Pop. Pop. They fell as surely as if I’d reached into their brain stems and flicked a switch on the nerve conduction.
Ghost bared his teeth at them, and I knew that if I hadn’t given him a stand-down sign he’d have made sure they never woke up. He was in a mood.
Wish to hell I was. My nerves were shot and when I’d raised the gun I was half-sure the shakes would have spoiled my aim. Yeah, it was that bad. I needed my edge. I needed the Killer back.
Even so, even without him, I bent low and ran, dropped one more guard at the front door, and then I was inside. In the belly of the beast. Ghost was with me, but he was drifting farther and farther from my side. I didn’t like the looks he was giving me, either.
Jesus Christ.
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
Chief Petty Officer Lydia Ruiz pulled into the ten-car parking lot, eased into a slot between a squatty little Fiat and a PT Cruiser with wood side panels and a roof rack for surfboards. She killed the engine and got out of the car. The motor tinkled slightly as it began to cool.
A warm breeze blew off the water and the sun was high in a clear blue sky. Out on the water a boat full of whale watchers was cruising north from San Diego, its hull painted a white so bright and pure that it hurt her eyes to look at it. Lydia took a few steps toward the entrance, then paused and turned back to her car. The passenger door was still closed. Bunny hadn’t moved at all.
Lydia went back to the car and came around to his side. Through the tinted glass she could see his face. Rigid, emotionless, blank. His sunglasses were tucked into the collar of his T-shirt, his blue eyes fixed on something that was not part of anything there in that moment. Seeing him like this twisted a knife in Lydia’s heart.
“¿Conejito—?” she called. Little bunny. A joke because he was so tall and muscular. Except now he seemed small, diminished by the comprehensive loss of confidence in who he was, and total lack of understanding of what he’d done. The intel about Project Stargate and all that mind control stuff did not seem to help Bunny. It had still been his finger on the trigger.
She opened the door and touched his cheek with the backs of her fingers. When she did that he always closed his eyes and leaned his face into her touch. It was a thing he’d always done and it never failed to ignite the love flame deep in her heart.
Except he didn’t do it now.
Instead he sat staring through the windshield glass as if it projected a movie he was commanded to watch. And Lydia was wise enough about combat trauma to recognize what was happening. The events on that gas dock had broken something inside Bunny. In his heart and maybe in his head.
Lydia knew that it could happen to any soldier no matter how they were hurt. The ones who were going to stay in the game knew how to manage their own scars, even use them. Doubt made you seek for truth. Fear made you cautious. They were pillars of wisdom and of survival. Except when they became the defining qualities of a person. That’s when a soldier became a kind of landmine that could kill himself or anyone around him. On the battlefield it created fatal hesitation. It soured judgment and clouded focus. It planted poisoned seeds in the heart from which ugly flowers grew.
“Come on, baby,” she said, pulling lightly on his arm.
He got out of the car and let her steer him to their house, but he did it like a robot. It chilled Lydia because it was like the man she loved had stepped out of his own body. She guided him to his favorite chair on their patio, opened a beer and set it on the table next to him, but Bunny didn’t look at it, didn’t take a sip. There were four old men playing bocce on the sand, and half a dozen surfers in black wetsuits sitting on their boards waiting for a wave. A line of pelicans rode on the wind out toward a fishing boat.
If Bunny saw any of it, he gave no sign.
Lydia sat next to him, her chair pulled close, her head resting against his shoulder. She didn’t even know he was crying until she felt a tear fall onto her head.
CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
The Mullah rose from his narrow bed and walked out of his house. His staff and the gathered senior officers all turned as he approached. Their conversation died off but their faces were alight with expectation.
“Is it time?” asked the warlord who had been a skeptic less than a month ago. There was no doubt left in his eyes.
The Mullah looked at each of them in turn.
“It is time,” he said.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
Bolton did not live small, I’ll give him that. This place must have cost twenty million. I couldn’t afford to mow the lawn. Made me wonder how much of it was bought with innocent blood.
The Scout glasses told me that there were no motion sensors on the ground floor or the big double staircase.
“Cowboy to Jester,” I said. “Ghost is coming for you. Follow him in.”
I used hand signs to order Ghost to run back exactly the way we’d come in. He vanished like a puff of white smoke. While I waited for him to return with Harry, I removed a few sensors from my kit and placed them on the downstairs windows and doors. They uplinked to a small drone and both boosted its signal and focused it on the house. Looking for a large electronic signature. So far, nothing, and that was not encouraging. What if I was wrong? What if that whole dream was nothing more than that?
Bad questions. Letting my mind ask them was like throwing gasoline on a fire. I heard a sound and turned to see Ghost moving along the line of hedges with Harry running bent over behind him. The kid was not a good runner. His stride was too short and he did not appear to pay any attention to the irregularities in the lawn. And it was his lawn. When he reached me he was out of breath, his face damp with perspiration.
“Rule one,” I told him. “Cardio.”
“Yeah, yeah, blow me,” he said, mopping sweat from his eyes. He looked around. “Dad really made a lot of changes to the place. Motion sensors, guards.” He crouched in front of the door. “You were right, these are new locks. He didn’t want me coming home and just waltzing in.”
I almost said, He didn’t want you coming home at all. Sooner or later it was going to catch up to Harry that the Closers were working for his dad. All of them. Including the ones who tried to kill Harry in Budapest. Maybe the kid already knew that and wasn’t letting himself think about it. Or maybe he had that truth locked in a closet in his mind.
I removed another of Hu’s doohickeys, peeled off the plastic tape to expose the adhesive, and gingerly attached it to the door. The little green light stayed green. But when I placed a second one on the frame the light turned red. An alarm, and a good one. No problem. I attached wires to the sensor and connected them to another of the signal rerouters, waited until the light turned green, and then let Harry pick the lock. The door clicked open. Easy as pie.
The inside of the house was all dark wood and expensive art, hardwood floors and rugs with complex patterns. Vases sat on little tables and a huge Bolton coat of arms hung over a stone fireplace that was bigger than my first apartment. There was a motto inscribed on the heraldry. Vi et Virtute.