More surprises from Damm.
Lujan’s route was now blocked. He waited until the second APC shoved the burning hulk far enough to one side for him to scrape past, then he drove around the wreck. He stopped when he saw all the bodies strewed facedown on the ramp. The mercs had been killed by their own explosive. Between the bodies and the condensation layer there was only wet concrete.
“Out!” he ordered four of the APC’s six-man crew. “I want to know if Shadow Man is among them. Double time!”
From the driver’s seat, he watched as his men hurriedly turned over the corpses.
“Not here, Major,” the report came back. “He must be up ahead. Damm’s not here, either.”
Lujan gunned the APC’s engine, and, without waiting for the men to climb back inside, started clanking up the tunnel. When he accelerated away from them, toward the condensation layer, his crew realized he wasn’t going to stop. The other APC pulled around the wreck and followed the major’s lead, rushing for the wall of mist. Lujan’s crew had to jump on the outside of the trailing vehicle or get left behind.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dr. Huth faced the conference room’s video screens and the assembled CEOs of FIVE. As he looked from screen to screen, he saw that they were all very upset, even infuriated with him. They demanded an explanation, knowing in advance that no explanation from him could suffice.
He angled his body so the overhead camera could pick up the scorched back of his lab coat and the wad of bloody bandage at his nape, and transmit said injuries to those who glared at him. The CEOs’ expressions didn’t change. If he expected any sympathy for a close brush with death, he was looking in the wrong place. Huth was glad to be behind the secure walls of the Totality Concept’s complex and at least momentarily out of the reach of FIVE’S tactical units.
In the meantime, the best defense was often a good offense.
In this case it also happened to be the truth.
“This incident wasn’t in any way my fault,” he said emphatically. “I didn’t organize the transportation or the security for Ryan Cawdor. You people did. I didn’t advertise the potential of Shadow World on the tell-yous for weeks, nor did I participate in the decision to plaster Cawdor’s face all over the megalopolis. You did. I didn’t plant the seeds for what happened today. You did.” He paused to let the weight of his accusations sink in, then he said, “All I am guilty of is surviving the attack.”
“Are you quite through, Dr. Huth?” asked the auburn-haired woman from Omnico.
He wasn’t through, but her disinterested and impatient tone of voice made him reconsider an extension of his rant. Obviously he’d scored no points with the frontal attack. If he continued, he might be making things even worse for himself, although it was hard to imagine that.
“Good,” she said after he closed his mouth. “Now, kindly rerun the abduction scenario for us.”
Huth nodded, relieved to be on solid factual ground. “We’d stopped on the freeway because of the carniphage sirens,” he said. “Without warning, we were rammed, then explosives were set off under our vehicle. The explosions disabled the APC and set it on fire, so we had to abandon it. I never saw any of our attackers. I never saw what happened to Ryan Cawdor or Captain Jurascik or the security team after they got out of the vehicle. As I made my own exit, the APC was hit by a rocket. And I received some thankfully minor injuries. Do you know what happened to the others?”
“We found the bodies of some of the security force in the middle of the freeway,” the CEO from Invecta said. “The man from Shadow World and Jurascik remain missing. They vanished without a trace. We are still interviewing the few witnesses we have managed to gather up, but from all accounts they saw about as much as you did.”
“I think we have to assume,” the man from Mitsuki said, “that Ryan Cawdor is going to be held for ransom. There’s no other reason for his having been taken by force like this.”