Black Man / Thirteen

They went down to the street. Cold struck through the thin fabric of the S(t)igma jacket he’d blagged in Florida.

Ortiz was waiting for them on the other side of the thoroughfare, leaning against the flank of the COLIN limo in a plain black topcoat and sipping coffee from a stall up the street. Carl could see the yellow-and-black logo repeat, weak holoplay in the bright winter air of the market and again in stenciled micro on the Styrofoam in Ortiz’s hand. Steam coiled up out of the cup and met the frost of the man’s breath as he raised the coffee to his lips. An unobtrusive security exec stood nearby, hands lightly clasped, sca

Ortiz spotted them and stacked his coffee casually on the roof of the limo at his side. As Carl approached, he stepped forward to meet him and stuck out his hand. No wince, no sign of the internal steeling Carl was used to when he made the clasp with someone who knew what he was. Instead, there was a loose grin on Ortiz’s lean bronzed face that shaved years off his otherwise sober demeanor.

“Mr. Marsalis. Good to see you again. It’s been awhile, I don’t know if you’ll remember me from Brussels.”

“Spring ’03.” Carl masked his surprise. “Yeah, I remember.”

Ortiz made a wry face. “What a complete mess that was, eh? Two agendas, worlds apart and steaming steadily in opposite directions. Hard to believe we even bothered talking.”

Carl shrugged. “Talking’s always the easy part. Looks good, doesn’t cost anything.”

“Yes, very true.” Ortiz shifted focus with the polished smoothness of the career politician. “Ms. Ertekin. I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion. Tom Norton told me you’d be coming in, but I felt in view of the. Unpleasantness, it might be as well to provide an escort. And since I was on my way across town anyway…”

You thought you’d swing the opportunity to curry some potential UN favor. Right. Or maybe just gawk at the thirteen.

But underneath the sneer, Carl found himself unable to summon much dislike for Ortiz. Maybe it was the relaxed handshake and the grin, maybe just the contrast with the past four months down in the Republic. He turned to catch Ertekin’s response, see what he could read in her face. The tiger eyes and—

—something invisible splits the air between them.

Carl was moving before he had time to consciously understand why.

—flicker of black motion in the corner of his eye—

He hit Ertekin with crossed arms, bore her to the pavement and crushed her there. One hand groping for a weapon he didn’t have. Over his head, the air in the street erupted in spit-hiss fury.

Magfire.

He heard the coachwork on the limo go first, riddled from end to end—it sounded like a spate of sudden, heavy rain. Someone yelled, grunted as they were hit. Bodies tumbled behind him, dimly sensed. Screams. He was smearing himself on top of Ertekin, casting about for the—

There.

Out of the market, the pitch and panic of the surrounding multitude, three crouched, black-clad forms, and the sashaying gait of skaters. They hugged the stubby electromag spray guns to their bellies, cradled low in both hands as they surfed the crowd. Shoulder work opened their path—Carl saw bystanders shunted aside and sprawling. The mesh made it seem like slow motion. Chloride clarity gave him the lead skater, stance shifting as he lifted the muzzle of the spray gun, eyes wide in the pale skin gap of the black ski mask. Half a dozen meters at most, he was going to make sure of his shot this time.

Carl locked gazes and came up off the floor snarling.

Later, he’d never know if it was the matched stare, the noise he made, or just the mesh-assisted speed that saved his life. Maybe there was the edge of a flinch in the man’s face as he hurtled forward; the ski mask made it hard to tell. By then Carl was already up and on him. Three—count them, one! two! three!—sprinted steps and a whirl of tanindo technique. The blade of his left hand slammed in under the lead skater’s chin; his right just added lift and vectored spin. The two of them went over together in a tangle of limbs. The spray gun dropped and skittered. Carl got on top of the skater and started hitting him in the face and throat.

The other two were sharp. The right wing leapt cleanly over the tumbled bodies in his path, came down tight with a solid plastic smack, and kept going. Carl got a confused glimpse of the landing, too busy killing the lead skater to pay real attention. But he felt the other wingman fuck up the same maneuver and catch one skate on Carl’s raised shoulder as he jumped. The black-clad form went headlong, almost graceful, hit and rolled on the pavement. Controlled impact, he’d be back up any second. The mesh strung moments apart like loops of cabling. Carl hacked down savagely with an elbow one more time and beneath him the lead skater went abruptly limp. As the tumbled wingman got almost back upright, Carl lunged, grabbed up the leader’s electromag, clumsily, left-handed, squirmed sideways, getting line of fire, and emptied the gun.

The magload sounded like seething water as it left the gun. No recoil—thank Christ—and pretty much point-blank. Carl lay, awkwardly braced, and watched the slugs rip into their target. The wing skater seemed to trip forward again, but jerkily this time, no grace in it. He collapsed facedown, twisted once, and didn’t move again.

The electromag’s feed mechanism coughed empty and stopped.

Sound filtered through: voices raised and hysterical weeping. Still frosted into the mesh, Carl heard it as if through a long pipe. He picked himself up warily, still not convinced at a cellular level that the third skater wasn’t coming back. He dropped the empty weapon, walked to the dead wingman. Crouched beside the body and tugged the man’s spray gun free. He checked the load, almost absently, on autopilot now, and surveyed the damage around him.

The limo was a write-off, coachwork pockmarked gray on black with the raking impact of the magfire. The windows were punched through in a couple of dozen places, powdered to white opaque in spiderweb lines around each hole. Incredibly, Ortiz’s coffee stood where he’d parked it, intact and steaming quietly on the roof of the limo. But Ortiz and his security were both down, tangled in each other’s arms and motionless—it looked as if the bodyguard had tried to get his boss to the ground and cover him there. Blood pooling on the molded pavement where they lay suggested he’d failed. Other bodies lay at a distance, shoppers and stall traders caught in the magfire. Ertekin was up on her knees, staring dazedly around at the mess. Her olive skin was smeared sallow with shock.

“Got two of them,” said Carl thickly as he helped her to her feet. “Third one was too fast leaving. Sorry.”

She just stared at him.

“Ertekin.” He flickered fingers in front of her face. “Are you injured? Are you hurt? Talk to me, Ertekin.”

She shook herself. Pushed his hand away.

“Fine.” It was a bare croak. She cleared her throat. “I’m fine. We’d better get. An ambulance. Get these people…”

She shook herself again.

“Who? Did you see…?”

“No.” Carl stared away in the direction the last skater had disappeared. He could feel a decision stealing over him like ice. “No, I didn’t. But right after the meat van gets here, I think you’d better take me in to COLIN so we can start work and find out.”