THE GETAWAY MEN - PART I
Thirty-seven seconds. That was all it took for the elevator in the lobby to reach the forty-sixth floor, where Jack Maddux currently loaded a shotgun with black-market disruptor rounds and waited for the gunfire to start.
He knew there would be four of them in the elevator. There were always four. Two of them would be genetically modded down to the spine and the other two would be support staff, watching exits, jacked-in to some sort of security feed on the distant chance that Maddux actually made his way out of the building.
There would be at least two more outside, waiting in some unmarked gray van, and another watching the feed of a SecuroDrone somewhere above the clouds.
It was almost mathematically impossible that Maddux would survive. But that didn’t worry him, he’d planned for this. In his experience, Osaka Corp’s security personnel were almost too prepared, almost too methodical. It left very little room for improvisation. And that was exactly what Maddux was counting on.
“You got thirty seconds,” said a voice in his ear. It belonged to Carli Catchfire, hacker-extraordinnaire, more than a little unstable. “Get ready. I blow when they breach.”
Maddux ignored her, focusing on the weapon in front of him. At this distance — and in this gun — disruptor rounds would do a veritable fuck-load of damage. They were illegal outside of military use and almost impossible to get, unless you knew the right people. Maddux, as it so happened, knew a lot of the right people. There were probably six arms dealers at any given moment that could get their hands on disruptors for the right price.
Disruptor rounds exploded on impact. A small amount of plastique was embedded in each round and clicked off the nastiest little fireball you’ve ever seen when they hit their target. Great for breaching and great for home defense, if you don’t mind a little cleanup. Whoever the poor sap was that stepped off the elevator first was going to need a closed casket.
He heard the ding from down the hallway, as clear as day. Maddux tossed the last of his necessities into an Adidas bag — socks, underwear, a couple of shirts, and his toothbrush — and threw the bag over his shoulder.
He gripped the hilt of the shotgun tightly, hand shaking ever-so-slightly.
“Stop shaking so fucking much, I can barely see,” said Carli. She was tapped in to the hard-wiring in Maddux’s optic nerve, seeing what he saw on a set of monitors in the safety of her own private domicile. “Show me infrared.”
Maddux tapped the side of his temple and the vision in his left eye swapped to infrared, showing the heat signatures of anything nearby.
“Four coming down the hall,” said Carli. “The big fucker in the front has metallic platings in his face and chest, so go for his legs.”
Good note. Maddux braced for the impact of a small breach charge, ducking behind the bathroom wall, and waited.
The door splintered magnificently. Maddux was almost impressed. Shards from the door flew across the room, shattering the window on the far side. If Maddux had been anywhere in view of the door, he would’ve been shredded to pieces. Bye-bye Maddux.
The first assailant entered the apartment, a big, burly motherfucker with a stupid, shit-eating grin permanently plastered to his face, most likely due to some botched facial reconstruction surgery. It looked less like a smile and more like someone pulled the skin of his face backward and stapled it to the back of his skull.
Maddux turned the shotgun around the corner and fired twice at the burly man’s legs. The disruptor rounds exploded on impact, shredding flesh and bone alike, and the scream that left the smiling man was nothing short of blood-curdling. His three companions turned and unloaded relentless fire toward the bathroom and Maddux ducked back into cover.
“What happened to ‘they breach, I blow’?” screamed Maddux over the comms device embedded in his ear-canal, quickly reloading the shotgun with two more disruptors.
“Technical difficulties,” said Carli, then went silent for a a long handful of seconds.
Situated in the walls of his entryway were three crude IEDs Carli had walked him through activating only thirty minutes prior. They were poorly made and volitale enough that Maddux had been nervous setting them up, but Carli was more than adament they’d do the job without much collateral. Doing the job wasn’t really what Maddux had been worried about. He was much more worried they’d do him in the process.
“Ready,” she finally chirped. “Are you out of the line of fire?”
“As out of the line of fire as I can be in this fucking shoebox,” replied Maddux.
“Good. I’d plug your ears.”
He did. As he did, a pulsating shockwave shook the apartment — hell, probably the building — and shrapnel rained through the room as the IEDs burst and ripped the remaining three Osaka Corp security goons apart. Something that looked a lot like a head flung past the bathroom door and collided with the far wall of the apartment.
The dust settled and Maddux slowly collected himself, brushed the debris from his shirt, and stood.
“You had better get going,” said Carli. “Heat signature’s indicate you’ve got three more on the way.”
“Can you delay the elevator?”
“Only briefly,” said Carli. “Someone on their side’s already running a skiptrace on my location. If I don’t lock-out soon, they’ll know where to find me.”
“Can you buy me ten seconds?”
Carli tapped on her keyboard for a long few moments, Maddux could hear her furiously typing away as the dread and anxiety closed in and attempted to corner him in a prison of thought. Finally, she spoke again.
“Go.”
He did. Without hesitation, without a second thought, he went. He listened to the beautiful, almost sensual voice in his head as she lead him down corridors, through hallways, and out into the alleyway behind the retrofitted and mostly abandoned apartment complex he called home.
As soon as he stepped foot outside the back door, a panel van pulled up and the side door slid open. Carli’s beautiful face and tattooed skin greeted Maddux as the van’s tires screeched.
“Get the fuck in!” she yelled.
Again, he did.