Survivor In Death (In Death #20)(74)

Six foot one, and one-ninety to two hundred on suspect one, five foot eleven, same weight range on suspect two.

“You confident in these, Detective?”

“I am, yes, sir.”

“None of them match the men Peabody dug up,” McNab said. “Body type's close enough on her first guy and her last, but the faces aren't.”

“No, they're not.” And that was a severe disappointment. “But that doesn't preclude the possibility that these were soldiers--hirelings or under orders--and that one of the men we've found is in a command position. We'll put these images and the data through the system, see what we find.”

She hesitated briefly. “You can take that, Yancy. You'd have the best eye for it.”

The rigor eased out of his shoulders. “Sure.”

“Then let's get started. You do good work, Yancy, even when you're dealing with a pain in your ass.”

“Would that be my witness, sir, or you?” “Take your choice.”

She walked it by Whitney first, compiling copies of all data along with her oral. “I've done the first pass at both military branches for full disclosure of records, and as expected on first pass, request was denied. I'm working my way up with the second.”

“Leave that to me,” Whitney told her. He studied the sketches. “You'd have to say brothers. The resemblance is too strong otherwise. Or your witness projected the resemblance.”

“Yancy was thorough. He's standing by the composites. Brothers isn't far out of reach, sir, considering the smoothness of the teamwork. Twins, as they appear to be, often have a close, almost preternatural bond.”

“We'll give them adjoining cages when you bring them in.”

Brothers they were, a unit of beliefs, desires, and training. Machines. Though they were human, though they ran on blood, humanity was lost in them.

The obsession of one was the obsession of the other.

They rose at the same hour every day, retired at the same hour in their identical rooms. They ate the same food, worshipped the same gods, in a sychronicity of discipline and objective.

They shared the same cold, harsh love for each other that each would have termed loyalty.

Now, as one worked, sweat streaming down his face while he executed punishing squats and lunges on his injured leg, the other sat at a command console, pale eyes tracking screens. The room where they worked had no windows and a single door. It contained an emergency underground exit, and the capability for self-destruct should their security be compromised.

It was outfitted with enough supplies to last two men a full year. Once, they had planned to use it as both shelter and command post when the primary vision of the organization they both had served had been met, and the city above was in their hands.

Now, it was shelter and command post for a more personal vision.

They had worked together for the larger cause for nearly a decade, and this more personal one for six years. They had seen the larger fractured, scattered. But the smaller, the personal, they would complete. Whatever the cost.

One stopped, sweat still dripping as he reached for a jug containing filtered water and electrolytes.

“How's the leg?” his brother asked.

“Eighty percent. A hundred by tomorrow. Bastard cop was fast.”

“Now he's dead. We'll terminate more, strike the other locations, but that can wait until we've hit the primary target.”

On one of the screens, Nixie's young face smiled out at the spartan room and the two men who wanted her life.

“They might have moved her out of the city.”

His brother shook his head. “Dallas would want her close. All the probabilities indicate she's still in the city. Cops coming and going out of Dallas's home location, but the probabilities are low that she'd take the target there. But she'll be close.”

“We bring Dallas in, ascertain the target's location.”

“She'll be ready for it, waiting for it. We can't rush it. Roarke's security and intelligence may be as good as ours. It may be better. His pockets are deeper, even with our contingency funds.”

“They have nothing that leads to us. That gives us time. It would be a coup, the kind that would boost morale and bring the primary mission back in place, if Roarke's home location was breached, if he was terminated in his own bed, and the cop taken. We'd have the message needed to regroup our members, and the information needed to complete our mission here.”

The man at the console turned. “We'll start on tactics.”

The martial arts studio in Queens was more of a palace, in Eve's opinion. Or a temple.

The entrance was decorated in a spare yet somehow lustrous style-- an Asian flavor with the Japanese sand gardens she'd never understood, gongs, the whiff of incense, a glossy red ceiling against cool, white walls and floor.

Tables were low, and the seats were red cushions decorated in gold thread that formed symbols.

Doorways were the papery screens she'd seen in Asian restaurants.

The woman who sat cross-legged on a cushion by a neat and tiny workstation nodded, placed the palms of her hands together, and bowed.

“How can I serve you?”

She wore a red robe with a black dragon flying across the bottom. Her head was shaved clean, the shape of her skull somehow as tidy and lustrous as the room.