“Joe,” she whispered to the night, then immediately clamped a hand over her mouth.
God, was the microphone on?
There was movement over to the left, far away from all the action. Junie raised the binoculars and focused them, saw a helicopter and several men. Then flash after flash as they fired at each other.
And there he was.
Joe.
She saw him throw a grenade, and that seemed to end the fight. Then he leaned in through the open door of the helicopter.
A few seconds later there was a single flash and Joe staggered backward, reeling awkwardly, turning, dropping.
She screamed his name, and before she knew what she was doing, Junie Flynn was up and running. The binoculars in one hand, a microwave pistol in the other.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-seven
VanMeer Castle
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Monday, October 21, 8:46 a.m.
I staggered back, my chest on fire. I heard another pop and another as Shelton continued to fire at me. A second round punched me in the gut. A third hit somewhere near my hip and spun me half around. His aim sucked, but I’d made it easy for him with that first shot. I’d leaned right into the helicopter.
I reeled away from him, hiding behind the front end of the chopper as he squeezed off shot after shot.
The microfiber Kevlar I had on kept those bullets from killing me, but the foot-pounds of impact, even from a small-caliber gun, smashed me. When I took a breath, two ends of a broken rib grated together in an internal shriek of white hot agony. I clamped a hand to my mouth to stifle a scream — and tasted blood.
I stared at my hand, at my arm. And down at my chest.
The Kevlar was completely intact. But there was a neat round hole one inch to the right of the arm hole. As I lifted the arm I could feel the wrongness of torn muscle and shredded flesh. Suddenly my legs buckled and I dropped to my knees. Somehow I kept hold of the pistol, but I felt like the effort of lifting it was going to take more than I had to spend.
Shit.
“Did I kill you, you son of a bitch?” yelled Shelton.
“No,” I growled back, “but thanks for trying, ass-hat.”
He actually laughed.
Weirdly, so did I.
I wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t killed me. With each breath my lungs felt worse, wrong. Wet.
“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Shelton,” said a voice behind me. “I’ll be happy to take care of this piece of shit.”
I turned slowly. Turning fast wasn’t happening. The bullet had gone in but it hadn’t come out. Low-caliber round, must have hit bone and taken a detour deeper into my chest cavity.
Two men stood by a gate that led from the helipad to a parking area. One was tall and broad and very Italian. The other looked a little like me. Big, ropy muscles, blond hair and blue eyes. His hair was curly, though.
I sagged down, dropping my butt onto my heels, fighting my body’s desire to simply collapse.
They towered over me. Both of them held guns, barrels pointed casually down at their sides. Both of them were smiling. This was going to be easy for them and they knew it.
I looked up at Blondie.
“Erasmus Tull?” I asked.
“Yeah. Ledger?”
“Yeah.”
He smiled. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”
I sighed. “I figured.”
“You have a lot of friends at the Warehouse?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded.
“Time to join—”
I shot him in the face.
Hey, fuck it.
Tull stayed on his feet for one full second, his eyes wide with astonishment. Then he fell backward in a boneless sprawl. Maybe I didn’t have dysentery like Harrison Ford, but seeing Tull definitely made me sick to my stomach. I figured Indiana Jones would be proud.
Tull’s friend yelled in shock, his face splashed with blood. He brought his gun up.
I could have taken him, too. In that moment of astonishment.
Except after that single shot the slide locked back on Sullivan’s gun.
The Italian guy raised his piece. He was screaming something. But I wasn’t tracking very well. The empty gun toppled from my hand.
And then the Italian exploded.
As an after echo I heard a single dry tok!
It was all very messy and immediate and for a moment the air was stained with a lingering pink mist. But as it cleared I saw Junie Flynn standing there, legs wide, both hands wrapped around a microwave pulse pistol.
“Junie,” I said.
She rushed through the gate and ran right to me and damn near bowled me over, but when she saw the blood she skidded to a stop and fell to her knees in front of me.
“Joe, oh my god, Joe … you’ve been shot.”
Her hands were everywhere, probing, touching. She pulled her sweater off and gently stuffed it inside my vest and pushed my arm down to hold it in place.
In my earbud I heard Mr. Church. “Cowboy — give me a sit-rep. Is the package still in hand?”
The package lay on the ground, covered in blood. I used my good hand to pick it up. There was a bullet drilled three quarters of the way through it. I remembered the shot that had hit my hip.
“Confirmed,” I said. “The package is in hand.”
Then I remembered the cavern.
“Listen to me, Deacon, that cavern is still open and they’re firing up the T-craft. You have to—”
“Captain,” interrupted Church, “I am channeling in a visitor.”
“Who am I on the line with?” I demanded.
There was a burst of squelch, then an unfamiliar voice said, “Captain Andrew Murray, sir, Pennsylvania Air National Guard. Requesting permission to join the party.”
Junie’s grave face blossomed into a smile.
“I hope you brought more to this pig roast than a beer bong, Captain.”
“If you have any use for a six-pack of A-10 Thunderbolts, then we’re forty miles out, coming hard, locked and loaded.”
I had to laugh. “Guess we ain’t the left-handed stepchildren no more.”
“We are acting on orders of the commander-in-chief,” said Murray.
“Captain,” I said. “There is a cavern opening on the north side of this property.” I gave the coordinates to Murray. “If anything—any craft of any kind — gets out of that cavern we are going to be at war with China before lunchtime. That is not a joke. Confirm.”
“Advise on location of your personnel, Cowboy.”
I thought of Warbride and Prankster. One old friend, one new. Both family, born as children of war.
My heart wanted to break.
“There’s no time left on the shot clock, Captain,” I said. “Pull the trigger.”
“Understood, Cowboy. Go with God and let the devil take the rest.”
Then I tapped my earbud. “Warbride, Prankster … Evac now. Repeat — evac now!”
There was no answer.
Junie touched my face. “Joe,” she said.
And then the sky was full of missiles and fire rained from heaven.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-eight
The Situation Room
The White House
Monday, October 21, 8:54 a.m.
The white dot — so puny and absurd a representation of what it was — crossed over into Chinese airspace.
Bill Collins got up from his seat and walked down the row of generals and officials until he stood in front of the screen. His face was a mask of shock.
He had been president for just over twenty-four hours.
If there was a country left after this was all over, he would be remembered as the president who could not stop an unwinnable war from killing millions. He would be reviled. The captain of the ship always takes the blame.
Distantly, vaguely, he wondered how this all might have played out if he hadn’t done everything he could to remove the DMS and cripp
le their power. Even now reports were coming in from a terrible firefight in Pennsylvania. Collins had reluctantly agreed — in light of Shelton’s confession — to send air support to Ledger’s assault on VanMeer Castle. A second, small screen showed the impact of missiles from six fighters. It was too soon to tell if any more of the T-craft had escaped.
“The message about the Black Book,” he said, “was it sent?”
The question was not directed to anyone in particular.
A second white dot appeared on the screen. Collins knew from Mr. Church’s intelligence that this was probably China’s T-craft, scrambled to confront the enemy. The Chinese craft was on the far side of the country, though. It could never intercept Shelton’s craft in time.
On the screen the white dot was one second away from Beijing.
“God help us all,” Collins said, but for a moment he thought he saw a third white dot. One that blipped in out of nowhere right beside Shelton’s craft.
Then there was a huge white burst on the screen. Intensely white, too bright to look at.
Collins shielded his eyes with his hand for a moment. He cried out like a terrified child.
Silence.
When Collins dared to open his eyes he saw that only one white dot was still there. The other one — or perhaps two — were gone. The last dot had stopped, though, and it hovered directly over Beijing.
And, against all sense, Beijing itself was still there.
Then the dot began moving. It headed out to sea. And then the altimeter began rolling madly, insisting that the craft was moving upward.
Upward.
Upward.
Until it passed within miles of the satellite tracking it and passed beyond its observational range.
Everyone at the table stared in total, stunned silence.
Then a voice behind him said, “The message was sent and received, Bill.”
Collins whirled around. Everyone turned.
A man sat at the head of the table. In Collins’s seat. In the seat reserved for the president.
Collins’s mouth worked and worked.
And then he screamed.
The man at the head of the table leaned forward wearily. He looked worn and thin. His color was bad. But he smiled.
“Gentlemen, the message was received,” said the president of the United States.
Epilogue
(1)
“We’re losing him!”
I’ve been a cop, I’ve been a soldier. I’ve heard people say that. EMTs working on an accident victim by the side of the road as a family SUV incinerated their vacation dreams. ER docs with blood smeared to the elbows as they massage the failing heart of a gunshot victim. Trauma surgeons charging the paddles for the fourth time while a rookie cop slides down into the big black.
I’ve heard it ten times. Twenty. More.
“Put pressure there … no, there, damn it!”
Familiar words. A routine of haste and desperation that seldom ends well.
“BP is falling. Sixty over forty.”
You stand by and watch. You have faith in the pros, in what they can do. You’ve seen them pull off Hail Marys with two seconds on the clock, or drop sixty-foot jumpers at the buzzer. Not always, but enough times so you don’t lose all your hope.
“He’s flatlining!”
I’ve heard it, seen it.
“Charging, charging…”
“We’re losing him.”
I’ve heard it all so many times.
But never when it was me down there. Not when I was the one losing the blood, not when I was the one feeling the black ice creeping in through the pores, listening to the doctors and nurses, hanging on every word, hoping to catch a lifeline.
“Joe!” I heard her voice. Junie Flynn. Calling my name from a thousand miles away.
I tried to answer.
But I had no breath left.
(2)
When I woke up, she was there.
Junie Flynn.
No makeup, rumpled clothes, circles under her eyes. Absolutely beautiful.
It took me a while to realize that I was awake. And another few minutes to grasp the fact that I was alive. I remembered being dead.
I think.
She held my hand and looked into the middle distance, thinking thoughts that were her own, and for a long time she didn’t notice that my eyes were open.
Then she did, and a great, slow smile blossomed over her face. It shed years and weariness from her.
“Joe,” she said.
“Junie.” My voice was nothing, a rasp over dry wood. She gave me a sip of water.
“I hate hospitals,” I said.
“From what your friends told me I thought you loved them. You’re in them all the time.”
“Nope. Hate ’em.”
She rose and bent and kissed me. Her long hair brushed my face, and I did not care one little bit that it was a wig.
But thinking about that made me think of her.
“How are you?” I asked.
She smiled, a sad little smile. “I’ll live.”
And I wished with all my heart that it was true.
I raised my head and looked around.
“Where am I? And … when am I?”
“It’s Friday. You’ve been here since Monday. We’re in Johns Hopkins.”
I looked around the room. I guess I am becoming a connoisseur of hospitals. “Nice wallpaper.”
You couldn’t see the wallpaper for all the bouquets of flowers. It looked like a tropical jungle. There were huge color photos of Ghost, clearly taken at my apartment. They’d shaved all the fur off his head so they could stitch him up. Someone had tied a wildly colorful scarf around his neck. He looked thoroughly disgusted, but I suspected it was an act. Someone had used a Sharpie to scrawl on the photo: “Ouch, Ouch, Arf, Arf.” It was signed with a paw print.
“Isn’t that adorable?” asked Junie.
“So cute I want to throw up.”
She laughed and gave me more water.
Then I asked the first of a series of very hard questions. Questions I needed the answers to but that I did not want to hear.
“My team. Lydia … Pete…”
She hesitated.
“God,” I began, but she touched my chest.
“No, they’re alive. They’re hurt … but they’re alive.”
“How bad?”
“Lydia will be okay. Concussion and some burns.”
“And Pete?”
“He was shot, too. I heard Bunny tell the others that Pete won’t be able to be a soldier anymore. Too much damage. But the doctors say he’ll probably walk again. With time.”
“Jesus. Was it worth it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh definitely. The T-craft was destroyed and—”
“Wait … how? Who shot it down?”
She frowned. “Don’t you remember? Mr. Church told you about it in the ambulance.”
“I don’t remember an ambulance. C’mon, Junie, what happened?”
“The message got through. About the Black Book. It got through.”
“And…?”
“And they blew the other ship up. Both ships, actually.”
“Junie, what the hell are you talking about. Who blew up the ships?”
She smiled at me. “The aliens,” she said. “Right after the message was delivered, they destroyed the T-craft Howard Shelton sent, and then they destroyed the Chinese T-craft. The jet fighters destroyed the ones in the cavern. They’re all gone. And Mr. Church is working with governments in eleven countries to expose groups like M3. All D-type components are being collected and destroyed. NATO is overseeing it, and because of all the secrecy in the past there’s a lot of transparency.”
“The public knows?”
Her smile ebbed. “Well, transparency in certain quarters. The story they’re feeding the press is that a group of multinational extremists hijacked some experimental stealth craft and used them to commit acts of terrorism. It’s nonsense o
f course, but that’s the stance they’re taking.”
“What about the Black Book?”
“I — don’t know what they did with it. Mr. Church said that it’s been handled. Some arrangement he made with the president.”
“With Collins? That jackass couldn’t—”
“God, Joe, you really did forget everything.” She got up and brought over one of the loveliest of the floral arrangements and held it so I could read the card.
With the thanks of a grateful nation,
And the personal thanks of a fellow citizen of this world.
It was hand-signed by the president.
The president.
I made Junie tell me the whole story over again from the beginning.
(3)
The next day they let me see Rudy.
His head was swathed in bandages and one dark eye stared out at me. It was surrounded by bruised flesh.
I sat in my wheelchair. He lay in his bed.
Everyone left us alone.
I think we sat that way for an hour before either of us said anything.
Finally, it was Rudy who spoke.
“Aliens,” he said.
“Aliens,” I agreed.
Then Circe came in and kicked me out. She closed the door and Junie wheeled me back to my room.
(4)
The warmth that had lingered all through October blew away in early November. With temperatures drifting toward freezing even under a noonday sun, I leaned against the fender of my Explorer, staring at the rubble of what used to be the Warehouse. The whole area was still quarantined, no public allowed. The cops passed me through when I badged them. I forget what badge I grabbed out of the truck. Didn’t matter, really.
Ghost sat on the ground, staring at the nothing where so many of our friends died. He whined quietly. I scratched his head, careful to avoid the long scar. I felt like whining, too.
Or, maybe crying.
The cold wind made my chest hurt. I was supposed to be wearing a sling, but I added that to the list of other things that I was supposed to do and chose not to.
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