“Ready,” Zahra said in a quiet voice. She turned away from the telephoto lens she’d set up in front of one window. “Who’s on first watch?”
“I’ve got this,” Master Sergeant Kane said. “Garrett, rack out. You’re up in four hours.”
“A-firm,” Nolan said. A part of him hated the idea of trying to sleep while the mission was still going, but he’d been through enough of these stakeout ops to know that it was best to rest while he could. His nerves would settle and his ability to fall asleep anytime, anywhere would kick in. Four hours wasn’t a long time, but for a Silverguard trained to stay awake for days at a time, it would be enough.
Bex gave him a nod and a wink, and Nolan returned it before turning his chair and wheeling toward the bedroom.
“All right,” Master Sergeant Kane said from the living room behind him. “It’s showtime!”
Chapter Nine
“Another one’s coming around the corner,” Darren rumbled. “Woman, dark hair, ratty overcoat.” He pressed his eye closer to the zoom lens that he’d been using to scan the street for the last four hours. “It’s Lange. Her third round in two hours.”
“Lange, copy that.” Zahra entered the name, details, and time in her datapad, and the information popped up on the screen, the latest entry in their watch log. “That confirms the full twelve on exterior patrol, passing every ten minutes.”
Nolan set down the now pristine Balefire Mark 2.1 and looked up from where he sat at the room’s lone table. “Exactly ten minutes?”
Zahra nodded. “Staggered by ninety seconds or so to make it look random, but close enough that the pattern’s clear.” She gestured to the names and timestamps for each of the dozen Black Crows patrolling around their target building. “No new faces on the roster yet, either. So we’re talking at least twenty-four-hour shifts.”
Nolan frowned. Twenty-four hours was a long time for the average soldier, cop, or guard to be on-shift. Hunger, thirst, and fatigue could mess with their concentration and make it easier to miss small details. Even with the rotating patrols, the men and women on duty would be feeling the fatigue soon.
Silverguards trained to stay awake for extended periods in extreme circumstances—Nolan’s record was one hundred and twelve consecutive hours with no sleep—but even they knew to break up watch shifts. At that very moment, Bex was taking her turn racked out on one of the two military cots they’d dragged into the apartment’s empty bedroom. They were going on fourteen hours into their stakeout, and eight-hour rotations kept them fresh and kept eyes on their target at all times.
Nolan rested the Balefire Mark 2.1 against the wall, within easy reach, and wheeled toward the surveillance station set up in the main room’s second window. Here, a laser microphone connected to a compact speaker set gave him ears on their targets. Not that there was anything to hear. So far, the Black Crows patrolling the building’s exterior hadn’t broken radio silence once, maintaining their “nonchalant passerby” façade on every sweep. The permacrete walls of the dilapidated building made it impossible to hear anything within the structure.
“Any luck re-establishing connection to Djinn Three?” Darren asked without taking his eyes off the telephoto lens.
“Not yet.” Zahra’s face twisted into a scowl. “Just waiting on Wyvern to return so I can run a diagnostic and find out what happened.”
An hour earlier, Zahra had launched four of her tiny coin-shaped drones to get a closer look at their target building from all corners of the compass. Djinn Three’s approach path from the southeast had been the shortest, and it had gone suddenly offline before Zahra could maneuver the other three into position. None of them were naïve enough to believe for a moment that pure coincidence had caused the drone’s malfunction at that exact time. Zahra had recalled her remaining Djinns, and Master Sergeant Kane had gone to do a physical sweep of the target location and collect the downed Djinn Three to find out exactly what had happened.
The door to the apartment opened and the master sergeant himself shuffled in. A thick stink of garbage-tainted mud emanated from the threadbare, tattered overcoat he wore, and Nolan had no desire to ask what the dark brown smears on his face were. A filthy woolen cap was pulled low to hide his cybernetic right eye and that half of his face. All in all, he looked far more like one of the many beggars that frequented this region of the Cyberwarrens and the nearby Bolt Hole than one of the most ferocious soldiers alive.
As soon as he shut the door behind him, Master Sergeant Kane straightened from his hunched-over stoop and strode toward Zahra. “Here.” He opened his right hand to reveal Djinn Three cradled in his gloved palm.
Zahra plucked the drone from his hand and hurried over to one of the thermoplastic crates that contained her equipment. Plugging it in, she picked up her datapad and began tapping furiously. “No signs of exterior damage,” she said, half-musing to herself. “Running internal diagnostic now.”
Master Sergeant Kane ignored her and moved to stand in front of the holo-screen with its list of guards and patrol times. “Dumb sonsofbitches,” he said with a snort. “Fuckheads are way too predictable. Staggered-shift patrols only work if there’s no pattern to them.”
“Like Kali said, Sarge, we’re not dealing with the brightest crayon-eaters in the box,” Darren rumbled from his perch at the window. “That Farrand guy actually had his DS129 tucked into the front of his belt. Almost like he wanted to commit testicide.”
Nolan chuckled. “Someone skipped that day of basic.” Even the dumbest Ironhand knew to keep a pistol barrel as far away from his junk as possible. He wheeled away from the speaker set and headed toward the holo-screen. “Spot anything interesting on this pass?”
Master Sergeant Kane’s face screwed up into a scowl. “Same as the first two times we strolled by. A whole goddamned lot of nothing.” He unclipped Djinn Six from his filthy, stinking jacket and set the little drone down on top of a nearby crate. “Taia?”
The patrol log on the holo-screen disappeared, replaced by a detailed three-dimensional rendering of their target building’s exterior.
“Based on Phoenix and Kali’s previous visual scans of the building,” Taia said, “and compiled with footage taken from CCTV cameras and the Djinn drones’ optical feeds, we’ve determined that the building has only two entrances—on the north and south sides—but neither appear to be in use.”
Nolan stared at the two graffiti-stained doors that opened into their target building. Heavy chains barred the main entrance on the north side, and a pair of overflowing metal dumpsters blocked the southern door.
Of course it would be too easy for the Protection Bureau to use regular doors, he thought sourly. Not when they can use hidden entrances and secret passages.
Based on the design of the Bolt Hole office where he’d visited Agent Styver, Nolan fully expected to be dealing with something deep underground and only accessible via a well-concealed entry point. Unfortunately, that meant first locating that entry point, a task that had proven impossible even after fourteen hours of surveillance. Shortly before midnight, Bex and Zahra had set up more surveillance equipment in a secondary location on the northwestern side of their target building, which Taia relayed to their current outpost to give them a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the structure.
In all that time, however, they hadn’t yet seen anyone entering or leaving the building. Even the Black Crows’ movement patterns made it impossible to determine where they’d come from. The guards seemed to appear on the CCTV footage as if stepping out of thin air—a technological impossibility, Nolan knew—and they approached the building from all directions. Nolan suspected they were utilizing the maze of underground tunnels built beneath the Cyberwarrens to get around. Unfortunately, he had no way to backtrack their movements without alerting them to Warbeast Team’s presence.
Taia had dug as deep into the underbelly of the holo-net as possible, but even probing those dark shadows hadn’t led to a comprehensive map of the subterranean pa
ssages. Almost as if someone as powerful as the Protection Bureau had gone to extensive lengths to scour any trace of them from existence. It was the simplest means of safeguarding their new secret location.
“Shit!” Zahra cursed.
Nolan, Master Sergeant Kane, and Darren all looked over to where she was working on Djinn Three.
“Fried circuits,” she explained, a scowl on her face. “Like deep-fried, crispy black. Not a malfunction, either.” She pointed to a tiny scorch mark on the drone’s underside. “Almost like it was a targeted EMP blast that overwhelmed its built-in shielding.”
Nolan chewed on that. “Not an EMP field?” Those were far more common, and far less cutting edge than whatever directed electromagnetic weapon she was thinking about.
“If it was a field, Sarge’s eyeball woulda gone boom when he got within range of the building.” Zahra gestured toward their team leader. “I’ve heard whispers about precision-targeted systems that sense nearby electrical activity and fire a quick EMP surge. Sort of like an anti-missile system, but built specifically to detect and target drones.”
That didn’t bode well for the op. “Think it got someone’s attention?” Nolan asked.
“No,” Master Sergeant Kane said, shaking his head. “Djinn Three was sitting right where Taia predicted it had fallen. None of the Black Crows I passed seemed to be any more wary or watchful than before it went down.”
“So more like an electrical bug-zapper, then?” Darren’s rumbling voice echoed from over by the window.
“One that appears to be both automated and disconnected from any alarms or monitoring alerts,” Taia said.
Nolan let out a breath. “Good.” The mission would be far simpler if the Protection Bureau didn’t find out about their presence until the time came to make a move.
“Not good!” Zahra snapped. “Djinn Three’s down for the count. I’m going to have to rebuild its guts from scratch, and I don’t have the components on hand for that.”
“I do,” Taia said, “but they are all back at the Iceglades safe house where the ships are berthed.”
Zahra shook her head. “Won’t do us any good, then. Not until we bug out of here.”
None of them would leave their observation post unless absolutely necessary or mission-critical. Doing so could risk compromising operational security. Worse, it could expose them to the Protection Bureau’s eyes and ears. The longer they could fly under the radar, the better their chances of success.
Taia’s voice suddenly echoed in Nolan’s earpiece. “The smart cells on Agent Styver’s clothing just came back online!”
Nolan spun toward the holo-screen. “Where?” The way the others in the room also instantly went on full alert told him that Taia had broadcast the message over team-wide comms.
“Locking on his location now,” Taia said. She called up a three-dimensional map of the Cyberwarrens, and a moment later, a blinking red dot appeared.
Nolan’s eyes widened. The bastard would be passing the street right in front of them in a matter of seconds.
He leaped into action without hesitation. A mental command to Taia shifted his Reinforcement Protocol wheelchair into the lower-body framework that propelled him from a sitting position to standing. The instant he could move, he darted toward his Balefire Mark 2.1, scooped up the gun, and raced back toward the window where the laser microphone had been set up. Shouldering the rifle, he sighted on the street where he expected his target to pass.
Nolan’s heart pounded and adrenaline rushed in his veins as he eagerly awaited the moment his crosshairs settled onto Agent Styver’s skull.
Yet one second became two, then five, then ten. Still no sign of the man. Frowning, Nolan glanced toward the holo-screen. “Where is he?” he asked.
“The smart cells place him directly next to the southeastern edge of the building,” Taia said.
Nolan sighted in the direction she’d indicated. “Nothing!”
“I’ve got nothing either,” Darren rumbled from his perch at the window.
Then Nolan remembered his conversation with Taia after his meeting with Agent Styver at the Leaping Guest. The man seemed to have appeared out of thin air, then vanished after. Cloakthread, or its technological equivalent, could be concealing Agent Styver from their eyes and the telephoto lens.
With a flick of his thumb, Nolan switched the Balefire’s scope to thermal imaging. Instantly, the streets below were overlaid in a sea of light blue and warm purple, the heat of Solaria’s light brightening the view through his scope. Heat streaming from rooftop vents, passing vehicles, and even disguised Black Crow contractors strolling along the street stood out in the thermal vision.
But no Agent Styver.
Come on, motherfucker. Where are you?
Then he spotted it. A puff of heat from an exhaled breath, accompanied by a hint of orange and red that, despite being barely more than thin lines in the air, formed the unmistakable outline of a moving figure. It couldn’t be cloakthread—the light-bending fabric couldn’t conceal body heat—but something far more cutting edge.
Yet the material, despite its advanced technology, failed to hide Agent Styver from Nolan’s rifle.
He settled his crosshairs onto the spot where he knew his target’s skull would be. Got you, you piece of shit!
Chapter Ten
The one thing Nolan wanted more than anything else in the world was to pull the trigger. One quick squeeze, and a needle-thin bolt would rid the world of Agent Styver. From this range, just under four hundred meters, Nolan hardly needed to aim. He could make that shot half-dead, blind, and with his eyes closed on a stormy day. It would be so satisfying to see the pink mist and know Agent Styver would never be a problem again.
But killing the man wouldn’t solve his real problem. The man was just a face and name representing his organization. To truly put an end to the threat, Nolan had to either take down the Protection Bureau or inflict so much damage that it would cost them too much to come after him. Pushing them until they were backed into a corner and forced to negotiate was his best play. Destroying the clandestine organization root, stem, and branch was the scorched-earth Plan B.
With great reluctance, Nolan moved his finger away from the trigger. He didn’t take his crosshairs off the faint heat outline marking Agent Styver’s figure, however. Instead, he tracked the man through his scope, following him down the street.
“Switch to thermals,” he told his companions. “There’s a barely noticeable heat signature moving down the street heading south, directly toward us.”
A moment later, a grunt echoed from where Master Sergeant Kane had joined Darren at the window. “Got him,” Darren rumbled. “The fuck is he wearing to mask his body heat like that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Master Sergeant Kane growled. “Just keep an eye on him. Desai, any of those drones have built-in thermals?”
“Just Djinn Four at the moment, sir,” Zahra answered. “Djinn Three’s out of action until I can do a full rebuild.”
“Then get it airborne and send it after our target.”
Nolan tore his eyes from his scope and glanced over at his team leader. Master Sergeant Kane was adjusting his coat, fingerless gloves, and woolen cap.
“Keep eyes-on until you lose him,” the master sergeant ordered. “We’ll pick him up a couple of blocks down. Send word if anything changes.”
“Copy that,” Nolan said. “Taia, set team-wide covert comms on active.”
“Comm channel open,” Taia replied.
“Askvig, watch him until he’s out of view.” Master Sergeant Kane was all business now. He scooped up a Gatecrasher and tucked the grenade into a pocket of his filthy coat, then hurried toward the door. “Garrett, get Ajeen up and ready to head out in case we call for backup.”
Nolan turned back to his scope before the door closed behind his team leader. As he tracked in the direction of Agent Styver’s movement, a tiny hum and a flicker of movement registered in the corner of his vision. Zahr
a sent Djinn Four zipping out through Darren’s cracked window before following Master Sergeant Kane out of the apartment.
It took Nolan just a few seconds to find Agent Styver’s heat signature. The man strolled at a slow, unhurried pace, as if he hadn’t a care in the goddamned world. For just one moment, Nolan entertained the image of what would happen if he pulled the trigger. Agent Styver had always made it so easy to dislike him, and Nolan doubted there were many people in the world who would miss the man.
But he slowly lowered the Balefire, set it against the wall next to the window, and turned to carry out Master Sergeant Kane’s order. Some old habits died hard, and even after years away from Warbeast Team, he still instinctively deferred to his team leader. Not just by rote or because of the man’s seniority, though. Master Sergeant Kane had rarely made mistakes—letting his temper lead him into Gemina Black’s sights on Diomedra numbered among the very few and far between—and he was one of those mythical “old, bold soldiers.”
Bex’s eyes flicked open the moment he pushed the door open, and she leaped to her feet, fully awake and alert. “Found him?”
Nolan nodded. “Troll’s got eyes-on, and Wyvern and Phoenix are heading out to tail him. Master sergeant wanted you ready as backup in case they need it.”
“Copy that.” Bex scrubbed a hand over her face as she moved toward the door, passed him, and headed straight for the holo-screen. Her long gun of choice, the MK75 with a rapid-fire engine configured to a light machine gun, rested against the wall where she’d left it, but she hadn’t taken off the Karma Sideshooter even to sleep.
Nolan watched her move, trying to push down his worry for her. He had no doubt about her skill as a soldier—she was more than a match for any of Warbeast Team. But the memory of a sobbing Roz clinging to her mother’s neck still haunted Nolan. He could only imagine how much worse it would be for her. She was giving up a great deal to be here, to help him. That knowledge had to weigh on her. She’d never split focus in battle, but it would be at times like this, during the moments of quiet, that the inner turmoil would be hardest to push through.
Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10) Page 7