The rig smelled of rust and disuse and brine. There were no windows. The discolored cream walls were blotched with spreading scabs of rust. Battery-powered fluorescent lanterns were slung, every few meters, from beams overhead, casting a hideous green-tinged light, at once intense and naggingly uneven. At least a dozen figures were at work, in this central room; they moved with the relaxed precision of good techni- cians. Professionals, Turner thought; their eyes seldom met and there was little talking. It was cold, very cold, and Conroy had given him a huge parka covered with tabs and zippers. A bearded man in a sheepskin bomber jacket was securing bundled lengths of fiber-optic line to a dented bulkhead with silver tape. Conroy was locked in a whispered argument with a black woman who wore a parka like Turner’s. The bearded tech looked up from his work and saw Turner. “Shee-it,” he said, still on his knees, “I figured it was a big one, but I guess it’s gonna be a rough one, too.” He stood, wiping his palms automatically on his jeans. Like the rest of the techs, he wore micropore surgical gloves. “You’re Turner.” He grinned, glanced quickly in Conroy’s direction, and pulled a black plastic flask from a jacket pocket. “Take some chill off. You remember me. Worked on that job in Marrakech. IBM boy went over to Mitsu-G. Wired the charges on that bus you `n’ the Frenchman drove into that hotel lobby.” Turner took the flask, snapped its lid, and tipped it. Bour- bon. It stung deep and sour, warmth spreading from the region of his sternum. “Thanks.” He returned the flask and the man pocketed it. “Onkey,” the man said. “Name’s Oakey? You remember?” “Sure,” Turner lied, “Marrakech.” “Wild Turkey,” Onkey said. “Flew in through Schipol, I hit the duty-free. Your partner there,” another glance at Conroy, “he’s none too relaxed, is he? I mean, not like Marrakech, right?” Turner nodded. “You need anything,” Oakey said, “lemme know.” “Like what?” `Nother drink, or I got some Peruvian flake, the kind that’s real yellow.” Oakey grinned again. “Thanks,” Turner said, seeing Conroy turn from the black woman. Onkey saw, too, kneeling quickly and tearing off a fresh length of silver tape. “Who was that?” Conroy asked, after leading Turner through a narrow door with decayed black gasket seals at its edges Conroy spun the wheel that dogged the door shut, someone had oiled it recently. “Name’s Onkey,” Turner said, taking in the new room. Smaller. Two of the lanterns, folding tables, chairs, all new On the tables, instrumentation of some kind, under black plastic dustcovers. “Friend of yours?” “No,” Turner said. “He worked for me once.” He went to the nearest table and flipped back a dustcover. “What’s this?” The console had the blank, half-finished look of a factory prototype. “Maas-Neotek cyberspace deck Turner raised his eyebrows. “Yours?” “We got two. One’s on site. From Hosaka. Fastest thing in the matrix, evidently, and Hosaka can’t even de-engineer the chips to copy them. Whole other technology.” “They got them from Mitchell?” “They aren’t saying. The fact they’d let go of `em just to give our jockeys an edge is some indication of how badly they want the man.” “Who’s on console, Conroy?” “Jaylene Slide. I was talking to her just now.” He jerked his head in the direction of the door. “The site man’s out of L.A., kid called Ramirez.” “They any good?” Turner replaced the dustcover. “Better be, for what they’ll cost. Jaylene’s gotten herself a hot rep the past two years, and Ramirez is her understudy.
Shit’ `Conroy shrugged’ `you know these cowboys. Fuck- ing crazy `Where’d you get them? Where’d you get Gakey for that matter?” Conroy smiled. “From your agent, Turner.” Turner stared at Conroy, then nodded. Turning, he lifted the edge of the next dustcover. Cases, plastic and styrofoam, stacked neatly on the cold metal of the table. He touched a blue plastic rectangle stamped with a silver monogram: S&W. “Your agent,” Conroy said, as Turner snapped the case open. The pistol lay there in its molded bed of pale blue foam, a massive revolver with an ugly housing that bulged beneath the squat barrel. “S&W Tactical. .408. with a xenon projector,” Conroy said. “What he said you’d want.” Turner took the gun in his hand and thumbed the batterytest stud for the projector. A red LED in the walnut grip pulsed twice. He swung the cylinder out. “Ammunition?” “On the table. Hand-loads, explosive tips.” Turner found a transparent cube of amber plastic, opened it with his left hand, and extracted a cartridge. “Why did they pick me for this, Conroy?” He examined the cartridge, then inserted it carefully into one of the cylinder’s six chambers. “I dont know,” Conroy said. “Felt like they had you slotted from go, whenever they heard from Mitchell . . Turner spun the cylinder rapidly and snapped it back into the frame. “I said, `Why did they pick me for this, Conroy?’ He raised the pistol with both hands and extended his arms, pointing it directly at Conroy’s face. “Gun like this, some- times you can see right down the bore, if the light’s right, see if there’s a bullet there.” Conroy shook his head, very slightly. “Ormaybeyoucanseeitinoneoftheothercham~~ . “No,” Conroy said, very softly, “no way.” “Maybe the shrinks screwed up, Conroy. How about that?” “No,” Conmy said, his face blank. “They didn’t, and you won’t.” Turner pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Conmy blinked once, opened his mouth, closed it, watched as Turner lowered the Smith & Wesson. A single bead of sweat rolled down from Conroy’s hairline and lost itself in an eyebrow. “Well?” Turner asked, the gun at his side. Conmy shrugged. “Don’t do that shit,” he said. “They want me that badT’ Conroy nodded. “It’s your show. Turner.” “Where’s Mitchell?” He opened the cylinder again and began to load the five remaining chambers. “Arizona. About fifty kilos from the Sonora line, in a mesatop research arcology. Maas Biolabs North America. They own everything around there, right down to the border, and the mesa’s smack in the middle of the footprints of four recon satellites. Mucho tight.” “And how are we supposed to get in?” “We aren’t. Mitchell’s coming out, on his own. We wait for him, pick him up, get his ass to Hosaka intact” Conroy hooked a forefinger behind the open collar of his black shirt and drew out a length of black nylon cord, then a small black nylon envelope with a Velcro fastener. He opened it carefully and extracted an object, which he offered to Turner on his open palm “Here. This is what he `sent Turner put the gun down on the nearest table and took the thing from Conroy. It was like a swollen gray microsoft. one end routine neurojack, the other a strange, rounded formation unlike anything he’d seen. “What is it?” “It’s biosoft. Jaylene jacked it and said she thought it was output from an Al. It’s sort of a dossier on Mitchell, with a message to Hosaka tacked on the end. You better jack it yourself; you wanna get the picture fast . . Turner glanced up from the gray thing “How’d it grab Jaylene?” “She said you better be lying down when you do it She didn’t seem to like it much.”