Icarus Effect

CHAPTER TWELVE

Cape Charles-Virginia-United States of America

The veetol was an old air-ambulance model stripped to the bare metal, a bulky and ungainly thing like a fat gull borne up on bright thruster nozzles that spat exhaust from the wingtips. They flew fast and low, following the line of the canal from Baltimore, until the river mouth opened up before them. Saxon felt it in the pit of his gut as the veetol rose up in a near-vertical ascent, trading altitude for thrust. He made an attempt to glance out the porthole; along with the Kelso woman and the hacker, Saxon was crammed into the rear of the flyer with Powell and four of his men from the New Sons. None of them looked like soldiers of any stripe he thought worthy of the name; they had a different air to them, which reminded him of the feral intensity of the gang kids he'd grown up with on the streets of North London. He pegged them for ex-cons or militia types. Kelso sat with her head down, lost in her own thoughts.

D-Bar gave him a smile that was all fake bravado. "What's wrong? Don't like flying?"

Saxon didn't allow himself to dwell on the similarity between this veetol and the one he'd rode into the wilderness six months ago. "Something like that," he offered. It was a tight fit in here, and he was starting to get tired of it. "Hey, Powell!" He had to shout to the other man to make himself heard over the roar of the engines.

Powell had the distracted look of someone using a comm implant. He glanced at Saxon but said nothing.

He nodded at the FR-27 rifle slung over the man's chest. "Do I get a weapon?"

"I only give guns to people I trust."

"What are we doing?" Saxon went on. "As cozy as this is, we can't fly to Switzerland in this thing."

Powell smiled thinly, reacting to something only he heard. "Don't sweat it," he called back. "Our ride is here." He jerked his thumb at the porthole.

For a moment, Saxon couldn't see what he was talking about; then his perception caught up with what he was looking at, and the shape he'd thought was just another churn of storm clouds took on a different aspect.

From out of the easterly front emerged a massive, elongated ellipse. Lined with fins and stabilators, great hoops hung from its flanks, the centers of them blurred by the motion of wide, fluted rotor blades. Along the flank of the aircraft he saw a blue-on-blue livery and the name: LEBEDEV AIRCARGO.

"Whoa!" said D-Bar, crowding in to take a look, "Cargo zep… Good cover." He trailed off as he thought it through. "But… how are we gonna get on board?"

Powell was getting to his feet. "Not the easy way."

The veetol's deck dipped and the hull of the airship rose to fill the window. The other men were securing their gear, checking straps and gear pockets. Kelso met Saxon's gaze with a questioning look and he gave her a shrug as a reply.

D-Bar turned to him, catching on. "He's not serious-"

A red light flashed and along the side of the veetol, a seam opened to peel back a long drop-hatch. Cold air howled into the cargo space and

Saxon felt his gut tighten. He closed his eyes and for a moment he was remembering blackness and the shriek of wind.

The dorsal hull of the airship drifted past below them, a curved stretch of ridged aluminum as wide as a football field. He saw guide rails set into the metal and thick maintenance cables. The veetol dropped, almost bumping into the hull of the cargo carrier as a gust of wind pulled at the wings.

Two of Powell's men went first, the gale-force airstream catching them. Before Saxon could stop him, Powell went forward and shouldered D Bar out through the open hatch. The hacker screamed as he fell, but the men on the hull were there to grab him.

Powell turned on Kelso and shouted, "You should stay behind. Go back with the flyer."

Saxon saw the shift of emotions on her face and she shoved the man out of her way. She dropped from the veetol, a flash of panic on her face and then she was down and safe, clinging to the guides.

"You next" Powell ordered.

Saxon frowned and made the drop; it was less than a meter and a half of open air, but a sudden burst of wind shear hit him like a punch in the gut. He felt his foot touch the curve of the hull and slip out from under. His balance wasn't there and he was falling.

Suddenly, slender but strong fingers were gripping his wrist tightly. It gave him the moment he needed, and Saxon's cyberarm snagged a cable and held fast. He turned his head to see Kelso holding him steady with no little effort.

Saxon nodded his thanks and scrambled back up the curve of the hull. Powell and the last of his men dropped to the deck as the veetol curved away, and he led them forward to a windbreak and a hatch set flush with the hull. D-Bar barged his way to the front and made sure he was first in. The rest of them followed suit. The hatch slammed shut as he dropped into the airship's maintenance bay, cutting out the roaring cold. He frowned; his face was raw with windburn.

"You okay?" Kelso asked.

He nodded and gestured to his cyberlegs. "It's these new pins. Still working out the gyro synch. Thanks for the assist, though. Hope you didn't strain anything."

"It was just reflex," she snapped, suddenly terse.

"One suh-skydive without a chute is enough f-for anyone," said D-Bar, fighting back the shivers.

"Can't argue with you there," Saxon replied, with feeling.

"Okay, listen up," Powell ordered. "The zep crew know the drill. They don't ask, we don't tell. The ship'll make a speed-run over the

Greenland-Iceland-UK gap and then on down to Switzerland." He looked at them all in turn. "We need to be ready to go the moment we reach

Geneva, so I advise you all to get some rest, because the moment we touch down, we don't stop until the Tyrants are dealt with, you read me?"

The other men gave a chorus of nods, and Saxon glanced at D-Bar. The young hacker was quivering and wiping tears from his ruddy face.

"Wow," he managed, crack-throated, "that was some rush, huh?"

"Get below," said Powell, cutting off any reply.

Geneva International Airport-Grand-Saconnex-Switzerland

It was late evening, and a light drizzle was falling in desultory waves across the gray runway and the aircraft apron. Namir listened to the rattle of the raindrops off the apex of the open hangar cowling overhead; the wide, low metal shed was dimly lit so as not to draw attention from the civilian traffic passing only a few hundred meters from the nose cone of the Tyrant aircraft parked within. Once again, the jet's livery had been reprogrammed and reconfigured to conceal its true nature. Currently it wore the black and gold of the private military contractor Belltower.

The PMC had a long-standing relationship with the Swiss government that proved a useful cover for the Tyrants. They would be left to their own devices.

Namir walked the length of the aircraft, casting a glance across the darkened hangar to where Hermann and Barrett were working at the back of an unmarked commercial van. The ruin of the German's right eye was hidden under an adhesive patch, but he showed no signs of suffering for the injury. Namir didn't intervene; they knew their jobs, and after the recent incident on board the plane, they knew better than to do anything that might be considered a further failure of their duties. He reached the jet's cargo hatch and halted, studying the door. The seal was undamaged, but there were clear signs of surface damage around the hinges and opening mechanism. It had never been designed to be operated while airborne.

He sensed someone approaching and turned. Federova walked toward him, folding down a hood from her dark hair, flicking rain from her shoulders. Her expression was unreadable, but Namir knew her well enough to see the irritation lurking there. She didn't enjoy the surveillance operations; she liked the hunt and the kill better than the stalking. "You're late," he said.

She looked up and saw the same scarring on the hull, and cast a questioning look at him. He smiled slightly. Yelena loved the sound of her own silence; sometimes it seemed as if he had never known her to speak at all.

"It's nothing of concern," he noted. "I'm afraid Ben Saxon made a decision to part company with us. He chose the time and place rather poorly."

Her eyes narrowed and she made a throat-cutting gesture.

"Likely." He held out a hand, changing the subject. "So. Give it to me."

Federova produced a small digital slate from her pocket and handed it over. Namir tapped the screen and scrolled through the images in the memory. The display was full of shots of the Metropol Grande, one of the more opulent of Geneva's great hotels. The footage highlighted locations for monitor cameras and security posts around the front entrance and throughout the underground garage beneath the building; others showed corridors on the executive penthouse level, accessways, and the like. The last image was at an angle, a surreptitious shot captured in a moment of opportunity. In the frame was an older man flanked by a coterie of bodyguards and personal assistants. The profile of

William Taggart's face was unmistakable. He scanned the other people in the frame, measuring them against himself, looking for anything that could be a threat. Some of the faces he was already familiar with from the files that Temple had supplied to the Tyrants; there was Isaias

Sandoval, the Humanity Front's right-hand man and chief of staff alongside Taggart's personal assistant Elaine Peller, and a few others. Not one of them possessed even the most basic of augmentations. Namir wasn't foolish enough to believe that his implants made him invulnerable, but they did make him superior. Quite how these people believed they could ever hope to protect themselves from the threats of this world threats like the Tyrants-was beyond him.

"Good work," he told her. The rest of the slate's memory was filled with copies of itinerary files and route maps, but the majority of that data had already been in the hands of the unit for some time. "Take this to Gunther. Make sure there are no last-minute variables, then help him secure the payload."

She walked off, casting a sideways look as she crossed paths with Hardesty coming the other way. The operative ran a hand over his bald pate.

"Ice queen's back, huh?" He watched her traverse the hangar. "So, I guess that means we still have a green light?"

"We still have a green light," Namir repeated. "Gunther can function, despite his injury. This sanction is too critical to the group for postponement. It must go ahead." Hardesty nodded, but he didn't leave. After a moment, Namir spoke again. "Was there something else you wanted to say, Scott?"

The other man folded his thin arms over his chest. "I was right about Saxon."

"Yes, you were." Namir met his gaze and waited for the rest of it.

Hardesty didn't disappoint. "He was weak. He never had the steel for this work. You made the wrong call-"

"Enough," Namir silenced him. "What do you want from me? An apology?"

"You misread him, and it almost cost us the operation!" Hardesty was emboldened by Namir's admission of error, and he was pushing it.

"Do you know why I wanted him to join us?" said Namir. The ice in his tone chilled the air between them. "It's because he had a code of conduct, Scott. Unlike you. Because this unit needs balance."

Hardesty was on the verge of launching into an argument, but he caught himself before he said something he might have regretted. As much as he was a braggart, Hardesty wasn't foolish enough to cross swords with Jaron Namir. Instead, he allowed himself a belligerent smile. "Balance, huh?" He glanced up at the scarred hull of the jet. "Look what that got you," he said, walking away.

Aerial Transit Corridor-Maury Sea Channel-North Atlantic

It was cold inside the airship's cavernous cargo bay. Faint layers of frost gathered on the sides of the container pods filling the length of the compartment. Breath emerged from Saxon's mouth in streams of white vapor as he walked the length of the companionway; the Caidin replacements for his lower legs were starting to bed in at last, and he'd used the downtime to get himself back into fighting condition. He didn't want a repeat of what happened when they boarded.

Powell and his men kept close to the aft service bay, where noisy electric motors fed the airships rotors and kept the area a little warmer than the rest of the cargo spaces. Without comment, he crossed into the group and helped himself to a couple of cheap YouLike self-heating coffee cans and power bars.

He found Kelso on her own, huddled inside a solar foil blanket. She was miles away, her gaze fixed on a brass coin as she turned it over and over in her fingers. She looked up as he approached and palmed the coin, as if she'd been caught doing something wrong. He held out a can and she took it, striking the base on the deck to get the thermal tab working.

Saxon dropped into a lotus settle and did the same, tossing her one of the bars. She unwrapped it with her teeth, waiting for him to speak; he tried to frame the question the right way, then finally gave up.

He nodded at her hand, where she had the coin. "How long have you been clean?" When she didn't answer straight away, he went on. "S'okay. I know what the chip is for…" He drifted off, frowning at himself.

Kelso studied him. "You were in the program?"

He shook his head. "Not me. My old man." He made a drinking motion with the can. "He didn't do that well with it."

"Stims. For a while." Her eyes narrowed; she was taking this as a challenge. "It doesn't make me weak," she told him.

"Of course not" he replied. "If anything, they give you the chip, it means you're stronger, yeah?"

"Yeah." She didn't sound convinced by her reply.

He swigged at the coffee and made a face. It tasted like someone had stubbed a cigarette out in it; but it was hot, and that was what counted.

Saxon leaned forward. "You don't think you can trust me." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Like Powell and the rest. You think I'm marked."

"After everything that's happened to me over the past few months, I'd question my own family." She grimaced as she took a pull from the can, then shot him a look. "Why'd you lie to Powell?"

"About what?"

"When I said I wanted to come. You told him I'd seen the faces of the Tyrants. That's stretching the truth."

"You saw Federova and lived to talk about it. Trust me, love, there's not a lot of folks can say that."

Her eyes narrowed. "Her and one other." Kelso's lips thinned. "I need you to tell me something. Washington, D.C., the hit on Skyler. Were you one of them?"

The question came out of nowhere and he took a second to follow it through. "When?" Kelso told him the date and he shook his head, his gut tightening as an old, hateful memory made itself known. "No. I was halfway around the world that day, trying not to die. Namir recruited me afterward. He was a man down, he said." He eyed her. "Were you responsible for that?" He thought about Wexler, the man he had replaced, and the lines of invisible influence that had brought him to this place at this moment.

She ignored the question. "Why did you lie?" she repeated.

He gestured at his eyes. "You got the same look I see in the mirror. You're like me. You're looking for someone to pay a butcher's bill."

"They killed a man who saved my life," she said, her gaze becoming distant. "Did it right in front of me. And I couldn't do a damn thing. Then the Illuminati's proxies covered it up and buried him under the lies." Kelso shook her head. "I couldn't let that stand."

"Illuminati" Saxon turned the word over, sounding it out, connecting it with what he knew. "Namir called them 'the group,' like he was afraid to say any more. They're the ones pulling the strings, signing the death warrants, fronting the cash…" He sneered. "I've heard the name. Some bullshit secret society, something outta trashy thrillers… only not." The soldier considered it. "Makes a cold kinda sense, when you think about it. Ghost orders and missions that never were… men and women sacrificed for the sake of keeping the shadows long."

"If what Janus says is true, these people are positioning themselves to manipulate… everything. The future of humanity. The creation of a new world order."

"Maybe so." Saxon looked back at her. "But you want to know something?"

"Go on." Kelso clasped the heated coffee can, drinking in the scant warmth from it.

"I don't give a fuck about all that shit." He shook his head. "I'm a blunt instrument, me, I'm not a clever bastard like the kid or Lebedev." Saxon nodded toward the others. "I've got a very simple need, and it's the same as yours. I want some bloody payback."

She looked away. "I… I'll tell you what I need, what I want. I want my life back. I want to go home. I don't want to have to know any of this!"

Her voice rose suddenly. "Because now I can't walk away!"

"Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?" said another voice. Saxon looked up as D-Bar approached. He looked pale and sweaty.

"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 large 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.

The van skidded and recovered, turning as the feed lane to the Pont du Mont Blanc opened up before it.

The next thing she did was a moment of pure instinct, without conscious thought; Anna kicked off and threw herself at the van as the two vehicles bumped. Her foot found the running board and her free hand snagged the mirror. She ignored the winds battering at her and fired blind, shooting out the glass and firing into the driver's side of the van.

Hermann shot back with a burst from a Hurricane machine pistol, spraying bullets into the air. His shots were wide; despite all his augmentations, driving the wounded vehicle, aiming, and firing at the same time were beyond him.

Her neurovestibular implant went hot and she felt the rush of new focus shiver through her; the feed-forward system augmentation tightened her aim to the point between the muzzle of the Zenith and her target. Anna let the ice-cold flood of her anger take over, let it ride the aim point.

Time slowed as the van hurtled across the bridge. Anna brought up the pistol and fired again. The shots struck Hermann in the head, carving across the front of his skull, ripping flesh and breaking bone. The impact trauma was massive, throwing him off the steering wheel.

The van skidded again and this time there was no one to stop it. Anna's grip was torn away by the hard pull of gravity and she instinctively fell into a roll as she struck the highway. The pain was breathtaking; Anna screamed as the road tore at her, her forward velocity shed in agonizing impacts as she tumbled.

The van veered into the guide rail and cut straight through it, bouncing over the pedestrian path to slice through the side barrier. Engine roaring, the vehicle plummeted toward the Rhone river and clipped the rear quarter of a barge passing below.

As the van hit the water, something in the makeshift bomb broke. Perhaps a connector damaged by Kelso's gunshots or a vital component short-circuited by the force of impact; the effect was the same.

The bomb went off in a howling, thunderous discharge of water and air, tearing the vehicle apart with the force of concussion.

Blood streaming down her face, Anna lurched to her feet as Croix came running. In the light from the streetlamps she saw the remains of the van spin into the froth of the river and vanish from sight.

Saxon heard Powell die as the last detonation took him off his feet and threw him across the hangar and out onto the runway. Powell's scream was torn away by the roar of the fire and then Saxon's world spun around him.

He landed hard, scraping his skin across the tarmac, pain lighting him up all over. The great ball of fire ejected a rain of steel fragments and burning debris, and Saxon dragged himself to his feet, trying to get clear. The heat rolled over him and he coughed, smoke and the stench of burning jet fuel searing his lungs.

He cast around, and his heart sank. Again… Not again…

No one else moved among the devastation and the flames; he cursed himself for being the survivor once more. Powell and his team were gone, the jet and any chance of finding Namir and the Tyrants obliterated… Saxon stumbled and collapsed on the grassy verge across the runway. In the distance he could see the flash of lights from approaching fire tenders and police vehicles. He had to run. He had to get away…

His legs refused to move. How? The question thundered in his head, robbing him of all motion, all power. How did they know we were coming?

Kelso's face blurred through his thoughts and he tensed. He had to warn her.

Saxon's blackened, pained fingers found the spot on his jaw that toggled his comm implant. "Kelso…" His voice was a crackling, painful wheeze.

"Kelso, do you read me? This is Saxon! We've been set up!"

For a long moment there was nothing but static; and when the reply came it was like a knife between his ribs.

"Ah, Benjamin," said Jaron Namir. "I'm afraid it's worse than you think."