Marie pulled up to a stop sign and threw the Khamsin into park. There was no one behind us to get pissed, anyway. "Okay, okay. Time to get to work," muttered Marie. She rummaged around under the seat again, but rather than beer she pulled out a stubby, folding-stocked carbine. "Hold this, if ya don't mind. You shot a kalash before?"

I carefully took the rifle. "Yeah, once or twice." Plenty of the guns that ended up in the junkyard when I was a kid were kalashes of one type or another. This was an interesting one, the barrel short enough that with the stock folded I could have hidden it under my coat. By the weight of it, it was loaded; to be sure I took off the safety and eased back the charging handle. Brass winked at me from the ejection port, bright and happy. She was ready to go.

I safed the gun and turned to Marie, who was watching with approval. "So, who are we shooting?" I asked.

"D-damn, Sawyer!" she coughed, taken off guard. "You really are a go-getter! We aren't' shootin' anyone."

"Come on, Marie! I mean, well, you drove me to Eighth and handed me a gun! What else am I gonna think we're doing?"

"Look, all you gotta do is roll down the window and hold that rattler where everyone can see it. Don't point it around or anything, just make it real obvious you got it." She grinned at me. "The objective here is drawin' attention. Oh, and be ready to chuck that package out the window."

Now it was my turn to bug out "W-wait, seriously? Why'd I have to go through all this elaborate crap-"

"Subterfuge, as Clydey would say. Subterfuge. If you thought it was important, well, anyone one who's been spyin' on us thinks so too. Ready?"

Shaking my head, I pulled out the package and set it on the seat between my legs. "Ready. I still don't understand this plan, though."

"In due time, Sharkie. Let's go." She yanked the Khamsin into gear and stomped on the throttle. We did a screaming four-wheel burnout away from the stop sign, the V8's roar echoing off the buildings. For a couple seconds the ute accelerated madly down the street, each shift sending a shock through my whole body. Then Marie got on the brakes so hard I thought I might detach a retina before powersliding around a corner. This went on for a minute or two, Marie using Eighth Ward's streets as a personal racetrack, swerving around the few other vics on the road, shattering the empty quiet and generally driving like an absolute madwoman.

"If your tires weren't killed before they are now," I panted during a brief respite. Every single turn had been a sideways smokeshow. I'd kept the kalash up in the window the whole time.

"I made Clydey promise me a new set before I said yes to the job," said Marie, the huge smile on her face belying her calm tone. "The fuckin' things are six hundred chits a pop, and in a weird size to boot. Let's make sure I get my money's worth!" She ripped into a very illegal U-turn and we shot off again.

I soon noticed a couple cars doing their best to keep up with us, though being plastic fantastics with piddly little motors they weren't doing a very good job. "I think we have a tail, Marie!" I groaned as we howled round a decreasing-radius bend.

"Do we? Perfect!" She smashed us through three turns in rapid succession. The Khamsin vibrated fit to shake apart as it barely kept traction. The last corner took us onto a larger thoroughfare. She promptly smashed the brakes, bringing us to a slow creep.

"A tail's good? Why's a tail good?" I asked nervously. The cars in the rearview were getting closer.

"We gotta deliver our package to somebody, don't we?" She peered at the storefronts lining the street, looking for something. "There! There we are." She coasted to a gentle halt in front of a square building with white-painted sheet metal siding. Backlit block capitals hung above the door, spelling out "TSAMOV TRAN GUOC RESTAURANT." Beneath them was an abstract symbol made of blue triangles-the Blue Div insignia. The flat wall reflected the sound of the exhaust, near-deafening even at idle. Marie revved the engine a few times, backfires popping off like a machine gun. I thought I saw movement through the restaurant's tinted glass doors. "Maybe we ought to get moving, Marie," I muttered. I rested a finger on the kalash's safety. Sitting in the car made me feel stuck as a flipped roach.

"Oh, we will. Hold on to your ass, young Sawyer!" She held down a switch, stomped on the throttle and brake at once. The engine spun up, deafening me, the blower screaming like a damned soul, but we stayed still. The whole car hunched like a cat getting ready to pounce as the drivetrain loaded up. Launch control.

I glanced over at the door, saw a bald, chubby dude in a suit come out. His face was red with anger, except where blue tattoos marked it. The anger changed to shock as he saw we weren't your typical hooligans.

"That's right, fucker!" Marie shouted when she saw him. "Come and get it! YEEHAW!" She jumped off the brake and we shot off the line so hard I was pressed a few extra inches into the seat. The blurred view out the windshield, the tremendous accereration, the unholy, glorious fucking noise! It was sensory overload in the best way possible. I screamed in excitement even though I couldn't hear it.

She kept us gunning for the building at the end of the street far longer than I would have thought safe. I didn't yell at her, figuring she knew her business, but I couldn't help freaking out a little, looking back and forth between her and the rapidly approaching wall. Just when I thought she'd kill us both she braked, the seatbelt cutting into me, the rest of the six-pack shooting out from under the seat. Just as she ripped us into a gut-wrenching left turn, I heard the pops of gunfire from behind. Our tail was no longer content with just following.

"Marie, they're shooting at us!"

"Don't shoot back. Probably won't hit anything you want to anyway." She kept checking the mirrors, not quite back on the gas yet. "'Sides, we got armor!" She rapped her knuckles on the windshield pillar. "Composite, baby. Tough but light."

"I thought this was a racecar!"

She flashed me a mad grin. "If you knew the kinda people I race with, hon, you'd armor up too." I caught the flash of headlights in the mirrors as our pursuit caught up. Marie got on the gas again. "Finally," she muttered. "These Blue fuckers spend too much on clothes. Imagine puttin' on your thousand-denar suit to go to the club, then rollin' up to the valet in a plastic shitbox." There was a loud clack as a bullet deflected off the edge of the cab roof. "Dammit! The paint on this thing is a bitch and a half to touch up."

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"Maybe you could worry about that later-Fuck!" She'd suddenly jerked the wheel left, bouncing the side of my face off the door frame. "Warn me if you're gonna do that shit!" I yelled over the exhaust as we shot down a tiny alley.

"If it surprised you, it definitely surprised them, right?" she laughed.

"Kings damn it..." I growled. These quarrymen seemed to live for fucking with people. "I thought you wanted 'em to follow us, for whatever reason! And now you wanna lose 'em?"

"I want 'em to stay on us, yeah, but I don't want them to know I want them to, you know? And quit your bitchin', we're almost done."

We hammered through a few more turns and mad accelerations, staying just slow enough that the Blue Div dragassers could keep up. Marie's driving kept most of the fire off us, though once a bullet slammed into the back window directly between us, the sound of it just about making me jump through the roof. Whatever kind of reinforced polymer she had in there crazed with cracks but held.

"Damn! That's just about enough, I think!" she shouted. "I'm gonna smash the brakes and take this next left. When I do, chuck that package out the window!"

"For real?"

"Yeah, for real! Here we go!" She hadn't exaggerated when she said 'smash.' I would have gone through the windshield if not for the seatbelt, which just near-choked me instead. The Khamsin jitterbugged back and forth like a droplet of water on a hot pan as Marie kept it just on the edge of stable. "Now!" she screamed.

I pulled the package out of my lap and tossed it unceremoniously out of the car. I didn't even see it land, for Marie took the corner and did her best to shove the gas pedal through the floor. "You throw it? It's out?"

"Yeah, yeah! Hey, 'Rie, that light's red-oh, okay. Just run it. That works too."

Marie just laughed. I got my bearings; we seemed to be headed southeast at a high rate of speed, quickly leaving Eighth Ward behind. Our tail was long gone. Finally Marie slowed down as the traffic thickened. "Fuckin' sweet, Sharkie! Without a hitch! Find me a beer, wouldja?"

After sticking the gun back under the seat, I found the last two cans-which had somehow wedged themselves between the seat and my door-and gave her one. She popped the top one-handed and drank about half of it in one pull. I opened up the other, though I expected we were drinking for rather different reasons.

"You want to explain the rationale behind..." I waved my hand around vaguely. "...all that?"

Marie belched and let the can dangle out her window. " Sure. That package Clyde had you get? It was pictures of one of Eighth's Blue underbosses. Compromisin' pictures."

"What, like he's into diapers or something?"

She gave me an incredulous look. "No, not that kind of compromising! Where the fuck did that come from? Phew. Naw, it's pictures of this guy Boss Yao, meetin' up with another Blue name of Nabeko Hojuu."

"So?" I asked, nursing my Ippon. "They're both Blues. She didn't answer for a moment, taking a hairpin onto Bavinstrasse heading east.

"Ah, but one Blue may not be like another, Sawyer dear." She was smirking at me again. "Yao's boss, Gustavo the Sausage-that's the fat guy in the suit-works for General Mikey Oliva. Hojuu, though, she works directly for General Paolo Caremme. You moppin' up what I'm spillin'?"

After thinking a couple moments, I thought I had an answer. "One of those generals is running the rogue faction of Blue Division, I'm guessing? And Walker wants them to eat each other!" She nodded encouragingly. "How'd we get shots of something like that?"

"No clue. They might be fake, too, just computer workups. The effect's the same either way, right?" She smiled, looking straight out the window. "Distrust and discord, wailing and gnashing of teeth. And as for why we didn't just have a courier run 'em over or something," she continued, guessing my next question, "the Bones coming in person adds a whole 'nother layer to the thing. Now Gus, Mikey, Paolo, they're gonna be thinking 'Did the other guys go to the Bones? Did my guy go to the Bones behind my back? Am I being played?' Questions to keep you up at night, right? Keep you paranoid, keep you nervous. And nervous men fuck up." She finished her beer as we rolled up to a red light, sagged back in the seat for a moment. "Plus, a car chase makes a great distraction," she said offhandedly.

I leaned toward her. "Distraction for what, Marie? What happened?"

She purposely lit up a smoke to drag things out after I asked, seamlessly switching vices. "Let's just say that there was plenty of valuable merchandise in the back of that restaurant, and while we were putting on an exhibition for the rubberneckers some very sneaky people went in and removed it. Very sneaky people with tattoos like ours." She wiggled her skeleton-marked fingers.

"I, uh, I don't have 'em."

"Oh. Right. Yeah. Gotta lay off the beer before dinner, I guess."

"You want me to drive?" I asked dubiously. She gave me a frank, flat look. Only a little walleyed. "Fine, fine. But the upshot is we ran them around in circles while some other Bones stole their drugs."

"Yup. Gus the Sausage is probably drownin' in flop sweat right about now."

"I mean, good, but why didn't you and Walker tell me all this shit beforehand?"

"Clyde? He's testin' you, probably. How close do you follow orders, how do you think on your feet, that kinda thing. He's go big plans for you, seems like."

I frowned, thinking. I didn't want anyone making plans for me. The thought made me resentful, and nervous too. "And you?" I finally said.

"Oh. I didn't say anything 'cause I thought it'd be funny. And look! I was right!" She cracked up again, darting through a few lanes of traffic and making a left turn as the yellow light turned red.

I just sighed, rubbing my face. No point getting mad. It was over now and she was too drunk anyway. I'd just have to be on my toes next time. "Well, thanks for the ride, Marie. That part was fun, at least."

"Sure, sure. You gotta get out to the track sometime. It's a fuckin' riot. Usually not literally."

"Don't worry, I will. You mind dropping me off near Parkside? I got some shopping to do."

"Oh, my! How fancy!" She grinned, hooking a turn north. "You lookin' to pay too much money for too little food? Maybe get one of those stupid end tables that's too small to actually put anything on, but it costs five hundred denars cause it's made outta some guy's old-"

"Vandermaas, 'Rie. I'm going to see Vandermaas."

"Ah, the Vanman. Tell 'im I said hello, would you? This is close enough, right?" By sheer coincidence she'd swung into the same lot from which we'd gone into the park. It would work. "Yes, ma'am. Thanks again. And don't wreck on your way home." I hopped out, stretching my shoulders.

"Anytime, Sawyer." She winked. "You did well today. You be careful too, hear?"

I thought of something. "Marie, wait a sec!"

"Yeah?"

"Let me get a picture of your whip. That friend I was telling you about, she'd love this thing."

"Go ahead! Here, gimme a second." She cocked the front wheels a little bit so I'd get a better shot, then flipped a middle finger out the window-with the tattooed hand, of course. I got a couple shots with my slab and gave her a thumbs-up.

"Thanks, man. This thing ought to be in magazines."

"Would be if the journos weren't scared of me. Fuckin' vultures. Anyway, hope she likes it. You have a good one!" Marie peeled out, courteous enough with the throttle that only a little gravel shot into my face.

I sighed long and heavy, watching her go. What a day. I turned around and headed north towards Tanje's shop.