Turner passed Webber the revolver. "See if you can find me some sort of rig for this. Now I want Lynch to show me these medics."
"He thought it would be you," Lynch said, scrambling effortlessly up a low incline of rubble. Turner followed Youve got quite a rep." The younger man glanced back at him from beneath a fringe of dirty, sun-streaked hair.
"Too much of one," Turner said. "Any is too much. You worked with him before? Marrakech?" Lynch ducked side-ways through a gap in the cinderblock, and Turner was close behind. The desert plants smelled of tar; they stung and grabbed if you brushed them. Through a vacant, rectangular opening intended for a window, Turner glimpsed pink mountaintops; then Lynch was loping down a slope of gravel.
"Sure, I worked for him before," Lynch said, pausing at the base of the slide. An ancient-looking leather belt rode low on his hips, its heavy buckle a tarnished silver deaths-head with a dorsal crest of blunt, pyramidal spikes. "Marrakech that was before my time."
"Connie, too, Lynch?"
"Hows that?"
"Conroy. You work for him before? More to the point are you working for him now?" Turner came slowly, deliberately down the gravel as he spoke; it crunched and slid beneath his deck shoes, uneasy footing. He could see the delicate little fletcher holstered beneath Lynchs denim vest.
Lynch licked dry lips, held his ground. "Thats Suts contact. I havent met him."
"Conroy has this problem, Lynch. Cant delegate responsibility. He likes to have his own man from the start, someone to watch the watchers. Always. You the one, Lynch?"
Lynch shook his head, the absolute minimum of movement required to convey the negative. Turner was close enough to smell his sweat above the tarry odor of the desert plants.
"Ive seen Conroy blow two extractions that way," Turner said. "Lizards and broken glass, Lynch? You feel like dying here?" Turner raised his fist in front of Lynchs face and slowly extended the index finger, pointing straight up "Were in their footprint. If a plant of Conroys bleeps the least fucking pulse out of here, theyll be on to us."
"If they arent already."
"Thats right."
"Suts your man," Lynch said. "Not me, and I cant see it being Webber." Black-rimmed, broken nails came up to scratch abstractedly at his beard. "Now, did you get me back here exclusively for this little talk, or do you still wanna see our canful of Japs?"
"Lets see it."
Lynch. Lynch was the one.
* * *
Once, in Mexico, years before, Turner had chartered a portable vacation module, solar-powered and French-built, its seven-meter body like a wingless housefly sculpted in polished alloy, its eyes twin hemispheres of tinted, photosensitive plastic; he sat behind them as an aged twin-prop Russian cargo lifter lumbered down the coast with the module in its jaws, barely clearing the crowns of the tallest palms. Deposited on a remote beach of black sand, Turner spent three days of pampered solitude in the narrow, teak-lined cabin, micro-waving food from the freezer and showering, frugally but regularly, in cool fresh water. The modules rectangular banks of cells would swivel, tracking the sun, and hed learned to tell time by their position.
Hosakas portable neurosurgery resembled an eyeless ver-sion of that French module, perhaps two meters longer and painted a dull brown. Sections of perforated angle iron had been freshly braised at intervals along the lower half of the hull, and supported simple spring suspensions for ten fat, heavily nubbed red rubber bicycle tires.
"Theyre asleep," Lynch said. "It bobs around when they move, so you can tell. Well have the wheels off when the time comes, but for now we like being able to keep track of them."
Turner walked slowly around the brown pod, noting the glossy black sewage tube that ran to a small rectangular tank nearby.
"Had to dump that, last night. Jesus." Lynch shook his head. "They got food and some water."
Turner put his ear to the hull.
"Its proofed," Lynch said.
Turner glanced up at the steel roof above them. The surgery was screened from above by a good ten meters of rusting roof. Sheet steel, and hot enough now to fry an egg. He nodded. That hot rectangle would be a permanent factor in the Maas infrared scan.
"Bats," Webber said, handing him the Smith & Wesson in a black nylon shoulder rig. The dusk was full of sounds that seemed to come from inner space, metallic squeaks and the cackling of bugs, cries of unseen birds. Turner shoved gun and holster into a pocket on the parka. "You wanna piss, go up by that mesquite. But watch out for the thorns."
"Where are you from?"
"New Mexico," the woman said, her face like carved wood in the remaining light. She turned and walked away, heading for the angle of walls that sheltered the tarps. He could make out Sutcliffe and a young black man there. They were eating from dull foil envelopes Ramirez, the on-site console jockey, Jaylene Slides partner. Out of Los Angeles.
Turner looked up at the bowl of sky, limitless, the map of stars. Strange how its bigger this way, he thought, and from orbit its just a gulf, formless, and scale lost all meaning. And tonight he wouldnt sleep, he knew, and the Big Dipper would whirl round for him and dive for the horizon, pulling its tail with it.
A wave of nausea and dislocation hit him as images from the biosoft dossier swam unbidden through his mind.