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  Hours into his ordeal, he was shuffled out of the confines of vehicles, and into a cavernous space. Everything echoed, vaguely metallic, with a low whine beneath it all that made him think airplane. Or factory? They took off with very little warning. Airplane. Without being strapped in, he felt like a loose shoe in a washing machine, apt to tumble out of control. But the liftoff was smooth, and fortunately he didn’t need a seatbelt. Perhaps his abductors cared little for his safety, but he was beginning to think they were doing it to him on purpose. Trying to throw him off, make him increasingly paranoid. If so, it was working like a charm.

  For the first hour or so, he tried to play a game of ‘Which way are we headed?’, basing his guesses off the time of night and a wild assumption about where North might be. He presumed, based on the easy right turns they seemed to be taking, that they were heading out over Newfoundland. To Europe perhaps? But then there was a series of banks and turns, and he gave up.

  They were airborne for what seemed like hours. After a while he calmed down enough for exhaustion to take over, and Dean started to cat-nap. When he woke fully, they were descending, and upon arrival he was hurried off the aircraft and tossed into another large-seeming space. A van or truck, maybe. Left in the vehicle for several minutes, someone finally removed the hood. He took a long, desperate breath and tried to see where he’d wound up, but it was dark.

  He was led into a building and down a hallway that smelled of mold and piss. After a few turns, he was put into a room where his restraints were finally removed, and then they left him there. He didn’t even bother trying the door, he knew it would be locked. Exhausted and disoriented, he lay down on a bed that squeaked in protest, vaguely noticing the sun coming up before he surrendered to sleep.

  18.

  Acrid smoke roiled past Shane, stinging his eyes. He forced them open, the smell of burned rubber and scorched flesh wrinkling his nose as his other senses came back to life. Rolling over hard, he squinted into the sooty air, trying to get a sense of where he was. In the brunt of the attack, his vehicle had been hurled sideways and through the plate-glass window of a car dealership—his last clear memory.

  Shane craned his neck until he caught sight of an off-kilter banner. Mercedes World. He grunted an ironic “Huh,” then picked himself up. No need to find the door, he simply walked back out the way he’d come. He found Jo, propped up against a tree. Dean was gone. The remainder of their team was scattered to the winds, in various states of injury.

  “They got what they came for?” Shane said, not expecting an answer. It was obvious what the attack was all about. He felt stupid for not seeing it coming.

  “Looks that way,” Jo answered, forcing herself to her feet and dusting off. Her legs shook and her color was worrisome, but she was fighting to ignore it and so Shane did, too. She pointed to a dirt road off the main street. “I caught a quick look. Any ideas on how to follow?”

  Shane looked around. Their own vehicles were smashed beyond repair. Their gaze fell together onto the showroom. Problem solved.

  “Any particular color?” Shane remarked as he made for the nearest coupe.

  * * *

  Shane drove along the dirt path, Jo calling out coordinates as she noted marks in the dirt or damage to the crops. Slow going over bad terrain, but they were making some progress.

  “You okay driving?” Jo asked, her plain sarcasm an indictment of his responsibilities as driver minutes earlier.

  “Just fine, Agent Osborne,” he replied evenly, refusing to rise to the bait. “Handles pretty good. I’d say MilSpecs if I didn’t know better.”

  Jo rolled her eyes.

  They continued on, slowing to re-assess their objective at each crossing. It was easy enough to follow until they arrived at a highway. There, the trail went cold. The driver had taken care to move all the way into the road before selecting a course. Smart, Shane thought.

  They opted for the most logical route. Northeast. Bound, some hundreds of miles distant, for the border. It was a fair guess the kidnappers would be wanting to get out of the country. Far from a sure bet, but it was the best they had to work with.

  After an hour spent searching on a small scale, the pilot and the spy were no closer to locating the kidnappers. It was time to widen the scope. Jo opened up her portable workstation and set up a grid. Then she began a sweep of radio frequencies, mostly to get a read on what was out there. In any region of the world, there was a certain amount of background noise that got broadcast—whether the broadcasters knew it or not—and with the proliferation of easily hacked audio and video equipment, they could even detect minute traces of subversive activity.

  Adding to their hyper-vigilant capabilities, unwitting civilian participants were useful too, if one knew where to look. Text messages about low flying aircraft, telephone calls regarding strangers in a small town. Informational tweets, snapped chats, video-clipped vines were turned into coordinates, neatly tagged, time stamped down to the millisecond. In the right hands, it amounted to a four-dimensional, highly detailed treasure map. The problem was finding the valuable one percent amid the ninety-nine percent of useless noise, a task Jo was singularly suited for.

  In an effort to thwart any pursuit, they’d abandoned the Mercedes in favor of less conspicuous transportation. The truck they heisted was uncomfortable and slow, but there was no need for speed. This was a slow, methodical search, mostly a listening game, moving with purpose as leads arose. There was no chance the trail had gone cold yet. If they were thorough enough, they’d find him.

  Once the local channels were exhausted, they moved further afield, continuing to focus north and to the skies. The kidnappers, desperate to get out of enemy territory, would leave trails. It was a sure bet they would be wanting to interrogate, and for that they needed to catch up with their own people. People high enough in the outfit to warrant the responsibility. This wasn’t something that could be handled in the field.

  To that end, Jo had begun listening for unusual chatter, and she had already picked up something interesting.

  “Listen to this,”—she removed the headset and switched the speakers on—“what’s your take?”

  He listened, leaning in to catch the words through the static. The language wasn’t English, but it was familiar. A slang version of Farsi used not only in the middle-east, but in underground circles.

  When the conversation paused, he glanced over and said, “Impressive.”

  “Isn’t it, though? Guess we know which way to look.”

  “Sure. But I was talking about you. How’d you catch that so quick?”

  She grinned. “A little piece of code I worked up. Language parsing stuff, all very A.I.” She plugged the headset back in.

  “Still,” Shane cautioned, “these guys may be sloppy, but whoever Dr. Eckert is being delivered to won’t be. We’ll need to wait for the handoff to know who we’re dealing with. Then find a way to get to him without giving ourselves away.”

  We won’t give ourselves away,” Jo replied, “because once we get close to him, we’ll activate the tracker.”

  “He’s got a tracker?”

  “Ever since he became a federal concern. Zee set it up, back before we blew up the ocean.”

  “Nice. You’ve got it on you?”

  “Wouldn’t be much good otherwise,” she said, digging through her pack until she found the device. “Once we’ve got his relative position on the ground, I’ll be able to pinpoint his whereabouts within five meters. So let’s not worry about that so much, and focus on what the hell we’re going to do when we find him. It’s not going to be easy to get him out, we can assume that much…”

  * * *

  “We’ve located the secondary. Permission to track?”

  The pilot hovered, systems in full stealth mode, with a clear picture of the landscape. Scrambled to follow up on the attack outside the military base, so far there hadn’t been any word on what next. The pilot scratched the back of his hand, thumb twitching over the s
tick.

  Negative, STX. Stay with the primary. Keep back, and don’t let them stray. We’re in a hold for now.

  Shit. “Affirmative, control. Watch and wait.”

  The primary assets were bouncing around cornfields, themselves engaged in pursuit, with no idea they were being watched. Akin to a Russian doll, eyes on top of eyes, one chasing the other like rats in a multi-level maze. The pilot wondered if he was just one of those middle dolls, even as above it all as he felt up here in the catbird’s seat.

  His thumb twitched again, but he held steady. He wouldn’t move until ordered, like it or not.

  After a few minutes, the radio squawked again. STX, we’ve got a new set. Note the final coordinates of primary, then come home.

  He fought to contain his annoyance. Why’d they send him up at all, if he wasn’t going to be bringing anything back? He half expected to hear a follow-up, claiming it was all a drill. He’d have believed it too, if he hadn’t seen the carnage first-hand. Now both targets were going to get away, with nothing to show for it.

  “Affirmative. Final coordinates locked in for the record. Heading back.”

  With a last glance at the retreating abductors and the ones following them, he jammed the stick hard and spun the bird for home.

  On the ground, an equally frustrated support crew sat on their hands. One minute command was asking them to alert all available personnel. A potential threat to national security in the form of an abduction—and a high-value asset at that. They were attempting to flee the country. But after all that, the stand-down order came just as they’d made contact. It felt like a massive joke was being played at their expense.

  Confirm, command. We’re just going to let him get away? We had eyes on both. Airborne was locked and awaiting.

  Find me just one goddamned person I can talk to then. Just one person with a clue!

  Even with the board a green? Wait, I’ve…fine. Birds coming back.

  Just one more FUBAR of a mission on top of all the false-alarms and bullshit alerts. But just as it was wrapping up, there was a new round of lunacy. A tactical alert lit up the board all along the coast. It looked like World War III on approach out there. The long range was even more dire, the stuff of filmmakers more than warriors, expressing their nightmares in minute detail. At least now it made sense why they’d let those little fish go. The enemy out there, gaining strength and coming in fast, threatened to capsize the whole damned boat.

  “Signal, get me on the line with command, and put me straight through to the general.”

  The signal chief acknowledged the order and set to work. He was breaking about a hundred protocols, this end run all the way to the top, but it stood to reason. In the face of such an emergency, one would want to talk to the top brass before making any rash decisions. Unbeknownst to the watch commander, however, the general in charge was himself attempting an end run, all the way up to the commander in chief—who was at this very moment taking his call.

  A minute earlier, and a counter strike might have been ordered. But fresh orders from the White House preempted retaliation. The president wanted them to hold steady, unless the attackers actually penetrated sovereign waters. That milestone was still a few minutes out, but as long as they stayed on the international side, they would not be met.

  The commander put through the all-call to his forces. Sorry to disappoint you all, but we’re not going to the party just yet.

  * * *

  The lack of retaliation left the invading strike force confused. The attack commander had fully expected to be turned back by now.

  “You’re sure they haven’t gone stealth?”

  “Negative, sir. We’d have gotten a visual confirmation from forward.” The sailor looked as confused as his captain. “They’re just not there, sir.”

  All the training, all the preparation had been for just such a moment. Yet the anticlimactic nature on approaching America’s shores was chilling. It was like they were being toyed with.

  “Get me command,” the captain ordered, “see if they’ve got more information for us.”

  Five minutes later, and the conversation back home had been just as odd as everything else. They couldn’t seem to make head nor tails of it, either, and for that matter they didn’t seem to have planned for it. There was simply no contingency for a resistance-free landing, and they didn’t have the resources even if they decided to be so foolish. After all, military considerations aside, this was the most heavily armed population in the world. One couldn’t simply weight anchor and walk in. Everyone on Earth knew the Americans were armed to the teeth. The closest neighborhood watch would sound the alarm if the military couldn’t be bothered. Perhaps that was the intent all along?

  But such thinking was ludicrous. Of course the American military was ready and waiting. They were simply watching for now. Perhaps extending enough rope for the enemy to hang himself with. Or else they were planning to lure them in so close that they couldn’t escape once the attack commenced. Eat them alive just a few kilometers away from the prize.

  “Hold position,” the captain ordered. He was violating his own commanders, but he was willing to risk retribution over the prospect of assured suicide.

  * * *

  The invading commander was right about one thing. The United States military was not ignoring the threat. They were massed and awaiting orders, ready to wipe out the enemy as soon as the order came. It was the top brass who were waiting, at the behest of their commander in chief. He knew he could fight on two fronts if he had to, but he preferred to keep a little of his powder dry. If the expected domestic flare-up should happen in the middle of a sea battle, casualties could mount fast before he had a chance to re-position the troops.

  Three more splinching sites had cropped up in the past hour, unbeknownst to any but the highest authorities. According to the most recent reports, that number was expected to increase exponentially over the next forty-eight hours. There was nothing he could do to stop it—containment was all he could hope for.

  “Have the governors been informed?” asked President Webster. He’d been on the line with officials in the affected regions, but as this threatened to go nationwide he called for all fifty to be looped in.

  “Contacted the last of them less than ten minutes ago, sir,” replied the chief of staff. An associate of the previous administration, Henry Roberts was accustomed to snap-decisions and fast action. Even so, Roberts was at the frayed ends of his sanity, having just taking on the job days ago. Already life and death, twenty-four seven, and this was just the beginning. Harder men than him had cracked under less.

  “Thank you, Henry,” the president said, motioning for his advisor to take a seat, “thank you for taking care of that.”

  “You’re welcome, sir,” said the chief.

  “Not too much resistance, I hope?”

  “The usual amount. Most of them just wondering whether to back us, or throw in with the populace. The usual balancing act. I suspect we’ll get the backing of a decent number, all said and done.”

  The president nodded, looking satisfied with the answer.

  “Can I ask what our next move is, sir?”

  Webster didn’t answer right away, getting up and strolling over to the window first. It really was a power position, occupying this office. Amazing how invigorating it could be.

  “Now, Henry?”—he put his hands on his hips and adjusted his belt, an old habit from the days when he was less fit—“Now we wait.”

  19.