Sky Hammer. James Axler

agent was drenched in seconds, the downpour of cool water slightly reviving him.

      Coming out of the alley, the dying agent paused at the sidewalk, trying to focus his eyes through the torrential deluge. Only a few people were in sight, all of them racing through the puddles for the safety of a store or a cab. Nobody seemed to be looking his way.

      Jerking his head, Davis forced himself awake. If he went to sleep now, he’d never wake up again. Leaving the alley, he lurched across the street and into another alley, a shortcut that kept him off the dangerous sidewalks.

      When Davis had joined the NSA, he’d been told that field agents had a long life expectancy. But years of service had taught him the truth. Death stalked everybody in the intelligence game these days, and the only way to survive was to shoot first and ask questions later. He had paused, unwilling to take a human life without direct provocation, and now he was a walking dead man. Davis knew it in his bones.

      That morning he’d arranged for a meet with one of his “groundhogs,” somebody who could feed the agency news from the street. Not the public streets, but the back-alley gossip, the hushed news from the French underworld. Blackmail, weapons smuggling, kidnappings, arson and murder. The NSA agent did nothing about the crimes unless they affected America. He simply took in the raw data and wrote a report for his superiors. Machines could tap into cell phone calls very easily these days, the electronic warriors were doing most of work nowadays. But it was spies, moles, turncoats and stool pigeons who kept America safe. People talking. Old-fashioned spy work. Human intelligence.

      Everything had seemed aboveboard when Davis met the snitch at the train station. The woman was mature, sixty, maybe seventy, but still maintained her good looks. She was demure in a pink dress with black trim. Only the smile was cold and impersonal. You’d never guess that she ran dozens of brothels across the great metropolis, establishments that catered to the criminal hierarchy, clients who liked to talk afterward. Davis had slipped the madam a book with money stuffed between the pages and she’d given him a newspaper. He’d barely had time to glance at the message taped to the book review page when a train arrived, somebody shoved a shotgun through the window in a crash of glass and opened fire. The madam hit the tiled wall of the station in a red spray, her ruined body crumpling to the ground. Taking cover behind a vending machine, Davis had withdrawn his side arm, but was unable to return fire because of all the civilians.

      However, that hadn’t stopped the dark-haired gunman, and Davis got hit twice before managing to escape by going through a plate-glass window. His agency vest had saved his life, but a block later he’d realized he was badly wounded. Dying. Somebody had tried to stop the madam from delivering the note he carried, so that made it a requisite that it be passed on. He pressed a hand to his jacket, but the cell phone was only bits and pieces, smashed during the brief gunfight.

      Pausing to rest against a lamppost, Davis struggled to read the short note through the bad light and pouring rain. Could this be real? By God, that would mean…

      Forcing himself into motion, the NSA agent continued his hopeless journey for the distant café. Come on, man, just one block more….

      IMPATIENTLY, JOE SNYDER GLANCED at his watch. Half an hour late. Davis had to have been taking care of business. Ten more minutes and he’d start without the man. He had skipped breakfast this morning, and the CIA agent was starving. The two men lunched regularly and, more than once, one or the other was late.

      Moments later a woman outside the café screamed, then a man sitting near the sidewalk jumped up, knocking back his chair. Coming out of the rain like something from a nightmare was a disheveled figure with a gun in his hand.

      Snyder started to go for the Glock under his jacket when he recognized Davis.

      “Good God, man, what happened to you!” Snyder cried, rising from his chair. Then he turned to a nearby waiter he knew. “Pierre, an ambulance! Fast!”

      Pierre didn’t waste a second in discussion. He turned and charged through the café, maneuvering through the maze of people and tables to disappear into the steamy back room.

      “Joe, gotta tell…” Davis mumbled, staggering against the table and knocking it sideways, the plates and silverware flying everywhere.

      Reaching out, Snyder caught the man as he collapsed. “Easy there, buddy. Easy. What happened? Are you shot? Stabbed?” Snyder demanded in a soft voice. There were no obvious wounds, aside from a lot of bruises and accumulated filth. Looked as though Davis had been wrestling alligators in the Parisian sewers.

      Davis tried to answer but went into a spasm of coughing, spraying red dots onto his wet hand.

      Grabbing a cloth napkin from the floor, Snyder wiped the red off the trembling man. Blood was on his lips, giving his breath a coppery odor. That meant massive internal bleeding. Not good. Then he noticed a crimson stain under the man’s arm. Carefully peeling back the linen jacket, Snyder saw that the agent was wearing a nonregulation bulletproof vest. So that’s why no blood showed, it was concealed under his vest! Releasing the Velcro strips on the side to let the man breath easier, Snyder frowned at the sight of the blood-soaked shirt underneath. There was a small bullet wound under the arm. An armpit shot. That was either a freak shot or else somebody knew that was a major killzone. And in their line of business, it was almost always deliberate. Stab or shoot a man there and, nine times out of ten, he died even if you got him to the hospital within minutes.

      “Doesn’t matter…” Davis whispered. “Couldn’t reach HQ…cell phone smashed…traitor!…we have a traitor…”

      “Easy now, don’t talk.”

      “Have to!” he whispered. “Joe…demo today…new weapon…for sale to everybody…anybody! Going to hit…hit…”

      “Who? Talk, buddy! Who are they going to hit?”

      “Abacus…” he said softly.

      “Abacus? Okay, what’s that?”

      Shuddering all over, Davis broke into a fit of coughing.

      “Never mind the target, who’s the traitor?” the CIA agent urged gently. “Tell me, and I’ll personally squeeze all of the details out of their stinking hide.” He paused. “Was Abacus a code name? Is that the traitor?”

      Grabbing the other man’s lapel with surprisingly strong fingers, Davis moved his lips, but no sound came out as the NSA agent slumped to the floor, his reserves of strength finally gone. Silently, Snyder lay his friend on the floor of the café where they had first met so very long ago.

      “Goodbye,” he said softly, using a fingertip to close the other man’s eyelids.

      The wailing siren grew steadily closer.

      Suddenly an ambulance braked to a halt in front of the little café, and the side door slid back to reveal a group of people, all wearing black and carrying weapons. One of them a compact flamethrower, a hissing blue flame jutting out from the preburner angled underneath the ventilated main barrel. The heavy set of duel fuel tanks on her back gave the grim operator the appearance of a hunchback.

      With a curse, Snyder dived to the ground as two of the men cut loose with shotguns. The café seemed to explode in blood as people near the entrance were literally cut in two by the discharges, then a machine gun racked the interior of the building as the flamethrower extended a fiery tongue of destruction that swept across the horrified crowd of civilians. Wine bottles exploded, people shrieked and a man dashed into the rain covered with jellied gasoline and dripping flames.

      Rolling to his knees, Snyder pulled a Glock from under his jacket, racked the slide and fired a fast five times at the people in the vehicle. Two of the killers grunted from the impacts, but nothing more.

      The attackers were wearing body armor, he realized, shoving over a table and taking refuge behind it. He had no idea who these people were, but they had professional hit squad written all over them. Probably the same group that iced Davis.

      Now the strangers concentrated on Snyder, the barrage of incoming lead hammering the tabletop and punching through