When Church is so rattled by something that he freaks at me on the phone, then my own scare-o-meter starts burying the needle. I ran like a son of a bitch and put a lot of gone between me and the death house.

Three blocks away I cut down an alley behind an abandoned house. Once I was sure that the place was completely deserted, I broke in. Ghost was too weak to do much running, so I left him in the kitchen and quickly cleared the whole house. Six empty rooms, lots of junk, some bugs, a dead rat, and nothing else.

There was no water, so we couldn’t stay long, but I needed more information from Church. He answered my call right away.

“Are you somewhere safe?”

I explained my location.

“Very well. I’m retasking a satellite to try and track you. Echo Team is six hours out, and I’ve alerted Barrier as to the hit on their house.”

“Good,” I said, “so now tell me why I ran away like a six-year-old from a party clown. Who the hell are these Red Knights?”

“They are trained killers. Very, very tough.”

“Yeah, well so am I.”

“Captain Ledger,” he said quietly, “take your ego out of gear for a moment and look at this objectively, I—”

“I am looking at it objectively,” I cut in, “but your lack of confidence is starting to piss me off.”

“Get over it,” he said quietly and waited for another smart-mouth comment from me. I said nothing. After a moment, he continued. “The Red Knights are members of a brotherhood of assassins that emerged during the later Crusades. Over the centuries they have been tied to acts of murder, sabotage, and destruction that by today’s standards would be classified as terrorism. Very little is known about them, and much of what is recorded is questionable. History distorts reliable intel; and, much like the ninja of Japan, the knights themselves contributed to, edited, and distorted their own mythology.”

“Gosh, where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah … your friend Hugo Vox. Are we saying that this is all his scheme?”

“Unknown.”

“Who runs these knights?”

“Also unknown, though there are unsubstantiated rumors of a group called the Red Order, but so far we haven’t been able to put together a file on them. It’s even possible Red Order and Red Knights are interchangeable terms; that’s to be determined.”

“Okay,” I said dubiously, “so why haven’t I heard of these Red Knights? If they’re political it sounds like something we should be handling. What do we know about them?”

“About their organization? Next to nothing. About operatives like the one you encountered? We know bits and pieces, and none of it is good. Do not underestimate them and don’t waste time with a database search on them. The DMS has not crossed paths with them before this.” He paused. “I have.”