Breece rose and opened the driver-side door of the car. The vehicle was marked now, just like his phones, just like the identities all three objects were registered to. He had to stop the damage there, stop them from retrieving DNA samples, stop any chance of the authorities finding out Breece’s real identity, cut off any path that might unmask Hiroshi and Ava and the Nigerian.

He tapped on the car’s center console, navigated the menus, touched a corner that was blank, and let it scan his retina. A new menu appeared, with hidden options.

Self-destruct. He set it for a ten minute countdown, or when triggered from his phone.

From the trunk he pulled out his go bag with gear, phones, gun, and fresh false identities. Then he grabbed an enzyme bomb as well.

He took off up the hill again, the enzyme bomb in his still-gloved hand. The landscape was quickly growing darker in the post-sunset twilight. He gained the top of the hill, found the two assailants he’d killed. He pulled the ceramic knife out of one man’s throat, cleaned it on the man’s jacket, and slid it back into his ankle sheath.

Then he stood back from the area, brought the cylindrical enzyme bomb up, pulled the pin on it, and tossed it at the spot where he’d been hit. It rolled to a stop against one of the bodies. A half second later a dozen tiny ports opened on the soda-can-sized cylinder, hissing out a dense white fog of DNA- and protein-degrading enzymes. With any luck they’d erase any biological traces he’d left.

Breece pulled out his phone again, sent an encrypted message to Hiroshi.

[Am safe. Stay clear of area. Your phone now burned as well. Meet at rendezvous.]

Then he dropped down behind a headstone, looked around it at the Lexus, pulled up the menu, and moved the self-destruct time up to now.

Three hundred yards away, a solenoid opened a canister of compressed oxygen, venting it into the gas tank of the car, hyperpressuring it. Seconds later, a score of tiny penetrators poked holes in the fuel tank, sending aerosolized gasoline into the car’s interior and into the air around it, turning the vehicle into an unexploded fuel-air bomb. Breece counted down: 3… 2… 1…

The car erupted in a fireball that lit up the twilight sky. The heat of it warmed his face. Any evidence left in that car was now vaporized.

Breece pulled the batteries from his phone, turned, and slowly crept down the back side of the hill. It was a long way to the rendezvous.

He made it to Houston eighteen hours later, wearing his spare clothes, his hair freshly dyed black, a car rented under a fresh identity.