The 4400® Promises Broken (21 page)

“Sir, do you know why I stopped you?”

“Yes, Officer,” Jakes replied. “I was driving too fast.”

“You were doing ninety-two in a posted seventy-five zone.”

Keeping his voice as level and calm as possible, Jakes said, “Yes, sir. I got caught up in the music I was listening to, and I lost track of my speed. I have no excuse. I’m sorry.”

Jakes’s statement of contrition didn’t seem to do much to satisfy the trooper, who regarded him with a stern mask of disdain. “Can I see your license and registration, please?”

“Of course,” Jakes said. “They’re right here.” He opened the glove compartment and retrieved his driver’s license and vehicle registration, both of which were completely legitimate for the body he was inhabiting. As he leaned back to hand his papers to the trooper, he stole a look down at the semiautomatic pistol tucked between his seat and the gear shift.

The trooper took the papers and eyed them with one raised eyebrow. “California? Long way from home.”

“Yes, sir.” The first rule of talking to law enforcement personnel, Jakes had learned, was to keep one’s answers short.

“And what brings you to Idaho?”

“Vacation,” Jakes said.

“Uh-huh,” the trooper said, still perusing the license and registration. He turned his head and looked through the SUV’s rear windows at the tarp-covered warhead in the cargo area. “Whatcha got back there?”

“Camping equipment,” Jakes said. The second rule of talking to law enforcement officers was never to volunteer a single bit more information than was absolutely necessary.

Stepping closer to the vehicle and shading his eyes with one hand as he looked through the rear driver’s-side window, the trooper said, “Doesn’t look like you brought much gear.”

“I travel light.”

“I can see that.” Deeper notes of suspicion crept into his voice. “Mind showing me what’s under that tarp, sir?”

“Not at all,” Jakes said. “I can release the rear hatch from here, if you like.”

The cop walked to the rear of the SUV. “Open it up.”

Jakes undid his seat belt, bent forward, and reached down with his left hand to pull the release lever for the hatchback. He set his right hand on the grip of the pistol next to his seat. With a tug, he unlocked the rear hatch, which raised slightly.

The trooper lifted the hatch fully open. Then he leaned in and supported his weight with one hand while he pulled aside the tarpaulin with the other. His jaw went slack when he saw the warhead inside its protective aluminum frame. “What the …”

Without a word, Jakes drew his pistol, twisted around, and fired one shot through the trooper’s forehead, painting the road behind him with a reddish-gray spray of brain matter.

As the dead man’s body slumped to the ground, Jakes fired three more shots at the parked police cruiser. Its windshield became veined with cracks as one slug after another pierced it and slammed into the head and chest of the second state trooper.

After the thunder of four consecutive gunshots within
the confines of his vehicle, the silence that followed felt almost surreal. The air inside the SUV was sharp with the sulfurous fumes of expended gunpowder.

That was Jakes’s third rule of talking to law enforcement officers: knowing when to end the conversation.

What a goddamn inconvenience
, Jakes fumed as he holstered his weapon and got out of his SUV.

He walked behind his vehicle, draped the tarp back over the warhead, and shut the hatch. Then he grabbed the dead trooper by his collar and dragged him back to the police cruiser.

There were no other cars anywhere in sight, and for that small mercy Jakes was grateful to the universe at large. He opened the driver’s door of the cruiser and pushed the dead sergeant back inside beside his slain partner.

Now to mop up
, he told himself. He pulled the memory stick and the DVD from the vehicle’s standard-issue dashboard camera system, then used the car’s onboard computer to see whether they had already made a query based on his car’s license plate; the cop who had remained in the car had been in the process of entering the data when Jakes had shot him. So far, there was no official record of this traffic stop. Jakes canceled the entry.

He shifted the police cruiser into neutral and pushed it off the road into a small stand of thick bushes. To drivers approaching it from behind, it would look like the world’s worst-hidden speed trap. Drivers on the other side of the divided highway would see it only from a distance, and the scrub brush would obscure the damage to the windshield.

It would likely be several hours before anyone realized
that these two men had gone missing. By then, Jakes would be long gone. Even if they found his fingerprints or DNA inside the car, it wouldn’t matter. His new identity had no criminal record. There would be no matching records on file.

Walking back to his vehicle, he squinted up at the bruised-black underbelly of a leaden sky. It looked as if a storm was coming. He climbed back inside his SUV, tossed the memory stick and recordable DVD on the floor in front of the passenger seat, restarted the engine, and shifted into gear.

A catchy song came on the radio.

He turned it off.
Eyes on the road
, he admonished himself. There was still a long way to go—and no more room for error.

1:53
P.M.

T
HE LAST THING
Tom had wanted to do was go back out and brave the crossfire hurricane that had descended on Seattle. But there were no working phone lines or e-mail, and cell phones spat out nothing but static. He might have tried sending smoke signals if half the city hadn’t already been on fire.

Since no one else had been willing to drive, Tom had ended up behind the wheel of one of NTAC’s armored SUVs. Now he was dodging fireballs, bullets, and dozens of random, telepathically hurled projectiles on every block, as he navigated the narrow residential streets of Madrona.

Yeah, this is exactly what I wanted to be doing today
, he brooded while swerving through a slalom of overturned cars and trucks set ablaze.

Diana was riding shotgun, and Dennis was sandwiched in an awkward pose between Jed and Marco in the backseat.

“If I’d known we were taking the scenic route, I’d have
brought my camera,” Dennis said, making no effort to mask his sour mood.

Tom bashed aside the stripped husk of an old Trans Am that was blocking the road, then replied, “Don’t thank me, Dennis, thank the Army. They’re the ones who turned the interstate into Swiss cheese.”

“We’ll have more room once we make the turn onto Madison,” Diana said, and she was right. Half a minute later, Tom pulled their vehicle through a tight, wheels-squealing, high-speed turn onto East Madison Street that pinned Tom and Jed against the SUV’s driver’s-side doors, and squashed Dennis even more firmly between Jed and Marco.

The latest in a series of random gunshots ricocheted off their back window, leaving a dull gray scuff. “Good thing this ride’s got bullet-resistant glass,” Jed said, “or else this would’ve been a damn short trip.”

“It’ll be short enough as it is,” Tom said. “We’d better figure out what we plan to say to Shawn before we get there.”

Diana seemed surprised. “I thought you and Shawn were on good terms.”

“We were, but …” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “You know how things get with family. And the way he did Maia’s dirty work at that meeting with Jordan didn’t help, either.”

Dennis leaned forward. “I have a suggestion.”

Seeing his former boss’s head thrust between the two front seats filled Tom with the urge to whack Dennis’s noggin with a mallet.

Like a human Whac-A-Mole
, Tom mused with a smile. “Let’s hear it,” Tom said, momentarily suppressing his mischievous impulse.

“I know this’ll sound like a radical idea coming from me, but maybe we should tell your nephew the truth.”

Diana directed a dubious look at Dennis. “Before I make any assumptions, exactly what do you define as ‘the truth’ in this situation, Dennis?”

“We tell him that the Marked have an antimatter bomb and are on their way to nuke Seattle unless his people help us find them and stop them.”

Tom shook his head. “And when he asks how the Marked managed to build an antimatter bomb?”

“Well, I don’t think we need to go into that,” Dennis said.

Marco covered his mouth with his fist and fake-coughed as he muttered,
“Bullshit.”

“Use your head,” Jed said. “Some of these people are freakin’ mind readers, okay? The second you walk in there, they’re gonna know what you did and why you did it, so if I were you, I’d get ready to come clean.”

Dennis let out an angry sigh and sat back. “Fine.”

Jed wondered aloud, “What if Jordan’s people went to the Center?” Diana turned and looked back at him as he added, “I mean, what if we have to deal with not just Shawn, but Jordan, too? That’d make things, well … tense.”

“The city’s getting blown to bits as we speak,” Diana said. “And you’re worried things might
become
tense?”

Looking around for some kind of support but finding
none, Jed replied like a scolded schoolboy, “You know what I mean.”

It was Marco and Diana’s turn to get pinned to their doors as Tom steered the SUV through a hard, fast, uphill left turn onto Twenty-third Avenue East. Barring attacks and detours, the rest of their trip would be a straight shot north until they reached Crescent and made the turn toward The 4400 Center.

“The big question,” Diana said, in her thinking-out-loud way of speaking to no one in particular, “is what are we going to ask Shawn or Jordan’s people to do about the bomb if they find it? Do we want them to destroy it?”

Dennis said, “I’d rather they didn’t.”

“Yeah,” Marco interjected sarcastically. “You might lose your job if that happened.”

“There’s also the fact that it represents a major scientific achievement,” Dennis said. “I’d think you and Diana could at least appreciate its value on that level. Simply destroying it would be a waste.”

Jed grimaced with doubt. “Maybe, but the last thing you want is for Collier’s people to get their hands on a future-tech bomb that won’t even set off a radiation detector.”

Marco replied, “What would Jordan Collier want with a bomb? He’s already got people who can wipe out cities with their promicin abilities.”

“Maybe,” Jed said, “but it never hurts to have an ace in the hole.” He leaned forward. “What do you think, Tom? Could you sleep at night knowing Collier had a nuke?”

“I don’t sleep at night as it is,” Tom said. “But I can’t imagine that would make it any better.”

Diana held out her open palms. “All right, then. We want their help finding the bomb, but we don’t want them to be the ones who get it back. So we’ll do that. We ask them to give us the intel and let us handle the rest.”

“Sounds like a great plan,” Dennis said. “And what do you think they’ll ask for in return?” Mild looks of surprise were volleyed between Diana, Jed, and Marco. Dennis continued: “Do you really think they’re going to drop everything while fighting off an invasion of their shiny new city-state just to help you find one little rogue nuke?”

Tom said, “They might if we convince them it’s on its way here.”

Dennis considered that with a pensive tilt of his head. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He raised his eyebrows. “But you’re missing my point, Tom. If they decide to go looking for
quid pro quo
in this little scheme, you’re in a world of shit. Because they might be able to give you quid, but you’re fresh out of quo.”

“He’s right, Tom,” Diana said, putting on her most serious face. “We’d better stop and get them a Starbucks gift card.”

Tom replied, “Okay, but don’t go cheap like you did for Secret Santa. Get an Applebee’s card while you’re at it.”

“Right,” Diana said with mock gravity.

“And a fruit basket,” Marco added. “Everybody likes those.”

“Wait, are we chipping in on this?” asked Jed.” ‘Cause all I’ve got is a twenty.”

Frowning at the casual ease with which the NTAC agents riffed on one another’s sarcastic quips, Dennis
deadpanned, “This is why I miss working with all of you: your professionalism.”

Hurtling down a narrow street in a potential urban war zone at ninety miles per hour was probably the worst possible place to lose one’s focus for even a second, but for half a minute all that Tom, Diana, Jed, and Marco could do was laugh.

“All right,” Tom said at last. “Put a cork in it. We’re almost there.” He made the left turn onto Crescent, then slowed as he navigated the Center’s snaking downhill driveway. “I know we don’t have jack or squat to offer. I guess we’ll just have to hope that there’s enough goodwill left between me and Shawn to get him to help us.”

“And if worse comes to worst,” Jed said, “we’ll offer them Dennis as a human sacrifice.”

“That won’t work,” Diana said. “A human sacrifice is supposed to be someone of value.”

As they rounded the next-to-last curve in the driveway, Tom saw Dennis in the rearview mirror, opening his mouth to reply.

Then the SUV slammed to a halt with an earsplitting bang, as if Tom had driven it into a brick wall at twice the speed.

The next thing Tom saw was the steering-column airbag as it hit him in the face. After that, his entire world turned red and purple for what seemed like several seconds.

Gradually, the airbag ceased its oppressive pushing against his face and chest, and then it deflated across the steering wheel. Around him, all of the vehicle’s other airbags shrank and went limp, releasing his stunned
passengers. Tom wondered if any of them had headaches that hurt as badly as his own.

The SUV’s front end had buckled into an accordion shape, and all its windows were fractured from the brutal impact.

“Is everybody hurt?” Tom asked. “Is anybody okay?”

“Yes, and no,” Diana said.

Nobody asked what had happened. In a world where telekinesis was an increasingly common fact of life, the cause of their calamitous instant deceleration was easy to guess.

In between the throbbing pains in his skull that kept tempo with his pulse, Tom heard an unfamiliar masculine voice inside his head:
Don’t move.