"Robb, J D - In Death 10 - Loyalty in Death (1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robb J D)

LOYALTY IN DEATH

J. D. Robb

PROLOGUE

Dear Comrade,
We are Cassandra.
It has begun.
All we have worked for, all we have trained for, all we have sacrificed for is
in place. A dawn after so long a twilight. The goals set over thirty years ago
will be achieved. The promises made will be kept. And the martyr's blood that
was shed avenged at long last.
We know you are concerned. We know you are cautious. This is what makes you a
wise general. Believe that we have taken your counsel and your warnings to
heart. We do not break the moratorium on this righteous and bitter war with a
battle we intend to lose. We are well-equipped, our cause well-financed, and all
steps and options have been considered.
We send this transmission to you, dear friend and Comrade, as we joyfully
prepare to continue our mission. Already, first blood has been spilled, and we
rejoice. Circumstances have put an opponent in our path you would find worthy.
We have attached to this transmission a dossier on Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the
so-called New York City Police and Security Department so that you might
familiarize yourself with this adversary.
Through the defeat of this enemy, our victory will be all the sweeter. She is,
after all, another symbol of the corrupt and oppressive system we will destroy.
Your wise counsel directed us to this place. We have lived among these pitiful
pawns of a weak-kneed society, wearing our smiling mask as we scorn their city
and their system of repression and decay. We have to their blind eyes become one
of them. No one questions us as we move about these immoral and filthy streets.
We are invisible, a shadow among shadows as you, and the one we both loved,
taught us the canniest soldier must be.
And when we have destroyed, one by one, the symbols of this overfed society,
demonstrating our power and our clean-minded plan for the new realm, they will
tremble. They will see us, and they will remember him. The first symbol of our
glorious victory will be a monument to him. In his image.
We are loyal, and our memory is long.
You will hear the first rumble of battle tomorrow.
Speak of us to all the patriots, to all the loyal.
We are Cassandra.
CHAPTER ONE
On this particular night, a beggar died unnoticed under a bench in Greenpeace
Park. A history professor fell bloodied, his throat slashed three feet from his
front door for the twelve credits in his pocket. A woman choked out one last
scream as she crumpled under her lover's pounding fists.
And not yet done, death circled its bony finger, then jabbed it gleefully
between the eyes of one J. Clarence Branson, the fifty-year-old co-president of
Branson Tools and Toys.
He'd been rich, single, and successful, a jolly man with reason to be as co-
owner of a major interplanetary corporation. A second son and the third