Toys

Chapter 113

Thank God for safety features: the car was programmed not to injure any high-tech Elite hands, and the door politely refrained from severing my fingers.

“Foreign object occluding rear starboard hatchway. Please clear immediately,” chirped the autopilot.

Expecting one or both of Jacklin’s immaculate Italian leather shoe soles to come down on my hands, I did the most energetic pull-up of my life, heaved the door wide, and sprang into the passenger compartment.

Fortunately, the vehicle was so large that Jacklin-assuming I had missed the departure-had moved forward in the cabin to a control console of some kind. He managed to wheel around just as I tried to tackle him again, demonstrating that patented human inability to learn lessons.

“You’re doomed,” he said, easily dodging me. I slammed into a credenza covered in crystal goblets and decanters, all of which probably had been pirated from some human antiquities museum.

I struggled to stand as the vehicle lurched into a steep climb.

Meantime, Jacklin began to yell. “Require immediate airborne tactical assistance, alpha priority-and all forces reclaim presidential mansion im-”

Something banged into the roof of the limo and sent us both to our knees.

“You hear that!” he screamed. “You thought somehow my defense department might not manage to notice your little insurgence on the fucking presidential grounds? That’s a commando squad, and I’ll say it again-you, Hays Baker, are doomed! You and your whole filthy cave-evolved species!”

Just then the passenger door, which had by now resealed itself, peeled back-the wrong way! The noise of the twisting metal was quickly lost in the roaring wind and the noise of the jet engines outside.

A wicked-looking segmented grappling hook plunged into the cabin and dug its sharpened fingers into a leather seat. And then, as I vainly looked around for something beyond antique glassware to use as a weapon, the first commando burst through the open hatch, two pistols leveled, and began blasting away-

At Jacklin!