“I’m all for making it an unfair fight if you’ve got something figured out.”
He pointed at a dense row of bushes to their right. “Go for those. When you get through them, head north.”
Even in the dim light he could see her skepticism. “Bullshit. You’re going to sacrifice yourself so I can get away.”
He shook his head. “I don’t like you that much. Keep your earpiece in. If you don’t hear from me in five, you’re not going to. If you do hear from me, do everything I tell you to the letter. Now give me your knife.”
She handed it to him but clearly wasn’t happy about the plan. Alternatives were hard to come by, though, and a moment later she was slithering into the bushes.
Despite her skill, the branches moved enough to be picked up by their pursuers’ motion detection overlay, but still there was silence. No doubt they didn’t want to give away their positions until they had a high-percentage shot.
Smith lowered his head and waited. Thirty seconds. A minute. Finally, he heard the rustle of branches at eleven o’clock.
The cold was already seeping into him but he ignored it and slid slowly toward the stream. The quiet gurgle as he entered it would be filtered out as background noise by the Merge worn by the men bearing down on him. One of the units’ few weaknesses.
The water was cold enough that his chest caught when he tried to breathe. A moment of concentration allowed him to get in enough air to go under, and he gripped a partially submerged sapling to keep himself hovering just inches beneath the surface.
A shadow passed near the bank and he watched it, trying to calculate how much time he had before hypothermia set in. Not until long after he’d drown or been shot, most likely. How comforting.
The water’s uniform temperature would fool the Merge’s heat detection and the reflection of the moonlight would dazzle the night vision, making the stream a complete blank to the man creeping slowly past it. As expected, he didn’t consider the water at all—another example of the Merge-induced overconfidence that he himself had fallen prey to on more than a few occasions.
There wasn’t much time. He wasn’t as desperate for air as he had been back in Randi’s safe room, but he wasn’t far off. The man crouched to get a closer look at the tracks in the mud. There would be no better chance.
Smith slipped smoothly out of the water and managed to grab the man before his Merge could make sense of the sound. His hands were numb but the oxygen flooding his lungs cleared his head enough to recall the education that Star thought was so wasted on him. Killing the man would immediately register on his teammate’s Merges. He had to be more skillful than that.
Smith barely managed to clamp a hand over the man’s mouth before he felt himself being pushed toward the water. As they toppled, he inserted the thin blade into the back of the struggling man’s neck, severing nerves he hadn’t thought about since medical school.
They hit the ground in unison and Smith wrapped his legs around the man’s waist, holding him tightly as his body jerked wildly and then went limp. A quick check of his pulse confirmed that it was still strong and racing, but that wouldn’t last long. He was completely paralyzed and that paralysis extended to the muscles that controlled respiration. The clock was ticking as he suffocated.
Smith searched beneath the man’s camo shirt and confirmed what he already knew: that the Merge he was using was military-issue. And ironically, that was what just might save them.
His fingers had been compromised by the cold but he still managed to get the unit off the man’s belt and crawl out of range of his head studs. He paused for a moment, trying to prepare himself before contacting the unit with his own skin and dropping onto his stomach in the mud.
As far as he knew, he was the only person who had any significant experience trying to use units set up for other people—experiments that had been necessary to see what would happen if the enemy gained access to one from a dead or injured soldier.
The research had been done only in an effort to be thorough—a U.S. Merge would be unusable by the enemy due to the fact that, beyond being indescribably unpleasant, the military network wouldn’t recognize their brain wave signature and would therefore deny access. He was on the army grid, though. In fact, he more or less controlled it.
The nausea started immediately, growing in strength as the Merge tried to link up with an unfamiliar mind. He knew from experience that this imperfect connection was possible. It would cause a momentary hesitation on the man’s teammates’ units and then somewhat garbled data that would look like a network issue.
After fifteen seconds, his vision swam sickeningly and the only thing keeping him from throwing up was the near hypothermia. His record for staying connected like this was thirty-nine seconds and it had involved some of the worst suffering he’d ever endured. This time, though, that wasn’t going to be anywhere near long enough.
Something flickered in his peripheral vision and a moment later distorted lettering confirmed his identity as “Lt. Col. Jon Smith” and gave him a level of access that only he and perhaps Dresner had.
Two distorted green dots appeared on an overhead of the battlefield, displaying the position of the paralyzed man’s teammates. There was a flash from one of them that represented rounds fired, but he could barely hear the shots over the metallic screech caused by the computer trying to funnel improperly encoded signals to his auditory cortex.
Using the menus was incredibly difficult, but he managed to shut down the voice port and press a hand to his throat mike.
“Randi…Are you…Are you still alive?”
“Barely,” came the nearly unintelligible response. “If I show so much as a thumbnail, these sons of bitches damn near shoot it off.”
Another flash came from one of the dots on his overhead and he heard her swear angrily.
“Are you hit?”
“Just a graze. But next time they’re going to kill me. I can’t see shit and they see everything. If you’ve got a plan, sometime in the next ten seconds would be good.”
“Where’s…Where’s the guy who just shot at you?” he said, sliding partially into the frigid water again to push back the nausea. He figured he was over thirty-nine seconds now and the suffering just kept intensifying.
“North by northeast about fifty meters.”
That gave him a good idea of her relative position.
“Okay. You have—”
He vomited violently, trying unsuccessfully to do it quietly.
“Jon? Jon? Are you there?”
“Yeah. You have another one coming in on you from…Wait. No. He heard me. He’s turning my way.”
“Can you handle him?”
“No,” he said, struggling to pull up the military simulation application. It became impossible to keep his head up and his face went down in the mud. Was he breathing? He couldn’t tell anymore.
The muffled sound of gunfire filtered through to him but he ignored it, concentrating on activating the training exercise system. It hesitated a few seconds but then launched, making him the default exercise leader.
According to the overhead, the man was bearing down on him fast while the other held his position looking for a line on Randi.
Smith tried to slide farther into the water, but couldn’t control his body anymore. How long had it been. A minute? More? Could he die from doing this? Would he even care at this point?
The approaching man slowed and he heard a garbled voice—undoubtedly he was calling to his companion, confused as to what he was doing stopped by the streambank and the erratic output of his unit.
“Randi…On my mark, break cover and go straight at the guy shooting at you. Then turn west and keep going full speed. You’ll run right into the guy coming my way.”
“Are you nuts?” came her unsurprising reply. “I’ve already been grazed once. I can’t—
“Do what I say!” he choked out as he highlighted both the men’s icons and told the network that they’d been killed in the e
xercise. Their Merges temporarily blinded and deafened them to simulate their deaths.
“Now! Go!”
Randi Russell heard, but didn’t comply. Smith sounded completely out of it and the bastard tracking her would be incapable of missing the kind of target he was asking her to present.
“Go!” he shouted again and this time she did, taking a leap of faith into the open. She ran full-speed in the direction of the shooter, teeth grinding against each other as she waited for the inevitable round that would kill her.
Instead, she found the shooter on his knees reaching desperately for something behind him on his belt. Figuring that there was no point in looking a gift horse in the mouth, she fired two rounds center of mass and another into the man’s face as she passed. Smith had once again pulled a rabbit from his hat.
It took only a few seconds to come up on the second man, who was also on his knees, but with his Merge in his hand. He heaved it into the woods and was bringing his rifle around when she fired a shot that penetrated his lightweight helmet and tore away most of the top of his head.
“Both men are down!” she said into her throat mike, adjusting her trajectory to take her toward the stream.
“Jon?”
She burst through the bushes, immediately sweeping her rifle toward a camo-clad man lying on his side at the edge of the water. The knife sticking out of his neck suggested he was no longer a threat and she ran to Smith, who was lying half submerged in the stream.
“Jon?” she said, grabbing the back of his hair and pulling his face out of a pool of vomit. No response.
When she rolled him on his back, his eyes fluttered open and she saw the Merge he was holding against his stomach. He tried to throw it, like the man she’d just killed, but it only went about six inches. She picked it up and hurled it into the trees.
“Jon? Jon!” His skin was dead-white and freezing cold to the touch. “Talk to me. Are you hit?”
He shook his head weakly as the sound of a helicopter became audible. Randi grabbed him by the hands and began dragging him to cover, but didn’t make it before the chopper came overhead and a powerful spotlight illuminated them.
She released him and swung her rifle into the blinding glare, but then stopped when an amplified voice overpowered the beat of the rotors. “Randi! Hold your fire!”
The copter swung in a slow arc, looking for a place to land, and she dropped to her knees, taking Smith’s head in her lap. “Hang on, Jon. The cavalry’s here.”
46
Alexandria, Virginia
USA
NO SIR. WE DON’T HAVE details yet on how it happened.”
James Whitfield sat in the office at the back of his home, staring into the darkness as he listened over an encrypted line.
“Davis was killed and we lost communication with Craighead over the course of a few seconds,” his man continued. “Miller’s Merge started sending garbled data right before that and then went offline. We’re trying to make sense of that now.”
Whitfield didn’t respond. Had he made the same mistake again? Had he underestimated his adversaries? No. Smith and Russell had repeatedly proven themselves in the field and he’d responded to that with overwhelming force: three well-armed, Merged-up special forces operatives benefiting from the element of surprise.
“So they both survived?” he said finally.
“It appears that way, sir. A helicopter touched down on top of Miller’s last known position. It was on the ground for less than five minutes and we believe picked up Smith and Russell, as well as our people.”
“You believe?”
“Our man on the ground has confirmed that they’re all gone, but he didn’t personally witness the transfer.”
“And where did the helicopter go?”
“We weren’t prepared to track an aircraft. I hope to have that information soon.”
“We don’t have the luxury of hoping, Captain. Call Andrews and get surveillance planes in the air.”
“That’s going to be difficult, sir.”
“I don’t care if it’s difficult,” Whitfield said, momentarily losing control of the volume of his voice. “Do whatever you have to do and find that goddamn chopper.”
“Sir, we could expose—”
“No more excuses, Captain! Get those planes in the air.”
Whitfield broke the connection and threw his headset into the wall. This was a complete, unmitigated disaster. If Miller and Craighead were still alive, they’d hold out for a while, but eventually would talk. They wouldn’t know anything more than the fact that they’d been sent to take out two people involved with a homegrown terrorist network, but if the right questions were asked, the carefully crafted anonymity of Whitfield’s Pentagon contacts could begin to show cracks.
How had they defeated his men? Where had the helicopter come from? But most important, who were these bastards?
47
Wood County, West Virginia
USA
IS A LITTLE GODDAMN HOT WATER too much to ask?” Smith said, unable to control his mounting frustration as he ran the faucet over his numb hands. The only heat and light in the dilapidated farmhouse came from the flames crackling in a woodstove that looked like it hadn’t been used since the turn of the century.
“Come over by the fire,” Randi said, throwing a threadbare blanket she’d found over his shoulders and pulling him toward the living room. Fred Klein slid a low stool—the only piece of furniture in the house—toward the stove and Smith lowered himself carefully onto it.
“Sorry about the accommodations,” Klein said as Randi knelt and rubbed Smith’s back vigorously, trying to get the blood circulating. “It’s not the Four Seasons, but it’s on its own hundred acres and owned by a fictitious mining company that can’t be traced to us. If you need medical attention we can bring someone in.”
Smith shook his head, fighting off another of the endless waves of nausea that refused to subside. “My body temperature’s coming back up and there’s nothing you can do about the effects of the Merge but wait them out.” He paused. “Thanks for coming for us, Fred. I know the risk you’re taking.”
“I don’t think you have much to thank me for. Too little too late.”
Smith just stared into the flames in front of him. While he’d always admired Klein’s patriotism and intellect, the retired spook wasn’t exactly a spring chicken and had very little direct experience with ops. Smith had always assumed that in this type of situation he and Randi would be sacrificed—an unfortunate fact of life that he understood and could live with. But seeing Klein standing there with a gun bulging in his jacket put the man in an entirely a new light. Smith’s already enormous respect for him grew just a little more.
Klein’s phone beeped and he seemed grateful to be able to divert his attention to it. Randi took the opportunity to stoke the fire, trying not to look worried while Smith watched her in his peripheral vision.
“All right,” Klein said, stuffing his phone back in his pocket after a brief conversation that consisted mostly of worried grunts on his end. “We have a positive ID on all three men.”
“Mercs?” Randi said.
He shook his head. “Active military. Two SEALs, one special ops marine.”
“What the hell were they doing at my friend’s cabin?”
“No one seems to know. The SEALs are posted to Afghanistan and the marine is an advisor in Iraq. I’m guessing they were supposed to be on their way back by now with no one the wiser.”
“They didn’t just fly to the States on their own,” Smith said. “Someone gave the order.”
“James Whitfield,” Klein said.
“Who?”
“He’s a retired military intelligence officer who consults for an organization that lobbies on behalf of the military. I think you’re familiar with him, Jon. Gray hair, scar on his neck?”
“What do you mean by ‘lobbying for the military’?” Randi said. “You mean he’s in the pocket of defense contractors?” br />
“No, actually. While he’s definitely been involved in making sure that our soldiers are well equipped, he’s also supported serious cuts in unnecessary bases and weapons systems. His goal is to make the military stronger, but also cheaper and more efficient—something that hasn’t won him many friends in Congress and the military industrial complex. I’ve only met him in passing, but I have to admit that I’ve always been an admirer.”
“Well, I can tell you that those guys weren’t trying to lobby us,” Randi said.
Klein crossed his arms and leaned against the wall behind him. “I think there’s a good chance that Whitfield is the one behind the money disappearing from the Pentagon. It just never occurred to me to look at him. I was focused on criminal activity—someone embezzling or a contractor covering up a failing project. Not someone diverting money to fund an organization looking to help the military.”
Smith finally turned away from the fire. His hands were thawing to the point that numbness was giving way to pain. “Am I the only one here who thinks it sounds a lot like you’re describing yourself? Whitfield sounds like your mirror image. Some kind of evil counterpart.”
Klein considered that for a moment. “Counterpart? Possibly. Evil? I’m not sure. There’s nothing I know of in his background to suggest he’s anything but an incredibly patriotic and competent former soldier.”
“It’s a hazy line, isn’t it?” Smith said. “Doing what you believe is right without any real authority. Killing people from the edges of democracy…”
“We save lives,” Randi said, sounding a little indignant.
“Maybe he does, too,” Smith responded. “Maybe he sees the importance of the Merge to our soldiers and thinks we’re poking our noses into places that could jeopardize that.”
“At this point, his motivations are irrelevant,” Klein said. “What we know is that the man is smart, motivated, and well connected. Your transfers didn’t work only because Whitfield had no way of knowing about my involvement—”