Kuga sold arms and was apolitical; he’d sell them to anyone. To everyone. He was creating a brand-new and enduring client base. This plan was brilliant, and it was scary as hell.

And I was right in the middle of it.

I saw the exact moment when the choreography of disaster began.

Two men—one white, one Black—were yelling at each other. Very loudly, and with a lot of jabbing of fingers inches from each other’s faces. I know there’s a lot of racism in America, but this was too picture-perfect. A large white man with swastika neck tattoos and a Black man with a do-rag and a T-shirt with a picture of George Floyd.

“Shut this down!” I yelled to Wilson or Church or whoever the hell was listening. I began making my way through the crowd, pushing past people, shoving some aside, holding up my fake ID, announcing that I was Secret Service.

I might as well have been invisible for all the good I accomplished, because by the time I reached the fringe of the circle of folks—all of whom were now screaming their hate—both the white man and the Black man pulled guns.

I tapped my com unit. “Christ, send backup. Now.”

The whole room became a war zone.

Just.

That.

Fast.

CHAPTER 164

THE PAVILION

BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

Mia ran fast, but the bullets were so much faster. Two of them caught her between the shoulder blades and punched all the air out of her lungs. She fell hard and rolled badly, coming to rest in a gap between two pines. The body armor had saved her life, but the impact had been tremendous. Pain seemed to pulse outward from both sides of her spine, and breathing was a real challenge.

The minigun chopped at the trees, creating a cyclone of flying bark and pine needles. Mia crawled as fast as she could and tumbled over into a small natural depression as the forest above her was chewed apart.

She tried to make sense of this. Clearly, the Lightning Bug hadn’t knocked out all the electronics on those goddamned machines. Maybe the mini-EMP bomb had been too far away, or maybe the K-110’s computers were shielded. She didn’t know and, in that moment, did not care.

Something whipped by overhead and flew straight at the fighting machine. It was one of Andrea’s crow drones. The birds were unarmed, but it paused in midair, hovering like a hummingbird right in front of the driver’s face mask. The minigun’s angle of fire went totally wild for a moment, and then stopped as the driver tried to swat the drone away.

That gave Mia a chance, and—despite the agony in her back and only spoonfuls of air in her lungs—she got to fingers and toes and scampered away through the brush.