Despite the remaining haze in the rest of the house, Smith could make out the details that mattered. The man was wearing all-black and his helmet was a familiar custom carbon-fiber rig bristling with electronics that he not only recognized, but had helped design. The rifle was an M4 carbine with a Merge-linked targeting system.
“Shit…”
“What?” she said, pulling two throat mikes off the wall and handing him one.
“They’re Merged up. Military-issue.”
“What the hell, Jon? Are you guys selling those things at Walmart?”
Smith didn’t respond, instead inserting an earpiece that now felt like the technological equivalent of a plastic cup with a string attached.
The man moved through the gloom with complete confidence, using an efficient pattern that would make it impossible for anyone to get by him.
“He knows the layout of the house. Is there any way he could have found out about this room?”
Randi shook her head. “Not unless he notices that the closet and powder room are a little smaller than they were on the architectural drawings. A friend did it for me.”
“He’s headed for the bedroom…Okay, he’s in.”
They watched the man sweep his rifle smoothly around the small space and then turn. His teammates outside would undoubtedly be following his progress with an overhead map application, probably superimposed onto the house’s floor plan.
“He’s coming our way.”
Smith grabbed a silenced pistol from the wall when the man threw the closet door open, but Randi put a hand on his wrist.
“Half-inch steel,” she explained. “Even if he somehow figures out we’re in here, it’ll take a lot more than what he’s carrying to get through.”
The man backed into the center of the room again, standing next to the bed as he reported. A microphone picked up his voice, but Smith had designed the military version of the Merge to pick up very low-level speech and he had to strain to hear.
“The house is clear. Any activity out there?” Pause. “Damn. Well, we know they didn’t leave. Let’s burn it.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Randi said, leaning over to the monitors as the man pulled off a small pack and begin digging through it. “Tina will kill me.”
“Let’s worry about her later,” Smith said. “Can we survive the fire?”
“No way. Basically we’ve got the steel, a little insulation for sound, and some drywall. One outside source for air, but it’s just a normal duct that connects to the roof.”
“Then we’ve got to get out of here. If we move fast, maybe we can take him out and get to the window—”
“Where they’ll be waiting for us with all that supercharged infrared targeting crap you seem to be handing out at parties.”
“You have a better idea?”
She pointed to a small wheel in the ceiling that looked like a submarine hatch mechanism. “That leads to the attic. According to the blueprints, though, the only way in or out is with a ladder on the back deck. There’s a little door about three meters up.”
She stepped up onto a stool that seemed to have been purpose-built and began opening the hatch while Smith selected a Swedish-made submachine gun from the wall. When he turned back to her, the hatch was open and she was pulling herself up into it.
He followed. Once he was safely through, she went to the door she’d described and quietly moved an old pair of skis out of the way.
“The guy covering the back looked like he was about forty degrees to our left at the edge of the trees. Call it twenty meters out. We should have the element of surprise, but it’s not going to last long. The Merge will lock on and the dark isn’t going to help you. This is a daylight fight to them.”
She pointed to a brass knob on the door and then walked to the back of the attic. “You pull it. I’ll go through first. Ready?”
He grabbed hold of it and nodded hesitantly. Normally, he preferred to put a little more thought into these kinds of things but there was no time.
“Don’t land on the grill when you go,” she said. “It cost five grand.”
Randi sprinted at the door and he jerked it open at the last possible moment, hearing the roar of her assault rifle as she launched herself into the air. He went through a moment later, seeing her hit the deck and roll into the overgrown grass beyond.
Flashes from the east immediately started tracking her as she sprinted for the cover of the woods. Despite her warning, Smith clipped the grill with his ankle on the way down and landed hard on his side, slamming a shoulder into the unforgiving wood planks.
By the time he’d struggled to his feet, Randi was in the trees firing controlled bursts at the men mobilizing against them. He ran toward her, but at a slower pace than he would have liked. The damage to his ankle caused it to want to collapse every time he approached a full sprint.
Smith held the compact weapon behind him, spraying blindly and trying to coax a little more speed from his awkward gait. Cover was only ten meters ahead, but with Merge-equipped men behind him, it would likely prove to be ten meters too far.
45
“Damnit!” Smith said in a harsh whisper.
The bullet went well wide of him, but it barely missed Randi, slicing through the branches only inches from her left shoulder. She cut right, nearly losing her balance on the soft earth as she tried to put a tree between her and the shooter.
His ankle was in bad shape and combined with the weak moonlight penetrating the trees, his progress had slowed to an unsteady jog. They’d made it farther than he’d expected into the wilderness but their pursuers were gaining ground fast.
Smith turned and fired at a fading flash behind them, but when he did, his ankle finally gave out. He splayed out on the ground and a moment later a bullet that should have found its mark passed overhead.
Randi came back for him, pulling him to his feet and taking some of his body weight as they hobbled down a slippery bank toward a stream turned black by the moonlight. They dropped to their stomachs in the mud and searched behind them, but there was only the dark outline of the forest. The three men were still coming — of that there was no doubt. But they’d gone silent.
“Damn!” she said, so quietly that he barely heard despite the fact that they were lying nearly on top of each other.
Her frustration was understandable. He’d played a similar game countless times over the past months. Their opponents had heat detection, light amplification, outline enhancement, targeting, and a host of other military-specific apps. What he had was a thin polo shirt, a swelling ankle, and a pair of slick-soled penny loafers.
“I can’t keep up,” he said, lips brushing Randi’s ear in an attempt to defeat their pursuer’s audio enhancement. It would be canceling out the sound of the wind and the brook behind them, searching for any noise that could be human-generated. “I hit your damn barbecue on the way down. But even if I hadn’t, we’re outmatched.”
She spoke equally softly. “Are you suggesting we surrender?”
That wouldn’t end well. But neither would their current non-strategy. The fact that their attackers hadn’t appeared and taken them out might suggest caution on their part. Or it could just mean that they were taking the time to flank them and would soon be coming in from all sides.
“No,” he said, looking at the water behind them as an idea started to form. “But we’re not going to win a fair fight with these three.”
“I’m all for making it an unfair fight if you’ve got something figured out.”
He pointed at a dense row of bushes to their right. “Go for those. When you get through them, head north.”