shorts. The prosthetic limbs ended in brightly colored running shoes that he apparently tied on just like anyone else.
Lalenia brightened considerably when he entered. “Raton, look who’s up.”
The muscular man smiled a tight, distorted smile as he walked to the end of McKinney’s bed. She could see now that the right side of his face was disfigured from a grievous wound whose scar tissue pulled at the side of his mouth. A horrendous scar ran along the side of his head to a stunted ear. He also appeared to be missing his right eye and had in place a false eye as black as onyx. He placed his hands on the footboard and she could see he was missing several fingers from his left hand as well. He had once been a handsome man, but he seemed not to notice.
He met her gaze and nodded. Then he spoke in a deep, mellow voice. “So, you’re the one who broke out of Odin’s isolation facility.” He started laughing midsentence. “That shows dash, Professor.”
McKinney stared at him. “Raton… Mouse. You’re Mouse.”
“You’ve heard of me.”
“A man named Ritter mentioned you. He made it sound as though you were-”
“Dead?” He nodded. “On paper, I guess I am.”
Lalenia walked over and kissed him on the cheek. “Not even close, baby.”
McKinney could see how much they cared for each other. Whatever scars he bore, Lalenia clearly did not see them.
Mouse focused on McKinney. “You ran into some difficulties back in the States.”
“Are we safe here?”
“Safe is relative. From them, perhaps, but only because you’re in the middle of a war zone. The cartels killed thirteen thousand people here last year. There’s more killing going on here than in Afghanistan.”
McKinney was at a loss for words. “Are you serious?”
“Most Americans have no idea how bad the fighting is down here. This will be JSOC’s next battlefield, Professor. Mark my words. Mexico’s constitution might prohibit U.S. boots on the ground, but there are workarounds.”
Odin walked in suddenly from the open doorway. He was wearing a faded gray T-shirt and jeans. He nodded to McKinney and let a slight grin escape. “I was worried about you for a while there.”
McKinney suddenly felt the reality of the situation. “I’m still worried about me. I can’t go home. And how long until they send machines here to kill us?”
He met her gaze and nodded grimly back. “Get some rest, Professor.”
E xhaustion came quickly to McKinney for quite some time, and she slept often. A week later she was sitting in the courtyard of a substantial-looking stone hacienda with a terra-cotta tile roof, enjoying the sunshine. The Christmas holiday and New Year’s had already come and gone, and she was morose with worry for her father. And for her brothers as well.
McKinney watched local children playing soccer in a dusty road nearby. She could see them through a wrought iron gate in a stone wall that enclosed one side of the courtyard. Their shouts brought back memories of Adwele playing with schoolmates in Tanzania. She wondered how he was coping with her sudden disappearance. Reaching out to him now would only put him in danger. She was helpless to do anything.
Instead, she stared into the distance. Beyond the houses were steep forested mountains, with clouds towering overhead. It was beautiful, but all she could think about was how to get back to her old life-and how impossible that now seemed.
Odin’s voice broke her reverie. “They said you were up and about.”
She looked up to see him standing in a nearby doorway.
“How are you feeling?”
McKinney shrugged. “Physically better. Psychologically, not so much.”
Odin came up clutching something wrapped in a burlap sack. He laid it on the table between them and sat in one of the rattan chairs next to her. Then he poured a cup of coffee from a steel pot nearby.
“How do you know about this place?”
“Years ago. We came down on an operation for the GWOT.” Seeing her confused expression he added, “The Global War on Terror. After 9/11 there were concerns about terrorists crossing the border, arms smuggling, that sort of thing. Turns out, the weapons were being smuggled the other way-from the U.S. to Mexico. We got caught up in a drug war.”
McKinney studied him. “You perplex me.”
“Why?”
“I just… why do you seek out war?”
He shrugged. “It’s what I’m good at. And there’s a bond you develop in war that’s hard to find in civilian life. People you can trust your life to.”
“But why get involved in Mexico’s drug war?”
“’Cause we were here. There’s a small number of vicious people destroying Mexican society to smuggle drugs into the U.S. Killing judges, reporters, men, women, children. We helped the locals who were trying to stop it. Those weren’t our orders, but we weren’t about to stand around and do nothing.”
“And Mouse?”
Odin nodded. “He met Lalenia. She refused to leave after the cartels killed her parents and her brothers and uncles. After they met, Mouse was always looking for an excuse to return here.”
“Is that how he…?” She gestured to her legs.
“IED. Central Asia. A few years back. Lalenia came up to Virginia to help him through physical therapy.” He pondered the memory. “Mouse was my commander, Professor. Team leader before me. He taught me everything I know. I needed his advice, and a safe place to regroup.”
“Apparently they think he’s dead.”
Odin nodded. “He’s a legend down here. El Raton — the Mouse. The cartels respect him. They found out the hard way that he’s an expert at insurgent warfare. He trained the locals to defend their land. To push the cartels out. Before that they were finding a dozen bodies in the street every morning. That’s over now.”
McKinney sat listening to the kids playing soccer for a while. The children laughing-untroubled by the momentous events of the world.
She gestured to the covered object in the center of the table. “What’s in the sack?”
“Something you should see. I didn’t want to alarm you until you were better.”
“I’ve been alarmed ever since I met you.”
“Okay, then…” He unfolded the burlap to reveal one of the black weaver-drone quadracopters that had attacked them in Colorado.
A slightly irrational fear gripped her. It was clearly dead-damaged and missing half its rotors. As a scientist, she was angered by irrational fears, so she tamped it down and leaned forward to look at the drone.
The core of it looked mostly intact, although none of the rotors at its four corners was still whole. The spikelike metal feet protruded menacingly, clearly sharpened like metal thorns.
“We managed to reconstruct this one by cannibalizing parts from the two that got into the plane cabin.” He picked up the lightweight device. “It wasn’t difficult. I get the feeling these were meant to be assembled by semiskilled workers. They’re modular, cheap. Mostly dual-use off-the-shelf parts. Circuit boards. Memory chips. Batteries. Optical sensors.”
She extended her hand, and he passed the dead drone to her. McKinney’s curiosity had already bested her anxiety, and she peered into its recesses, rotating it around. The broken propellers flopped around at the ends of wires. Her nose caught the peppery scent she remembered from the Colorado swarm. “There’s that smell again. Like cayenne pepper. I’d like to know the chemical composition.”
Odin nodded. “Mouse knows a few local chemists. Ex-cartel people. I’ll see if he can get it analyzed.”
She kept sniffing and traced it to nozzles next to a row of silvery capsules in the frame. They looked like the nitrous oxide cartridges used for whipped cream or the CO 2 propellant in paintball guns. “Four capsules. Like the chemical glands of a weaver. Mixing them in varying proportions to communicate different messages. That would match ant behavior. It’s how they lay down a pheromone matrix.”
“So they were leaving a trail.”
