SNAFU: Hunters

“You are a cop. Were a cop. Pretending to be a cop. Whatever you did in Tennessee.”

“No need to advertise it.”

“Eat your bones.” Flynn tossed the shades into the back seat and fastened his seatbelt, then ran his hands over the fake leather dash above the late-model Impala’s glove box. “Brilliant. These American-made autos really spice up the sex life, Rowley. We’ll fit right in.”

At two hundred and forty pounds and one percent body fat, Conor Flynn looked every bit the cop, or ex-military, as Matt. His skin-tight gray t-shirt did nothing to dispel the effect, and his square sunglasses screamed, ‘I am a Government Agent. Do not speak to or trust me.’

Flynn raised an eyebrow at the naked appraisal. “What?”

Matt just shook his head and put the car into gear.

They cruised through the suburbs, past an endless stream of one-story ranches and dingy, sun-faded plastic swimming pools. The smells of the city filtered through the air conditioning, street food and salt water and sweat and garbage rotting under the blazing summer sun. Matt considered grabbing the shades from the back seat, but wouldn’t give Flynn the satisfaction. Chain link replaced white pickets, and vinyl siding blurred into graffiti on decaying brick.

They pulled up to a stoplight and idled next to a cluster of young men, baggy street clothes and wary brown faces sweltering in the midday heat. This far south it took a special kind of stupid to wear pants if you didn’t have to, which might explain why half of them hung on their thighs or even lower. The pale yellow bandanas around foreheads, necks, wrists, or ankles identified them as Camino Reals. Heroin dealers and thieves, they lay outside ICAP’s jurisdiction even with their new domestic operations protocols.

Flynn held a hundred-dollar bill up with two fingers, but no one approached the car, their lack of attention as conspicuous as staring.

“Oy, boys.” Flynn waved the folded bill in the air. “I could use some information.” They glowered at the ground, at the sky, the telephone poles, anywhere but at the car. “Brilliant, lads. Thanks for nothing.” The light turned green and Matt pulled away, eyes on the mirrors, watching them watch him with wary eyes.

“No love from the South-Side Banana Hammocks.” Flynn chuckled and slipped the money back into his pocket. “Told you we look like cops.”

“If you’re so worried about it, why are we the ones going?”

“I didn’t say I was worried. It’s just going to be hard to pick a fight if they know we’re the law.”

“We’re not here to pick–”

Babbling whispers slithered through his mind, a mad cacophony of thoughts bent on murder and pain, the worst side effect of Gerstner Augmentation. Matt took the warning from the Late-Second Precognition but ignored the lurching desire to tear Flynn’s face from his skull and stuff it into his mouth. Jerking the wheel, he hit the brakes then the gas to bring them around ninety degrees, then floored it before the jeeps rounded the corner behind the run-down convenience mart.

Flynn laughed and reached down, but stopped when Matt shook his head.

“You won’t need the pig-sticker, they’re just running us off.” He down-shifted to pick up speed, then jammed the car into higher gear, gas pedal to the floor. The motor whined, a cicada with an internal-combustion mating call.

Flynn took his hand off the hilt of his katana, leaving it on the floor between the seats. The titanium and carbon nanofiber blade had yet to see use in combat, but Matt had watched Flynn dice up a car in the practice arena without breaking a sweat. Why an Irishman fought with a katana Matt would never understand.

Flynn jerked his thumb toward the back. “You want me to get the trunk?”

Matt shook his head. The REC-7 carbine and Auto-Assault 12 combat shotgun could stay where they were, in the trunk under lock and key. If worse came to worse he had his personal Glock 9mm in the glove box. But it wouldn’t. They’d been made as cops in a no-go zone, but hadn’t done anything to justify a murder, even from a gang as vicious as the Camino Reals.

They blew through two red lights, the jeeps swerving and honking behind, but as they passed from one turf to the next the pursuit broke off and didn’t return.

“You sussed those out pretty fast. Precog, yeah?” Flynn asked.

Matt nodded without taking his eyes from the road.

“Brilliant, brilliant. They wouldn’t clear me for it, said I’d had enough. I’m thinking what’s the harm, right?”

“The harm is you go bonk and kill everything around you until other people like you put you down.”

Flynn chuckled. “That’s what I mean, right? The side effect is ‘fun.’”

“Just keep your pants on.”

“Aye, Sergeant.”

Ten minutes later they rolled past the Marquee, a modern glass-and-steel structure at odds with the dilapidated neighborhood. The fading day washed the neon lights to a pale glow but did nothing to hide the ultraviolet paint across the front windows, a cartoon shark swimming through a golden crown that would be invisible to unaugmented eyes.

“See that?” Matt asked.