Durwood stopped the first fighter with a chop to the solar-plexus. He dislocated the second's elbow with an armbar. The Rivard men seemed reluctant to fire, though the chopper—a modified Aerospatiale SA 3—was not pressurized.
This was to their detriment.
Numbers three and four rushed Durwood. He picked an ax off the wall and swung it like a scythe.
The ax head lodged deep in the first man's ribs. Durwood had swung with such force that momentum carried the man through his squadmate.
Toppled, but not done.
Pain spiraled in Durwood's head. He fought toward the hurt, nursing it, pinching it like a skin-boil. God's wrath lived in his fists.
"You spill my flask, you're a dead man!" Quaid was growling across the cabin, pinned beneath a fighter with a Serbian or Croat look.
Durwood collected guns off the men he'd downed, then yanked Quaid's attacker off by the neck of a Kevlar vest.
The man, whimpering from his knees, raised both hands.
Durwood drove a knee into his nose.
Mercy. Yeah—right till I turn my back on you.
The very last enemy plowed into Durwood from behind. His face rang off the steel edge of a jumpseat. Swelling began immediately—Durwood felt it like Grandma Cole's sourdough in a hot oven.
Muscles clenched everywhere, Durwood jolted his head backward. His skull hit soft tissue.
A groan.
The sour tang of blood, near.
Durwood flipped and was upon the man. The man's eyes fluttered. His mouth hung slack.
The pain in Durwood's head rose to a bright, terrible peak.
He rammed his chin into the man's Adam's apple—a move suggested by no training Durwood had ever received. The crack resounded above the helicopter's rotor wash.
The man's eyes closed.
"Mon dieu!" Yves Pomeroy gasped. His hands palsied wildly. "These are paid contractors—whatever you believe of me or my company, they do not deserve to be brutalized!"
Durwood said, "Tell it to the UN. Now talk. Won't be long, we'll have company up here."
On cue, two attack choppers rose in the west horizon. Apaches. Missile tubes squared, like fangs mounted on wings.
The red button had alerted ground.
"Tell us more about Thérèse Laurent," Quaid said. "How long has she been in charge of CyberSafe?"
Yves looked inward a moment. "Fabienne appointed her last fall, eh bien...perhaps a year."
"Roughly how long the Blind Mice have been zapping data."
"I have begged for resources to fix the data loss," Yves said. "I am rebuffed. Fabienne believes the goal is unattainable, that the data is gone forever."
"Unattainable? Here's a woman who came within seconds of having a space laser that could annihilate the enemy of her choosing from twenty thousand miles up."
Yves raised one corner of his mouth. "One is puzzled by it, certainment."
Durwood said, "Nothing puzzling about it."
Quaid asked how many employees worked on CyberSafe.
"This is difficult to say." Yves puffed his cheeks. "Seventy or eight."
YOU ARE READING
Anarchy of the Mice
Macera"Nibble, nibble. Until the whole sick scam rots through." When anarchist-hackers the Blind Mice begin crippling the country's worst corporations -- the "Despicable Dozen" -- with web and software attacks, the public yawns. When they blip the power g...
