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“I’m asking you a question, Mike. Where do you get the bomb in Turkey?”

I glared at him. “The Fethiye fish market, from an anchovy dealer named Salomao.”

“And what’s it going to be packaged in?”

“A case of fish with a false bottom. Look, I know what you’re getting at.”

“Then shut up,” Walter said.

Mary looked at me and took my hand.

Something inside me wondered if I was losing her. Yes, I did defend her. Of course I would. I wasn’t an unfeeling bastard like Walter. If chasing down Players meant leaving Mary on her own, of course I would stay with her.

I knew the Players were tough—Walter and Agatha had drilled that into us—but we would operate as a team. In every practice—the daily runs and obstacle courses, the shooting drills, the bomb practice, the sales dialogues—we were a team, and we stuck together. The only times where I changed the plan and defended Mary were when there was an error: when we were attacked from behind, or when we lost radio communication. That wasn’t a reason to tear Mary and me apart. It was adapting to the changing conditions.

Julia stood up from the bomb, and Rodney touched the fuse with his unlit lighter.

Bakr once again trotted out to disassemble the bomb, readying it for squad nine, which was just John by himself. John and Walter were taking on their jobs alone. We had so few of us that this was the only option. Groups of three—like me, Eugene, and Kat—had two targets to hit. Others had just one.

I squeezed Mary’s hand. I wanted all of this to be over.

John stood up. “We’re leaving for Reno tomorrow afternoon. We have more practice ahead of us before our flights next week. And we’ve scouted out a good place to watch for the meteor.”

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_a06f80af-b09f-56ae-9f3b-0d452e68be70)

“We still have more training we need to do,” Walter said. All of us were back in camp, except for Tyson, who was staying out front guarding the gate. “We’ve started surveillance training, but we need to do it in a city environment. We need to teach you how to follow people, both in a car and on foot. So we’re going to hit it hard this week—we’ll need this to track down the Players when they get to Germany.”

Rodney spoke. “I know we’ve been over this already, but are we really sure about this? Does that meteor affect our plans? My squad is supposed to go to the Aksumite compound first. Ethiopia. That’s on the other side of the world. They wouldn’t have seen any meteor.”

“It’s a trigger event,” Walter said with a hint of anger. “It would make the news, and this is what the Cahokian line believed would be the signal. A big natural event. It could have been an earthquake in Rome or a tsunami in Japan. Some big event that sets everything into motion. Nature is sending us a big break, but now it’s our turn to use it and send out these invitations to the Players.”

“But why bombs?” Lee asked. He was smiling—obviously not concerned about the morality of bombing anyone. After all, he’d been the one to design the thermite and smuggle all the bombs out to our destinations. “We want to call them, not kill them, right?”

“It’s what Walter knows and Agatha described,” John said. “She said that the invitation would be violent. It sends a message.”

“Speaking of which,” Henry said, “why does the La Tène get a free pass? Why aren’t we stopping him?”

“We’ve been over this before,” John said. “Agatha said she’d handle it. We have to trust her. She has no reason to betray us since she’s been excommunicated by her line.”

“And remember,” John said, “our goal is not to kill these people. We’re stopping them. We’re going to, hopefully, enlighten them.”

“And more importantly,” Walter said tiredly, “as I’ve said a hundred times: this is not a real Calling. It takes more to win Endgame than just killing the other competitors. You have to follow clues and solve a puzzle. Even if Agatha is lying to us about the La Tène Player, he couldn’t win anything.”

Henry stood up and started to pace. “Do we know that? This meteor is a big deal. Too big, I think. How do we know it won’t set off a real Calling and game?”

“All the more reason to hurry,” John said.

“Right,” Walter said, “let’s just worry about the task at hand. We have a lot to do, every one of us, and it’s going to be dangerous and deadly serious. We can’t lose sight of what we’re about to do. We need to get to Reno, train there, and then get moving.”

Henry waved his hand dismissively.

“Don’t be discouraged,” John said. “We know that there will be problems. We just need to remember that there’s twenty of us and eleven of them. We’re luring them onto our turf. They’ll all be on their guard, but they’ll be waiting for the other Players at that sunburst plaza. They won’t be ready when we knock on their doors, wanting to talk. Yes, we’ll have guns, bombs, anything we need, but that’s the backup plan. The ideal is that we convince them all, and they walk away.”

“And if someone turns on us?” Henry asked. “You’ve made them out to be killing machines.”

“They’re also very savvy. Smart, tactically and strategically. A good argument, well made, could do wonders,” said John. “Yes, there are some vicious sons of bitches in the group. For them, a bullet might be the only solution. But most of them should listen to reason.”

I walked to the supply tent—it wasn’t so much a tent as it was a waterproof shelter built of tarps—and got a couple of boxes of 7.62 ammo. Ever since the gun-store robbery, I hadn’t been able to sit still. I needed to be doing something, and sitting around camp wasn’t one of those things.

Shooting helped, sometimes. I practiced almost entirely to fire at long range; the precision and concentration that it required helped drive thoughts of the sheriff out of my mind. I could hear someone coming up behind me.

“Hey, Mike.”

“Mary,” I said, and smiled for the first time all day.

“I caught the tail end of Henry’s rant. Can’t take these bullets on the plane. Well, not as carry-on, at least,” she said, with a quick smile.

She set down a box of 9 mm hollow points and pulled her Beretta from her hip.

I pulled the ear protection down into place. I picked a target at 200 yards, and took the straight-forward stance that Walter had recommended to me months ago. I made sure Mary had earplugs in before I let off my first round. The target was a one-inch sheet of steel. I’d hit it hundreds of times by now. It took me about five minutes to go through each shot: gauge the wind, adjust for the falling bullet. Mary, on the other hand, emptied her magazine into a target at 30 yards.

When we were out of ammo, she pulled her earplugs off and draped them around her neck like a necklace. She put her arm in mine, interrupting my reloading of the magazine. I set the M14 onto the hastily constructed plywood table.

“I’m still not happy we’re not going to the same place for these invitations,” I said. “I don’t care what Walter and John say.”

“I know, Mike. I know,” Mary said, exasperated.

“Do you think the thermite will work?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Barbara told me about it. Supposed to light up like fireworks. So I guess we’re going to the Olympics, huh?”

“I don’t think we’ll have much time to watch anything.”

“We might,” she said. “Once the Players are stopped, we’ll have won. We can do whatever we want.”

Mary took the binoculars from the table and spotted for me while I shot at the 300- and 400-yard targets. I was getting so much better with the rifle—I was one of the best in the group, beating everyone except the recent war vets: John, Walter, Bruce, and Henry. In all honesty, I was better than Bruce, but I had decided not to talk about it, as cranky as he was. He’d learned to shoot during Vietnam, but he’d served in the Navy, in the engine room of a destroyer, and never had the need to use his shooting skills after basic training.

I took aim at the 300-yard target through my scope, exhaled slowly, and squeezed the trigger.

“Hit,” Mary said. “Upper left shoulder.”

The target was just a chalk outline drawn on the trunk of a thick pine tree. I adjusted my aim and fired again.

In the instant I pulled the trigger, my mind was back in Redding, in the gun store where Tommy had been killed. The chalk outline on the tree was no longer a chalk outline but the image of the sheriff, his blood spouting forth from his chest, neck, and head. I closed my eyes to get rid of the image, but it was still there—it was always there. I hadn’t told anyone about it, but Mary had to know, right?

“Hit,” she said. “Center of the chest. Kill shot.”

My heart was pounding, and I began to sweat as I sighted the target once more. I could feel my hands trembling, and the crosshairs on the sight were dancing around the tree. I blinked and the sheriff was back.