“Mahom, what’s the fastest way to get Everit and his team outside in a flyer?” Kieran asked suddenly as the meaning became clear.
“Their outfit is geared for fast response. They keep an air-APC on permanent standby ready at the Cherbourg skylock.” The Sudanese frowned. “Why? What’s going through your mind, Knight?”
“Get them onto it right away! The syndicate still wants its money back. They think I’m at Tharsis—and probably two other people who are far away off-planet by now. They’re sending out another team to grab us. But they also think Leppo set them up last time, and therefore he’s in with us and knows the story. They want to grill him before they go in.” Kieran turned from the screen while Mahom clicked on Everit’s call code. “See what it means, Mahom? We don’t have to risk a lot of noise and commotion in the city at all. If we move fast, we can spring them outside—right there on the road to Stony Flats!”
23
Wedged in the rear seat between Casey and one of the guards, with another armed guard sitting facing them while the third drove, Solomon Leppo stared gloomily out at the complex of levels and spaces beneath the tangle of intersecting domes that formed Wuhan. What he had gotten them both into now, he didn’t know. He no longer had any doubts that the Knight was straight enough; but he was also somebody who didn’t play with trivia, and extremely complex. Whatever aspect of the Knight’s business this was part of was way over Leppo’s depth.
His stomach still ached, his ribs felt raw, and his cheeks burned from the drubbing Mullen had given him to express his displeasure—and Leppo had the chilling feeling that worse was to come. Mullen was convinced that Leppo had somehow set him up and almost gotten him killed, and he just wouldn’t buy Leppo’s insistence that he didn’t know what Mullen was talking about. He didn’t know what any of those who had gone on ahead earlier—apparently to meet some important people who had arrived from off-planet—were talking about. Two of them hadn’t seemed to be “with” the others at all, but acted as if they were in as much trouble as Leppo and Casey seemed to be. The short, flabby one with the black mustache and freaky eyes, that somebody had called Balmer, had wanted to know how big a split off the quarter-billion dollars Leppo had been offered. Trying to tell him that he’d never heard of any quarter-billion dollars was a waste of time. They seemed to think that the Knight was still out in the desert where Leppo and Casey had collected him from. Why else, they had argued, would the site out there be defended? They also seemed to think that a couple named Elaine and Sarda were there too. Leppo didn’t know who Elaine might be, but he thought that the other of the pair—the yellow-haired one—was supposed to be Sarda. Maybe he had a brother or something. Leppo wasn’t able to make any sense of it. He was starting to have acute second thoughts about this really being how he wanted to tackle the task of making substantial money. There had to be other ways, more conducive to health and longevity, than this.
They came to the approach lane of the Wuhan exit lock and joined a short line of vehicles waiting to make egress to the surface. “Looks like we’re going on an outside trip,” Casey murmured needlessly.
“Didn’t someone say Stony Flats?”
“Shuddup,” the guard next to Leppo growled, elbowing his bruised ribs painfully. Leppo shut up.
They moved forward with the next batch of vehicles. The inner doors closed behind them; the lock emptied, then refilled with Martian atmosphere. Once outside, the other traffic quickly dispersed among the clutter of roadways and constructions extending along the canyon bottom beyond the extremity of the city. This thinned as the road began rising, until, by the time they came to the series of steep hairpins carrying the road up to the open desert, the signs of habitation had given way to dry, crumbling slopes of sand and rock, with a line of tired pink crags above in the distance. As they gained height, more of the Martian landscape unfolded beyond the canyon. And then, suddenly, on rounding the last of the climbing bends, they almost ran into the skeleton of a tow trailer blocking the road. It lay across at a crazy, tilted angle, one end gouging into the sand mound bounding the roadside as if it had been dropped from the sky. The driver braked hard, throwing the occupants forward.