Holzinger spoke loudly in German, grunted, and then there was a soft thud.
John sprinted through the snow and slush toward the elegant steel-and-glass hotel. A few tourists and locals watched him with wide-eyed curiosity.
“John,” Deion said through his earpiece. “I think it’s a hit.”
John made it to the Park Hyatt entrance and slammed the glass door open without breaking his stride. His feet pounded against the black marble tile as he passed the massive fireplace across from the front desk.
A well-dressed staff member at the desk looked startled and hollered in heavily accented English, “Sir? Sir!”
John ignored the man. His feet practically flew up the stairs to the second floor. The earpiece had gone silent. “What’s happening?”
He heard the door open and close through his earpiece, and then Deion said, “Whoever it was, they’re leaving.”
“I’m coming around the corner,” John said. As he did, he saw the back of a man almost at the end of the hallway. The man turned, gave him a blank stare, and exited through the emergency stairwell. “I see the guy.”
“Leave him,” Deion ordered. “Check on Holzinger.”
John came to a skidding halt. “What? I can catch him.”
“You probably could,” Valerie said, “but you need to check on Holzinger.”
John growled in frustration. “I’m going for Holzinger.” Holzinger’s door was slightly ajar. The room beyond was quiet, and he pushed the door open.
There was a flash of light and a roar that knocked him to the ground, and then everything went black.
Deion wanted to kick himself. Of course it was a trap. “John!” he yelled into his mic for the fifth time. “What’s the sitrep?”
The rising and falling wail of sirens grew louder and louder outside, but there was no response from John.
Valerie stood at the window, her hands clutching the drapes in a death grip, staring at the Park Hyatt. “He’s hurt. He’s got to be hurt.”
“We don’t know that,” Deion countered. “John’s a tough son of a bitch. He’s probably trying to get control of the situation. John!”
The seconds stretched on, but John never responded. Finally, Clark said, “Multiple first responders arriving on scene. What’s your plan, Deion?”
Deion sighed. “We sit tight. The Swiss are going to be pissed off as it is, and we’d just make it worse.”
“What about your contact?” Clark asked.
“He’d probably try to screw us over. Again.”
Valerie turned to him, her face mottled with anger. “They’ll use this as an excuse?”
“He’s just been waiting to stick it to me.”
Valerie raised an eyebrow. “How do you know him?”
“Before I transferred to Afghanistan, I spent six months here. We didn’t exactly hit it off.”
“Can you work with him?” Clark asked.
“No,” Deion said. He slammed his fist against the table so hard his laptop jumped. “Damn it!”
Valerie let the curtains fall back into place. “It will be okay. Like you said, John’s tough.”
Deion frowned. “He better be.”
Lila hunched over her laptop. The man on the video ran down the road toward the Park Hyatt. His legs pumped hard, his face grim and determined. He had close-cropped brown hair, brown eyes, and a strong jaw. But the more she watched, the more she picked up on his odd gait.
The man moved fast, with a peculiar spring in his step that reminded her of a famous sprinter with a prosthetic leg made from carbon graphite and advanced polymers. Some theorized that the prosthetic gave him an edge, allowing him to push beyond human limits.
Watching the man in Switzerland, she finally understood. His coat flapped behind him, and she could make out the holster under his arm. His clothes looked appropriately European, but Patrick had assured her that the man was, indeed, an American.
She rewound the footage. The man went running across the street and tore through the entrance to the Park Hyatt, then a few moments later there was a flash of light and everything went black before finally recovering.
There was a soft blip from her desktop, and she turned to the monitor to her right to check her traces.
After a few minutes of analyzing different packet streams, she stared at the screen in disbelief. Patrick had promised her something amazing and disturbing.
Patrick was right. The RSA-encrypted traffic from the Sheraton hotel in Zürich was bouncing through a satellite twenty-three thousand miles above the earth before disappearing into the darkest reaches of the Internet.
There was only one military power on earth with the kind of resources to effortlessly tunnel traffic through a geosynchronous orbit satellite like that.
Just as Patrick had promised, the United States military was active in Zürich. They had attacked, or possibly even killed, a German citizen, blown up a room in the Park Hyatt, and then live-streamed the data to God knows where.
This was worse than the wealthy running amok. This was a problem with a system owned by the wealthy, a system that acted with impunity around the globe.
Patrick was right. Then again, he always is.
She gave up trying to break the encryption on the datastream and opened the encrypted Armageddon file. She spent the next two hours poring over it. Unlike the other bank records she had hacked, the records in the Armageddon file were hard to understand. The amount of money was staggering, and she wondered if any of it was tied to the operation in Zürich.
It can’t be what it looks like. It just… can’t be.
Smith reread Eric’s summary of the OTM’s performance since Smith had stepped down. He had a hard time keeping the small details in his mind, and he hoped that going over the report might stave off some of his memory loss.
He glanced around his office. The walls were industrial gray, much like the institutional carpet. Only the oak desk, a massive relic from the World War II — era Pentagon, hinted at any sign of personality.
I remember when I requisitioned it. I even remember moving it here, to Area 51, when I repurposed the base. Why can’t I remember the contents of this damned report?
He sighed to himself. His body ached, and his reflexes had long since slowed, but it was the missing pieces of information that disturbed him the most. Names or events on the tip of his tongue kept slipping away.
He was going over the summary for the fifth time when there was a knock on his door. “Come in.”
Nancy entered and shut the door firmly behind her. “You heard about Switzerland?”
“Of course.”
Nancy smiled frostily. “I thought you had transitioned the directorship to Eric.”
Smith closed the report on his computer and squinted at her. “I’m still in the loop.”
“You keep yourself in the loop,” Nancy said, taking the seat across from his desk. She wore formfitting black Lycra pants and a simple black t-shirt, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. A fine sheen of sweat covered her face and neck.
“I see you’ve been working out.”
She cocked her head to the side. “I was sparring with Redman.”
“Ah.” Bill “Redman” Burton was a former Delta Force Operator and one of Eric Wise’s closest friends. Burton had made himself at home in the OTM, leading classes at the indoor shooting house and teaching fighting and grappling techniques. “How goes it?”
She sniffed. “He’s good. He’s been training Waverly.”