*
Kevin actually broke out into a smile, almost grinning into Mandy's forward sights.
And what the Hell are you smiling at?
“I'll make time,” he murmured into his pillow. “I love you.”
Mandy blinked. Time? What about time?
The Mercenary stopped a moment. Kevin was right. He needed time. She knew he was operating under a deadline. The entire committee had to die before the next Paris operation was planned; otherwise his efforts were for nothing.
The operation had to be postponed. Kevin could then rest, recuperate, gather his forces, and then, maybe, he would have a fighting chance of staying alive long enough to get all of them. And then, after that, well, that was another issue. Worry about one thing at a time.
Mandy sighed, and then shook her head. Kevin Anderson would still have to die. It didn't matter what she wanted. Then again, she could at least make certain that he died fighting.
She lowered her pistol. There was a better way to kill the spy. A much better way to make certain that he not only died, but stayed dead... She'd see to it personally.
She just needed the stage to be properly set.
*
Henry Daley opened the door to his Virginia home, not far down the street from his office building. He smiled. Welcome to Langley, Virginia.
He had always thought it was a nice, comfortable home, and it was. Nice, roomy accommodations, with enough space for him to spread out. Even more now that the kids had moved out, and especially on a day like today, when his wife was out of town.
His briefcase hit the carpeted floor with a solid thump as he sagged against the wall. He was beginning to get tired of all of the cloak and dagger bull he was being put through on a daily basis. Trying to plan an operation while simultaneously protecting the members of the operation from the committee overseeing the damn operation. It was impossible.
And the increasing paranoia of the committee was something else. They wanted hourly updates on a mission that he didn't want to see start for another few days, at the very least. But, honestly, what was he going to do? He couldn't hide from them for long. And what could he do? Report them to the President? Most of them were from the President's party.
Henry looked at the stairs in front of him leading straight up, then shook his head and turned towards the living room on his right, moving directly for the overstuffed armchair.
He stopped halfway there, pondering whether or not he should pour himself a drink.
He turned, and then paused. There was a double scotch on the rocks already poured out, the ice cubes relatively fresh; perspiration had not even formed on the glass.
“Have a seat, Mr. Daley,” came the light, near soprano voice from behind him.
Henry turned, and for a moment, thought he was looking at a resurrected, pale Moira Dalton in the chair across from him—then he noted that, aside from coloring, the two of them looked nothing alike. But in the dark, while she was wearing black, the differences in body shape and haircut were harder to notice. She was seated calmly, legs crossed, hands folded in her lap. Next to her elbow was another glass, and in her lap was a silenced handgun.
He grabbed the drink, and then fell into his chair with a grunt. He sighed and took a sip. “Miss, I have enough of this at the office. Can't you make an appointment?”
The young woman smiled gently and shook her head. “I don't think I want to have this discussion in your office. Get Kevin Anderson some more time.”
He blinked, and then looked over her gear again. “You're a Mercenary. You people are hunting Kevin, but you want to give him more time?” Henry cocked his head at her, then frowned, thoughtfully. “What do you have in mind?”
“Delay the operation as long as you can. Give Kevin the time to fix the problem, until it's safe. He's only got a few more to go.”
Henry arched a brow. “I love Kevin like a son. I respect him. But he can't do this.”
The girl nodded. “I've read your performance reviews. According to you, he doesn't walk on water, he walks on the clouds and the angels sing his praises. But you're right; he's not going to make it. We can at least give him the best shot. If it looks like they're going to capture him, make him disappear into some hellhole …” The slight woman's eyes narrowed and hardened into pale blue diamonds. “I'll kill him first.”
Henry barely blinked, but slowly took another sip. He placed it down on the arm and studied her a moment. “Why?”
“I never said I liked my employers.”
“So what? Nothing that says that hating them is to like Anderson. So, what the Hell?”
The girl didn't move from her seat, didn't shift position, her basilisk stare still locked on Henry for a long moment. “Anderson is...unique. The world is far more interesting with him in it, and with the committee out of it. I guarantee you I’m the only person who can get Anderson without declaring all-out war. I'd like him to hang around a bit longer. There are too few romantic fellows around, and I'd like him to live until he can finish what he set out to do.”
She stood and moved towards the door, walking slowly backwards, making certain that Henry didn't have any guns on him she missed. “You do your job, and I'll do mine. One way or another, Anderson will finish this. Or I'll finish him.”
She sighed, stepped towards the door, and Henry said, “I'll do what I can, Mandy.”
She paused. “I didn't tell you my name.”
He bowed his head in a nod. “I know. But I'm good at my job. And you're only alive because you're apparently on Kev's side. Screw me, or screw him, I'll hunt you down and kill you myself, no matter who your father is, are we understood?”
Mandy smiled. “Perfectly. I see I made the right call.”
“Yes, you did. Besides... you remind me of someone.” He took a sip from his scotch, and smiled slightly. “Moira. Anderson's wife. She also spent a lot of time watching his back.”
Chapter 10: Reversal
March 10th, 2093
James Friedman lived in the cushy part of West Virginia, where he owned about half the state, which explained why half the town was named for him. The James Friedman State Library... and Bridge … and State Park, and the list went on. It also explained how he could have owned a twenty-acre piece of real estate with an exceptionally fancy mansion.
Kevin smiled at the setup through the goggles of the Mercenary helmet he “liberated” from the men guarding Bauer’s boat. There were no external security cameras, the majority of the security set up to protect the main building. The grounds themselves were not hardened against intruders, as far as he could tell … but then again, there was always something. For example, there were pressure sensors in the ground he was worried about.
He circled around the fifteen-foot wall, looking for a subtle way to breach the perimeter. The wall was solid stone, so unless he wanted to invest in some heavy C12 explosives, he needed to be better than his average day. Then again, that was if he were thinking rationally. He had somehow gone this long without having lost his edge, even when he was dead tired and in a bayou in the middle of Louisiana.
Maybe sleeping a whole day away in that lousy hotel had been a help.
Kevin's senses had always been highly sharpened by his emotions, which had made him good at his job, even when bullets were flying. The more that happened, the more it focused him. This was possibly the most focused he had ever been. People often told him that rage was never lessened by venting—dwelling on it, forming it into rational thought, only made it sharper. After killing over half of the intelligence committee, he was so sharp he was half convinced he could cut through solid steel.
For example, it only took him a glance at the front gate to know he wasn’t going through. The front gate was protected with more security on a single lock that he had ever seen. There were retinal scanners, iris scanners, and a touch pad that not only took a ten digit code, it could also scan the fingerprints of the person punching in the code, as well as a sample of DNA, not to mentio
n measure the blood pressure in each fingertip. There was no way that Kevin could get a living, cooperative human being to work all of that, assuming he could find someone whose fingerprints and code would operate the front gate.
Kevin had spent most of the day surveying the building, and had spotted two familiar gunships flying onto the premises, bearing the markings of the Mercenary’s Guild. So even if there were people on guard outside, he couldn’t be certain that their DNA would even be encoded into the system yet.
He almost tripped over the solution about an hour after sundown. There was a rake and a garden hose carelessly left out by the gardeners. Why they couldn’t just use automated services were beyond him…then again, the use of living servants was a sign of affluence.
Kevin strolled over the cement path, making certain to avoid the grass. He grabbed the metal rake, testing the tensile strength. He held the shaft and unscrewed the top of the rake and screwed it on to the end of the hose. He swung the hose around a few times then hurled it over the wall, made sure the rake hooked properly, and then climbed up. He peeked over the top of the wall, and saw the path down to the front door. It was an elegant path that split around an elongated fountain. The concrete was as wide as a sidewalk, if not more, so he could even walk around guards and still not need to risk stepping on the grass.
The two Mercenaries talking over the fountain, now that was a problem.
Kevin used the goggles built into the helmet to zoom in on the two Mercenaries. Neither one had their own goggles down, so he didn’t have to worry about night vision just yet. And considering he was wearing dark green (black was too dark—it was literally darker than the night itself), it was unlikely that they would see him without aid.
He climbed over the wall, and halfway expected that he would need to use the makeshift grappling hook to climb down the other side, but he found a drainpipe instead. He climbed down slowly. He crouched low and crept along the very edge of the cement, not moving fast enough to set off any motion detectors. The two Mercenaries continued chatting. They were both entirely too relaxed, so he could only assume that they had not been fully briefed.
By the time Kevin got beyond the stairs, he could see the setup rather clearly. There were lights on either side of the stairs sliding up to the double doors, and there was a camera pointing down from the doors, all ready to catch his smiling face if he drew too near. Kevin frowned, then tacked to the right, along the wall, following it down off the cement and on to the grass. He was so deep into the grounds that whoever built this place had apparently stopped caring about planting motion detectors.
Kevin followed the wall, hoping to find a back way. He had to pause slightly—there was another camera, and the only way under it was over the grass. He scanned the area with his goggles. There didn’t seem to be any motion sensors in the ground on this end as well—based on a false reliance on the sensors in front.
He waited for the camera to swivel away from him and darted straight at it, ducking underneath it and its point of view before it could come back. There was no path directly to the back of the house—that would have been far too easy—however, there was a door to that wing of the building—an emergency exit, by the look of it. There was also a ladder on the side, going up to the roof. He smiled, waited for the timing to be right on the camera, and then sprinted for it. He crossed thirty feet of the lawn to get to the ladder, then leapt the remaining feet, grabbing the ladder and starting to climb before the camera came back.
Kevin slid onto the roof and looked around, finding two skylights. He crunched as lightly as he could over the gravel as he made his way to the skylight, looking inside. It led down to a grand foyer with three levels—the main entrance, a grand set of stairs to the second floor, and to a catwalk that went around the room to another set of stairs, up to the third floor. There was also a chandelier that lit the entire ballroom quite well—including the four guards. There was a Mercenary on each of the upper two levels, with two regular security guards on the ground floor. There was enough firepower there to kill him at least a dozen times over.
However, the skylight was locked with magnetic seals. He looked at it a moment, and carefully examined the circuitry. He traced the wires with the edge of the knife and flicked it, and he could hear the magnets powering down. He scanned the roof again, and noticed that the last person up there had carelessly left a length of cable. Kevin took it and measured it out. It was about twenty feet long, and perfect. He quickly fastened a loop of cable around his waist, and the other end around a water pipe—he would swing in just above the catwalk.
Kevin walked back to the opening, studying it carefully, and timing everything to the last detail. Once he had the patrols timed to the second, he walked back long the roof, counting to himself. When the moment was right, he leapt into a dash, then hurled himself through the skylight at an angle.
The cable snapped taught and swung him like a pendulum back the way he came—and he came feet first into the head of the Mercenary guarding the entrance to the third floor. The Merc’s head snapped to one side, his neck snapping with it. Kevin quickly pulled off the cable, laying it against the railing, and pulled his knife as the second Merc came to investigate.
Kevin pressed himself against the wall, closed his eyes, and listened to the sound of the Merc’s footsteps. He slid along the wall, putting himself just below the light switch, hoping that they hadn’t upgraded the feature to act on voice command in the modern fashion.
When the Merc was audibly about to turn onto the walkway, Kevin turned off the lights, and opened his eyes—both of them already adjusted to the dark. He hurled the knife, and it landed point first in the Mercenary’s throat. The man gurgled a little before he went down.
The two security guards on the ground floor heard the thumps, saw the lights go out, and started up the main stairs. Kevin grabbed the first Merc’s gun, and stood, leaned over the edge of the walkway, and fired twice, killing the other two guards. That's what they get for not looking up.
Kevin paused a moment, retrieved his knife, and then turned towards the door. He grabbed it and opened it slowly, looking into the next hallway. It was darkened, like a museum, but lit just enough that the Mercenaries didn’t resort to their NVG settings. The only thing that worried him was that there were at least six of them in a patrol pattern covering the entire hallway.
He cracked the door open just enough so that he could slip through sideways, then closed the door behind him. He slid against the wall, and followed it in a crouch until he came to a branch off the hallway. He followed it, slipped through the next door that presented itself, and closed the door behind him.
Kevin turned, and then looked down into the courtyard—he was on a balcony. He sighed and looked around. He found instead a drainpipe against the wall, one that led up past an air vent. He shrugged and got to work climbing. He switched the goggles through several levels of vision before attempting to penetrate the air vent, and found nothing. Thank God for the historical preservation society. Yes, passing the law had made everything involving Friedman’s house a matter for the state to pay for, but also limited the security systems that could be built into the building.
Kevin followed the air vent to its conclusion—right into a high-speed fan. He growled, then drew his knife and slid it into the mechanism, pulling just one wire. The fan cut out, and he looked down, spotting two guards at computers.
One growled to the other, “I hate this building.”
Kevin smiled and shook his head. Oh well, if be done, ‘twere best be done quickly.
He slid between the blades in the fan and slinked down to the floor, stabbing the knife into the brainstem of one guard, then whirled and slit the throat of the other before either knew he was in the room. He pivoted, checking his surroundings…and found himself in an opaque glass booth. He looked at the computers—only to see footage of the exterior cameras.
I can’t believe I landed in the security room. He nearly laughed, then moved in, looki
ng at the computer. He quickly turned off all of the security cameras, not to mention the motion sensors, locks, and anything else he could think of. He called up a map of the building, and found where Senator Friedman kept himself.
He slid out of the security booth after checking the passage, then casually walked down the hall, and opened the Senator’s door... And looked down the barrels of two guns.
“Hello, Lt. Anderson, how are you?”
It was Friedman; the smug, slimy sumbitch had security guards on either side of him. Friedman stood there, smug. He stroked his short-cropped beard on his sharp chin as though he was a cartoon character. With his nebbishy appearance and wire-framed glasses, he looked virtually harmless. “Senator.”
“I see that Mandy has yet to dispatch you,” he smiled.
“It wasn’t for lack of trying.”
Friedman grabbed a gun from the guard on his right, and the one on his left put his away. Both of them grabbed Kevin, searched him, and tossed his weapons to the other side of the room. The thugs on either side of him blocked his way, and the wall was at the spy’s back.
Friedman looked at the gun, the knife and the helmet. “Is that all you came here with?”
Kevin smiled evilly. “I don’t need more than that.”
The Senator laughed. “Please, Anderson, you’re not fooling anyone. You lose, game over.” He raised his handgun. “And I’m going to end you myself.”
He raised a brow. “And what is it going to be?” Kevin asked. “I went insane and on a killing spree, blaming the intelligence committee for my team getting splashed?”
Friedman nodded. “Something like that.”
Kevin’s eyes merely narrowed. “I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch. And don’t worry, it’s not business, it’s purely personal. I’m going to enjoy ripping out your spine and beating you into submission with it.”
Friedman smiled. “How colorful.” He raised the gun to Kevin’s forehead and squeezed the trigger.
Codename: Winterborn (The Last Survivors Book 1) Page 12
