… but she had lived in this building long enough to know her way around it with her eyes shut.
Staying low, moving as swiftly as she dared, she found the door and shouldered it open, feeling along the walls toward the stairwell. As she got outside, feeling faint traces of rain on her skin, her optics began to stutter through the restart cycle, her vision returning by agonizingly slow degrees. She broke into a loping run, and behind her she heard the strident whoop of a siren as the dormant police drone caught her silhouette.
She ignored it, picking up speed, and by the time she reached the street, she could see again.
Romeo Airport-Michigan-United States of America
The sun was coming up, the line of orange light at the horizon growing brighter with every passing minute. Saxon walked the edge of the runway, threading the points between the shallow domes of the embedded lights that flanked the long expanse of cracked asphalt.
His hands were buried in the pockets of his tactical over-jacket, his head hunched forward. Saxon tried to lose himself in the simple motion of step after step, but it didn't work. The questions and the conflicts churning around inside him refused to be silenced. He had the very real sense that he was standing on the edge of an abyss, at a point of no return. Looking up, Saxon saw the distant chain-link fence. If he broke into a sprint, he could be there in less than a minute. He could be over it and down to the highway in another five. If luck was on his side, Saxon would be miles from the airstrip before any of the Tyrants knew he had absconded.
He could turn his back on them and go. Leave all the questions and distrust behind, ditch this identity and start anew. He could do it; he still had contacts from the old days, people who might help him disappear.
But what would that get him? A lifetime of doubts and looking over his shoulder? Namir had never said the words, but Saxon knew that the
Tyrants and their masters in "the group" were not the kind of people you could just walk away from. The federal agent, Temple, had been a minor player for them and he had been wiped out just on the suspicion of being a problem. The Tyrants would not turn their backs and allow one of their number to walk away; Namir would see him killed first. Hardesty would do it and enjoy it.
But how could he stay? How could he look Namir in the eye and not wonder? What did he really know about Operation Rainbird?
Saxon turned back to face the hangar at the far end of the airfield. Wan light spilled from the open doors. He wanted to draw the Diamondback from its holster, bury the muzzle in Namir's neck, and demand he spill everything. He let himself ride on that moment of high emotion, seeing the faces of Sam, Kano, and the others. Remembering the promises he had made to those men, and to himself.
And then he remembered the vu-phone. Saxon opened the rip-tab on the gear pocket where he had stuffed the disposable. Gingerly, he replaced the battery pack and touched the activation button. The phone blinked on and buzzed in his gloved hand. A single message was waiting. He drew it up; it was an embedded video file, what appeared to be a clip from a local affiliate of the global Picus News Network. The footage unfolded, a voice-over explaining that police in Virginia had been called to the site of a fire in Great Falls. On the handheld's screen he saw the woman he had confronted in the grounds rendered in grainy, colorless video. She entered a room full of people and started shooting.
White flares of light spat from a shotgun-a Widowmaker Tactical-in her grip, and panicking figures fell like puppets with their strings cut. The footage paused and a close-up gave a better view of the woman. Anna Kelso, read the caption, Wanted Fugitive.
The lie of what he was seeing made Saxon's hand tighten around the vu-phone. For a moment he tensed, ready to dash the device to pieces against the ground; but then it rang with a soft, persistent hum.
Saxon raised it to his ear. "Yeah?"
"Hello again. Will you speak to me now?"
It was unmistakably the same synthetic, digitally masked voice he had heard in the Hotel Novoe Rostov; the ghost-hacker Janus.
He glanced around. There was no one in sight in any direction. "What do you want from me? The video… Why did you show me that?"
"I want you to understand. This is what they do. These are the people that you work for, Benjamin. I want to be certain you have no illusions as to what they are capable of."
"How do you know-"
"Who you are? I know all about Ben Saxon. And Anna Kelso. And Jaron Namir, Ronald Temple, Yelena Federova, Scott Hardesty-"
"Then what do you want with me?" he demanded.
"I want to help you" said the flat, toneless voice. "I want to open your eyes. Because when you know the truth, you will be able to help me."
"You're a terrorist. You and your Juggernaut mates."
He could almost hear a shake of the head. "That word is meaningless. Terrorism is the use of violence to achieve radical political or social change. Is that not what the Tyrants are doing, Benjamin? Do you know what master you serve?"
"Leave me alone!" he snarled. "I'm through with you!"
"No!" shouted Janus, with the first glimmer of what seemed like an emotional response. "Do not hang up. That would be a mistake. Listen to me. You are cutting into the reality behind the lie of the Tyrants and their shadow masters. You know it. You know there are secrets beneath the surface. I want the same thing you do. To be free of their lies. You want the truth about Operation Rainbird. I want to find and expose the Killing Floor. Together, we can succeed."
"I don't know what this… Killing Floor is."
"Jaron Namir controls access to a private server on board your transport aircraft. In the files it holds are details of what you and I seek.
The truth, Benjamin. The facts about the deaths of your men, and the location data I require. But the server is isolated, protected. It is impossible to access it by anything but direct physical means."
Saxon frowned. The wind carried the sound of gears to him, and he looked back to see the doors of the aircraft hangar shudder and slowly grind open. "You're asking me to risk my life for you," he said. "For a faceless phantom."
"Untrue" said Janus. "All I am doing is providing you with the means. It is your choice, Benjamin. I cannot force you into this." There was a pause, and he heard the whisper of encryption software flattening out the texture of the voice on the other end of the line. "Listen carefully.
When Jaron Namir was nineteen years old, his sister Melina was killed in a road accident in Haifa. Psychological profiling conducted several years later, after his recruitment into Mossad, indicated a deep-seated guilt over the death of his sister; he later named his daughter after her. The likelihood of his personal pass code relating directly to Melina Namir is over eighty-seven percent, plus or minus five percent.
I have transmitted the four most likely code strings to your vu-phone. Use them to access the server."
In spite of himself, Saxon laughed. "Just like that?"
"Yes. Just like that." There was no trace of sarcasm in the reply. "Once you have access, use the wireless link to download the data you find to the vu-phone's memory. But be careful. If you are discovered they will kill you."
Saxon considered the offer. "And what if I don't? What if I smash this phone to bits right now?"
The reply was instant. "You will never hear from me again. But one day, very soon, you will be so driven by your personal sense of anger and despair that you will attack Jaron Namir. And you will be killed." There was a pause. "I have also read your psychological profile,
Benjamin."
"I'll think about it," he said, and switched off the phone before Janus could reply.
When he reached the hangar, the jet's engines were already turning, a low mutter of noise resonating through the open space. The hatches were cycling closed along the cargo bay where the helo was stored, and the robot forklifts had all retreated to the corners of the building, clearing the route to the taxiway. Hardesty was there, and he gave Saxon a withering look as he climbed the boarding ramp.<
br />
"Where the hell have you been? You turned off your damned comm!"
"I was taking some air," he shot back. "I got sick of the sight of you."
"Oh, yeah?" Hardesty came closer, crowding him. "You weren't thinking about going AWOL, were you? Because it would be my absolute pleasure to show you the error of that way of thinking." His body language was aggressive, daring Saxon to take a swing at him.
"Hey!" Barrett called down to the pair of them from the top of the ramp. "If you two ladies are done kissin', get your asses on board! We're on a clock here!"
Saxon pushed past and sprinted up the ramp, Hardesty a heartbeat behind him. The ramp was already lifting shut as the jet began to move, the engine noise building.
Namir came back from the forward compartment. Around the dermal ports of his augmentations, the commander's face was red with annoyance.
"We are not waiting for Federova?" said Hermann, from a seat by the windows.
Namir shook his head. "She has her own directives."
"The Kelso woman?"
That seemed to touch a nerve, and Namir looked back at the German, his eyes narrowing. "As much as it disappoints me to say it, that target slipped the net a second time."
"Shoulda sent me" Barrett opined. "I'd have dealt with her."
Namir ignored the comment. "It doesn't matter. Yelena is returning to her primary. She'll shadow our main target and we'll regroup on-site."
"On-site where?" said Saxon, working hard to keep his voice level. "What target? I thought we were done."
"With this, here? For now, yes." Namir gave a terse nod. "But the mission in Detroit was only one element of a larger operation. We're moving to the next phase. That's all you need to know, for the moment." He paused, scanning their faces. "I'd advise all of you to get some rest. It's another twelve hours to our destination."
CHAPTER NINE
Baltimore-Maryland-United States of America
Kelso did her best to sink deeper into her seat, turning her body slightly so that her face was concealed from anyone who might walk past. The rocking motion of the express train's passenger carriage tried to lull her toward sleep, but she was caught in a strange kind of middle state between exhaustion and alertness-unable to truly rest or to stay fully awake.
Each time the train clattered over a set of points she looked up to make sure the noise wasn't the sound of the doors at the far end of the carriage opening; but she need not have worried. There were few other passengers, and most of them had chosen seats on the upper deck, where the view was better. Here on the lower level, it was a noisier and less pleasant place to ride the rails. The express from Washington, D.C., out to Boston was the first leg of the journey to Quebec paid into her ticket; Kelso was scheduled to change trains at Penn Station in New York for the northbound Adirondack route, but she had no intentions of doing so. There were a dozen stops between here and there, and she was already formulating a loose plan based on jumping trains in Philadelphia. She'd wait until the very last second, and vault through the automatic doors as they closed…
Using the ticket was a calculated risk. If she was being tracked, it was likely they'd have people watching the main stations, maybe even someone on the train already-but it was clear that whoever had supplied the ticket, the passport, and the grenade had nothing to do with the
Tyrants. Still, until she knew for sure who her benefactors were or what they wanted, Anna decided to treat everyone with the same level of distrust. Right now, that seemed to be the only thing keeping her alive.
There were small screens set in the back of the seats in front of her, and they blinked into life as the train started to slow, the Baltimore suburbs blurring past on the other side of the rain-slicked windows. After the requisite information displays, the screens automatically switched to a feed from a local news affiliate, the ubiquitous Picus News logo framing image loops of global, national, and local events. Anna held her breath as she saw a portion of the same report that had been playing in her house, in the seconds before the assassin had appeared-the same hazy video replay of what appeared to be her indiscriminately killing dozens of civilians. Angrily, she reached forward and stabbed at the screen, darkening it, but the images were all over the carriage, on other displays here and there. Scowling, she drew into the oversize microfleece jacket, letting it swamp her.
Anna's eyes darted back and forth, scanning the area. She couldn't shake the sense of creeping dread that at any second, some citizen might recognize her, some transport cop would make the connection, some camera might get a good look at her face and flag it. They could be waiting for me in Baltimore, she told herself. Snipers and a takedown unit, ready to swarm onto the train the moment it rolls in. That's how I would play it.
Anna shook off the moment of burgeoning fear and looked around. There was a restroom at the end of the carriage; it could be a bolt hole if she saw police officers or agents boarding to search for her "What the hell am I doing?" It was a moment before she realized the words were her own, the question falling from her lips. The answer was clear, she was running-but where was she running to? Even if she made it to Philadelphia, what then? She wouldn't go to ground there. She'd have to keep moving. But to where? Panic darkened the edges of her thoughts. Anna had no plan for what was going on right now, and that terrified her. She hated the thought of being out of control, caught by fate and chance; and she knew, through long years of serving the law, that sooner or later a criminal ran out of road. How much more of mine is left?
A sudden jolt went through the floor of the carriage and Kelso lurched forward as the train decelerated abruptly with a shriek of brakes.
Somewhere on the upper deck, she heard a child cry out in alarm and the thud of dislodged luggage. Immediately, a red icon flashed into life on the seat-screens and over the animated advertisements along the walls of the cabin. An automated announcement requested that all passengers remain in their seats, but Anna was already up, propelled by nervous energy. Outside, the lights of the communities on Baltimore's southern outskirts were lost as the train rolled into a tunnel, continuing to slow with every passing second. The screech of the brakes dropped in pitch in time to the deceleration, and with a juddering lurch, the train came to a halt. The lamps inside the carriage blinked for a moment, but
Anna was already making her way forward, crouching slightly. She passed an elderly couple who were muttering to each other about the sudden happening, pushed her way to the restroom door-and halted. She thought about being trapped in there and her gut tightened.
Anna reached into her pocket, found the ticket and passport, and tossed them both into the toilet before setting off again. If they were tracking the arfid chips in the data cards, they would already be zeroing in.
Part of her wondered if she was overreacting-anything could have happened, some mechanical fault, a delayed train on the rails ahead of them, any one of a number of nondangerous reasons why they had stopped-but Kelso knew her own instincts. Throughout her career, every time she had ignored them she had regretted it.
Opening the door to the connecting alcove at the end of the carriage, Anna found herself at the foot of the stairwell leading to the upper deck.
On either side, doors at platform level looked out at the blank gray tunnel. She flattened herself into the wall and tried to peer down along the length of the train.
Faint illumination from glow strips cast flat shadows around the tunnel floor, but there was motion in the distance-flashlights, bobbing as they came closer.
Anna forced the door, but it refused to open, mag-locked until the train reached the next station. Without hesitating, she braced herself in the crook of the door and kicked out with her feet, aiming her heel at the corner of the glass. After three or four hard impacts, the window webbed and fractured. Scraping her fingers on the bent frame and sharp edges, Anna put all her bodyweight behind it and the glass finally gave, shattering into blunt fragments.
It was a longer drop to the rail bed than she had
expected it to be, and Kelso landed poorly, hissing with pain as her ankle twisted. Cold, rain damp air filled her lungs and she scrambled across the opposite track, crunching over the gravel between the rails. The lights were coming her way, and now she heard voices. The only escape route was back along the length of the train in the opposite direction. Anna hugged the side of the carriages and stole forward, as quickly as she dared.
She was only a few steps from the mouth of the tunnel when she heard a voice call her name.
She ignored it and broke into a run, wincing with the ache from her ankle. A halo of white glared around her as she fell into the beam of one of the flashlights, and she threw up a hand to shield her eyes. Anna stumbled backward, and she was looking for another means of escape when she heard the voice again.
"Kelso! Damn it, where the hell are you going?"
She squinted into the light. "D-Bar?"
The young hacker became visible, flanked by a couple of thuggish men who had the watchful, grim manner of career leg-breakers. They had machine pistols as well as the flashlights. "You are a real pain in the ass to pin down, do you know that?" D-Bar beckoned her to follow him.
"C'mon. We don't have long until the railroad signals reset, and then this will not be a safe place to stand."
Anna hesitated. "You left the package."
That got her a nod. "You're predictable, Agent Kelso. Juggernaut ran your psych profile, figured where you'd most likely go. 'Course, the
Tyrants figured the same thing, didn't they?"
She returned his nod. "I suppose I should thank you, then." Anna followed them toward the far side of the tunnel, where an archway led to a branching conduit.
He grinned wolfishly. "That's twice now I saved your pretty little backside. Honestly, being your white knight is getting to be a habit."
"Don't get a swelled head over it…" Anna halted. "Because I'm not going anywhere with you until I know where we're heading."
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