28 THE FAMILY



Wednesday October 24th

Breece jogged down the hill to the Lexus, slowing as he approached the car. He checked for any movement from beyond it, where he’d crushed the third man up against the SUV. Nothing. He peered under the car cautiously, until he could make out what was left of the man. It was a gruesome sight. The assassin’s head and upper body weren’t visible, crushed between the Lexus and the SUV. One arm dangled limply down to meet a lower body splattered with blood, legs bent at impossible angles. He was definitely dead.

Breece rose and opened the driver-side door of the car. The vehicle was marked now, just like his phones, just like the identities all three objects were registered to. He had to stop the damage there, stop them from retrieving DNA samples, stop any chance of the authorities finding out Breece’s real identity, cut off any path that might unmask Hiroshi and Ava and the Nigerian.

He tapped on the car’s center console, navigated the menus, touched a corner that was blank, and let it scan his retina. A new menu appeared, with hidden options.

Self-destruct. He set it for a ten minute countdown, or when triggered from his phone.

From the trunk he pulled out his go bag with gear, phones, gun, and fresh false identities. Then he grabbed an enzyme bomb as well.

He took off up the hill again, the enzyme bomb in his still-gloved hand. The landscape was quickly growing darker in the post-sunset twilight. He gained the top of the hill, found the two assailants he’d killed. He pulled the ceramic knife out of one man’s throat, cleaned it on the man’s jacket, and slid it back into his ankle sheath.

Then he stood back from the area, brought the cylindrical enzyme bomb up, pulled the pin on it, and tossed it at the spot where he’d been hit. It rolled to a stop against one of the bodies. A half second later a dozen tiny ports opened on the soda-can-sized cylinder, hissing out a dense white fog of DNA- and protein-degrading enzymes. With any luck they’d erase any biological traces he’d left.

Breece pulled out his phone again, sent an encrypted message to Hiroshi.

[Am safe. Stay clear of area. Your phone now burned as well. Meet at rendezvous.]

Then he dropped down behind a headstone, looked around it at the Lexus, pulled up the menu, and moved the self-destruct time up to now.

Three hundred yards away, a solenoid opened a canister of compressed oxygen, venting it into the gas tank of the car, hyperpressuring it. Seconds later, a score of tiny penetrators poked holes in the fuel tank, sending aerosolized gasoline into the car’s interior and into the air around it, turning the vehicle into an unexploded fuel-air bomb. Breece counted down: 3… 2… 1…

The car erupted in a fireball that lit up the twilight sky. The heat of it warmed his face. Any evidence left in that car was now vaporized.

Breece pulled the batteries from his phone, turned, and slowly crept down the back side of the hill. It was a long way to the rendezvous.

He made it to Houston eighteen hours later, wearing his spare clothes, his hair freshly dyed black, a car rented under a fresh identity.

He drove a two-block circuit around the rendezvous point, looking for any sign that his team had been compromised, that FBI or ERD were waiting for him inside the flat. He couldn’t call his team. By mutual agreement, none of them knew each other’s backup identities. All their primary identities had been burned by his presence at the cemetery.

The problem was one of linkability. His phone was linked to the site by its presence there when the deaths happened. His team’s previous identities were linked by the contact their phones had had with his in the past. All of those identities were connected. Break one, and you could break the others. So all those fictional names and bank accounts and ID cards had to go.

He parked the car two blocks away and ate in the restaurant across the street from the flat while he casually studied the area around him.

Was one of the other diners an FBI watcher? That electrician’s van – did it have a mobile listening post? That young couple walking down the street holding hands – were they enhanced ERD operatives waiting for someone to walk up to that door?

He stretched the lunch out, ordered a beer that his genetically upregulated alcohol dehydrogenase levels would chew up long before it could get him buzzed. The other diners paid and left. The electricians returned to their van and drove away. The young couple didn’t come back.

In the window of the flat, there was movement. A good sign. If there were an FBI or ERD ambush in there, they’d be utterly still, totally undetectable, waiting for their mark to make himself known.

He paid the bill and walked across the street to the flat.

No one fired on him as he approached. At the door he put his right hand around the pistol in his pocket and rapped out the knock with the knuckles of his left. Slow-fast-fast-fast-slow-slow.

The door swung open and his fingers tensed around the pistol and then there was Ava in front of him, as gorgeous and cool as ice as ever.

“Took you long enough,” she said, one eyebrow raised.

Breece grinned and swept her up in his embrace, twirled her around, sending her long dark hair flying. The ice melted and she laughed and kissed him.

They were all here. Hiroshi, the brilliant telecoms engineer turned hacker, his Japanese face careworn, his long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. The Japanese understood the future. They embraced it. This man more than most. Breece had no problem admitting that Hiroshi was his intellectual superior, might always be. He counted himself lucky for the man’s friendship over the years.

The Nigerian, tall, leanly muscular, quiet – but apt to sudden smiles and bursts of deep bellowing laughter. Their weapons specialist. A man of deep courage and conviction, who’d put his life on the line for the cause many a time.

And Ava. The chameleon. The woman who could blend in anywhere, persuade anyone of anything. Smart. Fearless. Gorgeous. Unflappable. The woman he loved.

They hugged and smiled, and slapped each other on the back, and then gathered in the kitchen. It was good to be back with his people again.

He opened his mind to theirs and they to his. Through the Nexus link he showed them the attack at the cemetery and they showed him their rushed trip to rescue him. They’d been on their way to risk their lives for him, heading to his location expecting to find a DHS team between them and him. He loved these three. He’d die for them if he had to.

“So Zara decided to off you,” Hiroshi said. “Why?”

Breece shrugged. “He’s always been a control freak. He’s always wanted to pick the missions, move cautiously. We’ve upset that. The truth is, we don’t need him, and that’s a threat to his power.”

“What does he know about this mission?” Ava asked.

Breece shook his head. “Nothing. Same as Chicago.”

“We need to deal with him,” Hiroshi said.

Breece nodded. “We will. After this.”

“So we’re still a go?” the Nigerian asked.

“We have one other problem,” Breece said. “Hiroshi?”

Hiroshi showed them the feed from the Chicago mission. Everything was normal until the last moments.

I think I have a bomb! the mule said in their minds. A bomb!

“The mission succeeded,” Breece told them, “but only barely.”

“We thought at first that the software had glitched,” Hiroshi said. “But the logs showed otherwise. Someone else hacked into that mind and overrode our commands. And whoever did this is very very good. It was less than a minute between the mule’s activation and this hack.”

Breece watched as his team absorbed that.

“Could this explain DC?” the Nigerian asked. “The mule there fired only twice instead of four times. And he missed.”

Breece looked at Hiroshi.

“Possibly,” Hiroshi said, nodding.

“So what do we do about this?” Ava asked.

“Two things,” Breece said. “First, we’re going to make a few changes to the mission profile. Second, we need to be more careful ourselves. As long as we’re running Nexus, we could be vulnerable to this hacker again. Hiroshi needs to run Nexus to prep the mule. None of the rest of us do. So until we’ve figured out what happened, the three of us are going to dump our Nexus, and after Hiroshi preps the mule, he will too.”

He felt their disappointment, Ava’s especially. He wanted to touch her in mind and body, feel her pleasure as he made love to her. But that would have to wait.

They all agreed with this decision. They’d all do what needed to be done. They were a team, and more. They were family. They were soldiers.

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