Hawking grunted. "Cheerful thought. On the way to or from the soft probe tomorrow, you think?"
"He'll wait until the main expedition," Jensen said quietly. "Tomorrow he'll be surrounded almost entirely by blackcollars. He'd know enough to wait until the rest of Caine's team is along, in hopes they'd get in our way in a fight."
Alamzad snorted. "Thanks a lot."
"He's right, though." Lathe nodded thoughtfully. "And it leaves us with only one practical approach—which I was going to recommend anyway. Suppose we do the following...."
The sounds of soft conversation filtered through the heavy door: Jensen and Alamzad, presumably.
"I hope," Pittman murmured as Caine reached for the doorknob, "you know what you're doing."
"Me, too," Caine answered frankly. "But this is our mission, remember. We have a right to know what's going on."
The room was considerably smaller than Caine had realized, more like a vertical crawlspace than a room per se. Alamzad and Jensen were indeed there, crouched over some sort of mechanism at the far end but looking back at the newcomers. "You should have announced yourselves," Jensen growled, sliding a shuriken back into his pouch.
Caine swallowed the automatic apology that came to mind. "We had other things on our minds," he said instead. "Your private scheme, to be specific."
Jensen cocked an eyebrow. "So Lathe's caught on, eh? Knew he would, eventually. Is he really so worried about me that he sent you to snake out the details?"
"He doesn't know we're here," Caine said. "This is on my authority as head of the mission."
For a long moment Jensen gazed at the two of them in silence. Then, slowly, he nodded his head.
"All right," he said. "But not for you personally, and not because you're my titular commander on this. I'll tell you because Pittman's earned it."
"Pittman?" Caine frowned, shooting a look at the other.
"That's right. Pittman stayed loyal to you and all the rest of us, no matter what it might cost him."
Jensen's mouth was tight. "That's the mark of a true blackcollar, Caine: loyalty. Loyalty to your teammates, to other blackcollars... and sometimes even to allies you don't approve of."
A shiver went up Caine's spine. "You're talking about Reger, aren't you?"
"Lathe's the one who makes our deals and alliances," Jensen said, his eyes focused elsewhere.
"That's the doyen's job, and commandos don't expect to have much voice in those decisions. Fine.
But there are other ways I can influence events."
"Such as by building a death-house gauntlet in Reger's mansion?" Pittman asked quietly.
"You've got it," the blackcollar said grimly. "Think of it as a loyalty test... with death as the punishment for failure."
Caine focused on Alamzad. "Did you know what he was planning?"
Alamzad shook his head. "I still don't," he added. "But I think I should."
"It'll cost you," Jensen warned. "All of you. If I tell you, I'll want your assistance in carrying out what'll essentially be an execution."
Caine took a deep breath. Far back in his mind, the thought occurred to him that this, too, was part of what it meant to be a leader. "You'll have it."
—
They set off before dawn the next morning: Lathe, Caine, Skyler, Bernhard, Kanai. and one of Reger's drivers, riding in tight discomfort in a car that had been designed for at least two fewer passengers.
"Why the hell didn't Reger give us a decent vehicle?" Bernhard growled as they headed out into the mountains. "Even a van would've been better than this."
"True," Lathe agreed. "But we've been using vans a lot lately, and I thought it might be a good idea to throw Security a minor curve in that area. They know how many of us there are and so will probably be watching most carefully for vans or large cars."
Bernhard snorted and fell silent.
Whether Lathe was right or whether the Security spotters were simply not watching the right place at the right time, they made it to the jump-off spot the comsquare had chosen without incident.
"Everyone out," Lathe ordered, heading back to the trunk. "Get your kits and let's get started—we've got a long hike ahead of us."
Caine glanced around in the predawn glow, a strange sense of deja vu tickling the back of his mind.
The creek trickling quietly alongside the road, a particularly striking bluff rising above the hills to the south... and he caught his breath as the landscape clicked. "Lathe, do you know where we are?"
"A couple of klicks northwest of the Aegis Mountain entrance," the comsquare said. "As good a spot as any to strike out overland from. Why?"
"Oh... no particular reason, I guess. Only that we're just a ridge or two northwest of the spot we headed out from when we checked out the base."
"Ah. Well, at least this time you won't have to worry about your car being stolen."
The words were barely out of his mouth when the car beside them pulled away, making a U-turn and heading down the road in the direction it had come. Caine swallowed as he watched it disappear around a curve, knowing it was the best way but still not really liking the arrangement. A vehicle parked here would be horribly conspicuous, true; but on the other hand they had only Reger's promise that the car would indeed come by twice a day until they rendezvoused with it.
If the others were worried, though, they didn't show it. "Which way?" Skyler asked as he tightened the straps of his pack and hunched his shoulders a couple of times to settle it.
"Through there," Lathe told him, pointing along a rock-strewn cut between two steep hills. "Singlefile, and keep an eye out for aircraft overhead."
They'd been hiking for just over an hour when a Security man stepped out of the undergrowth fifty meters ahead directly onto their path.
All six men froze into statues as Lathe, in the lead, flashed the appropriate hand signal back to them.
The Security man, Caine noted uneasily, was heavily armed, with both a holstered paral-dart pistol and a shoulder-slung laser assault rifle. Radio headphones peeked out from under his mountain cap, and infrared-enhancement goggles were slung around his neck.
Caine gnawed at his lip. The soldier wasn't looking their way at the moment—was, in fact, facing ninety degrees away from their line of approach. But balancing that was the fact that the terrain and sparse foliage near him precluded any kind of quiet approach. They'd have to take him out from where they stood.
But Lathe was making no move to draw either his slingshot or a shuriken—was making no move at all, in fact. "When are we going to take him?" he whispered to Skyler as the seconds crept by.
"Just relax," the other whispered back.
And to Caine's surprise, the soldier turned and walked casually away.
"What...?" he hissed, totally confused now.
"You weren't paying attention to his stance and equipment," Skyler explained as they started forward again. "Both were more appropriate to a sentry than to someone on bush-beating duty. Bernhard, what's out here that anyone might want Security protection for?"
"No idea," the other said with a puzzled frown. "Kanai?"
The other shook his head slowly. "Nothing I know of. Possibly a major intake to the city water supply?"
"That's right—you got a map of that network a few days ago, didn't you?" Skyler commented to Caine. "Maybe they still think we're out to sabotage the system."
"Doesn't matter," Lathe put in. "From his positioning I'd guess the center of the ring is a ways south, off to our left. We'll veer north and see if we can avoid any more contacts."
"Right," Caine said. He glanced at Skyler, caught the other's signal. "Bernhard, Kanai—do either of you know what those things were around the guard's neck? I've never seen goggles quite like those before."
Bernhard snorted and launched into a rather condescending explanation of infrared-enhancement equipment. Caine kept the whispered discussion going for several minutes longer as they continued on, plying both him and Kanai with more such naive questions. It was an annoying role to play, but as a diversionary tactic it succeeded remarkably well. By the time the conversation ended, Skyler had returned to the group as quietly as he'd left it, without either of the Denver blackcollars having noticed his absence.