Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (23 page)

She sat a while. Then she glanced around once more. This was not going as planned. Then again, to say that she had found what they were looking for would have been an understatement. It was not part of her mission to be here, now, in contact, but it was not exactly her choice either. Clearly she was going to have to go a little off-reservation.

Deciding to face him rather than dissemble further, Cara took a deep breath and said, “Well, Herr Pahr, if you really must know, I am here trying to find out who might have been selling some rather important information to some of our more unreliable neighbors in the east. And as of a short while ago I am now
also
here investigating the nature of your guards’ armor.” She let that sink in, then said, “Does that answer your question?”

He looked surprised, the coolness of his veneer cracking ever so slightly, like the intricate but well-worn pattern on the wooden table between them. She held his stare. He may think that he had her in his custody, but to do so underestimated her, and most certainly underestimated the man waiting for her a short way across town.

“To a degree, I suppose …” he looked less calm now, but still resolute in his belief in the capability of his guards. But now there was something else in his expression. He was plotting. He was calculating risk. He was thinking of how to ensure the silence of the woman in front of him. In short, he was thinking of how to dispose of her.

He went on, “… to a degree, Miss Woods. But you have still not told me who, exactly, you are working for,” he said, still with an air of friendliness.

“No, I have not,” she said, their eyes locked. She was calculating as well. She was calculating whether to try and fight her way out. Whether to call in Hektor. Whether she was about to be attacked or restrained. How they would come at her if they did. With her safety threatened, her face now became like stone, her eyes cold points looking out from behind her resolve, and the sight unsettled the minister.

“I’ll tell you what, Rudolf,” she said after a moment. “I’ll tell you who I work for, if you tell me who, exactly, you have done business with.”

“I am afraid I do not know what business you are referring to, Miss Woods,” he said, trying to match her stern stare.

“Well, maybe the name of my employer will help you remember,” she said. He was curious. The Americans? They were damaged, crippled perhaps, but the CIA still remained a powerful ally and an even worse enemy. The Israelis? Her accent would certainly point to that, but they did not have the motive to come after him, indeed, they were even clients of his, to a small extent.

But wait. Israeli. No … surely she wasn’t one of …

She smiled coldly as she saw realization dawn on him.

“Yes, Herr Rudolf Pahr,” she said. “I do
not
work for any of your so-called allies
or
your customers. I work for the organization you have been so happily selling information about. I work for TASC.”

His expression now became one of fear. He tried to mask it with a sort of righteous indignation but she knew the expression too well. She had seen it too many times.

Tension in the room began to mount as all parties felt the coming escalation. The clock seemed to slow and then suddenly the minister was barking a harsh order in German, and with that it was begun. They were moving toward her and so she was moving too. She kicked at the table with all her strength, pushing her chair backward. She had to stay moving. She must control the contact. She could not win if they got their hands on her.

As her chair pushed backward, she noted they were drawing weapons. She could not know if he had ordered them to kill her or capture her, his words had been too fast and too clipped, but her tactics remained the same regardless.

As she flipped backward, she brought her legs up hard. She fully expected one of them to be right behind her and she was right. Her heels were not long, but the rubber at their base was merely a cover. As her two heels connected with the man’s chin, the base gave way and revealed sharpened blades beneath. Driven with her full force they opened up his neck above the line of his armor. His eyes were wide as his head was pushed backward and all but disconnected from his body.

But she was still moving. She longed for the already dead guard’s armor to be on her, but would suffice with having it in front of her. Two more guards, including the minister’s head of security, were leveling their weapons.

This was no spy. This was a warrior, and their priorities were changing by the second from containment to survival. She had only a moment before they were firing. She pulled at the decapitated guard’s body, wrenching it down on her as she rolled to ground and tried to grapple his gun from his lifeless hand.

Then the bullets came. Most hit the guard’s torso, but the smarter of the guards aimed for her exposed legs.

She felt a bullet impact her, and felt her leg scream and rage at the pain resonating up and down its length. The suit stopped the bullet from opening her up, but her knee still dislocated under the pressure. She scrambled for the gun. Another bullet hit almost the same spot. The pain this time was mind-numbing.

She had sent her distress signal to Hektor as soon as events had come to a head. She had classified it Evac Priority 3. This meant come in hard but use side windows rather than the front door to avoid unnecessary casualties. Priority 2 would have meant come in through the front door and don’t spare the horses. Priority 1 meant come in through the bloody wall if you have to.

She was thinking about upgrading the call.

She could feel a timer in her mind. His estimated time to arrival. It was a fluid estimate that updated as he came in based on distance and resistance met, but it was counting down quickly. He would need to triangulate her exact position and he would need to get past a perimeter guard or two. No doubt those guards would not be having a fun time right about now. But then neither was she.

She managed to get the gun free from the guard’s hand as another bullet hit her exposed flank.

“Enough!” she heard the minister scream.

“Miss Woods!” he shouted. “You are surrounded. You have killed one of my guards and insulted the Austrian government beyond measure. Put down that gun and come out from under that poor man’s body … immediately!”

She paused, happy for the respite. She was badly hurt. If she’d had her battleskin on, the bio-med AIs it came with would be telling her she had multiple cracked ribs and the muscles of her left leg were badly torn in multiple places.

She could continue to fight, of course, but she would fare much better if she waited for the cavalry to arrive. But the minister was not uninformed of the coming reinforcements, ignorant though he may be as to their full speed and martial ability.

“We know you sent some form of signal. We don’t know how, but we know you did. Call off whatever team you have coming in. Let us talk, Miss Woods. Let us talk like civilized human beings.”

Human beings. Ironic. If only they were all acting like members of that same team then there would be no need for all this. She had sent the signal via a small transponder wired directly to her spinal interface. It was not much, but it meant that she could be sure of support should she need it. And she was under no illusions that she still needed it very much, despite the minister’s pleas.

She did send another signal though. She sent a plan of the room she was in, with the locations and armaments of the soldiers around her, and through the limited comms system attached to her spine she received the final countdown to his impending arrival.

It was a bit moot, in truth, as he could now clearly be heard thundering through the building. The minister’s eyes went wide. He signaled for his guards to prepare for whatever was coming. He toyed with finishing off the woman lying on the floor before whatever it was arrived, but he could not shake the feeling that this was not going to go his way. He was so very right.

Hektor came into the outer receiving room as an exercise in juxtaposition, his brute strength and bladelike weapons bloodying the overtly civilized walls with the two guards that still stood outside the inner-office’s door. He tried not to kill them unnecessarily but they were not wearing helmets, and as he disarmed them he feared he probably broke both their necks.

He unhinged the door like an unhinged beast, blasting it from its frame to announce to all within that he had arrived and that the team member he sought had better still be alive. He was greeted with more consistent and focused gunfire than he had met so far on his passage into the building, and he returned the gesture in kind. After turning the first two guards to liquid within their suits, pummeling them with a couple hundred hypersonic rounds each, he turned his guns on the last.

This one was standing in front of a cowering man, clearly guarding him with his life. He was shaking but he was resolute, ready to die for the cause of protecting the man he had been sworn to guard. Hektor respected the gesture.

He stomped into the room with emphatic thuds of his metal feet. He wanted to make sure the two surviving men knew the full weight of their folly should they fire on him again. His sensors could make out Cara’s heat signature to his right. She was under something. His 360
o
visual cortex told him what it was, or rather what it had been before she had shortened it by about a foot. He smiled inside his helmet.

His voice came out of a speaker in his side using the German of his erstwhile fatherland. “Put down the weapon and stand aside. This is not a request. This is not a negotiation. Put down the gun or I will blow your head off. Do it now.”

The sight of the bionic machine in front of him, its dual cannons leveled at his head, would have scared any man, but the guard remained admirably firm. The minister was not so brave, though, and nor was he a fool. This was a lost battle. Indeed it appeared it had been lost from the very start.

“It’s OK, Karl, lower your gun.”

With the gun lowered, Hektor instructed his own helmet to fold back. His systems told him that guards were converging on their location. They did not have much time.

“Cara, how are you doing?” said Hektor.

She groaned as she levered the dead guard off of her. “Great, Lieutenant. Just great.”

He reached around behind his back and grabbed a pack that was attached to it, releasing the tethers that held it there as he did so. It was a little battered from his meteoric entrance into the building, but its contents were hardier than it was anyway. As it hit the ground, it opened and the suit inside it literally sprang from it, a disembodied shell standing of its own accord.

Hektor’s eyes stayed on the minister and his guard.

“I am assuming this is our man?” he said.

“You assume correctly, Lieutenant. This is the leak.”

The minister was stepping out from behind his guard now, bravado rather than bravery, perhaps, but the emotion was almost indistinguishable as he puffed out his chest and said, “Now, Lieutenant. I am not sure what you think is happening here. But may I remind you that I am a minister of the Austrian government, and that you are, at this moment, guilty of a host of crimes, both national and international.”

Hektor looked at the man as if he was brandishing a spud-gun and saying stick-em-up, but the minister went on regardless, his tone becoming more placatory. “Now please, Lieutenant, don’t misunderstand me. I mean not to threaten you, I mean only to say that you should, perhaps, consider your position here.”

Hektor did not reply. He waited as Cara slowly and carefully removed her trouser suit and began working her injured leg into her battleskin. Its embrace was like an old friend, the welcome of returning home, but the suits were hard to get on even on the best of days, and this was certainly not one of her best.

As it sealed around her leg, it asked her via her comms module whether it should realign her warped knee. It was very matter of fact about it, pleasant even. She braced and said yes and the pain as the machine musculature aligned the leg was breathtaking. She shot a deadly look at the minister and the man recoiled at the murder in her eyes.

“Now, now, Miss Woods,” he said with a noticeable tremor in his voice now. “You attacked us, if you remember. I only asked you a question.” She did not respond, though her dark look only grew darker still as she worked her arms into the suit and it sealed around her broken ribs. She seethed as it clenched at them, then her face became calm as the suit pushed her base comms module aside and connected with her spinal interface.

She took the balm of its access, and the ability to curtail and contain her body’s pain management systems. A few moments of total neurological control, a few glanded hormones in her system, and she was ready for bingo.

She soothed herself and brought her anger under control.

Cara:
‘ayala, this is cara. as hektor has no doubt told you, we have our man. ¿what would you like us to do to him, sorry,
with
him?’

Cara’s anger was more than matched by the more profound and deep-seated rage that sat like a pall over Ayala’s heart. They listened as their commander gave her orders. As usual, Ayala did not disappoint.