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  “I’m afraid he’s going to have to decline your invitation,” Anvil said from behind Lydia. A karambit slid slowly in front of Lydia’s throat as Anvil removed her gun. “We have things to attend to—that do not include a visit to CITADEL headquarters.”

  “Like destroying my city and killing innocent civilians?” Lydia spat. “How stupid do you think I am, Lily?”

  Anvil’s expression darkened, and for a second I thought she was going to bury her blade in Lydia’s neck. She was a bit touchy about who used her name.

  “Is that a real question?” Anvil asked. “Because I wouldn’t know where to star—”

  Five CITADEL soldiers emerged and surrounded us, their rifles locked and loaded.

  “This is where you drop your weapon and surrender into my custody,” Lydia said.

  “Not likely,” Anvil said, keeping Lydia in front of her. “Tell them to drop their weapons.”

  “The moment she draws blood”—Lydia pointed at me—“kill him.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Lydia?” I asked, raising my hands. “Stop this.”

  “Did you think I would be out here alone?” Lydia asked. “I know you two. She’s like your lethal shadow. I expected her to show.”

  “You’re getting better,” Anvil said from behind Lydia. “but you’re not quite there—yet.”

  Anvil pushed Lydia forward, causing her to stumble into one of her men. Anvil rushed one of the CITADEL soldiers. She closed the distance faster than he could react, disarmed him, and swept him to the ground before running between cars. Several soldiers gave chase. I almost felt sorry for them.

  “Find and apprehend her,” Lydia said, standing and dusting off her clothes. “Take her alive. Use the tasers.”

  “That is a bad idea,” I said. “Call your men back.”

  Lydia glared at me.

  “You had something to do with Union Square,” Lydia said as one of her men cuffed me, and followed the others. She removed the dish and placed it on the ground next to me.

  “Careful with that,” I said. “It’s fragile.”

  “What is it?”

  “Signal booster,” I said. “My cable reception is shit. You know how it is. Overpriced rates and underwhelming service.”

  “How did you do Union Square?” she asked. “If you say it was a naturally occurring earthquake, I’ll tase you myself right now.”

  “That wasn’t us,” I said. “And you know it.”

  “I know you’re involved somehow.”

  “We don’t have anything to do—” I said.

  “I know HALO is involved, don’t you dare deny it. And now a drone strike at Cornell Tech and you just happen to be on Roosevelt Island?”

  “We’re on the same team here,” I started. “We’re both try—”

  “My team doesn’t run black ops in the middle of my city, risking the lives of innocents,” she interrupted. “You and your renegades are out there—”

  The sound of electricity filled the night followed by several grunts. Lydia turned at the sound, glancing at me with a satisfied smile.

  “Finally,” she said. “You and your team are coming with me to answer some—”

  Lydia crumpled to the ground mid-sentence as the sound of electricity crackled around her.

  “What the hell?” I asked, staring at Anvil. “Violence isn’t the go-to solution every time, you know.”

  “What? You planned on reasoning with her, really?” Anvil asked, sheathing her blades and releasing me from the cuffs. “She thinks we were part of the Union Square attack.”

  “You didn’t have to knock her out.” I said, picking up the dish and heading to the Armadillo. I walked around the men Anvil had tased out of commission.

  “I didn’t have to—I wanted to,” Anvil said with a slight smile. “That was pleasantly satisfying. We should get Q to outfit the Chameleons with tasers.”

  “Don’t think so,” I said. “I was just about to convince her to stop pursuing us.”

  “How?” Anvil emptied Lydia’s gun, tossing the rounds in one direction and the gun in another. “You were going to shoot her?”

  “No, I was going to—”

  “Appeal to her better nature? Make her see reason?”

  “Well, I can be pretty convincing, you know.”

  “Whatever you were going to do, it wasn’t going to work, Shep,” Anvil interrupted. “You forgot they call her ‘Pitbull’? It’s not because she gets easily distracted. Once she focuses on a target…well, you know the rest.”

  “I do,” I said, looking back at the unconscious Lydia as I jumped into the Armadillo. “I better put a call in to her team. She’ll be missed. How did she even know we would be out here?”

  “Like I said,” Anvil replied, turning on the engine. “She’s good. I’m better.”

  “I thought it was ‘we’re’ better.”

  Anvil shot me a look. “Who was handcuffed and being held at gunpoint?”

  “I had the situation under control,” I said. “I was lulling her into dropping her guard.”

  “Of course you were,” Anvil said with a nod and raced down Main Street. “Any longer and she would have surrendered into your custody.”

  “Point taken,” I said, shaking my head. I knew which battles to pick. This wasn’t one of them. “Let’s get this thing”—I pointed to the Trampoline Apparatus—“back to Cans. If he can find Victor, we can stop him.”

  “Not stop him,” Anvil said, her voice steel. “We aren’t stopping him—we are erasing him before more dead fill the streets. Erasing…period.”

  “I’m not going to make the same mistake twice,” I said, nodding. “This time we end him.”

  FIFTEEN

  It was the middle of the night by the time Anvil pulled into R2. Cans was waiting for us when we arrived.

  “I can’t believe you got it,” Cans said, geeking out. “Do you know how hard it is to get a working Trampoline Apparatus? These things are beyond rare.”

  “I can tell you how hard it was to get that one.”

  “Oh shit, yeah,” Cans said. “I’m really glad you two are okay.”

  “Can you find him?” I asked, handing over the dish to Cans. “How long?”

  “That’s hard to say. These things are encryption beasts.”

  “It’s been a long night. I need food and sleep—give me the cliff notes version.”

  “I have to open it up first, boss.”

  Cans took the Trampoline Apparatus and placed it on a worktable. Behind the radar dish section, I saw Cans open a rectangular box and connect a laptop with some cables. I leaned over to see what he was typing on the laptop.

  “This isn’t going to move any faster if you’re hovering over me,” he said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I get something.”

  “Sorry about that. I just don’t appreciate being shot at, and would like to return the courtesy at his earliest inconvenience.”

  “Monk has something to show you,” Cans said. “I found some scary shit in their databases.”

  “Did you leave a trail?”

  “Of course,” Cans answered. “They can follow it all the way back to Fort Meade.”

  “Excellent. Was Monk able to build an Earthquaker?”

  “I got him the plans, but he’s missing a component—he called it AA.”

  “AA? What the hell is AA?”

  “No idea,” Cans answered. “You better let him explain it to you. He tried to break it down for me, but I don’t speak chemical explosion. It sounds bad though.”

  I pointed to the dish apparatus.

  “Is this Trampoline going to be of any use in finding Black Wolf?”

  Cans nodded and smiled, grateful to be back in familiar territory. “You better believe Victor’s sweating right now, knowing we have this thing,” Cans answered. “You see this section here?”—he pointed to a part of the rectangular box—“this acts as a transponder. Once I decrypt the data—”

  “You can give me Victor’s loc
ation,” I said. “That data will tell us where he is?”

  “I can give you the location from where he sent the SWAT Control truck signal from,” Cans said. “If I move fast, I can do this before he rabbits, and you can stop him.”

  “Victor doesn’t ‘rabbit’. I have a feeling he wanted me to get this.”

  “That wouldn’t make sense,” Cans answered. “We can locate him once I crack the encryption.”

  “If I know him, that’s exactly what he wants,” I said. “He won’t run away. Not without trying to erase me first.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I know him,” I answered, remembering Anvil’s words: Out of all of us, you know him the best. “What’s the range of this apparatus?”

  “Up to three miles from the source, but it’s not omnidirectional. The signal has to come from a specific location, bounce off this dish and then be sent to another receiver.”

  “Like a…trampoline,” I said, moving back as his fingers flew over the keyboard. “I get it.”

  He gave me a ‘Captain Obvious’ look as Anvil nudged me away from the worktable.

  “Exactly,” he said, nodding and leaning closer to the screen. “As soon as I know—you’ll know.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Anvil said, glancing at the apparatus Cans worked on. “Victor may be waiting for Shep, but he will be moving his base of operations even as we speak.”

  “I’m aware,” Cans answered, without looking up. “This would move faster if I’m not being interrogated.”

  Anvil placed a hand on Cans’ shoulder, causing him to pause and glance her way.

  “Understood,” she said, stepping away. “Hurry.”

  “I will.”

  I flexed my hand as we left Cans’ workstation.

  “How did Lydia know about HALO?” I asked as we headed to the Hub. “It’s not like they would—”

  “Stop that,” Anvil said, pointing at my hand as we moved down the corridor. “Remember your breath.”

  I took a deep breath, centered myself and stopped flexing my fingers.

  The Hub was our main meeting area. R2 was designed identically to our Front Street HQ, which was now molten slag. A main center area connected different stations and offices situated around the center, like spokes on a wheel. Each area could be compartmentalized, with the Hub being the most secure.

  “Where would Victor get an Earthquaker?”

  “We both know the answer to that,” Anvil said as we stepped into the Hub. “HALO never decommissioned the project.”

  “Or if they did, they still had inventory. Doesn’t mean he had access to them.”

  “But someone at HALO did,” she answered. “Whoever that was, gave Black Wolf a device.”

  “A device he used in Union Square to kill hundreds of innocents.”

  “Which means their hands are just as bloody.”

  “Victor told me the reason,” I said as Monk entered the Hub. “Someone at HALO wants us removed from the board. We’re liabilities.”

  “They’re cleaning house,” Anvil said. “It means the project is still going. If they want us removed, we can derail their progress. Do you think Adams is involved?”

  “No. Adams is old-school. He would do me the courtesy of ending me himself. He would never act by proxy—not his style.”

  “I have bad news and worse news,” Monk said, holding what appeared to be a metal soccer ball. “Which do you want first?”

  Bella stepped into the Hub, behind Monk.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Bella asked, giving Monk a wider berth. “It looks like a soccer ball of death. Is it active?”

  “No, and technically this is a truncated icosahedron—not a soccer ball.”

  “Talk to me, Monk,” I said, pointing at the table. “Put your truncated soccer ball down.”

  Monk placed the metal sphere on the center conference table.

  “I was able to recreate this from the plans Cans ‘acquired’ from HALO.”

  “That doesn’t look like what was used in Istanbul,” I said, pointing at the device. “That device was larger, about three times this size.”

  “Larger,” Monk said. “This is the modern edition.”

  “The what?” I asked incredulous. “HALO is still—?”

  “They’re still making those things?” Bella asked. “I thought they scrapped it?”

  “Apparently, the data we gathered for them in Istanbul helped make this iteration possible,” Monk said. “We helped them get to this version.”

  “We helped them perfect it?” I asked. “Those fuckers.”

  Monk nodded. “It seems they’re working on a smaller version too,” Monk said, his voice grim. “About the size of a softball. Smaller than this”—he pointed at the sphere—“and about ten times stronger.”

  “How?”

  “They’ve managed to synthesize a stable version of AA.”

  “Okay, now in English we can understand,” I said. “AA?”

  “The volatile component of an Earthquaker is AA—Azidoazide Azide—which is really just a nickname for 1-diazidocarbamoyl-5-azidotetrazole.”

  “Still not English,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Pretend we don’t understand the words coming out of your mouth.”

  “Pretend?” Bella asked, looking at Monk. “I can barely get him to talk, and when he does, no one understands what he’s saying. I liked the silent you better.”

  “AA is one of the most volatile chemicals on the planet,” Monk explained, ignoring Bella. “This thing detonates if you look at it funny, much less try to study it. It’s major league catastrophic and what makes Earthquakers possible.”

  “And HALO managed to create a stable version of this AA?”

  “AAx-1 is stable and more potent,” Monk answered. “If the information Cans gave me is correct—a spoonful of this chemical amplified through an Earthquaker would turn Union Square into a crater—the entire area, not just part of a station.”

  “Holy hell,” Bella said under her breath. “We have to stop them.”

  “We can’t make this AAx-1 on our own, can we?”

  Monk shook his head. “I don’t even know how they managed to create it,” he said. “This chemical can explode with no obvious stimuli—you can’t even analyze the thing without running the risk of blowing yourself apart, much less stabilize it. Someone over there is a chemical genius.”

  “If HALO Tech managed it,” I said, “it means it’s possible.”

  “I’m still trying to decipher the entire formulae. I’m guessing it’s at HALO.”

  “You better get Quemi—our resident genius in on this,” I said, knowing what our next move was. “If we got you a sample of this AAx-1, could you find a way to neutralize it?”

  “Yes,” Monk said. “But HALO would never give you a sample of it. It’s not supposed to exist. I doubt anyone except the Director of HALO and a handful of people know about it.”

  “I never said they would give us a sample,” I said. “Lucky for you, I know a Division Head.”

  “That would be a suicide run, boss,” Monk answered after a pause. “HALO is a fortress. It’s impossible. The odds of getting in and out with a sample are staggeringly slim.”

  “Never tell me the odds,” I said, looking at Anvil who nodded. “I need to eat, sleep, and make a call.”

  SIXTEEN

  A few hours later, I called Bullock.

  “CITADEL wants your head on a platter,” Bullock said. “Lydia especially, would like to inflict some extreme pain.”

  I took a long pull from my second mug of Deathwish coffee and bit into an industrial-sized bagel nearly as big as my head.

  “What she needs,” I said around a mouthful of bagel, “is a vacation. Some time in the sun, on a beach.”

  “I’ll make sure to let her know your suggestion the next time she’s destroying my eardrums,” he said. “She came to HALO—personally—to accuse us of creating earthquakes in her city.”

  �
��Surprised you let her past security. Let me guess. Adams sent you to run interference, again.”

  “Yes, he was conveniently unavailable.”

  “We need to talk,” I said, taking another sip. “Somewhere secure.”

  “I thought that’s what we were doing?”

  “Face-to-face.”

  “Where?” Bullock asked hesitantly. “It’s not like you could wander the streets. Lydia wants you found…yesterday.”

  “You ever been to Liverpool?”

  “Liverpool? Are you insane? You want me to fly across the Atlantic? For a conversation?”

  “There’s a small part of Liverpool right here in the city. Meet you there at noon.”

  “Small part of Liverpool? What are you talking about?”

  “Five minutes past noon, I’m gone. Don’t be late and don’t bring friends.”

  I ended the call. I sat in one of the dim, small multi-purpose offices just off the Hub, and considered if I had been too obtuse, when Anvil walked in. She grabbed the other half of my bagel and took an enormous bite.

  “Do you think he’ll figure it out?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course you can have half my food, please…help yourself.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I was starving.”

  I observed her slight frame and shook my head.

  “Where does all the food you eat, go, anyway?” I asked. “You consume more than I do, and I outweigh you by a hundred pounds, easy.”

  “My body is an efficient fighting machine and utilizes the food I eat properly.” She pointed to herself—“Lamborghini”—she pointed at me—“dump truck.”

  “Dump truck?”

  “Emphasis on the ‘dump’ part,” she said, taking another bite. “Your clue wasn’t exactly clear.”

  “How did you—?”

  She tapped her ear. “Our proximity channel is on. “You didn’t give him much to go on.”

  “He has options. He can ask Adams or he can do some research. Google is your friend.”

  “You’re assuming he’s intelligent enough to ask for help,” she answered, finishing the bagel, unsheathing her blades, and placing them on the table next to a small bag. “Or do the research required.”