Extinction Machine (8 page)

Were we a couple?

Not really. Not in any way you could write a romance novel about.

When she was in this part of the world, and if neither of us was otherwise involved, we tended to attack each other in hot and creative ways. There were no strings, no obligations, and that was an arrangement that worked just fine for both of us.

Violin lay sprawled in a tangle of sheets in my Baltimore apartment. I think she’d gone back to sleep before the phone stopped ringing. She had pale skin with just the slightest hint of a Mediterranean olive in her complexion. No trace of a tan or even the ghost of a tan line—she’s definitely not the beach type. Round where it mattered, but lean and strong. Really, really strong. Some might say freakishly so, but she didn’t look it. She lay on her stomach, her face turned toward me, eyes closed, emitting a soft, purring snore. My middle-aged marmalade tabby, Cobbler, was snugged up against her, almost nose to nose with her, and they breathed with exactly the same feline rhythm.

The phone began ringing again.

My cell.

And then the house landline.

My dog, Ghost, started barking on the other side of the bedroom door.

Balls.

“Don’t,” mumbled Violin as I started to get up. It was somewhere between a plea and a threat.

“It’s probably my office.”

“Let someone else save the world for once. It’s Sunday, you’re hungover and more importantly I’m hungover. If you don’t let me go back to sleep I’ll kneecap you.” She said all this without opening her eyes, her voice a soft mumble of credible threat.

“I’ll risk it,” I said.

“Your funeral.”

I sat up and the motion set the room to spinning. Violin wasn’t joking about a hangover. I remember swearing to God while on my knees that I would never—
ever
—drink again if He’d just let me stop throwing up. Next time I was in church I was going to have to take a look at the fine print on that contract.

Right now, though, I watched the room do a tilt-a-whirl around the bed.

“Oh God,” I mumbled.

Both phones stopped ringing right before they would have gone to voice mail.

“Thank you, Jesus.”

And started up again.

I lunged for the cell phone, missed it by ten feet and crawled like a sick tree sloth across the carpet, grabbed the cell, pushed the little green button.

“What?” I snarled belligerently.

“Good morning, Captain Ledger,” said Mr. Church.

“Ah … shit.”

“Although it pains me to interrupt your Sunday morning meditations, I would appreciate your attention on a matter of some importance.”

Church hadn’t been at the bachelor party. I’d invited him but even though he didn’t say so I believe he would rather have been eaten by rats. Partly because, let’s face it, a bachelor party wasn’t his scene, and partly because Circe was his daughter. A precious few people on earth knew that fact, and I don’t want to know what Church would do to someone who let that fact leak. I’m a scary guy, but Church scares the kind of people who scare me.

“I’m off today,” I said with bad grace. “The duty officer is—”

“Joe,” said Church, “you need to get into the office now.”

Church never calls me Joe. Never.

I sat bolt upright.

“What’s happening?”

“Are you alone?” he asked.

I looked at Violin. She’d caught the urgency in my voice and propped herself up on one elbow. Alert and cautious. Cobbler crouched on the sheets next to her with wide, wary eyes.

“No,” I said.

“Then call me from your car. I’ll expect to hear from you in two minutes.”

He hung up.

I’ve been working for Church for a couple of years now, I’d seen him in the middle of some of the most terrible catastrophes this country has faced. Stuff that doesn’t make the newspapers, which is why my fellow Americans can still sleep at night. I’ve seen Church in situations where everyone and everything is falling apart and he’s always as cool as a cucumber.

But now there was something in his voice. Raw emotion held down by his iron control.

Fear.

Or maybe … panic.

Chapter Fourteen

VanMeer Castle
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Sunday, October 20, 6:10 a.m.

Mr. Bones opened the wings of his Ghost Box and engaged the encryption. When it finished running through a system check, he waved to Howard, who was pouring cups of coffee into a pair of tall ceramic mugs. Howard’s mug had Doctor Doom on it, Mr. Bones had Lex Luthor. They had matching workout shirts. Christmas was weird last year.

“She on the line?” asked Howard. He hooked a wheeled chair with one bare foot and pulled it over to the desk. They were no longer in the kitchen. The incident in Washington had sent them running for Howard’s big office, where they each made a series of phone calls to try and get the latest information. In almost every case the people they called had no idea that anything was happening in Washington. Only the vice president, Bill Collins, knew anything, but the extent of his knowledge was the same as what they knew. It was maddening.

Now they settled down to call Yuina Hoshino, the third of the three governors who ran Majestic Three. Hoshino was a naturalized American whose family had moved from Japan when she was one. Like her parents, she was a physicist. Unlike them, she was a laconic and introverted hermit who seldom spoke to anyone except her lab staff and the other governors. She was not a mouse, as Mr. Bones viewed it, but more like a burrowing tick—relentless, solitary, and bloodthirsty.

The space between the wings of the Ghost Box glowed and Yuina Hoshino’s head and shoulders appeared. She had straight black hair streaked with gray, glasses hanging around her neck on a chain, and a face that might have been pretty had she spent any time at all in sunlight and fresh air rather than inside a lab. At sixty-one she was five years younger than Shelton and looked ten years older.

“What do we know?” asked Hoshino in a voice that was creaky with disuse.

“Only what we’ve told you,” answered Mr. Bones.

“What’s the problem with our intelligence sources? Are we out of the loop?”

“No,” said Mr. Bones, “that’s all there is. Linden Brierly arrived to take charge. Ghost Box has taps on all cellular and landline calls, we’re inside the Secret Service intranet, and we have bugs on every important wall. If there was more to know, we’d know it.”

Hoshino frowned. “That’s disturbing. This is not a good time for mysteries. The air show is so close…”

The Third Annual American Advanced Aeronautics Convention—informally known as “the air show”—was held at a fairground in Ohio. It was the highlight of the year for all defense contractors invested in fixed-wing aircraft, and particularly those who were rolling out new prototypes like old money families trotting out this season’s debutantes. M3 planned to steal the show with the Specter 101. The air show was not open to the public, of course, but everyone even tangentially associated with the DoD, Homeland, and the crucial arms sales to foreign markets would be there. It was the best opportunity to impress the brass and the congressional bean counters, and it was equally fine for showing up the competition.

Last week the security systems at the Ohio fairground were hit by the cyber-attacks, so Howard offered to host it at VanMeer Castle, where he had his own private airfield and grounds well screened by mountains and trees. Howard offered to augment security with a hundred operatives from Blue Diamond Security, a company in which he owned a sizable interest. The other exhibitors were reluctant at first, but the promise of security by the fierce Blue Diamond private contractors helped smooth things out. That, and there was a lot of sympathy for Howard after the tragic events at Wolf Trap.

“This won’t stop the air show,” assured Howard.

Hoshino snorted. “Of course it will. I’m surprised the show hasn’t already been canceled. And, frankly, Howard, it surprises me that you even want the show to go on. After Wolf Trap and the others events, it’s clear that whoever’s behind these cyber-attacks wants that show stopped and they want Shelton Aeronautics crippled.”

Howard hoisted a suitably morose expression into place. “My security people tell me that the new upgrades will assure a safe event.”

“Maybe,” grudged Hoshino, “but even the air show is secondary to this thing in Washington. And … let’s face it, gentlemen, we’ve all known that this could happen.”

“What exactly is it you think
has
happened?” asked Mr. Bones.

“Isn’t it obvious? Someone else has developed a working device before us.”

“Who?”

“It could be anyone,” said Hoshino. “It could be the Chinese. They’ve acquired most of the D-type components that were on the black market recently, and they’ve had an army of agents out there looking for more.”

“No,” said Howard. “If they had a complete device we’d know it by now.”

“Maybe we
do
know,” said Hoshino. “Maybe that’s what we’re seeing now. This could be their opening move.”

Howard constructed a brooding and contemplative face. “If they had a device,” he said dubiously, “they’d have to test it first before they did anything like this.”

“If you ever bothered to read my reports,” said Hoshino, “you’d see that there’s some indication of that. Sightings are up all over the world.”

“Oh, hell,” barked Howard, “we’re seeding most of that crap into the press. And a lot of it’s faked by morons hoping to get onto one of those stupid specials. They spray a Frisbee with silver paint and get one of their asshole friends to throw it over the house so they can take a picture of it with a cell phone.”

“Some of it,” agreed Hoshino. “Not all.”

“What are you saying?” asked Mr. Bones.

“I’m saying that there’s something up there and it’s not us,” said Hoshino. “It could very well be the Chinese. Maybe they’ve finished testing their device and this abduction is the opening move in something bigger.”

Mr. Bones grunted. “Maybe … but having a device and being willing to use it in such an outrageous way is a big jump. Attacking us like this?”

“It might not be the opening salvo of a war,” said Hoshino. “It could be an attempt to send a message.”

“You mean a threat?” asked Howard.

“Of a kind,” she conceded. “Something that only certain people would be able to recognize for what it is. People like us.”

“Are you saying they’re behind the sabotage of our computer systems, too?” asked Howard.

“We’re not the only ones being attacked,” said Hoshino.

“That’s not the point. Someone is waging a war … but I don’t buy China for any of this. Maybe the attack on us, if they had the tools, which they don’t, but not taking the president. That’s just too risky for them. They’d have to know that if we got wind of who was behind something like this, even if the president is returned unharmed, we’d retaliate. China’s tough, but they’re not as tough as the press paints them. They’re not ready for a nuclear exchange or even an air war. The Seventh Fleet would love any opportunity to prove that they aren’t patrolling those waters for show.”

“What about the Russians?” asked Hoshino. “They’re working on something—”

“They
were
working on something,” corrected Mr. Bones, “until Pietrovich woke up dead.”

“Wait … what? Pietrovich is dead? When did that happen?” demanded Hoshino.

Mr. Bones cleared his throat. “End of September.”

“Why wasn’t I told?”

Another pause. “Guess it was an oversight. Sorry, Yuina. Didn’t mean to cut you out of the loop.”

“Loop?” Yuina Hoshino turned to Howard. “Did you know about this?”

“Well, yes,” he said blandly. “I’m shocked Bones didn’t tell you.”

“Sorry we didn’t tell you,” said Howard. “It was one of Erasmus Tull’s quiet little magic tricks.”

“Tull?” said Hoshino with distaste. “I thought he retired.”

Howard snorted. “He’s only as retired as we want him to be.”

“And you didn’t think it was important to tell me any of this?”

“I said I was sorry, but it’s done and Pietrovich is in the ground. What matters is that it closed down a line of research that could have hurt us. If you want me to go whip myself later, Yuina, then fine. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea fuck me culpa. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s yesterday’s box score and we have something a lot more important right here, right now.”

“Fine, fine,” said Hoshino in a totally artificial tone of concession, “let me know next time. Especially if you’re going to activate an agent like Tull. He was erratic at the best of times.”

“They’re all erratic,” said Howard. “Bunch of test-tube freaks.”

“They’re our children,” chided Hoshino.

“The fuck they are. They’re meat by-products. And, even though I use Tull because he gets the job done, that cat gives me the creeps. All of them do, so let’s not romanticize them, okay? There’s not going to be a Hallmark Christmas special at the end of this. Either they serve their purpose or we put a shiny new bullet into each of them. End of story.”

Mr. Bones cleared his throat to clear the air. “If it’s not the Russians and it’s not the Chinese, what are the chances that the North Koreans rebuilt their lab?”

“‘Rebuilt’?” repeated Howard. “Rebuilt what? That lab is a hole in the goddamn ocean. No, the Koreans only ever had two genuine D-type components, and they lost those when the lab blew. And maybe—maybe—they’ve acquired one or two more parts since then, but that’s a long way from having a device. Besides, if it was them, and they could take the president out of the White House, then we’d have found his body hanging from a tree in the Rose Garden. I’m not saying they’d sign their handiwork, but they wouldn’t risk holding him hostage or waste time with a catch-and-release.”

“They might,” said Hoshino. “If they were able to take him, imagine what kind of threat they could make. Instead of the usual saber rattling with their missile program, they would be able to whisper right into the president’s ear: ‘Look what we can do!’ Think about it. Think about how that would impact every decision the president made.”