“But what if he was right? What if everything he did really was necessary, for the greater good?”
Jared had thought about that very question countless times over the past year, and he chose his next words carefully as he tried to articulate his thoughts. “Maybe it was. But I don’t think I want to live in a world where we justify killing innocent people as a means to an end. There has to be a better way to do things. The Republic isn’t perfect, but it’s a better way than what the Project offered. It’s definitely better than what would happen if we put Ryku back in charge. You know that.”
Hatcher didn’t respond and began tapping his thumb against his knee as he stared at a spot on the wall. Jared waited, not wanting to interrupt his thoughts. He waited for what must have been a full five minutes.
The man’s eyes didn’t move, but his thumb kept tapping, and at last, he turned his gaze back to Jared and let out a long sigh. “Okay,” he said. “Tell that Seth guy I’ll take the deal he offered earlier. As soon as I’ve got it in writing, signed and dated, I’ll tell you what I know.”
“And what exactly do you know?”
“I know where Ryku’s been hiding. And as an extra bonus, I can even tell you who Mallory really is.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Dusk was falling by the time Zira and her team loaded their gear into a van once again and started driving to the airport, but they’d all been eager to get moving as soon as Hatcher had revealed Ryku’s location. They’d been preparing for this for months already. Under normal circumstances, they might have spent more time doing surveillance or planning out every last detail, but this was Ryku, and they didn’t want to risk anything that might tip him off. That, and according to Hatcher, the former chairman hadn’t been staying in any one place for more than two to three weeks at a time. He’d already been at his current location in the Mid Pacific region for twelve days, and even Hatcher didn’t know where he might be going next, assuming he hadn’t left already. So they were taking action now, before anything else could go wrong. They hadn’t even had to argue their case to Alma, who had simply told them to go and assigned three more of her best SIO teams to accompany them.
As the van drove the last few miles to the airport, Zira scanned Seth’s official report of Hatcher’s interrogation. Much of the information was a repeat of what he’d reported verbally earlier, but they hadn’t stuck around to listen to anything else once he revealed where Ryku was. Now, Zira skimmed through the report looking for new details. Her eyes went over a single line near the end a second and then a third time, just to be sure the words really said what she thought they did.
Hatcher reports that the True PRM leader using the alias Mallory is a former E-2 operative who was known in the PEACE Project as Cecilia.
She nudged Jared and extended her arm in front of him so he could read the report on her CL. His brow furrowed as he got to the part about Cecilia. Considering she had been the one to discover and bring evidence of his betrayal to Ryku, Zira could only imagine the mixture of emotions he must be feeling now as he realized she was the mysterious terrorist leader they’d been looking for all along.
“How?” he muttered.
Zira didn’t have an answer yet, so they both kept reading.
Hatcher also reports the following rumors among PRM leadership: Ryku arranged for Cecilia to switch places with one of his outside informants (Mallory Calkin) shortly after her arrest during the rebels’ attack on the PEACE Project compound. Possibly to avoid appearing in court, Mallory then pled guilty to all charges the Republic brought against Cecilia without contest. According to Hatcher, Cecilia is one of at least ten True PRM members currently stationed with Ryku at the aforementioned location. Photos received from the South Central Department of Corrections confirm that the woman residing there under Cecilia’s identity is actually former E-2 operative Mallory Calkin.
The report left Zira with as many questions as it did answers. If she had to guess, though, Ryku had ordered Mallory to take Cecilia’s place in prison because Cecilia had proven herself to be a capable, loyal operative willing to do whatever Ryku asked of her. He needed someone like that on the outside, someone who could command people’s respect and carry out whatever deadly assignments he might give her. Mallory was likely chosen to play the scapegoat out of convenience, whether because of the physical features she and Cecilia shared or because she was simply in the right place at the right time to make the switch.
As for exactly how the switch had occurred, Zira could think of some vague possibilities but had no way of knowing if any of them were right. Maybe the prison guards had been involved. Maybe some forged documentation and clever hacking into the prison’s databases had been enough to pull it off. Maybe the arrangements had been made during the attack on the compound, when Ryku saw that the walls wouldn’t be able to hold back the advancing rebels forever. Whatever had happened, Zira was surprised by the revelation, but not unduly so. Not really. Because of course Cecilia wouldn’t just go quietly away to prison. Of course she would try to find some way to continue fighting for the Project and for Ryku.
She closed the report and looked around at the rest of her team. “Hatcher just gave us the true identity of our friend Mallory. She’s a former E-2 operative, as we suspected. But she wasn’t just an informant. She was an active operative right up until the rebels took over the compound.”
“Someone you knew?” Tripp asked.
“Yeah.” She opted against going any further into her personal history with her former colleague. “Her real name is Cecilia. She’s with Ryku now, and she’s incredibly dangerous. Here, this is her.” She projected the PEACE Project ID photo of Cecilia that had been included in Hatcher’s report.
“She doesn’t have the scar,” said Salim. He ran a finger down the right side of his face. “In all the composite images, all the descriptions we got, Mallory had a scar here.”
Zira looked at the photo again. A memory flashed through her mind—Cecilia kneeling next to her in the compound as the battle between the rebels and the Project began to die down, blood dripping from a gash that cut down the side of her face from temple to jaw. She should have remembered sooner. She should have been able to identify her sooner, even with the two sub-par composite images they had. But Cecilia was supposed to be in prison; they’d confirmed that early on when looking at their original list of Ryku’s contacts. She hadn’t even been on Zira’s radar.
“The scar is new,” she said. “But this is her. This is who we’ve been looking for.”
“She’s with Ryku now?” Nova asked.
“Yes, at least according to Hatcher.”
Her eyes became cold and hard. “Good. We can take them both out at the same time, then.”
* * *
Several hours later, gray dawn light seeped into the dark sky over the rural country home Hatcher had identified as Ryku’s place of refuge. The stars overhead were slowly fading, but there wasn’t enough light yet that Zira was too concerned about being spotted as she darted to the nearest building, a two-story house several hundred yards away from the one Ryku was in. Jared and Nova followed close behind her, each armed with the same model of long-range, scoped rifle she carried in addition to their usual loadout. Josefina, Dodge, and Salim continued ahead to a position where they could quickly move in on Ryku and his lackeys as soon as it was time.
Once inside the house, Zira headed for the stairs, then looked for a room that would provide the best vantage point from which to view Ryku’s location and the surrounding area. There were two bedrooms with windows that looked out in the right direction. She and Jared took the one with the clearest view, and she gestured for Nova to set up in the other.
The voice of one of the other SIO team leaders came through her earpiece. “This is Bravo team, checking in. We’re all set up here on the north side of the target location.”
“Charlie team, checking in. We’re in position on the west side of the target location.”
“Copy
that,” Zira replied. “Alpha team is in position on the east side. Everyone hold where you are and report what you see.”
She slid one of the windows open as far as she could while Jared did the same with the other. They crouched behind their rifles and aimed them outside, searching the surrounding area though their scopes to get a better idea of exactly what they were up against.
It seemed Ryku had taken his cue from the rebels in choosing this particular location, an abandoned stretch of houses on the banks of a river in the middle of nowhere, with no one around to see him and report him to authorities. Had it not been for Hatcher’s information or some other major break, SIO may never have found him.
The two-story, prewar house he’d chosen wasn’t the largest in the riverside neighborhood, but it still would have been considered rather luxurious for its time. The back door opened up to a large, wooden deck on the south side with stairs running down to what might have once been a beautifully landscaped yard. A stone path leading to the river cut through the overgrown grass, and two small motorboats tied to a nearby dock would allow the house’s occupants a quick and easy escape should the need arise. For that specific reason, the members of Delta team were hiding in wait on the opposite shore along with Tripp and the technical support specialists from both Bravo and Charlie teams. Their targets couldn’t cross without running into SIO operatives, and even if they decided to make a run down the river rather than across it, multiple drones would follow them from the sky. One way or another, they were ending this here and now.
Zira focused her gaze through her scope to scan the surrounding area. A woman in a black jacket paced across the front of the house with a pistol in one hand. A second figure stood at the south-east corner facing the river, but the rifle he carried hung loose over one shoulder, and he seemed more focused on the rocks he skipped across the water’s surface than he was on his surroundings. East of the house, closer to her own team’s location, she spotted two other individuals patrolling the area.
She tapped Jared’s shoulder and raised four fingers to confirm he was seeing the same thing she was. He nodded, and she spoke aloud to inform the others of their observations. “Alpha team has two hostiles on the east side of the house and two more in the surrounding area.”
“Charlie team has a man posted at the southwest perimeter of the house and another walking along the road moving northwest.”
“Bravo team here. We have eyes on two hostiles posted at the north entrance and at least one more patrolling further out. One of my snipers claims he saw movement on the top floor of a nearby house, but we haven’t seen it again.”
It could be another hostile, maybe even an enemy sniper. “Keep an eye on it. Delta team, get those drones ready to go up as soon as we take our first shots.”
“Copy that.”
“Everyone pick your targets. Let’s take out as many of these guys as we can at the same time. Starting a countdown for sixty seconds…now.”
She pulled away from the scope for a moment to note the time on her CL and switch over to the exclusive Alpha team comms channel. “Nova, do you have a clear shot?”
“Yeah. The guy farthest north. Should be at your two o’clock.”
“Good. Jared?”
“I’ll take the other patrol.”
“I can get the two by the house. Josefina, are you guys in position down there?”
“Yes. Just waiting for you to clear out those patrols.”
“Good. Hold there for now.”
She glanced down at the seconds ticking away on her CL again and began a mental count in her head. The woman in the black jacket came into focus in the center of her crosshairs as she shifted her rifle against her shoulder. Ten more seconds.
Five.
She breathed in and out, then stilled her entire body so that the only things moving were her beating heart and her finger on the trigger. She squeezed.
The rifle pushed back against her shoulder, emitting a clap muffled by the suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. Jared’s rifle echoed the sound. In the blink of an eye, both of their targets lay on the ground.
She immediately turned her attention to the man at the riverbank. He was still skipping rocks, completely unaware that anything was wrong. He was too far away to have heard the suppressed gunshots, and the river’s flow would have drowned out the sound of his companion’s body hitting the ground.
Zira pulled the trigger again, and he fell.
She switched comm channels once more. “All teams report.”
“Delta team has drones in the sky headed across the river.”
“Charlie team’s targets are down.
“Bravo team’s targets are down as well.”
“Alpha team’s targets are down,” Zira echoed. “All ground fireteams are clear to proceed.”
She watched as Josefina, Dodge, and Salim emerged from the shelter of the house next door and began heading towards Ryku’s location. She scanned the area around them, searching for additional hostiles who might impede their progress. So far, so good.
She was just about to give Jared and Nova the order to head back out and follow the others when she heard a burst of distant gunfire. She put her eye back to her scope and looked towards the sound but couldn’t see anything. She glanced back down at Josefina, Dodge, and Salim. They were still making progress.
More gunshots, then the voice of Charlie team’s leader in her ear. “We’ve got hostiles engaging our ground team. We’re moving in to assist.”
Not even a second later, “This is Bravo team. There’s a sniper taking shots at our people on the ground. We’re one man down and still trying to pinpoint a location.”
“Copy that,” said Zira, then switched to her team’s comm channel. “Tripp, get me a visual of what’s going on out there.”
“The drones are almost there,” he replied.
“Good. Josefina, you guys keep an eye out for hostiles and stick to cover as much as possible. There’s an enemy sniper in one of the other houses. We’ll try to take them out and cover you from up here before we head down.”
“Roger that.”
She started scanning the windows of the surrounding houses. She couldn’t see anything, but after a few seconds, the distant gunshots from before started up again. “Jared, check the visuals from those drones and let me know what’s going on.”
He set his rifle down and quickly pulled up the drone footage on his CL. “Charlie team is fighting off a group of five hostiles on the west side of the house. It’s not looking good.”
Zira muttered a curse under her breath. There was nothing they could do for Charlie team from here but hope for the best.
A series of closer gunshots caught her attention, and she yanked the barrel of her rifle down to find her teammates through her scope once more. They were pinned behind the wall of a garage a few hundred yards away, popping out from behind cover every few seconds to fire at two approaching hostiles armed with assault rifles.
Zira took aim and put the closest one down. Josefina and the others quickly finished off the second, then kept moving.
“What about Bravo team?” she asked Jared.
“I don’t see any hostiles, but they’re down at least four men.”
Like Zira’s Alpha team, Bravo had only had six operatives to begin with. They needed to turn the tables fast if they wanted to salvage this operation.
“Where the hell is that sniper?”
As if in response to her question, a single clear shot echoed above the distant gunfire. She turned towards what she thought was the source of the noise, but she still couldn’t see anything.
“That one was fired at us,” said Josefina.
“Any idea where it came from?”
“Blue house, I think. Straight in front of us.”
“Stay put.” She was already aiming in the general direction of the house Josefina spoke of, but now she homed in on the windows. “Tripp, did you catch that?”
“Yeah. I’ll get
the drone in there. Maybe we’ll see something.”
The gunshots stopped, and for a few moments, there was silence. Zira watched as Tripp’s drone hovered in front of the windows of the blue house, then flew around to the north side.
“There!” said Jared. “Top floor, northeast window.”
“Nova, can you get that shot?” Zira asked.
“Hold on. Yeah, I see him. He’s pressed up against the wall trying to hide from the drone, but I think I can hit him from here.”
“Do you want me to come and take it?”
“No. I’ve got this.”
They waited.
And waited some more.
Zira wasn’t sure if Nova was actually taking an excessive amount of time to line up the shot or if it only felt that way.
At last, they heard the crack of her rifle. Tripp’s drone descended from where it had been floating over the roof to look inside the window again. Zira looked to Jared, waiting for confirmation. After a few tense seconds, he looked up from the video feed on his CL and nodded. “We got him.”
She needed to check in with the other teams, but first she had to take care of her own people. “Josefina, you guys should be clear to proceed now. We’ll be coming down—”
“Grenade!”
The man popped out of cover and lobbed a grenade in her teammates’ direction at the same instant Josefina’s shout echoed in her ear. Zira immediately shifted her crosshairs to the man’s chest and fired a shot. He went down, but the grenade he’d thrown had already reached its intended target. The blast sent dust and dirt into the air that obscured her view of the scene.
“Josefina! Dodge? Salim?”
No response. Nova swore, and Jared frantically raised his rifle to eye level again to search the ground below.
A few vague shadows moved in the dust, but Zira couldn’t tell who was who or evaluate how serious the damage had been. She set the sniper rifle on the ground, stood up, and tapped Jared on the shoulder. “Let’s go. Nova?”
“Yeah.”
“Get in here and cover those guys while Jared and I go down to check things out. And make sure nobody leaves that house.”
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