Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
Punta Sorapis, Northern Italy
The small plane banked to fly in an arc, then set down on a grassy field west of the base.
Steph lowered the binoculars. “Hopefully, no one was watching and saw that.” She made her way from their hiding spot in the bushes back to where they’d left the car so they could gear up. She glanced over at Adam, wishing they had protective vests to wear. “You good?”
He’d slept for half an hour at least in the front seat of the car while she drove here, but he didn’t look any better.
She figured that was because he’d told her the short version of what the rest of his team had learned over the past few days—the reason why he had to be careful never to show his face to a security camera in the US.
Or, preferably, stay away from the States so the colonel who had victimized him—her word, not his—never found him.
She’d come across a pharmacy in a small town and managed to communicate well enough to get him some painkillers, though he probably needed something a lot stronger.
“Good to go.” He grabbed a ball cap out of his backpack and put it on backward, tucking the ends of his hair into it. The easy way he checked his gun, familiarity and intensity in his movements, told her he was at home in this position. Being an operator wasn’t just a job, it was who he was.
Something she couldn’t say about spy work.
Steph said, “If you fall over, I’ll find a wheelbarrow around here to lay you in so I can get you out.”
Adam chuckled. “Good to know you’ve got my back.”
He flung the trunk of the car closed, and she followed him across a grassy stretch to where the trees stood closer together. Ash and another man, a blond guy. Both of them had gear on and carried weapons.
Once they’d all been introduced, and Ash tried to hug her—which Adam intercepted—they headed for the fence line.
“You think your sister is right about this place?” Adam motioned up ahead about a mile, which they’d already scouted out. The fence wasn’t electrified, and in places it had fallen down entirely. Everything about this spot said it was rundown and neglected.
“I think she knows a lot more than she would ever say, in a million lifetimes. And I think she’s up to something.
” Steph kept her eyes peeled on the trees, but aside from a wild animal she doubted they’d see a threat.
“She didn’t sound her usual argumentative self on the phone, but who knows what she has going on right now.
I usually try to avoid her and take jobs that keep me as far away as possible. ”
Ash eyed her. “Not itching for some Cain and Abel type battle?”
Steph shook her head. “No way.” She lifted her chin to the two men. “Thanks for coming by the way.”
“Yeah, she wasn’t sure about going in with me all injured. I’m a liability.”
Steph shot Adam a look, but he just chuckled.
When they came to the fence line, Ash used clippers to cut them a hole. Part of of it had fallen over, a stretch about fifteen feet long, but it now sat in a pool of water that was who knew how deep. He pulled the fence back, and Kyle went in first.
She and Adam went next, and Ash came in behind them. “Now I’m doubting what she said, wondering if this whole thing isn’t a trap.”
Adam said, “I don’t see any guys with vans, or a helicopter, so I think we’re safe from Earthnet for now.”
“So then how is Kai here? Or any of your other friends?” Steph looked around and saw a gravel strip that ran between buildings. “This place looks like a base, not a tech company.”
The wind blew a paper toward a building to their right, and she spotted an old military bunker behind these buildings and what looked like a missile silo. Without going over there, she couldn’t determine if this place had missile ejection doors in the ground.
“Definitely a base,” Adam said. “Looks like it hasn’t been used for years, though. Probably not since World War II, and then it got repurposed during the Cold War and outfitted to launch ICBMs at the enemy.”
“Why did my sister send us here?”
Adam motioned with a tilt of his head. “Come on. Let’s check it out. She might’ve sent us here to give us a clue as to what’s going on.”
“More likely she wanted to go up against them with her people, without us getting in the way, and sent us here to keep us busy finding nothing.”
Kyle stopped. “If we’re supposed to be finding nothing”—he turned to them, his attention on his phone—“then why is this place emitting a satellite signal?”
Steph whipped around, looking at all the buildings for the communication equipment she’d seen on that boat, which would let her know they were using it for more modern means. “It could be a lab like the ship.”
“But is Earthnet really holding Kai and Dan here?” Ash asked. “If he escaped, they’d have gone after him and we’d see people all over the area. Maybe it’s deserted because they cleared out.”
Adam said, “Or this is the AI testing us, learning our decision-making patterns like it did in Argentina.”
If that was true, then it might not have been Vesper on the phone. It could’ve been the artificial intelligence spoofing her voice, the way it had done with Kai on the ship. Telling them all there was a bomb so they left quickly.
“I don’t like any of this,” Steph said. “What do they even want with us?”
Kyle said, “You wanna call the CIA, find out what they know?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been burned. I can’t call them. They’ll have erased the number they gave me from their system.”
“Right.” Kyle nodded, but she got the impression there was something he wasn’t telling her. She didn’t even know this man, so that made no sense.
“All right, we split up into twos and search every building,” Adam ordered, digging in his backpack. “Take these with you.” He gave a radio to Ash, who clipped it to his belt.
Kyle looked at his phone, then said to Ash, “It’s that building over there.” He indicated a low concrete structure with broken windows.
In a place like this, she’d expect graffiti—and for anything useful to have been looted. But maybe the locals knew not to come up here and mess with the base and its buildings. She said, “We do need to find out about the history of this place. Maybe I should try to call the CIA.”
“Better idea.” Adam lifted his chin, indicating a missile silo. “Let’s go check it out.”
Steph wrinkled her nose. “I’m supposed to be a tough, independent woman.”
“Scared of the dark?”
“Isn’t everyone?”
Adam’s expression softened. “I’m thinking…maybe not.”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “I’m good. I’m probably just feeling some paranoid aftereffects of whatever Ice dosed me with.” Even though that felt like days ago, instead of just a few hours.
Hopefully, she sounded definitive.
Steph started walking, striding with confidence she didn’t have. Using the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to international espionage. “That building has some of the same antennae on it that the ship did.”
“So it does.” Adam followed as she picked her way across the uneven terrain.
A cold breeze rustled through the trees and the sky darkened, the sun hidden behind the clouds. She spotted an old axle, the vehicle likely something the size of a Jeep. “Maybe your team should buy this place, if no one knows it’s here.”
“You think we should expand our real estate portfolio?”
“Maybe Ice needs a summer home. This place suits his personality.”
Adam chuckled. “He isn’t taking Winston.”
Steph stood at the door of a squat concrete building with a low roof, barely higher than her head. She pulled out a tiny folding knife from her pocket.
Most of the structure had become overgrown, with the trees around it covering both sides of the building and disguising most of it, besides the door.
Weeds everywhere, up to her knees. Those tiny round deposits on the ground in groups, indicating the presence of rabbits.
Probably the only living creature for a mile.
“Need a key?” Adam asked.
Steph finished working on the lock and eased the door open, pushing it wide into the darkness.
“Okay, then.” Adam chuckled. “Guess you don’t.” He got on the radio. “Steph got us into the missile silo, so we’re gonna check that out.”
The response came back. “Copy that, Nix. We’re looking through an office, searching for any door that might lead down.”
“Got it. Phoenix, out.”
“You think they’ll find a lab below ground?” Steph accepted the flashlight he handed over and said, “After you.”
His expression softened. “Happy to.”
He wanted to voyage first into the dark?
She was going to let him. Even after everything he had been through, it didn’t seem to have given him a cold edge.
He had every right to be vindictive, and bitter, after suffering so badly.
And probably no one would blame him. It would be chalked up to “trauma.” And yet in spite of that, he still cared about people.
He managed to be kind. He didn’t allow the past to change him—or it had, and it was good.
“Don’t fret.”
Steph said, “What’s that?”
“A Bible verse my sister sent me. It’s a command not to worry about evil people.”
“I don’t worry about them. I worry about my father.” She shined the flashlight around an entryway, off which there were two halls on either side and a set of doors in between.
Adam went to the doors, kicking them open and going in gun first.
“I worry I’ll never see him again, but then what right do I have to expect that I will? That’s not the life we live, and it never was.”
“You didn’t see him?” He slid the beam of his flashlight back and forth across the room.
Old banks of computers, ancient terminals that probably had mice instead of wires.
Steph’s stomach clenched at every shadow. She wanted to grab hold of Adam’s hand but didn’t want him to know she felt like that little kid in the dark who had felt her father be torn away from her. “That photo? The one on Halloween? It was the last time I saw him.”
Adam slowed a little. “Tell me what happened. It’ll distract you.”
“No, it won’t. It’ll make this worse.” She could feel the dark touching her, clawing with sharp talons ready to strike at her and rake deep grooves in her skin.
“I only saw him when he came home between deployments, or when he wasn’t on a mission.
It was Halloween, and I wanted to go trick or treating with him so badly.
“At the end of the night we took a shortcut through the school grounds, and we were in the alley by the house when men jumped the fence and more ran from both ends. All the lights went out. Streetlights, home lights, everything. And I couldn’t see anything.
I heard him fighting. Heard him get hurt.
I tried to fight one of them, but he slammed my head against the fence and I fell.
” She took a breath. “They left me there, half unconscious.”
Steph reached up and touched the scar on her forehead.
“The government?”
She shrugged. “For a long time, I didn’t know. Then they made it my entire life.”
“Forcing you to work for the CIA just to safeguard him.”
“They gave me a way to talk to him, so I could be sure he was okay. But I haven’t seen him since that night.” She wanted to breathe her deepest fear aloud, but there was no way he’d understand. I don’t think I’m cut out for this.
He was, and he’d proven that over and over. Meanwhile, Steph felt as if she’d been floundering around in the dark her entire life. Waiting for something to happen and refusing to realize the obvious—it never would.
Her father might as well have died that night. For all she knew, he was dead now.
“Anything?” She spotted a lever on the wall and went to it. “Adam?”
He didn’t answer.
She looked over and saw his flashlight resting on top of a desk, pointed at the wall. “Adam?”
Steph grabbed the lever and raised it until it touched the wall again, pointing up. A deep whir began under the ground, aching ancient machinery whirring to life suddenly after slumbering for so long.
“I’ve seen this movie,” she muttered. “It doesn’t end well.”
Lights blinked overhead. One blew, cascading sparks onto a computer monitor. Others flickered on, first a cool orange, then warming to a bright yellow.
Casting illumination across the room.
The empty room.
“Adam!” She didn’t care if she sounded desperate. “Adam!”
Steph raced across the room, making sure he hadn’t fallen over. He was nowhere. Only his flashlight remained.
She should go find Kyle and Ash. Tell them their friend was missing as well now. Division Zero picked off one by one. A vindictive private company, and a quiet war, working behind the scenes. Drawing no notice from the world, the media, or governments.
If the team was killed, there would be someone left to ask questions.
If she died—would there be anyone who even cared?
Steph gasped and rushed to the door.
An alarm chimed, and a blast door lowered over the space where Adam had kicked the door open, dark gray metal and yellow stripes. It descended too fast.
Steph hit the floor just as the door did, reaching out but pulling her fingers back at the last second.
The blast door settled with a loud clang that shook the room.
Overhead a recorded voice said, “Facility secure.”