Jeffers faked a hat-tip to the pair and turned on a heel, his feet pounding loudly as he left the store. Julie could feel the ground shake with each of his massive footfalls.

  27

  Ben

  The jeeps they’d hired had come with drivers, and now their convoy sped through the dense forest of the Chachapoyas region in Peru. Ben sat in the front seat next to the Peruvian driver, a man who called himself simply, “Nacho.” Julie and Mrs. E were in the back, while Reggie had decided to travel in the jeep just in front of theirs with two of the Green Berets. The first jeep in the line held Beale, Jeffers, and another soldier, while the jeep at the back of the line carried gear.

  Scuba equipment, weapons, and communications equipment had been piled high in the seats of the jeep, and the team had strapped everything in and tested it for shock before embarking on the three-hour trip. They would drive through a small town called Mendoza, heading deeper into the Peruvian Amazon, then turn southwest and head toward the mountain range and valley where they’d fought a month before.

  Ben gripped the handle above his door as he looked out the window. Monkeys crowed into the misty air, the heavy humidity penetrating even the waterproof vinyl of the jeep’s walls. He didn’t recognize the road they were on, nor did he see any buildings or signs he knew, but it all seemed somehow familiar.

  Now they were heading back to the hellscape, hoping to find Garza and his army and bring them to justice.

  And this time, Ben knew, that justice would be coming in the form of a bullet to the head. He wasn’t a killer — or at least he would never describe himself as one — but he had come to understand that there were problems that needed to be solved in the world, problems that could only be solved by rooting them out and destroying them.

  Vicente Garza was one of those problems.

  He tightened his other hand around the grip of a massive pistol Reggie had handed him earlier. During their downtime, Reggie, having lived in South America for years prior to meeting Ben and Julie, had called around to some of his friends who might have a lead in the area.

  It didn’t take him long to find a man who owned an army surplus store, and legally sold used Peruvian military weaponry that he had acquired over the years. But the story Reggie told Ben was that the man also collected the sorts of things that were a bit harder to find — more modern weapons, from Brazil to Venezuela. In the shipping and delivery industry, Reggie explained, every logistics technician calculates for a thing called “shrinkage,” which is the uncanny ability of a certain percentage of a driver’s delivery to mysteriously “walk off” and disappear.

  The man Reggie went to meet was the type of man who often “found” these disappeared items. In translation: he had plenty of modern military weaponry available for sale.

  So when Reggie had returned to the gas station before their departure with a duffel bag full of M16s, Glock handguns, and ammunition, Beale nearly lost his mind.

  He shouted for a full minute at Reggie, who simply smiled back at him through the threats. Eventually Beale realized what had happened, understood that he had no ground to stand on, and fumed away. Ben, Julie, and Mrs. E waited patiently at the side of the room until Beale left, when Reggie walked over and showed Ben and Julie how to use the weaponry.

  Ben wasn’t sure if the episode would cause any lasting fallout between the soldiers and the civilians, but he knew Jeffers was right — the CSO was more help if they were armed and prepared for an engagement. They’d follow the soldiers’ lead, but Ben wanted to be useful if things got out of hand.

  Beale’s voice sounded over the jeep’s radio. “Listen up, both teams. Let’s go over the plan while we’re still out of radio interception range. We’ve still got some details to iron out.”

  Ben fiddled with the knob on the old stereo that they’d retrofitted. The cable hanging from the front of it crackled noisily with static electricity, then turned to a cleaner, louder signal. “We’ve got the data back from our satellite scans. There has in fact been activity in the valley area over the past week, so we believe this is the correct location. Scans also show two fortified locations — likely some sort of bunkers or turrets — on the roads that lead in and out of the mountain. These mining roads have always been there, but the bunkers appear to be newer. So that means we’re not going to chance a frontal or flanked approach from the roads.”

  Another voice joined in. “Sir, we don’t have another way in — I thought we decided the best approach was via the river, until we can get close enough to look for some sort of access shaft?”

  “It was, but we just don’t know what’s down there. We thought the spring would be a shot, the one that starts in the mountain. It may have been expanded and used by the original miners as direct access to the river, for a trash chute or something, or it may be that the spring simply seeps out into the river. Meaning that’s not a reliable way in.”

  All the soldiers had throat-mounted microphones that picked up their words without needing to manually start and end the transmission, but Beale had given one old-fashioned handheld radio to Ben’s jeep. Ben grabbed the walkie-talkie and pressed the button on the side. “Bennet here. When we were in Antarctica I crawled through the vent and ducting system — this place has to breathe, right? So there have to be access shafts cut into the side of the mountain?”

  Beale’s voice returned. “We checked, and there are. But they’re too small for us, and we don’t have any schematics — we’re not sure which ones are still in use and which ones will just get us stuck inside a collapsed mineshaft.”

  Ben shuddered just thinking about it.

  “So I guess it’s the river, then? Float down and hope we see a way in?” Ben asked.

  “Affirmative. It’s at least the only option that keeps us away from prying eyes. The Ravenshadow soldiers will be guarding the main entrances. Might be a few patrols around the perimeter, but the river cuts next to a cliff. It’s pretty unnavigable landscape on the ground out there.”

  Jeffers’ voice came over the feed. “Boss, you said these guys have been down here for months?”

  “Likely even longer,” Beale said. “Over a year, probably.”

  “Well,” Jeffers said. “If their army is as big a deal as the CSO guys make it seem, that’s a lot of men to keep happy. Food, water, pot to piss in. You know where I’m going with this?”

  “You’re thinking there is an access shaft they won’t be guarding?”

  “I’m thinking they’ve got to at least have a sewage dump line. Something more modern, but it could just be a channel that they’re forcing water through. One that ends in a deep spot in the river.”

  Ben thought about it. Aside from the obvious environmental ignorance of building such a system, it would be the easiest way to remove the waste and debris from inside the mountain.

  “Hold that thought,” one of the soldiers said in reply. “This right here…” he seemed to be speaking directly with Beale, so Ben assumed it was one of the Green Berets with him in the front jeep. “We thought it was just an anomaly from the visualization software. We used LIDAR and ground-penetrating radar, combined and superimposed on the topographical map of the mountain to build an image of the valley and surrounding area. Sometimes those interfaces don’t always sync up and we get… imperfections. This one here…” his voice trailed off again, then came back, “looks like it runs up from the river to the center of the base. It could be exactly that.”

  “Or it could just be an imperfection.”

  “Yeah, true. But it really would be an easy shot to get in, and worst case, there’s nothing there and we just have the drivers pick us up downriver and try again.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Beale said. “Great. That’s the plan. We drop in just north of the mountain, where the river’s wide and calm. Our gear gives us a little over an hour to get in — we have to conserve the other half in case we need to make a water exit — and hopefully we can get where we need to go from there.”

  The soldiers signed off, and Ben looked back at Julie.

  Hope this works, he thought. He knew he didn’t need to say it aloud.

  She was thinking the same thing.

  28

  Garza

  Garza’s mind rarely drifted. As a stoic, he had practiced for years the techniques and training detailed by the Ancient Greek philosophers, and he had grown to control the thoughts that found their way into his mind. It was a skill he had needed numerous times on the battlefield, both in the corporate world and in the military.

  But every so often his mind reached back for a memory that he thought had been locked away, a memory so deeply lodged in his archives that he wondered if his Stoic training couldn’t even prevent it from reappearing at will.

  He sat down, already feeling the exhaustion of his day’s work taking a toll. He had been at it since five in the morning, a habit he’d picked up — and kept — since boot camp. He had done his morning walkthrough after eating breakfast with his men, then fielded a few training questions from his second-in-command, Morrison, and finally taken a call from his buyer, who was currently in the country.

  But that was all normal day-to-day business. After lunch, he’d walked through his demonstration floor, examining the newest suits his scientists and engineers had built. He employed fifteen engineers, three chemists, two physicians, and a handful of other mechanics, technicians, and computer scientists. Together, the teams had churned out failed design after failed design, complaining about either low battery life, power output restraints, extreme stress on the human operators, or some combination of all three.

  His weapons experts had struggled with fitting the rounds into their casings and then into a magazine that was able to fit within the Exos’ shells, but they had eventually figured it out.

  The first generation of Exosuits was a massive success, and he had allowed his men — in shifts, of course — to take extended four-day vacations to rest and recover for the next phase.

  That next phase was the groundbreaking achievement. His magnum opus, the culmination of all the hard work he’d done studying and finding the perfect team of professionals. Moving his entire company to a country that wouldn’t interfere with his work had taken more legal maneuvering than he’d cared to do, but the deal was done.

  He was now the owner of the single best military exoskeleton suit of armor on the planet. His was going to change the world, but unlike his competitors, he wasn’t interested in merely selling the new tech to the highest bidder. He had countless ways to make money and generate income, and at its core Ravenshadow was still a security company that could earn plenty of work overseas.

  No, he wanted more. He wanted both the money for the tech and the control. Selling it outright was a recipe for disaster. It could end up in the hands of a dictator in a third-world country, or, even worse, in the hands of a corrupt first-world government’s military.

  Instead, he had worked a deal that was nearly as impressive as the tech itself. A four-way transaction between an ultimate buyer and him, the ultimate seller. But he’d also ensured that his part would be broker of that same deal, a way of both extracting more profit from the deal and in securing his bottom-line ownership of the tech. By explaining to the buyer that he was working with an exclusive broker who would own a liability license for half of the new tech, he could prevent the tech from being wholly resold as a proprietary item.

  And giving this broker exclusive access to resell licenses to use the complete system, he prevented the technology from growing without him, or from getting into the wrong hands.

  In short, of the two crucial components that made his tech work, he wanted to sell one half of it outright and license the other half.

  And neither the seller nor the other parties involved needed to know that he was both the buyer and the broker in the deal. His legal exploits had made the confusion of these facts easy to pull off, and neither the buyer nor the third party who thought they were the broker knew the full details.

  It was a massive, complicated mess, but in Garza’s mind it was dead-simple. He wanted to retain the ability to control the tech. He wanted to ensure the future of his Exosuits would be governed by him, no matter who thought they had control of it.

  All of this was on Garza’s mind when he came to rest in the chair. But all of these things were things he’d allowed into his mind.

  What he hadn’t expected today was a thought of a different type: a memory. One that he apparently had no control over preventing.

  His wife was there, as was his newborn daughter, Victoria. They were happy. Very happy. The kind of happy that almost causes pain. Perhaps even one of the last times he had felt that way.

  He could feel the heartache crawling up from his stomach, the pain of remembrance, the pain of loss. In the memory, he looked down at Victoria. His daughter. His world.

  He’d wanted so much for her, but he hadn’t realized what it would cost. Losing his wife — Victoria’s mother — had changed his outlook on life. He’d realized that while family was important, it had also been the cause of their loss. Without her mother, Victoria had drifted away.

  Without his wife, Garza had allowed it to happen.

  Without closeness of that nature, pain would never have been allowed to set in. If he had never taken these lives and intertwined them with his own, never committed to the journey of living life with loved ones, he never would have been set back.

  He had focused his sights on something that could never leave him, something that wasn’t human and couldn’t cause him pain: his work.

  He had turned away from Victoria after her mother had passed, turned his focus toward new beginnings, new achievements.

  Victoria was there, in her mother’s arms. The memory had a special place in his mind not because of the love that he felt, but because it was a good picture for how he envisioned both his wife and his only child: gone.

  The memory wasn’t a reminder of his time with his family, but of what he had been able to accomplish without them. It was a vivid reminder that the world would continue spinning no matter what. Best to spend it doing something that would leave a legacy.

  29

  Julie

  Julie gripped Ben’s hand tightly as they stood on the shore, waiting for the soldiers to hand out the scuba equipment. They’d trained together a few times, but hadn’t gotten their certification yet. However, the basics and most of the early practice was second nature to both of them.

  And since they would be in a river, they wouldn’t be at much depth. Their trimix of nitrogen, helium, and oxygen was kept to a ratio that would benefit a shallow dive, as the only reason they’d need to be completely submerged would be to stay out of sight of any Ravenshadow patrols who might be looking down at the river from up above.

  When Beale got to the two of them, he handed them each a pair of goggles and waited while two of his men brought over the tanks and began hooking them up. “I assume I don’t need to give you a lesson in scuba, do I?” he asked.

  Ben shook his head. “We’re good. Done it a few times.”

  “Very well. All you need to know then is that we’re using back-mounted BCDs, buoyancy control devices, so we’re clear in front of us. More maneuverable that way, too. And there aren’t any suits — dry or wet — so be sure you bail out if you start getting cold; hypothermia isn’t a joke, and we’re not stopping to warm up.”

  They nodded.

  “I guess… that’s it. You know the drill. Don’t get in our way. We need you to verify it’s Ravenshadow when we’re in, and help us get to Garza. That’s it. It’s not a sightseeing mission, and if something goes wrong with your tanks, you’re off. Get out of the water and get back to civilization on your own.”

  “Don’t worry,” Julie said, starting to feel a bit annoyed at Beale’s holier-than-thou attitude and pretentiousness. “We’re not going to slow you down.”

  Beale examined her, then nodded once. “Oh,” he said. “And don’t forget. You’ve got a communicator that’s waterproof, but there’s no way to send or receive while we’re underwater. Wait until we’re back on dry land or out of the water, then flick it on. They’re line-of-sight, and I’m the relay, so if you get more than fifty or so feet away from me you’re incommunicado.”

  Julie and Ben nodded.

  He turned and walked back to his group. Mrs. E, already wearing her tanks and flippers, waddled over. “These things are quite tight,” she said.

  “You’re not the smallest of people, E,” Ben answered. “Here, let me help.” He reached behind her and fiddled with the straps of her tanks a bit. Then, when Julie saw that Beale was engaged in another conversation, Ben spoke again. “He’s a real piece of work, huh?”

  Mrs. E smiled. “He is a soldier. Not used to working with civilians, I predict.”

  “I thought they were supposed to be ‘force multipliers,’ or something like that,” Ben said.

  Reggie’s voice joined in from behind them. “They are. They’re just not used to having help. They want to swoop in and be the heroes. Either clean up the mess themselves or train the on-the-ground local troops how to do it.”

  “Well, he doesn’t have to be a jerk about it,” Ben muttered.

  “He’s not. He just wants to keep us all alive, and he’s got a million things on his mind.”

  “It’s not that,” Julie said. “I mean, I get all that — that’s how we feel, too. Victoria’s in there, and I want to make sure we get her out safely. We all know the danger.”

  Reggie shrugged. “Yeah, he’s not much of a people person, but I’d bet he’s more than capable of getting the mission finished. Just trust him a little longer.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31