James Axler - Janus Trap

Decimal River pulled up a window of scrolling information on the laptop’s screen, flicking his hand before the motion sensor to run quickly through the pages of information displayed there. “Fifty-seven minutes ago,” he continued, “they activated the mat-trans, crossing from their home in the Montana mountains to…here.” He pointed to a paper map that was stretched across the wall of the cave. The map showed North America, and a red cross marked the Bitterroot Mountains. His finger tapped at an area close to the bottom right, but it meant nothing to Cloud Singer.

Broken Ghost took a single pace forward, and she seemed suddenly much more imposing as Decimal River looked up at her from his seated position. “Prime the trap,” she said, her words the barest whisper as they left her mouth.

Cloud Singer smiled. Soon the Original Tribe would get its due. Soon they would have their revenge on Cerberus and its accursed leader. And then Lakesh would die.

“IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME with these bottom-feeders,” Kane growled as he mentally assessed the immediate area around the crates where the three Cerberus warriors had taken cover. The exit door was ten paces ahead of them, and there was certainly enough cover to escape the boathouse if they wanted to.

“What do you see out there, Kane?” Grant asked.

Another hail of bullets hammered into the crates beside them, splintering the wood and kicking up puffs of sawdust, and they heard the sounds of guards running all about them between the stacked crates.

“People in diving suits,” Kane said. “Frogmen armed to the teeth. They were rushing in from the open dock.”

Grant nodded toward the door to the boathouse. “You want to get out of here?”

Kane thought for a moment, glancing across at Brigid for confirmation. “Nah,” he decided. “Let’s go make friends, cause mayhem.” With that, Kane stood, reached up and pulled himself up the stack of crates beside him, clambering to the top in a series of quick, economical movements.

Raising the Sin Eater before him, Grant hunkered down and stalked off into the shadows, his black duster helping him blend into the darkness. Brigid took a different route toward the opposite side of the boathouse, weaving through the crates at a fast trot as bullets zipped all around, the TP-9 held high. As she ran, she rooted around in her satchel with her free hand, producing three small metallic spheres, like ball bearings, from its hidden depths.

As Kane pulled himself to the top of the stacked crates, he saw one of Ohio Blue’s men up there stagger backward toward him, an oozing red stain across his chest where he had been riddled with bullets from below. The man cried as he misstepped, falling from the high stack and plummeting past Kane to the solid floor almost fifteen feet below. Across from him, on a nearby tower of crates, another guard was falling over his own feet, a gout of red gushing from a large wound in what was left of his skull. Whoever the newcomers were, they were well-trained, Kane realized—it took some nice pinpoint work to take out the high guards so quickly.

He pulled himself over the lip of the crates and, keeping his body low, stalked across the towers as flashes of gunfire continued to light the floor below. The body of another security guard lay sprawled on his back close to the far side of the crate tower, a single red-rimmed wound between his staring eyes. In an automatic gesture, Kane’s left hand reached down and closed the dead man’s eyes as he passed.

Kane dropped, lying flat on his stomach, and crawled the last few yards to the edge of the tall tower. His head popped forward, and he peeked over the side as the gunfire continued below him. It looked as though a miniature war had erupted down there. In heavy helmets and diving gear, a dozen men were working as a team, using long-nosed pistols to take out Ohio Blue’s guards as they approached the beautiful trader where she cowered behind her crimson recliner, bullets flying all around.

As Kane watched, the tall blond trader reached beneath the bullet-riddled recliner and produced a long-barreled revolver from its hiding place, taped to the underside of the couch. It was a Ruger Security Six, a silver six-shooter with enough stopping power to drill through a wag door. Blue hadn’t been cowering, Kane realized; she was using the recliner as cover while she armed herself.

In a flash, Ohio Blue raised the Ruger, steadying the butt with her free hand, and blasted a shot at the lead frogman. The bullet took him full in the chest and the masked man staggered for a moment. Then, to Kane’s surprise, the frogman shook his head and continued walking toward Ohio Blue, almost as though nothing had happened.

Ohio’s guards were also having little success, and Kane now saw why. The divers were wearing bulletproof vests over their diving suits.

Ohio Blue continued firing at the lead frogman, her shots going wild as she started to panic. A moment later, the six-shooter was out of bullets, but it took several pulls of the trigger before the beautiful woman realized. She tossed aside the useless weapon and ducked behind her crimson recliner as bullets zipped all around her.

“We want her alive,” one of the frogmen reminded his team as the group got closer.

On the crates above, Kane sighted down the length of his Sin Eater, slowing his breathing and focusing on the rearmost man in scuba gear. After a moment, Kane’s finger stroked the trigger, unleashing a short burst. The 9 mm bullets raced to their target, hitting the diver’s faceplate and shattering the strengthened plastic mask in an explosion of hard splinters.

Kane watched as the man ducked and clawed at the mask, his companions turning to look at him. From up there, Kane couldn’t hear the man’s howls over the sounds of gunfire, but he assured himself that his victim was cursing their unseen attacker even now. A grim smile crossed Kane’s lips at the thought, and he pulled himself back from the edge of the crates, rolled to one side and made his way to a new location as a hail of bullets slapped against the edge of the uppermost crate.

On ground level between the towers of crates, Grant rushed back toward Ohio Blue, his dark eyes assessing the squad of men in scuba gear. Even as he watched, the rearmost man took Kane’s bullet to his face and dropped to his knees, clawing at the shattered remains of his faceplate.

Placing his back flush to the crates, Grant scanned the area until he spotted Ohio Blue crouching behind her recliner, muzzle-flashes reflected in the sapphire blue of her dress. She was too far away and too out in the open for him to reach safely; he would need a distraction.

“Kane, Brigid,” Grant whispered as he activated his Commtact, a top-of-the-line communication device that had been recovered from Redoubt Yankee years before. Commtacts featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was subcutaneously embedded in the mastoid bone. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were picked up by the auditory canals, and dermal sensors transmitted the electronic signals directly through the skull casing. Even a deaf user would still be able to hear normally, in a fashion, using the Commtact. The Commtact didn’t need sound to be activated; it could pick up and interpret subvocalized speech if necessary, making it an ideal device for sneak work. Permanent usage of the Commtact involved a minor surgical procedure, something many of the Cerberus staff were understandably squeamish about, and so their use remained at field-test stage for now. However, the communication device was considered an essential tool for Kane and other field teams.

“The trader’s in trouble,” Grant explained. “I can’t reach her. Any ideas?”

“Be careful,” Kane instructed over the linked transmission. “They’re wearing some kind of armor that deflects bullets.”