Bite Back Box Set 1

by Mark Henwick

  Then I connected it all together, put the antenna on the dash and clicked on Matt’s install file.

  An animated octopus tap-danced onto the screen. I rolled my eyes. Geeks. One of the octopus’s legs went out at an angle and stilled. Then another, and another till all eight were still. The octopus shrank and became an icon at the bottom of the screen. A message popped up. “I have eight unsecured internet connections in the vicinity. I will warn you if there are less than four at any time. VOIP communications and internet access will be multiplexed through all connections and remote sites.” The message faded and another popped up. “Call Matt now?” I clicked on it and Matt’s voice came through.

  “Hi, Amber.” He sounded like he was speaking in a cubicle.

  “Matt, this is freaking A. Is it for-sure untraceable?”

  “Yeah. The remote sites spoof the addresses. Once they know it’s being done, and given federal budgets and resources, it can be reconstructed, theoretically. But I’ll know if they start backtracking. And those remote sites are real remote. Yeah, it’s untraceable until I tell you otherwise.”

  “Absolutely awesome. I owe you.”

  “No problem. I’ve really wanted to give it a run for ages.”

  “Hold on, I’m testing it?”

  “No, no. I tested it, you’re giving it its first run. Uh… gotta go now. Call me later about those two industrial units you were asking about.”

  I shuddered and signed off. I’d had a lot of experience with cutting edge equipment, not all of it good.

  To test it in a different mode, I sent him an email using the system and asking him to do some more digging on the topic of the police reports about animal attacks. It’d be interesting what he could come up with.

  I drove away west, doubling back to see if I had a tail and checking the octopus icon from time to time. No tail and some unsecured connections.

  I headed towards Monroe Street for a while, then stopped halfway and checked my cell. If they were tracking it, they had a location for me at that moment, but I wasn’t going to hang around. Most of the calls listed on it I could ignore. I would talk to Niall and Jen today anyway.

  There was a brief message from Agent Griffith. “Ms. Farrell,” he said carefully, “I have some notes here mentioning you in connection with a Project Snakebite in the Denver PD. I can’t seem to find any other references to this project. Please give me a call.”

  No, I wouldn’t call the FBI this week and talk to them about the Snakebite codename that Captain Morales and Colonel Laine had thought up to cover anything to do with vampires in Denver. I groaned; now I’d have to warn José as well—he had a police team assigned to this, and they’d need to disappear. But at least Agent Griffith was being polite now.

  I was nearly at the end of the messages. I got sales calls and wrong numbers like anyone else. My finger touched the button to delete a voicemail that was a woman I didn’t know who had obviously accidentally dialed my number.

  “…it’s not the same river, and you’re not the same woman.”

  I froze. I didn’t know the voice. The woman was clearly in the middle of a conversation. That’s reasonably unusual, just enough to make me pause. But the words were a rework of the second part of a quotation from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. The part everyone knows is the first half—‘you can’t step into the same river twice’. And the only time I could ever recall discussing it with anyone was with Colonel Laine, the week before.

  Another voice I didn’t know cut in. “But what does the book say about who will help you up?”

  I’d skipped school to join the army. I don’t read philosophers and Bibles for fun.

  I started reading stuff about Heraclitus because of what he said about change. It seemed very relevant for me as I became Athanate.

  And the colonel had quoted the Bible to me just once. He’d said it was a happy coincidence that the buddy principle we used in Ops 4-10 was endorsed by the Bible, Ecclesiastes 4:10.

  I’d taken those words to heart, and I whispered them now. “For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.”

  I shivered. With this, along with ‘Captain Baker’ on the Colonel’s contact number, I now knew that something had gone very wrong at Ops 4-10, and that was a seriously scary thought. A battalion of Ops 4-10’s capabilities in the wrong hands? I didn’t want to think about the chaos that could cause. And even if there were nothing to worry about on that level, why was I suddenly being denied? What had happened to the colonel? Was the whole paranormal investigation side under new management and being ‘cleaned up’?

  The voicemail ended abruptly. Just as it would if someone had found they’d accidentally dialed a number.

  I turned the cell off and drove on a few blocks before parking on a side street.

  Was that last part simply the colonel saying he was out of it and warning me that my cell was being monitored? Or was it a more sinister warning—who could I rely on to pick me up if I fell? Who was my buddy now? I couldn’t just put it all aside. Important as my visit to Haven was, I needed to find out what this meant.

  The octopus had made some more friends; I used the laptop to call Jen and left a voicemail saying there was a problem with my cell, but I’d be back this evening. I wanted to call José as well. He needed to know that Ingram was asking about Project Snakebite. But if they were tapping my cell and they knew something about Snakebite, what were the odds they were tapping his? It wouldn’t help if they couldn’t trace my call but recognized my voice. Even if I used Matt’s software to disguise my voice, I didn’t have an agreed code to warn José and I couldn’t just come out and say Snakebite. I guessed a personal visit had to go on my to-do list.

  I risked another look at my cell to see if there was any follow up from the Colonel. There was one more message—a sales spiel suggesting I might find the meaning of life if I logged on to a fortunetelling website. That raised a twisted smile. I turned the cell off again, drove a couple more blocks and logged on using the octopus.

  If this was the colonel, then he had hidden depths, or he’d found at least one buddy. It was a real fortunetelling site, and when I logged on as a guest and put my birth date in, I got a short screen of fortune cookie style quotes. Standard stuff, except one—‘in change we find purpose’. That was another Heraclitus, and aimed at me, I guessed. I clicked on it, and for a second, a number flashed on the screen and the website closed, as if there’d been a fault. I dialed the number on my internet phone.

  The call went through to silence.

  “Colonel, it’s Farrell. I’m on a secure line.”

  There was a moment more of silence, and then his voice came on, sounding tired. “Hi. Thanks for following the breadcrumbs.”

  I took a deep breath. “What the hell happened?”

  “I wish I knew. I’m still trying to figure it out, but the unit is now a hot zone for both of us. I will find out what happened, but I’ve got to get Vera out of this.”

  “They’d involve her? What about the rest of your family?” He was seriously rattled to have used her name in a phone call. Instructor Ben-Haim would have been having apoplexy.

  “I always discussed things with her, never with other family. And I found a listening device at home.” I could hear the anxiety in his voice.

  “Okay. Colonel, bring her to Denver. I can make you two disappear until we straighten it out.”

  “I appreciate it, Sergeant. Obviously, I hoped you could. I’m sorry to add to your concerns.”

  “Forget that, just get here.”

  “How do I contact you?”

  “Text my cell something random from the unit and I’ll call this number again.”

  “Done. I’ll be there in the next couple of days.”

  “Make it after the weekend.”

  “Got a party?” he tried to joke.

  “As if. This stuff at the unit…it isn’t the people we know, is it?�
�

  “No. The unit is on lockdown while personnel are being merged into another one run by Petersen. It’s that other unit that’s the problem.”

  The name Petersen gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. I’d found out his main interest in me was to see me dissected. For the greater good, of course.

  “I was told he’d been promoted,” I said.

  “Yeah.” The colonel’s voice betrayed what he thought of that.

  Good tradecraft should have meant we cut the call off as soon as we’d covered the important things, and we were way past that already. But I knew how isolated and exposed he would be feeling, and we were safe enough. I’d been there. No matter how tough you are, out in a situation like the colonel was, the sound of a friendly voice would be welcome to him.

  I cast around for something to say.

  “I never did get around to apologizing, Colonel.”

  “Apologizing? For what?”

  “Well, I screwed the pooch, down in South America. Got you demoted,” I said.

  Got myself bitten. Got my squad killed, too. Colonel Laine had been in charge of Ops 4-10 up to that operation. By the time I had recovered, he was only in charge of the medical team observing me. That had to have been a painful demotion, but he’d never once mentioned it.

  “Amber, you got it all wrong,” he said. “You did an exceptional job down there.”

  “I got them all killed!” I said, and bit my lip. Gods, this was still raw. My squad, my responsibility. I should never have opened this conversation.

  “Bullshit.”

  My mouth dropped open. I had never heard him swear before.

  “We’ll sit down with a drink and talk it through sometime,” he said. “But just for your information, I volunteered for that post. If things went wrong at Hacha del Diablo it was my responsibility. The least I could do was figure out what happened and how we could avoid it in the future.”

  “Okay,” I said finally. “Okay. That’s a date, Colonel.”

  Time to quit the call, but I didn’t want to leave him with Hacha del Diablo on his mind, especially if he felt responsible as well. We hadn’t shared many light conversations. I couldn’t even remember what sports teams he supported. I tried the one other thing about Ops 4-10 that I’d thought of recently, and ended up opening a whole new can of worms.

  “Hey, Colonel, I’ve just read a report on a drug lord down Mexico way. I can’t think how he’s still walking. We should’ve taken him out long ago.”

  “Name?” He sounded professionally interested.

  “Matlal. Luc Matlal,” I spelled it out. Again, we shouldn’t have been naming names, but he’d asked.

  The line was quiet.

  “You still there, Colonel?”

  “Yeah. Look, I realize you probably have secrecy issues, so you don’t need to say anything else about why you’re reading up on him. But just to tell you, Matlal’s name came up all right. I put it forward three or four times myself. No green light.”

  “Shit.” I didn’t like the sound of that. The more I thought about the ways this could link up, the more I didn’t like it.

  “Yeah. We can’t talk about it now. I’ll see you next week.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh…and…” he stumbled.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s safe, isn’t it?”

  He meant would my Athanate friends bite him and his wife. I’d never heard uncertainty in his voice before. It shook me as much as anything we’d said.

  “Nothing’s safe at the moment, but no one I’d hide you with would harm you.”

  We ended the call on that and I drove to Monroe Street. Time was getting shorter. I should have done this in the dark, sneaking in over a fence or something. But Larry wasn’t there and neither was anyone else.

  All of which left me more frustrated and with three chilling thoughts. Larry had been caught. That was edging towards a sick certainty. And if he had, and he was still alive, he hadn’t told them about Monroe Street, yet. But he would. And lastly, there was nothing I could do about it unless we got lucky.

  Regardless of the people in Ops 4-10, some of whom I would’ve still thought of as friends, with it a hot zone, I had some precautions to take before I went to Haven.

  I went back into the city, to the storage facility where I kept things I didn’t want to see or wasn’t supposed to have. I took some time checking the place out before going in, but it was clear. At least one person in Ops 4-10 knew of this place. I wasn’t worried about Keith, my former boyfriend from my army days; he wouldn’t betray me, even if we were no longer an item. But he’d been able to trace the locker from the old fake ID I’d kept. Anyone else in Ops 4-10 could follow that lead the same way.

  I laid the car back seat flat and emptied both storage units. All the weapons and army equipment went in first, in bags, then I put my old army uniforms on top to hide them. When I was sure it all looked innocent enough, I drove out. My fake ID from my Ops 4-10 days, Mrs. Abigail Welchester, disappeared forever, shredded into a dumpster.

  I finally got to head for Haven. I had warned Bian I might be late, but this was pushing it. And now I had things to ask for and lots to think about. I’d gone from my comfortable absolutes, the army and Ops 4-10 among them, to a sense of being completely adrift.

  House Altau could have been my new certainty, but I found Skylur too difficult to read. That left Diana. I’d started working on that yesterday and I wondered how it would play out.

  Chapter 21

  The late morning sun was summer-white and haze made Haven insubstantial as a reflection, almost dreamlike.

  At the gatehouse, I strolled on the gravel drive while the guards called through for clearance to open the gate. I turned in circles and thought about Ops 4-10, the colonel and Haven’s security issues.

  Skylur had said an attack here would meet a surprise. What did he mean?

  Apart from not being told things like that, the problem was I didn’t know what level of security was necessary.

  The wall, gatehouse and clear lawns around the house itself were an adequate layout to counter singlehanded assassination attempts, or small teams. I knew the building had a basement area which would probably provide sufficient protection against a medium-scale attack, say with rocket-propelled grenades or similar.

  But treating this as a mission plan for an Ops 4-10 attack, I could see the defenders lasting between ten minutes and half an hour depending on whether it was a kill or a capture mission. Taking it the other way and treating it as a defense problem, the best solution was that the house itself had to be a decoy with escape or defense options underground. But that scale of work meant difficult requirements for secrecy and expensive adaptations.

  The guards themselves were more than adequate for everyday security. But again, a defense force against a serious attack was a completely different beast. I had plenty of ideas about that, if they were needed.

  The guards called me back and opened the gates. I drove in and parked in the underground garage, then walked up into the house, searching for the room they’d given me. The place was cool and silent all around me. Not for the first time, I wondered where everyone was. Underground?

  A door onto the corridor opened and Bian slunk out like a cat. “Oh! I thought I smelled something nice,” she said.

  She was wearing her silky black combat pants, but with a loose white T-shirt advertising a biomedical center for blood donors, showing her leopard skin shoulders and neck. Her feet were bare. Her hair was gathered into a single top knot. Through the door behind her, I could see a couple of people arguing over a complex flowchart on a long board. Yeah, I understood why she wanted out of that.

  “Hi, Pussycat,” I said. I didn’t want to rise to her bait, so maybe that wasn’t the right response.

  She casually blocked my way, leaning close and sniffing.

  “Hmm. No wolf. Are you coming to stay? I’m sure I can find a bed for you.”

  “Bian, I’m not staying
at Haven.” A moment’s inattention, and my little demon was up and running. “Besides, I’m not sure you have a bed strong enough.” I tried to distract her from that and get her on the defensive. “And what about Mykayla?”

  Bian’s eyes lit up. Not distracted in the slightest. “We can have her along as well if you like. She gets tired so easily one on one. And the floor’s plenty strong enough.”

  I rolled my eyes. She was completely outrageous, and there wasn’t any way I was going to win this type of conversation.

  I pointed through the door she’d come out of. “Shouldn’t you be concentrating on—”

  “Oh, I think the security arrangements for catering during the Assembly will go just fine without me,” she purred, leaning in again.

  I was saved by Diana’s arrival. “Bian, you have no excuse not to be in that meeting.”

  Bian slunk back in, grinning at me over her shoulder. It was impossible not to grin back.

  Diana sighed and ushered me down the corridor. “I did warn you that she would get you back for your joke last week.”

  She opened a door and we walked into a sitting room.

  “She can be so fun and irritating at the same time.” I sat down on the sofa. “Changes direction like the wind in a storm. Tell me, how long does adolescence last for Athanate?”

  Diana laughed. “Forever. Or until they come out of it on their own. Don’t be embarrassed, Amber. If Bian can’t get a response out of you, you’re already dead.”

  I was more embarrassed that I couldn’t ignore it. And whatever I thought I ought to do, I was being nudged off course by my Athanate reactions.

  “How do you manage it?”

  “The mock-aggressive intimacy? I don’t fight it.”

  “So that stops her? You just stop fighting and she backs off?”

  Diana shook her head. “You need to understand, Bian makes no promises, even in fun, that she is not prepared to keep.”