"Mel Odom - Shadowrun 33 - Run Hard, Die Fast" - читать интересную книгу автора (Odom Mel)

green one-piece with a combat harness over it, his matte-black finished cyber-arms blended into the overall
look.
"Phasing you in, Skyhook," the feminine voice said.
"Copy, Groundwire. GPS coming on-line now." Argent glanced at the Sony Nav-Dat global positioning
system mounted amid the helo's control panel. The glowing orange dot that represented the Stallion held its
course while a purple triangle took form ahead and to the left. The big man glanced over at the helo pilot.
"I heard," Merkhur stated irritably in his clipped British accent over the helo's commlink. His meat body
sagged in the pilot's chair, a vehicle control rig plugged into his right temple under the wild tangle of chestnut
hair. Long and lean even for an elf, he looked almost uncomfortable folded into the seat, but the Vehicle
Control Rig cyberware made him part of the craft. For all intents and purposes,
he was the helo. He saw with its cams, heard with its aud pickups, and even felt the air friction against the
helo's skin. He wore traditional Japanese robes, soft cream over brown.
For the moment, the Stallion was covered with the markings of the United Canadian and American States
Post Office. The markings were camouflage, though, and a good rain blowing in across Puget Sound would
have washed them right off .Argent had known there wouldn't be any rain, and a quick rinse would put the
helo back to its original green color, making it harder to trace after the op played out.
The kidnappers had chosen the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood as the dropsite. They couldn't know it,
but he was familiar with the area. Much closer to ground zero now, Argent made out the long, winding
route of Union Street threading through the sprawl's other thoroughfares.
"If Shaundra Merlini's captors get away," the feminine voice of Groundwire said over the Wiremasters
Comm-link X, "they'll have plenty of boltholes to rabbit to before you or Lone Star can dig them out. The
girl will be dead when she's found."
"I know, Peg," Argent said softly. "But that's not going to happen."
Peg was a decker, one of the best at getting into high-tech systems, and Argent wouldn't have felt as
confident without her running the data end of the rescue. He hadn't seen a system yet that she couldn't
sleaze her way through given the time. The problem was that in their job there wasn't always time.
This time they'd been lucky. When Victor Merlini had contracted a fixer Argent picked up biz from and
explained the situation, mentioning his daughter's amputated thumb as well, Argent decided at once that he'd
sign on for the save if he could find a way to get next to the kidnappers. Standing up for an underdog
against over-
whelming oppressive odds was one of the jobs he took every time.
He'd combed the streets while Peg had ducked through the shadow information alleys of the Matrix
linking Seattle's computers and telecom activity. The closest they'd come to identifying the kidnap ring
through whispered rumors was to establish a reasonably certain tie to the Alamos 20K hate groups. Neither
of them had turned up names of any of the people connected with the kidnap ring.
What Argent was sure of was that Merlini had a right to be fearful for his daughter. Argent's research
had turned up seven people in the Seattle-based shipping industry who'd lost family members in the last
handful of months.
Merlini's family physician had also supplied a tissue sample from the girl, allowing Argent to hire two
street mages and a snake shaman to help him look for Shaundra. Escadero, the snake shaman, had gotten
the closest to finding the girl.
While in an induced trance, slithering through the may-bes of what might come to pass regarding
Shaundra Merlini's future, Escadero had spotted the young woman in a van in the Lower Queen Anne
District. But the foretelling vision wasn't always accurate, as Escadero had pointed out.
Tonight, it had proven on the mark. And one of the three mages now astrally searching for Shaundra
Merlini in Lower Queen Anne using the tissue sample had found her and relayed the information to Peg. It
had been a long shot, but it was all Argent had left to play. Lone Star had covered all the conventional
routes.
The Stallion skimmed the canyons of corporate skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and shopping
complexes, staying barely five meters above the uneven skyline, juking sideways as Merkhur controlled it.