It did not matter.
Allah would give him what he needed.
As he sped up to the parking area’s entrance, he swung the U-Haul in past the factory workers’ cars to the chain-link fence dividing the outdoor lot from the HF storage area.
And then they were there before him, the tank clusters with their serpentine pipelines.
Zaheer spun the van around in a full circle, backed up to the fence, slammed his brakes.
Through his windshield, he could see the motorbikes turning into the lot. A single uniformed security guard jogged toward him from the factory to his right — fat, unsuspecting, that one posed the least threat of all.
Shifting the van into PARK, Zaheer started to reach for the Zastava pistol he’d stored in the glove box, but then changed his mind, choosing instead the MP5K submachine gun under his seat.
“Yo, mister!” the guard yelled, trotting up to the driver’s side of the van. “That’s a restricted area, can’t you read the signs?”
Able to hear him shouting through his window, Zaheer noticed he did not have a hand anywhere near his gun.
Fat. Complacent. They would not learn their lessons.
The guard had heard the buzzing of the cycles now. He turned his head briefly toward the parking area’s entrance, saw the motorcycles, looked back at Zaheer again.
“What the hell?” he said. “What the hell is this?”
Zaheer had no time to waste lowering his window — the cycles were approaching. He raised the MP5 and fired two three-round bursts directly through it into the guard’s face, wiping him from his sight.
Then, heedless of the shattered window glass that had blown over him in slivery piles, he slung the submachine gun over his shoulder, clambered back into the cargo section, threw himself on his stomach, and turned the cannon’s turretlike beam director toward the tanks.
Cutting across the lot in a straight line, the bikes broke formation as they reached the front of the stopped van, Ricci and Glenn swooping to the left, the two other remaining Sword ops taking its right flank.
Ricci hooked his bike around toward the rear section and had time enough to see that the cargo hatch was already raised, opened from within, before fans of gunfire began pouring out of it. He wrenched his handlebars, tailing away from the van to avoid the volleys, but one of the ops on its other side was slower by a hair to react. Bullets cut into him and he went into a tailspin, spilling from his seat as his attack cycle crashed into the divider fence.
Enough, Ricci thought. No more.
He halted the bike at the side of the van, booted down its kickstand, and lunged off his seat, crouching low, pulling his variable-velocity snubnose automatic from under his leather jacket, switching the weapon to its lethal setting. Beside him, another motorbike also braked to a stop.
“Glenn?”
“Yeah.”
“Count of three, we get around back, open fire.”
“With you.”
“One, two—”
“Ricci.”
“What?”
“Check it out.”
“Check wha—”
“Look.” Pointing.
Ricci looked. And realized what Glenn had been trying to get him to notice.
The firing from the rear of the van had stopped, and a submachine gun… an MP5, Ricci thought… lay on the ground behind its back bumper, its black grip glistening wet with blood.
Ricci turned to Glenn, made eye contact with him through his visor, nodded in silent communication.
Slowly, guardedly, their weapons at the ready, they edged along the side of the van with their backs flat against it, then hooked around to the open cargo section.
The driver lay sprawled over what looked like a small cannon turret on a mount the size of a small valise. He was face down on his belly, a pool of crimson underneath him, crimson all over the turret, all over the hand hanging limply from the open bay door. Mounted inside the cargo section were three readout and control panels, their flatscreen displays blank.
Ricci looked at Glenn.
Glenn looked at Ricci.
“Done,” Glenn said.
And they both lowered their weapons to their sides.
EIGHT
“Guess it ain’t too tough to figure why I’m here,” John Earl said, trying hard to stay on his feet a little longer.
Hasul Benazir looked at Earl from behind his desk at the Kiran office.
“Our deal,” he said.
Earl nodded.
“Our deal,” he affirmed. “Fifty grand up front, fifty on completion—”
“Succeed or fail,” Benazir said.
Earl nodded again, hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat. As always the office was silent around him except for the sounds of pumped and filtered water in the octopus tank in the wall.
He waited. Hard, hard as hell, keeping his feet under him… though it didn’t help that Zaheer’s bullet was still floating around in the red muck between his ribs, probably just about to give his heart a last cold kiss.
Hush baby, you hush.
Yeah, Earl thought, the old fire-engine-red truck he’d driven for so long would be ditching off the highway of life any time now. He had stuffed the hole in his chest with fistfuls of gauze more than once, wrapped himself around with fresh bandage tape before showing up at the office, but all that had done was soak up the blood under his shirt and coat — well, the coat, anyway — and keep it from gushing out of him like water from a bathtub spout.
Now Benazir rose, came around the desk, stood in front of Earl.
“The money will be yours without condition,” he said. “I would, however, wish to know how you managed to escape what has just begun to trickle its way into the news. Those men on motorcycles…” Benazir shrugged, let the sentence trail. “How?” he said.
Earl remained very still. If he took even a single step forward, backward, or sideways, he figured it would leave him flat on the floor. Of course, it wasn’t his feet he had to be able to move.
“Well,” he said, and pulled his Sig nine from his pocket, “it went kind of like this.”
Benazir’s face barely showed any reaction. After a few seconds he blinked slowly, let his eyes stay shut for another span of seconds, and released a long breath as he opened them.
“You never did think you’d have to pay up the balance, did you?” Earl said. “Never thought I’d be around to ask for it.”
Hasul shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I never did.”
Earl looked at him with his gun between them, tightened his lips to hold back a cough. No sense messing the carpet with what would come out of him.
He motioned toward the aquarium with the pistol.
“Gonna give you a choice, Hasul,” he said. “You can let your poisonous friend Legs give you a tickle or you can deal with my friend Siggy here. Either way, it ought to be quick.”
Benazir remained nearly expressionless, staring at him with his dark brown eyes.
At length he nodded, strode toward the tank, removed the wood-veneer feeder panel from the wall above it, and set it down on the floor.
“I believe I knew,” he said softly, and turned his head to look at Earl as he rolled up his shirt sleeve.
Earl grunted.
“Kinda believe you did, too,” he said. He raised the gun a notch higher, his finger around its trigger. “Now go on, Hasul. Say hi to Legs for me… and I promise, I’ll see you by-and-by.”
Hasul stared at him another moment, gave him a nod, and then turned and slipped his hand into the aquarium.