Kieran wasn’t overenamored. Hard in and brutal. It lacked the finesse and use of misdirection and deception that appealed to him. But for once he was at a loss to come up with anything better. He shook his head dubiously. “Right in the middle of a residential zone. It’s bound to spark instant reactions. Even if you spring them, what are the odds going to be of getting yourselves out?”
“Speed and surprise,” Everit said again. “We’ll be gone before any enforcement gets near the block.”
“And then what?” Kieran asked. “You still have to get out of Lowell. All they have to do is seal the locks.”
“There are other ways out of Lowell.”
Kieran looked at Mahom. “I wanted these guys more to keep an eye on Hamil and his people at Tharsis. For this we need something more subtle—quiet and easy. You know my style.”
Mahom shrugged, showing two empty ham-like palms and a pair of bulging eyes. “We looked at it from all the angles, Knight. There aren’t other options. There isn’t the time.”
Kieran stared back at the pictures and charts. He was still contemplating them, when an incoming call came for Mahom. It was from one of the spies he had stationed around the block from where Leppo and Casey were being held. People were coming out and getting into the Metrosine. A screen showed the picture. There were six of them. Both Balmer and Sarda were there. Kieran also recognized Brown, Black, and the other man he had glimpsed with them in the elevator at the Oasis. Mullen, whom Mahom had previously identified, was with them. Brown drove. A quick tally of the numbers logged coming and going indicated that only three were left inside guarding the two prisoners. It gave much better odds than those Everit had been assuming.
“If we’re going to do it, this is the time,” Everit said. “We won’t see this again any time soon.” Mahom looked inquiringly at Kieran. Kieran nodded reluctantly. Everit went outside and called his men inside to brief them.
As things transpired, it now seemed they had plenty of time. Tracking the vehicle’s locator code, which one of Mahom’s contacts had extracted from the leasing company’s records, showed the car progressing through the Trapezium and along Gorky to exit to the surface at the Wuhan end. It soon became clear that it was heading for Stony Flats. Kieran puzzled over what might draw Balmer, Sarda, and practically the syndicate’s entire coterie at Lowell, out to a place like that.
By the time the Metrosine arrived at a spot identified from the map as a warehouse shed at the back end of the airfield, owned by a company that imported hydrocarbon distillates from the Belt, Everit had run his men through the plan several times, and they were preparing to move out. Kieran used Mahom’s desk c-com to buy five minutes of priority time from one of the commercial surface surveillance satellite operators, and when one was next passing over, directed a high-resolution scan of the buildings Mahom had picked out from the map image. Sure enough, the black Metrosine was parked under a glass-roofed annex at the rear of two of them, reached by an alley between. More interestingly, some shapes next to the Metrosine, if he wasn’t very much mistaken, were a couple of general personnel carriers painted in desert camouflage, a distinctly warlike profile suggestive of a gunship, and a smaller flyer. Somebody else out there, it seemed, was also putting together a private militia. But theirs had the appearance and firepower of an attack force. Kieran was still pondering on what it could mean when Everit and his team departed in a plain civilian bus. The only thing that made any kind of sense was that whoever had sent the abortive mission to Troy that had almost gotten shot down were getting set to try again. What to do? Recall Everit and get him out to Tharsis before the Stony Flats force made its move? Or gamble on seizing the chance to get Leppo and Casey out while the opposition was minimal?
But then the situation changed again, and the second option went away. Mahom’s spy in Embarcadero called again to say that five more people were coming out. The accompanying view showed, sure enough, the remaining three guards marching Leppo and Casey to another vehicle that had been parked nearby, which then left, going the same way as the Metrosine had. Mahom’s man fell in to follow at a distance, and it soon began to look as if the second car was heading through for Wuhan, and hence out onto the surface to join the others at Stony Flats.