David Weber - Torch of Freedom

He started walking across the room toward the back exit. "Or you can report the incident to the authorities, who will certainly treat you with the respect traditionally given to seccies. It's your choice."

Half a minute later, he and Anton and the two women and their captive were in the escape passageway.

There, they stopped. Anton shoved the captive against the wall and stepped back. Victor stepped forward, the gun in his hand.

Lajos Irvine was petrified. He was about to die, and he knew it. There was no mercy at all in those black eyes and the gun hand was as steady as a bar of steel.

A few seconds passed. Maybe five, although it seemed like fifty.

"I'm just not positive," said the black-eyed man.

"It's your call," said the waiter.

The black-eyed man stepped back. "He needs to be out for at least four hours."

"Not a problem." The waiter came to stand right in front of Lajos. He looked as wide as the sea.

"I'd say this was going to hurt me more than it hurts you, but that'd be ridiculous."

The sledgehammer fist didn't hurt at all, oddly enough. Or, if did, Lajos could never remember.

From the beginning, Jack McBryde had realized that simply defecting wasn't enough—not in light of all he'd contributed to the Alignment first. That was the real reason he'd chosen to attack the Center's secure data network and every other computer system he could reach. There were backups, of course, but there was at least a chance of inflicting significant damage on the Alignment's most secure data systems, and that was definitely worth trying.

Only now he wasn't going to have that opportunity. There wasn't going to be enough time. Which meant there was only one way he could hope to take out a meaningful chunk of truly significant data, and since it was painfully clear to him that he wasn't going to be getting off Mesa after all . . .

He tapped a combination into his personal com. It was a one-time, untraceable combination—one he'd set up through his own security connections, even as he'd hoped he'd never need it. It buzzed only once, and then Herlander Simões's voice answered. McBryde could hear the tension in it, the recognition that he wouldn't have been calling on this combination unless something had gone seriously wrong.

"Yes?" Simões said.

"Eggshell," McBryde replied, and heard an audible inhalation as the emergency codeword registered.

"I—" Simões began, then stopped. There was the harsh sound of someone clearing his throat. "Understood. Thanks. I . . . won't forget."

"Good." McBryde wanted to say something more himself, but there wasn't time, and there wasn't much he could have said, anyway. Except—"Be well. Clear."

Feeling stunned, Herlander keyed off his com.

"What does that mean?" asked Yana.

"It means he's been . . . he's going to . . ." He burst into tears. "He's the only friend I have. "

They were practically running down the passageway, now. Anton wasn't happy about that at all. First, it broke every rule of tradecraft. Secondly, there was a genuine risk of tripping over something in the dim light. And there were plenty of "somethings" to trip over, too. The floor of the passageway was littered with debris. Unlike some of these underground tunnels, this one was little-used. That was a good part of the reason they'd selected it, of course. But all they needed at this point was for someone to get injured in a fall.

They simply had no choice. The incident in the diner had not only delayed them, it had also made clear that something had gone wrong. What that something might be, they still had no idea. But whatever time they might have, it was running out.

Jack killed the circuit connecting him to Simões and began punching more keys. It was a long, complicated sequence this time—one carefully designed so that no one would ever enter it by accident—and he felt his stomach knotting with tension as the security fences went down, one by one, each seeking and demanding its own confirmation. He was probably the only person on the entire planet who had all of the required security codes, and even he wasn't supposed to have all of them. It was supposed to be a "two-man" rule situation, but McBryde had always recognized that if they were actually needed, there might not be time to get the designated "second man" online before it was too late.

I never realized how long this took , a corner of his mind thought distantly as he entered yet another in the queue of required commands and codes. If I had, I would have suggested streamlining things. How does anyone expect to have the time to go through all this rigmarole in a genuine emergency situation? It's stupid, that's what —

The mental sentence broke off in mid-thought as a boldly tattooed woman and three of her personal aides appeared in the field of view of the pickup he had focused on the Center's main entrance. He watched the uniformed sergeant springing to his feet as he recognized Isabel Bardasano and swore softly.

There's still time , he told himself. It takes a good six minutes to get to my office from there, even using the high-speed lift. And I think I can probably slow things down at least a bit . . .

"Thank God," said Carl Hansen, as Victor and Anton came out of the tenement. Then, seeing the two women with them, he frowned. "Who're they?"

"Never mind right now. They're coming with us. Something's gone wrong."

Yana emerged from the back of the van. "No kidding something's gone wrong." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. "Our passenger in there got a call a little while ago from He Who Is Not To Be Named. He's been found out, he's trapped in the center, and . . ."

Victor nodded. "He'll suicide. Good man."

Yana's grin was purely feral. "Oh, he's not going out alone, Victor. Not by a long shot."

That was one of the few times in his life Anton ever saw Victor Cachat's eyebrows raise in surprise. It would have been worth a chuckle except they had too much to figure out and decide.

"If he's going to blow the Gamma Center, we should alert Cary to wait and blow the Buenaventura at the same time. If we're lucky, the Mesans will think the acts were co-ordinated ahead of time."

He was a bit relieved at the prospect of setting off the device hidden in the basement of the Buenaventura this early on a Saturday morning. The tower itself was abandoned, and situated in an old industrial area that was mostly vacant. There were bound to be some casualties, but at least they'd be kept to a minimum.

Unfortunately, from Anton's viewpoint, they couldn't simply abort the explosion. Destroying the Buenaventura was the key to their faked escape records—which they now probably needed more than ever.

There was no longer any point, however, in setting off the explosion at the sports stadium. First, because David Pritchard might very well get killed when McBryde detonated the nearby Gamma Center. Secondly, what was the point anyway? David's bomb couldn't possibly do as much damage as McBryde's measures would.

Carl was keying the new instructions to Cary. "Okay, that's done," he said a short while later. "What's next?"

"Send instructions to Karen and David. Tell them to get the hell out and go to ground. If they go into hiding now, I think they've still got a decent chance of eluding the manhunt that's about to come down. Which is going to be one hell of a manhunt."

Hansen's face seemed to get a bit drawn, but he typed out the instructions quickly and surely.

"What about me, Anton?" he asked quietly.

"You'll have to come with us, Carl. There's no way around it now."