by S L Shelton
Breathe.
I gripped the steering wheel and braced myself against the frame with the other hand. As I lowered myself from the seat, my legs felt unsteady and weak, as if I had never learned to use them.
What the hell?! Wolf…help me!
Nothing.
“Have you been wounded?” BeauLac asked, with seemingly genuine concern in his tone. Of course, he would be concerned. He had no fortune, his own organization had betrayed him, and now he was being hunted by his own people. He was like a pampered pet, dropped in the wilderness and attaching himself to the first human he happened upon. He’d be dead in a day on his own.
Am I wounded? The only pain I felt originated in my head and my chest.
Breathe.
“Just unsteady. I got tossed pretty hard back there.”
He opened his door and got out as well as I took my first unsteady steps to the back door. There, I leaned in, stabilizing myself while I searched the Outlander for any items Wolf may have left inside. I patted my chest and felt the weapon hanging there. Sitting to take even more strain off my unsteady frame, I withdrew it from the holster and checked the chamber. It smelled like fresh powder—I’d used it recently.
I looked at BeauLac through the window, and for a moment, was tempted to ask him what had happened. He lingered just outside of the door for a moment, then got back in after a violent shiver worked its way up his spine. I realized I was rather chilled as well, still wearing wet clothes.
The magazine in my pistol was nearly full, and the two spare mags on the other side of my shoulder rig were full. After returning them to their places in my holster, I pulled a small duffel bag toward me and unzipped it—a laser mic and remote sat on top along with a couple of phones, an iPad, and more ammunition. I leaned over the back seat and found another bag with clothes in it. Breathe!
I pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie then tossed them to BeauLac. “They aren’t fancy, but they’re dry.”
He took and stared at them for a moment. I was about to get pissed off for his hesitation when he began to shed his pajama top. As he changed I replaced my jacket with a dry one, then stripped out of my wet pants, replacing them with dry jeans.
As I moved the contents from the wet pockets, I found a phone and a battery, zipped inside a sandwich bag. I pulled them out and inserted the battery. Once it powered up, I thumbed through the call log—only one number appeared. I pressed it and listened. I was relieved when John Temple’s voice answered. Breathe!
“Momma,” I said.
“Go secure.”
I complied and put the phone back to my ear. “Where are you?”
“I’m the same place I was when you left yesterday.”
That’s not helpful. I don’t remember where I was yesterday. “Text me the address.”
“What?!”
“Okay, just tell me the address.”
“Is everything okay?”
Work with me here, John. “It’s fine. I’m coming in. I need the address.” Breathe!
“Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“I swear to god, Momma, I’m fine, I’m on the road. I just need the address to plug into the GPS.” Breathe!
After he gave me the address in Lyon, I looked over at BeauLac, trying to decide if I should tell John now or wait to figure everything out once I was face-to-face with him. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” I said, opting for discretion.
“Monkey Wrench, what’s happened? Why are you coming back so soon?”
I had no good answer for him. I didn’t know what the plan was. Hopefully, Wolf would be able to clue me in before I arrived in Lyon and made the situation worse.
“I’ll explain when I get in. Don’t make any moves till I get there and can catch you up.”
“Alright. Be safe.”
Breathe! “Will do. Chat later.”
I got out of the back seat and walked unsteadily to the rear of the Outlander, having to consciously order my legs to take each step. This was definitely going to cut down on my ability to multitask.
“What are we doing?” BeauLac asked as I pulled the wiper off the back window then struggled to rip the metal strip from the rubber.
Breathe! “We’re switching vehicles.”
He looked at the Volvo and then back to me. “Is it yours?”
I raised my finger to my lips, signaling a need for silence as I walked unsteadily to the Volvo, the duffel bags slung over my shoulder. After slipping the shank under the window gasket, I pried it up, unlocking the car.
“Are we going to leave this here?” He asked, pointing at the Outlander.
I looked inside the Volvo and saw it was an automatic transmission. Breathe! “Do you know how to drive?”
“Of course I know how to drive,” he said, indignant at the suggestion he might not.
“Easy there, pal. One never knows how many ass wipers the super-rich may have.”
He scoffed in disgust.
I tossed the duffel bags into the back seat and all but collapsed into the floorboard to hot-wire the older vehicle. My fingers felt slow and unresponsive, as if I had thick gloves on, but after three tries I managed to get it started.
“Get in…you’re driving,” I said to BeauLac as I got unsteadily to my feet.
“Where am I going?”
Breathe! “You’ll follow me. Keep the engine running when we stop.”
Walking back to the Outlander, I must have looked like Frankenstein’s monster, each step was little more than throwing one foot in front of me, leaning forward, then throwing the other foot. I only managed to take two steps without the aid of a vehicle to grab onto.
I looked over my shoulder as I got in—BeauLac stared at me, a worried crease knit between his brows. I just got in. I had nothing to say that would calm his fears—I couldn’t even calm my own.
Breathe!
After finding a suitable location to dump the SUV, I spent a generous amount of time wiping down the interior. I didn’t care so much if my prints were discovered, but the nagging, pounding thought that BeauLac had to remain “dead”, forced a level of detailing we really didn’t have time for.
He helped as best he could, but I swear to god the man had never picked up a cleaning cloth his entire life before then.
After finishing the wipe down, I got in the Volvo and fumbled with the GPS on my phone, dropping it twice from my clumsy fingers.
“Should I drive?” He asked, walking around and standing in front of the still open door.
I thought about it for a moment then nodded. I crawled across the console, dreading the notion of walking again. As I awkwardly dragged myself across, my leg caught on the shifter. I reached down and yanked twice, ripping my pants. BeauLac waited patiently as I moved across, then got in and took a deep breath.
It was a moment before he released the parking brake. He was visibly shaken by the night’s events.
“Just follow the GPS. You’ll be fine,” I said, taking a conscious breath before my words.
I could tell he wanted to say something, but after a moment of silence he put the car in drive and pulled away from the SUV. I only hoped we wouldn’t have to evade more attackers—BeauLac would have no chance of outdriving them.
We drove in silence for almost an hour before he turned to me. I saw him start to speak a number of times before finally getting the courage to say something. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Not sure I know what you mean,” I said quietly without taking my eyes off the road.
“Between the time you abducted me and now, you seem to have forgotten everything …even the location of your compatriots, and now you can barely walk without effort. Were you wounded?”
Breathe! I looked at him and pointed to my forehead. “Head wound.”
“Ah.” He nodded.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I remember that I’m no longer supposed to torture then kill you.”
He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Well, at least you
remembered that.”
I smiled. I was glad BeauLac was at ease enough to roll with the dark humor. Perhaps John would be able to finesse more worthwhile information from him than I could with my memory gaps.
As we sped toward Lyon and John, I probed my memory more, hoping to provoke a response—any response—from Wolf. When that exercise failed, only leading to more anxiety, I sucked in a sharp breath, once again having forgotten to do so. I guessed I wouldn’t be resting anytime soon. I might suffocate in my sleep. Breathe!
That moment of self-pity was brutally and painfully cut short by a sudden flash, slicing through my memory—Kathrin…you’re gone.
Despite my best efforts not to, my eyes filled with moisture that then spilled down my cheeks.
“Are you alright?” BeauLac asked.
“Eye strain,” I replied, curt and harsh. “Pay attention to the road.”
Breathe!
**
10:05 p.m. — Rebel Team 2 Safe house, Adams County, Ohio
JO ANN ZOOK could barely contain her joy—the ploy had worked, and the National Intelligence Backup Servers had been rebooted, quarantining all of the foreign malware that her script had detected. With that reboot, her program went to work, masking itself as a port sniffer and getting compiled into the screening protocols. She could read everything. It was her birthday, Christmas, and graduation day all rolled into one.
For hours she combed through the backups, seeking the sensitive data they had been denied for months. When she got to the Homeland Security branch, she burrowed deep, downloading personnel files, assignment logs, and communications.
“You are some prolific bastards, aren’t you,” she muttered as she scraped the data into ad hoc flowcharts and indexed data tables.
Interagency communications were next, forming a layer that fit over the flowcharts like a transparency, connecting names and positions to the actions taken. Her eyes flashed over the spooling data as her graphic began to take shape, terabytes of data, condensed to bullet points of information.
After almost six hours watching the flow of data, her eyes burned and her neck cramped. “This is going to take forever,” she said to her screen.
She tipped her head sideways to crack her neck and something stood out on her screen. Something out of place. She rolled the screen backward and looked at the data more carefully before clicking on the index, opening the flow of documents.
Squinting at her screen, her confusion deepened when she noticed BRE meta-tags on a string of communications labeled “Secret Service.”
“Now why would BRE Security be interested in the Secret Service?”
She opened the directory and looked through the communications. They were emails, forwarded with assignment rosters from Baynebridge.
Jo’s eyebrow hooked up as she pulled the rosters into their own database and cross-referenced them.
When the names, profiles, and past assignments began to cascade across her screen, she sat back abruptly as if struck. “Nick.”
She stared, clicking through the profiles. “Nick!”
“What?! Jesus Chri—”
“Look,” she said, pointing at a cluster of twenty profiles, scrolling slowly through their past assignments with Baynebridge.
“Yeah, I remember a few of these guys. What’s the panic? We know they’re dirty.”
Jo clicked on the Homeland Security assignment roster, cross-referenced to the Baynebridge group.
Nick bent over Jo’s shoulder and squinted at the assignments—they were all now assigned to the same group, all now employees of Homeland Security, and all recently assigned to the Presidential Secret Service Detail.
“When?”
Jo clicked over to the flowchart and found their placement under the BRE communications. She opened an email from the President’s Chief of Staff.
“RE: DHS personnel rounding out President’s detail. Status Approved. Report for duty 5/2/2011. Full roster.”
“That was yesterday,” Nick said quietly, almost as if to himself. “Shit.”
He stood and Jo swiveled her chair to look at him, staring, awaiting some decision.
He shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“So, a Baynebridge hit squad has just been assigned to protect the President of the United States in the middle of a covert war, and we’re just going to let it play out?”
A pained expression made Nick’s pointed features look like he’d been kicked in the balls. “Goddammit.”
“Nick. We can’t let those bastards take down the President.”
“I know!”
“Then what are we going to do?”
Nick rubbed his hand across his face in obvious frustration, his dilemma clear—if they warned anyone it would expose their access to the government backup, or do nothing and let the President unknowingly surround himself with assassins.
He shook his head and squatted next to Jo, resting his arms on her computer desk. “Is Michael Casey still the head of the President’s protection detail?”
Jo clicked over to a new screen and typed a query into the Homeland Security personnel database.
After a couple of clicks, she nodded. “Yep. He was on duty today.”
Nick lowered his head, resting it on his arms and stared at the floor for a moment. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Send this to the other two groups with a note that I’m going to intervene.”
She began compiling the essential data and rolling it into an encrypted file. While she did that, Nick pulled a phone from his pocket and slipped the battery in. She began composing the message, but paused to listen when Nick made his call.
“Hey, it’s Nick. I’m sorry to call so late,” he said.
He smiled and nodded. “Yeah. Everyone thinks I’m dead, so that should tell you how important this call is.”
He looked at Jo and winked at her, but it did nothing to ease the tension she felt gripping her gut. She knew they might be blowing their best Intelligence source since going underground. In her mind though, she knew some things took priority. They’d find another way into the data if they had to—an assassination attempt was too important to ignore.
“I want to meet but it’ll take me some time to get out there. Is tomorrow afternoon, four o’clock okay?”
She watched as Nick flexed his jaw, grinding his molars together.
“Yeah. That works. Under Santa’s lap?”
After a second, he nodded. “It’s good to hear your voice, too. See you tomorrow.”
When he ended the call, Jo watched him for a moment. He stood motionless, staring at the wall, his eyes dashing and darting across some invisible, seemingly complex image.
“What now?” Jo asked.
Nick shook his head. “Now you have to join up with the other team.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m taking most of your bodyguards with me.”
Her eyebrows lifted high in surprise. Nick wasn’t just going to warn someone. It seemed he would intervene.
She opened her mouth to speak but Nick put his hand up. “Don’t. You’re right. We can’t just stand by. But we can’t just call in a tip either. That’ll blow us, and we won’t know if we’re talking to the right people. For all we know, the President’s detail is already compromised.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
Nick looked through the door into the dark, quiet house. “I’m going to wake Marsh up and the two of you are going to pack your shit and go.”
“Go where? We don’t know where the other teams are.”
Nick grinned. “You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out.”
She opened her mouth to speak again. Again, Nick held up his hand and shook his head. “Don’t do it until after we’re gone. The less we know about each other’s path, the better it is for everyone.”
That thought struck a chilling note, and she shivered like a string had been plucked from within her spine. The fact that Nick wouldn’t reveal his plan to
ld Jo that she, as well, might be tortured if captured. She suddenly found it difficult to take a breath.
“Don’t worry,” Nick said, almost as if reading her mind. “Marsh knows what he’s doing. You’ll be safe.”
Nothing about that statement made her feel better. In fact, it highlighted the fact that she’d be leaving the comfort of her computer cave, surrounded by five capable warriors, and trading it for the open road with only one. That sucked—epically.
“Shouldn’t we contact Scott and the other group before doing something like that?”
Nick shook his head. “Give me a clean burn phone and send a message out to the others. If they have a problem with it, they can abort the mission, but we don’t have time to fuck around. These guys are already protecting POTUS.”
Jo felt the pounding of her pulse in her throat as reality turned her logical mind into a whirlwind of emotion. Tidy flowcharts in her head became sudden clutter, making it hard to think straight.
“You’ll be with Storc soon,” Nick said and put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. This is what we do.”
She nodded, though still unsure of herself as Nick turned to leave.
“Thank you,” she said.
Nick grunted without turning around. When he had disappeared, Jo sent her messages. It would be hours before a reply, and she would already be on the road. She only hoped she hadn’t created an unrecoverable distraction. If the mission failed now, it would be solidly on her conscience.
eleven
Wednesday, May 4th
2:15 a.m.— Defense Intelligence Agency Special Projects Section, Research and Training Compound, Fort Detrick, Maryland
ALBERT EMRICK didn’t feel like head of Special Projects anymore. In fact, he felt a bit like a prisoner of it. For more than twenty years, he had grown his power and influence over the once tiny human enhancements division to become its only director, beating out generals, scientists, and political appointees to solidify his claim. A few strategically placed assassinations didn’t hurt his position either.
But as he lay on the cot in his office, sweating, having not been home in more than four days, he wondered if he would survive to see his crowning achievement succeed. Accepting Combine sponsorship had been a mistake. And now he treaded water in an ocean of treason, providing critical resources for a coup d’état. If they failed, he would be imprisoned—or worse.
