Chapter 2
Two days later, Matt stepped out of the car into a cool August morning. The pine forest shadowed his two-story log cabin. Squirrels rustled in the low thickets, and a blue jay squawked its displeasure as he closed the door. He walked up the porch to the front door of his seventeen-hundred square feet of heaven. The third step creaked, and he added it to the mental list of things to repair.
Monica flashed a groggy smile as she opened the door. Her curly chestnut hair matched his but fell to her shoulders, and her soft blue eyes were glazed with sleep. His Blake Shelton shirt enveloped her, a tent that almost concealed the baby bump as she leaned against the doorframe. Her well-muscled, tan legs didn't show the slightest hint of pregnancy.
"Hey, sugar. You weren't getting back until next week." She must have seen something in his expression, because her eyes widened in concern. "You okay?"
He stepped inside and kissed her, ignoring morning breath the coffee didn't quite mask. He pulled back and kissed her forehead, breathing in her scent. She kept herself in great shape—they'd met as pre-teens in a children's kung fu class, and she hadn't let up with her training—but in the past two years he'd grown strong enough to crush a person with his bare hands and had to mind his strength. He squeezed her just hard enough, and the cross between her breasts jabbed him in the sternum. "No, I'm not," he whispered into her hair. "But I can't talk about it. Not yet."
She snuggled into him. "Is it . . . Baghdad bad?"
It wasn't, but the immediacy of the loss made it worse. Not trusting his voice, he nodded and looked at the plain wooden cross on the living room wall. She squeezed him tighter, and they stood in the foyer like that, frozen in time, until a whine interrupted them. Matt smiled, let her go, and dropped to one knee. He grabbed the Basset hound by the ears and kissed his nose. "How's my boy?" Ted's tail thumped against the floor as he licked Matt's nose. His breath stank worse than Monica's.
"Coffee?" she asked.
"Yeah."
She stepped into the kitchen, sniffed the dregs in the bottom of the pot, and poured it into the sink. "I'll make a fresh one." She puttered in the kitchen, and he couldn't help but try to catch a peek under the T-shirt when she reached up for the can of Folgers. Granny-panties, white cotton, fraying elastic. Every husband's dream.
They talked about nothing over breakfast—Deputy Drake had arrested Kevin Bartell for screaming drunken poetry at his ex-girlfriend's house again, Jen and Bill found out they're having twins, and PanTex laid off twenty more people. Nothing changed in White Spruce; it just got older, more tired. As Monica cleared the dishes she paused at the sink. "Are you home long?"
He nodded. "I reckon a week or two at least. I'll have paperwork, but I can do it from here, or if needs be, down at the local." ICAP didn't have an office in White Spruce, or anywhere else outside Washington, D.C., but the Clifford Davis Federal Building in Memphis wasn't too awful a commute once or twice a week.
"Good. Pastor Joe's been asking about you, and you can take me to my appointment on Thursday."
Matt polished off the last of his coffee. "I'd love to." A strong, proud, intelligent, willful woman, Monica remained . . . brittle. She'd lost their first baby just out of high school, ten months after their honeymoon, while he fought half a world away with the Third Infantry. They'd been "trying again" for eight years, and in that time his beautiful, loving wife had lurched in and out of depression and dependency. Now pregnant again, she lived in constant terror of losing their boy. "Hmph."
"What?" She put the dishes in the sink and turned on the water.
He opened his mouth and wasn't sure what to say. At that moment he knew that she carried their son as sure as he knew his own name. "Do we find out the sex this week?"
She nodded, defensive. "If we want to, and the bean cooperates on the ultrasound."
He smiled at her. "Whatever you want to do, babe."
She put a fingertip to her lips and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. "Um . . . I'll think about it." Her dazzling smile emerged from the uncertainty. "It'll be fun to bounce around some names."
* * *
The conference call leached away two monotonous hours of Matt's life before anyone said anything interesting. He sat in his living room, staring aghast at his laptop, as Jeff defended the intelligence and their actions despite countless, repetitive questions that made it clear in no uncertain terms that the powers that be considered losing two squads of ICAP agents politically unacceptable.
Matt's mind leapt to dozens of choice comments about civilians in general and bureaucrats in particular, but he would never say them. It wasn't that he'd lose his job—the Six Million Dollar Man had nothing on your average aug—he just knew that it wouldn't help.
"Can't some of your men read minds, Agent Hannes?" the jowly pencil-pusher from Belgium asked.
Conor, onscreen next to Jeff, rolled his eyes. Jeff scowled for the millionth time. "No. Late-second precognitive therapy has enabled a few select agents to utilize short-term prediction, so they can predict what someone is about to say or do, but only the barest moment beforehand. Think of it like ultra-fast reflexes. Nobody can read anybody's mind."
Though the chances of anyone even looking at him were remote, Matt schooled his face into a blank mask. So-called "late-second" precognition, no more than a second or two out, happened all the time. Sometimes, beyond his control, his ability to predict future events would extend out two minutes or more. Or maybe months, if Monica carried a boy in her womb.
Mr. Jowly-guy continued. "What about this interrogation, then?"
Finally.
Jeff folded his hands on the tabletop. "The prisoners were recalcitrant. We were able to ascertain that they are a part of Dawkins's cartel and that they knew we were coming."
The gray-haired Dutchman leaned toward his screen. "How did they know this?"
"They claim to have been tipped off an hour before we touched down."
"Tipped off by whom? Do we have a leak?"
"We have no idea. Dawkins told them, and gave them a choice: evacuate, or stay behind and earn a bonus. Most of them left."
"What was this bonus for, Mr. Hannes?"
"Killing us," Conor said.
Jeff cleared his throat and leaned forward, blocking Conor from the screen. "The survivors would split a bonus of one million euros for every ICAP agent killed." Blood gushed down the walls, and Jeff's face melted off his skull. Whispers gibbered and clawed at the empty sockets. Matt blinked, and the hallucination disappeared. What the hell? "—send a message that further incursions into his business will not be tolerated."
Jowls flushed with rage. "This drug dealer seeks to threaten us? Is he stupid?"
"Dumb as dumb," Conor muttered. Jeff shushed him.
The Frenchman rolled his eyes. "By all indications he is not. One does not run a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise if one is stupid."
His phone buzzed. Akash's message read, Is Flynn trying to get fired?
Matt replied, Dunno.
Brian Frahm, Jeff’s immediate supervisor, a baby-faced American in his forties who didn’t look a day over twenty, lifted a hand from his thigh. They stopped and looked at him. "Debating Dawkins's mental acuity won’t do us any good. The question now is what to do about him."
Brian dropped his hand, and the room erupted in raised voices. Matt tuned out their squabbling and looked out the window, where a few leaves on the deciduous trees showed signs of color. He jerked back to the conversation when Jeff said his name. "Sergeant Rowley has the combat experience, the investigative experience, the training, and the—well, the augs necessary to bring the entire enterprise down. He's the perfect man for the job."
"What do you say, Sergeant?" Brian asked. Everyone waited for his response.
"Yeah. That is, I'll think about it."
Jeff smiled. Akash texted, Grats.
Matt grunted. Did I just get promoted, or fed to the wolves?
* * *
A week later, Jeff sat
on Matt's couch and cradled a cup of coffee in his hands. Conor sprawled over the recliner, and Akash perched on the loveseat. Monica puttered in the kitchen making sticky buns, a transparent pretext to eavesdrop, and the house smelled of gooey brown sugar and sweet bread. Matt leaned against the mantle, running his hand over the hearth. He'd hand-selected every stone and built it with his dad. Hard to believe they'd laid the last stone only five years ago, harder still that he'd been only twenty-two at the time.
"It's downright cold up here," Jeff said.
"It's the West Highlands in August," Matt said. "Nights get chilly sometimes."
"I wasn't expecting frost."
Conor chuckled. "Not a Boy Scout, then?"
Jeff ran his tongue over his teeth and looked out the window at the towering pines. "Not too prepared, I guess. So why's the town called White Spruce when there aren't any White Spruce?"
Matt shrugged. "I guess they planted a ring of them way back in eighteen twenty-something, right on the village green, but none of them survived the climate. Every couple of years the high and mighties talk about planting another, then cost and maintenance comes up and they drop the whole thing." He plopped down next to Akash, tired of small talk. "So I'm getting a command, an operations suite, and an 'as-needed' budget? That's a hell of a reward for just surviving. I don't know that I'm qualified."
Jeff grimaced. "It's not a reward."
Conor grinned. "I'll take it if he won't."
Akash snorted.
"You don't think I'm the leadership type?"
Akash shook his head so fast his lips jiggled. "Nuh-uh. Not even a little. Your idea of a plan is 'kill it until it's dead.'"
Conor laughed. "No, you're right." He turned to Jeff. "Let Matt do the paperwork."
Jeff kept his eyes on Matt. "You're the most experienced ICAP agent we have that's not already assigned to a high-priority mission"—Conor opened his mouth, and Jeff held up a hand to forestall the comment—"and you're the only aug stateside with investigative experience."
Matt took a sip of coffee. "My tenure with the Troopers wasn't exactly Sherlock Holmes."
Akash's wry grin contrasted with his flat tone. "Conor's got law enforcement experience. He spent most of his youth evading the cops."
Conor gave him a two-fingered "up yours."
Jeff ignored them both. "No," he agreed. "But it was solid. You did good, steady work, and you got results. Either way, Frahm’s backing you, and so are these two clowns, so the job's yours."
All sounds from the kitchen stopped.
"I have a condition."
Jeff raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"I run operations out of Nashville. It's closer than Memphis, and a whole heap closer than D.C."
"D.C.—"
"—won't work for us. You're lucky I didn't ask for White Spruce." Rolling his eyes, Jeff opened his mouth to speak, but Matt talked right over him. "Monica's pregnant. I promised her I'd spend more time at home." In the kitchen, the dish-clanking continued. "I intend to do just that."
Jeff set his coffee on the side table and looked pensively at Conor and Akash. They shrugged. He ran his tongue over his teeth.
"C'mon, boss," Matt said. "We just hit the biggest drug bust in the history of everything. Working closer to home ain't much to ask."
Jeff slapped his hands on his knees. "Alright, buddy, done. The transportation piece should be easy enough. You can utilize an AH-14 when we need you in D.C., which shouldn't be that often."
Matt thought for a moment, then nodded. Not everybody got to commute aboard an attack helicopter. "Alright. What about our team? I'd like to get two more agents to round us out."
Jeff pushed a stack of dossiers across the coffee table. "You've got your pick of those seven. All combat veterans, all augs."
Matt flipped through the files with particular attention to their Gerstner Augmentations. Adrenal boosters, regenerates, muscle and nervous system enhancements, eidetic memory stimulators . . . . Nothing out of the ordinary. He looked at Jeff. "No precogs?"
"Nope. None of them cleared for it."
Conor looked out the window. Akash shuffled his feet and looked anywhere but at Jeff. Jeff's eyes didn't leave Matt's.
Matt cleared his throat. "Are they . . . stable?"
Jeff pressed his fingertips together. "Of course, they're stable. They're monitored weekly, same as everybody. Incidents within ICAP are down ninety-five percent in the past three years. We've got a great handle on the psychological issues of—"
Matt rolled his eyes. "Spare us the PR talk."
"Sure, okay. So that's why they didn't clear for precog. Two years ago they would have, now they didn't. We're being careful."
Public 'incidents' were the reason ICAP existed. Countries had founded the International Council on Augmented Phenomena as a joint UN-NATO venture to combat the spread of Gerstner technologies, but before long it became obvious that Pandora's Box wasn't going to close. Super-human abilities weren't just available, they were cheap. The Russians had learned the hard way that too many augs spiraled into uncontrolled mutation and murderous rage, officially called Gerstner-Induced Psychosis—their military wouldn't be a threat again for at least a generation. Many street gangs and drug cartels still hadn't taken GIP to heart, and between intentional augmentation and Jade's long-term side effects, bonks suffered psychotic breaks far too often for anyone's comfort. It wasn't something that civilians should have access to.
With bonks that could throw cars, shrug off bullets, and dodge tank shells, civilian and military law enforcement couldn't cut it. Selected from military units and law enforcement around the world, screened for suitability and augmented well below levels considered safe, ICAP agents walked the line between Captain America and Bane and were the only law enforcement capable of hunting down other augs.
Screening criteria ranged from training to education but most of all included the ability to resist the whispers. Incidents still happened, but with proper psychological screening, judicial levels of augmentation, and careful monitoring there were fewer ICAP bonks every year. Good thing, too. Once an aug bonked, nothing short of death would stop it from killing everything it could.
Despite the danger of rogue augs, Jade remained ICAP's primary focus. Euphoria with no immediate side effects, Gerstner technology made it the cleanest high of any drug ever produced. Once someone tried Jade, the risk of uncontrolled mutation and madness couldn't compete with the lust to get just one more hit. No one recovered from Jade addiction, with recidivism well over ninety-nine percent. Taking a hit of Jade meant playing Russian roulette with full chambers, but junkies didn't think long-term. That dealers laced Jade into other drugs didn't help matters.
Matt didn't look up from the files. "I want six weeks training time, with at least two bag-a-bonks before we go for Dawkins."
Jeff smirked. "As his majesty commands."
Chapter 3
Time to roll. In his mind, Matt went through their mission parameters one last time. Nineteen homes had been abandoned in the New Mexico mountains in the past three months. In that same time, cattle poaching had skyrocketed, and four young girls had been abducted from their beds. The criminality centered around the decrepit remains of a mining town abandoned in the 1870s, once called Gruta Plata. Satellite surveillance indicated activity surrounding the old mine, still ringed by a crumbling stockade. One infrared image suggested a large man carrying a dead cow—by himself.
The air smelled of the coming thunderstorm, and Matt’s breath frosted his visor. Odd weather. His HUD blinked once at 3:30 am. He gave a tiny nod.
Tsuji "Blossom" Sakura looked like a stocky man in her full uniform and helmet. A veteran of Tokyo Metropolitan Police's anti-Yakuza division, on their first mission she'd revealed herself to be blunt, taciturn, and a consummate professional. She also moved faster than anyone he'd ever seen. She crossed the courtyard and climbed over the compound wall before Matt finished standing.
She opened the gate for the rest of the te
am. Conor covered the gate with Matt to let in Garrett and Akash. Corporal Garrett Johnson, late of the US Marine Corps 3rd Battalion, had stood almost seven feet tall before augmentation and now loomed closer to eight. Forty-three years old, he had four years on Blossom, the next oldest member of the team. Matt had let him plan both ops—when it came to using the resources at hand, rank meant little and age meant less. Garrett's dyed-blond, severe flat-top popped against his dark brown skin.
Akash slipped through the gate, his weapon up, with Garrett taking aim over his head.
Once through, they held position as Matt and Garrett moved up. Akash used American Sign Language, which they had all been required to learn. Anyone else hear that?
Matt shook his head, as did Garrett and Blossom. Conor replied, eyebrows raised to indicate a question. Chanting?
Akash nodded.
Matt crept toward the entrance, a timber-framed rectangle of blackness, and heard it—Latin-influenced gibberish, with touches of Hebrew and maybe Spanish. Crazies, he signed. Perfect! He meant no irony: some weird cult minimized the chances that ICAP agents should even be involved or that they'd face any real danger. In a best case scenario, recon would reveal no threatening augs, and his team would pull out to let the local police handle it. Then again, there was the guy with the cow.
Blossom peered through the doorway, then turned back, frowning. I can't see anything. Far more fluent in ASL than Matt, she hadn't said 'clear' in the military sense. He asked for clarification. It's like nothing. The space between the stars before augmentation. No IR. No UV.
He told her to hold position and moved up. At the doorway, his vision stopped, in all wavelengths. He triggered his radio and spoke a bare whisper. "Are you getting this?"
Jeff's voice blasted too loud in his ear-bud. "Five by five." After a pregnant pause, Jeff said, "Proceed." Matt signaled his team to hold position and stepped through the door.
Jade Sky Page 2
