Max Collins - Before the Dawn

“You don’t mind if I let that motivate me,” Seth said, “and not some sense of preserving ‘Americana.’ ”

“Not at all. But watch your all-American ass, my friend. The Russian, whose name you refuse to learn how to pronounce...”

Proving he’d been yanking Logan’s chain all along, Seth said, “Kafelnikov.”

“Any way you say it, Seth, he’s a dangerous man.”

Halfway out the door, the X5 shrugged. “ I’m a dangerous man.”

Logan couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

Colonel Donald Lydecker sat at his desk, drumming his fingers on its Lucite-covered metal top.

Had Max been there to see him, she would have noted that he looked little different than he had when the X5s broke out of Manticore back in ’09. The years had been kind to Lydecker, despite an alcoholism problem that he had kept in check during that same time span. His blond hair now contained a few straggling grays but was thick as ever. His icy blue eyes had changed only in that he now needed glasses for reading, and more “smile” lines had been etched in the corners. His body was still tight and muscular... it just took a little more effort these days, to keep it that way.

His office was strictly government issue, the walls and ceiling a pastel mint green, the file cabinets, chairs, desk, and computer table all standard institutional gray. Not one personal item adorned the top of his desk or any other part of the anonymous, no-nonsense office. Only his black shirt, slacks, and leather jacket were — because of his sub-rosa status — not GI.

Across the desk from him were two subordinates — a kid in his early twenties, Jensen, and an African American in his mid- to late thirties, Finch. The two men stood at attention, soldiers in civilian suits and ties, and Lydecker thought he detected a slight trembling in both.

It pleased him that they feared him — in his lexicon, fear and respect were analogous. He let his breath out slowly, calming himself, getting centered, just as he’d taught his kids.

“I’ve been watching video footage of one of our X5s — a male.”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

“And where do you suppose I got that footage?”

They glanced at each other quickly, then turned their eyes front. Neither man spoke.

“Perhaps I got it from our own intelligence efforts. Do you think I got it from our own intelligence efforts, Mr. Jensen?”

“... no, sir.”

“How about you, Mr. Finch?”

“Yes, sir... I mean, no sir...”

Lydecker sighed, just a little. “I got it from SNN.”

The two men stared straight ahead; they might have been carved from stone... if stone trembled.

“Would someone please tell me why the Satellite News Network can find one of our kids, and we can’t?”

Finch and Jensen had no answers.

“Mr. Finch, I want our people at the offices of SNN within the hour.”

“Yes, sir,” Finch said.

“Mr. Jensen, I want to know the source of this tape.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I don’t want it tomorrow. Dismissed.”

The two men saluted, turned, and left.

Lydecker turned to the TV and VHS machine on a cart near his desk, and played the tape again. He watched the grainy picture as the young man leapt across the screen. He knew immediately it was one of his X5s. Judging by the athleticism of the boy’s moves, Lydecker figured the young man on the tape was Zack, or perhaps Seth. The two oldest subjects, they had always been the best athletes of the X5 program.

Lydecker could only appreciate the athleticism of the young man, the beauty of his discipline. If this one was anything to judge by, these kids were growing up to be just what he and the others had dreamed they could be. Watching his creation clean the clocks of five police officers in less than forty seconds, Lydecker felt a surge of parental pride...

Thirteen of them had escaped that night, the group of twelve and their leader, Zack, with Seth immediately captured but overcoming the two guards and slipping out in the confusion; and the colonel had spent much of the last ten years trying to round up this deadly baker’s dozen.

He knew the higher-ups considered his recapture record less than stellar; the irony was, he had done his job so well with his young soldiers that they had made him look incompetent. Two out of thirteen in a decade did seem a shade paltry... he still remembered the general staring at him in contempt, saying, “You mean to say you can’t recover a goddamn bunch of little kids? ”

Little kids.

When they’d escaped, the youngest one had been seven. That meant six years of full-bore Manticore training... Kavi had been the first to be recaptured and that had taken over five years. Even then, it had been luck that they’d stumbled onto him in Wolf Point, Montana.

Kavi, then twelve, had been spotted by a Manticore operative — Finch, in fact — who’d stopped to watch some kids playing baseball. Kavi made a throw on the fly from the outfield fence to home plate... a major leaguer would have envied that throw... and Finch knew immediately where the kid had gotten the golden arm.

Two and a half years later, Vada, a female — eleven at the time of the escape — had been surrounded in the desert outside Amargosa Valley, Nevada. She had grown into a shapely young woman in a T-shirt and jeans and running shoes — soft brown hair, huge brown eyes, full sensuous lips.

Noting the sexual attractiveness of one of his own kids, Lydecker felt a twinge of something... guilt? Embarrassment? But the colonel could hardly fail to notice that Vada’s blossoming physique looked ready for a whole different set of sins than those she’d been designed for.

When she fought back, dropping three members of the TAC team without losing a drop of sweat, Lydecker had drawn his pistol, warned her once.

She cursed him and came running at him, like a wild beast, her fists tiny hard things raised to pummel...

When he put that bullet between her pert breasts, Lydecker surprised himself with an immediate feeling of loss.

Self-defense, his mind assured him.

But it wasn’t that easy: Vada was, after all, one of his own. He had reminded himself that this was his job, and if anyone was going to kill one of his kids, it should be him. After all, the X5s were his responsibility.

And it wasn’t like she was the first.

After the unpleasantness in Los Angeles — he’d found dealing with the Russian and his rabble extremely distasteful — Lydecker had returned empty-handed again. The amazing reports of the dark-haired young woman — Jondy?... Max, maybe? — had all the earmarks of an X5.

But after aiding and abetting the slaughter at the Chinese Theatre, Lydecker had come home with bupkus, the trail cold, ice cold...

Now, a reprieve, a real shot at getting back another of the X5s, a male, and he didn’t want to let that chance get away like the girl in LA.

He picked up the phone to arrange transport to Seattle. No matter what his men learned or did not learn at SNN, Lydecker had a trip to take.

One of his kids had turned up in Seattle...

... and “daddy” longed for a reunion.

The child Lydecker sought was creeping down the hall of the uppermost floor of Engidyne Software, the computer infrastructure company whose youthful CEO... and owner... was Jared Sterling. Seth had bypassed the alarm, opened a window in a lunchroom, and gotten inside.

This was the executive level of a steel-and-mostly-glass six-story suburban box that was otherwise primarily rabbit warrens of underpaid computer geeks. This floor, unnervingly quiet after hours, served the top echelon, half a dozen wonks who had been with Sterling from the start, millionaires thanks to Engidyne stock options. No one on this floor had to stay late to prove him- or herself, and — while a few geeks on the floors below labored into the night, seeking advancement that would never come — that left only a token security staff, about half a dozen... who had just finished their hourly rounds of the floor.