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“This is what your informant wrote down.”

More often than not, SWAT team personnel were dicks.

“Which house is it?”

“The one with the cupola. We’re launching the drone now. Stand by.”

Through the glass, I could see the four SWAT officers already out of the vehicle, one of them prepping the thermal-imaging drone. It would fly a perimeter around the target location, attempting to pinpoint heat signatures so we’d have some idea of how many life-forms were inside.

SWAT would go in first, taking the point position, with Nadine and me bringing up the rear. Once the lab was reasonably secure, they’d maintain a perimeter so we could go to work—taking an inventory of the equipment and ascertaining what exactly the rogue scientists were up to.

I fastened the magnetic straps on my inductive body armor and took my weapon out of the go-bag. It was a G47, chambered to .45 caliber. I had modded a grasp to hold a Streamlight onto the Glock’s composite after too many raids on warehouses with sketchy power.

Meanwhile, Nadine was locking the shell drum magazine into her weapon of choice—an Atchisson assault shotgun. I liked to tease her for bringing such a beast along when we usually had SWAT support, but her argument was tough to get around. She’d found herself in a bad spot in Spokane, Washington, before we started working together. She had unloaded an entire magazine of .40-cal rounds into a scientist who had done a little self-editing gene therapy around a host of genes in the SKI, PGC-1α, and IGF-1 pathways. As a result, the suspect’s skeletal muscles had undergone a massive hypertrophy cycle, together with his mitochondria, making them huge and superdense. The man, whom she’d described as looking like the comic-book character, Kingpin, had nearly beaten her to death before finally bleeding out.

But as Nadine was fond of pointing out, there was no animal that walked the Earth that a twenty-round drum of twelve-gauge slugs on full-auto couldn’t put instantly on the ground.

In my earpiece, I heard Officer Hart say, “We’re not detecting any heat signatures on the premises.”

“Copy that.”

No one home, which was just how we liked it. Now we would reconnoiter the empty lab, wait for the scientists to show up. It was much easier to take them down on the street than inside a room filled with explosive chemicals and biohazards.

I checked the time: 2:35 A.M.

We had a good three hours before first light.

I looked over at Nadine. “Shall we?”

It was cold enough outside to cloud my breath.

We grabbed our night-camo hazmat suits out of the trunk and helped zip each other into them. They had a self-contained breathing apparatus and a specially made visor that provided a wider field of vision for combat situations.

Finally, we opened the air tanks and fell in behind the SWAT’s tactical column.

“Night vision or flashlights?” Hart asked.

“Flashlights,” I said. There was too much ambient light here, and that harvest moon was on the rise. It would soon be shining through the Victorian’s windows.

The rear fence was too tall to see over, but we got through the gate leading into the backyard without having to break anything.

The lawn hadn’t seen water or other care in ages.

Weeds grew waist-high.

I looked up at the windows of the old Victorian. A few were missing the glass entirely, and every one of them was dark.

Up onto the sagging deck that creaked under our boots.

Officer Hart knelt at the back door; had the lock picked in ten seconds.

We followed them inside into total darkness.

The lights of their assault rifles swept over an under-construction kitchen.

We moved on into a dining room, the walls stripped to the studs, electrical wiring everywhere, tools scattered across the floor.

“Looks like a remodel,” I whispered over the open channel.

“Wait here,” Officer Hart said.

Nadine and I stood on raw subfloor in what would have been the living room.

Even through my suit, I could smell the sawdust and polyurethane in the air.

Moonlight streamed in through the windows that fronted the street.

My eyes were slowly adjusting.

I could hear the boot-falls of the SWAT team moving systematically above us, room to room.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Negative,” Hart said. “More of the same up here. It’s all stripped to the studs.”

Nadine looked at me. “You think Soren played us?”

“Why would he? He’s still in custody. Knows he won’t be let out until we give the high sign.”

I noticed a door under the stairs. It was secured with a Master Lock that opened with a four-digit combination. I gave it a tug. No dice.

“Move,” Nadine said.

When I looked back, she had a brick in her hand.

I stepped out of the way as she smashed it down on the lock.

The metal sheared off—the broken lock hit the floor.

“That was us,” I said to the team. “We just broke a lock off a door.”

“We’re heading back your way,” Hart said. “It’s a ghost town up here.”

I pushed the door open.

It made a grating creak on its rusty hinges.

I pointed my Glock into the pitch black, the light illuminating a set of old stairs that descended to a basement.