Chapter 21: Dismantling Summer

12:45 p.m.

Somewhere outside Carbondale, PA

Mainframe led the strike team through a maze of tunnels, honing in on Lady Jaye's signal. She had been on the move and J.T. was doing his best to keep the team close to her and out of sight. It resulted in some dead ends and too much backtracking for Flint's comfort. The longer they took to get to her, the more things that could go wrong. He didn't want to think about the things that could go wrong, yet that was exactly where his mind was taking him.

It was simple enough to imagine the worst outcome, death. Every Joe knew it was a possibility and chose to ignore it, case closed. It was those things in between—those things that some would even consider worse than death—that haunted the dreams of his teammates and him. For Flint, it was always personal. The one thing that could go wrong for him was that he would be the cause of something terrible for someone else. This mission was putting his fear front and center. He was in charge. He gave the order. He put her in harm's way. Anything that happened flowed directly from his command. If Cobra went off the deep end because it felt cornered and trapped, she would be the one to take the brunt of its rage. It wouldn't be death. No, that would be too kind for Cobra. Cobra would skip over your body and aim straight for your soul. Cobra would try to turn her. That would be the only thing it could salvage from a defeat. He could imagine it all too clearly. With a twisted mind like Dr. Mindbender at work, he could think of nothing worse. Cobra would hit two Joes, Jaye and him. His stomach revolted at the thought of seeing her act as someone else. Not when he finally knew her as he did now. To have shared what they did—death would almost be welcome. Come on Faireborn, shake it off. He tilted his head back and forth while moving his shoulders, attempting to do just that. The tunnels were starting to make him claustrophobic. He tapped Mainframe on the shoulder. "How we doing?"

Mainframe touched the side of his glasses a few times, widening the screen. "Well, we're close. It looks like she's stationary." Mainframe lowered his voice, speaking to J.T., "Status?"

J.T. flashed a message across the monitor Mainframe sported on a wrist band, another gift from Joseph. The techie nodded once. "Roger that."

He turned back to Flint. "J.T. confirmed she's been static for a few minutes. He's plotting a path that will get us close. It might start to get interesting."

Interesting. Flint didn't like the sound of that. Thus far, things had been very uninteresting. With the exception of the one near-miss, the strike team hadn't encountered anyone else. It all added to Flint's unease with the situation. Cobra wasn't even trying to put on a legitimate front. If it wasn't trying, that meant it had no intention of staying. With no intention of staying, the team would have to hit fast and hard. If they missed their opportunity to take it down, Cobra would no doubt torch the place, and maybe—yes there was that little maybe tucked away in the back of his head—take Jaye with them. Not on his watch.

Flint pursed his lips together and motioned for Mainframe to keep going. Flint held up his right hand and motioned forward. Shipwreck and Agent Miller continued their march behind the two. Agent Miller's head spinning around like a bobble-head doll, afraid he'd miss something, and Shipwreck calmly taking up the rear. The team continued on in this fashion until they came to a branch in the tunnel. Mainframe clicked on his glasses a few times, face scrunched up in deep thought. Neither going forward nor splitting off to the left seemed viable. He didn't even want to glance behind him and give the bad news that they had to retrace their steps once more. He needed some J.T. input on this one. "J.T., which way?"

No reply.

"J.T.? Which way? Mainframe, out."

His ear bud was silent. A quick look back across his shoulder and he was staring straight into the intense glare of Flint. The man narrowed his gaze. Mainframe quickly turned his attention forward, reviewing the map. This wasn't good.

J.T. was in his element conducting the magnificent grand scale orchestra that was his surveillance system. Running simultaneously were the one tracker on Mainframe, his stand alone beacon, and the two trackers on Lady Jaye. He smiled, and they said it couldn't be done. Oh it could be. Take that Agent Crawford. Because not only was he running four separate tracers, he had them all tied into one receiver, which he managed to disguise as a soil and air sampler machine. Don't get cocky J.T., this wasn't all you. He begrudgingly acknowledged his conscience. J.T. always gave credit where credit was due. And this time a tip of the hat was due to Mainframe's buddy Joseph, who had supplied him with some of the necessary equipment. But the implementation was all his and he was going to relish returning back to Quantico and telling Crawford all about it. To think, Crawford thought he was more qualified to help out the Joes.

Mainframe's voice sounded in his ear. He typed out a reply. When they were planning out their methods of communication, J.T. figured it would be too suspicious if he started to talk out loud to no one. Better to keep his part silent. Thankfully, Joseph had a prototype wrist monitor that Mainframe could wear and receive text messages from J.T. J.T. couldn't wait to tell Crawford about that one. There were so many things he was going to rub in that man's face. More qualified than him? Please. But the truth of the matter was that J.T. probably should have been paying less attention to his future bragging to Crawford and more attention to his surroundings for he might have heard the slow crunch of gravel behind him and been more prepared when he felt the tell-tale pressure of a cylinder of steel between the T2 and T3 vertebrae of his spine.

"Tell me Mr. Hill, how is your sampling coming along?"

"Well Charles, it would be a lot better if you didn't have that thing stuck in my back."

"Mr. Hill, I don't think you're here to do a safety inspection."

"No?" J.T. slowly moved his hand to send out a distress call.

Charles jammed his gun into J.T.'s back, throwing his weight off. "Not so fast Mr. Hill, hands up where I can see them."

J.T. began to raise his hands up, but not before he brushed against the side of his tracking system, turning the receiver off, just in case. "All right, I'm raising 'em now, nice and slow. Not trying anything."

"An excellent decision Mr. Hill." Charles moved the gun, pressing it up against the back of J.T.'s head, a clear shot. "Now Mr. Hill, let's start this again. You're not here to do a safety inspection are you?"

Mainframe scanned the images projected on to the lens. He clicked out of the frame for an expansive shot. From what he could tell, if they stayed on their current path, they'd get close to Lady Jaye and probably would hook up with the main tunnel that led to the elevator shaft. If they veered left, that would circle them around Jaye's blinking signal, but it looked like the tunnel dead-ended and there wasn't another offshoot that he could make out. He really needed J.T. to decipher the maze of green lines on the screen. Mainframe inwardly sighed, he wasn't going to have that luxury.

"Um, Flint?"

"What?"

Mainframe grimaced at the harshness of Flint's response. "I lost contact with J.T."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. He just dropped out. I think there might be trouble on top."

Flint scratched at his forehead. More and more he was liking this mission less and less. "Did you lose the feed? Can you still get us close?"

"I think so."

"Then do it."

That left Mainframe with the choice. Forward or to the left? He zoomed out on the glasses, scanning the bits and traces of the map fed to him by J.T. He wished he could make the decision by committee. There was no worse feeling than having the team's progress solely dependent on his ability to figure out what J.T. had in mind. But that was what being a Joe was all about. If he wanted a simple life, he should have stayed in Silicon Valley. He wanted more and here it was, more. Squaring his shoulders he led the team straight, focusing in on the beeping dot that was Lady Jaye. Hang in there Jaye, we're coming.