John Sandford - Rules of Prey

Lucas sighed and wrenched his mind back to Everwhen, which was, naturally, under attack by the forces of evil. The armored platoon had been called in by a good wizard who planned to introduce a new element to what had been a losing war: technology. Once signed up with the forces for good, the armored platoon would march on the cloud-veiled castle of the Evil One.

The story was not particularly original. Working the details into a logical game was an ordeal.

Like the M3 tanks. Where did they get fuel and repairs? Magic. How did the platoon acquire magical talents? By valiant deeds. Save a virgin from a dragon and the magic quotient goes up. If the dragon kicks your ass, it goes down.

The creatures of Everwhen were a troublesome problem. They had to be dangerous, interesting, and reasonably original. They also had to be exotic, but familiar enough to be comprehensible. The best ones were morphologically related to familiar earth creatures: lizards, snakes, rats, spiders. Lucas spent dozens of winter evenings sitting in his leather chair in the den, a yellow pad on his lap, dreaming them up.

The slicers were one of them. A slicer was a cross between a bat and a razor-edged plate of glass. Slicers attacked at night, slashing their targets to pieces. They were too stupid to be affected by magic, but were easy enough to kill with the right technology. Like shotguns.

But how would you even see them? Okay. Like bats, they used a kind of sonar. With the right magic, the platoon's radios could be tuned to it. Gould you get them all? Maybe. But if not, there were hit points to be worked out. So many hit points, and a character died. Lucas had to take care not to kill off the characters too easily. The players wouldn't stand for it. Nor could the game be too simple. It was a matter of walking the line, of luring the players deeper and deeper into the carefully crafted scenarios.

He worked hunched over the drawing table in a pool of light created by the drafting lamp, hammering out the numbers, drinking coffee. When Clapton started on "Lay Down, Sally" he got up and did a neatly coordinated solo dance around the chair. Then he sat down, worked for fifteen seconds, and was back up with "Willie and the Hand Jive." He danced in the dark room by himself, watching the song time counting down on the digital CD clock. When "Hand Jive" ended, he sat down again, called up a file on his IBM, read out the specs, and went back to the numbers after an almost unconscious glance at the clock. Twelve-fifteen.

Lucas lived in a three-bedroom ranch home, stone and cedar, across Mississippi Boulevard and a hundred feet above the river. When the leaves were off the trees in the fall and winter, he could see the lights of Minneapolis from his living room.

It was a big house. At first, he worried that it was too big, that he should buy a condominium. Something over by the lakes, where he could watch the singles out jogging, skating, sailing.

But he bought the house and never regretted it. He paid $120,000 for it, cash, in 1980. Now it was worth twice that. And in the back of his head, as he pushed into his thirties and contemplated the prospect of forty, he still thought of children and a place for them.

Besides, as it turned out, he quickly filled up the space. A beat-up Ford four-wheel-drive joined the five-year-old Porsche in the garage. The family room became a small gym, with free weights and a heavy bag, and a wooden floor where he did kata, the formal exercises of karate.

The den was converted to a library, with sixteen hundred novels and nonfiction works and another two hundred small volumes of poetry. A deep leather chair with a hassock for his feet, and a good light, were the main furnishings. For those times when reading didn't appeal, he'd built in a twenty-five-inch color television, videotape player, and sound system.

Tools, laundry appliances, and outdoor sports gear were stored in the basement, along with a sophisticated reloading bench and a firearms locker. The locker was actually a turn-of-the-century bank safe. An expert cracksman could open it in twenty minutes, but Lucas didn't expect any expert cracksmen to visit his basement. A snatch-and-run burglar wouldn't have a chance against the old box.

Lucas owned thirteen guns. His daily working weapon was a nine-millimeter Heckler amp; Koch P7 with a thirteen-shot clip. He also carried, on occasion, a nine-millimeter Beretta 92F. Those, and the small ankle gun, were kept on a concealed shelf in his workroom desk.

The basement locker contained two Colt.45 Gold Cups, both further customized by a Texas gunsmith for combat target competition, and three.22's, including a Ruger Mark II with a five-and-a-half-inch bull barrel, a Browning International Medalist, and the only nonautomatic, a bolt-action Anschutz Exemplar.

In the bottom of the locker, carefully oiled, wrapped, and packaged, were four pistols he'd picked up on the job. Street guns, untraceable to anyone in particular. The last weapon, also kept in the locker, was a Browning Citori over-and-under twenty-gauge shotgun, the upland version. He used it for hunting.

Of the rest of the house, the two smaller bedrooms actually had beds in them.

The master bedroom became his workroom, with a drawing table, drafting instruments, and the IBM. There were two walls of books on weapons and armies-on Alexander and Napoleon and Lee and Hitler and Mao, details of Bronze Age spears and Russian tanks and science-fiction fantasies that discussed seeker-killer shells, rail guns, plasma rifles, and nova bombs. Ideas that he would weave into the net of a game. The slicers flitted through Lucas' mind like splinters as he worked over the drawing table, hammering out the numbers.

When the phone rang, he jumped. It seldom rang; few people had the number. Thirty-odd more this evening, he thought, laying his pencil on the table. He glanced at the clock: twelve-twenty-two. He stepped across the room, turned down the CD player, started the tape recorder he'd attached to the receiver, and picked up the extension.

"Yes?"

" Davenport?" A man's voice. Middle-aged, or a little past it.

"Yeah."

"You taping this?" Vaguely familiar. He knew this man.

"No."

"How do I know that?"

"You don't. What can I tell you?"

There was a pause; then the voice said, "I took the Smith, but I want to talk to you about it face-to-face."

"Let's do it now," said Lucas. "This is a very heavy situation."

"The deal is like you said this afternoon?"

"That's right," Lucas said. "It won't go any further. No comebacks."

There was a pause; then, "You know that taco joint across I-94 from Martin Luther College?"

"Yeah?"

"Twenty minutes. And, goddammit, you come alone, you hear?"

Lucas made it in eighteen. The restaurant parking lot was empty. Inside, a lone diner stared out a window as he nursed a cup of coffee over the cardboard remains of his meal. An employee was mopping the floor and turned to watch Lucas come in. The countergirl, probably a student from the university, smiled warily.

"Give me a Diet Coke," Lucas said.

"Anything else?" Still wary. Lucas realized that in his leather bomber jacket, jeans, and boots, with a day-old beard, he might look threatening.

"Yeah. Relax. I'm a cop." He grinned, took the badge case out of his shirt pocket, and showed it to her, and she smiled back.

"We've had some problems here," she said.

"Holdup?"

"Last month and the month before. Four months ago it was twice. There are some bikers around."

When the cop came in, Lucas recognized him instantly. Gray-haired, wearing a lightweight beige jacket and brown slacks. Roe, he thought. Harold Roe. Longtime cop. Must be near retirement.

Roe looked around, stopped at the counter, got a coffee, and walked over.