Blades of Winter (39 page)

When I catch Winter, that bastard …

“Plus, I am
not
losing another Info Operator. I couldn’t send one if I wanted to, actually. This mission has such a high Estimated Violence Index that I’ve been ordered to manage our risk by only dispatching the absolute minimum number of assets. They also need to be Level 10 or lower.”

 … when I catch him, he’ll wish he’d never been born
.

Cyrus stops pacing and faces me, “You’re my only Level that has actually seen this man in the flesh. You’ve got more personal motivation to snatch him than anyone. Besides, you’re becoming a specialist in surviving impossible missions.”

I’ve got to get back there
.

“Scarlet, I can’t order you to do this.” He pauses, seemingly forever.

I grit my teeth so hard it feels like I could chew steel and crap Tiffany cuff links.

Finally he asks, “Do you want this Job Number?”

“Yes, sir!” My voice trembles not because I’m scared but because I’m trying not to shout. “That motherfucker will never know what hit him.”

The Front Desk raises one eyebrow. “We want that motherfucker
alive
, Scarlet.”

“Fine.” I roll my eyes. “But he still won’t know what hit him. When do I leave?”

I look good in a fascist uniform. Its lines make me look taller, and Trick would have loved to see me in these black boots. I’m the newest member of Gruppe 775 of a quasi-military program called The German Youth, or
Der Deutsche Jugend
.

My American accent is part of my cover story. I’m a German national who was raised in New York City. When I was fourteen, my family relocated to Munich, where I joined a Gruppe. My family has recently moved again, this time to Riyadh. I’ve transferred to Gruppe 775 just in time for this field trip to White Stone Research Institute.

The cover has to last only through today, and I’ve found that the fifty or so kids in my group have no trouble accepting me as a genuine German Youth as long as I’m pushy and obnoxious.

Der Jugend is to the Boy Scouts what grizzlies are to teddy bears. In addition to military training and political indoctrination, this institution gives German kids a head start on their arrogant sense of entitlement. One of the ways this happens is that The German Youth are allowed to visit almost any business, school, or government facility.

This includes microbiology research laboratories like White Stone Research, which it turns out is
not
owned by the late Kazim Nazari. It’s part of a science conglomerate called Research Associates, SA, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Eastern Innovations, AG, whose voting stock is held in trust by a consortium of private
investors, which is chaired by the CEO of General Equipment International, AG. Controlling interest in General Equipment is owned by none other than Badr Enterprises, which is not owned, held in trust, or controlled by anyone except Winter. When I saw this crap all mapped out on Bill Harbaugh’s whiteboard, it almost gave me vertigo.

White Stone was administered by Winter’s pal Kazim Nazari until ol’ Kazim got himself killed in Zurich last week. Domicles’s men inside the lab have tipped us off that Winter is running things himself now. They also let us know that they had just unpacked a pallet of boxes that were chock-full of briefcase-size doodads. The science teams have been working overtime getting these things ready. Domicles’s contacts also found out about a mandatory meeting for the entire research staff. All non-essential personnel have been given the rest of that day off.

That day is today. The meeting is at noon. Our thermobaric missile will arrive ten minutes later. It’s being launched from 800 miles away, and it travels at 550 miles per hour. That’s a flight time of 87 minutes, so Mr. Sub will launch his rocket hoagie at 10:43
A.M.
It’s 9
A.M.
now.

When I asked Cyrus why Winter would allow a bunch of kids to visit the day he unleashed the Darius Covenant, I got a one-word answer.

“Cover.”

Winter wants his involvement in the coming calamity to remain a secret. What better way to prove his innocence than having fifty ironclad alibis? Fifty know-it-all brats will see that White Stone Research was innocently building a better oil sponge. Not plotting the end of the world. No-ho, not us.

Der Jugend is providing a great way to get me into the lab, but they also pose a problem. The collateral damage at the lab will be bad enough without blowing away a
platoon of German kids. That would definitely bring significant repercussions from our ally across the Atlantic.

The Gruppe’s itinerary has them leaving the lab at 11:45
A.M.
to get back to Riyadh in time for an afternoon of insensitivity training. The attack is timed to miss the kids and hit Winter and his damned petron bombs. As this unfolds, everybody who’s anybody in Washington will be glued to a live feed from the White House Situation Room. What most of them won’t know is that I’ll be grabbing the main target out from under their long-distance blam-o-gram.

We ride to the lab in a big air-conditioned Mercedes tour bus. My skull pounds like a blacksmith at his anvil. I may have had too much to drink on the flight from Washington. The wheels of the bus jolt through a small crater in the road. I goose some Overkaine into my bloodstream and take a swig of water from my canteen as the bus continues to bounce across the desert. I look out the window and think about riding out here with Trick.
I still can’t believe he’s gone. Trick, I …

I blink a few times to hide that my eyes are wet and try to think about anything else. I discreetly recheck my gear. Li’l Bertha snoozes in her holster, hidden under the right side of my jacket. Next to my gun’s holster is a short-range signal jammer the size of a deck of cards. Under the left side of my jacket is my combat knife in its holster, plus a dangling grid of what look like half-inch-thick drink coasters. These are my grenades.

We couldn’t figure out how to hide regular pineapples in my outfit, so the Tech people made these flat, disk-shaped grenades for me. The way they line the inside of my jacket makes me feel like one of those shylocks who sell phony jewelry.
Hey, buddy, wanna buy a bomb?

Normally it would have taken over a week to get this Job Number set up and then a few days to get myself and another Level into Riyadh. The time taken to prep for this mission has been compressed from days into hours. Everything has been thrown together while all
the pieces were in motion. Money is absolutely no object, so I got to fly first class. Ohh, that was nice. I even got a free back rub in between the six or seven glasses of wine I drank.

The Vindicator took a different flight. When Cyrus told me who it was, I grinned and said, “Tell him to bring his Bitchgun.”

Now Raj follows my bus in a beat-up-looking produce truck. His forged papers say that he’s transporting food to the cafeteria at White Stone Research Institute. Once I’m inside, his truck will overheat and stall just outside the compound so he can be nearby in case I need help.

I comm to Raj, “Still there Rah-rah?”

“Still here, Shortcake.”

We’re on comm-silence, but that’s for the long-range network and the satellites. We can comm peer-to-peer as long as we’re not too far away from each other.

The plan is that I’ll sneak into the lab, spirit Winter out the back door, a helicopter will pick us up, and away we go. Then the lab gets blown into the next century. That’s the plan, but none of us maniacs who volunteered for this mission expect things to go exactly as planned. If Winter were that easy to snatch, my father would have captured him a long time ago.

My stomach is in knots, and my hands are shaking. I ball my hands into fists to hold them still and juice some Kalmers. I stop trembling, but the butterflies in my stomach still swoop around like Snoopy chasing the Red Baron. I close my eyes and try to think about something happy, and my mind lands on how much I liked going to the shooting range with Dad.

He looked so great in his firing stance: feet apart, shoulders relaxed, the weapon in his hands like an extension of his body. His confidence rubbed off on me and helped my concentration when it was my turn. We didn’t talk too much at the range. I knew it was serious grown-up time. Afterward he’d take me to Dairy Queen
for grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream, and we’d talk while we ate.

Jesus, I’m starting to cry again.
Are we there yet?

I turn my head toward the window so nobody can see my face. The desert slides past and stretches forward. I think about the meeting I had with Cyrus early yesterday morning. I was six minutes ahead of schedule, so I sat on the couch in his little waiting area and pulled an apple out of my backpack. I’d taken only two bites when Cyrus poked his head out of his office and waved me inside. I sat in his guest chair while he shut the door behind me. He sat down at his desk and didn’t waste any time. “Our colleagues in Central agree that Fredericks has been involved in crimes against the state.”

That’s a big one
, I thought.
They could put Fredericks in front of a firing squad
.

Cyrus leaned back and slowly passed his fingers through his hair. The relaxed movement of his hands contrasted with the intense expression on his face. He said, “We’re monitoring Fredericks’s commphone twenty-four hours a day. He’s boosted his encryption into the stratosphere, so we can’t tell what’s being said. But we can track when a call happens, especially when there are a lot of them.”

“Is Fredericks still in Washington?”

“Yes.” Cyrus nods. “As head of the SSC, he’s planning our response to the Darius Covenant. I heard that the cruise missile was his idea.”

“He has no idea that I’m going after Winter, right?”

“Right. We’ve initiated a new encryption code for your commphone, which should lock Fredericks out while Justice builds a case against him. He’s been passing your movements to the Blades or sending his Protectors after you.” They’ve decided that if Fredericks has a tap, it isn’t into ExOps. It’s into me.

Info feels that the only way he could have traced my location so often is to have monitored my No-Jack module through my commphone. This is certainly not how
these components are supposed to work, so Fredericks has found some kind of hack.

The rest of our meeting was about my mission to snatch Winter and how important it is for me to fit in with my Gruppe. Something that definitely won’t help me maintain my cover is crying on the bus. Part of being a German Youth is making all the other people cry.

I touch my cheek, but it’s already dry. That’s one advantage of working in this giant toaster oven of a country. The climate is so arid that teardrops evaporate before they even get to your chin. I turn back to face the front of the bus, smile to my seat mate, and remind myself—again—to
not
kill Winter.

We finally arrive at the lab. Since we’re The German Youth, we blow right by the security gate and guardhouse. The driver parks in the shade of an outbuilding. Gruppe 775 files off the bus and lines up in formation. If my day as a German Youth has taught me anything, it’s that lining up in formation is a big deal to these people. Of course, not all German kids join Der Jugend. Based on the few kids I’ve met, this organization doesn’t attract too many young German artists, musicians, writers, liberals, or intellectuals.

Our tour guide turns out to be Winter himself, Imad Badr. He wears a light tan suit and a dark brown tie. He welcomes us with open arms and effusive German. I stand near the back of the group and pull my hat low over my brow. This is a problem. I can’t exactly abduct someone while he gives a tour to a troop of rules-crazed German kids.

Winter leads us inside and jabbers away about what they supposedly do there. The overhead lighting throws his sharp features into high relief. This gives him a sinister appearance, but his manner with us is very warm and inviting.

Ol’ Imad has charm, I’ll give him that. He’s also got an intense way of looking at people as he talks to them. When one of the German kids in my group asks him a question, Badr looks him or her straight in the eye and delivers an intelligent, patient, and complete answer without any hint of condescension.

Our tour slithers past rows of small laboratories and
offices filled with earnest-looking scientists. Badr tells us the White Stone Research Institute’s founding goals are to explore ideas to minimize the environmental impact of oil spills, streamline the methods used in oil refineries, and find new uses for the by-products of the refining processes.

Ka-snore
.

We pass a large hallway, and Badr waves us past it. “This corridor leads to the main garage, our warehouse, and the barracks for my security personnel. Trucks, crates, and cots—nothing of interest to intelligent
Volk
like yourselves. Please follow me.”

I cast my peepers down the hall as we pass. At the far end, a set of double doors opens into the garage Trick and I discovered. The edge of the big glassed-in laboratory we scoped out peeks around the edge of the doorway.

I guess the secret doomsday lab isn’t on the tour
.

It’s 10:04 when our tour guide leads us into a lecture hall. We fill up the first three rows of seats. Winter sits in the front row, next to our Gruppe Leader.

A strapping twentysomething lab coat bounds onto the stage. The man exudes enthusiasm and raises my hopes for something interesting to listen to while I wait for my chance to snatch Winter. That hope is crushed like a Jack Fisher fastball as our speaker jauntily launches into an interminably detailed account of the sex life of bacteria. Short version: they don’t have one.