Nexus (48 page)

  She could surrender. Hand herself over. Plead insanity.

  No.

  She wouldn't see another child die because of her. She wouldn't be part of another Bangkok. There had to be a better way.

  Vipada was yanking at her. "This way! The cellar! We hide!"

  She'd made a promise to Wats. To protect Kade.

  Sam shook her hand free. "No, Vipada. You hide. I have to fight."

  "Then I fight with you," the young nun said. There was steel in her voice.

  Sam stared at her.

  She's older than I was when I learned to fight, Sam thought to herself.

  "OK," she told the girl. "Here's the plan."

 

Iverson fired and fired and fired. He emptied clip after clip into these orange-robed men. His squadmates did the same. Finally the press of monks eased. A few stood watching them from windows and doorways. None approached.

  Target One had gone off the scope. Iverson's HUD showed the target's last known position and vector. He broke up his team to cover possible routes, gave himself the direct pursuit.

  He dashed forward, rounded the corner of the building. He was in a triangular space between the large meditation hall on his right, the monk's quarters on his left, and the rock wall of the mountain ahead. Nothing moved on IR.

  Wait. There. A sound. A muffled curse. Iverson rushed forward, rounded the corner, saw two figures trying to clamber through an open doorway. He had them.

 

"No sign of Blackbird, sir," Jane Kim said. "Not in her cell. Team Two dispersing, searching the area."

  Nichols swore softly to himself.

  "Possible contact!" Kim called out. "Behind the buildings!"

  There, on one of the Team Two helmet cams, a woman in the middle of the passage, in nun's robes, facing away from him.

  "Take her down!" Nichols shouted. "Don't get any closer!"

  No SEAL was a match for her fourth-generation enhancements.

  A blur came in from the side of the screen. The camera turned, caught a glimpse of motion, then died. Static.

  "Fuck. It was an ambush!"

 

Sam tightened the knife-belt she'd taken from the SEAL around her waist, slung the other belt with the stun grenades and explosives and powered ascender over her shoulder, fastened it across her chest. The assault rifle was biometrically locked to the SEAL – useless to her. She turned to Vipada.

  "Ready?" she asked

  The girl nodded, wide-eyed.

  Sam interlaced her fingers. Vipada stepped up, and Sam sent her up onto the roof. The girl clambered for a hold, found one. Sam crouched and leapt, pulled herself up next to the girl. It was slick and wet here. Vipada clung to the slippery roof tiles.

  Sam looked up into the cloudy sky. As she'd hoped, this side of the roof, slanted to face the mountain, was out of view of the choppers. She began to slowly slither forward on her belly towards the peak of the roof. She needed to see what was going on out there.

 

Kade groaned in pain as Bahn half-dragged him down the walkway between the meditation hall and the stony mountainside. They reached something. A heavy wooden door. Bahn fished out keys while still supporting Kade, wrestled with the lock, opened it. Beyond the door lay a set of stone stairs, heading down into the gloom.

  
Pffft pffft click.

  Kade heard the shots. Bahn went limp, started to collapse forward. Kade tried to grab Bahn as he fell, missed. The young monk toppled forward and down the stairs with a hard thud and another thud and a sickening crack.

  Kade turned. There was a large heavily armed soldier pointing a rifle at him.

  He had nowhere left to go. He let go of the doorjamb, threw himself backwards, hoping he'd survive the fall, find some way to hide down there.

  The soldier's arm shot out, hauled him back, threw him across the walkway and into the rock wall of the mountain. His head and body collided with the hard rock. Vision faded. Stars bloomed. Pain racked his midsection. His bad leg folded under him.

  Kade flipped on Bruce Lee.

  Targeting circles blossomed in his vision. Attack and defense buttons loomed. Full auto. Click. That target. Click.

  His good right leg lashed out at the soldier's knee. The big man caught the foot, used it to spin Kade around and onto his stomach. The software brought Kade's hands up to catch him in plank pose, lashed out with the foot again. The soldier's knee came down on the small of Kade's back. Bruce Lee tried a roll and a knife hand strike to the throat of the man behind him. The soldier held him down, fended off Kade's struggles, grabbed the hand and cuffed it. Bruce Lee tried to push his hips up off the ground to create room to twist to the side. The soldier was too heavy. Bruce Lee spotted the knife on the man's belt, reached for it with his free hand, got his hand on the hilt. The soldier's hand came down painfully around Kade's wrist, twisted hard, cuffed it to his other hand.

  Kade struggled and the soldier smacked him across the back of the head, bouncing Kade's face off the wet stones of the passage. Kade felt his nose crunch, blood fountaining from it. His vision went grey again. Stars spun around him. When his wits returned, he found that his legs were bound. The soldier yelled something into a radio, tossed Kade painfully over his shoulder, and started to jog.

• • • •

"We've got Target One!" Bruce Williams exclaimed. "Iverson is headed back to Banshee One. Team falling in around him."

  "Excellent," Nichols said.

  On screen 3 Becker smiled thinly.

  "What about Blackbird?" Nichols asked.

  "The rest of Team Two just got there. Man down is hurt but still breathing. No sign of Blackbird."

  Nichols frowned. Where are you, Sam? Where are you? Don't make us hurt you.

  And don't hurt too many of us.

 

Sam froze near the top of the roof. She could hear the team below, searching for her. The wet roof tiles seemed to be shielding her from IR for the moment. Vipada clung to the slick tiles for dear life next to her. She saw Sam look at her and flashed a forced smile. That a girl.

  The courtyard was strewn with fallen monks. Dozens of them. At least fifty, sixty monks lay on the cold wet stones. Two distortions in the sky anchored two ropes that trailed down into the courtyard. There was a Navy SEAL guarding each.

  There. Motion from near the monks' quarters. Four SEALs jogged into view. The one in the middle had someone over his shoulder. Long, lean, wearing boxers and a cast. Kade. They made the rope below the closer of the two choppers, and the SEAL carrying Kade attached his ascender to the rope and zipped back up.

  I could let them take Kade… Sam thought.

  No. That was the coward's way.

  She scanned the men. At least four. Maybe more in the chopper. Armed. Augmented. American.

  They did a job a lot like hers. Could she fight them?

  Yes, if she had to.

  She waited until four of them had ascended the line, then slid down the wet roof, jumped into the courtyard, rolled and came to her feet in a sprint.

  The last SEAL had his gun over his shoulder, both hands on his ascender. He hit the button and zipped up, just as he saw her closing on him.

  There were shouts behind her. The other fireteam had come out from the maze and were in the courtyard now, tens of yards back. Tranq rounds struck the ground at her feet.

  The final SEAL reached the top of the rope on his ascender, climbed into the helicopter where they had Kade. Sam sprinted straight at the rope, slapped the ascender onto it onehanded as she ran by and jammed her thumb onto the ascend button. The device yanked her up by one arm, even as her momentum swung her out into a wide pendulum arc. She pulled a stun grenade from her stolen belt, felt its cold weight in her palm.

  A SEAL reappeared above her, assault rifle pointed in her direction. Sam jerked with her whole body as he fired, perturbed the pendulum swing as his shots ripped though the space she'd just occupied, flung the grenade with all her might. The SEAL saw her throw, ducked back into the chopper for cover. The stun grenade arced fast and hard through the air, hit the edge of the doorway, exploded with a loud bang just outside the open door of the Banshee.

  The ascender whined as it zipped her up towards the chopper above.

 

"Sir, we've got Blackbird. She's attacking Banshee One! She's on the rope, headed up."

  "Call 'em back," Becker said from the screen. "Get her in Banshee One, seal it, subdue her en route to the
Boca Raton
."

  Nichols nodded. "You heard that, Jane. Tell 'em to let her onboard, then keep her there."

  "Roger that."

  "And get Team Two up on Banshee Two. We've got what we came for."

 
 

The black Opal came over the final rise in time to see the SEALs disappearing into the stealthed helicopter.

  The woman was dashing towards the chopper Kade was in. Feng gunned the engine for the gates to the compound a hundred meters away. The Opal surged forward, burst through the ornate bronze and iron gate at one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, spun and skidded to a halt under the pendulum arc of one of the ropes. A slim figure in white nun's robes was zipping up the rope under power.

  The chopper canted forward, the quiet whup-whup of its blades grew slightly louder, and it began to move forward and up. The rope was swinging back at them, but the bottom of its arc was rising as the helicopter picked up altitude. The end of the rope was going to hit their position at ground level, at chest height, at head height, at three meters, four, rising…

  Feng slammed open the door, jumped onto the hood of the car, then the roof, took two steps and leapt out and up into the air, more than three meters up and three meters out. He hung in mid-air for a split second, one arm extended, a man in mid-leap, legs akimbo, detached from the earth, soaring through the night sky at a slender line that was swinging back towards him, but rising ever higher as it did…

  Feng snagged the very end of the rope with his black-gloved left hand as it hit the bottom of its arc. He roared in triumph. The Confucian Fist hung there for a moment, swinging beneath the chopper. Then he brought his gloved right hand up to join his left. He grinned up savagely at the chopper, a maniacal Asian man in a black chauffeur's suit, and began to climb hand over hand.

 

Sam reached the chopper, used the last of the momentum from the powered ascender to flip herself up and in through the wide door.

  She ducked as something whistled through the air above her head. A SEAL kicked at her in the tight space and she dodged, spinning to the side. Another smashed at her with the butt of his rifle and she threw him into the man behind her.

  One of the SEALs pounded a red control and the doors she'd come through slammed shut.

  Oh, fuck.

 

"We've got her," Bruce Williams said. "Canary and Blackbird both on Banshee One, headed back our way. Banshee Two is twenty seconds from loaded."

  "Combat! Combat!" Jane Kim yelled. "Two Royal Thai Air Force fighters inbound. They're hailing, demanding that the Banshees both set down."

  "Lose 'em in the clouds," Becker said from screen 3. "Get our choppers back."

 

Shu reached out to the car, subsumed control of its electronic warfare capabilities, activated the high-gain directional antenna embedded in the roof. Through it, she felt around the edges of the choppers' electronic presence. Where was the way in? Every system had a hole. Every system. She just needed to find this one. The Americans were jamming local transmissions. Shu routed around that, flipped to a frequency far outside normal bands, connected with her higher self. Shu swam in a luminous storm of data. Her higher self dug deep into top-secret Chinese military and intelligence databases for more about the XH-83 Banshee. Where was that hole? Where was it?

 

Sam whirled in the tiny space. Kade was bound and gagged in the corner, his one eye wide. Two of the SEALs were down, apparently dazed by the grenade. The other four came at her.

  
Use their bodies against them
, Nakamura had taught her.
One can defeat many.

  She let her Wing Chun take control of her. No drug clouded her mind. No rage from other minds confused her. She let her practice speak through her body.

  She was a stalk of bamboo. She was a summer storm. She was a whirlwind.

  She was made for this.

  They came at her with fists and legs and knives and rifles used like clubs. Four of them.

  Spin, dodge, strike.

  Take the knife away.

  Dodge, spin, sweep.

  Get that one off his feet.

  Spin, spin, block.

  Lure that one in close.

  Strike, spin, throw.

  She sent one of them hurtling into another at point-blank range. Heads collided. They went down in a tangle of limbs.

  Block, block, dodge.

  The other two closed around her, backed her towards a corner.

  Kick, feint, roll.

  She came up free, behind them. They were fast. She was faster.

  Kick, spin, strike.

  One of them went down. Another came back up from the tangled pile.

  Block, spin, throw.

  She rammed one into another, made them her puppets. One was back up on his feet. All the rest were down, trying to get back up.

  Spin, block…

  An explosion sounded outside.