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Pittman and Alamzad were out their side of the car before Caine and his human anchors could disengage themselves, racing toward the tu
The Security car had shot off the road to the right, crashing through the barrier and down the cliff to the creek below. The pilot, perhaps startled thoughtless by the apparent accident, had followed it down and was just coming to a hovering stop overhead.
Leaving its upper side exposed to the road above.
And the beams from the two lasers lanced out together, striking the intake vents dead on.
They took barely half a second of the fire before the pilot jumped the spotter out of position like a scalded bat. But the action was too late, and even as he brought the spotter around toward the road it was clear he was starting to lose altitude. His lasers fired once, too low, and then he gave up, and a moment later the spotter came to rest beside the ruined Security car.
Caine licked his lips briefly, arms trembling with reaction. A certifiably crazy stunt... but it had worked. "Let's get out of here," he told the others, as calmly as he could. "He may have enough range even in these mountains to whistle up reinforcements."
Apparently he didn't. Fifteen uneventful minutes later, they were once again within the teeming anonymity of Denver.
Chapter 11
Qui
Galway forced himself to return the general's glare steadily. "Would you rather have left them stuck out there with no transportation?" he asked.
Qui
Just great."
"It's not my fault that someone tried to steal their car," Galway said stiffly. "It's also not my fault Caine got back at the wrong moment. I could point out that if your men had bothered to make a surveillance pass first they would have seen that Caine had things under control and could have just kept going with no one the wiser."
"Oh, right." Qui
Galway sighed. "We both assumed it was the others in the stolen Security car, General—don't try to push all that off onto my shoulders."
"Why not? You're the one who claims to know these bastards—why the hell didn't you recognize Caine's voice?"
"What difference would that have made? Really? All right, suppose I had realized it was Caine's team in those two cars. He knows that Security dispatchers aren't stupid enough to fall for such a simple charade—he'd have been suspicious as hell if we hadn't made some reasonable response. All right, so we've temporarily lost them. So what? As long as Postern is alive and unsuspected, we're still on top of things."
Qui
"What have you got on the three people Caine's team took out?" Galway asked.
The other shrugged. "Smugglers, it appears, though we won't know exactly what they were smuggling until we get their car back—maybe not even then if they were on their way to a drop when they stopped. It's nothing particularly unusual—Denver's a sewer sludge of criminal types."
Galway pursed his lips. Smugglers. Caine had mentioned smugglers when he talked to the dispatcher on that wild ride back to Denver. Had he simply pulled that out of the air, or had he had time to interrogate the failed car thieves before the Security team blundered onto the scene? Though he couldn't see offhand what difference it made either way.
Aegis Mountain.
Galway shivered. So he'd been right about Caine's target—the team's afternoon trip virtually assured that. There was nothing else in that area that could possibly be of interest to the commandos.
Unless...
"Are there any private residences out in those mountains?" he asked the Security man slowly.
The other's eyebrows lifted slightly. "I can't imagine the Ryqril letting anyone live that close to their base," he said.
"Neither can I. Check it out anyway."
"Yes, sir." Swiveling around to his board, the officer logged the request with the appropriate research unit. "Unless it's urgent, Prefect, you probably won't get anything on this until morning," he pointed out. "Do you want me to tag it as a priority?"
Galway hesitated. "No, don't bother. Morning should be soon enough."
Especially since anything like a priority tag would be likely to attract Qui
Still, it wouldn't hurt to hang around for another hour or so. Just in case something came through.
—
Seen from space, nighttime Denver looked even more alive and active than its daytime incarnation had, and for the umpteenth time since Qui
"Prefect Galway?"
Galway started, realizing with some embarrassment that he'd dozed off. He looked up as Colonel Poirot, the man in charge of Denver's night watch, sat down beside him. "Yes, what is it? Have you found Caine's new car?"
Poirot shook his head. "No chance now, really. The satellites had him until about halfway through Golden, but we just couldn't keep track of him once the traffic got too thick."
Galway sighed. "Yeah. I suppose I was hoping we could get enough high-resolution stills that we could trace through them. By hand if necessary."
"You've already seen the highest-resolution we've got, I'm afraid." The colonel exhaled with frustration. "You know, before the war we had satellites that could count the eggs on a picnic table.
I'll never understand why the Ryqril didn't replace them."
"Because satellite transmissions can always be tapped into," Galway told him. "The Ryqril don't like the chance that someone else might be monitoring their movements. Well... what good news did you bring me?"
"Good news is a rarity around here tonight," Poirot said dryly. "This little gem came in a few minutes ago: the Ryqril have picked up a small ship skulking around a few million klicks out."
"What?" Galway took the proffered report, sca
"For the moment, apparently not. The ship certainly can't come any closer without triggering alerts all over the planet; by the same token the Ryqril can't get something out there without spooking it."
At which point it would simply swing around through hyperspace and take up its vigil elsewhere, forcing the Ryqril to waste time locating it again. Galway understood the logic, but that didn't mean he had to like it. "Postern didn't say anything about a ship," he muttered. "I wonder just how many other cards Caine's got stashed up his sleeves."