The Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Boxed Set, page 91
part #1 of Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Series
Ichi frowned, proving there actually was someone more obtuse than me.
I pulled a beer out for each of us and pointed the top of mine at Katy. “Not a thing. She likes old science fiction and horror stories. Logan’s Heroes or something.”
Katy rolled her eyes. “Damn! You are as wrong as Catholic daycare. Logan’s Run , babe. Hogan’s Heroes was a TV show.”
I shrugged. “TV was outlawed where I grew up.”
“Uh-huh. I’m waking Danny’s skinny ass up. Baby wants her sponge bath.”
Ichi glanced out the back door. “Is there more?”
I pushed past her. “Clothes and toys in the trunk. Want to help?”
We set the RC cars, cameras, and drones on the floor. Everything else went on the table in piles: jeans, shorts, undergarments, socks, shirts, T-shirts. Camouflage that would allow us to move anywhere below median income levels. I hooked a pair of cheap sunglasses on Ichi’s tank top, then tossed underwear into the washing machine .
When I returned to the kitchen, Pitsamai was pouring whipped eggs from a carton into a bowl Ichi had washed the night before. A smile, a soft shake of the hips. “It’s a beautiful day.”
Ichi stomped through, glaring at me.
I followed. “Excuse me.”
She was sitting on the bed, staring out a window. “You said you do not trust her.”
I pushed the door shut. “I trust you.”
“Then why the…?” Exaggerated hip sway.
“Manipulation? You do the same thing.”
“You never look at me.”
“I never thought…” I settled beside her and hugged her close. I couldn’t tell her this was exactly why you didn’t have relationships within the team, but she needed to hear that at some point. “I’m going for a drive. Want to come?”
She smiled.
Chan was still sleeping as we slipped out.
We shot southwest on 186, staying on the Mexican side of the border, then turning southeast once we were past the American soil. Ichi looked glorious in her tank top and shorts, the cheap sunglasses pressed tight against her eyes. I looked…less glorious, more like a day laborer on a lunch break. The roads improved as we entered San Luis Rio Colorado, widening, with clearer markings and a better surface. The cars were newer, better cared for. Modern suburban developments whipped past. The air took on more of the odor of a developed area—gas fumes, that staleness of close-packed houses and people.
Ichi had her window down, one arm braced on the door. “Where is this going?”
“The drive?”
She shot me a tense look that said she wasn’t ready for the other discussion.
“I’m checking out our possible routes. We can’t afford to encounter a bunch of surprises. What Katy does is like magic to me. We’ll be fine if everything stays as expected. ”
She seemed caught up in the road names, the houses. “When will we go?”
“Tonight.”
That surprised her. “Is that enough time to prepare?”
“It’s going to have to be. I discovered a new wrinkle. Another group moving in.”
“Besides EEC and LoDu?”
“Yeah. Those headbands? Those are an intelligence leak. They transmit the recorded data, and not to the good guys.”
She nodded slowly. It wasn’t the protest I’d expected over our romp in Omaha possibly being out in the wild. “We will have the dune buggy?”
“In a few hours, yeah.”
She relaxed. “Good. I am ready.”
A dark SUV approached us, big, speeding out of the desert, tinted windows. I tapped her thigh. “Don’t gawk at it, but do you see the SUV?”
Her head moved just enough to keep the vehicle in her peripheral vision. “Trouble?”
It sped past, engine roaring. I could see through the tinting with my IR vision: a man and a woman, both scanning their surroundings. Autopiloted. The two of them searching for anything out of the ordinary.
I turned off at the last road before the open desert and followed it southwest. “They’re patrolling. All the way out here.”
“Do they know about the house?”
I pulled into the driveway of a house—empty as far as I could tell, the occupants out living normal lives. I thought back to our arrival in Los Algodones. I’d never seen an SUV like the patrol vehicle up there. “I don’t think they go that far north.”
Ichi rolled her window up. “Do we act now?”
“I don’t think so. We’d lose the advantage of nighttime, and we won’t have the buggy for a little bit. We’re still safe. But we can’t go cruising around if they’re patrolling.”
“A problem?”
“Something we’ll just have to deal with. Those helicopters came from the west. Maybe they have a second base of operations out here. ”
I caught movement in my rearview mirror: a tractor-trailer heading down the road behind us.
“Vegetales felices,” I mumbled.
“What?” She watched the truck until it was out of sight.
“Happy vegetables. I think.” I put the vehicle into reverse and got back onto the road. “You remember seeing a lot of farms?”
“Some. Not many.”
“Yeah.”
The road forked, to the right heading deeper into the suburbs in a serpentine, straight ahead continuing into the desert. The semi was speeding straight. In the distance, orderly rows of green sprouted from dark soil.
“Farms.” Not huge ones, but big enough. I accelerated.
“Why do we care about vegetables?”
“They’re good for you.” When I saw her lips twist up, I felt stupid. “The name. The Agency used to run shell companies in Asia: Happy This, Happy That. It was always ironic. You ship nerve gas through Happy Transportation, nuclear waste through Happy Teeth. Some people just had a sick sense of humor.”
The truck slowed far ahead, coming to a stop outside a rolling gate. Two people ran out, unlocked the gate, and pushed it aside. I didn’t slow. I didn’t need to with my cybernetic eyes.
IR, UV, visible range, high-magnification: I recorded even what I didn’t have time to process.
My heart raced, but no one pursued us.
I held my hand out to Ichi. “The data device.”
She thumbed it unlocked and handed it to me. “What is it?”
“Just a minute.” I transferred the video and stills, then swung back north until we were on the edge of the housing area. There was activity in most of the yards—kids in the street, women or men puttering around. When I saw another house that didn’t have any obvious signs of activity, I pulled in.
Ichi touched my brow. “You are breathing hard and sweating.”
“Yeah. Sorry. It’s you, I swear. ”
She punched me.
I flipped through the images I’d captured, stopping, speeding up, digging out stills. She pressed against my arm, watching. I should’ve been distracted, but what I’d seen…what I thought I’d seen…
I stopped, played the recording back. Played it forward. “Shit.”
“What is it? It looks like a warehouse.”
“Yeah.”
I drilled down to the sign hanging from the front of the building: Vegetales Felices . More signage declared Propiedad de Vegetales Felices , Property of Happy Vegetables.
My fingers shook as I flipped to the next stills.
Another of the trucks, backed up to the loading area. Huge aluminum doors already rolled up. A darkened interior.
In UV, crates, machinery. People unloading.
Back to visible. The two people at the gate. A man and woman. Tall. Pale.
I drilled down. Her with blue eyes and blond hair. Not so common in Mexico.
Ichi squeezed my arm. “EEC?”
“Has to be.” I tracked through a panoramic shot, drilling in on details, studying them, trying to tease out more just from wanting it.
And then I froze.
On the loading dock. In the shadows. A lone man. The perfectly styled hair. Bicep raised to wipe sweat from his face. But half the face was still visible.
Stovall.
In place.
Ready to strike.
Our time was up.
Chapter 28
“It’s not personal.” That was my fourth time saying it. I’d kept count since calling the team together for our strategy session.
No one was buying it. It was in their eyes.
Ichi was leaning against the door with arms crossed.
Pitsamai sat at the table, brows arched.
Beside her, Chan staring at the computing device display; no clue there.
Danny sat on the countertop, making a point to look away.
And at the end of the table opposite Chan, Katy sat stiffly, her eyes tracking me as I paced across the kitchen to the plate-piled sink. Bacon grease in a pan, bits of egg, breadcrumbs.
They were like a jury. Watching. The sunlight came in through the kitchen window—blinding hot. All that was missing was a good cop, bad cop routine.
When I finished filling a glass with water, I turned back to them.
Katy said, “Yeah, maybe no one else is gonna call bullshit on you, but I am. You two always had a hard-on for each other. The world would be a better place if you two’d just gone ahead and had a big hate fuck. I’d’ve watched. ”
“That’s helpful. Thank you.” The water was cold and sweet, but it couldn’t drive the heat from the room.
Am I making this personal?
Of course I was. My best friend had died because of Stovall. I’d been torn apart because of him, half of me turned into a machine.
I finished the water, set the glass in the sink. There was a soft clatter as everything shifted. “Imagine for a second it is personal—but it isn’t. We have proof another team is in position now. Proof . And it’s a big team. We saw at least as many people as we have. And what do you do when you count resources in an environment like that? Danny?”
“Double what you see.” Monotone. Danny shook his head. “Conservatively. You, uh, you said you think Stovall’s got more assets available across the border?”
“I’m betting at least two helicopters for extract. American contractors. Probably a third after what they had happen in Bogotá. Hell, I’m beginning to think four.”
Danny brushed his hair back. “It’s too big.”
“It’s not. We have advantages.” I looked around at all of them. “Over both of them.”
“Like what?”
“We know where they are; they don’t know where we are. We can be agile. That’s the advantage of being small.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “That’s Stovall talking, Stefan.”
“No. It’s Norimitsu. It’s years in the field. Unless we want to start a war, we don’t need a huge force. We use our resources and our smarts. Chan? We can do this, right?”
The Gridhound’s eyes came up: dull, distant. “I can’t get into their systems.”
“Sure.” I paced around, caught a look at Chan’s display before it went dark: a terminal into another system—the other computing device, Chan’s Synchronicity project. A little, chubby-faced boy with black hair and a soft pout moped across a large, well-manicured lawn. Short pants, a dress shirt, and bow tie. Long, delicate fingers. Trees bordered a rose garden. A slender woman in a chair set in front of a patio table in front of a pool, frowning, watching the boy and not watching him. To her left, a man who could have been her twin. Smiling. Leering. Behind them, a stern-faced man glared. At the boy. At me. The outer edge of the image was blurry, like people imagined a dream. Dozens of thumbnails all around the screen had the same sort of blurry appearance, all with progress bars.
I tried to see the little boy with tattoos. Longer hair. Magenta eyes. Some work on the nose.
It’s a summer night. I ache from a long day in the field, hating the way my skin has tanned so darkly, knowing the grief I’ll catch going back to school in a couple weeks.
Mendoza.
The Mexican kid who refuses to speak Spanish. The kid who chooses to hang out on his own. Whose cousins can’t even associate with him because his mom married the drunk wetback laborer.
And the way that man glares at me when I tell him my shoulder hurts and ask if I can call it a day.
Words aren’t the old man’s strong suit, and he’s already had a six-pack by then. It quickly escalates.
“You’re weak. You’re spoiled. You don’t want to put in the hard work. When I was your age…”
And I say something I can’t take back, something I know I shouldn’t have said.
That’s when I find out just how much bigger and tougher the old bastard is.
But I don’t back down. Won’t back down. Ever.
And only Mom saves me. Screaming. Crying. Taking a couple punches meant for me. Hiding from the family for the next month.
Some kids never had a chance.
I patted Chan on the back. “I’ll get you into their network. They’re still unloading stuff. It gets dark, I’ll go in, slip in a device. Just like we planned for the compound. We’ve got some spare data devices.”
Chan smiled—crooked. “Yeah.”
I turned to Katy and Pitsamai, then said, “We leak their data. Get their personal Grid chatting out in the open. SunCorps gets a whiff, they send in their team, threat eliminated. And while that’s going on, we’re hitting the compound.”
Katy rolled her eyes. “Just like that? You talking about tonight?”
“Has to be. Stovall’s not going to waste time.”
“Uh-huh. Did you drive the route? ’Cause you weren’t gone but an hour.”
“SunCorps has patrols. They would’ve spotted us if we drove it more than once.”
“That’s a no, right? Sure sounds like a no to me. And if it is a no, that means you’re going to try driving around out there in the dark without knowing every last detail. That’s how people end up dead, baby.”
“So we don’t drive back.”
“What? You just let ’em blow your ass away inside the compound?”
“I’ve got a plan.”
“Mm-hm.” Katy glared at Danny. “Glad it ain’t personal.”
I turned to Pitsamai and Ichi. “They’ll be doing recon soon. They’ll have a drone, something high-end. Maybe that’s run by a remote Agency team, but I doubt it. I’m thinking they have to keep their footprint small or risk pissing off the people in the Agency supporting SunCorps. Plus, I’d imagine EEC wants to do this on their own as much as possible. When they move out for recon, I go into that warehouse. I drop Chan’s device off, then we head out to the compound. SunCorps gets the location of the EEC team, takes it out. While that engagement’s going on, we insert, pull off the extract, and leave.”
I turned back to Danny and Katy. “You two get Chan across the border to Yuma. Drive on through to Tempe if you think it’s necessary. Hide out in a public place if you think someone’s following you. There’s a shopping center that’s open around the clock.”
Danny seemed to finally break under Katy’s glare. “You mind sharing this new extract plan?”
“Chan, you want to tell them what we talked about?”
Chan blinked. Slow. Confused. “The car?”
“Yeah.”
Shifting. Anxious. “There’s an air car. Up in Phoenix. ”
Danny groaned. “Those things are even more fragile than helicopters!”
I held up a hand. “Wait a second, okay?”
That fragile smile spread across Chan’s black-painted lips. “This one’s a sports car. Lightweight. Fast. Maneuverable. Limited range. Good enough to get from the compound to Yuma.”
“We’ll probably be there before you,” I said. “Once we get the team extracted, the air car comes in, we get out.”
Danny’s cheek twitched. “Limited range? How limited?”
“A few hundred miles.”
“And it’s in Phoenix?”
Chan shrugged. “Was. It left a few minutes ago. It’ll be in Yuma in…” A swipe, and the display came back to life. The blurry image was a thumbnail with a progress bar—deleting. Chan cycled through windows, stopping at a video showing highway, desert. “About ninety minutes.”
Danny snorted. “That’s low profile. No chance cops are going to get wind of a stolen vehicle, I guess. What’s that thing worth?”
I waved him down. “We hired a storage unit. Someone’s going to charge it up when it lands. Chan already suppressed all the alarms coming off of it. We’ll be out of Arizona before anyone finds it. It’s the least of our worries.”
Danny grunted. Defeated. “You keep telling yourself it’s not personal. Only you can be honest with you.”
“I’m being honest. I’m not here to kill Stovall. This is about the money. Retiring. We served for years, Danny, and they rewrote the rules on us. They screwed us over. You want to let them win? I don’t.”
“Maybe we just find a different way.”
“There isn’t a different way, and you know it. They owe us, and I’m not walking away from this.”
Danny’s lips compressed. “I know. Not your strong suit.”
The afternoon was filled with preparations: strapping gear to the buggy frame, getting a truck we could use to haul the buggy out to the edge of the desert for us, checking weapons and chameleon suits, checking them again. I paid a premium for a scuba tank and splitter feeds, checked that it would handle eight regulators simultaneously.
It was fast-paced, sweaty work that required attention and precision. It frazzled nerves and left me questioning every decision.
I ate dinner with Ichi and Pitsamai, going over the plan between bites of tortillas and gravy. I reviewed the plan again while cleaning up. We checked our chameleon suits one last time, tied them off at the waist, pulled our cheap shorts on over them, then watched the last of the sunlight fade from the kitchen window.
We headed out to the neighborhood, searching for an empty house. Windows glowed with the light of entertainment center displays. Kids shouted at each other as they rode their bikes home.
