Frank Schätzing - Limit

Daxiong gave her a quick look of surprise. It wasn’t just Kenny who would be wondering who Shi Wanxing was. In fact she’d spontaneously invented the name in the hope that Daxiong might understand her bluff and play along. Now that the hitman had taken her computer, or what he thought was her computer, they were effectively dead. She had to try to keep him at arm’s length.

‘Wanxing?’ Kenny’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who is that?’

‘He—’ began Yoyo.

‘Shut up.’ Kenny nodded to Daxiong. ‘I asked him.’

Daxiong let a moment’s silence pass, a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity. Then, jutting his pharaoh beard, he said, ‘Shi Wanxing is, apart from us, the last person you haven’t killed. The last surviving Guardian. I didn’t know Yoyo had confided in him.’

Kenny frowned suspiciously. ‘Even she doesn’t seem to have known that until a minute ago.’

‘We don’t agree on the subject of Wanxing,’ growled Daxiong. ‘Yoyo thinks a lot of him, for some reason. I didn’t want to have him in the group at all. He talks too much.’

‘Wanxing is an outstanding crypto-analyst,’ Yoyo replied scornfully.

‘That’s why you shouldn’t have transferred all your data to him straight away,’ Daxiong complained.

‘Why not? He was supposed to decode the page with the Switzerland films on it.’

‘And? Did he?’

‘No idea.’

‘He did absolutely bugger all, is what he did!’

‘Hey, Daxiong!’ Yoyo railed at him. ‘What’s really at issue here? Just the fact that you can’t stand him.’

‘He’s a loudmouth.’

‘I trust him.’

‘But you can’t trust him.’

‘Wanxing is no loudmouth.’

‘Frogshit!’ said Daxiong, getting angry. ‘It’s all he bloody is!’

Kenny tilted his head. He didn’t really seem to know what to make of the argument.

‘If Wanxing talked to anyone at all about it, it was because he needed extra tools,’ Yoyo roared. ‘After you completely failed!’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

‘What?’

‘That Sara and Zheiying are in possession of this bloody message.’

‘What? Why them?’

‘Why? Are you blind? Because he fancies Sara.’

‘So do you!’

‘Hey,’ said Kenny.

‘You’re off your head,’ Daxiong snapped. ‘Shall we talk about your relationship with Zheiying? The way you make him look like an idiot just because he—’

‘Hey!’ Kenny yelled, throwing his computer at Daxiong’s feet. ‘What the hell’s going on? Are you taking the piss? Who’s Wanxing? Who are these other people? Who else knows about this? Say something, somebody, or I’ll blow the old guy to pieces!’

Yoyo opened her mouth and closed it again. She couldn’t take her eyes off the hitman, who seemed to have worked something out. That they were bluffing, keeping him at arm’s length. That they were actually staring past him, at the source of the hissing noise that Kenny hadn’t noticed because he had allowed himself to be distracted by the staged argument. Kenny, the bomb that had to be defused, like in the old films. Just another few seconds. The countdown approaching zero, half a dozen wires, all the same colour, but only one that you could cut through.

‘You’re in the crosshairs,’ she said quietly.

Xin looked at his display. It showed him what the scanner of the automatic rifle saw: Chen Hongbing, pressed into his seat. Part of the rear glass façade. A dark outline at the edge of the picture.

Something had appeared behind Chen.

‘If my father dies, you’re dead,’ said Yoyo. ‘Same if you attack us or try to escape. So listen. One of your airbikes is hovering outside the window right now. Owen Jericho is sitting on it, and he’s pointing something at you. I’m not familiar with these things, but judging by the size of it, I’d say that he could blow you to pieces with it, so try to keep your temper under control.’

Xin put his thoughts and feelings in order like an accountant. He’d get annoyed later. He had no doubt that Yoyo was telling the truth. If Chen died that second, he would die too. The girl and her enormous friend were unarmed, while he had a gun tucked into the top of his trousers – not much of an advantage really, because before he had drawn the gun he would be dead too.

‘What should I do?’ he asked calmly.

‘Turn off the trigger. That gun. I want my father to get up and come over to us.’

‘Right. To do that I’ll have to turn off automatic activation. I’ll have to touch it, okay?’

‘If this is one of your tricks—’ roared Daxiong.

‘I’m not about to commit suicide. It’s just a remote control.’

‘Go on,’ nodded Yoyo.

Xin tapped on the touchscreen and switched off the automatic trigger. The gun was no longer programmed to respond to Chen Hongbing’s movements. It was entirely under his control again.

‘Just a moment.’ He quickly keyed in swivel angle, rotation speed and fire frequency. ‘All done. Stand up, honourable Chen. Go to your daughter.’

Chen Hongbing seemed to hesitate.

Then he hurried from his chair and to the side.

Xin fell to the ground and pressed Start .

Cave-dwellers, savannah-runners: they’d experienced everything by the twenty-first century. They saw the rustling of the grass, heard what the wind carried to them, were astonishingly able simultaneously to respond to and intuitively assess a variety of stimuli. Some people drew more from their ancient inheritance than others, and some had preserved their instincts, developed over six million years of human history, to an extraordinary degree.

Owen Jericho was one of those.

He had driven the bike right up to the glass façade, clutching his rapid-fire rifle, held so that the red laser dot was resting on Kenny’s back. He hung there like a dragonfly, well aware that the hitman must have heard the hissing of the jets long before, but Kenny had shown no sign of turning round. He wasn’t prepared for an attack from that direction. They had him over a barrel.

Yoyo said something and pointed at her father.

The laser dot quivered between Kenny’s shoulder blades.

Chen’s thin, lanky body tensed, the hitman bent his arms. It was possible that he was holding something in his left hand, which he was using with his right.

Then it happened – and Jericho’s ancient legacy took hold. His perception sped up so quickly that the world seemed to be heading for a standstill and all sounds dropped to sub-audible levels. There was nothing but a dull background hum. As if he had become weightless, Chen slowly rose from the chair, moved away from the seat, centimetre by centimetre, left leg braced against the floor, right leg bent as he tipped to the side. It was a preparation for a leap, and even before it had really begun, Kenny showed that he was about to throw himself to the floor. Jericho registered all of this, Chen’s escape and Kenny’s dive, intuitively made connections between them and centred his attention on the remote-controlled gun. Even before it began to turn on its tripod, he knew exactly what was about to happen. Chen was able to escape because the gun was no longer aimed at him. The hitman wasn’t running away from Jericho’s gun, he was fleeing his own, which he was at that very moment directing to fire at the windows.

The same evolutionary calculation that had saved hunters millions of years before taught Jericho to climb a second before the barrel spat its first bullets. He had changed position by the time they left the muzzle.

Then things speeded up.

The gun on the tripod swung around and rattled off its rounds, then turned further on its axis. All the windows exploded. The burst took in Jericho’s bike, but he had managed to climb high enough to avoid being hit himself. Two of the bullets struck the rotating wheels of the engine. There was a sound like a cracking bell. The airbike took a terrible blow.