by Ilsa J. Bick
“You? Keeping your animal under control.”
“That’s it? I fast-rope us down and then…” He waited. “Dot-dot-dot? What?”
Boone spoke up. “Depends on what we find. You’re still good with a weapon, right?”
“I can fight.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Hacker said.
“If Kate McEvoy is only a tenth of what I’ve heard she can be, I’m not sure you’ll get away without one,” Boone said.
“Is she armed?” Besides, her arm, that is, ha-ha.
“Nothing more than a shotgun or rifle and a handgun, if that.” Boone paused. “Again, from the stories, she doesn’t need a whole hell of a lot of weaponry, depending.”
“Then, what is this? Search and rescue? Retrieval?” Termination? He swallowed that back. McEvoy might have gone off the reservation, but she was also too valuable to simply scrap. Unless they dismantle and use her for spare parts. A grim idea he wouldn’t put past Hacker.
“More like snatch and grab,” Boone said. “Preferably with a well-placed trank and no drama. I’m kind of partial to coming out of this with my head not literally shoved up my ass.”
“You still haven’t said why Six is so important.”
“It’s very simple, Mr. Kuntz,” Hacker said. “Kate McEvoy may have progressed…well, perhaps evolved is a better word. Yes, evolved.” Hacker seemed to taste the word, rolling it around his mouth and over his tongue. “Evolved to the point where she, as a flesh and blood woman, is not the most important component.”
All those twinkling Christmas tree lights. Those glowing traceries mapping out connections which never existed before. He placed a hand on his dog’s neck and thought of all those night mortars or distant weapons fire which woke him as he sheltered in some crappy little hut or rudimentary shelter and reached for the dog, so solid and alive. Six had been his anchor. Six had saved his life and then, later, McEvoy had saved Six only to lose Lord knew what.
“You’re counting on their connection,” he said. “You’re hoping that if Six is there, she’ll be less likely to fight because she won’t want Six to get hurt.” He didn’t know how he felt about them using Six this way, as if his dog were nothing more than a tool. He thought he probably didn’t like it. “Six is…what? Bait? Leverage?”
“More a reminder of her humanity. Assuming there’s enough left.”
“What? You guys only put in parts.” Kujo shook his head. “It’s not like you created some kind of monster.”
“Mmmm.” Hacker put a finger to his lips. “I imagine Dr. Frankenstein felt the same way.”
Chapter 2
Four hours earlier
“What do you mean, Wynn? What don’t I understand?” When Wynn had pushed into the tent—when Kate spotted a glint and known he had a knife—she lashed out, fast, taking the man down, swarming over his body, pinning his shoulders with her knees, digging her fingers into his throat, snatching up his knife. Beyond the tent came only the sporadic pop of wood. No one was coming to rescue Wynn, which meant she had some time.
“Time for what?” Jack’s voice was an urgent thrum in her brain. “Finish him, grab those girls, and go.”
Not before I know what’s going on, Jack. “What did you come to do, Wynn?” She brought the point of his knife to within a hair’s breadth of his right eye. “Lie, and I’ll pop out your eye and crush your throat before you have a chance to scream.”
“I won’t.” His fear smelled like roadkill after days in the sun. The knob of his Adam’s apple hitched against her palm as his throat worked in a hard gulp. “I came to get you out.”
“I’m supposed to believe that? You didn’t bring your dog, Wynn. Why not? You worried Dax would try to protect me?” She knew the dog would; for one thing, he liked her. For another, he was an ex-military working dog. She’d known that just as soon as she got a look at the identifier tattooed on the dog’s left ear—and that he’d been born overseas. Even if Wynn hadn’t clued her in as to Dax’s original name, Der, the dog’s military identifier was a giveaway. Six’s had been ß826. That ß was the clue. The Eszett or scharfes S, the sharp s, was the only letter in the German alphabet without a Latin equivalent.
Dax’s identifier was ß1701. QED. Dax had been born in Germany.
Which might come in very handy. Because right before their final mission to Cham Bacha, Tompkins had taught her two little words which he’d said would save her life. They had, too. She wouldn’t hesitate to use them again, if she had to.
“Why?” she asked Wynn. “Why get me out?”
“Because we have to run, Mac,” he said.
“First good idea I’ve heard all day,” Jack opined.
“But why, Wynn? Because they’re going to kill me? They could’ve done that already, but they didn’t.” She angled the knife just a touch so the blade caught orange firelight seeping through the tent. The steel gleamed as if already bloodied. “I’m not sure that would work out very well for them, anyway.”
“Don’t get cocky, Kate,” Jack warned. “They already managed to take you by surprise.”
Fool me once, Jack.
“What if they’re meeting up with more of their people?”
That was a good point. What if these people were only heading to Dead Man for a meet-up? Hand over the girls, get their money, they’re done.
“Kate?” Jack pressed.
I hear you, Jack. Something didn’t make sense, though. If Chicago and Oz were gone, she and Wynn had surprise on their side. Why run?
“How did you get loose? You were in zip ties. Oz put them on. He wasn’t gentle, either. Unless...” Wynn’s eyes slipped in a sidelong glance toward the side of the tent then back. “Listen, Oz and Lambert, they searched your pack. I got a look, too.”
She knew what he was saying. As soon as she’d spotted her pack, she reasoned they must have gone through her things. Which meant they’d gotten a good look at her spare feet, the ones outfitted only with spikes for traction on ice and snow. The modifications were, in and of themselves, nothing to get too excited about and certainly not game-changers. Amputees switched out legs or feet depending on what was required, or even how tall they wanted to be, which meant that her spikes weren’t that unusual.
The circuitry embedded in them, however, and the biosynthetic skin...well…
“Why did they keep me alive?” she asked.
“You mind getting off my chest?” Wynn countered. “You’ll still have the knife and I bet even if I had a sidearm, which I don’t, you’d probably catch the bullet in your teeth.”
His scent said he wasn’t lying about not having a gun. “Okay.” Closing the knife with a quick flick of her wrist, she slid off his chest. “I’ll just hang on to this. Now, answer the question. Why am I still alive?”
“If it was up to Oz, you wouldn’t be. He wanted to slit your throat, leave you in the woods, let the animals do the rest. But Lambert saw your legs and then what you’ve got in the pack and thought there might be money in it and, uh…well, you. You got to admit there’s nothing about you that’s standard issue.”
“He got that right,” Jack said. “You’d be worth something to the right buyer. Unfortunately, that would mean whoever got you would probably end up taking you apart to figure out what makes you tick. They might not kill you right away, either.”
“How come you got prosthetics like that anyway?” Wynn asked.
“Because I just do.” She wondered what SOP was if someone like Oz or Lambert or Wynn found out she was the modern-day equivalent of the Bionic Woman. Knowing Vance, disappearing a few nobodies would be easy. On the other hand, given everything that had gone down so far, this didn’t exactly break her heart.
“Come on.” Wynn gave her an incredulous look. “That’s no answer. What are you, Mac? An experiment, a weapon? How much of you is, you know, parts?”
“Where are Lambert and Oz?” She wasn’t getting drawn into a little heart-to-heart with this guy. They were not friends. She
liked that he was a dog handler. Actually, she liked the dog a lot more than she cared for Wynn.
“They got a report from Bayles, who came back not long after they knocked you out. Ex-military like the rest of us. He and I served together, actually.”
“Okay.” Something didn’t quite add up here. Yet another guy wandering into camp? That would make...how many? She ticked them off in her mind—Lambert, Oz, Wynn, Chili Mac, and now this Bayles person. Five guys for eight starving girls and that woman, whoever she was.
“Weird ratio,” Jack noted. “You’d expect more kids.”
She and Gabriel had thought so before, and Chili Mac had pretty much said they’d had a medic. She’d have guessed anyway because they still had a MOLLE bag filled with supplies. Kate recognized a medic’s touch. All combat medics had a very specific way of organizing their packs. This guy’s hadn’t been an exception. Everything was in its place.
Except this medic wasn’t with them anymore. The way Lambert had closed down Chili Mac when he started to spill the beans, she figured it was one of those forever things. As in, never coming back, either because the guy had deserted or was dead. Still, that meant seven guys and a dog guarding eight kids and whoever the woman was. But why hadn’t Bayles been with the others?
“Doing recon, maybe?” Jack was quiet a moment. “Kate, when you and Gabriel first spotted them, Oz was on his radio. Then, later, after Wynn got into it with Oz, Lambert told Wynn to do a perimeter check. Remember what he did?”
She did. He asked for Oz’s radio.
“Right, because he said his was charging. But what if Wynn was talking to Bayles?”
A good thought. Aloud, she said to Wynn, “Tell me about Bayles.”
“Not much to say. He came back, said he picked up a weird broadcast,” Wynn said.
“Define weird.”
“Beats me.” Wynn’s shoulders rose and fell. “Despite what you might think, I’m not privy to the master plan here, only the broad strokes. Dax and I are here more as security, to keep the girls in line. They’re afraid of the dog, what can I say?”
She wondered if they’d good reason. There was nothing like a really big snarling animal to make a person think twice. “You only follow orders?”
“Pretty much. Look, I’m a hired gun. No one tells me anything about anything. All I know is Bayles came back and the next thing, Lambert says him and Oz are gearing up and going out with Bayles, and for me and Paulsen to sit tight, keep a lid on things.”
“Paulsen has to be Chili Mac,” Jack said. “Which means whatever Bayles said spooked them enough to take three guys. That’s a lot of manpower, Kate. Why would they need it?”
The medic? What if he deserted, Jack? But why would he do that?
“What if it’s because those girls are worth way more than we think, Kate?”
More than what, Jack? Sex trade?
“Maybe.” Jack’s tone held a musing quality. “I’m thinking about what we saw when Miin died. You remember? In the vomit?”
How could she forget? It was heroin, Jack. It was also a lot of other crap the kid swallowed—moss, tree bark, what looked like bits of glass.
“That’s just it, Kate. I don’t think that was glass. I’ve been thinking about it.”
He had? How could that happen? What were you thinking about, Jack?
“The glass was”—Jack seemed to search for the right word—“too uniform. The pieces were all the same size.” He paused. “And cut.” Another beat. “And shaped. Kate, there’s only one thing I can think of which meets all those criteria.”
What? Then she got it. Oh my—
“What is it?” She snapped back to find Wynn peering at her again. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” She bulled on before he could comment. “The girls aren’t carrying only drugs, are they?”
Wynn’s eyes took on a hooded quality. “Why do you think that?”
This guy was a crappy liar. Like that whole nobody tells me nothing about nothing act smelled to high heaven. It was a literal scent, too, an oddly peppery stink. It made her want to pop him one right on the jaw. “Don’t bullshit me, Wynn. You know what I’m talking about. Each girl has a belly full of heroin.” She leaned in. “And diamonds.”
“Diamonds? I don’t know what...Huh!” Wynn’s head suddenly snapped to the right with such violence, he actually toppled. “The hell?” He put a hand to his jaw. “What was that?”
“What?” But she had felt an odd little...what could she call it? A rush? Something. Hadn’t she just been thinking about smacking him silly? “I didn’t do anything.”
“Now, who’s bullshitting? I’ll give you this.” Pushing himself back to a sit, he worked his jaw back and forth. “You’re pretty damned fast.”
“Fast...” Her voice trailed away as her gaze latched onto a sudden red blotch mottling Wynn’s left jaw. The hell? Her eyes snapped down to her right hand. She hadn’t moved, she knew she hadn’t thrown a punch. And yet...
Jack, did you do that?
No response.
Jack, did you—
“Fine, okay,” Wynn snapped. “They’re diamonds, but so what? What difference does that make?”
She would have to worry about Jack another time. “A big one. Your medic may have deserted, but he must’ve snatched a couple of girls while he was at it.”
Wynn’s eyes hooded again, and she didn’t need spidey-sense to parse his sudden wariness. “How do you figure?”
“Oh, get real. The numbers, Wynn. There are too many of you guys and not enough of them. It’s a waste of manpower, which means you probably had more girls to start with. How many?”
Wynn gave her a sullen look. “Fifteen. Vietnamese street kids. Vancouver’s lousy with them. That’s mostly where they come in and then they get sent various places.”
“So, they’re trafficked.”
“For sex? Sure, unless they get rounded up for something like this. We lost some real early on, same way we did tonight. Lambert expected that, though. Some kids can’t haul all those baggies for long. A couple days ago, two got away. Lambert sent Doc and another guy after them.”
Doc must be the medic. “Why Doc?”
“Because he was a SEAL. Shooter back in Afghanistan. Sending him made sense. Except a day later, we can’t raise Henderson...this was the other guy...and then Doc called in, said Henderson got killed falling off a mountain. Only then Doc goes silent. GPS is gone, too.”
She understood now. “Lambert figures Doc was in on it from the beginning? Arranged for the girls to escape then wasted Henderson?”
“That’s the thinking. Which is why they sent out Bayles to track him down, so they could go after him and the girls, if they’re even still alive. I’m not sure they will. The smart play would be for Doc to catch the girls, retrieve the merchandise, and get the hell out of here.”
Retrieve the merchandise. He meant kill the girls and gut them like deer.
Jack sighed past her left ear. “It is the smart play, Kate, and you know it. Those girls would only slow him down. His being a SEAL certainly explains why Lambert took so many guys.”
Prudent. Anyone military knows not to mess with Special Forces guys of any flavor.
“Listen,” Wynn said, “I didn’t sign up for this. Yeah, yeah, I want money but not like this. I’ve had enough. I don’t want any more dead kids on my conscience. That’s why I want to get them the hell away from this place. I’d been trying to think of a way, and then you showed up and you know, you’re...” Wynn waved a hand in the direction of her pack. “Pretty damned unique. So, I figure no time like the present.”
She bought about a third of that, mostly the part about wanting money and her showing up as his get-out-of-jail card. “What about the woman? What’s her story?”
“Jean?” Wynn shrugged. “Beats me except, believe it or not, she’s a nun.”
“You’re right.” This could account for the lingering stink of a lie. “I don’t believe you.”
“Swear to God. Or maybe she’s an ex-nun or some missionary, I’m not sure. I don’t know her story, whether she was supposed to be take the girls to a group home or what, but when Lambert intercepted the van, she got swept up, too. I think Lambert decided to keep her alive on account of the girls know and trust her. Listen,” Wynn pushed on, “we really got to go.”
“I still don’t get why running is better than simply fighting. They don’t know I’m loose.”
“Yeah, but if we take them on, there might be shooting, and I told you, no more dead kids. We start shooting, someone’s going to get hurt.”
“Then, what’s your plan, Wynn? Where do you want to run?”
“Where they can’t find us,” Wynn said. “We run into Dead Man.”
“What?” She blinked. “And then what? Even if you make it to the base of the mountain, you have to figure a way over the damn thing and then a way out to wherever, which would mean more bushwhacking. Forget about the amount of time we’re talking here, which could be days in the cold and snow, and forget that people have tried and failed, okay? You can’t possibly get around or over Dead Man with girls who can barely walk.”
Wynn had listened, his face almost impassive, but now his eyes sparkled with something close to amusement. “You’re not hearing me, Mac. I didn’t say we go over or around Dead Man. We get into Dead Man’s guts,” he said. “We go through it. I know a way.”
“How could you know—” All at once she felt a strange but recognizable tingle in the center of her brain and stiffened. The hell?
“Are you all right?” Wynn sounded concerned. “Mac?”
No, no, how is this happening? Jack, JACK? “I’m fine,” she said, sneaking first one hand and then the other to the back of her head. Walking her fingers to a series of barely perceptible divots only she would recognize, she felt a tiny vibration in each pad as her embedded transmitters responded to sensors nestled in her skull. “Just a bad headache,” she said, moving her fingers in a very specific way and very specific code. “Oz really let me have it.”
“You sure you’re all right? You don’t look so good.”
