“I don’t have any politics,” said Hoshino. “I don’t have any religion. Just science.”
“And yet you worked with Howard Shelton to build the T-craft that almost destroyed Beijing and Moscow and the capitals of countries that have anti-American agendas.”
“No,” said Hoshino. “That was Howard’s dream. He and his toady, Mr. Bones, closed me out of the T-craft program’s real aims.”
“So … you disapprove of what they tried to do?”
“Fear of a conqueror is one thing,” Hoshino said carefully, “however, to conquer the world—this world—would be to make enemies or, worse, fearful slaves, of eight billion people. It would end open warfare, but it would not end war.”
“Why not?”
“Because in the face of overwhelming military force, the weaker side will fight back using guerrilla tactics. These tactics are why we have not beaten ISIL, why America has failed to defeat the Taliban or al-Qaeda. It was hard enough in the pre-Internet days to beat a guerrilla resistance; now it is impossible. The army becomes a virtual one, connected through e-mails and the Internet. Their weapons become man-portable rocket launchers, drones, and other small but potent weapons. With a conquest of China and Russia, and the resulting de facto subjugation of all other military powers, you would create a network of nuclear states that also have access to advanced biological weaponry. You could not defeat that kind of opposition even with a fleet of T-craft. It would be the equivalent of fighting disease-carrying mosquitoes with carpet-bombing. The weapons you can bring to bear are too large for targets so small and maneuverable.”
“Did you ever say as much to Howard Shelton?”
“I tried, but he was never interested.”
“And yet you helped him build the T-craft…,” prompted VanOwen.
“We all wanted the craft built. We had different reasons, as it turned out.”
VanOwen leaned forward. “What was your reason?”
“Power.”
“Power?”
“Yes. To use the T-craft as this generation’s ultra-advanced reconnaissance aircraft. Just as the Lockheed U-2 was the breakout technology of its day, and later supplanted by the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, and so on, the T-craft would give us another big jump forward.”
“Only that?” asked VanOwen with a crafty smile.
“That, and to provide the next generation of stealth fighters and bombers. However, we were not the only country actively developing T-craft. Russia, China, North Korea, Japan, Great Britain, France, Brazil … there are—or maybe were—similar programs around the world. We were closer, though. We solved the problems they could not solve.”
“The biomechanical interface?”
Hoshino nodded. “Without that, every engine exploded upon firing.”
VanOwen’s smile lingered. “In your estimation, how close were the other countries to solving that same problem?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“Maybe five years? Possibly less.”
“A lot of that time burned off,” observed VanOwen.
Hoshino said nothing.
VanOwen picked up the first of the two sheets of paper. “This is a presidential order, endorsed by the directors of Homeland Security and National Security, and countersigned by the attorney general. It effectively ends your status as a citizen and orders that you be sent to a special facility so remote that it has no name, appears on no map, and none of the prisoners who have gone there have ever returned. Not one.”
The blood in Hoshino’s veins turned to icy slush and she felt vomit burn in the back of her throat.
VanOwen picked up the second sheet. “This is a special executive order that includes a pardon for all past crimes and will effectively seal any legal matters involving you. Neither paper has yet been signed by the president.”
“I … I…,” began Hoshino, but her mouth had gone too dry to speak.
VanOwen stood up and walked around her desk. She was tall and lithe and beautiful, and it made Hoshino feel small and breakable. The woman sat on the edge of the desk, one leg dangling as she swung it back and forth.
“The president of the United States is frequently referred to as the most powerful man on Earth,” she said quietly. “He gets that nickname because of the financial and military power he wields. It’s my job to make sure that he truly is the most powerful man. I want this to become clear to everyone else in the world. I want it to become clear to the people of this country. We are not looking to use T-craft to start a war. What we want is for the rest of the world to know that the age of nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction is at an end, and a new age has begun. You, Dr. Hoshino, can help this president earn his place in history as the greatest American president since Washington. Tell me now … which of these papers should I send to the president for his signature, and which should I run through the shredder?”
INTERLUDE SIX
THE GREEN CAVES
BELOW TUVALU, POLYNESIA
SIX YEARS AGO
Dr. Marguerite Beaufort crouched in the dark and watched the snakes disappear, one by one, through a crack in the wall. Ten of them at least, and likely more that she had not seen. The soft rasp of their sinewy bodies was the only sound in the cave except for a distant slow drip of water. Work lights were strung on wires and she had a strong LED light on her metal hard hat, but the cavern was so vast that the darkness seemed to devour the illumination with rapacious hunger. The walls were slick with moisture and there was a faint rotten-egg stink of sulfur in the damp air.
“What the hell?” cried her assistant, Carlton Wrigley, known as Rig, a gnomelike graduate student who looked like he belonged on someone’s lawn, or maybe in one of the lower-income Hobbit holes. “Hey, where are they going?”
At the sound of Rig’s voice, the last of the snakes paused and turned its head toward them. There, frozen in the stark glow, Marguerite could see the glassy markings more clearly, and it startled her. Instead of true markings, they almost appeared to be flecks of Lemurian quartz embedded in its skin. That, of course, made no sense at all. Partly because the snakes all had them, and none of them looked to have been injured by some rockfall; and partly because the placement of the chips was orderly. Like something natural instead of accidental. And it would also be the greatest find so far in an otherwise disappointing dig, because the only green quartz they’d found were fragments left behind by some unknown miners in the distant past. For weeks now Marguerite had been trying to figure out the best way to tell Valen and his friend Ari that they were likely wasting their money. Wrangling snakes with shiny green markings was not what she was paid to do.
“What kind of snakes are they, Doc? Think they’re poisonous?”
“I don’t know, but don’t touch them.”
“As if.”
The snake studied her with its dark eyes, and its tongue flicked out as if it could understand her through what it tasted on the still air. As if it took secrets from her that she did not want to share. Then it turned and slithered after the others and was gone.
“Jee-zus,” breathed Rig. “Where do you think they went? You think there’s a nest back there? I thought the walls down here were supposed to be solid. That’s what Dr. Svoboda said, right?”
George Svoboda was a top geologist at the University of Chicago.
“That’s what we were told,” she replied, but there was as much doubt in her voice as his. She touched the wall. “This is strange, Rig. I don’t remember seeing these cracks before. Do you?”
She told Rig to set up a portable light stand topped by a wide LED panel. He turned it on and angled the panel so that the light etched every bump and crack. Marguerite stepped toward the wall and used her fingertips to trace a crack that ran crookedly from the rocky ceiling to the stony floor. A dozen smaller cracks to her left were where the snakes had vanished; but this one was different. Not only because it was much longer, but because there the edges were crusted with some kind
of plant life. A kind of moss with unusually long stalks and bulbous heads flecked with dots of red.
“Moss?” she murmured.
“That’s weird,” said Rig. “I didn’t see any moss there yesterday.”
He was right, but Marguerite didn’t say so. The cracks and the vegetation were new. It was odd-looking, too. She’d seen all kinds of plant life in the various sites where her career had taken her. Weeds, fungi, molds, and thousands of other forms, but none exactly like this. In truth, this moss looked more like sea anemones, and when she touched it with her gloved fingertip the bulbous ends recoiled.
Marguerite snatched her hand back.
“Holy shit, Doc,” gasped Rig, his voice jumping an octave in alarm. “Did that stuff just move?”
She cleared her throat and forced herself to sound calm. “Yes. Some plants are touch reactive.”
“Yeah, sure, a Venus flytrap maybe, but … crap, Doc … moss? That’s freaky stuff right there.”
Yes, it is, she thought. Then she caught a brief glimpse of something inside the lichen. No, past it, deeper inside the cleft. She took a small but powerful penlight from her pocket and directed the beam inside.
She froze, staring, not believing what she was seeing. Sweat burst from her pores and ran down into her eyes, and her mouth, despite the humidity in the cave, went completely dry.
“Rig…,” she said very carefully, “go get Dr. Svoboda. Valen, too.”
“What is it? What did you see?”
“Get them,” she said. “Right now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE WAREHOUSE
DMS FIELD OFFICE
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
8:12 P.M.
Church finally called twenty minutes shy of me actually climbing the goddamn wall. I’d long since said a tipsy goodnight to Top and Bunny, and was stretched out on a lumpy bed in one of the guest rooms used for visiting staff. I was uncomfortable, angry, drunk, confused, and scared in equal amounts. Ghost was hogging most of the square footage of the mattress. When my cell phone rang with the Darth Vader ring tone I’d set for calls from Church, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I punched the button. “What do we know?”
“Not enough,” said Church calmly. “Auntie is on her way to D.C. and will begin pushing at her network first thing in the morning. From what she’s been able to determine through phone calls, though, if there is something official in the works against you, no one outside of the Oval Office seems to know what it is.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, feet flat on the cold, polished concrete floor. “Well … shit. Do we have any guesses at least?”
“None that will make you happy, I’m afraid. There’s been some talk about rescinding the DMS charter—”
I snorted. “Haven’t they tried that like a dozen times?”
“Seven times,” corrected Church. “However, Captain, I can’t impress upon you enough that things are not ‘politics as usual’ in Washington, and they haven’t been for some time. The old checks and balances are crumbling in what has become an increasingly obvious smash-and-grab phase. Trust, as a concept, is broken, and there is a lot of career anxiety because we’ve moved so far away from a merit-based hierarchy in the important departments.”
“Was it ever an actual meritocracy?” I asked sourly.
“More than you might think. At least in the critical departments concerned with intelligence and national security.”
“Not now, though,” I suggested.
“Not now,” he agreed. “Positions of power are being given out as payment for favors more than I’ve ever seen, and I have been involved in American politics for a very long time.”
“Yeah, exactly how long?” I asked.
Church didn’t take the bait. He never does. “It is entirely possible, according to Linden Brierley, that the arrest order was given as a test.”
“To test what?”
“Us,” he said. “Me. Brierley seems to think that this may have been done to see how I would react. To see how much power the DMS actually has.”
Ghost shifted around and laid his head on my thigh in a “pet me now” move. I scratched his head and his eyes immediately began to drift shut. “Why play that game?” I asked.
“You know the rumors, Captain,” said Church. “People think I have dirt on every power player, from junior senators all the way to the president. The knowledge that MindReader exists has fueled those beliefs, which is why there is such a mania to keep certain kinds of knowledge off of the Net, out of e-mails, and out of computer files.”
“Well, yeah,” I said, “guess I kind of believe that, too.”
Church sighed, sounding unutterably weary. “Captain, if I was a master blackmailer, could anyone have betrayed us like they have?”
I said nothing and stared up at the uninformative wall across from the narrow bed. There was a framed painting of bulrushes along a riverbank. Pretty enough, in a bland and boring kind of way.
“It may surprise you,” he said, “but I am not a sorcerer, nor am I omniscient. I’m a shooter turned upper management who is trying very hard to keep this country and this planet from burning down. Manipulating the government through blackmail would require far more time than I can spare from actually fighting the kinds of threats that come our way every day.”
“Ah,” I said, feeling a bit like an immature ass. “But what do we do if POTUS rescinds our charter? Or changes it? Or suddenly decides that we’re all criminals or traitors or whatever? What then? Do we let them put black bags over our heads and waltz us off to some black site? Do we go into open rebellion?”
“None of those choices is acceptable,” said Church.
“Then why not dig up dirt on these ass-clowns? Why not tear the whole thing down and…”
I trailed off because I heard what I was saying. Church knew that I’d gotten there, too. He was silent, waiting.
“No,” I said at last. “I get it. Tear it down and we leave ourselves temporarily vulnerable. We’d be a big, tough gazelle with a limp. There are too many predators just waiting for that moment when we stumble.”
“And if that happens…?” he asked gently.
“The rest of the predators are free to take the whole herd.”
We sat in silence for a few moments.
“So,” I said, “now what? How do we respond to the arrest thing? Top and I kicked the shit out of a bunch of Secret Service agents—”
“—and no paperwork has been filed on it,” said Church. “There are no witnesses and no official report. Brierley’s people inside the Secret Service believe the pickup was ordered on a whim or as a test, but it was illegal. It was an attempt to make us do something actionable.”
“Which I did.”
“Not in a way useful to them. They needed you to resist and possibly cause some injuries while also being taken into custody. That latter part was the way they could reverse-engineer justification for the actual pickup. Without having you in custody, they had no play left, and now Aunt Sallie has spread the word to enough people that there’s no way for them to fabricate a plausible chain of cause and effect that works for them. It’s a fumble, and too many people know it. It’s likely you would have gone to a black interrogation site and either been held as leverage over me, or been worked over until you gave them something they could use.”
“Yeah, well, sorry to spoil their plans,” I said.
“Quite frankly, I’m rather pleased with how it turned out. It’s very informative.”
“Okay,” I said, “so what now? Shouldn’t we be filing fifty kinds of formal charges?”
“That’s one way to go, Captain,” said Church, “but the fact that there are no records of this makes it the word of a covert group against that of the current administration. Remember, Captain, we don’t officially exist, at least as far as the public knows. If we file formal charges, our useful anonymity ends, and there would be consequences to that.”
He had a damn point. B
ecause of betrayal from within, and hacking of the older generation of MindReader, the DMS had hit some serious heavy weather. The biggest problem was the Kill Switch case, where Harcourt Bolton, Sr. used a mind-control device to literally take over the actions of several DMS agents, including Top, Bunny, and me. While being suborned by this “mind-walking,” we did some truly awful things. A lot of innocent people died and there was video footage of one bloodbath on the docks in Oceanside, California. Doesn’t matter that we were all wearing balaclavas that hid most of our faces. Doesn’t matter that Bug used MindReader to go in and mess with the images on those videos. There are people in the government who know, or at least suspect, that it was our fingers on the triggers.
“If we go after them,” I said, “they bury us with Kill Switch.”
“And other things, yes,” said Church. “They don’t need to prove anything. All they need to do is put us in the spotlight and wait for the public to demand our heads on pikes. If that happens, Captain, the DMS is effectively dead, which means that we will be cleared off the battlefield at a time when we are very much needed.”
“Shit.”
“It frequently astounds and disappoints me when I witness the lengths some people will go to to get in the way of their own conscience or sense of duty.”
“So, do we just forgive and forget?”
“Did I say that?” When I did not answer, he said, “I seldom forgive, Captain; and I never forget.”
“Then what’s our play?”
I could hear him crunching on a cookie. If the world was actually burning and there were missiles inbound to where he sat, the man would pause for a vanilla wafer.
“Aunt Sallie will address matters in Washington,” he said. “I want you to go back to San Diego. Take a week off. Maybe have your brother and his family come out for a visit.”
“Why?” I asked suspiciously. “Are they in danger out here?”
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