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4
“I’m bored. Entertain me.” The laconic voice coming across the comm could only belong to one person.
“Keep off comms unless you need something, Viper,” Raptor replied.
“I do need something, Raptor. I require entertainment. The last time I was this bored, the cell block was on lockdown.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t say you were in solitary, Viper,” Cap’s voice cut in. “From what I saw in your file you spent a lot of time there.”
“I was never bored in solitary, Superboy,” Viper shot back. “At least there, I had interesting conversation. All I have out of this neanderthal you partnered me with is a guessing game on the cup sizes of the women in the audience.”
“Hey,” Tank protested. “I’m really good at that game.”
“Stow it, you two,” Raptor’s voice was sharp. “Pay attention to the dock. Lone Star and I are in the western hallway about to turn into the front service corridor.”
“Radio in that area is for shit, Raptor. There’s a ton of interference from the wireless mics the candidates will be using, plus the network feeds are fucking it up,” Cap informed her.
“Fair enough, Cap. We’ll be incommunicado for about five minutes, then. Viper, try to behave for that long.”
“No promises, sweetheart, no promises,” Viper drawled.
“Call me sweetheart again and I’ll rip your nuts off,” Raptor shot back.
“You always say the sweetest things.” Viper clicked off.
Raptor shut off her mic and swore under her breath. She watched Lone Star press the button to silence his mic and turn to her. “Don’t let that asshat get to you, Sarge. The only power he has in the world is getting under people’s skin. With that kill switch in your pocket, you’ve got complete dominance over him, and that’s the one thing guys like him can’t handle.”
“That’s what’s funny about the whole situation, Lone Star,” Raptor said. “I don’t have a kill switch for Viper.”
“What? But you said…” A grin spread across the man’s face as realization dawned.
“Yeah,” Sheila nodded. “I lied. There’s no way in hell Duke would let a kill switch for one of our operatives out into the field. It’s way too dangerous. What if I lost it, or if I got taken out and somebody used the kill switch to force Viper to do something like attack the candidates? This election is huge. With no incumbent, both these guys are almost neck-and-neck for the White House. If somebody could control one of our guys, it would be nothing to make them take out one or both candidates on national TV. That’s the kind of black eye our program would never recover from.”
“Yeah,” Lone Star agreed. “That’s not even taking into account the chaos it would inflict upon the country if both major candidates were taken out just weeks before Election Day.”
“So look alive, soldier. Let’s make sure nothing like that happens.” The pair turned the corner into the front hallway, and sure enough, the comm circuit in their headgear started feeding back almost immediately. Lone Star sagged against a wall, shaking his head against the onslaught of sound. Raptor simply removed her headset, but the commlink was wired into Guerrero’s skull, so it was much harder for him to shut down the noise.
After several seconds of incapacitation, the man pressed a spot behind his left ear, and Sheila heard a soft click. Lone Star took a deep breath and straightened up, shaking his head to clear the residual ringing he no doubt felt in his ears.
“You okay,” Sheila asked.
“Yeah,” the man replied. “The built-in receiver got in a feedback loop somehow, and it fucked my equilibrium there for a minute. I couldn’t even tell right from left to switch shit off.”
“Sorry I couldn’t do it for you. I didn’t know where the commlink switch was embedded,” Raptor said by way of apology.
“No worries,” he said. He ran a finger along the flesh behind his ear. “But it’s right here if that ever happens again. You can feel a lump under the skin right behind my left ear. Press it until it clicks, and my comm will be shut down. That also takes my diagnostics and tracking offline, though, so I only disable it under extreme duress.”
“I think that skull-fucking you just took qualifies,” Raptor said. The phone on her belt vibrated, and she grabbed it and looked at the screen.
LONE STAR COMM DOWN. The screen read. EVERYTHING OK?
Yes. She typed back. Feedback into his comm from wireless mics. We’re both offline until we get out of this hallway. And stop yelling.
WHAT YELLING?
All caps, Duke. It’s rude.
FUCK RUDE.
Classy, boss. Classy. She looked over at Lone Star. “Duke says hi.”
“Why didn’t he text me?”
“I guess he thought you were dead when you disappeared from comm and tracking. He wanted to know if you got blowed up. I told him no such luck.”
“Funny.” Lone Star straightened up and started down the hall, sweeping his rifle side to side in front of him. Sheila had never seen a sniper rifle like that one before. It had a flash suppressor like the big fifty-caliber guns, but it also had a sheathed cable running from the scope to a jack in Lone Star’s helmet. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like it was as much anti-aircraft gun as sniper rifle, with a shroud around the long barrel for cooling, and a drum magazine. She took another look at it, and decided to call it the Platypus. It had a lot of odd pieces, none of them seeming to fit together, and she wasn’t quite sure whether it was fish or fowl. But Lone Star seemed comfortable carrying it, and if he could shoot the eye out of a quarter at half a mile, she didn’t care what the gun looked like.
She stepped in line behind Lone Star and slightly to the left, keeping her MP-5 aimed at the floor. If they encountered any trouble in the halls of the convention center, there were likely bigger problems than the two of them could deal with. Anything that got past the Secret Service sweep and the two dozen agents roaming the building was going to shrug off the 9mm rounds from her submachine gun with no problem. Good thing for her she had other options if the shit went down.
“Hey, what’s that about?” Lone Star said, his voice low.
All of Raptor’s senses went on high alert, and her thumb flicked the safety off her weapon. She brought the small gun up to her shoulder, tight against its sling as she looked where her partner was pointing.
A slender man was walking away from them, head down, moving fast. He was wearing black pants and a black hoodie, and both hands were held in front of his body, as if he was carrying something. Raptor hadn’t seen anyone dressed like that in the halls in any official capacity, so her sense ratcheted up another notch.
“Hey buddy,” she called out. “Hold up a second, we need to check your badge.” The man burst into a run, his booted feet thumping heavily along the corridor.
“Shit,” Raptor muttered. “I’m on him. Set up for a shot, I’ll try to get out of the line.” She broke into a run, her artificial legs reacting to the signals from her brain just like her real ones used to. In seconds, she was halfway down the corridor and gaining on the man. “Stop, or we’ll take you down!” she called to him.
The man stopped in his tracks, whirled and dropped to one knee. Raptor’s eyes widened as she processed what he was holding – an AK-47 rifle.
“Shit,” she muttered. “Gun!” she yelled in warning to Lone Star, then she leapt into the air, her jump fueled by hydraulics and titanium springs. As she jumped, she slammed her elbows into her ribcage, and a metallic click echoed through the hall. Gleaming alutanium wings snapped into place, extending from her elbows to her sides, propelling her toward the ceiling as she flew toward the shooter, now fully taking the form of her namesake, with shining wings and taloned hands.
The black-clad man opened fire with a short burst of automatic fire, spitting 7.62 rifle rounds down the hall where Raptor had run seconds before. Lone Star, kneeling at the far end of the hall, opened fire with his modified sniper weapon and put two rounds in the man’s chest. His shoulder exploded and he collapsed backward, dead before he hit the ground. His errant shots whizzed by over Lone Star’s head, and below the form of Raptor, hovering as she was near the ceiling.
Sheila dropped to the floor by the dead man and kicked the gun away. He was deader than dead, but protocol was protocol for a reason, and her whole program was proof that dead people sometimes got better. She checked for a pulse, found none, and pressed her comm unit to activate it. The feedback spiked through her ears again, and she shut it down with another slap. A quick press of her arms to her sides retracted her wings, and she knelt beside the body to check it for ID.
Lone Star came up, his long gun slung over his shoulder and a pair of nickel-plated Colt 1911s in his hands. “Anything on him?”
“I haven’t searched him yet. You planning on heading over to the OK Corral when we’re done here?” Sheila asked, nodding at his guns.
“Cut me a little slack,” Guerrero replied. “A man’s gotta have some kinda swag, you know.”
“Pablo, there’s whole rap tours that don’t have as much swag as you, pal.” Raptor patted the dead man down, but came up empty. “No wallet. Pockets are empty. I’ll scan prints and face, then send them to Duke to check out.” She pulled the phone off her belt and took a photo of the dead man’s face, then photographed each of his fingers individually, starting with the right index finger and working through them one by one. Then she looked at the screen and muttered, “Shit.”
“What’s up?” Guerrero asked.
“No signal. I guess the interference is worse here than it was at the end of the hall.”
“These convention centers are shit for cell phones. All the metal around us really fucks with the signal.”
“I guess I’ll send these to Duke later,” she said, clipping the phone back to her belt.
“You think he was alone?” Pablo asked.
“I don’t know. We need to report this, but I’m a little surprised nobody came back here at the sound of gunfire,” Raptor replied.
“Really?” Lone Star asked, then jerked a thumb to the wall of the ballroom. “Listen to that shit.” Now that he mentioned it, Raptor heard the strains of loud country music coming from the other side. “I think it’s Toby Strait or something out there.”
“I don’t think that’s a real person,” Raptor said. “How the hell did you come from Oklahoma and not know country music?”
“Look at me, chica,” he said. “Do I look like I go line dancing every Friday night?”
“Fair enough,” Raptor said. “I’m going to go check in with Agent Santos. You stay here and make sure our friend here doesn’t get up and run away.” She stood, looked down at the blood staining the knee of her black uniform pants, and grimaced. “Dammit. I go through more pants from bloodstains…”
“Hey, look on the bright side,” Lone Star said. “At least the blood ain’t yours.”
“Good point,” Sheila agreed. “I’ll be back. If anything bad happens,” she thought for a moment, realized there wasn’t anything she could do if anything bad did happen, then just said, “If anything bad happens, try not to shoot the good guys.”
“I think I can manage that, Sarge.” He snapped off a quick salute, and Sheila turned to run to the door at the end of the hall.
She made it almost fifty feet from Guerrero before the wall beside her exploded, showering her with cinderblock and drywall dust. Sheila bounced off the opposite wall, taking out more drywall, before slamming into the floor. It felt a lot like the little bit she remembered of getting blown up in Korea, loud and decidedly unpleasant. Gunshots rang out around her, and more small explosions followed.
Raptor struggled to her feet, shaking free chunks of wall and looking out into the demolished ballroom. She shook her head to clear the ringing in her ears, and suddenly Lone Star was beside her, pulling her down to her knees next to him.
“Stay down, Sarge!” he shouted in her ear. “We need to find cover, and find the other teams.”
“How the hell are we supposed to find them in that?” Raptor asked, pointing into the ballroom, where several thousand people now ran screaming in every direction, while a dozen or more men with automatic weapons opened fire on the crowd.
Raptor looked at Lone Star beside her, and suddenly everything became clear – this was the moment she had trained for. This was what she had been reborn for. The shit was hitting the fan. It was time to go to work.
