I kept circling. As I completed one circuit, I saw that I was leaving a trail of bloody drops.
“I could just kill you,” I said. “Deny you the chance of seeing the end. Air Force One hasn’t crossed into New York airspace. Not the metropolitan area, at least.”
“That would be disappointing,” conceded Gault. “But I would die knowing that it was inevitable. Stop fucking circling like that. It’s childish.”
I stopped at the foot of the bed. “And there is absolutely nothing I can say or do? Nothing? Not one thing?”
“No,” he said with finality.
I nodded thoughtfully. The sound of gunfire was dying away. None of the recent shots came from AK-47s. Top and the others were cleaning things up. Ghost started to come over, but I waved him off. “Family,” I told him. “Find family.”
He paused, then turned and ran out of the room. Looking for any of my guys who were still alive. Once he was gone, I tore open a Velcro flap and dug something out of my pocket, holding it out for him to see. It was a small cylinder about two inches long, set with a tight screw top.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Let’s find out.” I unscrewed the top and shook the contents out into my palm. There were six of them. I leaned over the steel foot rail and showed them to him so he would understand.
Gault said nothing, but there was doubt in his eye.
I picked up one of the objects. It was wooden and had a red bulb at one end with a dot of white at the tip.
“Wooden kitchen match. My grandpa used to call this kind a Lucifer match. Know why? ’Cause it’ll light anywhere. Has its own sulfur.”
I scraped the match along the steel rail.
Nothing happened, of course—the metal was too smooth. But for a moment Sebastian Gault flinched. Fear bloomed in his eye, and he recoiled as far as the mattress would allow.
I held up the unlit tip and gave it a comical frown. “Oops. No friction. My bad. Almost anywhere.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
I removed my pistol from its shoulder holster and scraped the match along the crosshatched grip. It ignited at once. Gault flinched again.
“Stop mucking about,” he cried. “You’re wasting your time. I won’t tell you.”
“I know,” I said. “But I guess I’m like you. Since I can’t have what I want, I might as well sit and watch my enemies burn.”
I bent and held the match to the sheet.
He screamed and tried to kick hard enough to prevent the cloth from catching. Might have worked if he had legs.
“Stop it, you fucking maniac.”
I straightened and blew out the match, leaving only a black scorch on the sheet.
“Five more matches,” I said. “I have those five, and I have a gun.”
He stared at me.
“Maybe you don’t know,” I said, “but Amirah didn’t die in that blast. She escaped, too. Or, at least the thing she’d become had escaped. I went hunting for her in the Afghan mountains. I found her. She was a mess. Rotting away. Being tortured by soldiers. It was horrible. I offered her a choice. The existence she had or a quick trip to paradise and peace.”
He said nothing, but his lips parted.
I showed him the matches in one hand, the gun in the other. “I’m going to offer you the same choice. You can give me that password, and I put a nice, quick bullet into what’s left of your head. I’m a very good shot. You’d never feel it.” I leaned forward again. “Or I’ll burn you. I have matches, and I have time. Tell me, Sebastian, do you want to burn? Again? Is that how you want this all to end? Do you want to bet that you have enough healthy nerve endings left to feel every inch of flames as they crawl over you? And don’t think I’ll let that happen fast. Fuck no. You’re a monster, and you’re going to kill people I care about. I’d want it to last.”
A small whimpering sound came out of his mouth. A tear, bloody and viscous, broke from the corner of his eye.
“Now you tell me,” I said in a voice that came from that cold, dark place, “this or paradise?”
I lit another match.
“Give me the password.”
Sebastian Gault screamed.
“Matthew!” he shrieked. “It’s Matthew.”
I held the match closer to the sheet. “It’s not Matthew. We tried Matthew.”
“No … no! It’s Matthew. In binary code. Type it in. The ones and zeros that make up the boy’s name. Type it in just like that.”
I straightened and tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Yoda, do you copy?”
“Right, mmmm, here, Cowboy. We can’t figure out—”
“It’s the boy’s name. Matthew. Type in the binary code for his name. That’s the password.”
“Are you sure? If this doesn’t work—”
“Do it!”
I shook the match to extinguish it. Gault lay there, weeping, panting, hating himself and me with equal intensity. I heard Yoda’s fingers hitting the keys.
Then nothing.
Nothing.
No bell.
“It worked,” he cried. “We’re in.”
“Start uploading the reset codes. Do it now!” I bellowed. But I don’t think Yoda was even listening to me.
I sagged back and collapsed into the leather guest chair. The room was filled with the dead and dying. I figured I was one of the latter.
“You’re a bastard,” said Sebastian Gault.
I holstered my pistol. He frowned.
“Aren’t you going to kill me? Isn’t that what you said? This or paradise?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Then do it, you sick fuck. Take your shot. End this.”
I looked at the four remaining matches.
After a moment, I got slowly, wearily to my feet. The pain in my side was a white-hot howling thing. I went to the foot of the bed again and leaned on it. Sweat was running down my face. Even with the bandage, I was losing way too much blood. I still held the matches.
“Well, damn you,” he said, “go on! Do it. If you want to send me to bloody paradise or bloody hell, then fucking do it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I will.”
I took a match. Popped it alight with my thumbnail. Held it to the others. They all flared.
“What the hell are you—?”
I dropped the matches onto his sheet.
One at a time.
In different spots.
He began screaming, thrashing, wailing.
I staggered over to the guest chair, pushed it ten feet back, and lowered myself into it.
Gault screamed so loud, I thought it would crack open the world.
I sat and watched.
The fire caught fast, spread too quickly for him to escape. The air shimmered, plumed outward, touching me, touching my skin. I know that it was hot.
So hot.
Hot as hell.
But to me, all I felt was a deep and endless cold.
Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-two
Air Force One
In Flight
April 1, 4:19 P.M. Pacific Standard Time
“Church,” said Linden Brierly. “Good Christ, Church!”
Church heard the voice, but it seemed so far away.
So far.
He knew that he must have collapsed.
The cold.
The lingering chemicals in the cockpit.
He knew. He understood.
But there was nothing he could do about it. The darkness was so big. Too big.
All of his life, he had stood against that darkness, and now it had come for him. Vast, shapeless. And so powerful.
So powerful.
As the darkness took him, Church spoke a single word. A name.
“Circe…”
And then he was gone.
Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-three
UC San Diego Medical Center
200 West Arbor Drive
San Diego, California
April 1, 4
:20 P.M.
Rudy Sanchez stood there, holding the walking stick in his hands. The silver handle was gone, snapped off midway down the shaft.
It lay on the floor. Half melted. The wood that was still attached to it was charred.
Behind him, men were running.
Kingsmen fleeing. Screaming. Mad with terror.
Soldiers with guns. Police with guns.
Lydia and Montana, the only two members of Echo Team left on their feet, fired at them. Everywhere, from all of the fire towers, poured uniformed men in riot gear.
So many guns.
So many screams.
Rudy looked down at the twisted figure on the floor. Broken, bleeding. Dressed in black rags. Smoke curled upward from hollow eye sockets in a face that was nothing but white bone.
It made no sense.
Because nothing made sense.
The massive hound, Banshee, stood amid the carnage, sides heaving, eyes filled with magic. Mouth dripping red, steam rising from her coat. The dog looked at him for a long, long time. Then threw back her head and howled.
The cry echoed through the halls and slowly, slowly faded into silence.
“Rudy!”
A voice cut through the fog and damage in his head. It was as crisp, as clear, as a vesper bell. It hit him with the force of cold water on burning skin. He turned, stared.
“Rudy,” she said. She spoke his name. Rudy.
He took a single staggering step toward her, and his bad leg buckled. He fell. Onto the bloody linoleum.
“Rudy. Oh god … Rudy!”
Because he could not run to her, Circe O’Tree-Sanchez ran to him.
Junie Flynn held one arm to steady her. Toys held the other. Both of them were painted in blood. Splinters of glass glittered like diamonds in their skin.
They crossed the battlefield, where only the dead lay. He got to his knees as she came to him, and he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his face to the side of her swollen belly. He kissed her, and then he used her hands and Junie’s to pull himself up. He kissed her belly. He kissed her over her heart. Then he took her face in his hands and kissed her lips.
“Oh God,” he said, kissing her lips, her cheeks, her eyes, her hair. “Oh dear God … it’s over.”
Circe gasped.
And Toys said, “It’s not quite over, mate. I think her water just broke.”
Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-four
Tanglewood Island
Pierce County, Washington
April 1, 4:25 P.M.
It was Brian who found me. He followed a barking, blood-spattered dog and found me on the floor beside the chair. Between the seat I’d slid out of and a bed on which a twisted thing was wreathed in fire and slowly turning to blackened ash.
“He’s in here!” he yelled. “Christ! We need a medevac.”
I opened my eyes and saw shapes over me, around me. The hulking, improbable shape of Bunny. The face of Top, lined with concern. Ghost’s big nose.
Brian looked past me to the dead thing on the bed. “What the hell is that?”
I told them. I mumbled a name.
But they all thought I was delirious.
That was fine. Maybe I was.
Maybe none of this happened.
I closed my eyes and let it all go away.
Epilogue
1.
The world didn’t burn down.
Not completely.
But the country will never be the same.
The Golden Gate Bridge has become a symbol of how impervious we’re not. It’s the new Twin Towers, equally potent, terribly painful.
Maybe there’s a philosophical or political discussion to be had about whether we dropped our guard in the years following 9/11, that we became complacent. That we forgot the lesson the planes taught us on that September morning.
I don’t know.
My part of the world never forgot. The people I work with never forgot. We never lost a step getting to first base. We were ready; we were fighting that fight alongside soldiers, cops, and spies. And ordinary citizens.
Maybe it was just that the Seven Kings—or whatever the hell you want to call what that organization had become—had wanted us to doubt ourselves. Probably. Their whole agenda, built on misdirection, misinformation, and screwing with minds, was the kind of thing they did so damn well.
Eleven warships had been destroyed. Sixty-three aircraft. Ninety-one tanks.
The death toll kept rising.
Rising.
Rising.
But we all knew that it was going to slow, to stop.
The password was real. It was “Matthew” in binary.
01001101 01100001 01110100 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110111.
Crazy, right?
It stopped Regis. It stopped Solomon. It ended the terror.
The world didn’t burn.
But damn if we didn’t nearly choke on the smoke.
2.
Over the next few days, I spent way too much time in hospitals.
My knife wound was tricky, but it was blood loss more than damage that nearly took me. They pumped me full of high-test, and the trauma surgeon more or less told me to stop whining about what amounted to a sissy injury. Nice guy.
Everyone else I know seemed to be in worse trouble.
Aunt Sallie lost one kidney, but she would live. The doctors were trying to tell her that she should retire. I hoped the doctors had good health coverage of their own.
Sam Imura took a bullet in the stomach and lost four inches of his large intestine. He was expected to recover. His parents flew out from California and brought Sam’s infant brother, Tommy. They stayed with him until he was released.
Toys had 119 stitches.
I sat vigil with Ghost while surgeons picked thirty-one glass splinters out of the woman I loved. Junie’s back looks like it’s covered in red lace. I tried to explain to her that I thought the scars would be sexy. She doesn’t believe me. She should. Scars to me were proof of life. Or a life lived. She was not a killer, not like me; but Junie was born in the storm lands. She is a warrior, too.
I love that woman with all my heart. More every day. More than I thought was possible.
“You ever planning to put a ring on that?” Top asked while Junie was in surgery. He expected me to make a snappy comeback. I didn’t. He stared at me for a while, and then he went off to find us some coffee.
He was smiling.
3.
I walked—very carefully, out of respect for my stitches—with Church down the long hallway of the hospital. Not the same floor, of course. That was an ongoing crime scene, and it was a charnel house. No, we were two floors up and in another wing, one untouched by the violence of that day. Church still wore cotton gloves over the damaged skin of his hands. The frostbite had been bad. One of the doctors had wanted to amputate most of his fingers. Another doctor, a top specialist from Switzerland, thought they could be saved. They were using radical treatments. It was a work in progress.
Church had to be in great pain, but he wouldn’t show it to me. I’ve wondered many times before if his stoicism is a sign of great power and therefore something to be admired or a sign of a tragic disconnect from a normal life. I felt sorry for him, but that’s something I would never show to him.
I also respected him. Maybe even loved him like a second father.
Yeah, that’s another conversation we’d never have.
Church had me go over what happened on Tanglewood Island. I told him as much as I cared to share. Maybe he guessed the rest. Our people managed to save the life of Doctor Michael Pharos, and he was medevac’d to a hospital in Seattle. And then he vanished into the big, dark system of the DMS. It is unlikely he will ever see the light of day again.
“Doctor Pharos is doing his best to be useful,” said Church. “He has been remarkably forthcoming.”
“Lucky for him.”
“No,” said Church, “not really.”
Down the hall, a figu
re sat on a chair outside a patient’s room. She stood as we approached. Tall, slender as a knife blade, beautiful. Alien.
“Hello, Joseph,” she said.
“Hello, Violin.”
She craned her head forward to kiss Mr. Church’s cheek. Then she took his gloved hands and kissed them. He spoke to her very briefly in the ancient language used by Arklight. They don’t know that I’ve picked up some words and phrases. Languages have always been easy for me. I caught two words that I probably misheard, and certainly misinterpreted. I thought Mr. Church said, “… my daughter.”
But I’m sure I’m wrong.
Maybe Church was referring to Circe. Thanking Violin for helping protect her. Sure, that was probably it.
Even so, there was a strange look in her eye. And in his.
“Thanks for bringing that dog,” I said. “I heard stories about what she did.”
Violin nodded. “Still, I wish I’d been there when they attacked. I’m sorry.”
“No need to be. Soldiers can’t be on every battlefield.”
She nodded and stepped back. Church and I entered the patient’s room.
The bed was empty, and the patient was getting dressed with great care and slowness. Much of his body was wrapped in bandages and surgical dressings. When he heard us enter, he turned, and I could see that his face was bruised and lacerated. He had stitches in his lip, through his eyebrow, and across the bridge of his nose. Only his eyes were untouched, and they were filled with a bleak acceptance, as if such physical injury was right and proper and in no way unjust.
“I did not hear that you’d been discharged,” said Church.
Toys tried not to wince as he pulled on a lemon-colored dress shirt. “They’ve already done a patch job. There’s nothing else they can do for me here that I can’t do for myself at home.”
I expected Church to object, but he merely nodded. “Brick will drive you.”
“No need. I called a cab.”
“Brick will drive you,” repeated Church, and Toys shrugged. That did make him wince.
As he began buttoning his shirt, Toys looked up at the ceiling, and maybe through it into the center of his own thoughts. “Sebastian,” he murmured.