Grease Monkey

by Tymber Dalton

  They drove through the area first, scoping it out. A lot of old houses, some businesses, a mix of newer apartment buildings, maybe less than thirty years old. Likely once a more affluent section of the valley, it had long ago seen better days.

  “Why libraries?” Roscoe asked.

  “Because they have a strong enough signal she can access them from outside without going in and risking being caught on security video. That’s my guess. And she can access the signals from outside when the buildings are closed. Usually they don’t turn off the sat-link after hours.”

  “Oh.” That made sense.

  “Heads up,” Lima said. “We’re close to the library.”

  The two drivers split up, taking different routes to circle the block where the library sat. Roscoe carefully studied pedestrians and anyone standing outside the building and smoking. “Do we know if she smokes?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t, according to Sin and Q. But if she’s smart enough to hide what she’s doing, she’s likely smart enough to pretend she’s smoking as a way of sitting outside and not drawing any undue attention to herself.”

  “Roger roger,” Roscoe said.

  They picked two different places to park at opposite corners of the building so they could survey all sides. Quack, Roscoe, and Echo left the cars and took up shaded seats on planters in front of the structure. They each had small tablets they pretended to read.

  After a couple of hours, they didn’t see anyone who fit the bill.

  They had, however, heard a couple of gunshots to the west of them. Not close enough to worry about, but close enough to take note of.

  “How long we waiting?” Echo asked Lima.

  “She never uses it in late afternoon, according to Bubba. We’ll give it another hour.”

  Roscoe stood when he felt a tremor rumble through the ground. Around them, pedestrians stopped, or in some cases ran, depending what building they were close to at the time.

  Within seconds, the tremors stilled.

  “Fucking earthquakes,” Roscoe said. “Pain in the ass.”

  Omega laughed at him over the radio. “That was nothing, Brooklyn boy. You scared of a little one or two? I’ve ripped farts stronger than that.”

  “No, they’re just a pain in the ass. I went through basic at Camp Pendleton. Felt them all the goddamned time.”

  Ten minutes later, Lima’s excited voice sounded over the radio. “Get back to the cars. Now. Bubba said he picked up her signal at the La Habra library.”

  They all bolted for their respective vehicles as Omega led the way. But by the time they reached the library in La Habra, there were no signs of her anywhere.

  “Dammit,” Niner said. “We need more bodies. I know Papa doesn’t want to spread us too thin, but we need more eyes covering more locations if we’re going to find her.”

  “Let’s return to base,” Omega said. “We’ll regroup and put together a new plan.”

  * * * *

  Dr. Riley Perkins sat outside the La Habra library as she contemplated the second message she’d received overnight from the guy calling himself “Bubba.”

  He’d been able to tell her things only Quong and McInnis, or any of the others on The List, would know about their time spent together in North Korea.

  Her gut instinct told her he was on the level, but she knew she couldn’t be too careful.

  It also made her glad she’d decided not to go over to Norwalk today, as she originally would have.

  Time to change things up a little.

  Well, she’d like to think that was the reason. The truth was, she’d heard there had been some reported pockets of violence just to the west of Downey, in South Gate, and she didn’t want to risk the trip on foot or on a bus.

  Now she was torn between reaching out to the mysterious Bubba, or following up with the e-mail she’d received overnight from Jerald Arbeid.

  Yes, absolutely, our network does want to tell your entire story. And yes, there was a team working on a Kite vaccine in secret. They were afraid if the public knew what they were doing that people might storm the facility, looking for a vaccine that wasn’t ready yet. Unfortunately, the lab was destroyed by the riots before they could complete their work. We can provide you and your colleagues and their families safety, as well as a fully equipped lab to work from.

  How can I contact you to discuss this further without putting you at risk?

  He didn’t sign his name. She noticed the e-mail, while listed as being from Jerald Arbeid’s account, filtered through several anonymous servers on its way to her. It would be difficult for anyone to track it back to him. He could easily claim someone spoofed his e-mail address.

  He’d said all the right things, though.

  If she had a chance to be on the run, or be set up in a permanent lab, she’d choose the lab, hands-down.

  Especially if it meant getting out of the LA area.

  After all, why wouldn’t she be able to trust a church as large as that one? She’d researched them. They’d done a lot of good over the years, helping to fund medical missions overseas and even in impoverished American cities. No, they weren’t as large as a medical charity like CMI, but they had a proven track record.

  It’s sad when I have to try to decide who’s less likely to fuck me over, the government, or a church.

  The US government, unfortunately, had a proven track record of fucking people over. Canada was a little better, but not by much. She’d thought about turning herself in to Canadian authorities, just to try to get herself into a research lab. But she worried that the scope of the devastation following China’s response with nuclear weapons might make Canada rethink their “no extradition for the death penalty” protocols.

  She couldn’t take the risk of sitting in a cell somewhere in legal limbo, either.

  That wouldn’t help anyone.

  Then again, it was a church, for chrissake. She could easily go to them, and then if she didn’t like the setup she could slip away. She’d acquired two other fake passports, one South African and one Belgian. She could walk away from the church and disappear into the night, literally, and move on.

  I think that means I’ve made my decision.

  Staring at her laptop screen, she found she couldn’t type her response yet, either.

  Her gut churned, unsettled. This was the same kind of feeling she’d had—and ignored—after being contacted by the North Koreans in the first place. That little voice inside her, filled with disquiet.

  And look what happened when I ignored that the last time.

  Indeed.

  Okay, one more day won’t make a difference.

  She was shutting the lid on her laptop when she both heard and felt a rumble that startled her.

  It startled her even more when she saw pedestrians stopping and looking alarmed, even running from buildings that were more than a story tall. Obvious fear widened their eyes over the tops of their surgical masks.

  She shoved her laptop into her backpack and shouldered it, standing, turning to a guy who had stopped walking.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Earthquake.” But the rumbling and noise had subsided, and as people relaxed, they started moving again. The man relaxed, too. “Mild one.” He continued on his way.

  She’d never felt an earthquake before.

  Now she had another reason to hasten her departure from the area. A devastating earthquake decades ago had changed the California coastline, between land sliding into the sea and tsunamis flooding what was left of the coast.

  Maybe the area was due for another “big one.”

  If so, the last place she wanted to be was there.

  Time to think about moving.

  She retrieved her laptop from her backpack and fired off a quick e-mail to the guy from the church network.

  Tomorrow. La Mirada library. Ten AM. I’m Dr. Riley Perkins. Have your guy wear a black shirt and stand out front by the round planter.

  Then she shut th
e laptop down, put it away again, and boogied.

  Chapter Eight

  That afternoon after returning from their unsuccessful recon mission, Niner and Roscoe sat at a table in the dining room with Omega, Echo, Quack, and Lima, and discussed their logistics about searching for Dr. Perkins. Both Q and Sin had given the men several facts they could tell Dr. Perkins, if necessary, that would help her believe who they were when they located her. Things only those of them on the team would know from their time in North Korea.

  If they located her. That was still a pretty big unknown, in Niner’s mind. While none of them wanted to abandon the mission, they realized that if the city’s condition deteriorated before they found her, leaving might be their only alternative. Sacrificing the team and the two scientists they’d already recovered was not an option.

  Not in the slightest.

  When Pandora, Clara, and Ak walked in, Niner was studying the map on the tablet on the table between the six of them when he felt the room tremble.

  Pandora let out a cry, which startled Niner and the other men. Ak and Clara, however, appeared unfazed by the tremor. All six men turned to stare at the woman.

  “It’s okay,” Ak told Pandora. “Just a little earthquake. Not even a big one.” Sure enough, seconds later, it stopped. “Just like earlier.”

  “That’s nothing,” Clara said.

  Pandora looked totally freaked out. “Shouldn’t we, like, I don’t know, get the hell out of here? I mean that’s like two earthquakes in a couple of hours!”

  The other two women laughed. “Nope,” Ak said. “Not for a little one like that. One like that likely won’t even make the news.” Her expression sobered. “Especially in light of what else is going on right now.”

  “This doesn’t concern any of you?” Pandora not only looked freaked out, her voice had taken on a shrill, sharp edge.

  Clara snorted. “If you’ll recall, you guys met me at a town located at the base of a volcano. Yeah, this is nothing. We used to feel little tremors all the time in Colima.”

  “Volcano, huh?” Ak asked, looking intrigued. “That sounds cool.”

  “It was. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to show you around there some day.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “It’s a pretty place—”

  “That was a farking earthquake!” Pandora shrieked.

  “Whoa, snowflake,” Roscoe said. “Take it down a few decibels. We’re all right here and would like to keep our hearing, thank you very much.”

  Incredulous, she stared at them. Then she threw her hands up in apparent disgust and turned, storming from the room.

  Clara laughed. “I guess she was pretty sheltered in Chicago, huh?” she asked the men.

  “More than she thought,” Niner said.

  “Screw you!” Pandora yelled from down the hall. “Asshole!”

  The men chuckled. “Tango and Doc have their hands full,” Niner said. “She’s feisty.”

  “She’ll need to be,” Omega said. “Especially with what we’ll likely be dealing with in the future. She’s never had to really need serious survival skills before.”

  “I’d say she’s handled herself pretty well,” Echo countered. “Look at Mexico. And before, in Australia, she’d almost gotten herself free when Tango and Doc found her.”

  “Yeah,” Roscoe said, “but then Tango got exposed—”

  “Shh,” Niner quickly said, tipping his head toward Ak. He knew she had to still be raw from the recent deaths of her brother and aunt, not to mention her own experience of being exposed to Kite, along with Quack, and having to go through the nerve-wracking waiting process.

  “What?” Roscoe asked, as emotionally clueless as usual.

  Niner knew he saw a side of Roscoe that no one else got to see. The man was intelligent, maybe even too smart in some ways. He had a knack for languages few others did. Besides fluently reading, writing, and speaking Russian in spite of his thick native Brooklyn accent, Roscoe had also started trying to learn Korean from him. And Roscoe did have a sensitive side.

  A small, well-camouflaged one, but still…

  Unfortunately, what most people saw of Roscoe was the painfully blunt man who apparently had a knack for saying exactly the wrong thing to the estrogen-enabled gender.

  Too late. Ak stiffened a little at Roscoe’s comment and did an about-face, heading out of the common room after Pandora.

  Clara tsked and shot Roscoe a look. “What the hell is wrong with you, dude?” She took off after the other women.

  Roscoe looked confused. “What’d I say?”

  Roscoe was less than a year younger than Niner’s own twenty-eight. “Dude, no wonder we never get laid. You open your farking mouth and talk. Maybe just speak to them in Russian so they don’t know what the hell you’re actually saying.”

  Even Omega and Echo were shaking their heads at Roscoe. “Son,” Omega said, “I ain’t ever seen a boy look as handsome as you who could run women off as fast as you do, without putting any effort into it at all. Most men have to work a little to scare them off the way you do.”

  Roscoe looked genuinely clueless. “What’d I say?”

  Niner shoved his chair away from the table and pointed at the tablet. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I want to make sure we aren’t going to get murdered in our sleep by three pissed-off women,” he muttered.

  “What’d I say?” he heard Roscoe ask again as Niner headed down the hall.

  Christ. At this rate, the apocalypse would come and go before they ever got laid again.

  He found the women downstairs, standing just outside the garage area. Clara was trying to comfort Ak while at the same time reassuring Pandora that the damn building wasn’t in danger of coming down on top of them.

  Fortunately for him, Clara’s glare couldn’t shoot high-caliber ammo in his general direction.

  Otherwise, they’d be playing Taps over his body already.

  “Look, he means well. He’s just—”

  “An idiot?” Clara asked.

  “A fucking asshole?” Pandora asked.

  “A clueless jerk?” Ak added.

  “Yeah. When it comes to women, he’s all those and more. I would have made him come apologize himself, except that—”

  “We’d kill him?” Clara asked.

  “Well, there is that.”

  “Why don’t we just send him to Russia?” Pandora asked. “Or better yet, China? He could singlehandedly turn their female population against all mankind.”

  “He’s not that bad,” Niner said.

  All three women crossed their arms over their chests and gave him that look.

  The one that told Niner he was glad he could ask their men to rein them in and not castrate him or Roscoe in their sleep.

  Or, him, at least.

  At this point, he was willing to let them castrate Roscoe.

  Hell, he might volunteer to help hold Roscoe down for them.

  Chapter Nine

  Jerald arrived at the Silo residence a little before one that afternoon. The reverend had worked from home that morning rather than having to return home to collect his wife later. When the nurse let Jerald in, he found that Mary Silo sat in her usual waiting spot in the living room, her unfocused gaze pointed in the general direction of the TV in the corner. Old children’s cartoons played on the screen.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Silo.”

  “Good afternoon, Jerald,” she said after a brief pause that lasted long enough he wasn’t sure at first if she’d heard him or not.

  Wow. She’s really out of it.

  He was about to say something else to her to make polite conversation when Reverend Silo emerged from his room, working on adjusting his tie. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “Ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Silo turned to Mary. “Let’s go.”

  Like a ghostly apparition, she slowly arose from her chair and drifted in
their wake to the front door.

  Today, they were filming the promotional videos. All Mary had to do was sit there, smile and nod on cue, and keep her mouth shut.

  Jerald always felt uncomfortable around the woman, especially over the last few weeks. If she knew all their secrets, would she still be such a happy, devoted wife?

  Then again, she had to already know a lot of their secrets. Lately, the reverend had talked more openly in her presence. Jerald assumed that wasn’t any of his concern, but it still unnerved him a little.

  Jerald also didn’t know exactly what was wrong with her. He knew a lot, based on her number of doctor’s appointments on the reverend’s calendar over the years, but he didn’t pry.

  That wasn’t his job.

  Right now, he felt like he wasn’t doing his job very well. He also felt like he’d failed the reverend with the way the Los Angeles Preachsearch project had abruptly terminated, apparently without a satisfactory result, either. Considering the secrecy requirements for many of their projects, he felt like he was absolutely useless in some respects, unable to plow forward the way he wished he could. But that might prove foolhardy if the wrong people found out certain details about those particular projects.

  Currently, he eagerly awaited word about Dr. Riley Perkins from the team he’d sent to Los Angeles. If they could get her, that would be a massive coup. And if word should leak out that the church had her in their custody, they could spin the story to say that she was sick and tired of being a government shill. Didn’t most Americans host unhealthy—and completely untrue—conspiracy theories about what the government did?

  Then again, what the government had secretly done, or planned to do, was usually far worse than any of their conspiracy theories.

  The church would only be saving Dr. Perkins. Rescuing her and the entire human race from the brink of extinction.

  Dear faithful, please send your money to help keep her safe, and help her save humanity.