At least there had been a good hot shower in the bargain, and there would be no more traveling for the moment, not even a walk down the hall. Her next appointment was coming directly to her hospital room; she wouldn’t even need to change out of her bathrobe to meet with him.
With the bedside remote she adjusted herself to a more upright position. She was still too wired for a nap and too tired to pace the floor, but there was no shortage of reading to be done.
A stack of materials in various media had been brought and left alongside her dinner tray by someone’s assistant. The encrypted touchscreen tablet placed on top would contain all things sensitive and classified, including issue-specific position papers from various intelligence services and an up-to-the-minute recap of the President’s Daily Briefing. A generous bundle of domestic and international newspapers and magazines rounded out the pile, and that’s where she began.
Not that she believed much of the sponsored propaganda that was parroted by the press in these times. No, Virginia kept up with the papers and periodicals purely to see what the general public was being told. Through study of the covert trends and agendas between the lines she could sometimes assemble a better forecast of where and when the next crisis might arise.
The truth was predictably scarce in all those spoon-fed pages. But as someone who spent her days immersed in the undisguised reality of a global house of cards on the brink of total catastrophe, she couldn’t help but think that maybe it was better this way. There was some form of mercy in the fact that the majority of people didn’t have any idea what was coming.
Virginia Ward no longer harbored any fantasies of a happy ending, not even for the nation she loved. Her work was not at all strategic but purely reactive and tactical in nature, clear-cut and eye-to-eye. She put a stop to things that were wrong; that’s how she phrased it on those rare occasions when she was asked what she did for a living by someone who merited an honest answer. Desperate circumstances arose and she went out to meet them, and then she put things right and made that single problem go away.
This was how she wanted it; nothing ambiguous, no soul-searching was required, and there was enough self-determination in her work to make it seem worthwhile. She retained the absolute right of refusal for these missions, and when she had the opportunity to choose an assignment for herself, she was free to take it on.
That bloody siege in Arizona had been one of her own choosing. The next, though, whatever it was, would no doubt be suggested for her by someone higher up, one of the many competing power brokers who worked their patient plots from behind the tinted glass.
The man she would soon be meeting was new to her. This made it even more important that her mind be clear. It was beyond unusual for her services to be requested—or even learned of—by anyone she didn’t know personally.
As she was lost in her reading there soon came a quiet knock at the door frame. She signed out of her tablet, looked up, and motioned the visitor inside.
“Is this a good time?” the man asked, smiling.
“Good as any. Please, come on in.”
He did, removing his jacket and laying it over his arm as he walked up near the bed. “Do people call you Ginny?”
“Not often.”
“Virginia, then.” He seemed to make note of her more visible injuries. “You took some damage out there tonight.”
“You should see the other guy,” she said without humor, and with hopes that the niceties would soon be coming to a close.
“I’ll bet.” He reached out and she shook his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Virginia. My name is Warren Landers.”
• • •
This guy was very well connected; that was the first impression he’d obviously sought to give her. His boss was a man named Arthur Gardner; he was the one who’d reached out to Virginia’s people a few days before. Landers had been sent to Arizona to observe her previous mission, and after apparently finding her work to be adequate for his needs, he’d followed her here.
As usual in these cases, once his credentials were established she hadn’t expected him to provide many other details of the organization behind him, and none were offered.
Mr. Landers sat and waited while she went through the backgrounder he’d brought.
At first blush the man whom Landers and his group were targeting seemed hardly more than a cold-blooded murderer. There’d been scattered sightings of him across the country and other seemingly random shootings along the eastern seaboard seemed to bear his signature as well.
He’d once been a military man with a sterling record, but upon returning home he’d apparently suffered some sort of a gradual post-traumatic breakdown. According to one supposedly reliable source, he’d later fallen in with a group of homegrown extremists. For almost two decades this organization had managed to stay under the law enforcement radar before suddenly popping up late last year.
“Thom Hollis,” she said.
“Thom or Thomas; he seems to go by both.”
She flipped through the upper corners of the remaining paperwork. “By the dates on these documents this has all been put together rather quickly. And recently.”
He nodded. “That’s true. This Hollis guy and the group behind him just made the President’s kill-list. The White House is about to green-light a signature strike on them, so there was a bit of a scramble to get up to speed.”
This “kill-list” to which Mr. Landers referred was a relatively new development, at least among governments that still tipped their hats to the rule of law. Together with a small contingent of advisors the President would regularly meet to nominate and then pass judgment on foreign (and now domestic) “militant” individuals deemed eligible for termination without the benefit of due process.
“So tell me about this group.”
“As you just read, Thom Hollis has been running with one of those right-wing domestic militias. Real throwbacks, Constitutionalists, religious fanatics, Sovereign Citizens, I’m sure you know the profile. They call themselves the Founders’ Keepers, and I guess they want to drag us all back to 1789, slaves and all. You’re familiar with George Pierce and the United Aryan Nations?”
“Of course.”
“They’re branches on the same tree, and apparently they’re all in the process of joining forces. There was a showdown a few days ago up in Wyoming; the good guys finally had these people pinned, and they hit back with the kind of weaponry and tactics and numbers that tells us they’re at a whole new level now. Most of them got away, and this Hollis guy split off from there.”
“And the woman who’s with him?”
“Her name is Molly Ross. Her mother was Beverly Ross, you might have heard of her, she was some kind of a libertarian activist dating back to the 1970s. She started this group and they seemed mostly harmless while she was alive, a lot of crazy talk but very little action. Mom put herself out of our misery last fall, killed herself, after the daughter and some of Pierce’s men perpetrated that incident north of Las Vegas.”
“That incident?”
“That nuclear incident.”
Though Virginia knew exactly what he was talking about, it had seemed more judicious to pretend as though she didn’t. This Landers guy didn’t need to know how plugged in she really was.
Much like that recent and surprising launch of a Chinese-made ballistic missile from a submarine off the coast of Southern California, the cover stories about the Nevada explosion had flown in so thick and fast that the whole event had passed immediately into the wacky realm of the conspiracy theorists. It was a meteorite, it was a plane crash, it was a botched underground test—only a handful of people really knew what had happened, and their hard knowledge concerned only the fact of the unplanned nuclear detonation, and not the full story behind it. This was the first that even Virginia had heard of a specific terrorist connection.
“Honestly, Mr. Landers, this sounds like a job for the FBI, and the police.”
“I would agree with
you,” Landers said, “but it’s not so much what Hollis has done so far that’s concerning us. He killed one of his own the other day, a guy named Ben Church, just a harmless old man from the group who was probably trying to talk some sense into him. Shot him in the head. You’ll see it in the psych profile, they’re calling that a ‘triggering incident.’ Anyway, they pulled some DNA and fingerprints from some handmade cartridges around that murder scene. Both belong to Hollis. And those other shootings you saw in the brief? The prints and the other evidence at those sites point straight to him, too. We’ve got some fairly good pictures from surveillance videos; he’s traveling with a young female companion, and they’re obviously disguising themselves but she looks an awful lot like Molly Ross.”
“As I said—”
“With all due respect,” Landers cut in, “I think this is a job for you. These killings are only a drum roll. They’re laying the groundwork for a major terrorist attack, and as soon as the press gets hold of it these two are going to start getting their names in the paper, and that’s just what they want. They want people to know who they are so everyone will know who’s responsible when they do what we think they’re planning to do.”
“And what’s that?”
“You and I both know there was a clear lead-up before 9/11. Small things that looked unrelated, and we only saw the connections after the attack. If we’d understood them before, we could have prevented a disaster and saved thousands of lives.” He took a step closer. “Virginia, it’s these people that were responsible for that near calamity last year. If they’d succeeded it would have made September 11th look like a garden party. Sure, the real facts never made it to the press, but you saw what happened. Even the nonspecific alert they caused was serious enough to move Congress to delay the fall elections; they still haven’t happened yet. But they didn’t stop after that. What these people have said very clearly to all of their underground followers is that something big is coming, something really spectacular, and they’ve promised that they’re bringing it soon.”
She closed the folder and thought for a moment. “All right. I’ll take a thorough look and let you know what I think by morning.”
“That’s all I ask; just give us your thoughts. And one other thing. We’ve got an advantage here if we want it. We have a back channel to this Molly Ross that I think can help us find her and bring her in.”
“What kind of a back channel?”
“It’s why this situation has become personal for me and the men I work for. We’ve got a family member involved. He was duped into helping these people last year, and my hope is that he can provide you with some insights, and maybe even make contact. His name is Noah Gardner.”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“Good. He’s actually right down the hall.”
“What a coincidence,” Virginia said.
“I have to confess, it’s my doing. Noah got caught in the cross fire in that firefight in Wyoming I mentioned. It’s a long story, but when they told me earlier that you needed a checkup after your mission I suggested that they bring you here, just in the hopes that we all could get together and save some time.”
“I understand.”
“He’s a good kid. They really got into his head, though”—Landers briefly twirled a finger by his ear—“Stockholm syndrome kind of stuff, especially with this girl. She slept with him, apparently, convinced him to help her with some corporate espionage, and it went downhill from there. He’s probably still got feelings for her, despite the fact that she almost got him killed. And I’d expect him to sound a little paranoid after all he’s been through.”
“Okay, then. I’ll go see him right now.”
Landers checked his watch. “Now?”
“If he’s awake. There’s no time like the present. Do you want to come along? It sounds like you two are close.”
“No, no, no, I’m a . . .” Landers seemed to struggle for a moment with exactly how to characterize himself. “I’m just a friend of the family. It’s probably better if we keep this all between the two of you.”
“Fine.” She held out her hand and he shook it. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get dressed.”
“He’s in room 306, just a few doors down. And you’ve got my number,” Landers said. With that he put on his jacket, subtly checked himself in the full-length mirror by the window, and left her with a plastic smile.
She met a lot of people in her line of work, and generally not by choice. Experience had taught her that the worthiness of the mission often had very little to do with any high moral virtues of the people requesting the job.
On his way out, this Landers person had said that she had his number, and he was dead right about that. In fact, she’d gotten that man’s number pretty much the minute he’d walked in her door.
Chapter 25
The leg that Virginia had worn to Arizona was a prototype and hadn’t really been intended for the rigorous shakedown it received. And if anyone was back in the lab wondering, it clearly wasn’t bulletproof, either.
She looked it over again, now nestled in its fitted recharging case against the wall, as she dressed herself in frayed denim cutoffs and a comfortable old T-shirt from her bag. They’d constructed this leg to be a photographic match of her natural limb, and as such it resembled the shapely and graceful lower-left appendage of a runway model. If David Beckham’s real legs were insured for $70 million, this single artificial one probably beat them both in its replacement value—especially since it had been made under a government contract. When she returned it to Cambridge the bionics engineers there would learn a lot from the data it had collected, but they’d also have a few hundred hours of repair work ahead.
By contrast, the piece she now put on was much like her first prosthetic ever, the leg she’d worn when taking those first unsteady steps in the months after the combat injuries that had nearly killed her. As a prosthetic it was a portrait of utility, just carbon fiber and stainless steel and plastic with a wool-padded sleeve, a wide black Velcro harness, and an old Converse high-top laced up to its unisex foot. This was the only spare she’d brought along and it fit her very well, in more ways than one. There were no pretenses about it, no apologies, and yet in its very lack of adornments it held a certain kind of beauty that not everyone might pause to appreciate.
When Virginia checked the clock after her guest had departed she found it was later than she’d thought. If the subject of her upcoming interview was already asleep she’d just catch him in the morning. Meanwhile, the short stroll might do some good for her fresh aches and pains.
In the middle of the night the hallway was perfectly still, as were the Marine sentries stationed outside her own private suite and one other nearby. A few steps farther down she paused and looked past the guards into the room where the members of the Dell family were safely housed. Cots had been rolled in and the space well prepared so mother and children could stay together in comfort.
The boy was the only one awake when she peeked inside. Ronny was his name, she’d later learned. He sat up a bit when he saw her, she gave him a small wave, and with very little movement he waved back, though he didn’t manage to smile. That was okay; we do these things one step at a time.
When she arrived at Noah Gardner’s room she found him reading by a solitary light at the side of the bed. Before she could knock he’d put aside his book and motioned her inside.
“You’re up,” Virginia said.
“Yeah. They’ve had me knocked out for so long I don’t know if I’ll ever need to sleep again.”
“I’m Virginia Ward.”
He nodded. “They told me you’d be coming by.”
“Do you feel like a chat now?”
“Sure,” he said.
Rather than pulling up one of the low chairs, she came to the foot of his hospital bed, lowered the railing, and hopped up to sit and face him from near that end. “Do you know what I’m here to talk to you about?”
“Yes. Yo
u want to talk about Molly.”
“Do you know why?”
“I was told there’s a chance she can be brought in safely, and that you might give her that chance.”
She nodded. “Where do you think we should start?”
“I think we should start with you telling me if that’s a fact.”
“If I get involved in this, Noah, I’m going to do what’s right, for my country first and then for everyone else after that. That’s what I do, and that’s all I can promise you at this point.”
“Fair enough, I guess.”
“And I need to say, right now it doesn’t look so good for her.” She opened the background folder that Landers had given her. “She’s gotten mixed up with some very bad guys, militant white supremacists—”
“Oh, get serious, now.”
“. . . and one man you might have come in contact with. A big guy named Thom Hollis.”
“Hollis?” He laughed. “I never actually knew his first name, but you’re saying Thom Hollis is one of these very bad guys she’s mixed up with? The man’s a teddy bear; he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“He had seventy-seven confirmed kills as a sniper in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“Really?”
“Really.” She handed over a summary of the service record. “His longest shot was just over a mile.”
For almost a minute Noah studied the papers and looked through the old photos of the man. “So he was a soldier, and a good one. Surely you’re not saying that makes him some kind of a lunatic.”
“Of course not. It seemed like you were saying he was harmless, and I wanted to show you that maybe that was only an impression you’d been given. How long were you actually around these people?”