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red button as the best chance of his hitting the right control when he was thinking at one hundred feet up while traveling at close to a hundred and eighty miles per hour over the rainforest.
    There was a fraction of second’s delay—made infinitely longer in Grant’s mind as he worried about something going wrong. Then he felt the back of the Manta kick like a mule as the explosive charge hidden beneath the plating went off, sending a stream of thick black smoke and small debris up into the air behind him. At roughly the same moment, Kane’s missile detonated, sending a burst of light coupled with the sound of an explosion out in all directions, giving the illusion that the missile had hit.
    “And after that apparent pain in the aft, boys and girls,” Grant said, “it’s time to crash this bird and crash it good.”
    Grant eased back on the throttle and sent the hurtling Manta in a plummeting spiral toward the ground, keeping the tract of open land in his viewport as best as he could without making it too obvious that he was still in control. He was going too fast, he knew, could feel the air buffet his wings as the Manta rocketed earthward, the shriek of engine strain loud to his ears.
    Grant’s heads-up display was going crazy, alerting him that he was moving toward the ground too fast and that he needed to pull up now.
    “Yeah, I hear ya,” Grant growled to the navigation system. “I just don’t plan on paying any attention.”
    A moment later, the tallest of the trees came rushing into view and Grant gritted his teeth. This was what it all came down to, audience or no audience.
    * * *
    K ANE WINCED AS Grant’s Manta dipped beneath the tree line, the trail of dark smoke marking its passage.
    “I hope you’re okay in there, buddy,” he said as the Manta dropped out of view.
    A moment later, the trees below shook and a flock of startled birds took to the sky, cawing angrily to one another as they hurried from the crash site.
    “Still nothing, Kane,” Brigid confirmed before he had time to ask.
    “Roger,” Kane acknowledged automatically. “Time we blew this mutie-chomp stand.”
    With that, Kane engaged the full force of the pulse engine, sweeping over the crash site of Grant’s Manta as if to eyeball it before roaring away through the cerulean skies. His vehicle notched up to two hundred miles per hour in a second, was closer to three hundred by the time his shadow had crossed over the crash site below.
    In five seconds, Kane’s Manta was gone, and the only evidence of its passing was the smoking shell of the identical craft it had apparently brought down.

Chapter 5
    Strapped tightly into the acceleration couch of the felled Manta, Grant strained to peer out of the viewport and into the skies above. He watched for a moment as Kane’s aircraft hurried away from the scene, the imaging software in the heads-up display picking out highlights and focusing on the air trail it left long after the craft itself had disappeared from view.
    “I hope you caught all that, bad guys,” Grant said, settling back down into the pilot’s seat. “Because I’d hate to have to put on an evening show, having already used up all our best tricks for the matinee.”
    Grant pushed back the helmet and took a breath of unfiltered air before adjusting the straps that held him in place. There was nothing out there now, just the trees—which he had deftly managed to avoid in his faked crash—and the empty, cloudless sky hanging above him like a brushstroke of blue paint. He could be here awhile, he knew, and he had come prepared.
    First, however, he checked the hand weapons he had brought with him. There was his Sin Eater pistol, which clipped neatly into a holster that attached to Grant’s wrist. The weapon retracted out of sight while not in use, its butt folding over the top of the barrel to reduce its stored length to just ten inches.
    The Sin Eater was the official side arm of the Magistrate Division, a compact 9 mm