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Papa shook his head. “It’s only been a couple of days for Ak. I’d rather Quack stay here with her. She’ll be okay, but losing her brother and aunt the way she did was a shock. Rather not leave her alone. Lima, however, needs to be included on the recon team. We need his tech skills for this one.”

  “We can’t coddle her,” Roscoe said. “I mean, not to sound like an asshole here, but Ak’s going to have to be able to keep up with us.”

  Niner snickered as Pandora threw a half-cooked pancake at Roscoe from the pass-through window, hitting Roscoe in the side of the head with it. Upon contact it splattered pancake batter on him and the table before it started oozing down his face.

  “You might not have meant to sound like an asshole,” the feisty Chicago native scolded, “but you just did. She knows she has to deal with it. But dammit, they were exposed, her and Quack both. She just needs another day to decompress and settle in. We can afford it.”

  Roscoe peeled the pancake off the side of his face and stood to walk over to the window, where he dropped the remnants of it onto the counter.

  Roscoe jabbed his finger in her face, but she didn’t flinch, which Niner gave her all due credit for. “Okay, for starters, snowflake,” Roscoe ranted, “no offense, you ain’t exactly the best judge of this. Might I remind you of that, Little Miss Didn’t Know Korean.” Her face went red, but she didn’t interrupt him. “Secondly, that was farkin’ rude, and a waste of a perfectly good panca—”

  “And third,” Papa interrupted, “I’m the one who made the call here. If we didn’t have a secure safe house, yes, I’d be right there with you giving her the ‘suck it up, buttercup’ talk. But in this case, we have the luxury of being generous and giving her an extra day to deal with this.”

  Roscoe grabbed a napkin to wipe pancake batter off his face. “Okay, fine.”

  “Excuse me?” Papa said, arching an eyebrow at him.

  Roscoe scowled. “Yes, sir.”

  After shooting another glare at Roscoe, Pandora spoke up. “You mentioned something about sifting through information?”

  “Yeah,” Papa said. “Bubba’s sending me a huge file today of more stuff he decrypted from the church facility’s computers. We need another set of eyes going through it.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Anything we can use to tie Reverend Silo to all of this. Or anything that might be helpful proving that Macaletto is the mole in Arliss’ command chain and tying him to the church or their operation.”

  A wry smile quirked her lips. “So, in other words, you just want a miracle?”

  Papa smiled back. “I’ll take all of them that I can get at this point.” His smile faded. “Bubba is sending Arliss the information on the bodies we found at the clinic.”

  The most grisly discovery had been finding a locked refrigerated room with over twenty bodies stacked in it like cordwood. Each one secured in a body bag. ID tags on the body bags had corresponded to encoded personnel files in the recovered data. They’d documented their find with photos and video to send to General Arliss.

  According to the info Bubba had decrypted from the facility’s records, the victims were volunteers who hadn’t successfully completed their “training” for some reason or another. They’d all been euthanized with po-clo. Apparently, it was how they’d culled candidates all throughout the process who weren’t performing to the program’s expectations.

  Before the end of the program, one of the facility workers had been taking the bodies, one and two at a time, to a seedy mortuary just outside of Compton, where someone there accepted cash and asked no questions. The remaining bodies, according to the decrypted records, were slated for a mass cremation.

  Most of the people they’d found in the cooler had been euthanized within the seventy-two hours prior to the Drunk Monkeys destroying the facility. They’d been culled just before the final group of volunteers had been sent out to spread Kite through the country.

  All of them had been infected with Kite the virus.

  Had they waited another day to enter the facility, all the Kite samples in the on-site lab would have been cleared out and moved to other locations, and the remaining bodies would have been taken for incineration.

  Getting the police involved would have meant blowing their own cover. So they’d pulled the bodies out of the cooler and left them on the floor of the room adjacent to it while others had helped grab virus samples and equipment from the lab.

  Whoever had designed the facility had cleverly included a self-destruct feature, natural gas valves hidden all over the building that could be quickly opened and fill the entire building with explosive fumes.

  As if they thought they might have a reason to quickly destroy everything in the building, including the contents of the lab and cooler.

  Yankee and Oscar had sprinkled magnesium thermite powder over the bodies to make sure they were thoroughly incinerated in the blast and resulting fire, leaving no trace. It was a morbidly logical decision, one that hadn’t set well with any of them despite the necessity of the grisly task. Their overall mission had to come first.

  They had to keep the scientists safe and give them as much support as possible to do their jobs to find a vaccine.

  Niner pulled the discussion back to their latest chore. “When are we leaving for our recon?”

  “Lima’s getting his stuff ready now. After you all eat breakfast, I want you in civvie clothes and fully armed. Omega’s been working on maps of the riot areas. You should be okay because they’re to the west of downtown, but it would seem a few pockets of violence have broken out here and there, one near Downey. Stay frosty and avoid those areas if you can, unless you get eyes-on visual contact with Dr. Perkins. You find her, you’re to grab her, no matter what, and bring her in.”

  Roscoe was still wiping pancake batter off his face. “Witnesses?” Niner asked.

  “Unless they’re interfering, try to take evasive action. No need to call even more attention to ourselves. Keep collateral damage to a minimum, but don’t hesitate to use whatever force is necessary to complete your mission.”

  “Roger roger.”

  After Papa left them, and Roscoe and Niner were sitting there, finishing their breakfast, Roscoe leaned in and dropped his voice. “Why do I get the feeling something bad’s about to go down?”

  “You always get that feeling before a mission.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “I didn’t say that, but considering we’re the ‘bad’ in this case, I think it’s nothing to worry about.” Niner pointed at Roscoe’s ear. “You still got a little pancake there.”

  His partner wiped at his face, grumbling. “Goddamned Pandora.”

  “Hey, you shouldn’t have pissed her off.” Roscoe did not have good luck with women. They loved him, his handsome, caramel skin, brown eyes, and brown hair…up until the point he opened his damn mouth and started talking.

  “Tell me I was wrong!”

  “I didn’t say that,” Niner told him. “I just know enough not to piss off a redhead by talking smack about her friend.”

  Chapter Two

  It was nearly nine o’clock in the morning in Albuquerque. Reverend Hannibal Silo stood in his office and stared out over the Sandia Mountains to the east. Jerald Arbeid, his right-hand man, was already in the process of implementing a PR smear campaign against the Drunk Monkeys, to start spreading misinformation, rumors, and innuendos about the special ops unit. It had to be handled very carefully. Slowly. Gently. With far more than the usual amount of finesse required to pull off dirty tricks such as these.

  They would have to seduce the mainstream media into picking up the story that Silo wanted them to tell. That meant having to court bloggers and whackjobs first, start building the foundation of their PR campaign.

  Meanwhile, despite the loss of the Los Angeles facility, Silo hoped their plans would continue as scheduled. Unfortunately, despite careful monitoring, they’d still picked up no hints of new Kite infections in the areas where they�
��d sent the volunteers.

  Which was odd, to say the least.

  Not even their mole inside General Arliss’ office had heard any news. And he could access a wide variety of secret and classified information pertaining to Kite outbreaks.

  While Silo did his best not to express his frustration at Jerald, it was, frankly, pissing the reverend off.

  The whole point—especially now that the LA facility had been blown up and the experiment couldn’t be replicated—was to spread the Kite infection around to some of the most worthless of society, weeding them out sooner rather than later. Druggies, the homeless.

  If they’d gone through all that trouble, the expense, the risk, just to have the plan fizzle out, he would not be a happy holy man.

  In fact, he’d be decidedly unhappy.

  Very.

  While they couldn’t be sure, he suspected the damn Drunk Monkeys were behind his facility’s destruction, even though he couldn’t prove it. All they had were some inconclusive surveillance camera photos and video footage, and a partial hit in a facial recognition database.

  Far from hard, cold proof.

  And they didn’t dare raise too many waves with local law enforcement, who announced the fire was gang-related and let it go.

  They’d been sweating the fact that over a dozen bodies still remained in the cooler there, awaiting disposal, but, so far, no one had mentioned that little detail.

  Meaning someone had deliberately incinerated the clinic and made sure the bodies weren’t detectible.

  Again, Silo’s suspicion lay squarely on the highly skilled special ops military team, who were used to covering their tracks.

  The only thing that kept him from throwing a full-scale temper tantrum over this was that the Drunk Monkeys covering their tracks had saved his own ass in the process. At the very least, it had saved him a lot of aggravation trying to either deny knowledge of the facility’s operations, or trying point out all the details—which they of course had painstakingly created—that showed the clinic wasn’t actually affiliated with their church no matter what it looked like.

  In the future, he would be far more careful with their plans. Including using several more degrees of separation, and not trying to utilize subterfuge to make it look like an operation might possibly be affiliated with the church. He couldn’t afford the bad press, and he hated the extra stress and worry.

  He hoped that morning’s update from Jerald would finally include information on Kite infection pockets blossoming in the urban areas where their volunteers had been sent. That would soothe his troubled mind and raise his spirits immensely.

  Not to mention, active Kite pockets on US soil would make the news and make his church donations jump as people tried to get right with their maker.

  The knock on his office door made him flinch, even though he’d been expecting it. “Come.”

  He turned as Jerald slipped through his door and closed it behind him. “Good morning, Reverend.”

  “Well?”

  “I’ve sent the first round of communications out to our contacts to get the information campaign rolling.”

  “Cut the bullshit, son. You know what I want to hear.”

  Jerald cleared his throat. “No new reported Kite infections we can tie to our volunteers and their efforts.”

  Silo stared at him, trying to process what Jerald had just said. “Explanation?”

  Jerald shrugged. “I don’t have one, sir.”

  “Other than they failed.”

  “That would be highly unlikely, given how many we sent out. All the pilots reported the volunteers were safely delivered to their destinations. It is still early. It’s only been a few days. Sometimes it takes a week or more for symptoms to appear. And instructions to remain concealed and avoid detection by law enforcement were deeply embedded during the conditioning part of their training.”

  “I want you to contact our friends and have an outside contractor sent to the Los Angeles area.”

  Jerald frowned. “May I ask why, sir?”

  “Because we have reasonable certainty that the Drunk Monkeys are there, based on the evidence you showed me. If they are there, they probably have Quong and McInnis with them.”

  “But why, sir? I thought you wanted to continue the research with the staff we had at the LA facility. Yes, they’ll have to obtain new samples of Kite, but they can quickly replicate their efforts once the St. Louis stronghold’s lab is completed and fully functional.”

  “That can still continue. But if we have a chance to get our hands on two people from The List, even better. I’m sick and tired of waiting around. And what about my audience with President Kennedy?”

  “I’m working on that, sir. I’m waiting on a call back from her chief of staff. They’re understandably busy right now.”

  “I don’t care how busy she is. Remind her it would be unfortunate if her worldly troubles were expounded upon by personal crisis.” He waved his hand at Jerald. “Dismissed.”

  Jerald nodded and left him as Silo settled into his chair behind his desk.

  Silo had awoken in an unsettled mood that morning, one he usually didn’t have.

  He was used to instilling unsettlement in others, not feeling it himself.

  The Drunk Monkeys were more than just a thorn in his side. He suspected the men, loyal to General Arliss, would carry out their orders unless physically stopped.

  He knew Arliss would never recall them on his own without direct pressure from the president.

  This was one instance where he definitely did not admire Arliss for his sterling character. It meant he had no leverage against the man other than via the president.

  And if he tried to play that hand too often, it might likely backfire on him.

  Lord, give me courage, give me strength, but most of all, please give me the fucking lucky break I need to make this happen. Amen.

  Chapter Three

  Why the fark am I still in LA?

  Dolce Quinn stood bent over the fender of her beater, piece-of-shit Chevy and played with the ignition wires under the hood. She couldn’t afford anything better than the twenty-five-year-old Frankensteined solar-hybrid mess right now. It might be an antique, but it damn sure wasn’t a good one. Hell, it was as old as she was, and in far worse shape.

  She likely wouldn’t be able to afford much better than the piece of shit for the foreseeable future with the way things were going to hell in the world, either. And especially going to hell there in Los Angeles.

  The auto plant she’d worked at for over a year until six weeks ago had shut down. While she’d picked up the odd job here and there with her mechanical training from the military, what little money remained from the inheritance she’d received when her parents died, and from saving up her military pay while she was in the service, would run out in less than a year if she didn’t make a change. She didn’t want to dip into her savings for anything but the basics of staying alive, if she didn’t have to.

  Maybe it’s time to think about re-enlisting.

  It certainly wasn’t the first time the idea had crossed her mind.

  Then her thoughts turned to the riots she’d heard about on the radio, and the way shit was inexorably rolling downhill and gaining speed in the rest of the world, and she thought better of that idea.

  At least if she had to, she could pack her bags and bug out of the city, away from people in general. Head north, toward Canada. Take the 5 all the way through Washington state. Buy a tent and some other camping equipment and a fishing pole, and snag a little place near a lake or stream. Build herself a small cabin to keep her out of the snow in winter. Hell, she’d excelled in wilderness survival in the service. How much harder could it be than that?

  Then she could hunker down until the world decided how it was going to end.

  Los Angeles was doomed, there were no two ways about it. Between the increasing violence and rumors of the growing threat from Kite, anyone who stayed behind better be armed to the teeth.
Even the rich folks holed up in their fancy, protected compounds in the hills around the valley wouldn’t be able to keep themselves safe if large enough mobs attacked.

  Law enforcement? What a joke. They were desperately outnumbered. Increasingly, they were completely outgunned as well.

  Maybe I could get myself hired on as a bodyguard and maintenance tech for some rich person.

  She had the skills there. Her marksmanship scores in the service made her eligible for a sniper team, had she wanted to stay in.

  She had not. And that was a couple of months before TMFU hit.

  Her best friend from basic and mech school training, Karlee, who had opted to stay in for another tour, had been shipped out to Manila as support staff soon after China’s attack.

  Then, just before Christmas, Karlee had e-mailed her that they were sending her and some other mechanics to South Korea to help with the civilian evacuation logistics there.

  The last time she’d heard from Karlee was two weeks after New Year’s, reporting about the growing threat of Kite, and how scared she was.

  And then…nothing.

  When Dolce had gone to the library and sent an e-mail to Karlee via official military support a month ago, the system had almost immediately returned a code of 8210.

  Serviceman status unknown.

  Which was the bullshit way of saying they had no clue where Karlee was, but she likely wasn’t breathing, and they hadn’t officially classified her as dead…yet.

  Sitting there and reading the screen had filled Dolce with sadness. And more than a little anger. She’d begged Karlee not to reup, to leave with her. Come to LA and move in with her and Sarah.

  But Karlee had been sending her pay back to her mother and little brother outside of Boston, and didn’t want to leave them in the lurch.

  The only reason Dolce hadn’t left LA sooner was her own job, Sarah, and the random hope that maybe, just maybe, Karlee would contact her at their last known address.

  Goddammit.

  Dolce finally coaxed the recalcitrant vehicle into starting and running in solar mode. Fortunately, she wasn’t planning on going very far, just over to the Torquada district. The brewery there was still up and running, from what she’d heard. Maybe they needed people. There were some auto shops over there as well, and even some commercial fleet repair facilities for larger vehicles. One of them might need help.