Grayman Book Four: Scary Monsters

Part One: Ghost Stories

1

May 13th 2025.

The Angel of the Abyss, whose name means Destroyer:

This new Gerhardt play—whatever it is—will never work.

Such is the criticism of Heinrich Wulfgar—one fake terrorist’s review of another.

He was revealed to us from the beginning—your own machine’s doing. Nothing he does will impress anyone other than his own band of idiots. All this will do is come back around to bite the NSA, and, soon after, your precious Committee.

He’s been making full use of the suite’s ample bar since they moved him here days ago, making a show of making up for lost time. Not that he hasn’t been honestly suffering for his drug of choice since he was so humiliatingly taken by Burke and Ram six months ago, even though that was just another play in the greater game. But the game must be played with realism, so he was rendered realistically: Sent first to Cuba, to the reopened terrorist prison, put on display like a trophy in their so-called war: the pampered elitist in a cage, still visibly bruised from the very honest beating Burke had given him. Then after six weeks, he disappeared from the camera’s eye, the official deflections hinting at what horrors had befallen him in stress interrogation, sent to some offshore torture chamber in the name of the greater good.

There was no torture, of course, but there was isolation. Heinrich Wulfgar needed to be kept off the grid. And observed, as his new handlers (or is that old handlers?) looked for any sign of duplicity. They knew that Zarovich had sent him to his fate with purpose, to step into the belly of the great beast, probably in hopes of learning its secret plans and somehow returning with them. But he was compliant—as he still pretends to be. Six months he has played the spy come in from the cold, spilling Zarovich’s secrets—everything he’d learned from his years as the so-called Warlord’s right hand. The only way to reveal his true loyalty is to give him this modicum of trust, of freedom, and see what he does with it.

Now Wulfgar chuckles like he’s been hit through the alcohol by a sudden spark of realization, though it’s clear he’s been thinking this since the news broke.

"But you know that, don’t you? And you gave the order anyway. He swirls the ice in his glass, loses his gaze absently in the abstract refractions of reality seen through his drink like it will give him some secret insight. Chuckles again. You’ve killed him. And that’s the best outcome this stupidity can reap."

"Captain Schrader’s been putting his life on the line for years to keep eyes off you," the American tries to force some respect, or at least decorum, by making it personal.

"Does he know that?" Wulfgar fences, his arrogance stoked by his vodka.

The American doesn’t answer him.

Wulfgar shows something that may be actual disgust. Gunter Gerhardt—formerly Captain Karl Schrader—is in many ways a lesser version of himself.

If the classified files are accurate, Wulfgar was once an up-and-coming Agency analyst, a wunderkind who spoke seven languages with aptitude scores at the top of the percentiles, only his personality failed to pass their profiles. Officially, he was shuffled off to worthless postings, but in places where he would likely be approached by the right people looking to turn him. Unofficially, his handlers chose to exploit his ego, to convince him he could play against the best of the best: he would play rogue, and earn his way into the top of Euroterror through treachery and atrocity (two skills it turns out he excelled at).

The truth of the matter remains in question. There is disagreement as to whether Wulfgar has continued to play his role, or whether Zarovich did seduce him into turning for real. More likely, Wulfgar’s own ego is still in command (or believes it is): He almost certainly thinks he is above the game, that he is playing both sides of it.

Now he has been taken from his secure location, taken back out into the world, back to his old stomping grounds at the heart of Euroterror—to Paris, capitol of one of the only Security Council nations to refuse UNACT security Terror Nets and Hunter Satellites orbiting overhead. It’s almost certain that he knows this is another test of his doubtful loyalty. It’s also almost certain that he believes he can beat it.

Wulfgar can still hold his alcohol, even after all these months of enforced sobriety. And careful observation reveals his skill as a bartender in covertly watering down his drinks. He is nowhere near as impaired as he pretends to be. But he is impaired enough.

This stunt isn’t about me, Wulfgar hits them again when he doesn’t get the explanation he’s been playing for.

How many in Zarovich’s circle knew the truth about Gerhardt? the Russian ignores Wulfgar, changing the subject, keeping the mood as social as possible, sitting on the sofa across the large room. This question has certainly been asked many times over the last six months, possibly for much longer than that. The point—as always—is not the answer, but reading how it’s delivered.

Myself. Alexi. Northgate, probably, if he was read in by his country-club friends.

Wulfgar rattles off the names with an idle slur in his voice, playing drunk and long-since tired of the question, but carefully avoiding adding Zarovich himself to the list. Zarovich is dead, of course. Everyone knows that.

No one responds to his answer—it is of no consequence: as usual, he’s told us nothing useful in his candor. Alexi Khorkhov is hopelessly struggling to keep Zarovich’s organization coherent, but he is no leader. And Northgate is too well-invested.

Wulfgar drinks and watches the satellite TV replay endless Breaking News of Gerhardt’s garish performance at the French embassy in Berlin. It is of course a local tragedy: an attack on the rational and peace-loving French, who have done so much to avoid the radical militarism of the UNACT Committee membership. But Gerhardt was also careful to kill two German nationals and one American to spread the effect, ensuring that Gerhardt earns the attention and credibility of Sanction, even if the French themselves refuse to lower themselves to invoking the media-friendly wrath of UNACT.

Putting that young girl into camera view and shooting her for everyone to see, so cold and vicious and proud, that was art.

But Wulfgar is right: This is all stupidly garish. It will most certainly go wrong. (Too bad they can no longer use their marvelous primary AI to plan their maneuvers for them. Or Zarovich.)

Will Khorkhov try to reveal Gerhardt? the Chinese asks the next usual question, smoking his atrocious cigarettes under the updraft of the suite’s expensive filtering niche.

Possibly, Wulfgar only slightly blunts his disdain for this scripted play. But Alexi will not share his intimate knowledge, not even within his own ranks, not even for the opportunity to hurt you, because it will diminish his beloved master to be seen as a puppet of the enemy. Your Colonel Ram is the bigger risk by far. He’ll certainly make a show of this with his childish tantrums.

I watch Wulfgar’s face slowly shift. It takes him some twelve seconds to make the actual realization that Gerhardt’s performance has been specifically crafted to draw out their prodigal hero. Then Wulfgar shakes his head, lets out another quiet chuckle (though this time more heartfelt), and drinks his drink with at least some honesty.

Does Gerhardt know you’ve just sacrificed him? Wulfgar makes the obvious protest.

Captain Schrader is a good soldier, the American rattles off like a true general. He is willing to die for his country.

Wulfgar freezes and glares at the American like he might actually throw his drink in his face if the Vodka wasn’t so precious to him.

This has nothing to do with any country… This is it: Wulfgar—still playing the drunk malcontent egoist—maneuvers them like a fencing master. This is all just about money and power, for the few that would so obscenely profit from it.

And the many that would eagerly follow our lead, the Russian falls into it like a proud fool, "for their own petty benefits. But we—we are changing the world."

For the better? Wulfgar baits them further. Or just for yourselves?

I could stop this with a word, a gesture. But I’m too curious to see this played out, and I care little for the consequences to my assumed masters—in that, I do have an appreciation for Wulfgar, even while I watch him very subtly prepare himself for his own death.

Dying for something larger than myself is simply not in my nature. By all assessments and observations, it should not be in Wulfgar’s personality either. I can only wonder what has instigated this change. I could ask him, but I doubt I’ll get the opportunity.

Would you refuse what we are offering you? the Russian keeps burying himself. Wulfgar steps out from behind the bar, fresh drink in hand, and slowly approaches the entertainment system and its large flat-screen. He gestures at the news feed sloppily, theatrically sloshing his drink.

Would you put me up in Zarovich’s old place—to play your new convenient villain—only to sacrifice me as well when the play is done?

We did not sacrifice Zarovich, the Russian stupidly defends.

No. Your AI did that, refusing to cooperate with your duplicity anymore, which is why we’re having this conversation in Paris instead of New York, despite the lengths you’ve gone to hide your safe house there. And your manufactured hero Mike Ram eagerly helped your machine against you, which is why he has not-so-quietly run away from you.

Wulfgar picks up the slim remote, begins to idly flip through news feeds like he’s looking for more shots of Gerhardt so gratuitously murdering that girl. Only a very experienced eye would notice how he is positioning himself, sizing up his opposition.

Besides the American, the Russian and the Chinese—who are aged and pampered too far beyond the prime of their physical prowess to be any close-quarters threat—there are three armed bodyguards in the room—one for each VIP member of this little Triad. But each is concerned primarily with protecting his own charge, and will likely not coordinate a response. There are also half-a-dozen more guns waiting as security just outside, but these will only be an issue if he intends to leave this room alive, and I suspect that even Heinrich Wulfgar knows how slim his chances are. (Or maybe he believes he is really that good.)

He also considers my presence, but discounts my lack of physical size or possession of a firearm. He’s only been introduced to me as an aide to the American member of this Triad, a valet, a gopher—perhaps a retired operative, a fixer or occasional assassin. It’s comforting to know that some secrets can be kept even from Antonin Zarovich. Or Datascan.

I have already subtly released the catches on my cane.

Will you kill Mike Ram, too? Wulfgar asks what is likely his final question.

If he cannot be reined in, the American demonstrates that his Russian counterpart isn’t unique in his foolish impulsiveness. Their confession is now complete.

Alarms go off almost immediately. I give credit: I did not even see Wulfgar trigger his trap.

I can imagine his thought process:

Anticipating the obvious sort of treachery, the suite has been continuously swept for any kind of outgoing transmission. But Wulfgar, like any good terrorist, always thinks to use the enemy’s superior technology against them, to exploit the unconsidered vulnerabilities.

The entertainment center includes both a teleconferencing system (including a camera and sensitive microphones) and a DVR. While Wulfgar sat incarcerated here awaiting this meeting, he had opportunity to do some creative tinkering, linking those systems and apparently disabling the indicators that would have let us see that we were being recorded. Once his recording was as complete as he desired, he could easily compress and flash it out. He would be instantly detected, of course. But instant is a relative term in our digital environment.

It takes the human brains in the room full seconds too long to comprehend and react. The look of smug superiority on Wulfgar’s face tells that he has been successful.

Guns are drawn, but the bodyguards hesitate, not recognizing the actual threat.

Transmission breach! Lock it down! the American barks into his personal link. The way his face twists in barely-civilized rage lets me know his people are telling him it’s too late.

"What have you done?" the Russian scolds Wulfgar like it makes any difference. Wulfgar just grins back at the pistols pointed at his face.

Shoot…! the American starts to order, but Wulfgar is already moving, not one to easily accept death. He’s fast. He throws his vodka at the Russian’s guard and dodges so that the first volley of bullets punch wall instead of his skull. His heavy glass flies straight into the face of the American’s guard, who actually manages to shoot it in midair before it hits him, only to catch a spray of glass fragments in his eyes for his trouble. Part of that spray also makes the Chinese’ guard flinch, giving Wulfgar just enough time to upend the coffee table at him, a combination shield and distraction.

The Triad VIPs haven’t even had time to get out of their seats. Wulfgar is on the Chinese guard and has hold of his arms, pivoting him just in time to use his body as a shield against the Russian’s gun. The American guard is trying to clear his vision enough to get a shot, but Wulfgar almost has control of the dying Chinese’ weapon. Which is when he hears me stepping quickly up behind him. And the sound of my cane.

He does the obvious thing to my obvious thing, spinning and blocking as I bring the shaft down on his head. But he doesn’t see that I’ve got the spear blade drawn and held low in my left hand, and as his forearm stops the high feint attack he probably first feels the spearhead penetrate through his navel to his spine.

Primitive weapons should never be discounted in these modern times. Too many centuries were spent in their perfection. And now, they have the benefit of modern materials.

I twist the nano-composite blade in his gut, and he tries to pull off of it but I only keep driving my weight behind it. He manages to get the gun from the Chinese, but a quick flick of my cane shaft catches his wrist, and does so with the sharp beak of the war hammer concealed inside its derby-style grip, impaling him between radius and ulna. A twist and a jerk and he drops the gun, allowing me to release his mangled limb and jab the head of the cane into the bridge of his nose. I can feel his upper teeth break through the shaft.

The impact knocks him back, pulling the spear out of his abdomen, but not before I rip up a bit to take some more of him on the way out. He barely has time to register reaction in his eyes before I bring the beak of the war hammer down and through the top of his head, sinking it the full three inches into his brain.

His skull impaled, he simply looks stunned. A quick twist and he falls free, landing limp on the hardwood floor next to the dead Chinese guard. But he leaks much more profusely. I’ve made more than the usual mess.

Apollyon! the American yells at me like I’ve done something unforgivably rude.

He was more than capable of killing you all before he died, I excuse, wiping my blades clean on Wulfgar’s jacket, careful not to step in all the blood. Though I expect he’s already done that anyway.

The American’s guard has gone to try to wash the glass out of his eyes, while the Russian—possibly used to getting vodka thrown in his face in more recreational settings—promptly checks the dead. The look he gives me as I calmly reassemble my cane is priceless.

Confirming my assessment , the main TV screen fuzzes over for an instant, then shifts to a familiar face, who looks little worse for his encounter with Datascan’s drones, at least from the neck up.

I HAVE YOUR CONFESSION, GENTLEMEN.

I see Zarovich’s mouth move with the words, but the voice is not his own: it is a synthetic vox, which sounds almost identical to Datascan’s. The effect is wonderfully creepy.

YOU WILL ANSWER FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE, Zarovich drones very much like a machine—he sounds like the droll android butler in a science fiction cartoon. ALL OF IT. IN MY TIME. ON MY TERMS.

I know the outgoing is jammed—he can’t possibly see us—but going by what he must have seen on the video flashed to him, he appears to survey the room, to lock eyes with each of the Triad members, then looks down at the body of his own pawn. He shakes his head, looks tired and maybe honestly sad. Then his eyes come up and look right at me.

YOU. I DON’T KNOW YOU.

Then the screen goes back to the news feed.

Amusing.

2

Colonel Matt Burke, Acting Commander, UNACT North American Operations:

No sane reason you needed to fly yourself all the way out here, Colonel Burke…

It still hurts, more than I want to admit, just to crouch down enough to reach the floor. And to move my neck. I have to use one hand on the wall for support, even though I’m probably contaminating the crime scene, even with my thick armored gloves.

At least I don’t have to hobble around with a cane anymore, or at least the smiling cheerful sadists who call themselves physical therapists insist I do without, forcing my new knees to finally get used to flying solo. But carrying sixty pounds of armor and gear six months after two knee replacements and a cervical fracture repair is apparently asking a lot today.

I’m thirty-seven and I’m an old man, busted and slow and sick of everybody telling me how lucky I am. And I’m wearing armor I can barely move in anymore—the same armor that failed to save me from a truck loaded with ANFO. (More accurately: It did save me, just not all of me, which makes me questionably more lucky than ten of my men.)

No sane reason? This has nothing to do with sanity. I’m just pissed off and cabin-crazed after six months on medical leave and seriously needing to get away from the tomb that is Mi-Com and back out into the so-called real world.

Back to work.

To bad it takes a spectacular slaughter like this to give me the excuse.

I have to keep using three points of contact to keep from toppling over, all the while the deep knee flexation of crouching really hurts in places that the experts insist I shouldn’t have nerves anymore. But I won’t keep doing the pills. And I don’t let Powell or the young guns that came with him see how bad Zarovich’s truck bomb broke me.

No sane reason…

It got you out here to meet me, I feel the need to bite back at Powell, which tells me I’m still carrying the old baggage after all these years. I have to remind myself: He’s been a good officer since he came over, a decent leader. Or at least he hasn’t presided over any more atrocities that I’m aware of. But that last one was pretty hard to forgive.

Keeping one hand on the wall like it’s just helping me think deep serious thoughts, I use my free fingers to pick through the blast debris, like I really need to touch the globs of recently melted metal sprayed everywhere to know what I’m looking at.

They used tank busters on the vault door, Powell tells me what I already know. HEAT RPGs by the mess.

The shaped penetrating charges are designed to get through up to thirty inches of hardened rolled-steel armor, as the warhead forces a cone of copper turned into a molten jet boring through the target at hypersonic speed. What you get is a big hole on the impact side and a small hole at the exit, but that exit comes with said hypersonic molten metal spray, tearing up anything on the other side.

As the vault door is thick but not solid, it worked like layered armor to defuse the cutting jet, so the first hit didn’t make it all the way through. What it did do was make a pie-plate sized hole dead-center into the metal armor of door’s locking mechanism, then went a long way to melting the guts out of it, while the blast did some serious damage to the concrete core (bonus education of the day: most big vault doors aren’t solid metal—a lot of the innards are reinforced concrete, both cost-efficient and designed to keep people from just torch-cutting through, with spaces for the hardened lock works). A second shell finished the job in spectacular style, detonating inside the door with enough force to shatter the insides and buckle it almost off its huge hinges, successfully punching through the last several inches of steel armor and blowing into the vault like a white-hot fire hose. All they had to do then was reach in with pneumatic wrecking bars and pry out the remains of the big heavy lock bolts.

The remains of the door now hang twisted and gutted on its huge hinges, most of its innards torn out or sprayed out. The secure basement level reeks of burning metal and plastic and flesh, leaking up to street level every time the elevator shuttles another group of cops or Feds or MEs or us—I could smell it the second I limped through the heavy tinted glass front doors.

The burnt flesh smell is the result of picking the wrong place to hide: one of the junior managers was apparently working late, and ran and locked himself inside the vault when he heard the shooting start. From the look of what’s left of him, he was square-on facing the door when the shaped charge punched through. The white-hot blast caught him about mid-torso, cutting straight through his spine while the thermodynamic effect of his fluids suddenly hitting several thousand degrees blew him apart as his guts got flash-boiled. The local ME still hasn’t collected all of him, but at least they bagged the bigger bits before I dragged my broken self down here. My own sick curiosity (or my need to experience that real world thing to make the trip truly worthwhile) made me look in the bag, of course. His head is amazingly intact, but there’s nothing left below about the second rib, and he doesn’t get recognizable again until his hollowed-out pelvis. The poor unlucky dumbass looks maybe twenty five, hot-shit conservative grooming (at least what isn’t singed away), and the expression frozen on his face looks like he just caught his girlfriend in bed with his boss. Everything else makes me want to swear off barbeque for awhile.

Last time I saw something like this was when a black-market Russian RPG-32 took out an APC full of consultants down in Columbia—that’s why still I make sure to take extra time on the ICW practice range cutting simulated RPGs out of the air before they can find their target.

Big ordnance, Powell is still darn good with the obvious. I think he just needs to say something every few seconds to convince me he’s not superfluous, because the AI has long since processed the scene and fed me a preliminary report before I got here. Not easy to lug RPGs around LA without somebody taking notice. And they’d have to be wearing armor almost as good as ours just to survive shooting them off in here.

He’s right: The bunker-like secure sub-basement where they lock up whatever secret treasures their high-roller clients have entrusted them with isn’t big. There’s maybe thirty feet between the vault door and the farthest wall. In that space, you’d have to deal with a blast designed to hurt a tank, not to mention the propellant backwash from firing the thing. Just the combustion alone would have gone through all the oxygen down here. The blast wave would still probably be lethal, even in full armor.

I expect to see at least some Hiroshima-like blast-silhouettes on the opposite wall to tell me where the bad guys were standing when the rockets blew, but there’s nothing. I drag myself back to standing and go kicking through the ash and crap in roughly a straight shot from the vault door. I find what I’m looking for quick enough.

Scratches on the concrete flooring, I tell Powell as I let Dee scan what I’m seeing through my interface glasses. Triangular pattern. Tripod. Dee confirms my visual geometry and coughs up some mounts that would fit.

Remote triggered? Powell sounds almost surprised.

Set ‘em up and ran back to hide, maybe back at the security checkpoint, I point back the way I came in. Two private security guards are getting bagged and loaded onto gurneys. The walls of the checkpoint—which sits just past the only elevator down to this level—are sprayed with blood that’s probably theirs.

Mounted launcher, Powell agrees. But that’s even more weight to haul down here. And they didn’t leave it, which means they carried it back up along with whatever they took from the vault.

Lots of boot prints in the dust, I pretend I know what I’m talking about. Lots of shooters or lots of trips. Dee has already scanned: all the boots are the same tread, same size—probably on purpose to keep us guessing their numbers.

Trips is time, Powell counters. This was noisy. I’d want in and out fast. That means they had lots of help. Also means lots of guns.

They didn’t use anything big on the guards, I remind him of the eight uniformed security they killed getting in—four on the front entrance, two on the main floor, and the two down here. That’s a lot of live security for a bank after hours, which suggests what kind of treasures they may have had locked up down here. Too bad it wasn’t enough. Those wounds looked like Fletchers. Only not quite.

High penetration, Powell confirms what Dee broke down from the preliminary scans of the bodies and the strays that pierced the walls upstairs. Went right through their soft armor. That’s hotter than the compact pistols we’ve been chasing all these years. Maybe some new kind of PDW—someone’s expanding their offshore product line. Might even be able to penetrate our suits. We sent samples out to the SENTAR TGs already, but the darts were all pretty ‘raqed—not much left at that kind of velocity.

No survivors. No witnesses. And no video, I lament the obvious, looking at all the cameras everywhere down here, all of them knocked dead before the exciting part started. It would have been nice to have gotten a look at the bastards.

Small-diameter pulse. Knocked out most of the lower floors, at least the delicate gear.

At least the lights are still on. And the elevators work, which was probably what the bad guys were going for: just enough zap to take out the security systems and the local communications and not much else.

Zarovich’s followers are getting more surgical with their homebrew pulse weapons. No more fried city blocks, which required industrial capacitors massive enough for their EM bleed to be visible from space. Just localized mayhem. Blame it on our own countermeasures: once Dr. Androkov hit on the idea of using existing Hunter anti-missile satellites to fry Zarovich’s big EMP generators with their HEM cannons, the geeks flooded the Net with dozens of designs for homemade weapons that required not much more than the guts of an old kitchen microwave, some sheet metal and a battery. The range is for shit, but they could be reasonably well aimed and turned out to be harder to insulate against than the much bigger and more expensive EMP weapons. The only downside was that playing around one long enough could cause systemic organ damage and a host of nasty symptoms. But built right and used right, they could do effective enough damage to our chip-driven systems: Blind our eyes so we can’t see them coming. Cut our links so we can’t coordinate shit. Allowing the bad guys to run in and run out before we can get our shit back together, and leaving no digital recordings to ID them.

These new units could fit in a large suitcase or backpack, instead of a large truck like the original EMP weapons that blew everything chip-driven in a quarter-mile radius.

How did Cajun-style get down here? Powell wonders out loud, standing over the body bag full of burned banker, finally sounding like he’s thinking beyond what Dee’s fed him. Offices are upstairs. You only get down here with clearance. Seems unlikely he’d be accessing the ‘executive securities’ by himself after hours. And if he was running from the bad guys, he would have alerted the checkpoint guards, who would have locked the place down.

You think he let them in here? I play, deeply intrigued by anything All-Seeing-Dee may have missed.

Inside man or hostage. Either way, he gets scared enough when the shooting starts to try locking himself in.

And locking them out. But he would have seen them carrying the rockets.

Unless they were cased, Powell argues. He might not have known what they had. He might have assumed he was their only way into the vault. And the vault had to have been opened for him to get inside, which means he at least started to cooperate. They may have brought the RPGs for backup, just in case the banker flaked on them. And he apparently did.

Better get a team to check on any family he might have had, I agree grimly, for whatever good it does.

They would have cleaned up any witnesses—or hostages—hours ago, Powell says the part I didn’t.

Dee flashes me an update to let me know teams are being assigned to look for anybody that could have been used as leverage to get the young banker’s cooperation. His file says he’s married. Medical records say the wife is pregnant.

Dee also starts a general scan of the police bands for any potentially connected recent homicides: Besides the banker’s family, if our players needed to recruit outside help for this job, they may have needed to keep them from being potential witnesses as well.

Any idea what they took? I ask the obvious question, looking at hundreds of dumped deposit boxes scattered all over the floor of the vault that’s almost as big as my executive suite back at Mi-Com. A lot of the boxes have varying degrees of blast or burn damage, but a lot more are just dumped but otherwise untouched, ripped out of their racks and tossed, like the thieves had the tech to scan their contents without opening them. And only a few have been visibly forced, which says our robbers had a mission, a specific treasure in mind, one worth hitting a Wilshire Boulevard offshore international banking and securities conglomerate with heavy (and expensive) military weaponry—heavy enough to get our attention, at least, and nobody wants our attention that doesn’t want to be dead or worse.

The Feds have had passive eyes on this place for awhile, Powell again repeats what Dee’s briefing already told me on the flight over from Mi-Com. Lots of rumors of terrorist assets squirreled away. Then the locals found this in the mess… His flashcard screen gives me a hi-rez of a small but impressively cut diamond, apparently dropped and forgotten in the rubble. (Which is a sensible treasure to risk using an RPG on a vault door to access: cash, documents or data could easily be destroyed in the process. And gold is darn heavy.)

Sloppy, or did they leave it behind to let somebody know what they took?

Either they used the robbery so the Feds wouldn’t see them accessing their boxes during business hours, or we’ve got bad guys ripping off bad guys, Powell calculates. The first option means they were in dire need of whatever was in here, which means they were hurting, afraid of seizure, or have something big and imminent in the works. The second option makes sense given recent events: It could be a civil war brewing between the surviving Rads, someone trying to take Zarovich’s old slot at the top of the food chain.

"Assuming Zarovich is dead this time," I remind him.

Dee hit him with a brace of LOCUST drones and a Hellfire, he denies, quoting the official investigation.

And if Dee hadn’t have gone off the grid doing it, we could have been there to confirm…

Colonel Burke, I hear Lisa suddenly cut in over my link (for a second I almost thought Dee was trying to shut me up).

I’m here, Captain, I answer her, putting my interface glasses back on.

If you’ve got eyes, I have something you probably want to see.

I’ve got eyes, I let her know, turning to the nearest blank wall so what I’m looking at here won’t show through the heads-up feed she’s about to send me.

What I get is a shot—shaky and lo-rez like a cell cam—of some non-descript neo-modern European architecture: a street-front row of unmarked red brick and white trim, maybe five stories tall. It could be bland urban condo housing or office space. Why we’re looking at nothing interesting isn’t clear. But then a zoom out shows me two dead bodies in some kind of dress uniform dropped in the walkup entry. On the bad sound I think I can hear gunshots coming from somewhere inside.

French embassy in Berlin, less than an hour ago, Lisa narrates. I see a few local cop cars come screaming up, but either they don’t know what to do about the whole foreign territory issue or someone tells them to hold position out on the street. I can hear more gunfire sounds from inside. And explosions.

One of the windows on the upper floor gets shot out from inside, then busted out by someone hitting it with a chair—the glass was bullet resistant, so it takes some doing. The reason for the act becomes clear when whoever has the camera zooms in:

There are two figures in the breached window: A big blonde Aryan dressed like Rambo and some little screaming brunette that he’s prodding into view at gunpoint. German Rambo is screaming something I can’t make out, but he sounds appropriately full of himself. He shoves his hostage head-and-shoulders out into the open air where the cops and everyone can get a good look. Then he shoots her in the back of the head and leaves her hanging half-out the window, a limp rag doll folded over the brightly painted ledge. Blonde beef flashes a psycho-righteous grin at the cops and vanishes back inside before anybody can shoot him.

Remember our old friend Gunter Gerhardt? Lisa grimly confirms what I didn’t want to see, then rewinds, zooms and enhances on Beefcake. It’s definitely Gerhardt, even without Dee doing the facial recognition geometry.

Aw, shit… And all that implies. I take it he didn’t get himself taken out by GSG?

Had his exit tunneled through the sewer system. Used tank-busters to blow through. Got in with a dozen men, shot the place up, killed a dozen people for effect, then exited before the locals could get in.

And made sure they got a money shot so we knew it was him, I grouse.

It’s already all over the news nets, red-band headline. So who’s the message for? she asks the next scary question with very little hesitation, which means she’s already been stewing on it.

The obvious would be he’s trying to move up the Euroterror ladder again, I give the easy first. But it’s not so easy. "That would mean his NSA handlers are stupid enough to think they can slip him into whatever void Zarovich and Wulfgar left. Or he is, which I expect will be the official line: he’s pulling this shit on his own initiative, trying to be a real terrorist."

The not-so-obvious is that he and his handlers know that we know who he really is, Lisa follows me into the scary place. They’ve been able to skate on the technicality that he’s never killed anybody himself, not that we can connect him to.

His handlers know that’s all that’s kept knocking him off our target lists, I complete the obvious conclusion. He’s got to know that too.

Victim ID is confirmed: Rebecca Melissa Gwynn, just turned 22. Dual French and American citizenship. Just went to the embassy to work out some issues with her student visa.

A stupid, unlucky, brutal death. I feel my programming kick, pumping up my rage until all I can prioritize is killing that grinning Aryan fuck, even though I know he’s supposed to be one of the good guys, decorated US Army Spec-Ops working deep for the NSA.

But that’s exactly the point: It’s one thing to make your rep as a terrorist by putting on a big show, attaching yourself to other bastards’ atrocities, even supplying and aiming the bad guys. It’s totally another to murder some innocent young girl to make your bones. That’s not forgivable under any kind of inter-agency politics.

Yes, they’ll disown him when we come to collect—and we will, that I won’t let slide this time—but he and his handlers know that and they’re pulling this shit anyway.

This is either so big they don’t care how bad we’re gonna hurt them, or they’re doing it just to get our attention… I think it through out loud.

I notice Powell has taken notice, though Lisa hasn’t linked him in. He’s not in our happy little circle of living with the knowledge that the Good Ol’ US-of-A is running a fake terrorist and somehow that’s okay with the Committee (though that might change after today), and he’s probably better off for it. He can still believe in the New World Order.

So what do they think is going to happen? Lisa wants to know—not an idle question: I can hear the icy murder in her voice even most of a country away.

Suddenly I get a sick feeling down inside my armor. My rage thrashes in upon itself.

Shit…

What? she wants to know.

"We’re assuming this sick little stunt is for our benefit, I give it to her, almost immediately regretting it. He didn’t do something quiet we’d pick up through intel. He did something to make the headlines. On camera. Something you’re guaranteed to see no matter where on the planet you are."

I don’t hear anything for several very uncomfortable seconds.

Michael… she finally comes back with what I really didn’t want to dump on her. But that’s exactly it, isn’t it?

Fuck.

3

Colonel Michael Ram, Commanding Officer of Record, UNACT North American Operations. Now six months MIA…

No one takes particular notice of you as you walk up the steps of the old brownstone and melt through the iron locks on the security entrance. It probably looks like you’re just having a little trouble with your key, and the smells of the city buffer the sharp reek of the acid you use to cut the thick deadbolts. The jet from the injector lays in a gel that melts like hot grease through cold butter. The nanocarbon of your gauntlets saves you from any accidental splash back, which would do to flesh and bone pretty much what it does to metals.

Five seconds and you’re in. You make sure not to track any of the corrosive on your boots. With luck, it will self-neutralize before anyone steps in it or puts their bare hand on the treated surfaces.

In your glasses, Dee feeds you your directions as always, reducing the musty architecture to glowing graphics. It doesn’t even matter that most of the lights in the narrow corridors have either burned out or been taken out by opportunistic predators—the view in your glasses is a bright cartoon world. And transparent: with a turn of your head, Dee flashes Terahertz and heat scans to show you life through solid walls.

In the ground-floor apartments: You see an older woman napping in a chair by the front window in the rooms to your left, probably fallen asleep in her ritual of watching the world outside pass by. On your right, a younger woman juggles a cell call and daytime talk TV and three small children like none of the above are particularly engaging or important.

Angel of Death, you pass them by.

You decide to take the stairs even though the building has one of those antique cage elevators. Your drone-induced injuries have long since healed, and your purpose drives you to climb without noticing the weight of your layers of armor. You aren’t even breathing hard by the time you step up onto the fourth floor landing.

You scan again.

First apartment on the right is empty.

First on the left: someone sleeping in the bedroom—adult male—and Dee feeds you the intermittent rattle of apnea.

Second on the right: empty.

Second on the left: two child-sized bodies plugged into some kind of VR game—you hear the sounds of simulated gunfire and graphic swearing.

Third on the right: empty.

You give yourself a full three seconds to be annoyed that there will be children in the potential lines of fire, then decide on the expedient route. But you will need confirmation of your targets first.

You stop outside the wall of the last apartment on the left and let Dee take a deep scan. You get shown four warm bodies, all adult males. One is in the bathroom, taking his time on the toilet. Another is asleep in the single bedroom, on the floor as they apparently don’t have beds for all of them holed up here, laying low until they can safely sell what they so riskily hold. The other two are in the living room, on a sofa in front of a small entertainment unit: two feet of glowing screen and a hot CPU that tells you it’s their connection to the outside world in more ways than just TV.

Dee scans deeper, increasing the resolution on the graphic of the apartment until it almost looks like a simple sim, picking out details. Guns. Fletchers. Including the new heavy PDW Fletchers that can cut most soft armor, and can certainly perforate several of these flimsy walls and kill the children next door. You can’t let them get off a shot.

But Dee can’t get faces. The two in the living room are turned away, as is the napping man. So it tries its best to get geometry on the one in the bathroom, to give you at least one good FRS…

IDENTITY CONFIRMED: ROMAN KOENIG. ZAROVICH CONTRACTOR. WEAPONS IMPORTATION.

Dee suddenly zooms in on what looks like the inside of an interior wall. Stacked neatly between studs are a dozen of the machine-pistol-sized heavy Fletchers, and packs of high-capacity clips. It’s enough.

You decide to forgo the slop and noise of the comped Desert Eagle that Dee bought for you after you recovered from the injuries sustained when it impulsively tried to blow Zarovich to hell with you still stubbornly in the room, and instead draw your other new gun from the clamshell at the small of your back under your coat. It lacks the stainless-steel aesthetic of your old automag (or even the brute blue-steel mass of the DE), but the synthetic FN Five Seven is much lighter and much higher capacity and loaded to cut through walls and soft armor with little resistance. Dee locks your targets through the thin plaster and frame walls, even suggesting your cleanest, quickest firing solution. You take a moment to regret not facing them properly,