James Moore - SNAFU - Hunters

As the train ground to a halt he leapt out the back then darted left toward a side tunnel.

Miguel Salido watched the man in black armor fade into the distance, wielding a metal pole like a Ninja Turtle. He growled in curious frustration.

The high pitched squeal of brakes brought a low tremor to his throat; a laugh. The whispers rejoiced, a slithering, pernicious cacophony of psychotic bloodshed that got harder to ignore with every passing day, and though he couldn’t understand them, they urged him to slaughter every man, woman, and child on the train.

He crushed them to a disappointed mewling, forced himself to think like a rational person.

The man in black armor, the woman he’d crushed, Miguel had never encountered anyone like them. Through years of street fighting, standing guard over drug deals, rising in the ranks of the Mako Kings despite being Cuban, not Mexican, Miguel had always been bigger, tougher, more of a cabron than any bastard around. When Jade hit the streets and everyone started getting bigger, Miguel pushed the limits of musculoskeletal enhancement and backed it up with surgically-added barbed spikes in his wrists and titanium alloy plates under his skin.

But this man, not much bigger than most, had almost taken him down. One crazy gun and some kickass bullets helped balance the score, almost too much.

Since growing up in the shantytowns of Arroyo Naranjo, swiping fruit from stalls at the mercado to stave off scurvy and starvation, he’d come to appreciate the big things in life. In coming to the United States, his time with the Mako Kings had given him almost everything: a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Miami – despite his size he’d never had the team spirit for football – a mansion, three cars, all the gold, drugs, and pussy he could ever want. But since Jade, since augmentation, they couldn’t give him a challenge.

Sometimes it took the little things to bring a smile.

Miguel took off at a run. At twelve hundred pounds he couldn’t sprint much faster than your average Olympian, even with no body fat. But he knew these tunnels, had operated in Spanish City for two years, and his prey hadn’t. That had to count for something.

He slowed, approached the train at a jog, and cut left at the smell of the man, subtle deodorant and gun oil and blood tinged with an underlying spice he couldn’t quite place, like Jade but not. He followed the scent until it reached an access door, and stopped. Sized for normal men, it would constrict him, keep him from using his reach or bringing his full strength to bear. A perfect place for an ambush.

Conor Flynn watched as Pointy approached the doorway. The hulking monstrosity moved with a smooth grace at odds with its blocky form, silent in giant, almost comical basketball shoes. It cocked its head and waited, one hand on the door, listening or feeling for vibrations or something.

Stepping to the side, it pulled open the door, which squeaked on old hinges. It winced, waited again, and after a long, long pause, went inside.

Conor followed through the open door, sword drawn. Darkness swallowed him.

Something thrummed through the floor and walls, a breathing shudder too low-frequency for even Matt’s ears to hear. He drew a mental map to al-Azwar’s body. Her REC7 carbine didn’t pack the punch of his AA-12, but it beat the hell out of combat knives, and he wasn’t likely to beat Pointy with his fists and elbows.

He jogged down the dark hall until it ended at a T intersection, on a hunch took a right, and a few minutes later when the hall took another right, farther away from al-Azwar, he backtracked to the intersection and headed left.

Miguel paused. The man’s scent tracked in both directions.

The right-hand path led back to the railway, and past that, deeper into downtown. The left-hand path led to Spanish City, the Mercado Royale, and a warren of smaller access tunnels under the city’s west side.

Where are you going?

He chuckled, a low rumble with more growl than mirth. A smart man would try to get back to his allies, back to whatever blew the gate to the parking lot, back to guns and backup. With a shrug, he turned left – if Miguel caught him before he got out, it wouldn’t matter.

The scent grew in intensity, the sharp tang of Old Spice, the underlying notes of blood and gun oil. He froze at a realization. In the chemical miasma that permeated his enhanced nose he noted the lack, the utter absence, of anything approaching fear. Running, hunted, through unfamiliar tunnels, the man smelled of predator, not prey.

A tingle of excitement ran up Miguel’s spine, a shiver of apprehension. How are you not afraid?

Matt knelt over al-Azwar’s shattered body, ignoring the pungent reek of shit to rifle through her kit. Someone had stripped her of her carbine, pistol and combat knives, but had left her first aid kit, which all ICAP agents carried in case an innocent or suspect needed saving. That it had soaked with urine when her system had let go had probably discouraged close inspection, and he gladly took the morphine autoinjector.

He looked up at the ladder embedded into a short tunnel that terminated in a round steel hatch. Heaving on it bent a rung on the ladder but did nothing to budge the portal.

He tried the COM again. “This is Rowley, come in.”

Nothing. However they built this place, it made far too good of a Faraday Cage.

He climbed down, listened for any signs of pursuit then hatched a plan.

Conor Flynn let Matt creep off, waited a full minute then approached the body. Matt had hidden the tripwire under Hurya’s exploded viscera, a clever move that would reduce detection but make it less likely that Pointy would trip it in the first place. Matt had wrapped his remaining det cord around the magazines for his ridiculous shotgun, thirty-two-round drums loaded with smart, direction-triggerable microgrenades, enough raw explosives to make mincemeat out of anyone who tripped the switch.

He knelt, ran his finger just above the wire, and pulled the detonator from the cord.

“What the hell are you doing?” Matt’s whisper clawed down his spine like fingernails down a chalkboard.

Conor plastered on a half-grin, the charming mask he’d worn for over thirty years. Matt gave him a slack-jawed stare, trust and suspicion warring in his eyes. The sword begged him to cut Rowley to ribbons, and the whispers cajoled their elated agreement.

“Not now,” he growled.

Matt hesitated. “What do you mean?” His wary stance betrayed too much caution, and Conor suppressed a chuckle at the misunderstanding.

He whispered back, “I called dibs. Not my fault you blighters don’t listen, is it? So let’s kill this thing.”

“Are… are you insane?”

Conor hid the truth behind the truth. “That’s why they hired me, am I right?”

“Put it back,” Matt said. He took a step toward his friend, for the first time wary around the enthusiastic psychopath.

“Oil of palm, Rowley.” Flynn replaced the detonator, though Matt had no idea what ‘oil of palm’ meant in these circumstances. His wife, Monica, had said that rhyme slang was much more of a cockney rather than an Irish thing, but either way Matt had yet to find Conor’s flippant word games particularly comprehensible.

“Are you–” he cut himself off from asking the same question again. “Get over here and watch our six. These bastards killed Platt and al-Azwar, and I’m not about to let them get away with it.”

Flynn sauntered over, thumbs hooked in his belt loops, katana slung at his waist in exactly a non-Japanese manner.