Paired Objective: Matched Desire, Book 2

by Clare Murray

  “How’d you learn all this?” Cam asked.

  “My mom couldn’t buy me all the latest electronics, so I had to mod what I already owned. That led me into more hardcore stuff. You could say Minecraft was my gateway drug. Seriously though, once you have the basics of a couple programming languages, it gets easier to learn new ones. The biggest hump for people to get over is being comfortable with messing around. Some people can’t function without icons to tap or click and a pretty GUI.”

  “Gooey?” They spoke in unison.

  “Man, they really didn’t let you around tech, did they? Graphical User Interface.” Abby typed another command on the fold-out keyboard, eyes narrowing. “Dammit.”

  “What’s wrong?” Cam asked.

  “The drone isn’t controlled through this system, so I can’t knock it off-course. But,” she said, pausing for effect, “I can intercept the internal emails from the drone’s remote pilot.”

  “And edit them?” Cam grinned.

  “Just so.” She grinned back. “Already changed one. Apparently, the operator spotted us a few miles back. He sent a message two minutes ago. I changed ‘Humvee’ to ‘tractor.’ It’s possible someone already saw the message, but the likelihood they’re getting their emails precisely on time is low. Besides, this is a top-of-the-line commtab. If their people here are operating lesser models, they’ll have even patchier satellite service.”

  “All right,” Russ said, opening the door. “Gonna recon while you stay here.”

  Abby put her feet up, keeping an eye on drone emails all the while. Deep down, she was nervous, but the Twins’ confidence was infectious. Besides, they could pull out if they discovered this was all a set-up. Even if they had to abandon the Humvee, the Twins were more than capable of fighting aliens if they had to stay out overnight. They’d need to find some sort of shelter, of course…

  “Damn, this is for real. It’s not a trap.” Cam spoke suddenly, startling her. “There’s five guys about half a mile northeast of us. They’re setting up a launch now. It’s a smaller missile than we expected, but it’ll cause real damage if it scores a direct hit.”

  Okay, so they couldn’t pull out after all. Abby swallowed hard. “What now?”

  “Can you sabotage the launch via the system?”

  “No. I checked already. The launch system is separate and manual. The only things I have access to are internal messages from the drone pilot to the launchers, and from the launchers to Headquarters. I can dick around with those or even delete them entirely, but I can’t remotely stop the missile.”

  “Can you get info on who’s down there? Any snipers?”

  That thought made her quiver. Twins healed preternaturally fast, but even they were susceptible to bullets. A fatal headshot…

  Okay, she wasn’t going to think about that.

  “No concrete information on numbers—wait.” She paged through an innocuous-looking message with the subject of Lunch? and frowned. “Ah-ha. Seven names total. So there’s two floating around unaccounted for.”

  “That’s reasonable enough to deal with.”

  Abby wasn’t going to ask what deal with meant, but she had an approximate idea. She looked back at the screen, monitoring all the communications flying through. A surprising number of politicians and their lackeys still used internal email. Either they didn’t realize she was privy to their communications or they didn’t care.

  Likely it was a combination, bolstered by natural arrogance. Since they were ensconced in the former White House, many of them felt they should run the country by default. That was despite the fact that none of them had run in a non-rigged election since pre-Invasion days. At least the current president had won the last election fair and square.

  Voting hadn’t been nationwide, of course. If a City couldn’t afford to send a representative, their votes weren’t counted. So in a way, President Wright wasn’t as legitimate as she could have been.

  Still, she’d won by a landslide. A former military woman, she was reputed to rule Chicago strictly but fairly, doing her best to send government aid to Cities who needed it most. Abby rested her eyes by looking away from the screen for a minute, relying on her peripheral vision to let her know if a new message pinged through.

  “How come you’re still with me?” she asked Cam.

  “Safer if I stick around.”

  “I don’t need babysitting.”

  “Out and about, two people are more easily spotted than one. Besides, Russ is trained for this. His specialty is ground maneuvers. In training, I stuck to the flight simulators.” Cam stretched his legs casually while keeping his full attention on the world outside. “I’d only get in his way out there. Besides, this way if he needs a fast getaway vehicle, I’ll be able to act instantly, since we communicate mind-to-mind.”

  Those were all solid points. “All right.” She turned back to the screen, noting the latest drone report. Nothing out of the ordinary, the pilot reported, stating an intent to turn north again. Five minutes later, the request was belatedly granted. Decent lag time on receipt, there. She could exploit that.

  “Sniper one down,” Cam said abruptly.

  “Make sure Russ doesn’t leave the gun behind.” She’d played too many first-person shooter games to simply leave weaponry lying around.

  “He bent the magazine in half. Now the rifle is unusable.”

  “That…works.”

  Occasionally, she forgot the men weren’t entirely human. The press had labeled them genetically modified, and so-called Supermen, referring to them in a vaguely pejorative way at first. That had put a lot of people off until they remembered that there were aliens barreling down on Earth at roughly nine-tenths the speed of light, ignoring all attempts to engage in peaceful communication.

  At that point, the Twins had become military men of the highest order. Able to leap tall trains in a single bound, or however that saying went.

  Two messages from Senator Green scrolled by. Every single message he wrote was written in ALL CAPS, which suited the asshole to a T. Abby rolled her eyes.

  “Any info on when the launch is go?” Cam asked.

  She shook her head. “Far as I can tell, it’s up to the individuals on the ground.”

  “Okay. And…that’s sniper number two down. I’d better make a report to General Coniston.”

  She listened with half an ear as Cam briefed Chicago. That was when she spotted the drone coming their way. It stopped, and she held her breath. Fuck. The drone hovered over the roofless barn directly above them. It was surprisingly large, an older model with four rotators and multiple cameras. Big enough for long-distance work and able to sustain higher altitudes, it was formidable up close.

  At this point, this situation was likely unsalvageable. Even if she edited the drone pilot’s message before it got through, the pilot would expect acknowledgment.

  “We’ve been spotted,” she snapped, typing commands. An idea blossomed. A crazy idea, one she needed a few minutes to execute. But if she got it right…

  “Compromised, sir,” Cam said tightly. “Orders?”

  “Do whatever you can to sabotage that launch, 03656.” The voice crackled through so loudly Abby heard every word.

  Five messages came through at once, including two from Senator Green, whose all-caps messages stood out from the rest. Abby frowned at the lag. Seemed as if she’d briefly lost satellite contact. Great. She’d missed the window of opportunity to edit the pilot’s message. He’d marked the government plates on the Humvee and sent the info through.

  What was worse, Senator Green knew the admin account was compromised. He was busy typing that to all and sundry—including the drone pilot.

  DON’T TRUST ADMIN ACCOUNT. QUESTION ALL SOURCES BUT ME.

  “Okay. The jig’s up. They know I’m screwing with them. Can Russ stop them?”

  Cam shook
his head. “He’s taken three men down so far, but the other four are more than capable of getting the missile airborne.”

  Abby watched internal messages scroll by. “Shit. Someone on the ground just messaged that the launch process was executed. Commencing in…” She calculated quickly, looking at sent versus received time. “Two minutes, give or take ten seconds.”

  Cam relayed that to the general, his voice bleak. Abby frowned, reaching for the keyboard. For a moment she’d felt helpless, but now her earlier idea didn’t seem quite so crazy after all. She squinted at the list of online identities. Yeah, there was one last thing she could do…

  “Russ says launch in one minute, forty,” Cam confirmed. She took in the info without acknowledgement. There was no time to spare.

  Above them, the drone quit hovering over them and sped north.

  Abby ignored everything else and typed a command. It was almost too easy to log in as Senator Green. The passwords were all there at her fingertips. The man would be fuming right now, helpless to do anything but stare at the login screen. Abby bent furiously to the keyboard, typing as fast as she could. Seventy seconds to launch. This was their last chance to stop things.

  “Tell Russ to get away from the launcher,” she snapped. “Now!”

  “What?” Cam turned to stare at what she was doing. “Shit. Okay.”

  Addressing the drone pilot, Abby pressed send. Holding her breath, she stared at the message as it pinged onto the screen under Senator Green’s name.

  CRITICAL FAULT. INTERCEPT MISSILE LAUNCHER WITH YOUR DRONE IMMEDIATELY.

  * * * * *

  Russ swore, pinning his prisoner to the ground with a ruthless boot to the throat. He’d been too slow. There was no way to stop the missile now that it had locked into countdown. The red numbers ticked down mere feet from him, taunting him in his helplessness.

  “Goddammit!” he roared.

  In fifty seconds, the missile would rise in a cloud of smoke and fire, shaking the wheels of its mobile launcher. In less than an hour, it would crash into Chicago, detonating its warhead against the City’s walls and leaving it vulnerable to alien attack.

  “Russ, get away from the launcher. Now!”

  His Twin’s thoughts roiled with urgency. Russ didn’t question him. He sprinted for the tree line, hauling his prisoner along for the ride. All the while, his mental countdown continued.

  Thirty seconds until launch.

  Russ set the still-alive prisoner on the ground, rolling his eyes when the man immediately attempted escape. With ruthless efficiency, he slammed the butt of the man’s gun against his temple, knocking him out.

  About to demand answers from Cam, he looked up with a frown as the black shape of the drone streaked across the sky. Abby had done a damn good job of intercepting the pilot’s messages, but the jig was obviously up. Still, the thing was flying recklessly. It seemed about to—

  “Holy shit.”

  He ducked behind a tree as the drone slammed into the mobile missile launcher. A gout of flame licked the air. The drone disintegrated in a puff of metal shards.

  “Detonation?” Cam sent urgently.

  “No, or I probably wouldn’t be standing here.” The red numbers ticked into single digits, a warning beep shrilling across the clearing. The crash had tilted the launcher, but the vehicle remained upright.

  “What’s the damage? I need to warn Chicago.”

  “It’s still going to launch, but its coordinates will be all messed up. Looks like an older model from what I can tell. There’s a decent chance the missile will go off-course.”

  He put his hands over his ears as the launch commenced. The mobile launcher quivered as the missile shot into the sky, black smoke trailing behind. Russ quickly raised his commtab to get a rough measurement of its direction.

  “It’s headed north-northwest, approximately,” he sent.

  “Enough to tip it into Lake Michigan if we’re lucky. General Coniston’s evacuating the shore and setting up defenses on the wall.”

  “Can he shoot it down before it gets near the City?”

  There was a pause, during which Russ unholstered his gun and shot out four of the mobile launcher’s tires. Then he slung the still-unconscious prisoner over his shoulder and began the trek to the Humvee.

  “Maybe,” Cam finally replied. “He says they haven’t concentrated on combating manmade weapons in a long time.”

  “Fucking Shadow Feds. What was with the drone, by the way? That little crash might just have saved Chicago.” Russ took one last dark look at the mobile launcher.

  “That was Abby’s doing. She posed as a senator and tricked the pilot into messing things up. I wouldn’t want to be that guy tonight.”

  Russ snorted. “Excellent. I’ll be with you in two minutes. Prep the rear and rig me up some kind of restraints. I took a prisoner.”

  By the time Russ arrived, Cam was ready. He and Abby stood outside, grinning to beat the band.

  “What the hell is so funny?” Russ demanded. “I know we were partially successful, but there’s still a damn missile heading Chicago’s way, even if it’s projected to land outside the walls.”

  Abby dangled a pair of pink furry handcuffs in front of his face. “You asked for restraints?” she asked sweetly.

  “Fuck me.” Russ’s pent-up tension erupted in a laugh. “Seriously?”

  “Purple duct tape as well. We found all this in the glove compartment.” Cam twirled the roll of tape around his index finger. “There was a butt plug too.”

  Russ slung the unconscious man into the back. “We’ll skip that. Let’s get going.”

  “I briefed the Complex,” Cam said, sliding into the passenger seat. “They told us to come straight back.”

  “Won’t get there before dark.” Russ noted his curt words had little effect on Abby, who climbed in between them as stoic as ever. As if she hardly realized she’d saved Chicago’s bacon. Flying that drone into the missile had been a stroke of genius. He told her as much.

  “Luck,” she said modestly. “The pilot believed I was Senator Green. And the drone was relatively large since it operated long-distance. It had lots of surface area for solar panels so I figured there was some chance of it screwing up the launch.”

  Russ easily caught what his brother was thinking—the Complex would approve of Abby. Rather than putting him at ease, the thought annoyed him. He didn’t need a goddamn general approving of their woman.

  “Gotta admit it’ll be easier for her to fit in if she scores a bravery medal,” Cam sent.

  “I’m more interested in getting home in one piece. Where do we stop for the night?”

  “Fort Wayne, so keep heading northwest. We need to push it a bit to get there before sunset.”

  Russ backed away from the roofless barn and began off-roading it back the way they’d come. It wasn’t a pretty ride for the guy in the back, but he figured the duct tape would hold him steady enough to prevent further injury.

  Beyond a bruise or three, which he more than deserved.

  Wasn’t it enough that the aliens had destroyed large swathes of humanity? What the hell possessed people to shoot missiles at each other in times like these?

  “Sometimes I’m glad we’re not entirely human.”

  Russ agreed with a quick nod. Checking his rear-view mirror, he made sure nobody was on his tail as he swung onto the cracked backroad leading north. His instincts said they were alone now. He hadn’t seen another vehicle, and the mobile launcher wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. The survivors would either have to walk or hole up in the disabled launcher’s cab for the night.

  “How many survivors did you leave?”

  “I killed three men.” A kind of regret churned in his gut. Three hale and hearty men, who would have been useful in the fight against the Barks.

  But another, deeper worr
y gnawed at him. He’d checked their ankles afterward. None of them had been manacled. Even so…

  “We’ll ask the prisoner if this was voluntary,” Cam sent. His normally upbeat vibe was diminished. Yet he remained even and steady, a counterweight to Russ’s dark, distracted musings. He took a deep breath. Cam was right—they could ask.

  In any case, there was no way these men couldn’t have understood that they were shooting a missile at a City with the intention to mass-kill a bunch of people.

  Slightly more at ease, Russ sped up, letting the Humvee’s prodigious shock absorbers take the strain of the rough road. He automatically scanned his side of the road, relying on Cam to scout the other and keep watch for potential ambushes or dangerous obstacles. So far, everything was blessedly clear.

  “Ever been this way?” Russ asked Abby.

  “Not here, specifically. I’ve taken the train through Ohio, though.” She looked up briefly from the stolen commtab, blinking at their surroundings. “This isn’t a very scavenger-friendly area, anyway.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “There’s too much nature here. Some would be all right with that, but I’m no good at catching small animals in traps, building fires or foraging mushrooms. I don’t get much sleep outdoors either, unless there’s a nice, safe wall in between me and the Barks. So no—I’d pass right through this area. The best places are those with Christmas decorations.”

  “Huh?” Cam asked.

  “It was a few days after Christmas that the aliens landed, so a lot of decorations were still up. So if you’re out and about, and you see a place with Santas and reindeer and baubles, that probably means it’s uninhabited. Not even the most hardcore Christmas freak leaves dusty decorations up for eleven straight years.”

  Russ snorted. “Nice logic.”

  “Kept me alive and fed.” She shrugged.

  Russ read Cam’s thoughts easily, and they jived perfectly with his. They would keep her alive and fed from now on.