Page 68 of Kyle

“You’re babying me, again,” she huffed.

“The hell I am. I want you rested and healed so you and Emerson can interview Monica. If she’s a victim, and the two of you can get her to flip, we can finally take out Harry Landry.”

“I thought you knew where Harry was.”

“We do,” I sighed. “But we’ve been ordered to stand down. Landry either has something or knows something of value. If we can figure that out, we can smoke his ass and move on. I want this shit done.”

I was tired of waiting. I understood Tom Anderson’s desire to collect as much intel as we could on Landry and Emilio Ruiz, especially now that we’d found Landry’s connection to Corella Industries. How many other corporations did Landry own stock in?

“Did Garrett get you a list of contracts and projects Corella’s been working on?” I asked Dec.

“He did. I’ll forward it to you. One in particular stood out. Corella’s technology was used in the remote control guidance system for the M824 missile. The M824 is a go-onto-target system with an onboard engine. It can be launched; it doesn’t need to be dropped.”

The M824 was a beast and the latest and greatest in military weapons. Some missiles needed to be dropped relying on speed and height to hit their targets. And some weapons could only hit stationary targets. The M824 didn’t need height due to the onboard engine and it could hit moving targets thanks to the advanced guidance chip Corella had manufactured.

“That’s a fucking problem,” I muttered.

“Why?” Anaya inquired.

“Theoretically, or more to the point, if a programmer at Corella wanted to, they could launch a missile,” Dec explained.

“Or if they wanted to, they could render the missile inop,” I added. “Say Corella didn’t want the weapon to hit a certain target, they could scramble the guidance system or simply turn it off.”

“That easy? But how would someone at Corella know the target?”

“If they bugged the chips? Yes, that easy,” I confirmed. “As to the how, the coordinates.”

“Fuck, brother, Corella could disable the launch and detonate the weapon in the silo,” Declan added.

“A missile silo? Where? In the US?” Anaya gasped.

I looked at my uneaten food and contemplated how much I wanted Anaya to know. Sometimes the saying, ignorance is bliss, was a real thing. The majority of the population went about their daily lives not knowing what was really going on around them, and in some respects that was a good thing. If every person walked around with the knowledge of what was truly lurking in the shadows no one would leave their homes and chaos would ensue.

“Anaya, there are more silos in the US than you’d believe. Hell, Zane owns one,” Dec told her.

“Zane owns a missile silo?” The shock in her voice made me smile.

It wasn’t every day someone owned a silo.

“Yep,” I answered. “It’s an old decommissioned one, left over from the Cold War.”

“Can I see it?”

“It’s in upstate New York. In a town called Lewis. It’s actually pretty badass,” I told her. “The Launch Control Center has been turned into a one bedroom, one bath house. But Zane kept the space authentic. All the controls the military left after the decommissioning are still in place. The main silo is eighteen stories into the ground. It’s fuckin’ wild. It looks like a steel door, dead set in the middle of the eight acres he owns.”

“Okay, but can I see it?” she pushed.

“If you want to, we’ll go up.”

“I want to,” she confirmed.

Declan chuckled at her excitement.

“You’re a nut. No damn way are you trapping me forty feet underground.”

Anaya’s smile dissolved at Dec’s off-the-cuff comment and I wanted to kick my friend’s ass.

“Hey.” I put my hand on her thigh. “Don’t listen to him. He’s also afraid of a little amphibian, called the Penis Snake.”