The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Chapter 46: Armageddon

A glance at her watch was enough to tell Dee that it was time: 5:48 pm, twelve minutes before the beginning of what could be the end of the Human Race!

"Alpha Three to all units," Tahsis' soft voice spoke into the tall redhead's ear. "I make delegates approaching the main building."

Lash's second-in-command frowned as, in the failing light, he began to pick out members of the multi nation delegations as they made their way from various parking lots to the main entrance to the grounds, the more important ones surrounded by their cordon of security. A normal human would've found it difficult to identify individuals in the rapidly approaching gloom. But Tahsis, with eyes mutated to make the best use of the low light, had no problem even making out each person's features.

Which made good use of his sunglasses' other feature: blinking his eyes in a certain pattern, Tahsis turned the sunglasses into a pair of close focus data readers, information beamed directly in via shielded link. In the blink of an eye he had positional, temperature and temporal data overlaying a three dimensional grid of the target area scrolling holographically over the left lens, placed perfectly for reading by his left eye. That data was now being combined with information on each mole among the delegates, including a photograph provided by the Armageddon database sitting in a computer back at headquarters. That made identifying the moles almost child's play.

The scroll of information, made possible by more of Mordecai's lone gunman technology, left his right eye free, allowing it to sight along the Kala's enhanced sights. Which he now did, using the sights' telescopic feature to closely examine each face.

"And I have our moles," he reported softly, quickly matching up the faces scrolling over his left lens with the ones he was seeing through the sights. "Kalin Kaslikov, of the Russian Delegation, second in command in the Ministry of Finance. And impeccably placed to terminate both the Russian president, Mikhail Putin and his entire staff."

Tahsis scanned to the next cluster of approaching delegates.

"And Geri Taylor, personal secretary to Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain. Also perfectly placed to terminate with extreme judiciousness the Prime Minister and his entire staff. Right behind them Mark Bennett, the U.S. Undersecretary of the Treasury, placed to remove both the newly elected President of the United States, Howard K. Johnson and his entire cabinet."

Dee glanced up through the growing gloom towards the roof of the conference center where she knew Tahsis was lying flat, scoping out the delegates as they made their way towards the building. To see what he was seeing would be enough to send chills through her entire body. The names as he read them off with each identification was enough to do that by itself.

These were the people that would ultimately start the beginning of the end. If they could only do something about them, take them out before they had the chance to begin Armageddon ...

As if reading Dee's thoughts, a blue dot of laser light appeared on the forehead of the nearest of the identified moles as they walked past her checkpoint, Mark Bennett. Dee's eyes flew wide at the dot's appearance, knowing that it was Tahsis' sights locking onto a target.

"Alpha Three to Alpha Leader," Tahsis' voice hissed over the comlink, "permission to fire?"

"Negative, Alpha Three," Lash almost snarled as he took an involuntary step away from his post towards the building, his own sharp vampiric vision attempting to pierce the gloom to find his second-in-command. "You are not cleared to fire your weapon! Do you read me, Alpha Three? You are not cleared to fire!"

"I can end this right now, Alpha Leader," Tahsis responded tautly, his voice filled with grim certainty. "I can have three quarters of the moles on the ground and dead before they draw another breath.'