Hardesty, the team's dedicated sniper.
Hardesty was rangy and tall, so much so that he seemed in danger of scuffing the top of his bald scalp on the ceiling. Saxon never saw him wearing anything other than a combat overall, sometimes with a gear vest or equipment belt. He was long and thin, like the spindly extreme range rifles he carried on-mission, and augmented across all his limbs. His eyes were high-specification optics of a kind Saxon had never seen before.
At first Saxon had found it difficult to adjust from being a team leader, as he had been with Strike Six, to being a line operator once again-and
Hardesty seemed determined to make it harder by being as big a pain in the arse as he possibly could. The man had taken a strong dislike to him, but the reason why wasn't clear.
"Just making conversation," he demurred.
"Joe Wexler was good," Hardesty insisted. "I could trust him. I don't know you. So I don't trust you."
Saxon moved to the cooler and took a bottle of water. "Trust this; Namir didn't invite me in because of my sparkling personality."
"Dead weight gets cut loose very fast around here," said Hardesty, pushing past as he made his way down the compartment. "Keep that in mind, limey."
As the aft door closed behind him, Saxon shrugged. "Friendly fella."
"Wexler was ex-CIA, like Hardesty," Barrett noted. "You know spooks, they like to stick together." "Right."
Hermann blew out a breath, his hand folding closed once again. He gave it an experimental flex, and Saxon saw where the knuckles and the proximal phalanges were heavily reinforced. Hermann noticed his attention. "A custom-designed modification," he explained. "In time, I hope to enhance the rest of myself in a similar fashion."
"Metal, not meat, eh?"
Hermann nodded, as if any other idea would be foolish. "Of course."
A soft chime sounded from the intercom, and Namir's voice issued out of a hidden speaker in the wall. "Final approach in ten minutes" he said.
"Prep your gear and be ready. We're on the clock for this one, so mission brief starts the moment the wheels stop. That is all"
Saxon glanced out of the window. The outer suburbs of the Russian capital flashed by, the city below shaking off sleep and awakening.
Pier 86-New York City-United States of America
Widow leaned back from the monitor and made a low, self-amused grumble in the back of her throat, the spider-hands reordering themselves into something closer to the order of human fingers. She looked up at Kelso and gave her a sour smile. "Thanks for the paper," said the hacker, nodding toward where Denny stood off to one side. "I always love doing these fun little jobs." Her tone made it clear the opposite was true.
Anna kept her hands inside her pockets. Jags of annoyance pulsed through her like twinges of pain from a pulled muscle, and she thought about how much she would enjoy slapping the smirk off the thin, spindly woman's face.
Widow gestured at the screen, where the captured image of Matt Ryan's killer was surrounded by a halo of search windows and subroutine panels. "This guy is a ghost."
"A name," she snarled. "I paid you for name."
"No." The hacker got up, pointing a too-long finger. "You paid for a search for a name. Not the same thing."
"Did you even do anything with that data?" Anna retorted. "Or did you just sit with your virtual thumb up your virtual ass for the past hour?"
Widow's face darkened. "Pay attention, slow-drive, because I'll only explain this once. I did a webwide trawl of all public-access video databases, plus a thousand more private imaging servers, parsing a data mesh based on Blondie here"-she waved at the screen-"and ran a match search using a collective of bloodhound info-seeker programs. The fact that he didn't even get the slightest of hits should be a wake-up call."
Kelso paused, the hacker's words catching up with her. Widow had a point; even the absence of data was a kind of data itself. The problem was, the absence of data was all that she had to go on, a whole damn pile of it. "He gotta be high military or corporate," added Denny. "To cull someone's past like that? Outta our league." That drew him a sharp glare from
Widow.
Everything they were telling her dovetailed with her own information. Whoever this man was, he had never been muscle-for-hire working kills for the Red Arrow triad. But who, then? The old, familiar frustration bubbled up inside her, the tension gathering at the base of her skull.
And then Widow did something Kelso didn't expect. She grinned. "Do you want to know how good I really am?"
"You do have something." Anna stepped closer. "Let me guess, you're gonna shake me down for more yuan?"
Widow gave an arch sniff. "No. I got standards. You paid top dollar for the gold service, so you get it." She giggled. "I just like, ha, building a sense of drama."
"A name?"
"Yeah," Widow said, "but not this guy's, not exactly." She returned to the monitor and pulled up some panels. "Got some puzzle palace stuff here, up on the Konspiracy Krew boards and over at Glass Curtain. Your mark, the data on the hit he was part of? The tactics match an open search those guys got running at their end."
Anna had heard of the groups Widow mentioned; they were fringers, part of the wide-eyed and credulous flying-saucer crowd, busy posting proofs that the moon was hollow or some other Twilight Zone crap. "You're not taking those mouth-breathers seriously?" The jitters were in her hand again, and she tightened her fingers, the nails digging into her palms.
Denny chuckled. "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, neh?"
"Ever heard of the Tyrants?" Widow cocked her head.
She shook her head. "I quit listening to the Top 40 the same time I stopped wearing a training bra. Talk to me!" Anna's temper flared again.
She could feel her tolerance level dropping along with her focus.
"They're a black-ops cartel," Denny offered. "No oversight, so it's said. Richer than shit. And hard-core, like you wouldn't believe. Stone killers through and through."
"Glass Curtain have them linked to a bunch of spook house stuff," Widow explained. "Regime change. Political murder. Intimidation. Corporate assassination."
The last phrase brought Anna up sharp. She thought about Dansky, there on the sidewalk. The killer going back to him, the second bullet placed to end his life instantly. She could feel the synchrony of the act in her mind's eye all over again. Everything Widow was saying fell into line with all the information Kelso's investigation had uncovered to date. It couldn't be a coincidence.
The earthy taste in the back of her throat was strong and she wanted to make it go away. "I want all you can get me on them" she said.
Widow smirked. "That'll cost extra."
In the next second, the million-candlepower glare of a night sun blazed through the thin ballistic fabric of the dome's roof, turning the gloomy interior into a starkly lit arena filled with sharp-edged shadows. A booming voice resonated through her rib cage, broadcast from overhead.
"This is the NYPD. Stay where you are. This area is under lockdown. As of this moment, all rights have been suspended" Beneath the words, she heard the familiar rising hum of sonic screamers winding up to discharge.
Denny broke into a run, but Widow was red-faced and shouting. Anna lost her words in the building wall of sound, but she knew that the hacker was blaming her for this. She thought Kelso had brought the police here.
Widow grabbed at her, knife-sharp nails emerging from the tips of the spidery fingers, but she punched her down, vaulting away through the panicked mass of the dome-dwellers as they ran about her. They tore up their decks from where they were mounted and yanked fists of glowing fiber-optic cable out of server farms, desperate to leave nothing behind that would incriminate.
Anna had just as much reason to run as all the rest of them. She reached the dome wall and slashed a new exit for herself with the collapsible push-dagger that dangled from a lanyard about her neck. Falling out onto the deck of the Intrepid, she was deluged in the white glare; overhead, a pa
ir of silent police blimps drifted in the breeze. Clusters of cameras, sensors, and guns were barely visible amid the drowning wash of hard light. Down on the river and on the shoreline, red and blue strobes came on. For one long moment, she found herself wondering if
Widow was right-had she brought this with her?
Kelso joined a throng of people running toward the old carrier's fantail just as the screamers went off. The wave of noise slammed into them and she fell as they did, her skin crawling with the burn of infrasonic sound.
The cops came across the deck of the old warship in a line, heads concealed by the mirrored masks of riot helmets, webber guns and restraint dispensers in their hands.
Sheremetyevo International Airport-Moscow-Russian Federated States
The aircraft parked at a discreet hangar on the far edge of the airport, distant enough to be out of sight of any prying eyes. The fuselage currently displayed the livery of Skye Secure Aviation, a transport subsidiary of Belltower typically used for the transit of sensitive cargoes; it was the ideal cover, but the mimetic hull could just as easily mimic the insignia of any civilian airline or military air force.
The operations room was a high, narrow chamber that filled both decks. Thinscreens were arranged on every surface, and hanging down from above, a cluster of holographic projectors resembled the splayed legs of an impaled insect. Folding seats among the control consoles and comm desks provided space for everyone to sit, but most of the Tyrants stayed on their feet. The air of barely contained tension was thick in the room; all of them wanted to hear the go-command.
Namir worked a panel, bringing the holograph to life. Nearby, seated in a way that communicated casual disinterest, the sixth member of the
Tyrants toyed with a loose belt length, hanging from a half-jacket patterned with triangular armor plates. If Yelena Federova was actually capable of speech, she made no effort to show it. When Saxon saw her, the woman was padding silently around the aircraft, almost a ghost.
Most of the time she kept to Namir's company, and Saxon had been content to leave it at that; still, he couldn't escape the sense that she, too, was measuring him.
The dusky-skinned woman graced him with a cool nod, sullen eyes briefly looking up from under a cascade of dark hair that hung down over her face from a half-shorn scalp. Federova had a dancer's physicality to her, an aura that Saxon could describe only as "grace"-but she hid a lethal edge beneath it. Her augmented legs were crossed in front of her; long and perfectly machined, they resembled the framework of racing motorcycles, curved and finely balanced. Standing, she seemed to balance en pointe like a ballerina.
The mutter of the holograph's activation pulled Saxon's attention away, and he watched as a vector-scan model of a blunt, modernist building sketched itself in the air before them.
Jaron Namir stepped up to the edge of the nimbus of laser glow; the colors threw stark highlights over his craggy features. "Intelligence has located one of our high-value targets," he began. "Here. The Hotel Novoe Rostov, off Zubovskaya Square." He touched a control and the image blurred, re-forming into a series of phantom panes. Several of them showed digital photos of a heavyset man with a beard and thinning hair.
"This is the mark. Mikhail Kontarsky, a minister of the Russian federal assembly, and senior administrator of the RFS committee on human augmentation policy."
Saxon raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing.
"This man is corrupt to the core" Namir went on. "He's betrayed his country and the people who elected him. Kontarsky has been suborned by an organization called Juggernaut. What we know of them is this: they are a decentralized anarchist terror group that uses information warfare to further an antiglobalization agenda. Neutralizing Kontarsky is a first step toward eradicating these dangerous militants, and it will deny them a conduit into the Russian Federated States."
The Juggernaut name was familiar to Saxon. He recalled intelligence briefings from his time with Belltower; one of the targets of the group had been Tai Yong Medical, a major client for the PMC's security division.
"So the Russkies are incapable of dealing with Kontarsky themselves?" said Hardesty, throwing a look toward Federova, who ignored it. "Why do we have to intervene?"
"Because the man is a point of instability, in a kleptocracy masquerading as a government." Namir paged through more images. "Kontarsky is a wild card. He has many friends in the duma-the parliament… That's why Juggernaut has turned him. He has to be removed."
"That would mean terminated," Hermann asked, "if we are being clear?"
Namir nodded once. "Make no mistake, we are dealing with a dangerous man here. Kontarsky is connected to several Russian organized crime syndicates. He's no choirboy."
Saxon peered at the screens, catching glimpses of elements from the politician's file, evidence of corruption and money laundering scrolling past his eyes.
"Mission data is being downloaded to your personal stacks," said Namir. "Draw weapons for a covert urban assault from the armory, and assemble on the tarmac in five minutes for deployment."
Saxon followed Hermann aft, turning the briefing over in his mind. "Taking down a member of the Russian ministry… Am I the only one who has questions about that?"
The German threw him a look. "If Kontarsky is a target, I trust the reasons are sound."
"Do you?" Saxon hesitated. "You've been with the outfit longer than me. Don't you wonder who gives the orders?"
"Namir gives the orders," Hermann said flatly.
"But who gives them to Namir?"
The other man walked on. "It is not something I trouble myself with, Saxon. Sometimes it is necessary to operate in the shadows to maintain the status quo. That is what we do."
"But still-"
"Still what?" Saxon turned to find Namir standing behind him. "Do you need a reason, Ben?
Look at Kontarsky's files. He's not an innocent man."
Saxon paused, studying the Israeli. "Who is?" In such close quarters, his thoughts couldn't help but turn again to wondering who would prevail if the two of them faced off. It would be an even match, Saxon thought. At first.
Namir glanced over Saxon's shoulder as Hermann passed through into the aft compartment, leaving them alone for the moment. "Juggernaut is a clear and present danger to global stability. They have to be dealt with. You understand that, yes?"
"I understand that someone is threatened by them," Saxon replied. "Tai Yong Medical? Others, maybe?" It was a clumsy attempt to gauge a reaction, and he knew it, but Namir gave him nothing.
"Have you ever wondered why Belltower's intel during Rainbird was so wrong?" The question came out of nowhere, and Saxon blinked.
"Juggernaut are info-terrorists, Ben. Along with all the other brushfire wars and proxy conflicts they have a hand in, they're working with the
Australian Free States. Conducting pay-for-play cyberwarfare on their behalf, compromising data security, disrupting intelligence gathering.
The men Kontarsky is working with are the ones responsible for your squad dying out there in the desert." Namir paused to let that sink in. "Is that reason enough for you?" he asked gently.
CHAPTER FOUR
NYPD 10th Precinct-New York City-United States of America
The coffee helped, but not enough. It was strong and tar-black, and it tasted awful, but the stew of day-old caffeine and stale sugar gave Kelso something to focus on.
The metal chair she sat upon, its twin across the way, and the table bolted to the floor were all the interview room had that could be considered furniture. The polymer cuff around her right hand was tethered to a loop in the tabletop, her other hand free to toy with the paper cup. Light came from a glow strip sealed behind armored glass, and high up over the lintel of the door across from her, the glassy fish-eye dome of a camera pod watched her, unblinking.
Anna knew things were going poorly when the cop who escorted her up from general holding didn't ask any questions. He just secured her, gave her the coffee, and left. N
ow she was marking time until the door opened again.
As if the thought of it were enough to make it happen, the metal hinges creaked and there stood the man she least wanted to see in the world.
Ron Temple threw a weak smile at the man by his side. "Thanks, Detective. I'll take it from here."
The other man eyed Anna, and walked away without a word. Temple dropped heavily into the vacant chair as the door locked shut behind him, placing a silver briefcase on the desk. He was tired, eyes bloodshot, still wearing the big, high-collared greatcoat he sported on the streets of D.C.
Anna imagined he'd come straight here, after he heard.
"What the fuck are you doing, Kelso?" he asked in a low, weary voice. Anna blinked; she couldn't recall Temple ever cursing like that before in front of her. He went on. "Do you have any idea of the kind of depths of shit you are in? No, don't bother to answer that. Of course you do.
Because you're an agent of this nation's highest-profile law enforcement agency, and not an idiot."
"I had my reasons," she managed.
"This is not a conversation!" he thundered, his annoyance bubbling over. "You do not get to justify this kind of stupidity!" Temple hesitated, and looked up over his shoulder at the camera eye. The indicator light showing that the monitor was active winked out, and he turned back to face her. His expression was conflicted; anger in there along with disappointment, sadness, and other things she couldn't read.
"You've put the Service at risk, Anna. Not just yourself, but all of us. I've had to call in a dozen markers from the NYPD to make this go dark, do you understand? As far as our flatfoot cousins are aware, your little excursion up here was a deep cover surveillance operation, and that's how it's going to stay. I'm damned sure I don't want New York's finest figuring out that an agent of the United States Secret Service was conducting an illegal, unsanctioned investigation!"
"It was the only way…"
He went on as if she hadn't spoken. "I know about everything. After I got the call, it all started to make sense. I had Drake and Tyler trawl your files. You've been using your access to the DOJ network and Nat Crime databases to pursue unlawful searches, hiding it from all of us while you let your actual assignments slide."
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