It happened with unnatural speed and violence, with a fierce, controlled power that could have come only from the union between human will and machine strength. A muscular figure in a security officer's jacket slipped out from behind one of the Belltower patrol vehicles and punched the closest guard with such force that he spun and bounced off the hood of the car. The man swept in, pivoting on one leg to kick away a second
Belltower trooper, the heel of his boot smashing the gold visor across his face. He dropped, blocking the falling blow from a crackling electro prod as a third man tried to tackle him; the attacker rose back just as quickly, brutally snapping the man's arm against the direction of the joint, putting him down in a screaming heap.
All this in less than a few seconds, every motion and attack powered by nerve-jacked, hyperaccelerated reflexes and brute-force cybernetics.
"Get back in the car!" Sandoval was shouting, grabbing at Taggart's suit jacket, pulling him toward the rear of the vehicle. On the steps, the
Swiss police officers were rushing forward, pistols out. Taggart stumbled against the limo, panic in his eyes, catching sight of Peller as she fumbled at the door handle.
Taggart's personal guards were two thickset men, both of them ex-military, trained and strong with it; but they were still only men, neither of them with a single augmentation, as the Humanity Front's founder demanded of his staff. For all they could do, they could not match the speed of their attacker.
He put them down as they blocked him, both bodyguards striking together, trying to split his focus. In one hand he had a heavy-frame revolver, and he used it like a club, shattering the nose of one man in a gout of bright blood. The other of Taggart's guards took a shattering strike to the knee that broke bone. His gun didn't clear its holster; instead, a following hit spun him into the dirt.
Taggart was at the door, Sandoval's hands on his back, shoving him toward the armored safety of the limo's interior.
Isaias turned and the killer was there, his face twisted in a grimace, cold augmented eyes that still held a spark of very human anger. "No, please don't!"
Kicking the door shut, the assassin threw Sandoval to the ground and leveled the revolver at William Taggart's head.
The target raised his hands in a gesture of self-protection.
All around there was screaming and shouting, the buzz of the drones, the clatter of weapons snapping into fire mode-but Saxon didn't hear that. The only thing that reached him was Taggart's question.
"D-did they send you?" he stuttered. "Was it them? Did they send you?"
The Diamondback's hammer clicked to the ready and he held the aim. The moment stretched like tallow, becoming long and fluid, extending away. All it would take would be the slightest pressure on the trigger. One shot and one kill, and it would be done.
He had no reason to care about William Taggart's life. Men like him detested what Saxon was, thought him to be less than human. How much pain had the Humanity Front and their radical cohorts in Purity First caused for people like him?
And how much more blood would be shed if he did this? How much more persecution and death would come from this one man's murder, here and now? Was that a fair trade for Anna Kelso's life?
"Fuck!" Saxon's curse exploded from his lips and he let the gun drop. He couldn't do it. He could not let himself be Namir's weapon in the
Illuminati's secret war.
Confusion flooded Taggart's face. "Who…? Who are you?"
And then another voice echoed in his skull. "You gutless prick. I knew you'd choke when the time came."
From the corner of his eye, Saxon saw a shimmer of sunlight off the lens of a rifle scope, up on the roof of the library building. "Sniper!" he roared, grabbing a handful of Taggart's jacket and pulling him down behind the limousine. His cry was drowned out by the crack of a heavy caliber shot.
Taggart fell out of the sight line, the hum of the round buzzing scant centimeters from Saxon's cheek; in the next moment he heard a wet thud and a strangled cry.
Turning, he found the Peller woman on her back, a blossom of red growing on her chest, blood staining the white gravel beneath her. Her sightless eyes stared up into the cloudy sky.
Saxon spun and aimed his gun toward the rooftop, but Hardesty was already moving, vanishing into the library. Amid the confusion and the chaos, he vaulted the hood of the car and ran for the windows of the building, scattering the reporters like panicked birds.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Palais des Nations-Geneva-Switzerland
Building B was the library, the archive, and the League of Nations Museum, closed today because of security concerns over the meeting and as such empty of visitors. Saxon broke in through a ground-floor window and blinked his cyberoptics through their scan modes, sweeping the big chamber for motion. Lines of high bookshelves formed shadowed lanes running the length of the building, and above a balconied area contained the glass cases of the museum exhibits and the interactive hologram tour guides.
Hardesty and Saxon found each other at the same moment; the sniper was moving with the Longsword rifle at his hip, and in one fluid movement he swung it up to his shoulder and fired.
Saxon vaulted to the floor, landing in a tuck and roll as a heavy rack of books exploded into confetti. He was in the worst place he could have been. Hardesty had the height advantage, looking down from the second floor, and the range to make the high-powered rifle work for him;
Saxon had a revolver with a single bullet.
It wasn't just the lay of the land that was working against him. Outside, the Swiss police were gathering their wits and he had maybe a minute before they would pile into the library, mob-handed. And he knew one thing for certain; if he was going to find Anna Kelso, he would have to go through Scott Hardesty to do it.
As if on cue, the sniper called out to him. "Hey, limey! Thanks for the help, man. No matter how this plays out now, you've done the job for us!
I'm gonna ice you, leave you here for the cops… Namir gets the group to finesse things a little, and by the evening news cycle, it'll be like you pulled the trigger yourself."
He edged along one of the shelves. "You reckon? You missed the mark, mate. Taggart's still breathing!"
"Doesn't matter!" he shot back. "We got a contingency for everything, Saxon. Don't you get that? The plan goes ahead, no matter how much the little people try to screw with it…"
Another bullet ripped through the shelves close to Saxon's head and he ducked. The son-of-a-bitch had a T-wave scope, peering through the cover. Unless he could get out from under, close the distance, nothing the soldier could do would keep the sniper from making the hit sooner or later.
He glanced up. The balcony overhead was a few feet from the top of the tallest bookshelf; he could make it, but the moment he moved,
Hardesty would cut him down. He needed a distraction.
Saxon leapt up onto the top of a study desk and the sniper saw him, swinging his rifle around to draw a bead. Saxon raised the Diamondback and squeezed the trigger; as good a shot as he was, even with the aim point enhancements in his optics, Hardesty was in three-quarter cover and essentially untouchable.
The massive crystal chandelier above him was a far larger, far easier target to hit. A great bowl of frosted glass and brass workings suspended from a metal chain, it dated back to the opening of the Palais almost a century earlier. Saxon's shot destroyed it utterly, the fragile antique exploding under the impact. Hardesty cried out in alarm as the chandelier came apart and crashed down around him.
Glass pealed as it shattered and collapsed, and Saxon used the moment to his advantage. Discarding the spent, useless revolver, he rocked back on his augmented legs and applied power to a sprinting leap that took him scrambling up the bookcase, careworn old volumes tumbling to the tiled floor as he kicked them free. Reaching the top of the stack, he swung for the rail running the length of the balcony and snagged it with his cyberarm. The metal fingers locked on and he hauled himself up with a hissing grunt of effort. He was rolling over and down as a bullet strike cut a divot of marble from the balcony at his side, sending chips of stone scattering like shrapnel.