Are you missing any chapters? Click the Raptor tag at the bottom of the post to get them all!
Chapter 16
Raptor slapped her arms tight to her body, ripping through the air like a bullet as she flew toward the devastated house. Heat slapped her face like a furnace as she pulled up at the last minute and flared her wings. The Hummer roared down the street and up onto the lawn, back door flying open to disgorge Lone Star onto the lawn almost before it stopped rolling. Sheila turned to see the Latino man running in her direction, his face pale in the dark night.
“We can’t stay, Raptor,” he said, tossing aside scraps of lumber as he made his way to her side.
“Whisper’s in there,” Raptor said, her voice hoarse with smoke and emotion. The remnants of the house lay lay scattered across the lawn, small piles of debris burning merrily in the darkness. Lights flicked on in the neighboring houses as Raptor dashed for the wreckage of the house. She had almost made it to the rubble when she felt Lone Star’s arm wrap around her waist and hoist her into the air.
He set her down with a grunt. “You’re heavier than you look.”
“I’m forty percent titanium, jackass. Now get out of my way.”
“We have to get out of here. The fire department and police are already on the way.” Sure enough, the sound of sirens, still faint in the distance, pierced the quiet suburban stillness.
Raptor looked up at the lanky man, watching the yellow and red firelight flicker in his eyes. She could see that he was as conflicted as she was, but she nodded. “Let’s go. We won’t do anyone any good if we have to deal with a bunch of local LEOs.”
“I thought Duke logged us with the police?” Lone Star asked as he ran around to the driver’s side of the Hummer.
“He did, but that just means they know exactly who they’re looking for when they need someone to blame. If we’re here when they arrive, we’ll be dealing with them all night, and probably end up in a cell for a couple of days while the people back at HQ get our shit sorted out. Now get this beast in gear and get us home.”
“Not a problem.” Lone Star reversed off the lawn and tore off down the street leading up to the wreckage.
Raptor tapped her comm, then looked over at the man driving. “Base is out.”
“Nah, your comm probably shorted from the blast. Use the dash radio.”
She leaned forward and tapped a screen set into the Hummer’s dash. Duke’s face appeared on the screen. “Sir, we have a—”
“Situation,” Duke completed for her. “I saw. We’re in contact with local law enforcement now, but they aren’t happy about having a house blow up in their jurisdiction in the middle of the night.”
“Did you mention to them that we aren’t happy about having our friend blow up in the middle of the night, either?” Raptor shot back.
“I did mention that we had an operative in the house when the bomb went off, and that backed them down off blaming you. A little. They still have a lot of questions for you two.”
“All due respect, sir, but we don’t have time for that shit.” Lone Star turned onto one of the roads leading out of the neighborhood, then took a quick left as he saw blue lights flashing around a bend. “We need to find the motherfucker who blessed up Whisper, and we need to explain to him what a bad idea that was.”
“I agree, but I can’t completely ignore the local police chief’s requests. If they see you, they will bring you in for questioning. Which will take time that we don’t have.”
“Then we just have to make sure they don’t see us,” Lone Star said.
“And you have to make sure they can’t track us,” Raptor added with a look to Duke.
“Bishop has that covered. Your locators are scrambled, so no one without access to our servers will find you, but you have to go radio silent for a bit. Don’t try to contact us. We’ll ping you when it’s clear on this end.”
“Roger that,” Raptor said, pressing a button below the screen to end the call. She looked over at Lone Star. “You ever been a fugitive before?”
“Nope. But I’ve seen Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid a lot.”
“They both die at the end of that movie.”
“Then we should do better. I’ve got a plan. Trust me, boss.” He turned onto another side street, then took a hard left out into a main thoroughfare. Seconds later, they were roaring down a four-lane highway with emergency vehicles zipping past them in the opposite direction.
“You got a place for us to hole up?” Raptor asked, swiveling her chair to the side.
“Yeah, I know a couple places. I’ll get us to one. Should be there in about twenty.”
“Good deal. I’m going to go run a diagnostic on my comm.” She could tell by his look that he knew a lie when he heard it, but he let it go.
Raptor walked in a crouch back into the Hummer’s spacious tech compartment. She plugged a small fiber-optic cable into a jack under her left arm and watched on a monitor as the video from her eyecam rolled simultaneously with Whisper’s body cam. She saw in double vision the room, while she watched the featureless roof from above. Then the machines, then the shattering of windows nanoseconds before the explosion engulfed the roof and blew the walls out of the house. Anything still inside that building would have been vaporized. It was a miracle the houses on either side weren’t leveled.
She played back the video again and again, looking for any hint of Whisper’s body running from the scene, but as soon as the shock wave hit her, the feed from her eyecam went out of a second, and Whisper’s body cam winked out at the same moment. After the tenth time watching it, she finally put her head down on the console and let the anger and greed wash over her. Whisper was gone, the op was blown, they were no closer to finding out who had it in for them than before, and they were on the run from the cops.
Fuck. This was shaping up to be a hell of a morning.
***
Fifteen minutes later, Lone Star pulled them around behind what looked for all the world like an abandoned service stations, then hopped out and banged on one of the garage bay doors. He stood for a moment, looking around nervously, then banged again. After a few more seconds, the door started to slowly rise, and the stocky man turned and jogged back to the driver’s seat.
“Where the hell are we?” Raptor asked.
“Remember when I said I know a guy? Well, that guy lives here.”
“He lives in an abandoned garage?”
“It’s not abandoned, it’s just undergoing renovations.”
Raptor looked over at him, noting the little half-smile tugging at the corner of Lone Star’s mouth. “Okay, if you say so. But if I have to kill everybody in the building, I’m gonna kick your ass when I’m done.”
“Fair enough,” Lone Star chuckled and put the Hummer in gear.
They rolled into an interior that definitely didn’t match the outside of the building. While the exterior was all dingy white paint and faded lettering, everything inside was gleaming and looked brand new. The floors were spotless, the toolboxes lined up neatly against the walls, even the hydraulic lifts shone with brand new paint. If she hadn’t ridden through the dirt-smeared roll-up door, Raptor would have thought she was on the set of a new Fast and Furious movie.
“Holy shit, Pablo. This looks better than our motor pool back home.”
“You ain’t lying, Raptor. My boy Jerry keeps his shit buttoned down.”
“How do you know this guy? I thought you were from Oklahoma.”
“We served together. He was on one of my tours through the sandbox, before I got hurt. When he got out, he came back here. This place was his dad’s, he’s been fixing it up. Ain’t that right, Jer?” Lone Star said as he opened the door and slid down to the floor.
A trim blond man with a light beard walked up and slapped hands with Lone Star, then gave him a one-armed hug. “Anything you say, Disney, anything you say.”
“Disney?” Raptor asked, coming around the back of the Hummer to maintain separation between herself and the stranger. Lone Star obviously trusted him, but Raptor wasn’t in a terribly trusting mood.
“Yeah,” the man said with a grin. Raptor felt herself relax unconsciously at his disarming smile and sparkling blue eyes, and gave herself a mental slap to bring her mind back into focus. “Because his initials are PG, we all called him Disney. Like a PG-rated movie.”
Sheila let herself smile a little, and stepped the rest of the way out from behind their vehicle. “Yeah, I get it. That’s pretty good.”
She saw Jerry’s eyes widen as she stepped fully into the light and he saw her cybernetic arms for the first time. Normally when she knew she was going to interact with civilians she kept the skinsleeves on, but she hadn’t planned on speaking to anyone except suspects last night, so she hadn’t bothered with them.
“Holy shit,” the blond man said, taking a step forward. “You’re a…”
“Cyborg,” Raptor said with a nod. “Yep.”
“I was going to say TECH, but whatever.”
Raptor shook her head. “I forget that we were declassified in a hurry after the convention center thing.”
Jerry laughed. “Yeah, and since the shitshow at the mall, you guys are one of the lead stories every single night. There have been more articles on how you’re made and chose than on the candidates lately.” He looked at Lone Star. “What the fuck happened there, man? You’re a better operator than that. Every story I’ve seen is calling y’all Robocop 2.0 and shit like that.”
Raptor and Lone Star exchanged a troubled glance. “Shit,” she said.
“Yeah,” Lone Star agreed.
“Well, nothing we can do about that from here, so we might as well focus on the problem at hand.” Sheila walked over to where a stunned Jerry stood and held out her right hand. “Sheila Hewson. Call sign Raptor.”
He looked at her hand but didn’t move to take it.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I have enough control not to crush your hand like a grape. Even though I could.” Raptor smiled at this. Jerry didn’t seem nearly as amused, but reached out and shook her hand.
“Man, that’s weird.”
“It’s a lot less weird when she’s wearing her skin, but we didn’t think we were going to have to see anybody on this trip. It was supposed to be a quick in and out, recon, extraction, exfil.”
“Only it was nothing like that,” Jerry said. “Been there, done that.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Lone Star nodded. “This was a setup from the jump. We walked into a trap. Lost one of our people, and now the po-po is all over us. Can we hide out here for a couple days?”
“Yeah, that’s not a problem. I’m not opening for another two weeks, and everything this week is scheduled for outside work anyway. You should be okay to hole up in here, as long as nobody is tracking you.”
“Nobody we don’t want to find us will ever find us,” Raptor said with a smile.
“Okay, then. Let me get you guys some coffee and we can talk about your next move.”
“Oh, I know our next move,” Raptor said, following Jerry into the small office. “We’re going to hunt down the bastards who blew up our teammate, and we’re going to kill the motherfuckers.”
