COUNT ZERO

Bobby scrambled out from behind the screen and hauled the table and chairs to the side.

“Catch this,” Beauvoir said, and dangled a bulging olive-drab pack from one of its shoulder straps, then let it go The weight of the thing nearly took Bobby to the floor. “Now get out of my way... Beauvoir swung down out of the duct, hung from the opening’s edge with both hands, then dropped.

“What happened to the screamer I had up there?” Jammer asked, standing up behind the bar, the little machine gun in his hands.

“Right here,” Beauvoir said, tossing a dull gray bar of phenolic resin to the carpet. It was wrapped with a length of fine black wire. “No other way I could get in here without a regular array of shitballs knowing about it, as it happens.

Somebody’s obviously given them the blueprints to the place, but they’ve missed that one.”

“How’d you get up to the roof?” Jackie asked, stepping from behind a screen.

“I didn’t,” Beauvoir said, pushing his big plastic frames back up his nose. “I shot a line of monomol across from the stack next door, then slid over on a ceramic spindle...” His short nappy hair was full of furnace dust, He looked at her gravely. “You know,” he said.

“Yes. Legba and Papa Ougou, in the matrix. I jacked with Bobby, on Jammer’s deck...”

“They blew Ahmed away on the Jersey freeway. Probably used the same launcher they did Bobby’s old lady with...”

“Who?”

“Still not sure,” Beauvoir said, kneeling beside the pack and clicking open the quick-release plastic fasteners, “but it’s starting to shape up... What I was working on, up until I heard Lucas had been hit, was ru

“I du

“Had,” Beauvoir put the shotgun down and started loading a Nambu automatic, “Most of the people on this level and the next one down got bought out this afternoon. Cash. Duffels full of it, There’s a few holdouts, but not enough.” “That doesn’t make any sense,” Jackie said, taking the glass of Scotch from Jammer’s hand and drinking it straight off. “What do we have that anybody could want that bad?” “Hey,” Bobby said, “don’t forget, they probably don’t know those Lobes ripped me for the icebreaker. Maybe that’s all they want.”

“No,” Beauvoir said, snapping the magazine into the Nambu, “because they couldn’t have known you hadn’t stashed it in your mother’s place, right?”

“But maybe they went there and looked...”

“So how did they know Lucas wasn’t carrying it in Ahmed?”

Jammer said, walking back to the bar.

“Fi

“Maas again,” Beauvoir said. “Whoever, here’s the deal with the Kasuals and Gothicks. We’d know more, but Alix the Lobe got on his high horse and wouldn’t parley with Raymond. No co-employment with the hated Kasuals. Near as our cowboys could make out, the army’s outside to keep you people in. And to keep people like me out. People with guns and stuff.” He handed the loaded Nambu to Jackie. “You know how to use a gun?” he asked Bobby.

“Sure,” Bobby lied.

“No,” Jammer said, “we got enough trouble without arming him. Jesus Christ...”

“What all that suggests to me,” Beauvoir said, “is that we can expect somebody else to come in after us. Somebody a little more professional...”

“Unless they just blow Hypermart all to shit and gone,” Jammer said, “and all those zombies with it...”

“No,” Bobby said, “or else they’d already have done it.”

They all stared at him.

“Give the boy credit,” Jackie said. “He’s got it right.”

Thirty minutes later and Jammer was staring glumly at Beauvoir. “I gotta hand it to you. That’s the most half-assed plan I’ve heard in a long time.”

“Yeah, Beauvoir,” Bobby cut in, “why can’t we just crawl back up that vent, sneak across the roof, and get over to the next building? Use the line you came over on.”

“There’s Kasuals on the roof like flies on shit,’ Beauvoir said. “Some of them might even have brain enough to have found the cap I opened to get down here. I left a couple of baby frag mines on my way in.” He gri

“Then how the hell did you expect to get out?” Bobby said.

“Drop it, Bobby,” Jackie said quietly. “Beauvoir’s done what he had to do. Now he’s in here with us, and we’re armed”

“Bobby,” Beauvoir said, “why don’t you run the plan back to us, make sure we understand it.

Bobby had the uncomfortable feeling that Beauvoir wanted to make sure he understood it, but he leaned back against the bar and began. “We get ourselves all armed up and we wait, okay? Jammer and I, we go out with his deck and scout around the matrix, maybe we get some idea what’s happening.

“I think I can handle that by myself,” Jammer said.