THE DEVIL COLONY

to craft a letter intended to draw out Rafe's little escaped bird. And it had apparently worked.

Much faster than I expected...

In the e- mail sent out, he'd set a noon deadline for her to respond. She wasn't wasting any time. He didn't intend to either.

'Sir, we've succeeded in decrypting the e-mail's text,' the team's computer asset informed him.

Rafe turned to the man. The technician went simply by the name TJ-but Rafe had never been curious enough to ask what those initials stood for. He was an American, emaciated, often hyped on stimulants so he could run code for days at a time. The expert stood before a bevy of mini-mainframe/servers, all interconnected by Cat 6 cables and hooked into a T2 broadband line.

Rafe didn't understand a tenth of it. All he cared about were results.

'The text will be coming up on your personal screen in a moment, sir. We're tracking IP addresses, triangulating sat-nodes, sifting server connections, and running a killer algorithm to untangle packet pathways.'

'Just find where it was sent from.'

'We're working on it.'

Rafe rolled his eyes at the use of the word we . TJ was no more than a glorified assistant. The true digital magician sat in the center of the wired nest of equipment. Ashanda's long fingers danced over three keyboards, as swiftly and elegantly as any concert pianist's on a baby grand. In place of sheet music, her gaze swept through lines of flowing code. On another screen, server nodes and gateway protocols splintered into a tangled web that spread across a digital global map. Nothing could stand in her way. Firewalls toppled before her like dominoes.

Satisfied, Rafe crossed to his personal laptop and read the text message on the screen from Kai Quocheets. He tapped a finger against his lower lip as he read through the wash of teenage angst and hurt feelings. A small part of him felt a twinge of sympathy, drawn by her passion, by her raw exposure on the screen. He glanced over to John Hawkes, suddenly feeling like breaking a third finger on the man's hand. Clearly the leader sorely used his fellow members, taking advantage of their youth and exuberance. In the end, he let others suffer the consequences while he took all of the glory.

That was simply poor management practices.

TJ whistled, drawing back Rafe's attention. He leaned over Ashanda's shoulder. 'I think she's got it!' he said, his voice rising in pitch. 'She's crashing through the last doors!'

Rafe stepped over, nudging TJ to the side. If they were victorious, he wanted to savor the moment with Ashanda.

Standing behind her, he leaned to her ear. 'Show me what you can do...'

She gave no sign of acknowledgment. She was lost in her own world, as surely as any artist in the heat of inspiration. This was her medium. It was said that when a person lost one sense, another would grow stronger. This was Ashanda's new sense, a digital extension of herself.

He ran a hand down one of her arms, feeling the old bumps of scarification under her skin. Such scarring was a ritualistic practice among the African tribe to which she had belonged. The bumps had been more prominent when she arrived at the ch teau as a child. Now they could be felt only under the fingertips, like reading Braille.

'She's almost there!' TJ said, breathless.

Ashanda leaned ever so slightly closer to Rafe's cheek. He felt the warmth of her skin across the distance. No one truly understood their relationship. He couldn't put it into words himself, and that was certainly true for her as well. They'd been inseparable since childhood. She was his nanny, his nurse, his sister, his confidante. Throughout his life, she was the silent well into which he could cast his hopes, his fears, his desires. In turn, he offered her security, a life without want-but also love, sometimes even physical, though that was rare. He was impotent, a side effect of his brittle disease. It seemed that even that most intimate of bones was damaged.

He studied her hands as they flew between the keyboards. He remembered how in private moments she would occasionally bend his finger, torturing him between agony and ecstasy until it finally snapped. It wasn't masochism. Rather, there was a kind of purity in that pain that he found freeing. It taught him not to fear his body's weakness but to embrace it, to tap into a primal well of sensation that was unique to him.

She let out the softest sigh.

'She did it!' TJ whooped, lifting his arms high, like a soccer fan after a goal.

Rafe leaned closer to her, allowing his cheek to touch hers. 'Well done,' he whispered in her ear.

Not moving, he stared at the screen. The digital map had swelled, and glowing green lines converged into a single locus situated in Utah. Rafe noted the location and smiled at the serendipitous sight of his own name on the screen.

'San Rafael, ' he said. Amusement lifted his spirits. 'Oh, that's just too perfect.'

He turned to John Hawkes.

The man's eyes were wide upon him.

'Looks like we won't be needing our hunting hawk any longer,' he mumbled.

He crossed toward the naked man, who let out a loud, panicked moan. Rafe believed he owed John Hawkes a small gift for his services-in this case, a lesson in good management practices, something that the man sorely lacked.

Rafe stepped behind him, hooked an arm around his thin throat. It wasn't easy to snap a man's neck, nothing like in the movies. It took him three tries. But it was a good lesson. Sometimes even a leader had to get his hands dirty. It helped maintain morale.

He moved back, wiping a pebbling of well-earned sweat from his brow.

'With that out of the way...' Rafe held forth an arm for Ashanda. 'Shall we move on, mon chaton noir ?'

Chapter 22

May 31, 3:19 P.M.

Above Ellirey Island

Iceland

Gray braced himself behind the pilot, Seichan at his side. Her hand was clamped hard to his forearm, as much from a need to hold herself steady as it was from terror.

The helicopter plunged toward a fiery doom, spiraling down. Rotors screamed overhead, struggling to hold them aloft. Beyond the cockpit window, clouds of smoke billowed while hot particulate rattled against the sides of the plummeting craft like hail. The engine's air intakes sucked in the same debris, choking the motors further.

In the seat, the pilot fought the cyclic stick between his legs with one arm and flipped switches on the console with the other. He was one of the enemy, one of the mercenary commandos, but at the moment his fate was tied to theirs-and the outlook was not good.

'We're fucked!' the pilot yelled. 'Nothing I can do!'

The island flew up toward them, a steaming, shattered chunk of rock. Fissures continued to tear apart the ancient volcanic cone. Fires raged within the deepest chasms. Seawater flooded into the island's interior and blasted upward in steaming geysers as icy water met molten rock.

It was hell on earth down there.

Their best hope, Gray determined, was out at sea, but the waters were frigid, capable of killing in minutes. He climbed into the empty copilot seat and pressed his face against the curve of the window. He searched the waters around the island. Sunlight reflected brightly off the waves, a sight that was far too cheery considering the circumstance. But the column of smoke and steam rising from the island cast a dark shadow to the south. It was within that shadow that he could discern a sliver of white riding the dark sea.

'There!' Gray exclaimed, and pointed down and to the right. 'At your two o'clock! South of the island.'

The pilot turned to him, his face deathly pale under his helmet. 'What...?'

'A boat.' It had to be Captain Huld's fishing trawler. 'Crash this bird as close to it as you can.'