She turned the scope back on the collection of trees, searching for Zabójca, still moving herself closer with the rifle propped on her shoulder.
And she saw them both, but it was too late.
Zabójca had the GS-777 loaded and was crouched between two trees, holding his finger to the trigger. With more trigger discipline, Taras was standing about thirty feet down the mountain from Zabójca, holding a silenced pistol up and pointing it at the Polish terrorist. Diana could only see his upper half, the rest of him covered by jagged rocks.
Zabójca released the rocket as both Diana and Taras shot, whizzing through the air, echoing off every rock, muffled slightly by the dewy humidity seeping through the valley but still loud. Louder than Diana’s screaming at Amber, louder than Taras’s silenced shot, and louder than the gun shot behind her.
Chapter 12
Nehemias Laird
Nowhere, Texas
It was so hot that he had to remove his leather jacket and spread it out over the back of the couch. At least in the basement, the concrete walls kept in some cool air. Meanwhile upstairs, his mom was using every bit of the electricity with the fans and her soap operas droning on in the kitchen.
She was going to blow another fuse exactly when he really needed her not to.
His fingers stroked against the keyboard, typing fast and impatiently, looking for the info that he needed, looking at what the Readers were up to. They had left out most of the important details like why they needed this fifty-thousand-dollar password and what they were going to use it for. So Laird would have to find that out on his own.
He had four monitors in front of him— one encrypting information from the department Cameron Snowman had told him about, the other delving into the dark web about Zabójca, one playing porn on mute, and the last playing reruns of Seinfeld.
It was a lot of waiting around until Laird got the confirmation call that Hoagland was out of the running.
People were gonna judge him, working for these guys. But Laird got it. He understood why the Readers did why they did. After years of being used and abused by the US military, they were maybe one of the only groups of people that he sympathized with.
Thank Christ he had left that funeral early or he would be burned up like Weick’s family, like the other uniformed officials, like Ratanake. There was a twinge across his chest, thinking about those that had “died for their country”—that’s what they said on the news anyway. All of those brave souls, attending a funeral, taking two hours out of their lives for a commissioned officer that they probably didn’t even remember.
It was the third rendition of “Amazing Grace” that had got him. Laird couldn’t listen to that song one more time—Ratanake hadn’t even liked that damn song.
Okay, sure, he was totally beat up about Ratanake’s death. He could admit that. For a long time, Laird had always thought that Ratanake would have outlived him. That way Laird could have been angry at him for the whole of his life, but everything had changed—mostly because of Wesley Tennison-Weick. Another twinge across his chest. Laird lit up the half-smoked joint balancing on the ashtray by his soiled mousepad. That kid had been the one to get him out of this farmhouse after ten years, to travel to London after hours of isolation and drinking and getting high and putting a gun in and out of his mouth. And now that kid was dead. A result of growing up in a family with too much invested in the military and secrets. And Laird was right back to what he had been. Bad habits were hard to break. Especially when grieving, if that’s what you could call what Laird was doing. Working for the Readers wasn’t great—he acknowledged that. But, he needed the money. He needed purpose.
He took a long hit of the joint, the high that was beginning to go down skyrocketing back up.
His sweat-covered back stuck to the ripped pleather of the office chair.
It didn’t take long for the VBA website to reveal the profiles of the two potential women that he was going to have to get passwords from—Lillian Stone and Marianna Axtell. Both were in line for this vacant position with the Veteran Benefits Administration, with Hoagland being the number-one pick but apparently dead after an assassination by the Readers in South Korea.
He doxxed both Stone and Axtell, getting as much information as possible on both of them to make the final process of this easier when it came time for that call. There was a part of him that wished the Readers had asked him to join them in their car or wherever their base was, because Laird’s patience was wearing thin as a forty-year-old living with his mother in a farmhouse in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.
She brought him the occasional grilled-cheese and lukewarm beans but other than that, she was old and needed help with almost everything. And he would. He was a pretty good son. He wasn’t a very good soldier or co-worker or role model, but he was not bad at taking care of his mom.
Both Stone and Axtell had pretty secure information. This job maybe wouldn’t be as easy as he thought it was.
His phone buzzed with a text from Cameron Snowman.
“Tomorrow.”
That was all it said.
Cameron Snowman was a guy that needed a joint. It seemed that he was always up in arms about some social injustice and not getting his way wasn’t an option. He was like his father in that way—uncomfortably persistent and brave.
Reading up on the position, Laird found that this vacant position—the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits—in addition to being a mouthful, also was the position that managed the funds for the VBA. And then, as he sucked back on the joint again, the Readers’ goal made sense.
The first
