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They stood, leaning back against the anchored ropes, angling out into a fifty-story void. Inside the hotel, Pyramid security had sealed off the suite. All that remained was for the Global team to go in. They were all waiting for Vickers to give the signal.
He nodded and they jumped out and down into nothing. Only skill beat down the fear. Down and swing in, playing out rope all the time. Their feet hit the terrace. Bruce stumbled slightly but the other two moved forward like a textbook example. Both sets of French windows were closed. Bruce, swung the M90 off his back and started for the glass, swinging the heavy weapon like a club. Vickers allowed him to get ahead. If he fancied himself as Conan, let him go. The windows crashed into diamond smoke. Bruce was going straight through them. Subjective time had slowed. Vickers suddenly was above his fear. There was only the breathlessness and the taste of anxiety in his mouth. He was in control. It was all going to be easy. He and Frank Lang went through the glass together, exactly in Bruce's wake. Already it was carnage. Bruce had sprayed the room with the twin-barreled machine gun. The three-man hit team were dead on the floor. Walls and ceiling was riddled with bullet holes and spattered with blood. Vickers lowered his Yasha and thumbed on the safe. For a moment he thought that Lavern had been killed along with the Contec people. Then he saw Frank Lang helping her to her feet. She appeared to have had the presence of mind to roll down behind the bed when Bruce came crashing through the windows. In this, she'd been faster than the three supposed professionals. It didn't look as though the Contec team had been exactly easy with her. There was a bruise on her cheek, her robe was torn and she was secured with her own handcuffs. Her mouth moved in wordless shock as Lang started to search for the keys.
Vickers inspected the bodies. They were three men, all extremely young. It was little wonder that they'd been taken so completely by surprise. They could scarcely be long out of training school. Why had Victoria sent such babies? It would be a near miracle if Mossman didn't smell a rat. Bruce was also moving around the room inspecting his handiwork. He bent down and came up with a video tape in his hand. He gri
"Maybe we ought to take a look at this."
Vickers scowled. "You can get on the phone and tell hotel security that it's safe to come home. Tell them to bring a doctor for her and body bags for the other three."
Bruce was still holding the tape. Vickers extended a hand.
"I'll take that."
"Prude or something?"
"Maybe. Or maybe I just don't want to give away trade secrets."
The Pyramid security came in with a seemingly endless supply of grim hostility. There must have been two dozen of them, with discrete dark suits and hard, bleak expressions. Contec and Global had fought a battle on their territory and they'd been forced to stand by and watch. They were madder than hell and they icily eyeballed the Contec trio while the bodies were bagged and Lavern was examined by a medic. Once she'd been shot up with tranquilizers, it was suggested that she be admitted to the hotel infirmary and given a thorough checkup. Lavern, who'd recovered a little of her composure, nodded mutely. She had to pass Vickers as she was helped to the door. She hesitated in front of him. Her face was slack with the exhaustion of prolonged fear and her eyes were wide as a child's.
"What the hell are you, Mort? What the hell are you?"
Vickers had no answer, but before he could even invent something the phone shrilled. He snapped around. Bruce was reaching for it.
"Don't touch that! Let me get it."
He moved and grabbed while holding up a hand for quiet in the room; he made his voice neutral before he answered.
"Yeah."
"Vickers still hasn't come back?"
The voice was instantly recognizable. He hardly needed the face on the uncovered screen.
"Sure, Ilsa. I'm back. I'm afraid we had to grease your boys."
So Ilsa van Doren had been sent in to get him. She, in her turn, had delegated the job to the kids. It was all getting a bit messy. Ilsa made what, transmitted through the phone, sounded like a viper hiss.
"Damn you, Vickers. You're making this matter very personal."
"Then perhaps you'd better come in person."
"I will next time."
"Next time?"
"Trust me."
"You'd better tell Victoria I'm working for Global now. You may find that she doesn't want anyone to fuck with the property of Herbie Mossman."
"I promise you there'll be a next time. You can count on that."
Vickers wondered if he'd made a rather foolish error in not killing her back when he'd had the chance.
FOUR
IT WAS DECIDED that Vickers should leave the city. He should be straight away transferred to the mysterious training camp in the desert. Even though he protested that he didn't feel any need to run from Ilsa van Doren, Mossman had been adamant. Vickers had become valuable. He was to be placed beyond the reach of Contec. Vickers wasn't clear what it was about him that was considered so valuable but he accepted it as a great deal better than being considered worthless. Mossman appeared to have completely bought the charade at the Pyramid, if indeed it had been a charade at all. Vickers still had his reservations. If Mossman had noticed the youth and inexperience of the Contec squad he hadn't seen fit to mention it. The fact that Ilsa was in the city and apparently directing them seemed to confirm that Vickers was a genuine target for a genuinely vengeful former employer.
Vickers had been given a line of credit and allowed out on a brief shopping trip to equip himself with an assortment of combat clothes, three pairs of boots, a flak vest, a bunch of toilet articles, some books, a tape player and a couple of bags in which to carry it all. The last stop was a gun store. With formalities smoothed by the mention of Herbie Mossman, he had bought himself the usual Yasha 7 plus the backup of a nine millimeter automatic and, as an afterthought, a shoulder holster. By the time he had all that he felt he needed, the sun was once again going down on Las Vegas. He was informed that a car would collect him at midnight. They were seemingly leaving the city under cover of darkness. This left him enough time to go back to the hotel for a shower, an early supper and then four hours' sleep.
It was Bruce who wakened him from an anxious and depressing dream in which naked people roamed a chill blue-gray desert and fought each other with long chrome spears like giant needles. At first he was disoriented and didn't recognize the room. He'd been temporarily housed in a small, faceless motel in back of the Strip. When he realized where he was, he profoundly wished that he was someplace else. "Damn."
He needed a holiday. "Time to move now."
"I feel terrible."
"Let's get going, shall we mate?"
Vickers had slept in his clothes, so all he had to do was to splash water on his face and gather up his belongings. On the way out the door, Bruce reached for the case that contained Vickers' brand new guns. "I'll take that for you."
Vickers halted. "Yeah?"
"It'd be better."
It seemed tactful not to make an issue of it. "Whatever you say."
Bruce took the case and started toward the parking lot. On the way, they passed a line of vending machines.
"You mind if I get some coffee?"
"You'll find everything you need in the car." When Vickers had been told a car would collect him, he'd expected nothing more than that. He was surprised to discover a minor motorcade. A black stretch limo was preceding and followed by a matched pair of lime green Jeep Comanches with inch-thick plexiglass and wire-mesh screens on the windows and windshield. To say the least, he was confused. One moment they were buying him guns and the next they were taking him away; one moment a cracker box motel, the next the red carpet. What did they want with him? What did they want him to do? He was even more confused to discover a nurse waiting for him in the limo. He assumed she was a nurse because she wore a nurse's uniform. She was so totally Vegas that she could just as easily have been a hooker on special assignment. Whichever one, she seemed almost u