Hostage Zero

She tried to will the thoughts away. They were counterproductive. Right now, everything was about the mission. She labored not to fixate on the right or the wrong of things anymore, hoping that she could one day find that emotional place where Digger lived at times like these, but she just wasn’t wired that way.

She could pretend-she could push herself when the time came to don her game face and be one of the boys-but when quiet returned, she always remembered that there really was good, and there really was evil, and that in the end, good always prevailed, even if at a daunting price.

Her years at Security Solutions working with Digger Grave had taught her that when the stakes were as high as Digger ratcheted them, outcome often trumped means. When the prize was important enough, any law was expendable if it stood in the way of justice. They were in the business of reuniting families, after all, and for Digger and Boxers, shattering rules was a part of the game that energized them. Venice could intellectualize immorality as necessity, but she’d never be able to fully embrace it.

That’s part of the reason why Jonathan called her the soul of the team.

With sleep out of the question, she’d spent the last half hour rechecking her connections to the Basin, Virginia, jail. Unlike Jonathan, whose ground-level view saw only one-third of the building, she was responsible for controlling the whole thing. The jail’s graveyard shift, which started at ten and would run until six o’clock the next morning, consisted of six deputies who divided their time between the front desk and the three cell blocks, all of which were connected by a series of steel security doors.

Looking at the plan view she’d pulled up on her center screen, she once again noted the important landmarks. The adult portion of the detention facility resembled a wide, asymmetrical V, with the men’s cell block taking up the longer left leg, and the women’s portion the shorter right leg. The two legs joined at the administrative section of the facility, where the admissions desk and the main security air lock were located.

The hallways through the cell blocks were further controlled by intermediate security doors which, in the event of a prisoner uprising, could isolate the event to one-third of either wing. Guards who were not patrolling the hallways worked at a warren of desks in the heavily secured apex of the two wings.

Watching her screens, she could see every corner of the jail, including the insides of the cells if she were so inclined-which she was not. There was nothing remotely engaging in watching men and women in their alone times, especially at night.

When the balloon went up on this operation, she was going to have a lot to do in a very short period of time, with no room for error. She’d programmed all the appropriate commands and committed them not only to memory but to a list that lay beside her keyboard, and in these final moments, she waved her fingers over the keys, practicing the strokes the way a piano player will silently practice a concerto before stepping onto the stage.

Finally assured that she’d done everything she could, she pulled up Spider Solitaire in a separate window on her computer and stacked up four wins.

At 01:45, she donned her headset with its boom microphone and waited for the boss to check in. Knowing Jonathan and Boxers, they’d probably spent the last three hours at a restaurant somewhere having a nice meal before another day at the office.

Her earpiece crackled, “Mother Hen, this is Scorpion. Are you there?”

Relief. Then the flutter of anxiety. “I’m here,” she responded. “What about Big Guy?”

“I’m on the Net,” Boxers replied.

“What are your screens showing?” Jonathan asked.

“Just a boring night at the jailhouse,” Venice said.

“Any questions on the plan?”

Venice resisted the urge to answer quickly. “I’ve run every scenario I can think of, and I think we’re ready,” she said. Never mind that every plan goes to the dogs five seconds after it shifts from theory to reality.

The movie screen in her mind played the images of blood-spattered walls again. “Hey guys?” she said. “Get this son of a bitch, okay?”

Jonathan and Boxers exchanged glances in the darkened van. “Did Venice just cuss?” Boxers gasped. It was the equivalent of a Muslim taking a drink. It just didn’t happen.

“Yes, I did,” said the voice in their ears. “And I’m sorry, but I just…” Her voice trailed off.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Jonathan said. “Let’s do it, then.”

The dome light had been disabled, so when Jonathan opened the passenger door and let himself out, the world around them remained dark. He addressed Boxers’ silhouette. “Be patient, Big Guy,” he said. “Trust twenty-first-century solutions.”

“I always do,” Boxers replied. “But I’ll never stop trusting nineteenth-century backups.” Boxers felt a deep love for blowing things up.