by Linda Nagata
Her heart rate soared as she lightly touched her knuckles against his. “Confirm,” she said, hoarse with tension.
The vehicle raced toward them: a big, dark-gray SUV with federal plates, its windows coated to reject the probing gazes of standard surveillance cameras and curious onlookers. A hundred feet out it braked hard, swooping onto the shoulder, coming to a rocking stop exactly in front of them as they darted from the brush to meet it.
Ava yanked open the front passenger door. Both front seats were empty. A passage between them allowed easy access to the back where the seat had been removed.
She scrambled in, slamming the door shut. The back door slammed a half second later, and the car accelerated hard, swerving onto the road.
She twisted around in her seat to see Matt clinging with one hand to a grip, using the other to unclip a shotgun from a ceiling rack. Two small quad-copters waited in racks on the floor.
Lyric’s voice: “Arnette, there’s a vest on the driver’s seat. Ammo in the dash compartment.”
Right.
Ava grabbed the armored vest. Got it on. Popped the dash compartment open and found three magazines. She ejected the almost-empty one from her pistol and slammed in a fully loaded one, pocketing the other two.
“You coming up front?” she asked Matt.
“Yeah.” He leaned over her shoulder, bulked up in his own armored vest. “Move behind the wheel. Be ready to take over if you need to.”
The stadium complex loomed ahead. Ava made the shift, then braced as the highway curved south, following the coast of East Loch.
Matt took over the passenger seat, sliding it back as far as it would go to give himself room to maneuver the shotgun. Behind his smart glasses, his expression was grim.
“You’ve missed the first window,” Lyric announced. “Robicheaux has just exited the base ahead of you. So you’ve got a pursuit, not an ambush.”
Ava heard an odd, amused note in Lyric’s voice. It snapped her focus, kicking her loose from the present, sending her back to that scene of Robert Bell, trapped in the basement laundry. Doubt pounded against her rib cage. Had Lyric deliberately mistimed this? No. This was real. It had to be . . . unless Kaden too had been misled from the beginning?
No.
“Why don’t you just hijack their ride?” Matt asked. “Make it easy for us.”
“I would if I could.”
Ava braced as she felt a shift in momentum. She glanced at the dash. “Hey, why are we slowing down?”
“Yeah, what the hell?” Matt demanded. “What are you doing? We need to be closing on Robicheaux.”
“I want you at legal speed so you don’t draw attention from the guards when you pass Makalapa Gate. If Kaden gets additional support you won’t be able to take him alive.”
Their progress felt horribly slow, though it was not. They approached the turn-off to the gate. As they passed, Ava looked down the side street, but she couldn’t make out much through the rain-blurred window, just a patch of light illuminating the area outside the guard booth.
Their SUV picked up speed again, rapidly accelerating.
The windshield wipers worked frantically, but the rain had begun to hammer, and each pass of the wipers yielded only a half-second clarity of vision. Even blurred, the sudden sight of red taillights ahead made her catch her breath.
It was him. Kaden. Her focus tightened despite a flare of anger. She had never loved him. She’d only loved the illusion of him. And I don’t regret anything. Yesterday’s words, but still true. If Kaden had not brought her into this, she would not be in a position to stop it.
With each swift beat of the windshield wipers, the taillights brightened, and the interval between Kaden and her shrank. Would he look back? Did he know there had been no traffic on the highway just moments before? Would he be suspicious when he caught sight of a single vehicle rapidly closing with his?
“Something’s off,” Lyric announced. “I’m hooked into surveillance cameras in the terminal, watching Conrad. He’s left the lounge. He’s moving quickly with a carry-on bag, phone to his ear. But it’s not his phone. Not his registered phone.”
“Secondary line of communication,” Matt said. “Is he talking to Robicheaux?”
“Unknown, but he’s in a hurry.”
“Even if he is talking to Kaden,” Ava said. “Even if Kaden has figured out this is a setup, why is Conrad moving? Is he heading to his plane? Is it ready to board?”
“Checking,” Lyric said.
Then: “Conrad is not going to his plane. He’s exiting the terminal.”
“What?” Matt demanded. “Why?”
Lyric hissed, and then she laughed. “Well, fuck me. Conrad’s flight has been canceled. The outbound traffic queue is so long, the charter company calculated they’d never get off the ground again before the airport closed—so they turned their plane around and sent it back to Maui. Conrad must be about to piss his pants right now.”
“He’s already got a new exit plan,” Ava said, with bitter triumph. “We gave it to him. He’s going with Kaden.”
“New battle strategy,” Lyric decided. “Hang back. Trail him into the airport, but make no move until Conrad gets picked up. Then take them both at once.”
chapter
22
Red taillights climbed the ramp that led to the Liliuokalani Freeway. Ava watched, anxious to close the gap, but Lyric kept the SUV following at a respectful distance.
Less than a mile later, Kaden shifted onto the long curving bridge that was the exit ramp to the airport. As his car rounded the curve, she saw it in profile for the first time. Another dark-gray SUV, identical to the one she rode in.
They took the exit too, but at a much slower speed. “We’re letting him go for now,” Lyric said. “We won’t lose him. I’ve got him through surveillance cameras.”
The ramp divided. Ava leaned forward, glimpsing Kaden up ahead as he disappeared down a lane that led to arrivals. They took that lane too. She looked for him, and as they reached the ground level, she caught sight of his SUV one more time. His vehicle had shifted into a lane turning left. A moment later, she lost sight of him again.
This time, they didn’t follow, but instead kept to the right, taking a different route.
Ava exhaled, bleeding off tension. She told herself Kaden had not gotten away, that Lyric knew what she was doing, that they were on the same side.
They rounded a curve, entering the lower level of the terminal building. The rain cut off. The wipers swiped a few more times and then settled out of sight. Lights shone in the baggage claim areas, but no one was there. No one was outside on the sidewalk either, and there were no cars.
They rounded the next curve, then accelerated, speeding past another eerily empty terminal. Ava gripped the armrest. At this speed, it would be only moments before they reached the return ramp to the freeway.
“Fill me in, Lyric,” Matt said. “What’s going on?”
The SUV braked hard, coming to a full stop beside the center island—and the world went strangely quiet. There was no sound of traffic, no tire noise. And because they were still under the shelter of the terminal building, there was no drumming rain. It was quiet enough, that Ava could hear the faint, distant roar of a jet taking off. A lonely sound, dividing those who would escape from those left behind.
“Kaden’s being cautious,” Lyric said. “He passed the lei stands and circled back up to departures. He’s moving fast now.”
“He noticed us on the road,” Ava said softly as she rechecked her pistol. “He’ll be looking for us when he exits.”
“Assume it,” Matt agreed.
“Get ready,” Lyric warned them. “He’s almost right above you.”
Deep breath!
“Let’s get this done,” Ava whispered over the rapid pounding of her heart.
Lyric said, “Here we go . . . They’ve made a hard stop at the curb. And here comes Conrad, grinning like a drunk . . . Okay, Conrad is inside the vehicle, back
seat. Door is closed. I couldn’t see how Robicheaux placed his bodyguards, but best guess from his profile is that he’s in the driver’s seat, with one of his bullyboys riding shotgun, and the other in back, on the left.”
“Got it,” Matt said.
“And here they come. They’re taking the freeway ramp.”
The side windows, front and back, slid open. Matt reached out, grabbed the side mirror, and folded it out of the way. Then he raised the shotgun, so the muzzle extended outside. Ava slipped off her smart glasses and pocketed them, not wanting to contend with more rain on the lens. She still wore her mic.
Lyric started a countdown: “Four, three, two, one—”
Ava braced herself against the seatback.
The SUV shot forward, hurtling out into the rain. A short sprint across level ground. Rainwater, thrown up by the tires, struck the undercarriage with a crunching roar. More rain lanced in through the open window, needling Ava’s face, and soaking her all over again.
They reached the ramp, and raced up the incline into the first gray gleam of dawn.
A buzzing from behind the front seats announced the launch of the kamikazes. Ava twisted around to see the two little quad-copters—just fifteen inches across—lift from their racks on the floor. They darted one after the other out the open window on the left, to fly alongside the SUV.
Just ahead, the ramp leveled out and merged with another traffic lane coming from the left. No taillights, but Ava’s eye was drawn by a blur of dark motion as a blocky SUV merged less than a hundred feet ahead of them.
“That’s him,” Lyric said.
The kamikazes shot away, pursuing their target. At the same time, muzzle flashes erupted from both sides of the fleeing vehicle—and the kamikazes blew up. Halfway between the two SUVs, they burst into balls of orange and white flame, generating a double concussion that Ava felt in her chest. The SUV bucked and her head snapped back against the headrest. She felt the heat of lingering flame, and caught the scent of spent explosives as they shot past the point of detonation.
Matt leaned forward, the shotgun braced against his shoulder, and started squeezing off carefully spaced rounds, each blast painfully loud.
Ava couldn’t get a clear shot from her side, not without leaning halfway out. She started to do it, when a hail of bullets frosted the armored windshield. She jerked back inside.
Kaden’s vehicle skewed right. It slid toward a ramp that would take him east, away from Pearl Harbor and toward the city.
Did he really mean to go that way?
“It’s a feint,” Lyric said. Calm, confident. “He’ll try to cross back at the last second. Block him—”
“No, he means it,” Matt said. “Follow him.”
Ava wanted to do more than follow.
Just as Matt had predicted, Kaden took the ramp. Their own SUV shifted lanes to go after it, but it dumped speed as it did.
“No way!” Ava shouted. She reached for the dash and toggled the switch that shifted the vehicle from remote to manual control. Lyric yelled a protest. Ava growled back, “I’ve got this.”
She stomped the accelerator, skimmed past a concrete divider, and shot onto the ramp. The SUV hydroplaned, sliding sideways on the wet, oily surface, tires screaming, but at the same time, rapidly closing with Kaden’s vehicle.
More white blossoms on the windshield, obscuring her vision, and then a spatter of blood, immediately washed away by the rain.
“Right-side shooter is hit,” Matt said, leaving his seat and moving into the back.
“Hold tight,” Ava warned him. “It’s gonna get rough.”
“Just drive.”
She couldn’t see him, but she sensed him right behind her. Proof came with a shot that sounded like it was to the back of her head. Matt said something. Missed? Maybe. Didn’t matter. She was out of time. The ramp was about to merge onto a wide-open freeway.
She aimed the nose of the SUV at the gap between the ramp’s concrete wall and the left side of Kaden’s vehicle, intending to force him against the right wall. But the car’s proximity alarm went off, the accelerator disengaged under her foot, and the SUV rapidly slowed to the posted speed limit as its automated accident-avoidance function took over.
“What are you doing?” Matt screamed, while Ava swore and hammered on the dash, watching helplessly as Kaden’s vehicle raced away.
“Reset, reset, tell me how to reset,” she murmured, scanning the dash while the SUV continued at a sedate fifty-five miles an hour.
There.
The steering-control toggle had shifted back to remote-autonomous mode. “Goddamn nanny state.”
She returned it to manual as Matt dropped back into the passenger seat. Far ahead, the dark bulk of Kaden’s SUV took the ramp down to Nimitz Highway, passing over the site of the encampment Ava had visited so briefly last night.
“You secure?” she asked Matt as she closed the windows and set the air-conditioning to blow hard and cold so water vapor wouldn’t cloud the glass.
“Gun it.”
She pushed the accelerator all the way down, feeling the tires float on the film of rainwater flooding the freeway. Beside her, Matt reloaded the shotgun.
“Lyric!” she shouted. “Why is Kaden going this way?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s doing. This doesn’t make sense.”
For the first time, Ava heard uncertainty in Lyric’s voice—and it made her skin crawl. Lyric was the puppet master, the oracle of HADAFA. She knew what people would do before they did.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Ava asked as she took the ramp down to Nimitz. The traffic lights ahead were green. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Denali has left the dock. It’s sailed—ahead of schedule. Robicheaux has left himself no way out.”
“That can’t be right,” Matt said.
“It’s verified. It’s true.”
“But that means it’s over,” Ava said. Hope stirred, a strange, warm sensation around her heart. “You said Kaden had to be aboard the sub to authorize the launch. If he’s not there, there won’t be a launch.”
“That’s how it should work,” Lyric confirmed. “But if they managed to transfer his authority—”
“No.” Ava rejected the argument. “He’s not suicidal and I don’t think Conrad is either. Run their profiles. Confirm it if you need to. Is either one of them willing to lay down his life here, now, to further the cause?”
“No,” Lyric said, her voice now low and hard. Vengeful. “That’s an unlikely behavior for Robicheaux, and incompatible with Conrad’s profile. They must have cancelled.”
“No way,” Matt said. “It’s now or never for them. Too many questions are going to be asked after this fiasco. At the least, Kaden will lose his command. He cannot abort. He has to have another way out.”
“He does,” Ava said as revelation washed over her, a rising tide of unwelcome memory. “He’s planning to join Denali at sea.”
Kaden had shown her the scheme, hadn’t he? That day after they’d met. She’d been there for the demonstration of a special-ops midget sub, newly assigned to Denali. It had been a dog-and-pony show prepared for a congressional representative . . . one from the Cornerstone party.
Thinking out loud, Ava said, “Kaden must have set up a rendezvous. The midget sub will come in, pick him up . . . at a harbor, maybe?”
It had to be in a harbor. It couldn’t happen anywhere else. The midget sub was designed to carry special forces personnel close to shore, allowing them to exit and enter underwater. But with the storm surge and the massive surf generated by Huko, Kaden couldn’t expect to swim to it from a beach, or from a seawall facing the open ocean—especially not with Conrad slowing him down. He would have to meet the sub in sheltered water.
But he was already passing the sprawl of docks at Honolulu Harbor without slowing down. In moments, he’d be blowing by Harbor Station. What was left after that? The old moorings at Ala Moana had not surviv
ed Nolo, and there was no other harbor on this side of the island.
“It doesn’t make sense!” Ava protested, feeling suddenly cold—shivering—in the blast of the air-conditioning.
It made no sense for Kaden to run east—not if Ava’s understanding of the situation was true. But if all of this was a crazy fantasy woven from the mind of a puppet master, playing a bizarre game of her own . . .
That sense of dissociation, of having lost all anchors to logical reality. Ava only knew Denali had sailed because Lyric had told her. She had no outside means of confirming that claim.
She had spoken to Astrid Robicheaux and believed her to be the real thing even though her description of Kaden contradicted everything Ava had believed about him. Was it possible Astrid had been a deep fake?
Kaden himself had all but confirmed his own treasonous role: Will these children grow up to wear a Chinese uniform?
But had they been talking past each other? What had he really meant by that?
Don’t do it, Kaden, she’d pleaded with him. Don’t do it. For all our sakes. And he’d let her go. He’d ended the conversation because he didn’t want to acknowledge the truth, to face his own guilt. That’s what she’d assumed. But what if he’d ended the call because he thought she was compromised? Or crazy?
It doesn’t matter!
Ava could not allow it to matter. It had all gone too far. The stakes were too high. Even if it was all a crazy fantasy spawned from Lyric’s machinations, she had to play it through, keep Kaden ashore. No grave harm would be done by that; her own jeopardy could not be made worse than it already was—while quitting now would put the lives of a hundred thousand innocents at risk. And if the missile launched and all those people died? Millions more would be lost in the engineered war that would surely follow.
And still, she mistrusted Lyric—enough that she kept manual control of the SUV.
chapter
23
Ava peered past the bullet-scarred windshield, looking for patches of pooling water that could send the SUV hydroplaning out of control; she watched for the dark shape of Kaden’s vehicle, now past Harbor Station; and she tapped her tactile mic, whispering, “Call Gina Alameda.”