Primal Scream by Michael Slade Read Free Book Online Page B

Spann, feeding him the breathalyzer double entendre.
    "No, she told me to give her the ticket fast Said she had a job stripping in a local bar, and having been late three times that week, she'd been warned once more and she was out the door. Due onstage in five minutes, that's why she was changing in the car. Asked me if I'd ever tried swapping undies for a G-string with my foot on the gas."
    "Have you?" Spann asked.
    "Funny girl."
    "Give 'er the blue?"
    "Didn't have the heart. I drove her to work code three while she changed in my car."
    Spann looked at the next ballroom table, where Nick Craven was conversing with the Mad Dog's date, a bleach blonde in a low-cut, skin-tight gown. Yes, Brittany Starr did jut the best set she'd ever seen, so Kathy took the offered cigar, bit off the end, and lit up.
    "That's what I like about you, Spann. No bullshit. Hit in the heart by a slug, yet still you hold onto the Smith."
    The Mad Dog held her gun up in one hand, comparing it to the SIG/Sauer he carried. Since 1954 the side-arm of the Force had been the Smith & Wesson .38 Special, a six-shot revolver long outgunned on the street. The ERT teams were the first to get semiauto matics, but now the Force in general was switching to the Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter in two models. The larger Series 5946 held a double stack, fifteen rounds staggered zigzag hi the mag and one in the spout. The smaller Series 3953 held a single stack, eight rounds piled high and one in the spout, with a lighter trigger pull for dainty fingers. Cop mentality is such that no sane male would dare pack the "woman's gun."
    "No 3953 for you, eh? Spann sports a double stack, like real guys. I always said the day a broad makes the team, my bet was it'd be you."
    "That's what I don't like about you, Ed. Bullshit, by the shovel. We both know the rules are fixed to keep me out. The ERT team operates like a fraternity. Leader is elected by the group, so rank is irrelevant to who's in command, and a single blackball is enough to prevent undesirables joining. But you don't need a ding session to keep us out, since no woman has bulk enough to bench-press the physical."
    The Mad Dog poked her breast. "Get working on your pecs."
    The ERT command trailer marked the center of Zulu base, which looked more like a set from M*A*S*H than it did a police action. Encircling the trailer were canvas tents dusted with snow, served by blue portable toilets lined in a row, and an icy parking lot beside a chopper clearing. One of the tents was a field hospital staffed by paramedics, but shortly before the snowmobile had roared in with George holding Spann, they'd been called out to an accident on the Kispiox road. The Mad Dog filled the gap by playing doctor in the trailer, and that done, the two cops bundled up and opened the door and stepped out into the vortex of action prompted by the MVA and rebel shot at her.
    Dubbed "the big red tomato," a Bell 212 hovered in ground effect, rotors swirling up twisters of snow like whirling dervishes.
    Vehicles rumbled in and out of the parking lot, an ambulance approaching from the Kispiox road, while four Bison APCs on loan from the Canadian army churned away, each armored personnel carrier, tailgate up and turret closed, marked with the crest of the RCMP. Caged inside were ERT cops and "Members without badges," all German shepherds except for one Labrador to sniff for bombs. A convoy of cube vans trailed behind.
    With them gone, there were still cops in camp, for fifteen emergency response teams—235 assault troops—had been choppered in from detachments around B.C. and Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ottawa. In whiter camouflage they drifted like spirits through the snow, as if Ghost Dancers had besieged the camp, as Spann and the Mad Dog wound their way to a winter morgue on the edge of white woods.
    The corpse cut from the waterfall was still in its shroud of ice, and now lay on a sled for transport east to Dodd's plane. George was about to pack it hi