Anna had to agree. The threats to Skyler's life were real enough, but she knew as well as Ryan did that the detail was there more as a favor for
a woman who was a close personal friend of President DeSilvio.
Ryan closed his eyes for a moment and she heard his voice inside her skull. "Gimme a mode check. All stations report in ." His mouth didn't
move, but Anna saw the slight motion in the muscles of his throat as he subvocalized; the communications bead bonded to his mastoid bone
picked up the silent whisper and relayed it wirelessly to the radio node encrypted to the protection detail's frequency.
One by one, everyone gave their call-sign code. The last was Agent Laker, who reported he had just entered the elevator and was on the way
down. Ryan paused for a moment, his gaze losing focus, and Anna knew that he was using the wireless link to patch into Laker's optics, getting a
look at the senator through the other agent's eyes. Then he blinked and it was back to business.
"Saddle up. We're on the move. Stay on open channel."
Connor slid smoothly into the driver's side of the SUV and Byrne clambered into the back. Anna paused, looking to Ryan for her orders as she
settled a pair of military-grade sunglasses onto her nose. The elevator arrived with a melodic chime, and he nodded toward the limo. "Ride with
Laker. I'll be right behind you."
"I really wasn't late," she said, suddenly feeling compelled to make the excuse. Anna thought about the careworn brass coin in her pocket and
her lips thinned.
"I know." He said it without looking back.
Anna opened the limo's door as Senator Skyler emerged with Agent Laker and a man she didn't recognize at her side. Eyes narrowing, she
immediately commed Laker with the sub-voc.
"Who is this joker?"
Laker made eye contact. "Security."
"We are her security. She knows how this goes, no last-moment changes to the detail."
"It's already been cleared with command. Guess she likes to have a backup."
The man got in the car first, and Anna saw what she expected; a corporate assistant-cum-bodyguard, rail-thin, watchful, with a humorless face.
Her optics captured a blink-and-miss-it flash of something under his dark, gold-lined jacket—the grip of a hi-tech nonlethal firearm—and a
discreet logo pin in the shape of a stylized bull's skull.
Belltower. As well as getting the American taxpayer to fund her security on the Washington visit, Skyler had also dropped what had to be some
serious cash on a personal guard from the largest private military contractor on the planet.
The senator was speaking firmly into a vu-phone as she approached. "I don't care what Phil Mead wants, Ruthie. I don't like the man and I
don't like his policies. Tell the governor he can go look for his endorsements somewhere else." Snapping the device shut, she afforded Anna a
wan smile and climbed in.
Kelso was the last after Laker, and as the door thumped shut the limo set off. She didn't need to look forward to see that the town car was
already on point, as the SUV slipped seamlessly into the six o'clock position behind the senator's vehicle.
Anna gave the interior of the limousine a once-over, and found herself looking Skyler in the eye. The senator reminded her of a history teacher
she'd had in junior high, plump but not overweight, with a pinched face and hawkish eyes.
"I don't often see female agents with the Secret Service," said Skyler, as the convoy crossed onto Q Street and turned westward.
"There's a fair few of us," Anna replied. "It's not that much of a boys' club anymore, ma'am."
"What's your name?"
"Agent Anna Kelso, Senator."
Skyler smiled in a way that was ever so slightly patronizing. "Did they put you on my detail because I'm a woman, Agent Kelso?"
"No, ma'am," Anna replied. "They put me on your detail because, like my colleagues, I'm very good at what I do." She could almost hear Ryan
wincing in the trailing car.
The Belltower operative, who was in the middle of pouring a glass of water for the senator, shot her a look.
"That's very reassuring," said Skyler as she took the glass. "I'm sure you have a lot of people to protect, and I appreciate your hard work
today." She paused for a sip and then leaned forward. "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?" The woman's request wrong-footed Anna, but she covered it. "I guess so."
Skyler pointed at her face. "Can I see your eyes?"
Laker gave her a quizzical look, but Anna complied, taking off the sunglasses and giving the senator her full attention. It wasn't as if she really
needed to wear them—her cyberoptic implants had full-spectrum UV and solar protection built in—but they were as much a part of the Secret
Service "uniform" as the black jacket and pants.
Skyler leaned closer, studying her. "Your eyes ... Caidin optics, am I right? I understand your agency also requires the implantation of certain
communications and enhancile cyberware as well, is that so?"
Anna was uncertain where this conversation was heading. "Yes, ma'am."
"How do you feel about that?" the senator went on. "I don't have any implants myself, I don't ask for them for my staff. How do you feel about
your government insisting on such a thing for you to do your job?"
"Not every Secret Service agent is enhanced," Anna replied. "That would be prejudicial."
Skyler sat back. "Really? Tell me, how many field agents do you know who are not implantees?"
Anna frowned. "I'm not sure I see your point, Senator." But she did.
"You know what I'm doing here, don't you?" said the politician. "The president has asked me to chair a Senate subcommittee with the National
Science Board on America's involvement with the science and industry of human augmentation technology. The very reason I have that job is
because of what I've done to make myself a target for certain criminal groups."
The briefing on Skyler had been clear on all that, Anna reflected. Back home in SoCal, Skyler's hard, pro-science stance on tech smuggling had
also led to a crackdown on something the press liked to call "harvester" crimes—the 2020s' equivalent of the old urban legend about guys
waking up in a bath of ice sans a kidney... Only this time, victims were unlucky souls killed and stripped for their cybernetic augmentations. In
the United States, the high price of many augs put them beyond the range of most regular citizens; trading in so-called recovered cyberware
was fast becoming one of the key revenue streams for the triad gangs and their rivals, right after people-trafficking and drugs. Skyler's home
state was the gateway to America for the snakeheads in Beijing, Hengsha, and Hong Kong.
As for understanding all the rest of it... well, Anna watched CNN and the Picus WorldView channel just like everyone else. People were always
looking for ways to divide themselves, and the line between "augmented" and "natural" was just another take after race, religion, gender ...
"My job," Skyler went on, her tone bordering on that of a lecture, "is to determine what kind of stance America should take on augmentation, to
find out if this emerging technology can benefit our nation's economy."
The car slowed as they approached Buffalo Bridge. "Are you asking for my opinion, ma'am?" said Anna.
That seemed to amuse the senator. "No, Agent Kelso. But the fact is, the man I'm meeting for lunch runs the company that made those striking
eyes of yours. Garrett Dansky, chief executive of Caidin Global. Tell me, did he do a good job?"
Anna resisted the urge to put the glasses back on. "I'd say so."
"And you don't feel... diminished by your augmentations?"
Her lips thinned. "I'm n
ot like the panzer girls on Ultimate Aug Fighters, if that's what you mean." Anna kept her expression neutral; what
implants she did have were mostly neural units, small-scale stuff that didn't disrupt her natural profile. "I'm good at what I do. These make me
even better."
Skyler seemed to accept that and drew back, sipping her water.
"You okay?" Ryan's voice was a gentle pressure on the back of her head. A telltale at the corner of her optic field showed he was speaking to
her on a channel isolated from the rest of the team.
"Fine." She knew what he was going to say next, the question he was going to ask, about the phone call the night before; she headed him off.
"Really, Matt. I'm good." It was a lie.
He didn't reply. Instead, he cut the one-on-one link as the convoy began to slow, the black iron fences of Montrose Park flashing past. They
were a few moments away.
"Senator?" said the Belltower operative. He had a soft, polite voice. Skyler nodded and checked her reflection in the limo's windows.
"Dansky's there" said a voice from the lead car. "Taking our station."
"Copy," said Laker out loud.
Skyler's car halted and Anna was first out. Her other concerns were forgotten in a heartbeat. She was working now, her eyes scanning the
street and the buildings, passing over the windows of the terraced houses with speed and care. She heard the SUV halt, heard the doors
opening.
The senator was out and walking forward, Laker and the Belltower bodyguard flanking her. Dansky came up, a smile on his face, extending a
hand.
When she scanned the street a second time, that was the moment when Anna Kelso felt a twist in the depths of her gut. It was an immediate,
visceral reaction, and she couldn't quantify it at first. She glanced in Ryan's direction. He was looking at her with a questioning expression.
Something rang a wrong note in Anna's thoughts. She'd taken in the whole of the street scene, parsed it in a moment, just like they had taught
her—and something did not fit. Across the diagonal of Q Street, a silver Motokun sedan sat low on its shocks, as if it were too heavily loaded. The windows were opaque, and
unbidden, Anna's hand slipped back under her jacket through force of habit.
She caught Byrne's gaze and he saw where she was looking; the younger agent's enhanced optics had a T-wave scanner that could peer through
light cover. He peered at the Motokun and the sudden change on his face told her she was right.
"Tangos—!" Byrne's voice was suddenly lost in a roar of engine noise, and the sedan bolted forward from the opposite curb, tires screeching as
the vehicle sped over the asphalt.
Anna's gun was clearing its holster as the silver sedan slammed into the back end of the town car and spun it about, ramming it up onto the
sidewalk and into the line of planters ringing the restaurant's open-air terrace. The sedan's doors burst open and there were four hulking
figures in black combat gear boiling out into the daylight. Each of them had a churning smoke bomb in his hand, and they threw them as one,
lines of thick gray haze arcing up over the roadway.
Anna heard screaming coming from behind her, the clatter of tables being turned over and glass shattering as the restaurant's customers
panicked and ran; and then she heard another sound, the familiar flat report of a grenade launcher.
She never saw the shell hit. One second she was bringing up her Mustang to bear, and in the next the hood of the limousine distorted and threw
itself upward as an orange fireball consumed the front third of the vehicle.
A hot wall of gasoline-stink backwash hit Anna Kelso head-on and blew her into the lines of iron planters.
Inside her head, she could hear Ryan crying for help.
The Grey Range—Queensland—Australia
The veetol moved low and fast over the foothills, skimming the trees with barely a half-meter's clearance between the landing skids and the
barren branches of the canopy. Dawn was still two hours away and the grim, moonless night drew in what little noise came from the tilt rotors
at the veetol's wingtips, flattening the sound. No illumination emanated from the boxy aircraft; behind a blank, windowless canopy, the pilot
guided the veetol by multiple sensor inputs from video feeds, laser-ranging returns, and a global satellite tracking system that delivered
moment-by-moment data on the landscape flashing past beneath. Passing below any radar detection threshold, the aircraft rose and fell with
the nap of the earth, closing inexorably on its target.
The map provided to Strike Team Six floated in the air above the metal floor of the flyer's cargo bay, projected from a holographic imager held
steady in Ben Saxon's hand. He turned it slightly so he could study the patterns of the guard towers ringing the insurgent camp. Saxon had a
habit of pulling at his short, unkempt beard whenever he was deep in thought, and he did it now, peering into the glowing red wire frame as if
the virtual would give him some sudden new insight into the mission.
"Five minutes out, boss," said Pete Kano, nudging him in the ribs, pitching his voice to be heard over the steady thrum of the rotors. Saxon
nodded, glancing at his second in command. They were a study in contrasts; the African was tall and deceptively wiry in build, big enough that
he never looked comfortable inside the cramped confines of a transport helo or APC, while Saxon was stocky and of average height. Where
Kano might have been an athlete, Saxon resembled a street fighter—but there was no other man he would have wanted to stand with him on a
mission as difficult as this one.
Saxon had been running Strike Six for Belltower Associates Incorporated for a little over two years now, and Kano was the only man who had
stayed with him for all that time. Where Saxon had been recruited directly from the British Army's Special Air Service, Kano had "liberated"
himself from a Namibian crime lord's war band after a Belltower battalion had wiped out his former boss's drug-running network. The rest of
the team had similarly diverse origins, men and women gathered up from national armies, police forces, criminal groups, all of them drawn in
by steady pay and high rates of danger money from the largest private army in the world.
Saxon wasn't one to shy away from the word "mercenary." It was what he was, what he did for a living; calling himself a "military contractor"
made it sound softer, somehow—and Ben Saxon liked the grit of the real thing. It was the main reason he had walked into Belltower's offices on
the very same day the armed forces of His Majesty's Crown had told him that his services were no longer required; the idea of a life on civvie
street just simply did not register with him. He liked it here in the thick; it felt right.
As the mission clock display hovering in the corner of Saxon's eye line dropped to the four-minute mark, Kano gave the nod to the rest of the
crew, and together they ran through their final weapons and equipment checks. Saxon hefted the weight of the Steiner-Bisley FR-27 assault
rifle slung across his chest and double-checked that the ammunition carousel was locked in place, the safety catch set. Eyes closed, he ran his
Deus Ex - Icarus Effect Page 2