Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

In the red-orange glow of the flames, Walt concluded it had neutralized the immediate threat and went tracking off through the snow. Its state of alertness raised to maximum defense emergency, or Cocked Pistol detection mode, the ’hog did not return to the perimeter fence. It was now on free-roaming patrol and actively seeking out potential hostiles.

Behind it, the ruin of the mess-scullery burned steadily in the night.

The unwieldy military abbreviation was C4ISR, which stood for the even more unwieldy Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance center. Situated at the north side of Janus, the narrow concrete structure was the base’s operational hub, the place where information was gathered and integrated, key decisions were made, and mission orders given.

Base personnel simply called it headquarters.

Five minutes before the explosion at the western perimeter, Colonel John Howard was stalking its halls and stuffing his pipe bowl. The pipe was a handmade Savinelli briar imported from Italy. The tobacco was Escudo Navy Deluxe, a coin-cut perique cultivated in Virginia and aged in Scandinavia. Both were gifts from Carol Morse, Net Force’s D/O and his former CIA liaison. Howard had received them after accepting her offer to join the president’s new cabinet-level cybersecurity organization as lead officer of Quickdraw, its global rapid-response arm.

Janus was Morse’s baby. The model for a projected network of semicovert and covert outposts hosted by allied governments in all seven continents. Four months into Net Force’s existence, the base was still an unrefined template, a work in progress. But it was vital to launching the search for the hacker who had masterminded the cyberstrike on New York.

Morse knew her stuff. Professionally and personally, she paid attention to the fine points, Howard thought. The Escudo, his favorite blend, was damn good quality. Its taste reminded him of grapes, the fat, round green ones his grandmother would pick wild during all his summers with her in Oklahoma. Scuppernongs, she called them, and they were nothing like the store-bought grapes back home in Baltimore. Their skins were as thick as olive skins. When you ate one, you turned it so the stem scar was over your mouth, and squeezed it between your fingertips so the sweet, soft pulp would burst out onto your tongue. Howard would devour them in the field outside Nana’s farmhouse, the juice running down his chin, getting on his T-shirt, making a sticky mess of him. They were not for eating in polite company, like when the pastor came over for Sunday supper. Pastor John Joseph Cotes of the Bixby Memorial Church, his wife, and their daughter, Rose.

Rose Cotes, with her almond-shaped eyes, knee skirts, and smooth brown legs. He’d shared them with her a few times, the scuppernongs, when they sneaked off to the barn after dessert.

In the corridor outside his operations room, Howard abruptly stopped pacing to refill his pipe, remembering the scents of drying hay and Rosey’s hair and the taste of the grapes on her lips. Taking two medallions of the Escudo from his tin, he rolled them into balls and tamped them into the bowl, gently, because he wanted to leave some air underneath. The air pocket was the secret, keeping the tobacco lit. Pack the balls too tight and they would keep going out.

When the bowl of his pipe was full, he struck a wooden matchstick, held it over the tobacco, and put the stem in his mouth, drawing in air to get it started.

Damn good.

Morse, she knew him inside out. He no longer bothered wondering how, just accepted that knowing people was one of her skills, possibly an instinctive thing. And what she didn’t know, what she couldn’t see for herself, she made a point of learning. Howard had met her face-to-face—what, twice? Three times? The rest of their communications were long-distance, Washington, DC, to Baneasa. Yet she understood what made him tick...and how to get to him.

It was Morse who had sent him Carmody and his wild boys, and he couldn’t quarrel with the outcome. Without them, there would have been no tracing the Wolf to his hideout in Rosalvea. But the Outlier, Kali? Someone who was still an international fugitive? Morse had given her clearance exceptions. Access to base facilities. A free pass to fly aboard Raven , the most guarded aircraft in the military. It seemed crazy given her list of hacking offenses.

Howard knew what she could do. He knew what she did to help Carmody’s Fox Team pull off the data heist in Bucharest. But he still didn’t know why she helped or where their common goals ended.

He puffed steadily as he moved the match around the bowl. The tobacco glowed under its flame, and he held in the smoke.

Scuppernongs , he thought and exhaled through his mouth. The cloud of smoke held its shape a second or two and then dissipated in front of him.

He liked clear-cut lines, borders with straight edges. And Kali...she was like smoke. Despite her actions in Bucharest, he couldn’t get a fix on her. She made lines blurry and indistinct, and that bothered him.

Tonight it bothered him more than most nights because of the mission. It had been entirely Morse’s call to send her with Carmody, against his objections. For all her arguments about it making operational sense, he hoped they all wouldn’t live to regret her decision.

He looked over at the swing door to Ops, puffing steadily on his pipe. Abrams, Berra, and the new kid, Wasserman, were inside watching the screens, but they would have next to nothing for him in the way of updates. The Scalpel team was keeping radio silence, and it wouldn’t be the first time. The operation had to be kept covert to all appearances. If things went wrong, the White House could have some distance, claim it wasn’t involved, insist no international laws were broken with its knowledge. Bent, maybe, but loans and foreign aid would candy-coat the bullshit enough so the Romanians would swallow. That was basic geopolitics, and Howard got it. But he wasn’t a politician. He was a soldier. A dozen of his men were with Fox Team, and he disliked being in the dark.

He was about to resume his uneasy pacing when he heard a loud, sharp cracking sound like a thunderclap outside the building. He guessed it might be connected to the snow, although the forecast hadn’t made him expect much of a storm. Just a light accumulation and slightly higher than average winds. Otherwise, he would have kept Raven wheels down and delayed the grab. But the closer you came to winter in this corner of the world, the more changeable and unpredictable the weather.

He stood listening for several seconds, heard nothing. Still, he wondered about that noise.

Howard started toward the entry door, meaning to take a quick look outside. He took exactly two steps before the sirens went off and stopped him cold. Then the swing door flew outward, and he saw Abrams standing in the entryway, his eyes enormous.

“Sir, we’re—”

They were the only words to leave his mouth before Howard heard another deafening crack, this time all around him. He saw a bright flash of light, felt a sudden vibration and terrible, blistering heat on his face. He shouted for Abrams to get down, but it was too late, he was gone, dissolved into a blinding orange brightness.

Then everything turned into fire and smoke.

“Hey, Sarge! Thought you were catching some shut-eye.”

Sergeant Julio Fernandez, Net Force Quickdraw, glanced up from his tablet to see Private Glenn Wasserman approaching from the stairwell. He held a finger up to his lips.

“You never saw me,” he said. “I told Howard that I was heading back to quarters.”

Wasserman passed Fernandez’s table, veering toward the coffee maker. They were in the basement level of HQ that was known as the Pit once upon a time, back in the bad old days of the CIA rendition program and black detention-interrogation facilities. Nowadays the hardened sublevel—its walls were steel-reinforced concrete, and its air came through a nuclear-biological-chemical filtration system—served primarily as a high-tech conference room, with this small recreation/coffee area spurring off one end.