Smokescreen (12 page)

In the car, Gennady nodded slightly. “I will. Thank you.”

The masked man’s voice drew Christie back into the warehouse. She let go of the camera feed and resumed her normal vision. No-Face was looking at her with renewed interest.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Who are you?” she countered.

He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t come here to kill you, and I didn’t come here to interfere with your op.”

Op?
Christie filed that away. The offhand use of that term told her that No-Face had a military or law enforcement background, or at least was familiar with one or both of those areas. Of course, a lot of the “security” divisions owned by the large international corporations had those kinds of backgrounds. Many of those corporate “security” divisions handled the same kind of blackmail as the people squeezing Dr. Gennady. There was some speculation that the people behind the blackmailing were one of the huge conglomerates hoping to acquire the government-regulated weapons technology.

“Then why are you here?” Christie divided her attention between the scene in the warehouse and the van approaching Gennady’s car, flipping back and forth between her normal vision and the camera feeds. The van moved slowly, like a shark cruising through the ocean.

“Came to peep the hostiles,” No-Face said.

Peep.
Another military or law enforcement term, meaning to check out. Christie noticed how he held the pistol: as nice and relaxed as she did.

“Didn’t expect you to be here,” he admitted.

“You were already here,” Christie accused.

“Guilty. I also thought maybe you were one of the bad guys.”

That was why she hadn’t noticed him. Remember
ing how she’d walked around and assumed the warehouse was clear made her feel vulnerable.

“You’re lucky we didn’t have a thermographic satellite link,” she said. “You wouldn’t have been able to hide so easily.” A thermographic scan would have revealed his heat signature even up on the second-floor landing that protruded partway over the first floor. He’d obviously found a good hiding place, otherwise she’d have found him when she did her preliminary reconnaissance two hours ago.

So he’d been in place for at least two hours. And she had been in the warehouse. Either she was getting sloppy or he was damn good. Remembering how he’d come up out of the darkness, she knew he was damn good. She’d never been sloppy.

“What’s your part in this?” she asked.

“Uh-uh,” he replied.

“We can discuss it here or in lockup.”

“I’m not sticking around for the debrief.”

Military,
Christie thought at his use of the term.
Definitely military.

“You got a plan for getting away from here?” she taunted.

“I’m working on it.”

No way, No-Face. You’re mine.
Christie flipped her vision back to the external cameras.

The van was even with Gennady’s sedan. Per the orders he’d gotten from the blackmailers, Gennady got out and stood by the car. The van stopped.

“Nobody’s in the van,”
Dwight Yeager reported.
“What the hell is going on?”

Christie flipped through the cameras available to her and found the one focused on the van’s interior. No one
was at the wheel. She switched through the views again, looking for a wide-angle view of the contact site. Out on the river, a fast speedboat drifted with the sluggish current. A bright light dawned onboard the boat, then it was gone, but it was enough to let her know that something nasty had been launched.

“Get him out of there!” Christie commanded, knowing it was already too late. “Get him out of—”

The artillery round plowed into the sedan, which exploded in a ball of white-hot flame, causing it to leap high into the air and flip over. A secondary explosion caused by the fuel tank detonating from the heat of the first blast occurred while the vehicle was plummeting back toward the street. Arturo Gennady’s body dropped out on the street nearly fifty yards from where he’d been standing.

The sonic wave from the artillery round fired from the boat out on the river and the explosion slammed into the warehouse window. Vibrations shook the floor beneath Christie’s feet. She turned her head, momentarily losing the electronic connections to the cameras, and stared through the window in disbelief.

You gave Gennady your word,
Christie thought as she continued the standoff with the no-faced man. She held her pistol tightly.
You gave him your word that he would be all right, that you would take care of him.

In the next instant, an executive-style helicopter dropped out of the sky and drew level with the warehouse window. Automatically, Christie triggered the telescopic function of her Enhanced vision, locking in the light multiplier function as well. In a split second, she could see through the night as clearly as day.

The side door of the helicopter slid back, revealing
a man sitting behind a belt-fed Heckler & Koch fifty-caliber machine gun. The man aimed at the warehouse window and opened fire.

I
nstinct and experience drove Dalton Geller into action. The beautiful blonde holding the pistol to his head hadn’t expected the attack from the river or the helicopter dropping from the sky with the machine gunner onboard. Neither had he, but he’d at least had it happen a few times in the past.

Until tonight, he’d thought those days were over. After the death of his best friend, Mac Reynolds, Dalton—and the U.S. Army—had been persuaded by Grace Reynolds that she needed more security than she had been getting at that time. Dr. Grace Reynolds was one of the top cybernetics integration people in the world and was currently involved in a radical upgrade on the implant surgeries for the military Enhanced program.

For the last few years, Dalton had shepherded Dr. Reynolds and her son Michael. Technically on loan from the U.S. Army, Dalton provided bodyguard services as well as security assessment. Only a few days ago, he had spotted Dr. Reynolds conversing with a known organized crime figure. Grace had been upset by the encounter, and she’d later refused to talk about it.

Dalton, however, hadn’t been able to let it go. His in
vestigation of the Chinese Triad had led him here to this warehouse. He hadn’t figured on the woman, though.

And he definitely hadn’t figured on the Triad attacking and killing without warning. Now, as confident and able as she seemed, he was certain the young woman who had moved so inhumanly quick was about to die under the withering hail of machine-gun fire. He leaped for her, intending to knock her down before the withering hail of fifty-caliber rounds that chewed through the window frame could reach her.

Instead, the woman fisted his shirt in one hand, stopped his forward momentum like it was nothing and drove him backward. His breath left his body in a whoosh and he felt like a truck had hit him. He crashed to the floor fifteen feet back from where he’d been standing. She landed astride him like a bronc rider, thighs on either side of his hips, fisting his shirt to keep his head from hitting the floor. He felt the lean hardness of her body layered in soft feminine flesh pressed against his. Under other circumstances, Dalton would have welcomed the experience.

However, her pistol was still securely against his forehead. Somehow he’d managed to wedge his up under that pretty little chin. They were still at a stalemate.

She glared at him with her milk chocolate-brown eyes, as if he was to blame for the bullets that ripped out the window and tracked down the side of the warehouse wall. The machine gunner was good. He laid down a fairly straight line. The armor-piercing bullets provided plenty of punch to go entirely through the warehouse and exit on the other side.

“Duck!” Dalton yelled over the cacophony of ripping metal and machine-gun fire. It was hard to force the word out with the remaining bit of air left in his lungs.

She leaned down over him, flattening her body against his. Her breasts pillowed against his chest. The sensation was a hell of a lot more distracting than Dalton wanted it to be. His breath, when it returned, was ragged and filled with her scent—heady and sweet, a mixture of perfume and pure woman.

The line of fifty-caliber bullets blasted through the warehouse wall only inches above her head. The deafening noise pummeled them with a physical presence. He roped his free hand behind the woman’s neck, pulling her down close to him, hoping to hell she didn’t fire her pistol at him.

Frankly, he was surprised when she didn’t because he’d seen a lot of trained soldiers lose their cool under that kind of fire, but it had been a gamble he’d had to take. He’d inadvertently bumped into her op and hadn’t had the good sense to leave when the leaving was good.

She pushed up off him and glared down again. The distraction in those brown eyes told him she was listening to something he couldn’t hear. He figured she wore a small radio, maybe even a com-implant because he couldn’t see the device. She was a cop, but she didn’t look like any cop Dalton had ever seen. Even the female MPs he’d gotten to know on more than a casual basis during his career around the world hadn’t come across as forcefully and as quickly as this woman.

Her blond hair hung down to her shoulders. She was at least five-eight, maybe five-nine, with an athletic build that still didn’t explain how she’d been able to pick him up and throw him fifteen feet with one hand. A moon-shaped scar showed under the left side of her chin. Her lips were thin but interesting, and her nose between those milk chocolate eyes offered challenge and
impertinence. She wore a black Kevlar duster over a black sweater and slacks. Like him, she’d chosen a good pair of running shoes for the night.

The machine-gun fire continued out on the street, as did the
whump
of the artillery rounds. Splashes of light and twisting shadows lapped at the shattered remnants of the warehouse window. More light blasted in through the ragged line of bullet holes in the warehouse wall.

Dalton looked at her and spoke loud enough to be heard over the gunfire and explosions, “I can’t stay and you’ve got to go. If you’ve got a team out there, and I’m sure you do, they need your help. Somebody’s determined to send a message tonight.” He paused to let that sink in. “So either we shoot each other or we let each other go. Me, I’m all in favor of letting go.”

She cursed with an effortless fluency and gusto that would have done a drill sergeant proud. Then she said, “We let go.” Her voice hardened as she made her threat. “But I’m going to remember you.”

Likewise, lady,
Dalton thought. He had the uneasy feeling he’d be seeing her again all too soon. He didn’t know how to protect Grace and Michael from the woman and that bothered him. She represented as great a threat to Grace and her son as the men he’d come to the warehouse to find out about.

Listening to the familiar sounds of explosions and gunfire on the street outside, Dalton wondered how deep Grace had gotten in with the Triad killers before he’d found out about it. And he had no clue how he was going to confront her about it.

When the woman moved, it was with that same incredible speed she’d shown earlier. She had the grace of a dancer, every move effortless and sure. Before Dal
ton could get up, she was at the window. She held her pistol in both hands.

For a moment, the woman’s beauty distracted Dalton. The glow of the explosions and the fires that had evidently caught below on the first floor drew her face out of the darkness. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman Dalton had ever seen, but she was certainly the most memorable he’d met in years. Except for Grace.

Thinking that galvanized him. He put his hands behind his shoulders, drew his feet up and kicked them out, and flipped to his feet. His chest felt bruised and ached with the exertion.

Movement caught by his peripheral vision drew his attention down to the first floor at the back of the warehouse. He’d entered the building through there before hiding on the second-story landing above.

The eight men who now entered the door all wore field gear—Kevlar body armor and helmets, combat harnesses and bandoliers supporting extra magazines, and assault rifles as their lead weapons.

Definitely a scorched-earth campaign,
he thought, knowing the attackers meant to kill everyone and destroy everything.
They hadn’t come to take prisoners.

“Hey, blondie,” Dalton called as he dropped into a kneeling position, and cupped the pistol butt with his supporting hand. Wheeling instantly, the woman took him in, then followed his line of sight as he aimed at the first man in the group of new arrivals.

Hoping the woman was as good as he thought she was and didn’t shoot him by mistake, he squeezed off two rounds as the first four men lifted their rifles and aimed at her.

The harsh reports of his Colt banged inside the ware
house, as he drew a bead on the next man’s face. There was no hope of cutting through the invaders’ bulletproof armor with the subsonic rounds the .45s were loaded with. The most he could do was split their attention.

His first two rounds had caught the lead man in the chest, punching him backward. Dalton had hoped for a head shot, but shooting down and into the darkness as he was made that difficult.

Five of the men fired at the woman. Bullets smacked into the wall behind her, striking sparks from the metal surface.

Standing on the second floor, which only covered half the first floor, she was exposed. Dalton expected her to go to ground; that move was the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances, but it would have left her trapped. Two of the enemy gunners ran for the stairs leading up to the second floor, obviously intending to flank her while she was pinned down.

Instead of going to cover, though, the woman ran for the second-floor railing. Her speed was incredible, her legs moved in a blur.

She’s Enhanced,
Dalton realized. That explained the speed she’d used earlier when she’d almost turned the tables on him. It also explained her strength. He was lucky he was as good as he was. Otherwise, she would have killed him.

The insight struck a sour chord within Dalton and brought back bitter memories. A lot of soldiers in Special Ops had been offered a chance at getting Enhanced. He’d turned down the opportunity. Flat. He believed that the technology, and the false sense of security the Enhancement had provided, had gotten a lot of men killed. A number of them had been his friends. One of them
had been his best friend, Mac. He still remembered Grace’s face when he’d given her the news about her husband’s death. He shoved those memories away and concentrated on getting the woman and himself out of danger.

When the woman reached the railing, she hurled herself outward like an Olympic diver, bringing both hands in front of her on the pistol. She performed a half gainer with a twist, firing with pinpoint accuracy even while she was upside down in the air. Her rounds caught the lead gunner on the floor in the face, knocking his head back and pitching his body backward. The other gunmen had to duck back for cover as she emptied her pistol in a rapid staccato.

Finishing the dive, she landed on her feet and was already running for cover a heartbeat later. The gunmen fired, too, tracking her behind a line of crates, not able to keep up with the inhuman speed she exhibited.

Deciding he was seriously outgunned and knowing he couldn’t dive down to the first floor with the same assurance that he would survive the twenty-foot drop as the woman had, Dalton turned his attention to the two men coming up the stairs. He stayed low and ran, holding his pistol in both hands.

The first man topped the stairs and stepped onto the second-floor deck just as Dalton threw his body into a baseball slide across the slick floor. One foot caught the gunman in the ankles while the other took out the guy’s knees. Kevlar body armor or not, the joints weren’t protected.

Something in the gunman’s leg snapped and he screamed loud enough to be heard over the rapid fire roaring in the first-floor area.

Dalton came to a sudden stop as the gunman smashed against the wall beside the stairs. Rolling to his left but staying low, avoiding the instinctive impulse to rise up, Dalton shoved his pistol forward and targeted the second man’s face.

Beneath the Kevlar helmet and night-vision goggles, the man’s face showed Asian ancestry and hard features marred by a wicked scar on his right cheek.

Okay, that checks out with what Katsumi said,
Dalton thought. Katsumi Shan had been the informant Dalton had used to find out about the drop site and Arturo Gennady. According to Katsumi, the people blackmailing Gennady consisted of Chinese gang members called the Bronze Tigers.

The gunman’s night-vision goggles swiveled and targeted Dalton. From less than three feet away, Dalton fired. The muzzle flashes screamed green images across the night-vision goggle lenses and the man jerked backward. Even as the dead man fell, Dalton wheeled back to face the gunman he’d trapped up against the wall. Dalton fired his last two rounds into that man’s face as well, then rolled into a crouch.

The dead man’s arm slewed around and Dalton caught a glimpse of the protective plastic pocket sewn into the sleeve of the leather jacket. He looked closer. The pocket held a compact video unit that displayed two images of the beautiful blonde that had held him at gunpoint, one full face and one profile.

Damn it! They had this planned from the onset!

Dalton dumped the Colt’s empty magazine on the floor, shoved a fresh one in from his pockets and picked up the empty. He didn’t want to leave any fingerprints behind. He’d used gloves to load the maga
zines so no partial prints existed on the empty brass, either.

Hurrying, knowing firsthand that even though the woman was Enhanced she wasn’t invincible, Dalton leathered his sidearm in the pancake holster belted at his back. He picked up the first dead man’s assault rifle, dumped the partially used clip, and fed in a new one from the combat harness the man wore.

Sitting on the stairs, left leg folded up under him like he was back on the range at Fort Benning in Georgia, Dalton pulled the assault rifle to his shoulder and took aim at one of the two men circling around behind the crates. He dropped the sights over the back of the first gunman’s neck, over the top of where the Kevlar vest would end, and squeezed the trigger. The man dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

With both eyes open like the drill instructor in Ranger school had taught him, Dalton searched for his next target, catching the gunman as he turned around to see what had happened to his buddy. Dalton fired twice, a quick double-tap that caught the man at the base of the throat then again in his chin. He pirouetted and fell in a twisted shamble of limbs.

By then some of the gunners had figured out where Dalton was. With the heat turned up and bullets blazing his way, he figured it was time to go. He stripped a bandolier of magazines for the assault rifle from the dead man on the stairs and threw himself to the first floor. Bullets smacked the metal stairs and the dead man in his wake.

Dalton landed and rolled, moving quick and staying low, then got to his feet and ran for the nearest stack of crates. He slid into place behind the crates and listened,
holding the assault rifle in an upright position with both hands so he could drop it quickly into target acquisition. He pushed the fire-selector to three-round bursts. Sniping wasn’t going to cut it in the tight alleys between the cargo stacks.