Because the logic was simple: the drive needed to complete. Everything else — every other tactical consideration, every other variable — was secondary to those four minutes. He had committed to this position and he would hold it. 02:30.
The north shooter fired again. The shot landed on the parapet near the hub enclosure. A ranging shot — they'd identified the upload point.
Tav moved to draw the next shot, deliberately exposing himself to the north window for two seconds before dropping back behind the enclosure's edge. The shot came where he'd been, not where he was. 02:20.
The radio on the second downed contractor crackled.
A voice, low and flat, speaking a coordinate.
Someone was directing the engagement from outside the building. Someone who could see the rooftop.
Tav fixed on the city around him. At the buildings. At the angles.
Found it: a vehicle on the western approach that had moved from its earlier position. The surveillance vehicle. Now parked with a clear sightline to the rooftop. A director with a communication link to the shooter.
02:05.
From the north building: two shots, timed close together. The sound of an engagement rather than suppression. Then silence.
Then, in his earpiece: "Shooter's down."
Alistair's voice. Flat with effort and intact.
"Copy," Tav said. "Roof is clear. Hub intact."
01:48.
Tav crouched beside the enclosure and watched the upload percentage climb and did not allow himself to look away from it. 01:30. 01:15.
Below in the city, cars moved. Lights changed. People were walking home from restaurants and catching the last trains and doing all the ordinary things that people did at this hour in this city, unaware that forty meters above street level a man was watching a percentage climb and thinking about an operative he'd loved in a warehouse in the industrial district, and a crossword puzzle with seven across unanswered, and what it meant to do something irreversible. 01:00. 00:45.
He heard the hatch again.
Tav rose.
And discovered that the third contractor had come through the hatch while the engagement with the first two was running, and had been waiting with a patience that suggested professional training and instruction, and was currently holding a weapon aimed at the hub enclosure's cable port with the clear intent of disconnecting the upload. 00:38.
Tav moved.
He covered the distance in four paces and the fight that followed was brief and ugly and ended with both of them on the rooftop surface and the contractor's weapon skittering toward the parapet and
Tav holding the connection with one hand and managing the weight of an opponent with the other and his shoulder doing something that was not quite pain yet but would be later. 00:22. 00:15.
The contractor made one more attempt.
Tav put him down cleanly. 00:07.
UPLOAD COMPLETE. DISTRIBUTION ACTIVE.
The LED shifted from green to steady white.
Tav detached the drive and held it.
His hands were not shaking.
But it was a near thing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
