James Swallow - Icarus Effect

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.

Inside, the horribly familiar smells of spent cordite and blood reached her nostrils. A man in a suit lay against the staircase leading upward, his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Anna felt for a pulse; there was nothing.

She moved on, hugging the walls, finding her way into the open lounge. More of Temple's guests were here, some of them caught still sitting in chairs with glasses of wine in their hands, others shot in the back as they tried to run. Anna saw the telltale patterning of close-range shotgun blasts.

On the floor above, a floorboard creaked and she froze. She very clearly heard a shuffling footstep; then in the next second, a strangled, pained gurgle and the heavy fall of a body.

Cold certainty gathered in her thoughts. An assassin-or more than likely, a team of them-were stalking through Temple's home, systematically executing everyone they found. It could only have been the Tyrants; the brutality and precision of the attack bore all their hallmarks. Above, she heard the creaking again. They were sweeping the house, floor by floor. She had little time; once they had completed their search, they'd double back and look for stragglers.

She scanned the corpses again; he wasn't among them, and if Ron Temple was anything like the man she thought she knew, he would have had a plan for something like this. He was methodical to the last.

The house hadn't changed much since she had visited it, and she concentrated, pulling up her memories of that day. Temple had shown Matt around; she remembered him mentioning something about the basement…

Anna found a doorway in an alcove, behind a privacy curtain. In the dark, it would be easy to miss. Slipping inside, she followed the weakest sliver of light her optics could detect, and with care, descended a shallow set of steps. She blinked back to a normal vision mode. There, half hidden behind a few wine racks reaching from the concrete floor to the low ceiling, was a work area. A desk, a monitor, a rudimentary office. It was cool down here, and the carnage above seemed miles away.

She was two steps into the room when she heard a faint breath. "Temple," she whispered. "I know you're here."

There was a gasp of surprise, and he gingerly emerged from behind the desk, a small pistol in his trembling hand. "You…" he whispered. "Are you… Was this a test?" Temple's face was a mess of conflicting emotions. "Did… Did I fail?"