“Look, I need to talk to him, it’s an emergency.”
“Would you like to speak to somebody else, perhaps?”
“Yes! Who did he leave in charge? I want to talk to them.”
“Who shall I say is calling?”
She gave her name and waited.
“Ms Malone, I’m Captain Harnois. I work with Mr Kennedy. Are you all right? Are you safe?” It was pretty clear her name had triggered an alert from the K Section computers.
“So he is out looking for me?”
“I’m afraid I can’t—” He stopped, seeming irritated with himself. “Yes, he is. Where are you, Ms Malone?”
“I’m not sure. Southgate, London. I’m within a couple of kilometers of Clarke Engineering. That’s where he’s gone, isn’t it? You need to tell him not to go storming in there. I’m out. I’m OK. The only hostage they’ve got is Roger Waxtead, and he’s probably dead. I was there when they shot him.” She remembered the way his body shook as the two bullets thudded into him. “Look, I’m not far away. I’m going back to see if I can stop Jay.”
“No. I think you should—” but she cut him off.
“You need to find my daughter. She’s staying with Jay’s mother, Dorothy Kennedy. Something’s wrong. Please hurry.”
She hung up and ran back out into the street. It was so typical of him to turn up to save the day after she’d already got herself out of there. Now he’d probably get himself killed. Which would serve him right. She set off at a run back the way she’d come. If Jay and his storm troopers went marching into that factory, the hamsters would tear them to pieces. It would be a massacre.
And the growing conviction that Cara was caught up in this too drove Sandra to forget her exhaustion, her thirst and hunger, and run faster.
***
Laura Thalman was prowling around the command console, unable to settle, knowing Jay was out there, when the call from Captain Harnois came through. Gerhard put down a sandwich he was about to start eating beside a steaming mug of coffee and eyed them regretfully.
“No, no,” Gerhard told Harnois. “We have stood down the attack. We’re waiting for the police to arrive.”
She could see Harnois’s face in the display, brows knitted, but could not hear his reply.
“Something’s wrong,” Gerhard said. “I can’t raise him.” A brief pause. “Fourget’s offline too.” He glanced nervously around his displays. “Look, give me a moment to find out what’s going on and I’ll get back to you.”
Harnois’s image disappeared. Laura chewed her lip as she watched Gerhard frantically querying his men and flicking between the various camera feeds.
“Captain,” she said, when she couldn’t stand it any longer. “I know where he’s gone. And Fourget too.”
The young officer swiveled his seat to face her. “You do?”
She nodded and would have said more but a perimeter alarm sounded on Gerhard’s console. In an instant he was on it, flicking through the camera viewpoints again, asking for information. He stopped with a sharp intake of breath. Laura saw in the display the image of a man lying on the ground. One of the MI5 agents.
There was a scuffle in the corridor outside the room and they both turned to face the door, Gerhard reaching for his pistol. Laura’s heart was racing. She wasn’t supposed to be in danger here. There wasn’t supposed to be any fighting. There was a thump and a whoosh of breath. Gerhard was on his feet, moving to stand between Laura and the door. A man came staggering backwards into the room and fell down hard on his backside. Gerhard raised his weapon and took aim at the doorway. Laura stepped back. She’d seen pictures of augmented mercenaries, had been revolted by the things they did to their own bodies, but she’d never expected to come face to face with one.
Into the room stepped the exact opposite of what she was expecting. Tall and long-limbed, the woman was dirty and dishevelled, her blouse spattered with blood and her long, thick hair matted, yet she moved with confident economy, and she was undoubtedly the most beautiful woman Laura had ever seen.
“Not another step,” Gerhard said. “Peel, on your feet, man.”
“She took me by surprise, sir,” the fallen soldier said.
“It’s so unfair when the enemy does that,” the woman said. “Are you in charge here?”
“Name,” the captain said.
“I’m Sandra Malone. Where’s Jay Kennedy?”
Laura’s mouth fell open. “You’re Jay’s Sandra?”
Sandra glanced her way and frowned but kept her attention on Gerhard. “He’s gone off to the engineering works to rescue me, hasn’t he?”
Gerhard pursed his mouth into the beginning of a question but didn’t ask it. He turned to Laura.
“Yes, he has,” Laura said, to Sandra. To Gerhard, she added, “He’s probably taken Fourget.”
Gerhard slowly lowered his gun. “What the hell is this? There’s an MI5 agent down out there. Did you do that?”
“I didn’t have time to waste on persuading your men to let me in. It was quicker this way. They’ll be all right.” She turned to the soldier with the injured pride and the bruised coccyx. “Won’t you?”
“He thinks you’re injured,” Laura said. “They shot someone.”
“That was Waxtead.”
“Waxtead?” Gerhard asked.
“Yeah, owner of HiQua, billionaire, co-conspirator with these bozos. Look, I haven’t got time to bring you up to speed. You need to get onto Jay right now and call him back. It’s suicide to go in there without a small army behind him.”
Gerhard hesitated.
“She’s right. Hurry,” Laura said.
The captain shook himself, holstered his gun, and went back to his console. He’d obviously accepted the situation, however reluctantly.
“I can’t raise him on the comm,” he said, “but maybe I can locate him and Fourget from their suit telemetry and send someone to intercept them.”
Laura and Sandra went to look over his shoulder at the displays. Absent-mindedly, Sandra picked up Gerhard’s sandwich and began chewing on it. He glanced sharply as it moved past his ear but he said nothing.
“There,” he said, pointing. Two avatars were blinking beside the factory fence. “Alpha five, alpha six,” he said into the comm. “Rendezvous with alpha one and two at grid forty-two. Standby for further instructions. Oh shit.” As they watched, the two avatars crossed the fence line and separated on the other side, moving rapidly apart. “They’ve gone in. It’s too late. Hey!”
Laura had been fixated on the two avatars circling the factory. Now she looked round to see Sandra Malone striding away.
“They’re going to need help,” the tall beauty said.
“Peel,” Gerhard snapped and the soldier moved to intercept her.
She stopped and turned back to Gerhard. “Jay’s a friend of yours, right?”
Gerhard was cagey. “He’s my commanding officer.”
“What about the other one, Fourget? Are you going to sit there and let him die?”
With a suddenness that made Laura jump, Sandra whirled around and kicked Peel’s legs out from under him. As the man hit the floor, she grabbed his sidearm and sprang away towards the door. “Surprise!” she said. She didn’t point the weapon at anybody but the threat was there.
Gerhard stood with his hand on his own weapon for a moment, then relaxed. “Get off the floor, Peel, and get this woman a holster and some spare clips.” He sounded angry, mostly with the hapless Peel. To Sandra, he said, “Do you have any kind of plan at all?”
She thought for a second. “I’m going to shoot as many bad guys as I can and hope that it helps Jay get out of there. It would be good if you could do the same.”
Gerhard snapped again. “Peel, are you still here?”
The soldier ran off. Laura could understand him standing there in a daze. She felt completely overwhelmed by what was happening. She’d been with EDF MI for four years and she’d been aware of many missions, some of which had ended b
adly, but she’d never been there in the field, never had to face the fear or deal with the shocking pace of changing circumstances. She’d never seen people making life-and-death decisions more quickly and casually than she would decide on which dessert to buy in the canteen.
Gerhard faced his displays again. “I need your commplant codes. I can watch you from here. Help you.”
Sandra nodded, presumably sending them. “And your troops?”
Gerhard hesitated. He looked sideways at Laura and in a flash of insight she saw what the captain was seeing—a representative of the senior management. Her heart fluttered as she realized it was her turn to step up, that she could do something now to change the course of events, that what she said next, even her silence, might affect the lives of everybody on the mission.
“You should do what you think is right, Captain,” she said. “I will back you up, whatever you choose to do.”
Gerhard and Sandra stared at her hard, perhaps trying to judge the strength of her resolve. She saw a small smile touch the woman’s lips.
Peel returned with a shoulder holster with gun and spare ammunition, and a lightweight armored vest. He brought them to Sandra, who gave him his gun back. As she reached to take the holster from him, he held it back and said, “I want a rematch.”
She grinned at him. “In your dreams, tough-guy.”
He grinned back and let her take the weapon. Sandra slipped on the vest and the holster as if she did it every day of her life. Laura watched, trying to reconcile the strength and courage of this Amazon with Jay Kennedy’s quiet, gentle manner. There didn’t seem to be any match and yet Jay was out there already, creeping through the night, ready to die to save her, behaving in a way she would never have expected. It made her feel disoriented, as if anyone she knew might suddenly change in an instant.
Sandra exchanged a few brief words with Gerhard, they ran a comms check, then she was gone. No goodbye. No ceremony. She just turned to the door and left. Laura could hear her footsteps in the corridor as she broke into a run.
Gerhard spent a minute more organising his men for an attack. Laura didn’t quite follow the details but it looked like a direct assault through the main entrance with Alpha Team in the lead and the MI5 guys supporting from behind. He called up the helicopter too and then went to find the police liaison to explain what he was doing. Before he left the room, Laura called to him and he stopped, looking vaguely surprised, as if he’d forgotten she was there.
“You won’t blow up the factory, will you?” she said. He seemed confused. “Only, Jay was keen for me to inspect the device they’re using in there.”
She could see from the frustration on his face that blowing up the factory was definitely something he had in mind. “I’ll try not to,” he said. “Not without the boss’s say-so. OK?”
She nodded and he hurried off. Alone, Laura drifted over to the tactical displays and found the map with Jay’s avatar. But, though she watched Jay, her thoughts were on Sandra. She could see why a man would fall head-over-heels in love with a woman like Sandra Malone. Hell, she was half in love with her herself and she’d only known her for five minutes. One thing Laura knew for certain now, she could forget about Jay Kennedy. Even if he and Sandra never got together, there was no way Laura could ever compete. It wasn’t the woman’s incredible beauty, or her obvious competence and commanding presence. It was seeing her strap on a gun and run, single-handed, into a building filled with armed killers to save him. With the bar set that high, there really wasn’t anyone else who stood a chance.
***
Jay pulled up sharp at the corner of the building. There was a hamster twenty meters away, walking towards him. A woman. If he could get in a headshot, or even hit a leg, he might bring her down. But he wasn’t confident enough in his marksmanship to risk it. He promised himself he’d spend more time on the ranges if he got home alive and not let his skills slip as he had done lately. Meanwhile, he had about thirty seconds to decide what to do before the giant reached his location.
He stepped back from the wall and looked around. There were places he might hide but that wasn’t what he’d gone there to do. The roof was flat but high. Even with the servos in his suit’s exoskeleton, he doubted he could jump high enough. He should know, of course. He should know exactly how high he could jump. Know it by instinct from long hours of practice. But he was an administrator these days, damn it. A manager. He had no reason to be training for combat. That was for the professional soldiers, like Fourget and his teams.
So what are you doing out here, stupid? he asked himself.
He could hear the mercenary’s footsteps as she sauntered closer. If he popped out from the corner, aimed and fired, she might be close enough now for a hit. But hamsters were fast. Scarily fast. Their nervous system augmentations gave them reflexes like cats and, in combat, they’d be hopped up on adrenaline, testosterone and artificial stimulants.
Shut up, you’re just scaring yourself.
He took a deep breath and listened to the footsteps. How close would she come? Would she look around the corner? Of course she would. He pictured the massive machine gun she was carrying. She had it in a right-handed grip, finger on the trigger, holding it at an angle across her body with her left hand around the long barrel, ready to swing it round and up in an instant. He swapped his handgun into his left hand and flicked the switch to automatic. Another footfall. Another.
He stepped out from the corner, right in front of her. Tall as he was, she towered over him. His right hand went out to grab the barrel of her machine gun even as she swung it forwards into his grip. He gasped as she pushed harder, forcing his arm back. He stepped into her, blocking the rise of the gun barrel with his right shoulder. Her right hand let go of the gun and shot up to his throat. If the suit hadn’t absorbed most of the force, it would have torn his head off. Even so, it lifted him off the ground. The strength of the woman was staggering. But he had enough presence of mind still to squeeze the trigger on his gun, the one that was pressed against her right leg.
With a cry of pain, she used her grip on his neck to throw him aside. Helpless, he flew across the yard and rolled on the concrete. She was down on one knee when he could see her again, swearing like a trooper and regaining her grip on the big machine gun. Fast. So fast. He took aim at her head and fired, just as she fired back at him.
A bullet bounced off the side of his helmet like a hammer blow and he dropped his gun, momentarily stunned. He came to himself in an instant but he knew there was no leeway in this fight. He scrabbled to pick up his weapon and to see what the merc was doing, all the while cringing against the bullets that might be flying towards him right at that moment. Then the panic drained out of him. The super-soldier was lying on the ground, not moving. Her face, what was left of it, was a bloody pulp.
He grabbed his gun and reloaded as he ran for the relative shelter of the building. His heart was thudding so hard he had to take a couple of seconds with his back against the wall to let himself calm down. He was shaking so much he could barely hold his gun, let alone shoot it. He kept thinking how lucky he’d been. How incredibly, stupidly lucky. But two seconds was all he could spare. He pushed off and ran.
***
Hamiye was with Lee and Hong. They were explaining again what they needed from the future even though Hamiye knew full well.
“And what if the cops are waiting? They’re out there right now. Why should they go away?”
“Show him, Hong.”
The scientist gestured for Hamiye to look at his displays. “Here,” he said, pointing to a button in the sensor field. “You push that when you get back. Five-minute delay then the incendiary devices explode.”
He looked at Lee. “You’re not waiting for me? How am I supposed to get away?”
“I’m leaving you a driver and a fast car.”
“I’ve got a fast car.”
“Not like this one.”
“The cops will track it however fast it is. I was supposed
to leave in the chopper with you.” Hamiye could feel his anger building. Lee was shafting him, he was sure. The escape was in a helicopter gunship, a stealthed machine that would take them to a boat waiting offshore, a machine that could fight its way out of any potential problems.
“Plans change,” Lee said.
“Not the plan that involves me getting away.”
Lee did not seem to be taking his concerns seriously. He spent a moment asking Hong whether the device was ready for the shot. Hong seemed to think it was—with his usual concerns and caveats. Finally, he returned to the topic. “Would you feel happier leaving with the mercenaries?”
They were going to fight their way out in their armored van if they had to. They had a route planned and surprises arranged for any pursuers. Even so, the cops would have RPGs and choppers too. Their escape was not guaranteed.
“You only have to wait two hours at the most,” Hamiye said. “If I don’t get out, you don’t get the information you need.”
“That’s why I’ve arranged a car for you. Relax, Farid. Your escape vehicle is well armored, very fast, fitted with all kinds of weapons, and my driver is one of the best. It will get you away. To be honest, it was my own contingency escape plan, in case there were problems with the helicopter. Now it is yours.”
Again, Hamiye wondered how on earth Lee could acquire hardware like that except through himself. “I want to see it.”
“There is no time.”
“Even so.”
Then they heard gunfire from outside. An automatic, then one of the heavy machine guns the hamsters used, then the automatic again. The silence that followed told Hamiye that the merc was down. His heart rate kicked up a notch. The thing they all dreaded was happening. Against all reason, the cops were storming the building.
“Into the sphere now,” Lee said, drawing a gun.
“No. This is crazy. They’re coming in now. They’ll be waiting for me when I get back.”
“Only if they get this far. Now get in the sphere.”
Hong started urging Lee in Mandarin. It seemed he too wanted Hamiye in the sphere.
Foresight Page 23
