âHEADS UP, PEOPLE. WE HAVE ACTIVITY!â
On the shots from the Hubbell, the Stony Man team could see the thrusters were firing on a dozen Thors, a lambent purple glow of ionized gas visible as the thick steel bars started accelerating toward the world below.
âWho are they attacking?â Tokaido asked anxiously. His hands itched to send out a warning to the target, maybe save some lives. But he knew it would be pointless. The Thors literally struck like lightning. There wasnât time for a warning.
âSomebody in the North American continent,â Bear stated honestly. âHell, maybe us.â Reaching out, the burly man slapped a button on the console.
âBarbara, you better sound the alarm,â Kurtzman said in a deceptively calm voice. âWe may have incoming.â
Paris, France
Lightning flashed in the stormy sky as Alex Davis staggered through the filthy alley. Holding his right hand to his wound, he flinched at the burst of light and tightened his grip on the Beretta pistol in his left. But there was nobody in sight. The clouds opened and down came the rain. The NSA agent was drenched in seconds, the downpour of cool water slightly reviving him.
Coming out of the alley, the dying agent paused at the sidewalk, trying to focus his eyes through the torrential deluge. Only a few people were in sight, all of them racing through the puddles for the safety of a store or a cab. Nobody seemed to be looking his way.
Jerking his head, Davis forced himself awake. If he went to sleep now, heâd never wake up again. Leaving the alley, he lurched across the street and into another alley, a shortcut that kept him off the dangerous sidewalks.
When Davis had joined the NSA, heâd been told that field agents had a long life expectancy. But years of service had taught him the truth. Death stalked everybody in the intelligence game these days, and the only way to survive was to shoot first and ask questions later. He had paused, unwilling to take a human life without direct provocation, and now he was a walking dead man. Davis knew it in his bones.
That morning heâd arranged for a meet with one of his âgroundhogs,â somebody who could feed the agency news from the street. Not the public streets, but the back-alley gossip, the hushed news from the French underworld. Blackmail, weapons smuggling, kidnappings, arson and murder. The NSA agent did nothing about the crimes unless they affected America. He simply took in the raw data and wrote a report for his superiors. Machines could tap into cell phone calls very easily these days, the electronic warriors were doing most of work nowadays. But it was spies, moles, turncoats and stool pigeons who kept America safe. People talking. Old-fashioned spy work. Human intelligence.
Everything had seemed aboveboard when Davis met the snitch at the train station. The woman was mature, sixty, maybe seventy, but still maintained her good looks. She was demure in a pink dress with black trim. Only the smile was cold and impersonal. Youâd never guess that she ran dozens of brothels across the great metropolis, establishments that catered to the criminal hierarchy, clients who liked to talk afterward. Davis had slipped the madam a book with money stuffed between the pages and sheâd given him a newspaper. Heâd barely had time to glance at the message taped to the book review page when a train arrived, somebody shoved a shotgun through the window in a crash of glass and opened fire. The madam hit the tiled wall of the station in a red spray, her ruined body crumpling to the ground. Taking cover behind a vending machine, Davis had withdrawn his side arm, but was unable to return fire because of all the civilians.