Drawing Dead (38 page)

Would-be reporters were running cell-phone videos straight to CNN. Some as-yet-unidentified individual on a small motorcycle with a tiny video cam strapped securely to his helmet was shot so many times by so many weapons that his DNA splattered the sides of buildings up to the third floor. Chicago PD could ignore Homeland Security's stand-down orders, but keeping them away was impossible. As would be questioning the motorcyclist.

Bloggers dueled for bandwidth; cables were torn from beneath the concrete by a blanket of cover fire laid down to protect the SWAT teams trying to enter what was left of the structure as the Fire Department's full range—chemical foam to high-pressure hoses—worked on containment.

Somewhere in a basement at Quantico, FBI profilers were screaming, “More data!” as if summoning a genie from a lamp.

Bullhorns competed with human screams, neither winning.

INSIDE WHAT
looked like a derelict gas station in the Badlands, Buddha pulled a tab, releasing torrents of air under the skin of the Shark Car.

Cross and Tiger each took a side and pulled off the city-camo, revealing a midnight-blue body that now resembled a limousine. Buddha stripped off the doorman's uniform and dropped it into an empty hazmat container before he re-donned his own clothes.

“Go!” Cross told Buddha, pointing both index fingers straight ahead.

Turning to Tiger, he said, “Come on.”

“How am I supposed to walk in—?”

“It isn't far.”

“What does—?” Tiger started to say, just as Condor dropped from his perch.

“Anything?” Cross asked.

“Nothing,” the young man answered, meaning no vehicle had attempted to enter the area after the Shark Car. “But a panel truck came a while back. They dropped off this motorcycle. I mean, one of them did—the other one never got out.”

“Can you get the bike back here?”

“Sure. But we'd have to ride it.”

“How else…?”

“The guy who dropped it off, he
carried
it!”

“You've seen him before.”

“Sure. But that thing has to weigh—”

“It doesn't matter. Just bring it down the road, we'll grab it there.”

Condor stepped off into the darkness, already speaking into the old Army-issue field phone he carried on a sling.

“It's about a hundred yards,” Cross told Tiger. “Keep your damn shoes on; I can carry you that far.”

“Wow! You must be
so
strong!”

Cross dropped to the same firing position he had used earlier, scooped Tiger over one shoulder, and began to slog forward in a fireman's carry.

“You say something?” she demanded.

“Just a prayer.”

“Are you trying to say—?”

“Can
you
try shutting up for a minute?” he said, smacking her rump with his left hand.

“Oh! That
hurt
!”

“Sure,” Cross said, sourly, his palm still tingling. “What I was praying for was that Princess didn't drop off
his
damn scooter.”

CROSS WOULD
be hard-pressed to distinguish one motorcycle from another, but he relaxed as soon as he saw it wasn't the Pepto-pink Harley.

Red 71 could be reached through the Badlands, but only if you knew how to navigate past a series of sensors before deliberately passing through a final strobing light to deactivate an open-on-contact twenty-foot drop to a pile of hacked-up I-beams.

Cross piloted the bike carefully, but Tiger held on as if they were about to go airborne any second. When they reached the back perimeter, Cross pulled in the clutch and cut the motor, letting the bike drift until it came to a natural stop. Few knew Red 71 could be accessed from that direction at all—those who did knew that no car could possibly traverse the torn iron maze. And that any first step would open a screen inside, with infrared cameras tracking movement of anything larger than a small dog.

“We'll leave it here,” Cross said. “Nobody's gonna steal it.”

“It's got to be another quarter-mile,” Tiger answered. “And I know you're not planning to carry—”

“Not me. But somebody will be out here soon enough. Probably Princess and that dog. And you know he'd carry you up Sears Tower if you asked him.”

“Oh, that's all right.” She flashed a grin. “I may not have been Girl Scout material, but I'm always prepared.”

Cross stood silently as the Amazon reached into a side pouch on her jumpsuit and pulled out a pair of thin-soled slippers. “The soles are some kind of plastic Rhino made—they flex, but you couldn't drive a nail through them.”

Cross had taken some serious risks in his life, but he wasn't about to ask the Amazon why she hadn't bothered to mention those substitute shoes earlier.

“THEY PROBABLY
got the coordinates wrong,” Percy said to Ace. “Wouldn't be the first time for those desk warriors.”

“Meaning, Blondie and that girl, they're somewhere around here, just not in the place they pointed you to?”

“Yeah.”

“Got a car?”

“No. I don't know my way around here—it'd just weigh me down.”

“You took the damn CTA dressed like that?”

“Night drop,” Percy explained. “Black parachute. Not my first. Just picked a flat roof, and…”

“Yeah, I got it. But we can't do no house-to-house here. Sooner or later, some little gangstah will crank off a few just to be doing it.”

“I thought you wouldn't have no problems.” The war-machine's version of sarcasm.

“Man, it ain't
me
that looks all RoboCop. You out of some seriously dumb movie, son.”

“You want me to, what, wait here? That's not what I—”

“Yeah, I know. You all kinds of bad. But unless you got some magic net to drop over that whole spot, they'll be gone before we get close.”

“I'm not—”

“Rest easy,” Ace said. “I just gotta make a call.”

Percy watched as the slim black man shook a sleeve of his long leather duster, deftly caught the cell phone as it slid across his open palm, popped it open with his thumb, and tapped a single key with a long, slim finger, all in the same motion.

“I need a posse car,” Ace spoke into the mic. “Four doors, two men in front, backseat empty. How long till you get it over to…?”