'So what do you think of the new gun?' said Breen.

Mancuso felt her body jerk minutely at the sound of his voice. She realized that she'd been half asleep. Eyes open, hypnotized by the pa.s.sing street. Eighteen hours yesterday. Twenty hours on shift the night before. She shook the images of McIlveen out of her head and forced herself to concentrate. She looked at the map on the screen, checking their location against the location of the alarm call. Two glowing dots merging.

The site of the call was a giant drugstore on Fifth Avenue, deep in the centre of the combat zone. Before the riots it had been a fashionable restaurant in a chic neighbourhood. Now the area was marginal slum: games arcades, discount stores, student housing for the Butler Inst.i.tute. 'Cut the siren,' said Mancuso. She could feel the adrenaline rising, the lift of dealing with a situation. On the street, at night, your back to the patrol car. Sussing the situation and dealing with it and coming out on top.

Breen eased the car to a stop a block away from the site of the call. Mancuso grinned and popped the car door open, swinging it out from its thick rubber seals.

The night was cool and the air was so clear you could breathe without a mask. Mancuso crossed the street, watching for movement. The drugstore was at Number One Fifth Avenue. The government had requisitioned the place during the state of emergency and retained the property rights ever since. Mancuso did a quick sweep along the storefront. These places usually had private security guards, paid to keep a high profile. Where the h.e.l.l were they?

As she glanced in the front door she found out. A young man in a black uniform lay against the chrome turnstile inside the gla.s.s doors. Head slack, bloodstains on his tunic. Mancuso went back across the street.

Breen was busy with the car computer, logging their location and filing a routine request for backup. 'This is way the h.e.l.l out of our patrol area. Why did we get this call?'

'Ask the central computer,' said Mancuso. 'Take care.' She thumbed the rocker switch on her gun from 'wait' to 'ready'. Breen leaned across the front seat to release his own gun from the weapons rack.

Mancuso kept glancing up to watch the interior of the drugstore as she waited in the entranceway, crouching over the security guard. By the time Breen arrived she had checked for a pulse and used a BT stick on the man. She was just going through the motions; she could see that he was well and truly gone. The triamine level indicated by the BT stick showed that he'd been fatally wounded at least an hour ago. Even the organ banks wouldn't be interested in him now. Breen waited while she closed the guard's eyes. He looked about nineteen. Mancuso moved into the drugstore, Breen following.

The drugstore seemed to occupy about three acres of glaring floors.p.a.ce. It was split into two levels, ground floor and mezzanine, illuminated by oldfashioned highconsumption fluorescent lights hanging from the yellowed ceiling. You could still see something of the old restaurant elegance behind the shelves and displays. The place had been designed to look like a twentiethcentury luxury cruise ship. There were fake portholes visible on the walls behind the government suncancer posters.

Mancuso and Breen moved between the shelves of products, crouching low, moving quietly. The only noise was the sound of the fluorescents buzzing and the asthmatic gulping of air filters somewhere. They pa.s.sed a deserted credit point. No sign of the staff and any latenight customers seemed to have fled. Mancuso scanned on either side of her.

The shelves stretching ahead were stacked with brightly coloured containers for dozens of competing brands of popular medicines. Vitamins, ginseng, herbs. Further back in the store, on the mezzanine, was the secure section. That's where they had the bottle shop and kept the tobacco and different brands of diamorphine and bitter alkaloid. It was the most likely target for a robbery.

Mancuso turned a corner into the skincare department and instantly swept her gun up to shoulder level, clicking the safety off. On the scuffed tile floor she registered another security guard, a woman. With figures standing above her.

As Mancuso's finger tightened she felt resistance on the trigger. The gun's scan was reading no danger. The guard was lying motionless on the stained marble floor with three other women standing over her. Beautiful women in culottes and vests. Milkyskinned, grinning. They flickered a bit as they smiled down at the woman on the floor. A display for blocker cream. Cheap Korean holograms. Mancuso stepped past the imaginary women and over the real one on the floor. She didn't bother with a BT stick this time. The top of the guard's head was gone. She checked that Breen was following and moved deeper into the drugstore.

Mancuso was ready for the next set of holograms. Which was just as well because they were a Hallowe'en display. A pumpkinhead creature with a long knife and two multicoloured grinning hags. They were imaginary ma.s.s murderers with a huge popular following. She recognized them from Sat.u.r.day morning kids' cartoons. Beyond the holograms was a wall full of squat orange canisters. Glowinthedark paint in jack o'lantern spraybombs. Beyond that was the girl.

The girl was moving casually enough, backing away down the aisle. But she was the first real, living person they'd seen since entering the store. That was automatically suspicious. And something about her caught Mancuso's eye. She was dressed conservatively, the way Mancuso herself had dressed, twenty years ago, when she'd run with a gang. Black bomber jacket, black leggings, DMs. The girl was young, maybe teens, maybe early twenties. Hair tied back. The jacket open. Not obviously carrying any weapons. But something wasn't right. Breen thought so, too. He came silently out of an aisle at the girl's side and put his handgun to her head. Polite hand on her shoulder and he was escorting her back down the aisle. Towards the main entrance. As she turned to follow him, Mancuso saw the back of the girl's jacket. A big red letter 'A'. Then a sound came from a few metres away and Mancuso was sprinting, not even thinking about it, gun held braced to her body and ready for use.

Under a Hallowe'en banner was a shelf of seasonal herbs and preparations. Cinchona bark, butcher's broom, tannis. Below the shelf a small man was crouching over something. Another body. The body was a girl, a white kid with dreadlocks and beads in her hair. There were no obvious external wounds but Mancuso could see the kid was dead. The little guy bending over her didn't appear to be the a.s.sailant. He seemed to be examining the kid the way a paramedic would. He stirred from his inspection as Mancuso closed in on him.

When the little guy began to look up from the dead girl Mancuso was looking directly at him, looking at his face. A faulty fluorescent tube overhead buzzed, flickering and strobing their shadows a bit. The muscles of the little guy's face were set. He looked angry. As he turned around he should have ended up looking directly into Mancuso's eyes. It was pure instinct that made Mancuso glance away. A spasm of the nerves, like jerking your fingers from a hot pan. She told herself that she was staying alert, checking out the situation around her. But she was suddenly aware that she was sweating under her uniform. Her heartbeat was racing a little.

She forced herself to look back at the little guy, look at him directly. She moved towards him, keeping him in the sweep of her weapon. On top of the situation. Doing the job. Mancuso could bust the little guy. Shoot him if it came to that. No problem. She just didn't want to look him in the eye when he was angry.

'Nice, eh?' The girl was looking at Jack Blood, Heather and Hetty as they walked past. The long curved knife suddenly switched from one of Jack's twigfingered hands to the other. The girl flinched. Breen didn't blame her. He still got the creeps if he was standing beside an ordinary store dummy. The hologram's gougedout pumpkin eyes rotated to follow them, a glint of ruby in the darkness of the vegetable head.

'That's Jack Blood,' said Breen. 'That's who my kid wants to be when he grows up.' The hags grinned, mouths opening to show realistic threads of saliva.

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. Kids,' said the girl. She had an accent that Breen couldn't quite identify. She hadn't offered any resistance but Breen hadn't holstered his handgun yet. Breen and the girl walked past a display of cardboard cats, witch hats and ghosts. Dayglo orange vests with 'Trick or Treat' screenprinted on them, so your kids wouldn't get run over by a car when they were out collecting poisoned candy. Breen would be happy to get back into the saner parts of the drugstore. Hallowe'en was the worst, in all sorts of ways.

'There's something I'd like you to see.' The little guy looked as if he was about to move towards Mancuso, get close and have a friendly conversation.

'Take it nice and easy,' she said. She was holding her gun steadily on the little guy but keeping her attention all around them. The little guy hadn't killed the girl with dreadlocks, Mancuso was pretty sure of that. And she still hadn't found any sign of the robbery in progress that had triggered the alarm call. She looked across the tops of the aisles, up towards the secure section of the store.

'That's an interesting weapon,' said the little guy.

'It will blow your interesting a.s.s into the next street,' said Mancuso, studying the mezzanine level. 'Now back away please.'

The little guy moved back from the body of the girl and Mancuso moved forward. 'The upper cylinder is obviously the muzzle and a cooling unit,' said the little guy. 'Now what about the other cylinder? Control system? Have you wondered about that?'

Mancuso bent to the corpse, checking for weapons in the girl's jacket. 'Control and scanning,' she said, keeping the little guy covered. She heard movement, a shuffling sound from deeper in the store.

'There's something I really think you should see,' said the little guy.

'Just shut up,' said Mancuso, concentrating on the sound. It was coming from above. Something big, being dragged. The sound stopped and Mancuso's full attention returned to the little guy. 'Turn around and spread your arms. I'm going to do a body search. While I do it you read your rights off this card. Do you read Spanish, Portuguese, English, Gujarati or Patois?' Mancuso took a card out of her jacket pocket.

'Yes,' said the little guy, turning and spreading his arms. Mancuso flicked her wrist, sending the card skimming across the shiny stone floor. It was sliding towards the little guy's feet when the explosion came.

Mancuso spun. The noise was coming from above again, from the secure section. A vast shattering and crashing. Too extended to be an explosion. Like a ton of gla.s.s breaking. Even as Mancuso was turning she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.

The little guy was making a break. She couldn't believe how quickly he moved. As Mancuso cursed and started to run he was already three aisles away, turning a corner. Moving through the kids' section he grabbed something off one of the shelves. Mancuso checked the shelf as she ran past in pursuit. He'd taken one of the pumpkin canisters. A spraybomb of paint. Mancuso hated that stuff. Her apartment building was covered by a layer of paintbomb graffiti about a centimetre thick. And it all glowed in the dark.

The little guy slammed through a swinging door marked 'Employees Only' and Mancuso followed. Through a broad room part.i.tioned into office cubicles, chipboard dividers and workstations, then a narrow room with tables and food machines, street clothes and street masks hanging on wall hooks. There was the sound of a crash bar being hit and another door opening. Mancuso got to it just as the door was closing on its pneumatic lever. It led down concrete stairs into darkness. Mancuso hesitated then stepped through.

The steps descended to the loading bay behind the store. Mancuso felt for the pressure pads beside the door that should have controlled the lights. She jabbed at the rubberized indentations. Nothing happened. As she moved down the steps small fragments of broken gla.s.s ground under her boots. Someone had smashed the lights. Mancuso stood motionless, holding her gun out in front of her. She realized that she hadn't been briefed on how to work the infrared on it. Down below her was the loading bay, a wide concrete s.p.a.ce opening into darkness. Mancuso began to descend.

The loading bay was a big rectangular area with a sloping ramp that led out to street level. No light came in from the street because the ramp curved sharply as it descended. The street entrance was out of sight from the loading bay itself. But as Mancuso's eyes adjusted she realized that there was light coming from somewhere. A small patch of milky green glowing in the darkness. Moving in on it she realized it was a splash of graffiti. Fresh. From that spraycan the little guy had grabbed. The landing bay was silent. From the other end of the curving cement tunnel she could hear faint traffic sound. Like sea noises in a sh.e.l.l.

The glowing graffiti grew in the darkness as she moved towards it, a.s.suming shape and scale. It was sprayed on the side of a ma.s.sive bulky object in the centre of the loading bay floor. Mancuso walked towards the glowing mark, eyes fixed on it, wading through the darkness. Her boot hit something on the floor and she stopped and reached down. Her fingers curled around spokes, brushed across curved rubber, sharp edges of a finned metal block, the smooth bulk of plastic and padding. Mancuso stepped around the motorcycle and kept moving.

The graffiti was sharp and clear now, glowing in spooky Hallowe'en green. Not a word or a tag, just a single symbol. Not a hex sign. A long curved loop ending in a dot: '?'

Mancuso studied the glowing question mark on the crest of the big shape in the darkness. The shape was big enough to be a garbage module waiting for collection. Far too big to be a car. The wrong shape for a van or truck. She approached, moving cautiously, and reached up to touch the paint and see if it was still wet. As she reached, before her fingers even made contact, she realized what the thing was.

In the faint glow of the luminous paint she could make out the surface of the surrounding metal. It had a familiar pattern of grooves and hollows in it. Mancuso began to grin in the darkness. She rubbed her hand across the high curved surface until she found the familiar dimple. Her fingers locked around the recessed grab bar and she pulled herself up, her foot lifting in the darkness and finding the rubber step where she knew it would be.

Careful not to make any noise on the metal surface, Mancuso released the grab bar and knelt on the curved top surface of the big metal box. Her fingers traced the fine grooving on the surface that outlined a big square, about half a metre on each side. She touched the lock mechanism lightly, resisting the urge to press down on it. She remembered quite vividly how much noise the hatch would make if it wasn't oiled. And they never were oiled. Besides, if they had any brains it would be locked securely from the inside.

Mancuso set her gun down, gently, remembering how alert she used to be for noises on the roof. She moved forward both hands free. She looked down at the hatch, the spraypainted question mark glowing on it, dead centre. Maybe she should try to open it after all. It might be unlocked. There might not be anybody inside.

And then the ghostgreen question mark began to slide, rising up into the air. Mancuso's heart slammed and she leaned back, reaching for her gun. The question mark rose and tilted as the metal surface rose and tilted beneath it. Mancuso's arm strained. She didn't dare move her body. She never should have moved so far from her weapon. Her finger tips brushed the cylindrical barrel of the gun.

The glowing question mark was rising silently as the hatch opened. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds must have drowned the release catch in oil. A dull glow spread out from under the hatch as the inner shield was swung back. The head and shoulders of a big man became visible, emerging from under the hatch, dim cabin light behind him. Mancuso grabbed for her gun and knocked the barrel to one side. It slid along the metal roof, sliding away, out of her reach, rasping as it followed the curved metal surface, sliding and falling towards the concrete floor three metres below.

While the gun was still in midair Mancuso stood up, stepped forward and put her combat boot on to the chest of the man who was coming out of the hatch. She put all her weight on her foot and pushed, driving him back through the hatch. As he fell she put her other foot on his head and followed him down.

The interior of the hovercraft was cramped and shadowy, lit only by the pale fluorescence of the screens at the weapons station and the pilot station. Mancuso landed more or less on top of the man. He was wearing a ribbed hiker's jacket and an opennecked shirt. Now that the surprise was over he was reacting, fighting back, and he was strong. Mancuso could smell peppermint on his breath and the leather of his jacket.

There was a knife sheath sewn on to the sleeve of his jacket, a carved bone handle protruding from it. Mancuso let the man reach for it, right arm going for left sleeve, and while his hand was exposed she broke his wrist. It didn't even slow the man down. He was on some kind of powerful dexedrine a.n.a.logue, blocking out pain and speeding up his reaction time. His pupils were open wide and his eyes as flat and gla.s.sy as a doll's eyes. As his broken wrist dragged down he simply reached across, left to right, and pulled the other knife out of the other sleeve.

Ambidextrous was the word that registered in Mancuso's head as she backed away, slithering across the floor, the knife lashing out at her.

They were both on their feet now, crouching in the confines of the hovercraft cabin. Neither of them moved. He held the knife so that the blade was flat, parallel to the floor, angled to slide easily between her ribs. Mancuso watched his eyes, waiting for a sign that would prefigure action, though he was so wired she might have been better off watching his feet.

The cabin was hot. It always was, despite the clumsy ma.s.s of airconditioning equipment that jutted down from the ceiling. Mancuso began to move, neither towards the man nor away from him. To one side. Circling in the small cabin s.p.a.ce. The man circled with her. Now she was at the front of the cabin, by the control panel and the pilot's seat, and he was at the rear by the air conditioning. Mancuso reached down and put her hand on the pilot's seat, as if for support. She slid her fingers down and hit the adjustment lever and pulled hard. The detachable seat back came away in her hands and she threw it straight at the man.

Moving with fantastic drugged speed and grace, the man darted to one side, the seatback missing him completely. But he jumped straight into the air conditioning, head slamming hard against the ceilingmounted unit. Mancuso knew how he felt. She'd spent her first three weeks on a hovercraft banging her head on the d.a.m.ned thing. The man's eyes had closed for an instant with the impact of the blow and before he could open them again Mancuso was on him, kicking solidly into his midriff so he bent double, knife leaving his fingers, rattling on the floor. Then she was pushing him back, her forearm against his neck, her free hand pulling back the velcro cover of her wristband. He knew what was coming, but it was too late.

She held the medicated pad to the bare skin of his neck. He groped at her elbow with his good hand, trying to break her grip, but Mancuso held tight. The ma.s.sive dose of tranquillizer on her wristband was being absorbed directly through his skin. She'd got him right over the carotid artery and the sedative took hold almost immediately.

He kept struggling but it was like wrestling with a child. His body loosened under her as his muscles relaxed and he settled into a profound sleep. Mancuso held on a little longer, to compensate for the stimulants that were already in his bloodstream, then let him sink to the floor.

Mancuso retrieved the seatback from the rear of the cabin and slotted it back into the pilot's chair. She sat down at the controls and sighed. It was a G-8, the same model she'd trained on and flown in combat. She'd still be piloting a G-8 now if the police service hadn't dumped the whole programme as part of their financial streamlining. The G-8s had been sold off at auction to help with departmental cash flow. They'd been snapped up by armed robber teams and terrorists who knew a good thing when they saw one. Ten years later the vehicles were still providing excellent service. Like this one. Mancuso began to punch b.u.t.tons, checking status.

The screen reported the rear doors of the craft as open. They gave access to the cargo bay. Whoever was robbing the store would need them open for loading up their merchandise. Mancuso moved a cursor on the screen and the doors closed. Scrolling down a menu she sealed the hatch on the roof. Her gun was still out there somewhere, on the loading bay floor, but that was okay now. Mancuso looked around the cabin. The NYPD logo on the bulkhead had been painted over with hex signs and graffiti.

Some new equipment had been fitted, thick bundles of wiring secured overhead with masking tape. The man in the leather jacket was snoring peacefully under the air conditioning. Mancuso stretched her shoulders, relaxing. It was nice to be home.

She switched the screen from status check to environment simulation. The cameras on the exterior armour tracked with infrared lights, sending a description of the loading bay back to the screen. The screen simulated the image, iconizing, highlighting, filling in details in an accurate cartoon replica of the world outside. The image was monochrome and precise. She scanned the floor and saw her gun lying by the rubber skirt of the craft. She saw the motorcycle she'd walked into and three others. A Kawasaki, two BMWs and a Honda. They were on the floor of the loading bay near the steps, ready for a quick getaway. No sign of the little guy or anyone else. No movement at all.

Mancuso scanned the tunnel exit. The screen displayed a string of figures and a wireframe diagram, showing where the curve of the tunnel would lead, as if she could see through walls. Mancuso looked at the tunnel mouth and then back at the motorcycles, presented on the screen in dull precise shades of cream and grey. She punched some b.u.t.tons on the keypad. What the h.e.l.l. The screen instantly blossomed into brilliant, garish colours. The same images as before but now hot pink, turquoise and lime green. Mancuso suppressed the urge to giggle.

The hovercraft lifted from the concrete floor in a spray of fine grit, shuddering slightly as it gained speed. Moving through the darkness to the mouth of the tunnel.

By the time she hit the sloping ramp of the exit tunnel Mancuso had the hovercraft halfway to full speed. She banked gently, smoothly nudging the control stick as she took the G-8 around the tight curve. The screen gave a continuous estimate of the hovercraft's position, animated hovercraft icon moving through animated tunnel. The icon made it very clear that the G-8 was too large to turn sideways in the tunnel.

As soon as she was fully around the curve Mancuso twisted the control stick, turning the craft sideways in the tunnel.

The hovercraft hit the tunnel walls with a grinding of metal that stopped as its twisting motion brought the rubber skirts against the concrete. The G-8 gave a final shudder, trying to turn in the impossibly narrow s.p.a.ce, then locked solid. The engine note spun into a highpitched squeal as the hovercraft hung there motionless, blocking the tunnel from wall to wall.

Mancuso switched the engines off before they could shake themselves to pieces. The roof of the craft was tilted at a steep angle and it was difficult climbing out of the hatch. Mancuso sealed the hatch cover behind her and hung for a moment from a grab bar. She dropped to the floor and jogged back up the ramp. Before she rounded the curve back into the loading bay she looked back over her shoulder and saw the luminous question mark glowing dead centre in the tunnel.

In the loading bay she paused to retrieve her gun before going back up the steps into the store.

Breen was crouching beneath shelves featuring a hundred different brands of shampoo, watching the secure area of the store. Mancuso knelt beside him. The secure area was thirty metres ahead and above them, on the mezzanine, with escalators running up to it on three sides.

Mancuso could see movement among the shelves. At least three people. There had been four motorcycles in the loading bay. Plus however many had crewed the hovercraft. The mezzanine overlooked quite a wide spread of the drugstore floor s.p.a.ce.

It would be hard to get any closer without being visible to someone looking out over the railings. Actually getting up there unseen was going to be even harder. Breen put his head close to hers.

'I've got it all figured,' he said.

Mancuso rode up on the escalator lying down. Flat on her back on the grooved metal stairs, her gun held above her. She watched the eggcrate fluorescent lights slide by on the slanted ceiling. On either side of her safety brushes edged the moving stairs. She saw small trapped bits of debris. Candy wrappers, coins, a child's lost glove. She hit the mezzanine floor shoulders first, gathering her knees to her chest and rolling clear of the escalator to land in a combat stance. Hiding behind a pyramid display of Polish vodka she realized that she was wet. The floor all around was wet. There were fragments of broken gla.s.s everywhere; the necks and sharp semicircle bases of bottles. Mancuso remembered the crashing sound she'd heard, when she'd looked up and the little guy had made his move. She hunched lower behind the vodka display as a man came by.

He was carrying a packing carton on one shoulder. There was a silhouette of a bottle drawn on the side of the carton and 'handle with care' warnings in several languages. The man moved to the back of the mezzanine and disappeared among the shelves. Mancuso could hear voices back there, and a humming noise that was growing louder. The voices of three men and one woman, maybe two. There was a metallic thud and the humming stopped. The sound of metal doors sliding open. Freight elevator. More voices and the sound of packing cartons dragging as they were loaded into the elevator.

Mancuso checked the a.n.a.logue sweep hand on her watch. Ninety seconds. She carefully refastened the velcro covers on her wristbands. McIlveen had once forgotten and left his wristbands open after sedating a suspect. He'd been changing his clothes in the station locker room, wearing just his boxer shorts. He'd leaned forward to clip his toenails or something and the wristband had come in contact with his knee. The guys coming on the next shift had found him like that, sitting there in his boxer shorts, deeply unconscious.

Sixty seconds. McIlveen's leg had been numb for a week.

Fifty. Mancuso had never let him forget it. She moved the rocker switch on her gun to its third position. The light went from amber to red. The digital readout above the magazine read full.

Thirty. Twenty. Ten.

Mancuso was up and moving. Past shelves of Jim Beam and Cutty Sark. Past the smoking section. Bright packets of tobacco, diamorphine and alkaloid. On the other side of a pillar were rows and rows of mineral water in gla.s.s bottles. A man was running between the rows, from the far side of the mezzanine, running parallel with her. Breen. Exactly on time. He wasn't McIlveen, but he wasn't bad.

There were twin freight elevators at the back of the mezzanine, behind the checkout terminals. Dead ahead. One elevator had its doors open and boxes of bottles stacked inside. One man stood inside, organizing the stacking. A man and a woman pa.s.sed cartons in to him. A second woman stood by the terminals at the checkout, supervising things. She had some kind of blunt smallbarrelled submachine gun slung on a strap from her shoulder. She was wearing an antique military tunic with epaulettes and big bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. The submachine gun looked like a Weber, or a clone of one. The man inside the elevator had a similar weapon, set on top of a stack of cases beside him. The others either had concealed handguns or nothing.

It was the man inside the elevator who saw them first.

He didn't even bother shouting a warning. He just turned, scooped up his Weber and began firing. The two carrying the packing cases screamed and ducked out of his way, throwing themselves on to the floor. The woman supervising fumbled for her gun, trying to drag it up across her body, and the strap snagged on a b.u.t.ton on her tunic.

The man in the elevator was firing single rounds now, deliberate and carefully aimed. Breen popped up from behind a display for Tanqeray showing a hologram of a boar's head and fired once, holding his pistol in a twohanded grip. It was about twenty metres to the man in the elevator. The man went down, wounded in the shoulder, his Weber switching to automatic fire as he fell, blasting wildly all around in the confined s.p.a.ce of the elevator, shredding packing cases and blowing apart bottles.

The woman on the floor in front of the elevator shouted something and jumped in among the cartons, trying to wrestle the gun away from him. The woman by the checkout had freed the strap from her b.u.t.tons and was raising the Weber when Mancuso fired a long burst that tore the checkout terminal in half and shredded the plastic countertop beside her elbow. The woman dived clear of the exploding plastic.

Inside the elevator the other woman had grabbed the other Weber from the wounded man and was fumbling to change magazines. Outside the elevator the man with the boxes was lying flat on the floor, clamping his hands over his head. The woman from the checkout leapt over him and into the elevator. She knocked the other woman aside just as she was reloading the Weber. The wounded man was lurching forward, clutching his shoulder, blood flowing down his teeshirt. He let go of his shoulder and hit the freight elevator b.u.t.ton with his good hand. The doors began to close and the man outside on the floor scrambled forward, throwing himself in among the others, elbowing aside the kneeling woman just as she loaded the Weber and was trying to take aim. The metal doors were sliding closed. Breen and Mancuso were both up and running. The woman with the Weber finally got it sighted and pulled the trigger. Mancuso fired from the hip as she ran. Ricochets screamed off the steel doors. The woman in the elevator fired wildly through the narrowing gap as they closed. A fluorescent tube imploded with a blue flashbulb pop above Mancuso. Delicate small fragments of gla.s.s snowed down on to her shoulders. Behind Breen a shelf rocked with the impact of a blast. Then the doors were shut and the elevator was heading down.

Mancuso's ears were ringing in the sudden silence. Colourful liqueurs flowed smoothly out of pierced plastic bottles on a shelf by Breen, running down the shelves on to the aisle floor, mixing in a bright tangle. She thumbed the switch on her gun back to mid position. The light on the barrel went from red to amber. The soles of her shoes were sticky with the spilled liqueurs. The indicator above the sealed doors indicated the main floor, then flashed as the elevator descended towards the loading bay.

'We take the other one,' said Breen. 'Take the other elevator down.' Mancuso nodded but she wasn't listening to him. She was counting in her head. Three in the elevator plus the one Breen had hit. Four. One for each motorcycle. One in the hovercraft as pilot. And then one for the weapons station.

Her gun suddenly moved in her hands as if someone had grabbed it. The barrel was twisting to the right with a harsh ratchetting sound, her fingers still gripping tight to the handle and trigger guard, fighting the movement. Breen was still saying something, in midsentence, his eyes just beginning to drift to the right, registering movement.

The status light on Mancuso's gun had gone from amber back to red. Directly beyond the gun barrel was the intersection of two rows of aisles. Coming out of them between a Johnny Walker display and a rack of red wine was a woman. Tiedyed shirt and a flak vest. She was holding something in her right hand. Holding it as if offering it. A pistol. Mancuso recognized the weapon, her mind automatically trying to cla.s.sify it even as the woman swung it to aim at her. Pointing directly at Mancuso and now there was the sound of gunfire. But it was Mancuso's own gun. She wasn't pressing the trigger but the gun was firing, a short burst. It caught the woman high and centre, in the chest, as if the tiedyed circle on her shirt was a target. The impact of the bullets threw her back. Her arms were spread wide. Her handgun went off, aimed now at the air above her. A bullet rang as it hit a ceilingmounted spigot for the fire sprinklers. Breen was reacting, moving, gun raised, turning to face the woman. But it was all over. The woman was lying on the floor between the aisles, out of it, a body.

Breen stared at the woman on the floor. Disturbed dust and paint fragments floated down from the ceiling in a fine cloud. Mancuso was looking at the gun in her own hands. At the top of the hand grip, where it joined the tubular barrel, there was a metal disc. The barrel of the gun was twisted off centre along the disc. Mancuso moved the handgrip and it shifted smoothly with the same ratchetting sound as before, locking solidly back into position. The barrel was aligned with the handgrip again. The rocker switch had gone back to mid position again. She hadn't touched the switch. The status light was amber.

'Nice reflexes,' said Breen.

'Yes,' said Mancuso looking at the gun. 'I wish they were mine.'

She pulled open the doors of the second freight elevator and stepped inside.

Mancuso and Breen got down in time to hear the motorcycles being kickstarted. The empty loading bay was visible in the light that shone through the opening doors of the freight elevator. Breen was out before they were fully open, moving into the other elevator, Mancuso covering his back. The cartons of bottles were still stacked on the patterned metal floor of the elevator, abandoned. There was blood on several of the cardboard cartons. 'How the h.e.l.l did they expect to carry that stuff on bikes?'

The motorcycle noise faded a bit as the bikes sped around the curve in the exit tunnel. 'They used to have a hovercraft,' said Mancuso.

Breen stepped out of the elevator and looked at her. 'What happened to it?' From the far end of the tunnel there was the sound of several voices screaming in unison and the squeal of rubber on concrete as brakes were applied at high speed. The engine noise of the four motorcycles died almost simultaneously, transforming into the sound of shattering gla.s.s and rending metal.

It's up there in the tunnel,' said Mancuso, 'creating an obstruction.'