But as I turned the knob I heard Ghost begin to growl. I told him to be quiet as I pulled the door open.
Two men stood there.
Big men. Strangers.
Both of them were dressed in black.
Both of them were pointing guns.
Chapter Fifty-five
The Warehouse
Baltimore, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 10:37 a.m.
Mr. Church sat in Joe Ledger’s leather chair and stared at the blank square of screen that moments before had held the image of Joe Ledger and Junie Flynn. Now all it showed was static.
“Bug?” he snapped.
“Working on it.”
“Work faster.”
Rudy Sanchez sat on the other side of Joe Ledger’s desk, fists balled in his lap.
Dr. Hu smiled down from the wall-mounted plasma screen. “Ledger probably spilled his coffee on the keyboard,” he suggested.
“Stop being a child,” said Rudy, and it shut Hu up as surely as a slap across the face.
In the lower corner of the big screen was the digital clock that Church had started after receiving the second video.
4316:12
4316:11
4316:10
“Bug,” he said again.
“This is weird, boss. We got a total communications dead zone that extends in a perfect circle around the lighthouse.”
Hu looked suddenly interested. “A jammer?”
“A mother of a jammer. It’s even killing the satellite uplink.”
Rudy frowned. “I thought Joe once told me that a jammer couldn’t do that.”
“It can’t,” said Hu. “C’mon, Bug, you’re reading it wrong.”
Bug flashed information onto the screens from half a dozen sources, including a Defense Department satellite and two general communications satellites. “Yeah? Then you show me how to read it right.”
Hu stared at the data. So did Church and Rudy.
Church snatched up his cell phone and hit a speed dial. “Gus. I want Echo Team wheels up for Turkey Point Lighthouse right now. Make it happen. Captain Ledger is in trouble.”
4315:55
4315:54
Chapter Fifty-six
Turkey Point Lighthouse, Elk Neck State Park
Cecil County, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 10:38 a.m.
“Oh God,” cried Junie.
“Get inside,” said the taller of the two men.
There was a black SUV parked on the lawn halfway between Junie’s front door and the helicopter. A third man stood by the car. There was no movement at all from the chopper, and that did not make me feel good. Hector and the others should have signaled me. They should be out in the field and up in the faces of these three goons.
They weren’t. The chopper sat there as silent and cold as a dead bug.
Junie touched my shoulder from behind and whispered, “Joe…”
Behind me, Ghost continue to utter a low growl of obvious intent.
One of the two men in the doorway shifted his pistol from my heart to Ghost’s head. The other one looked me in the eye. The gun he held was not an automatic. It was square and clunky, with four curved contacts at the business end. A microwave pulse pistol, an MPP. It was a scary-looking piece of hardware and it was pointed at my dog.
“You call the play,” said the man.
I half turned. “Ghost, ease down.”
Ghost stopped growling and sat. The man turned the MPP away from Ghost and pointed it at me, and the man who’d spoken gave me a nod, pleased that I’d made the sensible choice.
We’d see about that. “Ease down,” in the private and coded language I’d created when I trained Ghost, did not mean what these guys apparently thought it meant. Misunderstandings can be very useful.
“Get inside,” the man said again. He was the leader of this team. Unlike the clown act that had attacked me on the street in Baltimore, these guys were younger, tougher looking, and dressed in black battle-dress uniforms. No insignia of any kind. No rank. Everything was black, and their trousers were neatly bloused into black boots. They wore gun belts with extra magazines. They had white wires curling behind their ears and small wire mikes hovering at the corners of their mouths. The leader was a light-skinned black man, the guy behind him was white. They both wore identical mirrored sunglasses, right out of every cheap 1970s highway cop flick you ever saw. Neither of them was smiling. Mr. Black raised his barrel from my heart to my head, the four metal contacts were aimed right between my eyes.
Despite the exotic guns, the rational part of my mind wanted me to believe that these were a couple of working stiffs from the FBI or NSA and that we’d get this all sorted out as soon as we swapped IDs, and then we’d all laugh about it over tea.
The rational part of my mind was sometimes a fucking idiot.
The rest of me knew who and what these guys were, even if I hesitated using the word.
Closers.
Jesus.
I backed up with my arms wide to shield Junie but also guide her backward. Ghost rose and backed up, too, as the Closers herded us inside.
When we were all inside, Mr. Black looked past me. “Are you Miss June Cassandra Flynn?”
“I—” she began, but I cut in.
“Hey, let’s dial this down, fellows. I’m a federal agent. Please identify yourself and your reason for being here.” I pitched it in my best officer’s voice. Flat and authoritative.
Mr. Black and Mr. White turned their mirrored glasses toward me for a microsecond.
“Shut up,” said Mr. White.
“Look, chief, I think there’s been a big misunderstanding here,” I said, still keeping it in neutral. “If this is a jurisdictional thing, then we can get it straightened out. Who cut your orders for this pickup?”
“Raise your hands and do not interfere,” said Mr. Black.
“I can show you my identification,” I said. “NSA. We’re on the same—”
Mr. Black lashed out with the barrel of his pistol and slammed me across the face. A line of heat exploded along my cheek and the force spun me around and dropped me to one knee. Ghost barked and started to go for the man, but even with my eggs scrambled I knew that they’d kill my dog and then me. Which would leave Junie alone and probably the target of the next Shot. I lunged sideways and hooked my arm around Ghost’s throat.
“No!” I yelled, shouting it to anyone and everyone.
“Don’t shoot!” shrieked Junie. She darted forward, as if she wanted to put herself between the guns and us. Mr. White stepped toward her and jammed the hard metal points of his gun against her breastbone.
“Get the fuck back,” he said in a deadly voice.
Junie gasped and stepped back, bumping into me where I knelt. Ghost strained against my arm.
“No,” I begged in a fierce whisper. “Don’t.”
There was no shot. Not yet.
“Control that dog,” said Mr. White. “Do it now.”
“Ghost,” I pleaded. “Ease down, ease down.”
He trembled in my arms, but despite his primal need to defend the pack leader, he eased down. Just as he was taught. There was blood on his shoulder and I touched my face. My fingers came away slick and red. I didn’t think my cheek was broken, though. Small mercies. The gun may look plastic, but it hit like steel. I dearly wanted to take it away from him and shove it up his ass.
After a moment I climbed to my feet. Mr. Black’s gun followed me, always pointing at my heart. There was a small, cruel smile on his mouth. “Stand there and shut the fuck up. When we want you to speak we’ll ask you a question. If you open your mouth before then, I’ll put you down.”
I raised my hands, palm out, head high, and unthreatening. Whoever these guys were, they played in a whole different league from the clowns who braced me on the street in Baltimore. They had been Triple-A ball and these guys were major league all the way.
“What do you want?” demanded Junie.
Instead
of answering, Mr. Black said, “Check her.”
I thought he was ordering a pat down, but Mr. White reached into a pocket and produced a cell phone, thumbed a few buttons and pulled up a photograph of a pretty, blond, smiling woman. He held it up to compare it with the pretty, blond, unsmiling woman standing with me.
“It’s her.”
“Good,” said Mr. Black. They turned toward us. Toward Junie.
That’s when I knew what was going to happen next.
I couldn’t see their eyes, but I can read body language. They teach us about that in Ranger school, in the cops, in the DMS, and in martial arts. No matter how cold a person is, no matter how detached they believe themselves to be, it is impossible to kill without some psychological and physiological reaction. Even machete-wielding Hutus, mob button men, and mercs who will spray a whole village with automatic weapons fire feel something. That reaction might manifest as a curl of a lip in real or pretended loathing for the victim. It might be a mad light in the eye as the inner voice whispers that to kill is to prove a sort of godhood. It might be a flinch at trigger pull as the mind tries to erect screens around the action in order to compartmentalize it from the more ordinary parts of life. Some have to scream or yell or laugh louder than the sound of another piece of their own soul cracking off as if ricochet bullets pinged and pocked it. Some go totally cold, their conscious submerging into a dark place so deep inside their fractured minds that there is no name for where it goes.
There are a hundred different reactions.
But everybody reacts.
There is always a sign that the mind has ordered the body to break that most ancient of taboos—the ending of a human life.
Practiced killers try to hide their own involuntary reactions.
Warriors look for that small sign, that inevitable tell, because it is both a warning and a doorway.
I saw Mr. Black’s mouth tighten. Ever so slightly, and as it happened the muscles in his arm steadied in anticipation of the force of the gunshot and the recoil of the weapon.
I moved first. My hands were already high, hands open and loose. With every scrap of speed I could muster I whipped my open left palm across the barrel of his gun, knocking it away. It is not a move you try if there are any other options. And you don’t wait to see if it worked or how he’s going to react. All you can do is commit. Totally and with as much savage aggression as you can manage.
I can manage quite a lot.
My right hand darted out, fingers straight and stiff and stabbed Mr. Black in the eyes.
Before he felt it, before he could scream, I went for Mr. White, but Ghost, who had been waiting for this kind of move, was already in motion. He is big but he is very fast. And he is every bit as savage, every bit as vicious, and maybe after all he’s been through, every bit as crazy as me. He came in low and went straight up, jaws wide to take the wrist of the gun hand.
There were two shots. Mr. Black and Mr. White each managed to get off a shot in the same split second. One shot each is all we allowed them.
No bullets. The guns made that weird, hollow tok sound, and suddenly there was a flash of intense heat that burned past my face. The wall behind me exploded in a cloud of superheated plaster and charred wood. The other missed the top of Junie’s head by a hand’s breadth and hit the MindReader substation. The computer blew up—a big, gaudy explosion that took the sofa and half the wall with it. All the pictures on the wall crashed to the floor.
My brain recorded all this, but I was in motion. It was all happening fast now.
Ghost took Mr. White’s wrist. There was a red moment of crunching and worrying and growling and screaming. He took the wrist and the hand with it.
I pivoted to Mr. Black. He had one hand clapped over his eyes and the other tried to bring the gun around. I grabbed the gun and gun hand and wrenched it all in a vicious circle. The trigger guard is curved metal, it’s sharp. At the right speed and with enough leverage it can become a blade. As I took the gun I saw the finger fall.
Junie screamed and kept on screaming. At the blood or at the ugliness or in terror.
Everyone was screaming. Mr. Black, Mr. White.
Me.
I buried the pistol under the soft palate of Mr. Black’s chin and pulled the trigger. If it was a regular pistol it would have blown the top of his head off.
This wasn’t an ordinary pistol.
There was that hollow tok sound and then Mr. Black’s head exploded.
Yeah.
Exploded.
All over me, the wall, the ceiling. A huge blurp of superhot blood and brain matter.
I am pretty damn sure I screamed. You want to blame me? You make someone’s head explode and see how calm you stay.
As the corpse fell away from me, I turned and saw that Mr. White, despite the loss of his hand and the agony he must feel, was trying to hammer at Ghost’s head with his remaining hand. Ghost evaded the blow and clamped his fangs around the man’s thigh. Mr. White’s screams rose to the ultrasonic, but then I shot him in the face.
Same effect.
A tok.
And his head exploded.
I didn’t scream that time. Junie was screaming loud enough for both of us. I gagged. Everything I’d eaten since the late nineties wanted to come up.
But there were shouts from outside.
Not one man’s voice.
Two of them. More.
I shoved Junie down and ran to the open door. Two of the Closers were running toward the house with their M-16s ready to fire. I took the MPP in both hands and fired two shots. They both flew apart.
But there were still shouts.
No, a single voice. Not in front.
There was the sound of breaking glass, and Junie screamed, “Joe! The kitchen door—”
A man shouted at Junie.
Ghost was already in motion. He was a red-streaked white blur, a torpedo in dog shape who blasted through the living room, into a short hallway and out of sight. The man’s yells changed. Became screams. Became wet.
Stopped.
I crouched, listening.
Nothing. No sound.
“Ghost!” I called. “Hunt!”
I heard his nails skitter on kitchen floor tiles and then he was gone.
“Oh my God,” cried Junie, her eyes filled with the horrors that lay around her. There was blood everywhere. On her skirt and coat, too. On her legs. All over me. “Joe! Oh my God … what did you…”
“Get down behind the couch,” I ordered.
Her mouth snapped shut and without a further word she scuttled behind the couch and dropped down out of sight.
I looked down at the gun I held. Mr. Black’s gun felt wrong in so many ways. It felt intensely freakish in my hand, so I tossed it down and drew my Beretta. I tapped my earbud for the team channel. “Hector! Hector! Give me a sit-rep. Red! Slick! Do you copy?”
There was no answer. The communications were still down.
“Joe,” cried Junie, peering out from behind the couch, “are you hurt?”
“No. Stay down.”
She disappeared again.
I edged outside, fanning the Beretta across the lawn. The only movement was the swaying of tall flowers. With the pistol leading the way, I ran toward the helicopter. It sat there, eerily still in the sunlight.
There was no doubt of what I’d find.
Of what I did find.
Hector, Red, and Slick.
What was left of them was sprawled behind the Black Hawk. That gun—that weird gun—had blown them apart. Three good people were now fried meat and drying blood. Not even recognizable as the people they’d been. Red lines of blood snaked through the grass. Exactly the same color as the red trim on the helo.
Eight dead. My three friends, and five of the Closers.
What the hell was happening?
As I ran back toward the house, Ghost came running around the corner of the building, stopped and stared at me, waiting for orders. “Watch. Call, call,” I
ordered and he faded back, ducking into the shadows of the house. If anyone else showed up, Ghost would warn us with a couple of loud barks, and then he would go back to hunting.
My face hurt like hell from where Mr. Black had pistol-whipped me, and blood dripped onto my shirt. All the drinking I’d done last night, the violence twice today and the accompanying adrenaline dump, and the sheer exertion of terror was all taking its toll. Kicking my ass. I didn’t know how much I had left to spend on this game. It felt like I was down to my last couple of chips and I didn’t like the cards I was being dealt.
Exhausted, frightened, and sick at heart, I turned and ran back inside house.
Chapter Fifty-seven
Over Maryland airspace
Sunday, October 20, 10:43 a.m.
First Sergeant Bradley Sims looked up from the flat tabletop tactical computer screen that showed a topographical map of Elk Neck State Park. The rest of Echo Team was clustered around in a semicircle, checking their gear, thumbing fresh rounds into spare magazines, laughing and joking. Swapping the kind of trash talk that was meaningless in itself but useful as a way of coaxing courage into the heart and adrenaline into the veins.
Five of them. Four men and a woman.
All combat vets, all first-team shooters. None of them virgins when it came to a firefight, even if they had not all taken fire together in the same battle. Bunny, the hulking kid to his right, had been with Top and Captain Ledger from the jump, the three of them signing onto the DMS on the same day—and that day had been a nonstop series of battles. In the two years since, the lineup of Echo Team had changed so many times. Lydia, the woman sitting beside Bunny, had been on the firing line for half that time, which made her the third in team seniority. The other three—Pete Dobbs from Kentucky, Sam Imura from California, and Ivan Yankovitch from the Motor City—were all new to Echo.
So many others had fallen. Every night of his life, before he went to sleep and in lieu of prayers, Top Sims murmured the names of every other member of the team who had stepped up to the line and then gone down in the heat of a fight. Some were still alive but because of injuries received on the job were no longer field certified. Big Bob Faraday, who had taken a chestful of bullets during the Jakoby affair, now ran mission support out of a substation in Virginia. DeeDee Whitman, who’d taken a facial laceration and permanent eye damage while aboard the Sea of Hope, was a talent scout for the DMS—cruising the top guns in JSOC for Echo and other teams. Gunnery Sergeant Brick Anderson, formerly of the Denver office, now ran the special weapons shop two blocks from the Warehouse.