[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.He reached down to his belt and drew the tanto, which he then used to pry the top-hinged window open.Though it was locked, he managed to break that lock with the tanto as his silent countdown continued.He had just three seconds before the detection field came online and sent up an automatic alarm when it detected him hanging from the outside of the house.With the window swung open, he hauled himself up and felt his left arm give slightly as he did so.But he had to focus on the task at hand or he would fail to gain entry to the house, so he ignored the pain in his arm and used sheer, brute, strength to haul himself into the lavatory as the window swung closed behind him.Jericho collapsed to the floor and cradled his arm against his chest briefly before realizing that it had broken once again, likely aggravating the injury he originally sustained entering the window of Angelo’s flat in New Lincoln.“I should have just knocked,” he muttered subvocally.That he had re-broken the arm was actually something of a surprise, since most long bones were more or less structurally sound after a couple weeks of healing time.But he knew he was far from a young man, and was actually grateful that his increasingly fragile body had withstood as much punishment as he had put it through recently.After collecting himself, he removed the needle-launcher from his left and unslung the short, pistol-gripped shotgun from its holster across his back and attached it to the front of the bandolier so he could draw it more quickly.But he needed to remain undetected, or else he could kiss any chance of escape goodbye—and he had no intention of dying during this particular Adjustment—so he would need to depend largely on Sasaki’s tanto and the tranquilizers he had brought for the mission.Jericho listened at the lavatory’s door and heard nothing, and then he tested the door’s handle and found it unlocked.He swung it open and it was thankfully quiet as it opened wide enough for him to pass through.He was in a short hallway which had a stairwell leading up to the second floor at the far end, and appeared to adjoin both a kitchen and a parlor.He padded softly toward the parlor-side of the hall and kept his remaining needle-launcher aimed at the kitchen until verifying it was empty, after which he turned his focus toward the parlor.The first of the three guards was sitting in a chair beside a traditional fireplace, and he appeared to be reading some sort of e-zine on a data pad.The light of the room would create no shadows, and the curtains on the windows would prevent anyone not intently looking inside from seeing him, so Jericho carefully moved behind the man before tapping him on the shoulder.The guard looked up blankly before Jericho unleashed a crushing overhand right which easily broke the man’s nose, knocking him out cold.Jericho had only the one needle-launcher syringe remaining, and he wanted to keep it in reserve for one of the other two remaining guards inside the house.But he withdrew one of his tranquilizer syringes from the small satchel and injected the man in his left brachial vein, ensuring the drugs circulated throughout his system quickly enough to prevent him from regaining consciousness.Jericho then proceeded to the staircase, knowing that although he was a highly-trained operative, all of it had been just a little too easy.The overlapping fields of the autocannons; the relatively open lanes of approach provided by the guards posted outside; and a less-than-alert guardsman inside the safe house itself were all major red flags which further convinced him that not everything he saw was what it appeared.But he also knew that it was only a matter of time before the tranquilized guard outside would be discovered, and when that happened the compound would become a death trap.So he softly padded up the stairs, the pain in his left arm growing with each passing moment.He needed to secure the target and get some answers soon, or his only option would be killing General Pemberton before getting those answers.He had suspected the only way to enter the safe house would be after a localized electro-magnetic pulse, and that had proven correct just a few minutes earlier.Jericho had therefore left his enhanced vision gear with the cannon, and was forced to rely on his own senses rather than high-tech gear—which was how he preferred to operate anyway.Jericho made it to the landing and saw a glimpse of movement from a nearby open door.Ducking back down into the staircase, he saw a woman emerge from the room.She was wearing all-black, loose-fitting clothing and had medium-length, blond hair.Her physique was less a soldier’s and more akin to a ballet dancer’s, and she seemed unaware of his presence as she moved down the second floor’s hallway toward the door at the far end.Jericho moved quickly up onto the second floor’s landing and followed her down the hallway for several steps before she turned abruptly and caught sight of him.Her face twisted in alarm, but before she could scream he snapped a short, tight uppercut into her chin and her eyes rolled back into her head as she collapsed.Jericho deftly caught her slumping body before she fell to the floor and gently lowered her to the carpeted floor.While scanning the hallway and its five adjoining doors, he produced another tranquilizer-filled syringe and injected her in the jugular vein.He gave her the full dose since all it would do was keep her incapacitated for another handful of hours, and then carried her limp body to the room she had left a few seconds earlier.If he was to get answers then Jericho would probably require some quiet time with Pemberton, so the less evidence he left of his presence the better his chances were to get that time.Just as he set her down on the bed, Jericho heard a door open at the end of the second floor’s hallway.He quickly made his way back to the doorway and heard a man’s voice say, “Sasha? Are you coming?”The man’s footfalls approached the room Jericho was in, and Jericho took up a position behind the door and cocked his needle-launcher in preparation.“Sasha…don’t make me come in there after you,” he said playfully, and Jericho’s jaw clenched in a mixture of anticipation and disappointment as the man neared the doorway.Any trained professional would have never made the mistake of continuing to give away his position…unless—Jericho ducked down just as that thought occurred to him and was spared decapitation as a blade sliced cleanly through the wall behind him.The blade passed easily through the heavy, wooden door and Jericho rolled across the doorway to get a bead on his surprisingly adept adversary [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]