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cul-de-sac of an under-construction subdivision, half a dozen cars sat in the darkness. Knots of teenagers drank and smoked on their car hoods, laughing, arguing, or staring at the distant glow of the freeway. The pounding bass beat of rap music thudded into the cold night air from several car stereos all tuned to the same satellite radio channel. It reverberated in their chests as they threw rocks, shattering the newly installed windows of half-built homes. One kid zipped from car to car on a motorized scooter.
    They were a racially mixed group, mostly white, but with Asian, black, and Hispanic kids here and there. Their cars displayed their social class; a Mustang GT convertible with eighteen-inch chrome rims; late-model SUVs with vanity plates; Mom’s BMW. Economic class, not race, was the glue that bound them.
    A cell phone somewhere began a faint MIDI of
Eine kleine Nacht-musik
, and every girl in the group groped for her phone. The alpha girl – a thin, sexy blonde with low-cut denims and a midriff top despite the cold – clucked her tongue at theothers. ‘Y’all stole my ring.’ She read the text message. ‘Austin! Guys, turn down the music!’
    Stereos were quickly muted.
    Alpha girl used her best cheerleader voice to project the coordinates: ‘29.98075, and ′95.687274. 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 hangardoors, 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 wind-breakers 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