Daemon

polycarbonate laminate that could stop a rifle bullet. A score of AutoM8s now surrounded Gragg’s BMW in close order like a slavering pack of wolves. Gragg shook his head sadly and shouted at the windshield. ‘What now, crazy man? You’re on an armored car! What were you thinking?’
    Beyond the windshield the rider had reached down to his shoe and now brandished a killing knife as he braced himself with both feet and his other hand.
    Gragg laughed. ‘Look out. He’s got a knife!’
    The rider turned, jammed the knife under the bottom edge of a satellite uplink node, and pried upward. The node peeled off with a shriek of bending metal.
    The Voice came over the stereo system.
‘Uplink … one … of … twelve … has failed.’
    Gragg felt the rage building. ‘You son of a bitch! You’re going for a ride now!’
    With a wave of his gloved hands, the BMW went into a power slide and the rider was nearly flung off.
    *
    The Major’s chopper came in low and fast over the industrial area, banking so that nothing but brick factory buildings were visible in the left windows. The Major clipped a monkey cord onto his harness and gave it two test pulls. He struggled to his feet as the chopper leveled off. The old wound in his knee was already acting up. An image of a mortar shell landing next to him in a patch of Nicaraguan mud flashed in his mind.
Ancient history
.
    ‘There they are, Major!’ The pilot pointed.
    Below, the Major could see a red BMW screeching around drunkenly as it raced down the street, alternately braking and accelerating while a man tried to retain his grip on the roof. Twenty more vehicles swirled around the car, moving like a single organism. More vehicles converged on the site from all directions at high speed along cross streets, smashing into the occasional unlucky motorist. People fled for their lives. He shook his head.
What a goddamned mess
. How had this gotten so out of control? Behind him columns of black smoke rose here and there.
    Let’s give the city something else to look at
. The Major pulled his L3 cell phone from his jacket and spoke to the pilot as he started dialing. ‘It’s days like this that I almost miss working for the government.’
    The pilot’s voice came over the closed-circuit headset.
‘Almost.’
    The Major laughed. The line picked up. ‘Project Hazmat.’ The Major turned to look back through the atmospheric haze at Building Twenty-Nine in the distance. ‘Demolition.’ A pause. ‘6-N-G-7-3-H-Z-6.’ Another pause. ‘On my mark. T-minus ten … nine …’
    ‘We’re almost there, Nat.’ Ross glanced back at Building Twenty-Nine, three hundred yards behind them now. It was burning somewhere inside, and the flaming wreckage of AutoM8s around it partially obscured it with smoke.
    Philips spat out salt water. ‘I think I’m really blind.’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘What if that was a ZM-87 Laser Blinder? My retinas would be gone.’
    ‘Doesn’t make sense. Why permanently blind a target you’re about to hack to pieces? It’s probably meant to stun victims. I’d—’
    Suddenly a wave of pressure blasted across their backs. A visible shockwave rippled through the atmosphere and pressed down around them – followed close on by a resounding
BOOM
that they felt more than heard.
    They both went facedown in the water as the depths beneath them glowed orange and filled with the sound of splashing boulders and thousands of rock fragments. As they came up sucking for air, rocks and small boulders were landing all around them. Their ears were ringing.
    Ross covered her with his body as the rocks continued to rain down. He turned to see a towering mushroom cloud roiling up from the jagged tops of Building Twenty-Nine’s walls. The structure was a pool of flame with refrigerator-sized blocks of reinforced concrete still tumbling end over end across the runway. Burning debris trailing streamers of smoke sailed down from a thousand feet overhead. Metal sheets spun crazily as they fell. ‘Jesus Christ!’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘The building. It’s
gone
!’
    From his perch on the BMW’s roof, Merritt glanced back at a black mushroom cloud rising behind him above the factory buildings. ‘Son of a bitch …’
Later
.
    Suddenly Loki accelerated the car, pulling Merritt down onto the trunk, where he stopped himself from rolling off by pushing his foot against the metal knob on the right rear corner. He grabbed on to the lip of the trunk lid.
    Where the