In the basement, Kirk pulled out his knife and scraped away at the side of the pillar. “Doc, get out of here.” He keyed his radio. “Moms, withdraw, withdraw, withdraw. Confirm? Over.”
There was nothing but static. He looked up and saw that the steel sheathing covered the insulation. Forrenzo had shielded the room to prevent imaging from penetrating and also for giving him a tempest-proof area to work: secure from listening devices and taps.
Mac’s digging yielded what he feared. A series of wires. “Kirk, go upstairs and get everyone. ASAP. They need to get down here and get the hell out.”
As Doc hurried out the tunnel, Kirk took the stairs three at a time, ignoring the shooting pain from his broken ribs. He looked about the first level as he keyed his radio. “Withdraw, withdraw!” he called out over the radio.
“Withdrawing,” Moms’s voice said, and the thunder of boots running reverberated through the house. The team came down the stairs in a hurry, but orderly.
Kirk was staring at a bronze of a Native American on a rearing horse, a lance in one hand.
“Crazy Horse,” Roland said as he ran by.
Kirk fell into the rear and they made it into the basement. Moms waved for everyone to hit the tunnel and came up to Kirk.
“You got all the explosives in place and wired it already?”
Mac didn’t turn from what he was doing, but briefly waved his wiring pliers at his rucksack, which still bulged with explosives. “The house is already wired. Forrenzo wasn’t going to leave any evidence if he had to bolt out of here. I’m amazed the Firefly didn’t blow it down on top of us. Still could. Go!”
Moms ran to the tunnel door. She paused, looking over her shoulder at Mac hard at work, then followed the rest of the team. She stumbled out into darkness, where the team had gathered in the sand trap.
“What’s going on?” Nada asked.
“The house is—” Moms began, and then there was a series of muffled concussions followed by a rumbling sound.
Looking back, the entire Forrenzo house shivered, then began crumbling inward, roof first, then outer walls.
“Mac!” Roland ran back into the tunnel.
“Roland, stop!” Moms called out, but it was too late.
A blast of dust and debris came jetting out of the tunnel a few seconds later.
Thirty seconds later a dust-covered Roland came out, once more carrying a protesting Mac in his arms.
Moms breathed a huge sigh of relief.
The last of Forrenzo’s house crumpled inward.
Nada was watching carefully, along with Eagle.
“There!” Nada pointed. A Firefly lifted out of the rubble and then slowly dissipated.
In the lab, Burns and the four Ivars paused. “They’ll be on their way soon.”
The Ivars got back on task.
Burns checked his watch. The original Ivar had been gone too long. The kid was too terrified to not follow orders.
Which meant something had happened to him.
Burns went to the door and opened it. He stepped into the dark hallway, an emergency exit sign at the far end the only source of light.
He pulled out his cell phone and hit quick dial.
It was answered on the second ring. “Yes?”
“Mister Forrenzo. Please come to the University of North Carolina. The physics research building. Call me when you arrive outside. I will meet you.”
“I want—” the Russian began to protest, but Burns hit the off button. He opened the steel door and laid his cell on the ground, wedging it open so it could still get a signal.
“Faster!” Burns yelled.
Roland laid Mac down, and Doc got to checking his latest wounds, which mostly seemed to be his old ones aggravated and some scrapes and bruises from being blown down by the blast in the tunnel. And the bruises from the AK rounds.
“We did it,” Roland said. “We got ’em all.”
Mac lifted his head. “He had the entire basement lined with incendiaries. Whatever was in that vault will be nothing but melted scrap.”
There was a muffled explosion. “Secondary ignition,” Mac said. “It’s going to burn now.”
“Looks like Fireflies aren’t suicide bombers,” Nada said. “It could have gotten all of us in there if it had set off the charges.”
Two figures appeared out of the darkness: Scout and Emily.
“I told you to stay at the house,” Moms said, but there was no disapproval in her voice.
“Did you get it?” Scout asked.
“We got it,” Nada said.
A fire chief’s Blazer came roaring up and Cleaner got out on his prosthetics. “Hell of a gas explosion,” he said. He looked them over. “Need medevac?”
“I think we’re good for now,” Moms said.
Cleaner looked dubious, but got back into the Blazer and headed for the fire.
Emily knelt next to Mac. “Are you all right?”
“Just banged up a bit,” Mac said, struggling to a sitting position. “I could use a cold one.”
“I think we all could,” Moms said.
Emily went to her cart and opened the cooler and passed out beers — and a soda to Scout.
Mac lifted the beer, wincing as he did so. “To the Nightstalkers.” He tilted it toward Scout and Emily. “And Assets.”
Everyone lifted their drinks to the toast. Except Kirk. He was staring at the house, shaking his head. An intense blaze was now roaring straight up.
“What’s wrong?” Moms asked Kirk.
“Crazy Horse,” Kirk said.
“That was a nice bronze,” Roland agreed. “And I bet he had some good stuff in that arms room.”
Kirk turned from the house and looked at everyone. “We’ve been chasing Crazy Horse.”
Scout was the first to get it. “Fetterman. He chased the wrong thing. The real battle is somewhere else.”
CHAPTER 27
“But—” Nada began, but then Kirk held up his hand with the PRT on the wrist and pressed a button. Ms. Jones’s voice came over the net.
“Support got into Doctor Winslow’s phone. Just before the Rift opened he was communicating with a student of his named Ivar. He was directing Ivar to place dampers on a computer at his lab. A computer that had a copy of the Rift program on it.”
“Fuck me to tears,” Nada said.
“Language,” Moms said without any conviction. “But Ms. Jones, Support checked his lab. There was nothing suspicious.”
“The number Doctor Winslow was calling wasn’t to his regular lab. We’ve tracked the line. It’s a landline wired into the basement of that building. He had a lab we didn’t check out, where this Ivar was working.”
Moms turned to the team. “Gear up. These were just the battles. We’ve got to finish the war now.”
“There’s something else,” Ms. Jones said. “We tracked the money that was paid to Burns for the hard drive. It came from Doctor Winslow’s account, but it was wired in there immediately before from another account. From Forrenzo’s account.”
Nada stared at the blazing house as the rest of the team began loading the SUVs. “Winslow went to Forrenzo for the money,” Moms said.
“But Forrenzo’s been gone,” Nada said. “I don’t think the Firefly would have peacefully coexisted with him, considering it shot Mac up.”
“He left that night, remember?” Scout said. “I saw two SUVs drive away from his house in a hurry right after you guys got here.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Eagle said, trying to connect the dots in his huge hippocampus. “How would Winslow know about Forrenzo? And how did Forrenzo know to leave? We’re missing something.”
“We’ve been missing a lot,” Moms said. “This whole thing here was to keep us occupied, making us think we were handling the problem.”
“So where is Forrenzo now?” Eagle asked as he slammed shut the tailgate on one of the SUVs. There were sirens coming closer, Support with their fire trucks.