Icarus Effect de-1

by James Swallow

  Behind her, she heard a voice call out. Drake. She knew it was him without having to turn around. Anna ignored him, kept moving. In a few more seconds, she'd turn the corner and be at the elevators.

  "Hey, stop!" called the other agent. "I'm talking to you! Stop right now!" Anna heard the rustle of a holster being snapped open, the click of a safety catch flicking off. "I won't tell you again!"

  She fled. It wasn't a conscious choice on her part, not something she was aware of doing on anything but the most base, animal-brain level; but suddenly she was sprinting the rest of the distance down the corridor, her thoughts clattering inside her mind, the rush of new adrenaline warring with the tidal drag of the stim crash. She couldn't think straight, she couldn't process. All she could do was run, run, run Anna raced around the corner and came face-to-face with Agent Tyler, wandering out of the break room past the elevators, stirring a cup of dark coffee. "Kelso?" His face registered a moment of confusion.

  "Stop her!" shouted Drake. That was enough to galvanize Tyler into action, and he let the cup drop, going for his service weapon.

  Anna ignored him and dove for the open doors of the elevator, hand reaching for the controls. Her feet were just across the threshold when

  Tyler snatched at the collar of her jacket and pulled hard. Some of her hair caught in his grip and sent a shock of pain through her head. A kick landed in the back of her right knee and her leg buckled. She went down, catching a glimpse of herself falling and Tyler right on her in the mirrored back of the elevator car.

  Then she was on the floor, half in and half out of the lift, with a federal agent's handgun pressed into the small of her back. "You're under arrest," said Drake.

  Romeo Airport-Michigan-United States of America

  The aircraft put down on the runway just as the sunset bled away across the landscape. No visible-spectrum landing lights were in operation, and the pilot brought them in using a virtual headset rig that made it seem to him as if he were touching down in the middle of the day.

  Romeo had gone back and forth between active and inactive over the last four decades, until it had quietly slipped into the hands of a minor corporate consortium that, via a labyrinth of blinds and shell companies, was one cog in a far larger machine. The surrounding area was remote enough that the local populace were sparse, but it was close enough to Detroit for the glow of the city's skyscrapers to be visible on the horizon, the colors reflecting off the bottom of the low cloud base.

  Inside the hangar, a staging area had already been set up alongside a fuel bowser for the jet and a line of utility trailers. Robot forklifts swarmed around the rear of the plane, peeling back the vast curved blades of the cargo doors to gather up the helo nestled in its storage cradle.

  In defiance of common sense and regulations, Hardesty stood at the thin sliver of open air between the tall hangar doors and smoked a cigarette. Saxon caught the pungent smell of the nicotine as he crossed the space, taking the opportunity to exercise his legs after hours aboard the jet. Federova was at the back of an unmarked van, picking her way through a set of armored, olive-drab cases. She was considering different models of grenades, picking them up, weighing them, exchanging them for others. He smiled thinly; she reminded him of someone at a market stall buying fruit.

  After that night in London, he hadn't known what would come next. Even in the throes of their quiet, animated sex, he had still been on alert, waiting for the moment when she tried to stick a knife in his ribs or snap his neck. But that moment never arrived; and when they were both spent she left him there, as silent as ever. He couldn't help but wonder if Hermann had got the same treatment when he joined up.

  On the flight, Federova looked right though him, her manner utterly unchanged from the one she had shown him before. Saxon decided to file their night together away as some kind of opportunist incident and think no more about it; but it wasn't easy. She had been… a challenge.

  "Saxon." He turned to see Namir beckoning him from a temporary workstation set up near the nose wheel of the jet. As he approached, he saw

  Barrett and Hermann there with him, peering into a virtual map of the city of Detroit.

  The young German's manner also remained unaffected toward Saxon, despite the moment in the fight room; but unlike Federova's cool affect,

  Saxon could see the chink of something through Hermann's metaphorical armor. A new respect, maybe? Or perhaps it was something else: some kind of jealousy. Saxon had beaten him because of two things-endurance and superior augmentations. The former was something that had to be taught, but the latter… that could be bought. He wondered how badly Gunther Hermann wanted to surrender a little more of his meat to the machine. Saxon guessed he wouldn't hesitate if the offer was made.

  He studied the map as he came closer. On the flight in, Namir had discussed the next operation in brief. Detroit was home to a corporation called Sarif Industries; Saxon had heard of it, a cutting-edge cybernetics research and manufacturing concern that specialized in boutique tech off the axis of most people's budget. According to Namir, Sarif had forcibly indentured a group of scientists, who were now being held against their will in the company's main research and development facility. The Tyrants were going to go in and extract these people, and "restore the balance." He wondered how much of that was true.

  Barrett played around with the map control and shifted the image to a plan view of the Sarif facility. They were planning a rooftop assault, and the timing had to be perfect.

  "We have a narrow window of opportunity to breach their perimeter," said Namir. "Some of the Sarif staff are heading out to Washington for a meeting with the National Science Board, and there's a weapons demonstration taking place on-site for a representative from the Pentagon. As such, their focus will be split on that and preparations for the trip. We also have an electronic interdict ready to deploy, but for now, we'll wait here for the word before we move to the forward waypoint in the city."

  "Weapons?" echoed Saxon. "I thought Sarif was all neural implant tech and athlete-grade cyberlimbs."

  Namir gave him a long look. "That's part of the reason we're going in." He pulled the map back out to a higher scale, and Saxon got the message that he wasn't going to give him any more details. "Some of our… associates have secured a holding area for us here." He pointed a slender steel finger at a location out in the city's industrial wastelands. That's our waypoint once we clear the objective and exfiltrate. There will be some postmission cleanup to go through at that location, then we'll decamp and return here for departure."

  "What kind of threat force will we be facing?" asked Hermann.

  Barrett answered before Namir could speak. "A bunch of rent-a-cops. Some embedded security tech. Nothing that'll make you break a sweat."

  He shrugged, the action exaggerated by his augmented arms. "Hell, I could do this number on my own. We could leave half of you on the bench for this one."

  Saxon met Namir's gaze. "Is that right?"

  The Tyrant commander released a sigh. "I'm still working out the tactical details. The information we have received on the objective so far has been… incomplete. I decided to mobilize the whole unit in case it is needed." He smiled thinly. "After all, it's better to have an asset and not need it, than to need an asset and not have it, don't you agree?"

  "Can't argue with you on that score," Saxon admitted. Next to the display there was a data slate showing what seemed to be personnel files. He picked it up and studied them. "These are the marks?"

  Namir reached over and took the screen from him. "That's right. Along with some other actives who may be encountered in the area of operations." He hesitated, then called up a different file and showed it to Saxon. "Take a look at this. Give me your first impressions."

  "All right." Saxon studied the screen, a little warily. Looking back up at him was a younger man with a narrow, angular face and hard eyes. A loop of footage a few seconds long ran past, perhaps snagged from a security camera feed. The guy had no visible cyb
erware, but the way he carried himself immediately set off a warning in Saxon's mind. "This guy's not a rent-a-cop," he said. "Trained. I'd bet on it. Not military, though, not a spook either. A federal agent? Some kind of copper?"

  "That's a good read. He's a former officer of the Detroit police department, Special Weapons and Tactics unit. Currently heading up physical security at Sarif Industries."

  Saxon read the man's name out loud. "Adam Jensen." He scanned the other pages in the man's file. His eye dithered over marksmanship records, details of Jensen's police career, and information about a discharge from the force that said more by what it left out than what it didn't.

  What he read there crystallized his thoughts. "He's no day-player."

  Someone made a spitting noise behind him, and Saxon turned to see Hardesty approaching.

  "Jensen's a flatfoot," he sneered.

  "An ex-flatfoot," Barrett added, with a derisive snort.

  "My point," Hardesty replied, nodding. "He's not even that. He's just a broke-ass cop, out of his league. No threat to us."

  Saxon answered, keeping his eyes on Namir. "You shouldn't underestimate this guy. Read the file. He's tenacious. Men like that don't go down easy."

  "Like knows like, is that it?" Hardesty came closer.

  "I guess." He shrugged and handed back the data slate, glaring at the other man. "Let's just say I can tell the difference between someone who is a professional, and someone who pretends to be."

  For a long second, Hardesty balanced on the edge of the veiled insult; then he gave a humorless smirk. "Useful. You gotta teach me that sometime, limey."

  Namir blanked the holograph map with a wave of his hand. "Get your gear together and stand by. We need to be ready to deploy at a moment's notice."

  U.S. Secret Service Headquarters-Washington, D.C.-United States of America

  In the basement of the agency offices there was a holding area with cells and a processing office. It didn't see much use on a day-to-day basis and it was a lot cleaner and well appointed than its NYPD equivalent, but the function was the same. A cell was a cell was a cell.

  They took all her gear, including the flash drive, the doctored badge, and her car key; Agents Drake and Tyler were dogged but they were smart, and she guessed that sooner or later one of them would head outside to the parking lot to go looking for her vehicle. Anna found herself hoping that D-Bar had been quick enough to hot-wire her nondescript Navig sedan and get the hell out of there when he'd heard the scuffle over the headset; she'd left the line open all the way.

  They took her watch, so she had no way to reckon the passing of time. Maybe under normal circumstances she might have sat there on the plastic mattress and fretted about what was going to happen; but the crash was on her and she surrendered to it. Anna let herself go and fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  When Tyler woke her, it was like dragging herself up from the bottom of the ocean, as if her conscious mind were wrapped up in anchor chains that kept trying to pull her back to the dark and to sleep. Shrugging it off, she rose and followed him, grim-faced, down a corridor to an interview room. This, too, mirrored the one she'd been in at the 10th Precinct.

  Inside: a plain table and a few chairs, the console of an audio and video recording system built into the wall, and Ron Temple. His arms were folded in front of him, and his face had an expression on it she'd never seen before. It wasn't fear or anger, but some strange merging of the two.

  Anna couldn't help herself. The moment she saw him, she went for him. "You fucking bastard-!"

  Tyler was right there to stop her, and he caught her in an armlock, twisting the limb back until Kelso grunted in pain. "Calm down, Anna."

  "Go screw yourself, Craig!" she retorted.

  "Sir?" Tyler gave Temple a questioning look, and his superior nodded toward the other chair. In quick order, the agent pushed her into the seat. Anna's cuffs slammed into the tabletop and were held there by an invisible electromagnetic inductor coil.

  "I'll take it from here," said Temple. "Wait outside."

  Tyler gave her a last look and then did as he was told.

  Before Temple could speak again, she snarled at him. "I know what you did, you goddamn rat! You sold out your own people! You got Matt killed-"

  Temple reached across the table and silenced her with a hard slap across the face. "Shut up," he said tightly. "You stupid, stupid bitch. I warned you! Didn't I warn you to stay away from all this? But you couldn't just let it go, could you? You dosed yourself up and came right back."

  Her head rang with the impact and pain flared on her cheek. "I know you're part of it. The Tyrants. All of it."

  "That name doesn't mean anything to me," he replied, too quick, too practiced. "You don't understand anything."

  "I understand you abused your position!" she spat, pulling at the cuffs. "I understand that you took money to give up confidential information, information that got people hurt or killed!" She drew a sharp breath. "They were your colleagues. Matt and all the others…"

  When she looked up, she saw fear in his eyes. Temple was shaking his head. "You don't know. They have people everywhere. It's not like there was a choice, Kelso! It was my life, the life of my family, my kids!" Anna recalled he had an ex-wife and three children living in Toronto. "This is the way things work!" he spat, the anger returning again. "You're too na'ive to see it, and now you're going to pay for that. Because I am damn well not going to take the fall!"

  "Who are they?" Anna demanded. "The government? Corporates?"

  He gave a harsh laugh. "Too small. It's more than just flags or dollars! These people are so big you don't even see them!" He was trembling, and he seemed to realize it. After a moment, Temple took control of himself. When he spoke again he was formal and guarded. "You've destroyed yourself, Anna. The drugs, collusion with terrorists, breaking in here and stealing classified data…" He produced the flash drive from his pocket and showed it to her. "You gave me everything I need." He shook his head. "If you had just listened to me, you could have walked away. But not now." Temple stood up. "You're going to disappear. Everything about you will be destroyed, and when they're done, it will be as if Anna

  Kelso never existed."

  "You can't hide this!" she shouted.

  "They already have," he said, without looking at her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  North Springfield-Virginia-United States of America

  The unmarked van rumbled along the central lane of Interstate 495, heading westward into the evening. If any of the other drivers in the sparse traffic had given it a second look, they might have noticed the opaque polyglass slits along its flanks and the air vent in the roof; but there were few people driving at this time of day, and for the most part the 495 was the domain of unmanned cargo haulers. The blank-faced, slab-sided machines hummed past the van, running lights bright around prows that had a whiskered look, like dogfish. Some of them had thinscreens along their flanks denoting cargo and livery, lighting up the road as they passed.

  Shafts of color penetrated the interior of the van and made Anna Kelso blink and turn away. She shifted uncomfortably. The orange detainee jumpsuit she wore was scratchy, the fiber-paper material rough in the places where it rubbed on her skin. Restraints around her wrists and ankles gave her limited freedom of movement, but not enough to sit up or appreciably change position.

  The only other person in the back of the van was Craig Tyler. His narrow face and small eyes were set in a professional expression of detachment, but Anna knew him well enough to see that he was uncomfortable with the job he'd been asked to do. Temple had charged Tyler and Drake to personally convey her from D.C. out to whatever holding facility they had lined up; the other agent was in the driver's seat, on the far side of the armored bulkhead isolating the rear section of the van.

  At first, Anna had been afraid that they were taking her out to some remote spot in the projects, somewhere that they could put a bullet in the back of her head and leave her for dead; b
ut it soon became clear things were not going to be that simple.

  All she'd been able to draw out of Tyler was that the agents were taking her to a rendezvous, where she would be transferred into the care of

  "contractors." The word had an ominous ring to it; anyone who had worked inside the Beltway for more than a few months knew that behind that term lay a multitude of sins. Temple had been right; she would end up inside some ghost prison, a "black site" facility off the grid, and that would be the last anyone would see of her.

  "They're going to interrogate me," she said, her fear giving itself voice. "Some faceless mercenary, someone with no legal oversight, no due process." Anna stared at Tyler, who wouldn't meet her gaze. "And when they're done, when they get all they want from me, I'll be executed."

  She stamped her foot on the metal floor. "Right here, Craig. On American soil. You know that's not right!"

  He was silent for a moment. "What I know is that you're a terrorist sympathizer, Anna. You've been classified an enemy combatant."

  "Bullshit!" she snapped. "You know me! You know what I was doing was not about terrorism! It's about Matt Ryan-"

  "Maybe so," he retorted, speaking over her. "Maybe, yeah, that is what you think you're doing, breaking the chain of command and conducting illegal operations without sanction… But you're in bed with international criminals! You're working with Juggernaut! They're wanted by

  Interpol, the NSA, FBI-"

  "I…" She tried to find the right words. "It's not what you think!"

  Tyler reached into a pocket and pulled out a data slate. "D-Bar. You know who he is, right? Your hacker buddy?"

  The name brought Anna up short. How does the agency know about D-Bar? She'd kept that information to herself. They had to have been listening in on her calls. More than likely, her apartment was wired as well.

  Tyler ignored her, reading from the slate. "Patrick Couture, also known as P-C, also known as D-Bar, from the French word meaning 'to unlock'

  …" He frowned. "Escaped capture by RCMP forces in Quebec, currently wanted in connection with numerous data-crimes on three continents, known to be an active member of the Juggernaut Collective. Designated priority target." Tyler waved the slate at her. "This isn't some kid pirating software or deep-sixing parking tickets. He's part of an international criminal conspiracy! And now so are you."