Icarus Effect de-1

by James Swallow

  She caught the sound of glass breaking and froze. Something wasn't right; a power outage should not have lasted more than a few seconds.

  Anna glanced over her shoulder, and in the distance she could see the next house over, the lights still on.

  Her head snapped back as she heard gunshots, twice in quick succession. She guessed they were 10 mm rounds from a pistol. The gun sounded again, and this time she saw the reflection of a muzzle flash through a ground-floor window. A woman screamed and a shotgun answered.

  She blinked her optics to low-light mode; they had the Eye-See vision-enhancement package, the law enforcement variant, and while they were not as powerful as military-grade cybernetics, they were enough to throw the view of the house into an ashen pattern of green and white. Anna kept to her cover as two figures burst out the front door, stumbling in panic as they tried to flee-a woman in an evening dress and a man in a sports jacket. They raced across the drive, the gravel crunching under their feet.

  A shimmering thread, invisible to the naked eye, fell from a first-floor window and drew swiftly across the ground until it crossed the woman's back. There was a hissing snap and a cloud of ink-dark mist blew from her chest. The man turned in fright and took a second round in the sternum. Both of them were dead before they hit the ground.

  Anna dared to peer over the wheel well and saw a shadow move away from the window, a rifle slung in a casual carry.

  For a moment she considered turning tail, heading back to the car; but she was too deep in now to give up. Anna waited as long as she dared, and then stole toward the house, staying low as she threaded her way in through the front door the dead couple had left open.

  Inside, the horribly familiar smells of spent cordite and blood reached her nostrils. A man in a suit lay against the staircase leading upward, his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Anna felt for a pulse; there was nothing.

  She moved on, hugging the walls, finding her way into the open lounge. More of Temple's guests were here, some of them caught still sitting in chairs with glasses of wine in their hands, others shot in the back as they tried to run. Anna saw the telltale patterning of close-range shotgun blasts.

  On the floor above, a floorboard creaked and she froze. She very clearly heard a shuffling footstep; then in the next second, a strangled, pained gurgle and the heavy fall of a body.

  Cold certainty gathered in her thoughts. An assassin-or more than likely, a team of them-were stalking through Temple's home, systematically executing everyone they found. It could only have been the Tyrants; the brutality and precision of the attack bore all their hallmarks. Above, she heard the creaking again. They were sweeping the house, floor by floor. She had little time; once they had completed their search, they'd double back and look for stragglers.

  She scanned the corpses again; he wasn't among them, and if Ron Temple was anything like the man she thought she knew, he would have had a plan for something like this. He was methodical to the last.

  The house hadn't changed much since she had visited it, and she concentrated, pulling up her memories of that day. Temple had shown Matt around; she remembered him mentioning something about the basement…

  Anna found a doorway in an alcove, behind a privacy curtain. In the dark, it would be easy to miss. Slipping inside, she followed the weakest sliver of light her optics could detect, and with care, descended a shallow set of steps. She blinked back to a normal vision mode. There, half hidden behind a few wine racks reaching from the concrete floor to the low ceiling, was a work area. A desk, a monitor, a rudimentary office. It was cool down here, and the carnage above seemed miles away.

  She was two steps into the room when she heard a faint breath. "Temple," she whispered. "I know you're here."

  There was a gasp of surprise, and he gingerly emerged from behind the desk, a small pistol in his trembling hand. "You…" he whispered. "Are you… Was this a test?" Temple's face was a mess of conflicting emotions. "Did… Did I fail?"

  "What the hell are you talking about?" she hissed, throwing a worried look at the stairs. If the hit team heard them, it would be all over.

  He kept muttering to himself, thinking aloud. "No… No, it's not that. It's you. It's all your fault!" Temple rose up and aimed the gun at her.

  "You should be dead! How did you get away?"

  "I had help," she admitted, holding her hands open to show she was unarmed.

  "That's why they're here… Because of you, you stupid bitch! They know! You compromised me and they know it! I'm worth nothing now!

  Nothing…" He choked off in a sob. "Oh god. Everyone is dead. They're coming for me… They're cleaning house."

  Temple's self-pity grated on her and she stepped toward him. "This is the price you pay for betrayal. I'd kill you myself if I could, but that would let you off easy!"

  "You can't know what it was like…" Temple looked down at the pistol and studied it, turning it toward himself. "They'll find me

  …"

  "No!" Anna lunged at him and backhanded the man across the face. For a moment they wrestled, and then she knocked the gun away, sending it skittering out of reach under the wine racks. "I need you alive, you bastard. We have to get out of here!"

  "And go where?" He met her gaze and Kelso saw a side of the man she'd never seen before. He was falling apart before her eyes. "You can't run.

  You can't hide." Temple snorted. "What do you think is going to happen, Kelso? That you'll get your day in court like all good citizens? They won't let the Killing Floor be exposed!"

  "The what?" She'd never heard the term before.

  He wasn't listening. "We are already dead!"

  "Not yet," she said. "You're my proof."

  He went to the desk and tore through the papers scattered across it. "You want proof? Here. You came back for it, so take it" Temple thrust something into her hands, and she realized it was the flash drive he had taken from her back at the office. "See how far you get!" He was blinking back tears.

  Somewhere above them, she heard the crunch of broken glass. Anna grabbed Temple's arm and twisted it. "I don't give a damn what you say.

  You're coming with me. Move!"

  She went back to low-light mode as they emerged into the kitchen. Temple gasped at the carnage and she saw him lurch toward a knife block.

  He pulled out a butcher's blade and cradled it in his hands, his breathing fast and shallow.

  Across the room, a door opened onto the garden beyond. Anna heard movement in the lounge and she made for the exit. Her hand closed around the latch and she tested it: locked.

  From the other room came a metallic click and an egg-shaped object rolled over the threshold, rattling as it came to a spinning halt on the tiled floor of the kitchen.

  "No-!" Temple cried out just as Anna's mind caught up to what she was seeing; she rocked off her feet and slammed her shoulder into the door, wood splintering around the lock and frame. It came open as the grenade detonated with a shriek of combustion. A churning wall of heat and gas picked her up and threw her the rest of the way, sending Anna spinning into the soft, damp grass outside. She rolled as a torrent of glass and splinters rained down on her. Smoke and flame gushed from broken windows and the cracked doorway. Temple was still in there. Too late now.

  Anna pulled herself to her feet, the hot stink of the fire choking the air around her; the blast had to have ruptured a gas line. Without looking back, she took off toward the trees flanking the house. As she sprinted away, two figures in matte black combat gear emerged from the smoke, panning their weapons this way and that.

  Saxon swore as the explosion from the house caused his night vision to flare out, and he switched modes to ultraviolet. Crouching on one knee a short distance from the silent helo, he peered down the sight atop his rifle and tapped his comm pad. "White, this is Gray. Respond."

  "Don't get your panties in a bunch " came the terse reply. "We're on the way out. Prep for dust off."

  "That's your take on covert action? B
low the shit out of something?"

  Hardesty ignored the comment. "If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. Meantime, keep your eyes open. We got a possible runner, heading your way. Intercept and execute, if you can handle that."

  Saxon cut the channel without bothering to answer. Rising from the ground he came forward, the rifle at his shoulder, sweeping back and forth.

  He heard the woman before he saw her, a moment before she emerged from the tree line. She was running across open ground, the last stretch before the rear wall of the Temple estate. On reflex, Saxon pulled the FR-27 tight to his shoulder and flicked the fire selector to single shot; at this range, he couldn't miss. The assault rifle would put a titanium-tipped flechette round directly on target, enough to tear open an unarmored human body.

  Then she saw him and stumbled, staggered, almost lost her balance. Saxon's finger was on the trigger. The smallest application of pressure and she would be dead; an unarmed woman, a civilian, executed in cold blood.

  She stood, frozen, waiting for the kill shot to come.

  Ben Saxon was not an innocent. There were more than enough deaths that could be laid at his feet, kills he had made in the heat of battle and through cold, calculating aggression. Lives he had ended from afar, and some so close he heard the escape of their final breath. But then he was a soldier, and that had been war. But this…

  The realization crystallized for him. What he was doing now went against every moral code Saxon believed in.

  He let the rifle barrel drop slightly, and the woman saw the motion. In a few moments, she was at the wall and scrambling up over it. Conflicted, 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 i
n 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 around 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.