Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [105]
‘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. Tie‐dyed 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 classify 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 tie‐dyed 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 ceiling‐mounted 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 kick‐started. 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 hell 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 glass and rending metal.
It’s up there in the tunnel,’ said Mancuso, ‘creating an obstruction.’
* * *
They collected the girl in the black jacket on the way out of the drugstore. She was where Breen