will be the last time, know that.
Because I cannot afford to have men under my command who continually question me at every turn.'
The ghost of a threat hung in the air between them, the Israeli face-to-face with him. Saxon tensed, feeling the edges of ready menace coming off the other man; once again he found himself wondering who would prevail if they went against each other. He didn't like the odds.
'The group has been observing a… situation. This man has been classified as a liability,' Namir went on. 'He can expose us to our enemies.
What he knows could severely impede our objectives if it were to be revealed to the wrong people. Ronald Temple is a serious threat to stability.'
'And we can't have that,' said Saxon, without weight.
Namir gave the slightest of smiles. 'I knew you'd understand.'
Great Falls-Virginia-United States of America
Configured for stealth and speed, the helo flashed over the countryside at treetop level, ducted blades chopping the air in a low, droning thrum.
The pilot kept them off the line of any major population centers or highways, following power lines or river courses as they raced eastward. The radar-transparent polymers and sleek, blended lines of the hull gave the craft the detection footprint of a bumblebee, and in tandem with infrared and ultraviolet baffles cloaking the engines, the flyer was virtually invisible.
'Two minutes ' said the pilot, the words resonating through Saxon's head over the mastoid comm. He began his final premission ritual, losing himself in the simple, robotic motions, trying not to think about the job he had been sent to do.
Weapons. Equipment. Armor. All secure. He zipped open a gear pouch to check the contents and hesitated; something inside was emitting a soft glow. Hardesty and Hermann were busy with their own checks, so Saxon reached inside. His gloved fingers found the lozenge shape of the disposable phone; the morning they had left London, he had stuffed it into his kit and thought no more about it. He was certain he had deactivated it. Turning the device to conceal it from the others, Saxon tapped the screen.
An error display told him the vu-phone's digital mailbox was full. He scrolled down and found hundreds and hundreds of text messages, all of them sent from the number he had seen on the side of the advertisement blimp, all of them the same five words: What master do you serve?
Uneasy, he hit the mass delete tab, opened the phone's case, and disconnected the battery before concealing it once again.
'Will we need electronic support for this engagement?' Hermann was asking, loading heavy-gauge rounds into the magazine of a Widowmaker tactical shotgun. Hardesty's tone was dismissive. 'Namir said digital interdiction is being handled by other assets, so don't fret about getting caught on camera.
Just do what I tell you.' He sensed Saxon looking at him and met his gaze. 'You got a question, too? Make it fast.'
'Ninety seconds to deployment' called the pilot. 'Thermograph can't get an accurate read…At least ten-foot mobiles inside target structure'
Saxon glanced out the window and saw the flicker of lights below, the soft glow of streetlamps amid patches of darkness. He looked back. 'We can do this without collaterals. Cut the power, go in quiet, hit the mark, and extract.'
'Like a ghost, huh?' Hardesty snorted. 'It's funny. You bitched to me that I didn't have the stones to get my hands dirty in Moscow, but here I am going in at the sharp end and suddenly you wanna soft-pedal it?' He gathered up his FR-27 assault rifle, securing the ammo magazine in place. 'How about that. All of a sudden, you're gun-shy.'
'This is different. There are civilians in there.' The helo dropped into the low grass with a bump and the engine note fell as the rotors went to idle. Through a stand of trees Saxon could make out the house.
Hardesty shook his head. 'There's only targets.' He pulled a lever to let the hatch slide open and thumped Hermann on the back. The German vaulted out into the darkness. Hardesty went next and Saxon followed him, but he'd barely taken a step before the other man placed the flat of his palm on his chest. 'Where you going?'
'Namir-'
'Is not in command of this engagement,' Hardesty replied. 'I am. And I'm telling you to wait here and hold the landing zone. Y'know, in case a troop of Girl Scouts tries to sneak up behind us, yeah?' He gave a snort and set off.
Saxon stood there, watching the two men melt away into the shadows, his hands tense around the grip of his rifle, a nerve jumping in his jaw.
For a second, his finger rested on the FR-27's trigger. A single three-round burst would put that son-of-a- bitch down…
Then the moment faded, and the lights in the house went dark. He caught the faint sound of breaking glass and what might have been a woman's scream.
Kelso left the Falcon at the side of the road and crossed a stretch of scrubland to the wall of the estate; she'd been to Temple's place once before, back when he'd just taken the job as department head. It was after the Anselmo case had broken, and in celebration their new boss had held a barbecue to toast the team's success. It seemed like a century ago, a warm summer day with good food and a few beers, Matt there with Jenny
… Back before the first time Anna's career had gone off the rails.
She shrugged off the memory and scrambled up over the wall, concentrating on the moment. Temple would have security, she decided, some kind of alarm system Anna caught sight of the house as her head came level with the top of the wall, and in that moment she saw every light in the building die. Her fingertips touched a sensor strip on the top of the bricks, but no alarm sounded. Whatever had killed the power had given her a way in. She took the opportunity and scrambled the rest of the distance, dropping to the gravel drive. There were a few cars parked outside the three story house, mostly high-end sedans and a couple of SUVs. The house belonged to Temple's second wife and she was old money; Anna recalled office talk about how she liked to play the hostess, gathering movers and shakers from the D.C. community. The whole city ran on that kind of networking; Anna was disgusted that Temple could send her off to be disappeared, then stroll home for some overpriced wine with his spouse's cronies without breaking stride.
She moved closer, using the cars as cover. Her hand strayed to where her service weapon would have been holstered and she grimaced. After the van crash, she hadn't thought to steal Agent Tyler's firearm or stun gun. Going in unarmed made her feel naked and supremely vulnerable.
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.
