“You’re my graphic artist.”
“I don’t understand. What kind of art do you need?”
“Well, ma’am, near as you can manage, we need for that thing over there”—he pointed to a sun-faded and road-worn HomeWorx rental truck parked across the bay—“to look just like this right here.”
Hollis opened a folder and passed it across the table to her. On top of the papers inside was a series of detailed color photos showing every angle of a hazmat emergency vehicle from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Safety.
Chapter 50
At the clinic outside San Francisco, Ellen Davenport had tended to her patient through the night. As the morning came, Ellen reviewed the chart once again and, satisfied that she was stable and comfortable, left to check in on her old friend Noah.
The sleep lab in this clinic had a one-bedroom suite designed and decorated like a space that might be found in a nice, normal home. It was made that way so that the slumber patterns of visiting subjects could be evaluated in a more calming environment than a cold and sterile hospital room. This suite was where Noah and Molly had been put up together for the night.
When Ellen looked in the door she found them sleeping in each other’s arms, dressed in borrowed clothes they’d been provided with for their upcoming journey. It seemed as though they’d awakened earlier, bathed and gotten ready to depart, and then drifted off again in the midst of an intimate conversation.
Ellen had known this young man for a long time and he’d always been blissfully superficial in his relations with the opposite sex. This was a different picture; she’d never seen him like this, not with any other woman. The two of them looked like they belonged together, like they’d always been together, and like they didn’t intend to ever be apart again.
Ellen left the sleep lab and took a long, hot shower. When she returned to Virginia’s room she found her patient awake and as alert as the medication would allow.
“Where are we?” Virginia asked.
“We’re in San Francisco. You’re doing much better—”
“And where are the others?”
“Noah and Molly are in the next room. Everyone else headed off for Pennsylvania last night.” Ellen checked her watch. “We’ve got a flight to catch soon ourselves, and I have to get them up in a few minutes. My colleagues here are going to take good care of you—”
“They shouldn’t leave,” Virginia interrupted. She made a move to rise but Ellen stopped her with a gentle hand. “None of you should leave. Let me talk to them.”
“They’re very determined—”
“Please, let me talk to them.”
“Okay, shh. Just rest now. I’ll send them in before we go.”
• • •
Later, as Noah and Ellen and Molly buckled into their seats on the small private jet, he recalled their parting conversation with Virginia Ward.
She’d tried by every means to persuade them that the safest course was to put themselves under her protection, and she was probably right, but wisdom and reason had no effect on Molly. She was not going to be stopped this time and Noah wouldn’t be leaving her side, and so the decision was made.
Once they’d left, Noah had insisted on one thing, however, and he’d gotten no argument. As soon as they landed for their connection in Illinois, Ellen Davenport would part ways with them, catch a cab to O’Hare, and travel on to New York alone. There she’d meet with Charlie Nelan to figure out how to deal with the events of the last several days and begin to get her life back on track again.
The jet had been fueled and waiting for them at Hayward Executive Airport, near the bay. These arrangements were made by a well-to-do secret friend of Molly’s group, the CEO of a chain of hardware stores in the East, and his gift had allowed them to sidestep the heightened security that surely would have snared them instantly if they’d tried to go anywhere near San Francisco International.
As the jet taxied out onto its assigned runway, Molly felt for his hand and squeezed it tight when she found it. Then she told him where they were ultimately bound.
Her objective was a maximum-security storage facility in rural Pennsylvania. It was the crown jewel of a group of fortresses operated by a company called Garrison Archives. Naturally, Noah knew this place well. They stored many rare treasures there, irreplaceable collections and priceless works of art, all preserved and protected in a controlled underground environment built to withstand even a nearby nuclear war.
But another, larger level of Garrison had a different purpose. It housed a vast chamber of secrets through which the highest levels of classified information flowed. This was the place where the world’s most powerful entities—including many clients of Noah’s late father—kept all the electronic records of their dealings, records that the world outside was never meant to see.
Molly planned a controlled release of the darkest of these secrets onto the open Internet, just as Virginia Ward had come to suspect. If the truth really could set us free, this one act should provide more than enough of it to do the job.
Assuming they actually made it inside, there wouldn’t be much time. She needed Noah—and his years of experience with such information at Doyle & Merchant—to help her navigate the sea of files and documents, separate the wheat from the chaff, and then package the best of it to be leaked for mass consumption.
He hadn’t told her this, but even in the unlikely event that they were successful he had his own strong doubts about the lasting effect that such a release would have. It takes a lot of courage to see the truth even when it’s right there in front of you. Denial is so much easier, and these days most people wouldn’t know what to do with the truth if they saw it.
Regardless of his doubts, though, he was committed. Molly had said that she wouldn’t blame him if he chose to back out and go his own way. But this was his own way, he’d told her, and his choice, for better or worse.
Soon the engines whined up to full power, and the small jet began to roll and then to rocket down the runway. There was no turning back now; a few seconds later they were in the air.
Chapter 51
The eastern region headquarters of the Talion Corporation, their showcase facility, was located just outside Philadelphia.
This ultratech command center in which Warren Landers now sat was the equal of anything the traditional U.S. military had to offer. It was the war room where potential Talion clients—including governmental and UN decision-makers—were shown the many expanded options offered by a covert army of mercenaries. Contract soldiers were clearly the wave of the future and Talion was at the forefront of that trend. This was evidenced by the river of public wealth that had already been flowing in their direction for more than a decade.
The company’s founders and their insider cronies had gotten their corporate foot in the door with sweetheart contracts for wildly overpriced support services and limited security functions in Iraq and Afghanistan. These clever men were now poised to ramp up their operations into a nearly full-fledged branch of the armed forces—one with no oath or pledge to protect and defend anything but their sacred bottom line.
For the most part Talion had long since achieved this quasi-official status in various conflicts overseas, but that was only second prize. A success on this day could open a new and highly profitable front: a widespread domestic deployment, a standing army on U.S. soil that would dwarf the power and reach of the bumbling DHS and TSA.
Talion would soon be stationed on every corner, patrolling every street, acting as the unified enforcer of the coming surveillance state. All that was missing was a well-timed nudge over the finish line, another reawakening of fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the American people of the type that had been so effectively leveraged since September 2001.
Now there wasn’t much left to block the way.
It had been Warren Landers’s job to identify those remaining barriers and then remove them with extreme prejudice. The last of these had proven quite elusive—it wasn??
?t a particular person or an organization, but rather a quaint, patriotic ethos that had so far stubbornly refused to die. Molly Ross—just a common person—had for many become its unlikely torchbearer. Now, finally, as those outdated American ideals and their pitiful spokesperson were barely clinging to life, he would have the singular pleasure of pulling the plug and burying their remains forever.
• • •
The computer equipment salvaged from what was left of the Merrick ranch hadn’t yielded much of value at all. These days, though, it’s not really what’s kept on your computer that can reveal all your secrets; it’s the little trail of breadcrumbs you’ve left behind you out in the cloud.
Anonymity is an illusion in the digital age and all attempts to hide behind it are only further acts of self-incrimination. All day long people obsessively write their own confessions: every search, every click, every comment, every poll, every Like, every chat, every status update, every friend, every call, every e-mail, every photo, every purchase, every connection—everything everyone does on their computer, phone, or tablet is in some way captured and filed and cross-referenced, to be sold or shared however its true owners desire.
Each fragment may reveal only a tiny glimpse of their most private selves, but these tech-blinded people never stop to think that someone could be out there reassembling their full, explicit picture in every revealing detail.
In this case, that someone was Warren Landers, and when the full picture was assembled, it revealed a very interesting new lead.
A man named Lawrence Cole, often mocked as “Liberty Larry” by the many clever quipsters on the left, had long shown support for a wide range of causes in the so-called freedom movement. This Mr. Cole was quite a character: a sportsman, a collector, an aviator, an inventor, a philanthropist, an entrepreneur—and an outspoken blowhard for the founding principles of an America that had only ever existed in his cockeyed dreams. He was also the chief executive officer of a regional chain of home improvement stores.
And there it was: a single message sent from one of Cole’s poorly disguised private e-mail accounts was the only relevant thing so far that had been retrieved from fire-damaged hard drives brought in from the Merrick raid.
The retrieved message simply said:
Everything is set. The entire shop will be at your disposal. Godspeed, LC
No physical address had yet been found for this “shop”; details must have been transmitted through another message or another medium, but this was more than enough to get the ball rolling.
Whether the fugitives were caught in transit, cornered in this new hideout, or trapped in the midst of whatever ridiculous act of valor they were planning, the outcome would be the same.
There would soon be a brave intervention by the U.S. government’s new security partners, a daring shoot-out with those flag-waving, violent domestic terrorists, the homeland would be made temporarily safe again, and a new kind of hero would step forward to receive the thanks of a grateful, trembling nation.
Landers made two calls. The first was to deploy a pair of security men to each retail location owned and operated by Lawrence Cole. His home and his other residences were also to be put under total surveillance—the full monty, warrant-free wiretaps and all. Based on his outspoken and nearly seditious public profile it was a major oversight that he wasn’t being watched this closely already.
His second call was to a friendly link in the command chain of the Department of Homeland Security.
The course of action that Landers recommended to this useful idiot had been ordered only once before. But there was credible information from a high-level unnamed source—or so he claimed—that a hostile group called the Founders’ Keepers, known to have recently been in possession of a weapon of mass destruction, could now be in the execution phase of a major operation.
Their plot was not yet clear, he told her, but it could very well involve an airborne attack against a high-value target in a major metropolitan area on the East Coast of the United States.
Chapter 52
A little over an hour into their flight, in what might later qualify as the understatement of the year, the pilot had informed his three passengers that there could be some rough weather up ahead.
For his next announcement minutes later, though, he didn’t use the intercom. Instead he leaned around in his seat and motioned for Noah to come forward for a talk, all by himself.
The cabin wasn’t quite tall enough to allow him to walk upright in the aisle and he had to duck to squeeze his way through the narrow cockpit door and into the vacant second seat up front.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The NTAS has issued an alert. I just got the text. It says there’s an imminent threat from a domestic terrorist cell, and that these people may be headed for the East Coast.”
“What?”
“Yeah, this is bad. The FAA’s grounding all flights, just like after 9/11, but so far they’re being a little more methodical about it. I’ve been directed to reroute immediately and land at Denver.”
“Denver? Denver International?”
“Yeah—”
“We can’t land there. We’re probably at the top of the watch list, you understand that, don’t you? We’d never make it halfway through the terminal without being identified.”
“I’ve got no alternative, and I didn’t call you up here to discuss our options. To order a thing like this, these people aren’t fooling around. If we don’t land where they tell us they’ll send up the jets to put us on the ground another way. I’ve already set the course. I just wanted to let you know so you could tell your folks back there on your own.”
Noah broke the news to Molly and Ellen as gently as he could and then, over the next half hour, the three of them discussed it all and decided what to do.
Assuming they didn’t immediately walk into a dragnet upon landing, Ellen would slip away from the other two as quickly as possible and then lose herself in what was sure to be a sea of stranded passengers from other diverted flights. She’d then hire a car if she could and make her way to New York by any means available.
As for Noah and Molly, they would try to do the same, only their destination would be any nearby safe house they could contact after landing. The mission was over; escape was the best they could hope for at this point. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it seemed to be the only alternative.
As the flight wore on they sat and considered their situation; the sullen mood was broken only by occasional bouts of turbulence from the storms that had been promised all morning. Ellen was quiet but obviously frightened, and Molly had spent most of her time in silent prayer. Noah, however, felt surprisingly calm, having long since written off any extended visions of his own future. If this was the end of the line he was satisfied just to be next to her again, even if it was only for a little while longer.
The flight soon descended through a deep and dark gray layer of clouds to emerge in the midst of a heavy rain. There were a few steep banks and bumps and jostles, and before long Noah heard the gear descending and felt the craft settling onto its final approach. By the view out the window visibility was near zero; he could barely see past the tips of their wings.
A minute later the touchdown came with an unexpected jolt and they rolled out to near the end of the long runway.
Just as the pilot had slowed sufficiently for his turn toward the gate, Molly cried out “Stop!” so forcefully that the man up front applied the brakes and brought the craft to a screeching halt.
“What happened?” the pilot called back. “Did we hit something?”
“Just stay here for a second,” Noah said, and he turned to Molly. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got a terrible feeling,” Molly whispered. “I think they’re waiting for us.”
“How could you be so sure of that?”
“I don’t know, but I am. Please, just believe me.”
“I can’t just sit here on an active runway,” the pilot said,
and the jet began to roll again as the engines wound up.
Molly gripped his hand tight. “Noah, please. We’ve got to get out, right now.”
Mere intuition isn’t much to bet your life on but at that moment he found it was good enough for him. Noah went forward and spoke to the pilot, who soon made a reluctant adjustment and slowed their advance toward the distant gate to only a few miles per hour.
“Are you two serious?” Ellen asked. “You’re getting out of a moving airplane? What about me?”
“You have to come with us,” Molly said.
“I have to? What do you mean by that—”
The rain and wind whipped in as Noah swung up the door and the sound of the engines drowned out the rest of that conversation. He knelt and lowered the steps to their locking point about a foot above the scrolling pavement.
“We’ve got to move, Ellen; you’re just going to have to trust me,” he said, holding out his hand. “Now let’s go.”
With that Ellen picked up Molly’s duffel bag and helped her manage the last few feet across the aisle. The door of the rolling plane was on the side of the fuselage opposite the terminal; in these conditions, if they made it to cover quickly enough there was actually a chance their exit from the aircraft might go unseen.
“You two first!” Noah shouted over the noise. “Hit the ground running and stay low; you’ve got to get clear fast so the wings don’t knock you down. Head for those markers at the end of the runway and get down behind them. I’ll be right along.”
“Oh my God, look!” Ellen said, pointing across the cabin.
Through the line of round windows, far away through the driving rain they could see a large number of bright yellow strobes suddenly appearing and then beginning to fan out and accelerate in their direction.
“Go now!” Noah said. The two women descended the two steps and then on their own count of three they jumped to the pavement hand in hand. They nearly fell but soon regained their footing and took off toward the cover of the tall grass.