“What kind of intel?”

Bunny took a Lightning Bug from his pocket. “What we don’t know—and what wasn’t in the data Doc and her boys are looking at—is whether an EMP shutdown of their body armor will nullify the R-33 packets and the explosives or—”

“Or make them go boom,” finished Mia.

“Yeah.”

“Well, crap.”

“Yeah.”

Mia said, “Guess there’s one way to find out.” She patted his bulging biceps. “Bet you can throw that sucker farther than I can. So you do that, and I’ll see if I can get some mischief going on ’round the other side. Worst case, we catch them in a cross fire and shorten the odds. And Mother Mercy’s up there somewhere watching our backs. She’ll want to play.”

“I like this plan,” said Bunny.

They split up, with Mia circling wide to come up on the other side. Bunny was always impressed by how she moved and wished she was on Havoc Team instead of Chaos. Maybe after this, something could be worked out.

He gave her a couple of minutes and then worked his way along a ridge, keeping low behind thick shrubs. When he was within fifty feet, he thumbed the switch on the Lightning Bug, rose up, threw with all his strength, and dropped back behind cover.

The device had just enough heft to make for a good throw. It arced over the truck and, just on the far side, detonated. In bright daylight, it was only a flash that was nearly invisible. And its mild pop was buried beneath the sound of men working. Bunny flattened out with the ridge crest between him and any resulting explosion.

The forklift jerked to a stop, a crate almost level with the flatbed.

“What the hell?” he heard someone growl.

Men clustered around the forklift, offering the kind of useless suggestions people always thought worth sharing. There was no explosion.

Until there was.

But it wasn’t the massive blast Wilson had told them to expect. This was a good, deep solid crump of a standard-issue fragmentation grenade.

The blast caught everyone by surprise and punched the crated fighting machine off the forklift. The crate slammed against the side of the truck and then crashed to the ground, burning wood showering men who lay dazed and bleeding.

The other Fixers scattered.

Mia rose up and hosed them with her M5, burning through a full magazine and tearing two men to rags. Then she dropped down, rolled into a gully, and ran like hell as return fire from the sentries tore apart the place where she’d been. One of the sentries suddenly jerked forward, the entire front of his face disintegrating as a sniper round found him.

Bunny laughed. This was Magpie and Mother Mercy doing what they did, the fierce women scoring first blood.