Double Helix Ch. 19

"I know," she said. "But you made Nonna young again."

"Nissi and her team did that," I corrected her. "But again, that's something else entirely. I'm starting to think you people out there looking in at us from the darknet believe we can do anything here."

"Like pulling off a dangerous rescue of a death-row inmate?" she asked with a wry smile.

"Yeah, like that," I grumped. "Look, I'm not telling you it can't be done, but you'll need to talk to Nissi. And she may have other priorities. We've only got so much resources here to spread around. But if she can help you, I'm sure she will." Nissi had surprised me a bit, when she went in so hard to cure Nonna.

Gena rose from her seat then, and bent to put her arms around me. She didn't try to give me a kiss this time. "Thanks, Nock."

"What for?" I asked, as she drew back.

"For being a friend. No one else is as nice to me as you are."

"Not even Wendy?"

"Well, okay, but she's nice to everyone. I don't know if she knows how to be any different."

I raised my brows. "You haven't seen what happens when you call her 'Pollyanna'."

Gena giggled. "You'll have to tell me about that one later. I want to get some time in on the network. I'll come by again tomorrow night if that's okay? We can look at your break/fixes together?"

"Sure, I'd like that," I said. I watched her go, shaking my head in amusement. Norm was an idiot to push away such a sweet girl. Family was precious, something I knew all too well for having lost mine at such a young age.

The next day, Nonna took us out again after our morning meeting. As I had expected, Wendy and Dawn had been removed from consideration for direct action, though they were promised supporting roles in the op. Ed has somehow squeaked by, and I think he knew it, because he applied himself that much harder in his training.

That day went much as the last. New concepts were introduced, enfilade and defilade, suppressive fire, and others. Nonna put us into two fireteams and had us practice fire and maneuver tactics, one team taking cover and firing on an objective while the other team advanced to their own cover. It seemed like overkill, but I could see the utility of it. It got us thinking and working as a team, and if things went horribly wrong, we might need it.

Norm brought me, Nonna, and Tilly to the meeting with Mike the next day. He was already waiting for us when we pulled up, sitting in the hood of his car reading a book. He slapped it closed as we got out of the truck. "Good to see you all again," he said. "But I'm a little afraid to ask what this is about."

Norm shook his hand. "Thanks for meeting us. This is Nonna."

"Hello," he said, giving her a quick once over before returning his attention to Norm.

Norm folded his arms and leaned against the truck. "I'll get right to it. Do you remember Sasha Grey, our host in Seattle?"

"I do. It's hard to forget someone who's been on the news off and on for over a year."

Nonna spoke up. "The government wants to execute her. They will move her to Indiana in November and do it there. We're going to intercept that transport and rescue her."

Mike blew out a breath through pursed lips. "That sounds like a fool's errand. And what, you think you might need a medic?"

"No," Nonna said. "We think we might need a small group of armed and trained insurrectionists."

Mike laughed. "Well, if I see some, I'll let you know."

Tilly said, "Kyle Burkin. Federal Representative from Washington's 3rd legislative district. Outspoken supporter of President McCain and member of the House Oversight Committee. He died of an accidental overdose of painkillers in his home. Lisa Carmichael, assistant attorney general, Washington State. Led an initiative to aggressively track down and prosecute food crimes. She died near her home, the apparent victim of a robbery. No suspects were ever identified in the killing. Then we had the bombing late last year of the FBI's field office in Seattle. No casualties but there was significant structural damage to the building. Vindicavit in Libertatum took credit for that attack."

Tilly was watching Mike closely, and I saw her lips quirk in a smile as he spoke. "Okay, I have no idea what any of that means."

"You're lying," Tilly said. "I saw those names and the map of that FBI building in a set of documents that you tried to hide from us in that antique shop. I got the rest from public records. I suspect that the two deaths were your work. You are part of VIL, aren't you?"

Mike had been smiling up until then, but it slipped from his face like a mask falling away. "So this is how you repay me for saving your man's life? You're going to blackmail me, is that it? Well, it won't work. You have nothing but circumstantial evidence, and you have a lot more to lose than I do. I think we're done here." I saw that he had put his hand behind his back, probably going for a concealed holster.

"Mike," Norm said in a conciliatory tone. "That's not why we're here. We came to ask for your help, and I think you'll see that this is of value to all of us. Just give me ten minutes to explain. Then you're free to walk away, and we won't bother you again."

"Ten minutes," Mike said sourly. He let his hand come into view once more, making the move look casual.

When Norm began to describe our plan, it felt like what Mike must have felt a few moments ago, having our soft underbelly exposed. It was a calculated risk, intended to both inspire trust and convince him that our plan had a good chance of working. I could see the moment when Mike's expression went from indifference to interest.

"You have the weapons and equipment to make this happen?" he asked. "What the hell have you guys been doing down on that farm?"

"We are in the process of acquiring what we need," Nonna assured him. "What we lack is manpower. I am personally training the strike team to conduct the extraction of our target from the transport van. That is my concern. We need your people for two tasks. The first is to create a diversion to draw off local and federal authorities and contribute to confusion on the ground."

"A food riot is the obvious choice," MIke said. "The Department of Agriculture announced last week a 100 calorie reduction in daily food rations for the new year. A few people in the right place at the right time is all it would take to set them off like a powderkeg. What's the other?"

"I'm getting to that. The 405 will be down to a single lane for construction, so the transport will be traveling north on Interstate 5, then east over Lake Washington via the 520 through Bellevue and Redmond. Once outside Redmond city limits, a military escort will join the transport for the rest of the trip. At that point, we will be severely outmanned and outgunned, so we need to take the transport while it is still in the greater Seattle metropolitan area. We want to divert the van off the highway and into city streets where we can more easily interdict. We thought the best way to do that would be-"

"A car accident," Mike said, interrupting.

"Correct," Nonna said. "It would need to block all four lanes of northbound traffic so that the van and its police escort are forced to exit the freeway or be stuck. We should then be able to stop the van, neutralize the police and marshals, and snatch my daughter away before backup can arrive."

Mike stared at her. "Your daughter? I seem to remember that woman being close to forty."

Nonna grimaced, though it was gone from her face after an instant. We had all agreed beforehand not to reveal her relationship to Sasha. That would spark a lot more questions that we weren't sure we wanted to try to answer.

"It's a long story," I said. "Let's not get distracted."

Mike waved it away. "Fine."

"So the other reason we're coming to you is that we need a way into that van. It's armored against small arms fire and locked down tight, but maybe with a cutting torch or a-"

"I can get you what you need there," Mike interrupted. "You're right, bullets won't help you get in, and any weapon big enough to blow those doors is going to probably kill whoever is inside. You need finesse. So what about your escape? How will you keep the pursuit off you? They'll know almost the second you stop them. The police will put out an APB on whatever vehicles you use to pull this off."

"We're still working on that," Nonna admitted.

"It sounds like you've done your homework, but I've got to know, what's in it for us? How does this line up with VIL's objectives?"

"So you admit you are a member," Norm said.

Mike inclined his head toward Tilly. "I think your girl there established that already. My influence doesn't go far outside the local cell, but I'm heavily involved, yes."

Norm nodded. "Good to know. To answer your question, the McCain administration has made a big deal out of this case being a victory while spinning a narrative that greatly harms people's perceptions of genemods. Rescuing her will be an embarrassment to his administration. It will make him look incompetent."

"Won't work," Mike said. "They'll cover it up and claim that the execution happened right on schedule." He must have seen our disbelieving looks because he said, "Similar embarrassing events have happened before, on more than one occasion, but they were hidden from the public. McCain is painfully aware of his low approval rating. He's got the media locked down tight, all but nationalized, and most ordinary people just don't like him, let alone trust him. He won't allow something like this to further sully his reputation. If that's all you're offering, then no deal."

"What do you want, then?" I asked, seeing a negotiating tactic for what it was.

"I've got the sense that your farm is far more than you're letting on. You have resources well beyond what you should, and you have a woman who was at least in her sixties and half-senile when I saw her last. Now she could pass for twenty. I want to hear that 'long story' and I want to see your facilities."

"That's...it?" Norm asked. "You'll commit your people to this operation if we show you the farm?"

"I can promise you more than a dozen people, most of them ex-military. It should be enough to get the job done. I expect you to fund the provision of any vehicles and specialized equipment we may need. And no, that's not it. You're going to owe us a favor."

"Fine," Norm said. "But I reserve the right to refuse if I feel that favor puts me or my people at greater risk than what we're asking of you, or if it goes against our objectives."

"Naturally," Mike said.

"And you'll only get to see the farm after Sasha is safe."

"Agreed." Mike put out his hand. Norm hesitated for a moment and then shook it. "But just so we're clear, if this thing goes pear-shaped and my crew are in danger of being caught, we will pull out immediately."

"Understood," Norm said, and let go of Mike's grip.

"Great! I'll meet you back here in a week's time after I've had a chance to talk to my people." Mike straightened and walked back to the driver's side door of his car. "Keep me informed of any changes to the plan you sketched out today." He hopped in and drove back down the dirt track toward the road.

"Why do I feel like I somehow came out on the losing end of this deal?" Norm grumbled. "He looked pretty happy for a guy who's going to commit his people to danger."

"We can worry about that later," Nonna said. "This will greatly increase our chance of success."

Over the next few weeks, Nonna whittled down her core team as she and Mike fleshed out the plan. Besides Norm, and Mike, Nonn selected Stan, Stansy, Stanley, and Tilly to assault the transport on the ground, along with two men from Mike's crew who would get us through the doors. I would do what I did best, preferably high up and out of sight.

Tilly's shotgun had been upgraded to an AA-12, and I had still had my .308 sniper rifle, but had supplemented it with a Barrett .50 caliber anti-materiel rifle. The new gun was badass as hell, but my old rifle had greater magazine capacity, and I could fire it from my shoulder, so it was my preferred weapon. Norm would carry one of our old assault rifles, since he was a better shot with it than anything else. The rest of the extraction team would be armed with AK-47s, since they were reliable, effective, and cheaper than dirt on the black market. In addition, converting them to fully automatic was astonishingly simple. Nonna did all of them in a couple of hours.

We would employ four vehicles for the assault: Tilly's truck, a newly-purchased Suburban, and two out of a total of three high-end Honda street bikes. We also had Alice's SUV and one additional bike. The new vehicles were purchased through Andy for a significant markup over blue book, but we were flush with cash. I had been correct about the effect of Nissi's success on our money flow. Since reporting on Nonna's recovery, we had seen over a half million in new donations flood in. Norm also bought six old cars from a used car dealer in Idaho that took cash and asked no questions.

The drills continued, day after day, until we could perform our roles almost without thinking. We had also cross-trained so that we could swap people between roles if we needed to so everyone could at least shoot adequately and handle all of the vehicles. By the end of October, we had all of our equipment in hand. This included body armor, heavy Kevlar vests with thick ceramic plate inserts, designed to stop even small caliber rifle bullets.

With the date of Sasha's move rapidly approaching, it felt like the days were slipping away from us. The only breaks we took from the training were to harvest the bulk crops, the wheat, potatoes, and such, and the planting of same. Wendy, Dawn, and Alice's kids took over most of the less intensive greenhouse work, caring for the fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

We finally came to the eve of the big day. It was Thanksgiving, November 26th, though if anyone realized, they kept it to themselves. Maybe we would have a big dinner to celebrate after we got Sasha free.

I checked through my general inbox, to see if there were any important messages from our partners on the network. One message came from Haru of Tokyo University. He had heard from a reliable source that Rot had infected the plant life of Kaohsiung City Zoo, in Taiwan. The island served as a quarantine zone, where rice would be unloaded off of ships from the mainland to be loaded onto other cargo ships bound mostly for the parts of the world ravaged by Rot.

"They burned it," the message said. Haru wrote all of his correspondence to me in Japanese, knowing that I could translate to English better than he could. "Everything. Not just the plants, the buildings, even the animals after putting them down. They quarantined the workers and then tracked down every person they could find that had visited the zoo over the previous month. They have scoured nearby parts of the island and so far, no new instances of the disease have been found, but people are scared."

I passed the news on to Norm, knowing he would share it at his own discretion. It was a frightening concept to contemplate. More than a third of the food currently consumed by the world, if you included the region's own 1.4 billion people, came from China and its conquered territories in southeast Asia. If Rot ever took hold there, there would be mass starvation to rival the first two years of the outbreak, when half a billion people died. That had been a horrible time to live through, made all the worse as our government gradually turned against genemods. My thoughts turned inevitably to Ariana, with our separation as the capstone on that dark time.

I went back to the den to find Gena waiting for me. She had pulled the extra chair around behind the desk to sit with me, as she had most nights since her arrival. She had told me once that helping me solve network issues was a welcome break from the intensively technical work she undertook for Stan. "Hey, you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, and went to sit down behind my computer. "Just had to pass some news on to Norm."

"You look upset. You sure you don't want to talk?"

"I'm not-" I started, and shook my head. "Really, it's nothing you want to hear about. Old memories."

I turned my attention to my emails, but I felt Gena's stare on me. "What?" I asked, looking at her.

"Oh, it's nothing," she said, in that tone of voice women got that meant exactly the opposite of their words. She stood and walked out without another word. The back door clattered shut a moment later.

I shook my head and opened the next email, but I halfway through reading it, I realized that I hadn't actually comprehended any of it. I looked at the empty chair where Gena always sat. I didn't know quite what I had done, but it felt like I had just kicked a puppy. "Dammit," I swore. I got up, slipped my shoes on, and headed out the back door.

My eyes adjusted to the dark after a few seconds, casting the world in washed-out greys and browns. I saw Gena up ahead, wending her way through the ordered tree trunks of the orchard. I picked up speed, settling into that easy run that I could keep up for mile upon mile if I needed to. I caught up to her just as she crossed over into the neighboring farm. "Hold up," I said, slowing to come up alongside her.

She looked over at me and blew out a breath through her nostrils. "What do you want?" It wasn't angry, but neither was it friendly. She sounded...wary.

"I want to talk. What did I say to upset you?"

"It's fine," she said.

"No, it isn't. Why won't you tell me what the problem is?"

She turned to look at me. Her eyes shown grey in my night vision, but my mind's eye clearly saw the striking, pale blue that I knew so well. "Why won't you?"

I opened my mouth to express my confusion and irritation, but closed it again. I moderated my tone and spoke. "Gena, what is this really about?"

She sighed in exasperation, coming to a stop. I turned my body face her. "You really are that clueless, aren't you? Isn't it obvious? Do I have to paint it on your forehead so you see it every time you look in the mirror?"

I stared at her dumbly for a moment longer before my brain finally made sense of it. I liked Gena. I liked her a lot, in fact. And having her storm off like that had left me feeling a little sick to my stomach. I was her friend, her confidante, but what she was suggesting was something else entirely, something I had deliberately guarded myself against.

"You're Norm's kid sister," I blurted out.

She crossed her arms. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"It's just...I don't..."

She shrugged. "Like I said, it's fine. You're not interested."

She started to go around me, but I caught her arm. "I don't want you to go," I said. "Not like this. I wish you had told me something sooner."

Her deadpan look told me what she thought of that idea. Then she frowned and said, "Look, I may not be breathtakingly beautiful like Ariana-"

My eyes narrowed. "Who told you about her?"

She ignored the question, "-but I thought we had something. I thought you felt something for me. So I've been waiting for you to make a move." She put on a smile that didn't touch her eyes. "But I guess you just felt sorry for me, and like some silly teenage girl, I fell head over heels, and-"

I stopped her with a finger to her lips. "Give me a moment, please," I said. "I...I need to do something." Most people like to think that we are masters over our own minds and bodies, that we use reason to make our decisions and our emotions are merely flavoring for our experience. Most people are wrong. Emotion drives our decisions, and our so-called rational mind makes up the stories after the fact that we use to explain our actions. Hoping I wasn't making a huge mistake, I relaxed the block that I placed on my limbic system. For a few seconds, nothing happened, and I wondered if I had been wrong. Gena returned my gaze with a look of confusion. Then it hit me all at once.