We hashed it back and forth and, sadly, came up with a very long list. America doesn’t have as many friends as we like to think it does. And there are a lot of small groups that are not full-fledged national states that have been doing bad things with technology that can be easily transported. The God Machine I saw was frighteningly portable.
Church looked at his watch and stood. “I have to meet with doctors who I’ve asked to come here. In the meantime, I would greatly appreciate it if you would come up with a list of search arguments and give them to Bug and Nikki. If you’re right about this, Captain, and I believe you are, then there has to be a pattern out there. This is too big to have happened and been planned in a vacuum, even with people who are determined to keep it off the Net. No one is that clean or efficient. Someone somewhere will have made a mistake. Be exhaustive, and check in with Doc Holliday and Junie on this. In fact, Captain, I think you should go to Brooklyn to consult with them.”
Rudy and I stood. He said, “Then you don’t believe the attack on Washington was the purpose of this conspiracy?”
“You mean I don’t believe that ‘either,’ Doctor? No. To expand on Captain Ledger’s metaphor, I think this is a larger and shinier object of distraction. And, Captain, what you said about FEMA disturbs me greatly. After that event, when Hugo Vox was still believed to be on our side, he ran a scenario at his Terror Town facility, focusing on how a natural disaster could be used to maximize the effect of an attack while minimizing the likelihood of an efficient or effective federal response. If someone has developed a way to induce earthquakes, then as bad as D.C. is, there are much more dangerous targets. Here and abroad.”
“Like?”
“Like the Long Valley Caldera in California and Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming. Like the island of Manhattan. Like any of the nuclear power plants, the largest dams. It does not have to be bigger than Washington, Captain. If this process is as portable as it seems, they can play hit-and-run and wear us down like a pack of lions attacking an elephant. Persistence, elusiveness, and intelligence are their weapons. Our own size makes it difficult for us to respond. This is why terrorism has flourished, and why it is so often effective.”
With that he left.
Rudy and I stood in the doorway and watched him move down the hall like a man pushing through walls of solid lead.
“Joe,” said Rudy softly, “you know that he should have already thought of this.”
“He was on the same page,” I said.
“No. He was a step behind you. All of this with Auntie, with the DMS being persecuted by the president, Sam … Joe, aren’t you afraid that it’s made him lose more than a step getting to first base?”
Ghost pushed between us and whined a little.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
6800 BLOCK OF WEMBERLY WAY
MCLEAN, VIRGINIA
Jennifer VanOwen drove to McLean to meet her employer. It was only the third time they had ever met and VanOwen was nervous. Prying eyes were everywhere, especially in this era of cell phone cameras and social media.
Even so, it was a quiet street and the house had been continually occupied for years by a family whose members actually worked for the U.S. government. That they worked for another government as well was a deeply buried secret, one that had been protected since the early 1980s.
While she was away from D.C., carefully selected people from her employer’s organization would seed eyewitness accounts of her being here or there, and always having just left. Photos taken earlier would have their digital time stamp altered and would be sent to the news to keep the story of Hurricane VanOwen going. Those same people fed data to VanOwen so she would know where she was supposed to have been.
As she pulled into the short driveway, the garage door rolled up to let her pull inside. There was no light inside the garage, and no one visible.
She killed the engine and waited. She was not allowed to get out of the car and had never been inside the house. Several minutes passed before a piece of shadow inside the garage detached itself from the blackness and moved toward her. VanOwen opened her car door and the dome light sketched the outline of a woman dressed in a military camouflage uniform with the twin bars of a captain. The face beneath the billed cap was familiar. Pretty, stern, expectant.
“And…?” said the woman.
“I got it all,” VanOwen told her.
“Show me.”
VanOwen popped the trunk, got out, and walked around to stand beside her employer. VanOwen opened the case.
“Excellent.”
“I have to get back to D.C.,” said VanOwen. “I’ll be missed soon.”
“Yes,” said the woman, “you will.”
VanOwen heard the faint metallic click behind her but did not turn fast enough to see what it was before the knob on the end of a collapsible spring-steel fighting stick struck her at the base of the skull. The blade was angled so precisely that pieces of her shattered skull severed the brain stem and revoked all nerve conduction in a microsecond. She was dead before she knew that it was even a possibility. The next six blows were unnecessary and yet delivered with as much force and precision as the first. Her body slumped, and the other woman caught it, steadied it, and then leaned it forward so that VanOwen’s upper torso leaned into the trunk. The woman removed the metal case, set it down, and then hoisted VanOwen into the back with a grunt. VanOwen was not a large woman and she fit easily.
The woman used VanOwen’s skirt hem to wipe blood and hair from the fighting stick, then tapped the knob on the floor to reverse the telescoping weapon down to a six-inch tube. Very efficient. The weapon went back into her purse. She closed the trunk, picked up the case, and walked into the house. She made a single call on a disposable cell phone.
“Where are you?”
“Heading back to my hotel,” said Valen Oruraka.
“Wait for me there,” said Gadyuka, and hung up. Ten minutes later a woman who looked nothing at all like a Marine Corps captain drove toward Maryland in a white Camry. No one took any note of her at all.
It would be days before the smell emanating from the garage spurred a curious letter carrier to make a 9-1-1 call.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
They call it standing vigil.
Grandiose word for “waiting.” I kept hoping that it wasn’t a deathwatch, but that’s how it felt. Rudy and I had made our lists of keywords and shared them with the teams back at the Hangar. So, first there’s panic and hurry, and then there’s waiting.
Top and Bunny showed up, looking like they’d both been dragged down flights of stairs by their heels. We hugged and slapped backs—they didn’t know how bad mine was until I nearly fainted in Bunny’s embrace. Then we sat. And waited.
I still wore the same dirty, stained, and torn clothes I’d put on that morning. Bunny went out to the car and brought in our suitcases and we took turns getting cleaned up in the doctors’ lounge. More of Church’s influence.
Bunny wore a sleeveless Under Armour tank and board shorts; Top had on an ancient Atlanta Falcons sweatshirt over jeans. I came back wearing a floral-print Hawaiian shirt and an ancient but comfortable pair of Levi’s. The last sets of clean clothes we had after our trip out here were stuff more appropriate to the beaches of San Diego. Only Rudy was different, dressed in a quiet dark suit and polished shoes.
I brought a bag of treats for Ghost, who ate one but then sat looking at the closed door of Auntie’s room.
We continued our vigil. Nobody bothered us. There were empty chairs around us, but after taking a look at the four men and the big dog, other folks decided they’d rather sit anywhere else. Or stand. Guess we gave off a vibe.
We talked to Bug and Doc Holliday because Top and Bunny had tweaks to our keyword list. We hashed out my theory. Then Bug told us about the Speaker’s family and what was written on the wall. Deep Silence.
“The hell do you think that me
ans?” asked Bunny.
No one had a theory that covered that phrase, though something tickled at the back of my mind. Something I could not see clearly enough to understand. Silence. Deep and profound silence. Yeah, there was something there, but the harder I tried to catch a glimpse of it, the more elusive it became. Exhaustion, pain, and pain meds were not helping.
Hours passed.
The body count on the news was close to thirteen hundred. Thousands more hurt, and scores missing and unaccounted for. Experts kept insisting that this wasn’t the worst natural disaster in the United States, but other experts refuted it. Thousands died in the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. This was the second worst in U.S. history, they insisted. This was the worst of the twenty-first century in the U.S. It was the worst East Coast quake, both in terms of deaths and damage. They kept finding new ways to frame it. Some experts were giving predictions for what the final butcher’s bill would be. Others were floating dollar amounts for destruction.
“Bunch of damn ghouls,” muttered Bunny.
No one disputed him.
Church joined us and told me that Junie was flying to Brooklyn to bring FreeTech’s mojo to bear. My heart did a small skip and jump, though I wondered why she hadn’t called me directly. When I looked at my phone I saw that the screen was busted and dark.
“Was working earlier,” I said pointlessly, and could not actually remember if that was true or not. I was so goddamn tired.
“Bug is using MindReader and Calpurnia to help facilitate legitimate rescue and support services,” said Church. “He’s also assigned Nikki to hunt down and destroy any fake donation sites that pop up.”
“Thank God,” said Rudy. That was a pet peeve of Rudy’s and Bug’s. They hated when people used catastrophes to scam good-hearted people who tried to help. With MindReader, Bug was not only able to identify bad guys and return the donations to the donors, he also outed the perps to the FBI and did a few other nasty things. Not sure of the details, but I’ve heard that these scam artists suddenly had very, very unsavory search histories on their computers that they were unable to delete. So sad.
I went through every detail of what happened, and the four of them listened. Top dismantled a ham sandwich and fed it in bits to Ghost as I spoke.
“Designer earthquakes?” said Bunny. “That’s weird, even for us, isn’t it?”
“We can never be certain where the ceiling is when it comes to malevolent use of technology,” observed Church. “Science is evolving faster than our ability to predict its growth.”
My earbud suddenly came to life, and it was Bug. “Cowboy, is the Big Man with you? If so, tell him to log in to this channel.”
We all tapped our earbuds to get onto the same call.
“Talk to us, Bug,” said Church.
“Something’s happening, and it’s bad,” said Bug. “There are tons of cell phone videos showing up on social media and the news. And, Cowboy, it’s all you and Aunt Sallie. Ghost, too. All three of you beating the shit out of a bunch of unarmed civilians.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
COURTYARD BY MARRIOTT—NEW CARROLLTON
LANDOVER, MARYLAND
When he heard the knock, Valen fairly leapt to his feet and hurried across the room.
“Ari,” he cried as he opened the door, but then he stopped. It was not him. It was her.
Gadyuka pushed him inside and kicked the door shut.
“When did you last sweep the room?” she asked, but before he could answer she removed her own scanner and spent five minutes assuring herself that there were no active or passive listening devices. Only then did she shrug out of her coat, lock the door, and make a beeline to the vodka bottle, skipping the available glasses and taking a deep swig. Then she turned and leaned back against the desk, studying him with her cold, calculating eyes.
“Did everyone report in?” she asked.
“All but Ari. I haven’t heard from him yet.”
“Ari isn’t coming here.”
“What do you mean? Where did he go?”
Gadyuka took another, smaller drink, and set the bottle down. “Ari Kostas is dead.”
It took three full seconds for her words to make sense to Valen. “What…?”
“The other device exploded. He was killed instantly and a DMS field agent was sent to the hospital.”
Valen tried to speak, but could not. Instead he lurched to his feet, blundered past her, and ran for the bathroom.
* * *
Later, when he came out, his face tingling from washing after he’d thrown up, he slumped down on the edge of the bed. Gadyuka studied him like he was a display in a museum of oddities.
“You are a difficult man to understand,” she said. In his absence she’d gone to fetch ice, and now handed him a glass. He took a sip and his hand shook so badly the ice tinkled against his teeth. “You have worked so long, so hard, with such brilliance to bring us to this moment, and now that we’re so close we can taste it, you’re losing your nerve?”
“I’m not losing my nerve,” he spat, surprised by his own harshness. “I think I’m losing my goddamn mind.”
She began to say something but Valen cut her off.
“No. Don’t. I can’t bear any more of your political pep talks. I know that what we are doing will allow the New Soviet to exist. I know that if we carry it out to the end then we will have changed the world forever. I know that America will be both punished for old crimes and removed from the political equation. I know all that, Gadyuka. I know the math and I know the propaganda.”
“It’s not just propaganda,” she insisted, rising and taking the glass from his hands. She looked him in the eyes. “We are saving our country. What we are doing—what you are doing—is no different than what our partisans did to the Germans in World War Two. They blew up trains and factories and airfields, and not everyone who died was a Nazi. There has never been a war fought without civilian casualties. Not once in history.”
He sneered at her. “That’s hardly an argument in favor of what we are going to do next.”
“No, because what they did were half measures. Even the dropping of the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were half measures. The war was won. That was America threatening the world and forcing its way into becoming the global superpower and corrupt empire that it has become. They nearly dropped a bomb on Moscow at the end of the war. You know that to be true. If they knew we would obtain nuclear weapons technology as quickly as we did, they would have bombed us. They would have done worse to us than we are going to do to them. Much worse. They would have turned Russia into an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland.”
“How is that better? America will be uninhabitable when we’re done.”
“For how long? Three years, at the most? None of the survivors will have radiation sickness. There won’t be generations of genetic disorder and rampant cancers. They will bury their dead and, over time, they will become an agrarian culture and never again threaten the world with their nuclear arsenal. We will have not only pulled their fangs but given them no one left to hate. There will be no villain in this, Valen. Russia—the Novyy Sovetskiy—will offer unlimited help. Medical aid, cultural and agricultural aid. We will even offer to protect them against other countries that might seek to exploit their weakness.”
He walked to the far side of the room and stared out the window. “Words, Gadyuka. Pretty words to hide the ugliness of what we are doing. What we have done. What we are about to do.
“God almighty,” he breathed.
“Stop saying that,” she said.
Valen half turned. “What?”
“Lately you keep saying things like that. ‘My God,’ ‘God almighty.’ You don’t believe in God, Valen, and to use those phrases does nothing more than stick bamboo shoots under your fingernails. Stop it. You’re only hurting yourself.”
He could not meet her eyes, and after a moment turned back to the window, beyond which was a parking lot and nothing of interest. C
ertainly nothing he actually saw.
“Now,” she said, “we need to move. We’re done here. Let the Americans pick up the pieces in Washington. We have bigger fish to fry.”
When he did not move, she came over and stood behind him, then bent close and gently—ever so gently—kissed the back of his neck.
“History is calling to you, my love. Let’s go save the world.”
God help me, he thought.
And meant it.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Church commandeered an office for us to use, and we all hunkered down around his laptop to watch the news.
I was the news. There were feeds from six different cameras. None of them caught all of it, but each caught some, and I was there—smack-dab in the middle, beating the shit out of reporters, unarmed civilians, Secret Service agents, and cops. Auntie was in two of the videos. Ghost was in three.
The panic and the constant shuddering of the ground kept any of the videos from being crystal clear, and even when the networks froze an image and enhanced it, my face was a little blurry. But it was me and everyone knew it.
How did they know it was me?
Because my fucking name was right there on the screen.
Government Agent Joseph Ledger in Violent Attack
And …
Son of Baltimore Mayor Attacks Crowd
And …
Captain Joseph Ledger and Unnamed Woman
in Unprovoked Attack During Deadly Earthquake
Top Sims blew out his cheeks and sat heavily on the edge of the desk. Rudy groaned softly and put a hand on my shoulder.
Bunny said, “Well, now we’re in the shit.”
I said nothing.
“This is the gas dock all over again,” said Top.
“’Cept Joe’s not killing anyone,” countered Bunny, but it was a weak riposte.
“I’m not sure that will matter,” said Church. He glanced at me. “The fact that they identified you would be manageable. You were, after all, a Baltimore detective, and your father is in a high-profile job. You’ve been in the news before.”
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