“To keep us busy. To make us think we know where the threat is coming from.” I tapped the pressure gauge—sitting at zero. “They’ve known we were watching. Maybe from the beginning. You were right. Noah was?—”
“Movement!” Will’s voice came over my comms. “Drone two just picked up someone moving deeper in the system, east-northeast of your position. And camera three’s gone out again.”
“Fucking tabarnak.” Rav was already moving. “We’re moving.”
We pushed deeper into the tunnels, leaving the elaborate decoy behind. The passage gradually widened as we approached a junction point near where we’d left the Fenix robot dog.
“Fork ahead,” Will advised. “Path reconverges after about two hundred feet.”
Rav took the left path, pointing me to the right.
My tunnel curved gently, transitioning from stonework to an area dotted with terracotta drainage pipes.
“The drone’s lost him,” Will said. “Its camera’s gone out, too.”
I pushed forward, slowing as a side channel appeared on my right. But sound came from behind me. Someone’s heavy breathing. Not Rav’s. I started to turn, but not fast enough.
A solid weight slammed into my back, driving me to the ground. The impact knocked the wind from my lungs, my face hitting rough stone. I tried to roll, but a knee pressed into my spine, pinning me in place.
As I fought to breathe, the weight suddenly lifted. My assailant moved toward something in the wall. Through watering eyes, I saw him reaching for something embedded in one of the pipes. Something that glinted like metal.
I pushed to my knees, fumbling for the expandable baton at my hip—good thing the security guard at the front gate hadn’t found that. The metal rod extended with a flick of my wrist, reassuringly solid despite only having used it in training.
“Rav,” I gasped, hoping the earpiece hadn’t jostled free. “I found him.”
The man turned at my voice, his narrowed eyes the only thing visible behind his fabric face covering. He was maybe in his thirties, solid build, dressed in black gear similar to what I often wore with Pendragon.
He lunged toward me as I struggled to stand.
I swung the baton in a defensive arc, catching him across the forearm. He hissed but kept coming, grabbing for the weapon. We grappled awkwardly in the confined space, my back scraping against the wall as he tried to disarm me.
Then Rav was there, a blur of sudden violence. He caught the man with a perfectly aimed strike to the throat, followed by a swift knee to the midsection that doubled the man over. He tried to retaliate with a wild swing that Rav effortlessly sidestepped.
I watched, momentarily transfixed, as Rav systematically dismantled the man’s defenses. Every move was precise, economical.
One more reason I’d never found another man who could replace him. He was exactly what I needed when things went sideways.
The man reached for something at his belt, but Rav caught his wrist and twisted until the man dropped to his knees with a grunt of pain.
“Zip ties,” Rav said calmly, as though we were discussing dinner plans.
I retrieved a set from my pack, and together we secured the man’s wrists in front of himself. The fight barely lasted twenty seconds, but my heart was racing like I’d sprinted a mile.
I turned my attention to the terracotta pipe and what he’d been trying to retrieve. Carefully, I extracted a small electronic device with an antenna and a tiny green light on its side. I flicked a switch on its top, and the light went out.
All of a sudden, noise erupted in my ear—the Reynolds team’s rapid chatter. My earpiece had been off.
Rav asked, “Are the cameras back on now, Will?”
“They are. And your earpieces are transmitting.” The near-silent whir of one of the drones approached, and a puff of air brushed my face as Will stopped it in front of me. I held up the device. “Signal jammer.”
“Allowing them to walk by our cameras without us seeing them?” asked Rav.
“Perhaps,” said Will. “Bring it back when you’re done. I want to disassemble it and see how they bypassed my systems. It probably messed with the batteries, too.”
Above us, gentle music started. Was it already time for the concert to start? We were running out of time.
The pieces began to click into place in my mind. The decoy trucks Bobcat had reported, the fake deployment system, and signal jammers that masked their movements. “If they wanted us chasing our tails down here, where’s the real attack?”
