Perfect Weapon. Amy J. Fetzer

That meant running at top speed, he thought, then hotfooted it to his deer stand and climbed past the jump seat. He sighted again through the binoculars, his gaze clawing the hillside from the cavern entrance. Nothing. Impatient rage rushed inside him, but he moved slowly, finally swinging right and higher.

      The air was dusted, and from this distance, he couldn’t tell if it was smoke, or lingering morning fog; the smudge in the sky was too faint. He climbed down, dropping the last dozen feet into a pile of leaves, then heading toward the top. He hadn’t gone a hundred feet when he heard the whine of motorcycles and knew he was too late to catch them.

      He didn’t stop.

      7:58 A.M.

      The dark sedan pulled up to the contact point, the door popping open without help. Sydney climbed in and shut it. The locks clamped down automatically. Her gaze snapped to the driver, but he was hidden behind black glass. Probably wearing dark glasses, black suit, and no recognizable jewelry, either, she thought, feeling creeped out even as she was relieved to be on her way to safety. She wanted to ask the driver about the others, her colleagues, the sentries. But she knew no one she encountered would talk. It was their job not to.

      She stared out the window, her stomach churning miserably, then she looked around, saw the small leather hatch and opened it. It was filled with water bottles, and she took one, cracked the seal and drained a third of it. Her hand shook as she swiped it across her mouth, and she held it out to steady it.

      Blood was knitted deep into the cracks of her nails and knuckles. The urge to rub it was overpowering. The young Marine’s death played in her mind again and again.

      I’ve never seen anyone die.

      She didn’t want to again.

      She gulped more water, then tossed the empty aside and grabbed another bottle. She drank.

      Her composure wavered and she clamped her hand over her mouth, her eyes stinging. Don’t. Crying won’t help. You’re stronger than this. You have to be.

      In the back of her mind, she heard her dead father’s voice, cold and imperialistic, telling her logic defeats emotion, fear is the easiest to conquer. She’d bet a grand her father never had anyone shoot at him, either. But he was right, her fear was drowning under the flood of anger flowing through her like overripe wine. Thick and slow. Bitter rage churned in her, spilling over any remaining terror until there was nothing left but the urgent need to find out what happened—and see that someone paid.

      She leaned back and waited. Let her thoughts brew. The ride toward Washington would be long. She ought to be flaming mad by then.

      How nice.

      8:22 A.M.

      Cisco grabbed the oh-shit strap and held on as the chopper took a dive over Annandale. “This isn’t an F-18, hot dog. Go silent, we’re alerting the entire county,” Cisco said into the mike, and when the noise inside the chopper died down, he pulled off the headset and tossed it aside. The roadblocks were up, but he had to lock down the mountain before suspicions got out of hand and the local cops pushed their noses into his business. The park opened in—he checked his watch—less than an hour. He’d been forty minutes from Langley when he’d gotten the call, and the gridlock traffic had chiseled into his time. He didn’t have any left to make it clean and accepted it. The fictitious “gas leak” was going to be deadly.

      Turning his attention from the view out the chopper window, he stared at the bank of monitors. The sensors were off, way off. He sent the computer an arched look, his gaze hopping across the data spitting across on the small screen. “Copy?”

      “Yes, sir,” an agent said, pulling at his headset. “It’s the latest relay.”

      The data pour stopped, the screen blanking to a gray haze. He didn’t look at anyone else. He didn’t need to. They understood. The surveillance feed from the Cradle to Mother was gone. Something had taken it—or the power source—out. Cisco turned his attention to the mountain below.

      “Sir?”

      He could almost feel the other agents in the chopper exchanging confused looks. “Do nothing,” he said. “I can’t judge what I can’t see.”

      An agent turned back to the screen in a desperate effort to pull up the images. It was useless. The security cameras and sensors were able to survive a blast that would wipe out a city block. If they weren’t receiving, then Mother, the electronic caretaker, wasn’t just down. She was dead. That meant the air supply was enough to last maybe ten hours if it wasn’t contaminated. If it was, then he couldn’t vent the facility.

      Whoever had hit the Cradle knew its most tender spot. That didn’t leave Cisco many suspects. “I want infrared before we set down,” he said.

      An agent looked at him, doubtful.

      “You want to walk in there blind? Make it happen.”

      Jack saw a black combat boot, then a dark pant leg, and found a body nestled like a sleeping child in the underbrush. Circling for unfriendlies before approaching, he knelt, the business end of his gun pressed to the man’s temple, just in case, though the hole in the man’s back that had blown flesh and fabric four inches wide was a real clue. So, his aim was dead on. Good, Jack thought. But was this guy number one, or number two? He’d no idea how many there were up here.

      He searched for identification, knowing there wouldn’t be any. Not if they were good—and they were. They’d infiltrated into this area without a sound, right under his nose, then slaughtered his friends and did God knew what else in the hills. He pulled off the dead man’s hood and pushed the body over.

      It was cocky not to wear Kevlar, he thought, frowning at the dead man’s face, hair. He yanked off the black gloves, peeling the fingers back. What the hell is this shit? Quickly, he hunted through the front pockets and found C-4 fuses, and a detonator. This ain’t Radio Shack crap, he thought, leaving it where he found it. Moving against the ground in slow increments, Jack found the machine pistol a couple yards away. It was cold. Since he’d no intention of anyone slipping past using it on him, he removed the ammo and disabled it, left the weapon for the Feds, then headed up the mountain. Toward the area where he’d heard motorcycles.

      One killer down. Satisfaction still didn’t taste nearly good enough.

      On the hill, he tracked the woman’s footprints into the dense woods till they just stopped. He covered the area like a madman, trying to find more and put his foot on something soft. He dug and found a parachute pack. No chute, no release buckles, just the pack. He gave it the once-over, knowing he’d have heard a plane, and although a silent fall was possible with a HALO drop from thirty-five thousand feet, no one had free-fallen while he was here. That meant the attackers had staked their territory before he and his friends arrived. Before five A.M. Or they simply hadn’t seen them until he and his buddies had advanced up the mountain. That would explain why the shooters hadn’t shot him out of his deer stand. Jack had been the only who hadn’t moved. He’d been point man and the others moved forward in a straight line toward him, pushing deer his way.

      Under the canopy of trees, he threw down the chute pack and looked around. Find the reason and you’ll find them. The woman could have free-fallen dressed like that. Not wise, but doable. Where had she come from and what were they after? Big questions, he thought. There was something hidden in the Shenandoah Mountains, something worth killing for. He let his gaze move over the forest and felt as if he was hunting down a grain of salt in a sea of snow. There was just too much ground to cover alone.

      Wind blew across his face, leaves rustled and he saw a reflection that appeared and vanished with the breeze. The ground was scraped near the flicker of light and moving slowly, he parted the brush and hit pay dirt. A laminated I.D. tag. The back bore a magnetic strip like a credit card, the front, a thumbprint and the woman’s picture. Dr. Sydney A. Hale. Doctor of what? And what the hell was a doctor doing out here in the cold with a man in black ops gear shooting at her?

      It didn’t add up, but it didn’t matter either. He’d never let this rest. Not until he had