Speaking of my car, I could hear muffled barking in that direction. My big white combat shepherd, Ghost, was supposed to be sleeping in the car. He was up and clearly felt as cranky as I did. Lucky for the goon squad that I left the dog in the warm rental car or they’d need a lot more than ice packs and some career counseling.
I pocketed my phone, then dug an earbud out of my trouser pocket and pressed it to the inside of my outer ear. It looks like a freckle. I put the speaker dot on my upper lip by the corner of my mouth. Then I squatted beside Lurch, who was semiconscious and trying to muster the moral courage to give me another death stare. I patted his cheek as a warning, which he chose to ignore.
“You better like Gitmo, motherfu—” Lurch began, and I patted his cheek again, this time hard enough to dim the lights on Broadway.
“Whoever told you that you’re good at this is not your friend,” I said. “Whoever sent you made a mistake. You came at me here—here—which is an even bigger mistake. Be real careful that it doesn’t cost you more than you can afford to pay, feel me?”
He almost said something else, but didn’t. He was handcuffed to two guys who were probably supposed to be top-class muscle. I’d handed all of them their asses and hadn’t worked up a sweat doing it, so my friend here was probably having a come-to-Jesus moment. His eyes looked wet and his gaze slid away. I picked up the tooth he’d lost, showed it to him, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
“Now,” I said calmly, “tell me why you were ordered to arrest me.”
“Look, I—I mean they didn’t…,” he stammered. Then he took a breath and tried it again. “The word came down to bring you in and not kiss your ass doing it.”
“Who cut the order?”
“My supervisor said it came straight from the top,” said Lurch. “Straight from the Oval Office.”
“Listen to me,” I said quietly. “I can give you a pass for fucking with me. You’re following orders. Stupid orders, but orders. I don’t hold grudges for that kind of thing. But you came here. You came to where someone very special to me is buried. Of all the places you could have come, you made it this place. That’s on you. You’re the crew chief here and you could have waited until I was done and walked out of the cemetery. You didn’t. That crosses a line with me. I don’t forgive that. So, listen very closely and believe me when I tell you that if I ever see you again—here, or anywhere; I don’t care where it is or why—I’m going to kill you. I’ll make it hurt, too, sparky, and I’ll make it last. Now, look me in the eye and tell me that you understand.”
I leaned back and let him take a look. He did.
“Tell me,” I said.
He licked his lips. What he said was, “I’m sorry.”
I punched two of his front teeth out. One fast hit. He fell back so hard his head bounced off the turf.
“I didn’t ask for an apology,” I said without raising my voice. “Your apology doesn’t mean shit, because you already crossed the line. I asked you to tell me you understand.”
He started to say something. Don’t know what, but he bit down on it with the teeth he had left because it wasn’t going to be what I wanted to hear. He was crying now; nose running and fat tears rolling down to mingle with the blood smeared around his mouth and on his chin.
“I…” He stopped, coughed, tried again. “You won’t … see me again.”
“Tell your dickhead friends, too.” I straightened. “And tell whoever sent you that this isn’t over. I’m going to pay someone a visit. Tell them that.”
He nodded but did not dare say another word. There are times you can trash talk and times when you need to consider how comprehensive your healthcare plan really is.
The sun was trying to burn through the clouds and the birds were watching silently in the trees. I almost said something else to him, but left it. If he didn’t get it now, then he was unteachable. So, I left him there with his buddies, cuffed in a tangle.
I took all of their personal belongings and weapons back to my car. As I got in, Ghost gave me a deeply reproachful look, as if to say that he couldn’t leave me alone for five minutes without me stepping on my own dick.
“Not my fault, fuzzball,” I said.
He seemed to read something in me that changed his attitude from high anxiety to wanting to comfort another member of his pack. He’d never known Helen, but he knew this place. He nuzzled me with a cold nose and whined softly until I bent and kissed his head. There were tears burning in my eyes.
They should never have come here. Those motherfuckers.
I started my car and drove over to where a big Crown Victoria with federal plates was parked. I got out and casually slashed the right front tire. I used Lurch’s key to pop the locks, but a quick search showed that the vehicle was clean. No warrants, no nothing other than drive-through coffee. One cup was untouched and still hot, so I took it; but one sip revealed the awful truth that it was decaf. I poured it over the front seat and dropped the empty cardboard cup on the floor.
Ghost and I drove away at a casual speed. If anyone saw me they’d think I was calm, cool, and composed.
Was I scared? Yeah. I was absolutely terrified and, sadly, that was not a joke.
INTERLUDE ONE
FOUR SEASONS RESORT THE BILTMORE SANTA BARBARA
1260 CHANNEL DRIVE
SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA
SEVEN YEARS AGO
Valen Oruraka was deep inside a dream of chase and escape.
He was aboard a smuggler’s submarine, running from something unspeakable. The more he ran, the longer the hull was, stretching out before him like an endless road. Room to run, sure; but he could never seem to run fast enough. When he turned to look over his shoulder it was closer. Always closer.
“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” rose the cry. “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
The thing had no real shape. It was a shadow that roiled and twisted, lunging out with amorphous pseudopods and whiskery feelers and clacking claws.
Valen screamed as he ran, and the scream filled the hotel room. No one came to investigate, though. He was aware of how bad and how loud his nightmares had become over the last year, and he often booked a corner suite and slept in whatever standard bed, foldout, or couch was farthest from a connecting wall. Music blasted all night from his iPad, and that was directed at the door to the hallway.
He slept without his hearing aid, and so his own desperate cries never woke him. Nor did the shrieks of the ghosts he had created with every person he killed.
The night crawled on and he ran through his dreams and the sheets knotted like snakes around his naked thighs.
And then the dream ended with a touch. Bang. All of the horrors, gone. The submarine, the darkness, the capering shadows. Gone. He snapped awake, one hand darting blindly under the pillow for the small automatic he always slept with, the other whipping to block any attack. The pistol was not under his pillow; his scrabbling fingers felt nothing at all.
He froze and peered into the gloom. A figure stood above him, but as he turned it moved back. Valen blinked his eyes clear and the shadow shapes from his dream organized themselves into a human shape. A woman’s shape, of that there was absolutely no doubt. There was also no doubt that she held a gun in one hand. His gun.
The woman leaned over and turned on the bedside light, and smiled. Then she dropped the magazine from the pistol, ejected the round from the chamber, caught it with a deft dart of her hand, and set the component parts on the bedside table. She did not speak because she knew he could not hear without his device. So, in silence she stood up and walked slowly, like a hunting cat, to the foot of the bed. She was very tall, with the strong shoulders and the muscle tone of the competitive skier she’d been twenty years ago.
Valen kept blinking until his eyes were clear as he fished for his hearing aid and put it on.
“Gadyuka,” he murmured. “What are you doing here?”
Gadyuka—the viper—smiled as she slowly unbuttoned her sheer blouse. She was in no
hurry, but the deliberate movement of her long fingers pulled Valen the rest of the way out of the dream and very much into the now. Beneath the blouse was a pink underwire bra with a subtle paisley print of pink, orange, and yellow with lace trim, a satin bow in the front, and rhinestones in the center of the bow. It was more persuasively feminine than anything Valen had assumed she would wear. But then again, what kind of bras do stone killers wear? She unclasped the bra and let it fall, revealing full breasts the color of snow. Then she slid down the zipper on the hip of her smoke-gray skirt and let it fall, too. Her underwear was a medium bubblegum pink, with lace trim on legs and waist.
“What are you doing?” he said, his words slurred with sleep, surprise, and confusion.
“Maybe you’re dreaming,” she said.
“But…,” he began, but she shook her head, and that was the last of the conversation between them.
Valen licked his lips. His pulse was still rapid from the nightmare, but now it beat even harder. Her nipples were a subtle shade of pink, and hard, with the areolas pebbled from the cool air in the room. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties and pulled them down, revealing a trimmed pubic bush only a shade darker than the white-blond of her long hair.
She was aggressively, unbearably, mercilessly female, and Valen felt himself grow hard while also physically diminishing in her presence. He was a tough man, a killer and a fighter, and was regarded as dangerous by nearly everyone, but he knew that he was not a match for this Russian viper. She was so completely in command of herself that she seemed to crackle with energy and vitality.
When she climbed into bed it was she who took him. And she took him as many times as she wanted.
* * *
Hours later, Valen Oruraka lay totally spent, which shook out to feeling fully alive and yet near death. He was greased with sweat and covered with scratches and bites and the heady scent of her. His breathing was bad and his heart felt like a nuclear reactor on overload. The bed was a wreck. Some of the room was a wreck. He was a disaster.
Gadyuka sat up in bed, the damp sheets across her lap, breasts bare in the morning light, as she rolled a joint with great care, licked it, smoothed it, and put it between her full lips. Then she lit it and took two deep hits, held them in her lungs for a long time, and exhaled high into the air.
“Why are you here?” he croaked.
“Do I need a reason?” she asked, speaking in Russian with a Pomor accent. He knew that she was from the north, but that was all. Valen once considered doing some research on her but gave it up as likely a suicidal hobby. People he feared were afraid of Gadyuka, so he feared her, too.
It was like that with the people they worked for, as well. All of the Novyy Sovetskiy senior committee members were inflexible and unforgiving when it came to matters of security. Errors simply could not be allowed and so there were ten times as many safeguards as with any other plan in the history of modern warfare. There was only one punishment for breaking the rules. One punishment with no hope of repeal, parole, or pardon. That was only common sense.
He struggled to sit up. “You don’t walk across the street without a good damn reason. So what do you want?”
“I’m here to give you a job. Everyone is pleased with how you handled the recovery near Hawaii. That was as much a test as it was necessary to the goals of the Party. Now it’s time for you to tackle a much bigger project, and you will do it well because I told the senior members that you would.”
He looked at her naked body and cocked an eyebrow. “So … what? Are you my graduation present?”
“Hardly,” she snorted. “No, it’s a personal policy thing with me. I don’t fuck minions.”
“You lost me.…”
“Did you ever see that American movie Meet the Parents? Robert De Niro tells his daughter’s boyfriend that he’s now in the ‘circle of trust.’ Remember that? Well, welcome to my circle of trust.”
“Um … thanks? And, what does that mean, exactly?”
“It means life is about to get more interesting, Valen. In Star Wars—the original one, I mean—Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke that he’s just taken his first step in a larger world.”
“I didn’t know you were a movie buff.”
“I am. And it’s one of the things I’ll miss most about America once it’s gone.”
Valen flinched. “Gone?”
“Well, when it is no longer the bloated whore that it is.”
“Wishful thinking. Even after the election tampering and e-mail hacking and all that, they’re still the biggest gorilla in the jungle.”
Her smile was enigmatic. “That,” she said, “is why I’m here, lapochka.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
TWENTY-TWO MONTHS AGO
The president of the United States sat at the head of the table and smiled at the men gathered around him. The Joint Chiefs; Admiral Lucas Murphy, the White House chief of staff; several top advisors; Jennifer VanOwen, the president’s science advisor; and a few close friends to whom he had granted this highest level of security. Most of them looked attentive and mildly surprised since there was no active crisis.
The president turned to General Frank Ballard, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the ranking general of the U.S. Air Force. “Frank, I want to ask you a very important question. There was a program that was canceled by my predecessor. Majestic Three. M3, I believe it was called.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Ballard. “Majestic Three was shut down and all of its resources confiscated and assets reallotted.”
“Tell me something, General, did the Majestic Three program do us any good?”
“Good?” The general shook his head. “Hardly, sir. The governors of Majestic Three very nearly caused World War Three.”
“That isn’t the question I asked, is it? Is it, General? No. I asked if the M3 project did us any measurable good over the years.”
“Well, sir,” said the general, clearly uncomfortable. He fidgeted and cut looks at the other officers around the table, but no one was willing to meet his eye.
“Do I need to phrase it in smaller words, General?” asked the president. “Or do I need to ask the next person to sit in your chair?”
“It is, um, fair to say that we have benefitted greatly from the various M3 projects,” said the general. “New or improved metallurgy, polymers, fiber optics, aircraft design—”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the entire stealth aircraft project come out of what they were doing?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And isn’t the stealth program what’s put us ahead in the arms race and kept us there?”
“To an, ah, degree, sir, but—”
“Then I’d say that the good it’s done pretty well outweighs the bad, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not sure I can agree with that, sir. One of the T-craft developed by Howard Shelton very nearly destroyed Beijing. Others were being launched to destroy Shanghai, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang…”
“Which might have been a good damn thing,” said the president, and every face around the table went pale. “No, don’t look at me like that. Sure, it would have been a tragic loss of life, but overall, we’d have accomplished world peace. A lasting peace. We would have insured that American values were instituted around the globe.”
The room was utterly silent. The president smiled as if all of the gaping officers and advisors had nodded in agreement.
Jennifer VanOwen spoke into the silence. Over the last few years the science advisor had hitched her star to the president’s, even when he was only a candidate, and—even through staff cuts and public controversy—VanOwen had managed to stay out of the news and out of the limelight. A lot of the people in the president’s inner circle were afraid of her because she always seemed to know something about them; things that no one else knew. She did; but because she seldom used her knowledge as any
thing other than an implied threat to support the president, they simply either deferred to her or steered clear. A surprising number of power players around her knelt to put their heads on the chopping block, but among the survivors it was generally believed VanOwen was the one keeping that blade sharp. When she spoke, the president listened.
“Mr. President,” she said quietly, “the Majestic program, like all advanced and highly classified defense projects, was always potentially dangerous. The Manhattan Project was dangerous, and yet that ended World War Two and transformed the United States from a powerful nation into this world’s first true global superpower. Howard Shelton had his faults, no doubt, but he and the other governors of M3 were working toward a goal of an unbeatable and indisputably powerful America. One that took the concept of ‘superpower’ to a new and unmatchable level. With firmer and more courageous guidance from your predecessor, we might now have ended all wars forever. Instead, he was killed. Perhaps ‘executed’ is not too strong a word.”
“Now wait a minute, Jennifer,” cried the general. “That’s a pretty dangerous word to throw around. You weren’t even here when the Department of Military Sciences went up against M3.”
“No, General,” she replied coldly. “You were. And now Howard Shelton is dead. He can neither explain his actions nor speak to his motives. There was no due process. There was not even the slightest attempt to allow him to offer any other version of what happened. Instead we have an after-action report written by the man who killed him. With other reports filed by that man’s team. All biased, all of them in lockstep with an agreed-upon agenda.”
“That’s hardly—”
The president cut him off. “There were three people running Majestic Three?”
“Yes, Mr. President. Three governors,” said VanOwen. “The second man, Alfred Bonetti, was also executed by Captain Ledger and his DMS goon squad. The third is a woman, Yuina Hoshino, and she’s in prison serving thirty to life.”
“Okay, okay,” said the president, “so maybe the bad apples are out of the basket. That’s fine, that’s okay. We can discuss them another time. Let’s see about putting some people we trust in charge of the program. We have people we can trust, right? We have the best people working for us. Get me a list of names, General. I want it on my desk this afternoon.”
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