In Death 09 - Loyalty in Death

accommodating with the next target.
    Our demands must be met within forty-eight hours. To those initial demands, we now demand a payment of sixty million dollars in bearer bonds in increments of fifty thousand dollars. The capitalistic figureheads that line their pockets and break the back of the masses must be made to pay in coin they worship.
    Once confirmation of the liberation of our compatriots is assured, instructions on delivery of the monetary penalty will be issued.
    To prove our commitment to the cause, a small demonstration of our power will be made at precisely fourteen hundred hours.
    We are Cassandra.
    "A demonstration?" Eve glanced at her wrist unit. "In ten minutes." She pulled out her communicator. "Malloy, are you still in the target?"
    "Just securing."
    "Get everybody out, keep out for another fifteen minutes. Run another scan."
    "This place is clean, Dallas."
    "Run it anyway. After the fifteen, have Feeney send a unit of exterminators in. The building's full of bugs. They were watching every move. We'll need the bugs brought in for analysis, but get out and stay out of the building until after fourteen hundred."
    Anne opened her mouth, obviously decided to save her questions, then nodded. "Affirmative. ETA to Central thirty minutes."
    "Do you think they got a bomb past the scan?" Peabody asked when Eve broke transmission.
    "No, but I'm not taking the chance. We can't track every damn building in the city. They want to show us how big and bad they are. So they're going to take something out." She pushed away from the desk, walked to the window. "There's not a fucking thing I can do to stop them."
    She scanned her view of New York, the old brick, the new steel, the crowds of people jammed onto glides or sidewalks, the nervous, edgy traffic in the streets, the rumble of it in the air.
    Serve and protect, she thought. That was her job. That was her promise. And now all she could do was watch and wait.
    McNab came in, looked anywhere but at Peabody. He preferred to pretend she wasn't in the room. "You sent for me, Lieutenant?"
    "See what you can do with the disc I just ran. Make copies for my files and for the commander. And what is the status on Fixer's code?"
    McNab allowed himself a small, smug smile and a sly sidelong glance at Peabody. "I just cracked it." He held up his own disc and struggled not to scowl as Peabody turned her head away and studiously examined her nails.
    "Why the hell didn't you say so?" Eve strode over to snatch it out of his hand.
    Insulted, McNab opened his mouth, then shut it tight when he caught Peabody's smirk out of the corner of his eye. "I'd just run the backups when you sent for me," he said stiffly. "I didn't take the time to read the contents comprehensively," he continued as Eve jammed the disc home. "But a quick skim indicates he lists all materials used, all devices made, and there are enough of them to wipe out a Third World country."
    He paused, deliberately moving to the other side of Eve as Peabody shifted closer to see the screen. "Or a major city."
    "Ten pounds of plaston," Eve read.
    "An ounce would take out half this level of Cop Central," he told her. When Eve shifted to the wall screen, he moved another lateral foot away from Peabody, and she from him.
    "Timers, remotes, impacts, sound and motion activated." Eve felt the ice crawl into her stomach. "They didn't miss a trick. Plenty of security, sensors, surveillance toys, too. He put together a goddamn warehouse for them."
    "They paid him plenty," Peabody murmured. "He's got his costs, his fees, his profits all listed nice and tidy beside each unit."
    "Hell of a businessman. Guns." Eve's eyes narrowed. "He got hold of banned weapons for them. Those are Urban War era."
    "Is that what they are?" Interested, McNab leaned closer. "I didn't know what the hell he was talking about there, but didn't take time to run a check. Fifty ARK-95s?"
    "Riot dispersers, military. A troop could take down a city block of looters -- stunned or terminated -- with a couple of passes."
    Roarke had one in his collection. She'd tested it herself and had been stunned by the hot ripple of power up her arms at discharge.
    "Why would they need guns?" Peabody wondered.
    "When you start a war, you arm the troops. It's not a damn political statement." She shoved back. "That's smoke. They want the city, and they don't much care if it's in rubble." She blew out a breath. "But what the hell do they want to do with it?"
    She shifted to