Allie's War Season Four (202 page)

JON FELT THE slam to his light, pretty much at the same instant he felt Wreg reacting to the same. It made him dizzy, nearly made him black out as it whited-out his vision. He might have fallen entirely if he hadn’t already been sitting in the sand.

Most of the remaining members of their team stood and sat on the same stretch of dune as Jon, hunkered down past the furthest edges of the construct. By now, most were sitting directly on the sand like Jon, under organic structures that should hide their presence from any surveillance that might fly overhead, including satellites.

They all wore camouflage as well, but only a few of those stood outside the tents.

Jon was one of those. So was Wreg.

Still, they knew there was a good chance their presence would be picked up out here eventually, so the main goal was to hide their numbers, and to do their best to resemble a caravan of refugees in the event they were seen.

Since the Bedoin still lived in isolated pockets out here, refusing to settle in any one of the remaining Shadow cities or those independently-operated cities that still existed in this part of the world, their presence might not be seen as anything other than part of the landscape outside of the city walls. Given how their numbers were obscured by the organics, they certainly wouldn’t come across as any kind of threat.

Truthfully, even if their full numbers were known, they still probably wouldn’t be much of a threat, given the security measures protecting Dubai City.

Because of that same attempt at disguise, however, Jon wore a traditional robe and a turban, which had been surprisingly comfortable in the heat of the day, and still served multiple functions as the wind kicked up sand after dark.

Now he found himself struggling with the unfamiliar clothing, fumbling for his gun as he rose back to his feet. He saw Wreg touch his headset as he did. He followed the Chinese seer with his eyes as Wreg moved out from under the lean-to they’d been sharing, presumably to get a better signal.

“Adhipan.” Wreg growled the word as Jon followed him along the crest of the dune, turning his headset to the same channel. Jon heard Balidor’s voice right as he found the signal.

“I felt it,” Balidor confirmed.

“No shit,” Wreg snapped. “What the fuck
was
that?”

“The Sword,” Balidor said simply. “His light just spiked off the grid.”

“Where are they?” Jon said, cutting in.

“The Waterfront,” Balidor responded.

Wreg glanced at Jon, scowling.

Jon understood the meaning of the look. He’d studied the maps along with the rest of them. Revik was all the way across the city, almost in a diagonal line from where they were stationed now, at the northeast edge of the Dubai’s main wall. Even if they managed to get through the checkpoint at record speed, they were at least an hour out from where Revik was.

“Is Allie with him?” Jon said, turning his mind back to Balidor.

“Unknown,” Balidor said. “Her light hasn’t hit the construct. If she’s with him, she’s still operating under the radar. In theory, at least.”

“Or she’s incapacitated,” Wreg muttered.

“Or she’s incapacitated,” Balidor agreed.

“...And Menlim hacked his light,” Wreg added sourly.

“We all knew it was a possibility, my brother,” Balidor said carefully.

Even so, Jon felt the heaviness in the other’s words.

“What does Yumi think?” Jon said.

There was a silence. Then Balidor made a soft clicking sound through the transmitter, his voice turning even more grim.

“You don’t want to know what Yumi thinks,” was all he said.

“We can’t get to him?” Jon blurted.

He glanced behind him, noticing only at that very moment that others were listening to them, that they’d begun to gather around Wreg and Jon as they spoke to the Adhipan leader. Jon saw Loki there, and also Argo, Ille, Tenzi and Oli. Fear rippled off their light as they picked up impressions from the conversation, and likely read between the lines of their actual words.

Jon saw Kat standing there, too, a few yards away, her arms folded. He couldn’t help scowling at her a little, even though he felt the worry on her light.

“No,” Balidor said, after a lengthy-feeling pause. “No, my brothers, I’m afraid we can’t. Get to him, that is. No one is near enough.”

“So what the fuck are we supposed to do?” Wreg snapped. “Just stand here, holding our dicks, while Menlim takes them both out?”

The line fell silent.

In that silence, Jon felt seers consulting on the other end of the line. He also felt another sharper pulse of fear off Wreg’s light.

When Balidor came back, he didn’t try to reassure them that time, either. “I honestly don’t know, my brothers. All you can do now is what Nenzi asked, and wait.”

“Wait for what?” Wreg growled. “For Shadow’s troops to come collect us?”

Balidor clicked softly. Jon could almost see him shaking his head through the line.

“Wait to see if we need to enact the contingency,” Balidor said then. “The same one Nenzi told us to enact, if it looked like they wouldn’t be able to get out.”

Jon didn’t move. Neither did Wreg.

They both knew what Balidor meant.

The carrier was equipped with nuclear missiles.

The contingency Balidor referenced was the last-ditch one Revik gave them. The one where Revik told them to take out the entire city of Dubai, if it looked like Shadow was going to get him and Allie alive.

Jon fought to think past this as a possibility, realizing how little he’d let himself think about it at the time, meaning during those actual planning sessions. Now he felt paralyzed by Balidor’s words. He could only stand there, numb, staring blankly around at faces as the other seers continued to gather around him and Wreg, as if they were waiting to be told what to do.

Jon was still looking at nothing, when out of nowhere, something else clicked.

Then he was scanning faces for real.

When he couldn’t find the one he wanted, the frown returned to his face.

“Where the hell’s Chan?” he said, still looking for her dark red eyes and slanted cheekbones and black braids from among the seers standing on the back of that high dune.

Confused expressions crossed the nearest of those faces, presumably the ones who’d heard Jon say it. He watched others turn and look around at the seers standing next to them, as if they, too, were looking for those same distinctive features. But Jon never glimpsed Chandre’s dark skin and sculpted lips among them, nor did anyone else

“Chandre!” Jon said, louder.

When no one answered, Jon looked at Wreg, scowling.

“Where the fuck is she?” he said.

Seeing the blank look on Wreg’s face, Jon was about to direct his question to the rest of them a second time, when Loki pointedly cleared his throat.

Jon swiveled his gaze, his hands on his hips.

Loki’s complexion darkened, even as he made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. He glanced around at the seers staring at him and flushed more, gesturing again.

“He told me not to say anything,” he said, as if that explained it.

Looking at him, feeling his shoulders tighten where he stood, feeling Wreg’s light spark in understanding next to him... Jon found himself thinking that it probably did.

Explain it, that is.

CHANDRE CROUCHED AT the top of a pile of long, slatted crates.

She had not been there for very long in objective time, but in subjective time, it felt very long indeed. Even so, she found herself thinking that if she had gotten here any later, it would have been too late to effect any difference at all.

As it was, she might still be too late, given the circumstances.

She held her breath as she watched the dark-clothed seers filtering through the maze of tunnels and narrow aisles between the stacked wooden and metal containers. She watched them make their way silently through those passageways, holding her thoughts as still as her body, perhaps even more still, considering where she was.

The rifle never left her shoulder.

She used the infrared scope, which was shielded through the organic casing that generated a Barrier field in addition to the physical one. It allowed her to use the electronic components, even in here. Without those, she wouldn’t have been able to see the warehouse floor, at least not in sufficient detail for her purposes.

Her hands remained steady as she aimed the gun, but she pulled her eyes off that scope a few times to make sure she wasn’t missing any of the black-clad seers carrying automatic weapons as they stalked through those rows of crates.

Due to the magnification of the infrared lens, she alternated between the two, trying to use both perspectives to obtain an accurate count.

She couldn’t help but be impressed by the complete lack of footprint they left in the Barrier. Granted, she couldn’t use her own aleimi much, not down here, but she still would have thought she’d get a flicker of
something
from such a large group of seers, infiltrators or no.

That could be an effect of the construct, too, of course.

The boss had given her explicit instructions, but Chandre still couldn’t help feeling some relief––along with a ripple of near-fear––at how close things had gotten, in terms of her making it up to her perch before reinforcements had arrived.

Truthfully, once she’d seen her own people approaching the warehouse with that Rook, she’d had to work hard to get ahead of them. She’d managed it in part by utilizing a side door she’d found and managed to crack using a de-encryption tool Dante made for the job. The fact that it worked, that it got her inside minutes before the double doors rolled open on the other end, was the only reason she was still in play at all.

She still hadn’t had much time to reach a real vantage point before Terian led the Sword and Bridge through those rows of crates.

The boss gave her access to a mobile construct, providing an elaborate set of Barrier key codes to access the same in the event of emergencies. If she desperately needed the intelligence, she could have risked using that, but really, it was meant to be a last resort, and only if the boss and the Bridge needed immediate extraction.

Chandre had been deeply wary of using it before the emergency was certain.

She knew the boss wouldn’t thank her, if she did.

The Sword had more or less hammered that point into her while they’d discussed this ploy on the carrier, and then again on the ground outside that nightclub. Namely, that he didn’t want her sending up any alarms to Balidor or anyone else until she knew for sure that they didn’t have a shot at taking out Menlim. Having Chandre there as backup to his own attempt wouldn’t do any of them much good if she got taken out by the construct prior to the moment when he really needed her to pull the trigger.

It was a warning Chandre took seriously.

Now, watching the black-uniformed seers melt through the rows of boxes like liquid smoke, she tightened her hand on the gun, glancing at the group of her people standing clustered in the lit area between what looked like two rows of iron-barred cages.

Chandre saw the Bridge standing there, looking incongruous in high-heeled shoes and a form-fitting backless dress that scarcely covered her rear. She stood a few feet from the Sword, who, for the first time since they’d left that club in Deira, wasn’t actually touching her.