Read Online Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan - Free Book Online

ironic greeting. She put her fingers to her mouth and whistled shrilly. Another jacker, similarly armed, stepped out of another doorway up the street and ambled down to meet them. The woman smiled at Bryant.
    “Thought you’d be back. Now, you want to throw me those keys?”
    In the moment that her eyes were fixed on Bryant, Chris produced his empty gun and leveled it at her.
    “All right, that’s enough,” he snapped. “Back off.”
    The other jacker took a step forward and Chris swung the gun to cover him, willing him to believe.
    “You, too. Back off, or you’re dead. Michael, get in the car.”
    Bryant opened the door. Chris was feeling for the door handle on the other side when the woman spoke.
    “I don’t think that gun’s loaded.”
    She took a step forward, followed by her companion.
    Chris brandished the Nemex. “I said back off.”
    “Nah, you would have shot us by now. You’re bluffing, Mister Zek.”
    She raised her piece of railing, took another step forward, and Mike Bryant stood up from his side of the car, Nemex in hand.
    “I’m not bluffing,” he said mildly and shot her three times in the chest and stomach.
    Boom, boom, boom.
    The sound of the gun in the quiet street. Echoes off houses.
    Chris saw and heard it in fragments.
    The woman, kicked back two meters before she dropped. The railing, out of her hand and flying, to clatter and roll across the camber of the street into the gutter.
    The other jacker, hands raised, placatory, backing away.
    Face implacable, Bryant put the next three shots into him.
    Boom, boom, boom.
    He reeled and spun like a marionette, crashed into the wall and slid down it, leaving gouts of blood on the brickwork.
    “Mike—”
    The sound of pounding feet.
    The final member of the gang, summoned by the gunshots, sprinting across the street toward the fallen bodies. He seemed oblivious to the two men in suits. He hit the ground on his knees next to the woman, disbelieving.
    “Molly!
Molly!
”
    Chris looked across at Bryant. “Mike, let’s—”
    Bryant made a sideways hushing gesture with his free hand and lowered his aim.
    Boom, BOOM.
    The kneeling boy jolted as if electrocuted, and then keeled slowly over the woman on the ground. Blood ran out over the street and trickled down to join the crowbar in the gutter.
    The echoes rolled away into the predawn gloom like reluctant applause.
             
    T HEY DROVE BACK to the checkpoint in silence, Chris wrapped in numb disbelief. The guard let them through with a cursory glance. If he smelled the cordite from Mike’s gun, he said nothing. Bryant waved him a cheerful good night and accelerated the big car away into the well-lit canyons of the financial district. He was humming quietly to himself.
    He glanced across at Chris as they were approaching the Shorn block. “You want to sleep over at my place? Plenty of space.”
    The thought of the hour-long drive back home was abruptly unbearable. Chris mustered a dried-out voice.
    “Yeah. Thanks.”
    “Good.” Bryant speeded up and cornered west.
    Chris watched the towering blocks begin to thin out around them. As the BMW picked up the main feeder lane for the London orbital, he turned slightly in his seat to face Bryant.
    “You didn’t have to kill them all, Mike.”
    “Yeah, I did.” There was no animosity in Bryant’s voice. “What else was I supposed to do? Fire warning shots? This symbolism-of-combat shit you talk about doesn’t work with people like that. They’re gangwit scum, Chris. They don’t know how to lose gracefully.”
    “They’d already lost. And they were kids. They would have run away.”
    “Yeah, yeah. Until the next time. Look, Chris. People like that, civilized rules don’t apply. Violence is the only thing they understand.”
    Outside the hurrying car, the sky was brightening in the east. Chris’s head was beginning to ache.

C HRIS AWOKE WITH the horrified conviction that he had been unfaithful to Carla. Liz Linshaw was