Decker handed us ID cards. “Your cover is Colonel Jeremy Swift, an emissary sent by the AN. Casper, your cover is Cynthia Brand, former captain in the WAU—Women for Aryan Unity—and Swift’s common-law wife.”
“Rile, can we run through the objectives in order of priority one more time?” Casper asked.
“Primary: identifying or getting the ABT to give up Possum’s killer. Secondary: identifying the splinter group.”
“There’s one more,” I said. “My guess is the Lynch guy is part of the splinter group. If not, we also need to either identify him or get the ABT to.”
“Any other questions?” Rile asked.
“Negative,” answered Casper.
“Jagger and Rage are on their way here now with your ride,” Grinder announced.
“What’s their twenty?”
“Just came in the gate,” answered Decker, monitoring something on his laptop. “By the way, I was able to activate the audio and video feeds.”
I didn’t bother asking how. One, I didn’t care as long as they were hot. Two, even if he had explained, I wouldn’t have understood. Decker was a technological mastermind, probably the best in the world, not that he’d accept that title.
I saw the big black SUV pull up. The windows were the same dark color as the vehicle. “Armored?” I asked.
“A colonel in the Aryan Nation wouldn’t travel any other way,” murmured Rile. My eyes met Grinder’s. We were used to the eldest partner in the Invincibles commenting unnecessarily, as though he was teaching us something. The wanker.
“I want you in and out in forty-eight hours or less,” he added.
“Roger that,” I muttered as Decker approached and handed me something flesh-colored and not much bigger than the head of a pin. “What is this?”
“Put it on the tip of your finger and then insert it as far as you can into your auditory canal.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I exclaimed when I heard Grinder’s voice slowly counting inside my head.
“Bloody brilliant, isn’t it?” I heard him respond.
“Where are you?”
“Look out the window.”
Grinder was standing in the driveway; there was no way he would’ve been able to hear me except through the thing I’d just inserted in my ear.
“The active charge life is seventy-two hours, give or take,” said Decker, handing Casper the same thing he’d given me. “After which, we’ll still be able to hear and see what is happening in the compound, at least in the main buildings. We won’t have any means to communicate directly with you, however.”
“Can you hear me?” Grinder asked through the device.
“Affirmative,” answered Casper. I heard both his question and her response directly in my ear.
“Seventy-two hours,” Decker repeated.
I planned to be out long before then. If we weren’t, it would mean our problems were bigger than the charge life.
It took us less than thirty minutes to reach the ABT compound. It was nestled deep in the hills of North Austin, not far from the Central Texas Correctional Compound, and much too close to the ranch—and Rebel—for my comfort.
“Identification,” the guard barked when I pulled up and lowered the driver’s side window partway. I handed him the credentials Decker had prepared.
The guard read them and looked up at me with wide eyes. “Welcome to the ABT compound, sir.” Then he looked beyond me at Casper. “Ma’am.”
I raised the window without responding and pulled through the now-open gate. As I’d anticipated, several of the rank-and-file members were emptying out of the main building and stood at mock attention, awaiting our exit from the vehicle.
One man approached as I walked around to open the passenger door.