Deus Ex - Icarus Effect (45 page)

toward the flames gathering below.

Above, gunfire rattled, and through the smoke she saw another figure vault over the edge and come down toward her. Fear lanced through

Anna; someone was coming down to finish the job. But then she saw Saxon's blood-streaked face.

He punched his machine-fist into the hull and found a moment's purchase. Anna grabbed for his outstretched arm and heard him cry out in

agony as she pulled on the broken limb. Her shoes scraping over the hull, she shoved herself up, feeling plumes of heat from the fires searing

her back.

A shape hazed into view through the smoke. Barrett leaned over the edge of the sky deck and sneered, pointing his gun-arm toward the two of

them. The tri-barrel cannon spun up to firing speed and spat a line of stark, yellow-white tracer, shredding the paneling.

"Hold on!" shouted Saxon, as the glass window beneath them shattered under the salvo, opening up into a void of hot vapors. The two of them

tumbled into the interior of the burning yacht, vanishing from sight.

Barrett spat over the rail and turned away in disgust, cordite vapor coiling from the maw of his gun. He kicked away the spent brass casings at

his feet and moved toward the idling helo. Federova, her ice-cool glower now sullen and silent in its fury, shot him a hard look. She'd managed

to extricate herself from most of the tangler rounds, but she was angry that none of Saxon's blood had ended up on her blade.

Namir ordered her into the flyer with a sharp gesture, and he climbed into the empty pilot's chair. "Is it done?" he asked.

"Lost them in the smoke—" Barrett's explanation was interrupted by a dull concussion from deep inside the Icarus s engine room. The yacht

shuddered and listed alarmingly, tilting so far to port that the lake waters broke over the main deck and swamped it.

"Get in," Namir told him. "The police launches are a few minutes away. We're not going to be here when they arrive."

Barrett threw one last look over his shoulder, listening to the death-throes of the boat as the Icarus was consumed by fire and water. "See you

in hell, Saxon," he muttered, pulling himself into the flyer.

The rotors became shrill, spinning the smoke into twisting columns; then the aircraft lifted off and rose vertically, pivoting to survey the

burning boat as a raptor would hover over the corpse of a fresh kill.

Anna crouched close to the carpeted decking and did her best to draw what little untainted air remained into her chest. She cast around, finding

Saxon in a heap on top of a broken table. They had crashed through the roof into the forward gallery of the yacht, a richly appointed dining

room. Small fires had taken hold here, crawling slowly along the support stanchions. The floor was gritty with a layer of extinguisher powder

that had proven ineffectual. She moved to him, staying low, her breathing ragged and painful.

Above, a rent in the glass ceiling looked out into a blackened sky. The smoke filled it like a chimney, the hot haze billowing around her. She

blinked, her eyes stinging. "Saxon?" She could hardly speak; the call came out like the bark of an animal.

He stirred and rolled off the table, hissing with pain. Shards of shattered glass were buried in the meat of his damaged arm, and Saxon pulled at

them, tossing the bloodstained fragments away. "We ... We have to get off this deathtrap."

Toward the bow, the Icarus was already a quarter submerged, a wide slick of burning oil spread out across it. Water lapped in through breaks

in the forward doors, but a fallen stanchion blocked any hope of getting them open. They couldn't go back the way they had come in, and the

metal staircase leading to the deck above was searing hot to the touch. Anna chanced a look up the stairwell and saw nothing but flames.

She turned back to Saxon. "Down," she told him, a plan forming in her thoughts. "We've got to go down. There's no other escape route." The

risk of what she was suggesting made her blood run cold; but at the same time she knew there was no other option open to them.

"This boat's sinking, or hadn't you noticed?" he retorted. "Those decks will be full of water."

"I don't plan on burning or drowning," Anna snapped back. "Saxon, you have to trust me. I know a way out! Come on!"

He nodded, with effort. "Go, then," he said, and limped after her, deeper into the dying vessel.

The corridor to the aft canted at a forty-five-degree angle and the cold water of the lake was at Saxon's waist. All around them, the Icarus was

dying, electrical systems firing blasts of sparks over their heads, the hull moaning as it buckled.

At the door to the tender garage, Saxon and Kelso had to put their full weight behind the hatchway to swing it open against the pressure of the

water. The pain in his arm and his belly were numbing fires.

The small bay was a mess, debris scattered across the room floating in drifts and the yacht's launch already overturned and knotted in its own

guide ropes. Water was pouring in from the port side, and what space they had to breathe was thick with suffocating smoke.

"This is your way off?" Saxon asked.

Anna didn't answer him; instead she dropped beneath the surface and vanished into a cloud of bubbles. A moment later, she broke through

again and pulled at his arm. "You can swim, right?"

"Of course I can bloody swim."

"There's a dive hatch set in the deck. We get it open, we can get out into open water."

He shook his head. "This wreck is on fire! We're surrounded by burning fuel, we try to surface out there and we'll die!"

Anna shook her head. "That's not what I said. I told you to trust me, so trust me!" She grabbed his other arm and pulled him.

A crash of fire and heat rippled down the corridor behind them, ending any more argument from him. Taking as deep a breath as he could,

Saxon followed her into the water. His hands brushed the deck beneath them and found the edges of the hatch.

Together, they pulled at the latches as the water around them churned and boiled.

Namir turned the helo in a tight orbit over the Icarus, but it was difficult to make out anything. Thermals from the raging fires buffeted the

flyer, and he didn't dare venture too low, as gas tanks in the midsection began to combust one by one, lashes of orange flame jetting into the air

as the heat broke them open.

The yacht's bow crumpled and fractured down the length of it. The craft was taking on water as fast as it was burning, and it would be a race to

see which would claim it first.

He looked over his shoulder at Federova, who scanned the blazing wreck down the sights of a heavy battle rifle.

"Anything?"

She gave a curt shake of her head, and Namir knew she was itching to rake the craft with a hail of 5.56 mm rounds, just to make certain that

the Icarus was Ben Saxon's grave.

"Company!" Barrett called out to him and pointed across the lake.

Namir glanced back and saw the blue-and-white hulls of the police patrol boats cutting through the wave tops toward them. "Time to go," he

said, and grabbed the helo's throttle, pushing it forward to maximum. The flyer's nose dipped down and Namir guided it through the clouds of

fire smoke, and away toward the far coastline.

Under cover of destruction, the Tyrants vanished.

The Icarus perished with a final, spasming explosion as the diesel fuel reached combustion point and flashed into fire. The blast took the yacht

apart and rained fragments down in a cascade of shards and flaming debris. Anyone caught on board would have been killed instantly, ripped

apart or burned to ashes.

Beneath the surface of the lake, the concussion resonated through the water and beat at Saxon and Kelso, a heavy hammer of force battering

them down into the depths.

Saxon lost control and tumbled; blue-water ops had never been his thing, and now the pain and the hurt and the fatigue all combined with the

blast to rob him of his last breaths, the oxygen in his lungs streaming from his mouth in a gush of bubbles. He was going to drown, and there

was nothing he could do to stop it.

Then Anna was there, her arms snaking around his back, pulling herself close to him, fighting the undertow to draw them together into an

almost intimate embrace.

Through his clouded vision he saw her face, milk-pale like some ghost come to claim him. Over her shoulder he saw other shadows, other men.

The dead and the gone, the true ghosts beckoning him to join them. He reached out, and tried to speak. I'm sorry, he wanted to say, I let you

down.

Anna's face closed in and she pressed her lips to his, cupping the back of his skull, pushing them together.

The kiss was like an electric shock; and then from it new breath flooded into his mouth and his lungs, trickles of bubbles escaping as Kelso gave

up her air for him.

Pressed to him, he felt something flutter against his chest, something beneath the flesh of Anna's breast; a rebreather implant. She turned her

head away, peering through the murk as they drifted there, gently exhaling, breathing without breathing before she turned back and gave him

another moment of life. The implant could act like a small reservoir of air if needed, increasing lung capacity against gas effect, suffocation ... and

drowning. He had trusted her, and now in turn she saved him.

Saxon saw her face, saw the pain hiding beneath the surface, the scars that didn't see the light of day. They were alike, the two of them. Both

damaged by the same lies, both survivors of it. Both haunted.

Beneath the shroud of flame across the surface of the water, between the shafts of light and the fall of the wreckage, they held on to life, and to

each other.

Eiffel Tower—Paris—France

The private elevator took him to the second tier of the tower, which, as he had expected, was closed to the public for the duration. The

restaurant Jules Verne was equally empty, the only figures moving between the tables a discreet pair of young waiters who doubtless had been

thoroughly vetted for their reliability.

DeBeers dismissed his men with a glance and they found themselves somewhere to stand, out of his sight line. He crossed to the table where his

colleague was waiting. Morgan Everett got up, extending a hand and warm smile, framed against the windows and the view of the Champs de

Mars beyond.

"Lucius," he began. "It's good of you to come. It's been a while."

"Since we were face-to-face? Indeed." DeBeers took his hand and shook it. "You look well, Morgan. Paris agrees with you."

That got him a smile in return. "This city has always been important to the group. And the truth is, a lot of things here agree with me." Everett

gestured to the chair across from his and they sat.

DeBeers found the glass of Les Forts de Latour waiting for him and considered it. "How is Elizabeth, by the way?"

"She sends her best," said the other man. "She has other obligations." He nodded toward the waiters. "I hope you don't mind, but I took the

liberty of ordering for you." "I trust your judgment," he replied. "So, this is just the two of us, then?"

Everett sipped his wine and leaned forward. "You're not going to pretend you thought it would be anything else?"

"I suppose not," DeBeers allowed. "I'm concerned that the council might be dismayed at the thought of us meeting in secret."

"To conspire?" Everett chuckled. "Lucius, you've been an excellent teacher all these years, and one lesson I learned very early on was that

there is an elite within the elite."

"Some believe that," he agreed. "Page and Dowd."

"Bob Page has enough to do with the biochip initiative and his projects at Majestic 12." DeBeers detected a note of irritation in his old friend's

voice, but chose not to comment on it. "And dear old Stanton won't leave New York for anyone."