Extinction Machine

Chapter One Hundred Four

We left my uncle’s farm at four in the morning. I was in the Explorer with Ghost and Junie. Top and Bunny were in the backseat.

The rest of Echo Team was in Black Bess. I left Church in the care of Brick and Birddog.

“Whoa, whoa now,” said Brick. “How is it that the young miss gets to go on this raid and we have to sit here and play with our dicks?”

“That’s not how it is, Gunny. Junie volunteered to go. She knows Tull, she understands the science, and she has to be close for us to use the team channel because the other stuff is tapped. She has to come. You don’t.”

“Listen, boss,” protested Brick, “maybe I don’t have a left foot but I can pull a trigger and fire an RPG.”

“What he said, Cap,” agreed Birddog. “They were my friends at the Warehouse, too.”

“Look,” I told them, “I appreciate the offers, but this isn’t a frontal assault. We don’t even know if Shelton is our bad guy. I need you guys to make sure Mr. Church gets to the Hangar safely. The DMS is on the run and we can’t trust our radios. You need to get him to Aunt Sallie and then go to ground. We don’t know what else Tull and these Closers have planned, but hear me on this: If anyone takes a run at Church I want you to give them the worst day of their lives. Understood?”

“Hooah,” they growled.

Church walked us out. “Good hunting,” he said.

He had created the DMS and over the years he’d seen hundreds of his people fall defending the country and the world. Now a fool of a president and a group of maniacs were trying to tear it all down. Even battered and pushed to the edge, I did not believe for one second that Church was going to accept defeat. Not him. Not after everything that had happened. As I climbed into my Explorer I met his eye.

“Good hunting to you, too,” I said to him. He measured out a frozen millimeter of a smile.

The drive to Pittsburgh took a little over three hours. I dented a few traffic laws. Sue me. World in the balance, yada yada yada.

It was also one of the most awkward drives.

We talked about friends who had died in Baltimore.

We talked about Shelton, building our case against him.

We talked about aliens and UFOs, and the fact that we were having the conversation at all. When Junie reminded us that she had alien DNA it shut us up for almost twenty miles. I mean, really, go ahead and story-top that.

When the conversational button reset, we talked about all the things we each wanted to do to Erasmus Tull. I doubt Junie enjoyed that part of the trip. I did, but I was of two minds. Half of me wanted to take about forty minutes and use every second beating the son of a bitch to a finely textured pulp. The Warrior inside my head cheered that decision.

The rest of me wanted to give him the Indiana Jones treatment the second I saw him. If you ever saw Raiders of the Lost Ark you’ll know the scene. Indy is suddenly confronted by this Arab warrior who’s like seven feet tall, packed with muscles and swinging a scimitar. The crowd clears out, leaving a market square empty for what will be the fight scene of the century. But Indiana Jones just pulls his pistol and shoots the guy in the world’s best “oh, fuck you” moment. Turns out, the actor, Harrison Ford, had dysentery and really wasn’t up to filming the elaborate fight scene that had been choreographed. Spielberg loved it so much he kept that version of the scene in the movie. Every soldier I’ve ever met agrees that it’s the smartest fight scene in the history of film.

Tull was a hybrid who was supposed to be faster, stronger, and more ruthless than anyone. Thing is, I’ve both been there and done that. Genetically enhanced mercenaries amped up with ape DNA. People infected with a prion disease that turned them into zombies. Soldiers who had undergone gene therapy with insect DNA. And last year … the Upierczi. Actual vampires. Okay, they weren’t supernatural or anything like that, but they were easily twice as strong and three times as fast as me. So … I’ve done the whole fight the impossible fight thing and it’s getting old. I’m only in my early thirties and my body is crisscrossed with scar tissue. I’ve had more broken bones than I can remember. There was a time in my life when I thought I needed to prove to myself that I couldn’t be defeated, that I was strong, that the bad guys could never hurt another innocent because I wasn’t tough enough to stop them. But, you know, me and the guys have saved the world. The actual world. A couple of times now. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, and Rudy has been trying to tell me for fifteen years that I never had to prove anything.

So, my game plan, should I see Erasmus Tull, was to put him down like a dog and call it a day.

I liked that plan.

We drove on toward the dawn.

And the one thing we did not talk about — Junie and me, that is — was what happened last night. That was the thing I wanted most to talk about. Something that wasn’t tainted by madness and murder, by terrorist agendas and political corruption. By blood and death.

But as we drove, Junie Flynn took my hand and held it. She didn’t care if the two hulking thugs in the back saw it. Neither did I.

Chapter One Hundred Five

Ten miles from Shelton’s castle there was a distinctive bing-bong in my ear and I heard Bug say, “Bug to Cowboy, do you copy?”

“Bug,” I said tightly, “this line has been compromised.”

“Not anymore,” he said with a laugh.

“What?”

“We found a whole bunch of these weird little transmitter things stuck to the outside of the Hangar and the other offices. That’s how they hacked our system. Well, that kind of pissed me off, so I took a laptop up to the roof, cut one of the little bastards open and uploaded a whole bunch of really fun viruses, kicked them off the satellite and long story short — we have a clear com channel. If they hack it, they get a feedback screech at one hundred and eighty decibels. Anyone listening in is going to be saying, ‘Huh?’ a thousand times a day for the rest of their lives. So, booyah!”

I laughed. “Bug, I could kiss you.”

“Um, dude … no. Just … no.”

“Where are you, though?” I asked. “I thought they shut the Hangar down.”

“Well … yeah, they have us surrounded and all that, but Aunt Sallie initiated Protocol Seventeen. We sealed the upper levels and we’re down in the bunker. They, um, probably don’t know we have a bunker.”

“Nice.”

“Where are you?” he asked, and I gave him as much of the story as I could.

“Shelton, huh? Yeah, maybe. I’m going to put all of this new stuff into MindReader and see what she says. Last time I ran him, we only got a sixty-eight percent confidence that he’s the bad guy.”

“I need more than that or I really am going to jail.”

“Speaking of which, before that … stuff down in Baltimore … Mr. Church called a bunch of his lawyer friends. Jesus, Cowboy, you wouldn’t believe who he has on our legal team. Three of them are former U.S. attorney generals. Three. And other guys. It’s like the Justice League of America without the spandex. They’re putting together your defense right now.”

“Nice.”

“Tell you one thing, man,” said Bug, “if this is a frame up and the acting president is involved in any way … this will take him down.”

“I’m going to block out some time later on to cry about that,” I said. “But right now we’re pulling up to Shelton’s place.”

“And I got your back.”

I stopped on a rise a mile from the estate. Top and Bunny leaned forward and peered through the windshield. Bunny whistled. Ghost made a corresponding whuff. He was impressed, too. Though, I’m not really sure whether we were really impressed or simply appalled. The Shelton house was a castle. An actual castle. One of those old world fairy-tale castles brought over from Europe and reassembled stone by stone here in the States. Bug told us that it had two hundred plus rooms. Plus. Like they have so many rooms they lose track. The room count didn’t include the bathrooms. Made me want to piss in as many of them as I could and leave all the seats up.

The castle had spires and turrets and wings sticking out at improbable angles. Smoke curled from several chimneys. I didn’t even bother trying to count the windows just on the side I could see. My math skills don’t extend into abstract numbers.

“Wonder if Count Dracula rents a room from him,” said Bunny.

“Time to go,” I said.

Without another word, Top and Bunny exited the car. The plan was to have them close on the property through the thick pine forest that lined the right side of the road. They took heavy equipment bags out of the back. They left the door open for Junie.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” asked Junie.

“Not a chance,” I said. “Stay with Top and Bunny and make sure you keep your communicator turned on. You’ll be able to hear what I hear, and I’ve got a lapel camera that will let you see what I see. Feed me any intel you can. People, weird science stuff, anything. But whatever you do, stay away from the house. If we’re right about Shelton, then things could get very nasty in there and you are not a soldier.”

“I can handle a gun,” she said.

“Since when?”

“Lydia showed me this morning. Loading, gun safety, as much as she could, and you know I can’t forget what I learned.” Her eyes met mine. “Or what I experience.”

It was suddenly three hundred degrees too hot in the car.

“Um … listen,” I began, but before I could embarrass myself, she bent forward and kissed me.

And then she was gone. Top, Bunny, and Junie vanished into the woods.

Ghost looked at me with a pitying expression.

“Oh, and like you’re a class act,” I said. “You sniff dog asses.”

I took my foot off the brake and rolled down the long hill.

Chapter One Hundred Six

As I drove that last mile, Bug gave me more background on the man I was going to meet.

Howard Shelton was the third richest man in Pennsylvania. Yeah, I know that doesn’t sound like much if you don’t know Pennsylvania. The coal mines and steelworks aren’t completely gone, and there are a lot of moneymaking industries in the Keystone State. Corn, oat, soybean, and mushroom farming is massive. As is mining for iron, portland cement, lime, and various kinds of stone. Plus there are major electronics manufacturers and some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. Shelton had fingers in all those pies, which is where his family’s old money came from. Old Abner Shelton, Howard’s great-grandfather, was a crony of Teddy Roosevelt. Abner’s brother, Humphrey, had the stateroom next to the Astors on the Titanic.

The newer money — say from the thirties on up — was in defense contracts and military research and development. Every time a bomb drops Shelton puts a couple of bucks in his pocket. Even if those bombs don’t have the American flag stenciled on their cowling.

I idled outside a wrought-iron gate that was wider than my apartment and designed with all sorts of animals and oak leaves and birds. Between the gate and the house was a winding half mile of road that snaked between sculpted gardens, marble fountains, and rows of oaks and beeches and elms. The garage stood apart from the house and was nicer than my dad’s mayoral minimansion in Baltimore. There was a Bentley parked outside and a Lamborghini getting a hand polish from a man in driver’s livery.

“Y’know, pal,” I said to Ghost, “there’s rich and there’s rich and then there’s fuck you.”

He flopped down on the seat and began licking his balls. Clearly he agreed.

I tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Ronin.”

“Ronin here,” came the immediate reply. Sam Imura. We’d timed things to allow Black Bess to take up a position on the far side of the estate with Ivan behind the wheel. Sam and Pete were supposed to break the perimeter and find useful places to loiter.

“I’m at the front gate,” I said. “What’s your twenty?”

“Finished the first circuit and sitting in an apple tree on your three o’clock. Damn, boss, this place is bigger than Rhode Island.”

“Hold there,” I said. “But don’t be a wallflower if the party starts hopping.”

“Copy that,” said Imura.

“Prankster,” I said, “you in the game?”

Prankster — Pete Dobbs — confirmed that he was on the grounds, way over on the east side.

I got right up to the gate and tooted the horn and waited while a guard came out of the booth. He’d been there since I pulled up but apparently didn’t give much of a fuck about a guy in a Ford Explorer. Maybe if I’d rolled up in a Land Rover or a Lexus LX he’d have at least pretended to notice my existence.

Jeez, even the help was snobby around here.

Ghost glanced at the guard, went back to his hobby, then changed his mind and sat up. At first glance the guard was a big slab of white meat in a polyester jacket, but that was all deception. His jacket was a little too loose, his pants cut baggy in the crotch, and he had black sneakers on his feet. If I wasn’t in a sneaky profession I might have dismissed him. But the jacket was a little too baggy, and it was unbuttoned.

“What do you figure?” I asked Ghost. “Uzi or MAC-Ten?”

Ghost offered no opinion.

“MAC-Ten,” I decided. Though it could easily be a microwave pulse pistol if these guys were Closers.

The pants? Cut baggy in the crotch to allow the man to kick. So, some martial arts, too. The sneakers? They were thin-soled. Not running shoes — these were fighting shoes. The thicker the sole the more potentially damaging torque to the knees when kicking or pivoting on one leg. I’d guess almost no tread, too. Tread binds. This guy was a serious fighter and was dressed for it.

As the guy opened the small access door in the gate, I double-tapped my earbud. “Bug, get me a rundown on the security staff here. Tell me who this is.” There was a control panel on the steering wheel that allowed me to activate a set of high-def cameras mounted discreetly around the car. A holographic display appeared on the upper left of my windshield — invisible from outside. I zoomed in on the guard’s face. Immediately a series of white dots appeared on the image as the facial recognition package began identifying and cataloging unique points on his face and taking approximate measurements.

MindReader pinged before the guy could walk to where I’d stopped.

“Name’s Henry Sullivan,” said Bug. “Thirty-three years old. U.S. Special Forces, retired. Worked six years as an ‘advisor’ for Blue Diamond Security.”

“Bingo,” I said. “Martial arts?”

“Muay Thai kickboxing,” said Bug, “and boxing. Golden Gloves in Detroit where he grew up.”

“Swell,” I said. That put him in a better class than some of his MMA buddies. “Criminal record?”

“Nothing stateside, however there were some disciplinary notes in his army jacket. Doesn’t bond well with people of color. Got into several fights with black soldiers. While he was with Blue Diamond in Afghanistan he was one of four men suspected in the rape of two fifteen-year-old girls. No charges filed. Looks like the company paid off the families. Overall,” concluded Bug, “he’s a total dick.”

“Charming,” I said, and wondered if it would be out of line if I accidentally ran him over a few times.

The guard twirled his finger for me to lower my window.

I did, considering the best way to play this. I fished in my jacket pocket for NSA credentials. According to the card I was Special Agent David Paul Leonhard.

Dave Leonhard pitched for the Orioles in the late sixties.

“State your business,” said Sullivan, his voice flat and disinterested.

“I’m here to see Mr. Shelton.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to make an appointment.”

I badged him. “National Security, please open the gate and stand back.”

Sullivan gave me a four-second appraisal. “Wait here.”

He turned and walked away. Not to his guard booth, but far enough so he could make a call on a cell without me overhearing. Dumbass. I hit a locate-and-trace on the steering column and MindReader picked up his signal, kicked open a door on the right satellite, and fed the conversation in my earbud. Sometimes I think Mr. Church writes his Christmas wish list based on stuff he sees in Mission: Impossible films … but that means his field agents always have the best toys.

“… asshole here flashing an NSA ID.” He walked around back and read my license plate number. I didn’t have one of those James Bond license plate flipper thingies, but I did have a great set of fake tags. Government plates, legitimate number, and when they ran them they’d come up with a Ford Explorer belonging to the NSA. While Sullivan waited for a comeback on the number, I relaxed and scratched Ghost’s head. He usually likes that, but right now he kept craning around to study all of the potential juicy places where he could bite Sullivan. Ghost is a very smart dog.

A voice on the other end of Sullivan’s call came back with the expected information. “Let him through.”

Sullivan closed his phone and came back to the window. “Drive up to the side entrance. Turn off your engine and leave your keys in the ignition. Someone will meet you. You’ll be escorted inside.”

“Thanks, sport,” I said. People hate to be called “sport.” Ghost gave him an “I’ll eat you later” look, but Sullivan managed not to keel over from fear. Instead the guard gave us another quick two-count stare, then gave a single nod and walked away. What was he doing? Remembering my face in case we ever met again? Probably. Which was fine with me, because if we did meet again, and if that encounter was less civil than this, I wanted him to know me.

I drove through the gate and up to the house, parked where I was supposed to park, and was met by four goons dressed similarly to Sullivan. I’d switched the facial recognition from the car to the left lens of my mirrored sunglasses, and MindReader began pulling their info out of cyberspace. They were all cut from the same cloth. All ex-military — though one of them was a Brit, a former SAS shooter — and all formerly employed by Blue Diamond Security. According to Bug, their most recent tax returns listed their employer as Shelton Aeronautics.

Big surprise.

The lead guard was a thug named Burke who had a lantern jaw and shoulders you could suspend a bridge from. Bug gave me his background, and it made Sullivan look like a saint. A very violent man who wasn’t on death row because his most heinous acts were perpetrated on foreign soil in countries no one gives enough of a political shit about.

I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to take Burke behind the woodshed and explain karma to him.

He gave me a stony look and demanded to see my ID.

I showed it to him.

“Hand them to me please,” he said, pitching it as an order.

I’ve been working for the DMS long enough to have developed a useful set of government-standard expressions. One of them is the polite “go fuck yourself” not quite a sneer that’s so highly prized by the FBI and NSA.

“Now,” Burke said, snapping his fingers in my face.

I folded my ID case and tucked it inside my jacket.

“I’m here to see Mr. Shelton,” I said. “And you’re wasting my time.”

Burke stepped a little closer to me. “Here’s a news flash, asshole. You’re on private property and you haven’t produced a warrant. Hand over your credentials or hit the road.”

I shook my head. “I have a document in my pocket that says I can go wherever I want and see whomever I want, so I advise you to desist in this obfuscation and conduct me to your employer.”

I’m good at Scrabble and I liked seeing the eyes of goons like this glaze over as they tried to sort out what I’d just said.

“Yeah?” said Burke in what was for him probably a class-A comeback. “Let’s see the warrant.”

I didn’t have anything to show him. Instead I said, “You are aware, I assume, of the terrorist attack in Baltimore yesterday. And the cyber-warfare that has been targeting your employer and other key companies. Do you really want to hamper my investigation?”

“I said, show me some paperwork or turn around and drive out of here.”

Ghost didn’t like Burke’s tone and was giving him half an inch of fang in a silent snarl.

“You better keep a short leash on that mutt,” said Burke. The other three men shifted slightly to form a tighter circle. They probably thought it gave them a tactical advantage. They were mistaken.

I got up in Burke’s face. “You’re about to make a major career mistake, Mr. Burke. Push it and see what happens. Now — take me to Shelton.”

Burke grinned. “Let’s see … oh, how about kiss my—”

And his cell phone rang.

Special ring tone, two strident notes on a rising scale.

The goon squad froze. Burke stepped back from me and removed his cell phone with the speed you’d expect from someone scrambling to get a scorpion out of his boxers.

“Yes, Mr. Shelton?” he said, almost snapping to attention even though this was a phone call. Made me wonder how many cameras were on us right now.

I kept my face bland and used a subtle finger signal to prep Ghost for attack. The dog didn’t need any incentive — he had his eyes on Burke’s crotch and the hair on his back was rippling like the spine of a ridgeback.

“Right away, Mr. Shelton,” said Burke. Then he looked at me and I could actually see the guy’s blood pressure go up about twenty points. “Of course, Mr. Shelton.”

He lowered the phone, glanced at his crew, all of whom were staring into the middle distance like they were waiting for a bus. None of them looked at Burke as he took a ragged breath to steady the witches’ brew of emotions that was boiling inside his chest.

“Agent Leonhard,” he said to me, “I apologize for my rude behavior. It was wrong and I hope you can forgive my childish attitude and ill-chosen words.”

The syntax was all wrong for him, so I figured he was repeating verbatim what Shelton had told him to say. Usually I’m sympathetic with a guy who gets a two-by-four kicked up his ass by his boss; but, Burke was a total piece of shit, so fuck it.

“Well,” I said in my best officious-government-prick voice, “when you are done eating crow perhaps you’ll conduct me to your employer’s office.”

In my ear I heard Bug say, “Oh, snap!”

I swear to god Ghost snickered.

Burke’s blood pressure looked like it could blow bolts out of plate steel.

“This way, sir,” he said in a strangled voice.

Chapter One Hundred Seven

Burke stepped back and held out an arm to indicate an electric golf cart. I got in the passenger side, Ghost jumped on the back. Burke hesitated for a moment before climbing behind the wheel. I saw him make brief eye contact with the other men and one of them snapped a glance toward my Explorer and back. It was clear that Burke was telling them to search my car. I smiled. Let them look. They’ll have a certain kind of fun. Or not.

Burke climbed in and we drove away.

Neither of us spoke. It wasn’t really a bonding experience. Ghost sat up and stared at the back of Burke’s neck. Every once in a while he licked his lips with a big, juicy glup.

It was full dark now but there were enough lights on the grounds and on the exterior of the house to film a movie. We passed several guard patrols, fixed and walking. Two of the guards had dogs. Dobermans. They gave Ghost the evil eye but Ghost sneered at them. Ghost is well over a hundred pounds of solid muscle, and he was trained by the best military dog trainers in the business. The DMS trainer, Zan Rosin, put him through a few extra courses, and I’d worked with Ghost for a year and a half, teaching him every dirty trick I could think of. Ghost loved a good tussle, and if he couldn’t kick the asses of a couple of pussy Dobermans I’d trade him in for a hamster.

At the back of the castle was a ramp hidden by decorative shrubs. We rolled past them and into an arched entrance that was probably built for horses and wagons once upon a time. Beyond the arch was a large concrete room built to look like the mead hall of a Viking longhouse. Shields and crossed axes on the walls, half an authentic-looking dragon-headed longship thrust out from one wall. Rich tapestries depicting Viking raids on small villages, complete with slaughter and rapine. At the far end was a row of rough tables fashioned from dark wood, and set into the walls were doorways that I guess would probably lead to staff quarters. Almost certainly where the guards — Shelton’s Viking horde — bivouacked.

I’m a manly man and all that, but I felt like I was going to drown in a river of testosterone.

Burke parked the golf cart in a slot that had his name stenciled on it. As I got out I made sure to look completely around the room knowing that whatever I saw was being seen by my team and Bug. The mirrored glasses I wore had a superb high-def spycam built into one of the temple pieces. You could already buy this year’s version of that camera, but we had next year’s. A gift from one of Church’s friends in the industry.

I had a whole bunch of toys with me. As I followed Burke across the mess hall, I kept my hands in my pockets, unobtrusively peeling back the film on a sticky little bug. As Burke led me through a doorway into the east wing of the castle, I paused with my hand briefly on the frame, planting the little doodad. It was small and designed to gradually absorb the colors of whatever it touched. Within five seconds it would invisible. Nice.

As I followed Burke, I continued to record the layout with my glasses. We already had a schematic of the place based on the original design of the castle — which was a matter of public record from when the Sheltons bought it from a bankrupted Austrian count — but we didn’t know what modifications had been made since. The video feeds would be used to create a 3-D model for every part of the building I visited. Sure, this was still a castle and I wasn’t going to see much of it, but intel was intel. Every little bit helps.

This wing was clearly dedicated for servants and operations. There were small brass plaques on doors marked: ELECTRICAL, SECURITY, GROUNDSKEEPING, and others. One really caught my eye: WRANGLERS. When my gaze lingered on it for an extra second, Bug explained it.

“Shelton collects animals,” he said. “He has a zoo somewhere on the grounds, and he buys rare critters for a game ranch he keeps in Texas. Brings in stuff from all over and lets his rich buddies shoot them. Axis bucks, scimitar bulls, waterbucks, Ibex, Russian boar hogs, rams — who needs to stalk a sheep? I mean, I’m cool with hunting and all … but sheep? Seriously? How’s that a sport unless you like … I don’t know … kickbox it to death or something.”

I flexed my jaw muscles to send a tiny burst of squelch. One flex for “yes,” though right now it was a general acknowledgment. I don’t have any serious objection to hunting, and I don’t mind entertaining the trout every once in a while, but somehow a bunch of rich assholes in camouflage with high-power scopes and state-of-the-art rifles didn’t exactly fit my image of “sportsmen.”

Bug said, “I’ll find out what else he has on-site. Wouldn’t want you to walk into a jaguar, right?”

Two flexes. No.

We went through a series of winding halls, sharp turns, staircases, crossed an entrance hallway that you could have parked a line of F-15s in, and finally entered a wing that was clearly the domain of the master of this feudal estate. I was mildly surprised not to see the staff here dressed in doublets. Every once in a while I touched a wall, a doorframe, a bannister rail, and each time I left another of the chameleon devices. Burke never saw a thing.

I was pretty sure that there was a more direct route to Shelton’s office, but this was probably Burke’s passive-aggressive way of screwing with me. As a bit of revenge it walked with a limp. Burke was a weasel.

Bug came on and whispered to me again. “Hey, I’ve been doing more background checks on Shelton’s security team. Holy moly, these are some bad mamba-jambas. Some serious mixed martial arts competitors. That guy Burke? He was tied to an illegal cage-fight circuit in Central and South America. Crazy stuff like you see in the movies. People actually getting killed.”

I flexed my jaw once to acknowledge that I understood.

“Don’t let Burke get on your blindside. Shelton’s bought his way out of a lot of charges that should have put him in jail. His psych profile reads like Stephen King wrote it.”

Another flex.

“Last thing,” said Bug, “see if you can get to Shelton’s laptop. Not sure if he’ll have anything useful, but it’s our best shot. If nothing else, we might be able to hack his e-mails.”

A flex. The line went quiet after that.

We stopped at a secretary’s desk behind which was an almost completely artificial woman. Poufy hair that was too perfect a shade of honey blond, blue-within-blue contact lenses, Botox lips, a severe nose job that could not have been the best choice in the catalog, and huge boobs that had no parallel in human genetics. She stared at me from under a battery of stiff black lashes.

“Mr. Shelton will see you now,” she said in a Paris accent that was as real as the “French” in French fries. “However, your dog must wait outside.”

I said, “Je ne quitterai jamais mon chien ici avec vous. Il a peur des robots.”

She gave me a blank stare. No clue what I’d just said.

I breezed past her with Ghost at my heels.

Beyond her desk was a set of massive oak doors that stood ajar, allowing us peons to enter. Like everything else in this place, the message was simple: I’m rich, you’re not; learn your place.

Beyond the doors was the largest office I’d ever seen. It was absurd. I mean, truly absurd. A full-scale replica of the Kitty Hawk hung from the ceiling and it didn’t begin to crowd the room. High ceilings, tall stained-glass windows, ranks of suits of armor, framed art with a bent toward portraits of pinched-faced scowling men who I assumed were ancient Sheltons, and a desk that you could cut down to make the deck of an aircraft carrier. The tall bank of windows behind the desk were all in ornate stained glass. If you looked up the word “ostentatious” in the dictionary, there would be a note directing you to the special signed-and-numbered limited edition, and Shelton’s picture would be in that.

Howard Shelton sat behind the desk on — I kid you not — a hand-carved wooden throne. Inlaid with gold and silver. He rose as I approached and I wondered if I was supposed to shake his hand, bow, or knuckle my forelock.

Burke followed me in, but there were already two similarly dressed guards in the office. They stood to either side of Shelton’s desk, glowering like Visigoths. Their faces were lumpy, with broken noses and cauliflower ears. Brawlers for sure. The smallest of the three was maybe two-twenty, all of it in his arms and shoulders.

At a nod from Burke, the two guards walked around the desk, each of them sizing me up the way a Brooklyn butcher sizes up a side of beef. They and Burke formed a semicircle around me.

Ghost fidgeted. He wanted me to let him out to play. It was a tempting thought, but that wasn’t why we were here.

Shelton was even better looking in person. He radiated warmth and health.

“Good evening,” he said. “Special Agent Leonhard is it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

Shelton’s eyes twinkled. “Should I call you Special Agent?” he asked.

“I—”

“Or would you prefer ‘Captain Ledger’?”

Nobody was smiling except Shelton.

I said, “Ah, crap.”

Chapter One Hundred Eight

“What do you think?” asked Aldo, handing the field glasses back to Tull.

They lay side by side on a grassy knoll overlooking the Ledger farmhouse. There were no vehicles parked in the turnaround in front of the house.

“Did we miss them?”

Tull studied the house with narrowed eyes. There were several lights on and in one downstairs room the blue-white flicker of a TV. Tull tapped the wire mike he wore.

“Snake, what are you seeing out back?”

The team sergeant, Snake, came on the line at once. “The Black Hawk is tied down. Engine’s cold.”

“You do a thermal scan on the house?” asked Tull.

“Copy that. We have four heat signatures in the house. Nothing in the barn or other buildings.”

“Roger that.”

Tull turned to Aldo. “I don’t like it. I don’t think Ledger or the girl are here.”

“Shit.”

Tull wormed his way back from the top of the knoll, then he rolled over and stood up. He tapped his mike again. “Snake, we think the birds have flown. Aldo and I are going to run the back trail. We’ll get an eye in the sky to find them. They might be heading to another safe house.”

“Yes, sir … What about the four inside?”

Tull didn’t even hesitate. “Kill them.”

He clicked off the channel and ran for his car with Aldo at his heels.

Chapter One Hundred Nine

I said something clever like, “Um … what?”

Shelton smiled.

Then everybody was pulling guns. The three guards, me. Ghost crouched, waiting for my command to hit.

Shelton’s smile turned into a belly laugh.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said with a rough guffaw, “put your damn guns down. There’s expensive stuff in here.”

You could taste the compassion for my physical well-being.

I didn’t put my gun down. I pointed it at Shelton’s head.

“Them first or you first, take your pick,” I said.

He shook his head, really enjoying this. He even gave me a couple of seconds of slow, ironic applause. “Nice tough guy line. I dig it.”

The moment still burned around us. Shelton flicked a glance at Burke. “You heard me. Put them away.”

It wasn’t a suggestion.

The three guards immediately lowered their pistols, peeled back their jacket flaps and reholstered. Burke was about a half second slower than the others. Making a point, I suppose. It was lost on Shelton, who clearly didn’t give a shit. I filed it away, though, adding it to Burke’s tab.

I still had my gun out but I was beginning to feel like the kid who wore a costume on the day the Halloween party was canceled.

“Do you mind?” asked Shelton. He settled into the cushions of his leather chair and picked up a delicate china teacup, sipped it, and looked at me over the rim.

I lowered my piece. “Ghost,” I said, “ease down.”

Ghost laid down in his sphinx posture, ready to rise and leap at a moment’s notice.

Shelton cocked an eye at my gun. “You going to put that thing away?”

“Let’s wait and see,” I said.

“Whatever. Have a seat, or do you want to stand, too?”

One of the guards — not Burke — pushed over a guest chair that cost more than my car. Rich red leather that was soft as butter when I sat down. I laid my Beretta on my thigh.

“So,” said Shelton, “why am I so fortunate as to have the famous Captain Joseph Edwin Ledger here on a chilly October morning?”

“Publishers Clearing House sent me. You may be a winner.”

We smiled at each other. The guards glared at me. Ghost glared at them.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I know who you are?” asked Shelton.

“Why bother? You caught me on at least fifty cameras between the front gate and here and I’m pretty sure you can afford a facial recognition software package.”

“I own the patent on the one the FBI uses,” he said.

“So there you go.”

“It doesn’t bother you that I know who you are?”

“Actually it does,” I said. “And I have a slot open between nine and nine-oh-five this morning during which I plan to faint.”

“Funny,” he said.

“Not really.”

“Want to tell me why you’re here?”

“Depends on how much of your business is open to a public forum.”

He considered. “These guys have been with me for years.”

“That’s your call, but I wonder if you spelled their names right in your little black book.”

It was all about those last two words. That wiped the shit-eating grin off Shelton’s face faster than a good slap. He stared at me for a heavy three count, then without looking at his guys or changing the tone of his voice he said, “Get out. Close the door behind you and make sure nobody bothers me.”

“Mr. Shelton,” began Burke, “I don’t think that’s a good—”

Shelton’s eyes swiveled toward Burke. “Get the fuck out. Now.”

This time there was a different tone.

The three men headed for the door without another word. I turned to watch them go. Burke shot me a look that would have burned holes in sheet metal. I pointed my right index finger at him and used my thumb to drop the hammer. He lingered long enough to respond with a single nod.

Yeah, I’d be seeing Burke around the playground.

When we were alone, Shelton appraised me. “The question,” he said, “is whether you know something or if you’re on a fishing expedition.”

I said nothing.

He really seemed to be enjoying this. “Those sunglasses … they wired? Is this going to be on YouTube or some shit?”

I took them off, folded the earpieces and tucked them into an inner pocket. In my ear, Bug said, “Hey!”

I ignored him. I still had my lapel cam, though the image was crappy.

“Happy now?” I asked Shelton.

“No,” he said. “And I don’t trust you for shit.”

He opened his desk drawer, being very slow and careful about it so as not to alarm the big scary guy with the gun and the dog. He removed a device that looked like a small TV remote, but wasn’t. He showed it to me, then pressed a button and set it down on the desk.

“Jammer?” I asked.

“Jammer,” he said. “And don’t worry — I don’t have cameras in my office. I watch people, they don’t watch me. It’s just you and me.”

“Good. Can we stop fucking around now?”

Shelton nodded and sipped his tea. “I know your file. Army Rangers for four years, during which you didn’t do squat.”

“At the time,” I said, “there was no squat that needed doing.”

“Then you were a cop in Baltimore. Baltimore? Seriously? That shithole?”

“Says the guy from Pittsburgh.”

“Hey, Pittsburgh’s come a long way in the last twenty years. Used to be a dump but now it’s a center for the arts. Watch your mouth.”

“Baltimore … has an aquarium,” I riposted.

He grinned at that.

“Okay. Getting back to who the fuck you are. You were a uniform, then you were a detective and after 9/11 they put you on some dinky Homeland taskforce, and then you went away. The official story is that you went to Quantico and are doing something for the FBI, but that’s horse shit. You somehow got onto the radar of that psychopath Deacon — what’s he calling himself these days? Mr. Church? — and for the last couple of years you’ve been indulging your own inner psychosis by shooting everyone you don’t like. All in the interests of national security and Mom’s apple pie.”

“That’s a nice profile. Can I put that on my Facebook page?”

“And according to everyone you think you’re funnier than balls.”

“Balls are pretty funny,” I admitted. “But I am funnier, yes.”

“And now you’re here throwing around the wrong words. Why is that?”

“You tell me.”

He made a face like innocence abused. “Me? What do I know?”

“You nearly popped a vein when I mentioned the Black Book.”

Shelton tried to smile through that, but there was a little tic in his left eye. “What black book would that be?”

“Really? We’re all alone and you want to get cute?”

He chuckled. If I wasn’t sure that he was who he was, I might have bought it. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes, that legendary twinkle. Teeth so bright I could shave by them.

“The thing is,” he said, “I don’t know what you know. We haven’t actually confirmed whether you’re here fishing for something or if you know something.”

“That’s pretty much a two-way street,” I admitted. “I don’t know if you’re a remarkably well-informed innocent bystander, a supporting character in someone else’s mad scientist dream, or if you’re the supervillain I’ve been longing to meet.”

“Not knowing what goes on your head, Ledger, I have no idea how to answer that. What is this supervillain of yours supposed to have done?”

“Blown up a lot of people in Baltimore.”

“Ah, yeah … I saw that on the news. So sad.”

I held up a finger. “Some things we joke about,” I said. “Some things get you hurt.”

“Fair enough. But give me something more than vague threats and we’ll see if we can have a conversation.”

“This isn’t a conversation?” I asked.

“No. We’re kind of jerking each other off here. I don’t mean that in a gay way, you understand. It’s a figure of speech.”

I had to admit that, even though he was a piece of pond scum, he was charming. He hid his silver-spoon upbringing with just the right amount of trash talk. Some of it was almost certainly cribbed from old Sopranos DVDs. I kept expecting him to call me a “chamoke,” but Shelton was pure WASP going back to forever. When the Mayflower landed, his ancestors were there at the rock selling deeds to swampland.

“What would you like to know?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Something that you couldn’t have gotten off the Internet. Oh, what, you look surprised? You don’t think my name comes up when you search for the Black Book?”

I said nothing.

On the floor, Ghost gave me a look like he was losing confidence in who was the actual pack leader here.

I could see his point.

“Let’s try this,” I said. “Ever heard of Junie Flynn?”

“Sure. I watch TV. I even listen to her podcast. According to what she said the other night, either she has the Black Book or she is the Black Book. Works out the same either way.”

“You read the Cliffs Notes version of this, haven’t you?”

Shelton looked at his watch. “I have a busy day, Captain. Can we speed this along a little faster?”

“Sure,” I said. Using the same slow care that he’d used, I opened my jacket and snugged my pistol back into the shoulder rig. Then I removed a small device from my pocket and showed it to him. It was about the same size as the unit he’d taken from his desk.

“What’s that? Another jammer? I already told you, no one can hear us in here. Room’s soundproof and—”

“Good,” I said as I pointed the device at him and pressed a button. A compressed gas charge shot a tiny glass dart at him at six hundred feet per second. Not as fast as a bullet, but much faster than a middle-aged scumbag could dodge. He got a hand up, but the dart stung his palm.

He gave a single, small cry and then fell face forward onto his desk.

Chapter One Hundred Ten

First thing I did was make sure the door was locked. I put my ear to the wood, but there was no sound at all from outside. Soundproof indeed.

“Ghost,” I called, and he snapped to attention. “Scout.”

Instantly he began casing the room, sniffing for anything that could be a problem. Ghost is heavily cross-trained to find people, bombs, blood, and hidden things — like concealed doorways. Electronics will take you a good long way, but nothing beats the nose of an inquisitive dog.

There was a heavy chest against one wall — dense wood banded with studded iron strips — so I shoved that against the jamb. A determined group of men could break in, but nobody was going to sneak up on me. Then I checked to make sure Shelton was still breathing.

He was.

The juice in the dart I’d shot him with was a fast-acting but mild tranquilizer. One that Dr. Hu insisted wouldn’t trigger Shelton’s next heart attack. I had a syrette in my pocket with a stimulant that would bring him back up to the surface, but before I did that I swept everything off of Shelton’s desk and hauled him onto it. Then I fished out a coil of silk cord from my jacket and lashed his ankles together and then stretched his arms out wide so the hands dangled off the edges. I ran the silk cord under the desk. I wanted his hands exposed. The silk was thin but he wasn’t going to break it. Then I removed a small roll of duct tape, tore off long strips and ran them from one edge of the desk to the other so that they effectively anchored Shelton’s head in place. He could open his eyes and mouth but would not be able to turn his head at all.

I snapped my fingers and tapped the desk. Ghost came rushing over and jumped up, then stood glaring down at Shelton. Two fat droplets of drool fell from Ghost’s mouth onto Shelton’s shirt.

“Hey,” I said, “he’s not a breakfast entrée.”

Ghost gave me a withering stare.

I tapped my earbud for Bug and got nothing. So I picked up the jammer and played with the buttons until I found one that switched it off. When I tried Bug again he was right there and he sounded like he was having kittens.

“Cowboy! Are you okay?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “There was a jammer, but it’s off now. Ready for a little smash and grab?”

“Always, man, you know me.”

Shelton’s laptop was on a small table beside the desk. It was a style I’d never seen before. I removed a MindReader uplink and plugged it into the USB port. The little device flashed with green lights to let me know that it was happily gobbling up all Shelton’s files. Encrypted or not.

“Getting the feeds now,” said Bug. “Whoa … what kind of system is this?”

I bent and peered at the display on the side of the uplink. “The readout here says this stuff is heavily encrypted. How bad is that going to hurt us?”

Bug chuckled. “Silly mortal. I laugh at encryption. Ha! Ha, I say.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, just tell me how long will it take you to—”

“My whole team’s locked in the bunker with me,” he cut in. “You have the undivided attention of twenty-six world-class computer rock gods. It’s just … oh shit, man … You know what this is? This is that Chinese Ghost Box. The actual fucking Ghost Box. I am so getting wood here, man. This is soooo sexy.”

“Bug, you’re scaring me.”

“No, hey, this is how they’ve been screwing with us.”

“What the hell is a Ghost Box? Sounds like some kind of weird porno.”

“No, no, no, man, this is all over the rumor mill. A super-computer system designed not to be noticed. It was built to be invisible to other systems. Long technical explanation that would make your head hurt. Short version is that without an actual hardline connection, we could never interpret that system.”

“Does my five-dollar USB cable count as an actual hardline?”

“Oh, hell yes. Achilles’ heel, man. Direct cable connection. Nothing beats it. And if the Chinese geeks who built this ever find out that they were punked by something you can get at RadioShack, they’ll kill themselves.”

“Well … that’s…,” I fished for a word along the lines of “lucky,” but it had been so long since any word like that actual fit that I let the sentence hang. “Just tell me you can crack the encryption.”

“Not in the next minute, no, but eventually? Yeah. This is huge, man. Really huge.”

“I like huge. Okay, as soon as you get anything that puts Shelton in my crosshairs I want to know about it.”

“You got it.”

“Outstanding.” I switched to the team channel. “Prankster, Ronin? Give me a sit-rep.”

“Prankster here, boss,” came Pete’s immediate reply. “I’m in the building, hunkered down in a little bit of nowhere till you’re done with your business. Ready to entertain the tourists.”

“Copy that, Prankster. Sit tight until I give the word,” I said. “Ronin, how’s the view?”

“Clear and bright,” said Sam. He was a superb sniper — cold, precise, and patient. I would not want to be out on the grounds tonight. Not unless I was wearing an Abrams tank. “Found myself a nice spot for a high angle.”

“Excellent,” I said. “But the show doesn’t start until I give the word.”

“Hooah,” they said.

“And, Ronin … nobody dies unless I give a kill order. Copy?”

“Copy that, boss.”

I looked around the office Most of the rear wall of the office was taken up with towering stained glass depicting the Wild Hunt from Celtic folklore, but there were louvered panels near the bottom. I cranked one up and peered out. All quiet on the western front. Or, in this case, the eastern lawn.

Shelton groaned and I checked his vitals. So far, so good. I busied myself creeping the room and planting all sorts of chameleon bugs in useful places. Some were active units that would allow Bug to tap into the house’s computer-controlled alarm systems. Others were passive units that would remain inert for now but which would come to life with a signal sent from a satellite. Those were for later.

I gave Bug all of three minutes and then tapped my earbud. “Talk to me, man. Tell me you found anything. Unpaid parking tickets, kiddie porn … give me something I can use on this asshole.”

“Damn, Cowboy,” said Bug, “you weren’t joking when you said this stuff was encrypted. I mean … we’re having to fight through multiple levels of very weird protection. I’m kind of impressed. If I didn’t have MindReader but knew about it, I might build something like this.”

“Cut to the chase. Can you hack it? Do we have anything?”

“Give me a little credit. I said that it was tough, I didn’t say that it was tougher than me.”

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Bug is referring to himself or to MindReader. Or if he knew that there was a difference.

“We’re in now, but it’s going to take us a lot of time to evaluate this stuff. And the Ghost Box system keeps trying to counterattack with all sorts of viruses. I tell you, Cowboy, I might need to bitch slap this thing to keep it in line.”

“Meaning?”

“We have some seriously fucked-up viruses that would turn their whole network into Chernobyl. If Ghost Box keeps trying to counterhack us I’m going to have to clone MindReader’s command protocols onto—”

I cut him off. “Do whatever you have to do, Bug. Put a leash on it, but don’t ruin anything until you’re sure you have all the goodies. What about that drive?”

“Ah,” he said, “there’s really a lot of crazy stuff on that puppy, and it’s ringing ten kinds of bells. We got eyes-only stuff from Department of Defense, Homeland, NASA, jeez … there’s so much good shit here.”

“Hey,” I growled, “stop drooling and let me know the second you find anything illegal, or anything classified that we can—”

“Cowboy, you’re not listening to me. All of this stuff is classified. This is deep, deep shit here. I’m seeing stuff that even with black budget clearance codes the president doesn’t get to see. We got missile defense systems, we got HAARP stuff, spy satellite stuff, black ops sanctions … jeez-oh-man.”

I straightened and looked at Shelton. “Whoa, back up, Bug, and tell me that you’re not kidding here. Tell me that we hit actual pay dirt on the first try.”

“Well … it’s not the Black Book or anything, but there’s no way Shelton has legal clearance for this stuff. No way in hell. His official clearance level is in the basement compared to this stuff.”

“Who does have this level of clearance?”

“I … don’t know, man. God? This is weird, weird shit. I need Deacon to look at this, but I’m telling you that if we leaked even a little of this to a congressional oversight committee we could put Shelton away for two or three thousand years. But … and I’m not joking around here, we could tear down half of Washington, too. You should see some of the names that I’m finding here.” He paused and there was a click that changed the audio signal. “Look, I cut everyone out of this conversation, okay?”

“Okay. Talk to me.”

“Cowboy … this is actually scaring me. This is stuff they kill people over. This is actual black budget stuff.”

“On a laptop? You cracked it in a couple of minutes.”

“That’s it, man,” he said, “only a system like MindReader could crack this. You know that, there’s nothing else — and I mean nothing else — that could decrypt this stuff. We found and neutralized six separate erase programs. That’s one of the first thing MindReader looks for — self-destruct and hard-dump programs. If anyone else had hacked this that whole laptop would be smoking slag by now.”

“Okay.”

“The stuff we’re finding, though, is making my paranoia-o-meter go haywire. Deacon is going to freak when he sees this. This is … well, jeez, man, this is scaring the shit out of me.”

I knew Bug well enough to know when he was joking or exaggerating.

He wasn’t.

“But … Cowboy, so far I don’t see anything that links him to what happened at Dugway or the Warehouse. Or M3. Not yet.”

“Find it for me, Bug. I’m on thin ice here.”

“Working on it.”

“Contact Aunt Sallie and Deacon on scramble and cycle them into this.”

Bug rang off. The lights on the uplink told me that the file transfer was complete. I knew it also meant that MindReader had done the other part of its job: rewriting the software on the laptop to eradicate every possible trace of intrusion. Smiling, I pulled the uplink and dropped it into my pocket, then I closed the Ghost Box and repositioned it exactly as I found it.

The clock in my head was ticking as loud as gunfire.

I turned to Shelton. Now for the next phase of this insane little game.

“So,” I said to his comatose form, “whatever else you are, you’re really part of an illegal shadow government. Like right out of one of the Bourne movies. Until now I was going to cut you some slack, but — oops, you’re an actual bad guy. What a damn shame for you.”

Ghost looked from me to Shelton and uttered a low growl. I knew that he couldn’t understand everything I said, but he reads emotion very well. Or, maybe he reads me very well. The look he gave Shelton was probably every bit as cold and unsympathetic as mine.

I removed a small leather case from a pocket, unzipped it, and began removing some toys Dr. Hu had provided for me.

“Well hell, guys,” I said as I pulled the syrette out of my pocket and jabbed it into Shelton’s throat, “guess it’s time to play Truth or Consequences.”

It took four seconds for the stimulant to counteract the tranquilizer. It took another five seconds for Shelton to wake up completely. After that it took less than one second for him to realize how deep in the shit he was.

I leaned close to him and smiled. The three aspects of myself were all clamoring for dominance. The Civilized Man wanted to have a reasonable conversation, to appeal to Shelton’s better nature. The Cop wanted to throw the Constitution at him and use threats of prison and disgrace. The Killer wanted to wire him up and play bad games. I felt my control slipping.

That seldom ends well for anyone.

When Howard Shelton opened his eyes and looked up into my face, guess which face I showed him?

Chapter One Hundred Eleven

“What the hell are you doing?” croaked Shelton. He tried to yell but between the aftereffects of the drugs and what he saw on my face, his words came out cracked and crumbling. He jerked against the silk cord, which accomplished nothing beyond tightening the knots; and when he tried to turn his head, the duct tape kept him from moving at all. He was trapped and totally helpless, and he knew it.

Terror blossomed in his eyes.

“I’m going to keep it simple,” I said. “You have the Majestic Black Book. I want the book. This will only get as messy as you want to make it.”

“You’re insane.”

“Yesterday’s news.”

“I mean it,” he growled. “You’re crazy.”

I leaned a few inches closer. “Want to see how much?”

“This is an illegal search and seizure. This is assault and battery. It’s—”

“Blah blah blah,” I cut in. “I’m a wanted felon, a terrorist, and an enemy of the state. Two hundred of my friends were blown to atoms yesterday. And either you or aliens abducted the president and are threatening to destroy the entire eastern seaboard if I don’t get the Black Book. So … yeah, I guess you could say I’m a bit over the edge.”

Ghost made a faint whuffing sound. It was a strangely hungry sound, and Shelton gave him a frightened look.

“Dog’s a little troubled, too,” I said. “Dementia by association.”

Shelton jerked against the silk cord. “Listen to me, shitbag,” he snarled, “you’re making the worst mistake of your life. Right now it’s just you and me, so if you want to take your head out of your ass and untie me then we can let this drop. I promise no repercussions.”

I smiled at him.

“Don’t be stupid,” Shelton said. “Even if I gave you the book — which I don’t have—there’s no way you’d ever get out of this house. I have a goddamn army of men here—”

“You have fifty-four men,” I corrected. “And six dogs. Not counting the secretarial and housekeeping staff.”

“Those are my people, dickhead. They’ll tear you apart and feed you to my dogs. And that includes your mutt.”

I reached down out of his line of vision and punched a button on the device inside the little leather case. Shelton tried to see what I was doing, but the tape prevented him. Then I touched the little finger of his left hand.

“Here’s how we’re going to play this,” I said as I removed a pair of sturdy wire cutters from my pocket. “I’m going to ask you where the Black Book is. If you say something I don’t want to hear, I’ll cut off one of your fingers.”

He went as pale as old milk.

“I’ll fucking kill you and everyone you love,” he seethed.

I reached down with the cutters. He tried to see what I was doing, but I wanted him to just feel it.

The cutters went SNIP!

His scream was immediate and enormous.

It was so loud it hurt my ears.

Ghost howled.

I grinned.

“That would be an example of something I don’t want to hear,” I said when he stopped to gulp in some air. “You have nine more fingers.”

“Fuck you…,” he said in a weak voice. “Fuck you…”

SNIP!

He screamed again.

“Eight left. Oh, and you’re going to need to get your carpet cleaned.”

“Oh … Christ! God sweet Jesus.… ahhhhhhhhhh!”

His terror was like a great dark beast crouching over both of us.

“I can cut them clean or I can get creative,” I said. “And by creative I mean I can feed them to my dog while they’re still attached. This is your call.”

I gave him one second to think about it.

SNIP!

His shriek was ultrasonic.

“Jesus Christ, what are you doing? Oh shit, motherfucker. My hand! What are you doing? I didn’t say anything!”

“I’m double-parked,” I said, “and you’re wasting my time.”

“Oh … God … it fucking hurts…”

“God isn’t here,” I said, leaning closer still. “It’s you and me and my dog and what’s left of your hand.”

Tears boiled from the corners of his eyes.

“I … can’t…,” he blubbered. “I can’t…”

A moment later he was shrieking again. Ghost’s howls rose like spikes of sound.

“You can save your thumb,” I whispered. “Or would you rather we go to the challenge round? Should I get out the bolt cutters and go right to your wrist?”

“No … NO! Oh god, please, no…”

“Howard…,” I coaxed in a lazy singsong voice. “You’re being naughty.”

“They’ll kill me! God … they’ll kill me if I say anything.”

I bent closer still, and now my face was an inch from his. “Listen to me,” I said softly. “You’re still on this side of a bad line. If you make me take you over that line there won’t be enough of you left to put in a wheelchair. Is that what you want? Is that where you’re making me take this? I can leave you blind and ruined. If you’re really lucky I’ll leave you enough of a mouth so you can scream. But I can’t even promise that unless you talk to me.”

Shelton was weeping openly, tears and snot running in lines down the sides of his face. His face was beet red and I wondered what kind of a window I had before his heart burst or he stroked out. There was aspirin and other goodies in the stimulant, and that would help, but I was definitely pushing the envelope here.

“They’ll kill me,” he said one more time, but as he said it his eyes shifted away from me toward a wall on which was hung a portrait of Harry S. Truman.

I followed his eyes and then looked back at him. “Is it in there?”

His voice was tiny. “Y — yes…” He closed his eyes. “Oh, God…”

“Ghost — watch,” I said and hopped off the desk. There was a small electronics detector in another pocket and I ran it along the edges of the painting. All the little lights pinged. I strolled back to Shelton and patted his cheek. Maybe a little too hard. “Nice try. It’s wired six ways from Sunday, which means that if I sneeze on it your goon squad will be in here in ten seconds.” I leaned very close so that my breath was hot on his cheeks and eyes. “The first thing they’ll see is you die in ways that will give them nightmares the rest of their lives.”

Tears rolled from his eyes.

“Tell me how to bypass the security or what they’ll bury won’t even look like a man.” I bent closer still and described exactly what I’d do.

He screamed without me having to actually do anything.

And then he broke.

Like that.

“Okay, okay, please God, okay … don’t hurt me anymore…”

There was a lot of stuff like that. I had to coax him through the procedures to disarm the security measures on the safe. Some of them involved the same remote Shelton had used to activate the jammers. Others involved more complicated codes that I had to enter on a keypad that was hidden behind a carefully crafted panel on his desk. Lucky for him there was no retina scanner. I told him as much. He sobbed some more.

I left Ghost there to watch him while I made sure there were no passive alarms or tripwires. Dr. Hu’s little scanner was very efficient.

After five minutes I felt confident enough to swing the painting aside on its concealed hinges and enter the last set of codes on a second keypad. I’ve been to viral research labs and I don’t know that I’d ever seen an entry procedure as complicated as this. Fourteen separate steps. The safe set into the wall was a dummy. It was filled with stock certificates, bearer bonds, two jewelry cases, and at least five hundred thousand dollars in paper-wrapped bundles. I dropped it all on the floor. Once the safe was clear, Shelton talked me through the steps to access the hidden compartment behind the back wall.

The fake metal wall slid up with a hiss to reveal a space that was ten inches wide and a foot tall. There were three things in the compartment. A small metal cylinder the approximate size and shape of a cigar tube, a jagged piece of metal wrapped in bubble wrap, and a book wrapped in thick velvet.

The book was a little larger than a paperback novel and thicker than the Bible. Thousands of tissue-thin pages.

And, yes, it was black. I flipped through it. Lots of sketches of mechanical devices that I didn’t recognize. Page after page of notes written in a neat, cramped hand.

Bingo.

I tapped my earbud. “Package acquired.”

Bug made a strange series of falsetto noises and said, “I think I just came in my pants.”

“Never remind me of this conversation,” I told him.

Another voice cut in. Auntie. “Cowboy, confirm mission status.”

“Package acquired,” I repeated. “I have the Majestic Black Book.”

There was a sudden burst of static so sharp and loud that I almost tore the earbud off, but then it was gone.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded.

“I — don’t know,” said Auntie. “For a second everything lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Well, whatever it was, don’t let it happen again. Near blew my head off. Cowboy out.”

Then I turned back to Shelton, who stared at the book in my hand. His eyes were wild.

“They’ll kill me for this,” he said. His face was greasy with agonized sweat.

“Who will?”

“Them!” he snapped.

“Who? Are we talking little green men?”

“No, you maniac … the others in the Project. They’ll kill me and now they’ll kill you.”

“Not a chance,” I said, smiling a smug little smile. “They won’t even know I was here. Give me some names,” I suggested.

He looked at me like I’d suddenly suggested we both dress up in dinner clothes and waltz through the halls.

“Give me some names,” I repeated, “and I’ll make sure that you get full protection.”

“You can’t offer any goddamn protection. The DMS is done, it’s gone. God, you’re really an idiot aren’t you?” he said.

Okay, that hurt, coming from a guy I had strapped to a desk.

“Do you think there’s any place you can hide me that they can’t find?” He was wheezing with pain and terror.

“Yes, I do,” I said, not at all sure if I was telling a lie.

“They’ll find me and kill me and then they’ll find you and everyone—”

“Yeah, yeah, they’ll kill everyone I love. My family, my dog, blah blah blah. You watch too many Scorsese films. They won’t find out about this unless you tell them.”

“Wrong, shithead,” he panted, “they’ll find out as soon as my people take me to the hospital. They probably have a spy here…”

I parked a haunch on the edge of the desk. “Why would anyone take you to the hospital?”

He stared at me, caught in a terrible moment of indecision. Was I making a joke? Or did my question carry an even worse threat.

“You’re going to kill me,” he said hollowly.

“Actually,” I said, “no. I’m not going to hurt a hair on your head.”

“But … but … I don’t…”

I reached across him, out of his line of sight and twisted my hand again.

The agonized expression on his face immediately changed.

“W — what…?” he stammered. “What…?”

I reached down and removed the tiny metal needles I’d inserted into nerve clusters on each of his fingers. They were like acupuncture needles, with wires trailing away to the small device in the leather case. I held it up for Shelton to see.

“Ta-da!” I said quietly. “Electric nerve stimulators. You can set these things to send all kinds of signals. I could make it feel like you just gave birth to a ten-pound baby, so severed fingers were easy as pie. All the fun of torture without the mess. Order now and you get a free at-home waterboarding kit. Fun for the whole family.”

He gaped at me, totally unable to speak.

Ghost dripped more slobber on Shelton’s shirt.

I bent close and tapped Shelton with the book.

“Now listen close, asshole,” I said. “I have the book and you have the thanks of a grateful nation and all that. Except that nation is going to put you in jail until three days after the end of the world.”

Shelton mustered enough of his wits and focus to say, “Fuck you.”

Tried to spit in my face, too, but I dodged it.

I laid the book on his chest. “Understand something, friend,” I said, “just because I faked you out doesn’t mean that I’m incapable of playing rough. It would be a real mistake to think that.”

“Go to hell,” he said.

Suddenly fists began pounding on the door outside. Not knocking. Pounding.

Then the door shuddered as something slammed into it. It wasn’t anyone trying to kick it in. This sounded like one of those heavy-duty breaching tools — a steel weight swung by a couple of big guys. Shelton’s guards were breaking in. Ghost began barking furiously.

On the desk, Shelton laughed. “Guess you’re not the only one who can play a hole card, you sick bastard. As soon as you opened that last panel a signal went out to my whole team. They’re going to come in here and tear you apart, Ledger, and I’m going to piss on your bones.”

The heavy oak door began to splinter.

Chapter One Hundred Twelve

There was another huge whump on the door. The stout wood panels were cracking. It wouldn’t take them long to break in. Shit.

I tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Bug, do you copy?”

“Right with you, boss. We’re finding some crazy, crazy stuff on that—”

“Save it,” I said, “the big bad wolf is at the door. I’m going to have to get creative here.”

“Copy that,” he said, and there was a nasty little laugh in his voice.

I grinned, too, though there were still a lot of ways this could go south on me. Events already seemed to be spinning that way.

Whump!

I grabbed the right cuff of my jacket and yanked. The sleeve tore away easily. Velcro, baby. Then I tore off the left sleeve. When the Velcro fastenings ripped it exposed small strips of adhesive. There were similar strips inside the cuffs. With all four exposed I pressed them across the big crack that was forming in the door, affixing half to the oak and half to the heavy frame. I made sure to leave a lot of slack, though. I wanted the door to open, at least part of the way.

The adhesive was great stuff. In seconds it would bond with the wall and even Bunny couldn’t pull it off. Fun with chemistry. That would mean that all the bursting strength of the door would have to tear the material apart.

Ghost barked at me while I worked, but I whistled a happy tune.

Then I returned to Shelton. His face was gray and streaked with sweat. I felt his pulse and it sounded like machine gun fire. His skin was cold, though. He was going into shock.

Shit.

“Okay, sparky, here’s the thing,” I said amiably. “There are two ways this can play out—”

“Kiss my ass. In ten seconds my guys are going to—”

“I know, I know, tear me apart so you can piss on my bones. Yesterday’s news. No, what we need to focus on is what happens before they break in. They can find you alive and unharmed, or they can find you dead, and believe me when I tell you that I don’t need ten whole seconds to change your life. Or end it. If I’m going to hell, then you’ll be driving the cab, capiche?”

He opened his mouth to say something smartass or threatening, but didn’t. Instead I saw pain flicker across his face.

Uh-oh.

Whump!

Splinters flew into the room. Ghost stood wide legged and growled at the noise. He was fierce and he’d definitely get the first man through the door, but I had no illusions about our survival if things kept sliding downhill. Even so, I kept those concerns off my face.

I drew my piece and screwed the barrel into the soft underside of Shelton’s jaw. “No more jokes. I know you rigged the cyber-attacks and even killed your own people to make the authorities look elsewhere. I know you framed me and somehow got the president to shut down the DMS. I know you’re a governor of Majestic Three. I know you’ve been breeding alien-human hybrids, and I know that you’re building spaceships.”

His jaw went slack as I rattled all that off.

“Yeah, we’re smart, too. We know all that. We also now have two copies of the Black Book. The original and the pretty blond copy.”

His mouth worked like a silent gasping fish.

“But I really need to know what the end game is here. It’s not just to sell a new stealth fighter. You could have done that without all this bullshit. You didn’t need to frame me or kill my friends to accomplish that.”

Whump!

Whoever was hitting the door was serious about it.

Shelton found his voice and sneered at me. “You fucking idiot. You think you know a lot but you don’t know shit, but you don’t know what I’ve done to protect this country. You think I’m the bad guy? The fucking Chinese blew up the Locust bomber. They’re the ones who have a working T-craft. Not us. We’re years away.”

He sold it so well that for a moment I almost bought it.

Almost.

He was stalling, feeding me another lie, but why? He had things to bargain with.

Suddenly Shelton’s body stiffened and he arched his back as if I’d just Tasered him. His eyes rolled up in their sockets and he gave a single strangled cry. Then he collapsed back onto the desk. His breath rattled in his throat.

I felt for his pulse.

And didn’t find one.

Goddamn it.

“Bug,” I said as I dug into my pocket for another hypo, “we have a problem. Shelton’s coding on me.”

I jabbed Shelton with the needle and then started CPR.

Whump!

Shelton twitched and gasped, dragging in a ragged lungful of air.

Ghost’s bark jumped up a notch and I turned to see the door crack from top to bottom. The shattered wood bowed into the room, caught against the sleeves I’d affixed across the door, pressed them to their ripping point, and tore them apart.

I flung myself off the desk, hooked my arm around Ghost and dove for cover.

The wires inside the sleeves snapped, triggering the detonators in the cuff buttons, sending tiny electrical impulses into the chemicals that saturated the fabric.

The explosion was spectacular.

The force picked me up and threw me all the way across the room. It destroyed the massive door, turning the heavy wood into a death storm of jagged splinters that tore into Shelton’s men. Arms and legs flew everywhere; blood sprayed the walls and ceiling.

The screams were terrible.

Some of those screams were mine.

Chapter One Hundred Thirteen

Snake Harris ran down through a gulley that was still bathed in shadows. Six men ran behind him, each of them with automatic weapons aimed toward the house. Snake was the only one carrying a handgun. It was boxy and awkward looking, with four prongs instead of a barrel; however, Snake had used that pistol several times. The last time was at Wolf Trap in Virginia while working a job under the name Henckhouser. He and his partner had painted the walls using those guns. Snake loved the effect.

He ran with the pistol in a two-hand grip, his eyes focused on the back porch door. The telemetry from the satellite told him that the four heat signatures inside were stationary. Probably asleep.

That was okay. If they wanted to take it lying down, then that was just fine.

As his team reached the end of the gulley he looked across the lawn and saw the second team move into position beside the front porch. Another six men. And a third six-man team was in the attached garage, ready to kick the door that led into the cellar. Eighteen men and himself, ready to close around this place like a fist.

The primary mission objective was simple. Secure Junie Flynn. If she was there. Everyone else dies.

There was a burst of very faint squelch in his earbud, the signal that the garage team was in place.

Snake whispered a single word.

“Go.”

The teams rushed their objectives. Snake’s sergeant, a hulking man, passed him and kicked the door. Almost in the same second Snake heard the front door bang in. And then they were pouring into the house, rushing from darkness into lighted rooms, weapons up and out, searching out the four lives whose time on earth had come to an end.

The closest heat signature was the den and Snake burst inside, his gun already firing.

Tok!

The curled form under a blanket on the couch exploded as the microwave pulse burned into it. There was a flash of colored blanket shreds and then the air was filled with feathers. In the confusion, his men opened up and tore the form, the couch, and the whole side of the room apart. Splinters flew from the floor, plaster leaped from the walls, glass disintegrated out into the side yard.

There were shouts upstairs, more gunfire.

“Hold your fire!” Snake yelled. “Hold your fire.”

The chatter of automatic gunfire dwindled down to silence, the last of the brass tinkled onto the ground.

Feathers floated on the smoke and mingled with plaster dust.

The couch was torn apart. So were the two thick pillows that had been positioned under the blanket.

“Where’s the target?” growled Snake.

“Thermals are saying it’s here,” insisted his sergeant.

Snake whipped left and right, his team kicked over chairs, tore open closets.

They found the heat source.

It was under the couch. A device about the size of a TV remote.

“It’s a signal relay,” said the sergeant. “These fuckers are getting cute. They’ve forwarded a thermal signature here to draw us away from where they are. Christ, boss, they could be anywhere.”

Which is when the house blew up.

IN THE BARN, seated on a folding chair next to stacked boxes of Jack Ledger’s personal possessions, Gunnery Sergeant Brick Anderson tossed the detonator onto the floor.

“That’s for Baltimore,” he said.

Outside he heard a few sporadic shots. Birddog, cleaning up the leavings.

Brick switched off the jammer that hid the true thermal signatures. He stood up and walked to the barn door. The house was a burning pile of sticks.

“Joe’s not going to be happy about that,” he said.

A man moved out of the shadows.

“He’ll get over it,” said Mr. Church.

Chapter One Hundred Fourteen

I landed on my side with Ghost cradled against my chest; the impetus of my dive sent us sliding fifteen feet across the polished floor. The shock wave kept us going until my shoulders slammed into a table on which was a huge bouquet of flowers. The blast flattened the table, withered the flowers and splattered us with splinters and chunks of masonry.

The aftershock of the explosion echoed away from me, rolling down the halls. The screams of the maimed mercenaries filled the air. Ghost staggered to his feet, barked once, and then fell over on his side. It was only then that I saw the blood smeared on the left side of his head. A piece of debris had struck him, ripping open the flesh.

I lunged over to him, touching his chest, and my heart almost stopped while I searched for his. Found the beat. Rapid, thin. But there.

He was alive, but he was out cold. Maybe crippled. Maybe dying.

I tapped my earbud.

“Cowboy to Echo Team, I have the package. I need extraction and backup right now.”

Nobody answered me.

Across the room, Howard Shelton laughed weakly.

I turned to him.

“You dumb fuck,” he said.

I heard a sound behind me. There was nothing but empty wall, but as I spun around, something hit me. I had a vague image of light coming through a doorway that shouldn’t be there. There were figures in the light. Men. One small man with glasses. Several very big men.

I saw the stock of a rifle swing toward me and then blackness screamed in my head.

Chapter One Hundred Fifteen

I never really went out.

Out would have felt better.

Instead I floated in a haze of sick disorientation. I was floating. Not in a good way. There were hands under my armpits, holding me almost off the ground. The toes of my shoes scraped along as they carried me for about a million miles. At one point they threw me into the back of a vehicle. A golf cart, I think. I may have drifted off for a while. They woke me by dragging me out of the golf cart and hustling me down another hall.

By the time we got where we were going, they were grunting and wheezing. And I was not quite as out of it as I was at the start of our journey.

I made damn sure not to let them know that.

When they dumped me onto the floor, I collapsed in a suitably boneless heap and didn’t move.

There were voices.

Shelton. Weak, but getting stronger. And a lot of people fussing over him. I heard him gasp and curse when someone gave him an injection. I heard the puff-puff-hiss of a blood pressure cuff. Lots of technical medical terms. Lots of cursing. Mostly Shelton, telling everyone that he was okay, ordering them to leave him alone.

One voice was consistent throughout. Male, fussy, nasal. I think I heard Shelton call him Mr. Bones.

Minutes passed and the room settled.

Then I heard footsteps coming toward me. Slow at first and then speeding up with the unmistakable gait of someone about to punt the ball into the end zone, and I had no doubt at all what that ball was.

So I stopped faking it and rolled into the kicker, jamming the kick short as I looped a punch up and over and into something that squished like a bag of figs.

I pried my eyes open to see a medium-size man with a bow tie and round glasses stagger back from me, hands cupped around his balls, eyes absolutely bugged wide, mouth locked into an O of indescribable pain.

And one second later there were gun barrels screwed into both of my temples.

The little guy I’d punched was turning an interesting shade of puce. He dropped to his knees and it was clear he was trying his level best not to cry.

A dozen feet away, Howard Shelton sat in an expensive leather chair, his shirt unbuttoned, his color bad but better than it had been upstairs. I saw his Ghost Box laptop on a wheeled table next to him. The Majestic Black Book lay on his lap. A second Ghost Box rested on a table by a low couch. “Bones … get off the damn floor. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Bones shot him a look of pure hatred. I don’t think it was particularly directed at Shelton, but he had to fire off at someone. “Kill that son of a bitch.” He spat the words at the guards, but nobody pulled a trigger.

Shelton nodded past me. “Burke, help him up.”

I turned to see that there were other guards there. My friend Burke was there. He didn’t look like he was enjoying the day. He walked past me to help the man called Mr. Bones. As he passed me, Burke whispered, “I’m going to cut your balls off.”

So, fuck it, I swung a nice one into his nutsack, too.

Hey, these guys had me dead to rights. I had no illusions about getting out of there alive. Might as well enjoy myself.

Burke’s eyes flared wide in genuine surprise. Guess he figured a guy on his knees with guns to his head wouldn’t try it. Wrong guess. He tried to twist out of the way, but I caught him good. He dropped down right next to Bones.

The guards reversed their guns and beat the shit out of me.

So, there were three of us down on the floor.

“Enough,” snapped Shelton and the hammering stopped.

Blood leaked out of my ear.

Guards helped Mr. Bones up. I saw that the front of his pants were wet and dark. Not the first guy to piss himself after a good punch to the balls. Burke’s pants were dry, and he was getting to his feet all by himself. His face was as red as a ripe tomato and if I thought he hated me before, I’m pretty sure he’d found a new definition for murderous rage. That was okay. It’s not the enraged ones you have to worry about. It’s the calm ones.

“You’re quite something,” said Shelton. He drummed his fingers on the cover of the Black Book. “I very nearly like you, Ledger.”

I didn’t say anything.

“No, really,” he said. “You’re a breath of fresh air. You’re a reality check. I ought to give you a consultant’s fee for quality control. Here we are thinking we’re the toughest, scariest sons of bitches in the world. You know, super-rich industrialist and his henchmen, right here in my own castle surrounded by a million dollars’ worth of security and my own private army, and you roll up in a fucking Ford Explorer, torture the shit out of me — well, okay, mind-fuck me — and make me give up the most important single document since the ten fucking commandments. You blow five of my guys to Swedish meatballs, and you punch the nuts off my fellow governor and my chief of security. This is all very important to know, considering what I have going on, and with the guests we have coming.” He chuckled. “But I got to tell you, Ledger, you are a lot of fun.”

“Give me a chance to catch my breath,” I said, “and I’ll be happy to entertain you some more.”

He pretended to think about it. “Nah. Attractive as that offer is. I think I’ll pass. What do you think, Mr. Bones?”

Bones had crawled to the low sofa and pulled his legs up to hide the stains on the front of his pants. “He’s a piece of shit. Kill him.”

“Burke? What about you?”

Burke had to clear his throat to find a voice that didn’t sound like the soprano section of the church choir. “I apologize for any deficiencies in the security. I’d like to thank Captain Ledger for all his help. I think making him eat his own dick is a start.”

“Yes,” hissed Bones.

“Jesus, you guys are brutal,” said Shelton. “But it’s an interesting thought. Let’s keep it on the table.”

“I should have cut your fingers off for real,” I said.

“Yeah, well, that’s why you’re who you are and why I’m who I am.”

I struggled to get to my knees, which was as far as they were going to give me.

“Tell me something, Shelton,” I said. “When you kept blubbering that they were going to kill you … who exactly are ‘they’?”

Howard laughed. “Nobody. Just screwing with your head.”

“You thought I was cutting your fingers off and you were screwing with me.”

He shrugged. “I was in the moment. And it worked, too. You bought it. You tried to bargain with me. Nice.”

I shook my head. “Shit.”

In his chair, Mr. Bones made a sound like a tiny, hysterical giggle.

“I wasn’t joking when I said that you helped us out. We shouldn’t be vulnerable here. And you should never have gotten your hands on the book.”

“I’m clever as all get-out,” I said. “Ought to have my own reality show. Joe Ledger Pisses You Off.”

“I’d watch it.”

“So, tell me, Howard — what the fuck are you doing? I mean. I get why you’re reverse-engineering flying saucers. Big bucks in patents for new technologies, and you get to feed shiny new toys to the military market. That’s a sustainable market, and I don’t really give much of a cold crap about it.”

He nodded. “It pays the light bill.”

“Sure. But I’m pretty sure you’re behind what’s been going on these last few weeks. The cyber-attacks…? That was misdirection, right? Hiding among other victims?”

“Sure.”

“Killing the staff at Wolf Trap?”

“Dual purpose,” he said. “That way I become the main victim, and poor me, everyone rushing to send me flowers and condolences. But we suspected there was a leak at Wolf Trap. Didn’t know who, so…”

“Sixty people to plug a leak?”

Howard smiled. “People don’t mean shit to me. Or, haven’t you figured that out yet?” He tapped his forehead. “I’m brilliant but most of what’s up here is a bag of cats.”

“Don’t bait him, Howard,” said Mr. Bones. “He’s crazier than you are.”

“Um,” I said, “not really looking forward to a contest on that point. Though being framed as a terrorist kind of rattled my marbles. That was you, too, right?”

“Don’t complain,” said Mr. Bones, “we made you a very rich man.”

“I’m public enemy number one.”

“You want us to apologize?” asked Mr. Bones. “Really, go ahead and kiss my ass.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. But what about the ship?” I said. “Big black triangle. That’s yours, right?”

“Kind of.”

“‘Kind of’?”

“We’re not the only ones with a T-craft.”

“But that was you buzzing the Seventh Fleet, right?”

“Nope. That was China out there making a point. And I think they made a pretty solid point. They used what we perceived was their state-of-the-art fighter, a J-22, to lure the American Hornets into a game of chicken, knowing that the Hornets would take them apart. But … the J-22 was the warm-up act and it exited stage right so the real star of the show could make an appearance.”

“The T-craft.”

“Yup. And it flew right through the heart of the fleet at Mach twenty. Ripped past them in a way that said You can’t catch me and you don’t have anything that can shoot me down. It was a damn bold statement and I bet it left skid marks in the drawers of everyone from admiral to mess hall cook. It told the fleet and our government that China just won the arms race.”

“Unless we also have a T-craft,” I said. “I mean, that’s what the Majestic Project is all about. It’s what you’ve been working on since the forties.”

“Well…,” Howard said, drawing it out. He stood up, holding the Black Book to his chest with the reverence of a priest holding a Bible. “Yes and no. You see, M3 has been working on this, ’round the clock, since Harry Truman cracked the whip. The three governors have overseen that project with great diligence and dedication. But … that’s not the only game in town. Mr. Bones and I, being two of the three current governors, think the M3 project has spent way too much time spinning its wheels. I mean, okay, we made an ungodly amount of money, but it began to occur to us that building a spaceship as a weapon of war was a damn poor way to win the arms race.”

I frowned. “But you just said that’s essentially what the Chinese just did?”

“Not exactly,” he said with a dark smile. “Bones, you want to show him?”

“Not really,” complained Bones, but he got up anyway, looked down at his soiled pants, glared acid lava death at me, and limped to the big curtained wall that formed one side of the room. He touched a button and the curtains whisked back. From where I sat on the floor all I could see through the revealed windows was the rocky ceiling of a cavern. I hadn’t realized how deep we’d gone. When Bones saw that I was still on the floor, he snapped, “Well, come on.”

Under the watchful eye of the guards, I climbed slowly my feet. The room took a sickening sideways lurch and I staggered toward the windows, catching myself on the sill. Then I forgot about bruises, an aching head, or a sick stomach.

Beyond the glass was a massive natural limestone cavern. Longer and wider than a football field. Maybe eight times that big. Dozens of technicians in white coveralls crawled all over the skin of a massive black triangular ship.

But even that wasn’t what kicked me solidly in the gut.

Beyond that ship squatted another. And beyond that, another. And more of them, filling the entire cavern.

Shelton and Mr. Bones had an entire fleet of T-craft.

“Surprise,” said Mr. Bones. “Now you know why we risked everything. Now you know why we couldn’t allow anything to get in our way. China launched the first T-craft. They threw down the gauntlet. This is going to be our response.”

I licked my lips. “You’re going to start a war with China?”

Shelton and Mr. Bones laughed.

“You’re a very small picture guy, Captain Ledger,” said Shelton as he came to stand with us by the window. “We have no interest in fighting a war with a nation of one-point-four billion people. That would be nuts. That would be suicide.”

“Then what…?”

Howard looked at his watch. “Our guests should be arriving in a few minutes. They probably have exactly the same thoughts about this that you do. Small thinking.”

He placed one palm flat on the glass as if he could touch the row of T-craft.

“We do not want to fight a war with China,” he said again, his voice softer now, almost distant. “Why fight a war when you can just simply win it. No, Captain Ledger, in a little over two hours we will blow the People’s Republic of China off the map.”

Chapter One Hundred Sixteen

Top Sims tapped his earbud. “Sergeant Rock to Cowboy, copy?”

It was the fifth time he’d repeated the call.

“Damn, Top,” whispered Bunny.

“Is Joe all right?” asked Junie. She knelt between the two soldiers, a small, pale figure in the night, bracketed by hulking shapes in black combat gear.

Top touched a finger to his lips and nodded as a car came rolling over the hill and stopped at the main gate. The guard waved him in. Top watched the car all the way to where it parked by the side of the castle. As the two passengers got out he handed the binoculars to Junie.

“New arrivals,” he said. “Do you recognize either of them?”

She looked — and gasped. “The driver, that’s Erasmus.”

Top nodded and tapped his earbud again. “Sergeant Rock to Deacon, do you copy?”

“Go for Deacon,” said Mr. Church, his voice as clear as if he was standing right there.

“Bookworm confirms visual on Erasmus Tull at Shelton Castle.”

Junie looked at him. “‘Bookworm’?” she echoed.

Bunny leaned close. “It was that or ‘Stargirl.’”

“God.”

Mr. Church said, “Sergeant Rock, I cannot impress upon you strongly enough how important it is for this sighting to be without question. How high is your confidence in the target?”

Junie said, “It’s him. There’s no doubt about it.”

There was the slightest of pauses. “Thank you,” said Mr. Church. “That information is our lifeline.”

Then there was a subtle change in the white noise on the line.

“This is the Deacon. I am alerting all stations and all commands. We have high confidence in our target. Echo Team go to full alert. Backup, put the pedal down. It’s carnival time.”

Bunny chuckled. “Hoo-fucking-ah.”

Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

“Oh my God…,” I breathed, “why?”

“Why destroy China?” Shelton slapped me on the shoulder. “Why end the rising threat that is China? Is that a serious question, Captain? Would you rather have them continue to cut our balls off by making us slaves to their money? Would you like to see us slip farther down the financial tower? China has become the number-one economy and they hold the mortgage to the United States. At the same time they steal ideas, they pirate everything that we have, they’ve built themselves into the number-one global superpower by exploiting our weakness. Our laziness. They have a working T-craft now. They can strike us any time they want. That bit of theater in the Taiwan Strait — that was a demonstration of their power. That was them telling us that the Seventh Fleet — the most powerful armada of ships this world has ever known — will no longer be the defining power in global politics. That was them telling us that the arms race is over, Captain Ledger, and they won.”

He got up in my face. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” I demanded. “You start a war with them?”

“No … like I said, this wouldn’t be a war. As of now ‘war’ is no longer a relevant term. It’s archaic, old world. No, what we’re going to do will be a single, decisive stroke that would result in total victory. They have one T-craft, Captain. Granted, it’s a true Device because they got lucky and found most of the right parts, and then begged, borrowed, and stole the rest. We tried to play that game and came up short. We had to build a synthesized engine, a Truman Engine. And here’s a funny thing — although the Chinese have a true Device, they haven’t cracked the synthesis process for making artificial components. That’s our science, and it’s our trump card. They can use that T-craft to threaten us, to do us great harm, but they need that ship. That one ship is their fleet. But … oh, Captain, we are not building a fleet of ships. We don’t want to get into dogfights or struggle for the supremacy of the skies. Or even of near space. Captain … M3 did not build the Truman Engines for that.”

Shelton touched a button on a control panel mounted into the sill. “T-six you are cleared for departure.”

The T-craft closest to the window suddenly pulsed with white light. It was like a throb, like the first dramatic beat of a heart. Arcs of electricity danced along its skin like white snakes.

“You see that?” asked Mr. Bones. “That’s what is supposed to happen when a Truman Engine fires properly. The energetic discharge is contained and channeled into all shipboard systems. No explosion.”

“It’s a pilot thing,” said Shelton, nodding. “The energy is regulated by the biomechanical matrix. Wicked science, and even though we built these things, we don’t understand where the energy burst comes from. Our other governor, Dr. Hoshino, thinks that the process of firing opens a dimensional gateway to a source of dark matter. She might be right, that part’s more her field than mine. All that matters to me is that Mr. Bones and I figured out how to harness that force. How to use it to fly the T-craft, and how to use these ships as the greatest weapons mankind has ever seen.”

The craft lifted without a tremble. There were no visible engines and none of the struggle against gravity you see with the vertical takeoff-and-landing jets. The craft simply moved upward in a dreadful silence. As it rose above the level of the windows I could see the three round lights near each point of the triangle and a larger central light. It pulsed again, and then the craft began moving away from us, flying over the other T-craft. Men in white jumpsuits cheered and waved at it. As if this was something to celebrate.

“Where’s it going?” I asked, though I already knew.

“China,” said Mr. Bones. “And it will be there right around the time our guests arrive.”

“Guests?”

“Generals and a few congressmen who were convinced that this would be a better use of their time than vying for photo ops in Baltimore.”

“Do they know what you intend to do?”

Shelton smiled. “Not yet.”

“Tell me why you’re doing this.”

“Sure. Sure, I’ll tell you ’cause I’ve read your file and I know that you’re an actual psycho killer, so you’ll appreciate this,” said Shelton.

The bastard was really enjoying this. He slapped both palms on the glass.

“What you see here, all these ships … these aren’t ships, Ledger. These aren’t our fleet. They’re our arsenal. They are bombs.”

“Bombs? You’re going to use these things to drop nukes?”

“Nukes?” laughed Shelton. “Shit, that’s another archaic concept. Nukes are messy. They’re as dangerous to the user as they are to the target. No, Ledger, think bigger. Think ‘clean energy’ as applied to warfare. You see, every single one of these T-craft can deliver a Truman Engine to any point on Earth at twenty times the speed of sound. And then I can remote detonate them by removing life support for the pilot. It’s easy enough. It’s a small sacrifice, but it works. Don’t believe me … ask the kamikaze. Ask the suicide bombers who strap on a vest. They know that the sacrifice of a single life can make a profound impact on the whole world. Now, magnify that by the power of the Truman Engine. If China wants to fight us, let them use their craft to blow up an aircraft carrier or shoot down a few fighter jets. It’s seven thousand miles from here to Beijing and any of these T-craft can be there in less than an hour. An airburst over Beijing will reduce the entire city to dust in a millisecond. Twenty million people will cease to exist that fast. Bang!” As he said that he slapped his palm flat against the cover of the Black Book.

“And they’ll launch every nuke they have right back at you.”

“Will they? Before they can hit the launch codes I’ll blow Shanghai into orbit. Twenty-five million people. Bang! Gone! Guangzhou? Thirteen million. Bang! Shenzen, Tainjin, Dongguan. Bang! Bang! Bang!” He kept slapping the cover of the Black Book. “With half a dozen ships — with only six pilots — we can burn away over one hundred and seventy million of our enemy’s people. How long do you think they will want to fight that war? And … even if they decide to throw away their own ship in a suicide run at us, they can take New York or Washington. But only one. It’ll hurt us, but we will be poised to strike back and the American people will demand that we do. In less than a day China will become a wasteland. I have forty completed Truman Engines. We have nineteen craft built, and thirty more in production. How many do you think we’ll really need to conquer all of our enemies? After China burns, do you think Russia will attack us? Or those bumblers in North Korea?”

“Those generals — your ‘guests’—they’ll stop you.”

“Not a chance,” said Mr. Bones. “We will be giving them a practical demonstration. Before any debate starts they’ll see the destruction of Beijing. It will be a fact of life, Captain Ledger. That page of history will have already been written. Which means they will have to decide what to do next.”

“Then our own allies will—”

“Will what, Captain?” laughed Shelton. “Name one country that will stand up and take a swing at us once they’ve seen what we can do. What they know we can do. Name one country with the balls to stand up to this fleet.”

“America,” I said.

He stared at me, half smiling, waiting for the punch line.

So I gave it to him.

I touched my earbud.

“Did you get all that?”

Mr. Church said, “Every word.”

His voice boomed from the speakers of Howard Shelton’s Ghost Box.

And then all the lights went out.

Chapter One Hundred Eighteen

“Did you get all that?” asked Joe Ledger, his voice mildly distorted by static.

“Every word,” answered Mr. Church. His voice was clear as a bell.

President William Collins glared at the open laptop on his desk. He felt the stares of the two men standing in front of his desk. Attorney General Mark Eppenfeld and Secret Service Director Linden Brierly.

Collins licked his lips.

“It could be faked,” he said. “Deacon and Ledger could be faking this whole thing.”

“Bill,” said Eppenfeld gently, “for god’s sake…”

Bill Collins got up and turned to the big windows. Few things were more beautiful than the Rose Garden seen by dawn’s light. The other men stood there, watching him, saying nothing.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Collins.

Chapter One Hundred Nineteen

Carpe diem.

Seize the day. Useful phrase. Didn’t really apply to the moment.

I seized the gun of the guard next to me.

I didn’t need lights to find him. I pivoted, whipped my hands out, found him, adjusted my angle so that I had one hand on the rifle and used the other to chop him across the throat. That’s a trick they teach to blind fighters or anyone fighting in the dark. If you can find any part of your enemy you can instantly estimate where the rest of him is. A body is a body, and we all know where the parts are.

I tore the gun out of his hands, dropped into a squat, and hosed the room.

In the muzzle flash I saw two guards spinning around, punched into a ragged dance by the rounds. I saw Bones hook an arm around Shelton and pull him down to the floor. I saw the Black Book fly from Shelton’s hands and go slithering across the floor. I saw Burke dive behind the couch.

Then the magazine was empty.

In the sudden darkness I moved, cutting low and left, crabbing toward one of the guards, but I misjudged my distance and couldn’t find them. I flung the empty rifle away and the instant it struck a wall there were three quick shots from Burke. The muzzle flashes gave me the snapshot of the room that I need.

I rolled right and slid in the blood of one of the dead guards, then crawled over him, feeling for rifle and magazines, praying I had time before the emergency lights came on.

The lights came on right then.

“There he is!” screeched Bones, and I saw Burke swing his barrel toward me. But at the same time one of the guards tried to lunge at me. Burke’s first round tore off the back of the man’s head. I dove under his body and rolled hard against the sofa, slamming it back against Burke. It caught him solidly in the thighs. His pistol dropped onto a cushion and then bounced on the floor. As I swung the rifle up, Burke threw himself over the back of the couch and tried to smash me flat. Bug’s warning about him echoed in my head. Burke was a cage fighter from a circuit where people actually died.

I’m actually fine with that.

I had some issues that I wanted to work out.

As Burke landed on me, he wrapped his thighs around my torso, parried my right arm with his left, and used that mounted position to try and punch my face into junk. This sort of thing works really well in cage fights where the other guy fights the same way. It works when you’re fighting the kind of martial artists who are really sportsmen — the board-breaking, tournament-trophy crowd — and it even works sometimes when they’re fighting a barroom brawler.

The reason you don’t see a lot of these guys get their asses handed to them is that the guys who study hand-to-hand combat as combat tend to use their skills to kill people. They don’t compete and they don’t need to prop up their egos by winning trophies. In real combat, when bullets are flying and people are dying, you don’t see the real fighters try to wrestle their opponents down into a floor pin.

Here’s why.

I swept my elbow into the path of his punch. Not as a block — I hit his fist with my elbow. Big elbow bones trump much smaller hand bones every time. His fist exploded. Then I reached my right hand up, hooked two fingers in his mouth between teeth and cheek, and tore the front of his face off. Before he could even scream, I shot my hips up and twisted, toppling him hard and fast. I rose up ten inches and then dropped elbow-first into his nuts. To do that right, you aim past the balls and try to break the pelvic bones. Which I did.

As I rose I ran over his body and stepped down hard on his throat.

Combat isn’t a fucking sport.

I turned to find Shelton and Bones, but I caught only a glimpse of them, flanked by the remaining guards, scurrying through an emergency door. Shelton had the damn Black Book in his hand. I snatched up Burke’s gun and began firing as I ran. I thought I heard a single scream of pain as the door slammed shut.

Tried the handle. Tried to kick it. Even tried to shoot it. The door stayed shut.

Ivan started yelling in my earbud.

“Hellboy to Cowboy, Hellboy to Cowboy, you will not believe what just flew past me.”

“What’s the status on the craft?”

“Tried to take it down with an RPG but no joy. T-craft took off heading west like a bat out of hell.”

Another voice cut in. “Deacon for Cowboy. Fighter squadrons have been scrambled from here to the Taiwan Strait. All planes have been ordered to destroy that craft.”

“Good luck. Any of them firing missiles that can match Mach twenty speed?”

“No. The Air Force hopes to intercept the T-craft in a head-on encounter.”

“Definitely good luck. I hope someone’s on the phone to Beijing.”

“That call is being made,” said Church. “What is the status of the Black Book?”

“Shelton has it. I need to get out of this damn room so I can get it back.”

“Bug has your transponder signal. Prankster and Warbride are on the way to your twenty.”

“Already here,” cut in Lydia. “We’re outside looking at an airlock.”

“You bring party favors, Warbride?” I asked.

“Finest kind, Cowboy. You got any cover?”

“Give me ten seconds.”

I shoved the couch and heavy leather chair into a corner and dove behind it, then curled into as compact a ball as I could manage. “Go!”

The airlock door weighed somewhere around four tons, but Dr. Hu’s lab provides us with some interesting goodies. Each member of Echo Team carries two large self-adhesive explosive charges called “blaster-plasters.” I don’t know the chemistry, but cutting off a two-inch square will blast a deadbolt lock out of a solid oak door with sufficient explosive force to drive it like a nail into the first interior wall it hits. I’m pretty sure Lydia used all four of the heavy-grade blaster-plasters she and Prankster were carrying.

“Fire in the hole!” she bellowed.

The airlock muffled most of the bang on my side, but the whole frame around the airlock leapt heavily into the room, struck the floor with a resounding karang, pirouetted once and fell right on top of Burke’s corpse. The shock slammed the couch backward and nearly flattened me against the wall, and blew the heavy-grade windows out of the observation room and into the big cavern below.

I peered over the edge of the couch and saw the red lines of laser sights cutting back and forth as two black-clad figures moved in, Colt M4A1 carbines held high and tight, heads bent, elbows out.

“Echo! Echo!” I yelled. “Cowboy on your eleven o’clock.”

“Come out,” said Lydia.

I rose from my hiding place and pointed at the door Shelton had used. “Open that door.”

“Last plaster,” said Prankster as he knelt by the lock, stripped the plastic off of the adhesive and pressed it into place. While he did that I took weapons and ammunition from the dead guards. We ducked into the hall and Prankster triggered the blast.

The last plaster was more than enough. The explosion destroyed the lock and the door swung wide, revealing a stone corridor that was splashed with blood.

“You hit somebody, Cowboy.”

We ran into the passage and followed it around a curve and down multiple sets of zigzag stone steps. It was clear that we were heading to the cavern. The blood was steady and heavy. Either one person had taken a bad one and was going to bleed out soon, or I’d hit a couple of targets.

When we rounded the curve we found out which.

Mr. Bones sat in the corridor, his back to the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. He had a pistol in one hand and as we slowed to a cautious walk he tried to raise it. Not at us. He tried to eat the barrel. Prankster reached him in two long strides and kicked the gun out of his hand.

I touched Warbride and pointed down the hall. “Check the tunnel.”

She and Prankster moved off, leaving me with the dying governor.

I squatted down and he raised glassy eyes toward me. He was past the point of fear. All he had left was pain and despair.

He tried to smile. His teeth were slick with blood and spit.

“You … can’t stop … us…,” he said, wheezing out the words, using up what was left of him to try and turn a dial on me.

“Yeah? What does it matter to you? You’re dead. And here’s a news flash for you, sparky, no matter what happens, no matter how all this plays out, no matter what becomes of everything you and all the other members of the Majestic Project have spent your lives to accomplish … you’re not going to be there to see any of it. You’ll never know. That must suck.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said in a way that clearly meant that it did.

I stood up. His eyes followed me, looking from the gun in my hand to my eyes and back again.

“Go on … end it.”

I smiled.

“Fuck you,” I said. “Lay there and bleed.”

I ran to find my team.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty

I rounded the next bend and saw Warbride and Prankster hunkered down by the entrance to the cavern. As I moved up behind them I could see that things were going into the crapper very quickly.

Hatches on all of the T-craft were open and pilots in orange jumpsuits were climbing up as techs disconnected hoses and cables. I wondered how many of the pilots knew that they were flying suicide missions. Not many, I guessed. Easier to fool people than to try and manage a large number of highly intelligent, highly trained pilots who had to go kill themselves. The kamikaze had Shinto going for them. I didn’t see Shelton as a spiritual leader who could make realistic promises about a glorious afterlife.

I tapped my earbud.

“Cowboy to Deacon.”

“Go for Deacon.”

“Where are we with stopping that T-craft.”

“Nowhere. It has eluded all attempts so far.”

“Well, here’s more bad news. I’m looking at a fleet of these frigging things that are going to be lifting off in the next few minutes. We need a play here.”

“Open to suggestions, Cowboy. I’m off-site.”

I opened the call to the whole team. “Who has eyes on the exit from this cavern? Did anyone see the first one launch?”

“Ronin to Cowboy,” said Sam Imura. “It came out from behind the second hill north of the castle, call it four o’clock using the castle. It’s private forestland back there.”

“Shit. I need that hole closed and I need it closed right now.”

There were three seconds of agonizing silence on the line. Then Bunny said, “Cowboy, Sergeant Rock and I can get over there, but all we have are blaster-plasters. They’ll have to be rigged high in order to block an entrance that big. That’s going to take time.”

“We don’t have time,” I said.

It was Top who answered. “Buy us what you can.”

I looked at Lydia and Pete. The hard looks on their faces gave me an answer before I asked the question.

“Copy that, Sergeant Rock. Warbride, Prankster, and I will make as much mischief as we can.”

“Good hunting,” said Top.

I knew that Bunny would have wanted to say something to Lydia, and she to him, but there was no time left. No privacy left. All that was left to us was the killing and the dying.

Somewhere out there was a sleek, dark craft that had no business being in the skies of our world. An impossible machine flying at impossible speeds to fulfill the dark dreams of a greedy and murderous madman. Would our fighters knock it down? Could they?

And if they didn’t, what would happen to the world?

If the Truman Engine detonated over Beijing, how could we ever convince a shocked and grieving Chinese people that this was not an act of war? How could they ever hear our explanations through the roar of their own hurt and outrage? They would attack us because that is what countries do. We are a warlike people, but beneath the technology and the machines and the sophistication of our weapons we have that primitive imperative to lash out when struck. To hit back, even if our blows land on the wrong flesh.

Shelton thought that this would lead to the end of war, to a kind of peace through conquest. And how wonderful it would be to live in a world where we could lay down our arms and never again fire a shot in anger. How idyllic.

The price tag was the thing, though. If the deaths of tens of millions was the cost of a future without war, how could we actually call that peace?

These thoughts hammered in my head as Lydia Ruiz, Pete Dobbs, and I prepared to rush into the cavern.

And a twisted little voice whispered to me as I checked my ammunition and adjusted my gear. It said, If the bomb goes off over Beijing and the Chinese retaliate, won’t we need these other ships? Even if it’s a war we don’t choose to start, how can justify taking away our best hope of surviving the inevitable retaliation?

Man … those were ugly, ugly questions.

Questions for which I had no answers.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-one

President William Collins sat at the head of the table, with the Joint Chiefs on his right, the national security advisor and chief of staff on his left. On a large OLED screen, a real-time satellite showed a white dot moving at incredible speeds toward the Pacific Ocean. The satellite tracked scores of other dots, some in front of the fast one, some behind, all of them moving many times slower.

“It reached Mach sixteen over Ohio,” said General Croft. “We’re currently clocking it at Mach nineteen point four.”

“What are our options for shooting it down?” demanded Collins. Hands were clutched together on the tabletop, fidgeting like frightened mice.

The generals and admirals and secretaries looked at each other and away.

“Come on, what are our options?”

“Mr. President,” said Croft, “we don’t have anything that can catch it.”

“We have prototypes, we have experimental ships that go that fast.”

“None of them are in the air, sir. None of them have successfully cleared the test phase.”

“I don’t care,” Collins exploded. “Get them in the air.”

“They aren’t armed yet, sir. It would take a few weeks to—”

“Then what the hell do we do?”

“Mr. President,” said Admiral James, “everything that has wings and a gun is in the air. We’ve got seventy jets converging on it from three points and we’ll fill the air with missiles and rockets.”

“Good,” said Collins, jumping on that, clutching the thread of hope it offered. “When? How soon before they shoot it down?”

“Six minutes until contact.” James paused. “Mr. President, at this speed we’re going to get one shot. Just one.”

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-two

“What’s the game plan, jefe?” asked Warbride.

“It’s real simple,” I said. “Kill anything in a jumpsuit. Put a bullet in anything that looks like a computer. Don’t die.”

“Hell,” said Prankster, “even I can remember that.”

I held up my fist. They bumped it.

Corny, I know. Juvenile, sure.

If you’re one second away from running into hell — actual hell — you can do whatever you damn well please.

We turned, set, closed everything out but the mission.

“Go,” I snapped.

We burst from the hallway and split, Warbride went wide and left, Prankster cut right and I ran dead up the middle, all of us firing, firing, firing.

Rounds hammered into pilots and technicians, into Blue Diamond guards and machines. People screamed, men and women.

We did not discriminate, we didn’t pick targets. We killed everyone we saw. It was butchery.

Men fell from ladders that were hooked onto the sides of T-craft. Men sprawled over computer consoles, their blood soaking into the machines and shorting them out. Men toppled screaming from catwalks.

Return fire was confused. There were so many techs, so much valuable equipment that the Blue Diamond guards had to pick and choose their targets. We did not.

Prankster paused under a T-craft, plucked a grenade from his vest, pulled the pin and hurled it high overhead. It hit the top of the machine and exploded. If that did any damage, I couldn’t see it.

“The struts,” I yelled, hoping he could hear me through the din.

A moment later I saw a grenade go rolling and bouncing beneath the same T-craft. It rolled to a stop at the base of one of the steel struts. The blast bent the strut inward at a forty-five-degree angle.

That was enough. It was too much for the ponderous weight of the massive vehicle. The black ship canted toward its crippled leg and in its fall smashed a whole row of important-looking computers.

Then I saw Shelton. He was surrounded by a cadre of guards, two of whom had to help him limp along. I must have clipped him when I’d shot Mr. Bones. They were hustling toward a big industrial elevator. I broke into a run. I don’t think I’ve ever run that fast in my life, firing the weapon I’d taken from a dead guard. Emptying one magazine from a hundred feet away, dropping two of the guards. Hitting Shelton at least once in the arm. I dropped the magazine and swapped in a fresh one, fired, fired.

As the elevator doors shut.

I sprayed the narrowing gap, throwing as much death as I could into the metal box.

It closed.

There was a second elevator waiting right there. Give chase or stay with my team.

I tapped my earbud. “Warbride, Prankster, Shelton’s in the freight elevator.”

“Go get the fucker,” screamed Warbride. “We got this.”

It was the only choice I could make. I dove into the elevator. There were three buttons.

GARAGE

HOUSE

HELIPAD

I knew where Shelton was going and stabbed the top button. As the doors swung shut I looked out at the carnage. Two of the best and the bravest against a cavern full of people.

As the door closed I saw something that absolutely horrified me. Two of the T-craft suddenly pulsed with brilliant white light. Truman Engines were firing. Some of the craft were going to escape.

The world was going to burn.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-three

President Collins leaned forward, hands balled into fists, as the phalanx of slow dots moved toward the single light that tore across the Pacific. Suddenly the screen was littered with hundreds of smaller lights that erupted from the oncoming jets.

“All missiles have been fired,” said Admiral James. “Ten seconds to impact.”

The missiles flew in a converging line, like a net being drawn tight around a fish.

“Come on, come on,” breathed Collins. The room crackled with tension.

And then the white dot changed direction. It was a shockingly fast eighty-degree turn. The direction and altitude meter for the craft ripped through a new sequence of numbers.

“It’s turning,” cried James. “God, it’s climbing.”

“It’s accelerating,” said General Croft.

The T-craft shot over the line of missiles at Mach 23.6.

The missiles still flew toward where it was.

But it wasn’t there anymore.

Every second it was closer to China.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-four

Yeah, there’s nothing like a slow elevator ride in the middle of a wild and crazy firefight. Very relaxing. The frigging thing lumbered upward. Should have been playing some silly damn piece of music. “The Girl from Ipanema.”

I reloaded and took up a defensive position to one side of the door in case they ambushed me.

The doors opened.

They ambushed me.

Two shooters opened up with automatic weapons from ten feet.

Didn’t do them much good though, because as soon as there was a crack in the door I lobbed out a fragmentation grenade. Maybe they were too sure they had me. Maybe they didn’t see the grenade fly out as I dove to the corner. Didn’t matter. They capped off about a third of a magazine each before the grenade blew them apart.

I ran over the pieces.

I expected the helipad to be on the roof, but it wasn’t. We were on a flat pad to the east side of the castle. All the fighting seemed to be on the other side of the building.

Damn.

I opened up with the machine gun, dodging out and left in the smoke. I caught a third guard across the thighs and he fell, his weapon punching rounds into the asphalt on the helicopter deck.

I saw six men trying to squeeze into a business helicopter built for five. I helped with the problem by firing into the crowd. Shelton shoved one man straight into the path of the bullets and the man danced backed and knocked his boss into the chopper.

“Kill him,” shrieked Shelton. There was blood on his face and he held one arm tight across his belly. I realized the man next to him was Sullivan, the guard from the front gate.

They were trying to fight while trying to climb into the helicopter. All I wanted to do was kill them.

In combat, sometimes it’s about the choices you make.

I emptied the magazine into them. Dropped the rifle, pulled a block, fired and fired.

From over the edge of the roof I heard a lot of gunfire. More of it over the mike, inside the house. Lot of people were dying. In all the confusion I thought — just for a moment — that I heard a dog barking. Was it the Dobermans or was it Ghost? Was my dog even alive? Was any of my team still alive?

My slide locked back and I reached for a fresh magazine.

Which I did not have. All I had left was one grenade, but Sullivan and the remaining guards opened up on me. I threw myself into a dive roll and came up behind the housing of a huge air-conditioning unit. Bullets whanged and pinged off its skin, but the internal workings blocked any penetrating shots. I pulled the pin on the grenade, said a prayer to Saint Jude and tossed it.

He’s the saint of lost causes. I figured, what the hell?

The grenade exploded in the air. Someone screamed.

I peered around the corner and saw the last guard down with no face, and Sullivan sitting on his ass trying to hold the outside of his head on. He looked at me with an expression of profound confusion, as if there was no way on earth that something like this could possibly happen to him.

And then he fell over.

I came out from behind the air conditioner. I had no bullets and no grenades, but nobody seemed to be moving. Only the helo’s rotors were moving, spinning with desultory slowness. Whup, whup, whup.

I ran low and fast to the machine, bending on the way to scoop up Sullivan’s fallen pistol. I peered inside the bird. The pilot was slumped over, his face full of shrapnel.

Howard Shelton was curled into a ball. With one bloody hand he clutched the Majestic Black Book to his chest. There were red bullet holes above and below the book.

I took it away from him.

He stared at me with eyes that were filled with such pure hatred that I felt my skin grow hot. I tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Deacon, Cowboy to Deacon.”

“Go for Deacon.”

“I have the package. Repeat, I have the package. Transmit the message, we have the Majestic Black Book.”

“Thank you, Captain.” He disconnected to make perhaps the most important radio message in history.

Would they be listening?

Was it too late for that to even matter?

I had few illusions about it. The T-craft was going to be in China soon. We were almost out of time.

“Damn you,” whispered Shelton. I turned to him.

He had a little.25 belly gun in the same hand that had held the book just a moment before. It wobbled in his grip. Tears of sweat ran down his face. His skin was gray.

“Shelton, listen to me,” I said. “There’s still time to climb down off this ledge. Tell me what I need to know to recall that ship.”

He gave a single slow shake of his head. When he tried to speak he blew a big pink bubble that burst and dottled his face with tiny red dots.

“We can work something out,” I said. “We can step back from the brink. You don’t have to do this. This isn’t how you save America.”

His face contorted. I thought he was trying to smile, but his mangled lips curled into a sneer of total contempt.

“Fuck America,” he said.

And the son of a bitch shot me.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-five

On the screen, the T-craft flew over the North Pacific Ocean at Mach 25. It flew straight along the Tropic of Cancer and then at Marcus Island changed course on a flight path that would take it directly over the city of Hiroshima on its way to mainland China. It would pass over Pusan in South Korea, fly above the Yellow Sea, and hit the mainland at Dalian.

President Collins and his executives sat in stunned silence as they watched doomsday approach. No one said a word. Everything had already been said. Everything had already been done.

Now all that was left was to watch the horror unfold.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-six

Junie Flynn crouched behind a tree and watched hell unfold before her.

Top and Bunny had left her there because the fight on the grounds was going south. Blue Diamond guards were everywhere. Murderous Dobermans raced along inside the fence, hunting for Ivan and Sam.

From this distance, even with the binoculars Top had left her, she couldn’t make out who was who.

The air flashed and popped with gunfire as the Blue Diamond men tried to hunt down the kill team on the grounds. And somewhere down there was Erasmus Tull.

A hybrid, like her.

A monster.

She listened through the din, trying to make sense of it all. Listening for Joe.

He was such a strange man. Incredibly savage and yet capable of more tenderness that any man she’d ever been with. She could recall everything about last night. The heat of that first kiss. The way his hands had been as he undressed her — urgent and yet never rough, never a sense of taking. She remembered the lean hardness of his body. The many scars, old and new. The sensation of oneness as he entered her. His muffled cry as he buried his face against her throat as he came.

“Joe,” she whispered to the night, then immediately clamped a hand over her mouth.

God, was the microphone on?

There was movement over to the left, far away from all the action. Junie raised the binoculars and focused them, saw a helicopter and several men. Then flash after flash as they fired at each other.

And there he was.

Joe.

She saw him throw a grenade, and that seemed to end the fight. Then he leaned in through the open door of the helicopter.

A few seconds later there was a single flash and Joe staggered backward, reeling awkwardly, turning, dropping.

She screamed his name, and before she knew what she was doing, Junie Flynn was up and running. The binoculars in one hand, a microwave pistol in the other.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-seven

I staggered back, my chest on fire. I heard another pop and another as Shelton continued to fire at me. A second round punched me in the gut. A third hit somewhere near my hip and spun me half around. His aim sucked, but I’d made it easy for him with that first shot. I’d leaned right into the helicopter.

I reeled away from him, hiding behind the front end of the chopper as he squeezed off shot after shot.

The microfiber Kevlar I had on kept those bullets from killing me, but the foot-pounds of impact, even from a small-caliber gun, smashed me. When I took a breath, two ends of a broken rib grated together in an internal shriek of white hot agony. I clamped a hand to my mouth to stifle a scream — and tasted blood.

I stared at my hand, at my arm. And down at my chest.

The Kevlar was completely intact. But there was a neat round hole one inch to the right of the arm hole. As I lifted the arm I could feel the wrongness of torn muscle and shredded flesh. Suddenly my legs buckled and I dropped to my knees. Somehow I kept hold of the pistol, but I felt like the effort of lifting it was going to take more than I had to spend.

Shit.

“Did I kill you, you son of a bitch?” yelled Shelton.

“No,” I growled back, “but thanks for trying, ass-hat.”

He actually laughed.

Weirdly, so did I.

I wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t killed me. With each breath my lungs felt worse, wrong. Wet.

“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Shelton,” said a voice behind me. “I’ll be happy to take care of this piece of shit.”

I turned slowly. Turning fast wasn’t happening. The bullet had gone in but it hadn’t come out. Low-caliber round, must have hit bone and taken a detour deeper into my chest cavity.

Two men stood by a gate that led from the helipad to a parking area. One was tall and broad and very Italian. The other looked a little like me. Big, ropy muscles, blond hair and blue eyes. His hair was curly, though.

I sagged down, dropping my butt onto my heels, fighting my body’s desire to simply collapse.

They towered over me. Both of them held guns, barrels pointed casually down at their sides. Both of them were smiling. This was going to be easy for them and they knew it.

I looked up at Blondie.

“Erasmus Tull?” I asked.

“Yeah. Ledger?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

I sighed. “I figured.”

“You have a lot of friends at the Warehouse?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded.

“Time to join—”

I shot him in the face.

Hey, fuck it.

Tull stayed on his feet for one full second, his eyes wide with astonishment. Then he fell backward in a boneless sprawl. Maybe I didn’t have dysentery like Harrison Ford, but seeing Tull definitely made me sick to my stomach. I figured Indiana Jones would be proud.

Tull’s friend yelled in shock, his face splashed with blood. He brought his gun up.

I could have taken him, too. In that moment of astonishment.

Except after that single shot the slide locked back on Sullivan’s gun.

The Italian guy raised his piece. He was screaming something. But I wasn’t tracking very well. The empty gun toppled from my hand.

And then the Italian exploded.

As an after echo I heard a single dry tok!

It was all very messy and immediate and for a moment the air was stained with a lingering pink mist. But as it cleared I saw Junie Flynn standing there, legs wide, both hands wrapped around a microwave pulse pistol.

“Junie,” I said.

She rushed through the gate and ran right to me and damn near bowled me over, but when she saw the blood she skidded to a stop and fell to her knees in front of me.

“Joe, oh my god, Joe … you’ve been shot.”

Her hands were everywhere, probing, touching. She pulled her sweater off and gently stuffed it inside my vest and pushed my arm down to hold it in place.

In my earbud I heard Mr. Church. “Cowboy — give me a sit-rep. Is the package still in hand?”

The package lay on the ground, covered in blood. I used my good hand to pick it up. There was a bullet drilled three quarters of the way through it. I remembered the shot that had hit my hip.

“Confirmed,” I said. “The package is in hand.”

Then I remembered the cavern.

“Listen to me, Deacon, that cavern is still open and they’re firing up the T-craft. You have to—”

“Captain,” interrupted Church, “I am channeling in a visitor.”

“Who am I on the line with?” I demanded.

There was a burst of squelch, then an unfamiliar voice said, “Captain Andrew Murray, sir, Pennsylvania Air National Guard. Requesting permission to join the party.”

Junie’s grave face blossomed into a smile.

“I hope you brought more to this pig roast than a beer bong, Captain.”

“If you have any use for a six-pack of A-10 Thunderbolts, then we’re forty miles out, coming hard, locked and loaded.”

I had to laugh. “Guess we ain’t the left-handed stepchildren no more.”

“We are acting on orders of the commander-in-chief,” said Murray.

“Captain,” I said. “There is a cavern opening on the north side of this property.” I gave the coordinates to Murray. “If anything—any craft of any kind — gets out of that cavern we are going to be at war with China before lunchtime. That is not a joke. Confirm.”

“Advise on location of your personnel, Cowboy.”

I thought of Warbride and Prankster. One old friend, one new. Both family, born as children of war.

My heart wanted to break.

“There’s no time left on the shot clock, Captain,” I said. “Pull the trigger.”

“Understood, Cowboy. Go with God and let the devil take the rest.”

Then I tapped my earbud. “Warbride, Prankster … Evac now. Repeat — evac now!”

There was no answer.

Junie touched my face. “Joe,” she said.

And then the sky was full of missiles and fire rained from heaven.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-eight

The white dot — so puny and absurd a representation of what it was — crossed over into Chinese airspace.

Bill Collins got up from his seat and walked down the row of generals and officials until he stood in front of the screen. His face was a mask of shock.

He had been president for just over twenty-four hours.

If there was a country left after this was all over, he would be remembered as the president who could not stop an unwinnable war from killing millions. He would be reviled. The captain of the ship always takes the blame.

Distantly, vaguely, he wondered how this all might have played out if he hadn’t done everything he could to remove the DMS and cripple their power. Even now reports were coming in from a terrible firefight in Pennsylvania. Collins had reluctantly agreed — in light of Shelton’s confession — to send air support to Ledger’s assault on VanMeer Castle. A second, small screen showed the impact of missiles from six fighters. It was too soon to tell if any more of the T-craft had escaped.

“The message about the Black Book,” he said, “was it sent?”

The question was not directed to anyone in particular.

A second white dot appeared on the screen. Collins knew from Mr. Church’s intelligence that this was probably China’s T-craft, scrambled to confront the enemy. The Chinese craft was on the far side of the country, though. It could never intercept Shelton’s craft in time.

On the screen the white dot was one second away from Beijing.

“God help us all,” Collins said, but for a moment he thought he saw a third white dot. One that blipped in out of nowhere right beside Shelton’s craft.

Then there was a huge white burst on the screen. Intensely white, too bright to look at.

Collins shielded his eyes with his hand for a moment. He cried out like a terrified child.

Silence.

When Collins dared to open his eyes he saw that only one white dot was still there. The other one — or perhaps two — were gone. The last dot had stopped, though, and it hovered directly over Beijing.

And, against all sense, Beijing itself was still there.

Then the dot began moving. It headed out to sea. And then the altimeter began rolling madly, insisting that the craft was moving upward.

Upward.

Upward.

Until it passed within miles of the satellite tracking it and passed beyond its observational range.

Everyone at the table stared in total, stunned silence.

Then a voice behind him said, “The message was sent and received, Bill.”

Collins whirled around. Everyone turned.

A man sat at the head of the table. In Collins’s seat. In the seat reserved for the president.

Collins’s mouth worked and worked.

And then he screamed.

The man at the head of the table leaned forward wearily. He looked worn and thin. His color was bad. But he smiled.

“Gentlemen, the message was received,” said the president of the United States.