Grayman Book One: Acts of War

by Michael Rizzo

13

  Mike Ram:

  5:17am local.

  Matthew and Ibrahim left to take the long way around to their positions seven minutes ago. The others should be in-flight and imminent by now.

  The GSG snipers have long since settled in, ready, just in case. Also just in case, the NATO crew gets set to come in behind us. Otherwise, they’ll just be watching for anyone trying to sneak away after we hit the target, and to provide cover if we need one of the containment teams fast.

  Attila and his cool killers are relegated to similar duties, spread out with reasonable stealth in the shadows of the surrounding neighborhood. Attila himself is staying close to Richards here in the makeshift command center, though he doesn’t appear terribly satisfied that a showboat team of outsiders will be taking point, even if it does get apparent debts paid.

  You check your borrowed pistol one last time, adjust your coat to cover as much of the armor and gear underneath as it can, then step out into the icy pre-dawn air.

  You’ve been here before. Germany in October. Wearing this outfit. Someone else’s gun in your hand.

  “Déjà vu all over again…”

  “What was that, Captain?” Becker cuts in, bringing you back to the present. He sounds more than a little concerned, unsettled. Then the graphics light up on the inside of your goggles, Datascan inserting itself between you and the cold night.

  “Nothing. Just chilly.”

  “You’re on, Captain,” Richards pipes in, not sounding very comfortable himself. But with your first steps, you know where and when you are: the now-familiar weight of the armor grounds you back in the now. And new hat and coat over fifty-plus pounds of weapons and armor over forty-plus pounds of new muscle new body new face, you walk on down the road to do your job.

  The plan violates traditional tactics in almost every conceivable way. Without Datascan controlling every aspect, every maneuver, every line of fire, this would be the worst possible disaster. But if it goes right…

  Your heads-up gives you a virtual 3-D of the target complex: the fourteen live bodies inside are glowing through the transparently-rendered structures.

  The complex is a squared “C” shape around the central garden court, the individual buildings staggered offset and—even though they were constructed at the same time—faced in a mish-mash of styles designed to give the place an old-world feel. The roofs, though roughly the same height, are a mountain-range of variable angles, giving plenty of places for sentries to hide—if they could hide from a combination of satellite and infrared and Terahertz imaging.

  There are two guards on the roofs, apparently idle in the quiet early morning hours. They took some minor notice when Matthew and Ibrahim did their initial pass, and haven’t moved since. Inside, only four of the other twelve heat/sound shapes are moving around. And judging from a combination of sound and temperature shifts, one of those has just gotten up to take a shower. Bad timing.

  You walk straight up to the complex in plain sight, not bothering to keep to the shadows of the neighborhood buildings—just the opposite: you march smoothly right down the middle of the empty street, coat billowing in the chill breeze like a cloak, hat brim pulled down to hide your interface gear. You are a rippling gray ghost sliding in and out of the glare of the streetlamps, borrowed gun held low in the folds of your coat, daring them to recognize what you represent and sound whatever alarms they will.

  And that’s the point: You want them to see you, want them to recognize you, want them to panic. You want their undivided attention.

  On your heads-up, the two blips on the roof sit up and take notice. Datascan reads the rough chirp of close-range walkie-talkies a moment later. Thirty seconds after that, you can see some of the few lights on in the upper windows of the townhouses click off. Datascan shows you glowing icons of two man-shapes coming to the windows to look. A third moving form takes the stairs to the ground floor and waits close to one of the facing doors (trying to stay low, as if that makes any difference). Number Four is still in the shower.

  Upping the tension, you pause for a moment at the corner directly across the street, right under the glare of a streetlamp, and just stand there for a few seconds. This is partly to see how they respond to you, and partly to give you time to synchronize your actions with your incoming supports. On your heads-up, a map-grid shows you Matthew and Ibrahim in position. And coming in fast: the icons for two silenced VTOL dropships.

  Inside, the rest of the shapes begin to stir (except one, who appears to still be asleep in the flat where Number Four is showering). This is an essential balancing act: while it would be “cleaner” to take them all out in their beds, it’s politically necessary to confirm hostile intent (something that’s also supposed to be one of Datascan’s limiting parameters). The clearest way is to see how they respond to a threat, without giving them time to actually do anything messy.

  On your heads-up, the VTOLs pass threshold. You step out into the street and approach the very door you know you are being watched from. You stop just short of the entry gait, look up briefly at the roof, then take hold of your hat with your left hand and bow with a theatrical flair, like you’re greeting your dance partner at a royal ball.

  As your body tilts, Datascan reads the angles and targets and blows your primary rappeller through the provided slit in your coat between your shoulder blades. Hanging on tight, you manage not to lose your new hat as the auto-grappler and cable shoot almost straight up, and Datascan sinks the grappler into the eaves of the roof two stories above you. With a smooth jerk, you launch straight into the air. And keep going.

  The AI-driven rappeller motor calculates an overshoot and throws you a few feet over the rooftop, disengaging the grappler and line to spin back into your armor and lock home just a fraction after you come down on the roof tiles. Despite the bulk of your armor and the rather wild ride, you manage to land almost gracefully on your feet—one of the obstacle-course “X-Game” stunts Manning and Ibrahim taught you (though you’re sure everyone in the townhouse below heard the thud).

  Getting your balance back, you look around just in time to see guns hastily raised, confirming that you do have both roof-sentries’ undivided attention. You have just enough time to grin your grin at them before two clusters of muffled blasts drop them limp on the shingles, shot in the backs of their heads. Matthew and Ibrahim have arrived on cue.

  Matthew is unscrewing the suppressor from his SIG as he climbs over the angles of the rooftops on the rightward wing of the complex. Ibrahim is on the left wing, pulling the suppressor off of his own gun. In full armor, they look like spacemen trying to traverse a rugged alien terrain. Matthew almost loses his footing, catches himself, and signals that he’s intact.

  “…at least I didn’t fall off the building…” he’s grousing, heading in your direction. He’s rightly impressed, as you expect his landing (and Ibrahim’s) was much rougher than yours. They blew their primary rappellers horizontally from roofs across the street, using their secondaries to anchor them back to their points of origin, then trusted Datascan to swing them down and then arc them back up, sliding them over and then calculating their acceleration to toss them up to land rolling. And they landed just in time to right themselves and pop each one of the sentries from behind while they were preoccupied with you.

  “Time, gentlemen…” Richards nudges, impatient. But Datascan doesn’t appear to be worried. We’re still time-coordinated with the incoming VTOLs.

  “Hat, Captain,” Matthew gets your attention, then tosses you the spare helmet he’d brought with him. You hear him snicker on your link as you take off your fedora and roll the crushable felt to stuff it in your coat. “I just got what you reminded me of, doing that grappling-hook thing in that outfit: You look like Inspector Gadget.”

  Ibrahim spits out an involuntary burst of nervous laughter.

  “Cut the chatter…” Richards complains.

  You slip your borrowed (and as yet unused) pistol into one of the over-sized pock
ets your coat, then trade the goggles out for the helmet and visor—you will need the extra protection for the next part. “Better?”

  Matthew feigns an exaggerated shudder. “Ever see an old horror movie called ‘The Fly’?”

  “Position!” Richards refocuses him. You boot your visor interface and clamp your ICW in your grip. The three of you step to the inner edges of the roof, looking down into the courtyard. You can hear motion, voices, panic. Then the thrumming of the VTOLs.

  “Go!”

  We step out into space and fall. Our grapplers blow again and catch the roof behind us, rappeller cables fighting gravity to slow us just enough not to cripple us when our boots hit ground. Your coat billows out just like a cape.