Rogue (19 page)

‘I don’t know you,’ Otto replied, and shot him.

Nero watched the feed from the surveillance satellite, powerless to do anything about the events unfolding on the screen. The thermal imaging had shown the three helicopters move into position and drop off nearly forty men, who had closed in and surrounded the area where Raven’s Shroud had been located. He had watched as Raven and Wing were taken down, and he watched now as two stretchers were carried towards the waiting helicopters.

‘How far out are Colonel Francisco and his team?’ Nero asked.

‘Remaining flight time at current velocity is forty-five minutes and sixteen seconds,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied. Nero had missed the AI’s effortless precision, but as far as he was concerned, that simply translated as ‘too far away to help’.

‘Instruct him to stand off upon arrival. That area is too well defended to attempt an extraction now,’ Nero said, knowing that the Colonel would not like that. ‘Have the new tactical Shrouds prepped for launch. I want them there as soon as possible. Tell Chief Lewis that I want his best men on board. Any update on the position of Cypher’s Shroud?’ he finished.

‘Negative,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied. ‘Its tracking transponder has been disabled, and our inability to detect it using radar or satellite imaging suggests that it is fully cloaked.’

Nero had expected no less from Cypher. A psychopath he might be, stupid he most certainly was not.

‘There is a danger in allowing Raven’s Shroud to fall into threat agents’ hands,’ H.I.V.E.mind reminded him. ‘It employs proprietary G.L.O.V.E. technology. The navigation system is also a risk – locational data regarding H.I.V.E. is stored within it. The data is heavily encrypted, but that might prove to be inadequate protection against Otto. Destruct sequence is primed and ready.’

It was not the navigational data on the Shroud’s computers that Nero was worried about. It was the knowledge in Natalya’s head and the unspeakable lengths that Trent might go to in order to extract it.

‘Do it,’ Nero ordered.

Ghost stood watching at the edge of the abandoned lot as the medical team passed her with the two stretchers.

‘You did well,’ she said as Otto approached.

‘It was too easy,’ Otto said. He chose not to tell her about the faint scream he had heard inside his head when he had pulled the trigger. ‘He said his name was Wing.’

‘Yes, I think I’ve met him before,’ Ghost said. ‘Was this the G.L.O.V.E. tech you tracked here?’ Ghost held out Raven’s damaged Blackbox.

‘No,’ Otto replied, tilting his head to one side for a moment as if listening to something, ‘but that thing’s tracking transponder is still active. You might want to destroy it.’

Ghost dropped the device to the floor and stamped on it with her boot heel, smashing it to pieces.

‘All quiet now,’ Otto said with a smile. ‘No, whatever I sensed was bigger. Hold on a moment.’ He closed his eyes and reached out with his abilities. ‘There you are,’ he said quietly.

Fifty metres away, on the other side of the lot, there was a shimmering in the air and then Raven’s Shroud uncloaked.

‘Excellent,’ Ghost said. ‘We’ve waited a long time to get our hands on one of these.’

Otto felt something pass through the command pathways of the Shroud and his eyes shot open.

‘Get down!’ he yelled, pushing Ghost behind the wall of a nearby building. A moment later the Shroud was completely destroyed by an enormous explosion, blazing debris scattering in all directions.

‘How annoying,’ Ghost said, looking out from behind the wall at the smouldering crater that was all that remained of the drop ship.

Otto felt an odd sensation for a moment, like an echo of the destroyed Shroud’s systems just at the edge of his senses. He dismissed it as a glitch.

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ he said. ‘Once H.I.V.E. is ours, we’ll have as many as we need.’

Several kilometres away, high in the sky, Cypher watched as the Shroud that was on the ground exploded. The flare of the detonation whited out the sensors in the high-definition camera mounted on the nose of his own drop ship for a few seconds before they normalised. He tracked the camera over to the helicopter several blocks away that was currently loading two stretchers on board, zoomed in as far as the camera would allow and studied the figures on the gurneys. One was Raven and the other was his son. Cypher could not tell anything about the boy’s injuries from the grainy image, but he hoped for the sake of whoever had done this that he was alive. Whatever Wing’s condition, there was no way he was leaving him in their hands.

‘When that helicopter takes off you are going to follow it. Stay cloaked and don’t get too close. If you lose track of it, I’ll put a bullet in your skull. Understood?’

The pilot just nodded, swallowing nervously. Cypher climbed down the ladder to the three girls handcuffed to the passenger seats that ran along the walls of the cargo compartment. If looks could kill, he would have been a smouldering pile of ash on the floor, he thought to himself with some amusement.

‘Ladies, we are taking an unscheduled diversion,’ Cypher said with a smile. ‘Your continued cooperation would be appreciated.’

‘Do we have any choice?’ Shelby asked.

‘No, of course not,’ Cypher replied, ‘but you’re all still alive at the moment, aren’t you? Let’s see if we can keep it that way, shall we?’

The truth was that although he had disabled the Shroud’s tracking transponder, he had no way of knowing if Nero had some other way of tracking their position. At least with these three on board it was unlikely that Nero would just send an interceptor to shoot them down.

‘Wing’s never going to forgive you for this, you know,’ Laura said angrily.

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ Cypher said.

‘He’ll throw you off that bridge when you come to it, more like,’ Shelby said with a nasty smile.

‘Yeah, Wing’s going to . . .’ Lucy said, but fell silent as Cypher pointed his pistol straight at her head and cocked the hammer.

‘There is an old saying that children should be seen and not heard,’ Cypher said, his smile vanishing, ‘that applies particularly to you, my little Contessa. In fact, I think we’re all going to play a new game called first to speak gets their brain spattered all over the bulkhead.’

The girls all stared back at him in hate-filled silence.

‘Excellent, you all seem to have grasped the rules,’ Cypher said, lowering the gun. ‘How Nero puts up with you twenty-four hours a day, I really do not know.’

He pulled the device that he had built to neutralise Overlord from his pocket and tossed it on to the seat next to him.

‘We won’t be needing that any more,’ he said, smiling at the girls. ‘You know, I really think it would have worked, but without Wing’s half of the medallion it’s useless; it would have almost certainly killed the boy anyway. And in any case, this –’ he held up the pistol he had shot the H.I.V.E. guard dead with – ‘is much more effective.’

‘Raven is on her way back to you,’ Ghost said, her image jumping slightly on the video screen as she walked. ‘She’s injured, but she’ll live – for a while at least.’

‘That is excellent news,’ Trent said, sitting back in his chair. ‘I knew I could rely on you.’

‘We almost had our hands on one of Nero’s stealth drop ships too,’ Ghost continued, ‘but it was remotely destroyed. We did get one unexpected bonus though – we captured one of the H.I.V.E. brats as well.’

‘Good,’ Trent replied. ‘Nero is unusually protective of them, and one can never have too much leverage.’

‘And there’s someone here who wants to speak to you,’ she said, handing her communicator to someone. The screen was suddenly filled with the podgy, moustachioed face of a very angry man.

‘Señor Trent,’ the man said angrily.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mister . . .’

‘My name is Luis Fernandez de Souza and I happen to be the chief of police.’

‘What can I do for you, Señor de Souza?’ Trent replied casually.

‘You can start by explaining to me why a H.O.P.E. team has just mounted a tactical operation in my city without anyone informing me first,’ de Souza said angrily, his face getting redder.

‘I do not need to inform you,’ Trent replied. ‘We were neutralising a terrorist threat. The same person, in fact, who was responsible for the incident at Mount Corcovado earlier today. If you have a problem with that I suggest you take it up with your superiors and stop wasting my time.’

‘I report directly to the President, Mr Trent – you want I should take this up with him?’

‘By all means. It won’t make the slightest bit of difference.’

‘Just who the hell do you people think you are?!’ de Souza yelled furiously. ‘You have no jurisdiction here.’

‘We are H.O.P.E., Señor de Souza,’ Trent replied, a sudden nasty edge to his voice. ‘We have jurisdiction
everywhere
.’