Ричард Морган - The SF Collection

It wasn’t an ideal weapon for the circumstances, and out of the water it was too fucking heavy for comfort. He’d had to drape the long elastic sling it came with around his neck, and stick a cling patch on his right thigh to hold the damn thing still under his coat. His leg ached with the extra effort of walking with the weight. But the patented Cressi sharkpunch had the sterling advantage that it was classed as subaqua sports equipment, which meant he’d got it through security in his baggage without a second look, when second looks were the last thing he needed. And a gun that punched razor-sharp spinning slivers of alloy through water hard enough to eviscerate a great white shark did have some considerable reach in air, even if the spread made accuracy a joke. The young guard had blood running down his face as he fumbled at the slide on his shotgun. He was probably dazed from the sound of the explosions, he was clearly terrified.

Carl closed the gap, pulled the trigger on the sharkpunch again. The boy slammed back against the side cables of the bridge. Large chunks of him slopped through and fell into the river, the rest collapsed skeletally onto the suddenly blood-drenched planking.

Over.

The mule carrying the firecrackers had, not unreasonably, panicked as much as anybody else. She was headed up the path along the riverside, bucking and snorting. No time to hang about. Carl loped after the animal, ears open for the sounds of other humans.

He met a third gunman a couple of hundred metres along the river, hurrying down the path towards the sounds of gunfire, a matt-grey Steyr assault rifle held unhandily across his body as he jogged. The man saw the mule, tried to get out of its way, and Carl darted round one side of the animal, threw out the sharkpunch and fired more or less blind. The other man went down as if ripped apart by invisible hands. Carl scanned the path up ahead, saw and heard nothing, and stopped by the ruins of the man he’d just killed. He crouched and scooped the Steyr up left-handed out of the mess, dumped it immediately with a grunt of frustration. The guy had still been holding it across his body when Carl shot him and the anti-shark load had smashed the breech beyond repair.

‘Fuck!’

He picked and prodded his way around the shattered carcase, sharkpunch still levelled watchfully over his knee at the path ahead. Came up finally with a blood-soaked holster holding a shiny new semi-automatic. He tugged the gun loose and held it up to the light – Glock 100 series, not a bad gun. Pricey, shiny ordnance for backwoods muscle like this, but Carl supposed even here the power of branding must hold sway.

Tight, adrenalin-crazy grin. He put down the sharkpunch for a moment, worked the action on the other weapon. It seemed to be undamaged, would be accurate to a point, but…

Still no decent longer-range weapon, the shotguns they’d been packing back at the river had no more reach than the sharkpunch, and he still had no clear idea how many more of Bambaren’s security there were between him and Greta Jurgens’ winter retreat. Outside of actual location, Suerte Ferrer had been hopelessly vague.

He shrugged and got back to his feet. Tucked the Glock into his waistband, hefted the sharkpunch again and moved past the shattered man on the ground. Up ahead, the path seemed to rise slowly out of the rock-walled groove where it ran along the riverside. The mule had bolted on ahead, seemed to have finally found open ground off to the right.

Carl settled the leather hat a little more carefully on his head and followed. The combat high pounded through him. The mesh picked up the beat, fed it. The grin on his face felt like it would never come off.

‘You need to get a sense of geography about this, Suerte.’

Suerte Ferrer glowered up from the holding-cell chair, as Carl walked around him. Immigration had cuffed him there. ‘Don’t need no fucking geography lessons from you, nigger.’

The insult twanged through him, freighted with memories from South Florida State. It was the first time he’d heard it since Dudeck.

Of course, he’d heard the word ‘twist’ a few times in the interim.

‘I see you’re acclimatising to Jesusland culture pretty well.’ Carl completed his circuit and leaned on the table at Ferrer’s level. Their captive was still grimy and tired-looking from his border transit in a false-bottomed crate purporting to contain experimentally gene-modified rapeseed oil. He flinched back as Carl went face to face with him. ‘You want to go back there, maybe, Suerte? That what you want?’

‘Quiros said—’

Carl slammed the table. ‘I don’t know this Quiros. And I don’t fucking want to know him. You think we pulled your autohauler out of the line for luck? You have been sold, to me, and by someone a lot further up the food chain than your pal Quiros. So if you think you’re going to get some slick down-the-wire Seattle lawyer come pull you out of here, you’re wrong.’

He went round the table and took a seat again, next to Norton, who’d done nothing but sit with his legs thrust out in front of him and stare sombrely the whole time. Carl jerked a thumb towards the cell door, which they’d left promisingly ajar when they came in.

‘Out there, Suerte, you’ve got a highway that goes in two directions. It goes west to the Freeport, or it goes east back into Jesusland and a bust for illegal crossover. Your choice which direction you get to take.’

‘Who the fuck are you people?’ Ferrer asked.

Norton exchanged a look with Carl. He leaned forward and cleared his throat. ‘We’re your fairy godmothers, Ferrer. Surprised you didn’t recognise us.’

‘Yeah, we’re looking to grant all your wishes.’

‘See, this identity is blown.’ Norton gestured at the table top, where the documents Ferrer had been carrying were spread out. ‘Carlton Garcia. RimSec have a want out on you under that name from San Diego to Vancouver and back. Even if we hadn’t fished you out here, you’d get about three days into the Rim before you tripped something and end up either busted or yoked to some gangmaster who’ll put you to work fifteen hours a day in a trench and expect you to suck his dick for the privilege.’

Carl grinned skullishly. ‘Was that the Rimside dream you had in mind, Suerte?’

‘Go west, young man, go west,’ Norton said piously. ‘But go with some cash and a decent fake ID.’

‘Both of which we’ll give you,’ Carl told him. ‘Together with a bus ticket right into the Freeport. And all you’ve got to do is answer a couple of questions we have about your cousin Manco Bambaren.’

‘Hey!’ Suerte Ferrer backed up in the chair. His hands chopped a flat cross out of the air in front of him. ‘I don’t know nothing about Manco’s operation, they didn’t tell me shit about any of that. I didn’t live down there more than a couple of years on and off anyway.’

Carl and Norton swapped another look. Carl sighed.

‘That’s a shame,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ Norton started to get up. ‘We’ll tell the migra boys not to rough you up too bad before they dump you back over.’

‘Hope you’ve enjoyed your brief stay in the Land of Opportunity.’

‘Wait!’

Greta Jurgens’ hibernation retreat was an environment-blended two-storey lodge built right into the side of a cliff face set back a couple of dozen metres from the river bank. Fifteen metres or more of scrubby open ground from where the path from the bridge rose out of the groove it followed along the river, rounded a worn rock bluff and petered out in the scrub a handful of paces from the front door. The upper storey windows were blanked with carbon fibre security shutters, but downstairs there was activity. Motion visible through a wide picture window, and men darting in and out of the open door with weapons in their hands. Carl counted five before he slid back into cover, none of them yet kitted out in the weblar jackets the three down by the river had worn. One of them, older and apparently in charge, was already on the phone for further orders. Carl crouched where the rock wall on the right of the path still rose over a metre high and listened to the reports of his coming.