Gestapo Mars Read Online Free Page B

fifty-eight years.

FIVE
    T he one thing artificial women have over the real McCoy is that they know when to leave. Cassandra slipped away in the wee hours, likely after I was unresponsive to repeated demands to extend for another thirty minutes. I greeted the morning with room service coffee and showered away the cloying scent of her.
    Twenty minutes later, I left the hotel behind me and ventured into the sprawling underground city of St. Armstrong. Immediately, I picked up a tail while passing through a low-class residential section. There was something about the overly methodical way he followed me that screamed
cop!
    I zigged and zagged a few times to keep him honest—nothing too obvious—but I soon decided I needed to use some direct method to make him go away permanently, so I could get on with my business. I paused at the mouth of an alley, looked around like maybe I was lost. I dithered a good ten seconds then turned casually into the alley, making a point not to look back, but I heard his footfalls coming up behind me, plain enough.
    I feigned tripping over a piece of garbage and went to one knee, rubbing my ankle like I was injured. The light was just right, and I saw his shadow creeping up on me, then waited until the exact right moment.
    I spun, struck hard with a well-placed kick, my heel taking out his knee with a sickening crack. He winced, grunted, and went to the ground, his hand darting into his jacket.
    He came out with a huge automatic pistol—a slug-thrower, 12mm by the look of it—but I was already on him, grabbed his wrist, and twisted. He bellowed and his pistol went flying. I punched him hard on the point of his chin, and his eyes rolled up.
    The ground shook as two more goons landed on either side of me. I allowed myself a micro-second glance up to see where they’d dropped from, caught sight of the catwalk two stories up. Not only had these other two jokers been tailing me the whole time without my noticing, but they both had to be augmented to make a leap like that and land ready to fight.
    I ducked under a high kick from the first one, but the other landed a heavy body blow and I felt a rib crack.
Definitely augmented.
    Instead of sending a spinning kick back at the one who’d tagged me—the obvious move—I dropped and rolled toward the automatic pistol, grabbed it, and came up in a shooter’s stance. I squeezed the trigger six times, spraying the two of them with lead, the enormous gun bucking in my hands.
    The slugs hit in perfect groupings, three each across their chests. The muted metal
tunks
of armor beneath skin told the story. They flinched, but kept coming for me. These guys had the works. Not just augmentation for speed and strength, but armored skin, too.
    I picked one of the goons, aimed at an eye and pulled the trigger. Blood sprayed from the socket, and the back of his head exploded with bone and brain. He came to a screeching halt like somebody had jerked his leash, and then went down.
    No time for the other one. He knocked the gun away and wrapped his arms around me, got me in a bear hug. I felt the breath wheeze out of me, little black spots dancing in front of my eyes. It was probably three seconds before the lights went out.
    I fumbled in my jacket pocket, my hand closing around the little beamer. I didn’t bother to take it out, the angle was awkward anyway. I aimed it best I could, squeezed the trigger. The red beam burned instantly through my jacket pocket and into the guy’s hip. At this range it wouldn’t matter how he was armored.
    He screamed and dropped me.
    I crawled away, shaking my head, trying to make the hot buzzing in my ears go away. I blinked my eyes, focused, looked at my attacker.
    He lay two feet away, pale and dazed, his leg sliced off at the hip.
    “Oh,
Christ.
Oh, man, my leg.”
    I staggered to him, aimed the beamer. “Forget the leg. You’re not going to need it anymore.”
    The killer inside me knew the job.
No hesitation
was the first thing