18% Gray Page 3

  “What the hell are you doing there? Let me talk to Lance.” Shit. Andry was the new trainee?

  Andry’s scowl morphed into a smirk. “Gramps’s eating breakfast and he told me to only get him if you were having problems.”

  “Is he letting you check in the other agents, or just me?”

  Now the smirk became a sulky lip. “Just you. I’m training on your ass.”

  “Fine. Tell your ‘boss’ I’m a half hour out of Boise by crotch rocket and hoping to be back out tonight. I won’t check in again until tomorrow morning.”

  “Why not tonight?”

  “’N’case I don’t make it out tonight. Might have to stay overnight depending on the sitch with the package.”

  Andry rolled his eyes. “You mean James?”

  “Yeah, James.”

  “What is your problem with James Ayala?” Before Matt could answer, he heard Andry mutter “Sorry” to someone off-vid and then he turned back to the monitor. “Okay, I have you checked in at 0724 with no check-in until tomorrow at 0730.” Then Andry ended the transmission.

  “I don’t have a problem with James Ayala,” Matt told the blank vid screen. And his stupid fucking little brother. Then he smirked a little. Lance probably got all over Andry’s ass for non-essential communications on an encrypted transmission.

  Fine. He was going to see James Ayala, help him get the hell out of Idaho, laugh in his face, and then never see him again. It was seven years ago, and a lifetime in experience. And he was over it. Except for that revenge thing. Laughing in his face should take care of that, right?

  JAMES had picked up his tail. It was disconcerting, since Matt thought he was pretty good at remaining undetected normally. He’d been trained by those relatives in Special Ops. He shouldn’t be that easy to pick out. He must be concentrating too much on the James of the past and not on the one right in front of him. He came around a corner and realized he’d lost James. Fuck.

  Matt cleared the block, including an alley. When he first looked down it, he’d been surprised to see a Dumpster. He hadn’t known you could get someone to service them. No one could fit inside a Sorpacter, but clearly someone could fit inside or behind a Dumpster.

  When he checked it out, he found nothing. Except a really bad smell, which was now clinging to him even with the all-weathers he wore. Nice.

  James had to be long gone by now. Matt would have to stake out his house. He looked around the corner at the end of the block just in case.

  Bingo. The façade of a building partway down the cross street was being deconstructed, although there weren’t any workers around at the moment. There was equipment, scaffolding, even some debris strewn about. He bet James was there, and since it was deserted it was a good place to approach him. James might recognize him, and Matt couldn’t predict his reaction. It would be better without witnesses. A familiar reaction could cause problems when a guy was wearing the pink triangle. Even if “familiar” translated to “fistfight.” It could be reported and linked to James.

  In front of the deconstruction zone sat a construction-sized Sorpacter. It was attached by a sorting chute up the scaffolding, with openings about every three meters so stuff could be dropped in. He didn’t think anyone could fit inside the unit, but he checked to be sure. The sorting bot inside slammed the cover in his face. Nothing.

  Matt turned back toward the scaffolding. He was looking left, so he didn’t see James climb out of the sorting chute. He did manage to catch movement out of the corner of his eye right before 85 kilos of man hit him from 2.5 meters above him.

  Not the way he usually preferred to be jumped by a guy. “Fuck, James!” he sputtered, his cheek mashed into the rough sidewalk. He could feel James freeze when Matt said his name. He had Matt’s arms twisted into some impossible configuration by then.

  “Th’fuck?” muttered James, letting up on Matt’s arms a little. Thank God.

  “Get off me, you fucking idiot!” Matt hissed. “If anyone sees you lying on another man on the street, you’re going back into re-education.”

  “You were following me,” James pointed out calmly, not moving.

  “Yeah, so I could talk to you. I’m not trying to do anything to you! Would I have been so obviously following you if I wanted to fuck with you?” Okay, so Matt hadn’t known he was so obviously following, but he’d use what he had. “C’mon, James. Seriously, you need to get off me before someone sees.”

  James got up, but Matt could feel him standing very still back there in defensive—or offensive—readiness. Matt rolled over and looked up at James a few seconds before standing.

  James stared at him stonily, ready for anything as Matt dragged his sore ass off the concrete. He really would have preferred a plastic composite walkway. Idaho seemed a little short on modern updates, though.

  Matt could clearly see the pink triangle on the front of James’s shirt. Yeah, it would be obvious to anyone that this guy just got out of re-education.

  “Th’fuck?” James asked again, the look on his face changing from stony to confused. “Matt?”

  TEN minutes later, they were walking down the street together, each holding a coffee pouch. James had that completely blank expression he was so good at.

  “What are you doing here? You need to get th’fuck out of the Red, Matt.”

  “I’m gonna go.” Matt kept his voice just as low. “As soon as you’re ready.”

  James said nothing for half a block, just stared straight ahead. “You’re rescuing me?” He whispered incredulously.

  Matt imagined his smirk bore a striking resemblance to Andry’s from that morning. “Yup,” he said cheerfully.

  “I don’t need you to rescue me.” James’s tone was flat.

  “Then why haven’t you left yet? You’ve been out of the camp three weeks.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Sorry; that’s classified info.” Matt was just goading him, now.

  James snorted. “I have clearances you’ve never heard of.”

  Matt got serious. “Yeah, I’m thinking my file on you was incomplete. You aren’t a SOUF Regular or a Ranger, are you?”

  “Your file on me? Who the hell are you with?”

  “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

  “Fine. I’m Psi-force.” Matt took a small misstep. Psi-force was one of the most secretive and legendary branches of SpecOps, formed from the Blue remnants of Rangers PSYOPS after Fort Bragg and Camp LeJeune went Red in the ’50s. When the Blue states military reorganized in 2057, the Marines and all Special Operating Forces formed their own branch of the military—Special Operations Unified Force. Psi-force was one of the units that ultimately fell under the jurisdiction of both SOUF Command and the ArmySF Subcommand. Psi-force troops could be embedded with any military unit.

  “Your turn.” James nudged him.

  Matt stopped walking and turned to James. Let the fucker face this one head-on. “I’m an extraction agent for Queer Extraction Services Association.”

  James gave another little snort, and stared for a second. “I’m being rescued by a contractor,” he muttered to himself.

  Matt smirked again. They turned and continued on.

  “You have a licensed recoder?” James asked in a low voice.

  “Yeah.” Matt smirked a little more. It wasn’t like they let just anybody walk around with a recoder. James needed him for that if nothing else.

  “Guess that’s all right, then. Thank God.”

  Chapter 3

  SINCE James was being tracked so closely, Matt took him to a temporary safe house. It was a meeting room at the Boise Fire Department. Matt waited for the secretary to finish sweeping before they went in.

  “Would you like coffee? Do you need any tech?” She offered on her way out. A subtle nod gave Matt his answer. There must be listening devices in the hallway.

  “Yeah, my tablet’s malfunctioning. I’ll wipe it when we’re done.”

  “Right away.” She smiled pleasantly
and left.

  James arched a brow at him when he turned into the room and shut the door. “She swept it,” Matt told him. “We can talk.”

  “You trust her?” He seemed more curious than concerned.

  “Yeah.” Matt knew her pretty well.

  James pulled out a chair and collapsed into it. He rested his elbows on the table, put his head in his hands, and groaned. He stayed that way for a long time. The secretary came back with the tablet and left again. Matt sat down not quite directly across from James.

  The tablet held intel from the Boise Blue cell. He downloaded the encrypted info from the tablet into his regular hookup and sent it on to QESA through a Red satellite, re-encrypting it first. Matt checked on James again.

  His hands were fisted in his hair, and Matt could see his knuckles had turned white.

  “James,” Matt said softly. He may not like the guy much, but this looked like some serious reaction. At least for James. “I’ve done this tons of times. We’ll get out.” Probably wasn’t a good time to mention he’d done it mostly as part of a team, with less surveillance on the package.

  “How old are you now, Matt?”

  “Twenty-three. Almost twenty-four.” He felt stupid tacking on the “almost,” but couldn’t stop himself.

  One of those snorts from James. “How many times’ve you done this?”

  “I’ve done seventeen extractions bringing people out of the Red.” People always asked, so he kept track. If you were trying to escape you put a lot of trust in the people helping you. The consequences for getting caught were too high.

  “Yeah, seventeen. That’s good,” James said somewhat absently. “Listen, if we’re going to escape there’s something you need to know.”

  “That’s usually my line.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it is. You need to know this, though. In re-education camp they did something to my head.” Then he paused for so long Matt thought he might be finished.

  “Um, shaved it?” Not that it looked like it had been recently. It was long enough that James had some curl in his honey-gold hair. Those curls would just wrap around his finger.

  “No, the Blue did that,” James said, deadpan. Finally he looked up. James looked clear-eyed, if a little tense. “Actually, the Blue did other shit that I think led to this. But re-education fucked up my head. I’m not always… right, I guess.”

  Matt gently touched James’s hand. “No one can be right all the time.”

  “Smartass.” James finally showed some emotion, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “I mean, my head just… works differently.”

  Completely confusing. “Huh?”

  “Ah, fuck,” James muttered. Then he stared at the wall across from him for a minute. “Okay, I’m going to tell you some stuff that’s need-to-know. Actually, I think it’s not even supposed to be need-to-know, but I’m not sure I care anymore.”

  “Goody. I love being embroiled in conspiracy.” Not.

  James shot him an annoyed look, and changed the subject suddenly. “How’re you going to recode me without my tracker picking it up?”

  “I have a dummy. We can do it almost anywhere, but we should do it at your house so they don’t come looking for you as soon. It’ll look strange if you sit in a café all day, but they might buy you sleeping twelve hours.”

  “What about the trackers in my clothes?”

  Matt stared blankly. “They track your clothes?” Was that standard?

  “This pink triangle isn’t just a fashion statement, you know.” James’s lips quirked up on both ends. It was cute. No, not cute. It was, um, strange. Unique. Shit.

  “Shit,” Matt echoed his internal dialogue. “We have to cover that up too. It’s not going to be safe for you—or me—if I’m seen in public with you much. If they type me we’re both fucked.”

  “You have the gene too, huh?”

  Whoa. Looked more likely James was gay. If he had the “gay” gene he had about an eighty-two percent chance of being on the queer spectrum. Scientists hadn’t isolated other genes in play, but there had to be at least one or two. But the “gay” gene was taken by Red states as proof positive that someone needed re-education.

  How they caught the other thirty-five percent of homosexuals that didn’t have the gene was by good, old-fashioned finger-pointing.

  “That how they get you?”

  James nodded. “One of the guards thought I hung out with another POW too much, and sent us both for typing. The other guy didn’t have the gene, so he’s just in regular POW hell. Not enough guards to testify against him.” For anyone who didn’t have the gene, it took three “witnesses” to testify that they knew someone was queer for the charge to stick.

  Matt tried to keep himself from asking, but he’d never been that great at impulse control. “So, was he?”

  “Yeah, he was. And yeah, I know because we were fucking around.” James looked him in the eye. Matt tried to decipher what this meant. Was James daring him to say something? Or was he facing up to something from their shared past? Fuck, who knew?

  “All right, listen. This was my original plan, so let’s start there. I was hoping we could leave tonight, so the plan was I’d come over after nightfall, we’d activate the dummy and switch off your chip simultaneously. Then we’d have twelve hours to recode your chip before turning it on, showing you as a level-two parolee. We have a Blue agent in Colorado who works in Red Satellite Tracking. He creates false identities and tracking codes, reprograms the AI if possible. He’ll run interference when he can.”

  Matt’s Blue chip could truly be turned off, undetectable by Red tech. But Red chips had trace radiation so it could always be detected, even if off. Anyone with a chip in a Red state was either Blue, Red militia, or a criminal. Like someone who was queer.

  “Then we get the hell out of Boise and we should make it through Ontario within three days.”

  “Three days? What, are we walking?”

  Matt took pleasure in smiling really big and telling him, “Why yes, we are.”

  One kind of nice thing about the Red was the number of people who couldn’t afford transportation other than foot-power. Or the occasional horse, but they were expensive too.

  It was much easier to hide when you were on foot. The extractee and his extractor had to get out on their own, and Matt had learned through experience that walking was the lowest-profile form of transportation. “We’ll get picked up by a Feng Niao bird in Baker. Or Forward Operating Base Joseph if we have to take the second backup route.”

  After a flicker of surprise, James just nodded. “Guess they can’t send the military in for me, huh?”

  “Violation of Four Corners Agreement.” SOUFCOM could have sent a team in for him when he was still being detained, but not once he was “free.” Inside the Red states, the only way out of a detainment camp was through an oath of fealty and a real-time tracking device. Fortunately, oaths given under duress were considered invalid in the Blue. If Blue military personnel took the oath and got out, the military had to contract with QESA or another NGO to extract their soldier, but couldn’t do it themselves. That was an act of aggression, and against the Four Corners Agreement.

  Tracking devices were tricky. Contracts to extract someone wearing a level-one tracking device were almost never issued. Nearly everyone had to wait the two years for the switch to a level-two device. So if an extraction agent was sent in after a guy like James, the Blue wanted him badly.

  “What about your Brain-link?” If James had one, and he most likely did since he was an officer, they might be able to reactivate it, which would make all their com easier.

  “Don’t have one. In Psi-force only com specialists do.”

  Matt blinked. That was kind of weird. Most SF officers and non-coms had them. “Won’t really make a lot of difference; half the time I can’t turn them back on anyway.” The tech of implanting a com device in someone’s brain was tricky and delicate. And largely beyond Matt’s understanding.

  Jame
s nodded, leaned back, and crossed his arms, tipping his chair back and looking thoughtful. And relaxed. Matt could tell by his twitching jaw muscle he was anything but.

  “Our first backup is to head to Payette and walk across the Highway 52 bridge with our fake IDs. Our second backup is to grab a couple of bikes waiting for us in a barn outside of Weiser. We ‘steal’ those and ride like hell for the Snake River, then up Hells Canyon to the Hells Canyon Dam.”

  “That’s pretty far north.”

  “More safe spots, though, and sort of defies logic. Like, we should be getting out of the state as fast as we can, but instead we take forever. Creates circles of confusion.” Matt waved his spread fingers around.

  “You’ve got this all planned out. Done it a few times?”

  “Come out of Idaho with a similar plan five times.” Just never had to go through Hells Canyon. Matt held his breath, hoping James wouldn’t ask.

  “Ever gone through Hells Canyon?”

  Dammit. “No, never had to use that backup. We have a pretty extensive network of safe houses.” Matt sighed and admitted, “Which we can’t use, because you’ll have a live chip.”

  “What do you normally do?”

  “We bring out people who are already level-two parolees, and turn off their chip, leave a dummy somewhere they could conceivably be for a while. Camping or something. Then we walk really fast and avoid the militias. Sometimes we bring people out who haven’t been ID’d as queer by the Red, yet. That’s pretty easy.”

  James gave him a long, unreadable look. Finally he said, “It’s not going to be that easy to get me out.”

  “You sound very sure of that.” Which probably meant James had good reason to. He didn’t seem like much of an alarmist. And based on the little Matt could remember of James, he’d always been calm and level-headed.

  Matt could remember when he was about fourteen, going out to fight a big grass fire, spending a day digging fire line with other teenagers from Weimer. Late in the day, they got trapped when the wind shifted and the fire changed direction.