End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(49)

She leaned forward and, like a child exploring, she traced her finger around my face, saying, “If you had been there, you would have done the same thing, Nephilim. The mission is what matters. Why are you so upset?”

It was just one more bat-shit crazy thing with her. I glanced at Jennifer and saw her trying to hide a smirk. For the life of me, I couldn’t get her to quit using my given name, which I despised. She thought it held some deep biblical meaning, and it should have aggravated me even more, but her use of it reminded me that she’s about four beers short of a six-pack. And she was wickedly skilled.

I put the car in drive and said, “Look, Carrie, you pull that type of crap on the next mission and I’m going to go ape-shit on your ass. Just do what I ask. Nothing more, nothing less.”

She’d leaned back into her seat and crossed her arms, looking like she wanted to rip out my entrails. She spat out, “I’ll do what I must. Nothing more, nothing less.”

I started to retort, but Jennifer laid her hand on my arm, gently shaking her head. I let it go.

We went back to our hotel, plugged in the device to our Taskforce laptop, dialed into the Taskforce VPN, and let Creed go to work. We’d sat around waiting for about an hour, bouncing lighthearted banter between us.

The team we had wasn’t a real Taskforce construct, but we’d worked together enough that it might as well have been. Knuckles gave me shit about not taking the Bosnian at the gas station, and I’d turned it to Shoshana, chastising her in front of the group for penetrating the apartment complex and potentially compromising the mission, knowing I was going to get a rise out of her. Wanting the fireworks.

She surprised the hell out of me. For the first time, she didn’t take the bait.

She smiled and said, “I never knew you were such a pussy. Maybe that’s why Jennifer likes me so much.”

If there was such a thing as the entire room’s mouth dropping open, that was it. In an earlier life, when I’d tried to kill her, I had been sure she was a lesbian. And she knew it, using it now as a jab at me because of her close relationship with Jennifer. There was a pregnant moment of silence, and then Knuckles started laughing, still not believing what she’d just said.

Everyone else joined in, and I raised a finger to my brow in a tiny salute, saying, “Touché, little Jedi, touché.”

She beamed a smile at me, a little embarrassed that she’d caused the reaction, but enjoying it nonetheless. Aaron caught my eye and winked, happy that it had happened. Like me, he knew that Shoshana was a feral animal, and he was relentlessly trying to bring her out of that land, with Jennifer and I working toward that same goal. Tonight had been one more step.

The chuckles died down just as the computer had bleeped. I went to it with everyone coalescing around me. I’d clicked on and saw Creed sitting at the other end.

Whew. No Wolffe.

He said, “Good news and bad news. The good news is their security is shit. I had no trouble getting in. The bad news is there isn’t a lot to exploit. No phones, no laptops, or anything of value that I can penetrate. Not a lot connected to Wi-Fi. They know that’s bad.”

Which was deflating.

I said, “So what’s that mean? You can’t do anything?”

And he smiled, which was his way of showing that he was smarter than everyone else. Every single time I leveraged him, he would draw out what he could do, like he was reading a play for the climax. It was trying, but because he was so good, I lived with it. Up to a point.

He said, “I didn’t say that. The one thing I did find was an Xbox connected to the Wi-Fi.”

“And? So what? Did they post their plan on a Call of Duty map or something?”

“No. But they’re online with it.”

At that point, I exploded. I leaned into the computer camera until I was sure he only saw eyeballs and said, “You’d better cut to the chase, or I’m flying home to rip your balls off.”

I saw him recoil from the screen and Jennifer leaned into the camera, pushing me aside, saying, “Creed, ignore that. What do you have?” I tried to get back on the screen and she bumped my body away, glaring at me and saying, “Give it a rest, Neanderthal.”

I stomped in a circle for a minute, and then acquiesced. Knuckles said, “Jesus Christ. You guys are a reality show in the making.”

I said nothing, taking a seat. Creed stuttered, “The Xbox is connected to Wi-Fi. They use it for online games. And they use headsets.”

Behind Jennifer, I said, “So?”

“So the headsets have microphones. They talk to people online. And because of it, I can hear everything in the room. They never turned off the box.”

Holy shit. The mother lode.

I said, “And did you get something? Did you record it?”

He now returned to his smug look, saying, “I did. Unfortunately, they weren’t speaking English in the room. But I got it.”

I said, “Was it Arabic?”

“No. Definitely not Arabic. I don’t know what it was, but I have it.”

I said, “It’s Bosnian. Get a Bosnian terp and get it translated ASAP. I mean within the next ten minutes. Something is going down soon here, and we need to know immediately.”





Chapter 32




That had been an hour ago, and now I was waiting on the results. The VPN finally connected, asking me if I wanted to use my camera, like I was a college student on a Zoom call. I clicked yes, waiting to see who was on the other end.