Read Daemon for Free Online

Everybody got that?” She repeated the coordinates while several others keyed them into GPS receivers.
    An athletically built African American kid and his buddies stared at the console of his Lexus SUV. He keyed in the coordinates, and a graphical map appeared on the GPS’s LCD. “Tennet Field. It’s closed down. My dad used to have his plane there. Let’s roll!”
    A dozen kids paused to text-message the coordinates to still other friends. The smart mob was forming and would be en route in minutes.
     
    Gragg strode the tarmac in the pale moonlight, heading toward the dark silhouette of Hangar Two.
    The radio crackled in his head. He wore a bone-conduction headset. It was capable of projecting sound directly into his skull, regardless of the noise in his surrounding environment. It was a useful tool for managing a for-profit rave. The radio crackled again. “Unit 19 to Unit 3, do you copy?”
    Gragg touched his receiver. “Unit 3. Talk to me.”
    “The Other White Meat headed south on Farmington. Range two-point-three miles.”
    Unit 3 was a lookout placed on the east perimeter with night vision goggles. Gragg saw headlights turning into the main airport entrance. “Unit 20, Zone One is a blackout area.”
    “10-4, Unit 3.”
    The headlights soon went out.
    Signature control was a never-ending battle for a prairie rave. Lines of car headlights were the enemy.
    Gragg followed the thick generator cables running from the machine shop, past the parking lot, and up to the main hangar doors, where a subsonic bass beat rumbled, threatening to detach his retinas. A long roll of black Duvateen hung down at the entrance, blocking the light and some of the noise within.
    A line of a hundred or so teens hooted and hollered at the entrance, while a dozen heavyset thugs in SECURITY windbreakers flanked the opening. The bouncers collected twenty dollars from everybody at the door and then slipped an RFID-equipped neck badge around each teen’s neck. Once tagged like cows, the patrons then proceeded through the metal detectors and into the main hangar. Each guard was equipped with a Taser and pepper spray to quickly subdue and remove those inclined to disrupt the party. Dozens more patrolled the party inside.
    Gragg ran a tight operation, and for this reason he was always in demand by rave promoters. Tonight’s promoter, a young Albanian drug dealer named Cheko, stalked the tarmac nervously. But then again, he did everything nervously.
    Gragg sniffed the night air, then walked past the bouncers into the head-pounding madness that was the rave. He pushed through the crowd of youths. Although he was several years older than most of them, Gragg was of slimmer build and shorter stature. His lip piercing and arm tats gave him a menacing blue-collar appearance—but if anyone looked closely, the tattoos depicted entwined CAT-5 cable.
    Gragg looked up at the DJ tower, flickering in the strobing laser light. Mix Master Jamal was laying a trance groove. The topless go-go dancers on ten-foot pedestals danced rhythmically. Gragg smirked. The strippers weren’t so much for the teen guys as the teen girls. Suburban girls acted scandalized, but they’d tell friends who’d have to see it for themselves. Where else would girls from good families see nude dancers? In the seedy strip club on the state highway? Hardly.
    Gragg came inside specifically to find one of these girls from a good family. He moved through the crowd to the back of the hangar, where the real money was made—at the “pharmacy,” where Cheko’s people sold ecstasy, meth, DMT, ketamine, and a dozen other recreation-grade pharmaceuticals, in addition to soft drinks and bottled water.
    Gragg could usually spot his quarry easily—the sexy girl with a guy she didn’t look particularly intimate with. A first date, or perhaps just dancing together. He avoided girls with a group of female friends and girls who weren’t having fun.
    He soon found his target; the girl was