NightShade Forensic FBI Files, page 60
“They have bombs,” Walter threw out. “He can bomb the entire area.”
“But does he?” Noah found his brain taking different paths, as even the conversations between the agents were enlightening to him. They looked at him oddly. “It’s true that both blasts killed people. But the shrapnel from the first one was bizarre.”
“We haven’t been able to find any of it to test it.” GJ’s weapon was lowered, aimed at the ground, as her brain was her primary concern right now. “Some of Will’s people went out to scour the grass, but it was gone.”
“The cuts were real,” Christina argued, as though to contradict GJ.
“True.” But GJ didn’t have an answer. She only shrugged.
“It seems,” Noah said, “and correct me if I'm wrong, but the blast gets you. You sustain whatever damage you get as it's going off. That’s yours. But afterwards, it’s over. All the evidence is gone.”
Christina twitched one eye as though he was being ridiculous.
But he shook his head at her. “The shrapnel is all gone. Even the piece Walter had in her arm. No one can find it.”
Next to him, Walter nodded in agreement. “The trees are still standing. There's no evidence. No cracks in the earth, the soil isn’t out of place. Hell, even the grass is barely bent. Two hours later and it's upright again! So far, Will has claimed to have found a ten-foot-radius scorch mark. And that’s it. A backpack of C-Four does more damage than that.”
Christina began nodding, finally understanding where he was going. “We don't know what else he can do, but we know about these bombs,” she filled in.
Wade, who’d stayed silent and listened through most of it, tossed out the most damning piece of information. “We don't even know if there is an Aegis. We just assumed that’s what it is. The bombs might be the extent of the weaponry.”
“Even though Dr. Marks stole the bones? And everything lines up?” Walter asked. She seemed to sincerely wonder.
Wade shrugged. “As far as I know, it’s a fairy tale. That doesn’t mean they don’t have it. But it also doesn’t mean that they do.”
There was no solving that one, Noah understood. Not until they saw it with their own eyes. Maybe not until everyone walked away… if they could.
Time for the other side of the coin. “What do we have?”
It was Wade who spoke up again. “We have the normies over there.” He grinned and pointed at Walter and GJ. “And we have me. We’re evenly matched. Wolf against wolf, human against human. Roughly the same as what they have.”
He was right, Noah thought. Their gear and weapons were similar, although honestly, Noah wasn't quite certain if anyone was like Walter Reed—or even GJ. Who knew?
“But Christina...” Wade said, pointing an almost accusing finger at her. “I don't think they have anything like Christina.”
Then his finger swung back to Noah. “And I've heard about you.”
Holy shit, Noah thought.
He didn’t fit in. He wasn’t a wolf or a psychic. Not a super soldier or a genius. And yet, somehow, he and Christina were the only weapons at NightShade’s disposal that weren't matched by the other side.
“Oh!” GJ cried out, an idea clearly forming. “Oh! I’ve got it!”
65
Christina stayed in close to her teammates. The last time, she'd had them spread out, but this time, huddling tight made more sense. They needed to be in one place to provide backup to each other.
Though she had her rifle on her, it was her handgun that stayed up and at the ready. The smaller gun simply didn't require as much space to operate as the rifle did. So she consciously relaxed her grip and let her eyes glaze, hoping to spot anomalies.
She didn’t find anything, so she pushed forward again.
They'd headed north, like the first time they’d come out. Actually, there was no evidence as to which direction the soldiers would strike from next. Maybe whoever was in charge was working their way around the compound counterclockwise, and the agents should have gone south.
But some of the troops would still be here guarding this line of the property, if only to keep the wolves in. She’d chosen this direction in part because they’d been up here before and knew the layout better than they did other areas surrounding the family compound.
In her hopes, Christina and her team would figure out what Aegis X was. Maybe it was a weapon. Maybe it was an idea or a plan. Maybe it actually was the ancient boogeyman that baby wolves were threatened with to keep them behaving.
She hoped Will’s team could take out Marks and Menon. But if her team found them, they’d be just as dead. She really wanted that news to be something GJ could hear about later as a report, and not anything she had to be involved in herself.
Christina held no illusions that this time, they might capture a soldier and get them to talk. That wasn’t even on the table now. Two separate, deadly blasts had made that clear.
To the west, a faction of Will’s wolves had the same executable orders as her team. As wolves, they were able to move fluidly and quietly through a landscape they knew better than the soldiers did. Her team did not have that advantage.
But the wolf team lacked the two weapons that Noah had pointed out, giving her team a different advantage—and these other soldiers probably had no idea what Christina and Noah could do.
At the front of her cluster of agents, she once again made her hand signal to pause and look around. They'd crossed the property line, and though the area appeared abandoned, she didn't believe that for a second. There were simply too many troops out here. Even if they'd been trying to space themselves apart, at least one of them would be close by.
Surely, they haven’t all cleared out. Christina began to believe that, with every step, she was getting farther and farther into enemy territory and that she would soon be—if not already—surrounded.
Still holding up her hand, she waited as five sets of eyes swept the area around them. Hand signals came back one by one.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
With a motion at her shoulder, she told the group to press forward.
She only made it about twenty feet farther than she’d thought they would before she caught sight of a small piece of equipment apparently abandoned near a tree.
With more silent hand signals, she alerted the others. As a group, they checked it out, but it appeared the machine was only some kind of detritus left behind by a group long gone. It was one of the small, no-light heaters she’d seen when they’d tracked Noah before.
The whole area looked as though it had been simply abandoned by whatever soldiers had once held this ground. Walter leaned over and picked the thing up, shook it as though checking for fuel, then shrugged and set it back down. Her broad arm gesture swept the area to say, “This is nothing.”
Exactly as they had planned.
Christina didn't hear it, but more sensed… something. Keeping her hand down at her side, she tapped each of the others, no longer making the big hand gestures that anyone that distance could probably decipher as the signals they were.
In her head, she counted down.
Three…
Two…
One…
But it took another five seconds for it to happen. It was not the sharp onslaught she was ready for, but a slow change in the landscape. She realized that suddenly, there was one face, one human form, to her right. And then another appeared in front of her. Slowly, soldiers materialized around her agents where they stood. Every one of the combatants was heavily armed with helmets, rifles, and tactical vests.
They meant business, she knew.
She also realized they probably weren’t wolves. For a wolf, all the gear would be too hard to get out of when they wanted to change form.
Maybe she’d just learned something, and the armies were split—humans in one faction, wolves in another. She pocketed that away, slowly swinging her gun from one face to another.
Working on the proposition that she had to look scared, she found one soldier to focus on. For whatever reason, this one grabbed her attention. But his face seemed mildly familiar, so she turned away from him and aimed at the man next to him. His plastic goggles warped the shape and color of his eyes while they protected him.
Christina breathed easily. She aimed center mass, and pulled the trigger, starting what she hoped was a war.
66
Noah’s head swiveled as Christina’s opening shot ripped the air with both sound and the vision of the soldier flying backward.
By the time he yelled in anger and stood back up, his hand clutching the front of his bulletproof vest to be sure that it worked, everything had gone to hell.
Noah only hoped it was a controlled hell.
He shot at the woman in front of him, hitting her square in the middle of her vest and sending her backward, too. But his satisfaction with his shot was short-lived as he was punched forward by a bullet to the back of his own vest. Peeling himself upward off the ground, he groaned at his aching ribs and caught just enough of the action to watch Walter stumble backwards and fall ass-first into the grass.
They were outnumbered, and four of the five of them were on the ground within the first minute. One of them pointed a rifle at Christina’s head.
“Call off your troops if you want them to live,” he ordered.
They’d quickly been cuffed and cleared of their weapons, and now they were marching off, destination unknown.
“Keep going.”
Noah heard the voice as he felt the tap at the back of his legs. Both were equally annoying. The rifle barrel was nudging at the back of his calves, encouraging him to move faster, as though that were possible with four other NightShade agents walking directly in front of him.
They trudged through the tall grass with their hands tied behind them. Moving forward, Noah kept a respectable pace, despite getting the backs of his legs repeatedly tapped.
At least this time, his captors had left him with his vest on. But why? He wondered. What was the difference this time?
He found out soon enough.
The discussions of their captors were relatively clear, even from just hearing the one side. “Bringing them in … five, sir.”
Though it was tempting to make a bid at escape, Noah held back.
Right now, they were merely walking, and they didn’t know what waited at the other end of this line. The five of them were in a tight cluster. It wasn’t the smartest move on his captors’ parts, but Noah wasn’t going to point that out to them.
Just a few minutes later, they came up to a group of enemy soldiers, and Noah had to fight to keep his jaw from falling open. There were so many of them right here. So close to where they'd been the last time the agents had done recon in the area.
“Maybe they weren't here before, maybe this was a new installment,” Wade whispered, seeming to see the look on his face.
Maybe, but it would have to be very, very new.
Though their communication systems had been removed with their weapons, no one seemed to be policing them too intently. They stepped close to each other as they shuffled from foot to foot so they could whisper for a moment. As long as they didn't make any quick moves, they were only nudged back into line.
“Sit, here.” The soldier motioned with the tip of his rifle, a move that always gave Noah a case of shudders. But the seat in the clearing offered a chance to gather some intel, even though he was tied.
Sitting on the ground wasn’t the easiest task with their hands behind their backs, but they all managed it. Even Walter, whose one leg—though impressively bionic—didn’t fold quite as well as the other was able to look relatively comfortable. Noah wondered if anyone had noticed she was part Terminator, but it seemed they’d missed the leg and, given the gloves she wore, no one had figured out that they didn't want a punch from that left hand.
They stayed sitting there for about thirty minutes. Soldiers ringed the small space, leaving no chance for escape. Apparently, decisions were being made while they sat and waited, and Noah became concerned about the plan.
He was beginning to get worried that the soldiers intended to execute them all. But it quickly became obvious that they were going in an entirely different direction.
“They're ransom,” one of the men in front of them said, gesturing back toward the group and not caring if the five agents heard what he said.
“The family will trade us to get them back.”
“What would they trade?” one of the women asked, as though a trade were the most horrifyingly stupid suggestion she’d ever heard. “They don’t have any of our people.”
She almost laughed the words, and Noah wondered if she knew his team alone had captured or killed a decent number of “her people” already.
“Are these idiots important enough that they'll give us some of their other people? They would be lower-quality stock anyway. It doesn’t work because we aren’t dumb enough to get caught.”
Oh, joy, Noah thought. There could be nothing good about a conversation that referred to him and his friends as stock.
“They'll barter,” the man said, as though confident of things he didn't understand.
Walter looked up then and managed to join in with the conversation. “We're not family. We're agents. They won't barter for us.”
Noah almost laughed that she didn't clarify agents of what, but her words changed the expressions on those standing in front of her.
“Who wants you back?”
One of them leaned over and looked at the group with fresh scrutiny.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigations.” Christina, on the other hand, had no trouble saying exactly who they worked for.
It didn’t have quite the impact she’d hoped for. Two of the workers just shrugged to each other and were immediately distracted as another came in, smacking them on the shoulders. “It doesn't matter who barters or for what. We're not doing the bartering. Our job is to bring them in.”
Noah saw Christina fight the quirk at the corner of her mouth, keeping her eyebrows drawn as though she were angry or maybe merely just cranky. At least they knew now what was going on.
The others dispersed, though a few soldiers were left forming a ring around the small dirt patch where they sat. One of them brought water, setting the five bottles in a neat ring at the center of their feet, where no one could reach them.
Then even that group disappeared until only one soldier was left, silently stalking a circle as he stood guard. His rifle tip aimed at the ground as he walked, his swagger showing he had more ammo than sense.
He made the full circle, then stopped.
Noah began to wonder if they could take him. They probably could.
But then the soldier turned his glare toward Christina.
67
Christina felt the rifle smack softly against the bottom of her shoes. The move was meant to indicate that she should pull her feet up.
She rolled her eyes and glared at the man who'd done it.
“Hey,” he gruffed back. “Out of my way.” He said this as he walked directly into the path where her legs stuck in front of her. He'd done it only to cause problems.
This was the part she hated, playing nice, playing victim. He tapped on her shoes again. Sarcastically, and with an additional glare, she pulled her feet back maybe six inches.
He walked around the space she’d vacated, his rifle swinging until he turned around and swung the barrel up and toward her. His eyes sighting down at her. But what Christina found odd was that the barrel was aimed all of six inches to the left of her hip. Jesus, is he a Stormtrooper? That had to be was the worst aim she'd ever seen.
Then he started talking, his voice harsh but low.
“Listen.” He moved the rifle a bit, changing his aim as though he were pointing with it. “I just wanted to let you know that Will has people embedded on this side, too.”
It took everything she had not to let her eyes pop wide and her mouth fall open as his words hit her. His tone was angry. His expression was focused and rude. Both were discordant with his words.
Is this a trap?
Surely everyone knew Will. It would be so easy to say that… This soldier might think he could get her and her people to spill secrets to use against them.
She glared at him in response, and in reply, he reiterated what he’d said. “We're taking you to someone higher up the chain. Just so you know, no one's going to hurt you for now.”
The “for now” part bothered her, as he seemed to be sharing information. Maybe it was a subtle threat. Maybe it was tacked onto a not-too-subtle lie.
It seemed he realized that she wasn’t quite ready to trust him or his ploy for allyship.
He knelt down, pushing up close to her face as though glaring at her. His rifle was now down at his side, and her fellow agents watched the odd conversation. Christina wondered if they were close enough to hear that his words didn't match his actions.
Reaching up with his free hand, he pulled down the goggles and let her see his eyes with no obstruction. The icy blue color was familiar. The black hair just sticking out from under the edge of his thick protective helmet also triggered a memory.
As she remembered that particular combination of coloring, he said, “We met outside a bar. At the edge of the back parking lot.”
The wolf in the woods, Christina thought. The one who'd barely answered her questions and then disappeared.
Somehow, he was here, now. With the Aegis team.
He walked a circle around them again as though monitoring the space for a surprise attack. Then he reached down and grabbed for the water bottles, giving each of his captives a moment to get a drink.
Just like before, his motions indicated he was angry or irritated that he even had this job. But when he cycled back to Christina, he said, “I was out monitoring the numbers coming into the area. My job was to join up with anyone on Marks’ team and relay information back to the compound.”
