The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“They’re watching, though,” Coke said, glancing at the facades of the nearby buildings. “For that matter, we could get a better view at the main console inside.”

All the windows were shuttered, curtained, or blocked with makeshifts like the side of a packing crate, but there were hidden viewslits in the screens. The citizens of Potosi didn’t want to call attention to themselves, but they were afraid not to watch.

“Something I’ve noticed about war zones, Matthew,” Vierziger said. “The people who live in them either act as if they’re in danger always, or they act as if there’s no danger at all.”

Three more L’Escorial armored vehicles followed the first. They puffed and snarled as they lined up side by side to block the street. The same thing was happening in front of Astra headquarters.

The escape hatch in the back of one L’Escorial truck was open. Suterbilt huddled inside, mentally clinging to both armor protection and freedom of movement.

Coke glanced at his companion. “Look, I know it’s dangerous,” he said. “I just didn’t want to be cooped up inside if something popped.”

Somebody on the Astra side signaled with a bosun’s whistle. The L’Escorial gunmen who followed the vehicles on foot stared goggle-eyed, looking for signs of an ambush.

“The rest of the team can handle security for Bob,” Coke said. Vierziger’s comment still rankled. It wasn’t the whole truth, but …And nothing was the whole truth. “Via, I know we might get shot out here.”

“The difficulty isn’t in being killed, Matthew,” Vierziger said. His smile was as unreadable as that of the Mona Lisa. “The difficulty’s in what comes after.”

Pepe Luria sauntered from the courtyard of the L’Escorial building. His galaxy of fireflies looped and spun ten meters above him, each outlined by the purple haze of the static discharge which supported it.

Adolpho Peres stumbled along behind his captor. A L’Escorial gunman walked a meter to either side of the gigolo, but from a distance Peres did not appear to be tethered.

Coke raised his visor’s magnification to x40, then doubled it again. A glint joined Peres’ face to the short batons which the men beside him held. Trickles of blood had dried on the back corners of his jaw.

The L’Escorials had poked a length of piano wire through the gigolo’s cheeks. The men escorting Peres held the ends wrapped around their batons. If Peres tried to run—if he did anything except walk in precise unison with his escorts—the wire would rip his face open like a razor blade.

A L’Escorial with a handheld radio sat on the back deck of an armored car. He held his free hand over his ear as he spoke, then listened, to his radio. He looked up and waved to Pepe. Pepe waved back.

The four armored vehicles roared and staggered forward in clouds of black smoke. The men behind them followed, squinting through the dust and exhaust fumes. Overhead, the fireflies sailed in a figure-eight formation that advanced just ahead of the armored cars.

The breeze had died. The Astras moved up also, in a pall of their own raising.

Roberson clung to himself and shivered at the gates to Astra headquarters. The Widow Guzman walked behind the snorting armored vehicles. Kuklar was beside her, wearing a blank expression and carrying a drawstring sack. The bag held the data base looted from Suterbilt’s private office.

Vierziger laughed. He leaned his chair back against the building wall. “What do you suppose they’d do if Madame Yarnell returned to town just now?” he asked.

“Both sides are watching her,” Coke said. “They’d scurry to their holes like mice when the cat comes home. There’d be enough time.”

The L’Escorial radioman kept the armored cupola between him and Astra guns while he watched Pepe. When the lines of opposing vehicles had advanced to within fifty meters of one another, Pepe pointed his index finger.

The radioman spoke into his mouthpiece, turned, and closed his eyes. He jumped upright in plain view of the Astras, waving his arms like a semaphore.

The armored lines halted. The radioman lurched forward. He almost slipped off the side of his mount. He caught himself to crouch again in the shelter of the cupola.

Pepe gestured forward the men holding Peres. They worked their way carefully between the flanks of two of the armored cars, paying more attention to the hot exhaust louvers than they did to the man whom they were escorting. The wire twitched and quivered, drawing drops of fresh blood at every motion. The gigolo was crying.

Kuklar stepped in front of the armored bulldozer. The vehicle’s rocket launcher was depressed to sweep the street ahead. If Kuklar realized that, he didn’t seem to care. He walked forward stolidly, the sheath of his hook-bladed knife swinging in synchrony with his right leg.

“You know?” said Vierziger idly. “If something went wrong right now, they might all kill each other.”

Coke shook his head. “Not all of them,” he said. “Besides, we’d likely catch something ourselves, you and me.”

“There’s that,” his companion agreed.