Absolutely hated it.

Danny knew, however, that Rubeo did have a sense of humor, which apparently he’d programmed into the automated assistant that had questioned him about coffee in the elevator. Sitting in the beverage center at the left of the desk as he entered was a steaming cup of cinnamon herbal tea.

Pretty much the last thing Danny would ever drink.

“Very funny,” he told the computer. “Coffee. The usual.”

“The system still has some kinks to be worked out,” said Danny’s boss, Breanna Stockard, who was standing over a nearby desk.

“No—it’s my fault,” said Danny. “I should have known better than to try to outsmart something Rubeo rigged up.”

The coffee, very strong and hot, spurted through the dispenser into a fresh cup. While the automated assistant and the beverage center were a brand new addition to Room 4, their presence in the high-tech control area wasn’t a surprise. Back at Dreamland, one of the technology section’s proudest achievements was a zero-gravity coffeemaker, which could keep the crews aboard Megafortresses and other large aircraft pleasantly caffeinated no matter what the combat conditions were.

“I’ll meet you inside,” said Breanna, waving a hand to dismiss the computer screen that had been floating in front of her. “Everyone else is here.”

“Gotcha.”

Danny waited for the last drops of coffee to settle into the cup, then raised it slowly to his lips, cooling it with a gentle breath. He’d only been working for Whiplash—the new Whiplash—for two months, and things still felt a bit… different.

A full-bird colonel, Freah had recently been assigned to the Office of Technology, a special direct-report agency that answered to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On paper, he looked like just another pencil-pushing staff officer, paid for his advice and experience. In reality, he headed Whiplash, one of the most exciting commands in the military.

A joint venture with the CIA, Whiplash aimed to combine up-to-the nanosecond intelligence capabilities with a covert action team. It was modeled on the Air Force’s Dreamland program that had so much success a decade and a half earlier, under Breanna’s father, Lt. Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian. Breanna had recruited Danny specifically to head the military end of the program.

They’d had one success so far, on a mission that had stretched from Africa to Iran. For Danny, it felt good to be back in the mix again; most of his assignments since Dreamland had been administrative and supervisory. This post got him back on the front lines with gusto. But it was also a lot of work. He’d spent the weeks since returning home recruiting people and trying to smooth out differences between the two halves of the team—military and active CIA. He was still working on the training routines they needed and filling in his command structure. He was inventing, improvising, and even stealing as the need arose.

He’d tapped another old Dreamland Whiplash hand—Ben “Boston” Rockland, now a chief master sergeant—as his main personnel guy, dealing with young bucks and their egos.

Bucks and does; it was a coed force.

Boston was in Florida at the moment, putting their recruits through their paces. They had twenty-four newbie “shooters” or Whiplash troopers, drawn mostly from active military commands, each with different specialties and strengths. Eventually Danny planned to have some forty-eight troopers to form the core of a covert strike force. They could be deployed as a group, or work in very small teams, depending on the assignment. Whiplash technology would increase their effectiveness exponentially.

Danny took a sip of the coffee—it was perfect, naturally—then walked down the hall to the conference room.

“Colonel, good morning,” said Jonathon Reid. Reid was the CIA director’s liaison to the project, Breanna’s equivalent in authority. As the lines of responsibility went, Reid was in charge of operations for the specific missions, while Breanna’s ultimate say was over strategic and funding issues. But as a practical matter, their responsibilities were shared. Reid had the immediate access to intelligence as well as the people who commissioned the ops. Breanna, as a member of the Pentagon, held sway over most of the personnel, and thus the means for completing the mission. Though in many respects they were opposites, they worked together remarkably well.

Danny took a seat at the conference table across from Nuri Abaajmed Lupo, nodding at him as he sat down. Nuri was a CIA officer who’d preceded him into the program—the first and for a short time only member of Whiplash. He was young but extremely capable, as he’d shown in Africa and Iran. Nuri did, however, have some difficulty dealing with the fact that Danny was the one in charge. He was also used to working alone.

“Now that we’re all here, we can begin,” said Reid. “Screen.”

A screen appeared above the center of the table. It was another projection.

“The man on the ground in a pool of blood is the deputy defense minister of Poland,” said Reid. His voice was dry and raspy. “You may remember seeing something about it in the daily intel briefings. That’s the ministry behind him. Yes, this murder was carried out in broad daylight, inside a secure facility.”

Danny studied the images as the screen changed, showing first the surroundings, then the autopsy photos. Finally he had to look away—something about seeing death treated that clinically turned his stomach.

“You’ll note that the deputy minister was shot in the forehead,” continued Reid. “That wasn’t a sniper shot. It was at close range, with a very distinctive bullet. Something like this.”

Reid reached down to his briefcase and removed a manila envelope. Holding it upside down, he shook out what looked to Danny like a model of a bullet, with a rounded top and in an unusual shade of brown.

“This is a bullet?” said Nuri, picking it up.

“Carbon composite,” said Danny. “Right?”

“Yes, Colonel,” said Reid. “There’s no metal. We imagine that it was fired from a weapon that also had no metal, as whoever fired it had to get past a metal detector.”

Nuri passed the bullet over to Danny.

“This killed him?”

“That’s not the actual bullet, no,” said Reid. “That’s something one of our labs was working on. The actual bullet is in Poland. This is another murder, more recent,” Reid went on, changing the slide. “Yesterday as a matter of fact.”

A new image appeared on the screen. A man lay on a sidewalk, blood around his face and mouth. This time Danny couldn’t see the bullet wound. The picture had been taken at night, and the flash glinted off an unseen window just to the right of the image area. Two other bodies lay on the ground nearby.

“The dead man is named Helmut Dalitz,” continued Reid. “MY-PID, please display Herr Dalitz’s professional dossier.”

The computer complied. MY-PID stood for Massively Parallel Integrated Decision Complex, and referred to the network of interconnected computers and data interfaces that were at the heart of the Whiplash project. Not only did the network of computers provide an integrated database and security system for Room 4, but it also could be used by field ops, who connected via a tiny interface device that looked like an MP3 player.

“This one is a businessman,” said Nuri. “And he’s German. What’s the connection?”

“The only hard connection is the bullet,” said Reid.

“So they were murdered by the same man,” said Danny. “I mean, person.”

“Maybe not the same person,” said Reid, as Breanna slipped into the room and sat down. “But it’s a good bet that the organization is the same. This image was captured by a surveillance camera near the Polish base. We think it’s the killer, or one of the people working with him.”

Danny looked at the photo. It wasn’t exactly much—a figure, estimated by the computer to be six feet one inch tall, approximately 220 pounds—stood sideways in the grainy distance. His face was covered by shadow.