look at the face underneath—all fury and exertion, sallow and Nordic, with a shock of ice-blond hair. He clubbed Matt Ryan across the skull with the butt of the pistol, knocking him down. Then, with care, the killer took aim and ended him with a single shot.
Anna felt her friend die, the awful inevitability of it. She felt the horrific sense of the moment pass through her like an electric shock as Ryan
crumpled into a nerveless heap and was still.
Everything about him, everything he was, the good, honest man who had done so much to help her ... all of it gone in less than a second. Tears
streamed down her dirty, bloodstained cheeks as she struggled to hold on to consciousness, her pain overwhelming everything. It all seemed
impossible, unreal...
The killer halted for a long second, and she recognized the body language of someone conducting a sub-voc conversation. Then, very
deliberately, he turned to examine Senator Skyler, where the woman lay half in and half out of the SUV. She tried to hold up her hands to ward
him off. In the distance, sirens were approaching.
Anna waited for the next shot, but it never came. Even with all the madness unfolding around her, confusion rose in her thoughts as the
assailant walked away, leaving Skyler very much alive. Instead, he crossed to where Dansky was lying on the edge of the restaurant patio, and
shot the man again.
Then he turned to look toward her, and once more Anna got a good look at the sharp angles of the man's face.
It was the last thing she saw, as the thundering in her ears grew loud and dragged her down toward blackness.
The Grey Range—Queensland—Australia
Saxon never felt the impact.
A split second before the veetol collided with the hillside, jets of shock foam flooded the cargo bay with gouts of yellowy matter, reeking of
chemical stink. The fluid sprayed across him, the frothing mass instantly hardening as it made contact with the air. He gagged and coughed as
some of the foam made it into his mouth, his nostrils. It enveloped his body, smothering him.
The aircraft crashed down and ripped itself to bits as it drew a long black gouge of scorched earth across the tree line, the wings and rotors
shearing away in puffs of high-octane flame. Somebody was screaming.
The cockpit was crushed and the fuselage torn open. Inside, Saxon was slammed around his makeshift cushion, and for long seconds he
teetered on the brink of losing consciousness. He grunted with the exertion of keeping himself awake, and with a final, tortured screech of
stressed metal, the wreck of the flyer tumbled to a halt, inverted, half buried in a drift of loose earth packed around the nose cone.
A wave of punishing heat pressed in on Saxon through the cowl of the solidified shock foam and he felt it running like molten wax under his
hands. He dragged his left arm up through the mass and his fingers found the handle of the heavy jungle knife, lying in its holster atop his
shoulder pad. The soldier lurched forward, cutting through the clogged restraint straps still holding him in his seat, then down through the thick
foam-matter.
He used his right arm, his cyberarm, to peel back the curdled material. A gust of hot, putrid air washed over him. The cloying, sickly-sweet
stench of burned flesh and the tang of spent aviation fuel made him cough and spit out a thick gobbet of bloody phlegm.
Fire beat at him; the cargo bay was open to the night on one side where an entire quadrant of the fuselage had peeled back off the veetol's
skeletal airframe. The rest of the space was filled with black smoke and sheets of orange flame. Seats where men and women had been
strapped in were now little more than charred, indefinable things. The smoke was thickening by the moment, and he wheezed, cursing, calling
out their names as he sliced through the straps still holding him upside down. The knife cut the last and he dropped, falling badly. A shard of
agony shot up from his right hip and he howled.
The flames were all around him now, and Saxon felt the hairs of his rough beard crisping with the heat. He stumbled forward, reaching for spars
of broken steel, searching for a foothold to get him up and out of the wreckage. The metal was red-hot and he hissed in pain as it burned his
palms through his combat gloves. The smoke churned around him, clogging his lungs. It was leaching the life from him, dragging on him. His
chest felt like it was full of razors.
Saxon gripped the fire-scorched spars and dragged himself up the side of the fuselage, ignoring the singing pain from the places where jagged
swords of hull metal slashed his torso and his meat arm. Then he was out, falling into the dusty brown loam churned by the crash. He grasped
for his canteen, and through some miracle it was still clipped to his gear belt. Saxon thumbed off the cap and swallowed a chug of water, only to
cough it back up a second later. Panting, he staggered a few steps from the wreckage.
The tree-lined hill extended away, becoming steeper, falling to a fast-flowing creek bed a few hundred meters below. A black arrow of smoke
was rising swiftly into the night air. There was little wind, so the line was like a marker pointing directly to the crash site.
He stopped, fighting down the twitches of an adrenaline rush and took stock, running the system check. Red lights joined the green, and there
were more of them than he wanted to see.
He couldn't stay here. The drone that had shot them down would be vectoring back to scope the crash site, and if he was here when that
happened ...
Kano's face rose in his thoughts and Saxon swore explosively. He glared back at the burning veetol. Am I the only one who survived?
"Anyone hear me?" he called, his voice husky and broken. "Strike Six, sound off!"
At first he heard only the sullen crackle of the hungry flames, but then a voice called out—wounded, but nearby. He turned toward it.
Pieces of hull were scattered over a copse of thin, broken trees, small fires burning in patches of spilled fuel. Saxon blinked his optic implants to
their ultraviolet frequency setting and something made itself clear against the white-on-blue cast of the shifted image.
A hand flailed from underneath a wing panel, and he moved to it, crouching to put his shoulder under the long edge. Bracing against a boulder,
Saxon forced it away and heard a moan of pain. Sam Duarte looked up at him from the dirt, his tawny face a mess of scratches. The young mercenary's legs were blackened and twisted at
unnatural angles; he'd likely been thrown clear of the veetol when it plowed through the trees, but the luck that saved him from being
immolated had left him broken.
"Jefe ..."he gasped. "You're bleeding."
"Later," Saxon said, and bent down to gather Duarte up, hauling him to his feet. The other man grunted with a deep hurt as he put weight on
his right leg, and Saxon frowned. "Can you walk?"
"Not on my own," came the reply. "Madre de dios, where the hell did that drone come from?" Duarte looked around, blinking. "Where ...
Where's Kano and the others?"
Saxon could smell the burned meat stench on himself and he couldn't say the words; his silence was enough, though, and Duarte shook his head
and crossed himself. "We have to move," said Saxon. "You got a weapon?"
The other man shook his head again, so Saxon drew the black-anodized shape of a heavy Diamondback .357 revolver from a holster on his belt,
and pressed it into Duarte's hands. "That vulture, he'll be coming back," he said, checking the loads.
Saxon nodded, casting around, scanning the drift of wreckage. He'd lost his FR-27 in the crash, but the veetol had been carrying cases loaded
with extra weapons for Operation Rainbird. He spott
ed one off to the side and made for it.
Rainbird. The mission had been blown before they even reached the target zone. Saxon's mind raced as he ran through the possibilities. Had
they been compromised from the start? It was unlikely. Belltower's mercenary forces were the best paid in the world, and there was an
unwritten rule that once you wore the bull badge, you were part of a brotherhood. The company did not tolerate traitors in the ranks. Belltower
policed itself, often with lethal intensity.
He reached the case and tried the locks, but they were stuck fast. The knife came out again, and he worked the tip into the broken mechanism.
"The intel..." Duarte said out loud, his thoughts mirroring those of his squad leader. "The mission intel had to be bogus ..."
"No," Saxon insisted.
"No?" Duarte echoed him, his tone changing, becoming more strident. "We had a clear highway, jefe! You saw the data. No drones for twenty
miles."
The lock snapped and Saxon cracked the case. "Must've been a mistake ..."
"Belltower intel never makes mistakes!" Duarte snapped, coughing. "That's what they always tell us!" He tried to lurch forward on his one good
leg. "Whatever happened, we're screwed now ..."
Saxon shot him an angry glare. "You secure that crap right now, Corporal," he said, putting hard emphasis on the young man's rank. "Just shut
your mouth and do what I bloody well tell you to, and I promise I'll get you back to whatever barrio rattrap you call home."
Duarte sobered, and then gave a pained chuckle. "Hell, no. I joined up to get out of my barrio rattrap. I'll settle for just getting away from here."
"Yeah, I hear you." Saxon dragged a bandolier of shells from the case and pulled a heavy, large-gauge shoulder arm from the foam pads inside.
The G-87 was a grenade launcher capable of throwing out a half-dozen 40 mm high-explosive shells in a matter of seconds; the Americans
called it "the Linebacker." He cracked open the magazine and began thumbing the soda-can-size rounds into the feed. He was almost done
when he heard the low whine of ducted rotors overhead.
"Incoming!" shouted Duarte, and the soldier stumbled toward a twist of wreckage.
Saxon looked up and shifted the optics to low-light, instantly painting the whole sky in shades of dark green and glittering white. He caught
movement as something ungainly and fast wheeled and turned above them. The wings of the drone changed aspect and folded close to the
spindly fuselage as it dove at them. Saxon glimpsed a ball festooned with glassy lenses tucked underneath the nose of the robot aircraft as it
turned to single him out.
He broke into a run and vaulted away over fallen tree trunks just as the clattering hammer of heavy-caliber bullets ripped into the place where
he had been standing. Saxon rolled, hearing the deep report of the Diamondback as Duarte fired after the drone. The aircraft's engine note
throbbed and changed as it went up into a stall turn and came about.
"The trees," Saxon shouted, working a dial on the grenade launcher."Get to the trees. We stay in the open, we'll be cut to shreds!"
Duarte didn't reply; he just ran, as best he could, half-staggering, half-falling. Saxon looked up, finding the drone as it came hunting once more.
He pulled the G-87 to his shoulder, almost aiming straight up, and squeezed the trigger. With a hollow grunt, the weapon discharged a shell in
an upward arc. The dial set the grenade fuse for a half second, but even as the drone passed over him, Saxon knew he had misjudged the shot.
The shell exploded and the robot flyer bucked from the near hit, but maintained its dive.
His blood ran cold as the aircraft put on a burst of speed and fell toward Duarte, like a cheetah zeroing in on a wounded gazelle. "Sam!"
The soldier twisted and raised the revolver, the bright stab of discharge from the muzzle flaring in the low-light optics. The heavy cannon, slung
in a conformal pod along the length of the drone's ventral fuselage, opened up with a sound like a jackhammer—and Sam Duarte was torn apart
in a puff of white.
"Bastard!" Saxon rose from cover, screaming his fury at the machine as it looped and turned inbound once more, preparing to finish the job at
hand. He broke out and ran as fast as he could toward the steeper slope where the trees were denser, the grenade launcher bouncing against
his chest, his every breath a ragged, gasping effort. The cannon started up again as he reached the perimeter of the tree line, and Saxon turned
as he ran, mashing the trigger. The remaining three rounds in the magazine chugged into the air one after another, exploding barely a
heartbeat apart at a height just above the canopy. The drone's delicate sensors were blinded by the flashes and the scattering of shrapnel, and
it lost its target. The flyer drifted off course and clipped a tall tree; in seconds it was spinning and coming apart, shredding into a new firestorm
of burning metal. The detonation sent Saxon sprawling and he lost his footing. The soldier slipped over the lip of the hill and tumbled headfirst down the steep,
crumbling face, bouncing hard. Unable to arrest his descent, he fell pinwheeling over the edge and into the muddy waters of the creek below.
Washington Hospital Center—Washington, D. C.—United States of America
Sensation returned to her by degrees, assembling itself piece by piece, line by line. She had the sense of being in a bed, the cotton sheets
pressing against her legs, the prickly feel of the mattress cloth beneath. Her lips were cold and dry, a steady breath of oxygen flowing from a
plastic mask resting on her face. Anna felt worn and old, broken and twisted. Her body seemed dislocated from her; she expected pain. Why
wasn't there any pain?
With difficulty, she turned her head on the pillow beneath it and felt warmth on her face. Licking her lips, she tried to speak, but all that
emerged was a hollow gasp. It was dark all around her, a strange dimensionless void that she couldn't grasp.
Then footsteps, people nearby. A voice. "Anna? Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Okay, just lie still. You're in the hospital. Try not to move."
The oxygen mask was pulled away and she licked her lips. "Why ... is it dark?"
"Okay, nurse, thank you." Someone else coughed and she heard the familiar shuffle of expensive Italian loafers, a door closing. "Hey, Anna. It's
me, Ron. I'm here with Hank Bradley from Division. Just take it easy."
"Ron?" Agent-in-Charge Ronald Temple was Kelso's supervisor, a decent guy with a long career in the Secret Service. She hadn't expected to
hear him. "What's wrong?"
"Agent Kelso ..." The next voice was Bradley's. Anna didn't know the man as well as Temple, just by hearsay and reputation as something of a
hard ass; he was a senior agent working liaison with the Secret Service and the Department of Justice. His presence underlined the gravity of
what had happened. "I'm afraid we had to take your eyes."
"What?" Her hand automatically reached upward. Pads of gauze covered her face, and in a sickening moment of understanding, she realized
that the orbits of her skull were empty. Something hard and plastic protruded through the bandages from one of the sockets.
"We can't talk like this. Wait a second." Bradley came closer and Anna heard the whisper of a cable uncoiling. Something connected with a snap
Deus Ex - Icarus Effect Page 4
