“Sure. Her fuel source ought to keep her going all night.”
“Send her after them.” Alisha pulled her feet up on the tiny bed. “That way we won’t go in blind.”
“We?”
Alisha turned to Brandon, managing a quick smile. “You’re not going to confess to being a double agent now, are you?”
“I am a double agent.” Brandon touched Alisha’s cheek, so briefly and gently she might have imagined the contact. “But I’m working for the good guys, Ali. The only reason I’m part of the Sicarii is to do what I can to bring them down.”
Alisha sighed and lay down on her side on the hard mattress. “Then send the Firebird after Reichart, and let me get some sleep before we go save the world.”
She didn’t hear his answer.
The air was stifling, too warm and too still for too long, and tainted with the scent of heated metal. There was weight over her ribs, enough that taking a breath could be felt in the pressure against bruises. Discomfort, nothing more. Alisha came fully awake without letting her breathing pattern change, examining her memory and the unseen surroundings for danger.
Her ear, resting against her biceps, ached in a way that told her she hadn’t moved for hours. The rest of her body felt similar, muscles settled into a curled-up position on the bed. It would take a good hour of stretching to loosen herself up properly, but aside from that she felt surprisingly good. Content, she thought, then wondered at the word.
“Go back to sleep,” Brandon mumbled behind her ear. Alisha drew in a slow, careful breath, then moved his arm from her ribs. A chill swept through her despite the overwarm air in the van, and she fought back both a shiver and the impulse to cuddle closer to Brandon and do as he suggested.
“Can’t. Got a guy to save.” She peeled her cheek from the arm of the leather jacket she still wore and sat up gingerly. “Time is it?”
“Late enough to be hot in here.” Brandon interrupted his own answer with a yawn and rolled onto his back, putting his fingers to the floor to keep from falling off the narrow bed. “Don’t worry. The Firebird won’t disappoint us.”
“Never dreamed she would.” Alisha twisted to crawl over Brandon as professionally as she could, wincing as she braced her weight on her swollen wrist. Brandon slid his hand against her right hip, fingers in her belt loop to hold her above him. Alisha’s heart lurched as she looked down at him, and he gave her a brief, sleepy smile.
“Now this is nice.”
Alisha pushed up on her knee, taking her weight off her arm, and put her other foot down on the van floor to keep her balance. “Knock the cute sleepy act off, Parker. You’re as awake as I am.” There was less censure in her voice than there should have been, and Brandon heard it as clearly as she did. He tugged on her belt loop and Alisha tightened her core, not letting him pull her down. The cut across her stomach twinged, but less painfully than she’d expected: the sleep had done more good than she’d hoped it could.
“Knock it off, Brandon,” she repeated, and while the tone was edged with regret this time, Alisha filled it with steel. “This isn’t the time and even if I weren’t a walking bruise, it sure isn’t the place. I haven’t had sex in a car since I was—” She broke off with a sudden grin. “None of your business.”
Despite the disappointment that flashed through Brandon’s expression, he laughed and let her go. “It’s been that long, or you started that early?”
“None of your business,” Alisha said again, still grinning. She got off the bed, groaning as she doubled over and let the big muscles of her thighs and back stretch. “I need a massage and a hot tub. And breakfast.”
“And a haircut,” Brandon said ruefully. Alisha looked at the cascade of auburn curls that brushed the floor and sighed.
“Guess it’s your job to get breakfast and some clipping shears, then.”
“And then?”
Alisha closed her eyes, drawing her forehead against her ankles. “Then we go find Reichart and the other Firebird’s black box.”
“I’m not a hairstylist.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Alisha had sat cross-legged in the middle of the gutted van’s metal floor, opting for easy cleanup over the relative comfort of the bed. “Anything’s better than this.” She’d looked at herself in the rearview mirror and had been caught between laughter and tears at the disaster her hair had become. The laser blasts fired as the Firebird freed her from the Attengee drone had melted chunks of her hair into mats, and destroyed strips wholesale. The damage was almost exclusively around the top of her head, but Brandon’s suggestion of a mullet still didn’t appeal. “Even if you have to take it all the way down to a buzz, it’ll be better than this.”
“I might have to,” Brandon said helplessly. “There’s enough left for somebody to do something with, but that somebody’s not me.”
“Just cut away the damaged stuff first,” Alisha answered grimly. “We’ll see what we can do from there.”
She turned her head now, watching her own reflection in the side-view mirror. The back and sides of her head were almost shorn, the hair so short that its natural tawny shade had reasserted itself even though it had only been dyed two days earlier. The short gelled curls that stood up every which way were still copper-red, and just long enough to miss being a man’s military cut. There were places where the curls were too short, the damage very close to her skin, but the result wasn’t too bad. Alisha thought she looked like a boy. A very pretty boy, but a boy. The haircut made her want to wear distinctly feminine earrings, in part because she was unaccustomed to having her ears so exposed. “I need makeup,” she mumbled. Brandon, driving, glanced at her.
“Not really. You look good.”
“I feel naked.”
Brandon gave her a quick, hopeful grin that made her laugh as she shook her head. “You’re used to wearing your hair short. I feel exposed.”
“And makeup would help cover you up?”
“Yeah.” Alisha rubbed her hand over the back of her head, feeling the soft bristles shift with the pressure. Brandon had been delicate in cutting her hair, exploring her skin for burns—there were none, and she knew how lucky she was—before taking the scissors and razor to it. Despite his protestations, his hands had been steady and warm, confident as he cut away the damaged hair. Alisha had allowed herself to revel in the tactile sensation for a few precious minutes, though she had closed down her thoughts as they wandered further afield with what those warm hands might accomplish elsewhere on her body. It was neither the time nor the place.
When will it be, Leesh?
Alisha shook her head, despite knowing that Brandon would see the gesture. He did, glancing her way curiously, and she shook her head again. “Just thinking.” She put the thought away resolutely, adding, “About makeup and masks, I guess. Funny old world we live in.”
“Usually when people say that they don’t mean it’s funny at all. Are you going to unmask?”
Alisha waved her fingers at her unmade-up face and shorter hair. “I already have.” She gave him a sideways look, then turned her attention out the window again. Paris was left behind, the countryside smoothing out into hills and hamlets. Peaceful, Alisha thought, and then, more cynically, or hiding something. “Have you?”
“God, we’re a suspicious lot, aren’t we?” Brandon asked under his breath.
“Sorry. Habit.” Habit developed with Reichart, who never gave a straight answer to a question, if he could avoid it. Alisha flexed her fingers against the van’s window frame. “Have you ever heard of the Fas Infitialis?”
“Sure,” Brandon said instantly. “They’re always in the Sicarii’s hair. Diametrical opposites, from what I’ve gathered. If the Sicarii are about the divine right of a few, then the Fas Infitialis is about man creating his own destiny.” He shot Alisha a smile mixed with despair, then frowned as he took in her expression. “Ali?”
Alisha shook herself, trying to clear the surprise from her face. Independent verification, she though
t. Maybe she wouldn’t need to talk to Boyer.
Which, under the circumstances, was probably a good thing. Alisha flared her nostrils at the thought then pushed it away, too, paying attention to Brandon again. “Sorry, I…wasn’t sure they really existed. I didn’t know I was opening myself up for a lecture.”
Brandon huffed out a sound of mild offense. “That wasn’t a lecture. I was sharing my knowledge.”
Alisha laughed aloud. “I stand corrected. Jesus, Brandon, how many shadow organizations are there out there?”
“The CIA agent wants to know this?” Brandon asked, amused. “If you didn’t know they existed, how’d you know to ask?”
“I found a code,” Alisha said. Brandon shot her another look that dissolved into laughter of his own.
“Not the Da Vinci Code, I hope.”
Alisha snorted, but found herself grinning. “No. Besides, they’d have to be the Illuminati then, wouldn’t they. What else do you know about them?”
“If I answer that, am I going to get harassed about lecturing again?”
“Probably.”
Brandon grinned again. “I can live with that. I get the impression the Fas Infitialis are a lot less hierarchal than the Sicarii. More like terrorist cells, with three or four to a cell, nobody knowing who else belongs. Except instead of terror they’re trying to spread education and health. You wouldn’t think that kind of thing needed to be done in secret.”
“I don’t know.” Alisha frowned out the window. “It’s to the advantage of any government that doesn’t intend to give up power to keep the people undereducated and scrabbling to make ends meet. There’s not a dictatorship in the world that doesn’t hold on to power through show of force and intimidation. I could see them regarding a group like Fas Infitialis as being horribly dangerous to the status quo.”
“You’re a cynic, Alisha.”
“I know.” Alisha’s smile, reflected in the side-view mirror, turned sad. “It’s what happens when your ideals start to show tarnish. The surprising thing is how long I lasted before losing my faith.”
“Happens to the best of us.” Brandon pulled the van to the side of the road, eyebrows drawn down. “Firebird lost her tag on the Attengees here.”
“There’s nothing here, Brandon.” Alisha opened the van door and stood up in it, leaning on the frame as she looked over the vehicle’s top. “Trees and fields. Not even a decrepit old manor house to draw us in.”
“You’ve been reading too many spy novels.” Brandon opened his own door and stood in it as well, studying the landscape. “Even going underground shouldn’t have blocked the signal.”
“Turning the drones off would, though, wouldn’t it? Or could your bird be fooled somehow?”
“Don’t impugn my masterpiece,” Brandon said, only half kidding.
“I’m not,” Alisha said. “But at least one of her prototypes got shot down, so she’s not infallible. Can you call her back?”
Brandon’s shoulders tightened. “I’ve been trying,” he admitted. “Since we got up this morning. There’s no response.”
“Brandon.” Alisha felt herself straightening up, turning her focus from the field to her erstwhile partner. Despite the growing knot of dismay in her belly, a wash of humor came over her, more bleak than laughter-filled. “Don’t tell me you’ve lost another submarine.”
Chapter 22
“What?” Brandon stared at her, shaking his head. “I’m talking about the Firebird, Alisha. What in hell are you talking about? Submarines?”
Another pang swept over Alisha, this time of regret. Greg, her handler and Brandon’s father, would have caught the film reference. Would have expressed his amusement and wondered how it was he and his youthful protégé ever managed to communicate. Alisha pressed her lips together and shook her head in turn. “Nothing.” She could hear the touch of sorrow in her voice, and saw that Brandon heard it, too, though his drawn-down eyebrows told her that he didn’t recognize its source. “Are you telling me that people who have the ability to create more Attengee drones have gotten their hands on your aerial AI system?”
Pain tightened Brandon’s expression. Emotional, not physical distress, though Alisha suspected the second Firebird’s loss came close to causing him actual body suffering. “I didn’t want to tell you until I was certain it wasn’t just a malfunction.”
“Brandon.” Alisha felt cords stand out in her throat as she spoke through her teeth. “What happened?” It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask. She wanted to rant and rail, castigating him for keeping secrets. Not that she was one to point fingers for secrets kept; it was part of the world they both belonged to. Brandon flinched as surely as if she’d yelled, and for a nasty moment it made her feel better. Moving as if he’d had the heart taken out of him, Brandon sat back down in the driver’s seat, reaching for a flat control pad. Alisha took it from him, her jaw set.
“This is like the Attengee command pad,” she half asked. Brandon nodded, voice subdued.
“A little more sophisticated, but the same basic principle.”
Alisha gave a short, sharp nod and thumbed the pad on, dancing her fingers across its touchpad to activate the last images sent from the missing prototype. “Does this thing control the Attengees, too?”
“No.”
“Isn’t that going to be a problem if we’ve got to get through them to get to Reichart?”
Brandon shook his head. “I’ve got it taken care of.”
Alisha arched an eyebrow curiously, then frowned down at the touchpad, studying the night-vision video. Green and black shapes, easy to see as abstract art in motion, popped onto the screen. Three trucks followed the road, then came to a complete stop. Everything, even the glow of the taillights, blacked out, and a burst of static grayed the screen. Nothing more. Alisha shook the pad, as if doing so might loosen answers, then looked at Brandon.
He thumped the steering wheel, vision fixed straight ahead. There was color in his cheeks, high and angry. “That kind of burst was the last thing we got back from the Firebird that went down in the mountains, too. That’s why it’s critical to get the box back. If there’s some kind of malfunction in the system that’s causing them to go down, the recordings might help me pinpoint it.”
“This one was broadcasting back to you.” Alisha lifted the control pad. “Wasn’t the one in the Pyrenees?”
“I reconfigured it to after I lost the first prototype,” Brandon muttered. “The continuous feedback wasn’t enabled on the one you went after. It was supposed to send back its data every twelve hours. The static burst we got was on an emergency wavelength.”
“You think the broadcast signal might’ve tipped the Sicarii off to somebody following them?”
Brandon cast her a withering look. “The Firebird operates on an unusual frequency to help prevent exactly that sort of thing from happening.”
“And yet,” Alisha said stiffly. Brandon’s glare faltered and he nodded slowly.
“Yeah. And yet. Sorry.”
“So we’ve got two choices.” Alisha folded herself over, stretching her back muscles and speaking into her knees. “One—we can assume they didn’t catch the signal until they’d stopped, and that they’re close by.”
“And two?” Brandon sounded skeptical. Alisha lifted her head, feeling the muscles in her neck pinch.
“We can assume they noticed before they reached their destination and that we’ve completely lost them. They didn’t give me any kind of tracking device to pinpoint the Firebird I went after with. There’s nothing on yours, either?”
Brandon smiled faintly. “Even if there was, they’d have disabled its signal by now. All right. You’re the field agent. You tell me what to do next.”
“Get maps,” Alisha said. “Talk to the locals. That truck had to have gone somewhere.”
“Join the CIA, they said. Make the world a safer place, they said.” Alisha crawled through a culvert, pulling herself along with her forearms. Bruised tissue had long since giv
en up its complaints, numbness setting in when Alisha clenched her teeth and continued through the pain.
“Join the CIA,” she repeated. “Be the sucker who takes a walk and hands advanced technologies to power-hungry shadow organizations. Good job, Leesh. Really well done. Proud of you, girl.” The litany of self-recrimination made her feel oddly better.
Rock, meet hard spot. For a moment Alisha paused, lowering her forehead against her sore arms. Two items of—she breathed a laugh, closing her eyes. Reichart and the Firebird were not, by anyone else’s standards, of equal value. Only her own, and she was reluctant to confess that even to herself. The job required her to go after the Firebird, despite her walking away from Langley with her own agenda.
Just like everyone else, she thought with bitter humor. The very thing that had driven a wedge between herself and the CIA was the same thing that made her continue onward now: personal motivations that no one else would understand, because she wanted to keep them close to her chest, not sharing her plans with anyone.
Just what is your plan, Leesh? The question whispered at the back of her mind, making Alisha shake her head in the darkness. That question had the sense of being larger than the immediate, too much for her to consider in the here and now. Walking away from Langley might have been an irrevocable move, but it was one she was willing to stand by in order to gain answers she didn’t think she could find inside the Agency. What it would mean in the days and years in front of her wasn’t something she was ready to tackle.
The Firebird Deception Page 18