Smokescreen (17 page)

“No.” Dalton wasn’t sure he could operate the computer by himself and get the most out of it. And there wasn’t anything in Special Agent Christie Chace’s background that he was afraid for Kirk to know.

They started searching, saving files that Kirk promised to copy over to a memory wafer for Dalton later. Dalton was surprised at how much the FBI agent had been in the media. On the other hand, after seeing how she’d handled herself during the warehouse firefight last night, he had expected it. She’d been a key player in several operations against international gang members and foreign corporate espionage.

“She’s Enhanced,” Kirk said when they came to a
Viewpoint
story about Chace’s joining the pilot FBI program for intensive immersion in the cybersystems. “That’s one thing I wish I’d been able to get while I was in the Navy. Of course, Command was only offering the systems to special ops guys serving on the front line, not to a guy wearing dolphins and working miles out.”

“Where it was safe, right?” Dalton asked wryly.

“Oh yeah. Couldn’t have been much safer.” Kirk unconsciously touched the burn scarring on his face. “You were a Ranger, Dalton? Didn’t they ever offer the Enhanced program to you?”

“I turned it down,” Dalton replied. “Most of my squad didn’t.” For a moment, with the liquor working
in him, the ghosts of those final days with the team haunted him. He held Mac again, his friend’s body riddled with bullets from a heavy-caliber machine gun, almost torn apart. “They died. All of them. Most of the rest of us that weren’t Enhanced got killed, too.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Kirk said. That had been one of the stories that Dalton hadn’t shared with the ex-Navy man.

“Have you talked to the military guys who are Enhanced?” Dalton asked.

“A few of them,” Kirk replied.

“Ever notice how they seem…different?”

“What do you mean?”

With the whiskey in him, loosening him up, Dalton couldn’t seem to stay quiet. Or maybe Grace’s accusation had hurt him more than he was willing to admit to himself.

“The guys who got Enhanced,” Dalton said, “didn’t think they could die or get hurt. Like they could stand there and the bullet would bounce off them, or like they could dodge out of the way of the ones with their name on them.”

Kirk hesitated. “I don’t know that I would say that was true.”

“You ever fought with guys who were Enhanced?”

“No. Never saw any hands-on engagement action.”

“Well,” Dalton said, “they are different. Not all the time. But sometimes when a firefight got at its worst and the squad needed to deliver the most, I’d see all the fear go out of them. Like someone had turned off a switch. During those times, our casualties ran high. They didn’t stop till they were dead.” He paused, remembering. “I’m not sure some of them stopped then.”

Memories washed over him, filled with visions of bursting artillery, shrill cries of wounded and dying men, the acrid stink of blood and gunpowder, the heat of mortars slamming the ground and the taste of dirt and smoke in the air.

“My team’s last op was like that,” Dalton said. “We were hard up against it and should have pulled back to our last position. Instead, my commanding officer ordered us to take the site.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah,” Dalton said bitterly. “For about five minutes. We had enough time to evac our dead and wounded. It took that long because we had so many dead.” He’d carried Mac’s body to the evac helicopter himself.

“Man,” Kirk said soberly, “that’s harsh.”

“I lost my best friend there.”

“That’s where you lost Mac?”

At that point, Dalton knew he’d been talking about Mac, and he knew Kirk had been listening. “Yeah.”

They stayed silent together, both of them struggling with their own demons and nightmares, but they continued to prowl the Internet for information about FBI Special Agent Christie Chace.

“She’s a hotdogger,” Kirk said when they both agreed they’d exhausted the information pipeline three hours later. “She likes the action. And she’s good at it.”

Dalton silently agreed. All the files in the FBI databases they’d ferreted out about the FBI agent had agreed on that score.

“But she’s a total babe,” Kirk added, unconsciously shifting through the file he’d created on Christie Chace and stopping at one of the photos of Chace walking the
perimeter of a terrorist bombing in downtown Washington, D.C.

Dalton looked at the digital image and remembered again how the woman had moved with superhuman speed, how coolly she’d acted under fire. Bruising had already spread across his chest despite the Kevlar vest he’d worn.

“You didn’t say where you’d met her,” Kirk said.

“In D.C.”

“I didn’t know you got up there much.”

“I don’t.”

Kirk shrugged. “You ask me, she’s a good reason to go back.”

“I’m a loner. And my job takes up a lot of my time.”

“Yeah.” Kirk gave Dalton a sidelong glance. “I can see that. How’s Michael?”

“Michael’s good.” A sudden stab of fear raced through Dalton. He heard Grace’s threat again—
And if you do anything, anything at all to jeopardize this situation I swear to God that you will never see Michael again.
He closed his eyes for a moment, centering himself. He couldn’t imagine not being able to be there for the boy, couldn’t imagine a time when he’d have to ask,
How’s Michael?

The computer pinged for attention, jarring Dalton out of his dark thoughts.

“Late arrival,” Kirk said, then called the media file into view.

The piece came with digital images, showing FBI Special Agent Christie Chace taking alleged Bronze Tiger Triad gang member Sammy Bao from the Hong Kong Noodle earlier that day. In one of the images, she held a shotgun to a man’s nose as Bao was placed in handcuffs.

“Damn,” Kirk said. “The woman’s got brass, you got to give her that.”

“Yeah, but if she goes around acting like that, she’s gonna get her head blown off.”

“I know. You don’t jack around with the Tigers unless you’ve already scheduled a trip to the crematorium.” Kirk gave Dalton a serious look. “Look, total babe or not, this could be one to stay away from, pal.”

“Yeah.” Dalton realized that the effects of the alcohol he’d consumed were diminishing and it was almost 4:00 a.m. If he left now, he could get a couple hours sleep before Michael got up and started his day.

He paid Kirk and thanked the man for his time, then headed up the street for his motorcycle. His thoughts raced inside his head. Somehow he had to make peace with Grace, and he had to pray that FBI Special Agent Christie Chace never found the trail that led to the lab compound.

But he knew that was a vain hope. From everything he’d seen in the media files, Chace was as intelligent and driven as she was quick.

“C
hristie.”

Startled, Christie looked up at her father as he rummaged through the refrigerator at the family home where she’d grown up. The Chace family lived in a residential area in Georgetown. She’d attended Georgetown University, always staying close to family although she’d traveled a lot for her job at the Bureau. There was no place like home.

At six feet four inches, Wallace Chace was a big man who had just turned sixty. He’d been a Washington, D.C. policeman for thirty-seven of those years, twenty-four of them spent in a patrol car, nine as a shift commander and the last four in Internal Affairs. After retiring two years ago, he continued working part-time in a civilian capacity with Internal Affairs, but his wife often suspected that it was just Wallace’s excuse for riding around in a patrol car from time to time.

“You gonna cut that onion or memorize it?” her father asked. His voice was gruff, but there was a twinkle in his hazel eyes.

Christie looked down at the onion on the cutting board in front of her. She even had a knife in her hand.

“I got the bratwurst coming off the grill in ten min
utes.” Wallace took a serving tray of deviled eggs and a large bowl of Caesar salad from the refrigerator. “It ain’t gonna be the same without onions.”

“Oh,” Christie teased. “You wouldn’t want to miss the chance at heartburn.”

“Nah. I got new medication from the doc. I’ll get through this just fine.”

Christie tuned into her Enhanced speed, looked at the onion for a moment, then chopped. The knife blade was a blur, moving with superhuman precision, and the onion turned into a heap of perfectly diced pieces.

“Done,” Christie announced.

Wallace shook his head. “I’m never gonna get used to that Enhanced stuff.”

Christie used the knife to scrape the diced onions into a serving dish and added tongs. Her father had been wary when she’d volunteered for the Enhanced pilot program, but he’d been wary when she’d applied for the Bureau as well. In both cases, once he’d seen she was committed, he’d stood solidly behind her. When she’d been recovering after the Enhanced surgeries, learning to walk all over again, he’d regularly dropped in for visits to check on her and bring homemade soups and stews her mother had prepared.

“The tech is all coming, Dad.” Christie reached into the open refrigerator for the salad dressing her mother had made fresh that morning. “You had your vision corrected when your eyes started to change. Mom had a little
work
done on her cheekbones and eyes when she went in to have her vision and hearing enhanced.”

Wallace put a finger to his lips. When he spoke, his voice was low. “We don’t talk about your mother’s
work.
”

“Everybody’s doing cosmetic surgery,” Christie pro
tested. “That’s one of the first enhancements people choose. As well as a phone implant. It’s no big deal.”

“Yeah, well
everybody
isn’t your mother. Around here, we just talk about her vision and hearing enhancements. If we talk about that at all. And maybe I’ve had my vision enhanced, but I can’t see bacteria at a hundred yards.”

“Neither can I.” Christie paused. “Ugh. And why would you want to?”

“I was just saying…”

“I know.”

Wallace looked at her.

Christie knew that look. He was concerned. She was his youngest daughter, and the only one that had chosen to follow his career in law enforcement.

“So what’s occupying your mind so much?”

Christie leaned a hip against the kitchen sink. Wallace took up position against the island. The kitchen had long been a place where business had been conducted in the Chace family. Milestones had been celebrated, plans had been firmed up, weddings had been arranged and bad news had been shared in that little room decorated with her mother’s collection of frontier cooking and baking utensils.

“You know about my team?” Christie asked.

“Of course I know. I just don’t ask.”

That was one of the unwritten rules they had between them. When Wallace had been a policeman, no one was allowed to question him about homicides or robberies or anything else that he worked on or around unless he brought it up first.

“It’s been tough,” Christie said.

“Losing people is always hard. God forbid it should ever get easy.”

“I know. This thing has gotten complicated.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Christie considered the offer. “I don’t want to wreck the family day.”

Wallace waved the worry away. “Your mom knows how we are. If you think I can help, I’d be glad to.”

Over the years, Christie had discovered her father was a great sounding board. He could listen for hours, then help her distill the main problems she faced each time, and helped her support her reasoning for the course of action she’d already chosen to pursue.

She started in, laying out the foundation for the story by telling her father about Arturo Gennady and how the scientist was getting blackmailed.

Christie was just getting into the details of the stakeout when the back door opened and her oldest sister, Pam, entered. Pam was dark-haired like their mother, and tended toward a full figure, which was made even more full by her current pregnancy.

“Ah, you two,” Pam said, shaking her head. She stuck her head out the door. “They’re doing cop talk, Mom. You were right.”

“The bratwurst?” Wallace asked.

“Burnt to a crisp,” Pam said. “Mom’s phoning for pizza now.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Wallace cautioned.

“They’re fine, Dad. Russell pulled them off the grill.” Pam took the eggs, salad and diced onions and headed back outside.

“And that would be our cue,” Wallace said. “We can talk while we eat.”

And they did, managing to hold down one end of the long family table amid the flower gardens that Chris
tie’s mom worked on year-round. They conversed in shorthand, the way they’d learned to do around the rest of the family, and tuned out the other conversations taking place around them.

As economical and concise as she could be, knowing her father could read reams between the lines, Christie finished up with her confrontation with Bao and the murder of the Katsumi Shan woman.

“No one knows who killed this woman?” Wallace asked when she finished.

“If they do, no one’s saying.”

Wallace pushed his empty plate away. “Bao figures this woman means something to you.”

“Why?”

“Because he mentioned her to you. Have you ever used her as a snitch?”

“No.”

“But she has a history of dealing information,” Wallace said.

Christie nodded. She’d talked to Washington, D.C. police detectives who had worked with Shan.

“Maybe Bao thinks she gave you information.”

“Why would he think that?”

“Because the Shan woman had dug into Bronze Tiger business and got noticed.”

“Why?”

“Because someone asked her to.”

“Who?”

“Your wild card. The mysterious commando with the sea-green eyes.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“You think there isn’t?”

Christie picked at her salad and thought about it. Her
dad was right. The connection was there. She just hadn’t seen it.

“Any further thoughts about your mysterious guy?” Wallace asked.

Aside from the little fantasy issues I’ve been having?
Christie thought. The way he’d moved and the way he’d looked, even with no face and only those incredible eyes, her mind had insisted on pushing the button on her libido. She flushed a little and hoped her dad didn’t notice.

“I told Fielding I thought he was protecting someone,” Christie said.

“Did Fielding buy into it?”

“Fielding’s not a theory-based guy. He likes dealing in facts. If I’m going to mention that, I have to prove it.”

“We know the guy wasn’t there to protect Gennady.”

“Because he gave me the Bronze Tigers.”

“Yeah. But why did he do that?”

Christie followed the chain of logic, realizing that she’d had it all along. “Because he’s trying to protect someone else.”

“Who?” Wallace waited patiently.

“Someone else the Bronze Tigers would go after.”

“What project was Gennady working on?”

“A radical redesign of an automatic targeting system that’s going to be layered into the spinal cord,” Christie said. “When it’s finished, special ops warriors are supposed to be able to leave the targeting to their onboard computers. It will ping an IFF—Identify Friend or Foe—signature off enemy troops faster than the human mind can recognize and shoot.”

Wallace sighed and crossed his arms. “What about civilians that happen to be in the area? They’re not going to ping the IFF signature either.”

“Civilians aren’t supposed to be in the battle zones.”

Wallace shook his head. “I know you can do amazing things with the Enhanced hardware you’ve received, Christie, but you can’t remove the human factor. We make value judgments. Machines—computer programs—don’t.”

“I don’t think the government is trying to turn out flesh-and-blood robots, Dad.”

“It’s starting to sound like it to me.” Wallace waved. “That’s a discussion for another time. Let’s look at your problem. The Bronze Tigers chose to kill Arturo Gennady and your team.”

“To send a message.”

“But they’d still want to do business, right?”

“They were sending a message to the FBI.”

“At the cost of losing their cyberwidget? C’mon, Christie, you can think straighter than that. They wouldn’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

“Meaning they wouldn’t kill Gennady without another way to get the programming.”

Wallace nodded. “So what other way did they have?”

“Gennady’s team.”

Shaking his head, Wallace said, “Too easy,” at the same time that Christie realized the same thing.

“The Tigers would know DARPA would be all over Gennady’s team,” Christie said.

“Are they?”

“Yes.” Christie thought about what her father was pushing her toward. “Gennady’s design was going to be handed off to another scientist. Dr. Grace Reynolds.”

“What does she do?”

“Gennady handled the hardware side of things. The design issues and programming. Dr. Reynolds is work
ing on the biological end of things—making sure the invasive surgery and hardware links to the human central nervous system without causing paralysis and other problems.”

“So everything Gennady knew or worked out—”

“Is going to be in Dr. Reynolds’s hands.” Christie felt elated. The answer had been there, but it was all conjecture, something that Fielding would demand proof of.

“If the Bronze Tigers killed Gennady to send a message,” Wallace said, “it wasn’t a message to the FBI. It was to someone else.”

“Grace Reynolds,” Christie said, smiling as the pieces fell together in her head. “They knew Gennady wouldn’t roll over, and they knew Gennady’s designs would be turned over to Dr. Reynolds. The message was for her.”

“How vulnerable is she?”

Christie had seen Grace Reynolds’s file when she’d been working with Arturo Gennady to set up the sting. Gennady had also talked about Dr. Reynolds, saying she was one of the brightest minds he’d ever encountered.

“She has a son,” Christie answered. “Ten years old. Dr. Gennady mentioned having met him. There’s a baseball field at the lab that the boy built with someone’s help.”

“Is there a father?”

“You figure him for No-Face?”

“That would be my first guess. A man alone in the warehouse, my immediate impression is that he was a guy working to protect his family. With the way you moved, I’ll bet he’s military.”

Christie closed her eyes, accessed the computer in the back of her skull and opened the files she had on Gennady. She found the information on Dr. Reynolds in a
subdirectory, then opened it as well. Digital and video images took shape in her mind. Dr. Reynolds’s personal data expanded automatically.

“Mackenzie Reynolds,” Christie said. “Captain. United States Army Rangers.”

Wallace smiled. “Well, there you go. Mystery solved.”

A pang twisted through Christie’s stomach.
The man who owns those eyes can’t be married. There can’t be a Mrs. Sea-Green Eyes.
Then she noticed another notation.

“Not Captain Reynolds,” Christie said. “He’s dead. Killed in action almost three years ago.”

Wallace thought for a moment. “Then it has to be someone close to him. Someone who has an interest in Dr. Reynolds and her son.”

“Let me run a correlation check.” Still with her eyes closed, she ran a search through Captain Reynolds’s past and Dr. Reynolds’s present. One name appeared on both lists: Master Sergeant Dalton Anthony Geller.

Using her FBI credentials, she pulled up a military ID image, front and profile. She didn’t recognize the face, but the eyes were a dead giveaway.

Opening her eyes and shutting down video access to her onboard computer, she grinned at her father.

“Well?” Wallace asked.

“I got him.”