Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [96]
‘Is she dead,’ said Ace, searching for a pulse.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor.
‘Is that part of the plan?’
‘No.’
Then there was the sound of alarms going off.
And the gunshots.
* * *
19
‘What do you think of it?’ The new weapon system consisted of two thick black tubes, connected side by side, with ‘Manhattan Police Service’ and the Butler Institute logo picked out in thin elegant red. The bee and eye symbol was slightly larger than the lettering.
Mancuso held the gun in her lap, feeling the weight of it across the top of her legs. She studied the magazine‐release catch which looked a little intricate and prone to jamming.
‘So, what do you think of it?’ repeated Breen, glancing across at her.
‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ said Mancuso. ‘And slow down.’ They were passing the restaurant where McIlveen had been shot. Breen was looking at her as if he expected some kind of reaction. ‘On the road,’ repeated Mancuso, and finally he looked away. The police car swayed a little as it accelerated past the burnt‐out brownstone buildings, picking up speed. Their red light cut regular slices in the night, sweeping across blank walls and burst windows. Sweeping through pitch darkness where the road widened into wasteland. There hadn’t been a street light working in this neighbourhood for ten years. ‘Put the siren on,’ said Mancuso.
The brownstones gave way to wasteland, a burned‐out bus shelter, and then they were back among buildings again. Mancuso relaxed a little. Now their siren made a steady high scream that bounced back at them off the solid old stone faces.
Instead of easing up on the gas pedal, Breen was relentlessly creeping it down a little further.
The new weapons systems were an annual joke. Mancuso had spent three hours that evening waiting outside Research and Development. Waiting to be issued with the latest joke. Every month R&D blew a portion of their annual budget on technology licensed from the Butler Institute. Hastily organized designs were sent to industrial conglomerates in the Pacific Basin where each component was manufactured by the lowest bidder. Then the equipment was issued to the various police services and the Butler Institute got its technology field‐tested for free.
‘What’s that over there?’ said Breen. There was an orange glow from a building lot, ahead and to the right. Breen eased up on the accelerator and the patrol car coasted to a crawl. Mancuso studied the building lot through the bulletproof plastic of the passenger window. It was a space of waste ground created by the destruction of a medium‐sized office building. Orange light washed out on to the dark pavement through a wide gap in the corrugated tin sheets of the fence. Through the gap Mancuso could make out the tall shapes of vitrification rods jutting out of the earth. Their shadows swayed on the packed dirt. The source of the orange light was a car on its side, a taxi, burning.
Mancuso’s fingers were already moving across the rubber keyboard of the dash computer. There was something else there in the darkness, standing beside one of the vitrification rods. It gleamed like metal, dark blue or black. It was hard to tell in the shadows. It had a light on top of it, like the revolving lights on old police cars. Mancuso looked back at the taxi. The windows were cracked but not broken. The interior of the car was a misted, glowing box. There was a dark shape in there. Maybe it was the driver.
As Breen swung back out into the street Mancuso finished typing, logging the location and the general nature of the incident. Just another routine robbery and murder of a cabbie. She flagged the call as urgent. A car would be sent. Help would arrive. Eventually. Now Breen had his foot down hard. Side streets swept by. Mancuso didn’t say anything. In the rear view mirror the orange glow was shrinking. They turned a corner and then it was gone.