The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller (6 page)

He'd been waved onto the facility when the security police identified his license number. They had instructions not to approach the car and to allow him to park anywhere he wished. Diana's usual excellent work.

He turned off the car and opened his jacket in order to expose his pistol. He entered the building. At the end of a narrow corridor was a small sign on a door:
CORONER.

He had been unusually effective when it came to cleaning up criminal elements from Aeon. In fact, he was the only cop who was effective, at least in the field. Diana was good at deskwork and planning, but he was the one who could go out into the forests or down into the caves where Aeon's biorobots lurked and actually get kills. When the biorobots had been run by a few criminals, he had been a constant target. Now that the criminals were the government of the planet, the danger he was in had escalated even further.

They were capable of fielding bios that appeared to be human, but when you shot them, the skin sank against the metal frame in such a way that made it immediately apparent that they were anything but. When they were functional, though, they were very, very good.

So, were such things behind that door waiting for him? He had no reason to think so, but nevertheless his pistol slipped into his right hand. It happened so quickly that it would have seemed to an observer like a magic trick, as if the gun had appeared out of nowhere. As he drew, he simultaneously threw the door open. He determined that the room was empty except for a stainless steel double sink along one wall and an examining table at its center, its surface scuffed dull from many years of use. On the wall opposite the sink were three cabinets held closed by heavy-duty handles.

He could see by the fact that the handle had no dust on it that they had used the center drawer. He grasped it, felt a click, and stopped. Another pull and the door would swing wide.

Again, he braced the pistol. Only then did he open the door.

Darkness within. The odor of raw, dead blood. Total silence, no movement.

He released the handle, drew a small flashlight out of his pocket, and trained it on the dark.

What he saw was a corpse, and only that. He pulled at the gurney it was on, and it rattled forward on old rails.

The body was naked and headless. Tucked in between the legs was a black plastic bag.

Carefully, he ran a hand over the gray skin of the corpse. He next opened the bag and drew out the head. A human head weighs about three pounds, and he didn't notice anything unusual about the weight of this one. The young face was intent, the lips parted in a way that suggested pleasure. Pleasure in death? Why? Was it relief, or had whoever killed him somehow deceived him about what was happening?

He looked a long time into those eyes. Given the weapon used, he probably hadn't even realized that he was being killed. It had been strung from wall to wall where his throat would connect with it when he sat down and bent to his work. There would have been a sharp stab of pain as it slid through his neck but his head would have fallen off before he could so much as cringe.

“Why did you have our dossier, Albert Doxy?” he asked, speaking to himself, his soft words sinking into the quiet. “Where did you get it?”

Over the past year, their unit's files had been moved to the Iron Mountain facility in Rosendale, New York, one of the most secure such operations on the planet. And yet, here was a twenty-something with arguably its most sensitive file in his hands, walking into the White House from an unknown destination.

He called Diana. “The cadaver's ready to move. I'll wait here with it until the mortuary team shows up. Where are we taking it?”

“The coroner's facility at Langley,” she replied. “It's been cleared for you. Nobody will stop the wagon, nobody will do any ID checks. Just be sure you're directly behind. They're expecting a caravan of two vehicles—you and the coroner's vehicle, that's it.”

“Got it.”

While he waited, he examined the wound. When he set the head back on the neck, it appeared that the boy was wearing a thin red string.

He called Diana again. “I'm going to want you to start examining the Secret Service video, and also find out if they had any surveillance in the kid's office. Go over it frame by frame, layer by layer.”

“I'm doing it now.”

“Inform me the moment you get a hit. If you do.”

The coroner's team appeared in the doorway, three men and a woman.

“We're ready,” the team leader said.

As they moved toward him, Flynn held up his hand. “Slow down. I want your units and your names. I need to do some clearances.”

They traded glances. This wouldn't be a familiar procedure to them, but they had never encountered this level of security before. Once they were back out in the hall, he ran their names through the CARAT system, which addresses all accessible information databases on the planet, including many that are believed by their owners to be encrypted. In two minutes, he had all their records. They were all Air Force personnel, which was good. The USAF had a good security system and a good relationship with his own unit. Seeing nothing unusual in the records, he continued with his work.

He put both the body and head in a single body bag that he pulled from the supply closet beside the sink. He zipped the bag and put yellow plastic tape over the head of the zipper. Under no circumstances could these people be allowed to see the headless corpse. Media types would pay a fortune for a shot of somebody who'd been beheaded, and when it was discovered that the crime had been committed in the White House, six figures would be in play.

Safest way to prevent leaks: Don't tempt.

He opened the door to the team. “OK, kids, it's yours. There's a classified seal on the bag, though, and the tape is tamper-proof. Any sign of entry, and you're in a world of hurt.” In his car, he reported to Diana again. “Following on. There's four USAFs in there. They all have straight records.”

“Got it. Let 'em do their job. Back off.”

He disconnected and waited, watching as the body was brought out and put in the federal meatwagon for its journey to Langley.

As it left the Navy Yard, Flynn drove just behind. He called Diana again. “You find anything on those tapes?”

“We pick him up on the surveillance as he comes up the driveway. He enters via the main entrance, then goes straight to the West Wing.”

“Anybody engage with him?”

“A busboy exited his office five minutes before he arrived, carrying a food tray.”

“Show me.”

“Flynn, you're behind the wheel of a car.”

“Show me!” He turned on his iPad, which was on the seat beside him. An instant later, an image appeared. Flynn glanced down at it, looked more closely. Then he returned his eyes to the road. “It'll interest you to know that the busboy who cleared up after his lunch is now driving the meatwagon. In other words, he has Doxy's remains.”

“I'll dump SWATS on the meatwagon right now,” she said, her voice crisp with urgency.

“No, not yet. Let's play it out a little.”

There wasn't a single country in the world that wouldn't want to acquire the experimental implant that was in Doxy's head. It was also true, though, that few of them would go to these lengths to get it.

In his mind, he inventoried the possibilities. Russia? Maybe, but they'd gone broke over Ukraine and Syria and now needed Western friends again. China? They didn't kill, and certainly not in the White House. Iran, then?

“I think it's Misery,” he said. The acronym of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence was MISIRI, universally referred to as “Misery.”

“Misery is getting more sophisticated, then.”

He cut the connection. No matter how secure the line, safety meant keeping conversation to the minimum. The great problem with their work was that there were plenty of people on the other side who were smarter than humans. Not natively, but Aeon was thousands of years ahead of us technologically. How much they were machines and how much biology it was hard to know. You were not, however, dealing with human logic. What they did made sense, but it was their own kind, so that generally it was hard to grasp until after the fact.

Once, the detail had been linked to Aeon by a communications device we called “the Wire.” Through the use of quantum entanglement, it was able to transmit across interstellar space instantaneously. But when the revolution reached the campus of Aeon's exobiology staff, the Wire had been shut down. Now it was just a hulk in Detail 242's small headquarters deep in the CIA building at Langley, a dark unseeing eye. It wasn't alone, though. A back-engineered system was installed in some ships and submarines, in Air Force One, and in spy planes.

He punched up Diana. “Meatwagon's not slowing,” he said into his phone. They'd crossed the gray darkness of the Potomac and were heading up Memorial. The Dolley exit that led into Langley was just ahead.

“I've got eyes on it,” Diana responded.

“OK, if they're gonna be bad boys, I'll let them lose me, then move in on them when they've stopped.”

The old ambulance passed the exit.

“Stay with them. I'm hanging back.”

It accelerated through 70, through 80.

“They're shaking tails. Keep the cops off it, let it happen.”

“On to the highway patrol now.”

Ninety. One hundred. The purpose of such a maneuver was to force anyone tailing them to show his hand.

Flynn let himself drop back, then a little more. The truck was now doing something close to 110.

It flew up to the Beltway, weaving through traffic. The taillights disappeared into the winking mass ahead.

“They're slowing,” Diana said. “Taking the Beltway north. You're two miles behind them.”

How naive could they be, thinking that speed would shake a tail?

The most probable answer was that they weren't naive at all. They knew that the ambulance was under surveillance that it couldn't shake.

So, why were they playing it like this?

“They're exiting onto Bear Island. Taking the underpass right now.”

“You still have visual?”

“Infrared. Too dark over there for visual.”

Flynn hung out his blue light and flipped on his siren. The car leaped ahead, engine growling. Infrared wasn't much use. Games can be played with it: All you need is a foil blanket and you're invisible from above. Meatwagons carry such blankets.

When he came to the exit, he drove into Carderock Recreation Area, but not far. “What's their position now?”

“A half mile ahead of you. No movement on the truck.”

He got out of his car. He could cover a half mile on foot faster than they probably realized. If they realized that the tail had not been shaken, he hoped, they would expect him to come up in his vehicle, but maybe not.

“You see me?” he asked Diana.

“I have your position, you're too close.”

“I have eyes on them. There's movement. They're pulling out the body.”

“Back off, they're going to see you.”

He could hear birds settling in for the night, beetles moving through the leafy forest floor, a squirrel scratching its way up a tree.

“Flynn,” came Diana's voice from the earpiece.

He took it out and turned it off. He needed both his ears. He hardly breathed. He needed to see and hear these people. If they had something to do with Aeon, this strange behavior might be explained. If not, then what in the world was Iran up to? Why had they stolen the detail's file, or even known that such a file existed?

Aeon and Iran?

There were now more sounds ahead. The crunch of tires. No engine noise, though. A huge splash, followed by gurgling. What in hell were they doing?

He reinserted the earpiece.

“Flynn! Flynn!” She was hoarse. She'd been screaming at him.

He popped the mike to indicate that he could hear her.

“He rolled the ambulance into the Potomac!”

“He?”

“The other two are in it—they have to be.”

As it sank, the old ambulance began making louder splashing and gurgling noises. A truck going into a river is a loud business.

The idea of trying to help the people in it was out; it was too late for them. He would concentrate on just one thing now: the identity of the last man standing.

He popped the mike again. She reported, “Nobody got out of the meatwagon, so the two other kids are indeed still in there. The body's in it, too.”

“The head?”

“Not clear. He may have it.”

He pulled the earpiece out again, and at once heard a stealthy sound, cloth slipping softly against the trunk of a tree. With it came footsteps on damp leaves. He could stop him right here, but that would freeze the trail.

Now he could hear breathing, unsteady, afraid. The kid passed close, then the sound of his movement faded. Flynn returned his earbud to his ear. “See him?”

“He's emerging onto the road. There's a car coming.”

Flynn took off after him, angling toward the road, keeping well out of sight.

“He's getting in the vehicle. It's a late-model Mercedes. It's pulling out. Tracking.”

He didn't care where it went; that was no longer important. “Get the river dredged. See what can be found. And do you have any good face shots of the perp?”

“Working on it. Gotta reconstruct off the infrared.”

He reached his car. “Where are they now?”

“In heavy traffic, moving north. I'm still tight, though.”

The police would locate the truck, perhaps the bodies, or parts of them. If he was lucky, the head. The river was swift and deep, and finding things in murky, tricky water like that was likely to be much a matter of chance. Flynn did not like chance.

As he drove, he analyzed the situation, but his thoughts led in no definite direction.

“I've got the kid,” Diana said. “Misery op, definite ID.”