James Swallow - Icarus Effect

Namir's chest from close range. The shots would have killed a normal man, but the Tyrant commander wore a tac vest lined with armor inserts, and beneath that he carried dermal shell implants capable of stopping any low-caliber rounds that made it through; still, Anna felt a ripple of pain-memory as she recalled a bullet from a similar gun that had cut into her.

Barrett was shouting as Saxon raised the pistol's muzzle a degree higher and laid his aim on Jaron Namir's head.

The big man's grip on her neck tightened again, enough to draw a strangled scream from her lips.

"Saxon!" bellowed Barrett. "You kill him and the woman dies next!"

Namir lay in a heap on the deck, scarred and wheezing. He looked up, one eye gummed shut, the other the bright lens of an augmented optic.

"Go on, then," he panted. "That was a very clever recovery, Ben

… It's one of your best skills… The ability to evaluate and exploit a tactical opportunity. You're quick that way." He coughed up a string of bloody spittle. "So do it. Kill shot." He tapped at his cheekbone, under the undamaged eye. "Right here. I'll die, and you'll have what you want. Your payback." On the lower tiers of the yacht, glass portholes shattered as the fire continued to spread, waves of heat radiating up through the floor of the sky deck. "Icarus burns," said Namir, chuckling painfully at his own joke. "And so will all of us, one way or another.

What's it to be?"

"Drop the gun!" Barrett shouted. Pushing Federova aside, he dragged Kelso to the front of the upper deck and shoved the woman until she was half over the guide rail. "You test me and I swear to you, I'll drop her into the fire!"

The muzzle of the pistol wavered. He thought of Sam and his men, the ghosts he had seen in the gloom of the field hospital. He owed them this, this last bullet. This measure of justice.

"Shoot me," Namir demanded, "or save Anna." He shifted, dragging himself to his feet with slow, agonized motions. Blood was streaming from the wounds in his chest, but he never broke eye contact with Saxon. "You're aggrieved. You've been lied to and used. But that's the world we fight in. That's who we are."

"Not me," Saxon bit out. "I'm not like you. I never was."

"Then you have to decide." Namir gave a shrug. "Is your need for revenge worth another innocent life?"

He would never be this close again. Saxon knew it with ironclad certainty-if he did not pull the trigger, Namir would slip away, the Tyrants would vanish into the shadows cast by the Illuminati, and all the deeds they had done would go unpunished…

And the cost would be only one innocent life. Just one single person. Another name on the endless roll of sacrifices laid down for the ideal of the

Illuminati's draconian one world order. Anna Kelso's death in exchange for Jaron Namir's, a man whose soul had to be black with all the horrors he was responsible for.

He could not let him live. It wasn't right that such a man should have a life, a family, a purpose, while all Ben Saxon had turned to ashes around him.

It is not right!

With a sudden snarl of fury, he flung the pistol away into the waters of the lake, turning to Barrett. "Let her go, you son-of-a-bitch."

Barrett grinned through bloodstained teeth. "Sure, whatever you say." He opened his hand and Kelso screamed as she went over the edge of the sky deck and into the churning black smoke.

Saxon heard him laughing as he exploded into a full-tilt run, racing toward the far side of the boat. Barrett brought up his gun-arm and let rip with a screaming hail of rounds that chopped up the decking all around him, shredding wood and plastic.

Without halting, Saxon reached the lip of the rail and threw himself over it, Barrett's shots hissing through the air around him.

One moment, her world was a fog of pain, consciousness hanging by a thin thread, and the next

Anna was falling into the mouth of hell, gasping as black smoke filled her lungs, the heat of an inferno beating at her. She landed badly on the slant of the hull, a glass-and-steel slope that ranged away down to the main deck. Anna flipped over and tumbled. She threw out her hands to arrest her plunge, but she couldn't find anything to grab on to. The smooth, polished glass resisted all attempts to grip it. She slid inexorably toward the flames gathering below.

Above, gunfire rattled, and through the smoke she saw another figure vault over the edge and come down toward her. Fear lanced through

Anna; someone was coming down to finish the job. But then she saw Saxon's blood-streaked face.

He punched his machine-fist into the hull and found a moment's purchase. Anna grabbed for his outstretched arm and heard him cry out in agony as she pulled on the broken limb. Her shoes scraping over the hull, she shoved herself up, feeling plumes of heat from the fires searing her back.

A shape hazed into view through the smoke. Barrett leaned over the edge of the sky deck and sneered, pointing his gun-arm toward the two of them. The tri-barrel cannon spun up to firing speed and spat a line of stark, yellow-white tracer, shredding the paneling.

"Hold on!" shouted Saxon, as the glass window beneath them shattered under the salvo, opening up into a void of hot vapors. The two of them tumbled into the interior of the burning yacht, vanishing from sight.

Barrett spat over the rail and turned away in disgust, cordite vapor coiling from the maw of his gun. He kicked away the spent brass casings at his feet and moved toward the idling helo. Federova, her ice-cool glower now sullen and silent in its fury, shot him a hard look. She'd managed to extricate herself from most of the tangler rounds, but she was angry that none of Saxon's blood had ended up on her blade.

Namir ordered her into the flyer with a sharp gesture, and he climbed into the empty pilot's chair. "Is it done?" he asked.

"Lost them in the smoke-" Barrett's explanation was interrupted by a dull concussion from deep inside the Icarus s engine room. The yacht shuddered and listed alarmingly, tilting so far to port that the lake waters broke over the main deck and swamped it.

"Get in," Namir told him. "The police launches are a few minutes away. We're not going to be here when they arrive."

Barrett threw one last look over his shoulder, listening to the death-throes of the boat as the Icarus was consumed by fire and water. "See you in hell, Saxon," he muttered, pulling himself into the flyer.

The rotors became shrill, spinning the smoke into twisting columns; then the aircraft lifted off and rose vertically, pivoting to survey the burning boat as a raptor would hover over the corpse of a fresh kill.

Anna crouched close to the carpeted decking and did her best to draw what little untainted air remained into her chest. She cast around, finding

Saxon in a heap on top of a broken table. They had crashed through the roof into the forward gallery of the yacht, a richly appointed dining room. Small fires had taken hold here, crawling slowly along the support stanchions. The floor was gritty with a layer of extinguisher powder that had proven ineffectual. She moved to him, staying low, her breathing ragged and painful.

Above, a rent in the glass ceiling looked out into a blackened sky. The smoke filled it like a chimney, the hot haze billowing around her. She blinked, her eyes stinging. "Saxon?" She could hardly speak; the call came out like the bark of an animal.

He stirred and rolled off the table, hissing with pain. Shards of shattered glass were buried in the meat of his damaged arm, and Saxon pulled at them, tossing the bloodstained fragments away. "We… We have to get off this deathtrap."

Toward the bow, the Icarus was already a quarter submerged, a wide slick of burning oil spread out across it. Water lapped in through breaks in the forward doors, but a fallen stanchion blocked any hope of getting them open. They couldn't go back the way they had come in, and the metal staircase leading to the deck above was searing hot to the touch. Anna chanced a look up the stairwell and saw nothing but flames.