by Greg Bear
Rebecca met the eyes of the guard and they exchanged a look. The guard knelt behind the bar. He touched stainless steel canister and jerked back his hand.
"Hot," he said.
Six other canisters waited their turn, lined up to the left side of the black-draped bar.
"It's just Coke," the female bartender insisted once more, face pinched. So many tips just lined up and waiting.
The catering supervisor ran with short, quick steps from the rear of the hall—like a small, unhappy dog—and stood aside, chin in hand, as the male bartender filled him in.
The supervisor looked provoked. "There can't possibly be a problem," he announced. "All our supplies go through half a dozen security checkpoints. This is the most secure place in Los Angeles."
The canisters had frosted over—all seven of them.
Rebecca saw it happen.
Cycling.
Had she been a spaniel, she would have gone on point. The guard had the same reaction—not ESP, just a prickle of cop sense.
She stood beside the guard and said in a low voice, "Let's clear the hall."
The catering supervisor listened in dismay and was about to pitch a fit, but the guard nodded agreement with Rebecca and held up a thick strong brown hand—right in the supervisor's face.
Then he pressed a red button on his old-fashioned lapel mike.
"Shit!" the supervisor shouted, throwing up his arms.
An alarm sounded throughout the building.
A loud, female robo-voice echoed under the steel beam roof. "This is an emergency. Leave all personal belongings and evacuate the convention center immediately. Proceed to any exit marked by a flashing green light. Gather at staging areas designated by mall security and await—"
"Get out of here," the guard said to the bartenders and wait staff. Looking pointedly at Rebecca, he added, "You too. Everybody."
The female bartender squeaked "What the fuck?" and then broke into a run. The catering supervisor held his ground, his jaw muscles practically convulsing.
Rebecca swiveled to face the booth and Stan and the five men waiting for her talk. She gestured to Stan—an emphatic, double-handed wave.
"Clear out!" she called, then ran for the far exit.
Her left pump wobbled and the heel snapped.
She kept running.
Something intense going on in those cylinders. Probably nothing. Just Coke. But endothermic, exothermic.
Her broken heel and something like instinct jigged her left and she got the black LAPD bomb truck between her and the bar.
She remembered a cat she had seen as a child, hunkering wide-eyed in the middle of a dirt road just before it was run over by a taxi. Not enough time. A kind of curious, helpless calm.
Rebecca got down on her knees and then fell on the shiny concrete floor, the edge of red carpet.
She drew her arm over her face.
Sound.
No other word for it.
It came as a rocky wall, bigger and hotter than she could have imagined. The windows and meeting rooms and the roof above them lifted and vanished in a gray pall of smoke pierced by white flame.
The big black truck parted the blast wave.
The searing hand of a very bad thing scooped her up and flipped her over like a burger. People, tables, booths to either side simply whisked away.
The last thing Rebecca Rose remembered, before the man with the ginger hair came back to find her, was that huge truck and three or four men in black uniforms flying and twisting over her head.
The truck bent in the middle and fell on her.
Ribs snapped like sticks under a boot.
The pain was unbelievable.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nathaniel felt the concrete dust sift and settle on his head and shoulders, cake around his eyes. This time he imagined nothing. It had happened for real, almost exactly as he had pictured it—including the puffs from the shattered atrium windows.
Gray and black people rushed past, trying to escape the falling chunks, the wailing sirens and automatic alarm voices.
Nathaniel's senses jammed with observations, like a flood under a bridge carrying sharp, spiky logs. The flood keyed into his innate sense of self-preservation—so many fright bells ringing.
As he walked under the twisted beams, feet crunching through diamonds of glass—and as he climbed the groaning, shuddering escalator and the cracked concrete steps, counting each step, he again felt a surge of deep somatic fear—this time warning against the sharp draining of his physical and mental energy, like a dying battery—as well as the noise and the darkness.
All that imagining had worn him down and might have cost him what needed to stay alive.
I can't stop thinking. There won't be enough blood sugar left to keep my heart pumping.
The roof over the main exhibit hall had collapsed. Fire and rescue teams pushed through the fog of smoke and dust. Nobody was interested in keeping people out. Cordons had not yet been established.
Nathaniel walked steadily toward the center of the chaos. He could see the causal knots loosen, then tighten again. All of it made weird sense. His body screamed outrage that he would have to experience everything awful twice from now on.
But he knew who had done this. He knew who was ultimately responsible.
The Quiet Man—or Jones, if that was possible—had anticipated problems and assigned Nathaniel a task: to pass along something important. He had done so.
But all of it would be futile unless Rebecca Rose was still alive.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rebecca couldn't take a deep breath without something driving into her chest, like a belt of nails cinched tight.
Water underneath.
Dark behind, light in front.
She had somehow crawled into a cave and got stuck.
Awful noisy, for a cave. Too confused.
She tried to open her eyes but got grit in them, and then keeping them shut hurt as well.
People were banging and turning on big motors and there was lots of yelling and even screaming.
At first, she could not bring her hands up to her face to rub her eyes. She kept wriggling. The scariest noise of all was the sound of metal above groaning like a huge dog.
The belt cinched tighter and she gasped.
All right. She was not getting out of this place—cave or whatever—without assistance. She needed to pull her arm around and push it forward. Someone at the mouth of the cave might see her fingers twitching—they must be close, she could see light.
More motors, engines, very big, and a banshee screech of cut metal. She imagined circular saw blades and sparks flying and then it struck her this couldn't be a cave. Her mind just couldn't fix on where she was, where she had been before, how she had gotten into this fix.
The water was warming. She smelled smoke. A lot of smoke and heat. Okay, definitely not a cave—a roof had collapsed. She had been in her office or maybe her hotel room. She had been in the gym, strapping on her new pumps, the ones that had been comfortable at first, but then the soles had squeaked and the heel had come loose and she had walked in circles to the left . . .
Los Angeles. She was on the west coast.
Earthquake seemed likely. The floor was still trembling. Big earthquake and a collapsed building. Concrete dust. Heat from a fire.
Periglas. The executive officer of the Robert Heinlein. He had looked nervous, seeing her. Maybe we shouldn't all be in the same place.
Why had he said that? Had he said that?
They had been in the food court of the convention center. She had seen him there for just a few minutes, touched his hand, moved on . . .
Ended up here.
Flat as a bug.
No. They had got together for dinner. A late dinner. She had placed a call to the adoption center. Everything was on track. She had told Periglas about her wish to adopt—she had spoken of it while they were in bed.
He had looked at her and smiled.
&n
bsp; Ah, Christ, she thought. Stupid, stupid!
A hideous noise very close vibrated everything and made her teeth hurt.
BLAM—and then the sound of a saw cutting through rebar. Somewhere, they were using a CIRT pounder to blast a hole through concrete with shotgun shells for hammers. What did CIRT mean?
She couldn't remember.
Controller Impact Rescue Tool.
"Atta girl," she whispered. "Nine thousand acronyms in the naked city. This is just one."
Someone was in worse trouble than she was.
The mass above her lifted a few fractions of an inch, and she could push her arm around and touch her nose, pressed into the concrete, water up one nostril.
She managed to pry open one eye and wipe it with a finger, enough to get the big chunks of grit off her lower lid. Somehow she dipped a finger in the flowing water and washed that eye, not much improvement, but now she could look out to the light and see smoke-hazy shapes moving.
All right.
What next?
Voices over the noise. Someone calling, "Anybody down there? If you can't talk, try to cough. We know it's tough. We're working."
Mary, I know you're out there waiting for me to come and help make a home.
God, I hate bombs.
Okay then. It had been a bomb—a big one. A gigantic Coke bomb, seven cans full, maybe more, first hot, then cold, whatever that meant. She had never heard of anything like it. Maybe she was still squashing memories and images together. A visit to the no-host bar, a peek behind: frost and fire.
"Give us a sign!"
"I'm down here!" she moaned. "Get this shit off of me."
The weight lifted another inch and she turned her head to look straight out at the triangle of light. Where she could manage to focus, she saw a mound of white girders, parts burned gray, and chunks of stuff all different colors.
Red.
Lots of red.
Maybe she had wiped blood and not water on her eye.
Then a different shade of red, blurry and smaller, and below it, a face.
"I know you," said a man's voice, and she saw a well-meaning smile. "You're Rebecca. Say something, Rebecca."
"Ten, nine, eight, seven . . ." She imagined herself walking backward down the steps, counting, on her way out of the Los Angeles Convention center, about to go home.
"That's it. Keep talking. We're going to get this whopping big truck off of you."
"Truck?"
She remembered more. Flying truck.
The face went away and came back.
Ginger hair, tan coat.
"I know you," she said. "Your name is Trace. Nathaniel Trace."
"Sorry to have frightened you earlier. I'd like to have another word with you, Rebecca. If that's all right. Not right now, but when . . . you're free."
"Very funny."
Trace's smile was brilliant. He was not an ugly man, even with those scars.
"They're going to get you out," he said. "I see it happening. We'll talk soon."
The scarred face under the ginger hair pulled back and away. The giant blades of a fork lift moved slowly to within six or eight inches of her head. The blades lifted. Someone kicked a wooden block into the growing gap. The blades lifted again. Stuff shifted. The whole thing on top of her screamed and groaned, as if the big old black truck was still alive but trying to die.
Bomb truck.
Another groan, another wooden block, and then scraping cinder blocks. A fireman in a bright yellow rubber coat, face coated with soot, pushed between the blocks and got right up next to her.
They could have kissed.
"I hate bombs," she said.
"Me too, beautiful," he said. "Can you move your legs? Move your legs for me, honey."
She wanted to cry, that sounded so wonderful. Someone still cared. "I'll try."
"There's a lot of blood down here. Are you bleeding?"
"I don't know. I think I busted some ribs."
"You sound strong. Couple of more heaves, then we'll get it stable and I'll come back for you."
"Don't leave!"
The fireman winked and pulled out. Her foot felt like it was on fire. She tried to move her legs and could not. Other firemen moved in and more blocks were positioned.
In a compartment directly over her head, something big and hard fell with a nauseating clang followed by a prolonged, metallic fingernail screech. Rebecca tried not to think how many tons, where it might be balanced, how a robot in its lair—or a bomb tech's broken body—could suddenly lurch and upset the entire balance.
There was commotion beyond the triangle of light. Boots thumped past, raising puffs of acrid gray dust. She blinked rapidly, trying to focus. The bottom curve of a huge tire rolled by, followed by another, and another.
Big truck. Big crane. That made her feel better. How in hell could they get it in through all the debris?
Let them do their work.
She realized she had tensed all over, trying to keep the weight from closing in. That wasn't helpful. The tension of a tiny, trapped blob of protoplasm wasn't going to make any difference.
She relaxed, closed her eyes, let out her breath in a jagged sigh.
It was going to be a long night.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Washington, D.C.
Alicia Kunsler's armored limo pulled away from Reagan National and took an unexpected direction—to Dulles.
William sat beside her in the backseat, watching the Beltway give way to fields and forest land. He knew she had other things on her mind and had met him at the airport to save time.
The news from Spider/Argus had cast a pall. Kunsler had filled him in a little—just enough to both depress him and pique curiosity.
"I had a call yesterday from deputy director Scholes, west coast," she said. "He tells me they have reliable intel that Nabokov is in bed with the enemy. He's playing us. They're working under the assumption that the mission is compromised."
William half closed his eyes and both snorted and shivered. His shoulders seemed to shrug this off, and then he straightened in the seat and stared out the window.
"Credible?" he asked.
"No. Hell, I don't know—we haven't heard anything since Thursday. But the Bureau has two heads, and right now, Alameda is feeling threatened—low men on the funding pole. Scholes is working hard to squash me. This could be his best hammer yet."
"Maybe you should let me know who it is we're trying to save," William said.
"Not relevant."
"If I know him—"
"Not relevant, Agent Griffin. The less you know, the safer your career. If I go down, I can cut you loose with minimal damage."
"After all of this, why would Nabokov give in to Price?" William asked. "What's their theory?"
"They feel the Saudis are working hard to reverse the Arabian revolution—and they're looking for a U.S. connection. A point of leverage. Bureau East has been working on that assumption for a year, against Alameda's steadfast resistance—but now they've flipped. They agree, but they're playing it against us. Price has a long relationship with the royal family. Nabokov is a Muslim."
"Which is how he got into Talos in the first place."
"Yeah. Scholes thinks they've turned him," Kunsler said. "His thinking is clouded, to say the least—Muslim equals traitor. Unfortunately, Scholes has political cover with a senior senator who went to Harvard with the AG, who gets along very well with the Israeli lobby and who, incidentally, hates Muslims—in private, of course. Fortunately, Spider/Argus is still on our side, and they have a lot of influence. We need Nabokov's information—now. We're trying to figure a workaround. Maybe two."
Rain dotted the thick glass. The limo rumbled and hissed over the wet roadway.
Kunsler broke the quiet. "Now listen close. There's something else bad—but also good. You worked with Rebecca Rose, right?"
"I did," William said. "What about her?"
"She survived the convention center bombing."
"Jesus!" William said, with a blunt nerve buzz of genuine shock.
"Two hundred others didn't. I'll be meeting her tomorrow in LA."
William remembered his last days at the FBI Academy in Quantico, coming into the trainee lounge and watching on TV the Washington state blast that had mortally wounded his father. Rebecca Rose had been there, as well, and survived.
He had met her on that case—and they had joined the group that had traveled to Mecca. Everything seemed to be orbiting around the Middle East yet again.
He didn't like that one bit.
He kept his voice flat. "How is she?"
His tone didn't fool Kunsler. "Light concussion. Cracked ribs. Sprained ankle. I'm delivering her new orders—straight from the president. And not without qualms, even though that will chap Scholes's ass—which is always fun. This mess is getting thick as pea soup. But there's nothing we can do until we retrieve Nabokov."
"Give her my regards," William said.
"Don't be stupid," Kunsler said. "Why should I know you from Adam? You're just a lowly agent slogging along with a losing team. The team that's close to being out of a job."
William looked chagrined.
"What do you know about Little Jamey?" she asked.
"Only what was in the news," he said.
Little Jamey Trues was the son of Reggie Trues, Special Agent in Charge of the El Paso Division of the FBI. He had been arrested and charged with first degree murder in Lion City, Texas. He had shot his best friend, the son of Lion City's mayor, with a small pistol, in the friend's bedroom. Both boys had been thirteen at the time.
The mayor was a good friend of Axel Price.
The shooting had been ruled an accident by both the Texas Rangers and the FBI, but the Lion County coroner's office had declared it premeditated homicide.
A Lion City jury of twelve older white men had convicted Little Jamey and sentenced him to death at the Walls Unit in Huntsville. Everybody in the agency had been shocked by the blatant miscarriage of justice—but were powerless to act. The federal government was on borrowed time in that part of Texas, many said. The U.S. of A. couldn't pay its bills.
Alaska, California, and Idaho were already talking seriously about breaking up into separate economic units—New Republics, they hoped to call themselves. The fate of an agent's adolescent son seemed a trivial lump in the awful stew.