James Swallow - Icarus Effect

"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.