Nightstalkers

CHAPTER 13

Moms dumped air, the rest of the team following. “Mac, you take the front yard. Nada, back. Doc, safest place for you is to follow Nada. Eagle, how’s the Wall going?”

Eagle had the Snake at sixty feet AGL and was flying the outer fence of Senators Club. Every quarter mile, he fired a probe into the ground. The probes linked to each other, transmitting a field that would contain the Fireflies inside of them.

“It’s a big damn compound,” Eagle said. “Forty-four percent contained.”

“Faster,” Moms ordered. “Roland, we’re coming in.”

Roland had heard the screaming, which had abruptly stopped, but he was more focused on the immediate area. The Fireflies were out and who knew what they would get into? He grabbed his deflated parachute and wound some of the material around one of the pipes that protruded from the roof, using it as a makeshift rope. He climbed down to a balcony on the second floor. He busted through a large set of glass French doors.

Roland moved swiftly along the second-floor hallway, kicking doors, clearing the top floor.

There were a lot of doors.

Moms landed in the front yard, dumped her chute, and readied her MP-5. The area was well lit with streetlights and all she needed was someone working the graveyard shift to spot her. Then again, the only people here who might work a late shift were ER doctors. Support was on its way to help secure the community, but while Eagle was working on containment, she had to maintain concealment. She dragged her chute and stuffed it behind a clump of bushes in front of the house, then went to the wide-open front door.

She slid in the door, back against the wall, quartering the room, muzzle of the weapon following her eyes. The foyer was overwhelming, double staircases wrapping down to an entrance bigger than the house in Kansas where she’d spent many dark years.

She edged around to the open doorway.

There was a Rift. It appeared stable.

A woman lay in front of it.

Moms knelt next to the woman. Reaching into her vest, she pulled out an amyl nitrate capsule and cracked it under Lilith’s nose. She stirred, eyes blinking, disoriented.

“How many golden sparks came out of the computer?” Moms asked.

Lilith frowned. “Six. I think six.”

“Anything else?”

“No. It got my husband.” She giggled drunkenly. “No prenup, but a great insurance policy.”

Moms already had a syringe in her hand and jabbed it into Lilith’s arm, knocking her out.

Roland’s voice came over the net. “I’m coming down the stairs. Uh, the set to the, uh, east.”

“Doc, I’ve got the Rift in—” She looked about. “I guess the dining room. Front of the house, to the right as you enter; the front left coming from the rear.”

Doc was breathing hard — he was always breathing hard after he jumped. “On my way.”

“I saw six Fireflies leave the house,” Roland reported, walking up next to Moms. He took up a position just behind her, covering her blind spot.

“Eagle?” Moms asked over the radio.

Eagle reported in. “Eighty-two percent secure.”

“We’ve got six Fireflies, people,” Moms announced on the net. “Let’s secure this house as a base of operations and get a Wall around it.”

Eagle shot the last probe into the ground and checked his display. A continuous flashing red light surrounded Senators Club: a Wall that the Fireflies could not breach. They never ventured that far from their entry point anyway, the record being just short of two miles, but the Wall was an extra measure, and the Nightstalkers excelled at extra measures.

Nada was peering out a front window, hidden by luxurious curtains. All the lights in the house had been turned off and Doc was at work with his laptop and transmitter, the FireWire having been preconnected this time. This Rift was stable so far, but he worked with an appropriate sense of urgency.

Mac had the rear of the house covered and Roland was still clearing the first floor, with Kirk’s assistance.

It was a damn big house.

There was no sign of anything possessed by a Firefly, but sometimes the little bastards were on the down low, waiting for the exact right moment to attack.

“No one else in here,” Roland finally reported.

Moms switched freqs to talk to Ms. Jones.

“We have containment. The community is Walled. One witness here with us. One scientist through the Rift. Six Fireflies out.”

“Support is six minutes out from a Forward Operating Base,” Ms. Jones replied. “They will take over the civilian security for Senators Club. Six hundred and forty-four people live in there. Six forty-three now. Let’s keep this quiet. Support will keep things looking normal.”

“I’ve got it,” Doc announced.

Moms looked over as the golden glow from the Rift snapped out of existence. Doc went to the laptop and shut the lid, wrapping it in a thermal blanket.

“Rift is closed,” she reported to Ms. Jones, thankful they weren’t having a repeat of the Fun Outside Tucson.

“Good luck and good hunting,” Ms. Jones said, then clicked off the net.

Moms joined Nada by the front window. “What do you think?”

“Clusterfuck,” Nada said. “There’re eyes everywhere in a place like this. Eagle or I walk down the street, they’d call security on us. We don’t fit in.”

“You think the rest of us fit in?” Moms indicated her camos, body armor, combat vest, and weapon.

“You got a point.” Nada frowned. He looked over his shoulder at Doc securing the Rift computer. “Even Doc don’t fit in here. We could use an Asset who understands a place like this.”

“I’ll ask Ms. Jones. This will be our base of operations for the duration. Have Doc Wall it off so we don’t have to worry about a Firefly coming in.”

“Unless one stayed,” Nada warned.

“That might be the case,” Moms said, “but I feel better with a Wall up. And Roland said he saw six going out of the house. Doc?”

“I’ll have it up in two minutes.”

“Good.”

Nada looked around. “I don’t like this house.”

The room was a mess from the dinner party. Moms took a whiff and wrinkled her nose. “We’re going to have to clean this up.”

She noticed that Nada was glancing around with more disgust than she would have preferred.

“It’s just a house, people,” Moms announced over the net. “I don’t care if there’s a baby grand by the front door or two grand staircases. It’s another close and burn. Just like the others. We’ve already accomplished the close.”

Nada shook his head slightly, indicating he thought otherwise, but he didn’t say anything.

There were indeed two huge staircases that twisted down and around into the foyer like parentheses and Nada didn’t understand the redundancy. They both got you to roughly the same place on the same floor. It just made either floor a bit harder to defend if the other floor were breached. In fact, the whole place was going to be a nightmare to secure against infiltration, although they would have the Wall in place to protect against the Fireflies.

“I don’t think the architect was thinking urban defense or room clearing when he drew up the plans,” Moms said, seeing him look about.

The huge, open windows made Nada nervous as he always envisioned a sniper was out there, tracking his every movement. Before they turned them off, the bulbs in the table lamps had been so dim they made tiny circles of feeble lights under their heavy shades while the overhead recessed lighting had been so bright that any sniper within a mile could have seen them scratch their asses.

Moms cocked her head, which meant Ms. Jones’s voice was in her ear. She was nodding, receiving new instructions.

While she was listening, Doc announced: “I’ve placed four probes on the corners. We’ve got a Wall extending five meters square from the house.”

As he was speaking, Doc walked over to the computer and pulled out his small set of instruments, much like a thief had lock picks.

After a minute, Moms turned on the team net. “Support has the Forward Operating Base being set up around ten miles from here in a secure location. They’ve got civilian vehicles for us and we can offload our gear from the Snake. Roland and Kirk and Doc will stay here and clean the place up and keep the house secure. Mac, Nada, and I will STABO out to the FOB and drive back in with the gear. Questions?”

There were none. There rarely were.

“Eagle?” Moms asked. “Time to pick up?”

“I’m en route. Be on the roof, please. Three mikes out.”

“Here,” Doc said, holding out the hard drive. “Ms. Jones would want that.”

Moms stuffed it in one of the pockets on her combat vest.

Moms, Nada, and Mac took the stairs two at a time. Mac pulled on the rope leading to the attic, and the trap door opened and a set of wooden stairs unfolded. They went into the dark, hot space, night-vision goggles active. Mac searched about, then led them over to a window that looked over the backyard. He opened and leaned out. He reached into his butt pack and retrieved a short length of rope.

Moms and Nada checked the snap links on the front of their combat vests, because Protocol said they should check their snap links before a STABO. Mac looped the rope over a cornice on the roof and scooted out. He quickly climbed the rope to the roof.

“Two mikes,” Eagle reported over the net.

Moms followed, then Nada brought up the rear. They gathered on the top of the roof.

“Check your snap link, Mac,” Nada reminded.

Mac pressed the gate, made sure it was looped through the proper part of his vest and not a part that would tear off. “Roger.”

“One mike,” Eagle reported.

Nada was looking about. Huge houses in all directions, otherwise quiet. He could see quite a ways up here, two stories up plus being on top of the steeply peaked roof. He saw the rolling greens of the golf course not far away. Excellent fields of fire there. But overall: “This is gonna suck.”

“Yep,” Moms said.

“Gonna be hard to keep concealment.”

“We will,” Moms said.

“Yeah.” But Nada didn’t sound very confident. Then again, he never sounded very confident.

“Thirty seconds, from the east,” Eagle informed them.

They turned in that direction. In their goggles they spotted the bulk of the Snake coming toward them, wings vertical. A single hundred-foot-long rope dangled from the belly of the beast. The rope had a series of small loops in it, each fifteen feet apart. Eagle brought the Snake to a hover overhead and the rope slid along the roof. Mac clipped in first to the third attachment point from the end. Moms went farther along the rope and clipped to the second attachment point. Nada was last on the final attachment point. As his snap link closed he radioed Eagle.

“We’re on.”

The Snake lifted straight up.

Mac was drawn up from the roof, followed by Moms, then Nada.

Looking down, Nada was startled. He could swear there was someone on the roof of the garage attached to the house across the street from their new base of operations. But then he was airborne, twisting and turning at the end of the rope as Eagle banked the Snake to head to the FOB, the three figures dangling below the craft.

Looking back, Nada could no longer see that roof.

Deep in her room, Ms. Jones watched the half-dozen computer displays on the ceiling above her hospital bed. The proximity of Fort Bragg to this latest incident was a fortunate thing. Only sixty miles away and the home of Special Operations, she was able to mass a superb Support Force of active duty personnel, which she preferred over contractors.

They already had an FOB set up, and more personnel and matériel were moving north in convoys and via helicopters and sling loads.

It was nice to have such high-caliber Support, but in the end it would just be the Nightstalkers versus the Fireflies.

It always was.

Eagle brought the Snake down slowly, allowing Nada to get boots on the ground first, then Moms and Mac. Once they were clear, he deployed the landing gear and settled down right on top of the blinking infrared strobe only visible through his night-vision goggles. The small clearing was set deep in a forest, over two miles from the closest house.

A cluster of Humvees, trucks, and two black SUVs were parked just inside the trees. Troops came out of the woods with camouflage nets and poles and set to work covering the Snake even before Eagle got the back ramp down.

Nada took charge, as Moms was once again listening to Ms. Jones. With Mac and Eagle’s assistance they broke the large team box down into smaller loads. The two SUVs were backed up and the cargo compartments loaded to the gills with the items Nada thought would be needed in their new Area of Operations.

Satisfied, Nada turned to Moms and waited.

She had her head cocked for another thirty seconds, then switched off. “Nothing new,” she reported. “Let’s go.”

A soldier came running up with something. Two stickers. For Senators Club. They applied them in the proper spot on the windshields. He also handed them a transmitter, one for each car.

“What’s this for?” Nada asked, seeing no buttons on it.

The soldier shrugged. “No idea. I was just told you’d need it.”

Mac got in one SUV with Eagle, and Nada took the wheel in the other while Moms took the passenger seat.

“Crap,” Nada said as they pulled out of the FOB, through a narrow dirt track in the woods, lit by chem lights set up by Support.

“What?” Moms asked.

“Civvies. We’re gonna need civvies to move around in that place.”

“We can forage. I’m sure there are a ton of clothes in the closets upstairs.”

Nada gave her a doubtful look but said nothing further. They came out of the forest and turned onto a paved, double-lane state road.

“Besides,” Moms said, “our personal civvies are as bad as wearing uniforms there. We need civvies that fit in.”

Nada repeated his dubious look.

They came to the sign indicating the turn into Senators Club, just as the GPS informed them to make the correct choice and turn. They left the state road onto a road flanked by well-manicured brick walls. There was no guard on the first gate. In fact there was no gate, just a massive, ornate sign. Another, less ornate sign informed them they were now in Senators Village. Behind the trees on either side they could see rows of townhouses.

“Is this where the help lives?” Nada asked.

“No,” Moms said. “They probably live in that trailer park we passed about a mile back. This is where the younger people who aspire to move farther in live.”

Another brick wall and a slightly better sign indicated they were now entering Senators Park. The single-family houses were close together, a smattering of trees giving a moderate sense of privacy. They were mostly one story and small. The next level was Senators Forest, where there were more trees and the houses were larger and held claim to bigger lots. The whole place was like a canal with locks and dams, and you could only enter if you could rise to the level.

“At least they make the class structure formal here,” Nada said.

Moms shrugged. “We got a pass to the inner sanctum and we have a job to do.”

They went through a two-hundred-yard belt of trees, the outer buffer for the inner sanctum of Senators Club. The guard on the gate waved them through, only focused on the sticker and not able to see the occupants through the tinted windshield. “Ms. Jones will have Support take over the security,” Moms added.

“Just have to make sure they don’t get curious and poke into our mission.”

“Ms. Jones will ensure that.”

“Won’t the locals notice they got new security?” Nada wondered.

“People who live in places like this don’t focus much on the hired help,” Moms said, “even the ones with guns.”

Despite the fact they were now in Senators Club proper, it turned out Doctor Winslow had purchased a house that required another passage. A metal gate blocked the way and there was no guard to wave them through, just a sign that said Senators Ridge. Nada slowed down, trying to figure this out, when the transmitter they’d been given beeped and the thing swung ponderously open.

“They got more gates here than Bragg,” Nada said.

There were twenty-four houses along the ridge in four rows of six. It was the highest point around, allowing the occupants to look down on all the others who were scrambling to try and reach this status. The houses also had great views of the surrounding forests and artificial lakes dotted here and there, and the golf course.

“Who lives there?” Nada asked as he drove through, nodding toward a large structure in the middle of a field surrounded by a white fence that stretched for half a mile.

“Horses,” Moms said, spying one of the beasts. “It’s a stable.”

“Geez,” Nada muttered. “The horses live better than the people in Senators Village.”

Thus Nada and Moms and Mac returned, with Eagle, to Senators Club in the late hours of the night, the time when people skipping out on the mortgage usually drove off in the opposite direction. The SUVs screamed government anywhere else, but not here, where SUVs were the vehicle of choice, the bigger the better. Except these vehicles weren’t carrying soccer balls or traveling baseball bags and a half-dozen screaming kids.

The smug voice of the GPS wound them through a warren of curving streets. Each one looked almost exactly the same: hulking houses with square footage in five figures.

“Didn’t the architect of this place know how to draw a straight line?” Eagle wondered over the team net. “And what’s with the lights pointed in, not out?”

The amount of brick and stone and stucco and wood and granite and slate was staggering, and Eagle was correct: exterior lights, unlike at a firebase pointing out to highlight the enemy, were all pointed inward to display each house in case someone was blind and could miss the monstrosities.

“Landscaping is all too close to the houses,” Nada observed. “Good cover for anyone trying to break in.”

“They all have security systems,” Moms said.

Mac snorted. “The cheapest rent-a-cops you can buy and the cheapest system, I bet.”

“They did put a lot of money into the gates and fence,” Nada admitted.

As they pulled up into the driveway of the Winslow place, two of the four garage doors opened, indicating Roland was on his game, as expected. As they stopped, the doors slid down behind them.

Roland was standing in the doorway leading to the house.

Everyone got out and opened the cargo doors on the SUVs. Mac, Eagle, and Roland started unloading. Kirk was upstairs providing over-watch.

“There’s stuff in the kitchen,” Roland was saying, “that I don’t even know what they’re for.”

“They’re called appliances,” Moms said.

“There’s drawers with wires and weird machines,” Roland continued, giving his account like he would after having pulled recon on a high-priority high-tech target he needed an Acme to decipher for him.

“Dishwashers, warming ovens, trash compactors, and stuff like that,” Moms said as she started helping the others as Nada stood on top of the stairs leading into the mudroom, taking over-watch just in case they got attacked by a weed whacker. “Might be a good place to stash some weapons. Just don’t push any buttons,” Moms warned.

“I didn’t see any buttons,” Roland said.

“Just stay away from them then,” Moms said. The last thing they needed was for their weapons to get a rinse and hold.

They trooped inside carrying a bunch of gear they might need sooner rather than later. Mac went off to check the security system and Roland went back upstairs to pull over-watch with Kirk. A few minutes later they heard a crash of something and Roland cursing. He came over the net.

“There’s a room full of just dolls and clowns and dollhouses and stuff like that. It’s freaking me out.”

Moms and Nada exchanged a glance. Roland never got freaked out on a mission. But this was different. The house represented something so foreign to her team that she could see dismissal was turning to intimidation, and that wasn’t too far from uneasiness. And, ultimately, fear, although she couldn’t see anyone on this team going there. But then again, Burns had lost it in the Fun Outside Tucson because of a cactus. Everyone had something buried deep from some childhood trauma that could get to them, a reality Moms knew very well. For Roland, apparently it was dolls and clowns.

Moms spoke over the net. “It’s just a house. A very big house full of lots of stuff. Most of it is for looks. Like the baby grand near the front door.”

It was on big brass wheels and Nada immediately turned it from decoration to usefulness by rolling it over to the large front double doors and shoving it against them, then locking the wheels.

Moms nodded approvingly. “See? Nada blocked the front door with the piano. We use what we need for our mission. Improvise, people. It’s what we’re good at.”

“What’s the point of having stuff just to look at?” Roland wondered from upstairs, staring at who knows what. Moms knew he could see the point of looking at naked women dancing on some tables: that made sense. A piano? Vases as tall as the cactus from Tucson? Clowns and dollhouses? No.

“Mac?”

“Yo.”

“The house security system. Bypass the code so we can run it.”

“Already working on it.”

“And then set up your own cameras to give us a three-sixty view and put the displays in the room overlooking the front yard. That will be over-watch central. And then tie in to the Senators Club system so you can see everything their cameras see.”

“Roger.”

“Kirk?”

“Yes?”

“Hook your satellite retransmitter to the dish on the roof. I saw one when we STABO’d off. I want to ensure our com-link is secure. Then steal into Senators Club wireless so Mac can bootleg their video and all other commo. And I want us to monitor that even after Support takes over.”

“Roger.”

Nada tapped her on the arm. “It’ll be dawn in a bit. I’m going to do a perimeter search inside the Wall. Make sure we didn’t trap anything inside that’s trying to get out.”

Moms nodded, but pointed at his MP-5 and his MK-23. “Suppressors.” She hit the net. “Everyone, go suppressed.”

With a sigh, Nada quickly screwed on the bulky suppressors for both weapons. His sigh was because the suppressors required special rounds, which were less effective than normal bullets. He pulled the magazines in both guns, ejected the rounds in the chambers, then removed magazines marked with a piece of red tape from the specific ammo pouch on his combat vest where everyone on the team carried their subsonic ammunition.

The bulky tubes were not silencers. Anyone who was anyone who used weapons knew silencers only existed in movies. A gun makes a lot of noise in a lot of different ways. The moving parts make noise. The gunpowder going off and blowing out the end of the barrel makes a rather large noise. The crack of a round going through the sound barrier makes a supersonic crack. The best one could do was keep the gun well lubed to reduce the first noise; have a suppressor on the end of barrel to eat up the expanded gases from the gunpowder explosion to reduce that sound to a minimum; and prepare special bullets that were subsonic to avoid the last.

Ready, Nada slipped out the back door and was startled as the floodlights above his head automatically came on. Motion detector. Cursing, Nada went back in the house and turned off all the switches next to the door. He exited and this time, no lights.

There was a pool, almost big enough to take in the Snake. There were enough permanent security lights all over the place that his night-vision goggles weren’t needed.

Nada moved around the pool to the back fence. There were woods behind the house, so at least they had a way to move in and out. The neighbors on either side were about fifty meters away in their own hulking McMansions.

He looked for dead zones, places where they could operate unobserved. There was a pool house — he guessed that’s what it was called, because it was on the other side of the pool. It had a bar with the biggest built-in grill that Nada had ever seen. It was outside the range of the Wall around the home. He went over to it, opened the metal grate door, and looked around inside. There were steel shutters that could be cranked down. He pondered what their purpose was for a moment: hurricane protection? It was too far inland for a hurricane. Then he realized it was to secure the grill and the other stuff inside. He looked about and spotted a switch. Flipping it, the shutters slid down with a rattle, leaving only the door as an access — or egress — point.

This could be useful.

Nada left the pool house. As he stealthily made a circuit of the perimeter of the Winslow mansion, he noticed something doing a perimeter of its own. A small dog was shadowing him, about ten meters away, just outside the range of the Wall. It was a dog that obviously absorbed lots of bathing and trimming.

Nada went around the front of the house, then pressed his back against the wall, drawing his machete.

He waited, something he was very good at.

But the dog wasn’t coming.

Smart dog, Nada thought. Too smart.

He risked peeking around the edge. The dog was motionless, waiting for him outside the Wall.

“I got a possible,” Nada whispered on the team net. “Small dog, east side of house.”

“Roland,” Moms’s voice came over the radio. “Back up Nada.”

The dog was staring at Nada with unblinking eyes and he was shifting his evaluation from possible to probable. Of course, he’d met some crazy dogs.

He heard a door open and a light went on down the street. A woman called out in a half whisper, half yell: “Skippy! Skippy!”

Nada checked out the dog. It was focused on him.

“Skippy!” The woman’s voice was an octave higher. “Treat! Treat!”

“I’ve got the dog in sight,” Roland reported.

“Roland. See the pool house?” Nada asked.

“The what?”

“The thing on the other side of the pool with the steel shutters that are closed.”

“Roger. Understand.” Roland might not know pool houses and he might be nervous around dolls, but he was quick with tactics.

Nada extended the stock of the MP-5, then tucked it tight into his firing shoulder. He stepped around the corner of the house, pulling the trigger fast, semiautomatic. The suppressor made low chugging sounds as rounds left the barrel. The clicking sound of the gun’s mechanisms was like music to Nada’s ears.

Every round hit the dog, knocking it back.

It did not die.

Nada kept shooting. The dog darted right, growling and snapping its teeth.

The bolt on the MP-5 locked open, but Nada had been counting his trigger pulls and was pushing the eject button for the mag as it did so. He slammed home another mag of subsonic without missing a beat.

But the dog was faster. Nada got three rounds from the second mag into the dog, aiming for the head, before it launched.

It hit the Wall just six inches from Nada’s face and bounced back.

Stupid Firefly.

Nada flipped the switch and fired the rest of the mag on automatic at the stunned thing on the ground just in front of him, ripping shreds out of it.

Moving out of the darkness to the right, Roland was walking steadily forward, firing his MP-5 one-handed, adding to the carnage. In his other hand he held a recycle bin. The Flamer was on his back, the pistol grip secure in its asbestos sheath.

The dog rolled, trying to get to its feet, except Nada had severed both front legs with that automatic burst.

Nada reloaded one more time, fired half the mag into what remained of the dog, then dropped the weapon to the end of its sling while drawing his machete. The dog’s head was still moving, teeth snapping, and the rear legs scrambling. Nada slammed the point of the machete down through the dog’s chest and flipped it right into the recycle bin.

Roland slammed the lid shut on the bin.

They could hear the dog scrabbling around inside. Teeth ripped at plastic and a hole appeared.

Nada and Roland ran for the pool house. The hole grew bigger as Skippy shredded plastic. Roland skidded to a halt in the doorway of the pool house and threw the bin in. Nada fired over Roland’s left shoulder, riddling the bin and Skippy inside.

Roland pulled the pistol grip and fired the flamer.

The steel shutters contained the flame, and the dog was ashes in seconds.

The Firefly rose, hovered, and then dissipated.

“One down,” Nada reported. He looked at the pile of ash. “Sorry, Skippy. You might have even been a good dog.”

He tapped Roland on the shoulder. “Good job. Go back in and take over watch. I’m going to finish my perimeter sweep, then I’ll be in.”

Roland nodded.

Nada went back to the front of the house, then moved around, staying inside of the jungle of plantings that blanketed the front. He was almost to the front doors when he froze as he noted a glow to his right and up. He saw a teenage girl seated on the sloping roof on top of the garage of the house across the street, smoking a cigarette, an open window behind her. The room behind the window was dark. She was looking straight back at him, even though he knew she couldn’t see him in the shadows and without night-vision goggles.

She gave a little wave.

“We’re being observed,” Nada reported. “Front, across the street, on the garage roof.”

Inside the house everyone stopped what they were doing, grabbed weapons, and crawled to windows, except for Eagle, who maintained security to the rear.

“How many?” Moms asked.

“One.”

The girl looked to be around sixteen or seventeen. Nada saw three red dots fix the girl: laser-aiming beams. Moms, Mac, and Kirk.

“She’s a girl,” Nada said.

The dots didn’t move.

The girl did, taking one last deep drag on the cigarette, then did something Nada had only seen on army posts. She field-stripped the cigarette. She blew the shredded butt off her hand into the air where it dissipated much like the Firefly had just done.

“It’s just some kid smoking,” Kirk said, and one of the dots disappeared. “You said they can’t get into people, right?” The other two dots also disappeared.

“Not just some kid,” Nada muttered. “A smart kid.” He wondered for a moment if Skippy had been her dog, but it had been an older woman’s voice calling out for the dog, not a girl’s. Still.

The girl stood and disappeared into the window just as the light in the hallway to the left of that window came on. The girl slid shut her window and the room stayed dark for a moment, then there was a faint glow in her room: the doorway opening and someone checking on her.

Nada finished his perimeter sweep without further incident and came inside via the back door. Moms was seated at the kitchen bar, her MP-5 on the granite top, her head cocked, meaning she was talking to Ms. Jones, laptop open in front of her. Kirk was at one of the front windows, peering out with his goggles. Doc was checking the old laptop, performing mechanical surgery with small instruments.

Moms cut the connection with Ms. Jones. “Support is moving more Assets in.”

“I think we might have an Asset in this enemy village,” Nada said.

“The kid?” Doc asked without looking up. “She probably still wears a retainer at night.”

Moms nodded and spoke over the net so everyone could hear. “Ms. Jones gave me some info on places like this from someone she talked to. This whole community is full of what are called helicopter parents with nothing to do but follow daily schedules full of ballet classes and violin practices for their kids.”

“I like the violin,” Doc said. “I used to play as a kid.”

Moms ignored him.

“What do you mean, helicopter?” Eagle asked from rear security upstairs.

“They hover over their kids and keep watch all the time when they’re not working.”

“The girl across the street didn’t get observed by the helicopter,” Nada noted. “I get the feeling privacy around here is as rare as an old clunker on cinder blocks.” He walked over and looked at the dark window. He suspected she was still there, standing back away from the window, the way an experienced sniper would keep the muzzle of his weapon well inside the room. Only idiots in movies poked the gun out so it could be spotted.

“Fifty percent security,” Moms ordered. “The rest, get some sleep.”

Nada quickly broke the team down into guard shifts that would get them through the next few hours until dawn. “Remember, there’s five Fireflies out there and a lot of civilians. We’d like to keep most of them alive.”

Eagle spoke up in a falsetto, because Eagle liked to leave things on a high note: “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

“Shut up!” Roland and Mac and Kirk shouted over the net in unison.

Outside the gate to Senators Club — across the road, hidden in the forest — Burns had watched the Snake fly by earlier, three figures dangling below. Then the two SUVs came not much later, which meant the FOB was close by.

Protocol as always.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.

The person who answered wasn’t happy about being woken up so late.

He was even less happy at Burns’s words: “You need to get out. The Feds are moving into Winslow’s house.”

The voice on the other end cursed in Russian, then asked a question.

“I’ll tell you about your investment soon,” Burns said. “I’ll call you. Stay in the local area.”

He flipped the phone shut. His skin itched where he’d been flayed and punctured.

He forced himself to wait and was rewarded when two large Chevy Blazers raced out of Senators Club, tinted windows hiding the occupants.

Another piece that could be used when needed.