The Silent Army by James Knapp Read Free Book Online Page A

over at me and smiled weakly. He was middle-aged with wavy hair that had grayed at the temples. I’d seen that face before.
    “I know you,” I said.
    “Bob MacReady,” he said. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
    MacReady worked for Heinlein Industries, the UAC’s largest government contractor and sole controller of revivor technology. It had been largely based on technology discovered by Samuel Fawkes. When my investigation two years ago pointed me at Heinlein, he’d provided a lot of information to me. I couldn’t prove it, but I was sure he also had a hand in transferring Faye’s newly processed body to me too.
    “How did you get in here?”
    “Money talks,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
    “Like I got hit by a train. What happened?” The last thing I remembered was lying next to the curb.
    “From what I can tell from your records, you were injected with some kind of custom tetrodotoxin variant,” MacReady said. “It causes paralysis even in very small doses. It’s not easy to get.”
    “It was a revivor,” I told him.
    “Our revivors can be outfitted with injectors capable of administering a payload like that at short range,” he said. “Usually they’re loaded with something a little more deadly, and cheaper, than that.”
    I checked the FBI logs; Vesco and SWAT had arrested the survivors at the hotel, and all the revivors at the site had been impounded. No one had found the man, Takanawa, though, and no one had managed to intercept the cloaked revivor. Wherever it came from, it got away carrying eleven tactical nukes. Each one was about the size of a cell phone, and could take down a skyscraper.
    I checked my buffers, but the information I’d pulled from the computers at the hotel was gone.
    With some difficulty, I sat up and faced MacReady. The only light was from the glow of the monitor, but I could see he had aged visibly in the last two years. He looked tired.
    “I assume this isn’t a social visit,” I said. “Why did you come here? Are you here representing Heinlein Industries?”
    “No,” he said, “but I am here to talk to you about one of our former employees, Samuel Fawkes.”
    Fawkes was officially dead, and even his revivor was considered destroyed, at least on record. Two years back he had orchestrated the largest terrorist attack ever executed on UAC soil. From an unknown, remote location, contained inside a metal stasis crate, he had managed to infiltrate Heinlein Industries. With the help of revivors smuggled into the country, he was able to kill hundreds of people and cause millions of dollars’ worth of damage.
    He’d done it, so he claimed, because of information he uncovered while employed at Heinlein. It was there that he learned of the existence of people like Zoe Ott and Sean Pu.
    “What about him?” I asked.
    “We believe he is still operating.”
    “You believe he is, or you know he is?”
    “I believe he is,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “No one was able to trace it, but some weeks ago, his identifier was picked up, attached to a long-distance communication.”
    “If that’s true, then why didn’t you report it?”
    “I only just became aware of it, and I’m reporting it now, to you,” he said. “It wasn’t reported previously because I assume the recipient of the communication doesn’t want anyone to know.”
    “Who was he talking to?”
    “I don’t know that either, I’m afraid. But I’m telling you—Samuel Fawkes is still out there and he’s still operating. The events of two years ago are not over.”
    I nodded. I’d known Fawkes was never found, but he hadn’t tried to communicate with me since. I had been starting to hope he’d been uncrated and destroyed in the field, but never really believed it. He’d made his intentions clear the last time we’d spoken.
    “How much do you know about his motivations back then?” I asked.
    “Very little I could verify,” he said. “I know he infiltrated Heinlein’s systems,