“I spoke at length with Bellisia and she assures me that she knows the woman; her name is Zara Hightower. Apparently, Zara has always been Bellisia’s closest friend.”
There it was. Bellisia was Ezekiel’s wife and he was very, very protective of her. Gino kept his movements subtle, but he was careful to be in a place he could move fast to intercept any aggression on either part if necessary. Ordinarily, Joe could protect himself, but his wounds had been serious. He doubted Ezekiel would really do anything to try to hurt Joe, but Gino had been protecting him since they were children, and the habit wouldn’t die.
“Zara works outside Whitney’s seeming control quite a bit of the time. She was allowed to go to school, and he sent her to the best. A childhood prodigy or something. You know how Whitney loves brains. She taught at Rutgers and now works mainly consulting. She is invited all over the world by businesses to give talks on artificial intelligence and her particular subfield, which is learning machines.”
“So, she’s given a tremendous amount of freedom,” Mordichai said.
“You talked to Bellisia without talking to me first?” Ezekiel sounded mild enough.
Gino inched closer. Ezekiel was never good when he sounded that calm.
Joe ignored Ezekiel and focused on Mordichai. “Certainly more freedom than most of his women. She’s written up in all the journals and her name is everywhere in conjunction with artificial intelligence.”
Wyatt nodded and glanced across the table at Trap. “She and her team have developed some leading-edge programs in her field.”
Trap rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was considered leading-edge himself in researching new drugs for various diseases as well as in quite a few other fields. “I remember reading, very early on when she was a professor at Rutgers, one of the youngest, just a kid, she was creating some kind of knowledge compilation program to teach other programs to learn faster or something along those lines.”
“Which is?” Malichai prompted.
“You would tell the knowledge compiler what kind of program you wanted, what it would have to do, and the knowledge compiler would automatically write the program for you. She had four of her PhD students working on different pieces of the overall program. It was in such a way that each student had an important and exciting research problem they had to solve as they were constructing their piece of the overall program.”
Wyatt nodded. “It was a win-win situation for both her and her students. They got their PhD dissertations and she got her program.”
“Now that knowledge compiler program she built with her students back then is a piece of her current VALUE system,” Trap added.
“She’s the real deal, Joe,” Wyatt continued. “Smart as hell. I had no idea she was a GhostWalker. Never met her. Did you, Trap?”
Trap shook his head. “We traveled in different circles, but I started at the university when I was in my teens, obviously before her. When I heard of her, I kept up with her progress, just to see how she was doing. She’s younger than me, but after I read about her, I wanted to see how well she did for herself.”
“I would think Whitney would make sure none of us ever met her,” Ezekiel said. “Just my wife. Bellisia. Her best friend. My wife. The woman Joe talked to without talking to me first. I thought we had multiple discussions about that, Joe.”
“If we did, I don’t remember, Zeke,” Joe said, finally turning to face him. “Bellisia had no problem telling me the things I needed to know without you holding her hand. I didn’t bite her. We just talked.”
“Like anyone’s going to bite that woman,” Malichai whispered in a too-loud voice. “If she bites you back it’s over, as in you drop dead.”
“Don’t think he’s worried about you biting her, Joe,” Mordichai announced. “Zeke’s got himself in trouble and he’s worried she’s going to be looking for love in all the wrong places.”
Ezekiel wadded up the sheet of paper in front of him and threw it at his brother. “Shut the hell up.”
Gino relaxed, allowing the coiling snake inside him to unwind. He should have known Ezekiel’s brothers would take care of the tension that hadn’t quite worked itself out between Joe and Zeke.
“So, getting back to the problem Major General sent us,” Joe said. “We know for sure that Zara Hightower is one of us, and right now she’s sitting in Cheng’s fortress. If we don’t go get her, the chances that she will survive are zero.”
“Did Whitney admit to planting the same virus in her that he planted in Bellisia?” Ezekiel asked. “Does she need the antidote?”
“No. Funny that he managed to leave that out when he talked to Major General,” Joe said. “Bellisia stated Zara was never allowed to leave without the virus capsule in her.”
“How do we know that’s true?” Diego asked. “Whitney might have told Bellisia and the other girls that. This Zara could be working for him and leading us into a trap. For all we know, Whitney could have sold us to Cheng. He sold out Ezekiel.”
“No,” Joe denied. “He didn’t. That was all Violet.” He touched his abdomen, unconsciously smoothing his fingers over the wound the senator had inflicted when she’d betrayed them all. “She sold out Zeke and the rest of us when she gave Cheng the GhostWalker program. Whitney’s insane and he’s willing to do just about anything to experiment, but he is a patriot and he wouldn’t give us up. That much I believe, and so does Major General.”
Wyatt groaned. “That means we’re going to China to rescue this chick. Do you know how much trouble I’m going to get into from Pepper if I leave right now?”
“Major General didn’t give us any choice on this one, although, of course, it’s all volunteer.”
A little snicker went up around the room.
“Whitney said he’d allow us to keep the woman without his trying to get her back if we rescued her. One more GhostWalker, a brilliant one at that, a female—of course Major General is going to make the bargain. Neither Whitney nor Major General wants Cheng to recognize that she’s a GhostWalker. He’ll take her apart if he finds out,” Joe said.
“No wonder Whitney didn’t tell the general about the virus. He figures we’ll rescue the woman and then she’ll haul ass back to Whitney as fast as she can go so she doesn’t die. If she doesn’t make it back and dies before she can get there, at least Cheng doesn’t have her. Whitney wins all the way around,” Mordichai said.
“Aside from what Bellisia thinks, Joe,” Gino said, “do you think we can trust that this woman isn’t working with Whitney and that’s why he wants us to go in after her? He could just let the virus kill her. There has to be more here than any of us are seeing.”
Joe sighed. “Nothing with Whitney is straightforward. Nevertheless, we can’t leave her in Cheng’s hands. This is a suicide mission as far as I can tell, so in spite of what Major General says about mandatory, this is volunteer basis only. If you do agree to go, you would have to leave in three days at 21:00 that evening.”
Gino knew if there weren’t enough volunteers, Joe would go. That meant he was going either way. He couldn’t let Joe go, still healing from the wound that nearly ended his life.
“Three days doesn’t give us very long to train,” Ezekiel pointed out.
“Right now, construction is huge in China, particularly in Shanghai. Apartments are going up for the elderly. Several American contractors are working with crews there and have been for a while. New workers move through there all the time. You’re going in as workers scattered among several different crews. Our equipment is being transported with the equipment needed for the construction project. You’ll have to leave when the next crews are changing out so there is no suspicion. This company is already established and they bring in new workers and equipment all the time,” Joe stated.
“How big a team do we need?” Ezekiel asked.
“It has to be small. Five-man team. If it goes to hell, less men to get out.”
“I’ll go,” Ezekiel said immediately. “This is Bellisia’s best friend. She talks about her all the time.”
“I’m in,” Gino said immediately.