Janus Trap. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ burst. The 9 mm bullets raced to their target, hitting the diver’s faceplate and shattering the strengthened plastic mask in an explosion of hard splinters.

      Kane watched as the man ducked and clawed at the mask, his companions turning to look at him. From up there, Kane couldn’t hear the man’s howls over the sounds of gunfire, but he assured himself that his victim was cursing their unseen attacker even now. A grim smile crossed Kane’s lips at the thought, and he pulled himself back from the edge of the crates, rolled to one side and made his way to a new location as a hail of bullets slapped against the edge of the uppermost crate.

      On ground level between the towers of crates, Grant rushed back toward Ohio Blue, his dark eyes assessing the squad of men in scuba gear. Even as he watched, the rearmost man took Kane’s bullet to his face and dropped to his knees, clawing at the shattered remains of his faceplate.

      Placing his back flush to the crates, Grant scanned the area until he spotted Ohio Blue crouching behind her recliner, muzzle-flashes reflected in the sapphire blue of her dress. She was too far away and too out in the open for him to reach safely; he would need a distraction.

      “Kane, Brigid,” Grant whispered as he activated his Commtact, a top-of-the-line communication device that had been recovered from Redoubt Yankee years before. Commtacts featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was subcutaneously embedded in the mastoid bone. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were picked up by the auditory canals, and dermal sensors transmitted the electronic signals directly through the skull casing. Even a deaf user would still be able to hear normally, in a fashion, using the Commtact. The Commtact didn’t need sound to be activated; it could pick up and interpret subvocalized speech if necessary, making it an ideal device for sneak work. Permanent usage of the Commtact involved a minor surgical procedure, something many of the Cerberus staff were understandably squeamish about, and so their use remained at field-test stage for now. However, the communication device was considered an essential tool for Kane and other field teams.

      “The trader’s in trouble,” Grant explained. “I can’t reach her. Any ideas?”

      “Be careful,” Kane instructed over the linked transmission. “They’re wearing some kind of armor that deflects bullets.”

      Brigid’s voice came over Grant’s auditory receiver after a moment. “I’m just getting in position now,” she said. “Going to give our guests a little light show.”

      Grant knew what that meant, and he pulled a pair of sunglasses from the inside pocket of his coat as Brigid spoke, following up by inserting tiny earplugs into his ears.

      “Count us in, Baptiste,” Kane said in a low voice over the Commtact as he got into place above them.

      Brigid Baptiste was hunkered down in the shadows of the towering crates, close to one of the high walls of the boathouse. She had placed a pair of dark lenses over her own eyes and wore earplugs to muffle sound, just as Grant did. Her head was steady as she watched the group of frogmen swarming around the main area of the building, shooting the few remaining guards as they approached the recliner where Ohio Blue cowered. Swiftly, Brigid assessed the floorboards between her and her target—they were rough in places, and a little warped here and there with damp, but they were basically flat and smooth enough for her purpose.

      She drew her arm back, rolling the three silver spheres in her hand for a moment, assessing their weight as she gave one last look at the scene. Then, her arm arced forward, low to the floor, and she released the three globes as her arm continued its fluid sweep ahead. Released, the tiny silver spheres rolled along the floorboards, bumping across the rough chinks in the wood as they rushed toward the recliner.

      As the spheres rolled steadily across the floor, Brigid engaged her Commtact once again. “Three, two, one,” she whispered, narrowing her eyes and turning her head away from what she knew was about to happen.

      For a moment, nothing did. The three spheres rolled to the open area beside the recliner, their momentum dwindling. Two of the intruders in scuba gear had spotted them, and one shouted a query as he stepped ahead and placed his foot in the path of the first sphere. “What the fu—”

      His words were lost in the explosion of sound and light that followed as the flash-bangs detonated.

      Atop the crate tower, Kane surged forward, his Sin Eater held low. Even through the polymer lenses of his darkened glasses, the dazzling explosive burned into his retinas, and he blinked the pattern away as he leaped from the high crate and out into the open.

      A moment later, Kane dropped into the open area of the boathouse, the Sin Eater blasting a lethal arc of 9 mm steel before him. He landed amid the frogmen with a heavy thump of boot soles against wooden floorboards, then swiftly recovered into a fighter’s crouch as he began targeting the men in scuba gear. The sound of the Sin Eater seemed dulled by the ringing in his ears that the flash-bang had wrought, but his earplugs had helped protect him from the worst of it.

      The flash-bang was a miniature explosive device, designed purely to shock and startle an opponent. The explosive was all sound and light, but the charge itself was so tiny as to be worthless as a demolition device. The flash-bang was standard equipment for Kane and his team, who often saw a benefit to using nonlethal force to restrain or completely halt an enemy.

      The divers were all pulling at their masks in their sudden blindness, and several fired shots at random as they struggled to recover. To one side of the recliner, Ohio Blue was sitting on her backside, an enticing sweep of bare leg visible where her dress had fallen about her. Her blue-gloved hand was held over her eyes and her shoulders heaved as though she was crying.

      Off to Kane’s left, Brigid was securing the area, her TP-9 raised as she checked every nook and cranny before moving closer to the main action. A few of Ohio’s guards were still alive, but they seemed to be wounded almost to a man. Tough to stand toe to toe with an enemy who could shrug off bullets, Kane realized.

      Like a charging rhino, Grant joined Kane from his hiding place among the crates, fists swinging at the closest two frogmen as they staggered about blindly. His blows connected with solid finality, and the two men fell to the floor.

      Kane turned to Grant and nodded his approval. “Not exactly subtle,” he shouted to be heard over the earplugs he assumed that the other man still wore.

      Pulling the handblaster from another frogman and throwing it aside, Grant lifted the man off his feet and tossed him against the nearest stack of crates with bone-jarring force. “Their vests shrug off bullets, right?” Grant explained. “What was I supposed to do?”

      Kane aimed a stream of bullets at another frogman’s head, blasting his faceplate to splinters. “Aim for the head?” he suggested.

      Grant’s leg kicked out, slamming into the gut of a blinded diver, knocking him backward with a shriek. “Sure. Now you tell me.”

      Brigid joined them then, looking around as Kane and Grant made short work of the final few intruders. She crouched beside Ohio Blue, placing a steadying arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Can you hear me?” she shouted, close to the woman’s left ear.

      Ohio nodded, looking in the direction of Brigid’s voice with vacant, bloodshot eyes.

      “We’re getting out of here,” Brigid explained as she helped the trader to her feet.

      There was a noise from the far end of the boathouse, and all three Cerberus warriors spun to see the front of the building—the wall where the exit door was located—cave in as a heavily armored СКАЧАТЬ