“Somebody has an interesting sense of humor,” mused Church.
“Ha-fucking-ha,” I groused. “What else?”
“That’s the very bad news. They were taken to the ER at Harbor Hospital. At least that was the plan. A pair of ambulances showed up, EMTs loaded them, and they took off with a patrol car leading the way. The ambulances made a sudden left and by the time the cruiser saw them turning and circled the block to find them, the two ambulances were gone. Cops tried to radio the EMTs and got nothing. Helicopter flyovers failed to locate the vehicles. Police are searching for them, but there are a million warehouses, multicar residential garages, and boathouses in that section of town.”
Bug looked at me from the big screen on the wall. “I can put somebody on that. Lot of ambulance services have GPS units, so we can probably track them. The ambulance company might also have a remote vehicle disabling system. Lot of them do because of all those warnings from Homeland about how easy it would be to use a vehicle like that as a car bomb.”
“Gus,” I said, “send everything you have to Bug and keep me posted.”
He nodded and headed for the door.
“Wait,” I said, “what’s the ‘strange’ news?”
He turned with an enigmatic smile. “Oh yeah … that little metal doodad you found? I had the geek squad look it over. Get this … they can’t identify the material. They’re not even sure it is metal. But it might take a while for them to figure out what it is.”
“Why?” asked Church.
“Because X-rays won’t penetrate it and when they tried to run it through the MRI there was some kind of system failure. The geeks are trying to reboot the medical computers now.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Did that metal thing cause the crash?”
“That’s what they’re trying to figure out now.”
Church pursed his lips for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Gus, keep us posted.”
But Gus lingered for one moment more. “Oh, and Joe—your bird’s smoking on the roof. You want Echo Team on deck?”
“No, this is just a pickup. We don’t want to scare our expert more than we have to. Flight crew only. I’d rather have Top meet with the cop who lost the ambulances. Tell him to spread the team out and help with a search of the harbor area. I want those vehicles found.”
“You got it.” He left, closing the door firmly behind him.
To Church I said, “We need to add more numbers to today’s weird-o-meter, ’cause that just pushed it past ‘ten.’ I got a bad vibe from those four jokers from the jump.”
His answer was a stern grunt.
“Is that connected to the president’s abduction?” asked Bug. “I mean, I’m with you on not liking the coincidence, Joe, but I really don’t see how those two fit.”
“Neither do I, Bug. All I have to go on here is gut, and my gut is telling me that there has to be a connection. Has to be.”
“Then we need to find it,” said Church. “I’ve called Dr. Sanchez and he’s on his way in. I believe he has some interest in this field and—”
I was surprised. “He does?”
“Sure,” said Bug, “he and I talk about it a lot.”
“You do?”
“I’ve participated in some of those discussions,” said Church. “It’s by no means an uncommon topic around here.”
“It isn’t? Where the hell was I when all this was going on?”
Bug shrugged. “Out shooting things, probably.”
When I looked at Church, he spread his hands. “You would probably be surprised at how the support staff manage their time while the field teams are going to or coming from the field.”
I grunted.
“My point,” said Church, “is that Dr. Sanchez will want to help and right now information gathering is going to be a primary concern. Knowing that the Black Book is our focus helps us make some decisions about which other elements of this may be related. I’ll draw up a list of useful contacts for him to call.”
“Okay, but if we get our hands on the Black Book—then what? How do we let the kidnappers know?”
“Presumably they will contact us. I don’t want to be caught empty-handed when they reach out.”
“No shit. Then I guess I’ll go and see if Junie Flynn will help us.”
I could think of twenty reasons why this was a bad idea and a waste of time.
But I was already out the door.
Four minutes later Ghost and I were in a big UH-60 Black Hawk, lifting off from the roof of the Warehouse. The DMS birds were as black as their names except for thin red lines around the doors and along the tail. The muscular General Electric engines raised the six tons of mass into the morning air and the pilot turned the nose toward the northeast. Elk Neck State Park was sixty miles away. In scant minutes we were screaming through the air at two hundred miles an hour, racing as if the tick of each fragile second was one digit less on some bomb that we couldn’t see.
The president was missing. Taken from the White House in a scenario we all agreed was impossible. Actually impossible.
A mysterious video from a source even MindReader couldn’t trace threatened terrible destruction if we didn’t obtain a copy of a book that, fifteen minutes ago, even Mr. Church believed was a myth. A book I’d never heard of. A book that, had I first heard about it on one of those cable science shows, I would have dismissed with a laugh and channel-surfed over to an old Baywatch rerun.
A book that was supposed to hold secrets.
UFOs.
I mean … seriously? UFOs? Did I have to start believing in them now?
Or was this one of those things—like the Seven Kings—where it was misinformation layered over disinformation layered over insane conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo? The Kings had wanted us to believe that a goddess was punishing human iniquity by sending new versions of the old Egyptian Ten Plagues. When all the smoke cleared, that was just another bunch of terrorists playing on human fear and paranoia in order to make a buck.
Was that what we had here? Were we catching the outside edge of another massive con game?
I actually hoped so. The alternative was …
I looked at Ghost, who was crouched down on the helo’s deck. He felt me watching him and stared up at me with big, brown, bottomless eyes.
“This is nuts,” I said.
Ghost gave me another whuff, and left it entirely up to me how to interpret it.
Chapter Thirty-one
Over the Atlantic, due East of Hilton Head
Sunday, October 20, 7:19 a.m.
Erasmus Tull preferred to fly his own jet. It eliminated the need for any other staff besides his longtime partner, Aldo Castelletti. Much easier for keeping secrets.
The Mustang soared over the blue Atlantic, heading toward a private airstrip in Maryland, the engine muted to a soft growl by the cabin soundproofing. Tull glanced at Aldo, who was poring over a report on his iPad.
“Jeee-zuss, Tully,” swore Aldo. “Did you read this shit?”
“I read it.”
“Did you see that video Mr. Bones hijacked from the DMS?”
“Sure.”
“Think that’s really the president?”
“Yes.”
“Christ on the cross, man.”
Tull cut him a look. “What do you think?”
“What do I think? I think this is fucked up, man. Half of me wants to think this is a big steaming load of horse shit. The other half of me wants to run and hide. The main thing is that this doesn’t make any sense.” Aldo had heavy features, a thick mustache, a large crooked nose, and Tull thought that he looked like every Italian pizza shop owner he’d ever seen on a TV commercial. The coarse features and drooping eyelids were a terrific natural disguise that hid a keen and calculating mind. Unlike Tull and a few of the other top operators among the Closers, Aldo was not part of the family. He had a real mother and father. He had been born in a hospital, had sucked milk from a breast, had gone to preschool and all of that. Tull
envied him.
Sometimes Tull got Aldo on a talking jag, just ruminating about growing up in Little Italy, being part of a huge family. About being real. When Tull was talking to people—like Berenice—he sometimes borrowed those memories. They were full of rich detail. Those kinds of stories put people at ease. They never looked at you as if you weren’t like everyone else. That always felt better.
“Which part doesn’t make sense?” asked Tull.
“The part about abducting the fucking president,” said Aldo. “I mean, who in their right mind would abduct the president of the United States? Granted, that shows some heroic clanking steel balls—but what’s the point? It’s too much. It’s like showing off, you know? Does it make any sense to you?”
Tull shrugged.
Aldo waited for more. “That’s it? I ask you a serious question and you give me a shrug?”
“What’s there to say?”
“For fuck’s sake, Tully, we’re flying right into the middle of this thing and you don’t know what to say?”
“No, I don’t. We don’t have any solid intel on the abduction, so our role is a wetwork. Take out a few players, turn it over to the cleaners, and walk away. What is there to say, Aldo?”
“That’s a piss-poor answer.”
“Yes,” agreed Tull, “it is.”
“They want you to take the Deacon and his band of psychos off the board and you don’t have a comment?”
Tull gave him another shrug. “I made some suggestions to Mr. Bones, so the surveillance is already in place. Pigeon drones, that sort of thing. We have full teams on deck, satellite support, and by the time we have boots on the ground Joe Ledger will be a wanted man and we’ll be the good guys bagging a terrorist. I think they’ve planned this out so well they probably don’t need us.”
“Then why the fuck did you take this gig? Why blow off retirement?”
They flew a lot of miles before Tull answered that question. “You know that I worked for the Deacon for a while.”
“Sure. And then you split, but I never did hear why.”
Tull thought about it, shrugged, and said, “This was before Deacon formed the DMS. He was doing some problem solving within the government, hunting terrorist sleeper cells, that sort of thing. I was topkick for a five-person team. Deacon received intel that a group of Lithuanians were bringing some old Soviet implosion-type devices into the country redesigned as suitcase nukes. Nothing too big, just enough pop to level a couple of city blocks and up the local cancer rate by three or four thousand percent. Stuff that would be used at places like Grand Central Station at rush hour, Madison Square Garden during a concert, or Times Square on New Year’s Eve. It was junk from Kazakhstan, but it was something you wanted to take seriously. Only about halfway through the mission I get word from the Fixer—remember him? He was the acquisitions governor before Mr. Bones came on board.”
“Yeah, sure. He woke up with his throat cut. Chinese got him, I think. Pretty nice guy.”
“That’s the guy. Anyway, the Fixer gets in touch and tells me that the Lithuanians were not bringing in suitcase nukes. What they had were two satchels filled with debris from that old crash at Tunguska in 1908. They’d swiped the stuff from a testing lab in Siberia and were hoping to sell it to some Chinese buyers who were going to meet them up by the Canadian border. Problem was, I had four guys running with me, all of them loyal to Deacon. The kind of guys you couldn’t recruit into the Closers. Real GI Joes.”
“Yeah? So what happened?”
Tull shrugged. “What could I do. If we nabbed the Lithuanians then we’d have to turn the satchels over to Deacon. Imagine what would happen if he got a good look at actual debris. M3 has invested millions just to stay off of his radar. It was why I was planted in his group. But … the clock was ticking. If I had more time maybe I could have finessed a way out and been able to keep my cover inside Deacon’s organization.”
“What happened, man? Don’t leave me hanging.”
“Oh … I killed everyone and took the satchels, what do you think happened?”
Aldo stared at him. “Four of Deacon’s boys and the whole Lithuanian team?”
“There were only three Lithuanians.”
“Jesus, Tully, you are one cold motherfucker.”
Tull shrugged. “You have to do what you have to do.”
They flew in silence for a while. Tull was aware that Aldo occasionally cut sly looks at him.
Without looking at his friend, Tull said, “Y’know … I was retired, Aldo. A couple of hours ago I was in paradise with a beautiful and intelligent woman, with nothing to do but work on my tan, make love, catch fierce little fish, and forget that I ever did this sort of thing.”
“Sounds pretty great, man, but c’mon—you can’t change who you are.”
Tull sighed. “No, I guess not.”
“You going back to her when this is over?”
Tull reached into his shirt pocket and removed a pack of gum, popped two pieces out of the blister pack and chewed them, savoring the sugary sweetness. His eyes roved over the wisps of clouds beyond the windshield.
“I didn’t leave that door open,” he said.
Aldo studied him for a while, lips pursed, his gaze as much inward as directed at Tull.
Without turning, Tull said, “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a monster.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re thinking that I’m a coldhearted freak.”
“Hey, fuck, man, I’m not going to throw stones. I’m not welcome at church picnics, either.”
Tull cut him a sly look. “Maybe not, but you can go to confession and square it with God. Get a fresh coat of whitewash on your soul.”
Aldo shrugged. “Last time I checked that option was open to everybody. You should try it sometime.”
That made Tull laugh. A dark and bitter laugh.
“What’s so funny?” asked Aldo.
“You can’t whitewash something that doesn’t exist. I got a lot of nifty extras, Aldo, but I’m pretty sure a ‘soul’ was not part of the deal.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Over Maryland airspace
Sunday, October 20, 7:25 a.m.
My cell rang seconds after the Black Hawk lifted off. I looked at the screen display and debated whether to let the call go to voice mail. Apparently of its own accord, my thumbnail hit the button.
“Joseph?” said a deliciously familiar voice.
DMS helicopters have pressurized cabins to allow for conference-quality silence. Violin’s voice was soft and hearing it filled me with a memory of her that was rich and immediate and intense. Nestled between her thighs, our hungry mouths speaking each other’s names through gasps and cries, the way her skin is always cool even at the height of passion, and how my heat seemed to flow into her and back into me as we soared over the brink.
“I’m sorry I had to leave you like that,” I said.
“Work,” she said, not pitching it as a question. She understood.
“Work,” I agreed.
“Speaking of which,” she said, “I saw a car outside as I was leaving. A black one. Crown Victoria, with federal plates. Friends of yours?” She described the men and gave me the plate number. It wasn’t one of the two cars that had boxed me.
“No idea,” I said, “but there’s a little trouble going on. I’ll call that in to my boss and they’ll send someone out to take a look.”
“Probably nothing, then,” she said.
I heard sounds behind her. People. “Where are you?”
“The airport. I caught a cab after you took off.”
“You’re leaving?”
Violin laughed. “I told you that I had a job.”
A job. A nice little euphemism for what she did for a living. When she went to work, someone died. No one I’d miss. No one the world would miss. Lately her work was focused on men who used to belong to the Red Order. And a few of t
he highly dangerous and incredibly creepy Red Knights. They kept trying to hide from Violin and her sisters in the group code-named Arklight. They tried, but Arklight is very good and very determined. Also, Mr. Church let them have some limited access to Mind Reader. It made Violin’s job easier.
“When will you be back?” I asked.
She was a long time answering.
“Violin?”
“Let’s not worry about when,” she said. “I’ll call you when I can, okay?”
I said that it was okay because it had to be okay. This was as close to an arrangement as we had. Probably as close to a real relationship as we would ever have. I tried hard to resent it, though. I tried hard not to let it feel like a convenience.
“Stay safe, Violin,” I told her.
“You, too, Joseph.”
She was not the kind of person to ever say I love you.
Maybe I wasn’t, either. Not anymore.
The line went dead.
I sighed. Then I called in the info on the guys outside my apartment. Bug’s assistant, Yoda, took the details and said he’d run it. Oh, and, yeah, Yoda was the kid’s name. His parents were Star Wars freaks and, much as I love a little pop culture craziness now and then, those bozos ought to be horsewhipped. Kid’s sister was Leia.
That done, I sat back against the cushions and stared at the walls on the inside of the helo and on the inside of my brain. Before I could sink too deeply into glum musings, my cell rang again. Rudy. The last time I saw him he was dressed in black socks and boxer shorts, covered in Silly String, and drunker than anyone I have ever even heard of. No, we didn’t trick him into any naughty intrigue with hookers, but we staged a bunch of faked photos to make him think we did. Those photos were on my cell, but I hadn’t yet found the right moment to send them to him.
“It lives!” I said into the phone.
Rudy gave me a deep, protracted groan that was equal parts shame, anguish, physical pain, and moral outrage. “Believe me when I say this, Cowboy, I will find a way to kill you.”
“Hold on, I’m about to faint from sheer terror. No … no, that was just gas.”
His next comment was in Spanish and it insinuated that my ancestors frequently and enthusiastically fornicated with livestock.