If no one was inside, they could check in and return—double time, if needed.

  “What’s your orders, Lieutenant?” Derek asked.

  Lana opened her eyes, took another calming breath, and met his eyes. “Thank you.” She stepped past him and spoke up louder. “Finish up and move out. There’s a situation inside the walls, we’re pulling back to make sure it gets dealt with. Forrestor, Chamberlain, and Lincoln—you three stay here, behind cover. The second you see lights or hear an engine, fire a flare. Do not engage until we’re back.”

  She received a series of acknowledgments, and in another few seconds those who’d finished up with their devices joined her and Derek as they took off for Springfield.

  The pitch black worked in their favor. As they slipped in the gap they’d made for themselves to get out, Lana checked the security seal they’d left behind. It was still intact, so if there was someone inside they at least hadn’t come through the way they’d left. That was cold comfort, but the last thing she needed was any guilt on her conscience as they made their way in.

  This section of the town was entirely residential, a collection of houses that had been here before—some of which had been partial construction when the meteor hit—and the clustered makeshift shelters which had been built up between them, in back and front yards, and in the wide green space probably meant to be a dog park if the impact had never happened.

  It made for an imposing, tight maze that they filed through carefully in three groups to stay spread out, moving quietly and carefully, eyes scanning the darkness for the faintest signs of anything that might have been left behind by hostiles.

  Either they avoided whatever traps could have been set, or this simply wasn’t the way the hostiles had come. That, or she’d made a rash call based on a bad instinct.

  Which, the further into town they got, the more she started to think that could be the case. No one else appeared to be scrambling, even as they reached East Main and encountered a space big enough to put them all under fire from anyone hidden on the other side of the street.

  “Walker, take your team around the back toward the nursery,” Lana whispered, pulling back a bit into the shadows between a half-completed single-level with a white fence and the shelter that had been built onto the house next to it. “Hold position and ready for suppressing fire. I’ll signal when we’re across.”

  Derek gave a silent nod and gestured to the four she’d assigned him. They peeled off behind and headed around as she turned to face her four, barely visible in the dark. “I know it was a short training session and this isn’t what we talked about. There’s no kill box here, but there’s plenty of cover. Stay low, stay behind corners. Look for muzzle flashes.

  “Fighting in the dark is hard, so look for muzzle flashes and aim just above them. Remember—to the best of your ability, do not fire into walls or windows. Everyone knows the procedure, but we don’t know who’ll remember to hit the floor in the heat of the moment. Got it?”

  The four women with her muttered agreement, and she heard clicks and rattles as they checked their firearms in the dark, flipping safeties and confirming magazines were secured. In a minute or so, she heard the faint whistle of Derek’s go-ahead signal.

  The five of them crouched low, and Lana checked both directions and across before putting her attention on an especially dark spot between two houses across the street, in the direction of the library building. That was where tactical units would congregate in the event of a communication problem, and if Springfield did have infiltrators, that’s where they would need to go to knock out resistance.

  With a whispered order, she slipped out of cover and hurried across the street. Four sets of boots followed, shuffling quietly behind her. They made it without incident but held a moment longer before she positioned her team to give Derek’s cover if he needed it, and whistled his signal.

  Some distance up the street, she could just barely make out his team as they crossed.

  No fire so far. It made her twice as nervous as being attacked. Either there was trouble further in that was still quiet—which meant that anyone who was inside hadn’t been spotted and pinned down yet and could be anywhere—or there was nothing at all the matter and she’d pulled her people back from their positions for no good reason.

  The two teams reconvened at the edge of the next street and skirted west toward the center of town, crossing twice more through the open before they finally had the library building in sight.

  She and Derek squatted at the corner of the post office, where some faint light from the windows cast a minimal glow onto the town square. “No activity so far. And no one else here. Do we go check in, at least? Maybe it was a misfire, and some jerk just—”

  There was a flash in one of the library windows. Then another. Then a series of them, and the distant sounds of shouting.

  Lana straightened, her spine going ramrod tense for a brief second before she hissed, “Move in, now!”

  The ten of them rose and spread out, sprinting across the open ground toward the town square. Almost immediately, two muzzles flashed in the darkness atop the library building. Derek barked, “Cover!” as he dropped behind a book deposit box.

  One of Lana’s team gave a cry of pain that tore into her chest as she crouched down behind one of the benches and tried to identify who’d been hit. The faint light wasn’t enough, and she couldn’t let herself get distracted. She twisted around, her muscles taut as she rested the barrel of her rifle on the back of the bench and fired at the roof.

  “Walker, on me!” she shouted. “Cover on the roof!”

  The rest of her team didn’t verbally acknowledge the order, but she was relieved when they began firing in sequence at the roof where the muzzle flashes had been seen, just like she’d told them in the painfully brief training. Each of them had a number assigned, and knew to fire a short burst, one at a time, so that fire was steady, but no one was at risk of going empty too quickly to reload.

  She counted to five as soon as she gave the order, then slipped around the edge of the bench and took off at a sprint toward the library doors. Derek followed, the sound of his boots pounding pavement just behind her. In a few seconds, she slammed into the wall beside the library’s front door. As Derek hit the wall behind her, another of her team cried out from the far side of the lot.

  She cursed again.

  “You can’t think about it,” Derek warned her. “They don’t need to know how to take out trained soldiers; just how to stay alive. We going in?”

  Lana growled as she pushed back the desire to focus on her team’s survival. Derek was right; keeping soldiers occupied was all they had to do. She tapped his chest and made a circling motion toward the door, then held up fingers and counted down from three.

  On the count, he crossed the doorway, and the two of them pushed in at the same time, sweeping rifles around the library’s front entrance where too many shelves made too much cover for anyone inside. Already, the muffled fire from deeper in the library was growing louder. Suppressors, Lana assumed. With two on the roof there were probably two inside, going for the council, but potentially more tasked with securing the entrance from inside.

  All of which meant Apex had intelligence on Springfield. But that was a different problem to deal with at a different time.

  “Move in,” she whispered.

  She and Derek hurried from shelf to shelf, clearing corners as they went. Before they made it halfway across the room, the doors to the council chamber burst open, spilling light into the room. Two people came stumbling through, and she nearly took shots before she recognized Samuels.

  He was shoving President Daniels ahead of him, and a moment later dragged Amelie through as well, hurling her forward and out of the room as she clutched at one arm. “Go, go, go!” he shouted before pressing himself against the door frame and lifting a handgun to check it.

  With a snarl, he ejected a magazine and pawed at his jacket.

  Lana darted forward, and Derek followed. As they came into Samuels’ line of sight, he cussed and grabbed for the knife at his hip, but paused and spat as he recognized them. “Two inside,” he reported. “Herndon and Thurmond are down. Couldn’t check them. Daniels and Jefferson are injured. Came out of nowhere, had to have slipped security front and back.”

  Lana shook her head. “No bodies out front.”

  Muffled gunfire struck the doors from inside as they swung shut. Derek and Lana both jerked toward the wall and dropped to a crouch.

  “I’m out,” Samuels growled.

  Lana drew her sidearm and slid it across the ground toward him. “You injured?”

  As Samuels knelt to collect the firearm his face twisted with pain that she took for confirmation and he pressed a hand to his side. “Nothing that’ll kill me fast. On m—”

  “Keep Daniels and Jefferson covered.” Lana cut him off as she jerked her head toward the two. “There are two more on the roof, my team is keeping them occupied. How far in the room are these two?”

  Samuels looked for a moment like he’d argue, but seemed to push past it quickly enough. “Don’t know. Thirty feet?”

  Lana nodded and pulled her pack around, feeling around inside it for an EMP device, one of the backups for the kill box. She fitted it together quickly, counted to three, then wrapped the tape that had held the two components together down over the trigger and kicked the door in, hurling the device as far in as she could.

  Immediately, her own radio and Samuels gave a sharp hiss. The light in the room went out. From inside the room, she heard two surprised grunts as gunfire pocked the wall.

  The second it stopped, she and Derek moved as a unit, turning the corner, and hurtling through the doors, spraying fire across the room. The room strobed, showing two black-clad figures on the other side of the council table where another door led toward the back corridor of the building. One of them jerked and hit the wall. The other dropped, and a moment later the back door was flung open.

  Lana circled the table to the right while Derek took the left. She encountered Doctor Herndon first, laying on her side just under the edge of the table. She put two fingers to the woman’s neck and found a pulse there, but faint. “Samuels,” she called. “Room’s clear, one down. Herndon is alive, we’re in pursuit of the other.”

  Derek didn’t need her to issue an order before he moved toward the door and pressed to the wall on the right side. Lana continued her path around and checked the Apex agent either she or Derek had put down. He wasn’t moving but had a pulse as well.

  She took his weapon and slung the strap over her shoulder, then pulled him away from the wall to the floor. He groaned, and she pulled his arms behind him, resting a knee on his back as she waved at Derek. “Zip ties.”

  He produced a handful and tossed them to her. They scattered over the back of the agent’s legs, and she grabbed two of them and hastily fitted them together before wrapping them around the agent’s wrists and pulling them tight. By now, Samuels was inside, and she sat up to wave him over. “This one’s alive and restrained,” she reported.

  “Thurmond’s gone,” Derek said.

  Samuels spat out a curse. “Get moving, I’ll deal with this.”

  Wordlessly, Lana turned toward the door and took cover to the left. She leaned out just long enough to check the corridor, and when no one fired, she gave Derek the signal and rounded the door to run down the other agent, trying not to panic about how many others were inside the town.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CALEB

  Springfield, CO

  Tuesday July 31st, 9:23 pm MST

  Caleb listened to the pattern of fire coming from the library building where the town council was supposed to be coordinating the preparation effort. Someone was giving cover fire, he thought. That was good—it meant the hostiles had been engaged.

  He tugged Diego after him toward the doctor’s office and pressed the slim young man to the wall. “Hold position here.” He pushed Diego’s gun arm down toward the ground. “Keep this pointed down and stay low.”

  “What?” Diego asked as Caleb started to leave him there. “Wait, where are you going?”

  “You’ll be alright,” Caleb assured him, glancing over his shoulder once as he checked his weapon again by habit. He hadn’t fired it since he picked it up, but he was familiar with Apex’s usual gear after the couple they’d lifted from the field team they’d fled before. “Just try not to shoot anyone by accident.”

  Diego gave some other complaint, but Caleb put it out of his attention as he got focused and moved around the end of the doctor’s office and peered out to see someone’s team arranged around the edge of the town square. They were firing at the roof, and from what he could tell in the dim light at least two of the team were down.

  There were two figures at the door, and he had to squint in the darkness to try and see who they were. At almost the same moment, one of them crossed the double doors into the building before both entered. The only detail he could pick out was a row of braids along one side of a head.

  Lana, it had to be, which made the other one most likely Derek. Not one of the other women on Lana’s unit, at least. But she was meant to be out at the east side of the town, manning the ambush point there. What was she doing inside?

  Right then, there was no point in wondering. All that could come after. For now, he took the next round of suppressing fire as his opportunity and bolted as fast as his leg would allow across the side street between the office and the library, keeping one eye on the roof. The agents up there were preoccupied with the team on the ground, fortunately, and didn’t notice his crossing the open area.

  In the front? No, he didn’t want to flank Lana and Derek and surprise them or distract the folks in the square. Instead, he slipped along the side of the building to the back end, checked the corner, then stepped around it—

  And nearly tripped over an unconscious body.

  With a grunt, he caught himself just before he went down, hopping briefly on one foot before he dropped to a knee and tugged the person upright. It was Camby, his wrists secured behind him, his mouth taped. He gave a weak groan as Caleb moved him but didn’t wake.

  He gave the man a quick check, feeling for anything wet and warm that might be a gunshot wound, but only found a swollen lump in the back of his head—bleeding, but not so much that he would die of it.

  From inside the building came a sharp report of live fire. He ducked instinctively, and lowered Camby back to the ground, then readied his weapon and crept along the back end of the building toward the door. Everything came together in his mind. Apex had slipped a team in, somehow, and gone for the laptop and the council. How they could have known where either of those targets were… it warranted figuring out, but not now.

  The door halfway along the wall opened partially, and Caleb flattened himself to the wall, bringing his weapon up even as his shoulder caught and burned in the socket. It made that arm shake, and made his aim unreliable, but he rested his finger lightly on the trigger as the door pushed the rest of the way open.

  An Apex agent, barely visible in the dark except for the reflection of some distant light off her helmet, stepped into view, weapon swiveling quickly in Caleb’s direction as they moved to clear the doorway. He dropped down just in time as he was spotted, and the agent fired on him. His own weapon jerked in his grip as he squeezed the trigger, and his shoulder exploded with pain from the kickback.

  The agent stumbled backward, but didn’t go down, catching her fall on the doorway. Sharper fire sounded inside the corridor, accompanied by brief flashes of illumination that showed the agent’s weapon hanging precariously from one hand, the strap across her neck twisted.

  Caleb raised the Apex weapon again, but a spasm in his shoulder shot down to his hand, weakening his grip as some nerve was pinched. He fired anyway, but with no accuracy. It was enough, at least, to send the agent hurtling past the door and into the open. She rolled across the concrete. A woman’s voice shouted something he couldn’t quite hear.

  She saw him as he moved and brought her weapon around.

  Before she could fire, a burst of rifle fire erupted from the doorway. The agent’s leg buckled, and she dropped with a scream. Lana charged across the concrete and cracked the butt of her rifle across the woman’s helmet, twice, then kicked the rifle out of her hand. It fired briefly, skittering around the ground and tangling the strap, before Derek dropped down and planted his knee on it.

  The agent struggled briefly as Derek pulled a knife and cut the strap free, removing the weapon, and Lana trained her weapon on the agent’s head. “You can stop moving,” she growled, “or you can take a bullet in the face.”

  Derek pulled the agent’s helmet free.

  The woman inside it was spitting mad, her voice strained with a mix of fury and pain. “You have no idea who you—”

  She stopped mid-sentence as Lana tucked the rifle more tightly against her shoulder, ready to take the shot.

  “How many more?” Caleb asked.

  Lana glanced over at him once, then did a double take. “Dad?”

  “Two on the roof that we know of,” Derek reported.

  Caleb got to his feet slowly, his leg protesting, and moved closer to them, his own weapon tracking the woman. “That your team out front? My radio got fried when Diego set off one of his toys.”

  “That’s us,” Lana confirmed. “Comms are all down. Jammed.”

  Of course. He’d warned Thurmond. But there were protocols for that, just in case. “Anyone who realizes it will be pulling back to the town perimeter. We’ll have to sweep for a device, if it’s all bands, it’ll have to be nearby.”

  “Any ideas?” Lana asked the woman on the ground.

  In the dark, Caleb couldn’t see the woman’s face clearly. But when she spoke again, he thought he recognized her. She certainly seemed to recognize them. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she growled. “You people, again?”