In a sane and smart world, all those people would have erased their previous online identities and created new and antiseptic ones. However, as most cops in the world know, few criminals are masterminds. Even those who hired brilliant black hats to advise them still did profoundly stupid things, like keep old email accounts to communicate with friends. Or maintain back-channel lines of communication thinking that those were, by their nature, safe.

Bug loved that kind of thing. A window only needed to be opened a crack for him to get in.

And each day he worked at Mr. Church’s project, he did more damage. He shared crucial information with competitors and outright enemies; he planted unbreakable ransomware on banking systems working with these people; he outed them as pedophiles—even when they weren’t—to the right media sources; he stole billions in funds and donated it to charities; he crashed expensive systems on exactly the wrong days; he leaked corporate secrets just as the opening bell sounded on the world’s various stock exchanges; he created compromising pictures, texts, and emails and sent it to girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, and the law; and he made social media posts that—he was certain—would embarrass them in the eyes of their new employer. Some of those people vanished, and Bug figured that was the result of those posts coming to the attention of Rafael Santoro.

He did a lot of damage. He ended careers, businesses, fortunes, and lives.

He made it hurt.

But he did not find Rafael Santoro or Kuga.

Not yet.

Not yet.

CHAPTER 45

FORESTED AREA

APPROXIMATELY 3,800 YARDS FROM THE BLUE DIAMOND TRAINING CAMP

CADDO MILLS, TEXAS

The sniper was invisible. An angel of death hidden within the shadows of a massive pine tree, lost in the great ocean that was the forest.

The rifle rested on a sturdy limb, and the sniper was covered in cut pine boughs and wore a camouflage hood and balaclava, with grease paint over any inch of exposed skin. Unseen and silent.

The rifle’s scope moved without hurry from one face to the next. The crosshairs drifted over the recruiter’s smiling face, then the man doing the pat-downs. It moved on to the sentries and then to the two big men. First the tall white man and last the older Black man. Each time, the crosshairs froze over their hearts. At that distance, head shots were possible for a sniper of this skill level, but with the sheer destructive power of the copper-jacketed rounds, a center-mass body shot would be both lethal and easier to guarantee.

A voice spoke quietly in the sniper’s ear.

“Do you have them?”

“Yes,” murmured Belle. “I have them.”

CHAPTER 46

JAPANESE ICEBREAKER NOBU SHIRASE (AGB-5003)

NEAR EAST ONGUL ISLAND

QUEEN MAUD LAND, ANTARCTICA

The ship punched through a crust of ice that was far thinner than it should have been. That had become the routine, even here at the bottom of the world.