Red, White, and Blood

by Christopher Farnsworth

  She knew this. She thought he needed her information and he’d be forced to dance to her steps to get it.

  Helen Holt was also dangerous. She’d nearly killed Cade—the scariest thing on the planet, as far as Zach was concerned—twice. She’d murdered dozens of people personally and God alone knew how many others with her plans. Zach had no doubt she already had a plan to turn everything to her advantage if he let her get up. If he let her out of this house, her body count would be his fault. Of course, he’d probably be the first victim, so he wouldn’t have to suffer the guilt for too long.

  Three years ago, he never would have shot an unarmed woman in the back. He would have fought, and maybe even killed, in self-defense as he had with Reyes downstairs. But he would have been incapable of a cold-blooded execution. Holt knew that about him. She depended on it now.

  But Zach was not the same person she’d met three years before. The torture he’d undergone at her order was only an introduction to much worse things. He’d survived them all. He had a great deal more faith in his own resources.

  And he had a much clearer idea of what would happen if he failed.

  “Without me,” she said, “you’ll never find him.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Zach said, and pulled the trigger twice.

  The shots hit her at the base of the skull, right above her scarf, one immediately after the next, sending hair and bone and skin flying.

  Helen Holt remained kneeling for a moment. Then her body responded to the abrupt halt in communications from her brain. Her muscles went slack and she pitched forward onto her face.

  Zach reached under the gore and hair to check her pulse. He waited a full minute.

  Nothing.

  Zach had expected to feel something more. He’d expected to feel something, anyway. Maybe tomorrow he’d be curled into a fetal ball and weeping, but at that moment, it was like he’d hung up on an obscene phone call: a slightly soiled feeling that it had taken him as long as it did.

  Whatever. He could work that out in therapy sometime. Helen Holt, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Homeland Security and the Shadow Company, was dead.

  Right now, he had to figure out what she was talking about, or Candace was dead, too.

  In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

  —Winston Churchill

  All right, Zach, he told himself. Time to prove how smart you are.

  The problem was, Reyes had had plenty of time to eliminate the clues.

  He went back downstairs and booted up Nolan’s computer. It was wiped clean, except for a few files that were obviously bait: bookmarks for Satanic websites; photos of the president defaced with cheap drawing software; violent BDSM porn. Everything else was gone. Maybe with the right programs and a couple days, he could find Nolan’s real files on the hard drive. But he doubted it. Moot point. He didn’t have that kind of time.

  He went through the mail neatly stacked on the desk. Nothing useful. Reyes had left just enough to give the impression of an especially tidy single guy who shredded his credit card bills every month.

  So no help there, either.

  Zach checked his watch. The president’s jet was probably leaving right about now. Cade was inside his coffin and dead to the world. Zach was on his own.

  From a purely tactical standpoint, it might have been a mistake to unleash his inner bad-ass hit man. The odds of Holt telling him something were surely better when she was breathing.

  Then again, she might have something to tell him after all.

  BACK UPSTAIRS, Zach searched Holt’s pockets until he found her keys and phone. The phone was passcode-locked. He couldn’t open any of the apps or see her call history. He was sure she’d probably encrypted her files as well. Again, he didn’t have the time to crack them.

  But he didn’t have to. He took the keys instead.

  Outside the house, he pressed the button and unlocked Holt’s SUV. It was big and black, with government plates. It dwarfed his little fuel-efficient sedan. Zach wondered why the bad guys always got the cool cars.

  On the dashboard, he found exactly what he wanted. A built-in navigation system. Leave it to Helen to include all the bells and whistles on her ride.

  Most people don’t realize a GPS system keeps a record of its locations even if the owner clears the history from the onboard menu. The information is embedded deep in the machine code of the chipset that regulates the simple timekeeping and synchronization functions that enable the system to pick up seamlessly as the car moves from one satellite area and map grid to another.

  Even someone as capable as Helen Holt probably wouldn’t think about the data stored in the chips.

  But Zach was exactly the sort of geek who did think of those things.

  He took out his multitool and had the nav system open and its circuit board out in under five minutes.

  It took longer to find the component for his pad that he needed in the chaos of his bag. But he did have the chip reader—it was tangled in an old set of earbuds—and he slotted it into his USB port. Then he clicked in the board.

  His universal reader program could decipher everything from languages to codes to lines of software programming. It gave him the GPS coordinates of every one of Holt’s destinations and plotted them on a map. Zach figured she wouldn’t fly—too many cameras, too many witnesses, and even the laughable TSA security might not let her bring her guns on the plane. It made far more sense for her and Reyes to drive everywhere.

  Zach recognized the Mansfield Civic Center’s address. She’d been ahead of them from the start.

  In fact, aside from the hotels she stayed at, there was only one place Holt had been that Zach and Cade had not.

  It was a residential address in Omaha, Nebraska.

  Zach wondered what all the antigovernment activists would do if they knew how much data it was possible for someone with the right clearances to gather. Someone like Zach didn’t need radio implants or bar code tattoos or whatever the latest paranoid fantasy about the New World Order was. Just by living, people left a Day-Glo trail right up to the places where they kept all their secrets.

  The address was in the property tax listings as belonging to a James Kilroy.

  The public databases gave him Kilroy’s age, driver’s license photo, occupation, income and criminal history. He was about as clean as any average citizen could get. Divorced. Running a little behind on his spousal support payments and his other bills, but that was hardly unique in this economy.

  It might have been a waste of time, but Zach didn’t have anything better. He had to go deeper.

  Using an encrypted satellite connection, Zach accessed the National Security Agency’s latest version of BASKETBALL, a planet-size net used to sift through every electronic communication floating in the air for key words like “bomb,” “terrorist” and “al-Qaeda.” A square mile of computing power under the ground at NSA headquarters in Maryland could pluck warning signals from a trillion bits of data from intercepted cell phone calls, e-mails, faxes and text messages.

  Zach gave those massive electronic brains an actual name and address. They spat back a response in seconds, almost as if saying the task was insultingly easy for them. The computer-assembled file included a précis of Kilroy’s activity on the Internet, his flight patterns as a pilot, his spending habits from his bank accounts and credit cards, and a diagram of his contacts and influences in life.

  It was this last chunk of data that drew Zach’s attention first. Software that analyzed human behavior had made enormous leaps and bounds in the past few years, courtesy of billions of taxpayer dollars after 9/11. It was believed that if computers could analyze and diagnose antisocial tendencies, then the authorities could step in before some kid in Modesto decided to play jihad.

  The diagram the computers assembled was basically an illustrated version of Kilroy’s social life over the past year. Zach didn’t need a degree in psychology to see the warning si
gns.

  In the last twelve months, Kilroy’s phone calls to friends and family had stopped completely on the outgoing side and dropped to almost nothing on the incoming. His Internet usage went way up, and his spending habits indicated a nearly completely homebound existence: pizza delivery, late-night grocery runs, liquor store purchases. Kilroy had withdrawn from the world except for his job.

  Zach didn’t like the picture that was emerging from the cloud in his head. The words “loner,” “quiet” and “kept to himself” were the greatest hits on the assassin sound track.

  Zach clicked on Kilroy’s itinerary as a pilot. He worked for one of the regional feeder airlines. His salary was only a little more than he’d make as the manager of a midsize chain restaurant. Zach knew times were tough in the air travel business, but this was brutal.

  Then Zach’s mouth went very dry as he read the list of cities where Kilroy flew.

  The names leaped out at him.

  All the sites of the Boogeyman’s murders.

  Son of a bitch. He wasn’t an ex-cop like Nolan. He was a pilot.

  The Boogeyman was still alive. He could easily get past any airport security. And at this very moment, the president’s family was boarding the presidential jet to fly back to Washington, D.C.

  Candace and her brother and her mother. The people closest to the president’s heart.

  The demons were protecting me. I had nothing to fear from the police.

  —David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam” killer

  Ordinarily, even wearing his uniform, he never would have gotten within a thousand yards of the aircraft.

  But things just seemed to break his way.

  First, one of the security checkpoints at Louis Armstrong International in New Orleans, already clogged and choked due to the presence of the two candidates, shut down completely when a TSA worker was attacked by an irate mother who didn’t see why her little girl should be fondled by a male security officer during an enhanced pat-down. Many of the passengers in line sided with the woman. A riot nearly ensued. In the resulting backup, lines stretched all the way to the terminal entrance. In order to get things moving again, pilots and flight attendants were taken through without stopping for the metal detector or an X-ray scanner.

  Wearing his uniform, he carried his mask and his weapon in a bag with him right past security.

  He took a detour just past the concourse entrance and found a door that had been propped open. It was a pure coincidence. A maintenance worker’s electronic ID tag had stopped working that morning. He was due to get a replacement, but it hadn’t shown up. Tired of waiting every time he wanted to get through the door, he wedged his janitorial cart inside. It was just for a moment while he went back for more paper towels. But the Boogeyman slipped through unnoticed. A few minutes later, the cleaner came back and closed the door.

  Walking with a calm and confident air, he passed luggage handlers and ground crew. Since he looked like he knew where he was going, no one thought anything of it.

  He reached the perimeter patrolled by the Secret Service. The hangar that housed Air Force One and its twin, the backup presidential jet, was still on the other side of a runway, across open ground. A counterassault team walked the tarmac. More dangerous were the ones he could not see: the snipers on the roofs of the terminals who could pick off anyone who attempted to make a dash for the hangar.

  It was full daylight now. He was weaker than he would have been at night. He might be able to take one or two direct hits from their guns. But they would tear him into hamburger with a barrage of ammunition. Strong as he was, this body couldn’t withstand that.

  So he stood quietly and waited. Patience was a virtue.

  A moment later, every agent on the ground put a hand to his ear. Something was going on. As one, they all sprinted for the doors into the main terminal. He even caught a glimpse of one of the snipers running along the roofline.

  His excellent hearing brought him the words from one of the agents’ walkie-talkies: “Shots fired! Shots fired!”

  It had nothing to do with him. Later, the news would report that a man had packed his hunting rifle, still loaded, into his luggage. A ticket agent had hoisted it up and somehow, when it came down on the luggage belt, caused it to fire.

  The 30.06 bullet tore out of the Samsonite, through a particleboard counter and through the thigh of an airport police officer nearby. He pulled out his own weapon and shot back as he fell to the ground, screaming in pain.

  Luckily, he missed. But the entire airport was thrown into chaos. The Secret Service was sure it was facing a full-on assault. It pulled all of its agents to the main terminal to repel any attackers.

  The Boogeyman, wincing in the sunlight, strolled calmly over to the hangar.

  One of the agents, in his haste to get to the shooting, had left the door open.

  The Boogeyman smiled. He’d always been lucky like that.

  Air Force One, the presidential jet, is a near-mythical symbol of US power, shrouded in so much secrecy that even foreign leaders invited on board are forbidden from seeing every corner. But the aircraft just became rather less mysterious after it emerged that detailed plans of its interior and exterior had been made publicly available on the website of an American air force base.

  One diagram shows the location of the president’s suite, at the very front of the Boeing 747, which is known to include a medical facility, workout room, kitchen and office, as well as a bedroom. Another shows the location of oxygen tanks which could, in theory, be targeted by a terrorist sniper. The information appears to be intended for personnel involved in responding to an emergency on board.

  The documents, which had not been removed from the site yesterday, add precise detail to what was already known about the president’s plane: that it contains 85 telephones, 19 televisions, facilities for film screenings, flares to repel missiles and shielding to protect onboard electronics from an electromagnetic pulse. They also underline the previously publicized fact that the plane always pulls up at public events with its left side facing people and buildings—protecting the president’s quarters on the right side.

  —“Security Lapse Reveals Secrets of Air Force One,”

  Oliver Burkemann, The Guardian, April 11, 2006

  Colonel Geoff Martin ran through the preflight check with his copilots and navigator. Since the president wouldn’t be on board this run, he wasn’t technically the pilot of Air Force One today. Since he had the First Family but not the president, the jet would be called Executive Foxtrot One.

  But honestly, nobody paid much attention to that. They called it Air Force One no matter who was on board.

  Air Force One is, without question, the safest way to fly. A military version of the 747, the plane is inspected between every mission and given a full maintenance workup before every flight. If so much as a lightbulb is flickering, it’s replaced. Fuel for the plane is put in separate, secure holding tanks. Meals on the flight are prepared in advance from food bought by anonymous Air Force stewards wearing civilian clothes. The plane includes electronic countermeasures, overpowered engines, backup fuel, electromagnetic pulse shielding and, thankfully still unknown to the public, an escape pod designed by NASA to eject the president from the plane in case of catastrophic failure. And all of this is guarded on the ground by a Counter Assault Team armed with guns so advanced their model numbers are classified.

  Martin took his mission just as seriously as the men with guns. They might have been flying a jumbo passenger jet, but there was as little room for error as if they were dodging rocket fire in Afghanistan. So, no matter how tempting it might be, Martin and his crew never half-assed the checklist or any of their duties. This wasn’t the 9 a.m. commuter shuttle filled with grumpy businessmen. This was the flying White House.

  Martin, like every other pilot who’d ever flown the presidential jets, started at the bottom rung of the ladder. Everyone who hoped to get on the flight deck was required to spend their first months in the
unit with a chamois cloth in hand, waxing and cleaning the hull of the jets. It humbled even the most arrogant fighter jock and forced him to become familiar with every square inch of the planes.

  It had taught Martin patience. He never rushed the details. He was a credit to his uniform. The president was lucky to have him in the pilot’s seat.

  If life were fair, he’d have spent a long time in the job before a well-earned retirement.

  When the door of the lavatory in the flight deck opened, Martin was puzzled. There shouldn’t have been anyone else in there.

  The other members of the crew turned, just like he did. They were military, but it has to be said they were taken off guard. They were in what was supposed to be one of the most secure locations in the world.

  So when the man wearing the smiley-face mask and a pilot’s uniform stepped out of the toilet, they didn’t react at first. It was just too bizarre. Not one of them reached for an alarm button or even said anything.

  Not that it would have helped them.

  But Martin deserved a better end. They all did.

  Does everything connect through the Son of Sam interface? Recall that in 1974 one of Manson’s least repentant disciples, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, tried to do away with President Gerald Ford. If she’d pulled it off, the presidency would have fallen to none other than Nelson Rockefeller, appointed vice-president by Ford—and whose name is synonymous with the Insider corporate capitalist communist Illuminati occult conspiracy. And Ford himself is a Freemason who sat on the Warren Commission, which covered up the death of one president.

  —Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, The 80 Greatest

  Conspiracies of All Time

  Driving one-handed, Zach pulled out his phone to call Cade. He had to tell him. His fingers grasped the phone just as it buzzed with the receipt of a message. He glanced away from the road and checked the screen.