Prodigal Son

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “I’m sure I’ll figure something out,” Candy said. “Will you be on site?”

  “Hell no,” Tommy said. “I ain’t raiding no military base. Hell, I probably sold ’em half the gear they’re gonna be looking to train on your sorry asses.”

  Candy’s eyes found Joey. “How about you?”

  “She’s a minor,” Evan said. “She’s staying right here with her laptops. She can handle everything remotely.”

  “It’s my fate,” Joey said. “Behind every man are badass women doing all the work.”

  “I heard a rumor that someone’s looking to retire,” Candy said. “Maybe us badass women should lead the charge after this outing.”

  “I keep suggesting that,” Joey said. “But shockingly, he doesn’t listen.”

  Tommy stroked his biker mustache and shot a jet of tobacco juice out through the gap between his front teeth, enough to make a tapping sound when it hit the dirt. “Ain’t enough bourbon in my house for me to understand the lengths you all go to to help folks who don’t pay you a red cent.” He side-eyed Evan. “That was a hint.”

  Evan pulled three tight rolls of hundreds from his cargo pocket and handed them over to Tommy. Tommy thumbed one of the edges, breathing in the scent of money. Then he started to lumber back to his driver’s seat. He paused. Then swung back around, leaning on his side mirror to look at Evan.

  His baggy eyes held concern, though he was never one to give voice to softer emotions. He started to say something, thought better of it, spit again, and cursed softly at the wind.

  “I’ll be okay,” Evan said.

  Beyond the dunes the coyotes were at it again, singing their death song.

  “Wear the brown pants,” Tommy said, turning away once more. “You’re gonna need ’em.”

  65

  Darker Darkness

  Evan steered the Honda Civic over the bumpy dirt road through the ruinous landscape of the Nevada National Security Site, the night sky thick enough to hide the recce drones. Joey had made clear she could manipulate the surveillance feeds through a signals intercept, erasing Evan’s vehicle and heat signature. She’d yet to make a boast she’d been unable to back up; even so, as he neared the base, his back prickled with sweat when he thought about the invisible firepower drifting overhead.

  At last the solid perimeter fence of Creech North came visible in the night, a seam of darker darkness.

  He gave the front security gate a wide berth, peeling off down a side road. Signs at regular intervals urged EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION. STAY ON THE ROAD. Having seen the rabbit disassembled by a land mine on his last visit, Evan minded the instructions.

  He had his radio earpiece in, bone-conduction technology that sent and received audio signals through the walls of the skull, bypassing the outer ear and leaving it open to sounds in the immediate environment. He shared an encrypted channel with Joey and Candy.

  Joey had used one of Creech North’s own surveillance drones to watch Molleken’s delivery arrive—two SUVs with tinted windows bookending a black box truck. The convoy had arrived five minutes ago, drifting into the compound easily and driving to the central lab building Evan had infiltrated yesterday. She’d zoomed in with night vision, close enough to identify their weapons, and sent the images to Evan’s RoamZone. Just like the crew sent to take out Andre at the impound lot, the six contractors wore dark polo shirts and carried MP5s and Browning Hi-Power clones. But conducting semilegitimate business here, they’d forgone the black Polartec masks. Nonetheless, they’d be easy enough to differentiate from whatever base personnel remained.

  Careful to hold to the road, he pulled near one of the rear gates. There was no guard station here, just a massive solid steel gate braced by concrete barriers.

  He stopped in the middle of the road, killed the engine and then his lights. He’d have a few minutes before someone spotted him and came to ask questions.

  He hoped that was enough time for Candy.

  * * *

  The Jeep careened up to the checkpoint, windows down, country music blaring, Chely Wright singing about a single white female lookin’ for that special lover.

  Two MPs manned the station, one emerging swiftly, M4 carbine at the ready, giving the driver vigorous hand signals to stop. The Wrangler skidded to a halt, and Candy spilled out, a weighty tote bag swinging from her elbow. “Goddamn it, I’m all turned around. I’m supposed to meet the girls for a bachelorette party at Caesar’s Palace, and my GPS says the Strip’s no more than an hour from here, but it keeps glitching.”

  “Ma’am, please back up.” He wore the navy-blue beret, sage-green combat boots, and the Airman Battle Uniform with slate-blue incorporated into the camo design. The embroidered name tape read MOORE. Shoulders pinned back in rail-straight posture, dimples in his cheeks, wide jaw. He looked good and liked looking good, and she would use that vanity to crush him.

  She’d left the door open, the radio wailing, She just might be your dream come true.

  “Goddamn it, it’s hot for December.” She took a wide stance, her stockinged legs shapely above the boots, hips cocked to one side, and lifted the hair from the base of her neck with both hands, a gesture that pushed her chest out and upward.

  Moore’s focus moved where she knew it would, and she stepped forward again, letting her hips swing, her body transformed into a hypnotist’s pocket watch. The second MP came out from the guard station because—how could he not?—and said, “Ma’am, this is a classified base. You can’t—”

  She pretended to trip, tumbling forward into Moore, her chest pressed to his, her face in his shoulder. Surprised, he caught her under her arms, the M4 sandwiched between them.

  A quick glance past him showed the guard station’s door open, the monitors providing a panoramic view of the base perimeter, all that hardware safely ensconced behind the concrete-slab walls.

  She giggled—“My gosh, thank you”—untangling but keeping his right arm, clutching it at the triceps so it pulled straight, the elbow locking, her forearm flexing the joint the wrong way. The second MP was stepping closer, and she brought her cheek to Moore’s, whispered, “I’m sorry,” and dislocated the shoulder. As he fell, she stripped the M4 from him, guiding the sling neatly over his head and torso, and wound up holding the carbine aimed directly at the other man’s chest.

  Her purse remained slung over her shoulder, tight against her hip.

  It held a gaggle of zip ties and the portable EMP weapon.

  Moore curled at her feet. To his credit he neither cried nor reached for his backup pistol, but he was breathing hard enough to stir the dirt beneath his mouth.

  The MP in front of her kept his arms raised like a good little boy, gloved fingers spread.

  “Well,” Candy said with a wink, “aren’t you gonna invite me in?”

  * * *

  Evan felt the movement in the ground first, a deep rumble rising through the worn tires of the Honda Civic, and then the rear access gate parted.

  He drove onto the base.

  Abundant testing fields lay ahead, resting for another day. They were sleek from a recent rain, moonlight shining through silver puddles, seeming to bore into the earth itself. Carving through them, he clung to a narrow dirt path worn down with Humvee tracks. No signs of life. Eventually hangars rolled past him on either side like barns rising from farmland. A trio of MQ-9 Reapers slumbered beneath a steel overhang, $50 million taking a break. Light tactical vehicles were lined like dominoes in several outdoor parking zones, waiting for war games.

  The base was light on personnel as promised, ghost-town desolate. The security breach, which would present as a power-grid glitch, hadn’t roused anyone yet.

  He continued along the wagon-wheel spoke toward the center of the base, where the collection of buildings constituting headquarters were arrayed. Finally a few signs of life—a lone truck rattling toward the perimeter, two airmen halted on the street talking into their phones.

  Evan waved. They waved back.

&nb
sp; The disk of the lab building loomed ahead, its shiny black doors presenting a unified front. The Mimeticom box truck and dueling SUVs were parked at a slant in front, and he pulled in next to them and hopped out.

  In case Joey wasn’t watching, he said sotto voce, “Now.”

  As he mounted the stairs, the door buzzed open. He entered.

  The outside corridor was dark and desolate, but the massive lab below threw sterile light up through the interior windows. He peeked down, spotting the private contractors way below in the distant rear of the lab, mostly blocked from view by a metal contraption the size of two soccer goals but filled in with various layers. He could barely make out their movement through the slats.

  He counted five forms back there—no, six. Assuming that was the full transport team, where was Molleken? Evan scanned the space, found the OpsCenter at the dead middle of the lab. That’s where he’d have to insert the Yubico key and the Hak5 USB Rubber Ducky.

  He pulled back to avoid being seen, walking along the curved corridor to the elevators, the wall lights turning on as Joey illuminated his way.

  The sensor pad blinked green before he could touch it, summoning the elevator.

  The front doors banged open behind him, two MPs moving inside. The beefy one spotted him. “Hey!”

  Evan turned as they jogged toward him and waved them to hurry. “Move it! The base perimeter’s been compromised. We gotta alert the transport team.”

  The MPs arrived as the elevator dinged open. “Who are you?”

  “I’m an engineer in the microdrone division.” Evan stepped onto the car. “Come on, come on.”

  The MPs entered and stood on either side of him, close enough that their shoulders brushed. The big guy breathed down at him from the right. “Microdrone division?”

  Evan stared straight ahead, the elevator descending, taking him ever closer to a half dozen armed adversaries.

  “That’s right.”

  A third of the way down now, the lab floor drawing ever nearer. He thought about the stapled gash in his right arm, carefully wrapped beneath his long-sleeved shirt but still vulnerable. Anything he did from here on out, he’d have to be careful not to tear flesh through metal.

  A radio gave with a bit of static, and the MP on Evan’s left turned up the volume. “—repeat: We have a breach. Any uncredentialed personnel should be detained and questioned. Copy, Tanner?”

  Evan sensed the men’s faces swivel to him from either side.

  He took a swift step back, setting his braced ankle outside the big guy’s foot, palming the side of his head, and accelerating it into the wall as he tripped him. The guy’s ear slammed into metal, and he crumpled.

  To Evan’s left, Tanner had almost cleared leather with his SIG Sauer, but Evan grabbed it and yanked it the rest of the way out, goosenecking the wrist. He twisted the sidearm free, dropped the mag, jacked the slide to send the chambered round spinning, and emptied the rounds with fifteen quick flicks of his thumb.

  Mouth gaping, Tanner stood watching the brass rain down on the tips of his boots.

  The SIG spun in Evan’s hands as he disassembled it, the pieces dropping, a two-second breakdown. Keeping the slide, he asked politely, “May I cuff you to the railing?”

  Tanner nodded.

  Evan dug a flex cuff from a cargo pocket, zipped it around the MP’s wrist and the handrail. He did the same for the big guy, who was still unconscious, then plucked up his pistol. As Evan’s hands took the second SIG apart in similar fashion, he looked over at Tanner, who’d recoiled against the wall.

  “He’s had a pretty bad concussion, but he’ll be okay.”

  Tanner nodded, his eyes wide.

  The doors opened, and Evan smacked the emergency stop button to stall the car. “I’m gonna have you guys wait here a sec,” he said, dropping the SIG Sauer slides and the men’s radios through the dark gap between the elevator and the lowest floor. “You’re gonna want to stay quiet. I’m not the bad guy here.”

  Tanner nodded once more, his Adam’s apple jerking in his throat.

  Evan drew his ARES and stepped out onto the lab floor.

  It was football-field vast, the sight lines blocked by benches, walls, and workstations. Cautiously he picked his way through a labyrinth of test gear toward the OpsCenter and the crew of mercenaries beyond.

  ARES 1911 drawn, pistol tucked close to his chest in a two-handed retention position, finger indexed on the frame, not the trigger, thumb on top of the safety—precautions to avoid shooting someone who didn’t need shooting, like a wayward engineer. The Tenth Commandment: Never let an innocent die.

  Once he acquired visual on the threat and decided to deliver projectiles, he needed less than one-tenth of a second to disengage the safety and pull the trigger. He preferred a heavier press, 4.5 pounds with a little creep, which gave him more travel once he took up the mechanical slack in the trigger. So much precision training, so many minuscule adjustments to make sure he was operating as close to perfection as was humanly possible.

  Voices carried back to him. The clanking of gear. He crept forward through the maze of workstations, pulse pounding, eyes darting from threat area to threat area. Jack’s voice whispered in his ear, a mantra of competence: Off target, off trigger. On target, on trigger.

  A long table strewn with disassembled motor parts. A pallet of propellers. Two soldering benches. A pony wall built of stacked electronics crates. The gasoline stink of epoxy glue.

  Finally he reached the OpsCenter. Crouching to keep his head low, inching toward the nearest hardware tower.

  Now the voices were louder.

  “—first swarm, quick and quiet, before any oversight—”

  “—cannot memorialize this launch in any way—”

  “—hang on, hang on, need to fire them up—”

  A rumbling filled the air, and Evan flattened to the floor, taking a moment to realize that the sound was coming from the building itself. Way, way above, the ceiling irised open in the center, a growing spot of night sky blooming.

  A flight path up and out.

  Evan shouldered to the edge of a desk and peered around the corner.

  Now he had a clear view of the giant contraption they’d been readying, and the sight of it stole his breath. He took it in, disbelief rolling through him.

  It was wider and taller than unrolled gymnasium bleachers, but each step was as narrow as the slat of a venetian blind. A massive swarm of dragonflies perched on the slats, filling the entirety of the bleachers. These were the drones that Molleken had threatened him with in the battle lab, the glowing eyes that had risen before him in the darkness like a wall of menace.

  The next-gen dragonflies were a more wicked-looking design than the one that had killed Jake Hargreave. Needlelike stilettos protruded from their faces, gleaming menacingly. In addition, each had a square box strapped to its thorax.

  A bigger version of the backpack worn by the robotic bee that had blown a hole straight through the head of a mannequin.

  Explosives.

  At the base of the shelving unit, a jumble of empty rugged black Seahorse crates with the Mimeticom M emblazoned on their sides had been discarded. They were wheeled, their twist-lock latches released to show the scored charcoal foam inside.

  Several of the contractors unpacked the dragonflies from the last crate, setting them equally spaced on the top slat of the shelving unit. The swarm was nearly assembled.

  One of the men stared at someone out of Evan’s view behind the head-high server racks. “Hey, Doctor, are you ready to set ’em loose?”

  Brendan Molleken stepped into sight, palm-heeled a button on the control panel, and a thousand yellow-green eyes glowed to life on the bleachers.

  66

  A Nightmare Symphony

  A menacing hum filled the air, rising in pitch, the predatory howl of the swarm. Evan ducked back behind the desk, breathing hard, digging for the gear in his pocket.

  The humming intensified. The Yubico key wa
s slippery in Evan’s hand. He slid it into the port of the nearest hardware tower and tapped the trigger. The screen lit up. Authentication granted.

  He already had the Hak5 USB Rubber Ducky set to go. He jammed it home.

  Code whipped across the screen, a progress bar filling segment by excruciating segment as the hacked code uploaded.

  Molleken’s voice carried to him. “Target: Andre Duran.”

  A gruff voice, one of the hired guns. “Check.”

  Molleken said, “Set to locate and destroy.”

  “Should we widen target parameters to include any witnesses?”

  “Yes,” Molleken said. “Loosen collateral-damage restrictions on the ethical adapter. We’ll need to cover our tracks on that front. Leave no trace of the temporary adjustment.”

  The progress bar was half filled.

  Evan brought his nose within inches of the monitor, urging it to hurry.

  Now two-thirds.

  It reached the last bit and stalled.

  Squatting at the desk to keep his head low, Evan glared at the screen.

  Molleken’s voice came once again. “Initiate encrypted kill-order sequence.”

  “Check. We are cleared hot to launch.”

  Evan’s jaw clenched, a nerve line burning in the side of his neck.

  The progress bar clicked to completion and vanished.

  The humming decreased and then quieted.

  Molleken said, “What the hell happened?”

  Only then did Evan’s muscles untense. Air eased through his teeth, his jaw letting go, like he was deflating with relief.

  The gruff voice: “I don’t know. Looks like the encrypted kill order has been wiped.”