Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
EXECUTION
Kassian did not like leaving Roger behind alone. Or fine, with just the dog at his feet and Sal in his ear.
He didn’t like having both newbies following him past even one gate, as simple as it would be for them to hop the stone wall and run if they had to.
He didn’t like relying on Bjorn’s sketchy power to get him inside.
If he was being honest, he didn’t like much about this entire mission. He would have preferred to do it from his desk where no one would see his face or be able to track him.
“Trying to do it from your desk is what got us here,” he whispered.
“What?” Bjorn asked.
When Kassian glanced back at him, it was to see Leif smacking his arm and shaking his head.
“What?”
“He’ll let us know when he’s talking to us.”
Bjorn rolled his eyes, but Kassian switched his focus back to the road in front of them. He was about to dash across when Bjorn grabbed his arm.
“Wait.”
The zap of power that accompanied the word startled them both enough that Bjorn jerked his hand away.
Kassian belated tamped down on wishing he hadn’t. “Why?” he asked, instead of dwelling on how big Bjorn’s hands were, and how nice the contact was.
Bjorn pointed down the road and sure enough, a black, nondescript car rolled into sight.
“This is good,” Leif said. “Roger, when the main gate opens, throw your ball. Make sure the dog goes inside that gate. If we can get the guards to follow him?—”
“Yeah, I get it. Good luck, guys.”
“Be careful,” Kassian warned.
“Always.”
Kassian drew in a deep breath as he watched the guard approach the car and lean down to talk to the driver. He nodded, waved at the guard house, and the small gate opened.
Slowly, the car rolled forward, then the larger gate opened, and Kassian held his breath.
He almost didn’t see the ball sail over the roof of the car and past it into the compound.
He did see the dog, running full out, around the back bumper, between the guard and the car, and through the main gate. He sailed over the steel wall that hadn’t yet lowered into the ground and ran on.
If Kassian hadn’t been watching, he might not have noticed that the dog caught up with the ball, ignored it, and kept on going, to disappear between two buildings.
“Kas.” Leif yanked on his arm. “Now!”
Forced to ignore the dog and whatever Roger might do next, he spurred himself to motion, darting across the road while the second guard ran from the hut.
They all vaulted the low stone wall near the gate, but out of view of the camera trained on it. Low hedges on the other side, between the walls, served as meagre cover.
Leif pointed to the camera at the same time Sal said, “Camera’s blind. Go!”
There wasn’t enough foliage to keep them concealed, so they dashed towards the door in the tall fence.
Bjorn had only to slip his hand between the bars of the door and touch the swipe pad next to it. There was a soft zap and the fuzz of electric buzz tickling his ear from his earpiece, then the gate unlatched, creaking a bit as the latch gave. It swung inward under Leif’s palm.
“You guys wait here,” Kassian said, gripping Leif’s arm and holding him back.
“Can’t.” Leif glanced back, and Kassian followed his gaze. He was right. There wasn’t enough cover for them to get back without being noticed unless they had horseshoes up both their asses.
“Fine, but stay close, and stay hidden.”
“If you stay right against the wall, at least ten feet from the gate, the cameras won’t see you when I let them go,” Sal said.
“Got it.” Leif pointed to a spot along the wall concealed by more bushes, and Bjorn nodded.
Once inside and flattened behind a head-high row of lilac bushes and away from the gate and the direction the dog had gone, Kassian finally let out a long breath.
They eased their way along the wall, shoulders brushing the metal barrier until the commotion at the gate could only be heard through Roger and his communication device.
“Sorry!” He was panting, as though he’d been sprinting after the dog.
Kassian bet it was more out of nerves, but at least it was authentic. As long as it didn’t devolve into a full-on panic attack.
“I’m so sorry,” Roger repeated. “I had no idea—” He squeaked.
“Rog?” Sal’s voice came over the com, clipped and tight.
“Wait, Sal,” Kassian ordered. “Just wait.”
“Honestly, I didn’t even know this was here. I thought it was a sand pit. I threw the ball hoping he’d just run himself out. Do you have any idea how much energy huskies have? Because it’s a lot. They can run?—”
“Wait here,” a gruff voice said.
“O-okay.”
Kassian didn’t think Roger was feigning the nerves.
“You’re doing great, Rog,” Leif said before Kassian could think what to do. “Just keep them occupied a little while longer.”
“The car’s inside. The guard from inside went after Dash. The first guard is outside looking across the road. Tell me you’re not still there.”
“Nope. We made it in.”
A heavy sigh came over the earpiece. “Excellent.”
“What happened?” Kassian asked. “You were supposed to go in and get the dog and get out. Why did he take off?”
“I’m…”
“Roger, what did you do?”
“I might have… well.” He sighed. “I told him we’re going to find a bad guy, and I was going to throw his ball, and he had to run after it and bring it back.”
“Stupid dog,” Sal muttered.
“No. Not his fault. I didn’t explicitly say bring the ball back. I said ‘it.’ He maybe went to bring the bad guy back.”
“What bad guy?” Kassian growled. “There is no bad guy.”
“There’s always a bad guy.”
“But this mission?—”
“Dogs know bad guys,” Roger interrupted. “And this is an army base. He’ll find one.”
“Oh, for fuck sakes.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Leif said. “It accomplished what we wanted, and eventually, that other guard will bring the dog back to you, and you take it into the conservation area and wait for us.”
“Roger that.”
“Roger, Roger,” Kassian muttered, unable to keep the affection out of his voice, as exasperated as he was.
“We have bigger issues right now,” Leif reminded him. “We can’t just sit here forever. We have to find a spot where you can break cover and go inside, use that fake ID to get into wherever you have to, retrieve the file and get the hell out.”
“I know the plan.”
“So.”
“Fine. You two, stay put. I’ll go see where I can get in.”
“Maybe you should stay together,” Sal said.
“Too dangerous for all of us to be moving around if we don’t have to. Better for me to go and find a place I can break cover and act like I belong here. That’s the whole point, right?”
“Yes.”
“Sal.” Kassian turned his back on Leif and Bjorn, though they would still be able to hear him. “Take a breath. Roger is fine. He’s under guard. Nothing can happen to him. As far as they’re concerned, he’s some yahoo who can’t control his dog, yeah?”
“He is a yahoo who can’t control his dog.”
“Sal,” Leif said, “give him a break. He said himself he’s not fluent.”
“Yeah but ‘it’? He couldn’t have been more specific?”
“Let’s just deal with where we are, yeah?”
“Yeah.” They sniffed. “Yes. Of course. Kassian, there’s a storeroom along the back wall. You can probably slip out of the hedges there and take the covered path that leads towards the main building.”
“How do you know where anything is inside a secret military base we didn’t even know existed yesterday?” Bjorn asked.
“Nobody works at SPAM by accident,” Sal said. “Kassian? You ready?”
Having been reassured that Roger would be fine, Sal was back to all business.
“Lead on, Sal. I’ve got this.”
“We’re just going to let him go?” Bjorn asked. “Alone?”
“That was always the plan,” Kassian reminded him. “You two aren’t even supposed to be in here.”
“Can we get on with it?” Sal said. “I don’t want Rog on his own any longer than necessary.”
“You guys have to cut him a break.” Leif settled into a cross-legged pose, back against the wall. “He isn’t nearly as helpless as y’all seem to think.”
“Not the time for team building,” Kassian said.
“If not now, when?” Leif muttered.
Kassian tossed a look in his general direction, but didn’t let the snark derail his concentration. “Sal?”
“Right. Follow the wall. Stay behind the bushes until you find the storeroom.”
Kassian set off, following their directions, and soon enough, came into contact with the storage building in question.
“You see the doorway on the west wall?” Sal asked.
“How detailed are your plans?”
“Do you see it?”
“Yes, yes. I see it.”
“You should be able to move out of the bushes and under that awning, and from there, along the covered walk to the back of the main building. That’s where you’ll need your ID Just open the door—they aren’t locked inside the compound—and show your ID to whoever asks.”
“You’re sure it will pass.”
“Hello. This is me.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Once you’re past that checkpoint, you follow the corridor to the last left, take that, and the elevators are about halfway down. Take them up to the top floor, and you’ll want the office right at the front of the building.
“How do you know?”
“Trust me.”
“I do. Implicitly. But you have a lot of intel on the inside of a secret building.”
“You’re about to go inside where there may be other people around. You have to stop talking to me. We don’t want anyone thinking you’re cracked enough to be talking to yourself.”
“No, I suppose we don’t.” It was nice of them to say that like he didn’t actually talk to himself on the regular.
“And Kassian…”
“I know, I know.” He grinned, because of course. “Don’t actually talk to myself.”
“Just be careful. You don’t always realize you’re doing it.”
They weren’t wrong. Most of the time, yeah, he totally knew he was arguing with himself. Just that some of the time, he did it without realizing he was doing it on the outside of his head.
Sal’s directions were spot on. At the first checkpoint, Kassian showed the ID to the bored-looking clerk behind the plexiglass.
The clerk frowned at the card, frowned at Kassian, and held up a finger, telling him to wait.
He’d never wanted so badly to confer with someone—anyone, even the beef-head in his own brain—than he did as he watched the clerk make a phone call. The conversation was brief, with the clerk looking confused through most of it, but then he was waved through.
He didn’t hesitate but hurried down the corridor, expecting a hue and cry behind him at any minute. None came.
After that, right up until he exited the elevator on the top floor, everything went exactly as Sal predicted it would. Only Sal hadn’t anticipated the last person Kassian wanted to find standing guard outside the top-floor office.
“Rufus.”
His older brother’s eyes got huge.
The guard standing on the opposite side of the door from him glanced over, a frown on their face. They had opened their mouth, about to say something, when the door opened.
For a moment, the bright fluorescent glare of the hallway lighting blinded Kassian to the dimmer interior of the office so that all he saw when he looked in were two faintly glowing points of light. His first thought was an enormous animal waited in the shadows, ready to pounce and all his brothers’ whispered stories about half-humans with were-beast powers buried his common sense in a flood of panic.
He blinked, shuffled a step back, then a man, tall as Kassian, but whip-thin, bald, and as human as he was, stood in the doorway. He had startling blue eyes Kassian very much wanted to look away from, but couldn’t.
“Laurier.” He turned his gaze on the guard who wasn’t Rufus, and Kassian almost sighed in relief.
The soldier snapped to attention, pivoting and saluting. “Sir!”
“God, you are so… eager.” The newcomer shuddered. “I need caffeine. Go.”
“Sir! Yes, sir!” They saluted again and marched off into the elevator that still stood open behind Kassian.
“General George.” Rufus also turned and saluted, albeit not quite so enthusiastically.
“At ease, soldier.” George turned a glittering gaze on Kassian. “You must be me, then. Or, at least, you wanted my underlings downstairs to think you were.” He held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you, General Sherman George.” He grinned, and some of the humanness left his face. “Or is it Mr. Briggs?”
Kassian and Rufus both groaned.
“You must also be extremely disappointed that I came and took my post a day early. Although it was a good plan, trying to get in using my name before anyone here got a good look at me.”
Kassian slumped. “You have no idea.”
“Rufus.” General George turned to him. “That is remarkable. You could be twins.”
“We aren’t,” Kassian and Rufus said at the same time.
That made George chuckle. Actually chuckle with a genuine smile that showed off perfect white teeth. The suddenness with which his humanity came and went made Kassian’s skin crawl. “Nevertheless. Escort your brother—he is your brother?” George paused long enough for Rufus to grudgingly affirm this. “Into my office, please.”
“Yes, sir.” Rufus jerked his head at the open door. “The hell were you all thinking?” he whispered as Kassian passed him.
Kassian groaned again.
“Have a seat, Kassian.” George motioned to the chair across the desk from the one he took.
Kassian didn’t like his familiarity, that he knew Kassian’s name, or that he called Rufus by his given name and not their shared surname of Briggs. He remained standing when George sat and laced his fingers together on top of the laptop sitting on the blotter. “Rufus, do make sure we aren’t disturbed.”
Rufus glared a Kassian before yes-sirring again and leaving the room.
George stared at him, waiting and silent.
Kassin sat, eyeing the computer and trying to decide how long it might take him to overpower this guy and get out. And would Rufus help him? Or try and stop him?
“Oh. This?” George splayed both long-fingered elegant hands over the closed lid of the laptop. “You don’t honestly think I would have kept such a valuable asset just sitting out in the open like this, did you?”
Kassian said nothing.
“Did you think you would waltz in here, take the computer, and sashay right back out?” He tsked and shook his head. “I had hoped for better from you, young man. You are the brains of the family, after all.”
Kassian bit his tongue to keep quiet. He was the brains of his family, but no one else was allowed to point that out.
“I know Rufus tried to have me believe he’s the family genius—the one with all the computer know-how, but really, he’s had weeks to try and break this encryption, and nothing.” George leaned forwards. “I’m hoping you will have better luck. For your friend Roger’s sake.”
In his ear, Sal gasped.
“Leave Roger out of this. He was just walking his stupid dog with me. He had no idea what I was going to do. Just give him his dog, and let him go home.”
“If only it was that easy.” George stood. “We’re going for a walk, you and I, Kassian.”
“Where to?”
“Oh, it’s a cozy little space. Very comfortable. And state-of-the-art equipment. You like that, don’t you? Cutting-edge technology?”
Kasian remained where he was.
“Get up, Mr. Briggs.”
“You can’t make me do anything.”
“Oh, I think I can.” He waved a hand and one of the walls flickered. An image appeared of Roger, sitting placidly in the guard booth at the gate. He looked fine. Relaxed.
The guard standing over him did not.
“That is Antony.”
Kassian masterfully didn’t even flinch at Sal’s sharp intake of breath.
“He’s what you might call, oh, odd, shall we say. What he is, in fact, is an interesting variety of berserker. Do you know what sets him off?”
“No idea.”
“Boredom.”
“Sorry?”
“Boredom, Kassian. He can’t stand to be bored. He starts getting restless. First, he might pick at his own hair, or skin. He has to be reminded that’s not good for him. But next, he’ll turn that restlessness outward. On anything, really, but he does tend to prefer living things to play with. As he plays, he will, inevitably draw blood. Then…” He shrugged one shoulder. “Blood scent isn’t good for berserkers, Kassian. It makes them… volatile.”
“You’re just going to let him loose on an innocent bystander?”
George smiled. “You brought him here. For whatever reason, you decided it was a good idea to get him involved in your little plot, so this is on you. All you have to do is break the encryption on my file, and you are both free to go. Simple.”
Kassian glanced at the screen again.
Roger had stood and was facing the huge soldier standing over him. He placed a hand on the man’s arm, and the man flinched and snarled. Roger yanked his hand back.
The screen flicked out.
“Are we agreed?”
Kassian was not going to agree with this guy, but he did move to the door when George motioned to it. Once they collected Rufus just outside, he did follow his brother down the hallway to a stairwell as the others began to chatter in his ear about what to do.