25. Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
Day 10 Denali, Alaska
Frustration seethed so thickly inside Aiden, he felt like he was drowning. With a low growl, he threw himself into the chair next to Rawls. This meeting was in the same room Wolf had led him to three days earlier. He was even sitting in the same damn chair, which felt a little too déjà vu for his liking after the complete blindside Benioko had pulled on him earlier.
If he’d trusted WARCOM, if he was certain they weren’t behind this clusterfuck surrounding him, he’d have left Shadow Mountain on the spot and returned to his old command. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option, not until he knew for sure who was behind that damn bot weapon, and the testing on his teammates.
In the meantime, Shadow Mountain had all the tools he needed. He just had to man up and ignore the old shaman’s attempts to bully him into joining the tribal cult.
The chairs circling the enormous table were filling up fast. A white noise kind of murmur filled the space thanks to the dozens of conversations taking place between the hard-faced men loitering around the room. Most of the dialogue sounded foreign. Kalikoia, he’d bet.
His gaze landed on the coffee table and froze. Christ, he could use a cup of that steaming pick-me-up. But the string of men waiting to grab and fill their cups dissuaded him. He’d wait until the line waned and hope the pump pot still had some servings left.
The decision just kicked up the frustration.
Rawls swung his chair around until it faced Aiden and did an exaggerated double take. “From that black cloud smothering your ugly mug, I’m guessin’ the interrogations ain’t goin’ well?”
Aiden shot his buddy a seething glare and faced forward again. He should have paid more attention to where he’d sat. The last thing he needed was Rawls’s inability to keep his pie hole shut.
Unfortunately, the southern asshole had good instincts. Those two fucking clowns he’d gone to the trouble to fly up to Denali knew nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Goddammit.
A frown knit Rawls’s sandy eyebrows. “Seriously? You got nothin’ from them? Shadow Mountain has some of the best shit available to force hostiles to sing and dance.”
“Even the best shit on the market can’t make someone talk if they don’t know jack shit.” Aiden tried to keep the snarl at a minimum. It wasn’t Rawlings’s fault Demi’s attackers had turned out to be disappointments.
The only contact number they’d revealed was already disconnected. According to Shadow Mountain intel, their bank accounts had vanished, leaving no transfer or deposit information to track down who’d paid them. Hell, the morons didn’t know who hired them. Their rambling answers to all his questions had led to nothing.
“Shit, bro,” Rawls said, sympathy slowing his drawl to a crawl. “That’s fucked. Your luck’s all upside down, ain’t it?”
Aiden scowled back. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was it some subtle dig about Demi? Did everyone know he was on tap for a Dear Aiden letter?
“Rumor has it you got a bounty on your pretty head.” A wicked gleam lit Rawls’s blue eyes. “Two million, they say.” A smirk joined the gleam. “Have to admit, I’m disappointed in you, son. You’re slippin’. The bounty on my noggin’s five mil.”
Ah …
Aiden relaxed. This wasn’t about Demi. This was Rawls’s batshit crazy competitiveness coming out. The dude liked to bet on the most bizarre shit.
Aiden scoffed. “ Was on your head. You boys killed everyone who had a stake in liquidating you. And that five spot was for the whole lot of you, which means I’m worth double what you were in your prime.”
Rawls reeled back, like he’d been mortally injured, only to lean forward again and peer around Aiden. “You hear that, Zane? This ass here thinks we’re past our prime.”
“Not Zane,” Aiden drawled, filling his tone with mockery. “Just you.”
Zane shook his head, then lifted his eyes to the ceiling in a lord help me gesture. “Rawls been running his mouth again, has he?”
“Now that’s just hurtful.” Rawls plastered a wounded look on his face.
After another long-suffering look at the ceiling, Zane turned to Aiden. “Cos says you got hold of Devlin Russo?”
Aiden simply nodded. Dev was the only person in a leadership role at HQ1 that he trusted. Plus, a recent promotion to commander of ST4 had given him the contacts and authority to find out what Aiden needed to know.
“He come through for you?” Zane asked, raising his voice.
The dozens of conversations had edged into a rumble, although none of the warriors surrounding them appeared to be paying the SEALS in their midst any mind.
Aiden shrugged. “Still a lot of shit he doesn’t know. But it sounds like an USSOCOM-wide blackout. There’s no chatter about a new weapon. No whispers of nanobots.” Aiden frowned. “Hurley knows I’m alive. He’s got people looking for me. But no one knows where I am.” He shot Zane a wry look. “Dev says the SAT images of the exfil site above Karaveht went wonky just before you boys pulled me out.”
“Imagine that.” Zane’s face was as bland as his voice.
The lack of SAT images didn’t surprise him. Wolf had the technology to keep his base and warriors hidden.
“When the exfil chopper with the CDC team didn’t find me or my crew, they headed to Karaveht,” Aiden continued. “They found nothing. The town had been torched. It was still burning when the evac crew arrived.”
Zane rocked back in his chair, looking thoughtful. “They found nothing?”
“Nothing,” Aiden confirmed. “The entire place was rubble and ash. We hit one of the houses with a M14 on our way out, but the blast wouldn’t have taken out the entire town. And get this, Dev said there were no bodies on site. There should have been remains. Charred ones, at least. But the sweep team found nothing.”
Zane digested that. “Someone cleaned the site before Hurley’s boys arrived.”
“Looks like it.” Aiden squinted thoughtfully. “One other thing. They found no water. The well and pipes were dry.” He frowned and shook his head. “Even after the torching, there should have been water in the well. The CDC found the well capped and the water gone.”
Rawls ran his fingers through his short blond hair, leaving it sticking up in multiple places. “Sounds like the bots were dumped in the well and distributed through the water system.”
Aiden nodded.
Everyone was quiet for a moment before Zane asked. “Did your team come into contact with any of that water?”
“We did not,” Aiden’s voice tightened. “My crew picked up the damn things some other way.”
Rawls’s face darkened. For the first time, his voice sharpened. “Did Dev know about the nanobots?”
“He didn’t know shit.” Aiden scowled. “Hell, he didn’t even believe me at first. He kept asking how I could possibly know nanobots were responsible. I told him I didn’t trust that USSOCOM hadn’t been behind the whole fucking thing, so I hired a lab to run Squirrel’s and Grub’s blood and tissue samples, and they found the bots.” Which was true to an extent. “Dev was not happy I’d run to a lab.” And was that ever an understatement. The dude had been livid. “He’s insisting I return my crew’s bodies to HQ1 so they can run their own tests.” Aiden broke off with a grimace and a shake of his head. “I told him as much as I could, without exposing Shadow Mountain. At least Dev knows we’re dealing with nanobots now. He knows the bots target the brain, and that they can scrape—” Aiden paused before shrugging, “elements from the human body to reproduce themselves.”
“Dev’s not wrong,” Zane offered quietly. “Those bodies should be returned to Coronado. They’re not infectious, or so the Shadow Mountain labs claim, so their families deserve to lay them to rest. Plus, with both Shadow Mountain and USSOCOM dissecting the bots, there’s a better chance of understanding and countering the weapon.” He frowned, studying Aiden’s face. “Has Wolf said when they plan to release the bodies?”
Aiden released a tight breath and rolled his shoulders. Zane was right. His squad’s families deserved closure. They deserved to know what had happened to their sons, husbands, and fathers. They deserved a casket draped in the red, white, and blue of their sacrifice. They deserved a physical location to lay down flowers.
It was too damn bad he couldn’t give that to them. “Benioko won’t release them from isolation. He says they’re still a danger.”
Zane’s brows furrowed. He straightened abruptly. “Wait a sec—he claimed they weren’t dangerous when we swooped in to save your ass.” His frown deepened. “And the bots, are they still inactive?”
Aiden didn’t understand the shaman’s sudden caution, either. “That’s what the lab rats say.”
“Then why are they suddenly a danger?” Rawls asked.
An excellent question for which he had no answer.
With a shake of his head, he scrubbed his hands down his face, wincing at the scrape of stubble against his palms. He needed to shave before he choppered down to see Demi. Although when that would happen was anyone’s guess. Flying down to The Neighborhood kept getting pushed further and further away.
“What about those new cameras you boys were modeling?” Zane asked, taking a sip from his coffee cup. “Cosky seems to think they’re connected to the Karaveht clusterfuck.”
“Yeah…” Aiden squinted at Zane’s coffee cup and suppressed a yawn. A quick look at the coffee stand showed the line had vanished. Time to grab a cup. “The cameras were purchased from Nantz Technology. Nantz is a peripheral weapons contractor out of D.C. According to Dev, the cameras weren’t meant to be tested during our op. They were supposed to undergo testing months ago, but the battery packs went missing. A new shipment of batteries coincided with our insertion, so we were stuck with them. And that drone we were sent into Karaveht to recover? It was a prototype from Nantz too.”
Rawls grunted, his face hardening. “Easy enough to make batteries disappear.”
True, which was why Aiden hadn’t crossed Nantz off his suspect list.
He’d pushed back his chair, ready to rise to his feet and assault the coffee table, when Benioko shuffled into the room. Wolf followed. The room went quiet. Heads bowed.
Aiden sat back down, his gaze skipping from dark-haired warrior to dark-haired warrior. They all had leather cords hanging from their necks. With some, the cords were attached to small, hand sewn leather pouches resting against their BDU shirts. For others, the cords disappeared beneath their necklines, but the lumps beneath the fabric of their BDUs clearly showed where the pouches lay.
He’d noticed before that Wolf wore a pouch. Sometimes below his shirt, sometimes swinging free. Benioko had worn one, too, the day before. To his left, half a dozen spots down, O’Neill was kicked back in his chair, apparently napping.
There was no leather cord around his neck. Nor were pouches hanging off the former SEALs surrounding him. Those pouches must be a Kalikoia tribal thing. Which meant that O’Neill wasn’t part of the tribe. No surprise, considering his light brown hair and green eyes.
His gaze drifted back to Wolf’s pouch. What were those things? Some kind of voodoo magic?
Wrong culture, asshole.
Kalikoia culture wasn’t into voodoo. Although, how the fuck would he know? He knew nothing of Kali culture. For all he knew, those pouches could carry the ashes of their dead enemies.
“Aiden.” Wolf’s flat voice cut through the silent room, as effective as an RPG blast at drawing every eye. “Join me.”
The request froze Aiden in his chair. Did Wolf intend to ambush him with another request to join the Kalikoia tribe? Only this time in front of Shadow Mountain’s top warriors? Was Aiden’s inclusion in his brother’s plans to stop the apocalypse pursuant on bending to Benioko’s will?
“Your ears quit workin’?” Rawls asked. “Your big bro’s callin’ you to the head of the class.”
He sure was.
The question was why?