2 cobra 9

 

Chapter 9

 

The doc jumped.

“I beg your pardon?” he said. “I just want to make sure...”

“That I die?” I said. “Doc, hearing is the last sense to go, and I know what you tried to do. I carry a wire, so your family should be safe by now.”

“They are,” said Willow in my ear.

I decided not to reveal that I had had my assertion confirmed.

“I... someone would....”

“The government has had an eye on irregularities in this show for a while,” I lied, smoothly. “And whether it has been purely the intervention of a big Yakuza man like Ichiro Fukuhama or if it is corrupt in and of itself. But if you had to be coerced, you’re basically an honest man so I am confiding in you in order to reassure you.”

He almost collapsed in on himself in relief.

“I... thank you,” he said.

“Put it away,” I said.

“I will,” he said, grimly, putting the hypodermic back.

I was sure that Tarquin would follow up any contraventions of gaming and sport fixing, which, essentially, this came under.  And would gain much kudos from his political masters for doing so.

I blinked.

Sonofabitch!

Had Tarquin had his suspicions, and decided to kill two birds with one stone? Canny operator was Tarquin. I wager he realised that if he pointed me at Ichiro as a sanction, I’d find out the rest.

 

oOoOo

 

Next was a helicopter lift, followed by a private plane to JFK airport with the other contestants.  Other than a quick medical and the chance to use the onflight facilities, there was essentially no break to kit up again. What I had was what I had. I cleaned myself up somewhat and powdered some chalk ready to comb in my hair, storing it in a ziplock bag which had a bandage in in my medkit. Looking over people who were tall with dark hair, if I slouched and had grey hair, it would help.

We were all addressed in a private lounge.

Oppenheimer glared at me as he addressed us all.

“Your numbers are down to fourteen; we had to rescue two of the cavers,” he said.

I noticed that Dave was here; presumably, against the odds, he had succeeded. He winked at me, and mouthed, ‘I did a spelunking course because Norah forbade it.’

That made perfect sense.  I mean to say, in Dave’s situation, it made perfect sense. He had explained to us all that Norah had married him because he was an up and coming executive, and he had failed to realise that it was his anticipated bank balance she fell in love with. He had had a nervous breakdown from the pressure, which did not let up at home as she pushed him to succeed, and had ended up in hospital after jumping off the top of the office block and landed in a tree with a sum total of scratches and bruises and a broken wrist. Norah said he couldn’t even manage suicide right. He moved from physiotherapy to a lot of gym work, resigned his job to take up a lease on an antiques shop, and after a lot of nagging, managed to catch Norah in bed with someone else, which made the divorce easier, and with more favourable terms, since he also had doctors’ reports of a nasty attack of something not spoken about in polite society.  He and Norah had parted company, she with far too much of his money, and he had had to sell the antique shop. So, this was his attempt to both deny her and get a grub stake to start off again, whatever he said about new cars. I planned to get him a shop near us; I like Dave.

Oppenheimer wasn’t the only person giving me the evil eye, so was Ichiro.

That suited me fine.

“You are tired, somewhat dirty, and with very little on your persons, which is a handicap in crossing New York,” Oppenheimer went on. “New Yorkers will take you for down-and-outs and will shun you. To make your life harder, you will be fugitives. We have a team dressed as NYPD to hunt you down; each of you has a hunter, who will meet you in a moment. Their guns contain blanks, but if you manage to make the real police annoyed, theirs will not. Any questions?”

“Are we all going off from the same place?” I asked.

Oppenheimer glared again; I was looking clean and sharp, having washed in the aeroplane instead of collapsing, combed my hair, and reversed my jacket which had suffered from the squeezepoint. It was now leather, and I looked far more dangerous than any street bum.

“You will start from different points, Mr. Silverheels,” he said. “You are about to be taken by taxi with your pursuer to your disparate start points, getting to know each other on the way; then you will be given ten minutes’ start. You will be permitted half an hour first to study the map to see your objective, which is City Hall.”

 

Elizabeth gave me a feral grin.

“I’ll beat you on this one,” she said. “I’m a city girl.”

I forbore to mention that I am a city boy. I leaned over to Dave. He was looking thoughtful.

“Penny for them?” I asked.

“I may not drive like a demon, but I know city cars,” he said. “I’m going to take a dive in the street, and act concussed. I’ll wager any follower will ignore an accident scene, and I’ll get taken to a free hospital. I can steal some scrubs and just wander out.”

“Brilliant,” I said. “Good luck!”

He beamed.

“In a way I hope I don’t make the top eight, but I’ll leave it to fate,” he said.

“I’ll do what I can to work with you, if we can, if we both go through,” I said.

He brightened.

“I might just survive it, then,” he said.

 

“You’ll have to go out of your way,” said Willow’s voice in my ear. “Ichiro is coming from about 120⁰ from the direction you’re taking.”

She filled me in on some details.

I would have to take out my stalker fast.

We got to meet them when we had studied the map. Mine was a grizzled veteran who had either been a cop or a sec guard for many years.

“I’m Mike,” he said. “Rule says I have to be in a booth they are setting up for ten minutes before I come after you. I’m looking forward to it.”

“And I can do anything I like to try to evade you during that ten minutes?” I said.

“Well, if you break the law, you’ll get the genuine article on your tail too,” he said.

“But there are no restrictions on where I may go?” I persisted.

“Nope. It’s only me restricted, and only long enough to give you half a chance,” he said.

“Fine,” I said.

We were loaded into taxis where Mike bored me with his dog handling business. We were taken to our start points, where we waited outside a kind of tent which was set up in the street, with drones, photographers, front men, gophers, secretaries and other paraphernalia littered about.

“Are you allowed to ask them where I went?” I asked Mike.

“Nope, only civilians,” he said.

“And they may not interfere with me?”

“Nope,” he said. “Are you a dog lover at all?”

“No, my wife is human,” I said, gravely.

“Time!” called a front man. Mike nodded and went into his tent.

I jogged past it; the film crew were out in front. Only a drone followed me. The thing had side drapes rather than an all round skirt, more a gazebo than a tent. I had hoped it would. I peered through. Mike was looking towards the front opening, almost vibrating with excitement.

I moved swiftly and silently through the opening, and gave him a short, scientific chop to the head to knock him cold. Then I stripped, stripped him, tied him up and gagged him, rubbed chalk in my hair before re-dressing, put on his clothes – retaining my own comfortable boots under his uniform trousers as well as my own underwear – made sure I had my season ticket, and waited. The drone operator had failed to get through the curtain, and the thing came round the front and in the flap.

I ignored it.

“Time, Mike!” someone called. I barrelled out, and made for the nearest metro entrance at a run. I went down the first set of stairs on one heel, flipped my contactless ticket, and was through. Down an escalator, which I also ran down, and into the train which was waiting, making it just as the doors closed. The drone fluttered disconsolately on the outside.

I was in the wind.

 

I went two stops and got out, before making for Ichiro’s sector.

The beauty of that was that the drone operator would never for one moment look for me there.

It was slightly complex, but there was a point he almost had to pass through to head for City Hall, unless he wanted to tangle with the sort of area where the locals are not Japanese and assume them to be rivals in organised crime, if you get my drift.

I did wonder if organising this district had been a final revenge on Sebastian’s part. I didn’t have a problem with Italian Americans myself, so I could afford to cut through with only minimal hassle.

And no, I did not expect Ichiro’s pursuer to have caught him. Ichiro was a street warrior in his youth and had bags full of experience avoiding the law. He probably had not been so blatant as to have transport waiting, but he might have a season ticket. That, I had to risk. Though I fancy Ichiro fancied himself showing off on the trid, with parkour tricks, roof-running, and that sort of thing. I went up onto the roofs myself, and there a drone delivered me a nice new air rifle and a cool box.

A cool box?

Oh! Clever Willow. Ice pellets to fire.

We had read his habits well. He was indeed roof-running, the drone showing distance, the drop, and then Ichiro airborn as he leaped from rooftop to rooftop. Not difficult amongst these older buildings, but impressive enough for most people.

I had to balance the reduced range of the lighter ice pellets with being far enough away for his drone not to focus on me. I waited until he was two roofs away, and fired as he took off. 

He flung his arms wide in shock, and through the telescopic sight I could see disbelief and horror on his face.

Momentum lost for jerking backwards in mid leap, he impacted the next roof face first instead of landing on it; and plummetted to the ground below.

He would land on his chest, which was good.  Any bruising caused by my ice pellets would be hidden by the greater impact of landing. I went back down the fire escape I had come up by, in a deserted alley, having dismantled the air rifle, and I shoved it in a dumpster along with the cool box.  I did not want to be a first-responder policeman on the scene – being in Mike’s uniform – so I went over the back wall of the alley, through a parking lot, a chop shop, and back onto the metro.

I brushed all the chalk I could out of my hair, and was Jay Silverheels’ usual debonair self as I stepped out of the stop nearest to City Hall, and jandered up the steps to the film crew.

Dave had got there before me, and grinned.

“I didn’t expect to beat you,” he said.

“Oh, I got lost in the Metro system,” I said. “Electric horses um no stop for shouting ‘whoa.’”

“You’re a city boy,” said Dave.

“Hush,” I said “Not everyone knows that. And the New York Metro is complex.”

He gave me a sideways look.

“I won’t say a word,” he said.

“I see your hospital trick worked,” I said. He was still in green scrubs.

“Like a charm,” he grinned. “And they even took me most of the way to City Hall. A few blocks walk, and there I was. Oppenheimer almost had conniptions.”

“Now that, I’d pay to see,” I grinned.