F Paul Wilson - Sims 02 by The Portero Method (v5.0) Page A

shop that knows how to keep a secret.
                 After that the
story murked up. The two survivors of the wet team, Cruz and Hooper, had
spent too much time recovering from their doses of Mace to see anything. And
they were still limping from the tap dance the Cadman woman had done on them.
                 Luca shook his head, torn between
rage and admiration. Some kind of broad, that Romy. He
couldn’t help but admire the way she’d engineered the raid on that sim
whorehouse. And then she’d made asses of two of his best men. Maybe they were
still alive thanks to her. He could use someone like her.
                 When Cruz and Hooper could finally
see and walk again, they’d found Ricker and Green dead; they’d gathered up the
corpses and hauled ass out of there in the second van.
                 “I put Ricker in charge,” Luca said.
                 “Good choice,” Lister replied. “I’d
have done the same. But Ricker is dead, and that’s what disturbs me, Portero.
How does Ricker wind up with a cracked skull? Who do you know who could take
Ricker in hand-to-hand?”
                 “Nobody.”
                 “Damn right. He was a fucking
animal.”
                 No argument there. Ricker wasn’t just
big and tough, he was experienced and smart. No one was going to take him down
without a struggle, and not without him taking one or two down with him. But
according to Cruz and Hooper, they never heard a sound.
                 And Ricker’s body…his throat had been
crushed—that explained the silence—and his head had been smashed. Looked like he’d leaned out of a speeding subway and got clocked by
a support girder. Same with Green.
                 In fact, if Luca wasn’t so sure it
was impossible, he’d think someone had grabbed Ricker and Green by their necks
and smashed their heads together…like a bully brother breaking his sister’s
dolls. But who could manhandle two guys as fit and jacked as Ricker and Green
like that?
                 An icy length of barbed wire dragged
along Luca’s spine.
                 “According to what you’ve told me,” Lister said, “Ricker and the team didn’t know where
they were going until less than an hour before they hit the road. Even you
didn’t know. So how did whoever took them out know? Sounds to me like they were
already there waiting.”
                 “Or they were followed.”
                 “But why follow them at all?
Unless…shit! The Japs! I bet it’s the Japs! That goddamn Kaze Group has been
sticking its dirty fingers deeper and deeper into the biotech pie, and now—”
                 “I doubt it’s the Japs,” Luca said.
“They’ve got no reason to protect Sullivan.”
                 “Maybe they just want to keep us off
balance.”
                 Luca began to feel an unsettling
suspicion. He hesitated, as if uttering the words might turn the possibility
into a reality. But Lister—and SIRG—had to know.
                 “I think there’s a new player in the
game.”
                 “Where’d you get an idea like that?”
                 “A gut feeling. And the fact that we’ve never had to deal with a countermove
like this.”
                 A pause while Lister digested that.
“Who on earth…?”
                 “I have no idea—yet. But I’m going to
find out.”
                 “You do that. But don’t lose us any
more men in the process. Whoever these people are, they play rough.”
                 “Rough,” Luca said, clamping his jaw.
“They don’t know rough. Not by half.”
                 “And something you should know,”
Lister said. “Word from upstairs is that this was a bad idea.”
                 “Bad?” Anger dueled with a