The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller (24 page)

Flynn understood that he was still in his seat. Then he further understood that it was lying on its side on the concrete. The burning figure over there was Gene. Gene was burning.

Flynn tried to get out. The man was dying, screaming and writhing and dying.

He couldn't get the belt off, couldn't reach the pocketknife he carried for such emergencies. Using all his strength, he forced himself to a kneeling position. He dragged himself forward, the seat still attached to him. He had to put that fire out; he had to save that man.

Then it started raining. A storm? No, snow. It was snowing, but not enough to help the poor damn pilot. He had to hurry—people don't last long in fire. He went to his feet and staggered ahead, bent forward under the weight of the seat.

“What in hell is that? Look at that seat!”

“That's a guy, asshole, help him!”

The seat suddenly took on a life of its own, then Flynn was on his back looking into the face of a fireman. Then he was free. They hauled him out.

“Careful, get the gurney, get him stabilized.”

“We've got fire under the starboard wing tank—move, move, move!”

Flynn pushed them aside. “I'm Ok,” he shouted. “Get the hell out of here.”

“You don't know if you're Ok. We're getting a gurney.”

Flynn ran, trying not to stagger, forcing himself to ignore the pain in his back and leg.

As they followed him, a great light came, casting their shadows far ahead of them, along with the knotted, bulky shadow of Flynn Carroll. Then came heat, searing, like boiling water poured down your back. Flynn kept running, then flung himself down in the grass divider and rolled.

The fire set up a crazy quilt of flickering shadows. The firemen went about their work, their pumps thundering, their foam hissing. A winter wonderland, except it was still autumn and the snow stank of ammonia and jet fuel. Everything stank of jet fuel. A little farther away, the body of Gene looked like a mound of snow somebody had plowed up and left behind.

Gene. Dead because of him. Another notch on his gun, was that it? And the copilot, a woman just glimpsed.

“Sir, you need to get on the gurney.”

“Yeah, later. Where's the other crew?”

The fireman shook his head sharply.

So it was two more down, poor innocent people out trying to make a little money, trying to help him out. Were there kids at home? If so, Flynn would do what he could.

In the distance, he could see flashing light bars. He walked off toward them, going faster as he regained his orientation and his strength. There was back pain, considerable. Right knee. Also considerable. His head didn't hurt and there was no blood. Internal injuries? None of the burning sensation such things usually entailed.

Forcing himself not to stagger, not to stumble—in fact, not to just lie down and surrender—he went on.

The light bars resolved into a flood of official vehicles. Flynn shuffled into the lights.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HE FELT
for his throwaway phones, and found that one was still in his pocket. As he walked, he ripped it open. He'd have to hope that Aeon's surveillance experts weren't monitoring Diana's father.

It rang once, twice, three times. A female voice answered, thick with sleep. What time was it? Flynn didn't care.

“Grace, put the senator on.”

“Who is this?”

“Flynn.”

“Is Di okay?”

“Absolutely fine. She's safe in the tomb. I need to talk to Walt right now.”

A moment. Silence. Shuffling. Then the senator. “Flynn, what the hell?”

“I want you to go to Langley. Di's in the tomb. You go down there and tell her to put a spin on the crash story that'll be developing.”

“What crash story, Flynn? Where? Are you OK?”

“I'm good. There've been a number of crashes across the Midwest. We need Homeland Insecurity to spin them as terrorism.”

“My God, what happened?”

“You get to Di, you do it personally.”

“I can't enter the tomb.”

“I'm going to text you a number sequence. Send it to Di from your phone and she'll make sure you can get in. Now, listen, you tell her to make certain that I'm listed among the dead. Certain! And no matter who asks, Flynn is dead. That's all she's to say. Dead in the crash of a chartered jet at Dayton International.”

“OK, I'm in motion.”

“Thanks, buddy, I owe you.”

“Hell, Flynn, that tab's always paid in full. God go with you, wherever you are.”

He closed the primitive little phone, crushed it, then picked up the SIM card and threw it off into the dark.

Now he was among the light bars, meatwagons, local fire, local cops, state cops, uniforms everywhere, radios crackling, general tightness and silence as people waited to hear what the hell was happening. He saw some braid and brass and walked up to it.

“I need transport to Wright-Pat,” he said. “It's a national emergency.”

“Sir, you need to leave this area.” The officer looked Flynn up and down. “Sir, were you on one of the planes?”

“Lieutenant, you listen up. I need immediate transport to Wright-Pat. Do you hear me?”

“If you were on one of those planes—hey, Mike, get over here—you need to talk to CID.”

“If you want to keep your brass on your shoulders, you need to do as I say. You need to designate a squad car and have that officer drive me to Wright-Pat immediately.”

“I have a survivor here!” the cop shouted over his shoulder.

Flynn would have no more of it. He took the man by his lapels and lifted him off his feet. “This is a national emergency. I'm a federal officer. That's the end of your need to know.” Shock finally delivered compliance; Flynn could see it in the surprised eyes. He put him down. “Now, I repeat, you
will
transport me to Wright-Pat, and you will do it forthwith. Personally.”

“Yessir!”

The lieutenant led him to his vehicle. Flynn sat in the back. He didn't want conversation, and he didn't want to be observed any more than he already had been. The shadows, the night, were his home. He was not comfortable interacting with outsiders of any kind.

He'd survived again—somehow. But there had been collaterals, a lot of them, and he hated that as deeply as a man can hate. He hated Aeon too, with every cell of him, with his blood and his soul.

He took slow breaths. No emotions, only thought. Analysis. His feelings needed to stay in the vault of his heart.

“Take back streets,” he said to the lieutenant.

“Sir?”

“No highways. Too exposed.”

The cop pulled the car over and turned around in his seat. “I need to know what I'm dealing with.”

“No you don't.”

“You sit there and tell me you're in danger and I have to ask, what the hell is this about?”

“No you don't.”

“For chrissakes, I'm a cop. Protect and serve!”

“You can't protect me unless you follow my instructions.”

He squared his shoulders and drove on.

As they arrived at the main gate and the guard came out, Flynn realized that he had forgotten the identity he was using. Then he remembered, it was “Richard Kelvin.” It was just an infrequently used pickup, enough to establish identity for the charter operator.

He opened his wallet. The Grauerholtz cover was still there, but it didn't have any clearances.

“May I see your identification, sir?”

“You need to wake the commandant.”

“Sir?”

“It's a national emergency.”

The guard looked toward the trooper lieutenant. “Sir, can you help me here?”

This was it. Either this fell apart right now or it didn't.

Once again, the trooper turned to Flynn. “Who are you? I think I do have a need to know.”

“I'm the reason all those planes fell out of the sky, and my mission is absolutely urgent, and I can't tell you another thing. You just get me into this facility. I have a team waiting for me on the flight line and I need your help right now.” He added to the guard, “You have to let us through.”

“Sir?”

“Or call your commandant. Do something!”

“This watch isn't waking up the commandant. We don't have the authority.”

Flynn leaned forward. “Somebody does. Call them.”

“I'm sorry, but I can't let you onto this base without some kind of authority, not at this hour.”

Flynn said to the trooper, “Drive through while the bar's up.”

“I don't think—”

“Do it if you're a patriot. It'll all sort out in a few minutes, I promise you.”

The car didn't move. The barrier began to drop.

“Do it!”

The trooper gunned the engine and the police cruiser leaped forward. They went through and onto the base.

“Curve around on Skeel Avenue,” Flynn said. “There'll be a small cluster of buildings on your left, then a larger structure and a second one. Stop there. Second structure.”

Sirens rose in the background. The trooper slowed down.

“Hit your siren, put on your light bar—do it!”

The trooper complied, and none too soon, because the first security vehicle passed them going in the opposite direction and did not stop.

“Hurry, they're gonna figure it out in thirty seconds.”

“What happens to me?”

“Stop! Right here!”

The trooper jammed on the brakes and Flynn leaped out and sprinted into Flight Operations.

“I'm Flynn Carroll,” he said to the reception orderly. “Where's my crew?”

“Yes, sir. Just a moment.”

Sirens rose outside.

“Your group is in the assembly area.”

The rush of relief that surged through him was like air to a drowning man. “There's been a mistake outside. My transport—will you take care of it?”

“Your transport?”

“The state police brought me and they didn't have the right permit. Take care of it—do it now!”

“Yessir!”

Flynn strode past him, turned to his left, and entered the assembly area.

Tim Fletcher was there, and Will T. Berman. They were both scientists from the old exobiology team that had been trying to study Aeon. They'd made the mistake of believing that more advanced societies would be more ethical, not stopping to think that the Nazis were the least ethical society in human history, and had grown like a cancer in one of the most civilized countries in the world. Time does not eradicate the madness of men, and apparently that goes for aliens, too.

There were three others he didn't recognize.

Fletcher came to his feet. “Good to see you again.”

“Yeah. I want to be briefed on the plane, but only if you've got something sensible to say.” Fletcher had many times tried to get Flynn relieved of duty on the theory that he was upsetting to Aeon. He was upsetting all right—damned upsetting.

Fletcher smiled, and in it Flynn saw the sadness of defeat. Good. He'd faced his mistakes. Fletcher said, “This is Al Quint from MIT.”

“You're in bomb design, am I right?”

“Well, I'd hardly—”

“Don't give me any bullshit shyness, please. Are you capable of analyzing nuclear weapons and determining their degree of readiness?”

Quint drew himself up. “I am capable of that.”

“You have all your equipment? Everything you need?”

“Stowed.”

“Let's go.” Flynn hoped that this flight would be uneventful. His best guess, based on past escapes, was that he had until about eleven this morning before Aeon discovered that he was still alive.

There was a typical USAF-issue general officers' plane waiting for them. It was nicely equipped, but more utilitarian than the private-charter Lear, which had been luxurious … until it had turned into a death trap.

They took off immediately. The crew already had their marching orders, so Flynn didn't have to explain anything to anybody. Unless Aeon blew them out of the sky, the next stop was North Dakota.

“OK, ladies and gentlemen,” Flynn said, “what we're going to be doing is analyzing every aspect of the Minuteman operation at Malmstrom. We will want to check control systems, missile guidance programming, and the condition of the warheads, the fuel, and the rocket engines. Everything.”

Quint said, “Can we know why?”

Flynn answered carefully. “Something in these systems is wrong. We're not sure what it is.”

Robert Hardy, a man with wild white hair and an air of unease, said, “They have their own technicians out there.”

“We need an outside inspection.”

The only woman on the team, Linda Bartlett, said, “So somebody's not loyal. Is this terrorism? Because if it is, I'm not going and the hell with the fee.”

“You're already going,” Flynn thought, but did not say. They were well west of Dayton, probably climbing through ten thousand feet.

“Yeah,” Hardy said. “I'm not going into some nest of terrorists, either.”

Flynn smiled. He said mildly, “You're all agency assets and you're going where you've been ordered to go.”

“‘Ordered'?
Where the hell do you get off, mister?”

“Let me be clear. You will be doing the most important single thing that you have ever done, all of you. What hangs in the balance I cannot tell you, but it's a lot.”

Flynn had imagined that his feelings were hidden, until Linda Bartlett sat beside him and said, “I believe you're very afraid.”

Flynn looked away from her. He said nothing.

“Why? What's out there?”

“Your job is weapons design, am I right?”

“I lecture on nuclear weapons design, yes, but I don't build bombs.”

“You know bombs: how they work, how they're constructed, what sort of fissile materials they require.”

“Yes.”