One of the others detached from the group and came to the closest of the rails, on the line that threaded west out of Detroit toward the state line and beyond. He sank into a crouch, and she heard the faint whine of micro-motors in his joints. The largest of them in build and bulk, he was almost a full-body prosthesis cyborg and what flesh there was of him seemed more like a coating applied to a steel sculpture than the true matter of the man. In particular, his organic face hung on a hairless chromed head like a mask, inset with two bulky crimson optic implants that gave him a permanently doleful expression.
Thorne knew little about him, other than rumors that the man had been patched together with experimental augmentations and vat-grown bio-mech limbs after surviving the detonation of a truck bomb. All she cared about was that he was as capable as he looked. Others had chosen these operatives to assist her, based on algorithms and predictive models that Thorne would never be privy to. Each was augmented to a lesser or greater extent, many with exotic modifications that she had never seen before. But that mattered little in the situation before her; all that was required of Thorne was to marshal them to complete the objective.
He placed a hybrid flesh-metal hand on the rail and was still. “It is coming,” he said. His words were precise, clipped and heavily accented. “We should prepare.”
“You heard him,” Thorne told the others. “Take your places.” She indicated three of the operatives. “Team One, board in the crew car behind the locomotive. Team Two, we’ll board the rearmost car and sweep forward.”
The others all gave nods of agreement and set to work double-checking their gear. A slender, athletic man with recurved cyberlimbs dropped the bulky backpack he had been carrying and handed out the contents to the group – each of them were given a disk-shaped device with a pair of grips on one surface, a glittering metallic nanofluid on the other. “Test,” he called, when all the units had been distributed.
As one, the group twisted the grips and red indicators on the disks turned blue.
“Deploy,” ordered Thorne. On the breeze, she could hear the fast-approaching rush of an engine, and at her feet the rails were starting to vibrate. Each of the nine operatives found their assigned positions along the straightaway before them, each dropping down to lie on their backs with the disk devices resting across their chests, like offerings to the night sky. “Activate timers,” she called, snapping her visor shut as the rumble of the oncoming train rose to a roar.
There was a brief flash of white as the headlight on the engine swept across her, but the wavelength-deadening material of Thorne’s suit blended her body shape into the shadows. She tensed against every rational sense that told her to flee from the oncoming train, for fear it would crush her beneath its spinning steel bogies – and then it was thundering over her, a black wall of noise a few centimeters from the brow of her visor.
Thorne closed her eyes and let it happen. She felt the electromagnetic disk in her hand go active and held on tight as it automatically triggered and drew her up off the ground, and into the spaces on the underside of the train’s trailing carriage. The shock of the impact resonated through her limbs, but she hung on regardless. After a moment, Thorne dared to turn her head slightly and catch a glimpse of the railbed blurring past right below her.
Five green lights flickered on in her visor’s display; they were all aboard. Somewhere to her right, she saw a bright flare of laser light as a beam cutter began to slice through the floor of the carriage above her head.
* * *
Vande looked up as Chen entered the rear cargo wagon, swaying slightly with the motion of the train. She nodded toward the door he had just come through, leading to the center-most car where the load they were guarding was held. “How many times are you going to check those crates? We still have a long way ahead of us.”
“And miles to go before we sleep,” Chen added, with a faint smile. “I can’t help it, I’m on the spectrum. Just indulge my mildly obsessive-compulsive impulses and leave it at that.”
She frowned. Now they were clear of Detroit’s city limits, the train would not stop again until it reached their destination, a military decommissioning center in the Dakotas where the US Army disposed of their more dangerous hardware. Vande had already applied a no-sleep drug patch to her arm and she intended to remain alert and awake – but after everything that had happened during this investigation and the chaos of the firefight at the airport, fatigue was making her patience run thin. Chen’s good-natured banter chafed on her, and what he thought was endearing, she found irritating. Vande got up and toyed with the idea of moving to where the other members of her team were situated, in the forward cargo carriage two cars closer to the engine at the head of the train.
She tapped a spot behind her right ear, manually activating her infolink. “All call signs, report in.” Chen, the other agent in her car and the three up front all did as ordered, drawing a nod from her. “Solid copy. All right, from this point we are going to clear protocol. Check in every hour, alert calls only, otherwise maintain radio silence. Base, you get that?”
Jarreau’s voice echoed distantly in her head. “Roger that, mobile team. We’re tracking you from here. Safe journey.”
Vande nodded again and cut the signal. Jarreau was about to go into a virtual meeting with Manderley and the directors in Lyon via the NSN, largely to answer for the disruption caused in Detroit and the heat Interpol was going to draw because of it. She didn’t envy him. Vande had never liked dealing with the upper echelons of command, even in her time as a regular cop. She was better in proactive situations, in the field, in the action. She’d joined Task Force 29 because she thought they could provide that for her, but lately…
“So, anyone got a deck of cards?” said Chen. “I forgot to bring an e-book.”
She eyed the tech. “I think I may have to shoot you to shut you up,” Vande told him, her tone suddenly ice-cold and utterly serious.
AIR TRANSIT CORRIDOR – MICHIGAN – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Jensen stared across the VTOL’s enclosed cabin at Quinn, watching the other man scrutinize a handheld repeater screen. Over his shoulder, a narrow hatchway revealed the cramped virtual cockpit beyond, where Jensen could see Alex Vega’s hands in constant motion as she guided the aircraft over the dark countryside. They were flying low, nap-of-the-earth, skimming treetops and following the line of the terrain to stay off local ATC radar.
Vega was humming absently to herself, lost in the work of piloting. She’s good, Jensen thought, military or merc trained, I’ll bet.
Being in an aircraft like this, heading into an unknown situation – it was an old, familiar state of affairs for him. He closed his eyes and for a moment he was in a different time, a different place.
“Got the train on my scope,” Vega said, breaking off from her tune to look over her shoulder. “Five minutes out, fellas.” She flipped a switch and the cabin interior lighting switched to dim crimson tones – not that Jensen’s augmented eyes needed time to become night-adapted.
For a moment, Jensen expected to see Faridah Malik’s face looking back at him from the cockpit, and he frowned. As competent as Vega appeared to be, it would have put him at ease to have somebody he had complete trust in on the stick. As Sarif Industries’ senior pilot, Malik had been there to get Jensen into and out of a lot of dangerous situations in the past, and her absence here and now was keenly felt. He let out a sigh. Thoughts of tracking down Malik’s whereabouts threatened to split his focus and he shut that away, returning to Quinn.
“How deep has Juggernaut been on this thing with the illegal augs?” he asked. “And for how long?”
The other man gave a shrug. “I’m not in charge, Jensen. I don’t set the targets and the missions. We’re a collective, remember? The clue’s in the name. Juggernaut is a gathering of people who operate in concert. Decisions get made by the whole, not by one person.”
“Not even Janus?”
He smiled thinly. “Janus brings a lo
t to the table, for sure. Valuable intel, access that the rest of us can only dream of… So maybe his voice carries a little more weight, but at the end of the day we strive toward a shared goal.”
“Destroying the Illuminati.”
Quinn nodded. “That’s the big one. A work in progress, you might rightly say. Maybe a chess game would be a better analogy…” He paused, considering his own words. “They move, we counter them. We blockade, disrupt and generally mess with their shit in every way possible.” He chuckled. “And we do it pretty well. Their organization is old and big and hidebound, it reacts like a bloody supertanker trying to make a turn. Sloooow.” He sounded out the word. “Despite the name, Juggernaut is more agile, and we’re always there to get in their way. See, they think they have inevitability on their side, that they’re the irresistible force. But the Collective is the immovable object.”
“Cute speech,” said Jensen, as the VTOL bounced through a patch of clear-air turbulence. “Practice it much?”
“Little bit,” Quinn admitted. “Did you like it?”
“Still waiting for you to answer my first damn question,” he shot back. Jensen looked away, using the time to take inventory of the gear he was carrying. He checked the actions on the Hurricane machine pistol and the Zenith semi-automatic Quinn had supplied him with, counting spare magazines by touch in the pouches on his tactical rig.
“You’ve had the pleasure of Task Force 29’s company,” said the other man. “They’re a special operations unit under the aegis of Interpol, or so their mission statement goes. Working internationally to stamp out terrorism and crime in the wake of the incident.” He made air quotes with his fingers. “Good cops dealing with bad things.”
“All that I know.”
Quinn’s smile turned sly. “But what if I told you the Juggernaut Collective believes that TF29 are tied to the activities of the Illuminati? Most likely through co-opted assets distributed through Interpol and the active Task Force units around the world.”
Jensen shook his head. “If that’s true, why are Jarreau and his people working so hard to bring down this smuggling network? Supplying combat augmentations to terror groups has the stink of those shadowy bastards all over it.”
That got him another shrug. “Janus says there are factions within the Illuminati. Opposed elements working to different agendas.”
“Janus says?” repeated Jensen. “You ever wonder how he knows that?”
“All the time. But I trust him.” Quinn’s cocky manner faded, and Jensen got the sense the man was recalling a buried personal truth that would never be revealed. “And that’s all I’m going to say about that.”
Jensen wondered what burden Janus had lifted to get Quinn to become a loyal part of Juggernaut, filing the thought away for later consideration.
The other man went on. “I know you used to be police, so you think you get where TF29 are coming from… only you don’t.” Quinn gestured. “Lift up your head and look away from the moment, Jensen. The Task Force was formed to fight a surge in criminal and terrorist activity, and so on… But those circumstances have only come to a head because of the Aug Incident! The Task Force is a direct result of a situation the Illuminati invented! You know this, you were there, for crying out loud…” He became more animated as he warmed to the subject. “It’s the thin end of the wedge, bratán. Today, the Task Force is a bunch of small units scattered around the world, doing the tough jobs so decent folks can sleep soundly in their beds… but tomorrow? They’ll grow into an army with soldiers in every city and every nation. Answerable to no government, acting without oversight, all to keep us safe from the specter of techno-terror. The Illuminati manufactured the reason for the Task Force so they could sow the seeds of a New World Order military.”
Anyone who hadn’t lived through what Adam Jensen had experienced, anyone who hadn’t seen what he had seen, might have dismissed Quinn’s words out of hand as tinfoil-hat levels of conspiracy theory. But for Jensen, there was a troubling sense of the possible in it all. He sat back against the inside of the VTOL’s cabin. “Let’s say Janus is right. That Task Force 29 is being manipulated by an insider. What do you want to do about it?”
“Go in there and root around,” offered Vega, who had been listening to the conversation from the start. “Juggernaut wants a face that fits, get it? Only none of us on the roster meet the bill.”
“Alex puts it better than I could,” said Quinn. “We want to penetrate TF29’s organization and find proof positive that the group has been compromised.”
“And then we’ll burn it to the ground,” added Vega.
US ARMY RAIL TRANSPORT 995 – MICHIGAN – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The first inkling the team at the front of the train had that something was wrong was a clanking noise from the deck beneath their feet. Agent Doe was a First Nation ex-patriot with a high black topknot and a suite of advanced neural implants, and she slipped off the crate she had been sitting on and crouched low to the floor. “You hear that?” she asked the others.
Away at the top end of the cargo wagon, where a connecting door led to a crew car behind the locomotive leading the train, the noise sounded again and Doe drew her sidearm.
“You want me to call it in?” said one of her colleagues. “Vande will be pissed if we break comm protocol for nothing.”
“If it’s nothing,” said the woman, striding down the length of the long car. She reached the door and slammed the heel of her hand on the panel that would open it.
The metal door slid aside, and standing directly behind it was a shadow with dark, light-absorbing skin. In its hand was a wide, diamond-shaped push dagger that shot out and hit Doe in the throat and chest a half-dozen times before she could cry out. Gushing blood, the agent stumbled forward, her gun clattering away. Her killer grabbed her before she could fall, spinning her around as another hand came up with a large-frame Steiner-Bisley semi-automatic in it. The heavy pistol was doubled in length by a fat sound suppressor on the end of the barrel.
Pulling Doe close as a human shield, her killer advanced into the cargo wagon followed by two more featureless black-clad figures, each of them like pieces of the night given form and will. Other guns came up as Doe’s teammates drew down, but shots were already in the air. Subsonic armor-piercing .45 caliber rounds hit the Task Force agents in perfect double-tap groupings.
When they fell, Doe’s killer allowed her to collapse as well, and he stood aside as his comrades moved up, watching them pause to shoot the other two agents in the head, to be certain they would not rise again.
The killer tapped a key on the palm of his glove, sending three clicks of static over an encrypted channel.
* * *
“Forward car is secure,” Thorne subvocalized, watching as the last of her squad climbed up through the ragged hole in the floor and into the trailing carriage of the train. “Three kills.”
“Half of them terminated already,” said the hulking cyborg, in a manner that might have been disappointment. “I will neutralize the remainder.”
The members of the military train’s duty crew – two engineers and two soldiers – were already lying dead in a heap at the far end of the compartment. Silenced shots and close-quarter kills had seen an end to them in short order.
“This isn’t a game,” Thorne told him, looking up to stare the machine-man in the face. “We’re not here for you to score points.”
The lenses of his glassy eyes shifted slightly to focus on her. “Stay out of my way,” he warned, and advanced to the forward door. It slid open before the cyborg, revealing a line of two flatbed wagons between the rear car and the next cargo carriage. The sharp-sided shapes of denuded, wingless aircraft fuselages sat across the flatbeds beneath the flapping tarpaulin covers and heavy hawsers that held them in place. The cyborg set off, moving ahead without looking back.
The tall, thin operative with the sword-blade legs shot Thorne a look. “Don’t sweat it. The German gets twitchy if he can’t get
his hands dirty,” he said, raising his voice over the rush of wind through the open door.
She nodded at the dead men. “What do you call that?”
“Just warming up,” he noted, and set off after the cyborg.
* * *
“We’re here,” called Vega, as she pulled the VTOL into a hard turn. “I got the bird in whisper mode so we’re ghosting… But I think I saw movement out on one of the flatbeds, so watch it…”
Quinn peered through a porthole in the door at his side. “Don’t take any chances, little sister. Get us up to the engine at the front and hold her steady.” He turned to Jensen. “Your show now.”
Jensen gave a determined nod. “Pritchard,” he muttered, triggering his infolink. “I’m going in. You read me?”
What came back was a scratchy, hissing tide of interference. Jensen picked out a few words from the hacker, something about ‘jamming’ and ‘disconnection’ before Pritchard’s faint voice sank entirely beneath the crashing waves of static. It seemed that he would be doing this alone.
“Udači,” said Quinn, reaching for the hatch’s release switch. “Come out of this alive, and I’m sure we’ll talk some more.”
The hatch retracted and a roaring gale flooded the compartment. Jensen snapped off the safety belt across his lap and went to the edge. Speeding along less than a meter below the belly of the VTOL was the top of the military train’s olive drab locomotive, a wide line of exhaust grilles and metal plating. Aside from a few running lights, the engine was totally dark. It had no human driver, controlled instead by a robot brain that saw through the night with infra-red and radar senses.
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