The Road to Hell (3 page)

“
Who is he?” asked Susan.

“
An old friend.”

“
A friend?” Susan’s face twisted slightly in surprise. Harrison turned back toward her with a wry smile.

“
Yeah, there’s no worse enemy than an old friend with an axe to grind. Keeps it all nice and personal.”

“
What are we going to do?”

Susan crouched down close beside him, her breasts showing beneath her flimsy top. She looked so awkward dressed like that, but Harrison wasn’t complaining.

“
Rosie?” asked Harrison again, whispering into his wrist communicator. “Are you there?”

“
Yeah.”

A slight crackle interfered with the signal as the machinery around them pumped up and down with perfect rhythm.

“
I’m almost a block away, boss. Walked right out of there without a question being asked. They never pay attention to us middle-aged overweight black women.”

“
Yeah,” replied Harrison. “You’ve got the perfect disguise. But if it was the fashion police, they would have busted your ass. You wouldn’t have made it ten feet.”

Rosie laughed. That’s what she liked about Harrison; he loved her for who she was.

“
What’s the plan?” she asked.

“
I need you to fire up the cruiser. Get the engines warm. You’re going to have to remote pilot us out of here.”

“
You’re not going to take the controls?” asked Rosie, somewhat surprised.

“
Nah. Things are too hot. We’re going to have to fight our way out so I’ll be manning the sixty-cal.”

“
It’s that bad?”

“
Worse,” replied Harrison, peering around the corner again.

Kane was gone. If there was anything worse than seeing Special Agent Kane on the scene, it was not seeing him and knowing he was lurking around out there somewhere, ready to spring a trap.

“
Gimme a few minutes,” said Rosie. “It’s going to take some time to bring all the systems online remotely.”

“
Time’s the one thing we don’t have,” replied Harrison, switching off his wrist communicator.

“
You. Stop,” came a cry from behind them.

Harrison turned to see a plain clothes officer wearing body armour about thirty feet behind them. He was standing in front of a conveyer belt feeding freshly folded garments into a packing machine. Flashes of light burst around them as the officer fired on them. Boxes of clothing exploded above their heads as they crouched down instinctively, dropping below the incoming blaster fire. Fragments of cardboard, strips of cloth and burning strands of plastic billowed out of the shelving with each incoming round. Firing three rounds from the hip, Harrison caught the officer with a shotgun blast to the chest, knocking him backwards onto the conveyer belt.

“
Go!”

Harrison pushed Susan out in front of him across the wide main aisle. Uniformed officers in jetpacks rode high above the whirring knitting machines, floating across the ceiling of the factory looking for movement.

Laser packets cut through the air like lightning. Blaster shots rang out muffled and mute against the sounds of industry around them. Harrison ran alongside one of the metal carts as it followed its preset path along the concrete floor. Compressed beams of fortified light punched holes in the thin sheet metal beside them. Smoldering ash filled the air.

“
Down here,” he cried, dragging Susan with him into another aisle. “We’ve got to get to the loading dock.”

Halfway down the aisle, Harrison dropped to the ground and rolled under the warehouse shelving into the next aisle with Susan following hard behind him. Ahead, a large metal roller door began closing, shutting them in on the factory floor.

“
Quick,” yelled Harrison, making a break for the roller door.

Flashes of light burst around them as shots whipped by, burning into the concrete floor and the metal shelving on either side. The angle told Harrison all he needed to know. Someone in a jetpack was screaming down the aisle behind them firing on full auto. Thank God for full auto, he thought, the recoil made for a lousy aim.

Harrison dived for the closing door, rolled under it and out on to the other side. His shotgun skidded across the slick concrete floor and into the side of a maintenance rack a few feet away. Susan wasn’t as quick. She slipped and fell to the ground with less than five feet to cover. Scrambling, she fought to get back to her feet as the door closed to within a foot of the ground.

Harrison kicked over a metal garbage can, knocking it under the closing door, jamming the door partially open. Several pairs of feet appeared on the other side of the door as the police landed, disengaging their jetpacks.

“
No,” screamed Susan.

She was halfway under the roller door when one of the officers grabbed her by the left leg. Twisting over on her back, she lashed out with her free leg, striking the officer in the groin. Above her, the industrial-strength metal door groaned, its gears straining to crush the garbage can caught in the tracks. An alarm sounded from the door’s electric motor. Harrison grabbed Susan’s arms and dragged her through. No sooner had her feet cleared the edge of the door than he grabbed the shotgun and fired at the garbage can. The force of the shot knocked the crushed can out into the factory on the other side, allowing the door to thunder shut behind them.

“
Come on,” said Harrison. “It won’t take them long to get around that.”

The loading bay was full of star freighters packed full of contraband, all trying to leave the dock at the same time. Whining, grinding engines sent out a deafening noise as the freighters powered up. Several transports lifted off, driving up toward the safety of the dark, foreboding clouds. Police cruisers swarmed around the side of the factory, flying into the loading dock with sirens blazing.

“
This way.”

Harrison ran to the back of the dock and into the maintenance yard.

A row of hover cars and freighters sat in the numbered engine bays, all of them in various states of disrepair. Having the vehicles set in dry-dock allowed metal fatigue inspections of the entire hull as well as easy access to the propulsion jets set below the vehicles. One of the newer cruisers had been stripped down and chopped up for parts. Several mechanics jumped down into the service bays, ducking beneath the stripped-down cruisers as they scrambled out of the maintenance yard on foot.

Harrison smiled. There she was, down in the last bay, a vintage Plymouth Falcon. At forty-seven feet in length, she was oversized by modern standards, one of the first cruisers to use a fully-suspended fusion drive with a hybrid pulse engine. Both gull-wing side doors were open, raised up high above the body of the craft like a bird ready to take flight.

“
Get on board,” cried Harrison as he whipped off the engine covers. The alloy gravitation pumps were already warm. Rosie was at work.

“
This bucket of bolts,” replied Susan coming to a halt in front of the open door of the cruiser. “This is your plan? To escape in a museum piece?”

“
This bucket of bolts is about to save your ass,” said Harrison, pushing her on board.

A musty smell hung in the air.

“
We’re dead,” replied Susan looking around at the interior of the craft. Packets of half-eaten Chinese takeaways littered the ageing shag pile carpet floor. Foam stuffing broke through the rotten stitching on the bulkhead. Water stains seeped down from the ceiling of the cockpit. And the smell. Susan almost gagged.

“
Oh, this is disgusting. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when you close the side doors.”

“
Laugh it up,” replied Harrison, busily punching buttons and flicking switches, “She may not be pretty, but this baby’s a beast under the hood.”

An explosion at the far end of the maintenance area signalled the arrival of the police in force.

“
Are you ready, Rosie?”

“
Just say the word,” came the reply from the wrist communicator.

Blaster packets began pelting the side of the vehicle. Harrison took off his wristwatch communicator and tossed it on the pilot's seat. Without a word he pushed Susan out of the cockpit and back into the entry way. He motioned with his shotgun, pointing toward the far door of the cruiser.

“
What are you doing?” asked Susan in surprise.

“
Get out,” Harrison replied coldly.

“
Wh-What?”

Time seemed to come to a halt as Susan’s eyes settled on the pitted barrel of the shotgun just inches from her waist. As harsh as it was being shot at by the police, the rush of adrenalin had carried her through the moment, but this, this was different. This was personal. Suddenly, the threat of dying became very real. Life moved in slow motion. The blaster sounds, engine noise and confusion around her faded into the background as she focused on the shotgun pointing at her. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she realised Harrison was deadly serious.

“
I said, get out,” repeated Harrison softly.

Susan just stood there in disbelief as he shoved her over toward the far door.

“
This is about trust, remember,” he added as he stood in the doorway and pushed her out with the heel of his boot. Harrison hit a large panel on the side of the vehicle with the flat of his hand and the gull-wing doors of the craft began to close.

“
No,” cried Susan as she slipped and fell awkwardly, sliding down the gap between the cruiser and the maintenance bay wall. She landed knee-deep in stagnant water. In the shadows behind her, a thin trickle of rainwater dripped slowly from a storm drain emptying into the maintenance bay from beneath the concrete slab. Up above, she could hear Harrison talking with Rosie as the door closed to within a few feet.

“
OK, Rosie, we’re good to go. Now get us the hell out of here.”

With that, Harrison slipped out under the closing door, jumping down into the maintenance bay beside Susan. The side door on the cruiser locked in place as the craft lifted off. Flashes of light hammered the Falcon as it cleared the maintenance bay, blaster shots coming in from the charging police. Susan was stunned. She still hadn’t figured out quite what was happening or why. Harrison pushed her back into the storm drain under the platform.

The Falcon shuddered before darting forward out of the maintenance yard and into the distance. Several police cruisers gave chase, darting off after the Falcon as it weaved its way through the old town. Plumes of smoke shot out after the ageing hover car as the craft rounded a smelter stack and cut up toward the clouds. The police fired homing missiles at the craft. From where Harrison and Susan were in the storm drain neither of them could see what happened next but the deafening boom told them the Falcon had been destroyed.

Harrison put his hand over Susan’s mouth as she gasped at the realisation of what had just occurred.

Above them, the sound of business shoes resounded over the concrete floor. The sound was distinctly different to the deep, resonate thud of police combat boots running to and fro. These steps were solid, calm, rhythmic, coming to an abrupt halt directly above them. Harrison recognised the voice.

“
I want the bodies recovered. The senate will want to confirm the erasure.”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
What about the containment crew?” asked Special Agent Kane.

“
They’re on their way,” another voice replied.

“
Good. This has to look like an immigration raid. I want the whole area cleaned. Zero residual presence. Is that understood?”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
And will somebody get me some goddamn coffee.”