Shortly before dawn, the aging Mercedes made its way along narrow streets near the Hudson River. Following Lynch’s directions, Jordan turned left onto an access road that ran past blocks of run-down warehouses in Yonkers, New York. Beyond the hulking warehouses, Cait could see the Hudson River rushing by. The open window let in the stink of rotting fish.

Just getting to the Bronx had been an odyssey in and of itself. Cait had taken the loss of Lynch’s Cadillac hard. In addition to the money and guns that Lynch had socked away in the trunk, they’d been forced to leave behind everything they needed for Leyla. At minimum, they needed a car seat, a baby bottle, formula, baby food, diapers, and something to change her into if she made a mess of herself. All they needed was to be pulled over because of a crying baby without a car seat.

Just off the highway, they had found a 24-hour Walgreens pharmacy. It had everything they needed, if they could get in and out without trouble. They had listened fervently to radio reports and no one had mentioned Jordan yet. Still, they had been cautious. A good soldier, Jordan had a first-aid kit in the car. While Cait sang softly to Leyla, trying to keep her calm despite the fullness of her diaper and the disruption of her sleep, Lynch and Jordan had been forced to doctor each other. Parked in the midst of the cars and vans of employees—hiding in plain sight—the two men had disinfected and bandaged each other’s wounds. Lynch had been shot in the right side, just above his hip, so Jordan packed both entrance and exit wounds with gauze and taped them up. The bullet hadn’t seemed to hit anything vital. He might still need to be stitched up, but he would be all right.

After Lynch had taken care of the graze on Jordan’s right shoulder, Jordan had donned a clean sweatshirt from the trunk. If a BOLO had been issued for him, they could not afford for him to be recognized, so he put a baseball cap on sideways and slid his pants low on his hips so that his boxer shorts showed. He looked ridiculous and out-of-date, but anyone seeing him would notice the ridiculous look of him without really being focused on looking at him, or so they hoped.

The disguise had worked. And in addition to the things they needed for Leyla, Jordan had managed clean shirts for himself and Lynch, using crisp hundreds the old man had in his wallet. The shopping had left them with very little cash, but it didn’t matter now.

They were here.

“Pull around back,” Lynch said.

Cait felt a weird giddiness envelop her at the idea of rest. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep—she’d endured far worse in Iraq—but the adrenaline hangover that had started to drag at her. Leyla had been awake for nearly two hours, alternately whimpering and playing with her feet. Cait had given her a bottle of formula, thinking that would put her out again, but it hadn’t. The baby must be exhausted, too, and Cait hoped that would mean they could both get a little sleep now that they’d found a temporary sanctuary. The whole world seemed set against them and only tiny vestiges of hope remained within her. She knew she couldn’t make any decisions about their future until she’d had some sleep.

Jordan drove between two old warehouses, their paint faded and peeling, and took a right turn. On the left was a short concrete wall, and beyond that, the river. There were piers up and down the Hudson here, places where ships would off-load cargo to be stored in warehouses—or where they would have done so in better times for the area.

“Right in front of the garage,” Lynch said.

When Jordan pulled up, Lynch got out and walked stiffly—age and injury slowing him down—toward a small metal box beside the garage door. He opened the box, revealing a keypad beneath, and when he entered the code, the broad metal door began to groan and then to rattle upward.

Lynch glanced around suspiciously, then waved the Mercedes in. As Jordan drove into the warehouse, dim lights flickered to life high up on the ceiling of the garage, revealing some kind of delivery van and several other vehicles. He turned the car off, creating a single moment of silence before the garage door started rattling downward behind them.

Cait checked on her daughter—momentarily content to chew on her fist—then climbed out of the backseat. She stretched, nose wrinkling at the stale smell of her own body, and looked around. The garage took up a relatively small part of the warehouse. Two small doors led from it into other parts of the building, but they remained closed. Once the metal groan of the garage door ceased, the only sound was the ticking of the Mercedes’s cooling engine.

Lynch pulled out a set of keys and strode toward the nearest door. Jordan stepped out of the car, careful not to startle the baby, and looked around.

“Not much of a welcome,” Jordan said.

“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing.”

A chill raced through Cait. Part of her wanted to jump back in the car with Jordan and Leyla, just leave Lynch and get the hell out. But the old man had already taken one bullet for her and had blown who knew how many opportunities to hunt down these baby-killers by coming out in the open. She had to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’d earned that.

She unbuckled Leyla and took her out of the car, carrying a plastic Walgreens bag with formula and bottled water, baby wipes, and a couple of tiny T-shirts Jordan had gotten her to sleep in. He grabbed the other bags and the package of diapers and followed her as she went to the door Lynch had gone through. It stood open, darkness yawing within.

“Lynch?” she called.

“In here,” he replied.

From beyond the door, she heard a rustling and then a click, and the room lit up. Cait stepped through, Leyla tugging on a fistful of her hair, and stared around at the headquarters of the Resistance. Perhaps forty feet by sixty, this was clearly the nerve center of the operation. There were cubicles and computers around the edges of the room—in the middle, a conference table. To the left, Cait saw an array of various televisions—some flat-screen, others older—with cables snaking everywhere. To the right was a row of whiteboards covered with photographs of men and women who were clearly targets. Some of the pictures had been crossed through in red marker, presumably indicating that they were dead.

All of this had been done a long time ago.

“Oh, no,” Cait said softly.

Months’, maybe years’, worth of dust lay over nearly every surface. The desk and black chair in a single cubicle and the television array seemed to have been used more recently. Papers were spread across the conference table, stacks of files, and those also seemed to still be in use. The rest of the place seemed silent and abandoned.

“So where are they all?” Jordan asked.

Cait shot him a look of disbelief. Didn’t he see? Didn’t he understand? She held Leyla to her, wishing she could summon fury but only able to muster despair. Lynch walked over to the recently occupied cubicle and turned on the computer there. As she watched, he moved across the large room to a master control for the television array. A cacophony of voices echoed from the walls, CNN, Fox News, BBC, MSNBC, Al Jazeera via some kind of satellite uplink—and how the fuck did he do that?

Mesmerized, she could only watch as he crossed to the nearest of the whiteboards, picked up a red marker and drew thick X’s through the photos of three men. He paused in front of two others, then drew question marks on them. Even from here, Cait recognized one as having been with the government agents who had tried to take Leyla from her last night.

Last night. By now the sun would be rising outside. Here in the warehouse, daylight—sunrise—meant nothing. There was only darkness here.

At last, Lynch turned his gaze on them. But he was back in his element. Preoccupied. Distracted. He gestured toward the rear of the room, past the television array.

“There are bedrooms and showers back there. You’ll probably find something clean to wear if you poke around long enough. Clean sheets. There’s food in the kitchen, but I wouldn’t vouch for any of the dairy in the fridge.”

Leyla nattered happily, bouncing in her mother’s arms and tugging her hair.

Cait went to Jordan, kissed the baby, then handed Leyla to her friend. He scooped her up, staring first at Cait and then at Lynch, who seemed to have dismissed them.

Cait ran at him.

“No, Cait! We need him!” Jordan yelled.

“Fuck that,” she growled.

Lynch saw her coming. The way he moved, she knew he had been well trained. He knew how to fight. His mistake was going for his gun. She gripped his wrist, stepped in, and launched a side kick at his armpit that deadened the arm completely. Tearing the gun from his hand, she tossed it across the room even as she spun around and struck the old man in the chest and gut. Even at his age, Lynch would have been a formidable opponent, but she brought him down hard and landed on his chest, pinning him with her knees, her hands on his throat.

Her tears splashed down onto his face. “You bastard,” she said, choking on her sobs. “Crazy son of a bitch, you lied to me?”

“No,” he rasped. “They were … The Resistance is real.”

“Bullshit!” she screamed. “Then where are they?”

He clawed at her hands, unable to catch his breath, and she eased up enough for him to respond. Those steely eyes regarded her, full of loss and sadness, and she knew then that he was just as much adrift, just as terrified as she.

“Gone,” Lynch said. “There were dozens of us once. Some were killed. Some bought. Some were too afraid to die. But I … I’m one of them, you understand? I’m a War Child, just like your little girl. I have to stop these bastards. I have to kill them, to save as many of the children as I can.”

She sat back, feeling cold and hollow inside, the significance of it all settling in. She slid off of him, sat in a tangle on the carpet and stared at her hands for several long seconds while Lynch coughed and wheezed. Cait glanced over at Leyla and Jordan.

“Then there’s no one,” she said, shaking, breath hitching with the force of her tears. “We can’t hide for long. They’re going to get my baby. We’re going to … to die.”

She couldn’t speak after that. Lynch tried talking to her but she didn’t hear him. She could only stare at Leyla, her beautiful girl, and try to keep breathing as sobs wracked her body. Jordan brought the baby to her and Cait held her. She and Leyla lay together on the dusty carpet, the baby’s head cradled in the crook of her arm, and she cried, staring in horror at the shadowed corners of the room.

Like death, sleep tried to claim her. Eventually she succumbed.

She dreamed of hollow-eyed Iraqi orphans, of dark-veiled Baghdad mothers with empty arms, and a burning taxi in the aftermath of a roadside bomb.

She dreamed of screaming.