The Shack series

Chapter 34

Delaney jolted at what was obviously a nickname and brought her g*n back up instantly.

Holding his hands up, Pogo let his smile widen. He carefully looked over at me. "I have it on good authority the Camp Mayhem team isn't cheap, but they're worth every penny."

I caught it before Pogo did. Knowing Needles didn't grant automatic trust and immunity. Everything he knew about Needles was old information. The nickname wasn't. She was sure she'd been compromised.

Delaney's eyes shifted over him, and I had a momentary chill as I saw her eyes. She'd said it before, facetiously; her sister had even commented on it. But it was apparent now. The flippant "treat it as a game" attitude was all a mask. She'd been hunted and survived. She expected more to come, and she was willing to do whatever it took to stay alive.

Barely controlled anger radiated from her. She'd claw, fight, and bite to the bitter, b****y end.

Pogo saw the feral look and realized his use of what she considered sensitive terms had crossed a of line; she saw him as a direct threat to her survival. "Easy there. Nobody is going to get anything out of me. I know one of your trainers. Spooky told me about you."

For a fraction of a second, I wondered what kind of insanity would bring Donna's most lethal asset in to train a teenage girl. Especially this one. Maybe I would have focused on that more if I wasn't so concerned that Delaney was probably less than a hair's breadth from putting several holes in Pogo.

She c****d her head at him, eyes coldly lit. "You know her?"

"I'm married to her. We have a son."

Delaney lowered the g*n again, but not all the way. A muscle twitched in her jaw as she bit back barely harnessed fury. "No one who knew her name would be stupid enough to lie about that."

Pogo looked back at her, unblinking. She was no longer amusing or funny; I could see him drop her into the 'very dangerous' category in his head. He slowly looked over at me, his movements more precise and cautious. "They do occasional work for K2. It's a small team, specialized in surveillance and infiltration, but they've done a contested extraction."

Delaney's mouth twitched in quirk of a malevolent smile. Or at least something like a smile. "Contested extraction? I like that."

Pogo nodded. "Sounds a whole lot more professional than 'smashed things and wrecked s**t until we got them out,' doesn't it?"

"I'm puttin' that on my fuckin' resume. The whole 'wreck s**t' thing is pretty much my usual plan." A little tension seemed to drain from her, but I already knew she had unending reserves of that tension.

"I hear it a little differently. I think the words 'unpredictable and prone to violence' are used a lot, but Spooks considers your little team to be professionals. She doesn't do that lightly."

I saw a shimmer of pride pass over Delaney's face.

He switched back to me. "What about Emma?"

Emma was my protégé, an executive assistant director, and the closest thing I had to a daughter. Unfortunately, everyone knew it. And she was married to the head of one Donna's CUMULOUS programs, the slightly more respectable GREEN program, which often worked with us, but it made this worse. "I'm sure she wouldn't buy off on the charges against me, and I am just as sure that they've got someone all over her and her husband, which is probably why Donna isn't willing to take the risk of exposure."

He glanced over at Delaney for a moment and made a helpless gesture. "Best advice I can give you is to go with her team. Spooky says she'll try to render some assistance, but her hands are mostly tied, at least in any official capacity. Unless you have something in your back pocket, I don't know about?"

I shook my head. "If I did..."

"You wouldn't be here." He looked down for a moment. "Then her team is your best bet."

We talked for a few more minutes, but it was pretty clear we had reached the end of the discussion.

*****

A Walk in the Park

*****

There was nothing for it but to try to find whatever Michael had left for me. We went over maps of the area. I was gaining strength enough to be, well, fairly mobile, if not ready to run my regular five miles.

"It'd be safer if I did it myself." Delaney was less than happy about my decision to go.

"I can't be sure which bench it is; I'll have to get eyes on it to be sure. Besides, he might have left a sign or signal specific to me that you'd never pick out." I wasn't exactly prepared to just hand off whatever it was to a mercenary who worked for a private military company. I might occasionally forget what she really was, but I made a habit to remind myself.

She frowned. "The last part is true."

A twist of a smile crossed her face. "The part about being sure it's the right bench is bullshit, though. You'd be a lousy cop if you weren't sure. Still, if I were you, I wouldn't completely trust me or K2 either. I know you can, but how would you know?"

I sighed. She'd pretty much read my mind. "I'd say you'd make a good police officer yourself, but I'd never get it out with a straight face."

She rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't last a week as a cop." She took a breath. "Alright, I figured you'd say that, so we need to make sure you can make the distance from the Metro stop to the bench and back without collapsing..."

It sucked. She meant it. She figured it out and refused to go until I could go twice the necessary distance.

*****

Nothing ever goes smoothly. It was four days before Delaney felt I was healthy enough to make the run to the park bench.

Four hours in the car and on the train to reach the station.

Four minutes to reach the open expanse of the Smithsonian Mall.

Four blocks to reach the bench.

Four seconds to realize it had gone wrong.

The man turned toward me and his face split in a harsh smile of recognition; he hadn't been sure it was me until he got close.

"Hey, Asshole."

He glanced over at Delaney, freezing for a moment, eyes narrowed. She set her can of soda on the bench and took a step back. "Wanna see a magic trick?"

He looked at her in confusion; he hadn't realized we were together. She'd been following behind me, head down, hoodie pulled up, looking like a standard-issue disgruntled teen.

She gestured at the can.

It disintegrated in a shower of soda, the spray of liquid hanging in the air for a surreal moment.

He blinked, then froze.

A rifle shot of some kind, but it was obviously suppressed. She smiled, but a smile so malevolent it radiated darkness. "Look down, Dickhead."

A red laser dot showed briefly on his shirt, almost motionless in the center of his chest, then flicked off. She glanced around casually. "I'm starting a collection. It's called 'Guns I took from Assholes.' Thank you for your contribution. Put the g*n and your phone on the bench and step the f**k back."

He looked around carefully, but wherever the shooter was, they were well-hidden. He looked at her, and she returned his stare with a slight, absolutely evil smile. He put the g*n and phone down wordlessly.

"Okay, turn around and start walking in that direction for at least five minutes. If you do anything else at all -- turn around, pull another g*n, pull out another phone - they'll f*****g kill you. The only reason you're not dead already is that I don't want to deal with the f*****g mess."

Delaney scooped the g*n up and dropped it into her jacket pocket, then picked up the phone, tossed the battery into the grass, and dropped the cell into her potato chip bag.

I searched the bench. Nothing. I'd have seen a dead drop from Michael if one had been there.

The pain in my chest surged as I let my breath out. "We need to get moving. Odds are they're stretched thin, but I'm sure someone is calling everything they have in on us right now."

She nodded in response. "We're covered until we get into the Metro station."

*****

An After School Special

*****

We finally reached the trailer, and I dragged myself up the steps. My confidence that I could just will myself to push through the injury was pretty much gone.

Two girls were sitting in Mooky's kitchen chairs, eating peanut butter sandwiches and potato chips. The way they were watching the door, it was clear they knew we were coming. One of them, a fairly tall willowy blonde girl with "high school head cheerleader" written all over her, stood up and glanced at me before smiling at Delaney. "Took you long enough."

Delaney snorted with disdain. "We had to take the Metro and make sure we didn't have a tail. All you had to do was wait till we were clear and drive out."

"In DC traffic. It's as bad as Dallas." The blonde girl wrinkled her nose cheerfully.

"It was Saturday traffic; that's not as bad. You should see it on a weekday. I'm glad you made it, though. I thought I was going to have to kill the guy."

The other girl at the table took a sip of her soda. "We wouldn't leave you hanging."

"I know." The way Delaney said that was heavy with meaning, and the three of them just went silent for a second, exchanging glances. It was instantly clear that this was the "Camp Mayhem" crew Pogo had talked about.

Delaney broke the silence. "Maria, this is the team." She pointed to the blonde girl. "This is Mackenzie. And this..." She walked over and stole a chip from the other girl. "Is Tess."

Both of the girls gave very polite hand waves.