Without warning

Baumer came awake instantly and rolled out from under the falling corpse, crying out as he did so. He launched himself at Caitlin’s knees and knocked her back off her feet with a crash. She drove the syringe into his neck and squeezed, smashing the butt of her pistol up against his head for good measure. It didn’t knock him out, but it stunned him enough to allow her to piston a boot into his chest and push him away from her.

‘Crusaders,’ he shouted. ‘Hurry, they’re here!’

He tried to launch himself at her again, but the fast-acting drug had already robbed him of any coordination and he fell like a drunk into a heap at her feet.

‘Not so tough now, are you, you rapist motherfucker?’ she said before hitting the FTT button on her headset and speaking loudly. ‘I’m blown, Rolland. I got Baumer. Third floor, first room on the left coming up. Possible civilian above us, armed. Hostiles below. Lacan is awake and unsecured.’

‘You…’ muttered Baumer mushily as he collapsed into a drugged stupor.

Caitlin heard the French commandos open fire on the ground floor. The guard out the front would be dropping to the ground, dead before he hit. Below her, the sounds of riot and tumult erupted as men awoke and reached for their guns, unsure of what was happening, but certain they were in mortal peril.

She holstered the silenced pistol and pulled her personal weapon around on its strap, an HK MP5. Feet thundered up the staircase below her and she darted from the room, all concern at stealth now departed. The house had no power, but torches and electric lamps dazzled in her NVGs. She loosened off two bursts from the submachine-gun down the stairs at the bobbing, moving sources of light. Two of the torches tumbled back down, while the third stopped and dropped as the man carrying it let go.

Fire came back up at her, automatic and single shot, describing beautiful emerald traces in her enhanced night vision. She stripped a hand grenade from her belt, while firing one-handed down the staircase, pulled the pin with her teeth – painfully cracking a filling as she did – and tossed the small bomb into the maelstrom below. She closed her eyes, backing away and firing blindly.

The grenade exploded with a roar, causing the spike of pain already drilling into her head to grow cruel thorns that raked at the back of her eyes and drove jagged spears deep into her brain stem.

Caitlin pitched over and vomited. ‘Son of a bitch,’ she grunted, struggling to regain her feet.

The volume of fire downstairs was deafening, drowned out only by the deep bass percussion of exploding grenades on the ground floor. The boards beneath her shook and shuddered so much she feared they might collapse. And still she couldn’t get up. Her head spun as though she’d stepped off a fairground ride, and she could not control her weapon anymore. Two figures appeared at the top of the stairs, one of them the squat, powerful outline of the man she called Dr Noo.

He raised his weapon at her, a FAMAS assault rifle, and cried, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ - just before his face exploded and he toppled backwards onto the man behind him.

‘Quick, come with me!’

A voice, coming from above her… It was unfamiliar, but unmistakably American.

‘Who the fuck…?’ She gagged and choked again on a mouthful of bile, toppling sideways as she tried to stand. ‘Can’t go,’ she protested. ‘My target.’

‘Leave him!’

The stranger, the man upstairs, leapt down beside her, stripped the MP5 from her grip and wrested a fresh magazine from the utility belt. He swapped out the mag in the dark without any trouble and moved over to the stairs to fire down on any approaching attackers. Three more grenades exploded in close succession and the uproar of automatic fire became unbearable.

Caitlin felt herself falling away into darkness.

* * * *

50 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

No civilised man should ever be awake at this hour, thought Jed, as he waited in the darkened office for his last meeting of the night. Not unless he had a bottle of good champagne in one hand and a couple of exotic dancers in the other.

He stayed away from the window by habit now, but there wasn’t that much to see. The downtown city centre was in darkness, save for a few buildings running on generators, one of them his own hotel, a few blocks away to the south. The never-ending caucus would still be in session there, his delegates – he did think of them as his now – working the phones and counting heads as they attempted to stave off defeat in the morning’s vote.