The man was terrified. He shut up.
Now, all Santos had to do was immobilize the bodyguards. He hauled the second one out of the car and dragged him to the back. He expertly tied both unconscious men, using the soft cloth ties he had tucked away in his pocket. He didn’t want any ligature marks on them. He placed a loop around each neck and to the wrists, so they wouldn’t struggle when they woke up. He opened the trunk and hoisted the tied pair inside, then carefully shut the lid. He walked back to the bike, glanced at Dowling as he did to see if he’d make a break for it-try to get into the front seat, get the car started, or maybe just open the door and run.
Dowling sat, not moving, and Santos smiled. He hadn’t thought the man had it in him. He was a good judge of such things.
He killed the motorcycle’s flashing lights, undipped them and the siren and controls from the bike, then pushed the two-wheeler into a clump of bushes nearby, so it wasn’t visible from the road. Now it was just an ordinary motorcycle. By the time somebody found it, this would be all over. And there wouldn’t be any way to connect it to Dowling and his bodyguards anyway-the rest of the night’s business was going to happen thirty miles away
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CYBERNATION
a different highway. The motorcycle wasn’t stolen; it been bought under a fake name, and there was no i to link it to the limo. It would be another of life’s i unsolved mysteries. Santos walked to the car, opened the driver’s door, and behind the wheel. “Just sit there quietly,” he said. We’ll go for a ride, then we’ll have a chat. Behave your- f, and all it costs you is a little inconvenience.” . lie, that. Dowling and his two guards’would be dead i an hour, all things going as planned. But no point i upsetting die man, was there?
t Force HQ eo, Virginia
t was the nightmare that had finally pushed Michaels into ;. He’d awakened in a sweat, heart pounding, from a J dream in which the psychotic doper Bershaw had come i his house and captured Toni. In this one, the would-be had Little Alex and was holding him by one ankle, getting ready to smash the baby against the kitchen counter.
, Michaels hadn’t been able to go back to sleep after that horrific image.
_..,.. John Howard had told him whenever he was ready to give him a call. As soon as it got late enough, he did just fttiat
Now, they were in Michaels’ s office. ;., “I’ve been meaning to do diis for a long time,” Mi- chaels said. “Thanks, John.”
“No problem. Makes perfect sense to me,” Howard said. “In your place, I’d have done it a long time ago.”
“I mean, even with all of Toni’s expertise, and the | knives and lasers and stuff we have laying around, somebody has twice shown up at my house with murderous intent.”
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NET FORCE
“I remember the last incident quite well,” Howard said. “It’s about time you got some more serious hardware.”
“Yeah. I want to be a little better prepared if it ever happens again.”
“I expect this will do the trick,” Howard said. “Let me show you what we have.”
Michaels nodded and looked at the gun case, which seemed to be some kind of brownish-gray canvas or oilcloth, darkened here and there with splotches of lube.
He untied a string at the fat end of the cloth case and slid the weapon out.
“This belonged to my uncle,” he said. “It’s what they call a ‘coach gun,’ being the kind of weapon a lot of the stagecoach drivers used when they rode shotgun guard duty back in the Old West. This one is a European American Armory Bounty Hunter n, actually made in Russia for export. My uncle used to use it in cowboy action shooting.”
“Cowboy action shooting?”
“A competitive sport. Men and women get dressed up in pre!900 costumes like those that might have been worn in the Old West, give themselves names like ‘Doc’ or ‘Deadeye’ or “The Kid,’ and while in persona, shoot for scores using period weapons^single-action six-shooters, rifles, usually the lever-action kind, and shotguns.”
“Really?’
“Yep. A grown-up version of cowboys ‘n’ Indians. Got Native Americans who wear period stuff and compete, too. Everybody wears hearing protectors and safety glasses and all, but otherwise the look is usually pretty authentic.”
“Huh.”
“My uncle used to love it. There were a fair number of black cowboys on the frontier. After slavery was abolished, and before Jim Crow got going, nobody much cared what color you were, long as you could ride, punch cattle okay, and could shoot snakes or rustlers if they showed up. At least that’s the story I heard growing up.”
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CYBERNATION
“Interesting.”
:’s not a particularly expensive gun, basic walnut :ks and case-hardened color. The Russians don’t build pretty, but they are very solid and mechanically well- Uses 12-gauge shells, the short ones, two-andinchers only. Just as well-the powered three-inchers would have a fierce recoil a barrel this short.”
i –
I œ
: pivoted a lever in the middle to one side, and the breech. “Got twenty-inch-long double barrels, that pull the shells out, but not ejectors, so it i’t throw them on the floor. External hammers, they them ‘rabbit ears,’ see? This one is a modern copy the old ones, so the hammers don’t actually hit a firing “pin, but cock internal strikers. That way, you can use a featnmer block as well as a trigger-block safety, here, mis tbirtton. It’s about as simple as you can get. You open it put a pair of shells in, close it, then cock the hammers. fptSot two triggers, one for each barrel. Slide the safety off, dtm it like you would a rifle, or if somebody is in your face, poke them with it like a stick and pull the trigger.” . “What if I miss? Is this going to go through the wall and kill my neighbor in his bed?” \ “Not if you use birdshot. You don’t need buckshot or flogs for close range stuff. Combat distance, a load of feird- or rabbit-shot works just fine, and the little bbs don’t far after hitting couple of layers of sheet rock and ;. Even though you could get a permit for a handgun, this packs a lot more punch, it’s safer, and it’s legal to |?6wn here in the District, even for civilians.” ,l(W#v Michaels took the gun, worked the action open and Jf Closed, then tried the hammers out. It had a nice, solid ” “pel to it.
“You should drop by the range and put a few rounds igh it. It’ll kick some, but you can hip-shoot easy igh if you don’t want a sore shoulder. Just like pointing your finger.” : Michaels nodded.
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“And here’s the gun safe.”
He held up an oblong box big enough to hold the shotgun, with an image of a hand on it.
“This is titanium, lightweight, but strong enough to resist somebody trying to pry it open with a screwdriver. It’ll hold a couple of long arms. You bolt it to a couple of wall studs in a closet in the bedroom, put your gun and ammo inside it. It’s got a fingerprint reader in the handprint here that will accept sixty-four different ones, so you can program it to read yours and Toni’s and anybody else you trust. Uses a lithium-ion battery to run the reader, battery is good for five or six years, and when it starts to run low, it flashes a diode, right here, so you know to replace it. It can also be wired into your house alarm system if you want.”
“Seems, well, safe enough.”
“If you really want, you can get Gunny at the range to install the electronic safeties we use in .our issue guns, get a transmitting ring, and cover it that way, too. That way, if an unauthorized person should manage to get it out of the safe, it won’t shoot for them-^but I wouldn’t worry about that.
“So if somebody starts kicking in your front door in the middle of the night, you can get this out and ready to go in a few seconds. Anybody who sees you standing there with a piece like this is apt to think twice about proceeding in your direction. A lot of guys who would charge a pistol will pull up when they see the muzzle of a shotgun yawning at them.”
“I can understand that. Looks like a cannon.”
“Downside is, you only get two shots. A pump would give you five rounds minimum, more with an extended tube.
“You ought to consider taking the FBI/DEA house- clearing class for shotguns. As head of Net Force, they’d be happy to have you, and it would be worth a Sunday afternoon to learn it.”