Act of Revenge

Flash forward

Louis Massina paced back and forth in the small high-security area, worried, anxious, and angry.

But most of all, impotent. Boston was under attack. The lives of dozens, maybe hundreds, of his friends were directly threatened. One of his closest employees, a young woman with tremendous promise, was among the hostages.

Maybe even dead.

And all he could do, for all his money, for all his inventions — his robots, his drones, his computers, his software — was walk back and forth, trying desperately to suppress what could not be suppressed.

Anger. Rage. The enemy of reason, yet the core of his being, at least at this moment.

There were other alternatives. Prayer, for one.

Prayer is impotence. Prayer is surrender.

The nuns who taught him would slap his face for thinking that. They held the exact opposite: Prayer was strength, tenfold.

But while in many ways Massina was a man of faith, he had never been much given to prayer. In his mind, actions spoke more effectively than words. Prayers were all well and good, but they worked — if they worked at all — on a realm other than human.

And the action needed now was completely human. Not even the Devil himself could have concocted the evil his city faced.

Light flashed in the center of the far-right monitor.

“They’re going in,” said the operator watching the hotel where Massina’s employee had been taken hostage. The light had come from a small explosion at the side of the building. “They’re going in.”

Almost in spite of himself, Massina started to pray.

1 Real time

There were few better hotels in Boston than the Patriot Hotel if you wanted to soak up the city’s history: city hall was practically next door, Faneuil five minutes away. You could catch a trolley for the Old Town tour a block or two down the street. Bunker Hill was a hike, but then the British had found that out as well. The rooms were expensive — twice what they would go for at similarly appointed hotels nearby — but money had never been a major concern for Victoria Goodman, Chelsea Goodman’s favorite aunt. Victoria had gotten a job as a secretary for Microsoft very soon after it started, and when she cashed out her stock in the early 1990s, invested in real estate in and around San Francisco, most notably Palo Alto and Menlo Park — the future homes of Facebook and Google. Victoria had that kind of luck.

Despite her luck, and her money, Victoria was especially easygoing, self-assured yet casual. She met Chelsea in the hotel lobby wearing a blue-floral draped dress that showed off toned upper arms and legs that remained trim and shapely despite the fact that she had recently passed sixty.

“Just on time,” declared Victoria, folding Chelsea to her chest. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“I wouldn’t mind breakfast,” answered Chelsea. “How far did you run this morning?”

“It’s not the distance, it’s the attitude,” replied Victoria. “Only five miles. But it felt wonderful. It’s so marvelous running through the city.”

“You’ll have to try for the Marathon.”

“Those days are gone, dear,” said Victoria lightly. “I’d never qualify. But thank you for the thought. You didn’t bring your young friend?”

“We’ll meet her at the Aquarium,” Chelsea said. “She had to go to church with her dad.”

“Well, it is Easter.”

“Actually, they’re Russian Orthodox, so it’s Palm Sunday. He’s a single father, and lately he’s been trying to instill religion in her.”

Chelsea followed Victoria across the paneled lobby to the restaurant entrance, where a maître d’ greeted them with a nod. He had a fresh white rose in his lapel and the manner of someone who’d been looking forward to this encounter the entire morning. He showed the two women to a seat at the far end of the room, then asked if they would care for something to drink while they looked at the menus.

“Mimosas,” said Victoria. “And coffee.”

“Mimosas?” asked Chelsea.

“Why not? You don’t have to work today, and champagne always puts me in the mood for sightseeing.”

Chelsea was just about to ask how exactly that worked when a loud crack shook the room. The metallic snap was followed by two more, each louder than the other. The noise was unfamiliar to most of the people in the restaurant, but Chelsea had lately had a singular experience that not only made the sound familiar, but warned her subconscious that there was great danger nearby. She leaped up from her seat, and before her aunt could respond, had grabbed her and pushed her to the floor.

“Someone is shooting!” Chelsea told Victoria as the crack of a fresh round of bullets echoed against the deep wood panels of the room. “We have to get out of here!”

2

Johnny Givens couldn’t help but be impressed. Since coming to Smart Metal, the former FBI agent had seen more than his share of high-tech gizmos and gadgets. The company was the leading manufacturer of stand-alone robots in the Northeast, and its R&D section was beyond anything Jules Verne, Gene Rodenberry, or William Gibson could have imagined. And he himself was an example of its cutting-edge technology — having lost his original legs in an accident while working a case, Johnny now walked on a set of prosthetics designed and manufactured by Smart Metal’s Bio-Med division. Yet what he was seeing this morning impressed him even more than his legs. For he was seeing the future of policing.

The Boston Police Department had invited Johnny and his immediate boss, Smart Metal Security Director William Bozzone, to inspect their not-yet-complete Command Center, a veritable Starship Enterprise located in a disaster-proof shelter under the Charles River. Besides the normal communications gear one would find in a class-one emergency call center, BCPD Command had dedicated links to a dozen nearby police departments, the Massachusetts State Police, the National Guard, Homeland Security, and even the Pentagon. Police video cameras, set up at every substation, municipal building, and historic site, provided real-time visuals of what was happening around the city. Visual input could also be received from up to twelve helicopter drones, which were piloted from a room within the complex. Commanders could not only speak in real time to any officer on the force, but could “push” data such as video to their devices — phones, tablets, laptops — as well. Sophisticated computers utilized face- and voice-recognition software to ID suspects and present their rap sheets in less time than it would take a police officer to tell them to put up their hands. The center also received status reports on the city’s T or subway, buses, electrical grid, and its internet systems. And while still in its infancy, software that integrated all of the available information promised to provide alerts that would make the department far more proactive than imagined even a decade before.

To Johnny, it looked like nirvana: a twenty-first-century tool for law enforcement that would put police officers two steps ahead of criminals. So he was baffled when he noticed Bozzone’s frown deepening with every step they took around the center. What had seemed like a quizzical annoyance as they passed through the metal and chemical detectors before boarding the tram at the entrance had blossomed into something that suggested disgust. Bozzone didn’t voice it — he was nothing if not disciplined and polite — but having worked with him closely for several months, Johnny realized he was about ready to explode.

Their tour guide, Police Captain Horace Wu, seemed oblivious. Wu, a fifth-generation police officer whose great-great-grandfather had been one of the first Chinese American members of the Boston PD, led them from the Situation Room down a hallway past some as-yet-unoccupied offices to the Galley — a full-service cafeteria that, unfortunately, was not yet manned. Coffee and pastries had been put out on a table; Wu directed Bozzone and Givens to help themselves while he checked on the other groups being shown through the center.

“This is going to kill your diet,” Givens told Bozzone, glancing at the array of fruit tarts, jelly donuts, and squares of cheesecake.

Bozzone silently poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. Johnny helped himself to a Danish and followed.

“Not even tempted?” asked Givens.

Bozzone shrugged.

“What’s up?”

“You realize this is Big Brother Central, right?” said the security chief.

“I don’t follow.”

“The gear here, the coordination, the inputs, and the abilities — it can be used for a lot of things.”

“Catching criminals. Sure.”

Bozzone focused on his coffee, stirring it slowly.

“Danish is good,” said Johnny.

“The problem is balance. And responsibility. Who do we trust with the keys?” Bozzone raised his head and stared at Givens. His expression was somewhere between that of an interrogator and a philosopher, both accusing and pensive at the same time. “Who do we trust watching our every move?”

“It’s an extension of the guy on the beat,” offered Johnny. “In the old days, a cop would patrol a few blocks, know just about everybody, see just about everything going on. That was community policing.”

Johnny, who’d earned a bachelor’s in criminal science after his Army service, knew this was an exaggeration, and that in fact it bordered on an idealistic fantasy. But it was the best he could offer at the moment.

He expected Bozzone to counter, but he didn’t. Instead, his boss rose.

“Let’s get going. I don’t really feel like spending all Easter here.”

“Good idea,” said Johnny. “Otherwise I’ll be tempted to grab another Danish.”

It occurred to Johnny that their intel shack at Smart Metal, which had been set up to help the CIA complete a mission in occupied Ukraine, had even more capabilities than BCPD Command; Bozzone had raised no objections about that. But this wasn’t the place to bring that up. He fell in behind Bozzone, following as he walked back through the hall to the Situation Room, looking for Wu so they could say thank you and take their leave.

They had just spotted Wu across the room with a pair of Massachusetts State Detectives when a buzzer sounded. Givens looked up at the massive LED video panel at the front of the room. A large red banner was flashing across the top of the screen:

A systems operator at a console on a raised platform near the back of the room typed furiously, and the image changed from a map of Boston to a bird’s-eye view of the area near the harbor. A red marker glowed near a building Johnny recognized as the Patriot, a pricey five-star old-world-style hotel in the center of the city’s historic area. The screen divided in half; a video from a police car responding to the scene appeared at the top right, next to the map. Below it was an image from one of the two helicopter drones currently flying above the city.

“Is this a tech demonstration?” Johnny asked.

Before anyone could answer, another banner appeared on the screen, just below the earlier one:

“Come on,” said Bozzone. “Fast.”

Johnny followed his boss as he beelined for the exit portal, running to one of the waiting trams. Johnny had barely gotten in when Bozzone hit the Transport button. The magnetic-impulse car shot away from the Command Center toward the facility’s guarded entrance.

“We need to get out of here before they go to lockdown,” said Bozzone. “Boston is under attack.”

“You don’t think it’s just an exercise?”

Bozzone shook his head. “No way.”

3

As a practical matter, most days, even Sundays, religion did not intrude too greatly into Louis Massina’s thoughts, let alone his schedule.

Easter was different.

Easter high mass was a must-attend event; he had not missed one in his memory, which extended back to his days as a toddler. Accordingly, the mass was an exercise in nostalgia as well as devotion. The scent of lilies and incense as he crossed to the narthex from the vestibule returned him to his childhood; by the time he knelt in a pew to pray, he would remember the hard wooden kneelers he’d bruised his knees on as an altar boy. The choir would transport him farther back, to a neighborhood church — boarded now, but at the time crowded with blue-collar parishioners and their prayers. Massina would see his great-aunt, a nun, face beaming as she fingered her rosary beads. He would remember his parents, and the long walk home to the apartment where his mother had hidden their plastic eggs in various crevices.

That was a long time ago, and not just in years.

Conscious of how much had changed, Massina came out of the church in a contemplative mood, and it only deepened when he returned home. If he had been of a different temperament, this contemplation might have led to melancholia, a yearning for the past, and half a bottle of Scotch or some similar beverage. Massina was different: his mood prompted a laundry list of projects he must absolutely turn his attention to, things he had to accomplish, projects he had to try. That was his family’s greatest legacy — urging him to never be satisfied.

If I can dream it, why can’t it be?

A somewhat naive credo, and yet look where it had taken him.

Massina was lost in thoughts of cybergenic prosthetics and autonomous ships when the security system alerted him to the car that had pulled up to the gate.

He was surprised to see that it was one of his company SUVs, driven by Johnny Givens.

“Open gate,” he told the system, then went to meet Johnny on the landing to the front steps.

“You have today off,” said Massina sharply as his deputy security supervisor got out of the truck. “Why are you here?”

“Terrorists are attacking the city,” said Givens tersely. “There’s been an explosion in the T, hostages at a hotel downtown, a bombing—”

“Take me to the office.”

“Beef wanted you to stay here. It’s safer.”

“We’re leaving now,” said Massina. “Do you want to drive or should I?”

Johnny Givens had only worked at Smart Metal for a short time, but he wasn’t surprised at all by Massina’s decision. He doubted Bozzone would be either.

Getting downtown, however, was not an easy task. The police had cordoned off the area near the Patriot Hotel, and traffic was snarled to the point that they reached a standstill about a dozen blocks from their office. Massina surveyed the situation, sat patiently for about thirty seconds, then unlocked his door and hopped out.

“Mr. Massina!” Johnny shouted. “At least let me come with you.”

“Well, come on, then.”

“I can’t abandon the truck.”

Massina shrugged and started away.

They had passed a parking lot a half a block away. Johnny edged his way onto the sidewalk — fortunately empty — then backed all the way to the lot. He pulled into a space, then ran to catch up to his boss.

The inventor was rather short, and Givens had the benefit of appendages that were several times more powerful than “normal” legs. Still, it took him several blocks to catch up. By that time, they were within sight of the renovated factory that housed Smart Metal’s offices in the city center.

Two policemen dressed in riot gear stopped them on the next block. Givens prepared himself for an argument, but he didn’t get a word out of his mouth.

“Hey, Jimmy O’Brien,” said Massina, walking over to the taller of the two officers. “I saw your father at mass this morning. He’s looking very well.”

“Mr. Massina, how are you?” said the policeman, pushing up the shield on his helmet to see Massina better.

“Not good. What the hell is going on?”

“We’re not sure, but the city’s on lockdown.”

“I’ll be at my office,” said Massina, already starting past. “If you need anything, send someone around to see Bozzone. We’ll send you out some coffee. I’m not sure if there’s food, but if so, we’ll get you that, too.”

“Thank you.”

“You know everybody in the city?” asked Givens, catching up.

“Just the important people.”

Bozzone met Massina in the entrance hall. “You were supposed to stay at your house.”

“You’re giving the orders now? What’s the situation here?”

“We’re secure,” said Bozzone.

“How about our people?”

“I don’t know where everyone is but—”

“But you’re working on it,” snapped Massina. It wasn’t a question.

“I am.”

“Good.”

“The police want everyone to shelter in place,” said Bozzone.

“Is that wise?”

“Probably.”

“Unless they happen to be in a place where the terrorists are,” said Massina. “Make sure everyone is accounted for. Update me upstairs in twenty — no, ten minutes.”

4

Chelsea crawled around the back of the dining room toward a door that led to a hallway with storerooms and a bathroom. She could hear gunshots and a commotion at the front of the room, but knew better than to stop and see what was going on.

“Still with me, Aunt Vic?”

“Right behind you,” said Victoria.

The lights snapped off just as Chelsea reached the entrance to the hallway. She took her aunt by the hand, then rose and began running down the corridor.

Her first thought was the restroom, but out of the corner of her eye she saw a metal fire door and realized it meant there was a stairway behind it.

“The stairs,” she hissed. “Come on!”

She slammed her shoulder against the crash bar as if she were punching into a scrum in a field-hockey game. The door gave way easier than she had expected, slamming against the concrete wall of the stairwell and punching her in the side. Victoria rushed past, ducking to the right as Chelsea pushed the door closed. There was no lock.

“Up the stairs, come on,” she told Victoria, though her aunt was already leading the way.

Chelsea expected the older woman to fade as they hit the second flight, but either fear or her daily running exercise — perhaps both — gave her the energy of someone forty years younger. She wasn’t even breathing heavily as they reached the third-floor landing.

“How far up should we go?” asked Victoria.

“To the roof!” decided Chelsea.

Unlike the richly paneled and stuccoed walls of the hotel’s public areas, plain cement blocks lined this stairwell. Cold to the touch, their solid, no-nonsense, whitewashed surface reassured Chelsea as she climbed. It was a bunker-like womb, a literal stairway to safety.

Or so it seemed until a loud crash reverberated from above. A woman screamed — high-pitched, the sound bounced off the hard surfaces of the walls, vibrating the loose metal of the treads so that the entire stairwell tingled with fear. A deeper sound followed, one even more frightful — it was male, a grunt that turned into a shriek before sinking to a groan, pain mixing with despair. Its echo lingered for only a moment, disrupted by the sound of automatic gunfire, a rapid click and whistle, ricochets dicing the surface of the cement. Splinters began to fall, and a cloud of dust — cement, gun gases, blood — filled the stairwell.

“We gotta get out,” Chelsea told her aunt, grabbing her hand and pulling her to the door of the landing they’d just climbed to. The doorknob turned but the door wouldn’t open. Chelsea’s adrenaline took over. She pulled her aunt with her, descending to the next level down.

Don’t panic, she told herself. Step by step.

She thought of her trip to the Ukraine, and her training, and how to breathe. She forced herself to slow as she reached the next landing, fighting her adrenaline.

This door also seemed blocked, even though the knob turned.

Oh, for crapsake!

She was pushing, when of course the damn thing opened into the stairway.

Calm is better!

Slow is sure. Sure is fast. Slow is fast and sure!

Chelsea closed the door behind them as gently as she could. A fresh shock of gunfire rang from above as the latch closed.

Head leaning forward, arms out as if to catch a fall, Victoria moved in slow motion down the hallway, her head swiveling back and forth.

“Stay close to the wall,” Chelsea told her. She put her hand on her aunt’s shoulder, gently holding her back so she could take the lead.

“Careful,” said a male voice, so loud that she thought it was coming from behind her. She glanced back.

There was no one else in the hall. Chelsea lowered herself into a half crouch and began walking again, her right shoulder hugging the wall. The rooms along the hallway were laid out similarly to the ones in the restaurant — the stairwell at the end, a men’s room, a ladies’ room. Rather than opening into a larger room, however, this hall led to another passage. Chelsea went down on her knee, peering forward to scan the hall. It was only a few yards in either direction; each end gave way to another hall.

She listened, hoping to hear the voice again. There was strength in numbers.

“Which way do you think?” asked Victoria.

“Right, I think,” said Chelsea. “Toward the front of the hotel. Did you hear that voice?”

“No.”

“There must be other guests.”

“I hope they’re on our side.”

Chelsea peered around the corner, not sure what to expect. The hall ran for about six feet before giving way to a lounge area that rose above the main lobby. Seeing it, Chelsea knew where she was; the reservation desk was below and to her right. There was a small coffee kiosk around the corner from it. Most of the rest of the lobby area was a maze of low couches and chairs. A bank of elevators lined the hall on the left.

“This is kind of a balcony,” Chelsea told her aunt, leaning back. “It’s about eight feet wide, and it’s over the lobby. The front doors are just over there, and there are a couple of side entrances around that way.” She pointed to the section beyond the reservation desk. “It’s too high to jump down, but there are stairs at the far end. It’s like thirty yards.”

“OK.”

“The lobby is empty,” said Chelsea. She leaned back around the corner, making sure she was right. “Let’s go that way while we have a chance.”

“Out the front?”

“I think it’s our best bet.”

“Sneak or run?”

“Run… OK?”

Chelsea looked at her aunt’s face. Her eyes had narrowed, and while her lips were pressed together, she looked determined.

Chelsea started to get up.

“Wait,” said Victoria, grabbing her.

“What?”

“Do you have your phone?”

“Yes.”

“We should call and tell someone what’s going on.”

“God.” Chelsea dug into her pocket for her phone. She hadn’t thought of that.

But the phone couldn’t get a signal. Reception here was always iffy.

“Try yours,” she told her aunt.

“I left it in my pocketbook.”

“Forget it,” said Chelsea. “Let’s get out of here. On three.”

“On two.” Victoria raised her thumb.

Chelsea turned back toward the lobby, leaning forward to make sure the way was clear.

“One, two,” she whispered, and then she was off, flying across the long expanse. The deep carpet muffled her footsteps. The hotel remained eerily silent, without even mechanical noises, let alone people or guns or explosions.

As Chelsea reached the far side of the balcony, she spotted an alcove to the right. A red exit sign lit the corner. She decided that would be a safer route, since they wouldn’t be exposed.

“This way, come on,” she said, changing direction. She ran into the alcove and stopped at the door.

Just then the lights flickered and the place blackened. Emergency lights tripped on a moment later, casting the hall in a yellowish, almost sepia-toned hue.

“I just need to catch my breath,” said Victoria. “What’s this? I thought we were going out the front.”

“This might go directly outside,” said Chelsea. “Better not to be seen.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

But rather than leading to a separate entrance, the staircase came out on the side of the lobby, not far from the reservation desk. Chelsea took a step toward the desk, then quickly retreated as shadows moved across the floor.

She held her breath, waiting. There was no sound, and the shadows were gone.

“Ready?” she whispered to her aunt.

“Yes!”

“We go right to the door,” said Chelsea. “When we get outside, run left. I passed a Starbucks there, across the intersection. We’ll get help there.”

“And lattes,” said her aunt.

“Lattes, yes,” said Chelsea. “On three.”

Though they’d rested for only a moment, her legs muscles had tightened, and Chelsea felt her calves straining as she leaped forward, glancing both ways to make sure the lobby was empty. Heart pounding, she shot toward the row of doors.

A chain linked the bars of the set closest to her. Chelsea ran to the next set — another chain.

They were all chained.

Victoria either didn’t see it or didn’t quite realize what it meant. She continued past Chelsea and landed both hands on the crash bar. The door budged about an inch and a half before stopping abruptly. Victoria smacked hard against the glass.

Chelsea grabbed her aunt, holding her up.

“That hall,” she said. “Come on.”

The hallway off the lobby ran parallel to the front of the building. The right side rested against the building’s outer wall; the other was lined with offices. Chelsea wondered if people were hiding in some, but decided not to stop or check — they needed an exit, not allies.

There was an external door and a stairwell at the far end of the hall. This door, too, was chained, but the stairway was open. It led to the parking garage, which had several exits and entrances.

“The steps,” said Chelsea.

“More steps,” said Victoria, her voice resigned but almost comically so, as if they were running a steeplechase or some exercise course, not fleeing for their lives.

The steel doors to the garage were open. Exhaust mingled with fresh air, a good sign, thought Chelsea. She reached the bottom and ran into the garage proper. The ramp to the street was about forty yards away, the gate up, the entrance unblocked. The emergency lights were on, but there was also plenty of light coming from the street and skylights that were incorporated into the garden courtyard in the middle of the hotel.

“Aunt Vic, come on,” said Chelsea, helping Victoria as she entered the garage. The older woman was really straining now, and limping — she’d twisted her knee coming down the stairs.

“We’re out, we’re out,” said Chelsea, stooping down to take Victoria’s arm and shoulder her out. It was a three-legged race, a lark in the park — an old memory or maybe a dream flitting into Chelsea’s thoughts as they half jogged, half hobbled to the entrance.

Thank God! thought Chelsea.

They were maybe ten feet from the ramp when something darted from the left side. It moved quickly, so fast that Chelsea wasn’t sure what it was at first. It seemed unworldly, a wraith.

Then she saw it was a man.

Then she saw he held a rifle.

Then she realized the rifle was pointing at her and her aunt.

5

Massina listened intently as Bozzone described the situation as he knew it: there had been at least one explosion in the T, a car or truck bomb had detonated on the departure level of Airport Road, a group of terrorists had taken over the Patriot Hotel, another group had taken over the Boston Children’s Museum, and a suicide bomber had struck at the Back Bay Police Station. There were reports as well of an attack on a small restaurant in the North End and a disturbance of some sort at a bank on Massachusetts Avenue.

“Those are attacks that are confirmed,” said Bozzone. “You’re going to have rumors and misinformation, but the bottom line is the whole city is under attack.”

“Who?” asked Massina.

“Looks like an ISIS attack, similar to what they did in Paris,” said Bozzone. “This isn’t just a lone wolf either. This is coordinated.”

Massina had reached the same conclusion. But it didn’t matter at the moment who was responsible. The attacks had to be countered.

Revenge would come later.

And they would get revenge. The news of the attacks had awakened a feeling of rage in him, one he knew his city would share.

“What can we do to help?” he asked Bozzone. “Have you contacted the police?”

“I’m not sure they want our help,” said Bozzone. “They have their—”

“Nonsense. Offer them our UAVs and bomb mechs for a start. We have ten aircraft just sitting in our warehouse shipping area, ready to go. And probably the same number of mechs. Where’s Tommy Blake? Is he at home?”

“No, he’s downstairs. He was a few blocks away when he heard the news and—”

“Good. Tell him to meet me in the Box.”

“Lou, we really have to leave this to the professionals.”

“We’re professionals,” thundered Massina. “I’ll talk to the chief myself. Find the rest of our people. Get them here. Where’s Chelsea Goodman?”

“The city is on lockdown.”

“Not for us.”

Ten minutes later, having spoken to the police chief and the mayor, Massina strode into the “Box,” a secure communications facility he had established with the help of the CIA a few months before. He had done so for a mission he considered a patriotic duty. This time, things were different. This was personal: his city was under attack.

Johnny Givens shadowed him, ostensibly as his bodyguard.

“Here,” Massina told him, handing him a phone with an outside line. “Call your old boss at the FBI and tell him every asset I have is at his disposal. Tell him we’re launching a half-dozen drones in the next ten minutes with infrared and daylight cameras to work with the city police. We can tie them into his network if he wants. I have six bots they can use for bomb disposal. They’re on standby until someone needs them.”

“You got it,” said Givens.

Massina surveyed the row of multipurpose 4K screens sitting on the shared consoles in front of him. Each showed a different news channel. The Box — it was literally that, a large rectangular room sitting in the middle of an open basement space — had dedicated satellite communications and a link to the CIA’s Langley headquarters. It also had its own mainframes and a backup power unit independent of the filtered network that powered Smart Metal’s own massive arrays.

All these resources, thought Massina. And yet cable news was the go-to source for information.

Bozzone buzzed him on the intercompany talk channel.

“The police department needs a robot to check out a suspicious vehicle on 93 down south of the state police headquarters,” said Bozzone.

“Done. Tommy!”

Tom Blake, one of the lead engineers in the company’s mobile robot division, was sitting at a console on the opposite side of the room. Blake had already sent a team of engineers and mechanics to their yard across the river to ready the UAVs.

“Police need a robot on 93. What’s the best way to get it there?”

“Use the Lifter. We plop it down nearby.”

The Lifter — a two-engined, unmanned helicopter that looked and operated like a flying crane — was still experimental. But Massina didn’t hesitate.

“Do it,” he said. “Everything we have is in play, experimental or not.”

“We need to fuel it,” said Blake, his ponytail bobbing. Blake was an old hippie — literally old, at sixty-two, but only figuratively a hippie, given that he was both an aeronautical engineer and a millionaire former entrepreneur whose company Massina had bought for its talent as well as its drone research. “Tell them we’ll be in the air in fifteen.”

“Make it ten.”

“Dig it,” replied Blake.

Massina decided that meant yes. He told Bozzone the unit would be on the way.

“One thing,” said the security chief. “We’re having trouble reaching Chelsea. The cell calls go right to voice mail.”

“Get a car over to her house on Beacon Street and get her in here.”

“I asked Boston PD to knock on her door. There was no answer.”

“Keep looking.”

“I’m doing what I can.”

“Who’s here from AI or general software?”

“Well, you have—”

“Send Chiang and Telakus down.” Jin Chiang was a lead engineer on Chelsea’s AI team and a former countersecurity expert for IBM — a polite way of saying a hacker — hired to test security systems; his batting average for breaking into systems was higher than Yastrzemski’s. Avon Telakus had been a bot developer before going over to Smart Metal’s information security systems — their white-hat hacking unit.

“OK.”

Johnny waved to get his attention.

“Is it possible to tap into the Homeland Defense information network and supply them with real-time video?” Johnny asked. “The Bureau wants them online, too.”

“Absolutely,” said Massina. “Let me find a com guy to handle the details. Make sure he’s talking to an engineer. Translating’ll take all day.”

6

Chelsea glanced at her aunt. Victoria’s face was as white as milk.

The gunman took a step to his right, blocking off their path to the exit. Running would have been foolish in any event; he was holding an AR-15 with a thirty-round clip.

“Back,” he said.

Chelsea took a step backward, trying to memorize his face. He was young, with a beard four or five days old. He looked vaguely Middle Eastern, but not like the pictures of terrorists she knew from the television. His lips twitched.

He was nervous.

Not a good thing when he was holding a gun, she realized.

“Let us go,” Chelsea said. “We haven’t done anything.”

“You are a Muslim?” he said, pointing at Chelsea. “Arab?”

She shook her head, worried that he might let her go but keep her aunt here.

“Upstairs,” he said, raising his head in the direction they had come. “Both of you.”

“She’s an old lady,” said Chelsea, trying to think of how she might talk her way out of this. “She needs medicine. She could be your mother.”

“Go!” The man pointed his gun at Victoria.

“We’re going,” said Chelsea, taking hold of her aunt’s arm. She tugged gently, but Victoria seemed welded to the spot.

“We have to do what he says,” Chelsea whispered.

“You look like a good person,” Victoria told the gunman. Her voice was stronger than Chelsea expected. “You wouldn’t want your mother hurt. You wouldn’t hurt anyone. Let us go.”

“Back into the hotel,” said the man. “Or I shoot.”

For just a moment, Chelsea thought of calling his bluff. But that would be suicide.

“Come on,” she told Victoria, tugging her gently.

This time her aunt went with her. Chelsea’s mind raced as they walked toward the steps. Was there another way out? Was there a car maybe they could steal?

“Is he following us?” Chelsea asked as they started up.

“No,” said her aunt.

“That hallway to the right. Maybe there’s another door out. Or if there’s a room open, we could get out a window.”

Chelsea spun right and started sprinting down the hall. The first door on the right was a women’s restroom; she decided to try it, pushing inside. Her aunt followed.

There was a window on the far wall, but a thick antitheft screen of wire mesh filled the space beyond the glass. Chelsea pushed up the window and examined the panel. At least a quarter of an inch thick, the diamond-patterned metal remained stout as she pounded against it; her fist didn’t even make an indent.

“We’ll try another room,” Chelsea said.

“I need a breath first,” said her aunt.

“We have to keep trying.”

“I know, I know. Just a minute. A second.”

Victoria exhaled heavily, as if she were blowing out two dozen candles on a birthday cake. She gulped air and pushed it out again.

“Slow breaths, deep,” Chelsea told her. “Slow. Try to relax.”

You don’t give up on a problem, no matter how hard it is.

Her father’s voice, in her head, urging her on.

It was his voice she’d heard upstairs. She hadn’t listened. Her hesitation had cost them their chance, maybe.

Don’t dwell on your mistakes. Move ahead!

“Yes, go,” she told herself, answering him.

Victoria thought she was talking to her. “OK.”

Chelsea stopped at the door, peeked out, then held it open for her aunt. Out in the hall, they started running again, bypassing the men’s room — surely it would have the same window arrangement — in favor of an office a little farther down. The door was locked, requiring a card to open.

“Next one,” said Chelsea, already in motion.

She put her fingers on the handle, already calculating that it would be locked and they would have to move on. But by some miracle, the latch sprung open and she nearly tumbled inside.

The room was an office, with a desk, some empty shelves, and a pair of file cabinets. There were two casement windows on the far wall, covered by open blinds but large enough to let in considerable light.

Unlike the windows in the restroom, these opened horizontally, with a hand crank at the bottom. Chelsea flipped the locks open and cranked; the space was narrow but she figured she could pass through. The only problem was the screen separating the room from the outside. There didn’t seem to be an easy way to remove it; they’d have to break it down.

“We’ll break it with the chair legs,” she said, turning back to get her aunt.

She wasn’t there. In her haste, Chelsea had left her back in the hall, if not the bathroom.

The door started to open.

Thank God!

“We have a way out,” Chelsea said, grabbing the chair. “Come on!”

“You’ll come with me,” answered the man who entered the room. “Come now or I’ll shoot you.”

7

Borya Tolevi always had bad luck with the Blue Line. Always. While many aficionados of the city’s subway system rated its trains at the top of the T lines — dubious praise, surely — in her opinion they were the worst. Hers always ran late or was way crowded or smelled beyond human habitation.

Usually all three.

But today was unreal. They were barely out of State Station when the train stopped with a screech.

STOPPED! IN THE TUNNEL!! IN THE F-ING TUNNEL!!!

The lights flickered on and off. Onoffonoffonoff, then full on, then full off, emergency lights coming on, then off and on.

Like bullshit!

Borya looked at her watch. She was due at the Aquarium to meet her friend, mentor, and honorary aunt Chelsea Goodman, along with Chelsea’s actual real aunt, in forty-five minutes. Granted, she had plenty of time to get there — the Aquarium was the next stop — but that required the train moving again.

Maybe it would. Maybe it wouldn’t.

In the meantime, she was going to completely gag on the stench wafting from the old men crowding the seats nearby. She was standing in the aisle — easier to avoid perverts that way. But if she had to stand here for two more minutes she was going to either fall over or puke on the floor from the fart-stench wafting her way.

Borya decided her only recourse was to move to another car. She squirmed her way to the door at the end of the car, only to find it blocked by a woman who could have played on the Patriots’ front line.

“Excuse me,” Borya told her.

“Where you goin’, hon?” said the woman. “There’s no seats in that car.”

“I want to see for myself.”

“You’re not supposed to ride between the trains,” said Fattie. “Or walk between them.”

“That’s only when they’re moving.”

“The alarm will sound,” she said.

“Alarm? There are no alarms on the doors. What are you, like, a drug addict? Or just from New York?”

Fattie crossed her eyes. Borya thought she might have to poke her to get her to move — the target opportunities were rich — but finally she stepped aside.

As Borya squeezed out onto the minuscule platform between the two cars, she realized that the Aquarium Station was no more than a hundred yards away, a yellowish-red glow down the tracks.

Just as easy to walk.

And why not?

There were a million reasons, death and dismemberment being numbers one and two, with electrocution a close third. But as good at math as Borya was — and she was very, very good — statistics of life and death were not one of her strong points. It took longer — a half second — for her to decide to get off the train than for her to climb up onto the swaying chain gate between the cars and leap onto the narrow ledge next to the tracks. Misjudging the distance, she rebounded back, bouncing off the side of the train car and coming perilously close to slipping between the train and the ledge.

Had the train started to move, she surely would have fallen. What happened next would not have been pretty.

But the train didn’t move. Borya bounced to her feet and started along the ledge, steadying herself with her left hand against the train.

It was trickier beyond the subway car, with nothing to help her stay on the ledge. The walkway was barely that, with no rail and a rather slippery surface.

But it figured it would be wet near the Aquarium. Duh.

“You! What the hell are you doing!”

The shout took her by surprise. Borya started to slip but managed to catch herself by falling on her knees.

“Get out of the tunnel! You can’t be in the tunnel!”

It was the conductor, shouting through the window at the front of the train. He waved a beam of light at her from his flashlight.

“I’m going home!” Borya yelled back.

It was a lie — a stupid one, but stupid lies were better than nothing, in her experience.

“You’ll get killed!” sputtered the conductor. “Get back here! Get back here! Watch out for the third rail! Idiot!”

His words spurred her on. She couldn’t run — the ledge was too slippery and narrow for that, and she also worried that he had jinxed her. The third rail loomed large whenever she glanced to her left, monstrously magnified by her imagination.

The station platform was lit by emergency lights. It was deserted.

Had there been a fire? Was there still a fire?

No smoke. The air was — not clean, exactly, but not sulfur-choking, eye-tearing putrid either.

Was the power off all over town? Awesome.

Borya ran across the platform to the turnstiles. Since there were no police, no attendants, and no witnesses, she leaped over the turnstile rather than turning it — she’d always wanted to do that.

She glanced at the ticket booth as she ran toward the exit near the Marriot. The booth was empty, just like the station. The escalator wasn’t working either.

Bolting up the stairs, she found a pair of policemen guarding the doorway. “Where’d you come from?” barked one of them.

“I was in the restroom,” said Borya.

Another stupid lie: if there was a restroom at that stop, or any in Boston, Borya had never seen it. But the officer didn’t call her on it.

“Get inside the building,” he told her. “Shelter in place.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means get your butt inside the Marriott and stay there.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s an attack, hon,” said the other officer gently. It was a woman — between her uniform and her severe features, Borya hadn’t realized she was female. “You want me to take you inside?”

“We gotta stay here,” said her partner.

“I’m fine on my own,” said Borya.

“All right,” said the woman gently. “Just go right up to the main entrance of the hotel. They’ll take you in. Everything’s going to be all right. Don’t worry.”

There were four police cars parked outside, and a big green truck that looked like it belonged to the Army. Borya heard sirens in the distance.

A pair of National Guardsmen were in the street, with another near the side door to the Marriott. Borya ran along the front of the building, as if heading for the main entrance. She glanced back to make sure they weren’t following her, because the last thing she was going to do was shelter in place.

She had to find Chelsea. But Boston had turned into Zombieland — the nearby streets and sidewalks, which ordinarily would be packed with people, were deserted.

Where would Chelsea be? Her aunt was staying in some hotel, but it wasn’t the Marriot; she’d mentioned they might take an Uber to get to the Aquarium, which you would never do when you could walk across the street.

So…

Where?

Smart Metal. That was the best place to look for Chelsea. That was where she would go when there was trouble. She practically lived there anyway.

The building was back on the other side of the government center.

How to get there?

The subway obviously wasn’t working, there was no bus, and it was a long walk.

What she needed was a bike, like the one propped against the wall of the Chart House.

“Sorry. I gotta borrow your bike!” shouted Borya to the air. “I’ll bring it back. Promise.”

Maybe she didn’t shout. But the promise, at least, wasn’t a lie.

8

Johnny Givens paced back and forth in the Box, trying to calm some of the adrenaline building in his body.

It was a lost cause. He needed to be doing something more than just talking to people.

Or worse, listening to other people talk to people.

“I’m in,” said Avon Telakus, one of the programming wizards Massina had brought downstairs. Massina had ordered Telakus to hack into the security system at the Patriot Hotel.

Technically illegal.

More than technically. A probable violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1030 and a whole slew of other laws. But Johnny wasn’t working for the FBI anymore.

“They have video?” asked Massina.

“Looks like it.”

“Put the cameras on the screen,” said Massina impatiently.

“Arraying them up front,” said the twentysomething computer whiz.

Low-resolution black-and-white images popped across the monitors at the front of the room.

“Is this the best resolution?” asked Massina.

“It’s theirs. The frame rate is choppy beyond belief. They’re on backup power — they seem to have cut it at the hotel for some reason.”

“I suppose we should be thankful they’re not still using videotape,” said Massina.

Johnny stared at the screens. The cameras were mostly posted in hallways on the upper floors. At first glance, the place looked deserted.

“Can you move the cameras around?” he asked.

“Negative,” said Telakus. “They’re all fixed. They have more cameras than we can see here. They have presets operating the mix; this is what was set when they were taken over. I’m going to try to go around it and select cameras individually, but I really need to fiddle — the coding is not exactly world-class, and it looks nothing like the models I’ve pulled up.”

A new set of images popped across the screens. One showed a restaurant. Tables were upended; bodies lay on the floor.

“Looks like we got the right place,” said Massina acidly.

Massina folded his arms tightly across his chest, trying to control the anger he felt. These people had been killed in cold blood for no greater sin than being alive.

I am going to avenge you, he swore. I am going to reset the balance with these bastards.

Bozzone buzzed on his intercom. “Borya Tolevi just came in.”

“Very good,” replied Massina. The feisty kid reminded him a little of himself. “Did her father come with her?”

“No. He’s at home. I just talked to him. He’s fine. I told him we’ll keep Borya here until it’s safe. Here’s the thing,” added Bozzone, his voice rushing as if to keep Massina from interrupting. “Borya was going to meet Chelsea at the Aquarium, but she was way early. She thinks Chelsea was still meeting her aunt at the hotel.”

“Not the Patriot.”

“Yeah. The Patriot.”

9

Chelsea tried to memorize everything she saw, the men especially. They’d need her testimony when they put them on trial.

Counting the one in the garage, she’d seen five. They ranged in height from only a few inches taller than her to well over six feet. Two had full beards, but the others had faces that were simply scruffy, as if they’d forgotten to shave for a few days.

Three wore hotel uniforms — black pants and a blue blazer over a crisp white shirt. The others were in jeans and T-shirts.

All but one looked underfed, even malnourished. They’d hardly be imposing, if not for their guns.

Their guns: AR-15s, civilian versions of the M4 with some slight modifications, some subtly different stocks, a suppressor, and, in one case, a scope.

None of the men wore masks or disguises, as if they didn’t care if they were identified. That wasn’t good.

Chelsea and Victoria were led to the Patriot’s ballroom, where some fifty other guests and a handful of employees had been taken. Two terrorists stood guard at the back of the room near the main doors; another strutted across the small stage at the front, occasionally waving his gun at the people scattered around the floor.

The prisoners formed themselves into little knots, grouped around acquaintanceships and happenstance. A pile of wallets and purses, handbags and cell phones lay on the floor near the door; clearly these had been confiscated from the people in the ballroom, but the procedure was haphazard — neither Victoria nor Chelsea was searched, and Chelsea still had her cell phone and wallet.

“What do you think they’re going to do?” asked Victoria, settling into a spot near the wall, close to a man and woman with three girls, all under seven or eight. “Hold us for ransom?”

“Maybe,” lied Chelsea.

She turned her attention to the man on the stage, imprinting him on her brain: his face, brownish, speckled with a few black freckles and a large pimple on his cheek, a bad beard like most of the others, eyebrows far too bushy for the rest of his features. No marks on his brow, no wrinkles, eyes wide open, maybe too far open — it was hard to tell from here.

Khaki pants, a blue T-shirt with some sort of insignia.

A police shield?

Maybe. Some sort of emblem.

Shoes — scuffed brown.

His gun, like the others but with a folded stock. He waved it as if it were a pistol.

Be calm, collect as much information as you can, wait for an opening.

It was her father’s voice. He was always with her when she needed him.

Always with me, Daddy.

We’ll get through it, kid. Hang in there.

Chelsea turned her attention to the men at the door. One of them was talking into a microphone at his collar.

They were using radios. She hadn’t noticed that before.

Analyze it. What does it mean?

They’re very organized. They’ve been planning this for quite a while.

They have money. They’re well-funded. Radios. New guns.

They’re disciplined.

The man on the stage shouted at a man who was walking around, agitated, near the wall. He told him to sit or he would be shot.

An American accent. Flat. Not Bostonian but native. He was either raised in America or underwent extensive training to get his accent right.

He pointed at someone nearby and told him to get the man to sit.

Definitely native. Not Boston. Not New York either. Not Southern. Flat. Midwest.

He had a little strut. Overconfident.

Were the others American? Or were they foreign?

It suddenly seemed very important to know. She thought of striking up a conversation, talking to them — she could do that, gather information. It might be useful.

She had the cell phone. She could call and give the negotiators little tidbits to help them, intel on where they were, how many, what they were thinking and saying.

There would be negotiators. They would negotiate, even if they weren’t going to give in. Buy time until the SWAT team assaulted the place.

Chelsea looked around the room, trying to decide where the assault would come from. There was no way of knowing for sure, but she guessed the back of the room, since it was closer to the exterior.

It would begin with a flash of light and a loud bang: flash-bang grenades, intended to shock everyone inside for a moment, just long enough to get an advantage.

Then gunfire.

A lot of it.

“These bastards,” said Victoria. Her voice cracked. She was shaking, starting to lose her composure. “Savages. Who are they? What do they want?”

“ISIS,” said a woman nearby.

“Do you know that for sure?” asked Chelsea. “Did they say that?”

“Who else could they be?”

“It’s just that, knowing that and suspecting that are different things,” said Chelsea. She was thinking she would pass the information along when she had a chance to use her cell phone — assuming she could get a signal. “The more solid information—”

“It has to be them,” insisted the woman.

“Maybe we should pray,” said the mother with the children. “We should pray. It is Easter.”

Victoria nodded, but didn’t join in as the woman began mouthing the words to the Our Father. Two of the girls joined in; the oldest just stared at them.

“All the men will stand up!” shouted one of the terrorists near the door. “Stand and go over to the far wall. Faster!”

The men got up and made their way there, one or two quickly, the others, a dozen and a half, slowly, their shuffle the only way they could protest.

“You and you,” said the man on the stage, pointing to two boys barely into their teens. “With the others.”

A woman next to one of the boys grabbed him. “He’s just a child! Leave him alone.”

“I’ll kill him, then you,” said the man, pointing his gun.

The boy pushed himself away. “I’ll be OK, Mom.”

One of the men still had his cell phone; it began to ring as they mustered. The man on the stage jumped down in a rage.

“Whose phone?!” he demanded. “Whose phone!”

The men started to separate. Chelsea tensed, sensing they were going to gang up and attack the man with the phone.

What do I do?

She decided she would grab a weapon from one of the men at the door. They’d be so focused on the men they wouldn’t notice.

Can I make it?

She’d have to.

No question: I will make it.

She pushed her feet beneath her knees, ready to spring.

“Whose phone!” shouted the terrorist.

One of the men raised his hand. “It’s not working,” he said, stepping forward with the phone in his hand. “This is just an alarm—”

The terrorist slammed the man to the ground with the butt of his rifle. The cell phone flew to the ground; the terrorist smashed it with his heel.

“Who else? Who else has a phone?”

Victoria looked at Chelsea.

A woman near the front stood and held up her hand.

The terrorist turned on her and began firing.

Chelsea, caught off guard, turned toward the men at the door, but realized she was too far and too late.

“Down!” yelled Victoria, grabbing her as bullets began spraying through the room. “Chelsea!”

Caught off balance, Chelsea twisted down, knocking her chin against the floor so hard she blacked out with the shock and pain.

10

“Goddamn these people,” shouted Johnny, unable to control himself as he watched what was happening in the hotel. The terrorists had just lined up a group of men and mowed them down.

“What’s going on inside the hotel?” asked the FBI agent on the other end of the communications line. They hadn’t switched in the video yet.

“They’re shooting people,” said Givens. “It’s time to go in.”

“The SWAT people are still getting in place. They need those feeds.”

“We’re working on it.” Johnny glanced over at the computer engineers. Telakus was typing furiously; the others stared in horror at their screens.

Sitting here really wasn’t going to get those people out of the hotel, Johnny decided.

“Can you find a map or a schematic or something of the hotel?” he asked Telakus. “That would help the SWAT people.”

“I’ve looked. I haven’t been able to find anything.” The computer whiz shook his head. “Maybe I can break into the architectural archives or something. City hall. The building inspector, whatever. If they’re online. But, uh, I probably need Mr. Massina to authorize that.”

“I’m sure he will,” said Johnny. He turned to his right, expecting to see Massina there. But the boss had slipped out of the room.

Massina had Borya repeat what she’d told Bozzone twice, listening in case there was some detail that he’d missed. But Borya simply had no clue where Chelsea was.

She had to be in the Patriot. Borya didn’t know what time she’d been planning to meet her aunt, but if she had left the hotel or not gotten there, surely she would have answered their calls by now.

Or come in to work. That was Chelsea.

“Keep looking for her,” he told Bozzone. “Keep calling her.”

“If we could use the telephone company’s GPS system—”

“Good idea,” said Massina.

“Can I do something?” Borya asked.

“Stay here in Chelsea’s lab, so we know where you are when we need you,” he said. “We may need you very soon.”

It was a white lie — there was very little a young girl could do — but he wanted to make sure she stayed where she was safe.

“I will.”

“Good.”

Johnny was ready with a list of what the SWAT team needed by the time Massina returned to the Box.

“Surveillance overhead is great for the grounds and the roof, but real-time surveillance inside would be gold,” he told his boss. “Telakus says we could bring one of our computers there, set up a mobile connection, then show them what’s going on. It’ll be quicker than trying to cobble a connection together.”

“That’s true,” said Telakus. “Time is running out.”

“Let’s do it,” said Massina.

“We need some sort of building diagram,” added Johnny. “Can we get somebody to call over to the building inspectors or something like that? Architectural review or—”

“We’ll launch a UAV with penetrating radar,” said Massina. “Tommy! We need you to set something up.”

“Heard ya. Workin’ on it. We have a Nightbird outfitted for that mining company and—”

“Do it!” said Massina.

“I want to go with them,” said Johnny. “I’ll take the computer there.”

“Are you sure?” asked Massina.

“Damn sure.”

“Good. Because I think Chelsea’s in that hotel.”

11

Chelsea opened her eyes, dazed. Victoria pulled her into her arms, rocking her gently, half sitting, half crouched against the floor. The room smelled of spent gunpowder and blood. People screamed and cried, wailed and moaned in agony. Many of the men who’d been shot were still alive, but the terrorists didn’t allow anyone to help them.

“Savages,” said Victoria softly, her voice trembling. “They’ll kill us all.”

“Help will come,” insisted Chelsea. “I’m sure. Just stay strong.”

“I am.”

The terrorist who’d been on the stage earlier began shouting. The women were to move toward the door. A few seconds later, convinced that they weren’t moving fast enough for him, he raised his gun and fired toward the ceiling.

A few of the women ran toward the door, but most continued at a slow pace, cringing, unable to force more movement from their bodies. They had entered a fugue state of fear, paralyzed by the certainty that they were going to die.

One of the men near the door stepped forward and began directing them, waving his hand silently as he counted them into groups of five. Chelsea stayed close to her aunt, realizing that they might be split up, but it was no use — the man pointed at her and motioned for her to begin a new group.

Chelsea shook her head.

“I’m staying with my aunt,” she said.

Chelsea mustered a death glance as the man stalked toward her. He stared back, eyes locked with hers.

For a moment she thought he was going to shoot her. She stiffened, extending her barely five-foot frame to its full height, and took a deep breath, holding it, waiting for the inevitable — but instead of raising his gun, he grabbed her shoulder with his left hand and hurled her toward the wall.

“You and you,” said the terrorist, choosing two other women from the small cluster. Victoria started to join Chelsea, but the terrorist pushed his gun into her chest, nudging at first, then ramming her backward when that failed to stop her.

Chelsea raised herself to her knees and watched as her aunt’s group was led from the ballroom. Victoria walked with her head down, bent over, undoubtedly hurting from the blow.

Pressure had begun to build behind Chelsea’s eyes, a pain that felt similar to eyestrain. She rubbed her temples, then sat back, not wanting to kneel — it was too much like surrender.

The power flicked back on, fans whirring up, lights flooding bright.

The other groups were led out of the ballroom, leaving only Chelsea and the two other women selected with her. They were both about her age, twenties, slim. One looked Latin, the other Irish, with red curly hair. She had a large wet mark in the front of her taupe-colored leggings, running down her leg. The other woman wore a miniskirt and a sleeveless top that revealed well-toned muscles. There was something hard in her face, a kind of frown.

“Up!” yelled the terrorist who’d been on the stage. “Up!”

He waved his gun.

As she walked into the hallway, Chelsea thought of making a run for it. But there was nowhere to go — another terrorist was standing a few yards away.

“That way, right,” he said. “Right.”

“They’re not going to rape us, are they?” asked the girl in the leggings.

“What do you think?” answered the other.

12

The commander on the scene outside the Patriot Hotel was a police captain whose oversize balding head contrasted sharply with his toned, sleek body: the face of a sixty-year-old above a thirty-year-old’s frame. Johnny had met Kevin Smith several times when he was an FBI agent and so wasn’t surprised at Smith’s blank expression as he detailed the resources he had brought with him from Smart Metal.

“That will all be very useful,” said Smith finally, with all the excitement of a man making out a check to the IRS. “Lieutenant Steller is handling intel for the SWAT team, and Percy is in charge of the assault unit. You know Percy?”

“A bit,” said Johnny. Johnny thought it best not to give the details; he and Percy had not particularly gotten along.

As in, shouted at each other and nearly come to blows.

“Good.” Smith nodded. “This communications specialist — when’s he getting here?”

“Any minute,” said Johnny. They had biked over, at Ciro Farlekas’s suggestion. A fellow security officer who like Johnny had worked with the FBI, Farlekas was an avid biker, to the point of having a Carbondale bike he rode to work every day. Johnny had borrowed something more akin to a tank, but managed to beat him here, thanks to his legs.

The police were working out of a mobile command center — a large, heavily modified van — around the corner of the hotel. Cameras on two police cruisers fed real-time visuals of the building’s front. Information on the other three sides depended on spotters who were calling into one of Smith’s own com specialists.

“Damn, you’re fast,” said Farlekas, riding up after being let through by the officers up the block. “Where are we setting up?”

“Right here,” said Smith.

“We’re gonna fix ya right up,” Farlekas told him, his Tennessee drawl unchallenged by Bostonian vowels or idioms. “Jest gimme a few seconds here.”

“He’s good, don’t worry,” Johnny told Smith. He didn’t know Farlekas really, but everyone at Smart Metal was pretty much the best at what they did. “We’re online with their security videos, and we’re getting a, uh, drone with radar to map the insides. Do you need mechs?”

Smith tilted his head.

“Mechs are like robots,” explained Johnny. All of this had been foreign to him just a few months before; he’d spent several weeks training with them and now could work with them the same way he’d work with a human partner. “They’re designed to handle specific tasks, and while they can generally complete that task without detailed instructions, they don’t have advanced AI, so they can only do what you tell them to do.”

He pulled over the backpack he’d brought with him. “These are small units designed to enter buildings and rubble sites. We can tell them to go somewhere and they’ll figure out how to do it.”

“They look like little cars without shells.”

“More or less,” said Johnny. The mechs were tracked, with small claws. They ranged from iPhone to desk calculator in size.

“How do they help us?” asked Smith.

“We can use them to get in,” said Johnny. “Kill the power. We come in through a window in the pool area and make our way up the corridors to where the hostages are in the convention rooms.”

“How do we know they’re there?”

“You’ll see when Ciro finishes setting up the link. Should be any second.”

Smith picked up the radio. “Percy, come over to the command center,” he said. “We’re getting fresh intel.”

13

Walking ahead of the terrorist with the other women, Chelsea tried to force fear from her mind, as if the emotion were a paste that could be squeezed from a tube. She slowed her breathing, made her movements more deliberate; she focused her thoughts on the feel of her hips, her knees, her neck as she swiveled her head. She told her heart to slow; she told her glands to stop sweating.

It did almost no good. Her body was slipping from her mind’s control.

Think of a math problem.

It was her father again. She flashed on a scene from childhood, age eight or nine, talking with him about a test and how she’d panicked — math, a simple equation, fill in the x value or some such. The details of the problem were lost to her, but his presence, his reassurance, was there, beside her as she walked.

Her footsteps made no sound on the carpeted floor. Chelsea was a stride or two in front of the girl who’d wet her pants; she wasn’t sure how much farther back the other woman and the terrorist were.

Lengthening her stride as she neared the end of the corridor, Chelsea began sketching a plan. The hall formed a T with another hallway. She’d turn left and run, run to the emergency exit at the end of the hall.

If there was one. There had to be.

She held her breath as she got closer to the turn.

“Right!” barked the man behind her. “Turn to your right.”

Chelsea glanced to her left. There was no hallway there, just four doors to rooms.

She swung her attention back to the right, leaning forward and ready to run. But this hallway was the same — four doors, all rooms.

Now what?

“You, first door.”

Chelsea put her hand on the door, expecting it be locked. To her surprise the handle swung down easily.

“Inside.”

She went in quickly, looking to see if there was something she could use as a weapon before the others came in.

An iron! The closet.

The door slammed behind her. Chelsea whipped around. No one had followed her inside.

The door locked from the inside; her captor couldn’t come in.

Unless he had a passkey. Which naturally he would.

She could open it and go out. But he’d be in the hall, waiting.

How else can I get out?

She went to the window and pulled back the curtains. The glass was fixed in the frame; there was no escape short of breaking it. It looked out on the blank wall of a parking garage; she could wave or pound or even strip herself naked and no one would notice.

Something hit the wall in the room next to her, the one to the right. A crash followed — the TV, she thought — then a scream.

Again. More screams.

Oh, God. Oh, God.

14

“We have to move now,” Smith told Givens. “It’s our best chance.”

“If you go in like you’re planning,” Johnny told the commander, “you’re dooming the people they’ve already taken upstairs. The terrorists will just move up and kill them all.”

“We’ll get to them,” said Smith, though his grim expression made it clear he didn’t think they’d reach them in time. “If we wait, they’ll split the rest and we’ll lose them. We already have people in there dead.”

Both men were right, which was the tragedy of it — the team didn’t have enough people in place to prevent more deaths, but if they waited until they did, more would surely die.

Better to go now.

Johnny nodded, grimly turning his attention back to the monitoring screens. They showed people walking in the hallway, women followed by men with guns.

Chelsea?

Chelsea?

Johnny’s breath caught. It was definitely Chelsea, being led into one of the rooms upstairs.

No!

“I’m going to get them upstairs,” Johnny told Smith.

“What?”

“I’ll bring one of the bots with me and we’ll keep them occupied while the team comes up.”

“No! No! We need you helping with the robots on the first team and—”

Johnny was already out of the truck.

15

Borya’s father, Gabor Tolevi, managed to get nearly to Berkley Street before the traffic became unbearably slow, with cars bunched and not moving for more than a few seconds at a time. There was nothing more frustrating than sitting in a car whose engine could produce 585 horsepower at the twitch of his foot and not being able to use any of it.

Well, there were more frustrating things; he just didn’t want to think about them.

He’d told Bozzone that he’d wait until the emergency was over to collect his daughter, but soon realized that would be hours, maybe even days. While he trusted the Smart Metal people and knew his daughter could take care of herself, leaving Borya on her own downtown in the middle of all that chaos bit at his soul. So barely ten minutes after putting the phone down, he set out in his car to get her.

That was an hour ago. At the rate he was inching forward on the street, it would be another six before he reached her.

Tolevi eyed the curb and nearby intersection, balancing his frustration against the potential damage to the underside of his car. Finally, frustration won out: with a jerk of the wheel, he jumped the curb and with one set of wheels on the sidewalk and the other on the pavement, managed to cut the corner just enough to miss both the car in front of him and the no-parking sign. He considered simply leaving the car there, but then saw a driveway nearby. He veered toward it, cringing as the underside of the car scraped against something solid. He managed to angle without seeing sparks; the road in front was every bit as packed as the one he’d just left.

An older woman in a housedress ran down the steps of the house, yelling at him.

“I have to rescue my daughter,” he shouted, pulling his wallet out. “I’ll pay you twice this when I get back.”

All he had were two twenties. He tucked them under the wiper and ran off, ignoring the woman’s continued complaints. It wasn’t like she was going anywhere whether he parked there or not.

Dodging his way through the bumper-to-bumper jam, Tolevi managed to get to the sidewalk. This was relatively open — a few cars had pulled up onto it, and knots of people gathered on stoops and car hoods, but compared to the streets, the walkway was an open plain. He started to run, passing knots of Bostonians listening to reports on laptops and telephones. The snippets he heard sounded ominous and pushed him faster.

Tolevi was in good shape — he prided himself on his workouts — but it was a long way and he was not dressed for a run, wearing jeans and leather shoes with slick wood soles. Sweat built quickly under his pullover, and the sides of his head began pounding with his rapidly increasing pulse.

But each step also increased his anxiety about his daughter. He had already lost her mother; losing Borya, too, was far beyond what he could bear.

Gravity and heat eventually won. By the time he got to the police barricades a few blocks from the Common, Tolevi’s pace had fallen to something between a jog and a fast walk. Practically heaving, he pleaded with one of the policemen to let him through.

“I gotta — get my daugh-ter she — needs—”

“What are you sayin’?” asked the cop.

“Daugh-ter. Meds. Med-cine.”

He added the idea of her needing medicine on the spur of the moment. It worked.

“Your daughter’s down there?” said the officer. It was clear from the man’s face that he had a daughter as well. “Where?”

“Near the river.”

“All right. Stay away from the Patriot Hotel.”

“Got it.”

Tolevi started to run again; energized by the encounter, he entered the Common at a half trot. But he didn’t get far before he came to another policeman, who yelled at him to stop and explain what he was doing. Tolevi tried the same tactic, but this time it didn’t work: he was shunted to a holding area the police had set up near the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Several dozen people milled around on the path and the circle; a good hundred or more were sitting or lying on the grass nearby.

“How do we get out of here?” Tolevi asked the first man he came to, a man in his late twenties. He had a bit of a hipster look to him, with a goatee, pale skin, and engineer boots.

“We wait until the police say it’s safe to go.”

Tolevi moved on. People had their cell phones out, listening to or watching reports. As he moved closer to the west end of the park and approached a police barrier, he decided he would adopt an old but solid tactic — simply walk, eyes straight ahead, a man on a mission.

It didn’t work.

“Hey, you — stop,” shouted a policeman as he passed.

Tolevi pretended he didn’t hear, but there was no way to avoid the two National Guardsmen who turned around near the troop truck ahead.

“You have to go back, sir; I’m sorry,” said one of the soldiers.

“What is this, a police state?”

“Don’t be givin’ anybody a hard time,” said a man with a badge swinging from his neck. His Southie accent marked him as a Boston local, though on closer inspection, the badge marked him as a federal marshal. “Get your ass back over with the rest.”

Tolevi took a hard right, feinting in the direction of the crowd until he figured he wasn’t being watched anymore. He walked along the edge of the crowd until he found a place with only one policeman near the barricade. This time he tried a little subterfuge.

“The Bureau guy with the Guardsman back there wants to talk to you about frequencies or something,” he said as he approached. He pulled his wallet out, quickly flipping it as if showing a badge. “I’m with the Marshals Service.”

“What about?” asked the policeman, his eyes trailing Tolevi’s hand as he slipped his wallet back into his pants.

“The fuck I know. The Bureau people think they are the hottest shit going. I only came down here to help, you know? It’s my day off. Hell, I’m supposed to be watching the game by now. I’ll take your spot, but come back quick. I need to take a leak ASAP.”

Luckily for Tolevi, the officer nodded rather than asking what ball game he was talking about. “Just don’t let anybody through, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.”

Tolevi took off as soon as the man was twenty yards away. Within minutes he was hugging the brick wall of a building on Bruce Place — an alley more than a street — slinking toward his destination.

With downtown and the center of the city mostly cordoned off, the side streets here were empty, doors and windows were locked tight. Tolevi walked head down, full man-on-a-mission stride; no one who saw him would stop him, or so he thought.

He was on Derne Street, approaching Temple, when he saw two young men duck into the deli on the corner. Surprised that a store was open, he suddenly realized he could do something about his thirst. He went in and hunted for the cooler, still in man-on-a-mission mode; it wasn’t until he was taking an iced tea from the shelf that he realized he had clipped all of his cash to the windshield wiper of the car.

He started to put the bottle back when he heard a woman say something in Russian.

The words weren’t clear — she was on the phone with someone and hanging up to deal with a customer. But he thought maybe if he spoke to her in Russian, she’d let him come back with the money later. So he took the bottle and started for the cash register. It was only as he turned the corner of the aisle that he realized the two young men he’d seen enter were now robbing the place.

Tolevi reacted instinctively: he threw his right hand forward, smashing the man with the gun in the neck and side of the head so hard with the iced tea that the glass bottle shattered in his hand. As the man went down, Tolevi grabbed his wrist and with a sharp jerk snapped the gun from his hand. It clattered to the floor as its owner rebounded into his compatriot.

For a moment, neither the would-be robbers nor Tolevi moved. Then all three moved as quickly as they could — the robbers scrambling to leave, Tolevi scooping up the gun. But they were faster: by the time he rose, they were gone. He went to the door; not seeing them, he went back to the counter and examined the pistol.

Cheap Chinese knockoff. Sheesh.

“Babushka,” Tolevi called in Russian, not seeing the woman. “Grandma, where are you? It’s all right — they’re gone.”

“Oh, my God, my God, my God,” she answered, crawling out from under the counter on her hands and knees. She had armed herself with a sawed-off baseball bat.

Tolevi went around and helped her up.

“Are you all right?” he asked, still speaking Russian.

“Yes, those thieves — you are Russian?”

It was easier to say yes than explain that he was actually a mix.

“You are a good boy,” said the woman. Then, with some alarm, she added, “You are bleeding!”

He glanced at his hand. The glass had cut into the palm. It was barely a scratch, but the woman pulled him toward a sink behind the counter and made him rinse it off. He took a wad of paper towels and pressed it against his palm.

“What do you want?” asked the woman, switching to heavily accented English. “Anything!”

“I came in to get something to drink, but—”

“Whatever you want! Free! Take! Take! Wait until my son comes. He will give you a reward.”

“I don’t need a reward,” said Tolevi. “Thanks.”

“Don’t go. Wait!”

“I have to find my daughter,” he told her. “There are terrorists — didn’t you hear?”

“I heard, I heard. Go, get your daughter. Go.”

“Why don’t you hold on to this,” he told the old lady, giving her the gun. “Just in case those bastards come back. You know how to use it?”

She mimed the action of pointing a pistol with her hand. “Between the eyes,” she said. “Bam.”

“Good.”

“Then I kick them in the nuts,” she added in vulgar Russian. “To be sure.”

He gave her a thumbs-up as he left the store.

That’s my kind of grandma, Tolevi thought. I wonder if she’s available for babysitting.

16

Massina watched the SWAT officers getting ready to make their assault. There had already been shooting inside the hotel; they were taking too long.

Too damn long!

“Johnny wants to talk to you,” said Telakus, the computer whiz who’d broken into the video system at the Patriot and was feeding data to Givens and the team preparing to enter the hotel.

Massina picked up the handset.

“Chelsea’s up on the seventh floor,” said Johnny. “I’m getting her.”

“What?”

“I saw her.”

Massina turned to Chiang. “Check the surveillance feed on floor seven. Get the face-recognition program online — Johnny says it’s Chelsea.”

“I need to get on the roof. But I want to know what room she’s in. Can you use her GPS in her phone?”

“The terrorists are blocking transmissions,” Massina told him.

“How about with the UAV?”

The penetrating radar aboard the Nightbird UAV was powerful, but it wasn’t designed to identify people inside buildings.

“Maybe if we look at the image,” said Massina, though he was doubtful. “We’ll try. It’s not overhead yet.”

“How long?”

“Soon.”

“I need help to get on the roof,” added Johnny.

“How is the team getting there?”

“It’s just me.”

Massina rubbed his chin.

“Let me get Blake on the line,” he told Givens. “Get to a place where a drone can hover.”

Chelsea had already pushed a chair against the door when she heard the explosions. They were below her somewhere, two or three together, then a few more.

The assault had begun.

She made sure the chair was as tight as possible against the door panel, then stepped back, looking for something else to block the way. The nightstands flanking the bed were bolted to the floor. The bureau with the TV was either too heavy or fastened as well. The only thing was the chair near the window; she carried it over, lifting it just high enough to get it on the first chair.

She’d taken a step back when the door lock sprung open, unlocked by the master key of one of the terrorists. Before she could react, the door rammed against the chairs, pushing forward until it was stopped by the bar lock above the handle.

The man outside yelled at her to open the door.

Something warned her what would happen next: she threw herself back behind the wall that separated the bathroom from the bedroom proper. As she hit the floor, bullets flew through the door.

If I’m quiet, she thought, maybe he’ll think I’m dead.

The Lifter was designed to pick up machinery and heavy parts like bridge supports, not people; the grappling claws were metal and hardly gentle as they clamped around Johnny’s arms.

He shielded his face as best he could as the twin rotors filled the air with a thick mist of dust and grit. A discarded plastic bag and some pieces of paper flew against Johnny’s legs as he was lifted. Blake said something in his earset, but Johnny couldn’t hear over the drone’s engine.

The UAV took him straight up into the air. Johnny’s arms felt as if they would be ripped off his shoulders. He glanced down and immediately wished he hadn’t: the ground seemed to be spinning.

It wasn’t the ground, it was him: between the motion of the helicopter and the wind, his body twisted and swayed, arcing in a nauseating dance. Blake said something — he was trying to tell Johnny how to extend his legs to help brake his momentum — but Johnny couldn’t make out the words. The UAV slowed and tilted, cutting off some of Johnny’s momentum. He forced his eyes open and saw that the roof of the building was to his right, a flat expanse dotted with what looked like sloped aluminum tents — roof shelters for the mechanical equipment. Johnny braced himself as the Lifter darted toward one of the “tents,” aiming to deposit him near an access point to a stairwell. The drone slowed abruptly and he swung forward, not quite as wildly as before.

Blake intended on setting him down, but Johnny had had enough: he took a deep breath and let go, falling a good fifteen feet. His legs saved him — the high-tech prosthetics absorbed most of the energy from the fall, leaving him balanced on his feet.

It was his first step that felled him. His head was still dizzy and his stomach reeling. He threw his arms out, cushioning his fall.

Then he threw up.

“You OK?” asked Blake in his ear.

“Ugh.”

“Telakus has directions for you. We think we have Chelsea’s room.”

“Good.”

The man at the door pounded, but the door held.

Chelsea heard a scream, then realized it was hers.

I’m losing control!

The door cracked; the lock was giving way.

Desperate, she looked for any cover, any barrier that would slow the demon down, cause him pain or delay or anything — anything was better than surrender.

She reached across to the bed, grabbed the covers, grabbed the top mattress. She pulled it across, over her, as she heard the lock snap off its mounts.

Johnny had come equipped with a small pry bar in his backpack, as well as a set of lock picks. He needed neither — the roof door was ajar. He dropped to his knee to sling the pack off; opening it, he took out his AR-15 and what looked like a Spalding rubber ball.

Like the assault rifles the police were equipped with, Johnny’s gun had a telescoping stock and a laser dot, along with a thirty-round magazine and a spare taped to its side; there were two more in his pack. He checked the gun quickly, made sure he was ready, then tossed the ball into the stairwell.

“It’s clear,” said Telakus. The “ball” was actually a video-and-audio array ordinarily used for recording experiments, which was now transmitting a signal back to Smart Metal. Software stabilized the images and analyzed them in about a tenth of the time it would have taken a human to simply scan a still picture.

“Johnny, we think there’s somebody on her floor,” said Telakus. “He’s got a gun.”

“Right or left off the stairs?”

“Your right.”

There was an explosion below. The building shook.

“What the hell?” asked Johnny as he started down.

“One of the bastards in the ballroom blew himself up.”

Massina leaned over the console in the Box, watching intently as the first wave of SWAT officers followed one of his robots into the building. The bot, equipped with a chemical sniffer as well as a video camera, was looking for explosives, but apparently the terrorists hadn’t had time to rig them in that part of the hotel.

Suddenly the screen shook — there had been another explosion offscreen.

“Where?” said Massina.

“The kitchen,” said Telakus. “That’s number two. They had him cornered. There are only three of them left.”

“That’s three too many,” said Massina.

As an FBI agent, Johnny had been trained to deal with hostage situations and had in fact gone through two simulations very similar to this actual situation. But they were buried somewhere deep in his consciousness, pushed away by the adrenaline rocking through his body. He knew he should stop and clear at each landing, but that was impractical now — he needed to get to Chelsea right away; he needed to be there. He really ought to have an entire team behind him; he should have more intelligence, more firepower, more of everything. But the reality was that if he didn’t get there now, if he didn’t kill the terrorist on her floor, she was going to die.

The ball had bounced against a doorjamb and come to rest on the eighth floor. Johnny grabbed it and went down one more floor, throwing himself against the closed door.

“She still to the right?” he asked Telakus.

“Radar has her there. We can’t see the hall. We lost the video from the security camera when the SWAT team went in,” added Telakus. “They killed the backup power.”

“I’m throwing the ball.”

Johnny slipped open the door and tossed the gadget, then, without waiting for Telakus to tell him if it was clear or not, he threw himself out into the hallway, rolling on the floor and then leaping up, an easy target had the terrorist been watching.

“You’re clear,” said Telakus. “Jesus, wait for me.”

Johnny kept moving, scrambling forward. “Where’s the room?”

“Fifty feet, on your right, down that little hall — he’s going into the room!”

Desperate, Johnny lifted his gun and fired down the empty hall.

Chelsea felt the beast entering the room, plunging past the door, stumbling. She had pulled the mattress over her, and even if there had been light in the room she couldn’t have seen him. Yet she knew exactly where he was and what he was doing, what he looked like — five-eight, on the lighter side, scraggly beard, fanatical eyes.

There was gunfire, a burst in the hallway.

Then a boom louder than any she had ever heard before.

A blast of hot wind shot from the room as if a door had opened on hell. Still in the main hall, Johnny fell against the wall, more from shock than anything. He bounced, fell, got back on his feet, and then ran to the hall with Chelsea’s room.

Too late. Too damn late.

The corridor smelled of ammonia and steel and blood and something burning. Johnny started to cough. He covered his mouth with his arm, thinking it would make it easier to breathe.

“Johnny? Johnny?”

Telakus called to him from far away. The blast had dulled his hearing.

Rather than answering, Johnny pulled the headset from his ear and unclipped the mic. He stuffed the unit into his pocket: he didn’t want anyone to hear.

The door to Chelsea’s room had been blown off its hinges. It sat on a slant, propped against mangled furniture. Johnny pushed it to the side, but he couldn’t get it entirely out of the way. Squeezing through, he stared at the destruction.

The blast had scorched the far corner of the room and broken the window and drapes, leaving a jagged hole. It had also torn the terrorist into pieces. His legs and the bottom half of his torso lay near the debris at the door. The rest of him had largely disintegrated.

Except for his head. Johnny saw it as he walked into the room. It lay wedged in the corner, red, unrecognizable as anything human, yet somehow obvious.

He went and kicked it. It was like kicking a rotted pumpkin.

Except… it moaned.

Johnny jumped back, horrified.

“Help me out of here.”

Johnny whirled around. The mattress was moving. Chelsea Goodman emerged from underneath it, face blank, eyes wide, staring up at him.

“Johnny?”

“It’s me,” he said.

“I’m alive,” Chelsea told him. “Oh, my God, I’m alive.”