Say one thing for Doors, Cole reflected, what his men lacked in training, they made up for in equipment. The sentry that was slumped against the twisted old trunk of an ancient pine was becked out in a thinskin Kevlar chainmail that would have stopped any bullet of any caliber. He'd been armed with an MP-5K-PDW. The compact submachine gun was small enough to fit in a satchel, but featured a foregrip for stability in firing, and a folding skeleton stock for improved accuracy. The gun was also fitted with a SmartShot targeting sensor that fed into the microchips of what Cole was sure were tracking slugs. It was virtually impossible to miss with those babies.
But the guy had been stupid, and no amount of gear or equipment or bell and whistles could correct for that. Cole had screwed up, big time-the sort of mistake that would have gotten his ass reamed by Sergeant Tizonik back in training, and definitely would have gotten it shot off in India during the war. The HALO jump---High Altitude Low Opening---had gone well until he'd miscalculated his flaps and taken the chute into a tree. He could have ripped himself in half, or at least shattered some ribs, but he'd come down through the thinner branches and survived with some cuts and scrapes. They burned now, and Cole savored it, forcing the pain into his mission matrix, drawing strength and determination from it.
But the landing was loud and right in the middle of an area under patrol. It eliminated the need to tangle with Doors's laser-fences, heat-sensors, and ammonia detectors, but it had gotten the attention of this guy and brought him charging up the hill just as Cole was cutting himself loose from his web belts. A professional would have taken a position behind one of the massive trees and scanned the area slowly and methodically with IR and multiple-band scopes, then peppered the likely drop zone with fire. But this guy rushed in, gun up and ready.
Perhaps it wasn't his fault, Cole reflected as he slid down the gradual slope, and toward a low ridge of stone that was shielded by the full moon by a canopy of trees. The guy was accustomed to dipshit survivalist whack-jobs, sense-deadened Companion Volunteers, and maybe the occasional assassin---a freelancer who was an amateur though he'd believe himself a professional. This sentry had never been trained to anticipate him. One of the Archangels.
And so the man had charged up the hill, covering the tree and the billowing parachute and gear with sweeps of his laser sight. He'd been confident in his body armor and stood outside of cover.
Crouched in the impenetrable blackness of a tangle of thick roots and shadows, Cole had shot him twice with his Heckler and Koch SOCOM pistol, the long suppressor had deadened the gun's report to such a degree that the sound of the .45 caliber slugs cutting the air made more noise than the gun had.
The damp ground yielded and he skidded through pliable mud until he could roll onto his back and flatten against the ridge of stone. In one inexorable motion, he lifted the SOCOM and fired another double-tap into the skull of the sentry loitering by one of the pines.
Two sectors down, three to go, and then the house.
Cole sat up and looked over the ridge. In the darkness of the night, the massive Doors mansion glowed like jewel. Seven-hundred yards, he guessed. Three guards and various camera towers to bypass.
His cuts and scraped burned, and his back where the rifle was secured screamed in agony from having the thing pounded into it. Cole funneled it all into the matrix. As he had in Kashmir and Calcutta.
He straightened into a crouch and unslung the rifle. Like the SOCOM, it was an H&K. A G36, similar to the one he'd used in the War. He unfolded the stock, then screwed the suppressor onto the shortened barrel. He chambered a 5.56mm round and sighted through the EagleEye scope.
Three sentries. All of whom had routes right through his cone of fire.
Then only the cameras and sensor towers, but by the time they had him on their screens in Doors's security headquarters, he'd be inside the perimeter and knocking at their front door.
And that close to Doors, no one could stop him.
He flicked the safety off and waited for the first one to step into the crosshairs.
Godunov, Siberia
33 Hours Earlier
The shielding of the Taelon pre-fab structure hissed slightly with the onslaught of wind and diamond-hard chips of snow. Through them, Liam could hear the howl of the wind and the low, miserable moaning of pack horses struggling down the forest path.
"Major, you have no business being here," Sandoval snapped with his customary brusqueness, then turned on his heel---almost. The heavy, knee-high boots he wore prevented such a smooth and fluid motion and trapped him at half-turn.
"That's a Companion facility," Liam gestured to the collection of squat, concrete boxes-three of which were now exhaling a solid stream of thick, black smoke, which wafted past and blocked out the high-powered security lights. "An attack on it signifies an attack on the Companions. Whoever did it might be gunning for them next."
"I am in charge of this investigation, Major!" Sandoval shot over his shoulder as he pulled a knit cap over his ears.
"I'm not disputing that," Liam replied evenly. "As Da'an's protector I simply want to observe the investigation into this incident, so that I can adequately assess the risk to my Companion."
Sandoval was silent as he ruefully pulled on a pair of leather gloves. His bluster had backed him into a verbal corner and he knew it. The truth was that he was being a territorial little jerk right now, and he couldn't support that position with any legitimacy. Maybe he could contact Zo'or and try for Taelon sanction on freezing Liam out of this investigation, but Liam doubted Zo'or would go for it. He'd want whoever was responsible for this, and Sandoval's provincialism wouldn't accomplish that.
"All right," he finally agreed in a low, unhappy voice, "but understand one thing. We are here to investigate the attack on this facility, an no more. I'll warn you in advance, Major, your sentimental tendencies will be offended by what you see in there. I don't want to hear any speeches, any lectures, any of your bleeding-heart platitudes about the measures that Taelons take to secure their position on this planet. Is that understood?"
Liam took a step nearer to Sandoval. "What is this place?"
The other protector didn't flinch, but his eyes skittered a bit. "A detention center." Then he stepped through the energy barrier into the swirling wind and snow. Liam pulled his wool coat tighter around his body and followed. He felt the sting of the elements immediately. His cheeks and nose went numb almost immediately and he concentrated on stepping in Sandoval's footsteps.
The horses moaned again.
It was only a few years to the main entrance to the facility, but it seemed like the most torturous and demanding walk of his life. The doorway itself was a jagged hole, tinged with ice from where the explosives had melted the snow. The titanium, auto-locking doors stuck out of the drifts in the snow like toys thoughtlessly tossed there away by a child. An inconstant orange glow illuminated the bodies scattered around the entrance. Volunteers, Liam noted. Some were missing items. He mentally ticked them off as he walked into the entrance corridor. Boots, vest, helmet, gloves, rifle...
Only then did he realize the reason for Sandoval's defensiveness.
This wasn't an attack. It was an escape.
He looked up and strode to where Sandoval stood looking a bank of security cameras. "Someone escaped from this place!" he exclaimed, then noticed the screens.
And he understood the other reason for Sandoval's reluctance.
He took a breath, tried to speak, but couldn't find the words. He gritted his teeth until he tasted enamel.
"No lectures, Major," Sandoval said quietly. The even apologism was there, but none of the righteous bravado. Even he was shaken by this place. "No speeches, no lectures."
"I wouldn't know where to begin," Liam replied.
Jonathan switched the CD to Brahms, then sat back down behind his massive oak desk where the tumbler and pistol were within easy reach. His study was decorated in deep, rich mahogany and oxblood leather. One whole wall was lined with bookshelves. It was a room which conveyed power of the old-fashioned type. No computer screens, or uplink monitors here. This place was not about the triumph of technology and communications. This place was about the men who wielded power and the deals they struck. This is where he'd met with labor leaders, techno-tycoons, software geniuses, and industrial giants. This was where he'd bargained with them, threatened them, cajoled them. This was the room in which Tak Kakutani had signed over the patent to the mini-microprocessor, where David Cosgrove and the entire AFL-CIO had knuckled under during the oil boom of '08, where Bill Gates had wept like a child and begged him not to destroy what was left of his once might corporation.
This was the room of men and their pursuits, and so it was the room most appropriate for him to wait for his killer. He took a sip of cognac and checked the gun. It was an old weapon----a Sig P-210 pistol, with an eight-round magazine of 9mm exploding slugs. It had been manufactured in the mid 20th century, before polymers, ergonomic grips and clever safety systems became the norm on combat pistols. But the old Swiss-made piece was to this day considered to be the Rolex of pistols with a natural accuracy that rivaled any Special Forces sidearm. Jonathan's was fitted with high-profile sights and textured, wood grips. It has cost close to twenty-five thousand dollars and he practiced with it every day. He didn't give himself a nickel for his chances when his killer arrived, but at least he'd go out in style.
If it came to that.
The music soaked into the wood of the room, reminding him of what this about. The deals a man made to secure his place in the world.
Sometimes those deals went bad. Sometimes the price was too high, and when the time came to pay up. Well...
His global pinged. He slid it open and looked at Renee.
"He's on the grounds. Possibly inside the house. You've got to let me call the chopper."
Leave it to Renee to be unflappable and chilly. Even under these circumstances.
"No," he said flatly.
"Damn it, Jonathan!" Liam's voice from offscreen. "You've got to-"
He was cut off by a rattle of gunfire, and the screen defaulted to the MCI logo. Outside the heavy wooden door he heard the confluence of rifle shots and particle weapons.
This was it.
Jonathan picked up the Sig and cocked it and waited.
Taelon Mothership
27 Hours Earlier
Zo'or moved forward in the chair, an eerie combination of a sway and lunge with the trademark Taelon deliberateness and grace that had caused more than one human witness to describe them as "fish-like."
"So, Agent Sandoval, I am to understand that even with coupled, vast resources of the Taelon presence and the FBI, you were unable to track this miscreant?" The Taelon's singsong cadence bled contempt, and Liam could see the humiliation burn beneath Sandoval's skin.
"We tracked him to a local town," he reported, his matter-of-fact tone slightly rattled, slightly edgy, but otherwise held steady. "It appears that he robbed several homes and retailers. We found the clothing he stole from the Companion Volunteers discarded at varying stores. Some eyewitnesses have claimed to have seen him disappear into the mountains, but the veracity of this testimony is in doubt."
"If he did head for the mountains, he's dead by now," Liam interjected, earning a poisonous glance from Sandoval. In that blizzard, no form of transportation short of portal transit is possible. And we don't have portals in the area."
"The blizzard that you speak of, lasted only eighteen hours," Zo'or replied reproachfully.
"More than enough time for him to freeze to death," Sandoval said.
"But this human would not perish so easily. Otherwise he would not be at that facility."
Liam took a step forward. The ship always made him feel slightly uneasy. The surroundings of bioslurry and raw, malleable energy made him feel as if he were standing on the verge of a supernova or in the midst of a nebula. Today, though, his hackles rose for a different reason.
"What was that place?" he asked, low and urgent. It was a tone he'd never used in the presence of the Taelons, and Sandoval actually backed up a step. "Major..."
With a fluid movement of his hand, Zo'or silenced his protector. Its smooth, oblong head swivelled to bring the full brunt of its smug expression to bear on Liam. "Your species have referred to them as 'Reeducation Facilities.'"
Cole was through the back door off of the servants' entrance less than fourteen seconds after the power lines blew, and the house was still draped in blackness. The VR representation in his NiteSite goggles showed the interior of the house as if lit by 75-watt bulbs. He saw, for example, the fishing line-stretched look of panic and confusion of the first guard as he fumbled with his MP5K, as well as the look of tense, alertness of the second, who swept the barrel of his weapon across the darkness, trying to fix on the intruder by sound.
It was only a fraction of a second, but Cole knew as innately as he knew anything that even the most minuscule measurement of time could be critical in combat. Before the second guard could take action, Cole had loosed a three-round burst from the H&K. The house's internal security guards weren't wearing the uncomfortable thinskins, and Cole's shots took the man in the chest and dropped him like theater's sandbag. The lights came up as he sighted on the first guard, but the man wasn't anywhere near prepared enough even to spray and pray. Cole's burst caught him in the head and demolished his skull.
He was out in the foyer next, pulling of the cumbersome goggles. Security guards advanced from the opposite entrance, but they weren't expecting him to move this swiftly, and hadn't expected taken any defensive formation. The three of them were clustered in an oak-framed doorway like heavily-armed fish in a barrel.
In one, liquid movement, Cole set the weapon to full-automatic and squeezed the trigger. The gun shuddered, and Cole swept the doorway, blowing out chunks of plaster, splintering wood and flesh and bone in a fine, gaudy mist. The guards shuddered, but only for a second before the super-sonic needles of lead tore through them, shattered bone and pulped tissue, and left them useless, malfunctioning vessels.
Cole wasn't one for sentiment. He was close to his target, and not prone to pondering the larger meaning of action. He vaulted the railing of the spiral stairway and sprayed the upper floors with strategic bursts which ripped through the railing and slats and elicited cries of pain and fear from the security personnel waiting to ambush him. Spent brass jingled around his boots.
Gunfire rang out, bullets whistled around him. Cole laughed. He was in Kashmir again.
The Flat Planet
15 Hours Earlier
"He's one of mine," Doors explained, his gravelly voice rendered tinny through the speaker of Liam's Global.
"I don't get it," Liam looked over the screen at Auger, hunkered over a computer terminal. He turned, then nodded. "Jonathan, Auger's got this signal scrambled. Tell me what's happening here. Who is this guy?"
"A mistake," Doors said with something bordering on regret. "A good idea that didn't pan out. Meet me at the Washington house."
The connection broke, and screen displayed the default MCI logo.
"Don't you just love a cliffhanger?" Auger asked.
The concussion grenade knocked all of them off their feet, and Cole tapped them one by one as he scrambled over the top of the stairs. He hit the deck, heart gunfire pound the interior of the house, and rolled into an open doorway.
Doors's study was at the end of the hallway. This was, he knew, the home stretch. Five guards were down and another seven were moving on him. Cole clenched his teeth and recited the mantra of the Archangels: Pity the sinners, for the hour of atonement is at hand...
He exhausted the clip into the hallway, saw someone take the hit and go down. Cole ducked back into the doorway and tossed the rifle aside and drew the SOCOM. The security personnel were also hunkered inside doorways by now, and outside his line of fire. He switched the pistol to his left hand, pulled an offensive grenade off his web belt and threw it into the hallway. Standard combat tactic-toss the offensive grenade, rattle the opponent, then when they're recovering, go in shooting.
But Doors's men would know this.
He drew a defensive grenade-a polymer egg pregnant with steel pellets-and threw that after the first.
One explosion followed the other. He heard screams and random gun shots.
Cole lunge into the open, sighted, and began the final slaughter.
Doors Estate
8 Hours earlier
"His name is Heywood Cole, and he's a member of the Archangels. The Archangels were the original Resistence," Doors explained and took a sip out of the tumbler on his desk. Seated opposite Liam, Renee's posture was ramrod straight, her expression glacial.
"They were an elite Special Forces Unit in the SI War," Renee explained. "They used a great deal of Doors-produced technology. Consequently, we had a great deal of contact with them after the war, debriefing them on what worked, what didn't. That sort of thing. Many were hired into Doors Corporate Security. When the Taelons arrived, many of them became soldiers in the resistence."
"Soldiers," Liam said, mulling the word over. "Terrorists."
"Yes," Doors answered without flinching. "After the Taelon arrival on Earth, I was anticipating an initial period of turmoil and tumult before humanity openly accepted them. My vision for the resistence was that they would take sudden, violent action in that period and destabilize the Taelon presence. This could give us a wedge in their doings here."
"But there was no initial uprising, was there?" Liam pressed.
"Aside from some easily-dismissed militia groups, no."
"So what happened then?"
Doors took another sip and continued. "I used the Archangels to conduct high-risk terrorist raids in Eastern Europe and Asia."
"Meanwhile," Renee continued, "we initiated the infiltration portion of the resistence with Boone and Lily."
"The Archangels were successful in that they could combat both Taelons and the local security forces. These were not intellectuals recruited from college. These were highly-trained, battle-hardened veterans."
"So what happened?" Liam asked.
"The crackdown," Renee replied. "With the collapse of things here, their support mechanisms fell apart and-"
"There's more," Liam interrupted. "He wouldn't be hunting you if that was the whole story."
There was a moment of silence, underscored only by the howl of wind against the house, then Doors said flatly. "I gave them up to the Taelons."
Liam leaned in. "You did what?"
"After I was arrested. It was part of the deal I made."
"You sacrificed those men to save your own hide?" Liam spat.
"I did what I had to do to preserve the resistence," Doors replied evenly.
"They trusted you," Liam dogged.
"And they committed themselves to a larger cause. Their sacrifice was necessary to salvage that cause. Just as surely as if I'd sent them on a suicide mission."
"Except you delivered them to a Taelon reeducation facility where they had hardware planted in their bodies and their minds and reduced to vegetables. Death would have been preferable."
Doors waved airily. "I'm not going to debate the morality of this with you. We don't have time."
"Yesterday evening, Jonathan received an anonymous death threat on his Global," Renee explained. "When the techs examined it this morning, they found a tracer cookie."
Liam's hackles rose again. "He knows where you are?" Suddenly he noticed the bulge in Renee's jacket. Jonathan went into his desk and produced a pistol.
"And we're going to meet him."
Liam squinted past the spray of dust and debris and fought off his demolished equilibrium as he stumbled forward, his Glock PB-7 thrust ahead of him like the bowsprit of a ship. The one-two punch of the grades had effectively torn apart much of the hallway, and Cole seemed to be shooting survivors.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Renee lift herself into a shooter's crouch and nod to him. He returned it. They'd practiced this maneuver already. Renee bolted to the doorway, while Liam took up a covering position beside and to the left of her. Her chrome, tracking pistol swung to bear on Cole, who'd just put a bullet into the head of a thrashing, blood-drenched security guard.
Easy kill. They both fired at once.
And immediately, Liam saw his mistake.
The particle blast of his pistol moved slower than Renee's tracking slug which slammed Cole in the chest. He twisted, looked at them, and went down. Liam's blast passed over his head.
Except he wasn't bleeding. Armor! Liam wanted to scream, but the man's gun was already
zeroed and coughed twice. Liam fired once.
In the next few milliseconds he saw Renee take the hit, blood spatter from low on her chest. He felt a hammer blow pound his skull with burning pain that crushed his reality like an empty aluminum can. And before he went down, he saw his shot harmlessly take a gouge out of the ceiling.
Cole aced the woman and the guy with the unusual hair and then was at the door to the study. He braced himself, brought his leg up and kicked the door in with a crack and a splintering of wood rupturing of metal.
Doors stood, a Sig P-210 extended before him. Nice gun, Cole reflected. Wouldn't help him much, but a nice gun. He advanced into the room and Doors cocked the Sig.
For a moment they just faced each other, guns trained on each other's heads.
Doors broke the silence. "You can kill me if you want, but let me say one thing, agreed?" Slowly, he placed the pistol on the desk and put his hands on his head.
Adrenaline buzzed in Cole's skull and his voice was a rasp when he said, "Go."
"Listen very carefully..." Doors began.
The struggle to consciousness was fast, furious, and painful. Liam found himself staggering, bracing himself against the wall for support, his gun still at his side. His mind was sluggish, taking in the carnage around him, the pain that lanced him, and torrent of blood that flowed down his face. But he couldn't quite relate them or make them all fit.
But there was an overriding imperative----save Doors. The door to his study was kicked in. Liam lurched toward it, his Glock raised.
A gunshot rolled through the house.
He burst through the doorway in an uncoordinated stagger, his weapon sweeping the room.
Doors stood behind his desk, his gun trailing blue smoke. Cole was dead on the floor between them.
"Lucky shot," Doors shrugged.
The Flat Planet
Two Days Later
"This better be good, Auger," Liam griped as he crunched a couple of pain pills with his molars. "I'm supposed to be taking it easy. And believe me: right now there's no other way for me to take it." He was slumped in a chair off of the hacker's main computer system, wincing through a dull throb in his head.
"Oh relax, Liam," Auger taunted. "That thick skull of yours wasn't even cracked when it deflected that bullet. Besides, this you're going want to see." On the holo-viewer, he brought up a Reuter's file clip of Taelon Volunteers combing the carnage in Doors's house. "They removed the body, you know."
"Yeah, and questioned me for twelve hours straight."
"Okay, but here's the strange part. Remember that tapeworm we implanted in the backup systems aboard the Mothership feed us information? Well it transmitted some of their reports. Didn't you say that he was wearing body armor?"
"Yeah," Liam nodded. "Renee's shot didn't even slow him down."
"How is she, anyway?"
"Fine. Bullet punctured her lung, but those are easy to fix. She'll be out of the hospital at the end of the week. Auger-"
"He was killed by a single gunshot to the heart." The holo-viewer now displayed the reports.
"According to this, his body armor came loose...that doesn't sound terribly realistic to me."
"To me, either," Auger concurred. "But it make some sense. You recall how the Taelons were doing experiments with dead human brain tissue, recovering lost memories from the necrotic cells and such?"
"You think they're doing that with Cole?" Liam asked, somewhat rhetorically. "They'd need his brain undamaged for that, and the rest of his body was clad in Kevlar. But for that to work, he'd have to willingly loosen his body armor why would he do that?"
"Ah," said Auger as he began typing furiously. Another scene came up on the viewer. Another lab----this one with a Doors logo. "I found this in an old Doors archive. Alone it says nothing, but in the context of the weekend's events..." he stopped as a doctor in a labcoat began speaking to an unseen interviewer.
"With seven-eights of the human brain unmapped and its potential unused, our work is even more exciting. For example, we know that the human brain can actually be linked to the CPUs of the world's fastest supercomputers and out pace them. We may standing on the verge of an era of biological processing systems."
Auger freezed the program, then zoomed in one of the test subjects, supine in a hospital bed. "That's Dallas Czecky. Another Archangel. All of them went through this program."
Liam played it out verbally. "In the reeducation center, the Taelons probed their minds. They'll be doing the same thing to Cole's dead body. Doors didn't betray them...he put something in them. Something in their minds..."
"With the work they were doing, and potential of the human brain as a processing unit, Doors could have created a very large, very insidious program that's still being downloaded into the Taelon computers as we speak. Something that's downloaded directly from their brains in small increments, then reassembles itself..."
"And does what?"
Auger turned his deep brown eyes to Liam's. "Virtually anything."
Liam tried to contact Doors, but not unexpectedly couldn't get through.