WEST SIDE – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. It was exactly what Task Force 29 wanted, a covert location to serve as a temporary base of operations inside the city limits. The swell of the Detroit River slapped against the side of the long, broad barge

The swell of the Detroit River slapped against the side of the long, broad barge, but it sat so low in the water that the motion barely translated through the rust-caked hull. Heavy black tarps formed a tent across the barge’s upper deck, a recent addition that covered all that was taking place on board. Concealed along the rows of derelict store yards under the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, the barge was nondescript and forgettable.

It was exactly what Task Force 29 wanted, a covert location to serve as a temporary base of operations inside the city limits, but Jarreau wasn’t comfortable with it. The site had been put together by an advance unit with little time to prepare, and that made the Alpha team commander feel like he was starting the operation on the back foot. It was just one more thing on a long list of details that didn’t sit right with him. The mission brief he had been given on the flight in from Los Angeles was terse to say the least, as if someone high up at Interpol operational command wanted the job done fast, with no questions asked and no opportunity to think too hard about it.

He looked up at the flexing covers as the wind ripped across them, catching sight of the dark, winged shape they obscured. Below in the hull of the barge, elements of a mobile command center and staging area had been set up, where the rest of his squad could gear up and make ready.

He frowned. It wasn’t that Christian Jarreau wasn’t used to taking orders – he’d been military before he was with Interpol, after all – but there was something direct and cold in the tone of his standing instructions. He couldn’t shake the sense that there was more to this operation than he was being told. He wondered if Jim Miller felt the same way; but all NSN conferences were monitored by HQ, so asking that question out in the open would draw attention he wasn’t looking for. He pushed the thought away and set himself to concentrating on the work ahead.

Jarreau grabbed a can of self-heating GeeEmGee coffee and carried it over to the makeshift operations area, where a flat map screen displayed an aerial view of the city. He used the can as a marker, placing it on the riverfront where the barge was moored, and leaned over, peering at the grid of streets. Detroit had been a fractured city for decades, but in the past year it had slipped to the ragged edge of lawlessness and near-total collapse. While that meant less in the way of local law enforcement to potentially obstruct their operations, it also meant more unpredictability. Whole sectors of downtown were currently under gang control, and that made finding his marks all the more difficult.

He studied the screen. There were a dozen locations of interest that had already been entered into the mission database as potential sites for the smugglers to meet or store the hardware they were trafficking. Jarreau cast a practiced eye over them, winnowing out the ones that he knew were unlikely, highlighting others that seemed like good leads.

After a while, he reached to a margin band at the edge of the map screen, pulling out a dozen digital ‘pages’ to fan them out over the table like a hand of cards. The face of Sheppard, the ruthless gunrunner at the top of their hit list, glared back at him. The ex-Belltower mercenary’s brutish swagger set Jarreau’s teeth on edge. Thugs like this guy considered themselves as apex predators in the clandestine world of black ops. It didn’t matter if it was true or not – it only mattered that in any given circumstance Sheppard and his crew were likely to shoot first and damn the collateral damage.

“Boss?” He turned as one of his team came walking in his direction. “Sitrep. I got remotes deployed all around us, sensors and video are up.” Seth Chen was nominally Alpha’s senior field technician, a former member of the US Coast Guard’s cyber-ops force who had traded in shoreside base duties for something more challenging. Short, with olive skin and emerald augmetic eyes, he always seemed too flippant to Jarreau, but the tech had never let him down on a mission, and that granted him a lot of latitude. “No sign that we stirred up any interest coming in. If anything changes…”

“We follow orders and we won’t be here long enough to worry about it,” Jarreau told him. “Locate, isolate, neutralize. That’s the plan.”

“Copy that,” nodded Chen. “Info-sec and data intrusion tools are coming online as we speak. I’ll be in the city data-grid in the next ten.” He gestured toward the image of Sheppard and his men, and gave a wry smirk. “There he is. Handsome lad. Looks like a decent citizen, wouldn’t you say?”

“Think so? We find the guy, I’ll send you in to talk to him. Rest of us’ll go for a beer.”

“You’d put me in harm’s way?” Chen made a mock-sad face. “Really, boss? You realize how many hearts would break if I was hurt in the line of duty?”

Jarreau shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t want to upset your mother.”

“Vande would never forgive you,” insisted the tech. “You know she’s got a thing for me.”

“In your dreams,” said Jarreau’s second-in-command, as she strode out of the shadows. She made a dismissive motion in Chen’s direction. “Go on now. The adults are talking.”

“Okay, but don’t beg, Raye,” said the tech, retreating away. “It’s embarrassing for both of us.”

If Vande found Chen’s manner even the slightest bit amusing, she showed absolutely no sign of it. “New intel dump just off the comsat from Director Manderley’s office in Lyon,” said the woman, placing a data stick on the surface of the map screen. The display immediately interfaced with the stick and new pages of intelligence were dealt out across the panel. Jarreau saw the Interpol sigil atop the first page and frowned as he saw the directive written below. “Mandate for use of lethal force against all targets is authorized and highly recommended,” Vande went on, reading the words aloud.

“We’re supposed to be a police force, not an assassination team,” Jarreau said grimly. “What happened to arrest and detain for questioning?”

Vande paused, processing her answer. “You’ve seen the files on Sheppard and his associates, sir. They’re very dangerous, they will be heavily armed and they don’t show restraint. I’d suggest that we start putting together a long-range intervention package. Snipers for an initial strike with a sweep team to deal with any stragglers.”

“Shoot on sight?” said Jarreau. “We don’t even know for sure who we’re dealing with, and HQ has already hung out the red flag. Those orders might neutralize our immediate problem with the smugglers, but it gets us no access to the rest of the network.” He shook his head. “I’m not okay with this.”

“With respect, sir…” Vande paused again, clearing her throat. “I see where you’re coming from, but do you think for one second that Sheppard and his merc friends are going to shy away from gunning down any one of us? We don’t know what forces he’s already got in play here in Detroit, but I’m willing to bet they’re just as dangerous. And they have the defender’s advantage.”

Jarreau had more to say, but his train of thought was broken by Chen, who came back at a run from his panel on the other side of the cargo bay. “Boss, you need to see this.” He had a digital tablet in his hand, and with a flick of his wrist he ported the data across to the map screen. “I got a subroutine running, digging through all the local PD and security webs looking for anything hinky, specifically stuff that fits the profile of our bad guys.”

The map and the data pages folded away, and now the screen was showing grainy footage captured from a camera. Jarreau made out the shapes of parked cars and flat concrete walls. “What’s this from?”

“Emergency alert exload from a Tarvos Security Box-Guard patrolling a building in the business district,” Chen said, his words coming machine-gun fast. “Get this; the building is the former corporate headquarters of Sarif Industries.”

“That’s on our watch list,” said Vande.

Jarreau nodded. “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”

Chen advanced the recording and Jarreau found himself looking at a blurry still of a man with dark hair and an angular face, a gun in his hand frozen in the moment of discharge. “Judging from the robot’s telemetry feed, it looks like he was using electromagnetic pulse rounds,” said the tech. “Those kind of bullets are not what some ragged-ass street scavenger could afford.”

“He moves like he’s trained,” offered Vande. “The face is a new one, what I can see of it…”

“Not one of Sheppard’s guys?” said Chen.

“That we know of,” Vande corrected.

The video playback spun on, the point of view slewing around wildly as the Box-Guard tried to terminate the intruder without success. Then finally the man was fully in the frame again, throwing an object toward the machine. A moment later, there was a flash of detonation and the recording went dark.

“I saw something in the background,” said Jarreau.

“Sure did.” Chen nodded, and spooled back along the video’s timeline. “Here and here.” He excerpted more stills, these showing two muddy, shadowed figures. One was partly lit by the glow of a portable screen, and the other was stocky with hulking, oversized shoulders.

“Augmentations,” Jarreau said, almost to himself. “Maybe military or industrial models. Can we get a facial recognition match on any of these jokers?”

“It’ll take me a while,” admitted the tech. “There’s not a lot to go on. But if I can assemble a three-d model, we might be able to run them through the usual databases.”

Vande leaned forward and tapped the image of the man with the gun. “Concentrate on this guy.”

Chen shot Jarreau a questioning look, but the team commander confirmed her order with a nod. “On top of that, I want you to run a hard target search on Sarif Industries and whatever holdings they have in the city. If this is connected to our boy Sheppard’s deal…” He trailed off. His gut instinct told him there was something there; the break-in seemed like too much of a coincidence not to have some link to the smuggling network. “We need to know about it,” he concluded.

Chen accepted his orders with a nod, and walked away. Jarreau looked up and found Vande watching him. “Armed and dangerous,” she repeated, tapping the image again. “Like I said.”

SIX

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