Savas held him back with his arm. “It will be hard on you if something happens to them.”
“Gonna be hard on all of us soon, Special Agent. But really it was the only way.”
“Only way to what, you sick bastard!” hissed Miller, a fire in his eyes.
“Can’t tell you or you’d just laugh. But really, it’s for the best. The things you don’t know and can’t believe — well, it’s like a mountain. The lies you live, the truths you hold that really hold you mockingly. Your ideals and systems. All lies. You are slaves to masters that count on your good intentions and low intelligence. There is a world order you don’t understand and can’t perceive.”
Savas looked at Poison. “Is this the genius you mentioned? This nutcase?”
“Low intelligence?” Poison scoffed. “You know, they played you from the start, you dumb ass. And you bought it! You took it all in your little shark mouth and they reeled you in! All those torture videos? Interrogation scripts? They were faked!”
“I know.”
“What do you mean, you know?”
“Players play the players because the play demands it.”
“John—” began Cohen.
“Okay, enough of this crap,” said Savas. “Let’s see what you really look like.”
Cohen furrowed her brows. “John, wait a minute. Something’s not right.”
He ignored her and grasped the bottom of the mask. Looking through the eye-slits, he stared inside. “Anonymous no more, Fawkes.”
He pulled. The mask didn’t move.
“What the hell?”
Reaching around, he yanked the hood back, revealing a head covered in black leather straps. The Guy Fawkes mask was fixed tightly to it, concealing a bulk beneath it.
“Gas mask!” cried Miller.
But it was too late. Fawkes squeezed his shoulder blades together and there was a click, followed by the sound of two metal canisters crashing and ringing on the platform surface.
They exploded.
62
Fred Simon was blown backward and slammed into a wall, dropping to the ground unconscious. Debris flew across the room, smashing into the racks of computers, pocketing the overturned table, and coating everything with a thick layer of dust. Within seconds, several armed men stormed through the hole breached in the doorway, crawling over the pile of rubble from the collapsed wall, trying to get their bearings in an enclosed space choked with smoke.
Gunshots blasted from behind the table and one of the men staggered, grabbing his chest. He fell to the ground. The second began a spray of automatic fire aimed wildly in the direction of the table, but a series of shots by two weapons behind it struck him four, five, and six times. He lurched forward, falling to his knees with a scream, and rolled over on his side moaning.
As two more men burst through the opening a chaos of weapons’ discharge erupted. The NSA man beside Rideout screamed and clutched his face, blood squirting from between his fingers. He rolled on the ground, howling. Rideout slumped behind the table, blood flowing from the right side of his chest, eyes swimming. His gun dropped to the ground with a clank.
Another mercenary had fallen, but two more stepped in to take his place. The invaders advanced slowly, unimpeded. The NSA man with the wrench shook behind the server racks, his pants moist around the crotch. Several feet from him Lightfoote worked like a woman possessed, ignoring the chaos.
The three soldiers stepped forward cautiously, converging on the table and the forms of the bodies behind it. Rideout glanced upward but didn’t move his head, energy evanescing from his body. They looked down on him and the flailing NSA man. Two returned their attention to the rest of the room, hunting for targets. The other fired several shots into the screaming figure. The cries ceased. He turned toward Rideout and aimed.
A series of shots roared from behind them, bullets bursting through the man’s mouth and throat. As Rideout watched him fall, the two beside him spun around, firing at the bloodied shape of Simon. The old CIA man managed to empty his weapon, wounding one in the stomach, even as the assailants killed him. Simon fell against the wall, bullet holes and blood decorating the surface behind him. He slid slowly to the ground, his chest a mass of wounds, his eyes blank. He lay still.
The other NSA man dropped the wrench and walked out, falling to his knees.
“Don’t shoot! I surrender! I’m not part of this group! I’m from the NSA! Please, don’t kill me!” Tears stained his face as he trembled before the soldiers.
“Where’s the girl?” rasped one.
“She’s here. Right behind me! At the terminal!”
The soldier fired into his head, and the programmer fell. The mercenary raced forward, his companion stumbling behind, bent nearly double with his wound soaking his clothes.
The first solider leapt around the stacks of computers and opened fire at the terminal against the wall. The chassis exploded into fragments, the continued discharge blowing it and the monitor to pieces. He ejected the magazine and reached for another.
A pair of feet swung down from the piping above, catching him square in the face. The impact snapped his head back sharply, and his arms and legs went slack before he dropped to the ground.
Lightfoote landed like a cougar, crouched low to absorb the momentum, her arm splayed to the side along the floor. The remaining soldier staggered toward her, movements sluggish and jerky, gunshots blasting wildly from the barrel of his weapon to pock the walls harmlessly.
Bright silver flashed through the air and the soldier’s head snapped to the side as the wrench slammed into his jaw with a heavy crunch of bone. His body continued to the side and toppled over. Both soldiers now unconscious.
Lightfoote leaped beside them and bludgeoned each in the head. Satisfied, she raced beside Rideout, her gaze lingering a moment on the body of Simon across the room. “JP! You there?” She slapped his face.
His eyes struggled to open, a gasp escaping his mouth. “Oh, God, Angel. Shit, this hurts!”
Lightfoote pulled off her shirt, revealing a tight sports bra. She pressed the shirt against the wound, eliciting a scream from Rideout.
She shouted over him. “JP! Listen. Here, this arm works.” She pulled one of his hands to the shirt. “Stay with me! Keep some pressure there. I’m running up to get a medkit. Slow the bleeding!”
He nodded and his arm tensed against his chest. He inhaled sharply. “Angel, wait,” he gasped as she turned to leave.
“What?”
Rideout stared at the blasted computers. Every terminal was destroyed. “The worm?” he managed.
She crouched beside him and kissed him on the cheek. Sweat dripped from her shoulders and arms. His blood glimmered in streaks across her scalp.
“Launched. Gone!” She smiled. “You did good. Now shut up and don’t die on me.”
63
The white vapor had nearly dissipated. The faint aroma of gunpowder and ash mixed with a sickly sweetness still lingering in the air. Hulking shapes breathed resonantly from within gas masks on the platform.
The FBI team was concentrated at one end of the structure, all of them handcuffed, soldiers in masks pointing guns in their direction. The captives were still coughing badly, tears and mucus running from their eyes and noses. Their weapons were in a pile at the feet of their captors.
The mask spoke. “So easy. Don’t you guys ever play chess?”
Poison stood beside Fawkes, a gas mask around her head. She looked down at the FBI team. “What are you going to do with them?”
Fawkes cocked the smirking visage to one side. “Kill them, of course.”