he watched her disappear out of sight.
As he got back to the helo, the aircraft's rotors were humming up to full power. Beneath the sound, he could hear the skirl of approaching sirens.
Hermann was already on board, and Hardesty stood waiting. "You get her?" he demanded.
"Nothing out there," Saxon replied. "If you missed one, they're long gone."
"What?" the American grabbed him by the collar, his eyes wide with anger. "I gave you one simple order—"
Saxon said nothing, shook himself free, and climbed into the flyer.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Romeo Airport—Michigan—United States of America
After the helo returned to the barren, isolated airstrip, the rest of the night passed in sullen silence. Hardesty boarded the parked jet in the
hangar for what he said would be his "debrief," but until Namir and the others returned from the operation in Detroit, there was little any of
them could do but wait.
The thought of getting back on the jet made Saxon feel claustrophobic, and he walked the apron of the airport, turning over his doubts and his
fears, unable to make peace with the disquiet that continued to grow inside him like a cancer.
The unrest he felt was reaching critical mass—he could sense it. All the small details, all the little things he had let pass over the last few
months, now they accreted into a mass of contradictions and challenges he could no longer turn away from. He had tried to convince himself
that Namir had been right, back in the field hospital—that what the Tyrants were doing was making a difference to the world, holding back a
rising tide of chaos; but the longer he went on, the less he believed it. Namir had assured him that they would find the men responsible for the
failure of Operation Rainbird, the terrorists who planted the false data that led Strike Six to their doom. But aside from vague promises, nothing
had been resolved.
Have I been played for a fool all along? It frustrated Saxon that he could not be certain of the answer to that question.
There was an annex at the side of the hangar building, a line of rooms. He went inside, fatigue dogging him. He felt it rise up; he wanted to rest,
to close his eyes and make all of it go away, if only for a short time. But instead of solace he found Gunther Hermann, seated at a plain table with
ordered lines of weapon components spread out in front of him. He recognized parts of a Widowmaker, still blackened from being fired hours
earlier. A pistol, yet to be dismantled, sat within the German's reach.
"Where have you been?" he asked.
"Taking the air," Saxon replied irritably. He studied Hermann for a few moments, trying to take the measure of him; but it was impossible to
get a read from those eyes. They were dead, like a shark's.
"You have something to say to me?" said the younger man. The challenge was clear in his manner.
The question came before he could stop himself. "How many people died in that house tonight?"
"All of them." Hermann didn't show the slightest flicker of concern.
"And you don't have a problem with that?"
"Why should I?" He put down the cleaning rod in his hand and studied Saxon. "You heard what Hardesty said. They were targets. They were in
the wrong place at the wrong time. Collateral damage."
Saxon's jaw set at the man's matter-of-fact tone. "That's how you see it, yeah? Black and white? Hardesty says kill and you do it, like a good
little dog?"
A tiny flicker of emotion crossed Hermann's face. "I am a soldier. I follow orders."
Saxon shook his head. "I didn't sign up for this. Not to butcher civvies."
"What did you expect?" Hermann replied, confusion in his tone. "Did you come to the Tyrants expecting to keep your hands clean? That is not
what we do." He tapped the table with an iron finger. "I had thought a man of your experience would have no illusions, Saxon. We do the worst
of deeds in order to protect the world from itself. Because no one else can."
"And who gets to decide?" he shot back. "Don't you ever wonder about that? About who calls the shots?" Saxon leaned closer. "You were GSG
9, right? German police, antiterror unit. When you followed orders then, you were following the law—"
Hermann snorted softly. "When I was with them, the law was a rope around our necks. It kept us from making any progress." He shook his
head. "Do you know what Namir said when he recruited me in Berlin, what made me decide to go with him? He told me that the Tyrants did
not concern themselves with laws. Only justice. The group erased all my connections to the police force and I was happy they did." He nodded.
"What we are doing is right. The ends are justified."
Saxon tried to find an answer that didn't stick in his throat, but before he could frame a reply the door opened and Barrett entered. He
shrugged off his combat armor and gave them both a level look. "Miss me?"
"It's done, then?" said Hermann, his conversation with Saxon dismissed. The other man was almost eager to hear what had taken place in
Detroit. "Were there any complications?"
"Nothing we couldn't take in stride," said the big man. He glanced at Saxon. "That cop you were so worried about? Namir broke him in two."
Barrett helped himself to a beer from a cooler and drained it in a single pull.
"What about the people being held there? By Sarif?" said Saxon.
Barrett smiled thinly. "Oh, we handled them." He paused, massaging a contusion on the side of his skull. "They weren't that pleased to see us,
though ..." He made a face. "Some folks, huh? No goddamn gratitude."
Saxon glanced out into the hangar. "Where's Federova?"
The other man folded his arms. "Well, now. Would have been back here with me and the boss, but 'stead she's still out in the field." He aimed a
finger at Saxon. "Cleaning up your mess."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Barrett gave a shrug of his shoulders. "You tell me. Barely got our cargo secured from Sarif before Hardesty is on the horn to Namir, bitchin' a
blue streak."
"We achieved our objective," Hermann insisted. "Temple was terminated."
Barrett kept his eyes on Saxon. "Heard you let one get away."
"Bullshit," Saxon insisted. "Hardesty's just covering his own arse."
"Whatever you say, man." Barrett shrugged again and walked away.
Silver Springs—Maryland—United States of America
Kelso knew even as she did it that she was making a mistake. How many times had she seen criminals caught in the very same situation she
was in now, and for the same reason? She knew better. The smart play was to fade away, get out of the city, and keep on going.
That wasn't what she had done. Anna kept her head down and walked in the places where the streetlights didn't shine too brightly, staying to
the shadows. Instead of fleeing, she followed a basic, animal instinct to return to where she felt safest. Home.
Maybe now she understood those criminals a little better than she had when she was on the other side of the badge. For most people, it was
counterintuitive to just cut and run. She understood that impulse; the raw need to go to ground. She tried to convince herself she was being
smart—after all, no one would expect her to go back to her apartment—but she knew that wasn't it at all. She couldn't just leave. Not yet.
From the road she had glimpsed the spherical shape of a police monitor drone squatting on the lawn, the clusters of eyes on the robot
ceaselessly scanning the area. The device's face-matching and body-mapping software would be programmed with her biometric profile, and
she'd be made in a moment if she strayed too close. Instead, Anna detoured arou
nd the back and got in through a damaged window near the
trash bins on the ground floor. For once, she was pleased that her landlord had reacted with his characteristic slowness in fixing the problem.
She took the stairs to the fourth floor. Another sensor, this one the size of her fist, was attached to her front door. A built-in holograph projected
Police Line—Do Not Cross across the threshold.
Anna's luck was holding; she recognized the security sensor as a model the Secret Service also used. She frowned as she thought of Matt Ryan.
He had been the one who showed her how to spoof them. From her pocket, Anna pulled a piece of foil paper taken from a discarded cigarette
packet and a vu-phone she had picked from the pocket of a man at the metro station. She gently plastered the foil over the sensor's antenna
and worked at the phone, cycling its on-off function. After a few moments, the sensor went dark; Ryan had explained to her that the devices
could be put into a reset mode if they were swamped with microwave signals, like those from a cellular telephone—it was a hit-and-miss hack,
though. She unlocked the door and had it shut behind her just as the sensor reactivated. Moving slowly so as not to disturb it, Anna advanced
into her apartment.
The lights came on automatically, dim enough for her to see her way around but not so much they would be seen from the street; the television
chirped as it activated, casting a blue glow across the open-plan apartment.
Anna's gut tightened. The place had been turned over, likely by the agency, and while they hadn't wrecked it, it was still in great disarray. It
seemed as if they had opened every cabinet, every drawer and box, searching for... what? Some evidence to back up the accusation that she
was colluding with terrorists?
The light from the screen illuminated the open door to her bedroom. Even from here, she could see they had got into the wardrobe and found
the safe. Her files were gone, just as she had known they would be. Anna thought about the flash drive in her pocket, the one Temple had
pressed into her hands. That was all she had now, every other piece of her painstaking secret investigation now lost. She hoped it would be
enough, if only she could find someone to entrust it to.
A part of her wanted to fall into her bed and give herself over to sleep. She was exhausted, and the shock and fatigue from the day's events
were threatening to overwhelm her. Anna's gaze was drawn to the dark rectangle of the open bathroom door. For a long moment, she fought to
ignore the thoughts of what was inside the mirrored cabinet over the sink. She tasted earth in the back of her throat and swallowed hard.
It took a lot of effort to go straight to the bedroom. From the closet, she took a sturdy daypack and circled the bed, gathering up items of
clothing from where they had been piled, filling the bag with everything she would need to leave and not look back. Returning to the living
room, she finally allowed herself a look into the bathroom. In the reflection of the mirrored cabinet she saw the frosted glass window over the
bath, the light from the street shining through it.
Anna turned away and went to the desk until she found what she was looking for. The brass disc was right there where she had left it, and with
hesitation, she picked it up, turning it over in her fingers. Suddenly she realized that the sobriety coin had been what really brought her back
here. Everything else, the clothes and the bag, all that she could have found elsewhere. The coin she could not have surrendered; it was the last
link to the person she used to be, to the person Matt Ryan had always believed in. She swallowed a sob and allowed herself a moment to give in
to the emotion inside her, just a brief instant before she forced it away.
Then Anna realized she was looking at something she didn't recognize. She didn't get a lot of paper correspondence, maybe the odd circular or
item of junk mail, but there on the desk was a pile of items, doubtless placed there by one of the investigators Temple had sent to search the
apartment. The largest was a plastic box, postmarked from the city that day, but with no return address details. She shook it gingerly, and
then, with care, used her thumbnail to peel back the wrapping. Inside was a courier case with simple print lock. Anna tapped it with her index
finger and it opened with a click; the noise seemed like a gunshot in the quiet of the apartment, and it made her flinch.
Inside there was a commercial data card, coded with a one-way rail ticket from Washington, D.C., across the border to Quebec. She found a
Canadian passport with it, a high-grade fake using her face and a name she'd never heard before. The rest of the box was taken up with a flat,
slab-sided device that resembled a rifle magazine; a Pulsar electromagnetic pulse grenade. She drew out the weapon and weighed it in her
hand. It was a military-grade item, and possession of it alone was a felony... but that was hardly a concern for her now. Who had left her this
gift, she wondered? Was it some contingency plan by D-Bar and his Juggernaut comrades, or a clever trap left behind by the Tyrants? She put
the grenade back down and sighed.
For a moment, she thought the fatigue was playing tricks on her, but when it happened a second time, Kelso was certain she had heard
someone say her name. She gave a start when she realized it was Eliza Cassan, the Picus network's ever-present anchorwoman, voicing a breaking report on the Nightly World News. Anna fumbled for the television's remote and turned up the volume. She saw her own face there on
the thinscreen, a still from the agency's press file. A line of text ticked past at the bottom of the image, the words talking about a multiple
murder in Grand Falls, a manhunt getting under way...
"... at this hour. The Picus News Network had learned from sources within the Department of Justice that Agent Kelso was on suspension
pending an investigation relating to an incident several months ago, when Senator Jane Skyler of Southern California was injured during an
assassination attempt by members of the ruthless Red Arrow triad." The picture was replaced with quick clips of Skyler, then FBI agents
raiding the home of the senator's maid. Cassan's face reappeared, growing concerned. "Some viewers may find the following footage
disturbing. We have just obtained security recordings of the events at the Temple house that appear to incriminate Agent Anna Kelso in the
brutal attack that took place earlier this evening"
Anna felt the blood drain from her face as grainy white-and-green images unfolded before her. She saw herself stalking through the halls of
Temple's home, a heavy weapon cradled in her arms. She gasped as the figure on the screen entered a room full of people and gunned them
down with quick, callous motions. The image froze and zoomed in; the face looking back was very much her own.
"No ..." she muttered. "That's not me ... They faked it..." She trailed off as the weight of her own words bore down. It made terrible, perfect
sense. All the way back to the apartment, she had wondered why the Tyrant soldier who saw her hadn't opened fire and gunned her down. She
couldn't understand why he had let her flee, but now she understood. It had to be part of this! They let her go so she could be framed for the
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