"Keith Laumer & Eric Flint - Future Imperfect" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

fourтАФ"
"I'll be down," I told him. "Get me a carтАФany carтАФbefore he has his."
Six minutes later by my cuff-link Omega I slid into the seat of a low-built foreign job
that Anzio had pulled around to the side in the shelter of a screen of hibiscus.
"For cripe's sake get it back in one piece, Mal," he hissed at me, squinting against the
drizzle. "It belongs to some big oil bird in the tower suiteтАФ"
"If they nab me, I stole it." Another fifty cees changed hands. At this rate that game
had better be soonтАФpreferably with a couple of Maharajahs with just enough IQ to raise
into a pat hand.
The turbos hummed at me when I touched the go pedal; there was plenty of power
under the squat black hood. I eased her out, watched Sethys get into the back of a heavy
maroon Monojag with three other coin collectors. They gunned off down the drive and I
let them take a hundred-yard lead, then slid out behind them.
Old Miami was a town I had known well once, a lot of years ago. It had not changed
much in the decade since I had last seen itтАФexcept for the recent scars of storm and
flood. The high tides set up by the tremors that rocked the Gulf floor had swept it, east to
west, half a dozen times, scoured away topsoil, lawns, shrubbery, felling twenty-year-old
royal palms, sweeping to well-deserved oblivion the older, flimsier construction that
dated back to post-boom times. But the main portion of the cityтАФthe famous two-
hundred-story luxury hotels, the downtown streets of high-priced shops, the walled and
remote residences, each on its manicured acre that made up the wealthiest suburbs north
of RioтАФthey were unchanged.
I followed the Monojag along Flagler under the multiple spans of Interstate 509, west
into a section of massive concrete warehouses and gaunt steel food-processing plants, the
ugly spawn of the South American import trade that had been building to boom
proportions before the onset of the catastrophes. Now they were run-down, rust-streaked,
their yards grown high with rank weeds sprouted since the last high water a few weeks
before. There were fewer polyarcs here; the Jag's headlights cut diamond-white swathes
through flat black shadow.
My quarry was moving slowing now, creeping along at ten miles per hour. Once or
twice the wan beam of a hand-flash probed furtively at a dark side street, flicked over a
sign post. I kept well back, showing no lights, my turbos flicking over at minimumтАФjust
enough to keep my bumper rails off the blacktop. Ahead, the car stopped; I slid to the
curb and grounded. Two men hopped out briskly, casting long, awkward shadows in the
light of a block-distant pole. They ducked to confer briefly with their driver, shot a look
my way which missed me in the shadows, then stepped off into an alley mouth. The Jag
started up, moved quickly to the next corner, swung left. By the time I reached the
cornerтАФhanging back a little to give the ground troops time to put distance between
themselves and the streetтАФit was making another left turn ahead. I pulled to the curb
halfway up the block.
I cracked the canopy, listened hard, heard nothing but the ancient song of the frogs,
sounding complacent about the changes that had come to the areaтАФtheir tribe had seen it
all before, a hundred times. Out on the sidewalk I listened some more, heard car doors
clack. It was a short sprint to the corner. Fifty yards along I saw the Monojag parked,
doors open, a dim courtesy light from inside spilling out on the legs of two men, one of
whom might have been my gray-haired acquaintance. They turned away, disappeared
into what looked like a blank wall.
I did some mental estimating; their position was roughly opposite the alley mouth the
first pair had entered. They were setting up a cordonтАФclosing in on somethingтАФor
someone.