Lyle Green handed off the binoculars to his partner, Enzo Pellegrini, who raised them to his face and blew out a breath that reeked of stale coffee. They were sitting in a parked truck, focused on a particular headstone on a rolling swell of grass. It was a shade of green you only got from well-fertilized soil, which meant corpses or gardeners, and Shady Vale had an excess of both.
Enzo said, “Eyes up, south entrance.”
Lyle said, “Right, like your ‘eyes up’ on the pregnant broad or the guy with the prosthetic leg.”
“It was a limp.”
“Because that’s what you do when you have a prosthetic leg.”
“Girl, midteens.”
Lyle pulled the detached rifle scope from the console and lifted it to his face. The girl cut behind a stand of bushes and stepped into view. “Holy shit. That’s her.”
“Raise Van Sciver. Now.”
Lyle grabbed his Samsung, dialed through Signal.
A moment later Van Sciver’s voice came through. “Code.”
Lyle checked the screen. “‘Merrily dogwood.’”
“Go.”
“It’s her. It’s the girl.”
She drifted close enough that Lyle no longer required the scope. She set a bunch of flowers before the grave and paused, her face downturned, murmuring something to the earth.
“Do not approach,” Van Sciver said. “Repeat: Do not approach. Track her at a distance in case X is watching. Pick your moment and get her tagged. Let her lead us to him.”
Enzo dropped open the glove box. Inside were a variety of GPS tracking devices—microdots, magnetic transmitters for vehicle wheel wells, a vial of digestible silicon microchips.
The girl headed off, and Lyle tapped the gas and drifted around the cemetery’s perimeter, keeping her in sight. “Copy that.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later Lyle sat in a crowded taqueria, sipping over-cinnamoned horchata and peering across the plaza to where the target sat at a café patio table. Lyle had a Nikon secured around his neck with camera straps sporting the Arizona State University logo. Smudges of zinc-intensive sunscreen and a proud-alumnus polo shirt completed the in-town-for-a-game look.
He pretended to fuss with the camera, zeroing in with the zoom lens on the girl. Scanning across the patio, he picked up on Pellegrini inside the café, leaning against the bar and swirling a straw in his Arnold Palmer. A few orders slid across the counter, awaiting pickup. Pellegrini removed a vial of microchips, dumped them in a water glass, and used his straw to stir them in.
He’d just resumed his loose-limbed slump against the bar when the waitress swung past and grabbed the tray. As she carried the salad and spiked water glass over to Joey’s table and set them down, Pellegrini exited the café from the opposite side and walked to the bordering street where they’d parked the truck.
Lyle kept the Nikon pinned on the water glass resting near Joey’s elbow. From this distance the liquid looked perfectly clear, the tiny black microchips invisible. Once ingested, they would mass in the stomach, where they’d be stimulated by digestive juices and emit a GPS signal every time the host ate or drank. The technology had recently been improved, no longer requiring a skin patch to transmit the signal, which made for easier stealth deployment. But with this upgrade came a trade-off; the signal’s duration was shorter, remaining active for only ten minutes after mealtime. The microchips broke down and passed from the system in just forty-eight hours.
Van Sciver was banking on the fact that at some point within two days she’d be in proximity to Orphan X.
The girl poked at her salad, then rested her hand on the water glass. Lyle willed her to pick it up and drink, but something on her phone had captured her attention. She removed her hand, and he grimaced.
He had to put the camera down to avoid suspicion, so he took another chug of sugary horchata while he watched her thumb at her phone and not drink water.
His Samsung vibrated, and he answered.
“Code,” Van Sciver said.
Lyle checked the screen. “‘Teakettle lovingly.’”
“Update.”
“The table’s set. We’re just waiting on her to do her part.”
“Mechanism?”
“Water glass.”
“I’ll hold on the line,” Van Sciver said.
Lyle swallowed to moisten his throat. “Okay.”
The silence was uncomfortable.
Enough time had passed that Lyle could fiddle with his Nikon again without drawing attention. He lifted it up, watched Joey chewing and gazing absentmindedly into the middle distance. The sun was directly overhead, warming the patio. They were in fucking Arizona. Why wouldn’t she just take a sip of water?
At last she wiped her mouth. She reached for the glass. She lifted it from the table.
A figure loomed behind her, blurry in the zoom-lens close-up. A hand lifted the water glass out of the girl’s hand.
Lyle adjusted the focus, found himself staring at Orphan X.
How the hell did X know the water had been spiked?
Abruptly, Lyle was perspiring. The ASU polo stuck to the small of his back. X was saying something to the girl.
Lyle’s breathing must have changed, because Van Sciver said, “What? What is it?”
Lyle started at the voice; he had forgotten about the phone pressed to his cheek. His mind whirled, assessing the best phrasing of the update. He opened his mouth, but dread prevented any words from exiting.
The girl rose to leave.
Orphan X paused by her chair, water glass still in hand.
Then he drank it down.
As X followed the girl out of the plaza, Lyle felt his mouth drop open a bit wider. A chime announced the GPS beacon going live on his Samsung.
Van Sciver said, “What happened?”
It took Lyle two tries to get the words out. “We just hit the jackpot.”
* * *
Samsung in hand, Lyle ran across the plaza to where Pellegrini waited in the idling truck. Lyle jumped in, eyeing the GPS grid, gesturing madly for Pellegrini to turn right.
“There, there, there! We only have seven minutes left.”
Pellegrini looked confused by Lyle’s urgency. “We got the girl?”
Lyle said, “We got Orphan X.”
Pellegrini’s expression went flat with shock. The tires chirped as he pulled out. Lyle directed him around the block, following the blinking dot on his screen.
“Do we do this ourselves?” Pellegrini said. “Or wait for backup?”
Lyle held up the screen. As former Secret Service, they had a clear operational sweet spot, and that encompassed surveillance, prevention, and protection. When they had to be, they were proficient assaulters as well, but that wasn’t where the critical mass of their training had been spent. That had been made all too apparent by the death count of their fellow recruitees.
“We have Orphan X tagged,” Lyle said. “We can get the drop on him if we move right now.”
Pellegrini nosed the truck around the corner, and they saw it up ahead, a black Nissan Altima with a spoiler, Orphan X in view behind the wheel, the girl in the passenger seat. Lyle texted the vehicle description and license plate to Van Sciver.
Van Sciver had access to satellites, and once they locked the car in from above, there was nowhere on God’s green earth it could go that it wouldn’t be found.
Van Sciver’s text confirmed: BIRDS ONLINE NOW.
ARE YOU EN ROUTE?
ALMOST AT THE AIRPORT.
The Nissan wheeled around the corner. As it turned, Orphan X’s face rotated slightly toward them.
“Shit,” Pellegrini said. “Did he see us?”
“I don’t know,” Lyle said. “I don’t think so.”
“Tell Van Sciver.”
Lyle texted: MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE. UNSURE.
Van Sciver’s reply: PROCEED. BE CAUTIOUS.
The Nissan kept driving, neither quicker nor slower. They stayed on its tail.
“Holy shit,” Lyle said. “We’re gonna be the ones. We’re gonna be the ones.”
“Calm down,” Pellegrini said.
Up ahead the Nissan pulled into a six-story parking structure.
Lyle texted Van Sciver: ENTERED PARKING GARAGE.
The reply: BIRDS ARE UP. WE’LL PICK HIM UP WHEN HE EXITS. FLUSH HIM OUT BUT DO NOT PURSUE.
Lyle brought up the GPS screen, watched the dot rise and rise. “He’s heading to an upper floor.”
Pellegrini turned into the parking structure. As he slowed to snatch a ticket from the dispenser, Lyle pointed ahead. The black car, now empty, was parked next to the handicapped spots by the elevators.
The truck pulled through, and Lyle hopped out and circled the car, confirming it was empty. As he ran back to the truck, he was already keying in his next text to Van Sciver: CAR EMPTY, PARKED BY ELEVATORS ON GROUND FLOOR.
The last reception bar flickered, but the text sent just before the Samsung lost service. Lyle climbed into the truck. “Go, go, go. He went upstairs.”
Pellegrini said, “Why?”
“If he’s switching cars on another level, we have to get there to ID the new vehicle for the satellites. We’ve only got a few minutes before we lose GPS.”
A circular ramp looped around a hollow core at the center of the parking structure. Pellegrini accelerated into the turn, centrifugal force shoving Lyle against the door as they rode up the spiral to the second level.
He watched the dot. It was way above them on six.
Pellegrini made a noise, and Lyle glanced up from the screen.
A black rope was now dangling down the center column of the parking structure.
Lyle’s brain couldn’t process the rope’s sudden appearance. He looked back at the screen. The dot was no longer way above them. It was on the fifth level. Now the fourth.
Pellegrini was slowing the truck, reaching for his handgun.
Lyle looked back at the thick nylon cord dangling ten feet away from them.
A rappelling rope.
As they curved around onto the third floor, Orphan X zippered down the rope, a pistol steady in his gloved hand.
The driver’s window blew out as he shot Pellegrini through the temple.
Even after the spatter hit Lyle, he hadn’t caught up to what was happening. Orphan X rappelled down as the unmanned truck banged up the ramp to the third level, their fall and rise coordinated like the two sides of a pulley.
There was a suspended moment as the two men drew eye level, Lyle catching a perfect view of X’s face over the top of the aligned sights.
He saw the muzzle flare and nothing else.
* * *
Evan hit the ground floor, coming off the fast rope and crouching to break his fall. He threw his gloves off with a flick of his wrists and they dangled from clips connecting them to his sleeves, the full-grain leather steaming with friction heat.
Seventeen men down.
Eight left.
Joey stepped out from the stairwell and ran across to meet Evan at the Nissan Altima. As he tore off the detachable spoiler and ran it over to a Dumpster, she stripped carbon-fiber wrap from the Altima, revealing the car’s original white coat. Evan unscrewed the Arizona license plates, exposing the California plates beneath.
A few puzzled pedestrians gawked up the ramp at the rappelling rope. Near the third level by the smashed truck, horns blared. There was enough confusion that Evan and Joey went largely unnoticed. They stuffed the Arizona plates and fiber wrap in the trash container near the elevator, climbed into the now-white Nissan, and pulled out into the flow of traffic.