29: Manhunters -2006-

Then the lights went out—Phlox’s jammer triggered something, or 29 had cut the main line. In the blackness, Morrow felt more than heard movement: fast, precise, inhumanly quiet. He fired twice. The rounds hit drywall.

The man called Vega, a tracker from the Brazilian favelas with scars laddering his forearms, studied the photo. “He’s not running. He’s hunting back. The bodies in Baton Rouge—no panic. He waited for our people.” Manhunters -2006- 29

The team’s handler, a woman named Driscoll who never smiled and never missed a detail, pinned a satellite photo to a corkboard. “Twenty-nine was spotted twelve hours ago near the Atchafalaya Basin. He’s moving west. We think he’s trying to reach a smuggler’s airfield outside Lafayette.” The rounds hit drywall

Phlox was already scrolling. “He’s not running for an airfield. He’s running for the Interstate. If he hits I-10, he can be in Texas before dawn.” He’s hunting back

When emergency lights kicked in, the nurse Ellen Bouchard was on her knees, unharmed but trembling. Subject 29 was gone. On the floor, he had left his empty stabilizer syringe and a note written in neat block letters on a prescription pad: “You’re four hours from my next dose. But I’m two minutes from your fuel trucks. Let’s see who blinks first.”

Morrow closed his eyes for a long second. Then he gave the order. “We contain the area. No shots unless I call it. Vega, you and Kō flank south. Phlox, jam every frequency except ours. Driscoll, hold the extraction point.”