by David Mack
“Jaime, wake up Hal and Lucas. I need them to help Raj neutralize the tsunami caused by the California earthquake.”
Jaime acknowledged his instructions, then hung up to carry them out. Setting the phone down once again, Jordan sighed and threw a weary look in Kyle’s direction. “I didn’t just lie to the secretary of state, did I, Kyle?”
“I don’t know,” Kyle replied. “Did you?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. Did we or didn’t we have anything to do with causing this morning’s earthquake in California?” Sensing the young man’s reluctance to answer, Jordan pressed him. “Kyle, we’re standing on the brink of war, and this could be what pushes us over the edge. I need to know: Did we do this? Have you and Cassie pushed us into a war?”
Kyle turned away from Jordan, but his face was still visible in the mirror above Jordan’s dresser. The youth seemed to be struggling for an answer, but Jordan suspected that Kyle was getting his talking points from Cassie.
At first a guilty pall washed over Kyle’s features. Within seconds it was pushed aside by a mask of fear. Then his mien turned blank; his eyes went dead and his expression took on the slack neutrality of a sociopath. He turned back to face Jordan.
“It’s impossible to say for certain,” Kyle declared. “There are a lot of rogue p-positives out there. A lot of them have grudges against the government. It would only take one going off the reservation to cause something like this.”
It was an artless evasion, in Jordan’s opinion. Kyle was good at many things, but lying persuasively was not one of them.
“That’s not what I asked, Kyle, and you know it. But since you seem committed to misinterpreting me, allow me to rephrase my question: Did you—or did Cassie, acting through you—plan, order, or sanction, personally or through a proxy, the initiation or exacerbation of this morning’s earthquake by any promicin-positive group or individual?”
The ghost of a smirk haunted Kyle’s face. “Good question,” he said, walking toward the open bedroom door. As he left, he said over his shoulder, “I’ll look into it and get back to you.”
Kyle closed the door behind him. It shut with a heavy, wooden thud. Jordan stood and stared dumbly at it, unsure what troubled him more: the fact that Kyle was obviously lying to him, or that the youth and his dark muse had just given the United States the perfect excuse to declare war on Promise City.
TWENTY-TWO
8:05 A.M.
TOM HAD JUST settled in at his desk across from Diana when a muffled roar of frustration from outside their office called them back to their feet. They nearly collided in the doorway as they gazed past the NTAC bullpen, where a dozen agents were prairie-dogging over the walls of their cubicles, all of them looking at the source of the commotion: the director’s office.
Meghan Doyle was going berserk.
She slammed the handset of her phone up and down against its base on her desk. With one yank she tore the phone’s cord from its floor jack, picked up the whole unit, and let out a scream of rage as she hurled it at the wall. The phone shattered into a storm of plastic debris, loose wires, and orphaned computer chips that scattered across her office’s floor. Then Meghan slumped back into her chair, planted her elbows on her desk, and buried her face in her hands.
All the agents in the bullpen stared for several seconds at their silently exasperated director. Then, like a flock of birds turning in unison, they swiveled their heads toward Tom, who recoiled slightly from their unspoken collective plea.
He looked at Diana. She was staring at him, too.
Holding out his upturned palms in desperate supplication, he implored his partner, “Oh, c’mon. Why me?”
“She’s your girlfriend,” Diana said, arching her eyebrows.
Goddammit, I really hate it when she’s right, Tom fumed.
He felt the weight of the room’s attention as he emerged from his office, crossed the bullpen with his hands tucked sheepishly into his pants pockets, and ambled toward the door of Meghan’s office. J.R. lifted his coffee mug as a salute to Tom as he passed by his desk. On the other side of the bullpen, J.B. used tactical hand signals to sarcastically warn Tom, Keep your eyes open and your head down.
As Tom drew closer to his destination, he wondered why things like this always seemed to happen before he got a chance to drink his first cup of coffee. One cup of java before the world falls apart, he brooded. Is that really so much to ask?
When he reached Meghan’s office, he looked back at Diana for encouragement. She motioned him forward with a backhanded flicking gesture that made her look as if she were shooing a fly. He grimaced, lifted his hand, and with the knuckle of his middle finger knocked so softly that he barely felt his hand make contact. Then he listened with his ear to the door.
“What?” Meghan demanded from behind the closed portal.
Figuring that was as close to an invitation as he was likely to receive under the circumstances, Tom opened the door and slipped inside. Easing the door shut behind him with one hand, he reached with the other for the rod that adjusted the angle of the Venetian blinds on her office’s window-wall, which faced the bullpen. He turned it to fold the slats of the blinds closed for privacy. “Rough morning?” he asked.
Her face was still in her hands. “What gave you that idea?”
“Nothing in particular,” he said, hoping to ease into the conversation with some mild ironic humor. “Just a feeling.”
She sat up, reclined her chair, and stared at the ceiling. “I just got off the phone with the secretary of Homeland Security,” she said. “It was a short conversation. He did most of the talking.” She sighed. “The good news is that I’m being transferred to a warmer climate—the Atlanta office.”
Swallowing to suppress his rising sensation of dread, Tom asked, “And the bad news is …?”
“I’m being demoted,” Meghan said, flashing a thin smile taut with rage. “He’s making me a field agent, despite the fact that I have no law enforcement experience or tactical training.” She shook her head. “I get the impression this is payback for his being strong-armed into giving me this job in the first place.”
Bits of broken plastic crunched under Tom’s shoes as he circled around the desk to be closer to Meghan. He sat on the edge of her desk and took her left hand in both of his. “Did he even give you a reason why?”
“Oh, yeah, he gave me a reason, all right,” she said, rolling her eyes in disgust. “He said someone filed a complaint about the fact that I’ve been sleeping with you. ‘Inappropriate fraternization with a subordinate,’ he called it. Like I’m single-handedly corrupting the integrity of the republic.”
Tom clenched his jaw to keep from spouting profanities. “Dammit, Meghan, I’m sorry. I never meant for—”
“Stop,” she cut in. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” She huffed with contempt. “They’re just using the dating thing as an excuse. I know what this is really about: they blame me for losing Seattle to Collier, and they think the earthquake in California is the direct result of that. Face it: I’m a scapegoat.” She shut her eyes and bared her teeth in furious denial. “I can’t believe I have to move to Georgia.”
“You could resign,” Tom said.
That almost made her laugh. “Yeah, right. That’s exactly what that sonofabitch in D.C. wants me to do. Forget it.”
“All right, then,” Tom said. “I’ll request a transfer to Atlanta and go with you.”
She went quiet for a moment, telegraphing more bad news. “Actually,” she said, “you’re being transferred to Milwaukee.”
He waited for a punch line that never came.
“Hang on,” he said. “They’re sending me to Wisconsin?”
“Yup.”
“But …” he began, then his voice trailed off. “Wait a minute! If you’re in Atlanta and I’m in Milwaukee, who’s gonna be in charge here?”
“No one,” Meghan said wearily. She looked into his eyes. “They’re shutting us down.”
Standin
g beside Meghan’s desk with his fists clenched white-knuckle tight, Tom suddenly wished that Meghan had another phone—so that he could throw it against the wall.
Diana thought she had heard her partner wrong. “Shut down? What the hell are they thinking?” Glancing around the Theory Room at Marco and the two Jeds, she asked, “What does that mean for us?”
“It means pack our desks and get ready to bug out,” Tom said to the group, which stood in a small circle near the projection screen. “Meghan’s upstairs breaking the news to the rest of the unit. DHS just gave us a priority-one evac order. They want us all on a transport out of Boeing Field in less than an hour. She and I already have our new assignments. The rest of you will get your orders when we touch down in D.C.”
Anxious looks were volleyed from agent to agent. “Easy for them to say,” Marco replied. “It’s not like I came to work this morning with a bag packed.”
J.B. added, “I don’t even have my passport.”
“Or my toothbrush,” J.R. quipped.
“Too bad,” Tom said. “Cars, property, pets, and anything else you can’t carry on the plane stays here. Only immediate family will be allowed on the evac flight.”
J.R. looked at his twin and said, “Fine by me. I never liked cousin Ted, anyway.” J.B. nodded in agreement.
“Guys,” Diana snapped at the Jeds, “this isn’t funny.” Reining in her temper, she asked Tom, “What about Maia? She’s holed up in Collier’s headquarters.”
Frowning with regret, Tom said, “If she isn’t on the plane with you at nine A.M., she gets left behind.”
“Well that’s just great,” Diana said, seething with anger. “How am I supposed to convince her to leave Promise City when she won’t even talk to me?”
“Tell her the truth,” Marco said. “If Homeland Security’s rushing us outta here, it probably means the military’s about to make a major attack on the city.”
“Do not tell Maia that,” Tom interjected. “If it’s true, tipping off Collier’s people would be treason. And if it’s not, we might incite a panic that could get people killed.”
“I don’t give a damn about that,” Diana said. Unable to remain still, she stepped away from the circle and began pacing in front of the blank screen. “But you’re right not to tell Maia what’s coming. It’ll only make her dig in deeper with Collier.”
“Maybe you could trick her,” Tom said. “Tell her whatever she wants to hear.”
“Right,” J.B. chimed in. “The key is to get her outta that building. Say you’re ready to give her everything she wants, if she’ll just come meet you to talk over breakfast.”
Rolling her eyes, Diana replied, “Maia won’t fall for that. She knows I’d never give up that easily.”
Marco folded his arms. “Whatever we’re gonna do, we better do it fast. The buses leave here in twenty minutes, and our plane goes wheels-up in forty.”
Rubbing his chin pensively, J.B. said, “We could play it head-on. Walk in the front door of Collier’s headquarters, find Maia, and walk her back out.”
J.R. added, “Risky move, but it might have the element of surprise on its side.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Tom said. “Jordan’s people won’t let you get within a hundred feet of that building. He’s got sentries who can melt your brain, paralyze you on sight, or make you walk away and think it was your idea.”
Undaunted, J.R. looked at Marco and asked, “What about your teleporting ability? You could pop in, grab Maia, and pop back out before his people know you’re there.”
Shaking his head, Marco replied, “First, I can’t jump in blind. I’d need a photo reference or a video image of my destination. Second, I haven’t had much luck bringing other people with me when I teleport. So far the biggest passenger I’ve been able to move has been my cat. Plus, Collier’s been installing all kinds of exotic defenses in that building for months. Trying to ‘pop in’ might get me killed.”
“There’s always the roof,” J.B. said.
“What about it?” asked Marco.
“Well, we’ve got tons of photo references on that. You could jump to there, blow the lock on the access door with a C-4 charge, and enter through the main stairwell.”
Tom narrowed his eyes in cynical disapproval. “J.B., think for a second. Collier lives on the top floor of that building. Do you really think he hasn’t secured the roof access? Besides, we don’t even know which floor Maia’s on. If we go in there guns blazing, on some kind of commando mission to take Maia by force, we’re gonna get our asses handed to us.” Adopting an apologetic tone, he said to Diana, “If you think you can talk her out of there, you should do it now.”
“She won’t leave,” Diana said, imagining how Maia would react to the coming crisis. “Not like this.”
“Then we’d better get ready to go,” Tom said.
“I’m not leaving,” Diana replied. “If Maia stays, so do I.”
Concern hardened Tom’s countenance. “The evacuation’s not optional, Diana. We’re under orders. All NTAC personnel have to be on that plane.”
“Then I’ll resign,” Diana said, proudly defiant.
Marco and the Jeds traded worried looks. J.B. said to Diana, “You don’t really think it’ll be that easy, do you?”
“He’s right,” Marco said. “The law says that in times of national emergency, we’re all in for the duration. We can’t just quit.” With a crooked smile he added, “On the bright side, at least it means we have job security.”
Diana looked to Tom for some sliver of hope. “Meghan won’t enforce that, will she?”
“It’s not up to her,” Tom said with a shrug. “Meghan just got demoted, remember? She doesn’t have the authority to let you stay even if she wants to. The tactical unit’s in charge of the evacuation, and Major Falkner has his orders directly from the secretary. One way or another, Falkner will put you on that plane—as a prisoner if he has to.”
“Fine,” Diana said, already formulating a plan. “Since there’s no way we can avoid getting on the plane, we’ll just have to think of a way off.”
TWENTY-THREE
8:55 A.M.
MEGHAN DOYLE STOOD beside an open door that led out of the King County International Airport terminal to the tarmac, where a 737NG passenger jet was warming up for takeoff. A line of NTAC agents filed past her, empty-handed as they marched to their forced evacuation from Seattle, escorted by tactical personnel garbed in black uniforms and loaded with gear and weapons.
A balmy breeze tainted with the odor of jet fuel mussed her blond hair. The whine of the jet’s turbines pitched upward and grew louder. She squinted against the early-morning sunlight reflecting off the plane’s tail, then looked away and checked her watch. In less than five minutes, the transport would taxi away from the terminal, escorted by a pair of F-14 fighters from the adjacent Washington Air National Guard base.
She had been keeping a mental tally of who had passed her and who had yet to board the plane. Searching the art deco interior of the terminal, she spotted one of her two AWOL agents. Tom was standing next to the door of the men’s room, checking his own watch. As the end of the line of agents walked past her, she called out to him, “Tom! Let’s go!”
“I’m waiting for Marco,” he yelled back. Pushing open the door, he shouted into the restroom, “C’mon, Marco! Pinch it off! Our ride’s leaving!”
“All right, all right,” Marco hollered back, his voice echoing from inside the bathroom. He stepped out a moment later, paused to look back, raised his compact digital camera, and snapped a photo before following Tom to the boarding gate.
Ushering both men out ahead of her, Meghan asked Marco, “Do you always photograph bathrooms after you use them?”
“I’m photographing everything,” he said, snapping another shot of the terminal over his shoulder as they climbed the steps to the plane. At the top of the stairs, he looked back and added wistfully, “All of this might be gone tomorrow.”
“Well, w
e need to be gone in sixty seconds, so get in the plane,” Meghan said, nudging him inside. She followed him in and said to the flight attendant, “We’re all aboard. Close it up.”
The young military officer nodded and sealed the hatch, which closed with a leaden thunk. All at once, the shriek of engines fell away to a dull drone that reverberated through the aircraft’s aluminum hull and was partly muffled by the white noise of the ventilation system, which recirculated overprocessed air inside the passenger cabin.
Meghan followed Tom and Marco aft to their seats, which were in the last row of the business class section. There was no barrier between business class and coach; the only difference between them was that the seats in business class were wider and had more forward legroom than those of coach.
As Meghan fumbled to find and connect the two halves of her seat belt, a man’s southern-accented voice drawled over the cabin’s PA speaker, “Mornin’, folks. This is Captain Dan Harper, and I’ll be your pilot today. At this time, I need to ask y’all to buckle up and set your seats to their upright positions as we wait for our turn on the runway. We’ll be servin’ breakfast once we reach cruisin’ altitude, so just sit tight, and enjoy the ride. Flight crew, prepare for takeoff.”
Everyone settled in except for Marco, whose face contorted with what looked like the first sign of nausea. He got up from his seat and moved aft, toward the lavatory, where he talked his way past a flight attendant who tried to intercept him.
Leaning across the aisle, Diana asked Tom in a confidential hush, “What’s wrong with Marco?”
“Dunno,” Tom said with a shrug and a shake of his head. “He’s been feeling queasy ever since we left NTAC.”
Diana frowned, then unfastened her seat belt and stood up. “I’d better go check on him,” she said, heading aft.
Meghan watched Diana make her way to the back of the aircraft. Diana knocked on the lavatory door, then stepped clear as it opened, blocking her from view.
Perplexed, Meghan shot Tom a questioning look.