Read Going Dark for Free Online

the wind, and it doesn’t matter if I can’t see the helicopter now, because I’ll be able to see it when it takes off. “Cover me, Roman.” She’s a better shooter than I am, but I have the high ground. “I am not letting that helicopter go.”
    I stand up on the iceberg, brace my feet against the blast of the wind, and bring my weapon to my shoulder.
    “You operating, Shelley?” Kanoa wants to know.
    “Roger that.”
    Operating . That’s what we call it when the Red gets inside our heads, pushing its agenda so we feel it, so we know what needs to be done. The skullnet icon is glowing and I have no doubt at all that I am operating on a program written by the Red.
    “More figures on the landing pad,” Fadul reports as the volume of engine noise climbs. And then her tone shifts. “Incoming!”
    I don’t flinch, even when an RPG explodes to the east, a last rogue shot as the helicopter goes airborne. I see the blur of its rotors through the platform’s superstructure. Confidence floods me. I know I’ll be able to hit it.
    I wait for a better angle. Two seconds, three, the wind steady against me. I think the pilot wants to stay low, keep the platform behind him, but the wind catches his ship, lofts it up. A targeting point pops up in my field of view, sighted on the engine block. I fire a three-round burst.
    And I hit it.
    I know I do.
    But nothing happens. Tracking its flight with the muzzle of my weapon, I shoot three more bursts—but the helicopter keeps going, accelerating southeast across the wind like it’s heading for Greenland.
    “Nice shooting, sir,” Roman says.
    She’s fucking with me. I expect that from Fadul, but notfrom Roman. I scowl down at her—but then I remember the RPG. “Fadul! Status?”
    I check her icon—it’s gone yellow—but Fadul sounds fine when she says, “Motherfucker missed me.”
    I look again at Roman. She’s standing with her head cocked, watching the retreating helicopter. “The wind’s pulling a streamer of black smoke out of the engine block,” she reports. “I don’t think they’re getting far.”
    My skullnet icon fades from sight. The unearthly confidence I felt goes with it and I’m suddenly conscious of my exposed position atop the highest point anywhere on this ice field. “Jesus,” I whisper, looking up warily at Sigil ’s decks.
    Kanoa knows exactly what I’m thinking. “No activity on the platform,” he assures me. “And Logan’s got an offer of surrender from the two remaining enemy on the ice—though you might want to move to a less exposed position anyway.”
    “Yeah.”
    I jump down, managing not to land on my ass, but my hands are shaking—and not from the cold. The Red wanted me to take that shot, wanted it enough to risk making me an easy target. I’d like to believe it ran a calculation first, that it plotted the positions and status of every enemy soldier remaining and determined my exposure was minimal—but I don’t believe it.
    The Red wanted me to take that shot. That was the priority.
    •  •  •  •
    I head toward Logan’s position, checking in with my wounded on the way.
    “Fadul, you sound functional but you’re showing yellow. What’s your status?”
    “Fucking ice splinter went through my left bicep. But I can walk and I can shoot.”
    “Roger that. Dunahee, you?”
    “Shoulder’s broken,” he whispers between clenched teeth. “I can walk.”
    Julian is not ambulatory. He’s got a hole blasted in his gut. Escamilla has stuffed the wound with putty and stopped the bleeding, but it’s a bad wound, he’s losing heat fast, and we need to evacuate him ASAP.
    I don’t know yet how we’re going to do that. This mission now qualifies as thoroughly fucked, and if we’re going to unfuck it, we have to move fast. Both logic and instinct tell me that whatever it is we’re looking for, it left on the bird—and I’m going to believe that Roman is right. Damaged and fighting the storm, the helicopter