The Shack: The Milk Run

It sucked. She meant it. She figured it out and refused to go until I could go twice the necessary distance.

*****

Nothing ever goes smoothly. It was four days before Delaney felt I was healthy enough to make the run to the park bench.

Four hours in the car and on the train to reach the station.

Four minutes to reach the open expanse of the Smithsonian Mall.

Four blocks to reach the bench.

Four seconds to realize it had gone wrong.

The man turned toward me and his face split in a harsh smile of recognition; he hadn't been sure it was me until he got close.

"Hey, Asshole."

He glanced over at Delaney, freezing for a moment, eyes narrowed. She set her can of soda on the bench and took a step back. "Wanna see a magic trick?"

He looked at her in confusion; he hadn't realized we were together. She'd been following behind me, head down, hoodie pulled up, looking like a standard-issue disgruntled teen.

She gestured at the can.

It disintegrated in a shower of soda, the spray of liquid hanging in the air for a surreal moment.

He blinked, then froze.

A rifle shot of some kind, but it was obviously suppressed. She smiled, but a smile so malevolent it radiated darkness. "Look down, Dickhead."

A red laser dot showed briefly on his shirt, almost motionless in the center of his chest, then flicked off. She glanced around casually. "I'm starting a collection. It's called 'Guns I took from Assholes.' Thank you for your contribution. Put the gun and your phone on the bench and step the fuck back."

He looked around carefully, but wherever the shooter was, they were well-hidden. He looked at her, and she returned his stare with a slight, absolutely evil smile. He put the gun and phone down wordlessly.

"Okay, turn around and start walking in that direction for at least five minutes. If you do anything else at all -- turn around, pull another gun, pull out another phone - they'll fucking kill you. The only reason you're not dead already is that I don't want to deal with the fucking mess."

Delaney scooped the gun up and dropped it into her jacket pocket, then picked up the phone, tossed the battery into the grass, and dropped the cell into her potato chip bag.

I searched the bench. Nothing. I'd have seen a dead drop from Michael if one had been there.

The pain in my chest surged as I let my breath out. "We need to get moving. Odds are they're stretched thin, but I'm sure someone is calling everything they have in on us right now."

She nodded in response. "We're covered until we get into the Metro station."

*****

An After School Special

*****

We finally reached the trailer, and I dragged myself up the steps. My confidence that I could just will myself to push through the injury was pretty much gone.

Two girls were sitting in Mooky's kitchen chairs, eating peanut butter sandwiches and potato chips. The way they were watching the door, it was clear they knew we were coming. One of them, a fairly tall willowy blonde girl with "high school head cheerleader" written all over her, stood up and glanced at me before smiling at Delaney. "Took you long enough."

Delaney snorted with disdain. "We had to take the Metro and make sure we didn't have a tail. All you had to do was wait till we were clear and drive out."

"In DC traffic. It's as bad as Dallas." The blonde girl wrinkled her nose cheerfully.

"It was Saturday traffic; that's not as bad. You should see it on a weekday. I'm glad you made it, though. I thought I was going to have to kill the guy."

The other girl at the table took a sip of her soda. "We wouldn't leave you hanging."

"I know." The way Delaney said that was heavy with meaning, and the three of them just went silent for a second, exchanging glances. It was instantly clear that this was the "Camp Mayhem" crew Pogo had talked about.

Delaney broke the silence. "Maria, this is the team." She pointed to the blonde girl. "This is Mackenzie. And this..." She walked over and stole a chip from the other girl. "Is Tess."

Both of the girls gave very polite hand waves.

I gave an equally polite nod and sagged into the easy chair I'd temporarily escaped. My backup consisted of teenage girls.

Tess laughed softly. I got the feeling she knew exactly what I was thinking, and she confirmed it almost instantly. "It's like an after-school special, isn't it?"

She pointed at Mackenzie. "She's the pretty one." That earned a scowl from her target.

"I'm the geeky one." She pointed at Delaney with a huge grin. "And Delaney is the outlaw girl with a heart of gold."

"Oh fucking shoot me now." Delany threw her hat at Tess.

Tess ducked it easily, and I realized they'd played this scenario out dozens of times. Mackenzie shook her head at the two of them, then looked over at me. "It's not as bad as it looks."

Tess straightened up, suddenly serious. "It isn't. You already know Delaney. Mackenzie is one of the best shooters you've ever met..."

"Tess is our tech geek, and she's a ghost when she's following someone." Mackenzie obviously didn't want to give Tess a chance to understate her own abilities. "And she's an awesome spotter."

I looked at Mackenzie. "So what did you use at the Mall? I didn't even hear the shot."

"A heavy-duty air rifle. A pretty heavily modified Benjamin Bulldog.357 with a custom moderator on it. It isn't my favorite gun, but it was the right one for the job. I usually use it for hog hunting." She almost seemed to be running numbers in her head. "Limited range compared to a conventional rifle, but we made the most of it. And with the moderator, the sound is different enough to avoid most automatic shot detection systems; still loud, but it doesn't sound like a gunshot. The Capitol Police have to have shot detectors all around the Mall, so it was an issue."

I blinked, thinking back. The hair was different, they must have been wearing wigs, but... "The art students sketching near the Museum of Modern Art."

Tess looked unhappy all of a sudden. "Crap. I thought that was perfect."

"It was; I just figured it out. No vehicles nearby, and I only saw one pair that could be you." I focused for a moment. "You used the sculpture garden as your cover."

She nodded. "Those ugly granite wall sculptures channeled the sound of the shot straight up. It had the field of view we needed, and it was perfect to stage a normal scene. Two girls drawing the sculptures; obviously working on some kind of school art project, eating a picnic lunch on the mall, reading texts on a phone together, and listening to music. Those easels and the carry tubes made it easy."

Mackenzie shrugged. "The bullpup is fairly short. We could shield it long enough to take any shots we needed."

My memory of the two girls looking at the phone together sitting with their easels set up and their long black art carry tubes was suddenly much clearer. They made is sound easy, but the window had to be incredibly narrow.

"You were ranging the bench when we walked past you, weren't you?"

"But you didn't notice it at the time, did you?" Tess asked the question mostly off-hand, but I realized they were both studying me intently; they were using me as an after-action review. Delaney was fixing herself a sandwich, but she was tracking every word as well. These girls didn't just have some individual skills; K2 had trained them in higher-level stuff. That meant they'd invested a lot of time and effort; post-mission analysis and planning aren't exactly beginner level.

I was pretty sure asking detailed questions about their training would be a bad idea. I shook my head. "Not at the time."

Tess shrugged. "We couldn't exactly bring a vehicle-blind in close enough, even if we could guarantee a good parking position. The DC sniper killings made that tactic obvious to the police."

"And anyone else who might pay attention." I paused. "I'm really concerned that they knew about the bench."

"We think he just caught up to you at the bench; it was facial recognition that found you. Or lack of it. K2 thinks they were surfing the feed off the Internet of Things -- all the cameras, sensors, traffic lights and stuff - around the FBI, the Mall, everything in the area. K2 wasn't sure if they could finesse it enough to get the right ones, so they had their associates use a bigger hammer method and take all the cameras near the Mall offline. Took out the ones in the Metro system too. That might have triggered the tangos to look around the Smithsonian. Or maybe they were already there."

Tess glanced up at me. "It looks like an eastern European hacker group called 'GoGoPiggy' was paid to do the facial recognition program and surveillance."

I shook my head. "The damn world is changing too fast."

"The technology for facial recognition has been around a long time. People are fighting it legally, but..." Tess shrugged.

"They tried to ban the crossbow too, but it was effective, so it was almost an inevitability. It stayed in use until guns took over." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mackenzie and Delaney hanging on every word. I didn't get this much focus when I lectured the FBI Academy students at Quantico. "K2 sounds like they have a pretty good cyber capability."

Mackenzie shook her head at Tess in a warning, then looked at me. "Nice try."

Delaney gave a lopsided smile. "Sorry, principals don't get to know everything, just what they need to know."

Tess glanced at her computer screen. "GoGoPiggy has other priorities now. They were sloppy, and their bitcoin wallets were taken down. They lost a lot of money on this one, and it has been communicated to them that it can get worse."

"I've always been told that bitcoin wallets are absolutely secure."

Tess shrugged. "Nothing is impossible; some things are just really, really expensive."

I looked around at them. After school special or not, it was nice to be working with professionals.

*****

Later that evening, well after Delaney had headed out on one of her "errands," Mooky walked through the door and looked around in confusion.

Tess gave him a warm smile. "Hey, Mooky."

Mackenzie looked up from where she was sitting on the floor in the middle of an equipment layout, examining the seals on her air rifle. "Hey, Mooky."

"Hey..." He stopped, blinking in confusion.. "Who are you?"

Tess pointed at the big carry-out bag Mooky put on the counter. "Dude! Are those the tacos?"

"Yeah, I uh...Delaney called, and..." He stopped as both girls jumped up and surged past him.

Tess dug through the bag and pulled one out. "Chipotle?"

Mackenzie reached over and took the offered taco. "Thanks, Mooky!" She looked back over at Tess. "Can I get a couple Napalm Sauce?"

Mooky watched, completely lost as they sorted out a couple of tacos each. He finally looked at me.

I shrugged. "They're Delaney's... friends."

"Yeah, I kinda figured that out, but what are they..." He ground to a halt as he saw the heavy air rifle. "Is that some kind of ray gun?"

"It's an air rifle."

He blinked twice. "Like a BB gun?"

Close enough. "A really powerful BB gun."

He looked over the equipment laid out on the floor. Low profile protective vests, a couple of handguns, night vision scopes and more. "I don't want to know, do I?"

"Not really." I pointed to each of the girls in turn. "That's Tess, and that one is Mackenzie."

Each girl waved cheerfully as I pointed them out.

Mackenzie pointed to the counter. "There's twenty-five bucks there for the tacos. Delaney left it when she had to go check on the salvage yard."

Nodding slowly, Mooky walked toward his bedroom, dragging his steps and mumbling. "I'm gonna go clean up."

Something in Tess's face twitched. "Hey, Mooky? Thanks for letting us crash here for a few days. Really. We'll get out of your hair as soon as we can."

He nodded slowly and trudged into his bedroom.

*****

No matter how professional they acted at times, it was still disturbing as hell to realize the mercenaries watching over me weren't even old enough to be out of high school. Their conversations flashed dizzyingly from the relative merits of custom rifle loads to the price of lip gloss, to the latest pop song, and then to surveillance tactics without missing a beat.

Even to the glimmerings of teen romance. I had to admit they had a slightly different perspective than when I was a teenage girl.

"So... Matthew asked me to the Valentine's Dance at school," Mackenzie announced with a bit of pride, but I could sense that she wanted some approval.

"Really? He's cute." Tess turned away from her laptop.

"He's too stupid to live." Delaney was lying on her back on the countertop finishing the last of yet another candy bar.

"Hey! You don't even know him!" Mackenzie scowled at Delaney.

"Same Matthew you talked about in chat?"

"Yes."

Delaney rolled her eyes at the ceiling. "Too stupid to live."

"Hey!"

"He goes to the same school as you and Tess, right?" Delaney carefully folded her candy wrapper.

"Yes, but..."

"So he has to know you won the Texas State small-bore rifle competition, right?" She eyed her little wrapper and folded it again.

"Yes." Mackenzie pulled herself up to her full height. "And HE thinks it's really cool."

"Too stupid to live."

"Stop saying that."

"He wants a torrid summer romance..."

"It's not summer."

"It's always summer in Texas. You need to install a damned air conditioner for the whole state."

Mackenzie just gave her a sour look.

Delaney shrugged. "He's trying to start a first-love romance with a hormonal..."

"I'm not hormonal!"

Tess snickered. "So, two weeks ago, when the world ended because you couldn't find your pink blouse..."

"It was Dreamsicle orange, not pink..." Mackenzie suddenly caught herself. "Okay, maybe I'm a little hormonal."

Delaney drove on mercilessly. "Starting a torrid first-love romance with a hormonal teenage girl who can drill a dime at 600 meters. Too... Stupid... To... Live."

Mackenzie stared at her open-mouthed, then looked at me.

I held my hands up. "She has a point."

Mackenzie looked like she was going to say something, but Delaney cut her off. "Just let me know when it goes wrong; I'll drive down and help bury the body. It'd be easier if you get him up here so I could use the car crusher, though."

Tess giggled.

I shook my head. "If it helps any, I'm pretty sure most boys that age are too stupid to live when it comes to pretty girls."

I could see Mackenzie trying to work out what I meant by that; I noticed she didn't brighten up when I said "pretty girls," though and remembered her slight annoyance at Tess when she had introduced them.

I waited until Delaney and Tess went out on a communication run to talk to her.

"I didn't mean to insult you when I called you pretty."

She eyed me for a second. "It wasn't an insult. I know what I look like. It just isn't... part of this. Everybody at school, everybody at the mall, that's all they see." She raised her hands. "Look, a pretty cheerleader girl! But with K2, with Tess and Delaney... I get to be the badass with a rifle."

"So are you the team leader? I'm having some trouble with your team dynamic. It's odd."

"We don't really have a team leader. I'm more like a spokesman because Tess would rather be invisible and Delaney..." She laughed. "Delaney's just not good with people sometimes."

I nodded. "I can see where that could be a problem."

She tilted her head, studying me. "So are we playing the twenty questions game? We figured it was coming sometime soon. You'd want to do it when only one of us was here, and not Delaney. You had your shot at her and probably didn't get much. So we already decided what we would talk about and what we wouldn't."

I blinked. K2 had spent some serious effort training them. "Okay. Let's do that. How did this happen?"

"Mostly by accident. Delaney's dad and my stepfather, Tony, were teammates in the Army, and I kind of dragged Tess into it." She looked thoughtful. "Kim told me you met my stepfather once, a long time ago. His nickname is 'Hollywood.'"

Hollywood. I damn sure knew that name. I remembered him, most women would since he was a walking talking wet dream. He was also an assassin. Or at least we thought he was. Michael had tracked him carefully, just in case he went rogue. He was a sniper, probably one of the best in the world, and he had worked, or maybe was still working, with Pogo and Howard's crew. We weren't certain; Howard could be touchy if we looked too closely at his people. I was pretty sure Hollywood mostly took his occasional contracts from the murkier side of the government. Taking out terrorists, arms traders, that sort of thing.

"That explains your ability with a rifle."

She nodded.

"Doesn't school get in the way of all this mercenary stuff?"

"Not as much as you'd think. Mom and Tess's mom thinks we're part of a junior law enforcement club; learning from police, doing ride-alongs and all that. We do enough of that to convince anyone, and we've built a pretty convincing legend with K2's help. I'm pretty sure Mom suspects. She's not stupid, and I know Hollywood knows better, but they never say anything. Mom was only a little over a year older than I am now when she joined the Army, so that's probably why she ignores it. Tess's parents are divorced, and she bounces between them, so there's a lot of room to work with there. Delaney... she has some kind of deal about this with her family. Most of the time, we just do courier work, sometimes we do short term surveillance or counter-surveillance, and occasionally we help with plumbing jobs -- infiltration and planting bugs. A lot of it is just a couple days. Sometimes just a few hours. Kim is usually pretty careful about everything. This one is different. We normally don't do babysitting...protection details."

"It's a different kind of work."

She caught my thoughts almost before they were fully formed. "You're wondering if I could kill someone. We've seen a few dead bodies. I go hunting a lot, and it's all about keeping your focus. I know it will probably happen sooner or later. I'm okay with that." She paused. "Tess would rather not. I'm sure she would if she had to. But that's why it's either Delaney or me with you for now."

"Delaney..."

Mackenzie gave me a cool look. "I don't think you have to wonder if Delaney would do it."

"I'm not. I'm pretty sure she already has."

She nodded. "I do this because I want to, so does Tess. I don't think Delaney has a choice. She won't go into it, and she doesn't want to get us involved. All I know is that people keep trying to kill her, and whatever the reason is, they can't just take it to the police."

That fit with what Tiffany had said.

"Pogo said you've done a contested extraction..."

Her mouth tightened into a grim line, and she suddenly looked much more like a hardened mercenary than a teenage girl. "That was supposed to be a simple surveillance job with a protective babysitting team on site, but it went sideways. It turned out that an oil sheikh's daughter ran away with her own daughters. His men killed her escort and snatched them right as we got there. Our backup team was held up." She stopped and made a sound dangerously like a snort. "Did you know Delaney knows how to drive a bulldozer?"

"Why am I not surprised."

She shook her head. "You asked if I was the leader. We all are, sort of. We're good at different things. Kurt calls us a team of experts. We each take the lead when we need to. But when things go really wrong, it's Delaney. She makes decisions even when all the choices suck."

I studied her for a second. "Most of the time, making any decision is better than making none."