important thing is we’re getting out of here.”
“I can’t believe it,” Sarah said, looking down. “After everything we’ve been through, all the people we’ve lost, we’re just leaving. It was all for nothing.”
I sighed. She was right. A lot of people had died, and we had nothing to show for it. “I know,” I said. “The important thing is we’re still alive. We have each other. We’re going home. All things considered, I’ll settle for that.”
Sarah gave me a sad smile. “Me, too. So, uh, where are you going when you get home?”
“I don’t really have a home,” I said. “The closest thing I have to family is a cranky old bastard named Hawk. He lives in a little town called Quagmire, Nevada. I’ll probably go there, since I don’t have anywhere else to stay. What about you?”
“I managed to get an e-mail off to my mom, telling her I’m coming home,” Sarah said excitedly. “She doesn’t even know where I’ve been. Not really, anyway. I gave her a story, told her I was working as a translator for an oil company. I’ll probably go back to Modesto, where she lives. I don’t have anyplace else to stay either.”
I chewed in my lip for a moment. “Modesto is a long way from Quagmire,” I said.
“You know, I hate living in California anyway,” Sarah said, smiling again. “I could, I suppose, be talked into leaving. You know, with the right incentive package.”
I raised an eyebrow theatrically. “Baby, I’ve got an incentive package right here,” I said, gesturing to myself while grinning stupidly.
Sarah laughed out loud. “You’re cute when you’re being a retard, you know that? Are you asking me to move in with you?”
“Eh, you might want to let me find a place to live first,” I said.
“Oh no, it’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said, eyes twinkling. “You’re going to have to meet my mother first.”
“Oh boy,” I said without enthusiasm.
“Stop it, my mom is a sweet lady.”
“Wow,” I said after a moment. “This is all surreal. We’re really doing this, aren’t we? Holy shit. We’re going home!”
“I know, right?” Sarah said, squeezing me again. “Thank God.”
I closed my eyes, holding Sarah tightly. “Thank God.”
LORENZO
Carl and I sat in the van. It had turned out to be the hottest day so far this year, so of course, the air conditioner in our secondary van had died. We had one other vehicle stashed in a storage unit but it would stick out way too much in this neighborhood. The heat was like a stifling blanket, burning the air in my lungs. Sweat dripped down my back and pooled in my armpits. I finished the bottle of water and tossed it. Tonight was the night.
“You ready?” Carl asked from behind the wheel.
“Yep.” I cracked the vertebrae of my neck after securing the transmitter around my throat. This was it. “Radio check.”
She was out of sight, a couple hundred yards up the road, closer to the fort. Alone, unarmed, and ready to step out into traffic on a moment’s notice. She sounded excited.
Circling high overhead was Reaper’s favorite toy and the single most expensive thing that I had ever purchased, and that included sports cars, yachts, and houses. Little Bird was basically the world’s fanciest remote- controlled plane. Well, at least that a regular person could actually purchase. No matter how bad Reaper wanted one, we couldn’t afford a Predator drone.
L.B. had a wingspan of only ten feet. When you took it apart, the whole thing fit into two big suitcases. It wasn’t fast, it didn’t have any guns, but what it did have was the ability to stay in the air for damn-near forever running off what was basically a glorified leaf-blower engine, all while snooping with every type of camera you could think of. It was like having my own portable spy satellite.
Old Fort Saradia was visible at the end of the road. Those twenty-foot walls had been built over a hundred years ago by the British Empire. There were only two entrances, one off the road, and a smaller one on the opposite side overlooking the rudimentary dock, and thermal showed that both of them were being guarded.
Inside the walls were several other buildings. Some old battered historical things, then a couple of large steel buildings that dated back to the forties, and finally a dorm that had been built more recently when Fort Saradia had been used briefly as the oceanographic institute for the emir’s new university. The whole thing was supposed to be unoccupied now except for a couple of caretakers.
“You gonna stick with the plan this time, Lorenzo?” Carl asked.
“Sneak into a den of professional killers, find the box, walk back out. Right?” I was nervous, but I tried not to let it show. The shakes would come later, now I needed to be cold and professional.
“Walk in the park,” Carl muttered. I knew he didn’t like this at all. He wanted to go with me, but Carl was a warrior, he wasn’t built for stealth. And no matter how satisfying it would be, kicking in the door, guns blazing, was just going to get us all killed.
Rather, I was going to do what I did best. And that meant being one sneaky son of a bitch. I needed to be fully in touch with my inner ninja. I checked my gear again. I was moving light. Speed and silence mattered more than firepower. Forty of them, one of me, it didn’t matter what I was armed with. If I got caught, I was going to die. I had my STI, several extra mags of 9mm ammo, the excellent Silencerco suppressor, a pair of knives, one fixed blade and one folder, radio, lock picks, night-vision monocular, and finally a length of piano wire tied between two small wooden dowels. I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.
My clothing was neutral, all gray and tan, cargo pants, plain long-sleeve T-shirt, soft desert boots, one of those cargo vests with ten million pockets, and even a khaki ball cap. The Dead Six types that we had seen tended to be dressed in that contractor-chic style, so I hoped that if somebody spotted me, their first inclination would be that I was just one of them, and by the time they recognized that I wasn’t, they’d be quietly dispatched.
After some internal debate, I had worn my lightweight, concealable armor vest, because even though it made me a little less mobile, this was a very trigger-happy bunch that we were dealing with. It would stop pistol rounds, but rifle bullets would still zip through like it was made of butter.
Now we were waiting. From the Fat Man, we knew that all of Dead Six was coming here, and with the curfew in effect, they couldn’t risk being randomly pulled over anymore than we could. Once Carl dropped me off and picked up Jill, he was going to park out of sight.
We were hoping for a vehicle that I could either carjack or ride unnoticed. Preferably the latter, as the former introduced some real bad complications into the mix. It was too early in the evening to start popping people. Reaper had already notified us of a couple of potentials, but they had been traveling too closely together. Luckily, the fort was the only thing at the end of this road other than shabby ramshackle housing, so if it was any sort of decent vehicle, it was obvious where it was going.
I didn’t like this plan. There were way too many things to go wrong. But if this didn’t work, then I was going to be reduced to trying to climb over walls that were probably under video surveillance. “I hate winging it,” I muttered. Carl grunted in affirmation.
