18% Gray by Anne Tenino

hit your bag. You’re getting loopy.”
    Matt kind of agreed. “Go toward the road. One of our ‘guests’ went down toward the river a minute ago.”
    When James disappeared into the bushes to the south, “guest” number two reappeared from the opposite side of the campground. Matt watched unblinkingly while he rolled himself back into his worn Mylar cocoon. He seemed strangely meek. No defiant or sullen looks. Huh. No balls without Daddy to back him up.
     
     
    J AMES woke Matt up at 0600 with a pouch of instant-hot coffee. “God, I could get used to that.”
    “Having someone bring you coffee in bed?”
    That too. “Uh-huh. Nice, thanks.”
    “Thought you’d wanna be outta here soon.” James gave him an intent look.
    James wanted the match on that retinal scan as badly as Matt. More. They had to get away from their nighttime visitors before he could check in at 0730.
    “Let’s get to it, then.”
    By the time Matt was pulling up the perimeter alarm, their visitors were coming to. James had put the coffee away already, and Matt tried to work up a shred of guilt for having nothing to offer the intruders—oops, he meant guests —but he just wasn’t up to the job. Matt and James left with barely a word to them.
    James hadn’t asked for any details about their exact route. When Matt started looking for a good spot to check in from at 0715, James said, “It’ll be nice to be myself again.”
    He either wasn’t totally convinced that Matt believed he was James Jeremiah (ha!) Ayala, or he wasn’t comfortable with everyone at QESA not believing. The people who could scrub this mission and strand him here. Not that they would.
    Well, Anais might.
    They weren’t in the best spot for checking in. They’d entered the small town of Emmett, but it had been pretty much unavoidable. Matt’s experience was that towns like this were often half abandoned, and it shouldn’t be too hard to find someplace covert.
    But the problem with this damn town was that it was too prosperous, and didn’t have a lot of abandoned buildings or hidey-holes. Shit, this usually wasn’t an issue. It must be one of those communities that had banded together and avoided selling their water rights and/or land to foreign agribusiness for a quick buck decades ago. Asia owned more land in Idaho than the locals did.
    Matt was working toward a park he’d seen from the hill coming into town. There’d be something there.
    “Here,” James said quietly from behind him. Matt looked to where James indicated with his chin. There was a shipping container in that little ravine to the east of them.
    “’S’exposed; can’t get in without anyone seeing.”
    “D’you see it when we walked beside the ravine thirty seconds ago?”
    “No.” Matt scowled. Jerk just had to be observant.
    James gave a little snort. Matt was starting to understand some of them. He was pretty sure that snort meant “you’re being immature,” aka “quit sulking, whiner.”
    “If we go in under that little bridge over there, I can keep an eye out. Pretty sure your lines of sight are obscured.”
    The ravine was an ag canal, but this time of year it was just a sun-baked gully with willow brush growing up its banks. Matt sat inside the somewhat rusted-out container with various somewhat creepy fauna and disassembled himself. This was annoying. Did other half-assed secret agents have to remove their faux calf muscle to phone home?
    Fucking military doctors.
    “Matt.” Andry greeted him with an overly formal nod.
    “Andry.” Matt rolled his eyes. “Where’s Grampa?”
    Before he could finish the question, Lance was kicking Andry off the vid-datascreen and greeting Matt.
    “You still with Ayala?”
    “What would I have done with him?”
    “Thrown him in a river?” Lance looked cranky as all hell.
    “He can swim. Okay, lay it on me, old man. Stop being grouchy and just spit it out.” Matt knew it couldn’t be good.
    “His retina scan didn’t match the ones on