Deep Silence

EPILOGUE

So, yeah, they found me.

Stairs were gone, radio reception was for shit, but they knew where to look. National Guardsmen rappelled down and got me out. They asked a whole lot of questions for which I had no answers that made sense to anyone.

When I got upstairs I didn’t find any of Echo Team. Not one. Not even Ghost. My heart started to break and I think what’s left of my mind wanted to snap. Then a colonel was there, coming at me, pushing me down onto an equipment case, pushing a cup of coffee into my hands.

“How many?” I asked through the blackness in my mind.

“All of them,” he said. “All of them are alive.”

I dropped the coffee, put my face in my hands, and wept.

“Alive” is a relative term. It is often coupled with “well.” Not this time.

I sat vigil in another hospital.

Tracy Cole and Pete Smith circled the drain for a long time. Circled and circled, as surgeons worked. I know surgeons get a lot of flak for being hotshots and egotists. Not from me. They are heroes in their own way. They worked all through the night and into the next day.

Tracy Cole lost part of her lung and a lot of useful bone and tissue. Pete Smith lost his spleen. Neither of them were going to walk through the valley of the shadow with us anymore. But the shadows wouldn’t own them, either. They were on this side of the dirt, and we all have to put that in the win column.

Duffy had nine broken ribs and a cracked sternum, all from bullets that hit him but didn’t penetrate his body armor. The company that made that armor made him a seven-figure offer to be their spokesman. He told them to stick the offer where the sun won’t shine. He told me that he’ll be back.

Same with Tate. Concussion, seventy-three stitches, and some burns. He looks like Frankenstein, but he doesn’t care.

Top took two bullets in the belly. Both were oddball ricochets that hit the lava rock and bounced up under his body armor. They cut him, but the angle was in his favor and both rounds lodged in the plate steel he calls an abdomen. He’s already walking around and telling the hospital staff how to do their business. Bunny, on the other hand, had a through-and-through of the thigh. Took a lot of meat with it, but missed the bone and it missed the arteries. His fianc ée, Lydia Ruiz, flew out from San Diego and was alternately giving him hell and giving him kisses.

That left me.

I had a bunch of cuts on my body I couldn’t explain. I had some burns and I had a moderately nasty skull fracture. They shaved my head, did some weird shit to me, and told me not to drink any booze for a month.

Yeah, we’ll see how that plays out.

Ghost had a rough time of it. His Kevlar saved him from bullet wounds, but the incoming rounds had kicked up a spray of jagged stone chips. The doctors removed eleven of them and put in forty-seven stitches. There was some muscle damage, and he would need rest and rehab and lots of TLC. Which he would get. He was already milking it with the practiced ease of a professional scam artist.

Aliens.

Junie came and sat by my bedside, and we talked. Doc Holliday called me twenty times a day, and we talked. Rudy was there, and we talked.

Aliens.

Where do you go with that?

Were they gone? Why were they ever here in the first place? Would we ever really know the meaning of it all?

A lot of Junie’s friends in the conspiracy community have always had a lot of answers. Or, theories. Some of them are dingbat nonsense. But some make a lot more sense to me than they did before. When Junie talks about these things, when she plays video interviews with people claiming to be experiencers, with people claiming to be channels for alien beings, I don’t laugh or turn away or dismiss it out of hand.

And, weirdly, unexpectedly, it’s brought us closer. The truth of what’s in her DNA and what I saw firsthand has burned away a lot of ephemeral relationship angst and bullshit. Sometimes at night, when I think about the scaly monsters on the hill in that other world, I give them a nod of thanks.

Does that make me a little crazy? Ha. That ship sailed a long, long time ago.

Mr. Church came out to see me. We sat in the garden of the hospital, drinking coffee and eating cookies.

I told him everything, and he listened without comment. When I was finished he took off his tinted glasses and rubbed his eyes and nodded. He didn’t say a thing about what I told him.

Instead, he told me about what the rest of the DMS had been doing while Echo Team was being put back together.

Bug and his team used MindReader Q1 to hack their way through Gadyuka’s laptops, which had been obtained by Lilith. Tracing e-mails to servers and decrypting the hell out of all of it gave them the names of everyone involved in the New Soviet. This data was offered to the president and top officials in the State Department, but there has been no response at all.

“Nothing?” I asked.

“Not a word,” he said.

Vladimir Putin was clearly behind all of it. We knew it, but could not prove it. Uncle Vlad never sent e-mails, but all references to the “Party Leader” in other New Soviet correspondence had to be referring to him. There was no one else who had the authority to make sure the whole project moved forward unhindered within the Russian bureaucracy. Our government seemed unwilling to touch him, and the DMS could not carry out an assassination. That was extreme even for us.

“So, what do we do?” I demanded. “We just leave him?”

“Not exactly,” said Church.

Church had Bug hack into each of Putin’s many private bank accounts, where he had tens of billions of dollars squirrelled away. Bug proved how truly devious and dangerous he could be by draining every last penny from those accounts. A full third of it was transferred to charities set up to deal with the families of earthquake victims, and the charitable organizations that worked tirelessly to help in the aftermath of the disaster. Another third was given to Lilith to fund Arklight’s expanding global activities.

“Sweet,” I said. “And the rest of the cash? What did you do with that?”

Church didn’t answer that question. Instead he told me about the other fallen members of our family. Violin was recovering in a private hospital in Switzerland. She was expected to make a complete recovery, though it would take some time.

“What about Harry Bolt?”

“He is steadfast,” said Church. “From what I’ve been told, he hasn’t left her side.”

“I’m surprised Lilith hasn’t had him skinned alive.”

“Lilith is a realist,” said Church, and left it there.

Sam Imura was also recovering and was in California with his parents.

“Will he be able to come back?” I asked.

“Able? Yes,” said Church, “but he doesn’t want to. He tendered his resignation via e-mail.”

“Damn,” I said. That one hurt. “What about Auntie?”

Some of the light went out of Church’s face. “She’s alive,” he said. And that was all he would say.

There were a couple of other things.

The body of Jennifer VanOwen was found in the trunk of a car in a house in Virginia. The owner of that house was determined to be a Russian spy, and had since vanished.

The body of Yuina Hoshino was found, along with two lab techs, in a testing lab, also in Virginia. The bodies were identified by dental records because the lab had burned down. All of the computers and equipment inside were utterly destroyed.

Coincidentally, UFO online clubs widely reported triangular-shaped craft of unknown origin in the area the night of the blaze. The authorities, when contacted by the local news services, declined to comment.

Two months after the events we’d all come to refer to as the Deep Silence case, Church called the senior staff, team leaders, and department heads to the Hangar.

We were asked to assemble at eleven thirty at night. We met in the TOC, the tactical operations center. Standing, sitting on chairs by computer workstations, leaning against walls. The huge multiscreen display wall had been channeled so that all of the screens became one, showing a single image — that of the round symbol of the Department of Military Sciences. A digital clock ticked away the minutes and seconds as we shuffled in and stood waiting for whatever announcement this was going to be. It wasn’t Christmas and it didn’t feel like anyone’s birthday party. Ghost stood beside me, too nervous to sit or lay down. I felt pretty anxious, too.

There were fewer of us than there had been a year ago. The absences were conspicuous. I’m pretty sure everyone felt, as I did, that the others were there, standing unseen beside us. The DMS was a smaller, tighter, closer organization than it had been since I’d first joined, and we were more than merely survivors. We were family.

I stood with Top and Bunny. We were battered and bandaged, but still on our feet. Bug sat cross-legged on the floor below the multiscreen. Doc Holliday stood slightly apart from everyone else, and there were odd lights in her eyes and a strange little smile on her face. Church stood alone in the front of the room, and the fact that Aunt Sallie was not there actually hurt. From what Church had told me privately, she would not return to work once she got out of the hospital. If she got out of the hospital. The stroke had done what guns, bullets, and legions of professional killers had failed to do. The level of grief I felt surprised me. It hurt. It hurt one hell of a lot.

Maybe it ran deeper than compassion for a fallen soldier in this war. Maybe it was a more atavistic dread, because if someone as powerful as Aunt Sallie could fall, then how were any of us safe? I cut a look at my guys and saw identical expressions on the faces of Top and Bunny, who were looking to where Auntie should be standing. Top caught my eye and he gave me a tiny nod, acknowledging that the telepathy people like us sometimes have was running on all cylinders. I returned the nod, but there was probably no reassurance in it.

And then there was Sam Imura. He was done with the DMS. Maybe he’d never pull a trigger for anyone again. Maybe he’d become a different kind of person doing a different kind of work. Impossible to say, but I could feel the universe pushing us in different directions. That hurt, too.

We waited through the ticks of the clock and it was getting close to midnight.

Rudy came in last of all, spotted me, and moved to stand with us. He looked tired and gray.

“How you doing, brother?” I asked.

“Uneasy,” Rudy confided. He glanced around. “No one looks happy.”

“Nope. You have any idea what’s coming down?”

“I—” he began, but then Mr. Church stepped forward and spoke.

“Thank you all for coming out here on such short notice.” Church spoke quietly but his presence, his energy dominated the TOC. He wore a dark black suit and quiet tie and I had to push away the thought that he looked like he was dressed for a funeral. “Over the last years we have stood together to fight an extraordinary number of threats, and I am proud to say that each and every one of you has risen to that challenge. Those challenges. Over and over again. As did those of our brothers and sisters who were consumed by the fires of this war.”

The room was silent as a tomb. Church looked down at his black-gloved hands and for a moment there was a small, sad smile on his lips.

“We’ve each been marked by the battles we’ve fought,” continued Church. “As our own Dr. Sanchez so often says, violence leaves a mark. Some of those marks are obvious; they are like sigils cut into our skin. Other scars, other wounds, run deeper, and are visible only to others like ourselves; the chosen few who have walked through the storm lands. That is how it is for such as we. The war is the war.”

I heard several people around the room repeat it like a litany. The war is the war.

The clock ticked away the seconds.

Church nodded. “Now we are at a crossroads. As of midnight tonight, our charter will no longer be in effect.”

I nearly staggered. It was like a punch to the throat.

“Again?” growled someone, and there was even a ripple of laughter. Aggressive laughter. We’d had our charter canceled twice before. However, Church shook his head.

“The DMS charter was not rescinded by the president,” he said. “I have canceled it.”

We gaped at him. I heard gasps and hisses and even a cry of alarm.

Church held up a calming hand. “Most of you know that we have not always enjoyed the full support of Congress or the White House. That position has slipped several notches in recent years. Some of it was the direct result of hacking and manipulation by the Seven Kings, Zephyr Bain, Nicodemus, and others. Some of it was our own humanity being caught under the wheels of threats bigger than anyone has ever faced before. The fact that we have rebuilt ourselves, strengthened our resolve, and risen to a new high mark of efficiency is a testament to all of you and to the people in your teams and departments. You are remarkable. You are heroes, and that is a word I never use lightly.”

There was total silence in the room.

“There have been political threats made against our organization,” he said, “and it was only a matter of time before our charter was officially revoked. I, for one, do not care to be a victim of a political culture of power over patriotism, of personal agenda over the common good. So, I have sent a courier to deliver our withdrawal from any official connection to the government of the United States. That person is ready to hand that document to the president’s chief of staff.”

If we were all stunned before, we were now in actual physical shock. Church gave us a moment. However, seconds kept falling off that clock behind him. I felt cold inside. My hands and feet were numb.

“Those of you with active military rank will be given the option of returning to your branches of service or receiving an honorable discharge,” said Church. “That has been arranged with trusted friends of mine within the various armed services.” He paused. “No one is being abandoned. No one’s record will be adversely affected. Rather, the reverse. Commendations for your excellent service have been added to your files, and anyone who chooses to return to the army, navy, coast guard, air force, or marines will likely receive a promotion and choice of station or assignment. The same goes for those who have transferred here from the FBI, DEA, ATF, or any other law enforcement, investigative, or covert group.”

Silence. I don’t think any of us were capable of speech.

“For those who choose to take this as an opportunity to retire, I think you will find that the retirement packages will be adequate to your needs. You will receive full pensions and a benefits package that includes full medical coverage for you and your families, as well as other tokens of my personal gratitude. A trust has been set up so that all of your needs will be provided for. You have served your country and served the world, and that service will not be trodden upon once you step down.”

Silence.

Church took a breath. It was impossible to read his mood or gauge his expression. He’s a spooky old bastard and has the best poker face in the world. Behind me I heard someone sob.

It was Bunny who raised a hand to ask a question. Church gave him a sober nod. Bunny licked his lips. “Sir,” he said, “we’ve been fighting this war for a long time. Just because the assholes in Washington turned their backs on us doesn’t mean the war’s over.”

“Farm Boy’s right,” agreed Top. “Seems like now we’re going to be needed more than ever. Not sure I understand how going home to sit on a porch or stepping back into all that bullshit bureaucratic red tape’s going to do anybody any damn good.”

Church studied him for a silent moment. He gave another nod. Behind him the clock was getting dangerously close to midnight. It was like looking at the timer on a nuclear bomb. We all feared midnight’s strike.

“I could not agree more,” said Church. “The war is the war. The war will always be the war. We are in an age of new and greater threats than anything humanity has ever faced. Cyberterrorism, rampant religious hatred, bioweapons, drones, secret cabals, and other terrors are still out there. But it is no longer the job of the DMS to fight that war.”

The clock ticked down.

11:57.

11:58.

11:59.

Midnight.

The screens behind Church went black. The symbol of the DMS vanished and was gone. We could feel it leave. It was like having our blood sucked out of our veins. My knees wanted to buckle. I felt that weak. That shattered.

Rudy snaked out a hand and grabbed my wrist with crushing force. Ghost howled. Actually howled. Like a wolf.

I looked around. People were hugging each other, sobbing openly. They were devastated. Church stood apart, his face grave, hands clasped behind his back. Bug looked up at him.

And smiled.

I stared.

Why the fuck was he smiling? Had this pushed him over the edge? The DMS, after all, was the only family he had left. This was his home and MindReader was his god.

Church raised one hand and snapped his fingers. Loud as a gunshot, and we all jumped. Every single one of us.

“Listen to me,” he said in a voice that was deadly cold. “The DMS is gone. In my last conversation with the president, he accused us of acting with too much independence, of being a rogue organization.”

Mr. Church looked at us and, like Bug, he smiled, too.

“That seemed to be the only worthwhile idea that has come out of a politician’s mouth in more years than I can count.”

Silence dropped back over the whole crowd.

“I won’t speak for each of you,” said Church, “but I am tired of fighting the wrong war. I am weary of fighting against our own government, against red tape, against fear of action and restraint born of greed. I am tired of being on a leash. When I formed the DMS it was with the idea that we would have total independence of action and the freedom to pick our own cases and react with our best speed. We were as good as our word for a while, but politics and personal agendas hobbled us. Crippled us. Weakened us.”

He was still smiling.

“That ended at midnight,” he said. “It’s a new day. The war is the war, and it cannot be won by half measures. If going rogue is what it will take, then so be it.”

He snapped his fingers again and the screen behind him lit up. A new graphic flooded us with its light. It was not the biohazard code of the DMS. Not anymore. Never again. This was something else. Something new.

I looked around and saw people — Top, Bunny, Rudy, Doc Holliday, and others — mouthing the words that were worked into the new logo. The new symbol.

I spoke those words aloud.

“Rogue Team International,” I said.

A side door opened and I saw people enter the room. Junie and Toys. Violin and Lilith. Others I did not know, but who wore the same predatory smiles and looked at us with hunters’ eyes. They came and stood with us.

With us.

“Rogue Team International,” said Church, and his smile became colder and more deadly than any I’ve ever seen on a human face. “Self-governing, fully autonomous, independently funded. A global rapid-response strike team endorsed but not answerable to the United Nations.”

Beside me, Rudy said, “Ay dios mío.”

Top and Bunny had tears in their eyes, but they stood straight and tall. Junie flashed me a brilliant smile, and even Lilith gave me a nod. One warrior to another.

Mr. Church turned slowly to look at the sea of faces.

“Welcome to the war,” he said.