Deadlock
© 2009 by Robert Liparulo
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Publisher's Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Liparulo, Robert.
      Deadlock / Robert Liparulo.
          p. cm.
      Sequel to: Deadfall, 2007.
      ISBN 978-1-59554-166-6
      1. KidnappingâFiction. 2. CanadianâFiction. I. Title.
  PS3612.I63D45 2009
  813'.6âdc22
2008044443
Printed in the United States of America
09 10 11 12 13 QW 5 4 3 2 1
To Mark Nelson
Thank you for being a great friend all these years
“A scar nobly got . . . is a good livery of honour.”
âWILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
All's Well That Ends Well
“Battle not with monsters
lest ye become a monster;
and if you gaze into the abyss
the abyss gazes into you.”
âFRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
CONTENT
EUREKA, CALIFORNIA
8:32 PM
The mission was simple: kill everyone.
The complications came in the details, such as the directive to keep it
quiet
. So when a guard stepped around the corner of the house, Michael had to stop him from firing the pistol he was reaching for. Michael brought up his sound-suppressed shotgun and put a sabot slugâwhich became shrapnel only upon hitting fleshâinto the man's chest.
There was no way he could have missed. His helmet contained a face mask that enhanced the quality of everything he viewed. A blue set of crosshairs showed him where his weapon was pointed. The system recognized humans, and the face mask crosshairs turned red when his aim was dead-on.
The man flew backward and struck the corner of the house. But instead of rebounding off it, he continued falling, passing through the bricks as if he were a ghost. The break from reality startled Michael, but only for the five heartbeats it took him to remember another of the helmet's technical capabilities: it could insert avatarsâdigitally constructed charactersâinto his field of vision.
Unless the system glitched, as it had just done, it was impossible to tell avatars from the live actors cast to make these training missions as authentic as possible. The face mask's screen rendered people, real or drawn, as photo-realistic cartoons. Sketchy black lines outlined them. Their skin was too perfect, too creamy.
“Crap,” Michael said, disappointed in himself for letting the glitch startle him. His teammatesânot to mention the officers watching in the Command Center via a live satellite feedâwould have caught his hesitation. That was all he needed, being the newest and youngest member of the team.
Here on out,
he thought,
make it perfect.
He felt a nudge on his arm, and the team leader's voice came through his headphones: “That was the warm-up.”
Of course. The designers of these tactical games always pulled the same trick: they sent an enemy to confront the team right away. It got the players' adrenaline pumping, their hand-eye coordination aligned, their minds into a kill-or-be-killed mentality.
Michael glanced back. He nodded at his own helmeted reflection in Ben's black face mask. Beyond, at the curb, Anton occupied the team's transportation, a van “commandeered” for the mission. Emile, the last member of their four-man team, would be coming through the back.
Don't shoot him
, Michael reminded himself. That would completely blow their chances of outscoring the other teams. He'd never live that one down.
“Get moving,” Ben said.
Michael moved quickly up the front porch steps, knelt in front of the door, and pulled a lock-pick gun and tension wrench from a pouch. He felt the deadbolt disengage. He unlocked the door handle and replaced the tools. He rose, readied his weapon, and waited. A red light on his display indicated that Emile had not yet bypassed the home's security system.
Michael considered the scenario they were playing: A rebel leader, whose planned coup would harm U.S. interests, had holed up with guards in a suburban community. Michael's team was to eliminate everyone and make it look like a murder-suicide. That meant no evidence of forced entry, and when they terminated the leaderâthe High Value Targetâthe shooter had to be close, the shot placed just right so the wound would appear self-inflicted. They'd been told the HVT had access to the type of shotguns the team was using. The weapons' smooth-bore barrels would make it impossible to prove different weapons had been used.
Ben gripped his shoulder, reassuring him. It only made Michael more nervous. This was Fireteam Bravo's last chance to edge ahead of Team Charlie in frag points, or successful kills. He didn't want to mess up.
On his screen, the red light changed to green. Three deep breaths, and he opened the door.
He stepped into a foyer and buttonhooked around the door. Clear. A living room opened to the right. Farther along the left foyer wall was a French door, partially open. Light shone through the glass panes.
The layout of the houseâtwo stories, central hall on the ground level with rooms on either sideâwould force him and Ben to separate.
As Ben rushed toward the lighted room, Michael moved into the living room. He panned the gun across the area. Clear.
Behind him came a scream. It was cut off by the distinctive sound of his teammate's weapon:
Thoomp! Thoomp
! Something crashed. Michael fought the urge to rush back.
The scream had been high-pitched, like a woman's, then changed to a deep, guttural growl. Either his headphones had glitched or the guard had shrieked in surprise, then slipped into you're-not-going-to-get- me mode as he'd gone for his gun.
Had to be an actor. What computer-generated avatar would do that?
He ran through the room, toward an archway. Beyond, the surfaces of a kitchen gleamed. A door in the kitchen's back wall swung open. As a figure came through, the sensors in Michael's helmet identified the intruder as another team memberâEmile.
Michael turned, absently noticed a table cluttered with the remnants of a meal: dirty plates, silverware, glasses. He started past it and spotted a man. He was standing in a den, on the far side of a couch. Facing Michael, he reached into his jacket.
Michael fired. The man left the ground. He crashed into a television, which rocked but stayed on. The system added spatters of black game-blood to the front of the TV. Cartoon animals danced and sang on the screen, their voices high and merry.
Thousand points right there
, Michael thought.
I'm going to be top dog on this one.
Emile rushed to a sliding glass door off the den, opened it, and stepped out.
Michael went to an opening on the opposite side of the den. The foyer: he'd circled back around. Ben was making his way up a staircase. Michael fell in behind him. At the landing, Ben turned left and swung into a bedroom.
Thoomp!
Michael turned right. At the end of a hall, a man stood in a doorway. Michael snapped his shotgun up. The computer's facial recognition software identified him as the HVT. Michael ran for him. The man slammed the door.
Michael rushed up to it, then remembered why the guy was the High Value Target: rebel leader, preparing a coup. No doubt he was armed, leveling a machine gun at the door. Michael slammed his back against the wall beside the door.
Kick it in. Duck out of the line of fire. Dive back in. Blast away.
Glass shattered within the room.
The window!
Michael kicked open the door. He saw a flash of movement at the shattered window.
No, no!
He jumped onto the bed, over it, stopped beside the opening. He glanced through, pulled his head back. The patio roof extended out from the house below the window, glass and pieces of wood all over it. He stuck his head through to check either side. Nobody.
Emile was just there. He'd gone out the door to the backyard patio.
“Emile! He's in the backyard! Do you see him?”
Michael stepped through the window and scrambled down the incline to the roof's edge. The yard was dark, except right below him, where the light from the house splashed out. A rain gutter had broken away, swinging from one end. He leaped for the grass. His ankle twisted and he rolled. Pain flared up his leg. He brought his gun up, swung it in a complete circle, rotating his body on the grass.
The sliding door into the den was open. Could the HVT have gone back in? Through the house to the front door? Hiding? Again, he spun around. He saw no other clues to where the man had gone. He got his feet under him. His ankle gave out, and he fell to one knee. Felt like glass grinding around inside him.
Forget it. Push it away.