“You heard her,” Gatsby said. “Let’s get moving.” He fixed a pointed stare at Sylvan. “Now. Be ready to leave in ten minutes, or you’re walking.”
Tank slung the messenger bag she carried her laptop in across her chest, then grabbed her rucksack and duffel bag. She carried them out to the truck she’d been driving and loaded them inside, her senses on high alert. They weren’t in a residential area. It was an older, run-down mix of warehouses, industrial businesses, and commercial buildings. Traffic was starting to pick up a little because she could hear it in the distance.
It felt open, exposed.
Too exposed.
She grabbed the three extra mags out of the concealed pocket at the bottom of the messenger bag and tucked them into her left jacket pocket. Her nine millimeter, the one none of them knew she had, she slipped out of her back holster and tucked it into her right jacket pocket. It wasn’t ideal, but it would be a little more accessible.
Walking the perimeter of the building, she kept her eyes and ears wide open, on alert, looking for any hint of something that didn’t belong.
If they didn’t get moving soon, she’d have to take off without them. They had maybe an hour at the outside before the government would have triangulated their location and gotten troops mobilized.
While at the back side of the building, she pulled out her sat-phone and texted her contact.
EXFIL ASAP. 15 SOBS.
She received a response seconds later.
20?
She pulled up the GPS coordinates and texted them.
Barely time for three breaths before they replied.
EXFIL en route. ETA < 1hr. Will ID as friends of Ax.
Followed by GPS coordinates for the meeting spot, a park not even twenty minutes away.
Another sigh of relief. Now she had an answer for the group as to where they should go immediately. She wiped the messages and stuck the phone back in her pocket.
When she walked around the front of the building, Gatsby was emerging and loading his stuff. He turned to her.
“Forget what Sylvan says. I, for one, really appreciate everything you’ve done.” He stuck out his hand.
She shook with him. “I don’t want to be in charge,” she said. “I’m happy with you making the final decisions. I just want to stay alive. That’s all.”
“Don’t they say every good leader has great advisors?” He smiled at her.
He wasn’t bad-looking. In a different time and place, a different world, she might consider pursuing something with him.
“Advise you, I’m happy to do that. But as far as I’m concerned, you’re stuck being the head dude what’s in charge.” She flashed him a grin.
“Gee, thanks. I think.” But he returned her smile. “I’ll go get the rest of them ready. I think wherever we end up tonight, we probably should post some lookouts. Did you even get any sleep last night?”
Finally, a breakthrough. She shrugged. “I could use a nap.”
“Until we know for sure the rest of them won’t do something totally stupid and get us killed, me and Connell will help with the lookouts.”
“Thanks.”
She watched him walk inside. How would he react later, she wondered. Would he see the pragmatic aspects of their situation and adapt, or would he rebel and end up dying anyway?
They had a vital role to play in this terrifyingly deadly new world. Until Kite was controlled, and the butchers of Barstow were brought to justice, she had to do her best to keep them all together and keep them working toward their goal.
And keep them alive.
* * * *
A little after dawn, and their convoy was already in Topeka when Papa pulled everyone over into the parking lot of an empty strip mall.
Their commanding officer walked to one of the vehicles ahead of them, stopped, talked to the occupants, then continued on to theirs.
“What’s up?” Zed asked after rolling down the driver’s side window.
“Need a few people to go back to KC.”
“Why?”
“Extraction.”
Leta leaned forward in her seat. “What?”
“There’s a team of hacktivists, students. Ax has been in contact with them. Bubba said they might be in trouble. We’re to render assistance and bring them in.”
“Shit,” Zed and Uncle both muttered.
“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Why is this bad?”
Uncle glanced back over his shoulder. “Civvies.”
“I’m a civvie.”
“Yeah? And you’re a doctor.”
Papa patted the driver’s door. “Lima, Niner, and Chief are going with you. We’re moving equipment and personnel around now. Come get geared up.”
Zed shifted the vehicle into park but left it running for the heater so she wouldn’t get cold. She watched through the windshield as the men gathered around another vehicle, selected their gear—including weapons—then returned. Once they were back in and situated, she asked.
“Is this going to be dangerous?” They’d both grabbed carbines.
Uncle looked grim. “That’s why we’re taking a doctor along.” Before leaving Georgia they’d packed Doc’s portable medical kit in her SUV with her other gear.
“What’s going on?”
Once again, Uncle turned. “Military has a massive hard-on for these kids. They broke into servers and pulled on-site footage from Barstow and started posting it. They’ve got standing STK orders out on them.”
“STK?”
“Shoot to kill,” Zed clarified.
Her stomach rolled. “And we’re bringing them in? With us?”
“We’re not standard military. We’re the only chance they’ve got to survive. Get them in, safe, and take them with us to our next destination. Won’t have to deal with them after that, Bubba said.”
“Why can’t your general dude cancel the order to kill them?”
“Because he can’t reveal his hand right now. He wants to get the word out about what happened in Barstow. He’s trying to get the bad guys out of office, the corporate-sponsored shills. If he openly interferes with the STK order, it puts a spotlight on him that he might not be able to shake.”
“You remember I can’t shoot, right?”
“You shot that guy,” Uncle reminded her.
“Not accurately, and I didn’t kill him. That was Clara.”
Zed let out a sigh. “That’s why you’ll be our driver once we get there.”
“Uh, problem.” She waved her hand at the window closest to her. “Ice and snow.”
“Roads are salted around here. It’s warm enough there won’t be much ice on the roads by the time we get back there to them.”
“Do we even know where they are?” She didn’t want to put more miles between them and safety. She wanted to get to safety and stay there.
“Bubba said he’s got their twenty.”
She stared at Uncle. “You realize I have no idea what that means, right?”
Zed snorted. “Their location.”
“Then why couldn’t you just say that?” She felt badly about her shrill tone, but her nerves felt stretched to the breaking point. They’d assured her that wherever it was they were going was safe, secure. She’d felt incredibly exposed and vulnerable while out on the road.
And now they were going back.
Uncle finally grokked the source of her distress. He turned in his seat as much as possible to look at her. “Do you want us to swap you out with Doc or Tango?”
Oddly enough, it was the patient, calm tone of his voice that sliced through her soul and made her feel like complete and utter shit. She’d risked her life to save a guy she didn’t even know, and yet she didn’t want to watch the backs of the two guys she was madly in love with?
“No,” she said. “I’ll go. I’m just…terrified.”
He reached back and palmed her cheek, evenly meeting her gaze. “It’s okay to be scared.”
“You guys aren’t sca
red.”
Zed snorted. “Baby, we usually spend a good chunk of time on our missions with a pucker factor of eleven on a scale of one to ten. We just don’t let it interfere with our job.”
“Scared is okay,” Uncle said, still staring into her eyes. “And we get it. This isn’t your gig, it’s all new to you. We’ll ask Doc or Tango to come—”
“No,” she said, resolute. “As long as you don’t mind me being scared.”
“We’d worry more about you if you weren’t,” Uncle said. “Just like we know you had to be terrified back there in Atlanta, but your training took over. You saved Archie’s guy. You and Clara both.”
“She saved our lives,” Leta said. “Clara. That was all her. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be dead. Twice over.”
“Training. Her training is different from yours, and from ours.”
“When does it get easier?”
He smiled and pulled his hand away so he could face front again. “When we figure that out, babe, we’ll let you know.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Leta kept her mouth shut and sat back in the seat. Still behind the wheel, Zed followed as Niner drove the lead vehicle, a minivan they could cram extra people and gear into if necessary. Apparently the group they were going to retrieve was comprised of fifteen unarmed student hackers, friends of Ax’s who’d been sowing their own brand of chaos by exposing what happened in Barstow and elsewhere.
Since they were friends of the aforementioned hacker, Ax, who’d left the group just before Leta’s arrival, General Arliss wanted them protected and moved with them to safety.
The sun rose higher in the sky, shining directly into their eyes as they traveled east toward the meeting point on the west side of Kansas City. Lima had already radioed the coordinates to Uncle, who tapped them into his tablet to pull up the map.
Zed got on the radio. “Any word from Bubba if there are unfriendlies on their trail yet?”
“Unfortunately, yes. A group of four was dispatched from Ft. Leavenworth. Hopefully our cargo will have moved their asses in time to no longer be where that team thinks they are.”
“How does that work?” Leta asked, still feeling ill. “I mean, technically those soldiers are on the same side you are. You’d shoot them?”
“Not unless we’re forced to,” Uncle grimly said. “Our orders are to exfil the student group. As long as they’re waiting for us at the meeting point, we’ll be able to get out of here without firing any shots.”
“I hate jargon.” The irony didn’t escape her that she was a doctor, and that the medical field had plenty of its own jargon.
“Which one threw you?” Zed asked.
“Exfil.”
“Exfiltrate,” Uncle clarified. “Extraction. Rescue.”
“Okay, then why can’t you just say that?”
“Because the military rarely says in one word what it can say in twenty.”
* * * *
Uncle wasn’t happy about Leta being sent with them. Papa had voiced his reasoning in quiet tones while he and Zed were gearing up earlier.
“She needs to learn this stuff.”
“I’d say she did pretty good under literal fire back at the CDC,” he’d grumbled, the closest he’d come yet to outright defying their commanding officer.
“And that was in a hospital,” he said. “Familiar territory for her. She hasn’t been tried under field conditions yet. We’ve got to toughen her up fast.”
“You sure this is the way to do it?”
“Adapt or die,” Papa coldly shot back. “We’re too close to our final goal. Pandora got kidnapped and almost rescued herself. Then she saved Clara’s ass in Mexico. If Leta can’t handle the stress of a routine exfil op, we’ll have to leave her behind in Topeka until everything blows over.”
He’d heard the way Zed angrily slammed a mag into place on the carbine he was prepping to take with them, but his partner didn’t reply.
“I’m not trying to be a dick,” Papa added, “but we don’t have the luxury of time. I’m sorry it’s not fair, but I don’t have to tell you that the mission comes first.”
Their CO had walked away then, leaving Uncle and Zed to exchange an angry glance with each other.
“Never thought I’d say I hate the old man,” Zed muttered. “But I hate the old man right now.” He slung the carbine strap over his shoulder.
“Ditto. He’s right, although I hate to admit it.” Stu and Scooter, their two latest additions before Leta, both had the benefit of a couple of days of adjustment time under relatively safe conditions.
Leta had been forcibly launched from the frying pan into the fire, and now was waiting for a tac-nuke to land on her.
He got it.
He didn’t like it, but he got it. And had Leta begged to be left behind for this exfil, it would have crushed him emotionally, because he knew it would have necessitated her being left behind in Topeka while they continued on to their next destination.
Now it terrified the crap out of him that she was coming with them on a mission, no matter how safe it might be.
Sometimes it was the safest missions that went tits-up the fastest.
As they approached the park they were meeting at, he glanced over his shoulder. “Keep it running,” he said. “And be ready for anything. If at any time we tell you to go, you go. With or without us.”
“Go where?”
He held up the tablet. “Find your way back to that shopping center we were at in Topeka. Papa will send someone out to wait there if we don’t all return.”
It broke his heart how terrified she now looked, but when she nodded, it raised more than a little hope in his spirits.
This woman had been operating on a guy and then opened fire on an armed attacker who burst into her OR.
If she could handle that, she should be able to handle this.
He hoped.
* * * *
Tank made another circuit of the building, her unease growing with every minute that passed. The group was starting to assemble, finally, members hauling their gear out and dumping it into whichever vehicle they’d been traveling in at the time.
Of course it was Sylvan who dragged everyone down, the last to get packed, grousing about it the entire time despite her public chastisement.
Tank’s nerves felt taut, stretched nearly to breaking. As bickering broke out amongst Sylvan and her two car mates, Tank got behind the wheel of the truck she’d been driving. Sylvan and the other two were in the other car that they weren’t sure would run very long. The truck Tank was driving was on the iffy side, but she hoped it’d make it to Topeka.
As Tank tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, she idly wondered about taking Sylvan inside the building for a talk.
Alone.
And leaving her there.
Connell and Gatsby walked over to break things up and sent Sylvan and Torphin, one of the other women, to Tank’s truck.
Dammit.
As soon as Sylvan opened the passenger door, Tank hooked her thumb at the backseat. “Back there, Sylvan.”
Sylvan shot her a glare but shoved the seat forward and climbed into the back without complaint. Torphin was only nineteen, but the woman was sharp, quiet, and—this time, at least—listened when Tank talked.
Tank started the engine and pulled alongside the recalcitrant car. Torphin, riding shotgun, rolled down her window so Tank could talk to Gatsby, who’d gotten behind the wheel.
“Follow me,” Tank said. “I found a place we can sit and let that thing charge up for a little while.”
He gave her a thumbs-up. “Lead the way.”
Some of the parks had outside charging stations. If nothing else, the solar backup on the car could get a little bit of sun while they ate breakfast.
And waited for the exfil team.
Tank pulled around the front of the van and kept an eye on her rearview mirror as she drove. Not just to make sure the other two vehicles were following.
To also make s
ure they weren’t being followed.
Hopefully they’d gotten away in time. She was honestly shocked local law enforcement hadn’t shown up by now. Then again, maybe that particular arm of the military didn’t want local law enforcement knowing what had really happened in Barstow.
They were three blocks from their hideout when they passed a car with four men in it going the opposite direction. Tank deliberately didn’t make eye contact with the occupants, but of course fucking Sylvan noticed them.
She turned, staring out the back window.
“Face forward,” Tank ordered, speeding up a little and hoping it was just a coincidence.
“What, I can’t even look out a window now?”
So much for her listening.
Tank swore as she saw brake lights come on and the car stopped.
It made a U-turn.
“Shit.” She looked at Torphin. “Call Connell’s burner and tell him to tell Gatsby they need to fucking move their asses.” She floored it, hoping Ellsen, the guy driving the van, would keep up with her.
“What’s going on?” Sylvan asked.
“Shut the hell up,” Tank ordered, dropping the truck into a lower gear as they hit a grade and powered up it. “Get down.”
“What?”
An unmistakable pop of gunfire, and Tank’s sideview mirror exploded in a shower of glass. “Get the fuck down! They’re shooting at us.” She floored it, blasting through a red light, Ellsen and Gatsby taking it with her and causing a spin-out behind them that blocked their pursuer.
“What do I tell him?” Torphin shrieked.
“Tell them to keep up or they’re dead,” Tank grimly said. It wouldn’t take long for their pursuers to catch up.
In the backseat, Sylvan started sobbing. “We’re going to die!”
“Remember that next time you want to look for your family.” Tank whipped it around a corner, the van and Gatsby keeping up. “This is all on you, girlie.”