A lot of pressure. Probably the worst of it was that no one, least of all Rico, could really know just what she went through, because when she went into the matrix, she went alone.

It humbled him. It made him feel like his skills and abilities weren't really any big deal. Most men were made to fight, to face pressure, conflict. They were born that way. But for a woman to go. through what Piper did ... that was something special.

"We did good," she said softly.

"So far," Rico agreed.

"The kami were with us."

"It ain't over yet."

"What's bothering you, my love?"

"I don't' know." Rico felt restless, uneasy. Instinct said the run had gone too smoothly. No one had gotten as much as a scratch. That rarely happened. The price of a run against a major corp could usually be measured in blood. Had they simply been lucky? Was some surprise still to come? Something that would make up for the easy way things had gone so far ...

His brain kept reminding him about the team and the plan. The team was experienced and the plan had been a good one, worked out in detail. There had been plenty of weaknesses in the Maas Intertech facility, and the plan had exploited them. On that basis alone, the run should have gone smoothly.

"I don't think I'm gonna sleep till we get rid of this slag," Rico said.

"You" re too good a leader."

"I'm responsible."

"You're not a G.o.d."

"I'm doing all I can do. That's my job."

That was all anyone could expect, no more, no less, and his adamant tone cut Piper short, hie he knew it would. They'd had this talk before. Rico had no illusions about his capabilities. He couldn't know how things would turn out. He couldn't see into the future to discover how they were being used-if they were being used-or how L. Kahn or somebody else might be planning to betray them. Rico's job was to see that they came outta this alive, the whole team, and Piper especially. That made it hard to sleep or rest, to do anything but worry about what was coming next.

"I'm gonna check around a minute."

"You need rest, jefe."

"This won't take long."A moment to pull on his pants, another to pick up the Predator 2 lying on the table beside the bed. A few more to do what he needed to do. He stepped across the hall to the second bedroom. Surikov was in there, asleep, stretched out on a mattress. He looked okay. Dok said he'd survived the bustout in good shape. A little tired, a little over-excited, but no worse for the wear. Dok and Filly had the room to the right, at the end of the hall. They looked okay, too. No lights anywhere. That was standard. Rico moved up the hall to the main room. Shank stood at one of the windows overlooking Mott Street. He held the b.u.t.t-end of an M22A2 braced against his hip. Thorvin stood at one of the rear windows with an SMG. Bandit sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor.

"How's it scanning?" Rico asked.

"Wiz, boss," Shank answered.

Thorvin grunted and nodded.

Rico paused in front of Bandit. The shaman's eyes were open and staring straight ahead. "Something in the air," Bandit said. "Feels bad."

"Like trouble?" Rico asked.

Bandit looked up at him, and said, "Good bet."

The infrared-enhanced cameras in her belly pod clearly picked out the big ork standing just inside the second-floor window overlooking Mott Street and the smaller dwarfish figure by the window in the rear.

For almost an hour, the pair had barely moved except to turn their heads, and that made Bobbie Jo wonder.

The average gutterpunk didn't have anywhere near that kind of discipline. Most runners she'd spied on here in Newark and other plexes had the discipline of the typical rock'n roller. They were more interested in breaking out the beer and the whiskey at every opportunity. After a run like the one against Maas Intertech, most would've thrown a party, complete with bootleg chip and recreational psychochems.

A quiet voice, the words, "Good bet..." came to her over the radiolink. Probably via the listening post set up in the tenement across from the runners' hideyhole. A laser mike directed at a window. The runners seemed worried about something. Bobbie Jo could understand that. Skip Nolan's voice quietly arose. "Air One, status."

"No movement," Bobbie Jo replied. "No change." And no more banter over the radio. It had died out over the last hour or two. The team inside the Command and Control vehicle was tired. So was Skip. She could hear it in his voice. Bobbie Jo was feeling a little worn herself. The runners had slept most of the day prior to their run against Maas Intertech and were sleeping in turns right now. The units of the Executive Action Brigade had been working fourteen-hour shifts since the beginning, since picking up the runners at that yakuza bar, Chimpira. Now only Colonel Yates seemed to have an excess of energy and that was because tailing the runners had changed from a silicon glide into serious biz. The runners had gear they weren't supposed to have. The chopper they'd used to get out of the Maas Intertech facility hadn't been so wiz, just ordinary radar, but the van, that gray and black phantom, it had presented problems. The dwarf rigger who did the team's driving and probably most of its repairs had the van outfitted with some kind of wild military-grade sensor gear. Getting the equipment to sleaze it had cost the Executive Action Brigade a few more nuyen than Colonel Yates had been prepared to spend.

Bobbie Jo could still hear the man cursing, cursing everybody, especially the runners and the Brigade's current client "If those sc.u.mmers pull any more c.r.a.p, we'll ice 'em! We'll ice 'em all!"

Talk like that worried her.

Icing the runners would be murder pure and simple, and, if nothing else, in direct violation of their orders, their contract with the client. That would make everything they'd done so far a waste of time and effort. They'd forfeit their contract and any money they had coining, and the Brigade's rep would slip a few more notches. Bobbie Jo didn't think the Brigade could afford it.

Abruptly, her ground-based combat comp went into active mode. Targeting indicators began winking in front of her eyes. She felt a shock of surprise strike straight into her gut as apparently random movements below her suddenly resolved into the semblance of a pattern.

She saw matched sets of vehicles, dark blue sedans with vans, moving rapidly along the streets that bracketed Mott Street If she read their movements correctly, all those vehicles would arrive at opposite ends of Mott Street at almost the same instant. She broadcast her alert signal. Even as her squeal hit the air, two dark-clad figures appeared on the roofs of buildings facing the runners' Mott Street hideyhole.

Those figures moved toward the front of the roofs as if to take up sniping positions. Focusing her lenses and zooming in, Bobbie Jo saw that one of the figures wore a dark uniform with shoulder flash that included the likeness of a black ape.

What the h.e.l.l was going on?

Ground teams reported more movements, furtive movements through back alleys, uniformed personswith automatic weapons taking up positions.

This was crazy. It suddenly looked like a commandostyle raid was about to hit the runners' hideyhole, right here in the middle of Newark's Sector 2. It didn't seem possible. Yet now she heard Skip firing off orders to Brigade units on the ground, declaring toe approaching vehicles hostiles, and then she saw the big bay door at the front of the runners' hideyhole rolling up.

"Ground Four and Five," Skip said. "Intercept hostiles."

Where Mott Street met Raymond Boulevard, a dark brown Brigade sedan suddenly shot right onto the roadway, broadsiding one of the hostile sedans, only to be struck in the tail by the van accompanying that car.

Then, the runner's gray and black van came roaring out onto Mott street at mid-block, turning toward Fleming. The hostiles coming up the street from that direction, a car and a van, abruptly split left and right, skidding sideways and effectively blocking off the roadway. The runners' van didn't even slow down. It slammed against the sedan's front left side, bounded up onto the sidewalk, then down again, and went roaring straight at the corner.

Autofire punctuated by the thumping of heavy weapons was breaking out all over the place.

Thorvin had the power plant to the max as they hit the street, engine roaring, tires screaming, laying a trail of smoking black as he turned up the block. He saw the big sedan and the van coming straight at him, splitting left and right to block the roadway. No way he was stopping. The combat subroutine of his...o...b..ard computer performed an immediate a.n.a.lysis on the sedan and put a rapidly winking red indicator right where he should hit the sedan for maximum effect.

It was quite an impact. Nearly shook the datajack right out of his skull. Cost him an outboard sensor array. But he had the speed up to eighty kph by then and-freaking h.e.l.l-the physics worked! He caught a glimpse of the sedan spinning half a circle as he bounded up over the curb and tore a path down the sidewalk and straight to the corner. Just a simple matter of ma.s.s versus energy, really.

Corner coming up fast.

Skid turn-no other way around it.

Bullets pounded off his skin as the tires gave a banshee wail and sent him sliding sideways around the comer.

Alarm bells in his ears.

An image leapt into the back of his mind, something like a jet fighter swooping low over the buildings off to the left of the intersection. A red schematic flashed in front of his eyes: A Cybers.p.a.ce Designs recon drone.

"Bird's with us again!" he snarled.

"Burn it!" Rico barked.

A targeting indicator winked-locking on. Thorvin popped the M-134 minigun out of his roofpod and opened up. Three bursts, and the drone went spinning wing-over-wing, down and out of sight.

Bobbie Jo felt the slugs battering her airframe, then the flare of fire from the long-range fuel tanks.

Alarm indicators flashed and flickered. The skin over her right wing split and burst into tatters. The concrete ground came swirling toward her.

She screamed. Blackness swallowed her.

14.

Another bone-rattling impact and they were clear of the attacking forces converging on Mott Street.

Thorvin had the power plant opened up wide, and the noise was deafening. The roar of the engine rising into a stammering whine that chipped "away at the nerves like sustained autofire. Hanging onto his seat with one hand and his Predator 2 with the other, Rico clenched his teeth and stared into the pa.s.senger-side rearview mirror. He tried not to think about the people bouncing around in the rear of the van. There wasn't time.

"Splash one drone!" Thorvin bellowed over the scream of the van's engine. "I'm heading for the freaking you-know-what?'

Rico nodded. "Do it!"

Surikov cried out from the rear. The slag was scared and rightly so, but he and Dok would have to deal with it. Bandit's warning that someone was about to bust the Mott Street safehouse had come none too soon. The hostiles had moved in on foot and in cars and in vans and had even thrown up a drone. Probably, it was Daisaka Security, the security arm of Maas Intertech's parent corp, Kuze Nihon.

n.o.body with organized paramilitary forces brought out the heavy guns just because they felt like partying. There had to be a reason for the attack, and Surikov was the only one that made sense. But thepoint that bothered Rico most was not who or why, but rather how the opposition had gotten to them at Mott Street. How had they been found out?

Two possibilities came to mind. One was that someone might have tailed them to the safehouse, despite Thorvin's declarations to the contrary. Rico didn't think that very likely. Two, Piper might have been traced through the matrix. She was equally sure that n.o.body had traced her, but that didn't mean she couldn't be wrong. Rico didn't think much of that possibility either, for the simple reason that where the matrix was concerned, Piper was usually right Was there something he'd overlooked? And what in fragging h.e.l.l could it be? He couldn't believe that anyone on his team had given them up.

One thought came to mind.

He looked at Dok. "Check the slag for a snitch."

"What?" Dok exclaimed. "Now?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?"

Dok stared for a moment, swaying with the violent motions of the van as it skidded around a corner, then, he bent, broke open his medpack and went to work.

They already knew that Surikov had implants: datajack, chip memory, subprocessing unit. A really advanced skillwire system. Lots of tech drek to expedite and accelerate his scientific research. L. Kahn's chip-dossier had mentioned it. What it suggested to Rico right now was that Surikov might also have been implanted with some kind of electronic microtransmitter, something that Maas Intertech or Daisaka Security could home in on if the slag ever got "lost." or s.n.a.t.c.hed.

Stuff like that wasn't common, but for top execs and ramjamming research slags like Surikov, neither was it unknown. Rico cursed himself for not antic.i.p.ating the possibility and getting Surikov checked out sooner.

Surikov was lying flat on the floor. Dok bent over him, hanging onto a cargo strap. Two seconds later, the med scanner in Dok's hand began to beep shrilly, and Dok looked up, wide-eyed.

"Come on, Monk! Hurry!"

Minx grabbed his hand and tugged, propelling Monk forward, down a flight of stairs leading to a subway station. Only at the bottom of the stairs Minx turned right instead of left, yanked open a metal door marked, PLX-3, AUTH PERS ONLY, and tugged him right through the doorway.

The door slammed shut at his back, then everything went black. Minx tugged him ahead at a run.

Their feet echoed against the floor, a smooth, hard floor that seemed basically level, though cluttered with stuff that rustled around his ankles and crunched under his sneaks.

Minx slowed. Something heavy banged and something metallic squealed. A door swung open. They stepped out onto a concrete safety walk that ran along one side of an underground roadway. Monk couldn't recall having ever seen this part of the transitways before. The roadway, only two lanes wide and divided by white dashes, extended off in both directions for a few hundred meters before curving out of sight. The pavement looked really clean. No litter anywhere.

Minx looked back and forth, up and down the roadway, then thrust back her wildly frizzled hair, now glowing red and orange, and grinned.

"This is it," she said.

"What?"

A rumbling arose into a roaring like a race car. A gray and black van came screaming around the curve to the right, blew on by them and disappeared around the curve to the left. Minx frowned.

"Huh?" Monk said.

As the van disappeared, a storm of amber blips began washing across the walls of the transitway, appearing from around the curve to the left. The roar of the van faded away, then swelled. Another truck, a sort of tow truck, came screaming around the curve to the left This time Minx nodded, glanced at Monk and pulled him ahead, under the railing guarding the safety walk, then down onto the roadway.

The tow truck roared like a semiballistic jet, amber strobes blazing from above the cab and from inside the ma.s.sive front grille. Monk watched that grille coming closer and closer and closer until it seemed huge, t.i.tanic, and it suddenly occurred to him that the truck wasn't slowing down and he was standing right in front of it Abruptly, Minx yanked him aside, and the tow trucks tires screamed and white smoke billowed into the air.

"Come on!" Minx shouted.

The tow truck screeched to a halt, the door swung open, and Minx all but pulled Monk up the steps and into the cab.

The truck roared ahead. The acceleration was incredible. It thrust Monk against the back of the broad bench seat, holding him there till he could hardly breathe. He glimpsed a pair of black-gloved hands grippinga steering wheel and the front dashboard, blazing with controls- lights, graphic indicators, LED dials and gauges-all winking, gleaming, flaring and flashing incessantly. He stared wide-eyed at the broad white lines of the roadway streaming toward him in a blur. Exocentrical Rumination blasted from speakers all around.

"Who's your friend?" someone shouted. "Real booty!"

There was that word again.

Minx grinned. "This is Monk!" she yelled. "Monk, this is Harry! Harry the Hack, people call her! She's the best hack in the city!"

"Yeah?" Monk shouted, wondering what a "hack" might be.

Minx nodded, smiling.

"Used to drive a cab!" Harry exclaimed. "Never managed to lose the tag!"

Minx sat back, and Monk leaned forward to get a better look at Harry. She had gold-blonde hair drawn back into a thick braid. She also had the perfect, cosmed-generated face of a Maria Mercurial novastar, complete with languid bedroom eyes and a small dark mole a little above and beside voluptuously full ruby lips. She wore a shiny, studded black jacket and black engineer boots. She took a quick drag on a brown Sunset Neon cigarette, then looked across at Monk and grinned.

"What the h.e.l.l are you looking at!" she shouted.

Monk looked at the dashboard. A TV/3V show was playing on the vid there. "As The E-Mail Turns,"

rolled across the screen. The first scene showed a glowing neon man in a glowing neon room pushing glowing neon envelopes around on a glowing neon desk, and muttering incoherently. Monk hadn't ever seen this show before. If it made any sense, it escaped him.

Something barked. Monk looked aside to see Minx giving a hug and a kiss to a huge dog with glaring red eyes and vicious white teeth. "We call 'im Prince!" Harry shouted.