Terminated

Chapter 3

Info came in an hour down the road, in the form of a text to Patrick’s phone from Pansy. It didn’t say much, but it did give them an address in Kansas City. Bryn sighed when she saw it, because it meant a long, boring drive . . . if they were lucky, of course. And for the first few hours, they were; they managed to stay at a constant, legal speed, and no one seemed to notice them. “It’s a little late to ask, but are we sure the anti-tracking shot worked?” she said. Riley glanced up from whatever she was doing on her phone, and nodded.

“I double-checked,” she said. “We’re dead air. Nobody’s tracking us.”

That was a relief, because Bryn was fairly sure that without Pansy’s countermeasure they’d have already been under attack. Jane wouldn’t be messing around, and she’d be investigating any avenue to finding them. Including, of course, going after their friends and family.

Her own family, in fact. The only saving grace to that was her family, with the exception of Annie, who’d gotten caught up in the madness, had no idea what was going on. Sometimes, dysfunction was good for something after all. She didn’t know about Riley, but she hoped Joe’s family was somewhere very, very safe. He had a lot of precious people he could lose.

It was too late to warn them or try to get them to safety—not that her family, never all that close, would have listened to what she had to say in any case. Certainly not to the extent of pulling up stakes and running away. It would be far, far better just to stay away from them. Any contact could put them in greater danger.

“We’re staying on I-40 all the way to Oklahoma City,” Joe said, “and then switching to 35. I figure we’ll need a gas and rest break in about thirty minutes. Sound okay?”

“Find someplace with lots of traffic,” Patrick said. “The more people that pass through, the better; major truck stop, preferably. Crowds are good cover. If that looks iffy, go for someplace off the beaten path with old pumps. If they haven’t upgraded those, chances are they won’t have state-of-the-art surveillance, either.”

“You’re really worried, aren’t you?” Bryn asked him. Patrick looked at her for a few seconds, and then nodded.

“I’m worried,” he agreed. “The Fountain Group hasn’t exactly been idle this whole time while we thought the government was in charge of Pharmadene’s research programs; they’ve been carrying things forward, and they’ve got Jane on their payroll. I know Jane. We both understand what she’s capable of doing, but more than that, I understand how tactical she is. She’ll be casting as wide a net as possible. For all I know, she might have already pinpointed every one of Manny’s secured bolt-holes, which means she might be satellite-tracking us right now; I don’t doubt the Fountain Group has that capability, or can buy it from those who do. So any stops we make are risky, and potentially deadly. We need to bear it in mind.”

“And I was looking forward to scoring some beef jerky and beer for the road,” Joe said. “You really know how to kill a good time, man.”

“Let’s hope I’m wrong.”

He seemed to be, at least for the first portion of the trip. Joe picked a huge truck stop, one with at least fifty cars, trucks, and vans crowding the lot, and dozens more giant tractor trailers. Joe pulled up to a pump, and the other three bailed out to head inside to the store. Even if they’d been willing to forego the magic lure of beef jerky and candy bars, Bryn needed to pee, and she knew she’d better grab the chance while it was available. The line was—inevitably—longer than she would have liked, and she felt tremendously vulnerable standing in one place . . . but the bathroom break passed without incident, other than a squalling two-year-old throwing a fit at the counter.

She bought a not-entirely-unflattering hat to shade her face from the cameras, and some candy bars, and was in the van before anyone else except Joe.

Odd. She’d thought Riley would have made it back first, since she’d been ahead of her in the bathroom line. Or Patrick. He didn’t strike her as much of a convenience store browser.

Bryn passed Joe a Snickers bar, and he unwrapped it and ate half. She had taken over the shotgun passenger seat, and they sat in chocolate-medicated silence for a full minute, but she didn’t stop watching their surroundings, and neither did Joe.

Patrick returned, bearing bottles of water and a ridiculously large coffee, which explained his delay.

But Riley was missing.

Joe finished his candy and said, “Bryn.”

“I’m on it,” she said, and bailed out to go back inside. The ever-shifting crowd had a certain weird sameness . . . mostly overweight bodies not flattered by baggy cargo shorts and overly patriotic T-shirts, with a few holding-their-noses sleek-looking elites scattered in for diversity, getting their chic diet water before climbing back into their high-dollar cars. She wasn’t sure how she fit in here, or anywhere. But one thing was certain: Riley wasn’t anywhere in sight.

Bryn checked the restroom. Nothing. She was on the point of calling an alert when she finally spotted Riley outside the windows, pacing back and forth at the side of the building. She was on the phone, and she closed the call just as Bryn headed toward her.

“What are you doing?”

“Hedging our bets,” the other woman said. She’d also invested in a hat, a khaki boonie-style thing that was oddly cute on her. “It isn’t that I don’t trust Pansy, but I want to be sure we have some options and backup.”

“You called your friend Jonas, didn’t you? Patrick said—”

“Nobody elected him Commander in Chief,” Riley said. “And trust me, we’re going to need help.”

She was, of course, right about that. They did, and Bryn finally shook her head and said, “Fine, I won’t tell him. But we need to get going. By the way, I bought Snickers. What’ve you got?”

“Hair dye,” Riley said. “And scissors. We’re both getting makeovers.”

They had one more stop before night closed in around them, and after some discussion Joe and Patrick decided to choose a motel for the night. No-tell roadside inns were plentiful, at least; the pink stucco place that Joe picked seemed likely to have been in business since the 1950s at least. It catered to kitsch, but it was definitely not much in terms of technology. Flat screen televisions still only existed in the realm of science fiction, and air-conditioning was a leaky window unit. At least it was clean, and quiet, and the hot water worked.

Bryn cut her hair short, and applied the hair dye, which turned her from dark blond to a brunette. Riley, on the other hand, elected to go punk—shaggy hair with purple streaks, and a black dog collar with spikes.

“That’s not regulation FBI. I’m pretty sure,” Bryn said, as Riley fluffed her hair into a spiky shag.

“Good,” she said. “If we get time, I’ll get some nose studs and a low-cut top. The less they look at my face, the better.”

They had an uneasy night’s sleep—and a short one. Bryn ate protein bars every few hours, and it seemed to help assuage the anxious feeling of hunger . . . not completely erasing it, but pacifying it. We still need meat, she thought. She wondered if she could convince her friends to find a diner for breakfast that didn’t mind serving an almost-raw steak. The very thought made her mouth water.

She was on her way to the van when she noticed how quiet it was. Yes, it was a rural area, off the freeway’s constant hum, but there seemed to be such a deep well of stillness in the early morning that it keyed her instincts up to alert.

Bryn changed directions and went to Patrick’s door, and rapped softly. He took only a couple of seconds to open it, and she stepped in and shut it behind her. “Trouble,” she said. She wasn’t sure, but she also wasn’t willing to be gratuitously stupid.

Patrick didn’t doubt her, or even take a glance outside. As she dumped her kit on the floor and opened it to remove the PS90, he did the same, only he took out his shotgun. It was a good choice, she thought. They also silently separated out their ammunition on the bed, ready for reloading.

Patrick paused in the act of reaching for another shotgun shell as a voice called out from beyond the window. “Hello, honey, I’m home!” It was Jane. Bryn couldn’t possibly forget that voice, and she saw Patrick close his eyes briefly in a storm of emotion that probably wasn’t love and relief. It lasted only a second before he gathered himself, slammed the shell home, and pumped the shotgun.

“They’ll already have us boxed,” he said. “She wouldn’t announce anything until she was sure of her position. She thinks she’s got us cold.”

“Maybe she does,” Bryn said.

“We’ll make it a fight unless she’s got more upgraded models with her like you and Riley, which I doubt; Jane always did want to be the strongest person in the room. She won’t want anyone who’s in danger of upstaging her. If she’s got an Achilles’ heel, it’s her ego.”

He was talking calmly, but quickly, and he took up a position to the right of the curtained plate glass window. Bryn took the left side. She knew, from her own reconnaissance of her room, that the bathroom’s high, narrow, barred window wasn’t so much of a threat. It’d take time and energy for an enemy to get through, and it would be noisy as fuck.

No, Jane would favor the frontal assault, as usual. Patrick was right, Jane needed to show them who was boss. Especially Patrick. Especially Bryn.

“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” she asked Patrick, without really looking at him.

He didn’t look back, either. “Probably.” She saw a ghost of a smile in her peripheral vision. “Let’s make the bitch pay for the privilege of killing us.”

They didn’t actually have the chance, because right about then, there was the sound of a helicopter. No, not just one—lots of helicopters. The dull chopping sound got loud, crisper, until it was an overhead drone.

Bryn swept the curtain aside to look, and saw ten military helicopters hovering over the little motel—fully armed and armored, state-of-the-art death from the air. They were in perfect formation, tightly grouped, and the threat could not have been clearer. They didn’t even make any announcements.

“Right,” Patrick said softly. “That’s it, then.” And he was right. If Jane had managed to summon up that kind of firepower, they had nothing to match it. Their armory—however good it might be for a running operation—wouldn’t stand for long against rockets and high-capacity aerial machine guns.

But then something very odd happened, because the helicopters didn’t attack; they just hung there in the sky. It didn’t look like the formation was aimed at them at all.

It was, she realized, aimed straight at Jane. Patrick’s ex—tall, strong, and crazy—was standing beside a fleet of five converted Humvees, and even if she was trying not to look intimidated, her posse with her wasn’t doing the look so well, staring up at the hovering ceiling of doom. Big guys, heavily armed and Kevlared, but as nervous as mice in a field with a hawk soaring overhead. They were disciplined enough to hold their ground until she gave the signal, at least, but once it was given, the retreat was decidedly not casual.

“Did you expect this?” Bryn asked. Patrick gave her a curt shake of his head. “Are we in bigger trouble?”

This time, the skin around his eyes crinkled in what was almost a smile. “You know, I’ve learned not to assume anything,” he said. “Let’s wait and see.”

Jane was the last to retreat. She was holding an assault rifle—hard to see what it was, but it looked deadly enough—and she lifted it and aimed it at the window. Bryn stepped back, out of sheer instinct, but Patrick—Patrick didn’t move. He was a clear, easy target if Jane decided she didn’t care about the consequences.

But she did after all, because she laughed, lowered the weapon, and got in the Humvee. As soon as her ass was in the seat, it did a fast U-turn and sped away, all the others falling into formation behind it. Three of the helicopters split off, following, but the trucks distributed their retreat, too, and the remaining formation shifted. Bryn couldn’t understand what was happening at first, but then she saw it—more helicopters coming, from the direction to which the Humvees had fled. Not as many in this formation, but enough to make it an Apocalypse Now kind of fight.

The two formations settled into a hovering standoff, each protecting their own forces.

“Jane has air support, too,” Patrick said. He sounded a little numbed, which was pretty much how Bryn was feeling about things as well. “Christ. We’ve got air support. What the hell is happening?”

“I think ours came from Riley,” Bryn said. “She made a call yesterday, to her friend Jonas. I’m guessing he pulled in some favors, just in case. I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t take it so well.”

“I’d have been angry about it,” he acknowledged. “And we’d all be dead because of me being too low-profile. I expected her to bring a small strike force, not the frigging armored division.”

“She knows what you expect. Which is why we can’t let you run the strategy against her, Patrick. You know her, she knows you, and you can’t get out of each other’s way. Let Riley run it. Jane won’t see that coming—just like she didn’t expect this.” Bryn gestured at the helicopters. One was dropping out of formation, graceful as a falling leaf, toward an open spot in the sparsely occupied parking lot. It touched down, rotors still at speed, and a tall man disembarked. Like Jane’s people, he’d come prepared for war, with body armor and fearsome personal weaponry. At his side was another man, shorter and wider, who was wearing what looked to Bryn’s eyes like the uniform of an army major.

Riley stepped out of her room, and a second later, Joe Fideli followed her. He had his own PS90 with him, but carried at port arms—a friendly but cautious gesture. There was no question he had Riley’s back.

Bryn and Patrick exited, too, and reached the two newcomers about the same time as Riley and Joe.

“Brick,” Riley said, and extended her hand to the man who wasn’t in uniform. He ignored it and pulled her into a hug. “Ooof. Been working out, madman?”

“Yep, little bit, here and there. Looks like you were right about the trouble, Riley,” Brick said. He let Riley go, and his lively dark gaze fixed first on Joe, then Bryn, then Patrick. “I’m Jonas Wall. Brick, to my friends. Riley says you’ll fall into that category. Hope she’s right, because I just put my ass on the line for you.”

“You’re not the only one,” Riley said, and extended her hand to the man standing next to Brick. “Major Plummer. Been a while. How much trouble are you in right now?”

He shrugged; it was impressive he could shrug, given the amount of muscle he packed on those shoulders. Definitely a bodybuilder. “We’re conducting maneuvers,” he said. “Way I see it, I have less to explain than our opposite numbers across the way. I’ve got authorizations. They’re black ops-ing it in a very public way, and I promise you that right now there are some scrambles going on to cover asses. But Agent Block, you’ve got a problem, too. A big one.”

She laughed. “You mean, in addition to the people who almost mowed down the entire motel?”

“Yeah. I’ve already gotten countermand from up high, so I have to pull out and head back to base. I’m doing that at a leisurely pace, because we’re having mechanical problems, as you can see.” His pilot leaned out of the helicopter and held up a wrench. “Very serious issues. He’ll be a while fixing that, for safety. My point is, these jackholes may be conducting their own off-the-books operation, but they’ve got coverage somewhere in the Pentagon. Maybe elsewhere on Capitol Hill, too. You need to be careful. This is some political shit.”

Brick nodded. “They’ve already gone to work inside the FBI, too; way I hear it, higher ups are saying you went off the reservation, bribes might have been involved. It’s a tangled mess, and the gods on high are going to be wading through it for a while, but until they do I doubt you can count on much in the way of official government support. Pharmadene was enough of a black eye all by itself. It’s now officially an embarrassing clusterfuck, and nobody wants to be caught in charge of it.”

“I don’t care about politics,” Riley said. “Major, I know you have to withdraw; I owe you a favor for riding to our rescue in the first place. I never expected you to bring quite this much . . . thunder.”

“Better too much than too little,” he said, and bared his teeth in a smile. They were big teeth, and very white. “If you get in over your head, yell. I’ll do what I can. So will some of my brothers and sisters, to the best of their ability. But you’re in good hands with Brick.”

He shook hands all around, and he was good at it—a firm, dry hand, good eye contact. Then he was in his helicopter and they were rising up into the air, an eerie combination of brute effort and mechanical grace.

“Plummer will give us maybe fifteen minutes,” Brick shouted over the dull, rolling chop of blades that hovered over them. “Get moving. I’ll escort you where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?” Bryn asked, and got a full, assessing look from the man. He was . . . intense, she had to admit. Intense in a good way—like Joe, he preferred a shaved head, which added to the richness of his brown eyes and dark skin. The goatee framed a mouth that seemed, even now, to be just on the edge of a smile.

“Classified,” he told her, and winked. “Trust me. I know where you need to get, and I’ll make sure you travel safe. That’s my job. Logistics and protection.”

“Brick owns a private security company,” Riley said. “Trust me. He’s a friend.”

“Does he understand what he’s getting into?” Patrick asked. “Brick, the people looking for us mean to kill us, and they don’t care who they have to go through to do it. They may not quite be ready for a missile battle in the skies on sovereign soil, but they’re not far from it. Are you prepared for that?”

Brick gave him a slow, wide smile. “Prepared for it, staffed for it, used to it. Mount up, kids. We’re rolling.”

He walked away as a black SUV—not too dissimilar from their own, actually—pulled up, and Bryn noticed for the first time as he climbed in that he moved a little stiffly. It wasn’t terribly noticeable, until he stepped up in the cab. The way he moved his right leg seemed . . . off.

Riley noticed, too. “Brick lost a leg in Iraq,” she said. “Took shrapnel to the head, too. They said it was a miracle he survived. He decided to put it to good use.”

“You trust him? With your life?” Patrick asked.

“Yes,” Riley said. “With all our lives. Come on.”

With that, they were on their way to their own SUV, and in less than a minute, they were on the road, surrounded by flanking vehicles, with a cloud of air support blocking the sun as they headed northeast.

Major Plummer’s helicopters peeled off half an hour later and beat the skies toward home base, which left them cruising along at a steady sixty-five miles an hour in a box formation, which rarely had to break up for traffic—wrong time of day, and wrong part of the country, although there were plenty of tractor trailers on the road. Bryn didn’t feel safe, but she also felt a whole lot less vulnerable than before. Jonas Wall—Brick—had a confidence that seemed utterly warranted. Even against Jane and her thugs.

Of course, he probably hadn’t seen what she and Riley could do, under pressure. Or Jane. How many of us are there? She hadn’t stopped wondering about that . . . because it terrified her. The whole operation that had been under way at the nursing home, colonizing the helpless bodies of the elderly in the locked facility, had been about breeding more of the nanites and siphoning them off for later implantation. Had the Fountain Group actually reached the stage where they were seeding the nanites, or was that still a goal for the future? Or was Pharmadene the only pilot program running?

She knew that with ten soldiers equipped like herself, she could have taken on a hundred men, easily. Maybe ten times as many. It was an advantage as lopsided as machine guns against Stone Age clubs. Give those same upgraded soldiers advanced weaponry, and . . . her mind just balked. Better not to imagine what could happen.

“We’ll be in Wichita soon,” Joe Fideli said. “As pimpin’ awesome as the fleet is, are they really going to stick with us in the city, too?”

“They’ll flank us and shadow, but they won’t be right on our bumpers,” Riley said. “Once we leave Wichita we’ll re-form the group until Topeka. Brick will have replacements ready to meet us there, so these will peel off and head in for relief.”

“Damn,” Joe said. “Maybe I need to work for this guy. I love organization, and you don’t get it too often in private security. And Bryn, love you, but so far my association with you hasn’t exactly paid my mortgage, much less put my kids through college.”

“I thought you were doing it because you loved me, Joe.”

“Well, that, too. But the hazard pay invoice is going to be a bitch.” Joe grinned a little madly. “Bet Manny’s saying that, too.”

She could only imagine. The rental on his bulletproof SUV alone would run into the tens of thousands. “Dude, I already gave you a job at my funeral home.” A funeral home she had owned and operated, albeit under government control and funding—because they needed to track the progress of those being administered the Returné drug, like Riley and others who’d been illegally brought back by Mr. Fairview, who’d once owned the place. She’d been in charge, more or less, of taking care of those who’d survived the revival process—and making sure they took their shots, stayed sane, and didn’t attract too much attention. It had been part of the deal.

Now she guessed all that was over, which was sad, because she’d been . . . happy. As happy as a dead woman could be, she supposed. She’d liked the work, the calm, steady, useful work of caring for those who were gone—and those who’d been returned against their will through the magic of super-science. She’d been den mother and counselor to many of those who’d been addicted, against their will, to Returné. She’d seen some adapt, and some give up.

The consequences of giving up were pretty horrific, because the drug was designed to keep you going at any cost, and as its nanites lost efficiency, you simply . . . decomposed. But stayed alive and aware until the bitter end.

I’m not going out that way, she promised herself. If necessary, she’d make Patrick or Joe swear to load her into a crematory oven and burn her to ashes. It would be awful, but relatively fast, at least.

Second thought, maybe she should ask Riley to do it, and they could make a mutual destruction pact. Riley would understand.

Riley’s cell phone rang, and she answered it, listened, and made a monosyllabic response. Then she hung up and said, “Heads up. We’ve got word of some kind of intercept being planned. Brick’s on it, but keep your eyes open—” It was prime territory for it, Bryn thought; the narrowing road out here in the country meant that their escort stayed ahead and behind, but couldn’t fully box them in.

But the flat Kansas fields didn’t seem to offer any kind of obvious threat, either.

They watched tensely for anything big enough to present a threat, and for miles—almost fifty miles—they saw nothing, unless the enemy had taken to recruiting thermal-surfing hawks overhead as surveillance.

Up ahead, Brick’s SUV flashed its lights, and took an exit, heading for the access road. Bryn wondered why, but then she caught a look at Joe’s gas gauge—they were running low, too. And the sign they passed said LAST GAS FOR 150 MILES, so she supposed it was sensible enough. The Shell station up ahead looked ancient and deserted, and it was on the other side of a train track.

She was looking out for everything, but somehow, she forgot to watch out for roadside IEDs.

Bryn saw the car abandoned by the side of the road, half in the ditch about twenty-five feet from the tracks, and even with her experiences in Iraq, her personal experience at being nastily surprised by such things, she didn’t immediately key in on it as a threat. It was positioned crookedly, one tire off, and there was one of those Day-Glo stickers on it that showed the local police had tagged it for towing. Entirely normal, and any other time and day in the USA, entirely safe.

But not today.

She didn’t even see it go up; her head was turned away, checking the other side of the road. She didn’t hear it, either, because before the sound reached her and rolled over her like a tank, the impact had already thrown the SUV up in the air and flipped it partly over, and her body was too busy trying to sort out all of the unnatural inputs—sound, light, heat, gravity twisting out of shape, pressure, pain.

And then the SUV landed on its side with a boom like cannon fire—tinny in her shocked ears—and rolled over on its top in a gritty chorus of bulletproof glass warping and cracking. It didn’t have enough momentum to keep tumbling, so it rocked to a stop, and for a second Bryn held still, waiting for her body to tell her its status.

Good to go, apparently. Aches and pains that she’d have normally felt faded under adrenaline, and besides, the nanites were good for one thing, and that was healing damage.

The cabin was full of smoke, and she heard coughing. “Patrick?” Her fingers scrabbled for the seat belt release, and she found it and pressed. That dropped her onto her neck and shoulder, and she slithered around over the broken glass to ease the strain. “Joe? Riley?”

“Riley’s good,” came the agent’s voice, and then Riley’s body slipped out of the upside-down restraints and rolled next to her.

“Joe here,” Fideli said, and coughed again. “Fuck. Hey, Pat, you sleeping in? Because we’re in some trouble here.” While he talked, he was working the release on his seat belt. It was stuck, but in seconds he had a combat knife out of its sheath and was slicing through the thick fabric like silk. Riley squirmed back to give him room to drop; he did it more elegantly than either she or Bryn had done, but then, he’d probably had more practice.

Patrick didn’t answer. He was hanging limp, bloodied arms dangling. Joe cursed under his breath, rose to his knees, and cut the man free. Bryn, without prompting, helped ease him down. Behind her, she heard more glass breaking, and metal groaning; Riley was forcing open the driver’s side door with muscular kicks.

There was a firefight going on outside the toppled SUV, a thundering chatter of bullets punctuated by a low rumble and a loud blatting horn, and what the hell was that . . . ?

Joe had taken hold of Patrick beneath the arms and was crab-walking backward, dragging the other man with him. Bryn shook the lingering fog out of her head and turned to the cracked window next to her. Impossible to see what was going on, so she smashed it out with a flurry of quick punches. Cuts and breaks didn’t matter.

There was a spotlight rushing toward them, and the sound of metallic screeching pierced the noise of combat, and Bryn had time to realize that the vibration was coming from the railroad tracks, the railroad tracks underneath the SUV that she was in, and the headlight was from a black locomotive rushing toward them with the pulping force of God’s biggest hammer.

Riley realized it, too, and from the other side of the SUV she grabbed Joe and heaved, hauling him and Patrick out with one bone-shaking pull and dragging them at an angle backward to a ditch.

Bryn bailed out of the window she’d broken, hit the hard, vibrating metal of the tracks, and didn’t have time to get out of the way . . . just enough time to roll off the metal and onto the wood and gravel in the center.

The train went over her like a storm, a roaring black hurricane of steel and smoke, burning metal and sparks. She was facedown, cheek pressed onto the sharp chunks of rock, and the smell of burning oil overwhelmed her.

She didn’t hear the train hit the SUV, but it must have, because it kept moving, thundering over her and gradually easing to a stop still parked on top of her.

She made sure it was stable, then shakily crawled out between the smoking wheels, slithered down the embankment and rolled into a weed-filled ditch that was smoldering with pieces of the exploded car.

The battle was in full force up on the road.

Half the escorting SUVs were trapped on the other side of the tracks, barred from them by the train; Brick’s two other teams were still in the game and laying down hot fire to keep the attackers—from the goddamn train now—from firing down on Riley, Pat, and Joe, who needed cover badly. Bryn took only a couple of seconds to take the situation in, and focused on the body-armored assault team in the boxcars of the freight train, who’d slid aside the doors and were pouring semiauto fire at the guardian SUVs, trying to take them out first.

Bryn lunged back up out of the ditch, grabbed hold of the back passenger door of their wrecked, mangled, chopped-in-half SUV, and braced herself. All about leverage, she told herself. The door was twisted and hanging loose anyway. Go.

She yanked, and metal groaned and shook, but the door held.

One of their attackers turned his fire on her. She felt the bullets striking but ignored them; pain was pain, the nanites would fix it. Her world narrowed to the door.

She yanked violently, twisting down, and the one remaining hinge snapped at its stress point, leaving her holding a thick armored door.

She picked it up and ran to the opposite side, around the still-smoking SUV, and rolled into the ditch that held Joe, Patrick, and Riley. She and Riley got the door up and above them, protecting the two men, seconds before the concentrated fire bore down.

“Ladies,” Joe said between gasps for breath, “you’re making me feel kinda useless here.”

“You’re the only one who can shoot right now,” Bryn panted. “How’s that for feeling useful?”

He grinned. He was bloody from a cut on his head, and his smile looked wild and warlike. He still had his sidearm, though Bryn hadn’t had time to grab her weapons bag, and he crawled to the edge of the sheltering door. “Go,” he said, and they shifted it a few inches down his body. He fired six shots in about three seconds, moving his aim with tiny, precise ticks. “Clear.” They moved the door back to cover him—and the answering fire was less—a lot less. “Got five out of six. Last bastard twitched.”

“Vest shots?” Riley asked.

“What am I, an amateur? Head shots, thank you very much.” He took a couple of deep, pumping breaths, and nodded. “Go.”

They repeated the maneuver, and he did six more shots. When he signaled clear again, there was only a desultory rattle of fire on the steel, and then silence.

They were retreating.

Joe wasn’t assuming anything, though. He ejected his clip, slapped in a new one, and racked the slide so fast that it was one blur of motion. Ten seconds passed. Fifteen. Twenty. Bryn’s arms were starting to burn under the strain, and she could see that Riley’s were shaking, too.

Then she heard a shout from behind her, and saw that one of Brick’s men was gesturing at them from his bullet-pocked SUV. “Guys, I think we’re leaving,” she said. “Joe, can you carry Patrick?”

“Better if I drag him,” he said, and holstered his weapon to take hold of the still-unconscious Patrick beneath his arms. “On three?”

They counted down, and as Joe pulled, Riley and Bryn kept the shield over their heads as they moved toward the waiting SUV. From there, Brick’s surviving men—there were at least two down on the road—loaded Patrick in, and then Joe, Riley, and Bryn. One of them tried to hold up the door as a shield, and looked comically surprised when he realized how heavy it was.

Bryn found it funnier than she should have and had to suppress panic giggles. She swallowed them as the remaining mercenaries piled in with them, and pressed her fingers to Patrick’s throat. His pulse was steady and strong, but he had a wicked blow to the head, and plenty of cuts.

“He alive?” the man in charge asked. He resembled Brick a little, but in miniature—small, muscular, and a man who’d clearly been given quality training in mayhem; he was in the shotgun role, and before they could answer he fired out the window of the SUV at the remaining members of the assaulting team. One went down. The others broke for cover.

“He’ll be okay,” Joe said. “Could be a concussion. Hopefully his skull didn’t get fracked.”

“We’ve got a portable med unit I can roll to us,” the man said. “Anybody else got holes in them?”

“Nothing that won’t fix itself,” Bryn said. She wasn’t being flip; she knew she’d taken five or six rounds, but the wounds had already closed, and the bullets had been pushed out. She was, if not healed, well on the way to healing. Efficient things, the nanites. She could almost like the little bastards, except for the side effects.

Like looking at the blood on Joe’s face and having an almost irresistible desire to lick it off and bite into that soft, tender flesh. . . .

She looked away and squeezed her eyes closed. “Riley,” she said.

“Yeah,” Riley said. “I know. Hang in there.”

“Trouble?” the driver asked. He jammed the SUV into reverse, expertly steering around the abandoned vehicle in the way—from the way the engine was smoking, it wasn’t drivable—and hit the gas.

“Nothing you can fix,” Riley said. “What’s the plan?”

The truck was rocketing backward at a terrifying speed—Bryn couldn’t imagine driving that fast in reverse, but the man behind the wheel looked perfectly comfortable with the whole thing. She decided the best thing to do was to not watch, and instead focused on the man in the passenger seat, who was changing out the clip on his military-grade selectable full-auto P90. “We get the fuck out of this killbox and regroup,” he said. “I’ve been around, but I’ve never seen that much firepower to kill four people, outside of diplomats or drug dealers. Jesus, who’d you folks piss off?”

“Better you don’t know,” Riley said. “Classified. What’s your name, soldier?”

“You can call me Harm,” he said. “Everybody does.”

“Seriously?”

He laughed a little, but it was humorless. “Harmon Strang the Third. Harm, for short. Ain’t no brag, ma’am.”

“I don’t think you go in for bragging, Harm,” Bryn said. “Guys like you don’t need it.”

“You say the sweetest things. I almost don’t mind getting shot up for you.” The sarcasm was scorching, and so was the bleak look in his dark eyes. “Can’t say the same for the two men I lost back there.”

“I’m sorry,” Bryn said. “Friends?”

“Coworkers,” he said. “Risk is part of the job. I’m pretty sure they never thought they’d be bleeding out on a side road in Kansas, though. Seems like a fucking waste.”

He wasn’t wrong about that.

The driver got to a wider spot in the road, and performed a bootlegger turn that made a scream of panic rise in Bryn’s throat, but she braced herself and swallowed it, somehow. She could tell Riley was feeling some of that, too, in the glance they exchanged.

Joe, grinning, looked like he was having the time of his life. Adrenaline junkie. He’d probably have a hard comedown later, but for now he’d go off a cliff, screaming defiance and shooting people on the way down. A genuine to-the-bone soldier.

They sped down the access road, did a shrieking sharp turn to get back on the freeway, and rocketed over the arching bridge, beneath which lay the train, the remains of the train-bisected SUV Bryn and her friends had been inside, the exploded car, and the bullet-disabled second escort vehicle. She could see, from this vantage point, the bodies scattered like broken toys. There were a lot more than the two they’d lost. On the other side of the train, the other two SUVs—Brick’s—were off the road and shielded behind the concrete of the gas station—which, Bryn realized, was abandoned and closed. The whole thing had been a setup.

And a well-thought-out one, too.

Brick’s SUVs started their engines and sped out to join them on the freeway . . . and then they were on the road, and accelerating; their convoy was two vehicles lighter, but going a whole lot faster. Harm got on the cell phone to his boss. “Don’t like this road, Brick, it’s too straight and not enough cover. Got any options?”

“Not much,” Brick’s voice came back over the speaker. “Got reinforcements rolling, but you’re right, this whole damn section is all grids. No way to get anywhere out of sight. Everybody good there?”

“McCallister’s down, but not out. Rest of ’em look fight-ready.”

“You keep ’em that way,” Brick said, “because I got the feeling this isn’t over yet.”

Brick was right, and if they hadn’t had qualified combat drivers, all four SUVs might have been junk on the side of the highway, because they hadn’t gotten more than a few miles before two eighteen-wheeler trucks tried to run them off the road. It was almost as hard to negotiate with semitrucks as it had been with the train, but the SUVs had the advantage of speed and maneuverability over momentum, and at least one of the men in Brick’s SUV was a crack shot, taking out one driver within thirty seconds, and putting the other truck out of commission with well-placed bullets to the engine block.

“Brick,” Harm said, as they sped away from the rapidly dwindling shape of the last attack truck, “we’re running on fumes, man. Give me some good news.”

“Refueling stop coming up,” Brick said. “Stay tight on my bumper. We’re about to test the off-road claims on these bastards.”

In half a mile, his driver took a drastic slide off the road and into the soft dirt, and then a sharp right . . . into a cornfield. “Well, shit,” Harm said, and braced himself on the dashboard. “Hope to hell he knows what he’s doing.”

Brick’s SUV was taking the brunt of mowing down the crops, so the rest of them were able to keep right with it, traveling through a newly plowed tunnel in the tall, summer-blown corn. It smelled like dirt and mashed plants—something like mown grass, which was funny when you looked at the size of the stalks being cut down.

It didn’t last long, because the lead truck burst through the corn and onto a narrow dirt path, thick with sun-dried ruts that the farmer and his employees must have used. They took it way too fast for the terrain, sending up a smoke signal that shimmered in the dry, hot air like the finger of God, pointing straight to them. So much for stealth.

“Where are we going?” Joe asked. “Because I’m not loving this plan if it involves some pissed corn farmers with sawed-offs.”

“Relax,” Brick said over the cell. “It’s a safe house.”

And it was.

The farmhouse—typically Kansan, with whitewashed board walls and neat russet trim—sat in a cleared square mile next to a big red barn and a shiny metal tower that could have been feed storage or water; Bryn was no specialist in that. It looked well cared for, and utterly normal.

At least, until the doors of the barn opened with hydraulic smoothness, and proved to be as thick as the doors of Manny’s Titan missile complex. Brick drove in and came to a fast stop, and the SUV Bryn was in veered around and parked with military precision next in line. In ten seconds, they were all in place, and the doors were cranking shut behind them.

“Hands up,” said an amplified male voice from somewhere outside their truck. “Everybody. We’re looking with thermal, and we’ll see if you’re not in compliance.”

Bryn raised her hands, and so did all the others, except Patrick, who was still cold unconscious. That took some explaining to the disembodied voice, but finally, they were all told to exit the vehicles and line up along the wall, hands still raised.

“I don’t like this,” Riley said, and Bryn caught that shine in her eyes—the unsettling gleam of savagery, the same hungry, ferocious burn she felt in her own stomach. “I thought it was a safe house.”

“He never said it was ours,” Harm said, and led the way out. He took his place at the wall, and Bryn joined him, reluctantly. She felt exposed and angry, and as Joe stood next to her, he sent her a concerned glance.

“Hold together,” he told her.

Do I look that bad? She must have. Bryn took a deep breath and concentrated on the wood pattern of the boards in front of her. At least, it looked like wood—but it probably wasn’t, given the reinforced front doors.

Brick didn’t join them at the wall. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him in hushed, urgent conversation with two people who’d emerged from what looked like a control room, from the angled view she had of the consoles and switches inside. She couldn’t hear the conversation from where she stood, but Riley frowned and half turned toward Harm.

“Are they speaking Russian?”

He shrugged. “It’s a multicultural world.”

“Is this a Russian agent safe house?”

“Why? You got a problem?”

“Besides the fact that I am an agent of the FBI, you mean?”

“We’re all friends now, last I heard,” he said, with a smile that was far from innocent. “Cold War’s over. Besides, what the holy hell would Russian spies be doing holed up in a farmhouse in Kansas?”

She glared at him hard enough that Bryn thought it might leave marks . . . but before she could answer, if she intended to do so, Brick came striding over. “Put your hands down,” he said. “But keep them in plain sight. They’re going to refuel the vehicles, and then we’ll be on our way.”

“Brick, what the hell is—”

Joe Fideli shook his head, stopping Riley midsentence. “Look, kiddo, I respect that you’ve got loyalty oaths and all, but me, Brick, and Harm all share a couple of things. First, we aren’t government employees. Second, we all used to be, and we haven’t forgotten that. So regardless what the hell all this is, it isn’t being used to hurt the government or people of the United States, and I suggest you let it slide, because without them, we’re dead on the side of the road.”

Riley didn’t like it, and neither did Bryn, but she had to acknowledge the wisdom of what he was saying. She trusted Joe, and she believed him when he said he wouldn’t have let it go himself if he thought it was a threat. She didn’t know Brick or Harm so well, but she thought that they had the same post-military sensibility that Joe did . . . and she did, for that matter.

So she nodded. Riley didn’t.

“I need to know what’s going on,” she said.

“Then ask Brick—he’s your friend.”

“I mean it, Joe. I can’t just shut my eyes to this—”

“You have to,” he said flatly. “Literally, close your eyes and pretend to be somewhere else if you have to, but if you screw this up, Riley, you’ll get us all killed. What happens if you get us in a firefight and they find out how well trained you and Bryn are? You think they won’t want to break off a piece of that knowledge?” He leaned significantly on the two words, and raised his eyebrows.

That gave Riley pause, and evidently shook her out of her role as FBI agent . . . and into her bigger, scarier role as a prized lab rat. She’d been caged before, Bryn thought. She wouldn’t want to be in a Russian lab, undergoing the same horrors.

Of course, the fact that Bryn’s clothes had bullet holes and blood, but no matching wounds, might be something of interest . . . but luckily, after the explosion and the ditch, her clothes were filthy enough that the blood and tears were nothing special to pick out.

Riley finally not so much agreed as just stopped disagreeing . . . which was good enough. They stood in tight silence as Brick and his men backed each of the vehicles to the gas pump located outside, and the Russians—if that’s what they really were, a man and woman who looked very much middle-American—waited as well. Their gazes were not fixed, they were active and mobile, observing everything, judging everyone.

When Patrick groaned and stirred a little, the strange woman exchanged a glance with her significant other and broke off to come to them. She crouched down next to him as his eyelids fluttered, and he groaned again. She probed his head injury carefully, then nodded.

“No fracture I can determine, but there could be swelling,” she said, “and almost certainly a major concussion. You should take him to a hospital as soon as possible to rule out any permanent damage. He has been unconscious for too long for it not to be serious.” Her American accent was, of course, flawless.

“Thanks, Doctor, but we’ve got this,” Bryn said. She was guessing, but the woman’s brisk, calm manner was something that seemed very familiar to her. Not that she had any fondness now for the medical professions. “He’ll be fine.”

The woman raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and went back to her cold-war spouse. It was good of her to have made the overture, though; she didn’t have to, by the letter of her verbal agreement with Brick.

Bryn knelt down next to Patrick as his eyelids fluttered again. He wasn’t quite out of it, and wasn’t quite in it, either. She checked his pupils. They were equal, which was good news, but the Russian doc had been right; he needed to be seen by someone qualified to check him over in detail. Field medicine could do only so much, and then it got its patient killed from the myriad of deeper complications that weren’t immediately obvious.

“Ready,” Brick said, and she glanced up to see that all the cars had been backed out of the barn and into the gravel yard. “Get him in—we’ll rendezvous with the med team in half an hour.”

“How exactly are we going to do that with Jane on our tail?” Joe asked.

“You let me worry about that,” Brick said. “Let’s roll.”

“A moment,” the Russian woman said, and stepped forward again, frowning. “You’ve been wounded.”

She said it to Bryn, and her gaze was fixed on the barely visible blood beneath the grass and mud stains on her shirt. Bryn froze a second, darting a glance at Joe, and knew he was on high alert, too.

“Not my blood,” she said, and smiled just a little. “I’m fine, thanks for asking. Joe, help me get Patrick in the truck, will you?”

Joe didn’t hesitate. He dragged Pat up, and Bryn took his feet—not that Joe couldn’t do it all by himself, but she needed an excuse to get away from further scrutiny. Together, they carried him to the SUV, easing him into a seat. Riley went around to the other side and got in as well. Brick took the driver’s seat, and Bryn backed up toward the passenger side.

“A moment,” the Russian doctor said again, insistently. “You’ve been hit, or you stripped a corpse that was shot. There is no other explanation for—”

Brick calmly pulled a sawed-off shotgun out from under his seat and pointed it right at the two Russians, and said, “And we were all getting along so well. Guess detente never lasts, right? Leave the girl alone, unless you want to hear the bad things that happened to her while she was being held naked in a warehouse until we rescued her. Yeah, she stripped a corpse. Killed him her own damn self. You wouldn’t?”

His flat delivery, and the forbidding look in his eyes, reinforced the threat of the shotgun, and although the Russians didn’t raise their hands in surrender, they didn’t give them any more trouble or ask any more questions. Brick handed the shotgun to Joe, who stepped in and took the back passenger seat behind him, keeping the aim steady on the other two.

“Thanks for the hospitality, folks,” he said. “Let’s do lunch sometime, eh? Vodka and borscht on me.”

Brick backed the truck out in one smooth, fast motion, and led the convoy out of the farm, back on the service road. This time, they didn’t take the corn shortcut, but followed the grids of dirt roads all the way back to the freeway.

Joe rolled up the window and said, “Nice gun. Can I keep it?”

“Hell no,” Brick said, and held his hand up. “Family heirloom—man, get your own.”

“I had some nice stuff, but it got run over by a friggin’ train.”

“Sounds like the start of a pretty good country song.” Brick grinned, and handed the shotgun back to him. “You can keep it warm for me.”

“Careful, that’s how I married my wife.”

The banter eased some of the coiled tension in Bryn’s stomach, but she wasn’t sure they were out of the woods—or the tall corn—quite yet. “How did you know about this place, Brick?”

“Did some work for those folks a while back. We were friendly. As friendly as people like us get, anyway. They’re all right. A little tense, but ain’t we all just now.”

“They’re Russian spies,” Riley said. “They ought to be tense, operating on American soil.”

“They’ll pull up stakes and be in the wind by the time you report ’em,” Brick said. “Which is too bad, because they had a nice setup out here in the big nowhere. Not like they were hiding nukes or anything.”

“Then what are they doing?”

“Providing a way station,” he said. “Food, clothing, shelter, medical assistance, communication, that sort of stuff. You know. The CIA has similar places all over Europe, and in Russia, too. Part of the game, lady.”

“I don’t think it’s a game.”

“Your mistake. It is, and it never ends, and it never has a winner. You score points, you lose points, players and sides come and go, but the game itself never stops. Hasn’t since the first nations in the world started talking instead of fighting. Spycraft’s the world’s second oldest profession. Has a lot in common with the first oldest, too, only you’re doing it for your country.”

Bryn wasn’t sure whether that was depressing or inspiring, but she was more concerned with Patrick, who was definitely waking up now—and from the shallow, rapid breathing when he opened his eyes, was also fighting back some extreme disorientation and nausea.

“Patrick?” She took his hand and held it, and after a blank few seconds, he turned his head to look at her. “Patrick, how’s the head?”

“I think I’d like to have your nanites right now,” he said, and tried for a smile but didn’t quite make it. “What the hell happened?”

“IED in the car on the side of the road, we rolled, you hit your head, full-on firefight. We even got hit by a train,” Bryn said. “Sorry you missed it. It was pretty epic. Also, there were Russian spies.”

“You’re making this up.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

“Jesus. Where’s Jane?”

“I don’t know exactly, but I expect she’ll be coming for us again soon. We’re meeting up with a medical team; they’ll check you out.”

“Not necessary,” Patrick said, but she didn’t like his pallor, and she thought his pupils were looking a little strange. “Just give me a weapon.”

“I’m not giving up my sweet heirloom shotgun,” Joe said. “I just got it. Rest, Pat. We’re good for now.” His tone was light, but he shot a glance back over the headrest, and Bryn could tell that he was concerned as well. “Brick, how far to that rendezvous?”

“Fifteen minutes once we make the highway.”

Joe didn’t say go faster, but Brick got the message, and the SUV accelerated as fast as the rutted dirt road would allow. Patrick hung on grimly to his seat belt, looking green and agonized, and whatever disrepair the freeway was in when they finally bumped up onto its hard surface, it felt like silk under the wheels, and Patrick (and all of them) breathed a sigh of relief. The flanking trucks closed in around them on the two-lane surface—not quite a box, but as close as it could get for the conditions. And Brick opened the throttle even more, blowing past speed limits to the point that the blur of corn and wheat outside the window became a disorienting kaleidoscope.

Patrick shut his eyes again, and she felt his grip on her hand tighten. “Are you okay?” she asked, and got no response. Dread gathered in her chest, smothering her. “Patrick!”

His hand slowly loosened, but his eyes didn’t open again. He didn’t respond when she called his name again, either.

“Brick!” she called, and heard the sharp edge of panic in her voice. “Brick, he’s out again!” She knew that was a bad sign, and rubbed her knuckles on his sternum—a painful sensation, one that would bring most people around.

But he stayed limp. He was breathing, though, and when she checked his pulse, it remained fast, but steady.

“Five minutes,” he said. “Can’t cut it down more than that.”

She knew he was right, but it still felt like an eternity. She kept her fingers pressed to his neck, feeling his pulse, and she thought his skin felt clammy. Shock, probably. They needed to get him warm before his blood pressure fell too far.

She was so intent on Patrick that it came as a surprise when the SUV braked, and she looked up to see that the lead truck was making a sharp left turn—again, an unmarked dirt road. This time, it wasn’t quite as rutted, or as long, and they pulled to a stop in a cleared area next to what looked like some kind of abandoned pumping station.

An unmarked black tractor trailer was parked there, and as the fleet of SUVs came to a halt, the back doors of the trailer opened, and three people bailed out, plainclothes but carrying red medical bags. From there, it all went very fast—they had Patrick on a gurney and into the trailer, which turned out to be a well-equipped medical bay, in minutes. There wasn’t room to observe, so Bryn was left outside, with the others, as they triaged his condition.

It took fifteen minutes for the man in charge—or at least, Bryn assumed he was the head doctor—to come back to report. “Pretty bad concussion,” he said. “No skull fracture, but there is bruising and swelling of the brain. We’re going to keep him here and run more tests; he needs rest and quiet, and it’s pretty obvious he won’t get it on the road with you. You want to stay with him?”

She did. Desperately. But that wouldn’t help—it would only hurt, in fact, and Patrick would be the first to tell her she needed to continue the mission and finish this, or it would all be for nothing. By staying with him, she might lead Jane to Patrick, when he was next to helpless.

So she swallowed and said, “No. I’ll check in on him, but I can’t stay.”

The doctor seemed unsurprised, and handed her a blank white business card with a phone number handwritten on it. “Here’s the number,” he said. “If he’s anything like our usual patients, he’ll try checking himself out of our care way too soon, but we’ll make sure he’s out of danger before we let him go. Anything else we should know?”

“We have heat all over us,” Brick said. “A shit ton of it, and some of it may spill onto you, so be prepared. Get somewhere safe and locked down.”

“Will do, sir.” The doc was definitely a veteran of combat, Bryn thought; he took the news with total calm, and climbed back into the trailer to give orders to his people. They shut up the trailer, and the drivers—whom Bryn assumed were combat trained—started up the truck and headed off down the dirt road in the opposite direction from the freeway behind them. Evidently, they had a different destination in mind.

Brick’s radio cracked as they headed for their own transportation, and he answered. “Go.”

“Sir, we’ve got some activity to the northeast.”

“Helicopters?”

“No, sir, looks like it could be a drone. I don’t like it, sir. You need to get under cover immediately.”

“What’s our window?”

“Ten minutes at best.”

“Jesus, son, we’re in fucking Kansas—you know that? It’s as flat as a table, and we can’t outrun a drone. What assets do we have to kill it?”

“Nothing in the air right now, sir. I’m reaching out to our nearest air force friend, but I have the feeling they’ll want to stay out of it before shooting down their own expensive toys, even unmanned ones.”

Bryn grabbed for her phone and checked their location on the map. Close. Very close. Brick and his men were still talking, and Joe was tossing in suggestions, but Bryn leaned forward and held out her phone. “Here,” she said. “Go here. Haul ass and max the engines. It’s our only option.”

“Go,” Brick said to Joe, and got on the radio to deliver the orders. To his credit, he didn’t even ask where they were going; Bryn supposed it didn’t much matter to him. She thought, Wait until I tell Annie about this, because it was Annie’s teenage obsession with kitschy roadside attractions that had rung a bell for her, out here in the middle of nowhere.

They were heading to the salt mines.