Mason answered at once. “Yes.”
“There’s no going back, guys.” Ezra’s voice suddenly grew cold and deadly. “Let me make this totally clear: no one ever leaves Titanfort. You get me?”
Mason got him, and so did the others. A mission like the war against Occulta Manu was the highest level of classification. While they were on the team they would have access to the most highly classified information in the world. The only way to leave Titanfort was death. If you joined, you joined for life.
“So how does this work?” Zara said.
Ezra smiled. “Like I said, the entire building is ours. Three entrances. Palm print, eye scan and voice recognition to get in. You tell no one about what goes on in this place. We have residential quarters on several floors and a gym and a pool. We take personal fitness very seriously at Titanfort and we have annual medicals.”
“What if you fail?” Milo said. “I thought you said no one ever leaves?”
“You don’t fail your medical.”
“Got it.”
“Looks like you need to get yourself some treadmill time, Piglet,” Zara said, and squeezed Milo’s stomach.
“Hey! Get off.”
“She’s right,” Ezra said. “Lose twenty pounds.”
Zara burst into laughter. “Man, I love this place! Please, please, please can I be his personal trainer?”
“You cannot,” Ezra said. “We have people for that.” He turned to Milo. “Start in the morning. Floor 25.”
“Got it.”
“Say goodbye to those pastries, Chunk,” Zara said.
Milo sighed. “I’m really not that bad,” he said. He turned to Ezra, his face getting very serious. “Is there a drugs policy at Titanfort?”
“Of course. Drug tests every month.”
Milo turned to Zara and smirked. “Oh dear, a drugs test every month, you say Ezra?”
“Yes.”
“And is that another one of those tests that you can’t fail?”
“It is.”
Milo intensified his gaze at Zara and widened his smirk. “Thanks for clearing that up, Ezra.”
“You bastard,” she said.
A ripple of laughter went around the room, then Ezra raised his voice to regain their focus. “We have another more extensive training facility in Wyoming. It’s about ten times more secret than Area 51.”
Milo laughed.
“Why are you laughing?” Ezra said.
“The Area 51 thing, I was… nothing.”
“I’m not joking,” Ezra said flatly. “Our facility in Wyoming is called The Ranch. Less than five hundred people know about it and they’re all top level former military or intel. Now you know. If you want to work with me or not is up to you.”
Zara said, “If it means having a chance to get revenge on the people who killed Virgil, then I think we should do it. We owe it to him.”
Mason cleared his throat. “So what’s the next mission?”
Ezra turned on the laptop and a large picture filled the white screen at the end of the office.
They all stared at it for several seconds in awed silence. “That’s the next mission?” Mason said.
“Yes.”
Zara whistled loudly. “I do not believe what I’m seeing.”
Each of them was unable to move their eyes away from the image on the screen.
After a minute or so, Ezra spoke. “So,” he said, his voice cutting the stunned silence. “Are you in?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Ella said. She was holding a small bouquet of white lilies. Behind her the skyline of New York City rose like an old friend as she approached the coffin. Just a week after landing in New York and meeting with Ezra at Titanfort, and already it seemed like a dream.
“None of us can,” Mason said. “Virgil saved my life more times than I can remember.”
“I knew him for years,” Caleb said. “We played poker together whenever we had the chance. Attended tournaments together.”
Milo was silent. His hands were stuffed in his pockets and he turned his head down to the ground. His face was obscured by his floppy fringe, just the way he liked it. No one would see his grief today.
Mason watched now as Virgil Lehman’s family and friends filed out of the church and walked sullenly across the cemetery to say their final goodbyes. As the coffin was lowered into the earth, Zara spoke through gritted teeth. “He didn’t deserve this.”
No, he didn’t, Mason thought. “We risk our lives every day doing what we do. Virgil was the same. He cared more about other people than himself.”
Ella began to cry, and Mason squeezed her shoulders. “Are you all right, El?”
“I’m fine… at least I will be.”
“At least you’ve got Ben,” he said.
She nodded. “He’s on a mission in Russia at the moment. I miss him.”
A heavy man in a black suit walked over, beside him was a frail woman behind a black veil. She was clutching a handkerchief in her trembling hands.
“Jed,” Virgil’s father shook the Londoner’s hand firmly. “Thanks for coming.”
Mason gave a polite nod.
“I miss my son so much, Jed,” Virgil’s mother said, the mascara-stained tears tumbling down her cheeks. “And he’s only been gone a few days.”
Mason said nothing; there were no words.
John Lehman fixed a firm, dry eye on Mason. He was an ex-CIA man who had been around the block more than most. He knew the score and now he wanted it settled. “You know who did this to my boy, right?”
“We do,” Mason said at last.
Lehman worked hard to keep the rage in check. “You know what I’m going to say then.”
“You don’t need to say it, sir.”
Virgil’s father turned silently and waved at an old friend as he filed away into the crowd. When he turned to look at Mason his eyes were starting to fill with tears. “I didn’t think so.”
There was no talk of wasted life here. Everyone paying their respects today knew how much Virgil had packed into his young life. He’d written two doctorates, stopped terror attacks all over the US homeland, climbed mountains, explored shipwrecks, and skydived over tropical islands. Now, he had died bravely, thwarting the plans of a shadow network of villains who wanted only to destroy and harm anything in their way.
More than any of that, he’d married his high school sweetheart and had a beautiful daughter. It was the thought of that little girl growing up without a father than had pushed most here to inconsolable tears. Mason watched now as Virgil’s widow drifted out of the church, dressed in black and holding her baby in her arms. He clenched his teeth to maintain some degree of control until she had faded back into the crowd.
The Raiders joined the other mourners as they slowly filed away from the church.
“That was as tough as it gets,” Zara said.
Caleb had said nothing since they left the church. Now he was breaking open a fresh pack of robusto cigars and searching for a lighter. With the cigar clamped in his mouth he fired it up, blew a cloud of smoke into the air and said, “I’ll never forget you, Virgil.”
“None of us will,” Ella said quietly.
Mason’s reply was cut short by the sight of a long, black limousine pulling up outside the cemetery. Getting out of the car, Ezra Haven closed the door softly so not to draw any attention to himself, and then he casually leaned against the hood with his arms folded across his chest.
“He keeps his word,” Zara said. “I’ll give him that.”
Caleb allowed a gentle laugh. “I told you he would.”
Mason had never doubted it. He trusted Caleb with his life, and if his old friend told him Ezra was on the level, then he trusted him too. The only problem was that trusting someone was different for working for them. Ezra’s proposal would draw them into a very different world, a dangerous world. Mason glanced back at the mourners saying their final farewell to his old friend and fellow Raider for confirmation of just how dangerous.