to talk to his sensor operator ASAP, find out why they were discharged a few months ago.” Evan approached the wrecked Bronco bookending the nearest row of vehicles. It was a sorry lineup: a VW Bug missing two tires, a Ferrari with a front trunk twisted open from a collision, the carbon-fiber lining giving off a stoical gleam.
“I’m going with you,” Andre said. “To talk to the sensor operator.”
A MINI Cooper puttered by on the road ahead, and Evan halted, reaching back to put a hand on Andre’s chest. He waited for the car to pass and then resumed walking.
“No,” Evan said. “And watch the street.”
He passed in front of the Bronco’s smashed grille, his Original S.W.A.T. boots grinding over glass pebbles. He tugged at the passenger door, which gave with some resistance.
Andre hovered at his back. “What are you doing now?”
“This is where Hargreave was looking before you interrupted him.”
“Right,” Andre said.
Evan knuckle-tapped the pine-tree air fresheners dangling from the rearview, sending them into a twirl, and then searched the top of the dashboard. Nothing.
His gaze caught on a sticker adhered to the inside of the windshield. He swung out of the truck and looked at it through the glass. An elaborate security hologram of the air force base’s insignia—a robotic set of wings rising from a five-pointed star.
He leaned close. The hologram was elaborate and—given the drone innovators’ capability with and fondness for lasers—no doubt embedded with covert laser readable imagery. The features hidden inside the hologram could be verified only at a security checkpoint with a control device endowed with proper input illumination.
They’d let Hargreave keep it on his windshield to lure him back.
It had worked.
Rendered in white against white at the bottom corner, as subtle as a watermark: INS NORTH.
It took a moment for Evan to recognize the capital letters as the Federal Aviation Administration three-letter identifier for Creech Air Force Base.
But this was slightly different.
Not Creech. Creech North. Evan had never heard of it.
He whipped the Strider out of his pocket, the refined-grain particle blade clicking open, and Andre took a step back. “Whoa, Nelly,” he said.
“Watch the street.” Evan leaned back into the cabin and gently sawed the knife beneath the sticker’s edge. The corner popped up, and then he was able to pinch it and peel it free intact.
It disappeared into another cargo pocket.
Andre slapped one hand with the other. “So that’s what Hargreave came back for.”
Leaning back, Evan saw that the Little Tree air fresheners had stopped spinning, revealing a visitor parking pass hung in their midst.
He slipped the permit hanger free. CALIFORNIA VETERANS REINTEGRATION CENTER. One-day pass. The heavily guarded compound in Fresno where Hargreave’s sensor operator was being rehabilitated.
Something behind Evan clicked, shifting the shadows.
His head snapped over, his hand moving toward his holster, but it was just the motion-sensor lights turning themselves off in the kiosk. He untensed his back muscles, then straightened up.
Over Andre’s shoulder a set of headlights flared at the intersection. As the car continued in the direction of the open front gate, Evan made out the model.
A Tesla Model S.
Tinted windows.
Like the one that had passed them earlier.
Midnight silver instead of pearl white. Different license plate. Los Angeles was lousy with Teslas.
And yet the First Commandment spoke up in the back of Evan’s mind: Assume nothing.
His body stayed on alert, Andre keying to it. “What?”
“I told you to watch the street,” Evan said.
At the far end of the facing road, another Tesla turned into view. And then another. The third plate Evan recognized.
The vehicles sped up, converging on the open front gate.
33
Search and Destroy
Evan’s pistol was in his hand instantly, his Woolrich tactical shirt still gaping at the belly where he’d reached straight through it for his holster. The faux buttons were held together by magnetic closure, the halves now refinding their mates, the shirtfront clapping back together.
At his side Andre made a strangled noise that barely emerged from his lips.
Evan pulled him down behind the Bronco and ran a quick calculation. Eight rounds in the magazine, one in the spout. His cargo pants had low-profile inner pockets on either side hiding an extra mag, which put twenty-five rounds within reach.
He’d recently upgraded to Gorilla Silverbacks. The Silverbacks had excellent terminal ballistics with huge cavities in the ogive and premachined fracture lines that allowed them to expand rapidly to two and a half times the original caliber. When the hygroscopic effect was elicited, they basically turned into grappling hooks, punching a hole big enough to