“Real mess you got in the starboard carry slot.”
“Drek, yeah. Blew a chip on recovery.”
“I can patch the R-P today, but the chip…” Collins shook his head, making reflections dance on his bald pate. “Ain’t got nothing like that on the shelf and ain’t nobody this far out can cut you one.”
“Frag it. I need that bird.” Begay spat on the floor and stared at the star pattern the spittle made on the concrete floor.
“Begay?” Sam waited until the Navaho looked up. “It looked like your aircraft had manual controls.”
“Yeah. Used to be a spy dropper before I put in the rigger controls. Left them manuals in, ’cause I thought I might want to take up flying someday.”
Collins snorted. “He means it was his backup getaway.” Begay gave the Ork a snarl, but there was no real heat to it. Sam realized the drone’s use as an escape vehicle must be an open secret, but the rigger needed to establish that it was his secret to share.
“Begay, I used to do some small-craft piloting. My old Mitsubishi Flutterer was something like your ultra-light. I think I could fly it if you really need a recon.”
“You’re full of surprises, Twist. Next you’ll be telling me you’re a magician.” Begay laughed. “You aren’t a witch, are you, Twist? ’Cause if you are, you’re walking from here.”
Sam said nothing. The left side of his mouth twitched into a nervous half-smile. He was saved from the need to reply when Collins stepped into the silence. “If the kid was a skinwalker, Begay, he wouldn’t need to ride with you in the first place.”
“What would you know about it?”
The two old friends started wrangling over who knew more about magic and the ways of magicians, giving Sam the opportunity to slip away. He didn’t want to get drawn into a discussion that might end up with Begay living up to his threat to leave him stranded here in the wilderness. Sam didn’t think of himself as a magician, but he didn’t know what Begay’s standards were. Had the Navaho seen Sam scanning the chips the professor had given him? Was that what really motivated the seeming joke of a question? Feeling quite alone, Sam found a dark corner and sealed in to watch Collins’ crew service the panzer.
Boise belonged to the Salish-Shidhe Council, but it was different than the towns Hart knew from the coast, where the influence of the Northwest Coast tribes was strong. The flavor here was of the Plateau and Plains tribes, a lot more like the Ute Council burgs. That wasn’t too surprising; Ute territory started just to the south beyond the Snake River. Still, it was the biggest settlement around and well situated for a move on the panzer while it crossed the Snake River Plains. She had picked it as a likely choke point once she’d found a street snitch who pegged the panzer’s destination as Quebec. It had taken only minimal bribes for clearances and a place on the regular shuttle to put her here ahead of her quarry.
That was what she had thought on the flight here. The shadow underground wasn’t very developed in Boise, but she made a few connections and learned enough to know that she had guessed wrong again. By pretending that she was looking for a panzer runner and needing to know the itchiness of local enforcement, she had found out that all was quiet. All of the-admittedly limited-excitement was to the north where, yesterday, a Council copter had reported contact with a panzer headed north along the river. The chopper pilot had lost the panzer in the canyons. No surprise there. Any good panzer runner could ditch a general patrol.
The panzer hadn’t been identified, but Hart was reasonably sure it was the one Verner was riding. Her contacts had seemed anxious to do business, even with her flimsy story, which meant that the smuggling business was slow right now. It didn’t seem that many other runs were in progress and the mystery panzer was headed in the right general direction. There were other paths to Verner’s destination than the one she had decided to block, but all involved a lot of heavy terrain. Verner’s run to Quebec would have gone a lot faster if they had taken the track through the plains. Perhaps the suit had anticipated opposition and chosen a less obvious route. If so, he was smarter than she thought. Or else his friends were. Or maybe he was just plain lucky.
The copter report placed the panzer too far north to reasonably expect that they would double back and take the lower road through the Snake River Plains. That meant they would be crossing the Rockies, somewhere in the wilder country. There were not many cities or even towns up there, and they’d be avoiding the few that were. Unless they were planning a long detour north, the likeliest crossing would put them out in Sioux territory somewhere near Great Falls, so that became her next stop. Great Falls passed for a city, but it was surrounded by badlands, prairies, and outback, none of which were her best working environments. And that’s where they would be.
She had wanted to tie this one up herself because she was mostly to blame that Verner was still running around. She should have made sure that the Elves had done the job on him in the ambush. Now she couldn’t hope to nail him herself out there. Tessien was better in the wild places than she was. She wanted Verner gone before he reached civilization again.
She stopped at a public telecom, slotted a credstick, and punched a number. She waited while the connections were made and a voice on the other end repeated the Last four digits of the telecom code.
“Jenny, have our skinny friend meet me at Far Side North.”
“Will do, boss.”
The Thunderbird sat hunkered to the ground, quiet for the moment as Sam watched Begay crawl around the blackened scar on the side of the vehicle. The Navaho cursed as he fussed with the soldering gun, repairing damaged circuits.
“Why couldn’t it have been Pinkskins that we ran into out here? With all their trying to be more Indian than Indians, their fragging arrows wouldn’t have touched the T-bird. No. We got to flop on some lost patrol of fragging Wildcats. Drek, but there ain’t no beauty in that.”
“Wildcats?”
“Sioux special forces.” Begay hopped off the T-bird and spat. “With anti-vehicle missiles, too. Missiles! What kind of mouse-minded idiot issues a squad missiles for a trek in the mountains.”
“Maybe somebody was looking for panzers?”
“I didn’t tell them we were coming.”
“Neither did I.”
Sam handed a water bag to the rigger. Begay swigged the water and spat again, then tossed the bag back to Sam. “Pretty slick the way you forced their Hummer into the ditch. Better shooting than I would of figured you for.”