Without taking her eyes off of the roo, Tasìa smacked the wall below her with the butt of the .357 revolver. There was no razor wire. At least immediately beneath her.
She braced herself, left leg dropped down against the back of the wall to pin the rest of her body in place, the 50-Split now raised up in both of her hands. Tasìa took a shot aimed at the roo's head. In the time it took her to squeeze the trigger and the bullet to reach its mark, the roo disappeared.
Oh fuck, she exclaimed softly, as she thrust herself down and away from the wall and braced herself against a car hood.
A clammer of metallic debris smacked against the wall where she had been a split instance before. Of all Nature's creatures, this was one of the few who possessed an advantage of speed. She kept moving as she put the 50-Split away, and brought the stiletto back in hand.
She no longer would have the advantage of distance between them.
Tasìa did not necessarily want to kill the roo, but neither could she deny what its presence meant. Cartels loved to use the jacked-up roos in yards like this one. They called them the English phrase 'speed freaks', or just plain 'freaks.'
This motherfucker will not stop until it kills me!
She needed to get moving.
As she whipped passed a strapped down bundle of cars stacked three high, a thump ponded against the one on the top, a Black Falcon Camaro. With another thump, the front windshield suddenly smashed in.
Her nostrils flared up, unleashing a coppery steam.
The roo's next jump, Tasìa perceived as she evoked the Modality, would be a razor sharp hoof in the side of her neck; she raised the stiletto up like a shield with both hands gripped upon it. The flat of the blade caught the heel of the roo's hoof.
Tasìa twisted her shoulders, aligning with the thrust of the kick before the roo could crash into her, and jerked the blade from the hoof and swung it in a downward arc into its nut sack.
The roo's squeal it let out mightily unhinged. She tried to shake and jerk the blade to give to the cut a jagged rip for more penetrating damage but the roo flipped backwards to avoid her.
Now that she achieved a little distance between herself and it, Tasìa once more switched out her weapons. With the .357 Iconoclastic in hand, she let the Modality guide her hand to take a burst of shots.
When she executed the sweep, however, the roo was not there to catch the bullets.
Faster than Modality calculation? The fuck!
Tasìa eased off the modality adrenaline rush and she backed away from the stacks, towards the open yard to force the roo to attack her in the open though she had no idea where it disappeared.
Her upper torso pivoted from left to right at a 120° radius. It was a reasonable assessment of where the roo could have maneuvered but from behind her, a whirling noise grew louder, and she ducked as an old-fashioned license plate bounced off her leather jacket.
The roo had kicked it from her right where by the laws of physics it had no right to be.
As she spun to face the roo, Tasìa felt a rip in the jacket and that made her furious. She snapped the .357 Iconoclastic up level to take advantage of the angle of attack. Its slide-ruler sites automatically adjusted to accommodate the space between her and a potential target.
A second license plate thumped against the pistol and smacked the side of her hand. Blood splat in her eye where she was cut in the webbing between her pinky and little finger.
She dropped the gun as her hand seared in pain.
Its a good time for the roo to come at me in a hard charge, Tasìa thought.
She kicked her legs out in a flip, and somersaulted. Her boot heels made connection with the roo's face. It stunned the beast long enough for her to grab the .357 Iconoclastic, twist around, and empty four shots to its chest where a human heart would be.
Kangaroo anatomy wasn't a subject of familiarity to her.
It mattered not, the beast dropped dead to the ground.
Tasìa relaxed. She now realized as she let out her breath and gulped in air that she had not breathed in over a minute.
She ignored the pain in her hand.
With a shake of her head Tasìa cursed in despair. She felt the greatest of contempt for those who turned animals into human killers. Only a few apex predators did the rivalry come naturally, such as with the grizzly, but for the rest of the animal world to challenge Man, that was unnatural.
The junk yard roo, the speed freak, was an abomination created by the designs of evil men. Cartel assholes.
Tasìa bent over to catch her breath. Killing an animal not meant for game always brought about a foul mood.
She took a moment to recall a playful argument on the prison yard track that she had with Lydia Estrella.
"I always had dogs in my yard trained to protect me as a child. Dad was a cartel accountant."
"They were trained to not just warn you but to attack?" Tasìa asked.
"Of course. Vicious creatures at that. I wasn't allowed to play with them. I needed them for my protection."
"Lydia, that is what a gun is for."
Lydia threw up her hands, palms clutching the air.
"At eight?"
"Why not?"
Lydia chuckled and brushed off the argument with a scattering of her fingertips. Being argumentative was declassé in her social circles.
"You're a queer senora, mi amiga."
Once her breath returned and her heart calmed down, she surveyed the salvage yard to make sure nothing else lay-in-wait for her. Only a few other vehicles besides the Lamborghini Huracán were scattered about the premises that had not been piled into stacks.
Tasìa's eyes scanned cautiously.
They would make for excellent shelters for vermin.
She took out her PalmEx and scanned the grounds for IR readings. Only three creatures were large enough to pose a threat - a trio of peccary skunk pigs roamed about the far distant side.
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Her mind at ease, Tasìa was ready to call the Lt. Colonel and read him in when something else caught her attention. It wasn't a living thing but a dizzying fright crawled up her torso even so.
There was a Hearse amongst the cars. It stood alone in a cubby made of three sets of stacked vehicles. Tasìa was damn certain it was the very same one from her incident with the vampire larpers on the outskirts of Villa Marròn
She approached the vehicle cautiously with the .357 Iconoclastic drawn low, but then chuckled at the absurdity. If he was in that coffin and actually rose up from the dead, she would just nail him again but with a much greater increase in magnum force this time.
As much as she loved that .32 Kel-Tech she used to splatter his brains, the little repeater pistol was mostly useful for its ease of concealment.
She didn't want to keep Sol waiting longer than necessary, so she picked up the pace and opened the driver side door. A coffin was there, but was it the same one? Hell, Tasìa didn't pay enough attention to it on her excursion several weeks previously to identify it conclusively. This one was white, done in false marble with gold inlay - what of it could she remember?
As Tasìa twisted her head to appraise it better, something caught her eye. Three pills in the pinch of the driver's seat. Some more pills were scattered in the floorboard.
Yep. This was it!
Those pills were Sinclair's. She downed a bottle of prescription meds as she freaked out over the prospect of changing into a ghoul.
How long has the vehicle been here?
Tasìa checked out the ground beneath it. The sparse grass meant it likely was rolled into the yard soon after she made short work of the vampire larper and his ghoul crew.
Quite the coincidence.
"Lt. Colonel Sol, speaking."
"I'm inside, sir. I'll feed you in," she steadied the PA as she surveyed the grounds in full spectrum mode.
UV - r o y g b i v - IR - Laser Bounce.
"I ran into hostility with that one there."
"Damn," Sol whispered under his breath loud enough for Tasìa to hear. "I'm surprised the dudley-do-rights at the VEAA would allow its contractors to possess a gray-market beast like that."
"Absolutely unreal how fast it was."
The Lieutenant Colonel was a quant at heart.
"You have an estimate on that?"
"Reaction time, .08 seconds over my own."
Sol whistled, "at Harvested level of performance that is all the difference in the world. What would you assess to be your X-factor, Ms. del Alma-Gris?"
She gave it a moment before answering.
"Geometric intuition," she was about to allude to the Modality but then asked herself if Sol was aware of it.
Is HE now alluding to it?
She got her answer.
"That is a good way to put it. It even speaks to you doesn't it?"
Tasìa chuckled nervously in response.
"Oh," Sol began. "Don't answer that. I didn't realize until now it's something you have not fully integrated. No, forget it. If you don't mind, Let's get a read-out on the grounds so we can give my tact-techs something to do."
Sol was a sly fox. He threw that out there to arouse her curiosity and let her know cooperating with him was in her interest. She put the matter to the side. It was irrelevant to the current mission.
Removing the camera from her PalmEx PA first, she then pinned the camera to her jacket. First, she checked out the Lamborghini. IR scan revealed nothing so she wasn't expecting to find Leòn's freshly made dead corpse inside it. The full spectrum scan revealed nothing of use, as well.
Leòn kept the interior of the car surprisingly clean. She decided there was nothing of obvious value inside, and turned back around as not to waste Sol's time.
"I'm walking the grounds, now. There is no way whomever was here left no trace of their presence."
She walked along the parameter of the main building. Turning the corner on the far gate side, she spotted the roo cage.
"Interesting," Sol responded. "It appears tampered with. Someone wanted to make it difficult for you or an investigative team to retrieve the car."
The cage hatch was bent up and lay tossed on the ground, ripped out from the locking mechanism. Who would brave being that close to the roo?
She ducked her head into the cage. On the floorboards lay a shock collar severed and coiled like a rope. A tranq dart was bent up near it.
I need to acquire a few non-lethal weapons for vermin like that roo, she thought. Sick of the guilt trips causing me to dislike myself.
To that agitation in her gut, Tasìa squatted.
"Just a moment, Lt. Colonel."
She grabbed her smokes, the Blonde-Cerises, which handsome Beauregard kept her well supplied, and lit one.
"Do you see something," he asked.
"Yep," Tasìa said as she glanced around for something to report, and pointed the camera at that something in the midst of catching her eye.
A large footprint of a boot with a jaggéd indention around the arc. She traced the second set of prints where someone had squatted in the dirt to tamper with the gate locks.
"It is neither Al-Majhul nor Omar."
"Didn't think it would be. I suspect that road kill back there were in the wrong place at the wrong time. However," - Sol pause for a moment.
Glancing at the screen to see what he was doing on his end she saw him jabbing his finger into the air.
"That jagged arc on the boot print is from a Silent Sole. It's part of a counter-leveling mechanism to absorb sound. You've got a Creeper Team on your hands."
Tasìa's nose wrinkled.
"Creeper Team?"
"Just the usual, bounty hunters that go after special targets. Spec ops use a similar boot but this one is a soft sole so that can be ruled out."
Shit! Elise. It had to be.
Tasìa stood up and walked into the yard back towards the Lamborghini.
She attempted to make light of it.
"That at least gives us an idea what this is about. Any idea of the price on Ballano's head. What his market value is?"
Sol chuckled.
"One half the price on my head. One fifth, your step-grandfather, the General's. It usually comes as a package deal to take us all out, Kutuzov and his four principles for twenty million."
Tasìa whistled.
"I've never got mine above two million in spite of a concerted effort at being an outlaw on my part. I'm envious."
Sol cleared his throat.
"With that note, I need to inform my tacticians."
"Hold up a second, Lt. Colonel. I think I found the means of extraction they used. There is a sled outline right here, eight meters to the southwest of the Lamborghini. I'm catching a reading. It's a hovercraft AFT-4 Series 27. If that means anything to you."
"Roger that," said Sol. "The kind usually packed in an armed support helio, but not this time. We would have seen it. Thank you for the assist, Ms. del Alma-Gris but my boys are getting impatient. Over and out."
It was an abrupt ending to the call, but he did have a lot on his plate, covering for Leòn's duties.
Tasìa finished the Blonde-Cerise. As she found the control panel beside the gate, she stubbed the cigarette to free up her hand.
The open command did not respond. Someone went through the trouble of disconnecting it. She took out the PalmEx PA and pinged at the gate station. Override proved easy for the mechanical control panel.
There was not even an old-fashioned Bluetooth interface between software and mechanical hardware embedded in the device. It was even more basic than that. A ping equaled activation. The door jolted and stopped in place with a metallic screech.
The Creep Team had wedged the chain rollers that moved the gate with a long metal bar. In spec-ops there was a term for the team member whose job it was to create distractions - a sabo.
Elise's sabo stayed very busy. With that level of commitment displayed, Tasìa did not even trust her hands on the wedge bar. An enterprising sabo would have left a contact poison on the wedge bar if he had it on him, no doubt.
Indeed, the sabo left a cracked tranq lodge in the forked heft on top. He had split the needle so the entire surface would cut her.
And the cracked tube was folded inward so the tranquilizer would not drip.
She could make use of it. Tasìa carefully removed it and placed inside the leather fold of her boot holster.
A light work jacket was left in the tin-roofed station's entrance. Tasìa took the windbreaker off of an S-hook and wrapped it around her hand, pulled the bar towards her and back again until it lodged into the pulley rut.
After several attempts, it finally loosened, and the chain weights caused the gate to roll inward on its own and slam to the side.
Tasìa looked back over the yard behind her.
The salvage yard wasn't the worst place Tasìa had been in over the last year; hell, if she wasn't anxious to be elsewhere, she would take some time to salvage scrap materials for a project she had in mind.
She turned to the Lamborghini, glanced down, searched to see if the security lock was registered to one of her accounts.
After several seconds of thumbing through, she discovered the VEAA Automotive and Amenities Services AI went through the trouble of getting it correctly set up to acknowledge Tasìa's override authority.
The engine started and the lights came on with a simple tap. She really hoped she wasn't going to be on their bad side due to the explosives they found.
It was all just a misunderstanding, really.
Tasìa slid into the Lamborghini driver seat. Something dangled from the rear view mirror display. A green strand of yarn held a thumb size drive and a flyer made of pretty mauve-colored postcard stock.
She raised her Personal Assistant up to it and ran a spectrogram graph. No odd chemicals were detected. The drive was a Sensorium Interactive.
The hundreds of diamond facets along its surface were standard for the product. They gave off a pleasing glow from LED lighting buried within.
Someone not only wanted Tasìa to listen to what they had to say, but they wanted to make an impression. The flyer was a very artful design with subtly shifting 2.5 lithographs.
It advertised Grosse Prix Confidential Cyber Security. They had a suite for patrons just southeast of Vida Escondida's main strip. It was where Leòn had set up their meeting.
On the back of the flyer was a short note.
Continue as you previously planned, same booth. I would listen to what he has to say- Elise.