Deadlock

  © 2009 by Robert Liparulo

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Liparulo, Robert.

  Deadlock / Robert Liparulo.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: Deadfall, 2007.

  ISBN 978-1-59554-166-6

  1. Kidnapping—Fiction. 2. Canadian—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3612.I63D45 2009

  813'.6—dc22

  2008044443

  Printed in the United States of America

  09 10 11 12 13 QW 5 4 3 2 1

  To Mark Nelson

  Thank you for being a great friend all these years

  “A scar nobly got . . . is a good livery of honour.”

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, All’s Well That Ends Well

  “Battle not with monsters

  lest ye become a monster;

  and if you gaze into the abyss

  the abyss gazes into you.”

  —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

  CONTENT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  ONE

  EUREKA, CALIFORNIA

  8:32 PM

  The mission was simple: kill everyone.

  The complications came in the details, such as the directive to keep it quiet. So when a guard stepped around the corner of the house, Michael had to stop him from firing the pistol he was reaching for. Michael brought up his sound-suppressed shotgun and put a sabot slug—which became shrapnel only upon hitting flesh—into the man’s chest.

  There was no way he could have missed. His helmet contained a face mask that enhanced the quality of everything he viewed. A blue set of crosshairs showed him where his weapon was pointed. The system recognized humans, and the face mask crosshairs turned red when his aim was dead-on.

  The man flew backward and struck the corner of the house. But instead of rebounding off it, he continued falling, passing through the bricks as if he were a ghost. The break from reality startled Michael, but only for the five heartbeats it took him to remember another of the helmet’s technical capabilities: it could insert avatars—digitally constructed characters—into his field of vision.

  Unless the system glitched, as it had just done, it was impossible to tell avatars from the live actors cast to make these training missions as authentic as possible. The face mask’s screen rendered people, real or drawn, as photo-realistic cartoons. Sketchy black lines outlined them. Their skin was too perfect, too creamy.

  “Crap,” Michael said, disappointed in himself for letting the glitch startle him. His teammates—not to mention the officers watching in the Command Center via a live satellite feed—would have caught his hesitation. That was all he needed, being the newest and youngest member of the team.

  Here on out, he thought, make it perfect.

  He felt a nudge on his arm, and the team leader’s voice came through his headphones: “That was the warm-up.”

  Of course. The designers of these tactical games always pulled the same trick: they sent an enemy to confront the team right away. It got the players’ adrenaline pumping, their hand-eye coordination aligned, their minds into a kill-or-be-killed mentality.

  Michael glanced back. He nodded at his own helmeted reflection in Ben’s black face mask. Beyond, at the curb, Anton occupied the team’s transportation, a van “commandeered” for the mission. Emile, the last member of their four-man team, would be coming through the back.

  Don’t shoot him, Michael reminded himself. That would completely blow their chances of outscoring the other teams. He’d never live that one down.

  “Get moving,” Ben said.

  Michael moved quickly up the front porch steps, knelt in front of the door, and pulled a lock-pick gun and tension wrench from a pouch. He felt the deadbolt disengage. He unlocked the door handle and replaced the tools. He rose, readied his weapon, and waited. A red light on his display indicated that Emile had not yet bypassed the home’s security system.

  Michael considered the scenario they were playing: A rebel leader, whose planned coup would harm U.S. interests, had holed up with guards in a suburban community. Michael’s team was to eliminate everyone and make it look like a murder-suicide. That meant no evidence of forced entry, and when they terminated the leader—the High Value Target—the shooter had to be close, the shot placed just right so the wound would appear self-inflicted. They’d been told the HVT had access to the type of shotguns the team was using. The weapons’ smooth-bore barrels would make it impossible to prove different weapons had been used.

  Ben gripped his shoulder, reassuring hi
m. It only made Michael more nervous. This was Fireteam Bravo’s last chance to edge ahead of Team Charlie in frag points, or successful kills. He didn’t want to mess up.

  On his screen, the red light changed to green. Three deep breaths, and he opened the door.

  He stepped into a foyer and buttonhooked around the door. Clear. A living room opened to the right. Farther along the left foyer wall was a French door, partially open. Light shone through the glass panes.

  The layout of the house—two stories, central hall on the ground level with rooms on either side—would force him and Ben to separate.

  As Ben rushed toward the lighted room, Michael moved into the living room. He panned the gun across the area. Clear.

  Behind him came a scream. It was cut off by the distinctive sound of his teammate’s weapon: Thoomp! Thoomp! Something crashed. Michael fought the urge to rush back.

  The scream had been high-pitched, like a woman’s, then changed to a deep, guttural growl. Either his headphones had glitched or the guard had shrieked in surprise, then slipped into you’re-not-going-to-get- me mode as he’d gone for his gun.

  Had to be an actor. What computer-generated avatar would do that?

  He ran through the room, toward an archway. Beyond, the surfaces of a kitchen gleamed. A door in the kitchen’s back wall swung open. As a figure came through, the sensors in Michael’s helmet identified the intruder as another team member—Emile.

  Michael turned, absently noticed a table cluttered with the remnants of a meal: dirty plates, silverware, glasses. He started past it and spotted a man. He was standing in a den, on the far side of a couch. Facing Michael, he reached into his jacket.

  Michael fired. The man left the ground. He crashed into a television, which rocked but stayed on. The system added spatters of black game-blood to the front of the TV. Cartoon animals danced and sang on the screen, their voices high and merry.

  Thousand points right there, Michael thought. I’m going to be top dog on this one.

  Emile rushed to a sliding glass door off the den, opened it, and stepped out.

  Michael went to an opening on the opposite side of the den. The foyer: he’d circled back around. Ben was making his way up a staircase. Michael fell in behind him. At the landing, Ben turned left and swung into a bedroom.

  Thoomp!

  Michael turned right. At the end of a hall, a man stood in a doorway. Michael snapped his shotgun up. The computer’s facial recognition software identified him as the HVT. Michael ran for him. The man slammed the door.

  Michael rushed up to it, then remembered why the guy was the High Value Target: rebel leader, preparing a coup. No doubt he was armed, leveling a machine gun at the door. Michael slammed his back against the wall beside the door.

  Kick it in. Duck out of the line of fire. Dive back in. Blast away.

  Glass shattered within the room.

  The window!

  Michael kicked open the door. He saw a flash of movement at the shattered window.

  No, no!

  He jumped onto the bed, over it, stopped beside the opening. He glanced through, pulled his head back. The patio roof extended out from the house below the window, glass and pieces of wood all over it. He stuck his head through to check either side. Nobody.

  Emile was just there. He’d gone out the door to the backyard patio.

  “Emile! He’s in the backyard! Do you see him?”

  Michael stepped through the window and scrambled down the incline to the roof’s edge. The yard was dark, except right below him, where the light from the house splashed out. A rain gutter had broken away, swinging from one end. He leaped for the grass. His ankle twisted and he rolled. Pain flared up his leg. He brought his gun up, swung it in a complete circle, rotating his body on the grass.

  The sliding door into the den was open. Could the HVT have gone back in? Through the house to the front door? Hiding? Again, he spun around. He saw no other clues to where the man had gone. He got his feet under him. His ankle gave out, and he fell to one knee. Felt like glass grinding around inside him.

  Forget it. Push it away.

  He rose and limped through the door. Swinging his weapon back and forth, he crossed to the foyer. Ben was stomping down the stairs.

  The front door was open. Emile came through it from outside. He shook his head.

  “What happened?” Ben said.

  The garage.

  Michael started for the door in the kitchen. As he passed another door—narrow: a pantry or coat closet—it opened. A man—not the HVT—bolted out, screaming. He was on Michael, hammering at him with something, cracking it against the helmet.

  Static flickered over Michael’s screen. The man’s image flickered with it, his face seeming to change. He went out of focus, then became sharp again, all eyes and nose and teeth. Michael couldn’t get his gun around. He pushed, but the man was clinging to him with one hand while the other continued beating the object into his helmet and shoulder.

  Thoomp!

  The man gasped and crumpled.

  Liquid spattered over Michael’s face mask, obscuring his view. Bursts of static on the screen pierced Michael’s eyes. He reached for his chinstrap. His fingers slipped over it, wet. He tugged off his glove, got the chinstrap unsnapped, and ripped off his helmet.

  At his feet, bleeding out on the floor, gasping for breath, was a young boy.

  TWO

  The child could not have been more than twelve or thirteen years old.

  Unfiltered by the computer, the cartoon aspects were gone. The blood was not black, but bright red. And everywhere. It spurted out of a hole in the boy’s side. The kid looked up at Michael, fear and disbelief making his eyes wide. He tried to talk, hitched in a breath. His head pitched back. His chest stopped rising and falling. The air he’d taken in eased out.

  Michael dropped his helmet and fell to his knees. He touched the boy’s face. The flesh under his fingers was soft. Michael slid his hand down to the wound. Wet, sticky, warm. His finger slipped into the hole. He felt bone.

  “What?” he said. He looked up at the helmeted soldier whose shotgun still oozed smoke. “This is real! He’s real! Just a . . . just a boy.”

  “Michael.” The voice was muffled by the helmet, but he recognized it as Ben’s. “Put your helmet back on.”

  “But . . . can’t you see? This is real. He’s dead. We killed him.”

  “Put it on, now.” Ben shifted his aim from the boy to Michael.

  Michael’s chest tightened. “Wait!” he said. “This is real! It’s not an exercise, it’s not a game!” He felt sick. Had he really believed it was all just a game?

  Realistic, yes . . . that’s what made the Outis Corporation the best at training soldiers. That’s why he’d chosen to go with it right out of high school.

  But real? No, no . . . not now, not here. They had not been deployed. They were still on U.S. soil, he was sure of it. They often traveled, or pretended to travel, to training facilities Outis maintained all over the country. And they had traveled this time, but not far.

  “What’s going on?” he said. His eyes stung, clouded up. He wiped at them.

  Ben was a statue, unmoving except for the finger tightening against the trigger.

  Emile darted forward, putting himself between Michael and the team leader. He held his hand up to Ben. “No!” He swiveled his helmet around to Michael. “Put your helmet on. Michael! You have to.”

  For the first time, Michael saw not his helmet but his own pale face staring back at him from the surface of his teammate’s face mask. He was accustomed to the helmets, their uniformity and anonymity. But now, with his own off, and a dead boy in front of him, they seemed alien and wrong.

  “Out of the way, Emile.” Ben sidestepped, reclaiming his target. “You have till three,” he said to Michael. “One . . .”

  “Michael!” Emile said. “Put it on!”

  “Two . . .”

  Once again, Emile stepped in the way. He spoke to Ben, words M
ichael could not hear.

  Michael looked down at the boy. About his brother’s age. Kind of looked like him too. He spotted what had rolled away from his hand when he fell, the weapon the boy had attacked him with: a family-sized can of chili. Michael felt dizzy. He closed his eyes.

  This is what’s not real: this dead boy. The game, the exercise, those are real. I got hit on the head, that’s all. Jumping off the roof. Some crazy actor’s overexcitement when he attacked me. Got me thinking weird. I’ll open my eyes, and the boy will be gone.

  But he wasn’t. The metallic odor of blood and tangy cordite from the gunshot that had shed it stung Michael’s nostrils. He started to hyperventilate. He stood. “How could this happen?” he whispered. “This isn’t right.”

  Ben handed something to Emile.

  Michael’s eyes focused beyond them, to the den. The cartoon characters on the television were doing a cancan through a field of flowers. Red blood ran like claw marks over the screen. He squinted, tilted his head, but he could not quite see the body on the floor in there—only a blue-jeaned leg and sneaker. They were small. He had shot another child, maybe a few years younger than the one at his feet.

  He groaned. “What have we done?”

  Emile stepped toward him, his hand out, calming him. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  “Not with the helmets on,” Michael agreed. “Take them off, you’ll see. You’ll see what’s real.”

  “We’ve all had them off at one time or another, Michael,” Emile said. He edged closer. “It’s all in the timing, man. You took yours off a little too soon, that’s all.”

  Michael looked around Emile. “Ben, who did you shoot in that room over there? Who screamed? Who’d you shoot in the bedroom upstairs?” He started to weep. “Who did you kill?”

  Emile sprang and seized Michael’s wrist. His other hand came around from behind, holding a pistol.

  No, no—not a gun, Michael realized. It was the CO2 injection pistol the team leader carried for hostage-taking.

  Michael punched at Emile. He struck his helmet, his arm. He stopped him from swinging the syringe closer.

  “No!” he said. “Look, look what’s happening. This is real.”

  He stepped back, and his ankle gave out. He went down hard. His cheek landed in a puddle of blood. The boy’s lifeless eyes glared at him accusingly.