Page 3 of Bonded in Death

“I saw what I saw, heard what I heard.” Magpie spoke up. “And no, I wasn’t seen, I wasn’t heard. Scavenging, scouting out a new area, and I stumbled on a tunnel that shouldn’t have been there. Happened on some air ducts, a handy way to get around. They’ve got a war room, at least twice this size. Well-equipped, well-manned. An armory—and I was tempted there, but the well-manned discouraged me. Better to report back and live another day.”

“We need to go back, get the full scope.”

“I got a pretty full scope, Fox, and sent the old SOS to Rabbit.” Magpie used his finger in the air to draw anXand twoI’s—the symbol for twelve.

“And that’s why we’re here. Part of that full scope is a prison.”

“In the HQ?” Mole asked. “I’ve been hearing about a prison in Whitechapel.”

“And you hear well and true,” Rabbit told her. “Magpie was able to take photos of that building and location while slithering through the duct system.

“The prison is the second part, simultaneous with the first. The first, destroy enemy HQ; the second, take control of the prison and release our people.”

He looked at Magpie. “One more trip through for you, mate, photos if you can get them, any additional information. Fawn, Hawk, and I will build the explosives, Fawn and Hawk will place them.”

“Team Two—Fox, Panther, Chameleon, Wasp as tech—will hit the prison, using the explosion as cover and as signal to move in.

“Mole and Owl, lookouts for team two. Magpie and Shark, lookouts for team one. Cobra and I will run communications here.”

For days they worked on details, on timing, on weapons, approaches, escape routes.

When it was done, when Command green-lighted the mission, they suited up, sat around the table once more for a final briefing.

And Rabbit passed a bottle of whiskey around the table.

“A drink before the war. This is our flash point, the turning point in this long, hard battle. And we will succeed. Tonight we take lives, and we save countless others. Remember what we fight for. Not ourselves, but the innocent.”

He looked at Owl.

“Our children.”

Then at Fox and Fawn, at Panther.

“Not just for England, but for all. To The Twelve.”

They drank, not knowing that one who drank with them was a traitor.

Chapter One

Wasp had gone by many names in his life. But when he flew from Rome to New York in September of 2061, he traveled under the name he’d been born with.

Giovanni Rossi.

He’d retired nearly eight years before, and now spent his days in his garden, enjoying his grandchildren, sipping wine in the evening with his wife.

He’d gone soft in the middle, and didn’t mind a bit. Gone was the whip-lean tech, the slippery spy, the reluctant soldier who hated war.

He looked like what he was, a man inching toward eighty and comfortable with his life. There were times, still times, when he flashed back in dreams to when the world went mad.

But he woke beside his wife, safe in his bed, and in good weather—even not such good weather—enjoyed his breakfast on their little terrace as Rome came awake.

Next to his family, the city where he’d been born, had lived for decades was the love of his life.

He would miss waking beside his wife in the morning, and his terrace, and Rome. But the signal had come, and he’d taken a vow that bloody, treacherous night.

He’d packed lightly—if he needed more, New York would provide. So he rolled a small case behind him, and had a bag on his shoulder.

He saw the uniformed driver holding a sign with his name on it, and smiled.

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