Extinction Machine (30 page)

“How do you know this?”

Junie paused and drummed her fingers on her knee for a long time before answering. “I … had a source.”

“A source?” asked Church. “What kind of source?”

“Someone who was on the inside,” she said evasively.

“‘Was’?” asked Hu, jumping on that.

“Was,” confirmed Junie, but she didn’t immediately explain. “My source was involved in the active R and D on recovered artifacts. That research required that he consult generations of notes that had been entered into the Black Book. Interesting to note that no one ever called it the Black Book, of course, and it was absolutely forbidden to mention words like ‘alien’ or ‘UFO’ at any of the labs or testing facilities. It all had to seem very normal, like they were reverse-engineering a captured MIG or some piece of Chinese spy technology.”

“Which it probably was,” muttered Hu, but everyone ignored him.

“All the research and development fell under one umbrella, though,” continued Junie. “They called it ‘the Project.’”

Church asked, “Your source was on the inside of this Project?”

“Very deep inside,” she said. “He was a senior researcher and designer. He led one of the most important teams, though like most of the senior scientists he consulted on several projects because so many research lines overlapped. They had a lot of these experimental lines going at once. Radical engine design, artificial intelligence, human-computer interfaces, organic computer memory, biological hybridization, even some work on psychic enhancement.”

“‘Psychic’?” echoed Hu, smiling. “Please.”

“Doctor,” said Church quietly. The smile vanished from Hu’s face.

“Yes, psychic,” said Junie with a bit of frost. “They wanted to develop pilots who were completely integrated with their craft, and who could think their commands instead of using control panels or joysticks. That was a big part of the Project. It was way more practical than the eye-head controlled operations we use now. It would have been the most important military development since the invention of the airplane. Maybe more so. It would be an incredible leap forward. A quantum jump forward in terms of the arms race.”

“How so?” I asked.

“The human mind is so much faster than a computer,” said Junie. “Not in data recall, of course, but in reaction time, decision-making, intuition, and creative reactions to critical encounters.”

“How much information did your source share with you?” asked Church.

“Yeah,” said Bug, “it sounds like a lot.”

Junie glanced at me and then down at her hands, which were folded nervously in her lap. “It was a lot.”

“Did he write any of it down?” asked Bug.

“He had notebooks,” she said, nodding almost absently. “Over a period of fourteen years he managed to copy every single entry in the Majestic Black Book.”

We all came to point like a pack of birddogs.

“Ms. Flynn,” said Church very quietly, “where are those notes?”

She raised her head and met his eyes. “Destroyed,” she said. “They’re all gone. My source was in a car accident and the notes were incinerated.”

The silence was crushing. I felt like I’d been hoisted up into the sunlight and then dropped right back down into the slime.

Rudy said something under his breath. Bug looked away; Hu gave a triumphant smile as if this was the kind of news he wanted. The man was deranged.

But Church continued to study Junie.

“What exactly happened to your source?” he asked. “How was it that all his research notes were with him when he had his accident? That seems strange to me.”

Junie nodded. “They found out that he was duplicating the Black Book. When he realized that they knew, he gathered together everything he had, notebooks, printouts, drawings, flash drives, all of it and took off. This was in Virginia, in a lab in Arlington. My … source … tried to make it all the way to D.C.”

“What did he hope to accomplish there?” I asked.

“Exposure,” she said. “There was an important bill being debated in the Senate. It was all over the news. That jobs bill a couple of years ago. My source wanted to get to the Capitol building and … I don’t know … crash the Senate.”

“The security would have stopped him.”

“He was terrified, he didn’t know where else to go. He thought that if he yelled out the right names right there, with all those congressmen and all that press, then maybe he could force his way into the public eye. He thought that creating a media sensation would keep him safe long enough to get the truth out there.”

“Guy sounds like a fucking idiot,” said Hu.

Junie gave him a withering look. “He was naive. About that kind of thing … he was very naive. That’s how they hooked him in the first place. They played on his idealism. They sold him on a story that he was working on a project that would help save America and maybe even prevent future wars. Considering what he was working on, that seemed reasonable. It still could be, or would be in there was a genuine public welfare in the minds of those bastards in M3.”

“How so?” asked Rudy. “What were they working on?”

“In simplest terms they were trying to re-create the engine of the crashed UFO. That engine is enormously powerful, capable of flying all those light-years across space. My source was told that if this power could be tapped and controlled, then it could be the basis for an entirely new kind of clean, renewable energy.”

“Oh, wow,” said Hu, “a cliché.”

“Doc,” I said, “if you make one more crack I’m going to beat the living shit out of you. Tell me if I’m joking.”

“That’s enough,” barked Church, though I don’t know if he was directing that at Hu, me, or both of the yapping dogs.

In the ensuing silence, Church focused all his considerable personality on Junie.

“Ms. Flynn,” he said, “we know that your source never made it to Congress. What happened to him?”

“They got him,” she said.

“Who got him?” asked Church. “Specifically who?”

“The Closers.”

“And they are?”

“Most people call them the Men in Black.”

Chapter Fifty-three

The Harbor District
Baltimore, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 10:25 a.m.

The black Yukon drove at a sedate speed past the long double chain-link fence that bordered the street side of Cobbler Records Storage. At the corner, they made a turn and drove away, tucked into traffic, hiding in plain sight.

“Okay,” said Aldo, “so that’s where it is. We could have seen it on the Ghost Box. There are pigeon drones all over the place.”

Tull shrugged. “It’s always better to put eyes on something. Hard to tell about architecture and building materials from a video feed, and the building plans are no longer on public record.”

“Church pulled them?”

“He made them disappear,” said Tull.

“Driving past the place is a piss-poor substitute for a blueprint.”

“Not always,” said Tull. “And not in this case.”

Chapter Fifty-four

Turkey Point Lighthouse, Elk Neck State Park
Cecil County, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 10:28 a.m.

Dr. Hu said, “So you’re telling us that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones abducted the president of the United States.”

Junie gave him an arctic glare. The fact that she was taking a quick dislike to Hu made me like her even more.

“Yes, Doctor,” she said icily, “we’ve all seen the movies, ha-ha, but in the real world the Closers are anything but wise-cracking heroes protecting us from the scum of the universe.”

“Then who do you think they are?” asked Church.

“They claim to be government agents.”

And suddenly I thought about the four goons I met today. Four men in black suits claiming to be government agents. Church’s eyes flicked toward mine for a millisecond. He was right there with me.

“They show up after significant UFO sightings or crashes,” said Junie. “That’s been happening since Roswell. They harass and even sometimes threaten witnesses.”

“What kinds of threats?” asked Rudy.

“It varies,” she said, crossing her arms under her breasts. “Sometimes they threaten to arrest people on the grounds of national security. Sometimes they hint that ‘accidents’ might happen if the witness doesn’t stop talking. Sometimes their threats are very direct.”

Rudy frowned. “Threatening physical harm?”

“Threatening to kill witnesses. Or the families of witnesses.”

“Has anyone actually been harmed?” Rudy asked.

“There are several cases in there about people who have been brutally beaten. Some people have gone missing. And there have been a number of unexplained or unexpected deaths of witnesses. Car accidents, heart attacks, cancer, viruses, street muggings … all sorts of things.”

“Bug?” murmured Church.

“Already on it. Compiling a list now.”

“Have the Closers ever taken a run at you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve never actually witnessed anything. Wish I could say otherwise. God, I’d give anything to know … to really and truly know.”

“I thought you were a believer.”

“The Pope believes in Jesus,” she said, “but I bet he’d like to actually meet him.”

Everyone smiled at that. Even Hu.

“True,” I admitted.

“Who do you think the Closers are, Ms. Flynn?” asked Church. “And what do you think they’re trying to accomplish?”

“I have theories, but that’s all they are. They claim to be from the Air Force, the CIA, or the FBI. Andrew Meyers, who used to be a major voice in UFO research, believed that these men are really members of the Air Force Special Activities Center, based in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and working under operational authority of Air Force Intelligence Command centered at Kelly Air Force Base in Texas.”

“Bug,” said Church.

“On it,” Bug replied.

“This guy, Meyers,” asked Rudy, “you said he used to be a major voice. Did he die?”

“No. He retired from UFO research. No one seems to know why.”

Before anyone could say anything, Bug said, “On it.”

“You said that this was Meyers’s theory. What’s yours?”

She said, “I think the Closers work for Majestic Three.”

“Which could connect what happened this morning in Baltimore to this case,” said Church.

Junie turned suddenly toward me. “The men who attacked you were Closers? How come you didn’t say that?”

“I didn’t know who they were,” I protested. “I still don’t. As much as it pains me to say it, Junie, there are a lot of people who would like to see me dead.”

Barely under his breath, Hu said, “And some of them work with you.”

“Ms. Flynn,” interrupted Rudy. “What exactly happened to your ‘source’?”

“He was in a car accident on the George Washington Parkway. His car was run off the road into an oncoming truck. He and his wife were both burned to death in the wreck.”

“Whoa,” I said, “there’s a pretty significant median between opposing lanes.”

“Not down by the foot of the Mount Vernon Trail, off the ramp from the Curtis Memorial Parkway,” said Junie, and it took me a moment to recall that part of the highway.

I nodded. “Okay, but that’s a dangerous road, though, accidents happen all the time.”

Junie gave another shrug.

“So,” said Rudy slowly, “it’s your belief that your source systematically made a copy of the Black Book, and when M3 found out about it they sent these Closers to arrange a fatal traffic accident.”

“Yes.”

Bug asked, “Do you have any idea who might have a copy of the Black Book? I mean … Do you know the names of the current members of M3?”

“Or any previous members?” I added.

Junie laughed. “I’ve spent the last ten years of my life trying to figure that out. I have a list of about a hundred possibles. A lot of those names are going to be on the list of industrialists profiting from radical technologies your Mr. Bug is compiling.”

“She called me Mr. Bug,” said Bug, apparently to himself.

“Do any names stand out for you?” asked Church, and I knew that this was the key question. Church asked it casually because we didn’t yet know how far we could trust Junie Flynn, or how deep her true knowledge ran. If she was, after all this, just a conspiracy theory nut, then any guess she made could be worthless. Or, if she was as well informed as she claimed, then she might have what we needed. Either way we didn’t want to spook her. This all had to be done right the first time.

Junie thought about it and then gave Church a careful nod. “There are seven living people that are on my ‘most likely’ list. They are Ernest Foster Gould of Gould Cybersystems; Charles Osgood Harrington III, Harrington Aeronautics, Harrington-Cheney Petrochemicals, Harrington and Mercer Fuel Oil Company; Rebecca Milhaus, president of Brantley-Milhaus-Cooper Aviation and wife of H. Carlton Milhaus, CEO of Milhaus and Berk Publishing; Howard Shelton, owner and CEO of Shelton Aeronautics; Reese Sunderland of Sunderland Biological and Sunderland Integrated Systems; Joan Bell-Pullman of MicroTek International; and David Robinette of Robinette Development Associates.”

My breath caught in my throat and I cut a sharp look at Church. All of those names were well known to us. Laboratories, computer systems, and factories of every single one of them had been targeted by the cyber-attacks. Church gave me a tiny shake of his head. For now he didn’t want that information shared with Junie Flynn.

I think she caught something though, because her eyes darted from me to Church; however, Church asked her, “Is it your belief that one or more of these people are members of M3?”

Junie shook her head. “No, I think that all the current members of M3 are probably on that list, and maybe one or two former members.”

“Please explain.”

“It’s circular logic,” she said. “In almost any industry, most companies develop products in a kind of dead heat. Company A might bring out a new widget that seems to be ahead of the market, but looking back you can see that it’s a natural step in the progression of research and development. Companies B and C tear that product apart to find what their own R and D missed, but they’re so close behind already that they can get a competing product out in the same calendar year. Look at the cell phone business and you see what I mean. The Samsung-Apple court case is a prime example.”