“Ran away from where?” Parris asked.
Chloe stiffened.
“New York Military Academy,” Cristián said.
“Cristián!” Chloe said, hurt.
His arms tightened. “We’re all family here,” he said softly.
Chloe tried to encompass that. They really were. Even the three men standing perimeter around them were a fraternity with Parris in the center. The Academy spent three years grinding the concept of fraternity into Chloe’s bones, as if she didn’t understand the meaning in the first week she was there. She rejected it for herself. Even though she hadn’t refused aloud, they knew she wasn’t buying into it. It was what drove the hazing, the heavy handed instructions from the teachers, the endless KP duties and more.
“Military school,” Parris breathed. “That explains a lot.”
“You’re a soldier, Chloe?” Isabela whispered, sounding impressed.
“No,” Chloe said. “They tried to make me one. It didn’t take. I was too ornery.” It felt awkward to be speaking of these things to anyone but Cristián, yet he was right—this was his family.
She’d never had to think in terms of family, before. There had only ever been first her mother, then EllaJean.
“And who is—was, I mean—EllaJean?” Parris asked. Her tone was light, yet interested.
“Chloe’s grandmother, who raised her after her mother died,” Cristián answered. “A brilliant woman. She spoke seventeen languages—”
“Twenty-seven,” Chloe corrected, as either Trini or Pia gasped.
“She spoke seventeen languages fluently and could make herself understood in ten more,” Cristián said smoothly. “When Chloe’s mother died, she turned down an offer to play lead violin in a concerto orchestra, and took over Chloe’s education.”
The silence seemed to tick with intensity. Chloe shifted in Cristián’s arms, acutely uncomfortable.
“Wow…” Parris breathed.
“Wow, indeed,” Isabela added.
“How on earth did you end up in military school with a woman like that taking care of you?” Parris demanded, her voice still soft.
Chloe shuddered. “I didn’t appreciate what I had, when I had it.”
“You do now?” Isabela asked.
“Every day,” Chloe admitted softly.
An owl hooted, somewhere in the dark.
“Silence!” Parris hissed.
Her heart leaping, Chloe pressed her lips together to prevent any noise escaping her. Cristián’s arms tightened.
For what seemed like an hour, nothing happened except her heart beat continued to thud in her temples. Chloe strained to hear anything. There was only the soft whisper of a breeze in the tops of the trees, the rustle of small creatures in the dark and nothing else. No one moved. No one breathed loudly.
The rifle shot was shockingly loud and unexpected. It seemed to come from just a few feet away. The flash of the muzzle was blinding. Chloe jumped and a breathless gasp escaped her.
Almost as the rifle fired, Parris surged to her feet, her own rifle in her hands. She fired a short, sharp burst. It seemed she was expecting this, for there was no delay in her response.
Shouts from farther away in the trees and more firing, none of it close by. Boots, running in the night.
Parris stayed where she was, her rifle aimed, turning in a semicircle to sweep the trees. There was a night scope on her rifle, for Chloe could see the orange glow of the stepped-up image against Parris’ eye and cheek. She didn’t seem to blink as she quartered the trees.
Isabela moaned.
“Mamá!” Pia said urgently.
“Shh!” Parris said, her tone absent. She was concentrating.
A twig broke nearby, making Chloe jump again.
A man stepped out from among the nearest trees. He raised a weapon to sight along it. Before he could fire, another shadow rose up from the ground beside him and melded with his. There was a wet slicing sound, and a gurgled breath. The first man slithered bonelessly to the ground and lay still.
The second bent and wiped his knife on the dead man’s sleeve.
Parris relaxed, lowering her rifle.
“Sorry,” Locke said. “Had to let him get close to smoke him out.”
“We’ll need Odesky and his pack,” Parris said. “A fire and hot food, second. Coffee, third. Then we push on.”
“Got it, sir,” Locke said. He turned and moved into the trees once more.
Parris dropped her rifle, then off-loaded her heavy pack. She reached into it and pulled out a flat, round object which she twisted.
The tiny clearing filled with light from the LED lamp.
Isabela slouched on the ground, holding her arm. Blood oozed between her fingers. She bit her lip, holding back any noise she might make, while Pia held her up.
Parris dropped in front of her. “Sorry about that, ma’am,” she said softly. “They had a good tracker among them. We had to play bait to get them, but it’s done now. Let me see.”
“You…let them get close?” Isabela asked, her voice weak.
“Close enough to think we’re that stupid, which made them relax,” Parris said. “We couldn’t shake them off when we were moving, so we had to stop and let them find us. I didn’t mean for anyone to suffer for it, though.” She peered at Isabela’s arm as she spoke. “Looks like a shallow slice through the skin and muscle. It’ll hurt like crazy, but Odesky will have something for it and an antibiotic for infection.”
After that, things happened quickly. The nine men of Parris’ unit returned to the clearing one by one, to report in. The Insurrecto group on their trail had been dealt with.
Odesky treated Isabela’s wound and gave her something which made her sit quietly, her eyes hooded and sleepy.
The others set up a campfire, a small one. Small stoves around it boiled water, into which they poured powdered food which became a thick, rich stew they handed out in tin mugs. There were not enough spoons to go around, so the soldiers ate with their fingers. They seemed cheerful and relaxed, which helped Chloe eat.
Cristián pulled Parris to one side, close by where Chloe was sitting, yet farther from where Isabela sprawled. “Can you spare a man to take my mother and the girls back to the big camp?”
Parris considered. “It’s best that way,” she said, at last. “Two men, who can oversee security there. I don’t like the way this bunch kept coming, long after dark. The Insurrectos don’t have that sort of grit. Something is driving them.”
“I can go on,” Isabela said, lifting her voice.
“No, Mother. You’re going back to the others,” Cristián said.
“I’m still mobile,” she pointed out.
“I said no,” Cristián said sharply, his hand coming down in a hard chop. “You’re a liability. The girls, too. You can’t move silently to save your lives and I won’t have you putting others at risk.”
Isabela considered him. “Then you’ll be sending Chloe back, too?”
Chloe flinched.
“I need Chloe’s expertise,” Cristián said, as Parris opened her mouth to speak. “Or can you hack a secure server and loop security feeds?”
Isabela’s mouth thinned as she pressed her lips together firmly. She shook her head.
Parris cleared her throat. “Okay, then. At first light, Ramirez and Gomez can take them back. We can’t wait that long, though.” She glanced at her watch. “I need to risk reporting in, it’s been more than twenty-four hours.”
“Won’t the Insurrectos spot the communication?” Chloe said.
“Maybe,” Parris said, digging in her pack once more. “If I’m quick and we move fast enough, it won’t be an issue. Things are moving, though. I have to find out if anything vital has changed. And I have to tell them what we’re doing.” She grimaced. “In the grand scheme of things, I’m just a Captain, even if I am taking my orders directly from the President.”
“You are?” Cristián breathed.
“It’s a long story,” Parr
is assured him. “My CO was in the Sit Room and President Collins kinda took over.” She opened the heavy duty laptop she extracted, and the screen glowed as it booted up.
Chloe reached out and dropped the lid once more. “Wait,” she said, taking off her backpack. “I have some software which will mask you from everything.”
“Chloe, no,” Cristián said. “You can’t give it to them.”
Parris looked from one to the other of them.
Chloe shook her head. “No, they need it. We need it.”
Cristián gripped the wrist of the hand she had in the backpack and shook it. “You can’t. Parris is American and military. She’s obliged to give it to her superiors. They’ll give it to everyone else. That’ll make your software open source. You’ll lose every royalty you could have made on the thing and it’s…it’s brilliant. You can’t give it away.”
Chloe looked at Parris, who shrugged. “I have no idea what software you’re talking about. If it works, though, then yeah, I’d have to pass it on, because it would help everyone else in the Army, too.”
Chloe shrugged. “It will help you. It will help Vistaria. In fact…” She pulled the USB tab out and handed the one-centimeter square fob over to Parris. “Put it in the port, then boot up. It’ll self-install. Then you can do whatever you want and nobody will see a thing.”
Parris nodded and inserted the fob and opened the laptop once more.
Chloe turned to Cristián. “You have the command version on your cellphone—is your phone charged now?” He had placed the charger’s solar panel on his pack shortly after leaving the house. The matt black pad absorbed sunlight all day, although the sunlight under this canopy was filtered and intermittent.
“Maybe forty percent,” he said quietly. “What are you thinking?”
“Send it out, Cristián,” Chloe told him. “Give it to absolutely everyone.”
“If I do, it’ll fall into Insurrecto hands,” he pointed out.
“So what? They can’t reverse-engineer it. I wrote it. I know they can’t. It’s as unhackable as I could make it and if anyone gets too nosey, it’ll wipe itself out before they spot the code.”
“They could use it for themselves,” Parris pointed out, proving she was following along just fine.
“And again, so what?” Chloe said.
“She’s right,” Cristián said. “All that will happen is they’ll go dark on us, just as we will for them.”
“They won’t go dark on me, though,” Chloe said, with a grim smile.
Parris glanced at her startled. Then she smiled, too.
Cristián pulled out his phone and swiped. His smile was as pleased as Parris’. “You planted a honey trap,” he breathed.
“Nope. The cloak leaves signatures only I can read with a special app and no one gets that, not even you. With it, I can open any channel of communications and look at it, just as if they weren’t using the cloak.”
Cristián bent and pressed his lips to her cheek. “I love the hacker streak in you. You make a good rebel.”
Chloe should have felt pleased by the back-handed compliment, only the small voice in her brain which coldly assessed everything whispered, you’ve given away everything of value. Now, there is no going back. If you try, you’ll go back to nothing.
It didn’t help that Cristián had said nearly exactly the same thing, begging her to rethink her decision.
What on earth was she doing here?
Was she trying to make a wrong decision go right? Did her lizard brain think this would bring Cristián through the invisible wall which was keeping him from her? Was she back in military school, rebelling against authority, trying to make the world go the way she wanted, not the way they insisted it go?
You make a good rebel, Cristián’s voice echoed in her mind.
Only, in the Academy, she had failed miserably at being a rebel and had run away, instead.
She didn’t have that option, this time.
12.
IBARRA HURRIED INTO THE ADMINISTRATION center, ignoring the startled looks everyone gave him, for the left half of his head was covered in white gauze and tape. The doctor had stitched the top half of his ear back to his head. He’d warned him the ragged tear might mean it would never knit together properly and might yet have to be removed.
Gangrene, the doctor mentioned in passing, as if he hoped Ibarra wouldn’t catch it. It didn’t improve Ibarra’s mood. The demand he attend Serrano had come while the doctor added the last of the tape. The nervous non-com bringing the message suggested Serrano’s mood made it an imperative Ibarra drop everything and go now.
Serrano was marching about the space behind his desk, his hands on his back, looking pissed as hell. His face was red. The windows behind Serrano were blank, showing nothing but black night, for they faced the mountain behind the city. The staffers had a view of the city itself through their windows.
Ibarra felt nervous in this office. It would be far too easy for a Loyalists sharp shooter to find a nest on the mountain and reach out with his rifle and snuff out the life of anyone standing behind the windows. Serrano dismissed the notion when Ibarra mentioned it, though. He informed Ibarra curtly that the windows were bulletproof.
It didn’t help Ibarra feel any easier standing inside this office, especially at night when they couldn’t see out. It made him feel vulnerable, bulletproof glass or not.
Torrini was the new IT man plucked from the depths of one of the ground troop units and dumped in the computer room to work miracles. He stood as close to the door as he could get without actually stepping out of the room. He was nervous and when he saw Ibarra, he swallowed.
Serrano threw out his hand when he saw Ibarra. “I can’t make any sense of what this idiot is saying. Something about masking and VP-somethings—what happened to your head?”
Ibarra raised his hand to the gauze. “It’s irrelevant,” he said, even though the question raised once more in his mind the startling moment when the blonde bitch’s teeth had closed over his ear, and the agony which came afterwards. He would have to create a fitting retribution for those moments of pain, and the ones to come after this, too.
There was no need to share any of it with Serrano, who would not be pleased Ibarra was messing with potential leverage against the Loyalists.
“What is the problem with the IT security?” Ibarra asked Torrini, turning to face him. Serrano wanted Ibarra to interpret. Anything more technical than a rotary phone had this effect upon Serrano.
Relief touched the small IT man’s face. He was a rotund Vistarian, with rosy cheeks and a mustache bigger than he was, and crooked teeth. “I was explaining to the president that the electronic traces of Loyalists we monitor have disappeared.”
“Yes, yes, you told us about this before,” Ibarra said. Talking was making his face hurt. His whole head, actually. His ear was on fire, now the local anesthetic was wearing off. “Key people over there have stopped using their phones and their computers. We found a Morse code book—they’re likely using radio messages,” he added, addressing Serrano. “A throwback to the Second World War.”
“Morse worked well,” Serrano said. “Are you monitoring the air waves for signals?”
Ibarra blinked. “No signals were found. We decided the code book was a ruse to misdirect us.”
“I beg to interrupt,” Torrini said. “I am not speaking of just key personal. I’m talking about everyone.”
Ibarra turned to look at him. So did Serrano. That was something he could understand, at last.
“You’re saying you cannot track a single Loyalist?” Serrano asked.
Torrini swallowed, his mustache quivering. “Over the last eight hours, all electronic traffic has diminished. Now there is close to nothing and what there is, is meaningless without other traffic for context.”
“How can this be?” Serrano demanded. “Ibarra, you told me even a telephone leaves an electronic trace. The call can be monitored! Are you saying now that everyone not in a gray unifo
rm took it upon themselves to use smoke signals?”
Ibarra’s heart squeezed. He’d left his nitroglycerin pills in his jacket at the medical clinic. Now his heart was hurting, along with his head. “I do not understand this either, General.”
Serrano smashed his fist upon the big desk, his face turning a deep shade of red. “They’re up to something!”
“But…” Torrini murmured, then reconsidered the wisdom of opening his mouth right now.
Ibarra leapt on the opportunity to push Serrano’s focus onto anyone but him. “You were about to say something, Torrini?” he exclaimed.
Torrini exhaled. Sweat popped on his temples. He gave Serrano a nervous smile. “I was only going to say I don’t believe it is just the Loyalist army which has gone silent.”
Serrano glared at him. “Explain!”
“It’s just…” Torrini gave another smile, along with an almost silent laugh. “Everyone has gone silent, General.”
“Everyone?” Serrano said.
“The whole main island and most of the coastal regions of Mexico, centered on Acapulco and…” He gulped. “It is spreading, General. I do not think this is a Loyalist army plot.”
Serrano considered him for a long thirty seconds. Serrano’s face, which was already deep red, took on a gray cast around his lips and nostrils and the creases of his jowls and cheeks.
“Everyone…” he murmured.
Ibarra took a half-step sideways, putting distance between himself and Torrini.
Serrano spoke just above a whisper, not because he was controlling himself, but because his vocal chords were under so much pressure, he couldn’t speak louder. His voice was hoarse.
“There are twelve thousand enemy troops sitting on the other side of the Freonegro pass. The only thing stopping them is a drone circling over Washington, and the prisoners we took to make them stop. We knew it would work because of the intelligence Torres and Zalaya before him unearthed about vulnerable people in the White House, and the key people among the Loyalists. Do you know how we learned all this critical information?”
The question was directed at Torrini, although Ibarra still quivered.
V-Day Page 12