Page 27 of Radar (Iniquus Certified Cerberus Tactical K9 #2)

Xander

Sunday

Lumberjack, Alaska

When Elyssa slipped into REM sleep, Xander reached for his kit, pulling his throat mic into place around his neck so that he could speak silently and the technology could pick up his words from the movement of his larynx alone.

Xander spent a moment typing up a report on his encounter with Claude, Eddie, and Elyssa at the lodge, listing the details that were significant to the case like the fact that Eddie had said they’d just met Paca that day, Xander had no clue that Elyssa was in the Kalinsky family until she brought up her great uncle in a post coital discussion.

He pressed SEND, then waited for Hiro’s RECEIVED.

Giving Hiro a moment to read it over, Xander dropped magnetic comms into his ear canals so he could hear without visible technology.

Then he made the phone call.

“Xander, checking in.”

“Xander, you’re on speaker phone in my office,” Hiro said. “White’s here with me.”

“You’re sounding robotic,” White said. “Is she sleeping next to you, so you have to use the voice amplifier?”

“Affirmative. Hey, White, you’re working late.” Xander was forcing himself to keep this word choice light. Tone couldn’t be discerned over this type of communicator.

“Here it’s early,” White said. “I’m having my second cup of coffee.

Listen, a report was forwarded to me. I have an update on the Zorics’ machine’s movement.

Satellite imagery captured images of the Kyrgyzstan mountains.

With the newest advances to the system, AI was able to find recent movements.

The AWG team wasn’t far from the site when the team was in the mountains.

It was in Scott’s search area, in the northwest quadrant.

If Tink and Peter hadn’t been captured—I’m not blaming them, please, don’t hear it that way—just had they not stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time, your team would have found the machine. But life happens, and here we are.”

“Which is where?” Xander asked.

“A van moved in,” White said. “A van moved out.”

“It’s not very big, then.” Xander knew the technology had to be on the small side if the Zorics were moving it around and testing outcomes between different countries. But still, it would have been nice if the machine were bigger than an elephant and not small enough to fit in a van. “Crap.”

“Agreed,” Hiro said. “In this case, bigger would have been better.”

“Were the images clear enough to make out specifics?” Xander asked.

“It looked like a machine,” White said.

“Helpful.” And because he knew the comms didn’t inflect to show sarcasm, he labeled it for his team. “Sorry, sarcasm isn’t warranted.” He took a breath. “White, did you have a chance to read the report I just sent Hiro?”

“I did.”

“What are your thoughts about this Lumberjack, Alaska situation?” he asked. “Why would Orest be talking to a squirrel person, a meat guy, and a food engineer?”

“I’m just now being apprised of how this contact proceeded,” White said. “Do you think you have an in with this great-niece, Elyssa?”

Xander’s whole body stiffened. “Well, I slept with her.”

“Not the kind of ‘in’ I was referring to, but alright.” That was White’s sardonic humor.

Xander knew she didn’t mean anything by it. Under any other circumstance, he’d mark the clever play on words. But when it came to Elyssa? “Not funny. Can we be respectful, please?”

“Do you have emotional ties to her now?” White asked.

“She’s interesting, intelligent, and kind.

Am I ready for her to have my babies?” When Xander asked that, he was surprised that he felt a momentary bubble of joy.

Then he mentally popped it. Xander decided to keep things neutral with the team again, choosing to keep his words light.

“I wore a condom, so that would be a no.”

“Let me ask again,” White said, the mild ribbing having fallen away.

“If you had to target this woman, could you do it? I mean, an ‘in’ is an ‘in,’ right? Can you exploit the situation, or should we send someone else to take your place? Someone who didn’t just bang the enemy?

” Yeah, White was pissed with this turn of events.

As she should be. He was angry with how this was playing out, too.

“Bang isn’t … please don’t,” Xander said.

“No, I’m sure it was a magical moment,” White said dryly. “But in case she’s about to destroy the world in some crazed terror attack, I’m going to say this as plainly as I can: Don’t get emotionally involved.”

“Noted,” Xander said. “No problem there. Let’s move past this.”

“To your question about the four people in Lumberjack, this is what we have,” Hiro said.

“We’d already been working on Orest’s movements into the United States.

Eddie Baylor and Elyssa Kalinsky-Landers were on the same plane as Orest, flying out of Newark.

We’d also noted that they each had a room at the same hotel as Orest when they stayed overnight in Fairbanks. ”

“I videotaped Orest boarding alone,” Xander said. “Did they all come out of D.C. together?”

“Negative, Orest flew up earlier in the day. In the couple of minutes since you sent your report, we were able to check the date that Eddie and Elyssa got their tickets. That was done this past Tuesday. At that late date, I’d imagine they took what they could get by way of flights. Their layover was skin-of-the-teeth.”

“Okay,” Xander said, looking down at Elyssa’s peaceful silhouette and pulling the blanket up to cover her back.

“We did a dive into the connections between the four. Claude is Orest’s researcher in Fairbanks.

We’ll set him aside for the moment. Elyssa told you she has a familial connection to Orest Kalinsky, and you said Eddie is Elyssa’s friend.

Before the flight to Alaska, Orest, Elyssa, and Eddie were in Paris together—or at least they all passed through customs at the same time. ”

“Elyssa calls him Uncle Orest,” Xander said.

“Yes, we’re looking into which branch of the family tree she’s swinging from,” White said. “More on that when we have it.”

“I saw her picture,” Hiro began, “I—”

“Not a single other word about Elyssa that’s not case-related.” Xander’s newfound protectiveness became a growl in his chest. “There are boundaries.”

“Case related,” Hiro said. “Chill out. I saw her picture, and she doesn’t have the Zoric coloring.”

“Going back to my earlier question to you about your emotional proximity to this woman,” White said, “by making an intimate connection, you have a foot into the inner circle.”

“Inadvertently. I had zero idea,” Xander said. “I wasn’t using her.”

“Serendipity, then,” White said. “Xander, I’m serious here. I’m listening to you and, damned, man, it sounds like you’ve fallen over a cliff.”

“Nope. The comms must be playing with my voice. I’m good. I’ve got this,” he lied.

“Okay,” Hiro said, “play it cool while the profilers do their work. We’ll get back to you as we have insights.” There was a smile in Hiro’s voice when he said, “Want to hear some shit?”

“You weren’t already giving me shit?” Xander asked.

“Not even close to this. I was conducting AI analysis that included Orest’s and your routes at Newark Airport.

We tracked Orest by CCV cameras. I included the track we have from your phone.

His, you already know about. Nothing new there.

Yours is the interesting one. During the stretch when you were moving the acid box from the men’s bathroom to the field, when you got exactly a hundred meters from the tower—and I mean exactly a hundred meters—tower communications came back online. ”

“Let’s talk that through,” Xander’s heart was racing again.

Ever since he talked to Anna in Bratislava, he felt like he’d been running a marathon.

He remembered what she said about having to pace her room at night with a pillow to stifle her screams. He got it.

This was unlike any battle he’d fought in the war.

This was an existential threat to humanity that seemingly left the heads of intelligence unperturbed when it should be a five-alarm, all-hands-on-deck event.

Xander rubbed his thumb along the fine bone in Elyssa’s arm where she’d tattooed her good intentions. “I’m listening,” Xander brought his focus back to the conversation. “Was that when I moved off the tarmac onto the field? Because that was the moment when I smelled the acid.”

“A few strides before that,” Hiro said. “Which tells me it’s probable because it would take a few strides before the scent wafted up to your nostrils.”

“What I’m hearing about the exact one-hundred-meter point,” Xander said, “is that as long as the bag was left unfound in the airport, it could potentially continue interfering with tower communications with the planes, and those planes would have remained at risk?”

“Either that or it’s a strange happenstance,” Hiro said. “The timing is why I think that the carry-on was involved in the communications crisis. But there’s no way we’ll be able to prove any of that.”

Xander’s phone buzzed. “Incoming from Orest’s room. I’m looping you in.”

Xander made out the sounds of someone getting out of bed. A pee stream hit the toilet. There was a flush. Some heavy breathing and the zipper on his case.

“He didn’t wash his hands,” White whispered.

Xander was about to switch the surveillance to videotape when English was spoken over what must be Orest’s phone, set on speaker.

“You have everything set up?” Orest asked, then he coughed up some morning phlegm and spit it out.

“We’re a go. I’ve got it handled,” an unidentified, American-accented male said.

“My car arrive early. I leave now,” Orest replied, ending the call.

Xander glanced at the clock; it was zero four hundred.

Over the room surveillance, they heard shuffling and banging, followed by a click of the door.

There was nothing else.

“He’s on the move,” Hiro said.

“Hiro, does Xander need to shadow him?” White asked.

“We’ve got access to his phone. We can track him that way,” Hiro said. “Better that Xander stays in Elyssa’s good graces.”

“It would be odd if Xander kicked her out of bed in the middle of the night, then packed and drove away,” White agreed. “Elyssa would mention it to her uncle. I would, anyway.”

“Look,” Hiro said, “it’s been a stressful couple of days, and you're still recovering from getting jumped, Xander. Get some sleep. I’ll listen to his phone and mark anything that comes up. It’s a two-hour drive to Fairbanks with no side roads.”

“Wilco. One other thing, though. Did you figure out why he’s heading to San Francisco?

” Xander asked. “I’m worried about the boxes he mentioned.

Specifically, I’m thinking about when Russia planted magnesium incendiary devices at logistics hubs in Germany and the UK.

While they were found because they accidentally went off before the cargo was loaded, if those devices had lit up over the ocean, with as hot as magnesium fires burn, it would be a conflagration.

Is it at all possible that the boxes might be caught up in something like that? ”

“Washington sent a backchannel message to the Kremlin to knock it off,” Hiro said.

“They said if a flight went down, it was an act of war, and we’d act accordingly.

If war was the Zoric family’s aim, why not just blow up a plane so everyone understood their game?

Why mess with the system to drive a jet into the ocean?

The same number of people are dead. But in the act of exploding a plane, there had to be retribution.

In the case where a plane simply disappeared, there was only confusion and grief. ”

“They want something big enough to dial geopolitics back to the seventies and eighties, putting the USSR back on the map,” White said.

“But that something has to be just under the threshold of war. That’s a fine line.

They’ve spent considerable time and resources trying to perfect their balancing act, but they’re also hedging their bets by heading to an escape hatch on Davidson’s Realm, in case their calculations were wrong. ”

“What did the back channel communication produce?” Xander asked.

“Poland arrested four people over that,” Hiro said. “We’re pretty sure that Russia handed the names and evidence over to smooth the waves. Russia denies that it was involved in any part of the events.”

“And they’re right,” Xander said. “Russia herself didn’t do it.

It was the families with whom they had a wink-wink, nod-nod relationship.

The families are doing the things that Russia wants done but also wants to keep at arm’s length.

Russia invokes plausible deniability—as unplausible as it actually is—and everyone is grateful that we can pretend that it’s okay because otherwise, an allied leader might have to push a nuke button or two. ”

“Dangerous times,” Hiro said.

“Dangerous, indeed.” White sighed. “Xander, rest so that when you put on your thinking cap tomorrow, you don’t fry your electrical system. Sleep, that’s an order.”

“Not in your chain,” Xander said.

“I am,” Hiro said. “Sleep. That’s an order.”