Is Abajian that ruthless?
Have we been played?
I pull out a chair and sit, thinking,
Be calm. Lock it down
.
I look up at Jaynie to find her regarding me with a worried frown.
“What does Abajian want with Nashira?” I ask her.
“He wants to take it down. And then he wants to take down the Arctic AI.”
FaceValue doesn’t tag a lie, but there is more that she’s not saying.
“Isn’t that
your
goal, Shelley?”
“Yes.”
ETM 7-1 has made a lot of mistakes lately—maybe because we were operating on faulty intelligence. We have to do better. Going after the L-AIs should help with that, help us get back on the right road, help us unwind the damage we’ve done.
“We are on the same side,” I say.
“In most things.”
“Mars is a mistake.”
“We’ll fight about that later.”
I nod. “Who’s still got explosives?”
Jaynie, Fadul, and Tran are all out of det cord. They used up their supply at the lab. But Logan digs into his pack and pulls out a couple meters of cord and a packet of C-4. “Might not be enough.”
I turn to Leonid. He shakes his head. “No. No explosives. I was to help you get out of Basra, not help you to level the city.”
“Give it to me,” I tell Logan. “We’ll make it work.”
He hands over the packet. I put it in a deep pocket of my vest.
“We need to hook you back into gen-com,” he says. “We need to be linked, and I can’t stand looking at your dead black icon anymore.”
He’s right. It’s an issue I would have addressed right away if I was thinking clearly. “Ask Kanoa—”
“Yeah, Kanoa says he’s going to reinstall gen-com on your system—and he wants to see the order.”
“Send it to him.”
A tag slides open in my overlay, alerting me to the install.
“Are you really going in like that?” Tran wants to know. “No dead sister? No helmet? You’re going to go down as soon as the shooting starts.”
“Let’s see what happens when we get there.”
“How are you going to keep up?”
“I’m not. I’m going to split the squad, ride with Papa. Everyone else goes on foot.” That will give me more flexibility in our approach, and time to consider what the hell we need to do. I look at Leonid to make sure he’s okay with this, and get a confirming nod. It’s Jaynie who objects.
“No, that’s not going to work. We need to stay together. Either that or you come behind us, Shelley.”
“This isn’t going to be like the lab,” I tell her. “I think the Red has isolated Nashira and taken control of the district. It’s not going to be hard to get inside.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because the Red wanted me to go there alone, with no weapons. How hard could it be?”
We just need to get in, find the vault, and blow it.
Easy.
“And if we move in two squads, one mounted and one on foot, odds go up that at least some of us will get there.”
The update to gen-com completes and Kanoa checks in. “I thought we’d lost you this time, Shelley.”
“Not quite. Did you get the mission briefing?”
“Roger that. It’s confirmed—but Fadul is right. You need to sit this one out.”
“You know I can’t. The mission was given to me. That might not mean anything, but if it does, I need to be there.”
He’s quiet for several seconds. “I don’t like the setup, Shelley. Feels like another look-and-see mission. Too many unknowns.”
“We’re supposed to do it,” I remind him. “We got the order.”
The Red issued this mission, but it’s a mission that’s being written as it’s executed and that means it’s going to be weakest in the last stage, the step where we get pulled out—the step that got missed during Arid Crossroad.
“You need to get us an extraction plan.”
Kanoa tells me, “It’s taken care of. Abajian has Black Hawks standing by.”
I think I’d rather have the mercenaries. Abajian worries me. Jaynie agreed we’re on the same side, but I’m not sure.
Still, by the time his helicopters reach us, we should be done.
I am officially given command of mission Kingmaker Prime in light of my “superior knowledge of the mission plan.” In other words, Abajian doesn’t want to risk getting cut out of this operation, so he’ll do what he can to make me feel I’m in control. Jaynie goes along with it as if it was all a prearranged deal.
• • • •
Leonid doesn’t have grenades or explosives, but he has an angel, and that makes up for a lot. He gets it out of the back of the SUV, unfolds its meter-wide crescent wing, and launches it over the wall. He texts me the address. I share it with gen-com, and we all link in.
I check the time on my overlay.
0404.
Dawn is still two hours away. The dusty night sky is faintly luminous with the reflected glow of lights still on in distant quarters of the city.
Jaynie, Logan, Fadul, and Tran are all fully rigged, helmets on, HITRs in hand, waiting at the gate. Leonid gets behind the wheel of the SUV. In his right ear he’s wearing an audio loop with a tiny mic that links him to gen-com, and he’s got a map of where we’re going on the dashboard navigation screen. I take the passenger seat, the Lasher 762 at my side.
“Okay,” I say over gen-com. “The mission is to destroy Nashira. We want to collect as much intelligence as we can, but let’s get the job done, fast and clean.”
I get a whispered “
Hoo-yah!
”
Leonid triggers the gate to open. My squad slips out, bearing right. We roll out behind them, without headlights, turning left onto the dark deserted street. I look for my squad but I can’t see them. They’ve vanished into the night. I shift to angel sight.
This is the way I’m used to operating, with a clear vision of the terrain around me. I look down on the neighborhood streets and inside the walled compounds. No one is in sight, and our SUV is the only vehicle moving on the residential streets. It surprises me. I didn’t think a curfew could be this well respected.
Farther out, on a main avenue, I spot police cars, one stationed at every major intersection. I warn Leonid. He says, “We will stay on the small roads.”
I look for the gunships that were hunting in the city earlier in the night, but the angel doesn’t pick up any. Stranger than that, the angel fails to map any other aerial surveillance devices in the immediate area—no other drones and no seekers.
“Kanoa.”
Several seconds of silence follow and I start to get concerned, but then he answers, “Here.”
“Did Abajian pull his seekers?”
More seconds of silence, and then, “We’ve lost contact with them.”
I look again at the streets around us. “Hey, the police cars are pulling out.” It’s an exodus, as if they’ve all been called back to the station at once. I count twelve cars crossing the canal, leaving this corner of the city unprotected—and just in time, because we’ve gone as far as we can on the neighborhood streets.
We enter a main road, swing around a traffic circle, and head south toward the low hill with the fortress mansion on top. It’s an artificial hill, I’m sure of it, built to elevate a dragon’s home. The angel flies over it.
“Anything?” Leonid asks.
“No. No one on the walls or in the courtyard. Maybe security is all electronic.”
“Bad decision.”
Delphi startles me by linking in. “Shelley.”
Guilt hits. As my handler, Delphi saw me maimed and seemingly killed again and again and it tore her apart. That gave me one more reason to leave, because I knew it was inevitable that it would happen again, and I was right. I close the feed from the angel. The blood road is visible again, a faint red shimmer against the asphalt.
“Shelley, are you there?”
“I’m here.” I want to ask her if she’s doing okay, but a question like that has too many layers; now is not the time.
“Major Kanoa has cleared me to talk to you.” She’s using her stern handler’s voice. “Back at Dassari when you would tell me you had a bad feeling, I learned to believe you. We know now that was the Red, warning you, but sometimes a feeling is just a feeling—and I’ve got a bad feeling about this mission.”
I’ve never heard her talk like this before. I check the link. It’s her, me, Kanoa. No one else. Not even Jaynie. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I say.
Leonid looks at me, a questioning eyebrow raised. I tap my finger beside my eye. He nods, returning his gaze to the road.
“You said the Red assigned you this mission, assigned it only to you. You were alone, with no weapons and no explosives—and you weren’t in any condition to fight and you still aren’t. How were you supposed to carry it out, Shelley? How were you supposed to take down Nashira under those conditions?”
Power of God.
That’s what I’m thinking.
The Red will deliver this victory into my hands.
But that’s bullshit.
“I don’t know how it’s going to work, Delphi. I’ll know when I get there.”
“You’re too trusting, Shelley. There is something wrong with this setup. Critically wrong.”
“Maybe. But even if there is, we have to do it. If Nashira is run by the same group behind the Arctic AI—”
“I understand your sense of responsibility for the Arctic War. And the potential intelligence gains are undeniable—but something is off. Don’t assume anything going in—and don’t trust the Red to keep you safe.”
“I promise you that, at least.”
“Okay. I’ll be watching.”
She closes the link. I lean back and close my eyes.
“Talk,” Papa says.
I relay Delphi’s suspicions. I have to assume Kanoa shares them, because he was linked in and listening. “I think you were right, Papa. This mission was given to me. Only to me. So let’s skip the rendezvous. I want to reach the target ahead of the squad.”
A dead sister helps a soldier on foot move quickly, but a vehicle on an open road is always going to be a lot faster. Leonid pushes us over sixty. We close rapidly on the target hill. Jaynie notices and tries to intercede. “Shelley, you are ahead of schedule—”
Kanoa comes in on my side, cutting her off. “Driveway on the right, one hundred sixty meters.”
Leonid gets the update over his audio loop. “I see it.”
“Ten meters in,” Kanoa adds, “it’s secured with a steel gate.”
“The gate will open,” I promise them.
Leonid keeps his eyes on the road. “You sure, King David?”
“Pretty sure.” The place has been hacked. How else is this going to work? I trigger my window to go down, then I lean out with the Lasher, bracing myself with an elbow against the door.
Leonid steps on the brake, preparing to make the turn. The tires scream and smoke.
“The gate is opening,” Kanoa says. “No other sign of activity.”
We make a hard right onto a concrete driveway. The gate has rolled back, out of the way. There are no other defenses.
“Punch it,” I tell Leonid.
The driveway climbs around the hill. He sends the SUV rocketing up its steep grade, the electric engine quiet, but the tire noise loud in the predawn hush. The house at the top is protected by its fortress wall, but on the way up, Kanoa says, “Now the next gate is opening. No other sign of activity.”
I knew this would be easy.
The angel red-alerts. It’s picked up suspicious movement to the southeast, in the direction of the Persian Gulf. I glimpse a text report indicating three gunships in the air—but the report gets wiped from my overlay. Delphi cuts in. “No threat. Supporting forces coming in.”
“We don’t need supporting forces. We just need to be extracted when this is done.”
She doesn’t answer.
We pass the second gate and enter a wide, tiled courtyard surrounding a mansion three stories high. To the right of the mansion’s front door is a window wall of one-way black glass that wraps around the corner of the house and reaches all the way to the roof.
There are still no defenses; no enemy is present; not a shot is fired at us.
In the Bible, when David got called out alone to the battlefield, he stood in front of a warrior of giant reputation, but I’m not required to do even that. I could have walked here alone and still triumphed. The Red planned it that way, it prepared the way for me, but I refused to take it on faith—not for the first time.
James Shelley: nonbeliever.
It’s because I refused to do what I was told to do that I’m walking on artificial legs.
We drive across the courtyard and stop fifteen meters from the house. I open the car door just as Abajian breaks into gen-com. “Captain Shelley, this has gone far enough. You will stay where you are. Do
not
enter the building.”
Leonid hears the order over his audio loop and pauses, his own door partly open. He gives me a questioning look.
Off-com, I tell him, “You should stay here.”
This gets me an annoyed
tsk
. “I have made my bet. Let’s go.”
He slides out. I do too.
Colonel Abajian is not my commanding officer. It’s tempting to tell him to get the fuck away from my mission—but I’m not a jacked-up lieutenant anymore and I’m relying on him to extract us. So I go for the diplomatic approach. “The mission is clear, sir.” The blood road glimmers beneath my feet, crossing the tiled courtyard to the mansion’s front doors. “I am required to enter the building.”
“Captain, you have no idea what’s at stake. Do
not
approach. A team of specialists is on the way and will be taking over.”
I don’t have time to argue. My soldiers are moving fast. The squad map shows them less than five minutes away—and I need to know what we’re walking into before they get here. Delphi thinks something is off in this mission, that it’s not as straightforward as it seems. If that’s true, I can back out. I took the receiver out of my head so the Red can’t compel me to complete the mission. But Logan, Fadul, and Tran are all still vulnerable. They will get here before Abajian’s team. So I need to know.
Lasher in hand, I follow the gleam of the blood road toward the mansion’s front doors—big copper double doors with a raised abstract design. Leonid parallels me a
few meters to my left, his weapon held in two hands, ready to use.
“Captain Shelley, you will stand down! It was your rogue action that ignited the Arctic War. What we recover inside that building could neutralize that mistake. It could expose our hidden enemies. But not if you destroy Nashira. Destroy it and we have nothing.”