Isolation Read Online Free PDF Page B

keep her options as open as possible. A frontal assault, even if she succeeded, could leave her wounded, or worse, outed as an enemy agent. She stepped through the doorway of Building 2, which was still swarming with workers in the twenty-four-hour factory, and walked purposefully past them to the elevator. Seduction was always an option, and she had been engineered with exceptional beauty for that very purpose, but on the roof there would be too many. A four-man crew for each of the four gun emplacements, plus guards. The elevator arrived and she stepped in, half smiling at the challenge. Can I actually do it? Twenty men, give or take. But then again, I don’t have to distract them all at once, do I?
    She smiled again, taking off her jacket to expose the blouse beneath—it was army issue, and fairly plain, but adjusted properly, it showed a fair amount of cleavage. She pulled her hair out of its tight bun and shook it loose, running her fingers through it to give it body. She hiked up her skirt to show a little thigh, and waited as the elevator rose slowly to the top. On the top floor she screwed a silencer onto the end of her gun, hid it in her jacket and threw it over her arm as she exited the elevator and walked up the stairs to the roof. The cannons were laid out in a line, and she walked slowly toward the farthest one, letting all the soldiers watch appreciatively as she passed.
    As always, Heron was fascinated by the men’s reaction to her. She felt removed from their attention, as if they were watching not her but a character she had created, and through her creations she could manipulate their every action. A certain walk and their pulse would quicken; a smile, a bit of eye contact, and their entire attitudes would change. Some wanted to protect her, like General Bao; others wanted to talk to her, to learn who she was; and still others wanted simply to touch her. All these reactions, and more, were a form of control—they saw something pretty and wanted it for themselves. How many of them suspected that she was the one controlling them?
    The antiair guns were set up on turrets, able to turn in any direction and track their heavy double cannons up and down in a huge range of fire. They had a blind spot directly overhead, where the turret couldn’t rotate quite far enough, but the other guns could cover one another as needed. Heron reached the last one in the line and smiled at the four-man crew, not seductively but innocently. For a long-term seduction you needed wit and intelligence, but for something quick and dirty there was nothing even half as effective as gorgeous naïveté.
    “Hey, boys.” She lifted a flap of her jacket, showing the general’s symbol. “Wu asked me to come check on the artillery, but I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it.”
    The men stared, uncertain how to react. The two youngest were smiling like idiots in the back, and Heron favored them with a mischievous smile. The leader of the crew asked what she needed to know, and she ran her hand along the cannon’s thick metal barrel. “Does it really take all four of you to fire it?” They laughed and shook their heads, explaining in broad terms their individual jobs: one man spotted, one man aimed and fired, and the two youngest kept the gun well fed with ammo. She cooed over each new revelation, bending over and laughing and generally making a fool of herself, and the men responded in kind, treating her more and more like an idiot but telling her, and giving her, anything she wanted. After all, what could an idiot do to hurt them?
    She bent low at the waist, pointing to something in the gun’s turret system and preparing to ask a question, when suddenly an artillery shell struck the civilian building to the east. She straightened slowly, glancing at her watch: 2220. That can’t be the invasion.
    “That wasn’t ours,” said one of the gunners. They wandered to the railing, shocked, and looked down at the city beyond the