Timothy Zahn Cobra 2 Cobra Strike

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running people below. He hit the next roof, crossed it in a dead run, and with
a quick prayer to the patron of fools, jumped again.
Not to the mayoral building roof, but to a spot midway down the side and that
only to provide a slight braking impact before he hit the street. The building
was seven stories high, its lit windows testifying to activity inside, and
Pyre knew he was taking
212 Timothy Zahn a big gamble going in at ground level. But the mayor's
office itself had been on the first floor, and the Cobra was betting that
Qasaman paranoia would bury the most important facilities underground.
And then he hit the street and there was no time left for planning and
thought. Most of the thirty or so people in sight were hurrying away from him
in the direction of the hooting alarm, but the two who flanked the ornate door
were standing fast ... and their frozen astonishment didn't extend to their
mojos.
But the birds saw no drawn weapon, and their movements were the slow ones of
surprised study instead of the swifter ones of attack. Pyre targeted and shot
both out of the air; and then, as the guards belatedly reacted, he shot them
as well. He took the three outside steps in a single bound and slipped inside.
He hadn't been paying all that much attention to the route the one time
Cerenkov's team had been in this place, but fortunately the layout seemed
straightforward. Pyre followed the main corridor to the first junction and
branched right. At the next cross corridor he turned left, aiming toward the
center of the building and there, barely ten meters away, were the two
liveried guards he remembered seeing at the mayor's door.
They looked at him in frowning surprise, hands dropping to their guns. Pyre
shot both of them out from under their mojos, then killed the birds as they
tried to disengage their talons from their epaulet perches and become
airborne. Mentally bracing himself, he shoved the doors open and stepped
inside, hands held at the ready.
It was almost a repeat of the scene he'd seen through Joshua's sensors the
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last time, with two important exceptions. The fumes that both he and the
contact team had missed out on before were an almost literal sledgehammer to
the nose, bringing him to an abrupt
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213
halt and nearly gagging him. And this time the mayor's cushiony throne was
vacant.
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It took Pyre a handful of heartbeats to get his breath and voice back. For the
people seated at the low tables around the throne, those few seconds turned
out to be their salvation. Whether the fumes enhanced their mental processes
or whether they were simply naturally observant he didn't know, but by the
time he was able to function again all of them had apparently deduced who he
was and were making mad dashes from the room. Within seconds the scene was
deserted.
"Damn," Pyre murmured under his breath. The smoke, he discovered, tasted odd,
too. Clicking up his audio enhancers, he held his breath ... and from
somewhere out of sight among the free-hanging curtains he heard the faint
sound of shallow breathing.
So they hadn't all made it out of boltholes. Was die straggler armed? Probably
... though none of the others had tried to use their guns, and that carried
some interesting implications. But even if the skulker was afraid to shoot.
Pyre had no desire to hunt him down in this maze, with only the diffuse sounds
of breathing to guide him. But there might be another way. If the mojos were
really as touchy about weapons as they'd seemed when the contact team first
stepped outside the
Dewdrop's lock ...
Left hand ready for trouble, he reached down with his right and drew his
stolen pistol.
The sound of steel on leather was loud in the silent room and the single flap
of bird wings that followed gave direction enough. Ahead and to the left ...
he sprinted around the curtains there and came face to face with a crouching,
terror-eyed man.
For a second they gazed at each other in silence. Pyre's main attention was on
the Qasaman's mojo, but the bird seemed to realize that an attack would be [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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