Crossover (43 page)

"Angel's moving, eight people in the van, Angel included. No Shimakov."

"
Copy that. Do you have positional fix
?"

"Negative." As the turnoff lane opened to her left and she slid into it, a sudden buffeting of slipstream. One of the nine-car convoy also moved over, slowly decelerating, and Sandy nudged the brake as she moved up behind. "I'll get closer, I might be able to hack a frequency ID if I can get a visual."

"
Be careful you don't get seen. That's imperative
"

"Copy that." Broke connection, slowing as the turnoff left the highway, eased in behind the low, sleek groundcar, wondering just how much confidence Ibrahim really had that a special-ops killer would truly understand covert surveillance. The lights were red and she stopped. Navcomp counted the seconds for her. Green at zero, the car moved on immediate, centrally controlled reflexes and she followed just as fast with a squeeze of throttle.

This road curved at 100 kph through a landscaped zone of lakes and foliage, then in among the buildings and towers of the main Tarutao business district, and the buffers cut the speed down to eighty. Central tower. She scanned and found it, several blocks away. Lights and sidewalk commotion flowed by on either side. Saturday night crowds, partygoers, dinner groups ... traffic was considerable, and navcomp flashed a warning of slower speeds ahead, bottlenecks building as traffic merged and unmerged, seeking side streets and parking lanes.

Damn. She let the buffers ease her speed down, ignoring throttle setting, and cruised for a while one metre from the rear bumper of the car in front, eyeing the nose-to-tail traffic ahead with distaste while simultaneously scanning her linkup-directory for areas of less congestion. Wondered again at the buffers, and the barrier elements that protected the Prabati's CPU from a simple hack-and-disable. It was tempting.

"
Sandy, we're out of the car park, heading north-west along ... Buschler Road. Bit of traffic, we're ten below speed limit at the moment. Looks like a busy night
."

"Tell me about it. Thirty-second intervals or next turnoff, keep me informed."

"
Copy Sandy
." She called Ibrahim as soon as the connection blanked.

"
Hello Cassandra
," came a new, male voice on the other end, "
the Director's unable to speak right now. Where's the target
?" Sandy frowned beneath the helmet. Ibrahim not available? What the hell could possibly be more important?

"
Angel is headed north-west up Buschler Road, 10 kays below the speed limit. What's Ibrahim up to
?"

"
Copy on Angel ...the Director is consulting, he's on the ball nothing to worry about
." Click and gone.

Sandy thought about that reply and decided in slightly less than half a second that she didn't like it. It was a silly time to start consulting. And she
hated
being told not to worry. Especially by some green civilian kid who sounded barely out of secondary school. She didn't know who Freud was precisely, but she reckoned that was one of his slips. Her vision edged to a reddish tinge and time seemed to slow another notch.

The Eagle One feed showed a CSA unit — a groundcar — headed for approximate rendezvous with Mahud's van ... she accessed, found their frequency and called them up.

"A-3, this is Snowcat, please inform me if you get a reading on that van's frequency ID."

"
A-3 copies, Snowcat
."

The traffic accelerated a bit, she saw the adjoining turnoff approaching and took it, an uninterrupted cruise down a side street and then paused at the entrance to Buschler, indicating. Central control found her a spot, one car slowed and she moved out into the gap as the navcomp instructed. The tower car park was behind her now, Mahud should be somewhere up ahead. But with the regulated traffic flow, overtaking was impossible. She bit her lip, and restrained herself from beating buffer-elements into so much cybertronic wreckage.

Scanned the road further ahead ... it ran long and straight through this built-up district, office buildings rising high to the sides, blazing light and only sporadic nightlife, here in corporate-central. Traffic lights changing further along ... if she got caught, she'd drop even further back.

"
Sandy, were stopped at the lights. Where are you
?"

"I'm just a bit behind you, can't see you yet but I'm getting there. Anything more for me?"

"
If I hack this thing's frequency ID it'll detect me. Safer if you do it from the outside, I think ... you were always better at it anyway
."

"That's fine, keep your head down. I ... wait, I think I see you." Vision-zoom through the visor over the car in front, another set of lights further ahead, cars stacked up, a mass of red tail-lights ... a navy-blue rooftop, higher than the surrounding traffic, probably a van. Closing fast.

"Yeah, I've got you ..." The lights went green ...

"
Green light
."

"Yep, that's you." Her vision retuned slightly, back to normal light, combat reflex fading a touch. "If I get a fix I'll see if I can get your frequency."

Cruising at 80 kph, sandwiched by traffic, tires thrumming smoothly on a typically laser-planed Tanushan road. Up ahead, the CSA car A-3 turned onto the road behind Mahud's van. Moved over a lane, traffic making way for him. Strange manoeuvre. Maybe they were trying to catch up. They might have traffic override systems that she didn't possess on this rented bike. She called Ibrahim.

"A-3's got him in sight," she said, cruising through the green light of the van's last stop. A car ahead of her moved across to the slower left lane, and Sandy found herself gaining ground, empty street ahead for a hundred metres.

"
Eagle One copies, Snowcat
," came that same, young male voice in her ear. Still no Ibrahim. She didn't like it. The road angled slightly right, corporate offices giving way to mixed commercial, much busier, pedestrian crowds, bright lights and overpasses, gliding past on all sides. Eyes fixed on the visible top-rear of the navy-blue van, she reconsidered the Eagle One feed, saw vehicles shadowing along nearby streets and trunks ... navcomp flashing then to indicate a vehicle falling back in the right lane, decelerating.

It was A-3, drifting back at 65 kph while she cruised on at 80 ... something in mind, Sandy thought, frowning, seeing that Buschler ended another kilometre up ahead, and trying to calculate where the van would head next, toward what general destination, and which CSA units would follow...

A-3 dropped to level beside her and equalled her speed. Sandy looked across in surprise, not liking such a non-covert manoeuvre that could only stand out on an automated system, and the passenger window dropped on A-3's side ... and found herself staring down at the muzzle of a pistol that she recognised as a stunner. Chemical pellet, a GI neutraliser. She stared.

"
Snowcat, this is A-3, pull over at the next left turn and halt
." The feed from Eagle One went abruptly dead, terminated. Possibilities raced. The mind overloaded. Came clear, vision shift to combat-scan, thoughts suddenly flat. Calm. Intent and calculating. Time slowed. Fast access, multiple pathways opened, quick penetration, sort-and-scan ... quick routing down a Traffic Central branch, annihilated A-3's CPU barriers with complete absence of subtlety, hacked the Prabati's own in a second more, locked in ... "
Snowcat, this is A-3, I repeat
..."

Executed. A-3's brakes abruptly locked in a squeal of burning tires, passenger's heads whipped forward as the Prabati's own barriers fell and suddenly, wonderfully, the cycle's performance buffers simply weren't there any more. Sandy gave the throttle a savage twist and the bike exploded up the road with a howl of hydrogen power, spewing white smoke from the wheelspin as she went.

Made the first cross-street before she could take a breath, slammed on the brakes and the massive sports-bike tried to stand on its front wheel, took the corner with a hard lean at 80 kph, her right knee scraping the road as she went. Accelerated out with the rear end sliding, aiming at the narrow gap between two lanes of traffic-filled road, and turned 80 into 200 kph in three seconds flat down the busy Tanushan street. Navcomp screamed at her, screen flashing red, and central comp tried admirably to adjust — she could see the cars moving over in their lanes just before she whistled by in a blur of speed. There wasn't much room between lanes and she swerved across the road to aim up the centreline past oncoming traffic, cars slowing and swerving to avoid as central comp took panicked evasive action. The next light was red, but central stopped the traffic for her and she shot through at a shade under 260 kilometres per hour, the street beyond the traffic lights appearing comparatively clear.

Crouched low over the bike, hands fastened on throttle and clutch with fingers tickling the brakes, the speed was immense, but hardly troublesome. Net-linked, she scanned ahead, sorting through the oncoming web of roads, crossroads and traffic, analysing each piece of moving data with computer precision. The bike was fast, the traffic chaotic, but in combat mode her brain was far faster. Time moved at a crawl as she calmly, unhurriedly calculated her route, judging angles, speeds and trajectories, and adjusting her path and velocity accordingly.

Tried to contact Mahud, as she began the long, hard deceleration toward a new, promising turnoff, bodyweight suddenly thrust forward upon her arms as the front suspension compressed. Nothing. No Mahud. Something had gone badly wrong, and the CSA operation was compromised. Everything fucked. And now some CSA elements were after her instead of Mahud, she'd lost the van, lost contact with Ibrahim and Vanessa, running like hell to stay ahead of them all, still free, and thus of some use to Mahud, while hoping against hope that Ibrahim would fight a way through whatever had happened, and reestablish contact. Somewhere past the smothering, intense concentration of combat mode, Sandy felt herself in the perfect mood to kill someone.

Indicated a left turn for central comp's benefit, saw/felt the traffic take evasive action, half slid into the wide, three-lane corner at 90 kph ... and nearly lost it as she applied hard power and the rear end bucked, threatening to throw her from the saddle. So, she found time to think as she howled up the highway, dodging traffic, she wasn't perfect after all. The bike had its own handling characteristics, and if she ignored them she'd crash. Snaked hard left and then right, another twist of throttle as she grazed past a car-side in a hard right lean, rocketing up past 250 in no time at all and passing the next group of cars so fast they might have been parked. She resolved to pay attention and learn.

Realised then that the navcomp was squawking something else at her ... cops were after her evidently, even Ibrahim's promise of protection from the local police hadn't happened, God knew what that meant. Someone unwanted was trying to access her communication frequency and she diverted them with absent determination ... more traffic lights, and the turnoff she'd been aiming for, up to the freeway. Through the lights as cars pulled wide, and up the curbing access ramp leaning wide and low, roadway rushing past at nearly 200 ... then upright and through the narrow gap between car and railing, a flash and gone through her peripheral vision, and then she was on the freeway. Elevated, eight-laned, long and very flat. Crackle in her inner ear, and then ...

"
Sandy, you there
?" It was Vanessa, her voice hard with adrenalin. Sandy weaved, once and twice at 240 through traffic, making her way toward the outer right-hand lane.

"Go Ricey." Beyond the roaring of engine, tires and slipstream she could hardly hear her own voice within the confines of the helmet.

"
Long story short, Sandy ... Dali intervened, we think the FIA are in on it but some of our guys have gone with him
." Burst through a metre-wide gap, a hard lean left toward another space ... "
We lost uplinks and frequencies, we're trying to re-establish ... SWAT's still with us, but some are on the fence, it's chaos, and we've lost the van. Where are you
?"

"On a freeway." Tight-voiced and tense-stomached at a wide, curving right-hander toward the suddenly available outer lane ... every car seemed so much closer to the next at these speeds, and large spaces were suddenly very small. "A-3 pulled a gun on me. I'm being chased by cops, I'm not sure about CSA. Get them off me."

Arrived finally at the outer lane and rammed the throttle as far as it went. Head low and body flat behind the windshield, she quickly passed 300 kph and kept climbing. About her, the slipstream was solid as a wall. Everything thundered.

"
We'll try, but I'm not sure if we can — no one seems to know who's in charge. Dali ordered you arrested, Sandy, he knows about the operation. Some of our guys are taking orders direct. We think he's using some internal leverage with some of them ... Ibrahim's trying to contact them but we're cut out of the system and it'll take some time to re-establish — they've cut us off. Look
..." distractedly, as if searching through something, "...
we'll try and hide you, just don't get caught and try not to kill anyone, huh
?"

"No promises," Sandy snarled, hugging the centre rail through a curving turn at 348 kph. There were no shapes or colours, only motion, a continuous, eye-baffling blur. The sensory assault was vicious. Like her mood.

"Hello Sparrow," said Pham from the seat in front of Mahud, "are you clear?"

"
Sparrow is clear
," came the reply from the other vehicle. "
Proceeding to target. Good luck
." Pham turned in his seat beside the driver and grinned at those in the back.

"Best insurance in Tanusha," he said.

"Damn right," said Schroeder, checking her weapon. The van cruised up an on-ramp, onto a northern freeway, slowly accelerating to merge with the Saturday evening traffic.

Mahud clenched and unclenched his jaw, gazing sightlessly out through the windshield at the sporadic cruising traffic that wound onward between the soaring towers. He'd lost all contact with Sandy. The corporate com-network on which all FIA units were operating had cut in a new shielding function, which transferred through to the van's systems ... damn, something had happened, something big, and an emergency system had activated. Something he hadn't known they'd had. Shit.