“Once I discovered these dusty levels,” he said, “it struck me as a perfect haunt for Sigma to set up shop, what with its easy access both to the labs of the Smithsonian and to the halls of power in D.C.”
She heard the flicker of fatherly pride in his voice; he was plainly happy to show it off to newcomers, which she suspected must be a rare event.
The elevator doors whooshed open into a long central hallway.
“This is the command level,” he said, leading the way. “Ahead is our central communications nest, the nerve center of Sigma.”
As they approached, a slim woman in the dress blues of the navy stepped out of the room to greet them. She was handsome in a hard way, perhaps made more severe by the short bob of her auburn hair. Jada also thought she noted a trace of faint scars across her cheeks, but she refrained from staring.
“Director Crowe,” the woman said. “Good to have you back, sir.”
“This is Captain Kathryn Bryant,” Painter introduced. “My second-in-command.”
“Kat is fine.” She shook Jada’s hand with an overly firm grip, but the warmth of her small smile softened the greeting. “Welcome, Dr. Shaw.”
Jada licked her lips, anxious to see more of this world, but she knew their timetable was short.
“How are preparations going?” Painter asked. “I’d like to have this team moving in less than an hour.”
“You heard about Commander Pierce?” she asked and led them into the communications room. The oval space was small, dominated by a curved bank of monitors and computer interfaces.
“I did. We’ll work around him if need be. I assume you’re offering him whatever support he needs.”
Kat cast him a withering glance, suggesting she’d do nothing less. She settled into a chair before the monitors, like a pilot taking the helm. “As to the itinerary for this mission, Monsignor Verona and his niece will be taking the first morning flight out of Rome headed to Kazakhstan. It’s a five-hour flight for them. If we stay on schedule here and get wheels up in an hour, our team should touch down about the same time as the Veronas . . . midafternoon local Kazakhstan time.”
Jada frowned. This was one part of the expedition that made no sense to her. “So as I understand it,” she said, wanting clarification, “we’ll be collecting these others to substantiate our claims that our search of Mongolia’s remote mountains is archaeological in origin.”
“That’s right,” Kat said. “But we’ll also be using the remainder of that day in Kazakhstan to investigate a mystery that may or may not be connected to the current threat. If nothing pans out, you move on.”
Painter had briefly explained about a skull and book. But she had hardly listened, not giving his story much credence. But this wasn’t her call.
“And who else will be on this expedition?” Jada asked.
The answer came from behind her. “That would be me, for one.”
She turned to find a man standing a few inches shorter than her, but beefy as a pit bull. He wore sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a Washington Redskins baseball cap that did little to hide his perfectly smooth head. Her first instinct was to dismiss the man, but she noted the sharp glint of intelligence in his dark eyes—and amusement.
Though she couldn’t put a finger on why, she felt an instant fondness for him, like for a goofy older brother.
It seemed she wasn’t the only one.
Kat Bryant leaned back in her chair. The stranger crossed over and kissed the woman on the lips.
Okay, maybe not a brother.
As the man straightened, Kat glanced back to Jada. “He’ll take good care of you.”
“She has to say that because she’s my wife.” He kept one hand lovingly on her shoulder.
Jada finally noted the other hand was prosthetic, attached at his wrist by a thicker cuff of electronics. It was so real she almost missed it.
Painter nodded to him. “Monk Kokkalis is one of Sigma’s best.”
“One of?” he asked, looking wounded.
Painter ignored him. “You’ll also be accompanied by another, one of our newest members. His specialty is electrical engineering and physics. He also knows a fair amount about astronomy and has some, shall we say, unique talents. I think you’ll find him a great asset.”
“That would be Duncan Wren,” Kat explained.
“Speaking of which, where is he?” Painter asked. “I thought I asked everyone to attend this mission briefing.”
Kat shared a glance with her husband, then swung around to face her monitors. She mumbled under her breath. “I’ve already briefed him. He had a medical matter he had to attend to before leaving.”
Painter frowned. “What medical matter?”
6:18 P.M.
“Don’t move,” he was warned.
Duncan balanced his six-foot-two bulk on a tiny folding chair with a wobbly leg. “It would be easier, Clyde, if you took into account that not all your clients are emaciated meth addicts.”
Across from him, his friend wore a surgical mask and a set of magnifying eyeglasses affixed to his face. Clyde looked like he might break ninety pounds when wet, most of which was hair, which trailed in a long ponytail down his back.
Clyde grasped Duncan’s large hand atop the table, as if about to read his palm. Instead, he reached with a scalpel and nicked the edge of Duncan’s left index finger near its tip. Fire lanced up his wrist, but he kept his hand steady on the metal table.
Clyde plunked the scalpel down. “This next part may hurt.”
Ya think . . .
Picking up a sterilized pair of tweezers, his friend probed the new wound. As steel scraped nerves, pain set Duncan’s teeth to grinding. He closed his eyes, controlling his breathing.
“Got it!” his torturer said.
Duncan opened his eyes to see a tiny black pellet, the size of a grain of rice, extracted from the cut, clutched in the jaws of the tweezing forceps.
It was a sliver of rare-earth magnet.
“Now to replace this old worn one with a new one . . .”
Using the same tweezers, Clyde lifted a fresh magnet from the cache Duncan had supplied. The magnets were courtesy of a DARPA lab in New Brunswick, though their current use was definitely off-label.
The rice-sized pellet—coated by Duncan in Parylene C to prevent infection—was slipped through the wound. Once in place, a few drops of surgical glue closed the cut, sealing the magnet beneath his skin, where it rested beside the somatosensory nerves responsible for a fingertip’s perception of pressure, temperature, and pain.