Alan Dean Foster Montezuma Strip (v1.0)

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

awaited orders to move. The damn door finally clicked open. Chuy rose up and
stepped back. "Move it, hombers!"
Huong and Kilbee disappeared within. Moments later they were tossing out long,
flat rectangular boxes no thicker than slats. They were made of opaque
molycite, carefully labeled. I didn't waste time trying to read them. When
Chuy and I each had one the intruding pair descended and we started running,
fast and low, back to the lot.
Once there we waited, timing our rush to the Sodan. When Chuy gave the word we
moved, into the coupe, deflating the balloon drunks and replacing them with
our own selves. Huong drove sedately out of the lot.
At the city lot we abandoned the stolen coupe for Chuy's beat-up Mord. Only
when we were back on a main street in town did the boys start whooping and
hollering, exchanging raps and cries.
"Let's see what we got," said Chuy. He took a prier from a slim toolbox stored
under the front seat and started working on the molycite carton. The lid slid
off smoothly and we saw that it was full of densely packed NISC optical leads.
As were the other three slats. The last one we cracked contained doublet
Mahatmas, gold-sealed and ready to install, each worth sixty Namerican dollars
apiece wholesale underground according to Huong. There were fifty leads in the
slat.
"What do you think, 'Stebo?" Chuy was beaming. "Not bad for a couple hours
running around in the dark, eh? Better than snorting desdu, and safer."
"You did okay, buffo," said Kilbee grudgingly.
"Thanks. Then stop calling me buffo, okay?"
For the second time that night a big hand reached back over the seat.
It went like that week after week. We were doing pretty damn good. One night
in July, when it was too hot even for the spy vit to move very fast, we
skragged a whole box of custom-augmented lumin plates. Twenty-five of 'em, a
thousand dollars a plate. Huong got so boned we had to pass him around three
different moray holes just to get him hosed down.
But we each could've packed out a box. It bothered me. I thought I knew what
the problem was, but I waited 'til I was sure before pushing it on Chuy. I was
doing a lot of thinking since I'd been accepted into the troop, and I wanted
to be positive.
"Yeah, we coulda taken four boxes," he told me over a couple of self-chilling
Cabos at his place. It was out on the Point, in an expensive neighborhood, but
not too flamboyant, if you know what I mean. Not right on the Pacif, but you
could see it from his rooftop. Chuy himself, he never used the sundeck. That
was for crazy anglos who wanted to get as dark as the people they were always
railing against.
"Then why didn't we?" I asked him. Looking out the second-floor window I could
see Huong and Kilbee down in the compact high-walled garden-yard, sitting
under the misters with a couple of girls they'd picked up outside the
International School of Management. Huong's lady looked like she was from
Finland or something. Her skin was as pale as underwear on washday. The slant
was partial to tall Europeans. Kilbee wasn't partial at all, so long as they
had a waist. Friggin' equal-op employer.
"Because of the way the yard security's set up. We're like mosquites, 'Stebo.
You draw a little blood here, a little there, your target gets up irritated
but not furious. You take too much at one time, you get squashed." He slugged
cold Cabo. "I seen it happen. Compadre of mine, Esquivel Figuerito, borrowed a
six-wheel sloader. Slipped into the yard and filled it up with twelve crates
Page 69
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
of Miashi and Davidano thrummo components, real class noise-makers, that he
took off a container from Surabaya. Skrag weighed about two hundred kilos, I
guess. They busted him before he was halfway to the barrier."
"How?"
"Mierde, homber, those induction containers derop around on magnetic fields,
right? So the weight of each container is checked and double-checked and
recorded when it's offloaded from a ship, and the weight goes into the
monitoring 'puters along with the rest of the stats. Yard Security Central
Montezuma Strep has a mass-weight record of every container as soon as it
comes off the ship from whatever Slantland it calls home. They're monitored
twenty-four hours a day. A container's weight suddenly drops, even a little,
and it sets off an alarm in Security that records the amount of weight loss
even as it's identifying the specific container. The yardeyes swarm that
container on foot and speedbikes so fast you don't have time to sneeze. Nobody
gets out.
"That's why we never skrag more than twenty kilos of anything. It allows us
about a ten-kilo margin and we don't go over one decagram. Never. That's why I
never been caught since I developed this little game. We take too little to
miss. Sometimes we don't get much. A couple hundred. You seen it, you been in
on it. But it's a gamble every time. I'd rather mess a guess and suffer a few
sterile nights than end up busted and back in Hermosillo, or worse. Haven't [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Archiwum