Free Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith Page A

struck me as undignified.
    There was no point in rushing up the tunnel firing my gun: a blanket fire of energy would cut me in half and quarters and eighths before I got anywhere near them. There was a bend in the pipe about five yards ahead, and that seemed to be my only potential hope. If I waited, and they eventually crept down to do me in, there was a tiny, minimal, infinitesimal chance that I might be able to get one or more of them first. My position would still be absolutely terrible, but I wouldn't be dead. Soon afterwards, perhaps, but when all you have is a few minutes, each one of them seems fairly precious, each couple of seconds worth having. I crouched down and waited, gun ready.
    On impulse I fumbled the portable vidiphone out of my jacket and called my apartment. I told the fridge to make sure that Spangle was fed regularly, and to alert the store if it ran out of cat food. I think it sensed I was in a serious jam, and it dispensed with the usual backchat and wished me luck. There was still no sound from the pipe up ahead, so I quickly called Zenda's office and got Royn on the screen.
    'Oh hi, Stark. Hey, you're in a tunnel.'
    'Yeah. Is Zenda available?'
    'Christ, no way, Stark, I'm afraid. She's in meetings for the next seventy-two hours solid. Any message?'
    I thought for a moment. Nothing came, nothing big enough.
    'Just say I called. No, say this: say I said to remember the waterfall.'
    'Sure thing. Remember the waterfall. You got it.'
    "Thanks, Royn.'
    I heard a sound up ahead and cut the transmission, hugging the wall as tight as I could. Each shot was going to be critical, and so I braced my arm and held my torso as steady as I could, waiting, I knew, for death.
    After everything I'd done, everything I'd seen, the distance I'd travelled, it was going to end in being gunned down in an ancient sewage pipe on an unimportant job. And I found I cared, strangely. A few years ago I wouldn't have done. Something had been changing in me recently, stirring and flexing beneath the surface. I'd started to feel worse, but to care more. Something was happening, but I didn't know what. Now it looked like I'd never find out.
    Then the sound came again, and my arm wavered slightly. It was very faint, but I thought I recognised the kind of sound it was. I opened my mouth slightly to let the noise get to my eardrums through the eustachian tubes as well as my ears, and strained every nerve to hear. It happened again, and my mouth dropped open wider of its own accord.
    It was laughter. The sound was definitely laughter.
    * * *
    I've had a lot of experience of macho people. In the last nine years I've worked for, with and against a wide spectrum of soldiers, policemen, lunatics, hit men and gang members, and I've met a lot of 'if it moves shoot it, and if it doesn't shoot it until it does' kind of guys. When that kind of person is on the hunt, when he's got a quarry in his sights and he's moving in to blow it to little bloody pieces, some of them will laugh. A few laugh with nervousness, with a last-minute realisation of the enormity of what they're about to do. Some will laugh heartily, desperately proud and strong, and some will laugh the thin giggle of the completely and utterly deranged as the twisted devil inside them peeks out to do its work.
    None of them, however, have ever laughed with the guttural, lewd good humour of the sound I could hear echoing down the tunnel. It wasn't a pretty laugh, but it was a genuine one.
    The conclusion was obvious, but so unexpected that I took a while to look at it from every side. Men who are on their way to kill someone do not laugh like that. At least one of the guards was laughing like that. Therefore they weren't coming to get me. They didn't know I was here.
    That may sound like thin reasoning to you, but it's the kind that has kept me alive over the years, and I've learnt to trust it. I realised I was still in with a chance, in the short term at least. The guy who'd been