He did as ordered and then sent a confirmation. In the fortress above, the Whites would be scrambling, frantically trying to discover why their sophisticated early warning system had gone dark. According to Auma, they would initially assume it was a malfunction. That would be the time to strike—before they realized they were in danger.

There was a quiet rustling from behind and he quickly found himself surrounded by the men under his command. The Bearer of the Sacrament stopped next to him, taking off his backpack and removing various purpose-built containers. They were fashioned from local trees, intricately carved with magical symbols. Nabirye accepted one and shook it before removing a small lid. Beneath was a tiny chamber containing the proper dose. As commander, it was his honor to be the first to be blessed.

He leaned forward and breathed it in, feeling the familiar surge. The blood throbbed at the base of his skull. The strength in his limbs became infinite. Any hint of uncertainty, fear, and compassion slipped away. All that remained was a blinding, ecstatic rage.

26

SCOTT Coleman tried to ignore the voice and hang on to sleep. In his dream, he was driving a tractor through an endless field of wheat. Complex patterns came and went across it, written by an intermittent breeze that also tossed the hair of the woman riding next to him. Sonya Voronova spoke, but not in the bland midwestern accent she’d worked so hard to perfect. And not in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Russian accent that she reverted to when she was joking. Instead, the sound that came from her was the gruff southern drawl of Joe Maslick.

“Scott! Wake up!”

He finally opened his eyes to see the former Delta operator’s face hovering above him.

“What?”

“We’re picking up something on the cameras.”

“Let me guess. Down in that death gully to the east.”

“Yeah. How did you know to pump up our capability there?”

Coleman threw the blanket off and stood. “A little bird told me.”

“Mitch,” the big man grumbled.

Getting dressed wasn’t particularly time consuming. In situations like these, Coleman tended to sleep in his fatigues. He slipped into a pair of boots carefully lined up near the bottom of the bed.

“What’re we looking at?”

“At least fifty men. The one in the lead dug up and cut that wire you had us bury and now the rest are forming on him.” He glanced at the real-time image on his phone. “Not sure what’s going on. Visibility’s shit because of all the trees. They seem like they’re in a huddle or something.”

Coleman reached for his own phone and scrolled through various video feeds and sensor logs. It was indeed hard to figure out what they were doing. Passing something around maybe? Assault rifles all around, but nothing heavier visible. Bunched up like amateurs.

“So, they’re basically sitting on top of that wire?”