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I SLEPT CURLED UP ON a sofa in the training center. Zander sprawled in a chair, his long legs stuck out in front of him. We logged maybe three hours before Gamble called early in the morning.
I swiped sleep from my eyes and yawned. “Morning. How’s Trujillo?”
“She had surgery to set her fingers and repair the broken bones in her face, and she’s doped to the gills. Doctors need to keep an eye on her for a couple of days minimum.” He added, “I hear the FBI showed up at the clubhouse and scared away the bad guys.”
“Not before McFly McFlitted down a zip line over the assault vehicles and blew their turrets off.”
“Yeah, my source told me one of the drivers didn’t make it out. His body was badly burned, and they haven’t yet identified him.”
“The rest of the attackers bugged out when the FBI showed up. Thanks for sending them, Gamble.”
“Hey, I’m always up for exposing unlawful military actions, but you can also thank the President. I conveyed everything that happened to Kennedy, and he put the President on the line with us. It was the President’s decision that I report an unauthorized paramilitary action to the FBI. He knew they would respond with an FBI strike force.”
“Well, it was a smart move.”
“Have the nanomites heard anything further from Danforth’s array?”
“I just woke up. Zan—I mean John-Boy—is still out, but no. The nanomites tell me they are not in ongoing contact with Danforth’s nanobugs. Confirms our suspicion that Danforth is in a shielded facility. Hey, Gamble?”
“Yes?”
“The nanobugs sent out a data packet while Danforth was ordering the helo strike. Danforth may be in a shielded facility with a ‘secure’ landline, but the nanobugs were able to send data through that line when it was in use.
“Here’s the zinger: The array reported that Danforth’s companion recognized Zander and has decided that Jayda is Gemma in disguise. Bottom line? We’re blown, Gamble. We can’t go back to our apartment, and I sure can’t go back to work.”
“Uh, yeah. That might be awkward.”
“Awkward? Ha-ha-ha. You’re cute, Gamble.”
“Me? Cute? You must be sleep deprived.”
“Not as much as you. Listen, we’re going to stay at Malware’s clubhouse until we know what to do next. Seems like the safest place for us.”
“Okay. And you know where to find me. Logan and I are swapping shifts keeping an eye on Trujillo.”
“Roger that.”
Gamble chuckled. “Take care, Jayda.”
I left Zander sleeping and went in search of coffee. I checked Mal’s office, but it was empty. I struck pay dirt in the operations center.
Baltar the Bleary cracked a smile when I stuck my head in. I guessed Baltar to be the oldest of Mal’s crew; his five o’clock shadow (plus twelve hours) had that gray/grizzled tint of the over-forty crowd.
“Hey, Rip. Sleep?”
“A couple hours. Not you, huh?”
“No, but soon. Too much activity going on last night.”
“The FBI?”
“They had firetrucks and a big crime scene unit down here. Closed off the street. Mal went out and talked to them, mostly to stonewall them. After all, we just live here. We didn’t invite the intruders. Never seen them before. Nothing more to tell.”
“Uh, hello? McFly dropped incendiary shells on them?”
“Like Mal told them, we never fired a shot. We aren’t responsible for crazy paramilitary people blowing themselves up in the street. By the way, the feds hauled off the charred BearCat remains an hour ago. What a waste.”
Something he said niggled at me. “Wait. You guys live here?”
“Yeah. We have our own apartments on the second and third floors. We have a few part-time employees, too, meaning they have homes and families. We treat them like firefighters: They spend a couple shifts here each week. After the attackers ran off, Mal called in four part-timers to beef up our numbers—Fiona, Mulder, Banner, and Neo. You’ll probably meet them today.”
“I thought you guys only did training.”
“No, that’s a small slice of our repertoire. We do high-profile security work and government contracting in addition to training.”
“Interesting.”
I sniffed the pot near Baltar. “Mind if I have a cup?”
“Help yourself, Ripley.”
***
“SATELLITE IMAGERY SHOWS them driving into that building’s garage. They are still holed up there.”
She nodded. “Have the FBI departed?”
“Yes, and the remains of the assault vehicles have been hauled away.”
“Good. Are your people regrouped and prepared as I directed? Do they understand that it is imperative to take the woman alive and undamaged?”
Danforth nodded.
“Hit them again. Now.”
“In broad daylight? The FBI . . .”
“Deploy the strike teams as I’ve instructed. I need to keep Jayda and Zander Cruz busy while I solve the challenge of how to trap them.”
“I’d prefer for the operation to be discreet.”
“The time for discretion is over, Lawrence. The clock is running, and the plan goes forward this week. Give your people the green light.”
Danforth submitted. He picked up the secure landline and issued the orders.
***
STEAMING CUP IN HAND, I wandered back to the training center and sat down on the arm of Zander’s chair. “Morning, babe.”
Zander yawned, stretched, sniffed—sat up, and took notice. “Is that coffee? Smells divine. Want to share?”
“Hmm.” I indulged in another blissful slurp before, feigning reluctance, I shook my head. “Honey, I love you—but love has its limits.”
He stroked my arm and looked up from under his thick, dark lashes.
“All right. Listen. I didn’t want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice.”
He pursed his lips and canted a Flynn Rider brow in my direction. “Here comes the smolder.”
*Preen*
Locking my unimpressed gaze on him, I blinked once and took a looong, sloooow pull on my mug. Smacked my lips in appreciation.
“Dunno. This is really good.”
His mouth widened in a toothy smile. “How about now?”
“Uhhhh, nope.”
“Okay, this is kind of an off day for me. This doesn’t normally hap—”
I drained my cup. “Ooops. All gone.”
“Hey. You broke my smolder.”
I leaned toward him, feigning a bit of my own smolder. “What if I told you of a place, a magical place, where coffee runs free in pure, rich mountain streams—and one has but to ask to receive all one desires?”
“Shrew. You know where the pot is.”
I giggled. “Yeah. C’mon, sweetie. I’ll show you to the burbling fountain of life.”
“You’d better. I just gave my best performance—ever.”
I led him to the operations center and pointed at the coffee pot. “Behold!”
Baltar cracked another grin. “Morning, John-Boy.”
“A good day to be alive, Baltar.”
Those were the last words I heard Zander speak before—
Jayda Cruz—Danforth has given orders to attack the clubhouse a second time!
Every nerve in my body jangled at their warning. “Nano, when?”
The strike teams were prepositioned; they are coming NOW.
“Baltar! We’re under attack!”
Baltar hesitated only a microsecond before he hit a switch. A low alarm sounded throughout the clubhouse. We heard the rush of feet as Mal, Dredd, McFly, Deckard, and the Malware personnel we hadn’t yet met grabbed their weapons and deployed.
My eyes were locked on the screens in front of Baltar. “There!”
Malware, Inc. had cameras mounted on the warehouses surrounding the clubhouse. One camera was angled toward the clubhouse’s roof.
A Black Hawk helo swooped over the roof. Two heavy lines dropped from its doors. As we watched, attackers fast-roped down to the roof.
“They’re setting a charge on the hatch!”
Baltar spoke into his headset. “Mal, we have company on the roof. At least a dozen.”
“Copy. Dredd? Get your team upstairs to greet our visitors.”
“Roger that.”
“Baltar—” I pointed at other monitors. Two teams of twelve were on the ground, one team at the garage, the other at the side entrance. The assault was designed and coordinated to hit the clubhouse at three different points simultaneously.
“I see them.” Baltar spoke into his mic again. “Mal, we have two squads of tangos on the ground attempting to breach the side entrance and the garage.”
“Copy that. All available personnel to the main floor.”
Zander asked, “What do you want us to do, Baltar?”
“You and Ripley stick with me. We’re in the core of the clubhouse. If, by chance, we’re breached, get to the panic room and lock it down.” Without taking his eyes off the screens, he pointed through the operations center door, across the training center, to another door. “It’s the safest place here, and it has a bug-out hatch.”
“But we can help you fend off the attackers,” I said.
Baltar was too busy to outright laugh at me. “Sure you can. Just stay put.”
Zander and I watched the battle play out on the monitors while Baltar fed updated information to Malware team leaders. The problem, as I saw it, was in the sheer numbers. I counted thirty-six assaulters to Mal’s nine defenders—ten, counting Baltar.
Twelve, counting us.
More than sufficient if we counted the nanomites.
The attacking team on the roof blasted through the hatch, only to find the second one. That did not deter them. While they set their second charges, Dredd and his crew positioned themselves to pick off the attackers when they broke through and dropped into the third floor.
Instead, we saw the attackers on the roof toss several somethings down the chimney. They lay flat on the roof to protect themselves from the intense light and noise that followed. Even over the monitors, the ongoing mini-explosions were deafening.
Baltar cursed. “Freaking nine bangers!”
Deafened and disoriented, Dredd pulled his team back to safety. Immediately, the attackers dropped into the third floor and spewed an unrelenting barrage of rounds.
Baltar reported the news. “Mal, third floor is breached. Repeat. Tangos inside.”
“Copy that but cannot assist—”
The Black Hawk had not flown away; it had waited, hovering high above, out of camera range. Now it descended, straight down to street level, its rotor wash pummeling the clubhouse, the three barrels of a GAU-19 .50cal Gatling gun taking aim at the garage doors. As the combatants on the ground raced away from the clubhouse, I realized that their presence had served to lure Mal and his team to defensive positions just inside the two entrances . . . where the Black Hawk’s belt-fed BMG rounds would shred them to bits.
Baltar screamed, “Incoming .50cal! Pull back! Pull back!”
The rattling roar of the Gatling gun reached us in the operations center as it decimated the garage doors, punching through two layers of armored steel like so much tissue paper. Its work done, the Black Hawk rose and lifted away, and the two dozen assailants charged into the clubhouse.
Mal’s voice came over the speakers. “All units! Fall back to defensive position Bravo. Repeat, fall back to defensive position Bravo!”
Baltar pressed a few buttons. “Bravo open for business.”
When he received no response, Zander and I ran to the training center. Moments later, Malware’s personnel, dirtied and bloodied, rushed into the room. A man we didn’t know secured the training center’s blast doors behind the last of them.
Mal counted his people: Dredd, Deckard, and the man on the door; McFly and three others, one a woman.
Mal asked Dredd, “Mulder?”
“Sorry, Mal. He took out two of theirs, but . . . he didn’t make it.”
Mal shook his head and strode to operations. “What’s our status?”
“Thirty-four bad guys inside perimeter Alpha.”
“Are we locked down?”
“Yes. But look.”
We assembled around Baltar’s station, and he pointed to three monitors. The attacking teams were stacked far back in the passageways and around the corners. Waiting. Waiting on their demolition experts to finish laying charges—not against the blast door, but against the reinforced concrete walls in two separate locations.
“They’ll be inside in five minutes, give or take a few ounces of C4.”
Mal turned to Zander and me. “Time for you two to go.”
He pointed at the woman we didn’t know: She was big, broad, and hardened. “Fiona will escort you through the bug-out passage.”
Fiona growled at Mal. “You’re sending me away?”
“You have a kid at home, Fiona, so yes—and it’s not open for debate.”
He turned to us. “John-Boy? Ripley? When you come out the other end, you’ll be on your own. We wish you well.”
“But—”
Mal jerked his chin at Zander. “John-Boy? Get her out of here.”
With Fiona leading the way, Zander pulled me from the ops center, kicking and screaming. “Zander, we need to help them!”
“We need to let them do their jobs.”
“Their jobs? You mean dying to protect us? We need to protect them, Zander!”
He slowed to a stop, conflict twisting his mouth.
“Zander, we cannot run away and have their blood on our conscience. We have to stay here and fight. You know what we can do.”
Fiona yelled to us. “Come on!”
“No, Zander. No. We can prevent the deaths of our friends. We can even prevent the deaths of those coming to kill them.”
He was struggling, I could see that. His instincts—and all that Hispanic machismo—told him to protect his wife; I prayed the Holy Spirit would convict him of his duty to protect more than me. Maybe the Holy Spirit was using the nanomites, because they picked that moment to chime in.
Zander Cruz, “Whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake.” Ecclesiastes 10:8.
“The nanomites are right. These attackers won’t be expecting us when they break through those walls. You and I really can ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,’ but our sting will take them out of the game without killing them.”
Finally, he nodded. “Okay. Like you said, I’m newer and less experienced using the nanomites to fight, but yeah, you’re right. We can end this with less bloodshed.”
He pulled me closer to him, until his face was in mine and his breath was hot on my face. “But if you go and get yourself killed, Jayda Cruz, I’m never taking your advice again. You hear me?”
He planted one on me, a kiss both harsh and passionate—and then the wall beside the blast doors imploded.
I had my hands up even as we staggered under the overpressure. The nanomites flew from me in a dense stream, widening as the distance grew until a pulsing shield surrounded the two of us, deflecting flying debris.
“Zander! Widen the shield!”
He mimicked my stance; his nanocloud burst from his fingertips, and our shields joined, grew, and intensified. I had expected a bombardment of rounds to strike the shield, but the soldiers threading through the breach in the wall took one look at us and veered away, some toward Fiona on our left, most toward to our right where Mal and his team were firing from the ops center.
“Fiona!” I jogged toward her, throwing out a phalanx of nanomites to shield her at the same time, momentarily shifting the shielding.
Something punched me in the gut, low in my right side. The nanomites had taken some of the impact, but still . . . the pain knifed through me and bent me almost double.
“Jayda?” Zander extended more shielding over me. Multiple rounds pinged off the current the nanomites had projected to protect Fiona.
“Get Fiona,” I gasped.
Zander sent a rope of nanomites to her. The rope grabbed hold of her and jerked her to us, pulling her under the shield. When she, in response to her training, lifted the muzzle of her rifle to return fire, Zander pushed it down, “Don’t! The bullets will bounce back.”
Consternation crossed her face, but she seemed to realize how counterproductive—how dangerous—firing it within our shield would be.
“Jay, are you all right?” Zander asked me.
The nanomites answered for me. Zander Cruz, do not worry. The wound is through and through. We are mitigating the damage.
I felt both heat and pain in my groin and clenched my teeth, so I wouldn’t moan.
“Don’t worry about me,” I ground out. “We need to save our friends.”
He nodded. “Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
“Let’s move toward Mal to cover them.”
Zander and I, towing a blinking, bewildered Fiona in our slipstream, edged toward the ops center. The nanomites shifted the shield to deflect enemy rounds as we moved. Our shield soon took most of the fire intended for our friends, the shells bouncing or ricocheting away without penetrating.
It also seemed that, the closer we got to Mal et. al., the less the attackers fired on them. Or maybe they were loath to fire on us?
“Get behind us!” Zander shouted to our crouching friends.
They were too amazed (and possibly terrified) to respond.
“Come on!” Fiona urged. “We are safe behind them. Hurry!”
“Go, go, go!” Mal ordered. He and his men rushed to us. Once they were near enough, the nanomites narrowed and closed the shield, forming an impenetrable dome over us.
“Don’t fire,” Fiona explained to Mal and his men. “Just . . . watch.”
Another explosion shook the training center, and a second hole opened up, this one behind us. A line of attackers rushed in. A few opened fire, but their rounds accomplished nothing. With all of Mal’s team within the dome, the rounds pinged off the wall of electricity, most harmlessly. A few bounced back to wound the shooters.
The attackers began to realize that their firepower was useless. Disbelieving of what their eyes told them, they slowly lowered their weapons to stare at the sight of the sizzling wall of fire around us.
“Nano, how many attackers are within range?”
All but three, Jayda Cruz. Three remain in the corridors outside the training center.
“We’ll have to get them afterward. Zander?”
“Yeah?”
“Time to take them out.”
I closed my eyes and drew down on all the current available to me. Zander, taking his cue from me, did the same. A hum crackled across the training center. It intensified by the moment. The lights in the clubhouse flickered and dimmed, and tongues of fire licked at our protective dome. The dome quaked and shook and, within the trembling, vibrating dome, Mal and his team felt the current building—and they cowered under it.
Then, slowly, the clubhouse floor dropped away, and Zander and I rose. Electricity snapped around and through us and darted to our fingertips. We gathered it into our hands, grew it into pulsing orbs, and took aim. We hurled bolus after bolus of energy into the attackers’ ranks. Guided by the nanomites, the bolts connected and “punched out” the soldiers, one and two at a time.
As the other attackers saw their compatriots falling like dead men to the floor, they panicked. Some tried to run back through the holes blasted in the training center walls, but we caught them before they could escape. The last half dozen men, at the sight of bodies stacked up amid the rubble of the breaches, gave up. Befuddled and confused, they dropped their weapons and tried to surrender.
“Aw, we’re not gonna hurt you,” I said to myself. “Not much, anyway. Just give you a nap—which is better than you deserve.”
We dissolved the shield, dropped to the floor, and advanced on the remnant, flinging fire from our fingertips, knocking them out.
“Three more out there,” Zander said, pointing through a hole in the wall. “Can you make it?”
“Yeah, but let’s use the doors.” My gut felt like an active volcano, and I didn’t fancy a climb over the stacks of unconscious bodies.
Zander held his palms facing outward, toward the training center entrance. The fortified, hydraulically sealed steel doors thrummed and trembled. They shook, shook harder, then burst open.
Zander and I, the nanomites guiding us, hunted down the three remaining attackers. We found the last one hiding in a corner, weeping.
“Please don’t kill me! Please!”
I said softly. “We’re not going to kill you, and we haven’t killed any of your friends. You’ll be all right.”
Sobbing in relief, he never saw the pulse that knocked him out.
“What next, Jayda? So many witnesses . . .”
“They won’t remember—and neither can anyone from Malware.”
“Oh. You mean the old ‘destroy the newest synapses’ trick?”
“Yup.” I spoke aloud to the nanomites. “Nano? How long did the assault last?”
Twenty-seven minutes from the first roof breach, Jayda Cruz.
“And how far back did Zander and I first expose our ‘powers’?”
Nine minutes, fourteen seconds, Jayda Cruz.
“Mark that point and delete all memories back to that moment, please? From everyone here except us.”
I had an idea and glanced at Zander. “What if we asked the nanomites to . . .” I explained my idea.
“I like it, Jay. I like it a lot.”
“Cool.” I gave the nanomites instructions, and a spurt jumped from us to the man at our feet. Half a minute later, the nanomites returned.
We are done with this man, Jayda Cruz.
We went back to the training center. Dust from blasted concrete and smoke from expended rounds hung heavy in the air. We found Mal and his crew bunched together where we had left them. They were arguing among themselves. At our return, they lapsed into watchful silence, wary and uncertain.
“Nano, start working on the attackers, please. I’d like to talk to Mal’s people first.”
I took another step and gasped. “Ow.”
Zander put an arm around me and helped me toward them.
“I suppose our secrets are out,” I murmured, “although I’m certain you have lots of questions.” I shrugged. “Normally, we avoid public displays of our abilities, but we just couldn’t allow more people to die today.”
Mal coughed and cleared his throat, but had trouble forming words. “You . . . and him . . .”
“It’s okay, Mal. We know how bizarre it is. We’ll explain more in a minute.”
I swept my hand to indicate the thirty-some bodies. “To clarify, these guys aren’t dead, just unconscious. When they wake up, they will remember breaching the training center, but nothing about us. They will have a vague recollection of breaching a room filled with knockout gas, and—poof—lights out.”
Mal found his voice. “Uh, Ripley, there’s no such thing as a safe KO gas. That’s the wishful fantasy of spy movies. Use of a KO gas can stop breathing altogether—meaning casualties.”
“Yeah? Well, I guess they’ll think you’ve created a new and safe gas, won’t they? In any event, they won’t remember what we did to them, and that’s the important thing.”
“Whoever sent them watched the battle live via these guys’ helmet cams.”
“We can’t mitigate for that. We’ll have to deal with them another way.”
McFly spoke up. “These guys are gonna be very unpopular with whoever sent them. Triple our numbers and they couldn’t bag you two?”
“Yes, but they’ll be alive. Sadly, they will be worthless to their handlers.”
“What do you mean?”
“They will experience a mystifying reluctance to practice the art of war . . . ever again.”
Mal put his hands on his hips. “You can do that?”
“I think so.”
He looked around at his team. Baltar was shaking his head in wonder. Fiona grinned like a Cheshire. The others seemed to relax a little. Only a little. Our relationships with them weren’t going to be the same any time soon.
“You know you can trust us to keep your secrets, Ripley, John-Boy. Um, you do trust us to keep your secrets, don’t you? I mean, you must, because . . .”
Zander and I looked away; we couldn’t meet his eyes.
“What? You don’t trust us? You’re going to wipe our memories, too?”
Zander spoke. “It’s less about trust and more about operational security.” He crooked a half smile at McFly. “Like you drilled into us, right?”
With a reluctant shake of his head, McFly agreed.
Jayda Cruz, Zander Cruz, the police and FBI have arrived and are about to enter the clubhouse.
Mal’s crew was growing agitated, so I addressed them. “BPD and the FBI are on scene. Sorry about this, but we need to hurry. Mal, you and your team will remember everything about the battle up until Zander and I, uh, did our thing. Just like the attackers, you’ll wake up thinking some kind of gas knocked you out.”
I was planting the subliminal hints in Mal’s crew that the nanomites would leave intact.
Mal’s crew protested, but to no avail. They were already falling like cordwood until only Mal, Zander, and I remained standing.
He turned in a circle and realized his team was “out.”
“We’re not going to knock you out, Mal.”
He shifted a nervous glance to us. “You aren’t?”
“No, we need you to do something for us.”
“Okay . . .”
“Your crew will be confused, but malleable to suggestion. We need you to ‘remind’ them that the attackers filled the training center with gas to knock your people out. As improbable as it will sound, ‘remind’ them that the gas also knocked the attackers out. You, Mal, recovered first just as the feds and the police arrived to take the attackers into custody.”
“And you think my people will buy that line of horse pucky?”
“They will, because you will insist that’s what happened, and they won’t have an alternative that makes any sense. After you’ve spun that tale a few times—adding a few convincing details—their brains will accept and incorporate your explanation into their memories.”
We heard shouted commands in the open corridor. Coming closer.
“We’ll use that bug-out route now, Mal.”
“Wait. One more thing. Did you notice that, as soon as the attackers recognized you two, they didn’t shoot at you?”
“They had their orders; they need us alive,” Zander answered.
“Well, someone screwed up, cuz I took one in the gut.” I glanced at my bloodied shirt. The nanomites had staunched the bleeding but, deep inside, I burned like a house on fire.
“Gotta go, Mal. Be safe, bro.” Zander put his arm around me and we hobbled toward the panic room.
***
“WE NOW JOIN JILLIAN Framer reporting live from Capitol Hill. Good morning, Jillian, what is the status of Senator Delancey’s confirmation hearings?”
“Tom, an hour ago, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee moved to send Senator Delancey’s confirmation to the Senate floor for a vote—and my sources tell me that the House Administration Committee will do the same, either later today or first thing tomorrow.”
“Jillian, what does that mean for Senator Delancey?”
“It means that the senator could be confirmed by both the Senate and the House within the next twenty-four hours and be sworn in as the next Vice President immediately afterward.”
“Jillian, I believe you reported earlier that the shortest vice-presidential confirmation was six weeks for Gerald Ford in 1973?
“Yes, Tom, and Ford was sworn in as Vice President an hour after the vote. If Senator Delancey is confirmed today or tomorrow, following less than two weeks of hearings, it would be an unprecedented display of bipartisan unity. Back to you, Tom.”
~~**~~
