“Yeah, well, fuck you, old man. You may have been hot shit once upon a time, but then right around the time you started losing your swing, early humans invented the wheel and you got left behind. And—”
He shoved me.
A really good, incredibly fast two-handed shove to the chest that sent me sailing backward. I lost my footing and fell, hard and clumsy. I scrambled to my feet but Violin and Harry were already up. The kid caught her arm as she went to swing on Bolton, but then Church’s voice cut through everything.
“Enough!” he roared.
Everyone froze.
Church came around the table, hooked a hand under my arm, and hauled me to my feet. He was not gentle about it. Then he put one hand on Harry’s arm and the other on Violin’s shoulder and pushed them to the side so he could face Bolton. Bolton and Church were about the same size, they looked like they were the same age, and I knew they both had years and wars behind them. Bolton stood with balled fists, ready to swing. I thought he was going to hit Church. Or try to, anyway.
In a quiet, cold voice Church said, “I think it would be in everyone’s best interests if you were to go attend to your duties, Harcourt.”
Bolton fixed Church with a look of pure, unfiltered contempt.
“You run a sloppy shop, Deacon. Maybe it’s time you thought seriously about getting out of the game.”
Church nodded. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
They held their ground for a long moment. Any trace of civility and affability was gone from Bolton’s face. He looked at Violin and dismissed her as nothing, and his eyes swept past Harry as if the kid wasn’t even there. Bolton focused on me and raised a finger to point at me. “You’re done, Ledger. You’re a psychopath and it was a mistake to ever give you a job here. Consider yourself relieved of duty. You and your team are to turn in your badges and weapons. Security will escort you out. If you have a lawyer, I’d call him, because we will be filing charges for negligence and wanton destruction of government property because of what you did to Gateway.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I ever tried to be nice to you.”
Then he turned, whipped the door open so hard it banged into the wall, and stalked out.
Violin wanted to go after him. I saw her touch one of the concealed knives she always carried. I wanted to either shoot Bolton or throw myself out of the window. Even split. Poor Harry Bolt looked like he either wanted to run away or cry. He was deeply embarrassed. He sat down on one of the chairs and looked at his hands, and said nothing. Church had a calculating look in his eyes as he walked over and sat down.
My phone rang. Bug.
“What?” I asked listlessly.
“I got something, Joe,” he said, his voice charged with excitement.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
THE PIER
DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 9, 1:39 P.M.
Bug laid it on us. I put him on speaker so they could all hear. Mr. Priest, aka Esteban Santoro, the Gateway book sequence decryption, the coercion. All of it.
“Wait, I’m confused. Why would this guy Priest or Santoro or whatever his name is need to steal it?” asked Harry. “Isn’t he part of Gateway?”
“Doesn’t seem like it,” I said. “He’s running the Closers who raided FreeTech and hit Toys’s place last night. And the crew that was at San Pedro’s office. If I had to guess, he got left out in the cold when everything went to shit down at Gateway. Maybe he’s freelance or maybe his contract has been picked up by someone else who’s now after the Kill Switch master code sequence.”
“The latter would be my guess,” said Church.
“Dr. Hu thinks there has to be some kind of master control unit,” said Bug. “Maybe it’s a full-sized God Machine like they had down at Gateway. Hu thinks the master code sequence would allow that machine to interface with all the others. That way one person would have control over a fully functional and fully regulated process.”
“Who?” asked Harry. “This Mullah character?”
“I suppose,” said Bug. “I mean, who else? Everyone at Gateway is dead. And I don’t read this Priest guy as brains. He’s muscle.”
“Agreed,” said Church.
“Then the code sequence is our target,” I said. “We need to find Priest and get it from him, and it would be nice if he resisted arrest.”
Church got up and went to a quiet corner of the room to make a call. He spoke for several minutes. When he was done he turned and stood there, lips pursed, thinking for a long moment. “I spoke with Dr. Kang. He did not personally work on the master code sequence from the Unlearnable Books, so he put the project supervisor who did on the line. After scanning and collating the pages from each of the Unlearnable Truths, a numerical pattern did, in fact, emerge. The numbers are coordinates.”
“Coordinates for targets?” I asked. “We can put teams in position and—”
Church shook his head. “They are coordinates for three stars as seen from Antarctica. The Large Magellanic Cloud, Sirius, and Alpha Centauri. If you calculate their positions, you come up with set numbers. The Large Magellanic Cloud is fifty-seven degrees altitude, azimuth one hundred ninety degrees. For Sirius you have six degrees of altitude and two hundred and sixteen degrees of azimuth. And Alpha Centauri is seventy degrees of altitude and three hundred twenty-one degrees azimuth.” Church paused. “However, if we can place any stock at all in the writings of Lovecraft—and so far his work, however fantastical it may appear, seems to be our most reliable source—it indicates that the builders of that city arrived there one billion years ago. References in two of the Unlearnable Truths pin the time down to within half a million years. This changes things considerably. The Large Magellanic Cloud would be altitude sixty-three degrees and two hundred seventy-three degrees azimuth, Sirius would be fifty-two degrees altitude and one hundred thirty-five degrees azimuth, and Alpha Centauri would be thirteen degrees altitude, two hundred sixty-eight degrees azimuth. These are the local coordinates; what you would see by eye, looking up. Astronomers use a different set of coordinates to plug into our telescopes and map the sky. Right ascension and declination. These coordinates are not dependent on location, but are dependent on time. And we have those, as well.” He read off the numbers. “The first set, however, matches the code lifted from the Unlearnable Truths by Dr. Kang.”
“Then we have the code,” gasped Violin. A great smile bloomed on her face.
“But … we don’t know where the God Machine is,” said Harry. “Jesus … we’re screwed.”
“Santoro’s on the run,” I said. “He knows we’re going to be on his ass. If he’s as smart as he’s supposed to be he’ll figure we’ll be throwing a net and putting eyes on roads, trains, airports, boats. That’s going to slow him down. Even if he slips past us, he’s not going to do it fast. And then the code has to be input and his team has to coordinate with the ISIL dickheads. We might have two or three days before they hit us.”
“Can we shut down all the airports?” asked Violin. “Minimize the potential damage?”
“I’ll speak to the president,” said Church.
“Good luck with that,” I said, “but I need to run Santoro down and get that code. If he’s in L.A., then I need to be there.”
“My dad just grounded you,” said Harry weakly.
Church picked up his phone and called Brick. “I want you to locate Director Bolton. He’s in his office? You’re sure? Good. Prep Captain Ledger’s helo. Do it as quietly as possible. If anyone asks, it’s for me and I’m heading to the airport to fly back to New York No, that’s a cover. Have Bird Dog on board with a full field kit. I want it fueled and smoking in five. Contact any Echo Team members currently in the building and have them meet the captain on the roof. We’re going off the reservation. Thank you, Brick.”
Church turned to me. “I’ll reroute ops from here to the Hangar. Bug can hack into CCTV to try and locate Priest.”
I
smiled, and maybe in the back of my head I heard the Killer turn over in his sleep. “You trust me to do this?”
“I never lost faith in you, Captain.”
Violin said, “Wait, what about me?”
Church smiled. “I have something else I’d like you to do.”
Harry Bolt looked very much like the fifth wheel he was. “Okay … well, what about me?”
I walked over to him. “A lot of that will depend on whose side you’re on. Your dad seems to want to tear the DMS down. Maybe you hit the nail on the head when you said he was jealous. Whatever. He’s going to drag his feet and play this wrong and a lot of people are going to die. So, ask yourself, kid, where do you think you fit?”
There were a lot of ways Harry Bolt could have played it. He was a schlub, so he could play dumb and sit it out. He was CIA, so he could side with the home team. He was Harcourt Bolton’s son, so maybe blood was thicker than water.
He straightened and although he was seven or eight inches shorter than me he did his best to look me in the eye.
“My father’s wrong,” he said.
“So where does that put you?”
His gaze shifted from me, to Church, and then settled on Violin. She gave him the kind of smile I’d only ever seen her give to me. Once upon a time. It jolted me.
Then Harry Bolt looked at me again and held out his hand. “Good hunting, Joe.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
OCEANSIDE HARBOR FUEL DOCK
OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 9, 7:22 P.M.
“There they are,” whispered Bunny.
He eased away from the narrow slot in the curtains so I could take a look. We were in the marina office. Bunny, Top, and me, each of us dressed in black BDUs and balaclavas. We were the only field agents at the Pier when the call came in.
“We can take them right now,” said Top. He had his Heckler & Koch HK416 in his hands, the barrel lowered, finger laid along the curve of the trigger guard. The effective range of the HK416 is four hundred yards. The cluster of men was less than fifty feet from where we crouched. If I gave the word, Top would send them to Jesus without so much as a flicker. “Say the word, Cap’n, and we can all clock out early.”
There were seven men on the dock. All dressed in boating clothes, or some approximation of them. Shorts, boat shoes, Polo shirts or lightweight Windbreakers. One of them wore a Hawaiian shirt with brightly colored tropical fish on it. Sunglasses and ball caps. Looking like people who belonged among all these expensive seagoing play toys. Looking ordinary. They didn’t look like Closers.
“Not until we’re sure,” I murmured. We were all killers, but we were soldiers, not assassins.
Dr. Kang’s report was that Priest had exited the building carrying a metal briefcase in which were several portable high-capacity external drives. One with the scans of the Unlearnable Truths and the master code sequence Kang’s people had interpolated from the books; and several others with lots of information related to projects owned by either Erskine or San Pedro. None of them, according to Kang, said either “Majestic” or “Gateway” on them. Nothing labeled “Kill Switch,” “God Machine,” or “Dreamwalking,” either. We didn’t know what the data was, but we damn sure didn’t want it to get into the hands of whoever was behind all of this. ISIL or someone else. My guess was that it was going to be “someone else,” and I was beginning to get a nasty idea of how this was all being managed.
Priest’s photo had been fed into the facial recognition feeds of security cameras all over this part of California, with MindReader interpreting the data. The target used some of the most devious tricks in the evil bad guy playbook to avoid capture and make it from Los Angeles all the way down to the marina here in Oceanside. By car in good traffic that’s two hours, but when you’re trying not to get arrested and sent to Gitmo it can take a lot longer. In this case five and a half hours, with long heart-stopping gaps when we all thought he’d slipped the leash.
If that happened, and the Mullah or whoever was in control of Kill Switch got their hands on that control code, then America was going to experience a new Dark Age. And if our worst fears were realized, inside that darkness the SX-56 pathogen was going to spread every bit as aggressively as the Black Plague had, as the Spanish flu had. Why? Because every aspect of emergency response, from cops to doctors, depended on electricity. Shutting off the lights would give us no chance to get in front of the bioweapon. So, yeah, I almost told Top to take the shot.
Almost.
But we needed the drives and we needed to ask questions and you can’t ask those questions of a corpse. I wanted a name and I was damn sure Mr. Priest—Esteban Santoro—was going to want to tell me. I planned to ask very nicely. In a manner of speaking, “nicely” being a relative term. I am not a fan of torture, but these bastards wanted to kills thousands—perhaps millions—of children. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to prevent that from happening. Nothing.
I kept expecting the Killer in my soul to roar out his blood challenge. He was the ultimate protector of the innocent because to his primitive sense of survival, the young were a guarantee that the tribe would survive. You had to protect them, and I remember the things that part of me has done when the bad guys have targeted kids. Those memories will haunt me until I die. Letting those children die, though, would kill me.
We’d arrived at the dock in a boat belonging to a close friend of Mr. Church. It was a very expensive XSR high-velocity speedboat. If this came to a sea chase we had a clear edge.
“Call the play, Boss,” murmured Bunny. He had an AA-12 drum-fed shotgun. He calls it Honey Boom-Boom. Bunny is working out some issues. “Time to rock ’n’ roll.”
“We need him with a pulse,” I said. “No one’s clocking out until we get those drives, feel me?”
“Hooah,” said Bunny, the disappointment clear in his voice.
“Hooah,” said Top, his tone more workmanlike and philosophical.
I tapped my earbud to get the command channel. “Cowboy to Deacon.”
“Go for Deacon,” said the voice in my ear. Mr. Church was in one of our mobile tactical operations vehicles, with all communications routed to him rather than through the Pier. “Give me a sitrep.”
“Target is acquired,” I said. “Santoro plus six. We are about to make our run.”
“Do you have eyes on the package?”
I began to say no, but then another man came walking along the dock with something tucked under his arm. He stopped in front of Santoro, his back to me so that what they were doing was briefly obscured. I heard a faint murmur of conversation and when he stepped aside I saw that Santoro now gripped the handle of a small waterproof black plastic case. They must have transferred the drives to something safer for boat travel.
“That is affirmative,” I said. “I have eyes on the package. Repeat, I have eyes on the package.”
“Copy that. Bring it home.”
“Roger that,” I said.
I moved away from the window and knelt on the far side of the door. Top took up station beside the door and Bunny squatted like a linebacker.
We counted down and moved.
Top opened the door quickly and we went out. I went left, Top went right, and Bunny moved straight toward the men. The gas dock was wood and concrete, with three benches, a trash can, and a long row of fuel pumps stationed at the ends of a line of finger piers. There were several boats in slips, their bumpers nudging the dock in the mild swell. A dockhand was swiping the credit card of one of Santoro’s men. Nice that they were paying for the gas. Made it almost seem like they were ordinary citizens.
Almost.
We moved instantly into concealed shooting positions before the bad guys could turn and draw their weapons. We yelled real damn loud. “Federal agents! Hands on your heads. Get down on your knees with your hands on your heads or we will kill you.”
Santoro turned toward us. Slow. Without hurry, without much surprise. His expression was on the amused side of
bland, his body language calm. He gave us the kind of look you’d expect to see on someone like … well, on someone like me. But only when I was being fronted by a pack of cranky Cub Scouts. He looked at us as if we were expected though unwanted.
“Let me see if I can guess,” he said, his voice a soft and cultured baritone. “Not FBI. Not NSA, either. So who are you? Definitely not SEALs.” He nodded toward Top. “You’re too old.” At Bunny. “You’re too big.”
“And I’m too charming,” I said. “Put your hands on your head, asshole, and get down on your fucking knees.”
His eyes clicked toward me. “Ah,” he murmured, “now I know who you are. Captain Joseph Edwin Ledger. The Deacon’s pet scorpion. I believe you knew my brother. What a pleasure.” He glanced again at my guys. “Top Sims and Bunny Rabbit. Your right and left hands. The two cornerstones of Echo Team. I’ve heard some interesting reports about you fellows.”
“You read anywhere that we’re known for taking bullshit? No? Then get down on your knees and keep your hands where I can see them or I will kill you.”
The rest of Santoro’s team was still frozen where they were, and right then they looked more like confused bystanders than a crack team of henchmen. There was a glazed look in their eyes. Not exactly blank, but off somehow. Like nobody was home. That sent a chill up my spine.
Santoro looked at me. His eyes were sharper than the others’, more intense. On the docks and in some of the boats people were watching. Scared, surprised, and fascinated despite the presence of big men with guns.
“You can’t kill us all,” he said.
I shifted my aim downward, confident that I could put one through his thigh without endangering the onlookers. We had them dead to rights. We were holding every card.
It was perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
Which is when it all went wrong.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR