UAV - Chapter 5

1

Helen spotted them outside the Paris casino, two airmen in brand-new civilian clothes that still had the creases from the packaging. The tall one—Jack Wallis, according to Victor's file—wore a polo shirt tucked into dress pants like he was headed to a church social. The shorter one, Beck, had wrapped himself in a long-sleeve shirt and sunglasses despite the heat, his albino skin marking him as unmistakable even in the Vegas crowd.

She followed them at a distance, moving through clusters of tourists with practiced ease. The Strip was its own assault on the senses—neon blazing even against the fading desert sun, the sticky-sweet smell of frozen daiquiris wafting from the open-air bars, a wall of dry heat rising from the sidewalk that made the air shimmer above the concrete. Taxi horns blared. A street performer's saxophone wailed from somewhere near the Bellagio fountains. Victor's instructions had been precise: separate them, sedate them, bring them upstairs. Francis and William were already positioned in the MGM, waiting near the restrooms for Beck. Helen's job was Jack.

The blonde wig itched against her scalp. She'd spent an hour in front of the mirror applying makeup that made her look five years younger, the kind of girl who might actually be in a sorority. Victor had even sourced the perfume—Marian Wallis's brand, pulled from a surveillance sweep of their home. The bottle sat in Helen's purse next to the dart gun, and every time she caught a whiff of it, her stomach turned.

They climbed into a Jeep and she followed in her rental car, keeping two vehicles back. They drove to the MGM Grand, and she parked three rows away, tracking them as they walked inside. She gave them a ten-minute head start.

Inside the MGM, the desert heat vanished, replaced by the frigid blast of industrial air conditioning that smelled of carpet shampoo and stale cigarette smoke. Helen found a spot near the bar where she could survey the floor. The casino's vaulted ceiling swallowed sound into a dull roar of slot machines and voices—the electronic chiming of a thousand screens, the clatter of chips, the occasional whoop of a winner cutting through the ambient noise. Cocktail waitresses in gold sequins threaded between the tables. Beck settled at a slot machine. Jack drifted toward the blackjack tables.

She nursed a club soda and waited. Four hours, Victor had told her. They had twelve-hour leave passes—Beck's forgery, which Victor's people had already flagged through their military contacts. The pilots thought they were getting away with something clever. They had no idea.

Helen checked her phone. Francis confirmed he was in position near the men's restroom on the east side of the floor. William waited by the service elevator. The pieces were set.

Jack lost hand after hand at the blackjack table, his shoulders gradually loosening with each drink. He wasn't bad-looking—tall, earnest, the kind of face that belonged on a recruitment poster. He had a wife and a baby daughter back in Arizona. Helen knew this because she'd read his file three times, memorizing the details she wished she could forget.

When Jack finally left the table and went looking for Beck, Helen slipped off her barstool and moved closer. She positioned herself two machines down from Beck's slot, feeding quarters and tracking the two men in the reflection of her screen.

"I'm up six hundred," Beck told Jack. "Enough for a decent hooker."

"Or six crappy ones," Jack offered.

They bantered about dinner plans and martinis, the easy back-and-forth of men who trusted each other completely. Beck mentioned two more spins. Jack asked about counting cards. Beck launched into an explanation involving memory palaces and probability that made Helen's fingers tighten around her glass. Beck was sharp. That was exactly why Victor wanted him.

"I'm going to take a piss, then we'll hit the restaurant," Beck said, climbing out of his chair.

Beck wove through the crowd toward the restrooms. Toward Francis. Helen's chest tightened, and she pulled out her phone, tapping a message to Francis: *Target approaching east restroom.*

The reply came in seconds: *Copy.*

She had maybe three minutes before Beck reached Francis. Three minutes to make her move on Jack while his friend walked into a trap on the other side of the casino floor.

Helen smoothed her wig, adjusted the sorority-girl smile she'd been rehearsing, and stepped out from behind the machine.

"Who?" she asked, timing it perfectly as Jack mumbled something to himself about Beck.

Jack nearly fell over. He stumbled into the slot machine and banged his shoulder, and for a moment he might actually knock himself unconscious and save her the trouble.

"Sorry, ow," he said, rubbing his shoulder.

"I didn't mean to startle you," Helen said, keeping her voice light and warm. She stepped back, giving him space the way Victor had taught her—let the mark feel in control. The dart gun pressed against her hip through the purse.

She shook her head. "No, but you were leaning on the slot machine I was hoping to use. Your friend just won a few hundred dollars on that machine, and in my experience it's best to borrow someone else's good luck when I run out of my own. Maybe I can steal some of his."

Jack stepped aside, and Helen sat down at Beck's machine. She fed dollars into the slot and pulled the lever, aware of Jack from the corner of her eye. He was deciding whether to leave. The war played out across his face—loyalty to his wife fighting four months of loneliness and a blood-alcohol level that had to be pushing point-one-five.

She lost a few pulls and punched the machine, turning to Jack with a practiced shrug. "Superstition never pans out. Forgive me for being rude. I was just hoping that one of these days I would actually win money here."

"No apology necessary. I'm just waiting for my friend," Jack said. "I'm Jack."

"Helen," she said, and the truth of her own name tasted bitter on her tongue. She'd considered using an alias, but Victor insisted on the real name—said it would be harder to slip up under pressure. "From Jersey. My girlfriends brought me here for my birthday. I'm in a sorority. Alpha Phi Omega!" She threw her hands up and laughed, playing the part, hating every second.

Jack stumbled through an explanation of where he lived—yes, no, sort of near Vegas, actually Arizona, it's complicated. He was sweet in a clumsy way that made her think of his daughter, ten months old according to the file, and Helen had to look away for a moment to keep her expression steady.

"Well, Jack from Las Vegas," she said, "would you be so kind as to pull this lever for me after I put a dollar in? Maybe I can borrow some of your luck."

"I've been losing all day, so I don't think that's a good plan," he said, but he stepped forward anyway. She slipped a dollar into the machine.

They won. The machine erupted with pinging noises and music, and Helen cheered because that was what a sorority girl from Jersey would do. She fed another dollar in and gestured for him to pull again. Another win. He sat down next to her, and she leaned close, letting the perfume do its work.

"Looks like you are lucky," she said.

"Do I get a part of the spoils?" he asked.

She leaned in and whispered, "No way, but I'll think of a consolation prize."

2

Her phone buzzed in her purse. She didn't need to look—that would be Francis confirming Beck was secured. The clock was running now. She needed Jack upstairs in the next five minutes or the whole operation risked exposure.

"Sorry, I uh…shouldn't…can't…uh…won't," Jack said, shaking his head. He cleared his throat. "I'm married."

"Oh," Helen said, letting her face fall into a pout. Something loosened in her chest—relief she couldn't afford to examine. "That's too bad."

"I love my wife," he said.

"She's a lucky woman," Helen replied, and she meant it more than Jack would ever know. She meant it the way someone means it when they've watched a man choose his family over temptation and recognized a kind of decency she'd almost forgotten existed.

They sat there in silence, and Jack started to climb out of the chair. "So uh…I'm just going to go find my friend."

Helen pulled out her phone. Plan B. She'd known this was the likelier outcome—Victor's read on people wasn't always right, and Jack's file had flagged him as devoted. The seduction was Victor's preference. The dart gun was Helen's contingency.

"Hang on just one more second," she said, tapping her phone to check Francis's confirmation. Beck was unconscious in a service elevator, headed for the room upstairs. "You know, it's actually kind of endearing. Victor thought you would come with me without question."

Jack's body went rigid. "Uh…what…?"

"He said if I wore the same perfume your wife wears and look cute you would do anything I asked. I thought maybe you would be a good guy and not cheat on your wife, so I came with a backup plan."

She kept her voice flat now, professional. The sorority girl was gone. Jack blinked and stepped back, and fear ignited behind the alcohol haze.

"What is going on?"

"We already have Beck. I spiked his drink, so when he got to the bathroom they had no trouble leading him upstairs. That should be enough to convince you I'm serious, but just in case…"

She pulled the dart gun from her purse and shot him in the chest. A quick squeeze, barely a sound over the casino noise. She slipped it back in her purse before anyone turned. Jack jerked the dart out, already swaying.

"What…what shoot…shot with me?" he mumbled.

"A very mild sedative, which when mixed with all the alcohol you consumed is going to make you very sleepy."

He yawned, his eyes glazing. "Why did that you?"

Jack staggered into the machine. Several people turned to look. A man in a tuxedo came over, concern creasing his forehead.

"My husband has had a little too much to drink," Helen said, smiling at the man. The lie came easily. They always did.

"Shot…" Jack tried to explain. "Shots, she shot…"

The man smiled, understanding written across his face. "Would you like help to get him upstairs?"

"Oh, would you?" Helen asked. "That would be most kind. I think it would be best that he sleep this off."

"Of course," the man said, taking Jack under the arm. They moved toward the elevator. Helen walked beside them, one hand on Jack's back, steadying him the way a wife would.

"I…" Jack said to the tuxedoed man as they rode upstairs. "Shot."

"Yes," the man agreed cheerfully. "I love their shots as well."

"No, no," Jack argued, the words barely forming. "She…I…shot…"

The elevator opened. Helen led them down the corridor to the room Victor had booked. She slid the keycard and pushed the door open. "Thank you so much."

"Do you need any help?" the man asked.

"I think I can get it from here," she said, taking Jack's weight against her shoulder. "There you are, honey."

She dragged him inside and closed the door. Across the room, Beck lay unconscious on the second bed, his albino skin almost luminous in the dim light. Helen pulled Jack to the other bed and dropped him face-first into the sheets.

She stood over the two unconscious men—a pilot and a hacker, the pieces Victor needed to fly stolen drones into a target she still didn't know. Her hands shook. She clenched them into fists, pressing her nails into her palms until the trembling stopped.

She should leave. Call Victor, confirm the extraction, move to the next phase. Instead, she stood there, Jack's chest rising and falling beneath her gaze. The perfume was fading, replaced by the stale recycled air of the hotel room, and without it she was herself again. Helen Allison. Sister of Kate. A woman who used to know the difference between right and wrong.

She pulled the hotel notepad from the nightstand and wrote quickly: Room 1847. Two men. Not voluntary. She tore the page free, folded it, and tucked it into the lining of her purse behind the dart gun. Not evidence. Not yet. Just a record that someone had noticed what was happening in this room. A breadcrumb she could drop later if she ever found the courage.

"I've got him," she said into her phone.

She didn't look back as she left the room.

***

Markwell Systems, Cupertino, California

Lyle Goldman sat alone in his apartment, three monitors glowing in the dark, willing himself to be wrong.

He wasn't wrong. The packet captures didn't lie. Someone had woven an authenticated backdoor into Markwell's autonomous navigation suite—a second set of handshake protocols hidden inside the standard handoff cycle, calling out to an external endpoint every time the system transitioned between operational modes. It was elegant work. Invisible unless you were looking at the raw traffic and knew exactly what normal looked like.

He'd spent the last forty-eight hours mapping it. The endpoint resolved to a chain of proxy servers that bounced through three countries before disappearing into a VPN tunnel he couldn't crack. Whoever built this didn't want to be found.

He should tell Peter. Peter Galveston was his supervisor, the one person at Markwell who might listen without immediately burying the report in bureaucratic procedure. But a report meant documentation, and documentation meant Markwell's legal team, and legal meant the kind of slow institutional response that gave whoever was on the other end of that endpoint time to cover their tracks.

Lyle copied the evidence to an encrypted drive and slipped it into his desk drawer. Tomorrow, he'd tell Peter. Face to face. No paper trail until they understood what they were dealing with.

He didn't know it yet, but tomorrow would be too late.