The wheel strut crumbled and folded back, and the shock tilted the drone downward. The onboard avionics did their best to correct the pitch, but there wasn’t time before the drone slammed into the second figure—the yelling officer—and then the truck that was four feet behind him.
The sirens did not stop blaring.
Top did not stop screaming all the way across the field.
Chapter Seventy-nine
Tanglewood Island
Pierce County, Washington
March 31, 4:13 P.M.
Doctor Pharos stood in front of the wall of TV screens, arms held wide. He turned slowly toward the Gentleman. On the screens there were reporters speaking from outside a collapsed house in Fort Myers. Other reporters speculated as to the nature of a violent confrontation in Brooklyn. News feeds from Chula Vista showed men in hazmat suits removing two body bags from a small house. The rest of the screens showed views of the mourners, police, and emergency workers at Citizens Bank Park. The bulk of the news was now an even split between the drone attack at Citizens Bank Park and the video of Osama bin Laden.
The digital crawls along the bottom of each news feed asked hysterical questions and made bold statements.
America Under Attack?
Is This the Return of Mother Night?
Osama bin Laden—They Lied!
Who Knew and When Did They Know?
Terrorism in America. What’s Next?
“And that,” said Doctor Pharos, his arms still wide as if he could embrace the whole of the pain and suffering, “is what magic looks like.”
On a metal folding chair placed a dozen feet from the hospital bed, Doctor Aaron Davidovich nodded and smiled.
Nodded and smiled.
Nodded and smiled.
If Doctor Pharos took note of the fact that the scientist’s hands were clutched into fists in his lap, he did not care to comment.
Chapter Eighty
NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center
525 East 68th Street
New York City
March 31, 4:13 P.M.
Mr. Church spoke with the medical team for a long time. He was not given the usual soft-soap responses common with family or friends of someone undergoing surgery. Even though he did not flash credentials, the doctors responded to him as if it was right and proper to disclose everything. Nor did they give him the layman’s version. The content of his questions set the tone.
When they were finished with their report—which was guardedly optimistic but in no way enthusiastic—Church outlined several resources he was willing to make available to them. Protection, of course, but also access to advanced technologies and top specialists from around the world.
“Whatever you want or need will be made available,” he said. “No questions and no red tape.”
The doctors accepted this. Some people boast and make dramatic statements in stressful moments. Others simply set a higher bar for the truth.
Church shook hands with them and gave them each a card with his private cell number and a second number should he be unavailable. That other number, he assured them, would be answered twenty-four hours a day.
Then he went with Brick up to the hospital helipad, where a bird was waiting. Within forty minutes they were on a private jet heading west.
Heading to Circe.
All the way to the airport and throughout the entire flight, Church’s phone kept ringing. Not from the doctors he’d just left. These were calls from the president, the chief of staff, generals, the NSA, Homeland, the CIA, the FBI, the ATF, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and a dozen other groups.
Brick took some of the calls, triaging them, responding to some, connecting callers with resources, providing access to teams and assets, sharing the workload with Church. Brick did not like the way his boss looked. Pale and strained. Tense. He wondered how much more of this even Mr. Church could take.
The attacks kept coming.
Eglin Air Force Base was the latest. That one alone would have poisoned any given day.
But the day had so much more to do.
One call in particular made Brick stiffen. He immediately handed the phone to Mr. Church. “You better take this one, Boss. Something weird just happened in Chula Vista.”
Chapter Eighty-one
UC San Diego Medical Center
200 West Arbor Drive
San Diego, California
March 31, 4:37 P.M.
Lydia Ruiz saw the dog first and stiffened, her hand going immediately to the handle of her holstered Beretta. Then she saw Junie and Sam. And then Violin.
She did not exactly relax at the sight of the strange woman she’d first met during that mission in Iran. Lydia liked Violin, but she was also afraid of her. Genuinely and, she felt, justifiably afraid. Violin was not normal. Not in any way that Lydia reckoned. Violin was undoubtedly the second most dangerous woman Lydia had ever met. The first most dangerous being Violin’s mother, Lilith. A demon if there ever was one.
Which made Violin … what, exactly?
There was a lot of debate about that among the members of Echo Team. Never, though, when Captain Ledger was around. Violin was more or less the captain’s ex, and he considered her part of the family. His own family and also the extended family of Echo Team.
And she was here to help.
With the insanity of what had happened in Philadelphia, it was difficult even for Mr. Church to keep his top-tier team working guard duty. The captain was banged up from the attack on the ballpark, but Lydia knew it wouldn’t matter much. It was hard to keep Captain Ledger out of the fight. And he’d absolutely want to be in this fight. In this hunt. If the man had two broken legs and was stepping on his own intestines, he’d want to be in this fight. He was that kind of guy.
It was why Lydia Ruiz would have walked through fire for him.
She stepped outside Circe’s room to intercept the party at the door. Violin offered her hand, and Lydia took it. The Italian woman’s grip was always so much stronger than it should be. Always a surprise. Hard, dry, and holding within it the promise of a great deal more strength. Never, however, a challenge. It wasn’t a bully handshake; she wasn’t trying to prove anything. The power was simply there.
Toys gaped at the dog. “Bloody hell.”
No one acknowledged his remark.
“Lydia,” said Violin.
“Hey.”
Violin looked past her to where Circe lay amid a cluster of arcane machines. She glanced at Toys and then away, as if noting but otherwise dismissing him. She took a step toward the comatose woman.
“May I?”
Lydia flicked a glance at Junie, who nodded. Lydia was nominally in charge of this room and this detail, but somehow Junie Flynn seemed to be in actual charge. Nothing was ever said; no orders were given to that effect. But it was the case, and everyone knew it.
Lydia looked from Violin down to the dog and up again. Then she stepped aside. Toys gave the dog a very wide berth, retreating all the way to the nurses’ station. Behind the desk, the nurses and a doctor gaped at the dog, but the day had already changed it’s frequency so completely that they no longer tried to impose rules and restrictions on anything that happened. And all other patients had been moved from this floor.
The Italian woman entered the room with Banshee following silently behind. For so large a dog, it made no sound. Not even the click of nails on the tiled floor. Violin went over to the bed, picked up the chart that was hung on the end, read it, replaced it, and then bent and kissed Circe’s forehead. Then she did something Lydia did not understand at all. Violin then turned, bent, and kissed Banshee’s forehead in exactly the same way. She spoke very softly and slowly to the dog, and Lydia would later swear to Bunny and anyone else who would listen that the damn dog actually nodded.
Then Violin turned and walked out of the room, shepherding Junie out as well. The dog, however, did not follow. It suddenly raised up and placed both f
ront paws on the side of the bed.
“Bloody hell,” Toys said again.
“Whoa!” growled Sam.
“Get her down,” snapped Lydia, starting forward, a hand on her sidearm.
Violin merely shook her head. Junie shifted to block the two soldiers from entering the room.
“Wait,” she said. “It’s okay.”
The dog stood there, looking down at Circe with dark, intense eyes. It did not try to lick her. It didn’t even sniff her. All Banshee did was stare at the comatose woman as the seconds peeled off the clock and dropped slowly to the floor.
Banshee abruptly pushed off and dropped to all fours. She gave Lydia and Sam a long and penetrating stare. No one spoke. Then the wolfhound walked over to the corner of the room and sat.
She remained there, as still and silent as a statue.
Violin touched Junie’s arm. “I have to go. I have a team waiting for me. Banshee will stay here.”
“Thank you,” said Junie. She kissed Violin’s cheek. “Please be safe.”
A troubled look flickered on the Italian woman’s face. “There is something very bad coming.”
“What have you heard?”
“It isn’t anything from our sources, nothing like that. This is more of a feeling.” She paused. “There is evil abroad in the land, Junie. That is not melodrama. Real evil is out there, and it’s coming for all of us. It hurts me that I can’t be here to stand with you. Look to Banshee. She was born on the night of new moon when the doorways between worlds are at their thinnest. She can see through shadows. Do you understand?”
Junie chewed her lip for a moment, then nodded. “I think I do.”
Violin nodded. “If my team and I finish our job, I’ll try to get back here. Until then, stay vigilant and stay safe.”
With that, Violin turned and left
After a moment, Junie went into Circe’s room and closed the door.
Outside, staring through the glass, Lydia and Sam stood together in a pool of profound confusion.
“What,” said Lydia slowly, “the hell was that all about?”
Sam Imura shook his head. “I really do not know.”
Before either of them could say anything else, Lydia’s phone rang. It was Mr. Church.
Chapter Eighty-two
Tanglewood Island
Pierce County, Washington
March 31, 4:45 P.M.
Doctor Davidovich followed the guard back to his room.
The guard said nothing at all, even when Davidovich asked casual questions. The halls of the island resort were immaculate and lifeless. The dark hardwood wainscoting had been polished to a high gloss, the runner carpets were the very best quality, the Tiffany shades on the wall sconces were lovely. But there was absolutely no personality to the place. It was like stepping into a catalog page. Attractive down to the last detail, but unreal and unrelatable.
Like so many other aspects of his life.
Like the two men he had just spent the last hours with. Doctor Pharos and the cripple. A mad doctor and a freak. That’s how he thought of them. Both hideous in their way. Both of them claiming to be part of the same family as him. Both of them believing that he was part of their world, that he was as corrupt, as demented, as vile as they were.
Two monsters.
Two, or three?
That was such a terrible question.
While he’d been in the bathroom, Davidovich had despaired over finding no faint sparks of conscience or morality in his own head or heart. Now, realizing that they were gone, that he had participated in the extinguishing of that heat, it left him feeling strange.
It should, he knew, have made it easier to step completely out of the world as he’d known it, even out of the capsule world in which he’d lived for the last few years. It should have made it a snap to become one with the darkness. As those two men were in tune with it.
That should absolutely have happened.
In the absence of conscience, there can be no genuine regret.
None.
As he walked, Davidovich wondered how sane he was. Because, despite the absolute darkness within, he felt an acid burn in his esophagus, right behind his heart.
Chapter Eighty-three
Over Ohio Airspace
March 31, 5:01 P.M.
I keep several sets of clothes aboard Shirley. I changed from the borrowed hospital scrubs into jeans, a tank top, and a Hawaiian shirt with sailboats on it. Usually, those shirts remind me of happy, peaceful times. Today, I felt like I was wearing a clown suit to a funeral. But it was the most sedate thing I had.
Then I got the call from Top.
Jesus.
I spent some long, bad minutes on the phone with Top and Bunny. Mostly Bunny. Top was hurting. Dilbert Howell had been a friend of his for many years.
“Has to be the fucking Seven Kings,” he said.
“Has to be,” I agreed.
I next called Glory Price, the top kick of the Miami field office. She and her people were already on the way in a couple of Black Hawks. We discussed the matter at some length, and I filled her in on my conversations with Bug and Church. She already knew about the rest. About the Kings targeting the DMS.
“I knew it was going to be a strange day from the jump,” she told me.
“Why, because of Philly?”
“No,” she said. “Because this morning on the way into the office I hit a dog. Or … I hit what I thought was a dog.”
“You okay?”
“Me? Yeah, just shook up. It really rattled me. The thing came darting out between two parked cars.”
“What kind of dog was it?”
“That’s just it,” said Glory, “it wasn’t a dog at all. Not really. When I took a look, I thought maybe it was a coyote. But it wasn’t that, either.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Joe,” she said, “the thing I ran over was a jackal.”
“A what?”
“A jackal. A fucking jackal. The animal-control guys had to send a picture of it to a zoo to get a proper ID. It was a Canis adustus, a side-striped jackal from southern Africa. And, get this, there aren’t any in any zoos closer than Philadelphia. None known to be in private collections, either. So weird.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and I’m not really in the mood for today to get any weirder.”
“Well, buckle up,” she said, “’cause there’s one more thing. And that’s what really has me freaked out.”
I didn’t want to hear it, but I told her to tell me anyway.
“When the animal-control guys loaded it onto their truck, one of them spotted something. A dark mark on the jackal’s gums.”
“What kind of mark?”
“A tattoo. Two letters and some numbers: I, S, period. Then, thirteen, followed by a colon and twenty-one. At first we all thought it was some kind of identification tag, like they used to have on racehorses before they started using RFID chips. But it wasn’t. I had Nikki run it for me, and it came back as a Bible reference. Isaiah 13:21: ‘But desert beasts will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures; there owls will dwell, and goat-demons will dance there.’”
“Well … shit,” I said.
“I know. So freaky. I mean … this has to be tied to what happened to Rudy. This has to be tied to that guy Nicodemus, right?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
Operative word: “afraid.”
My next call was to Church, but I couldn’t get through. So I called Yoda at the Hangar. He was Bug’s second in command.
“We’re, ummmm, all over this.” He is one of those people who always makes some kind of noise. Mostly a strange little humming sound. He always sounds like a pedantic bumble bee. Charming for about half a minute and then intensely irritating thereafter.
“I want more than that, Yoda.”
“Mmmmm, meaning what, mmmm, exactly?”
“I have two guys heading to the airport for a direct flight to Eglin. Th
ey’re taking a MindReader station with them, and we’re going to take over control of the investigation. At least as far as the software and hardware goes. Mr. Church doesn’t want us to interfere with the military’s investigation.”
“Top will oversee that,” I said, but Yoda told me I was wrong.
“Mmmmmm, Mr. Church ordered Top and Bunny to, ummmm, head to San Diego.”
“Why? They’re needed at Eglin. I was just talking to them an hour ago.”
“They’re already on a, ummmm, plane.”
“What’s happening?”
He took another breath. “We have another, ummmm, drone thing,” he said. “I, ummmm, think the Kings are using food-delivery drones to target citizens.”
Chapter Eighty-four
Tanglewood Island
Pierce County, Washington
March 31, 5:09 P.M.
Doctor Davidovich sat in his room and stared at nothing. The room’s lights were off, and he sat in an envelope of darkness.
Without and within.
He was trying to detach his mind from the strangeness of the moment, from the bizarre theatrics of his encounter with Doctor Pharos and the Gentleman. The lights were off so that his attention could not be pulled toward his computer or the stacks of notebooks that had come with him from his years in captivity.
He wanted to think. To take stock. To lay out the chronology of his personal descent from the man he thought he’d been to the man he clearly was. Aaron Davidovich was neither religious nor sentimental enough to view this process as his “long, dark night of the soul.” That was a laughable thought.
A dark few hours in a posh resort on one of the outer rings of hell. It would make a good reality show. Life in Hell, with Aaron Davidovich.
The truly sad thing was that he would probably watch that show.
He wished he had it on DVD now so he could binge watch it. He wanted that kind of telescoped perspective. All of the seasons of his life. Teen nerd. College wunderkind. Hot prospect scouted by top universities. The man Scientific American called the “Computer Einstein.” Then, the DARPA years. The government’s excitement about Regis.