Daniel Suarez - Daemon

He looked back at Loki’s BMW, then swerved and stabbed the brakes—bringing himself just feet off Loki’s front bumper. Still going seventy, he eased back on the throttle and, taking a breath, released his hold on the handlebars, falling backward onto Loki’s front hood as the BMW bumped his bike’s rear tire. The bike veered forward and to the side and was immediately crushed by a wall of oncoming AutoM8s, which raced past only inches to either side of the BMW. Several smashed head-on into pursuing AutoM8s, exploding into a whirlwind of plastic parts, glass, and tumbling metal.

Merritt hit Loki’s hood hard, then slid back into the windshield. He rolled left, jamming his foot down onto a brushed metal knob at the corner of the hood, and clamped onto the wiper well with his hands. He braced his other foot against the knob on the far corner like it was a rock-climbing wall.

He glared into the blacked-out windshield and pointed threateningly. You’re not rid of me yet, asshole.

From the backseat of the BMW, Gragg stared in amazement at his pursuer now straddling the car hood. “You have got to be shitting me….” He didn’t see that coming. He watched the man like a television show through the glass as the guy pulled an automatic pistol from his coat and aimed at the corner of the windshield.

A series of muted cracks sounded. Divots appeared in the glass over a several-inch area. Gragg watched this calculated attempt to penetrate his armor with something bordering on admiration. The corners were typically the weakest spots on a bulletproof windshield. It was a cool-headed call—especially with scenery racing past behind him.

Too bad the glass was three inches of polycarbonate laminate that could stop a rifle bullet. A score of AutoM8s now surrounded Gragg’s BMW in close order like a slavering pack of wolves. Gragg shook his head sadly and shouted at the windshield. “What now, crazy man? You’re on an armored car! What were you thinking?”

Beyond the windshield the rider had reached down to his shoe and now brandished a killing knife as he braced himself with both feet and his other hand.

Gragg laughed. “Look out. He’s got a knife!”

The rider turned, jammed the knife under the bottom edge of a satellite uplink node, and pried upward. The node peeled off with a shriek of bending metal.

The Voice came over the stereo system. “Uplink…one…of…twelve…has failed.”

Gragg felt the rage building. “You son of a bitch! You’re going for a ride now!”

With a wave of his gloved hands, the BMW went into a power slide and the rider was nearly flung off.

The Major’s chopper came in low and fast over the industrial area, banking so that nothing but brick factory buildings were visible in the left windows. The Major clipped a monkey cord onto his harness and gave it two test pulls. He struggled to his feet as the chopper leveled off. The old wound in his knee was already acting up. An image of a mortar shell landing next to him in a patch of Nicaraguan mud flashed in his mind. Ancient history.

“There they are, Major!” The pilot pointed.

Below, the Major could see a red BMW screeching around drunkenly as it raced down the street, alternately braking and accelerating while a man tried to retain his grip on the roof. Twenty more vehicles swirled around the car, moving like a single organism. More vehicles converged on the site from all directions at high speed along cross streets, smashing into the occasional unlucky motorist. People fled for their lives. He shook his head. What a goddamned mess. How had this gotten so out of control? Behind him columns of black smoke rose here and there.

Let’s give the city something else to look at. The Major pulled his L3 cell phone from his jacket and spoke to the pilot as he started dialing. “It’s days like this that I almost miss working for the government.”

The pilot’s voice came over the closed-circuit headset. “Almost.”

The Major laughed. The line picked up. “Project Hazmat.” The Major turned to look back through the atmospheric haze at Building Twenty-Nine in the distance. “Demolition.” A pause. “6-N-G-7-3-H-Z-6.” Another pause. “On my mark. T-minus ten…nine…”

“We’re almost there, Nat.” Ross glanced back at Building Twenty-Nine, three hundred yards behind them now. It was burning somewhere inside, and the flaming wreckage of AutoM8s around it partially obscured it with smoke.

Philips spat out salt water. “I think I’m really blind.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What if that was a ZM-87 Laser Blinder? My retinas would be gone.”

“Doesn’t make sense. Why permanently blind a target you’re about to hack to pieces? It’s probably meant to stun victims. I’d—”

Suddenly a wave of pressure blasted across their backs. A visible shockwave rippled through the atmosphere and pressed down around them—followed close on by a resounding BOOM that they felt more than heard.

They both went facedown in the water as the depths beneath them glowed orange and filled with the sound of splashing boulders and thousands of rock fragments. As they came up sucking for air, rocks and small boulders were landing all around them. Their ears were ringing.

Ross covered her with his body as the rocks continued to rain down. He turned to see a towering mushroom cloud roiling up from the jagged tops of Building Twenty-Nine’s walls. The structure was a pool of flame with refrigerator-sized blocks of reinforced concrete still tumbling end over end across the runway. Burning debris trailing streamers of smoke sailed down from a thousand feet overhead. Metal sheets spun crazily as they fell. “Jesus Christ!”

“What happened?”

“The building. It’s gone !”

From his perch on the BMW’s roof, Merritt glanced back at a black mushroom cloud rising behind him above the factory buildings. “Son of a bitch…” Later.

Suddenly Loki accelerated the car, pulling Merritt down onto the trunk, where he stopped himself from rolling off by pushing his foot against the metal knob on the right rear corner. He grabbed on to the lip of the trunk lid.

Where the hell are the police?

He jammed the knife blade under another metal knob and tore it up from the sheet metal. The knob dangled by exposed wires until Merritt sawed through them.

The Voice intoned again, “Uplink…four…of…twelve…has failed.”

Gragg had eight uplinks left. With triple redundancy he knew he needed at least four to adequately control the car and his army of AutoM8s. He turned around in his seat to see the man mere inches away from his face now—still clinging on. Gragg pounded the window. “That’s it!”

The man’s motorcycle helmet clunked against the glass, awkward in its bulk as he tried to keep his center of gravity down. In between erratic car movements, the rider quickly pulled the helmet off, tossing it over his shoulder. It was immediately crushed by trailing AutoM8s. The man then pressed his head down against the trunk lid.

Gragg could now see the rider’s face. “Roy Merritt…holy shit.” Gragg smiled in spite of himself. The famous Roy Merritt—known to every Daemon operative in the world. The man who tackled Sobol’s home defense system and survived—the entire ordeal captured on Sobol’s security cameras. The one and only Roy Merritt was hanging on to Gragg’s car. Gragg was being pursued—and pursued damned well—by the Burning Man himself. He should have known. The son of a bitch had a knife, and he was doing more damage than a squad of corporate military. Gragg couldn’t deny some level of admiration. Merritt had probed Gragg’s defenses, found a hole—one that would be filled in the future—and improvised an exploit. What hacker couldn’t admire the man’s cojones? His instincts?