On the monitor, McGrath said, “What’s the status of the stealth fighter?”
Three said, “The stealth fighter has been shot down over the ocean. No survivor.”
On the monitor, McGrath added, “Civilian damage and casualties?”
“Light,” Three said. “Pieces of exploded missiles rained over the city, but property damage is minimal. There are some reports of injuries, but no deaths.”
McGrath grunted. “We were lucky.”
As Palmer’s voice came whisper quietly over the comm channel, the room went silent immediately. “Carl,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
“I’m here, Nancy. I can see you. We just got our drone over your position.”
“Is it armed?”
“It is.”
“Good.” Palmer took a labored breath. “You did the impossible, Carl. You saved the president because you worked with Aaron. You each are brilliant at what you do, but together you are unstoppable.”
“I know.” He glanced at McGrath’s image on the right half of the monitor as the director nodded. “He knows too.” Carl was silent for a moment. “We have help coming for you.”
“No.” Palmer’s voice was getting weaker. “I did a Carl Johnson. I took a bullet for the president. I’m done.”
“No, Nancy, I’m—”
She coughed. “Trust me, I know injuries, and mine is terminal.” Her breathing grated over the comm like she was gasping for air. “I’m going to miss our date, Carl, but I want you to take care of something for me.”
“Name it.”
“Make them pay.” She took a deep gargling breath that sounded like she was drowning. “All of them, starting with these fuckers right here with me.”
Carl watched the video feed from the drone. He saw the paramilitary force in civilian clothes surrounding Palmer’s minivan. All around him, his mercs were silent. They had all gathered in the living room to watch the explosive escape of the president. Ex-Special Agent Cummings, her mother, and her daughter were crammed into the room too, as was Officer Bonhardt, his family, and Randal Cunningham.
One of the men approaching Palmer’s position held a cell phone to the side of his head.
Carl pointed at the monitor. “Wizard, I want to know who he’s talking to.”
“On it, Boss.”
“Three.” Carl looked sideways at his lead mercenary. “Prep drone missiles.”
On the drone’s tactical display on the wall monitor, two triangular brackets appeared over the cluster of three chase SUVs and Palmer’s minivan.
A man knelt in the van doorway. “Agent Nancy Palmer,” the man said, his voice clearly audible through Palmer’s comm channel. “I’ve heard a lot about you. But you don’t look so good.”
Palmer’s tired voice returned, “Have you heard a lot about my friend, Carl Johnson?”
The man chuckled. “In fact, I’m guessing you’re on comms with him right now. My boss would like to chat with him, so I expect my phone to ring.” The man dictated a number.
Carl looked at Wizard. “Dial it.”
“They’ll be able to trace me.”
“Not if you trace them first.” Carl looked behind him at Agent Cummings. She was fully outfitted in her hard-shell combat armor. “Nineteen, I hope you enjoyed your two days of R&R.”
“I’m ready to get busy.”
Carl nodded at her. “Let’s get everyone prepped for immediate evac. You’re in command of civilian protection. Get ’em safe, and keep ’em safe.”
“Copy.”
He turned his attention back to the screen. The man kneeling in the doorway of Palmer’s van answered his phone. “My name is—”
“Let’s jump to the part where I don’t give a fuck who you are. I want to know who your boss is,” Carl said.
“Let’s jump to the part where I have your agent. I can either take Agent Palmer to the hospital or stand here and maybe shoot her a couple more times.” He pulled out a belt knife. “Or maybe I’ll just carve her up a bit.”
Carl looked at Wizard, who gave him the universal give-me hand sign. He needed more time to trace the man’s call.
“Alright, what does your boss propose?” Carl watched Wizard’s fingers fly over his laptop keyboard.
“He wants to meet you and discuss a ceasefire. Rendezvous with me at these coordinates.” The man dictated some lat-long digits. “I’ll introduce you to him.”
Carl said, “Well, it probably won’t be you doing the introduction, but I agree to the meeting.” Wizard’s fingers moved faster, and Carl knew he was close to a discovery.
“Empty threats don’t suit you, Johnson. You’re lacking leverage here.”
Wizard flashed Carl a thumbs-up signal, and Carl pointed across the room to Three.
“Launching,” Three said.
“And send the video to this guy’s cell phone,” Carl added.
The man on the ground said, “What video?”
“The video showing you how empty my threats are.”
At first the man didn’t seem to understand what he was looking at. Then he did. “Fuck!” He turned and looked into the sky. He seemed to look right at the drone for the brief second before three missiles blew him and his group to hell in blinding white explosions…
…along with Agent Nancy Palmer.
Chapter 27
Carl felt a punch to his gut. He leaned on the table before him, bracing his weight on his fists, and looked down at the floor. He trembled. “Oh, God…”
“Johnson.” McGrath’s voice was stern but carried an understanding softness.
Carl took a deep breath and looked at the monitor.
“We’ve suffered a deep loss,” McGrath said. “But we still have work to do.”
“Yes, we do.” Carl stood straight and looked around the room at everyone looking at him. Finally, he focused on his field commander, Merc Three. “What’s the president’s status?”
“The pilot reports she’s G-LOC. That’s pilot speak for G-induced loss of consciousness. They pulled a lot of Gs in that max-climb takeoff.”
Carl looked at McGrath’s image. “Nice move stripping that jet down to nothing but fuel tanks.”
“It wouldn’t have worked if you hadn’t lured the stealth fighter to the other side of the city.”
Carl nodded and felt Cummings step up beside him. “Like Agent Palmer said, you two work well together.” She raised her voice a little higher as if wanting to address everyone in the room. “I vote we continue this alliance.”
McGrath said, “Agreed.”
“Look at us,” Carl said. He pointed at McGrath’s image on the monitor, then at Special Agent Cummings, then at himself. “Eight months ago, we were all trying to kill each other, and now here we are, working together to save the president.” Carl shook his head and smiled mischievously at the monitor. “You know, whenever I’d get in a tight spot, I’d ask myself, what would McGrath do.” He shrugged. “Well, I’d use the F-word in front of your name, but still…”
McGrath twitched the side of his mouth in what Carl thought was almost a smile. “Agent Palmer and I had that same discussion a few hours ago. She said I should let Carl Johnson be Carl Johnson.”
Cummings said, “Well, the president escaped, but we got our asses kicked…again.”
Three said, “That’s because we’re playing defense. I don’t mean to be insubordinate, Boss, but I’m tired of this bullshit. The president is safe for a minute, so it’s time for us to start our own brand of ass-kicking.”
Cummings’s gaze bored into the side of Carl’s head. “So, what would Carl Johnson do?”
Carl looked at McGrath. “I’m going to need some supplies.” He dictated a list.
“The president would never agree.”
“Good thing she’s unconscious.”
“I’ll get back to you when I have it all.” McGrath’s image vanished from the monitor.
From across the room, Merc Three said, “Do you think he can get all that?”<
br />
Carl nodded. “That man will do anything to accomplish the mission, as will I. And right now, the mission remains to save the president.” He swiveled his head Chris Tucker-style toward Wizard. “You have a name to go with that phone number you traced?”
Wizard nodded. “It was hard to trace, but I used the new NSA algorithm that—” He shook his head. “Never mind. But these guys’ tech rivals ours. They cover their tracks well.”
Carl nodded. “Understood. Gimme.”
Wizard tapped a key on his keyboard, and Carl’s target appeared on the monitor. He absorbed all the details about the man, his family, and known associates.
“So, Rainman’s henchman is named Hollis Koll,” he said to no one in particular. Then he pointed at the monitor. “Well, Mr. Koll, I look forward to meeting you in person.”
Wizard added, “Look at the name of his corporation.”
Carl scanned the sidebar…Atlas Consortium. He said, “You think that’s the same covert Atlas our CIA asset mentioned? The shadow government entity? They wouldn’t be so blatant as to use the name of a covert organization as their company name, would they?”
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Merc Three said.
Wizard added, “Maybe this consortium is the shadow government entity.”
Cummings sounded skeptical. “But that’s a European think tank, a multinational conglomeration of tech and banking companies. Not the kind of company that would have extensive infrastructure in the US.”
Wizard pointed at the Bonhardt family. “Well, the contract on these folks was for banking fraud. If a tech and banking consortium was going to put a hit out on someone, banking fraud is what they know best.” Wizard shrugged and everyone looked at the Bonhardt family. “Hell of a coincidence.”
Lenore Cummings banged a fist against Carl’s shoulder. “If this is our guy, if he’s part of Atlas”—she nodded at the monitor—“how are we going to find them?”
When Carl met her gaze, he saw a fierce, controlled anger. “Well,” he said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m going to ask Hollis Koll politely to reveal information.”
She nodded. “Mmm-hmmm. I’d like to be there to see that.”
“I’ll give him your regards.”
“Please.”
“Wizard, send all this data over to McGrath and let his people chew on it for a while. After all, data analysis is what the government does best. Let’s see what they come up with.” Carl took a deep breath and scanned the room. “Alright, people, the president’s jet is going to run out of fuel in a couple hours, and her blood isotope remains detectable for another thirty or so hours.” He glanced over at his long-time friend, Randal Cunningham. “Did you just get here?”
The man nodded.
“McGrath briefed you on the way over?”
Cunningham nodded again and stepped closer to Carl and Nineteen.
“Good. I need two things from you. Before the president’s plane hits the ground, we have to find a way to get her out of it and transport her undetected.” Carl pointed at Officer Bonhardt, who walked over to join them. “And this fellow seems to carry the secret to countering this behavior control biotechnology. I’d like you to investigate why. After the president, he is the most important person on the planet.”
Cunningham said, “I’ve been thinking about that. There’s a lot of conspiracy theory chatter online about psychotronic weapons to influence people, you know, through bioelectromagnetic signals from cell phone, RF, or microwave transmissions, but that’s all hogwash. Everyone’s brain is different, so you can’t just blast everyone with EM hash and expect them to do your bidding.
“Instead, if you want to target and influence a specific audience and, in fact, every member of that audience, then you have to have a trigger to cause them to act the way you want—probably an electromagnetic signal—and you have to have a catalyst of some kind—likely chemical or hormonal—that makes them receptive to your trigger signal.”
Cunningham turned to the police officer. “Since our target audience for behavior control is the police, we need to identify the trigger and the catalyst, and then we need to discover how you, Officer Bonhardt, happened to interrupt the connection between the two.”
“Alright,” Carl said. “You have everyone in this room at your disposal, so get to it.” Cunningham nodded and he and Bonhardt turned to talk with the mercs who had gathered around.
Carl felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to face Lisette. “What’s up, sweetie?” He saw Lenore Cummings, who had stepped over to talk to her mother, glance over. “I apologize, Miss Lisette.” He said it loud enough for her mother to hear. “In front of all these professional soldiers, I should be more formal.”
The girl grinned and blushed a bit. “That’s okay.”
Carl nodded and said, “What’s on your mind?”
“We’ve been here too long.” She did that soft-stomping bounce from one foot to the other, which he recognized from eight months ago was her way of showing discomfort and frustration. “We should leave.”
Lenore agreed from several paces away. “That’s a good idea. Let’s redeploy in case Atlas has their own Wizard and was able to get our location from that phone call.”
Merc Three looked up from his conversation with Wizard. “I agree with the young commander, Boss.” He winked at Lisette. “We’ve got all our eggs right here in one basket. All our weapons and mercs are here, along with the cop and your Thinking Machine, and the civilians.”
Cummings added, “That’s a mighty inviting target.”
Carl nodded. “And if Atlas has more of those little plastic drones—”
“Very hard to detect, those things are,” said Wizard. “And they can probably be outfitted with microburst transmitters. They gather a half hour of sensor data and transmit it in an encrypted burst so short our drone would never detect it.”
Carl nodded and held out a fist bump to the girl. “Good call, Miss Lisette.” She blushed again and put her whole body into the fist bump, twisting and making a good windup with her own fist. Carl got the feeling the girl hadn’t done a lot of fist bumping. She needed some training. He nodded at Mrs. Bonhardt and her kids. “Why don’t you show the kids how to bag up all the cell phones so we can get ready to go.”
As he watched the girl walk over to Claire Bonhardt, a part of him just wanted to reach out and hug the girl and apologize…again…Cummings cleared her throat and brought him back to reality.
He nodded at Cummings. “Nineteen, I want you to lead three mercs—Six, Sixteen, and Seventeen—to keep the civilians safe. I know someone who has a mountain cabin outside Taos, New Mexico. She’s got an underground concrete bunker fully stocked. She built the whole thing herself, completely off-grid, doesn’t even have cell phone service.”
Cummings nodded. “Government and civilian surveillance is everywhere. How do we get there undetected?”
Three said, “Our nearest cargo plane hangar is in Oklahoma. We’ll charter a helicopter to get you there, then you can take one of our old Twin Otters to Taos. If there’s a hundred feet of dirt road up there, that plane can land.”
“You have your own air force?” Cummings notched an eyebrow. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“I put the money I stole from Alfonso Reyes to good use. I actually had operations against the government in mind when I bought a fleet of executive jets, cargo planes, and Twin Otters around the country. Those old twin-engine props can land on some pretty rough terrain and those pilots are the continental version of Alaska bush pilots. Their itineraries are rarely scrutinized.”
She said, “Since you have so much money, maybe you can buy me another house since you nuked my last two.”
Carl smiled with a shrug. “The first one wasn’t really my fault.”
“Stingy.”
Merc Sixteen spoke up. He was a big guy with multiple combat scars on his face, a crew cut, and a black T-shirt showing huge biceps. His neck was thick. Every visible in
ch of his body and the right half of his face was covered in dark tattoos. “Not to question your authority, Boss, but can we have someone with combat experience in command, I mean, like a soldier?”
Three chuckled and Carl said, “It’s a fair question, and one I’ve been expecting.” He looked at Wizard. “Put Agent Cummings’s FBI record up on the monitor. Show her weapons certification and tactical training list.”
Five pages of courses and weapons scrolled up the screen, including a variety of handguns, semiautomatic assault weapons, fully automatic military rifles and machine guns, APC-mounted fifty-cal guns, hand-held grenade launchers, shoulder-launched rockets, and half a dozen sharpshooter rifles. There were only two categories—expert or proficient—and for all but two of the weapons listed, Cummings was expert.
“Anyone here expert on a weapon not on Cummings’s list?”
Three raised his hand like a school kid. “Slingshot, Boss.” He pointed at the monitor. “I don’t see slingshot up there.” He shrugged. “From back when I was a kid.”
Another voice said, “Credit card! I can spend that money, and I can kill with it too.”
“Butter knife.”
“Mom’s cast-iron skillet.”
Carl waved them all off. “You guys…”
Sixteen said, “I know, Boss. She can hit targets, sure, but I mean, real combat. That’s all I’m saying.”
Cummings said, “Anyone here ever had a one-on-five gunfight and killed them all with headshots?”
Three raised his hand again. “Well, Boss did. As I recall, he took out six with headshots, and it was at your house, too!” He ended the comment with a chuckle. “I think you were there, right?”
Cummings seemed nonplussed. “Anybody other than me and Carl?”
No one spoke.
Carl held out a fist, and she fist-bumped him, then said, “Okay, is that issue settled?”
Merc Three looked over at Sixteen. “We good?”
“Good, sir.” He looked at Cummings and said, “I meant no offense, ma’am.”
She nodded.
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