The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Coke shrugged. There wasn’t really a choice about going. He just hadn’t wanted to appear too eager. “All right,” he said. “Mary, you want to tag along?”

“You bet,” Margulies said as she shifted herself onto both feet. “Maybe Angel and I can catch up on things while you talk business with the important gentlemen.”

Niko Daun stepped into the doorway from the kitchen. His action station was first floor, rear; Vierziger and Moden guarded the upper story for now.

“I wonder if I could go, sir?” the sensor tech asked. He already wore the ammo pouch filled with bugging devices. “I’d sort of like to see the place.”

“No, stick around,” Coke ordered. He didn’t want to try planting hardware in L’Escorial HQ while Tijuca was there. Margulies’ friend might recognize Frisian equipment, which could be embarrassing— or worse. “I won’t need a gofer, since we’re just across the street.”

He grinned at the syndicate boss to draw attention away from the exchange which had just taken place. “You know,” he said, “you could have just phoned yourself.”

Ramon waved his hand. “Would you have accepted the invitation had I not shown myself willing to visit you?” he said.

“You’ve got a point,” Coke said. He deliberately checked that his sub-machine gun was on safe. Slinging the weapon muzzle-down across his back, he added, “Let’s go talk to the Old Man, sir.”

Ramon Luria ushered Coke ahead of him through the door marked BOARD ROOM. An old man in red and a middle-aged one wearing a business suit of Delian cut were already seated within.

Instead of wood paneling, the walls of the sanctum in the basement of L’Escorial headquarters were covered with holographic screens. If the equipment had been perfectly tuned, an observer would almost think he was standing at ground level and the building didn’t exist.

In fact, the hardware had all been installed at stock brightness and coverage settings, which varied from unit to unit. One of the thirty-odd screens was dead and three others operated at less than half their proper resolution. The set-up made Coke think of a diorama viewed through distorting mirrors.

Ramon waved proudly at the walls and said, “My son Pepe brought these back with him from Delos on his last trip. Pepe is very up-to-date, very civilized.”

There was no sign on the streets of the gunmen who had been omnipresent throughout Potosi since the survey team arrived. Civilians moved in nervous spurts, like birds on the verge of a violent storm.

The table in the center of the room was a black synthetic oval. There were thumb controls at eight points around its circumference. Each was a shallow dome paired with a shallow depression.

Coke casually fingered the bump nearest him. Nothing happened. If the system had been operating, his touch would have brought live a workstation linked to the data bank within the table.

“I am Raul Luria,” the old man at the head of the table said without rising or preamble. “Potosi is mine, Cantilucca is mine. For too long I have allowed the Guzman syndicate to exist—out of affection for the late Pablo, so close a friend of mine. But after last night—”

Raul Luria rose with the staggering difficulty of a ship’s mast being stepped by amateurs. The man seated to Raul’s left looked alternately bored and disquieted by the rhetoric.

“—after last night, I have no more compassion. They must be crushed!”

The old man—the Old Man—pointed a crooked index finger at Coke. “Where do you stand in that, foreigner? Shall we crush you too?”

“I represent a business firm, sir,” Coke said mildly. “We can supply personnel and equipment that will permit you to achieve your stated goal faster and more cheaply than you could in any other manner. I don’t see why we can’t strike a deal that will benefit both parties.”

“One of the possible problems, Major,” Ramon Luria said with his back to the door behind Coke, “is the sort of arrangement Friesland has already made with the Astras.”

“And what you had to do with the raid last night,” Raul Luria grunted as he bent, joint by joint, back into his chair. “If you’re working with those pigs, I’ll see to it that you’re slaughtered with them. I swear it!”

“Father, we agreed there’s no profit in discussing the past,” Ramon said, his voice quivering between fear and contempt. “Isn’t that so, Master Suterbilt?”

The businessman grimaced. “There’ll be no profit in anything for the best part of a year,” he said. “It’ll take at least that long to rebuild gage stocks. And what is the Delos cartel going to say?”

“There’s no arrangement between Astra and the FDF,” Coke said. “Zip. Nada. Do you have a chip projector here?”

He glanced over his shoulder. Ramon looked blank. “I can bring one,” he offered.

“Here, you can use mine,” Suterbilt said. He slid a palm-sized belt unit across the table to Coke.

The businessman was stocky and probably no older than Coke, now that the Frisian had time to focus on him. At the moment, Suterbilt wore a scowl that amplified the angry appearance of his ruddy complexion.