Lethal Game (GhostWalkers 16)

At first the man refused to take it, gently shaking his head, not wanting to take from a kid on the street who didn’t have much more than him. Malichai had insisted. When he got home that night, he didn’t tell Ezekiel what he’d done, but refused to share Zeke’s food. When he was shivering so much from the cold and Zeke had snapped at him to get under his blanket, he’d done that, because when Zeke got pissed, you just obeyed.

“I can take it, Rubin,” he said. He’d grown up on the streets. He was tough.18Malichai thought he’d seen everything. He’d been all over the world. He’d gone to various countries during their celebrations, some with strange rituals and unbelievably extravagant and gorgeous costumes, he’d even seen—on television—the strange and wonderful Comic-Con and Dr. Who conventions, with their seas of people dressed in various attire fitting the themes of their favorite pop culture hero or heroine.

What he’d not seen before was the mixture of people from countries around the world coming together dressed in everything from suits to sarongs, women covered in veils from head to toe, and men with turbans and others dressed in nothing but board shorts and sandals. There seemed to be a lot of smiles and nodding, some tried talking in signs; others spoke in halting English or other languages to try to communicate, but they tried.

He noticed phones were out and many people were using apps to translate what they wanted said. He watched the monitors closely. It was impossible to say one person stood out in the crowd because of the way they were dressed. The mix was so strange, with people from different countries dressed in more traditional clothing and some in more religious garb in order to show their solidarity with what the conference was all about. Ideas. Just people bringing together ideas on how to better understand one another and their cultures.

Malichai’s job was to identify any of Callendine’s men moving through the crowd. The SEAL team had placed vehicles equipped with jammers if needed to stop the remote detonation of any bomb Callendine or his men might set off. If Callendine saw the vehicles out front and around the sides of the building he would know immediately why they were there, but that couldn’t be helped. They could only hope the bombs were all about remote detonation, because if they weren’t, each bomb would have to be defused. They would have to find every one of them. All team members were looking for bombs in or around every support beam, primarily the major ones.

He hoped they were wrong, but he had a bad feeling, that nagging one that always told him he was right. He didn’t like knowing, but that radar had saved not only him but his fellow GhostWalkers on more than one occasion. He kept looking through the bank of screens, watching carefully not only for Callendine’s crew—and he had faces taped to the van’s whiteboard stretched just above the bank of screens—but also to catch glimpses of Amaryllis, just to know she was safe. He hadn’t seen her in the last few minutes and that made him antsy. He despised that he was sidelined. It didn’t matter how important Ezekiel told him this job was, and he knew it was; he wanted to be there, where the action was—and watching over Amaryllis.

“Anything?” Avery, one of the techs assigned to watch as well, asked.

“Not so far,” Malichai said. “This is like looking for a needle in a haystack. How do you do it all the time?”

Avery was considered one of the best techs at gathering information. The other team members spoke of him with admiration and respect. Malichai knew the value of a man who took his time and double-and triple-checked all information for his men in the field. He never stopped until he had them back safe at home. Avery was that man. He was also the man who would sit patiently in a van for however long it took, looking into a bank of screens until his eyes wanted to bleed until he discovered the enemy and how best to stop them.

“I could ask you the same thing. Your expertise is the field. You know what you’re doing, and you attack it with confidence. This is mine. My world. It’s how I can make certain you all come home. It’s how I can make the world safer for them.” He indicated all the people moving through the multitude of doors as they entered the building.

His gaze never once left the screens, reminding Malichai to keep his eyes on the ones in front of him as well. He had studied the faces of Callendine’s crew so long they were burned into his brain. He didn’t need to look up at the reminders. These men were the ones Callendine had elected to take on the mission the vice president had sanctioned whether knowingly or unknowingly.