Santas grinned, gave a little foot feint, but did not follow up. Michaels shifted his hands, but did not take the bait.
“Just making sure that you’re awake, White.”
“I’m awake.”
“Go on with your story. Tigre is angry.”
“Yes. And he looks at Dog and says, ‘So, you say I am not the deadliest animal? Who is, men? You?’
” ‘Not me,’ Dog said.
” ‘Tell me! Tell me now, or I will kill you!’ And he reared up and prepared to leap on Dog. But before he could attack, there came an explosion, and Tiger suddenly fell over dead.
“There behind the animals stood Man, smoke curling from the muzzle of a rifle.
“And Dog smiled his dog-smile and said, ‘I am not the deadliest animal in the forest. But I have a friend…'”
Santos smiled. “That’s not such a funny story, Bronco.”
“Oh, I don’t know” came a voice from behind him. “I thought it was pretty good.”
Santos stepped back and half-spun.
A black man, another tourist-not-a-tourist, stood there, aiming a handgun at him. He held the gun in both hands, and it was pointed right at Santos’s heart. A second man stood behind him. He had a gun, too.
Too far away to get to them before they could shoot. Hmm.
“Commander,” the newly arrived black man said.
“General. I am extremely glad to see you.”
Santos glared at bronco. “You cheated.”
He smiled. “Yes. Cheating is good silat,” he said. “That’s the art I practice, by the way. Pukulan Pentjak Silat Serak. From Indonesia.”
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“Ah.” Santos knew of the Indonesian forms. He had never faced anyone who played them before, but he had seen pictures, films. “Where is your skirt?”
“It’s a sarong, not a skirt-!”
Santos leaped, turned the jump into a dive and roll, and as he came up, made that into another dive-
The gun went off, but a hair slow. The bullet burned across his back, the lightest of touches. A graze, that was all, nothing, no damage-
There was a large sealed window looking into the hallway just ahead of him. He was a step and a dive away from it…
The gun boomed again, loud in the enclosed space, and the bullet hit the glass in front of him, punched through, and spiderwebbed the glass with fractures. Good!
He launched himself at the cracked plate headfirst, hands and forearms up to cover his face. Hit!
He flew through the window in a spray of glass shards, tucked, rolled, hit the carpeted floor, came up, too much momentum, slammed into the corridor’s far wall. That shook many of the glass fragments on him loose. He grunted as he flattened against the wall, pushed off and L-stepped away, shoving hard with his left foot, moving to his right, as the third bullet punched through the wall where he had been a quarter-second ago. But now he was moving down the hall, ducking low, and gaining speed with each step. In two heartbeats, he was out of the line- of-fire, the angle on the window no good to the shooter anymore. He pumped for all he was worth, feet digging into the rug, leaning into it, almost a fall. He reached a juncture, cut to his right, skidded across that corridor and into the wall, hit on his left shoulder, bounced off, and kept sprinting.
He laughed, loudly. He had a small wound on his back, and there was blood coming from little cuts on his arms, the back of one hand, but he was gone. They would never catch him from behind. He would find a way off this ship. CyberNation might be mortally wounded, but that did not
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matter. He would get away. He would go home. He would count his gold and have the last laugh.
But first, there was one small piece of business he needed to finish. Then he could leave.
Chance had the pistol and the disk with the blackmail insurance on it. Nothing else was important enough to worry about, not now. She didn’t know how many of the invaders were on the ship, or if her people had had time to wipe the computers, but she would have time enough to destroy the disk, and that was all that she could do now. If they caught her, CyberNation’s lawyers would get her out of jail, and once that happened, she would disappear. She had half a dozen false identities ready for use, money stashed under those names. This was a big loss, but she would survive. She could start over, under another name. Work her way back up. It might even be fun, that kind of challenge.
She couldn’t risk hiding the disk. They might take this ship down to the waterline for all she knew, and if they found it, CyberNation would suffer a major, maybe even a killing blow. The files were damning-names, dates, places, a criminal prosecutor’s dream. She had done it to protect herself in case CyberNation decided she was no longer worth having around, but now she needed their help, and anything that hurt them might hurt her.
It wasn’t enough just to break the disk. Supposedly there were recovery devices now that could get information from fragmented DVDs. It could be glued back together, and while some of it would be lost, much could be salvaged. She couldn’t afford the risk.
No, she had to make sure there was nothing left to recover.
There was a cigarette lighter on her desk, a fancy thing of carved jade and semiprecious stones, a gift from a former lover. She would burn the disk. The pistol would make sure nobody would get to her before the disk was destroyed, if need be. A few shots fired into the floor or
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ceiling would make anybody heading her way cautious. She’d only need a minute or two. After that, she would surrender. Sooner or later, she would make bail. She hurried down the corridor toward her office.
39
Toni came out of the room; she looked carefully up and down the corridors. There were people milling about, a score of tourists who were puzzled and upset, but none of them were Santos or any of his guards that she could tell.
“What’s going on?” somebody said.
“Pirates!” a fat man answered. “We’ve been taken over by hijackers!”
Toni smiled.
“What’s funny, lady?” a bald man with a bad complexion said. “You think being hijacked by pirates is funny?”
“It’s not pirates,” she said. “It’s just my husband, come to rescue me.”
The man stared at her as if she had turned into a giant snake. She smiled again and started toward the stairs.
Boy, this was gonna be a great story to tell Little Alex someday. Maybe when he was forty or fifty …
40
“I never saw anybody move like that!” Jay said.
“Did you hit him?” the boss asked.
John Howard shook his head. “Not so you’d notice. I didn’t think a man could be that fast, rolling and all. He a gymnast?”
“Capoeira,” the boss said. “South American fighting art.”
“We’ll get him,” Howard said. “We have the ship. The more important thing is, our people control the computer room, and they’ve pulled the plug. Jay here can have a field day.” He pulled a pistol from his belt and threw it to Michaels. “But just in case we run into your friend along the way, here. If you see him, shoot him.”
Michaels nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
As they were heading toward the stairs, Toni appeared.
Michaels nearly knocked her down he grabbed her so hard. They hugged, spun in a circle. Jay could feel the relief coming off both of them like heat off a fireplace. And he had to admit, he felt a lot better himself. He had been worried a little.
Toni held up a mini-DVD. “The plans for the attack on
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the net,” she said. “They ramped things up. You need to get these locations to the appropriate authorities,” she said.
Howard took the disc. “Yes, ma’am. Although they won’t be doing anything from here. We control this vessel.”
“You collected Santos and Jasmine Chance?”
“Not yet. But we will.”
“He’s a dangerous man,” she said.
‘Tell me about it,” the boss said.
Santos saw that the door to Missy’s office was closed, and when he got to it, he found it locked. She wasn’t in her room, and he didn’t think she would be trying to hide on the ship, she was too smart not to know they’d find her. No, she’d be here, and likely working on some scheme to save her beautiful ass. That was the thing about Missy, she always had a backup plan.
He touched the door, nodded once, and stepped back. He hit it with his shoulder and slammed it open, recovered his balance, and moved through the atrium to the inner office.