Shock Warning

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There were a lot of things you could say about Lemoore, but most of the nice ones wouldn’t be true. It was located, or so the brochures said, in a rich agricultural area, which meant it was hot, flat, dry, and dusty. It was, if you believed the base PR guy, close to the playgrounds of San Francisco and Los Angeles, which meant it was roughly halfway between them in the part of the Golden State where nobody wanted to live anymore. It provided a small-town, hometown atmosphere for the poor bastards unlucky enough to catch duty here, which meant that no one would in his right mind ever want to dwell in nearby Hanford, Tulare, or Visalia.

It had exactly one thing going for it — it was the location of STRKFIGHTWINGPAC, the Pacific Strike Fighter Wing, which meant it was home to some of the most bad-assed Navy fliers in the service, hot-shit F/A-18 Hornet jockeys who flew their steeds five hundred miles inside enemy air defenses, bombed the crap out of whatever was pissing them off, and then fought their way out and were home before breakfast. Once upon a time, you didn’t want to fuck with STRKFIGHTWINGPAC.

And yet, today, most of the F-18 units had been moved east, to the naval air station at Oceana, in Virginia Beach, to be closer to the Navy bases at Norfolk and Hampton Roads. All part of the downsizing of the services that had started with Clinton after the end of the Cold War, and continued steadily through the Bush administration. Much of the training had moved over to Fallon in Nevada, but there was still a presence here. It was the perfect symbol for an America in decline, just as California was: The Golden State had been created from nothing, and to nothing it was returning. All except the coastal cities, which would be the last to fall.

Someday, reflected Danny, West Los Angeles and Pacific Heights would get to experience the sensations felt by the inhabitants of fifth-century Rome as the Vandals poured through the gates. No doubt they would be congratulating themselves on their tolerance as their necks were stretched for the knife.

Danny had expected a bit of trouble from the MP at the gate, but he, Hope, and the kids were waved right through. “There’s a canteen just up ahead, sir,” said the guard, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, “if y’all want to wash up. Admiral Atchison’s been notified and he’ll send someone round to collect you shortly.”

“I’m sorry to bother the admiral so early in the morning,” said Danny. The sun was just coming up. Hope dozed beside him and the kids were all sound asleep.

“No bother at all, sir. Around here, we never sleep.”

“Just in case some bad guys need their ass kicked?”

“You said it, sir.” He paused; it was lonely on sentry duty. “Heard about them dead cows?”

“We saw them. Awful.”

“Radio says something about botulism in the feed. Gonna be hell to pay for that, for sure.”

“Going to be hell paying for a hamburger, you bet.”

“Myself, don’t eat much meat. Tryin’ to stay lean and fit.”

“You’re doing a good job, sailor.”

“Thank you, sir. Y’all have a nice day now.”

“You too. And thanks.”

Danny drove slowly toward the PX, the commissary, and a cluster of other small buildings. He hadn’t been on a post in a long time, not officially anyway, not since his days with the Night Stalkers. That would be the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), 2nd Battalion, based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he had learned his craft and become, if he did say so himself, the finest chopper stud in the country.

“What?” said Hope drowsily.

“Sleep,” he whispered.

There was something about being on a base, something both forbidding and comforting. It was a closed community, off-limits to outsiders, a community of like-minded men and women, all self-selected and assembled by merit to get the job done. It was the thing he missed most about military life, and even though he had lived among the civilians for many years now, even though he wouldn’t trade his comfortable home in Los Feliz and the money he made from Xe (the old Blackwater) and his other freelance assignments, there were times. There were times….

The PX was closed, but the commissary was just opening. The canteen was attached to it, so they could get something to eat there while they were waiting for the base commander. They were all frazzled from their experiences of the night before.

What the hell had happened back there? The only miracles Danny believed in were the ones he performed himself at the controls of a helicopter. Taking out that punk on the East River had been fun, just like old times, darting over and under the East River bridges until they’d finally trapped the bastard on his boat and that cop in the air with him putting a couple of .50-caliber rounds into the sonofabitch.

His phone vibrated. He looked at the display: HARRIS.

He switched on encryption. They wouldn’t be using voice contact at this point, certainly not here. All their traffic would be monitored as a matter of course; on a base like this, every computer terminal on post would be equipped with keystroke-loggers, and all voice traffic would be intercepted and analyzed, then sent back to Washington to the Defense Intelligence Agency and to the Central Security Service in Fort Meade. Op-sec was everything, even here in small-town, hometown America.

Well, that made it official. The trip to San Francisco was going to have to wait. The proposal was going to have to wait. The new life that they both wanted to start together was going to have to wait.

He glanced over at Hope, but she was fast asleep once more.

That meant he was in, although that was a foregone conclusion. When “Bert Harris,” or whatever name he was using at the moment, called, Danny was in. They had been together too long for him to question either the operation or its necessity. It would be high-risk, high-reward, that much he already knew, and it would be a matter of national security.

What did a bunch of dead cows have to do with all that? He’d find out soon enough. He reached for Hope’s hand—

The rap on the window startled him; he must be getting old, to let someone sneak up like that on him. Or soft. Or maybe just in love.

“Sir?” he heard as he rolled down the window. “Admiral Atchison requests that you follow me, please.”

The lieutenant commander glanced into the backseat. “Nice-looking bunch of kids you folks got there,” he said.

Hope awoke. “Why, thank you, Officer,” she said.

“This way, sir,” said the lieutenant commander, getting into an official vehicle. Danny swung in behind him as they headed toward the officers’ housing area.

“You call cops ‘officers,’ ” he said to Hope with a smile. “In the service, you call them by their rank.”

“How do you know what rank they are?”

“You look on their shoulders — dead giveaway.”

“But—”

Danny leaned over and gave Hope a quick kiss. “Good morning to you, too.”

She smiled, softened — and then remembered where they had been and what had happened. “Is everything okay? What does the radio say? What happened? Why were those men shooting at us?”

The enlisted men’s barracks gave way to the BOQ and then to the senior officers’ housing area. These homes were quite nice, and the higher up the ladder you stood, the nicer house you got. The base commander, Admiral Atchison, would have the nicest home of all.

As indeed he did. They pulled in front of a large, twostory house with a well-tended lawn and a basketball hoop in the driveway, which Rory eyed enviously. An attractive woman of about forty greeted them at the door.

“Hello,” she said, “I’m Melinda Atchison. Please come in. You must be exhausted.”

Danny introduced Hope, Emma, Rory, and Jade. “You three come with me,” ordered Mrs. Atchison. “Breakfast is served.” She turned to Hope and Danny. “Would you like some coffee?”

Hope understood that her place at the moment was with the children. “Let me help you,” she said. Then, to Danny, softly: “Good luck.”

“You can wait in the living room,” said Mrs. Atchison, and then she and Hope disappeared into the kitchen with the three children.

The living room was well furnished and well appointed. Souvenirs from various duty stations were on the mantel and art that the Atchisons had collected at various stops around the world hung on the walls. They had taste and class — typical of today’s well-educated officer corps.

“That’s for you, Mr. Barker,” came a voice behind him.

Danny turned to see the admiral entering the room. As they shook hands, the admiral said, “I found it here this morning.”

It was a PDA, but unlike any that Danny had ever seen before.

“You obviously have friends in very high places. About four this morning, I received classified instructions to extend you every courtesy of the base, and that’s precisely what I intend to do,” said Atchison. “Whatever you need in the way of men and materiel, all you have to do is ask.”

Danny wondered just what sort of materiel this operation was going to entail, but he would be very surprised if it didn’t have something to do with the Hornets. “What do we know about the cattle deaths?” he asked.

“Officially or unofficially?”

“Your call.”

“Officially, it’s botulism, as you may have heard. Unofficially… we don’t have the slightest idea. Something — not a poison — killed the livestock, and I mean killed them dead.”

“I know. We saw it.”

The admiral gestured to the sofa and invited Danny to sit. “Best guess, some kind of space-originated laser, possibly from a satellite.”

“Surely your men would have picked it up?”

At that moment, the PDA squawked to life. He had been listening the whole time:

“Not necessarily.” The voice was altered, but Danny knew its cadences.

“Hello, Bert,” he said.

“Lasers have come a long way since science-fiction movies,” said the man calling himself Bert Harris. “They’re far more focused, harder to pick up; they leave almost no footprint. Think of it as firing a rifle to hit a something the size of a dime from two miles away. Who the hell is going to notice that?”

“You’re talking about the SBL program.”

“Right,” came the voice. “Space Based Lasers. Developed for use as anti-missile devices, but we all know they have a lot more potential uses than just that. But there’s even more to it. There’s the LLRE.”

“What’s that?” asked Danny.

“Admiral?”

Atchison didn’t seem to mind that he was taking orders from a glorified squawk box. “It began as a way to measure the distance from the earth to the moon,” he began. “The Apollo 11 astronauts left retroreflectors on the lunar surface, and Apollo 14 and 15 continued the mission. From various points on earth — the Côte d’Azur Observatory is one, there are others in Germany, New Mexico, Australia — you can fire a laser beam at the moon and have it come rocketing right back at you.”

“And you think maybe this is what killed all those cows?” asked Danny.

“It’s possible. From what we can tell, something altered the brains of the cattle and turned them to mush.”

Danny wasn’t sure if this was the right time to mention it, but plunged ahead. “And how does that explain what I saw on the wall of an overpass?”

Silence for a moment. “What did you see?” That was Harris, not the admiral.

Might as well come right out with it. “I saw the Virgin of Guadalupe, and so did about a hundred other people, mostly Mexican farmworkers.”

A longer pause this time, then: “You’re sure?”

“Her image is on every votive candle, coffee mug, and tea towel in southern California,” said Danny. “Of course I’m sure.”

“Well, then… I guess we’re going to have to talk about this some more…. Admiral, Mr. Barker and I may need three of your Hornets and your best flight crews.”

“You’ve got ’em. Just say the word.”

“Thank you. You’re going to have to conceal their absence, of course, because officially they will not leave your base. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the admiral.

“I may have to take them very far away, perhaps to the Af-Pak theater.”

“We’ll get them there for you.”

“Thank you. Stand by for further instructions.”

The line went dead. That didn’t mean anything. “Bert Harris” would not be far away.

Danny picked up the device and slipped it into his pocket. “I’m not sure just what this is all about, or how it’s going to play out,” he said.

“Welcome to the Navy,” said Admiral Atchison.