FORTY-TWO MILES away, the satellite feed went dead.
“Where’s his backup?” Painter Crowe kept his voice firm, biting back a litany of curses. Panic would not serve them.
“Still ten minutes out.”
“Can you re-establish the link?”
The technician shook his head. “We’ve lost main feed from his helmet cam. But we still have the bird’s-eye of the base from the NRO sat.” The young man indicated another monitor. It showed a black-and-white overshot of Fort Detrick, centered on a courtyard of buildings.
Painter paced before the array of monitors. It had all been a trap, one directed at Sigma and aimed at him personally. “Alert Fort Detrick’s security.”
“Sir?” The question rose from his second-in-command, Logan Gregory.
Painter understood Logan’s hesitation. Only a handful of those in power knew of Sigma and the agents it employed: the President, the Joint Chiefs, and his immediate supervisors over at DARPA. After last year’s shake-up among the top brass, the organization was under intense scrutiny.
Mistakes would not be tolerated.
“I won’t risk an agent,” Painter said. “Call them in.”
“Yes, sir.” Logan crossed to a phone. The man appeared more a California surfer than a leading strategist: blond hair, tanned, fit but going a bit soft in the belly. Painter was his darker shadow, half Native American, black hair, blue eyes. But he had no tan. He didn’t know the last time he had seen the sun.
Painter wanted to sit down, lower his head to his knees. He had assumed control of the organization only eight months ago. And most of that time had been spent restructuring and shoring up security after the infiltration of the group by an international cartel known as the Guild. There had been no telling what information had been gleaned, sold, or spread during this time, so everything had to be purged and rebuilt from scratch. Even their central command had been pulled out of Arlington and moved to a subterranean warren here in Washington.
In fact, Painter had come in early this morning to unpack boxes in his new office when he had received the emergency call from satellite recon.
He studied the monitor from the NRO satellite.
A trap.
He knew what the Guild was doing. Four weeks ago, Painter had begun to put operatives into the field again, the first in more than a year. It was a tentative test. Two teams. One over in Los Alamos investigating the loss of a nuclear database…and the other in his own backyard, over at Fort Detrick, only one hour from Washington.
The Guild’s attack sought to shake Sigma and its leader. To prove that the Guild still had knowledge to undermine Sigma. It was a feint to force Sigma to pull back again, to regroup, possibly to disband. As long as Painter’s group was out of commission, the Guild had a greater chance to operate with impunity.
That must not happen.
Painter stopped his pacing and turned to his second, the question plain on his face.
“I keep getting cut off,” Logan said, nodding to the earpiece. “They’re having intermittent communication blackouts throughout the base.”
Certainly the handiwork of the Guild too…
Frustrated, Painter leaned on the console and stared at the mission’s dossier. Imprinted atop the manila file was a single Greek letter.
In mathematics, the letter, sigma represented “the sum of all parts,”, the unification of disparate sets into a whole. It was also emblematic of the organization Painter directed: Sigma Force.
Operating under the auspices of DARPA—the Department of Defense’s research and development wing—Sigma served as the agency’s covert arm out in the world, sent forth to safeguard, acquire, or neutralize technologies vital to U.S. security. Its team members were an ultrasecret cadre of ex–Special Forces soldiers who had been handpicked and placed into rigorous fast-track doctoral programs, covering a wide range of scientific disciplines, forming a militarized team of technically trained operatives.
Or in plainer language, killer scientists.
Painter opened the dossier before him. The team leader’s file fronted the record.
Dr. and Commander Grayson Pierce.
The agent’s photograph stared up at him from the upper right corner. It was the man’s mug shot from his year of incarceration at Leavenworth. Dark hair shaved to a stubble, blue eyes still angry. His Welsh heritage was evident in the sharp cheekbones, wide eyes, and strong jaw. But his ruddy complexion was all Texan, burnt by the sun over the dry hills of Brown County.
Painter didn’t bother glancing over the inch-thick file. He knew the details. Gray Pierce had joined the Army at eighteen, the Rangers at twenty-one, and served to distinction off and on the field. Then, at twenty-three, he was court-martialed for striking a superior officer. Painter knew the details and the back history of the two in Bosnia. And considering the events, Painter might have done the same. Still, rules were codified in granite among the armed forces. The decorated soldier spent one year in Leavenworth.
But Gray Pierce was too valuable to be cast aside forever.
His training and skill could not be wasted.
Sigma had recruited him three years ago, right out of prison.
Now Gray was a pawn between the Guild and Sigma.
One about to be crushed.
“I’ve got base security!” Logan said, relief ringing in his voice.
“Get them over—”
“Sir!” The technician leapt to his feet, still tethered to his console by the headset’s cord. He glanced to Painter. “Director Crowe, I’m picking up a trace audio feed.”
“What—?” Painter stepped closer to the technician. He raised a hand to hold off Logan.
The technician turned up the feed on the speakers.
A tinny voice reached them though the video feed remained fritzed.
One word formed.
“Goddamnmotherfuckingpieceofshit…”
5:07 A.M.
FREDERICK, MARYLAND
GRAY KICKED out a heel, catching the woman in the midriff. He felt a satisfying thud of flesh, but heard nothing. His ears rang from the concussion of the slug against his Kevlar helmet. The shot had spider-webbed his faceshield. His left ear burned as the electronic bay shorted with a burst of static.
He ignored it all.
Rolling to his feet, he slipped the carbonized dagger from its wrist sheath and dove under a neighboring row of tables. Another shot, sounding like a loud cough, penetrated the ring of his ears. Wood splintered from the edge of the table.
He cleared the far side and kept a wary crouch while searching the room. His kick had caused the woman to drop her flashlight, which rolled on the floor, skittering shadows everywhere. He fingered his chest. The body blow of the assassin’s first shot still burned and ached.
But no blood.
The woman called to him from the shadows. “Liquid body armor.”
Gray dropped lower, attempting to pinpoint the woman’s location. The dive under the table had jarred his helmet’s internal heads-up display. Its holographic images flickered incoherently across the inside of his faceshield, interfering with his sightlines, but he dared not abandon the helmet. It offered the best protection against the weapon still in the woman’s hand.
That and his body suit.
The assassin was right. Liquid body armor. Developed by U.S. Army Research Laboratory in 2003. The fabric of his body suit had been soaked with a shear-thickening fluid—hard microparticles of silica suspended in a polyethylene glycol solution. During normal movement, it acted like a liquid, but once a bullet struck, the material solidified into a rigid shield, preventing penetration. The suit had just saved his life.
At least for now.
The woman spoke again, coldly calm, as she slowly circled toward the door. “I rigged the building with C4 and TNT. Easy enough since the structure’s already scheduled for demolition. The Army was nice enough to have it all prewired. It just took a minor detonator modification to change the building’s implosion t
o one that will cause an explosive updraft.”
Gray pictured the resulting plume of smoke and debris riding high into the early morning sky. “The vials of anthrax…” he mumbled, but it was loud enough to be heard.
“It seemed fitting to use the base’s own demolition as a toxic delivery system.”
Christ, she had turned the entire building into a biological bomb.
With the strong winds, it was not only the base at risk, but the entire town of nearby Frederick.
Gray moved. She had to be stopped. But where was she?
He edged toward the door himself now, wary of her gun, but he couldn’t let that stop him. Too much was at stake. He tried flicking on his night-vision mode, but all he earned was another snap of flame by his ear. The heads-up display continued its erratic flashing, dazzling and confusing to the eye.
Screw it.
He thumbed the catch and yanked the helmet off.
The fresh wash of air smelled moldy and antiseptic at the same time. Staying low, he carried the helmet in one hand, the dagger in the other. He reached the back wall and hurried toward the door. He could see well enough to tell the swinging door hadn’t moved. The assassin was still in the room.
But where?
And what could he do to stop her? He squeezed the handle of his knife. Gun against dagger. Not good odds.
With his helmet off, he spotted a shift of shadows near the door. He stopped, going dead still. She was crouched three feet from the door, shielded by a table.
Watery light filtered from the hallway, glowing through the windows of the swinging doors. Dawn neared, brightening the passage beyond. The assassin would have to expose herself to make her escape. For the moment, she clung to the shadows of the windowless lab, unsure if her opponent was armed or not.
Gray had to stop playing this Dragon Lady’s game.
With a roundhouse swing, he threw his helmet toward the opposite side of the lab. It landed with a crash and tinkle of glass, shattering one of the old tanks.
He ran toward her position. He only had seconds.
She popped from her hiding place, swiveling to lay down fire in the direction of the noise. At the same time, she leaped gracefully toward the door, seeming to use the recoil from her gun to propel her.
Gray could not help but be impressed—but not enough to slow him.
With his arm already cocked, he whipped his dagger through the air. Weighted and balanced to perfection, the carbonized blade flew with unerring accuracy.
It struck the woman square in the hollow of her throat.
Gray continued his headlong rush.
Only then did he realize his mistake.
The dagger bounced harmlessly away and clattered to the floor.
Liquid body armor.
No wonder the Dragon Lady knew about his body suit. She was wearing the same.
The attack, though, threw off her leap. She landed in a half crash, plainly turning a knee. But ever the skilled assassin, she never lost sight of her target.
From a step away, she aimed the Sig Sauer at Gray’s face.
And this time, he had no helmet.
5:09 A.M.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
WE’VE LOST all contact again,” the technician said needlessly.
Painter had heard the loud crash a moment before, then all went deadly silent on the satellite feed.
“I still have base security,” his second said by the phone.
Painter tried to piece together the cacophony he had heard over the line. “He tossed his helmet.”
The other two men stared at him.
Painter studied the open dossier in front of him. Grayson Pierce was no fool. Besides his military expertise, the man had first come to Sigma’s attention because of his aptitude and intelligence tests. He was certainly above the norm, well above, but there were soldiers with even higher scores. What had been the final factor in the decision to recruit him had been his odd behavior while incarcerated at Leavenworth. Despite the hard labor of the camp, Grayson had taken up a rigorous regimen of study: in both advanced chemistry and Taoism. This disparity in his choice of study had intrigued Painter and Sigma’s former director, Dr. Sean McKnight.
In many ways, he proved to be a walking contradiction: a Welshman living in Texas, a student of Taoism who still carried a rosary, a soldier who studied chemistry in prison. It was this very uniqueness of his mind that had won him membership into Sigma.
But such distinctiveness came with a price.
Grayson Pierce did not play well with others. He had a profound distaste for working with a team.
Like now. Going in alone. Against protocol.
“Sir?” his second persisted.
Painter took a deep breath. “Two more minutes.”
5:10 A.M.
FREDERICK, MARYLAND
THE FIRST shot whistled past his ear.
Gray was lucky. The assassin had shot too fast, before being properly set. Gray, still in motion from his lunge, just managed to duck out of the way. A head shot was not as easy as the movies made it seem.
He tackled the woman and pinned her gun between them. Even if she fired, he would still have a good chance of surviving.
Only it would hurt like hell.
She fired, proving this last point.
The slug slammed into his left thigh. It felt like a hammer blow, bruising to the marrow. He screamed. And why the hell not? It stung like a motherfucker. But he didn’t let go. He used his anger to slam an elbow into her throat. But her body armor stiffened, protecting her.
Damn it.
She pulled the trigger again. He outweighed her, outmuscled her, but she didn’t need the strength of fist and knee. She had the might of modern artillery at her disposal. The slug sucker-punched into his gut. Pounded all the way to his spine, his breath blew out of him. She was slowly maneuvering her gun upward.
The Sig Sauer had a fifteen-round magazine. How many shots had she fired? Surely she still had enough to pound him into a pulp.
He needed to end this.
He lifted his head back and slammed his forehead into her face. But she was no novice to brawling. She turned her head, taking the blow to the side of her skull. Still, it bought him enough time to kick out at a cord trailing from the nearby table. The library lamp attached to it came crashing to the floor. Its green glass shade shattered.
Bear-hugging the woman, he rolled her over the lamp. It was too much to hope that the glass would penetrate her body suit. But that wasn’t his goal.
He heard the pop of the lamp’s bulb under their combined weight.
Good enough.
Frogging his legs under him, Gray leaped outward. It was a gamble. He flew toward the light switch beside the swinging door.
A cough of a pistol accompanied a slam into his lower back.
His neck whiplashed. His body struck the wall. As he bounded off, his hand palmed the electrical box and flipped the switch. Lights flickered across the lab, unsteady. Bad wiring.
He fell back toward the assassin.
He couldn’t hope to electrocute his nemesis. That only happened in the movies, too. That wasn’t his goal. Instead, he hoped whoever had last used the desk had left the lamp switched on.
Keeping his feet, he pivoted around.
The Dragon Lady sat atop the broken lamp, arm outstretched toward him, gun pointing. She pulled the trigger, but her aim was off. One of the windows in the swinging door shattered.
Gray stepped around to the side, moving farther out of range. The woman could not track him. She was frozen rigidly in place, unable to move.
“Liquid body armor,” he said, repeating her earlier words. “The liquid does make for a flexible suit, but it also has a disadvantage.” He stalked up to her side and relieved her of her gun. “Propylene glycol is an alcohol, a good conductor of electricity. Even a small charge, like from a broken lightbulb, will flow over a suit in seconds. And as with any assault, the suit reacts.”
He kicked h
er in the shin. The suit was as hard as a rock.
“Goes rigid on you.”
Her own suit had become her prison.
He searched her rapidly as she strained to move. With effort, she could make slow progress, but no more than the rusted Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.
She gave up. Her face reddened from her strain. “You won’t find any detonator. It’s all on a timer. Set for—” Her eyes glanced down to a wristwatch. “Two minutes from now. You’ll never deactivate all the charges.”
Gray noted the number on her watch drop below 02:00.
Her life was tied to that number, too. He saw the flicker of fear in her eyes—assassin or not, she was still human, afraid of her own mortality—but the rest of her face only hardened to match her rigid suit.
“Where did you stash the vials?”
He knew she wouldn’t tell him. But he watched her eyes. For a moment, the pupils shifted slightly up, then centered on him.
The roof.
It made sense. He needed no other confirmation. Anthrax—Bacillus anthracis—was sensitive to heat. If she wanted the bloom of toxic spores to spread outward from the blast, the vials would have to be up high, caught in the initial concussive blast and jettisoned skyward. She couldn’t risk the heat of the explosion incinerating the weaponized bacterium.
Before he could move, she spat at him, hitting him on the cheek.
He didn’t bother wiping it off.
He didn’t have the time.
01:48.
He straightened and ran for the door.
“You’ll never make it!” she called after him. Somehow she knew he was going for the bio-bomb, not fleeing for his own life. And for some reason, that pissed him off. Like she knew him well enough to make that assumption.
He ran down the outer corridor and skidded into the stairwell. He pounded up the two flights to reach the roof door. The exit had been modified to meet OSHA standards. A panic bar gated the door, made for quick evacuation in case of a fire.
Panic pretty much defined this moment.
He struck the bar, initiating an alarm Klaxon, and pushed out into the dark gray of early dawn. The roof was tar and paper. Sand crunched underfoot. He scanned the area. There were too many places to hide the vials: air vents, exhaust pipes, satellite dishes.
Map of Bones: A Sigma Force Novel Page 3