“They’re just kids,” she whispered, suddenly horrified at all the firepower that was being brought to bear. “Dad, they’re just kids.”
“It’s not the time, Alix,” her father said.
“But they weren’t like—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish. Events were unfolding already. One thing cascading into the next, into the next.
Alix watched with her heart in her throat.
A couple of guys with a heavy iron battering ram dashed to the warehouse and pinned themselves at either side of the entrance doors. They waved hand signals to the rest of their team. There were soldiers at every door now, locking down the entrances.
At a signal from Lisa, the tear gas gunners stood back and aimed their weapons at the upper clerestory windows.
Oh, God, what have I done?
But it was too late to stop what was already in motion.
Tear gas and pepper canisters boomed from the guns. They arced toward the factory’s windows, trailing yellow smoke.
Shshshshshshshshshs…
They hit.
24
SSSSHSHSHSHSHSS…
Tank’s longboard shot across the ancient concrete of the factory floor, weaving easily past cracks where subsidence and age had broken the smooth, open space. The kid was fluid, Moses thought. Whenever that boy was on a skateboard, he looked perfectly self-possessed. Without doubt or fear. Just a perfectly tuned object, speeding toward his goal.
Even if he sometimes crashed.
Moses briefly envied Tank’s silent self-possession. The kid was like a hermetically sealed person. Whatever went on inside his head almost never came out as words. There was Tank, rolling around on his board. There was Tank, building his latest Rube Goldberg contraption, and that was all there was. The rest of him was silent depths so deep they might as well have been the Mariana Trench.
Tank never seemed impatient. Tank never seemed worried.
Moses checked his watch again. Alix was late, and he had no idea why. Right after they’d sent Alix off with Cyn and Adam, he’d been frustrated to discover that the Banks household had gone dark to their surveillance. Sometime while they’d been convincing Alix to go along with their plan, the place had fuzzed out, and now Kook couldn’t pull a single image, either inside, or outside the house.
“Either they put up new electronic countermeasures, or Alix disappearing made them do another sweep and Williams and Crowe found our bugs.”
“Which is it?”
“No way of knowing, unless you want to go over and ask.”
He didn’t. But after being almost godlike in his knowledge of what was happening, it was frustrating to suddenly be blind again.
Am I being too trusting?
Maybe Alix was just grounded, and they’d have to wait longer. Or maybe she’d lost the USB key. Or maybe… Moses grimaced. Why am I sweating it? Nobody else was sweating it. Just him.
How come I’m the only one who’s nervous?
He schooled himself to be still. Maybe they’re all pretending to be calm. Just like me.
He took another tour of the factory, trying to act relaxed. Kook was deep in another coding session. A sweet haze of marijuana smoke hung about her, and green cans of her latest energy drink were stacked around her in a tower that Tank had carefully built as she worked, with her so buried in her code that she hadn’t seen him doing it. A whole fortress of AdrenaPUMP.
“Anything from the Trojan horse yet?” Moses asked.
Kook gave him a sour look. “You asked me fifty times already. Go bother someone else. You’ll know if your girlfriend gets it online.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Go bullshit someone who will believe you,” Kook said, and went back to her coding.
Moses made a face and wandered back to the main factory floor.
Adam and Cynthia were kicking the hell out of a heavy bag. Taking turns practicing elbow strikes.
“Pivot!” Adam was saying. “You want your hips in it! Whole body, girl! Whole body.”
WHAM!
Cynthia hit again, and the bag swayed.
“Yeah! That’s what we’re looking for! Do it again!”
BAM!
Cynthia was hitting the hell out of it. They were both sweating. “Okay, now try your shin kicks,” Adam said.
For Adam, it had started out as a bit of a joke. He hadn’t really thought Cynthia would learn. Didn’t have the killer instinct, he said. She didn’t have the rage—
THWOCK.
Cynthia’s shin hit the bag and it swayed. “Good!” Adam said. “Give me a combo punch. One, two, hook! Good! Keep going!” Adam turned and ambled over to Moses. “Any word from our girl?”
Moses shook his head. “Nah.”
“She still seemed pretty pissed in the car.”
“We rattled her cage pretty hard.”
Kook gave a shout from her workstation. “Hey guys! Come here! You got to see this!”
They all ran for Kook. She was staring at one of her screens, her pierced eyebrows knitted with concentration. She expanded the security cam windows, filling up her monitors with surveillance views of the outside of the factory.
SWAT-type people were just outside. Tons of security goons, blocking all the entrances.
Moses swore.
“I do believe that’s Williams & Crowe,” Adam said mildly.
“I told you we couldn’t trust her,” Kook said.
Moses didn’t have a chance to retort. Tear gas boomed toward the factory, trailing yellow smoke.
Glass shattered.
More tear gas rounds followed, a rain of toxic smoke, pouring in.
Alix watched as the Williams & Crowe teams smashed the doors open. It took a couple of swings, but they tore the metal doors off their hinges. The doors fell inward, and tear gas billowed out. More smoke was pouring out from the broken windows above, yellow smoke that made Alix’s throat seize in silent empathy for Tank.
Security teams with gas masks charged through the doors, M-16s held ready.
It was like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer, Alix thought.
Dad seemed to sense her anxiety. “Williams & Crowe recruits from special forces for their security work. They’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t worried about them. Alix had a sudden sickening image in her mind of Cynthia lying in a pool of blood, shot dead by some armored guy with an M-16. Or Tank. And Moses? What about him?
A gun went off and then another.
Alix startled at the sound. Oh God, I didn’t want them dead! I wanted…
More smoke was pouring out of the building, billowing clouds of it.
“Is something on fire?” Alix asked.
Their driver turned on his radio. There was a lot of shouting coming over the channels.
Someone took over the channel—Lisa’s voice. “Hold fire! Hold fire!” Her voice was almost frantic. Alix listened, her throat tight with tension.
The driver shut off the radio again. “They’ll be cuffing them now,” he said, pointing to the doors. “They should be coming out right there.”
Dad glanced over. “Are you sure you want to see this?”
Alix wasn’t sure. “I—” she started, and broke off. “Is that normal?” she asked, pointing.
Massive billowing clouds were rising into the sunny sky. Not the yellow clouds of tear gas, but obscenely bright colors, white and red and blue gushing into a vast, towering plume of brilliantly stained smoke. Faster and faster, thicker and thicker.