The bikers had carried their ammo on them, all nine millimeter, all in mags, no boxes. There was an abundant supply of nine mils left over from the war, and no way to trace the brand or purchase. Handguns every warrior had brought home from the war. Their weapons had been left behind when they died, while the others in the dark rider unit were trying to get away from the slaughter.
It was stuff that could be purchased most anywhere. All the same. No personal anything. No markers, no way to track.
I’d run flesh and blood through a viber and none of them had military records despite the military tats. Not even birth records. And the Gov kept meticulous records of every birth and death, and especially of its military members.
Wiped. Black ops? I’d considered that before and again. Black ops would suck. But everything pointed to that. Except their targets.
I tapped my morphon and said, “Jolene and Gomez. Do you have a list of items taken from each of the places that were hit?”
“Of course we do, Sugah, or at least the things theyreportedwere stolen.”
Right. If the riders were looking for illegal substances like drugs or weapons, then that made it harder to track. And from what I had seen, four girls had been taken and never seen again. “Anything that correlates to anything interesting?”
“Your question requires us to be able to read your mind,” Gomez said, condescendingly. “I will display the reported articles on the office screens.”
“Fine. Come on, cats,” I said. “I’m closing up.”
Having learned nothing new, I returned the rider gear to the box and closed and locked the container door.
I thought about getting eyes on the bodies again, but it was a waste of time. The viber had given me nothing on any ofthem. The dead riders were in the freezers in the SunStar, future protein for the cats. Wanda had tried to scrape a hole in the bedrock and bury them, as she could have done most anywhere else, but the junkyard occupied a place that had once been a tree-covered mountain, mined flat until the vein of coal ran out. There had been no way to bury anyone. So the freezers had sufficed.
And I had good pics of the faces and tats.
???
I returned to the office and studied the bloody note with Jolene’s EntNu link, both provided by a dead man. Or at least a man who had appropriated a dead man’s name. William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield had sent his son or his nephew alone through dangerous backcountry territory with a call for help and a spaceship crew member’s insignia.
Only half of theSunStarwas on ground level. The rest was in a mine crack. I studied the note. What if the crack had an opening somewhere? What if people could get in? I had never been all the way down to the mine-crack floor. The toxic fumes and sheer descent had kept me away.
“Jolene. Are there any Hatfields living in Logan?”
“Forty-five people with the surname Hatfield live in Logan and the surroundin’ area.”
“Any of them have names that include William Anderson or Anse?”
“I discovered birth records for three: William Anderson; William Anse Hatfield; and an Anderson Hatfield, no middle name. No death record for the three.”
“Any of those names correlate with the EntNu address provided by the boy?”
“I’ll check, Shining Sugah, but it’ll take a bit.”
“Okay. And—” I stopped. Debated what I was about to ask. “See if Logan Jagger has any known association with Logan, West Virginia.”
“Logan Jagger,” Gomez said, “National Enforcer of the Outlaw Militia Warriors, is a Hatfield on his maternal side. His six times great grandfather was Johnse Hatfield, the son of the real Devil Anse.”
That was a coincidence I couldn’t ignore.
“Jolene. How did someone in Logan get your EntNu link?”
“Somebody done stole part a my comms system, Sugah. You wanna talk to them before I blow a hole in ’em or after?”
“Can we do that without being detected from satellites? Talk to them, not shoot them?” I figured I better clarify before she initiated her weapons.
“I can. But you better know—them having my address and one a my EntNu links means they coulda listened in on everything we said while you were wiping out Warhammer. Not the stuff y’all said comms to comms on the ground, but all the things you and I, and Mateo and I, said to each other. That’s . . . That’s just puredastardly.”
It had been six months since the battle. They had waited to contact me until they were attacked and they needed something only I might provide. Yeah. Smart.
I almost asked her to connect me with Jagger, but I stopped. “Connect me with Hatfield via your own link.”
