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“Yep, little bit, here and there. Looks like you were right about the trouble, Riley,” Brick said. He let Riley go, and his lively dark gaze fixed first on Joe, then Bryn, then Patrick. “I’m Jonas Wall. Brick, to my friends. Riley says you’ll fall into that category. Hope she’s right, because I just put my ass on the line for you. ”
“You’re not the only one,” Riley said, and extended her hand to the man standing next to Brick. “Major Plummer. Been a while. How much trouble are you in right now?”
He shrugged; it was impressive he could shrug, given the amount of muscle he packed on those shoulders. Definitely a bodybuilder. “We’re conducting maneuvers,” he said. “Way I see it, I have less to explain than our opposite numbers across the way. I’ve got authorizations. They’re black ops-ing it in a very public way, and I promise you that right now there are some scrambles going on to cover asses. But Agent Block, you’ve got a problem, too. A big one. ”
She laughed. “You mean, in addition to the people who almost mowed down the entire motel?”
“Yeah. I’ve already gotten countermand from up high, so I have to pull out and head back to base. I’m doing that at a leisurely pace, because we’re having mechanical problems, as you can see. ” His pilot leaned out of the helicopter and held up a wrench. “Very serious issues. He’ll be a while fixing that, for safety. My point is, these jackholes may be conducting their own off-the-books operation, but they’ve got coverage somewhere in the Pentagon. Maybe elsewhere on Capitol Hill, too. You need to be careful. This is some political shit. ”
Brick nodded. “They’ve already gone to work inside the FBI, too; way I hear it, higher ups are saying you went off the reservation, bribes might have been involved. It’s a tangled mess, and the gods on high are going to be wading through it for a while, but until they do I doubt you can count on much in the way of official government support. Pharmadene was enough of a black eye all by itself. It’s now officially an embarrassing clusterfuck, and nobody wants to be caught in charge of it. ”
“I don’t care about politics,” Riley said. “Major, I know you have to withdraw; I owe you a favor for riding to our rescue in the first place. I never expected you to bring quite this much . . . thunder. ”
“Better too much than too little,” he said, and bared his teeth in a smile. They were big teeth, and very white. “If you get in over your head, yell. I’ll do what I can. So will some of my brothers and sisters, to the best of their ability. But you’re in good hands with Brick. ”
He shook hands all around, and he was good at it—a firm, dry hand, good eye contact. Then he was in his helicopter and they were rising up into the air, an eerie combination of brute effort and mechanical grace.
“Plummer will give us maybe fifteen minutes,” Brick shouted over the dull, rolling chop of blades that hovered over them. “Get moving. I’ll escort you where we’re going. ”
“Where are we going?” Bryn asked, and got a full, assessing look from the man. He was . . . intense, she had to admit. Intense in a good way—like Joe, he preferred a shaved head, which added to the richness of his brown eyes and dark skin. The goatee framed a mouth that seemed, even now, to be just on the edge of a smile.
“Classified,” he told her, and winked. “Trust me. I know where you need to get, and I’ll make sure you travel safe. That’s my job. Logistics and protection. ”
“Brick owns a private security company,” Riley said. “Trust me. He’s a friend. ”
“Does he understand what he’s getting into?” Patrick asked. “Brick, the people looking for us mean to kill us, and they don’t care who they have to go through to do it. They may not quite be ready for a missile battle in the skies on sovereign soil, but they’re not far from it. Are you prepared for that?”
Brick gave him a slow, wide smile. “Prepared for it, staffed for it, used to it. Mount up, kids. We’re rolling. ”
He walked away as a black SUV—not too dissimilar from their own, actually—pulled up, and Bryn noticed for the first time as he climbed in that he moved a little stiffly. It wasn’t terribly noticeable, until he stepped up in the cab. The way he moved his right leg seemed . . . off.
Riley noticed, too. “Brick lost a leg in Iraq,” she said. “Took shrapnel to the head, too. They said it was a miracle he survived. He decided to put it to good use. ”
“You trust him? With your life?” Patrick asked.
“Yes,” Riley said. “With all our lives. Come on. ”
With that, they were on their way to their own SUV, and in less than a minute, they were on the road, surrounded by flanking vehicles, with a cloud of air support blocking the sun as they headed northeast.
• • •
Major Plummer’s helicopters peeled off half an hour later and beat the skies toward home base, which left them cruising along at a steady sixty-five miles an hour in a box formation, which rarely had to break up for traffic—wrong time of day, and wrong part of the country, although there were plenty of tractor trailers on the road. Bryn didn’t feel safe, but she also felt a whole lot less vulnerable than before. Jonas Wall—Brick—had a confidence that seemed utterly warranted. Even against Jane and her thugs.
Of course, he probably hadn’t seen what she and Riley could do, under pressure. Or Jane. How many of us are there? She hadn’t stopped wondering about that . . . because it terrified her. The whole operation that had been under way at the nursing home, colonizing the helpless bodies of the elderly in the locked facility, had been about breeding more of the nanites and siphoning them off for later implantation. Had the Fountain Group actually reached the stage where they were seeding the nanites, or was that still a goal for the future? Or was Pharmadene the only pilot program running?
She knew that with ten soldiers equipped like herself, she could have taken on a hundred men, easily. Maybe ten times as many. It was an advantage as lopsided as machine guns against Stone Age clubs. Give those same upgraded soldiers advanced weaponry, and . . . her mind just balked. Better not to imagine what could happen.
“We’ll be in Wichita soon,” Joe Fideli said. “As pimpin’ awesome as the fleet is, are they really going to stick with us in the city, too?”
“They’ll flank us and shadow, but they won’t be right on our bumpers,” Riley said. “Once we leave Wichita we’ll re-form the group until Topeka. Brick will have replacements ready to meet us there, so these will peel off and head in for relief. ”
“Damn,” Joe said. “Maybe I need to work for this guy. I love organization, and you don’t get it too often in private security. And Bryn, love you, but so far my association with you hasn’t exactly paid my mortgage, much less put my kids through college. ”
“I thought you were doing it because you loved me, Joe. ”
“Well, that, too. But the hazard pay invoice is going to be a bitch. ” Joe grinned a little madly. “Bet Manny’s saying that, too. ”
She could only imagine. The rental on his bulletproof SUV alone would run into the tens of thousands. “Dude, I already gave you a job at my funeral home. ” A funeral home she had owned and operated, albeit under government control and funding—because they needed to track the progress of those being administered the Returné drug, like Riley and others who’d been illegally brought back by Mr. Fairview, who’d once owned the place. She’d been in charge, more or less, of taking care of those who’d survived the revival process—and making sure they took their shots, stayed sane, and didn’t attract too much attention. It had been part of the deal.
