“Sure he did, friend Tamara. And he killed not just eighteen people but likely two or three others standing too close to each of the ones he aimed at, too. I won’t arrest him for caring, just for the murders; because it’s my job and I’m better at it than he hoped.”
She turned toward Lacey at last, her eyes full of tears and fire. “Do you know how many thousand they’d have killed if they took over? How many Hanse will kill if he gets away to Argentina this morning? Do you call that justice?”
“Justice? What’s that?” Lacey demanded. “But they pay me to enforce the law, and yes, that’s damned well the law!” He took a deep breath. “Now, mind your flying. If we go down, there’ll be a Red Team around Merritt before the echoes of the crash have died. Believe me, he’d rather I take him than those animals in uniform. . . . Believe me, I’ve been there.”
She obeyed but the tears gurgled in her voice. “Don’t you think you owe anything to society?” she asked.
“This society?” Lacey repeated with savage incredulity. “The society that made me what I am?”
Tamara said nothing more for a minute, concentrating on the thickening traffic as they approached the huge concrete slab of the port.
“We’ve got a priority clearance,” Lacey said. “You can set us down on the terminal building.”
“We couldn’t get close to Hanse,” the girl said, as much to herself as to her companion. “When he flew it was in his own CT-19, and he always carried his own car with him. He didn’t trust anyone, anything. We delayed, hoping he would slip up; but we waited too long. And so their plans were so close to ready that if Hanse gets to Parana now, he may be able to bring it all off even with Follard and the others dead.”
A heavy cargo aircraft lumbered aloft a hundred and fifty meters from its painted bay on the great field. Three seconds later a private supersonic, incredibly expensive to own or operate, streaked skyward with its wings folding even as it climbed. Short takeoff and landing requirements made full runways a thing of the past, but the congestion and varied speeds near the port still demanded rigid control.
Lacey had noticed the girl start as the supersonic shrieked away. “Merritt’s in one like that?” he asked. “Don’t get excited, it wasn’t his that time. I’ve put a hold on him, blocked his controls through the port computer. He’ll be waiting for us.”
Tamara angled for a slot on the crowded roof of the terminal building. A closed car sped up to reach the same parking space, then spun away as Tamara hammered it with the draft of her fans. Lacey, gripping the bulkhead tightly, grinned over at the furious red face visible through the cabin window of the other craft.
Tamara cut the drive and they ghosted to a halt. She looked back at Lacey. He said, a trifle awkwardly, “It’ll be ten, twelve hours before they start dragging actual names out of Merritt. Somebody who’d gotten out of the State before then—used Sig Hanse’s access code to fake exit privileges to Munich, say—would be gone for good.”
The girl stared at him, her eyes an acid blue and her hair springing up like a cobra’s hood as she doffed her helmet. “Bill had me assigned driver to whoever got tapped to investigate Follard. He pulled a few strings, nothing major for somebody who has as many friends as Bill Merritt does. There was a chance that by giving him a nudge in the right direction, we could get a CS agent interested in what Hanse was doing. You didn’t need the nudge—or care about what you learned without it.
“But I’m not going to use the position Bill put me in to, to save myself.”
“It’s your life,” Lacey said, breaking eye contact as he climbed out of the car. “The Lord knows I’m not the one to tell you what to do with it.”
“I’m coming along,” Tamara insisted, swinging into the narrow aisle between their car and the next one over. Lacey shrugged and walked toward the stair head.