Going Dark (44 page)

Jaynie sketches a plan. There are forces outside, waiting for us to emerge. We intend to take them by surprise. “All right,” Jaynie says as the map winks out of sight. “Let’s do this.”

We answer with a quiet
“Hoo-yah!”

“Execute.”

I kick open the back door. Across the street is another of the endless identical project buildings, ugly boxes to hold people with nowhere else to go.

The open door inspires shouts and wild gunshots that come nowhere near us. Flynn and Dunahee lean out long enough to fire grenades into the air above the street—a double burst intended to make everyone duck. Logan and Escamilla step outside into a rain of shrapnel, firing two more grenades, this time at a pair of black pickup trucks waiting at the end of the street with gunmen standing in the truck beds.

Fadul and I are only a step behind. We cover the opposite end of the street, working through a series of targeting circles in a determined effort to convince any would-be shooters to keep the fuck down.

“Move out!” Jaynie barks. “Go, go, go!”

Fadul stays with me. We keep shooting until everyone is out and then we turn and run like hell past the wreckage of the two pickup trucks. Bloody, burned men are strewn across the asphalt along with their weapons. Most are still alive. When one reaches for a rifle, I kick it away and keep running, chased by an escalating volume of fire.

I’m midstride when a burst stitches my pack. The force knocks me off balance. I stumble against a brick wall, which explodes in front of my face when it’s hit by the next flurry of bullets.

Fadul is in front of me. She turns to shoot at whoever is shooting at me. I pivot and back her up. Tran joins us. It takes maybe twenty seconds to persuade the shooters to back off. Then we turn and run as the air vibrates with the thunder of a charging gunship.

“Get under cover!” I shout over gen-com. But there is no
cover. Not in the street. We have to shelter in a building.

“Inside, inside!” Jaynie orders, bounding for the front door of the nearest building. Logan and Escamilla meet her there, training their weapons on the door as Jaynie kicks it open. They charge in. There’s no return fire.

Roman goes in next with Dunahee. Flynn is right behind them as the gunship roars in, low and fast. I’m not going to make it to the door. So I drop into a crouch against the wall, hoping my high-tech camouflage will hide me. That’s how I get a good look at the gunship. It’s not hunting us. It passes our position a block away, all lights off, but there is enough ambient light that night vision lets me see its insignia. “Iraqi Army,” I whisper over gen-com.

I can’t tell for sure, but I think it sweeps in over the bombed street beside the lab. Gunfire greets it. It answers with heavier-caliber fire.

“Holy shit,” Fadul whispers. She’s hunkered down a couple of meters away from me. “They’re shooting their own people?”

Tran says, “Maybe Abajian sent it. Maybe he convinced the IA it’s an armed revolt.”

I’m thinking something else: that it wasn’t Abajian who persuaded the IA.

Dunahee says it for me. “Maybe it was the Red.”

“I don’t care who it was,” Jaynie says. “Let’s move.”

We hit the street again, stampeding toward the perimeter of the projects. Someone takes a couple of shots from out of a window. “Kanoa, target?”

“Let it go. It’s a kid.”

•  •  •  •

The route takes us right, then left, then right again, across streets and through alleys—and the gunfire directed against us quickly drops off. The streets ahead are open. It gets so
quiet I can hear the faint, insect buzz of seekers scouting the street.

It’s like we’ve stepped over some boundary, invisible to us, that marks a different neighborhood, one where people have decided their best option is to hide the children in closets and behind mattresses, and hunker down while we pass through.

It’s a good choice.

Without resistance, we move fast. We only need to get past three more buildings to put the projects behind us and reach the first canal.

I start to think that maybe we’re going to make it, but Escamilla kills that hope when he says, “I got a bad feeling.”

And Logan: “I got it too. Let’s get off this street.”

Jaynie says, “Shelley, confirm?”

I can’t confirm it. I took out my receiver so I don’t get premonitions anymore. But I trust my squad. “We need to move.”

“On it,” Kanoa says. “Backtrack. Take the lane.”

The route shifts, rolls back behind me, and then cuts into a lane between two buildings. “Move!” I shout, turning, stepping out of the street, taking a position at the corner of the lane that lets me watch the facing buildings.

Tran is closest. He jumps after me, taking a defensive position a few meters away and behind a parked car. The others are still scrambling when I see movement in several windows on the third floor across the street.

I should have suspected the silence. The seekers I heard were not ours.

“Take cover!” Kanoa barks. “Movement on all—”

I’m already shooting when a torrent of gunfire erupts from windows on both sides of the street. Escamilla is hit in the first volley. His icon blazes on the periphery of my vision, bright red as he goes down. Flynn gets hit too. A
plume of blood flies from her shoulder. The hit leaves her staggering, but she still manages to retreat into the lane. Her icon stays yellow. Dunahee spasms, stumbles. But like Flynn, he keeps his feet, and with Roman’s help, he too makes the lane.

Fadul is next, bounding past me. But as soon as she’s in the lane, she turns and steps out again, firing a grenade. The concussion rattles the street and slows the assault, giving Logan a respite as he bends down, setting an arm hook around the shoulder strut of Escamilla’s dead sister. Jaynie assists him, and together they drag Escamilla into the shelter of the lane while Tran and I hammer positions on the building across the street.

Fadul crouches at my feet and starts shooting too. “How the fuck,” she whispers between bursts, her voice amplified by gen-com. “How the fuck did these fuckers . . . fucking know . . . our route?”

Fair question. This is the most concentrated firepower we’ve faced. More than we dealt with in the first block outside the lab or the fusillade as we left the shelter of the store. It’s an ambush, and it had to have been in place for many minutes or our seekers would have detected the presence of gunmen assembling in the buildings. If Escamilla hadn’t spoken up when he did, we might have been too far from the lane, and all of us would have been shot down in the street.

“Fadul!” Jaynie snaps. “Move out. You’re on point. Kill anything that gets in your way.”

“Roger that, ma’am!”

Fadul spins away. Jaynie sends the rest of the squad after her. I cover the next targeting circle, and the next, ever aware of Escamilla’s red icon, willing it not to shift to black.

Jaynie says, “Tran. Shelley. Let’s go.”

“Right behind you.”

I give them a few seconds to move out and then I turn and follow.

The apartments flanking this lane rise in windowless brick faces, but the lane is wider than the alleys we’ve been through. There’s enough room that a line of cars is parked on one side. I’ve passed the first few when Kanoa speaks in a low, urgent voice. “Take cover between the cars.”

Tran is a few meters ahead of me. He ducks out of sight, while I drop into a crouch between two little economy sedans.

“Seven militia, with more behind them, are gathering at the start of the lane. Shelley, you and Tran need to hold them off. Give us time to move the wounded.”

“Roger that. Tran?”

“Yes, sir! They shall not pass.”

I glance at the squad map. Fadul has paused in her advance, like she’s waiting for the squad to catch up. They’re not far behind her. Flynn, despite her injuries, is helping Logan to handle Escamilla; Jaynie and Roman are shepherding Dunahee.

I dismiss the map. “Kanoa, you got video of the street?”

He puts a feed on my visor’s display. The perspective is from near the rooftop. It shows a crowd of gunmen gathering just outside the lane. Two of them ease around the corner, crouching behind the cars.

“Hold your fire, Tran,” I whisper, concentrating on staying calm, cold, analytical. It’s become my default state.

The two whisper together. One leans out, looks down the lane like he’s trying to figure out where we are. I don’t think he has night vision. I wait. I want them to take their time, think about what they’re doing. The longer they take, the more time the squad has to reach the canal. Two more join the first pair. Outside the lane, another talks on a phone. He wants a report on our exact position.

“Target on the rooftop,” Kanoa says, clearing the video from my visor.

I look up, cover a targeting circle, and shoot. There’s a scream. The shooter drops his rifle. It almost hits me, while he falls backward, out of sight.

Tran opens fire down the lane, hitting a guy in the forehead as he peers around a corner to check out the action. Two of the men crouched behind the cars lean out to try some test shots. One of their rounds ricochets off the brick, drilling into a parked car and setting off an alarm. Another bites into pavement, kicking up grit.

I shoot under the cars, which flushes the men into the open. Tran hits one, sending him sprawling. He clips another, who ducks out of sight. The last two flee back around the corner.

“Fall back,” Kanoa says.

I pivot out from between the cars, and run. Tran is ahead by several meters, moving fast, when Kanoa orders me down again. I crouch between a new set of cars while bullets fly past, zipping, pinging, cracking into the vehicles, shattering their windows and punching holes in their sides. Someone in the militia uses my trick, shooting under the vehicles. Two rounds ricochet off my robot legs, sending jolts of pain into my hips, but the legs hold out.

I wait for a lull. Then I stick my HITR out past the sheltering body of the car, letting the muzzle cams take a look at things. It’s busy out there. The battle AI posts targeting circles. I cover them and let the AI pull the trigger. It squeezes off a series of single shots that put two militia on the ground and send two more diving for cover.

As soon as the last one is down, I go.

My route gleams at my feet. It’s a path straight through to the end of the lane, where a wide cross street leads to the canal. “Where’s Tran?” I gasp.

Kanoa answers, “Around the corner.”

I can’t believe Tran has reached the end of the lane already. I wish I could run that fast. I run as hard as I can, all too aware I’ve got no cover while I’m moving. It’ll be just seconds before the shooting starts again.

I don’t want to take a bullet in my back.

I want to get the fuck out of this city.

A flurry of shots erupts behind me. At least one pings off my helmet. A few slam into my pack. I don’t slow down.

Then Kanoa is yelling at me, “Why aren’t you on the route?”

“I am on the route!” It’s glowing beneath my feet.

“You’re not! You missed your turn. You should have—” He stops in midsentence, while I drop into another gap between cars. I lean out and shoot, just to let the enemy know I’m still dangerous. “This doesn’t make sense,” Kanoa says. “Shelley, I’m looking at a copy of your display. What you’re seeing, it’s not right. That’s not the path you’re supposed to see.”

“So fucking fix it!”

“Updating.”

I fire a few more rounds and then eye the squad map until it expands. It shows my soldiers nowhere near me. They left the lane earlier, turned toward the canal. They’re already at the water.
“Shit.”

My shoulders heave, my hands shake, sweat is streaming down my face, but my mind is calm, machinelike. “I can’t go back.”

“No. You have to get to the end of the lane. There’s no other way out.”

Okay.

I fire a few more shots. Swap out the magazine. It’s a long way to the end of the lane.

At the start of this mission we were instructed to limit
our impact, but war is not something you can control. It never goes the way the planners say it will. I shift my finger to the second trigger. A well-placed grenade could help me close up this lane, delay the pursuit for at least a few seconds.

I squeeze.

Nothing happens.

I check the grenade magazine. Still two left. I try again.

Nothing happens—and I’m taking a lot of fire. Bullets are pinging off the cars around me, bouncing along the walls, skipping on the ground. I try to return fire, just to discourage the militia, but when I squeeze the first trigger, nothing happens. It’s like my HITR’s been unregistered, like I’m holding another soldier’s weapon.

“Kanoa!” My heart pounds about ten times in the next two seconds. “Kanoa, you there?”

No answer.

I check the icons on my visor’s display. They show me still linked to gen-com, but I’m not getting through.

“Jaynie, you there? Answer me! Logan?”

Nothing, though I still see them on the map. They’re already across the canal and moving in among the houses. It’s like they don’t even know I’m missing.

I push the HITR around the back of the car again, using the muzzle cams to get another look down the lane. There’s no reason that should work, but it does. So I’m still linked to the weapon. The feed from the muzzle cams pops up on my display—it shows me figures shooting from behind the cover of parked cars—but I can’t shoot back. The trigger is dead.

My system is compromised.

I’m
compromised. Isolated.

And I know what’s happened. The L-AI that monitors this district, the one that’s called Nashira—it’s not a battle
AI, but it’s adaptable. It must have penetrated my electronics. Maybe it hacked the Red, or maybe it just took over the task of managing me. Isn’t that what Issam told me in Budapest? That tasks tend to get transferred to a locally dominant AI?

It’s compromised my communications and my primary weapon. At least my skullnet is safe. It can’t reach into my head. But I need to get the fuck out of here before it hits my dead sister. I sling the HITR over my shoulder. Then I pull my pistol. It doesn’t have linked electronics, so it should work.