Icarus Effect de-1

by James Swallow

  "Anyone ever tell you it's rude to eavesdrop?" Saxon retorted.

  "Please," said the young hacker, "I spend my life finding out other people's secrets." But almost as soon as he said the words, his bravado disintegrated; and suddenly Saxon remembered that he was looking at a boy still in his teens, just a scared, cocky kid who was only now waking up to the fact that he was in way over his head. "Makes you wish you could just erase the data in your brain, right?" he was saying. "Search and replace 'Illuminati.' Go back to being one of the happy cattle."

  "You really mean that?" asked the woman.

  The more he watched D-Bar, the more Saxon saw how shaken he was. "I… I've been going through the files we got, the fragments we could salvage. You wouldn't believe the stuff in there. Hints about the things they got planned. The things they've already done. We're not just talking

  JFK and Roswell here, I mean this is big…" His eyes lost focus and his voice dropped to a whisper. "Majestic 12, the United Nations, the WTO…

  They're so big. Every time you think you've seen the top, but it's all just layers and other layers!" D-Bar caught himself and blinked. "I mean, how can we fight that?"

  "We break up their game." Saxon's reply was iron hard. "They think they got a clear hit on Taggart? Not today." He got to his feet. "Today we got the edge."

  "How's that?" asked Kelso.

  He smiled wolfishly. "They think you're hiding in fear. They think I'm a dead man. So they'll be looking the other way when we stick a knife in them."

  The countryside was dark and shrouded by heavy storm clouds, masking the approach of the airship. The transfer was swift, the massive craft moving low with all running lights extinguished, drifting along the center of the river to match pace with a long cargo barge steaming north toward the Swiss capital. On descenders, Powell and his men led the group to the deck of the vessel, and Anna looked up as her feet touched the rain-slick metal. In the night's gloom, it seemed an impossible sight; the airship a featureless black cloud among gray companions, rising in silence amid the wind. In a few moments it merged with the overcast skies and was gone as if it had never been there. The rain came harder, and she pulled her hood tight over her head, hurrying below.

  Inside the barge were five more men; they all had the same aura as the New Sons, the same wound-tight aggression simmering just beneath the surface, the same eternally alert manner of the career renegade. All of them were armed and showed off augmentations to a greater or lesser degree. Powell shook hands with their leader, a rail-thin man with unkempt, greasy hair and a ragged beard. He had implants covering his eyes, like frameless glasses. They were dark and reflected no color.

  He extended a hand to Kelso and she shook it. "Welcome to Switzerland," he said. The accent was French, but she picked up inflections that suggested he'd been educated in the States. "I'm Croix. You've brought us something interesting. The information on the hit is confirmed?"

  "It's solid," said Powell, looking around. "Where's the rest of your people?"

  "Standing right in front of you," said the Frenchman. Before Powell could argue he went on. "We have our own operations in progress. And this is extremely short notice."

  "You understand how important this is?" A nerve jumped in Powell's jaw. "The reason we're moving so fast on this is precisely because we have an unparalleled opportunity here. A chance to get the drop on the Tyrants!"

  "Uaccord" said Croix, stepping closer to Saxon, "but we don't have the manpower or the money that you do, my friend. We have to pick our fights."

  "You're members of L'Ombre," said Saxon. "I read the file on you guys when I was at Belltower."

  The name rang a bell with Anna; L'Ombre was on Interpol's watch list as a known militant activist group in mainland Europe, linked to a number of incidents with an antiglobalization agenda. But given what she knew now of a clear connection between them and the New Sons of

  Freedom, she wondered how accurate that intelligence really was.

  Croix allowed a smile. "Do we get good press?"

  "Not really," he admitted. "They wrote you off as day-players."

  The other man's smile vanished. "Their mistake. We're in this fight for the duration, believe me." He looked Saxon up and down. "So you're the turncoat, then? Lebedev told me you'd be joining us. Should I trust you?" His hand slipped to the revolver holstered at his belt.

  "Your call, mate," Saxon offered. "But I don't think Lebedev would have shipped me halfway around the world just for you to kill me."

  "True," said Croix.

  "He helped us get the data on the Taggart hit," said Anna, uncertain why she felt compelled to defend the man.

  Croix glanced at her. "And you. You're the fugitive. Interesting choice of recruits, Powell."

  "That's one way of putting it," said the other man. "So, can we cut to the chase here? What do you have for us?"

  Croix snapped his fingers and one of his men produced a laptop. D-Bar immediately crowded in, studying the device. "As I said, we lack manpower but we make up for it in other areas. L'Ombre has access to certain sources of electronic intelligence."

  "What do you mean?"

  D-Bar sniggered. "According to this, the Swiss sat-comm network has more holes than… well, you know, the cheese."

  "We exploit them," said Croix. "As such, we've been able to track two distinct encrypted communications nodes that have appeared in the

  Geneva area."

  "They match what we have on record," said the hacker. "It's the Tyrants. They're here, all right."

  Anna felt her pulse quicken, and she stepped closer to look at the laptop. "You're telling me you can read their communications?"

  "Of course they can't," D-Bar snapped irritably. "Quantum coding crypto? Don't be stupid!"

  "But we can recognize their presence. It's a fingerprint," said Powell.

  Croix's smile returned. "Oh, we've done better. We have locations."

  "How'd you manage that?" Saxon raised an eyebrow. "Namir's team don't make mistakes."

  "People get lucky sometimes, Saxon," D-Bar broke in.

  Croix nodded to the man with the laptop, who brought up a series of digital maps. "One of the communication nodes remains static at the airport."

  "Must be the jet," said Saxon. "Namir uses it as a command post."

  "The second," Croix went on, "is mobile." He said something in French and the other man used the computer to show grainy footage from what appeared to be a traffic camera. "A delivery vehicle. It's been making a circuit of the city."

  "Cleaning the route," said Anna. "Making sure he's not being tailed, before…"

  "Before what?" asked Saxon.

  Powell folded his arms. "That's what we need to find out." He was silent for a second. "All right. We need to do this right now. Take the vehicle and the jet at the same time. We don't know what we're dealing with, and we can't afford to wait and watch."

  Anna saw something on the video footage that sparked a cold tremor of recognition within her. She moved closer, peering at the images.

  "Taggart does not speak until midday," Croix was saying. "They won't move against him until then."

  "Are you sure? Do you want to take that risk?" Powell insisted.

  "The plane will be the harder target, though, right?" said D-Bar. "And if Saxon is right, if that's the control…" He swallowed. "Look, with this setup I can monitor the van from here-"

  "No," said Powell. "It has to be a simultaneous takedown."

  "The kid's right, though," offered Saxon. "That aircraft will be heavily defended. You try to storm it with anything less than a full team and the

  Tyrants will cut you to ribbons."

  "Croix." Powell turned to the Frenchman, considering the other man's words. "Get us an entry into the airport. Then set up a vehicle so we can at least tail the mobile. I'll lead the team against the jet. Saxon will come with us."

  Anna heard him talking but she registered what he was saying only peripherally. "I'll take the van," she said.
"Get me close and I'll take him."

  Saxon's brow furrowed as he heard the raw fury bubbling up inside her words. "Kelso, what is it?"

  She pointed at the screen. "You know him?" On the monitor, the blurry image of a man's face had been captured by one of the traffic cameras.

  He wore a bandage over one eye and a cap.

  Saxon gave a wary nod. "He's German, former GSG-9. Gunther Hermann."

  The name echoed in her mind. Hate, cold and hard like black diamond, grew solid in Anna's chest. It was the same man from that horrific day in

  Georgetown. The killer who had left her for dead, who shot Byrne and Dansky… and Matt Ryan.

  Geneva International Airport-Grand-Saconnex-Switzerland

  "There," said Saxon, pointing into the gloom. "Hangar four."

  Beside him, Powell squinted down the eyepiece of a monocular. "That's a Belltower aircraft."

  "It's them" Saxon insisted, studying the shape of the parked jet. "I'm not seeing any movement, though. They have to be inside."

  Powell spoke over the general comm channel. "All right, listen up. Two entrances, one gangway at the forward hatch, another drop-ramp at the aft. You know the drill. Move in, neutralize any threats. Fast and efficient." He glanced at Saxon. "Stay where I can see you. Croix may want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but he's not me."

  Saxon shrugged. "Whatever you say."

  "All units," Powell said to the air, "take the plane. Go, go!"

  They covered the distance to the far hangar in a few seconds, veering from shadow to shadow, avoiding the footprints of security cameras.

  Saxon had to admit, for a group of irregulars, the New Sons had the makings of a good spec ops team; but he wasn't convinced they'd be enough to deal with the Tyrants.

  Not that survivability was foremost in his mind at this very second. All he cared about was finding Jaron Namir, and ending his life.

  There were active boxguard robots scanning from the corners of the hangar interior, and Powell's men went after them with Pulsar grenades, shutting them down with flashes of electromagnetic discharge. Saxon hesitated at the foot of the gangway, glancing back down the line of the plane to where the cargo bay doors were wide open. He toggled his mastoid comm. "Any unit at the rear: is the helo in place, over?"

  He got a reply immediately. "What helo, over?"

  "There should be a small veetol flyer stowed back there-"

  "Saxon!" Powell snarled, coming up behind him. "Stay off the channel unless it's important!"

  He frowned and climbed up the staircase, staying low.

  The highway traffic coming into the city across the Rhone from Lancy was mostly commercial at this hour, and there was a moment of uncomfortable recollection when Anna watched a massive automated truck thunder past them. She'd insisted on taking the shotgun seat, kneading the grip of the Zenith automatic Croix had given her while the Frenchman sat behind the wheel of their black sedan. He had a connector running from one of his augmented arms into the dashboard, and he scanned the road ahead, his face set in concentration.

  The interior of the car was dark, but in the backseat, D-Bar was lit by the glow of the laptop computer; the screen's pale light gave his face a corpselike pallor.

  "I see him," said Croix. "Five hundred meters ahead. Confirm?" He threw the question over his shoulder.

  When D-Bar didn't reply, Anna turned in her seat. The hacker blinked and looked at her. There was a mix of emotions on his face that she couldn't read. "Oh. Yeah," he managed. "Confirm."

  "He's turning off the motorway," Croix noted as the van slipped into a feed lane. "Heading into the city. We need to know where he's going."

  Anna listened, but she was watching the glow of the taillights from the target vehicle with almost feral intensity. In her mind's eye she could see only the face of Gunther Hermann, that and the moment of Matt Ryan's murder, over and over.

  Geneva International Airport-Grand-Saconnex-Switzerland

  "We're in," said the other team leader. "Tail section clear. Moving to secure lower deck." "Copy," whispered Powell. "We're moving aft."

  Saxon pressed himself into the wall and strained to listen. They had found no one in the cockpit, nothing but the jet's controls set in standby mode. It rang a wrong note in his mind, and he hesitated, frowning.

  "Something's not right," he said as Powell came to his side.

  "What, that we got the drop on your Tyrant buddies?" he husked. "Keep moving." He gestured with the silenced FR-27 in his grip.

  With Powell and another two of his men following on behind him, Saxon moved down past the galley to the doors of the ops room. He felt an unpleasant chill on his skin. Walking the halls of the jet so soon after having nearly died there did not sit well with him.

  On a three-count, he tore open the door and fell into the room, looking for a target.

  The ops center was empty, the consoles working quietly, screens showing a steady train of data as it scrolled past. He moved carefully into the middle of the room, a cold sweat forming between his shoulder blades.

  "Clear," said Powell, a note of disbelief in his voice. He tapped his comm. "Unit two. Move to the cabins. They could be sleeping. Execute whoever you find."

  "They're not sleeping," Saxon muttered. Something caught his eye and he moved to one of the control panels. It was part of the jet's encrypted communications suite. The screen showed a series of active broadcast nodes. The first was highlighted on a map, moving through the Geneva suburbs. Hermann in the van, he thought.

  Over the radio, he heard the voice from before report in. "Sir, got something here in the cargo bay… Looks like chemical drums. Commercial grade ammonium nitrate. Accelerants. Everything youd need to build a backyard IED."

  Powell's brow furrowed. "Why the hell would they need that crap? We know the Tyrants have access to military-grade explosives…" He turned to the soldier with him. "Cooper, check everything in this room. We don't want any surprises…"

  Saxon's attention was still on the comm system. He found a second node display; this one was a stream of encryption, shifting and moving. The location was static. He realized he was looking at a virtual icon for the jet and the ops room.

  "Sir" said the operative on the lower deck, "whatever they were making here, they built it already. All we got is leftovers."

  The color drained from Powell's face. "A truck bomb…" He tapped his comm bead again. "Patch me in to Croix, right now!"

  Saxon distantly registered the conversation, hearing Powell shouting an urgent warning to the L'Ombre field commander. He didn't hear the words, instead tracing the line of the signals between the first and second Tyrant communication nodes; and beneath them both, he found a third.

  It was isolated, away from either of the others. Saxon frowned, trying to interpret the complex web of signal and encoding; and then with a sudden, cold clarity, he understood what he was seeing.

  None of the communications to Hermann had originated from the jet. All of them were coming from the third, concealed comm node, the identity and location displayed only as a single codeword-Icarus.

  Wherever Namir and the Tyrants were, it wasn't here. They were broadcasting to the jet, then letting the automated systems on the aircraft relay the signal to the van. Namir had to know that the Tyrants were being monitored.

  They had never been here.

  "We've been set up!" he shouted.

  Rue de Lyon-Geneva-Switzerland

  Powell's voice sounded from Croix's hand radio as they passed the Pare Geisendorf, heading east. "The vehicle Hermann is driving has explosives on board. The Tyrants have put together a fertilizer bomb… They're going to detonate it in the city!"

  Croix swore. "That's perfect. They blow up a piece of Geneva and then fake a claim from some transhumanist radicals; they get what they want and Taggart dies…" "Where's Taggart now?" Anna asked D-Bar. The hacker hesitated again before he answered. "The, uh, hotel. The Metropol Grande, downtown."

  "The Grande has a la
rge underground parking garage," Croix went on. "A big enough explosion in there could collapse the whole building."

  "We've got to stop him now!" Anna snapped, working the slide of the Zenith. But Croix was already pointing down the road ahead. "He's making a run for it!" Anna saw the van's lights flare as it leapt away at high speed, jumping a stop signal, tires squealing as it veered past a car crossing the highway. Croix flattened the accelerator and the sedan surged forward.

  "Floor it," Anna snapped. "Get us closer!" "What the hell are you talking about?" demanded Powell.

  "We've got to get off this plane, right fucking now!" Saxon told him. "Namir and the others are somewhere else, bouncing the signal off the comm gear on board!"

  "Why?" Powell shot back.

  "They knew we were coming!" he roared.

  Powell's rifle was coming up, his face split with an angry snarl. "Did you-?"

  But in the next second another voice was speaking over both of them. "Sir?" They both turned as Cooper backed away, his face pale. "Saxon's right."

  The other man had bent down to open an access panel; concealed behind it was a fat brick of gray, claylike material, with a series of silver detonator pins wired into it.

  Powell shouted into the radio. "All units, disengage, disengage, disengage-!"

  The first of the remotely triggered charges went off at that moment, blowing the jet's tail into a cloud of metal shrapnel.

  A gust of hot gas and smoke came rolling down the length of the aircraft toward them as they ran. Inside the spaces of the fuselage, a second charge detonated, then a third. The churning inferno blossomed into a deadly flower.

  Rue de Chantepoulet-Geneva-Switzerland

  The two vehicles roared across the junction and cut through the sparse traffic, jockeying for position as they turned back toward the river.

  Taggart's hotel was across the Mont Blanc bridge, less then five minutes away.

  Anna shouted "Closer!" and dropped the passenger-side window. Her actions were dislocated somehow; it was as if she were watching herself from a long way away. She shrugged off her seat belt and dragged herself out the window as Croix brought the sedan alongside the van. Anna got a quick look at Hermann's incredulous expression in the wing-mirror before she raised the Zenith and unloaded four rounds into the vehicle, aiming for the engine block.