“Probably looking after his investment,” Nada said.
“What do you think is going on in that lab?” Nada asked.
Moms grimaced. “A Portal. Let’s just hope it hasn’t opened yet.”
“All right,” Nada said. “Let’s move out.”
“You’re not leaving me behind,” Scout said.
Nada turned to her. “There are no more Fireflies here. You’ll be safe. This is our duty, not yours.”
She didn’t notice that behind her, Moms had pulled out a syringe. As Scout began to protest, Moms slapped her on the shoulder with it.
Scout jumped. “You did not just—”
Nada caught Scout as she crumpled and lifted her in his arms. He carried her limp form over to Emily’s golf cart, her blue hair contrasting sharply with his cammies. “Make sure she gets home?”
Emily nodded. “I will. And make sure you all get home.”
Roland was next to Moms and leaned close. “Do you think he’ll forget her?”
“Would you?” Moms asked. “Let’s load up!”
Ivar wondered if Burns or the other Ivars would come looking for him, since he’d been gone a while, but he had a feeling they weren’t operating as well as the machine they were working on. He was more concerned that Burns might simply flip that toggle switch.
The man with the gun hadn’t said a word after asking a few more questions. Hadn’t moved. Still as stone, while Ivar fidgeted on Doctor Winslow’s couch. As out of tune with the rest of the people around here that he was, even Ivar had heard some of the stories about what happened on Winslow’s couch with some of the more aspiring female postdocs.
The doors to the lab banged open and Ivar started as a man wearing an expensive camel-hair coat walked in, followed by eight men dressed all in black fatigues with combat vests and carrying automatic weapons and other assorted weaponry.
“Your Doctor Winslow betrayed me,” Forrenzo said. “He brought the Feds into his house but I did not see him get arrested. He put a virus into my home security system and I barely got out with my life.” He walked over to Ivar and leaned forward until his dark eyes were just inches from Ivar’s. “I want my money and I want whatever he bought with my money. And I want it now because I have a plane waiting at the airport and I am leaving this shithole of a country. And I want Winslow.”
“I don’t know where the money or Doctor Winslow is,” Ivar said. “And as I told him,” he nodded toward Stone-face, “Doctor Winslow has the hard drive.”
Stone-face finally spoke. “Mister Forrenzo. He says it is the program that is on the drive that is important. And he says they made a copy.”
“Where is this copy?”
“In the basement.” That wasn’t the only thing copied, Ivar thought.
Forrenzo pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
Burns answered and without preamble got to the point. “You’re inside the building, Mister Forrenzo. I told you to call from outside. And you have the student, don’t you?”
“I do,” Forrenzo said. “He is under my control.”
“No,” Burns disagreed. “He’s under my control. See that collar around his neck? You’ve seen similar.”
Forrenzo looked at Ivar, saw the collar, and began backing out of Winslow’s office, indicating for Stone-face to stay with the student.
“What do you want?” Forrenzo asked. “What is this great program that cost me five hundred thousand dollars? Where is Winslow?”
“I’ll answer all your questions soon enough,” Burns said. “But first, we need just a little bit more time. We might have it before the Feds catch on. But if they’re as smart as I know them to be, they’re on their way here now. A small, elite team. I need you to stop them from getting in this lab down here.”
“How long do you need?” Forrenzo asked.
“Forty-five minutes. And they’ll begin their assault by parachuting someone, if not the entire team, onto the roof. They’ll come top down. It’s their Protocol.” A manic burst of laughter came over the phone. “They always follow Protocol. Forty-five minutes, and everything will be different. You will be paid back many times over, I promise, Mister Forrenzo.”
The phone went dead.
Moms looked over her shoulder and thought of Custer as they sped down the road toward the FOB. Kirk was having trouble breathing with broken ribs. Mac had been rebandaged, but she could tell he was near his limit, no matter how many happy pills Doc fed him from his tackle box of good stuff. She didn’t think he’d go Burns on them, but he just might collapse. Roland was, well, Roland. But then again, his ancestor Myles the warrior had followed Custer and that didn’t turn out well.
Eagle had a thoughtful look on his face, but then he always looked like that.
Nada was off his game, the girl having affected him. Nothing had ever affected Nada.
Doc was the only one excited. He wanted to see what was in this lab.
As Eagle drove, those who could scrambled as best they could to pull their cammies and body armor and other gear on over the civilian clothing. They pulled into the FOB.
Support already had the camo nets off the Snake. The team ran up the ramp, Eagle jumping in the pilot’s seat, no time for a preflight check, having to trust in Support. He began powering up the engines as the ramp shut. Moms had the iPad out, checking the information forwarded from the Ranch by Ms. Jones.
“This is our target,” Moms said, kneeling in the middle of the cargo bay, the rest of the team, minus Eagle, bending over in a circle around her. “Physics research building, University of North Carolina. Should be empty this time of the night.”
“Except for whatever is in that lab,” Doc said.
“No,” Kirk said. “Wrong. Forrenzo the arms dealer wasn’t in his house. He gave Winslow five hundred thousand to buy that hard drive from Burns. I’d think Forrenzo is somewhere in the area.”
“Arms dealer?” Roland was intrigued about going up against them. Even if they killed him with the latest weaponry, it would still be fun.
They all staggered slightly as the Snake lifted.
“It’s six stories high and the target is in the subbasement,” Moms said. “Will take a while to clear our way down.” She looked up. “Roland and Nada, go in high onto the roof via HALO. Clear the top floors. Rest of us fast-rope in after them onto the roof, link up, and clear down to the basement and finish this thing.”
“Whatever this thing is,” Eagle said as he banked the Snake to the north, the lights of Chapel Hill glittering ahead.
“No,” Nada said, surprising everyone. “That’s Protocol. We’ve used Protocol so far every step of the way on this mission until we ran into Scout. And we were making mistakes, including one very big one, being lured into a diversion.”
“We’re ten miles out,” Eagle said. “Six minutes until we’re on target. If you want me to gain altitude for a jump, I need to start doing it now.”
Everyone looked at Moms. She tapped the iPad. “See this? Right outside the lab?” She slid her finger over slightly. “And this? Great infil point.”
She stood and began unbuckling her body armor. “We go in like normal people for once.”
Six Russian mercenaries scanned the night sky. One had the latest generation Russian-made surface-to-air missile — the SA-24 Grinch — on his shoulder, finger resting lightly on the trigger. It was a fire-and-forget system, in that once the firer got the sighting system to acquire the target, he pulled the trigger and the missile did all the rest of the work getting there.
All the way below them, in the subbasement, Forrenzo reached the landing, one of his men prodding Ivar twenty feet ahead of him. The other merc covered Forrenzo’s back.
They walked down the hallway. The steel door was shut.