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inclined to put up with errands like that. Important shit had to be done, and he needed to do it. Trips to Hollywood, endless meetings talking budgets, hiring quotas, mission statements for the twenty-first century, blah, blah, blah. Only one solution to this problem.

Road trip.

Ray looked at Ink, his gaze narrowed. "Whistle me up a Lear. I'm headed for BICC. When Hillary calls tell her I'll report on conditions as I observe them personally."

Ink cleared her throat. "Are you sure that's wise, sir?"

The "sir" irritated him. He didn't like hearing it, especially since most of the time it was insincere blather covering up the speaker's real feelings. He wished he had someone he trusted to discuss problems with. Someone who would tell him the truth. Someone to make up for what he realized was sometimes his own hardheadedness and, let's face it, recklessness. He saw where this train of thought was heading and consciously derailed it. He almost sighed, but stopped. It was all over when you started sighing to yourself.

"Hell, no," Ray said. "But that's what I'm doing. Who's on the EDR?"

That was another thing about this fucking job. He'd been talking in acronyms ever since taking it. Ray watched a Chinese-style dragon fly through a bank of puffy clouds and glide across Ink's left cheek as she leafed through the memoranda in the in-tray, eventually finding the Emergency Duty Roster. "It's a light night," she reported. "Just Crypto and Stuntman."

Ray nodded. Crypto was a longtime SCARE man. He was good at figuring out codes and shit, but not much in a fight. Stuntman was another hire out of that American Hero crap. In fact, he'd won the damn thing, but apparently his hoped-for movie career had never developed, so he'd gone into government service. Ray had never worked with him, but had read his file. He was supposed to be pretty much indestructible. That was something, at least.

"All right," he said. "Crypto can stay home and work his crossword puzzles. Tell Stuntman to meet me at the airport." Ray's face was looking fairly normal, though his smile was still crooked. It was almost endearing. "What can I bring you back from New Mexico?" he asked. "How about a pinata?"

Ray had known Jamal Norwood, aka Stuntman, for only an hour, and hated him already. He was a young, good-looking African-American with fairly light skin and more Euro than Afro features. Ray approved of his clothing sense, though his suit was a little too flashy and expensive for so young an agent. It was his attitude Ray couldn't stand.

"I'm Billy Ray," he'd said, strapping down next to him as the Lear was prepped for takeoff.

Chapter 11

"Yeah," Norwood replied, unimpressed. "Heard all about you. They call me Stuntman, but I've given up that shit. No future in it. Doubling for Denzel and Will Smith and low-life ghetto rap stars making the real money while my ass - "

"I thought you were a millionaire. Didn't you get that much for winning that crappy show?"

"Un-uh, Carny. After taxes and agent's fees there was barely five hundred thousand left."

"Carny?" Ray asked.

"What?" Norwood looked at him. "That's what they call you."

"My code name is Carnifex."

Norwood shrugged. "Not what I heard. Everyone calls you Carnivore."

Ray looked at him blankly, finally understanding a little of what Nephi Callendar had gone through all those years. Norwood fiddled with his iPod, and fell asleep a minute after takeoff. And he snored. Loudly.

Ray stared stonily ahead as the Lear flashed west, wanting to sleep but unable. It seemed like forever, but took only a couple of hours. Norwood woke up after they'd touched down at the private landing strip outside the Biological Isolation and Containment Center, located in the middle of nowhere in the southeast corner of New Mexico, within stone-throwing distance of the Texas border, if you could throw stones pretty far. A jeep was waiting for them with a security tech wearing BICC insignia and the Haliburton company patch. Justice doesn't even have the guts to show up himself, an unhappy Ray thought, getting unhappier.

Stuntman wasn't happy, either, as he surveyed the mostly flat, mostly empty desert. He was already perspiring in the morning heat. "Any place to get breakfast around here?"

"Just the BICC cafeteria, sir," the tech said.

"Swell," Norwood grumbled. "Nothing like government-contract food."

Ray was hungry, too, but he wasn't going to bellyache about it even if Stuntman was right. They climbed into the jeep and the driver sped off down an obviously recent asphalt road