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d.txt herself against the wild swings of the panzer. She dogs the hatch down
over her head and dives for the bunk. Seven-millimeter casings roll jingling
across the metal deck.
"Time to hide, Sarah." Cowboy's voice comes both in her head and ears.
"Time to find a deep hole and hide."
You can't, she wants to say. You can't hide from them.
She pulls the headset off, closes her eyes, and tries to escape into
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blackness.
Chapter Seven
TAMPA'S TOTALS OVERNITE, AS OF 8 THIS MORNING: 22 FOUND DEAD WITHIN CITY
LIMITS...LUCKY WINNERS
COLLECT AT ODDS OF 18 TO 1
POLICE DENY CHARGES OF FIXING (RELATED STORY ON PAGE 3)
The panzer waits for nightfall in a narrow fold of ground between the Blue
Mountains and the Tuscaroras, having followed a shallow creek between green
bluffs into a quiet swale studded with pine. Cowboy sips some orange-flavored
electrolyte replacement and squats on a fragrant bed of pine needles. His mind
is cool and clear, but tremors are running through his limbs, the aftereffects
of too much adrenaline. Through the trees he can see a hawk flying against the
sun, wings spread to catch the thermals.
Lucky, he thinks. That the first rocket went for Andrei. That they assumed the
panzer was unarmed except for Sarah in the hatch. Otherwise the first rocket
would have been aimed right in his lap. Maybe it would have got through the
armor, maybe not. His muscles tremble at the thought.
"Those people were trying to kill us," he says. "I figured if anybody's story
survived, it had better be ours."
Sarah looks out into a dappled meadow and frowns. Her hand is never far from
the gun on her hip. "Too bad about those truck drivers, though. They were just
hired help."
"Then they shouldn't have tried to play with the likes of us," Cowboy says. He
can feel indignation prickling along his neck and shoulders at the idea of
being ambushed by a collection of shabby players like that. He frowns at the
blue-green Tuscaroras. "This'll be all over the screamsheets in another few
hours," he says. "Those escorts Andrei hired for the panzer weren't his
people, right? Just some local escort service with a license from the police
that'll be revoked if they get into trouble. They'll have seen the panzer go
down that turn and then heard half the world blow up. No way they aren't going
to tell the local laws."
"I've got to talk to Michael the Hetman," Sarah says. "This was a move against
him, and it was by one of the Orbitals. "
Cowboy feels shock prickling the hairs on his arms. He looks up at her. "How
do you know that?"
"That white guy I unzipped," Sarah says. She bares her teeth in unconscious
anger. "He worked for the Orbitals. One of their...security units. For a man
named Cunningham. Cunningham had to have set this up." Cowboy stares at his
silvered image in the mirrors over her eyes and wonders what he's stepped
into, how high this dirtgirl's profile is. And how much he's been soiled by
whatever it is she's mixed up with.
Sarah's voice turns soft. As if what she's saying is something so personal she
can only speak of it in whispers. "And they've used rockets before. Fired one
at me."
And now Cowboy knows. He's covered with Sarah's mess, and the smartest thing
he can do is say adios and climb back into the panzer, stud into the eye-face,
and fly away and never look back. Whoever is firing those rockets wants this
scar-faced dirtgirl and doesn't care who gets splashed on the way to her. He
represses an urge to look over his shoulder.
"Which Orbital?" he asks. "How strong are they on the ground here?"
She shakes her head. "I don't know. They wouldn't tell me. "
"Wouldn't tell you when?"
She takes a breath and suddenly he can see the sadness in her, that in spite
of the armor and gun and shades and swagger she's very alone here, sitting in
some dead-end Blue Mountain valley and trying to think of a next move. A
street animal lost and blind, running on adrenaline and instinct and knowing
there are footsteps right behind her, each one bringing the enemy closer.
"When I worked for them," she says. And she tells him a story about how she [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]