Predator One

Chapter Eighty-five

Toys felt as if he’d lost any contact with the real world.

He’d been at the hospital for a full day, and so far, except for that one call with Mr. Church, he felt as if the full sum of his usefulness was a few ticks below zero.

He sat on the floor outside Circe’s room. The massive dog, Banshee, lay on the other side of the wall. Inside the room. Junie was in there, too. Everyone else was outside in the hall. Lydia was pacing incessantly up and down a twelve-foot line in front of Circe’s door, her booted feet making soft sounds as she passed within inches of where Toys sat.

Toys closed his eyes, unwilling to endure the vile looks the DMS agent threw him on every turn. He went into his head and thought about the wild stories Hugo Vox had told him about Nicodemus. Impossible stories. Mythical fantasies and outright horror stories. All of which Hugo swore were true. Since he’d heard Rudy Sanchez speak the name of the monstrous little priest, Toys had felt as if the world was cracking and falling apart around him.

Toys had even seen the little priest at Hugo’s estate in Iran, though he had begged off from an actual introduction. He’d heard too many tales about how those introductions often went. Nicodemus liked to make a lasting impression on a person. Some people never quite recovered from those encounters. There were rumors of at least two suicides directly following private meetings. In those days following the fall of the Kings, when Hugo and Toys lived in Iran, Toys had begun his downward slide into regret, shame, and self-hatred. Even at his worst, though, he was too clever to risk an encounter with someone for whom the word “chaos” seemed to have been deliberately invented. The priest was a trickster. A monster in every sense that Toys could imagine. And Toys was not entirely sure he was human.

So, no, he had chosen not to shake the man’s hand or stand in his company.

Even now, with nothing more than the sound of his name on the air, Toys felt filthy, diseased, leprous — as if that name could taint the hearer.

Toys suddenly felt something, and it pulled him out of his terrified musings. It was more of a sensation rather than a noise. It was a something. A feeling, or an awareness. He straightened and looked around and immediately understood what it was.

A disturbance in the bloody Force, he mused, getting to his feet.

A big man came out of the elevator, flanked by soldiers with weapons in their hands and grim faces. The big man carried no obvious weapon and wore a dark suit of the best quality. His face was equally grim, though. His eyes were hidden behind the lenses of tinted glasses.

Mr. Church.

Behind him was an even bigger man. Brick. When Toys encountered Brick in the past, he’d tried — and failed — to strike up casual conversation.

Toys scrambled to his feet but stayed where he was, uncertain what to do.

As he approached, Church glanced at Rudy Sanchez’s room and nodded to the soldier who stood by the door but walked directly toward Circe’s room. Junie came out to meet him, and she gave him a powerful hug that the big man — after only a slight hesitation — returned. Then he gently pushed her to arm’s length and looked past her to where Toys stood.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. There was no reproach, no accusation, no hostility. But there was also no room to sidestep or evade the question, even if Toys had wanted to.

“I came to talk to Junie, and stuck around after things started happening.”

“He’s been keeping me company and—” began Junie, but Church cut her off.

“Has he been in here alone at any point?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Toys. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

Church’s mouth was a hard, unsmiling line. “If I thought I should worry about you, Mr. Chismer, you would not be here.”

From the way he said it, Toys chose to take it as a threat to his general existence rather than merely to his being present at the hospital. He nodded, accepting any meaning Church wanted to imply.

“Toys is a friend,” said Junie, shifting her body as if wanting to put herself between the young Brit and the head of the DMS.

There was a movement, and they all turned to see Banshee come and stand in the doorway. The massive dog looked at Church.

“Violin brought her,” said Junie. “She wanted to stay but couldn’t. She left Banshee here for Circe.”

“I know,” Church told her. He walked toward the dog, which held her ground and watched him. Church stopped and held out his hand to be sniffed. Banshee paused for a moment and then took his scent. Then Church bent close to the dog and spoke rapidly but softly to it in a language Toys did not recognize. The dog licked his hand, turned, and went back into the room. Everyone stared at her and then slowly shifted their eyes to Church. To Junie, Church said, “I’ll be a few minutes.”

Church entered the room, closed the door, and drew the heavy curtains.

Chapter Eighty-six

Doctor Aaron Davidovich opened his bedroom door and walked into the hall. There was a guard stationed ten feet away, and he turned toward the scientist with crisp military precision and natural suspicion.

“Sir,” he said, “may I help you?”

Davidovich smiled. “I want to take a walk. Get some air. Am I allowed?”

The guard hesitated, and Davidovich watched several emotions flicker on the man’s hard face. Davidovich was sure he could catalog them. He was sure that the man had been given what would feel like conflicting orders. Until today, Davidovich had been a prisoner; after all, he’d been brought to the island with a black bag over his head. This guard might even have been part of the escort detail. At first Davidovich had been locked in his room with strict orders to stay there. The guards would know about that restriction. Then were was Pharos’s big speech about how Davidovich was now part of the family. An equal. Blah, blah, blah. All bullshit. Manipulative and clumsy. The guards would know some of that, too. Being allowed to spend so much time in the bathroom before had been a test of the supposed tolerance and freedom. Everyone would know that. Pharos, the Gentleman, all the guards.

Exactly as they should have.

Just as Pharos would probably expect Davidovich to further test that freedom in some way. A stroll around the building would be one predictable way. A stroll on the grounds would be another.

How would the guard react? How were the orders phrased?

The guard took a step back, thereby increasing the subjective control that a guard would have over a prisoner.

“Of course, sir.”

“So,” pushed Davidovich, “I’m allowed to go outside?”

The little muscles at the corners of the guard’s face tightened, but otherwise his face showed exactly zero emotion. It was a very “soldierly” thing for him to do.

“Absolutely, sir,” said the guard.

Davidovich smiled, but he exhaled, too. To show relief. Everything here was theater, so he felt it important to run with that. To play his role.

“Which way is it?” asked Davidovich. “Can’t seem to remember the way.”

He laughed as he said that. Reminding the guard about the black hood. Making a joke of it. Sharing the joke.

There was the slightest flicker on the guard’s lips. “Let me show you.”

No “sir” this time. A more human response.

Good, thought Davidovich coldly. That will make it easier.

The guard led him to a closed door, unlocked it with a keycard, pushed it open, and held it for him. There was a set of stairs, and the guard followed him up, through another door, along a corridor that looked identical to the one downstairs, and then out into the humid, misty day.

The sound was covered by a writhing layer of mist that flowed like pale snakes under a thin blanket. High above them, pelicans glided in formation. Boats swung at anchor across the water, and, far out toward the horizon line, an oil tanker lumbered its relentless way from Alaska to some port in California.

Davidovich did not know which island he was on, but during the trip he’d overheard enough bits and pieces to know they were in Washington State and that this was very likely Puget Sound. Collecting disparate data and assembling them into cohesive information were nothing to him. And since being in captivity, his survival depended on observing and assessing every fragment of data. About everything.

Every single thing.

There was a wide wooden porch with a slat rail built completely around the hotel. It was painted a rather bland tan color. Artless. Darker brown benches were bolted to the deck against the wall at regular intervals. Beyond the rail the terrain varied. In some spots there were lush flowerbeds, in others patches of neatly mowed grass. They passed another guard, who stood watch at the entrance to a finger pier. Davidovich nodded to him. The sentry didn’t even look at him but instead cocked an eyebrow at Davidovich’s guard.

“Taking a walk, Max,” said the guard.

The sentry responded with a single curt nod.

They walked on. In a few places, the rail overlooked stretches of a rock shoreline, where boulders were continually splashed with foamy seawater. Crabs scuttled over them. The rocks were patterned with overlapping splashes of new and old gull droppings.

“Can we go down to the water?” asked Davidovich. “God, it’s been so long since I smelled the ocean.”

From the guard’s expression, he clearly wanted to say no. His smile was entirely plastic. “Sure. But you have to be careful.”

“Oh, I’m not going in,” laughed Davidovich.

There was a latched waist-high gate nearby, and Davidovich waited while the guard opened it. The scientist nodded thanks as he stepped through and then followed a short, winding path down to the soft, muddy sand. Davidovich stood for a moment and took several long, deep breaths of sea air.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, grinning.

The guard nodded. “I guess.”

Davidovich squatted down. “Oh, look. Those stones look just like dinosaur eggs.”

The beach was strewn with many fist-sized black and charcoal-gray rocks that had been polished to smoothness by ten million waves as they rolled and tumbled through the Pacific. Davidovich picked up a couple of them and studied the pores and curves.

“They really do look like eggs,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

“I guess,” repeated the guard. The man was already deeply bored.

“You know,” said Davidovich, “I almost went into paleontology. Loved dinosaurs when I was a kid. Well, when I say I almost went into it, I mean I thought about it. Jurassic Park came out when I was in high school. Great flick, even thought Michael Crichton got most of his science wrong. You can’t really clone a dinosaur from blood in a mosquito. Everyone knows that. And using frog genes to patch gaps in dinosaur DNA? Don’t get me started on that.” He weighed one of the stones and then pitched it out into the surf. “Most people don’t really understand dinosaurs. They didn’t evolve into crocodiles or Komodo dragons. No, the chicken has a lot more in common with velociraptors. Think about that next time you’re eating Chicken McNuggets.”

He stood up with several stones in his hands and spent a few minutes throwing them out to sea, scooping up more, throwing them. One of the stones clanged off a buoy and rebounded, skipped along the top of an incoming wave, and then plopped down out of sight.

“Whoohooo!” shouted Davidovich. “You see that?”

“Nice throw, sir.”

Davidovich held a stone out to the guard. “How’s your arm?”

The guard shook his head. “That’s okay, sir.”

“Oh, come on. Have a little fun. See if you can hit that buoy?”

“Really, I’m not supposed to—”

“Not supposed to have a little fun? I don’t believe it. I will not believe your orders specified that you can’t lighten up and fuck around a little. What’s your name?”

“Steve.”

“Come on, Steve. Just throw one. You’re not going to tell me that you can’t outthrow a computer geek, for God’s sake.”

“It’s not that,” said Steve.

Davidovich held out the stone, still grinning. “Won’t take no for an answer. Just one throw.”

“I—”

“Steve…”

The guard looked up and down the shoreline as if expecting to see his fellow mercenaries or maybe Doctor Pharos standing there watching. He shook his head.

But after a moment he took the stone.

“Just one,” he said.

“You have to hit the buoy.”

Steve managed a small smile. A real one. “No problem.”

He tossed the stone up and caught it, fitted his fingers around it like a ballplayer, raised his arm, and threw.

It was a good throw, but at the instant he threw it, a wave picked the buoy up and canted it to the left. The stone missed by an inch.

“Ha!” cried Davidovich. “You missed.”

“It moved.”

“Doesn’t count. My turn.” He picked up three more stones, switched two to his left hand, and with his right threw the other. It whistled through the mist and caught the buoy on the rise. The clang echoed back to them. “Got it!”

“That was a lucky shot,” said Steve.

“Talk’s cheap. Money where your mouth is,” said Davidovich as he held one of the remaining stones out.

“I got this,” said Steve, taking the stone. He was grinning, too, as he set himself for the throw. “I fucking got this.”

He put a lot into the throw. Raising his left leg and stepping into the throw to put body weight behind a fastball pitch, he whipped the stone above the waves, and it hit the buoy dead center mass. It struck a massive clang from the metal that was three times as loud as the sound Davidovich’s rock had made.

Steve laughed out loud and spun around, delighted that he’d won.

His broad, happy grin broke apart as Davidovich smashed the remaining stone into his face. The guard’s head snapped back, and he immediately fell backward. Davidovich followed with desperate speed, hammering over and over with the rock as the man collapsed back onto the beach.

Over and over and over again until there was no trace of the smile, or the face, or the man. Only red horror. Blood leaped up around Davidovich as he continued to hammer at the man until there was no longer even a head shape.

Davidovich heard a sound. A high, shrill whimpering noise. When he realized that it was coming from his own throat, he reeled back from what he was doing. The rock fell from his hand, and for a moment he stared at the intense red that was smeared all over his it.

He could feel the warmth of it. Smell it.

Drops of it burned on his face.

It was the first time he had been this close to real blood since that day when Boy had strapped him to a chair and made him watch Mason and Jacob as they systematically dismembered and dehumanized a stranger back in Ashdod.

He fell backward and then scuttled away from the corpse like an upside-down crab.

Then a word exploded inside his head.

A name.

Matthew.

He stopped whimpering, stopped retreating.

Matthew.

Davidovich made himself look at Steve. Once upon a time, Boy had threatened to have Matthew picked up. Threatened to have his testicles and eyes mailed to where they were keeping him. So Davidovich could see the proof of his son’s dismemberment. There was no way to know if Steve would have been part of that, but he worked for the Seven Kings. He might have participated. Maybe he would have held the boy down. Or handled the knife. Or shipped the package.

It didn’t matter.

“Matthew,” he said aloud. Then he summoned the rage that was almost drowned beneath the ocean of fear. He used it the way it should be used. He pumped it into his muscles. Into his tendons and bones.

Get the fuck up, he told himself.

And he got up.

Beyond the dead man were the waters of the Puget Sound.

Beyond them was the mainland.

Somewhere out there was his son. Maybe the Kings would still kill his boy, but Davidovich didn’t think so. Not right away. No, they would place all of their resources into finding him. Into getting Davidovich back. Into silencing him.

“Try and catch me, you sick fucks,” he said, and then he waded out into the cold water and struck out as hard and fast as he could. Boy had helped him get fit and strong. To have stamina.

Yeah, and fuck you, too, you little psycho bitch.

He tried not to think about those nights with her. All he allowed himself to think about was his son. And the phone number that his handler in the CIA had made him remember all those years ago.

Chapter Eighty-seven

Toys looked up sharply as the door to Circe’s room opened and Mr. Church stepped into the hall. Lydia and Junie instantly began moving toward him, but Church shook his head and walked into Rudy Sanchez’s room. Brick went and stood outside, arms folded, chest massive, expression unapproachable.

The big dog, Banshee, stood in the doorway and watched him with calm, dangerous, strange eyes. Junie walked past the door and went into Circe’s room.

Doors closed.

Toys remained seated where he was.

“Whatever’s going on,” said a voice, and Toys jumped and looked up to see Sam Imura standing nearby, “it’s way the hell above our pay grade.”

Toys looked up at him, said nothing, and nodded.

Chapter Eighty-eight

“Doctor Sanchez,” said Mr. Church, “can you hear me?”

Rudy Sanchez’s eyes fluttered for a moment, then opened slowly. His pupils were dilated and the sclera was shot with red. There was a dark purple bruise in the center of his forehead. A half-moon shape. A heel shape.

Rudy licked his lips and tried to speak. Could not.

Mr. Church took a plastic sponge that had been provided by a nurse, dipped it in cool water, and pressed it gently to Rudy’s lips. He let the man suck moisture from it, then set the sponge aside.

“Th-thanks…” Rudy’s voice was hoarse, his voice cracked.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.”

“Who am I?”

“Mr. Church.”

“Do you know who you are?”

“Yes.”

“What is your name?”

“Rudy Sanchez.”

“Good. Do you know where you are?” asked Church.

Rudy’s eyes turned glassy, then wet. A tear broke and rolled from the corner of his eye, along his temple, and into his hair. He looked away and then squeezed his eye shut.

“I am in hell,” said Rudy.

Chapter Eighty-nine

With Top and Bunny on a separate jet to take over the crime scene in Chula Vista, I decided to maximize the flight time to try and map out what we knew about this case. I used several packs of Post-its to paper my jet’s interior walls. I called Top, and after consoling him on the loss of his friend, I told him that I wanted to make this a joint project. We kept an open line via earbuds and laptops and worked it through together.

The process filled the rest of the flight time.

“I think we have it mapped out,” said Top. Our computers were synched to share data and we have the videoconference function thrown onto the big screens mounted inside of each aircraft. It was the closest we could get to being in the same room. This allowed us to see the notes we’d all taped to the walls. My high-def screen was the only part of Shirley’s interior that wasn’t covered with little colored paper squares.

The three of us looked at what we had. The port side of Shirley’s cabin was covered in Post-it notes and larger papers taped to walls, windows, and seats. Both jets had onboard printers, and we’d printed out every news report that involved drones or autonomous computer systems.

I expected to find six or seven incidents. That would have been enough. That would have been truly frightening.

There were dozens of them.

I didn’t even know what to call this.

We’d tagged more than ninety incidents that could be related to the Kings’ experimention with UAVs and the Regis control software.

“There are clear patterns here,” said Top, pointing. “You can see their whole damn rollout from day one. It started with this.” He stepped up and tapped one Post-it on which was written

The date was one year ago from yesterday.

“Remember that?” asked Top. “The guy who had that Cajun-cooking reality show? Something happened and the whole crew died? Local law said a generator blew up, overheated the ice on the lake where Binoche was fishing, and the whole team went into the icy water. Died right there. Only thing is, there was a camera drone doing — whaddya call it when they have someone else take scenery shots and shit?”

“B-roll?” I suggested. “Second unit?”

“Right. They had a UAV camera doing that. A production assistant reported it going missing, then said it was back and heading their way. That was the last transmission.”

“So, what are you saying?” asked Bunny. “Someone hijacked it and put a bomb on it?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Why?”

“Test drive,” he said. “Can’t prove it, but think about it. Remote spot and a way to completely hide the evidence? That sound like those Kings ass-fucks to you?”

“Okay,” agreed Bunny, “but who the hell’s Aldus Binoche. I mean, sure, he had that TV show, but he has no connection to the Kings.”

“Figure it out, Farm Boy.”

Bunny sighed. “Right, right, they picked someone with no connections to test-drive their thing. But … what thing were they test-driving. This isn’t Regis.”

“Actually, it is,” I said. “The UAVs leased by the network all have SafeZone. The manufacturer of the software even had to do a big payout to prevent a lawsuit.”

Bunny leafed through some pages on the floor of their jet. “So how come it didn’t show up in the field-test stats? No, wait, I’m being slow again. It doesn’t show up because this is the civilian version, and it’s already sold, so why would the vendor report it? There’s — what? — one of those legal things where they pay money but the other side has to sign something that says no one is actually accepting responsibility or admitting fault?”

“Brain finally switched on?” asked Top.

“I need more coffee. Can’t remember the last time I slept.”

We scanned our notes.

“Looks to me, from what we have here,” said Top, “that the Kings can hack the GPS and controls of commercial UAV and maybe autonomous drive systems. That seem like a fair assessment?”

We thought about it, nodded. There were several incidents of wayward drones whose misbehavior had no known cause. Unless you consider the hacking and hijacking angle.

“You know, Boss,” said Bunny, “this makes me think a little harder about your theory that they have either Davidovich or his research.”

We looked at the other notes.

“Then there’s this from ten months ago,” said Top, taking a matchstick out of his mouth and pointing to another. “Four serious accidents involving self-parking cars. One fatality in Saint Louis. Girl gets killed when her car suddenly pulls out into traffic. Statement from her friend inside the salon and witnesses on the street confirm that the girl was fighting to get out of the car but was killed. That’s number two.”

“SafeZone?” asked Bunny.

Top nodded and pointed to more than thirty other accidents, including some fatal crashes, involving autonomous driving systems. The accidents were random, scattered across the country, across economic and social demographics, across age groups. There was a pattern, but it wasn’t easy to see.

We saw it now, though.

“Again, they’re hacking SafeZone software and causing it to malfunction,” said Top. “All of which led up to Cadillac One going ass-wild a little while back.”

The Beast, the president’s armored car, had indeed malfunctioned, causing some minor injuries. Linden Brierly, a close friend of Mr. Church, had had his face dented.

“Wait,” said Bunny, “so they had this same software in the president’s car? Is it still there? I mean, if so, we need to make a call.”

I shook my head. “No. As soon as it malfunctioned, it was stripped out and replaced by a different system. Solomon, I think. Different manufacturer altogether and it isn’t tied to Regis. Bug ran a check on that for Church after it happened. No one who was anywhere near Regis was involved with Solomon. It has no DARPA or DoD connection, and it has no military application of any kind.”

“Sure, okay,” said Bunny, “but does that mean we trust it?”

“Right now,” I said, “I don’t trust the timer on my Mr. Coffee.”

“Hooah,” agreed Top.

“We’ll forward all of this to Nikki and Church. And to Linden Brierly.” I looked at the wall. “What’s next?”

Top looked at his laptop. “El train in Chicago. Autodrive system on two trains went ape-shit four months back. Engineers couldn’t control the trains, and they crashed.”

“Geez,” said Bunny, “I remember that. Something like eleven people dead.”

“Twelve,” said Top. “Put down to computer error.”

I stepped closer to the wall. “That’s a bigger system to take control of. With each step, the Kings have been flexing their wings. Testing SafeZone, proving to themselves that they can take it over.” I turned to the others. “What questions does this raise? Hit me.”

“Right out of the gate,” said Bunny, “what about BattleZone? We have the Eglin thing, but there’s nothing else here that says they can hack into the software packages the Department of Defense has been installing. No ships have launched missiles, no fighters have gone crazy. What’s that tell us? Do they not have access to the military version of Regis? Is it only SafeZone that they can control?”

“Eglin,” said Top.

“Sure, Eglin,” Bunny agreed, “but what about it? That Regis stuff’s in everything. Why aren’t there missiles in the air? If they had control over BattleZone and all of Regis, they could launch all their shit and that would be game over. The fact that they haven’t makes me think that what happened to Dilbert Howell was actual computer error. Sad, tragic, sure, but I’m not sure we can make a case to connect that to the Kings.”

“You’re saying you don’t believe it?” I asked.

“What I’m saying,” insisted Bunny, “is that we can’t prove it. Eglin could be bad timing and a tragic accident.”

Top gave him a long and withering look.

“We can’t take Eglin off the board,” I said slowly. “I mean, if it was the Kings, it’s a big win for them. It might have told them everything they need to know if they’re planning something really big.”

“Like a major launch?” asked Bunny.

“Like a major launch.”

“Shit.”

“Which puts us exactly where, Cap’n?” asked Top. “Do we recommend to the entire United States military that they flush a few billion dollars and pull the software out of every plane, tank, and warship? They would burn us at the damn stake.”

“In a heartbeat,” said Bunny.

“Got to file a recommendation of caution,” I said. “And we have to hope that Eglin wasn’t part of this.”

From the looks on their faces, I knew they didn’t buy that any more than I did.

“Other questions?” I asked.

“Drones in general,” said Bunny. “Aside from being able to hack other people’s drones, the Kings have access to their own. The one at the Resort. Two different kinds of drones in Philly. And the one that killed Bug’s mom. Where are they getting them?”

It was a good question with, unfortunately, a disappointing answer. UAVs are everywhere now. More than 320 companies based in the United States manufacture drones or drone parts. Thousands of stores sell kits to build them. Plus, there are imports. Canada and Mexico have factories, and everyone in Southeast Asia who could retool a plant are turning them out.

I called Doctor Hu to see if he had anything, but he transferred me to Yoda without actually responding to my question. He does that sort of thing. Hu’s a dick.

When Yoda came on the line, I explained what I wanted.

“Hmmmm. Well, the, ummmm, drone from the ballpark isn’t standard. It’s, ummm, a variation on a design used by the Russians. Though, ummmm, we’ve seen an almost identical model in North Korea. Built to look like a regular pigeon. I think, mmmm, Nikki told you that it had some kind of radical QC CPU. Mmmmm-hmmmm, that’s kind of delicious, and we’re picking it apart to see, ummm, how it works. Or why it works, because it’s so small. Nothing like it anywhere. I, ummmm, dream about tech like this.”

“Okay,” I said, and damn near followed it with an “mmmm.” “Does it tell us anything? Does it lead us anywhere?”

“Ummmm, no. Not really. Just, mmmm, tells us that they’re smarter than us.”

“Not really what I want to hear, Yoda.”

“Not really what I, ummmm, ever want to admit.”

I ended the call. Then I thought about it and called Nikki. She didn’t hum, and she worked in a different part of Bug’s group. She was a superstar in research and hacking.

“Nikki,” I said, putting the call on speaker, “I want to describe something to you, and I want your reaction. Okay? Let me outline it without commentary.”

“Sure, Joe. Go for it.”

I told her what Top, Bunny, and I had come up with. The yearlong pattern of what appeared to be field tests of the ability to hack and subvert autonomous driving systems and commercial drones. When I was finished, I could almost hear her frown.

“This can’t be right,” she said.

“Tell me why.”

“What you’re describing is a pretty clear pattern, Joe. I mean, sure, they hid it pretty well by spreading it around and making it look like either random accidents or, in the case of the TV drone, some kind of domestic terrorism.”

“Right, but…?”

“But if this pattern actually exists, then we should already know about it. I mean … that’s what MindReader does. It’s what I do. We look for patterns in the big jumble of events, news stories, incident reports, police reports, and everything filed by the FBI, Homeland … It’s just that this has to be wrong.”

I took a breath. “Or … what’s the alternative, kid?”

She didn’t want to say it, and — let’s face it — we didn’t want to hear it.

She said it anyway.

“Or they kept this from us. They hid it. Which means someone’s learned how to block MindReader.”

Bam. There it was.

Nikki put a button on it, though. “Setting aside how they did it, if they have something like this … what else are they hiding?”

Chapter Ninety

Aaron Davidovich washed ashore like a piece of trash. Rumpled, broken, filthy, and cold.

So cold.

His clothes were soaked. He’d kicked off his shoes in the water, and his feet were bruised and cut. Every muscle he owned ached like he’d been beaten. He lay on the beach, half covered by muddy sand, chest down, face turned sideways so he could breath through the little gap between the bunched fabric at the shoulder of his torn and sodden suit and the angle of his forearm. His cheek rested on his hand, but the hand was like a block of ice that didn’t seem to belong to him anymore.

“God,” he gasped. “God…”

Davidovich felt like he was welded into the sand. Part of a desolate landscape. Maybe he would die here and truly become part of this place. The sand fleas and worms would consume his skin and organs. His blood would drain away into the sluggish surf. If no one found him, his bones would dissolve beneath the relentless assault of parasites and bacteria. He would cease to be. He would fade into nothingness.

All that would be left was the memory of him.

A hated man. Despised. Reviled.

Maybe damned.

Damned.

He believed that Matthew would continue to love him for a little while, but after the full extent of his crimes were known and endlessly dissected in the press, that would change. A son’s love for his father would change into bitter hate and disappointment. And that would pollute the life of a child who should have been allowed to grow up with no emotional scarring, no trauma that might twist him into some ugly adult shape.

A father who was a traitor, a terrorist, and a mass murderer?

Yes. That was going to ruin the boy.

It would definitely kill Davidovich’s mother. She was holding on by a thread as it was. This would snap that slender filament and send her plunging down into the pit.

He wished he would die, too.

Right here, right now.

He prayed that there was no god, and he was aware of the absurdity of that. He wanted death to be a big black doorway that led nowhere. If there was nothing, there was no shame. There would be no memory of the harm he’d done — and would continue to do — to his son.

A wave broke over him, pushing stinking seawater up to his shoulders. He turned his face to keep it from filling his slack mouth. The action was too slow, and he gagged on a mouthful of brackish water and fish excrement.

Davidovich tried to spit it out, failed to do it the right way, and gasped in half a pint of water. Into his throat, into his lungs.

The coughing fit was immediate, and it was terrible. His lungs felt like they were exploding as he coughed and spat and choked. His body convulsed, tearing itself loose of the sand until he was a tiny ball on elbows and knees, his chest pulsing with the deep, braying coughs. Pain detonated in his chest, in his lungs. The world fragmented into fireworks of pure white and midnight black, with a fringe of red around the edges.

“Please,” he gasped between fits.

That word was worse than the pain of the spasms. It tasted more disgusting than the seawater in his mouth.

Please.

It was what he had said to Boy years ago. When she’d first come to him and beaten him, and humiliated him. It had been the thing he’d said when she made him watch the degradation and evisceration of the man Boy had killed on that day she made him her slave. It was what he had whispered in the nights when she came to him and touched him and drew him to the top of a swaying tower.

Please.

Such a weak word.

Such a terrible word.

He said it again. Meaning so much.

“Please…” he said.

The coughing fit faded. Slowly and reluctantly, as if his body would have preferred to continue punishing him. He remained on elbows and knees.

For a long time.

And then he gathered together everything that he had and everything that he was. Scientist, father, husband, son, man, traitor, murderer, monster.

Each of those aspects had a part in making him get up off his knees. Get to his feet. Orient himself. Take a step.

And another.

Walking up the sandy slope toward the lights.

Across the water was the dark bulk of the hotel on Tanglewood Island.

Beyond the trees in front of him, rising like the promise of heavenly retribution, was the snowcapped bulk of Mount Rainier.

For reasons he could never explain to himself, not even in that moment, Davidovich spat toward the mountain and muttered, “Fuck you.”

He kept moving up the beach, angling toward the Fox Island Bridge. Limping on his battered feet. Leaving smudges of blood behind him with every footfall.

Walking away from the edge of the abyss, one trembling step at a time.

Chapter Ninety-one

“The prognosis is encouraging,” said Mr. Church. He had his briefcase open on the wheeled table beside Rudy Sanchez’s bed. An open package of Nilla Wafers sat atop a stack of folders. Church selected a cookie, tapped crumbs from it, bit a piece, and chewed quietly. Rudy watched him. “The concussion was mild. There are no fractures.”

“You’re ignoring what I said.”

Church studied the cookie for a moment, then set it down. “Ignoring? No, doctor, I am not.”

“Aren’t you going to say something?” asked Rudy.

“What would you expect me to say? You’re in great distress. Understandably so, given your devotion to Circe and concerns for your baby. You were attacked and have sustained injuries. The nation is under attack, and you likely feel torn between wanting to be here and needing to be out there doing what you can.”

“No,” said Rudy.

“No — what?”

“That’s not it.”

Church nodded and settled back in his chair. “Then tell me what it is.”

“The man who attacked me…” Rudy’s words trickled down, and for several long minutes he lay there, not looking at Church. Not really looking at anything in the room. His gaze drifted upward to the acoustic tiles fitted into their aluminum frame in the ceiling. He stared at them as if they were windows into his own thoughts. Church said nothing. He ate the rest of his cookie. Drank some water from a bottle of Arrowhead. Ate another cookie. Waited.

The room was very still, very quiet.

Finally, Rudy took a ragged breath. It was loud, like a drowning man breaking the surface to drink in his first lungful. His body trembled, and he dabbed at fresh tears in his eye.

“I–I’m afraid,” he began slowly, “that you won’t believe me. That you’ll think the details of my attack are the product of cranial trauma.”

“Would you allow me to be the governor of my own credulity, Doctor Sanchez?”

Rudy glanced at him. “What I have to say won’t seem rational. You won’t be able to believe it.”

Mr. Church gave him a small, weary smile. “Doctor, over the last six years, we’ve come to know each other very well. I believe I can accurately state that the understanding we share exceeds the bounds of what has actually been spoken between us. You possess insight, and I’ve been more candid with you than with most. Do you honestly believe that I would sit in close-minded judgment of anything you would have to tell me?”

“I don’t know.

“Doctor…”

“I don’t think so, but this is difficult for me to even think about, let alone say. I don’t know if I believe it.”

“Then,” continued Church, “perhaps we can help each other come to a level of understanding and acceptance.”

Rudy almost smiled. “You say that like you’ve been in this situation before. With ordinarily reliable witnesses who have extraordinary things to say.”

“More times than I care to recall, doctor. Before and after Captain Ledger came to work for me.”

Rudy closed his eyes for a moment and repeatedly licked his lips. Then he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Not at Church.

“There was a priest in the chapel,” he said. His tone was soft, almost hushed. “Even though Agent Cowpers had cleared the room, he was there.”

“This man was not a total stranger to you?” asked Church. “Was he?”

“I don’t…”

“Doctor, now is not the time to be coy. If you have some suspicion, then please share it. This man is a threat to you and to Circe.”

Rudy thought Church almost said “to my daughter.” There was the slightest hitch in his words, but Church was too skilled to let himself make that kind of error. The truth — and the urgency of it — hung in the air, though.

So, Rudy took one more breath and blurted it out. “I think I know who it was.”

“Who was it?” Church asked.

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

Rudy paused. “I think it was Nicodemus.”

“Ah.”

“You … don’t seem surprised. Why? Do you know something?”

Church nodded. “You were overheard speaking that name when the staff brought you up here.”

“Then, you already heard? Good, but know this … he doesn’t look the same.”

“Meaning what? Was he in disguise?”

“No. I saw him at Graterford Prison several years ago. I sat with the man, spoke with him. And although the man who attacked me looks a bit like him, speaks like him, knows what he knows, he’s also different. It’s almost like he was in another body. Like he was wearing someone else’s skin.” Rudy paused again. “I am aware of how this sounds, and I’ll accept that blunt-force trauma is a factor here. However…”

“Go on.”

Rudy’s hands were shaking as he reached up to run fingers through his hair. “Dear God and the Virgin Mary protect me,” he said in a small and frightened voice, “I think the thing I met in the chapel wasn’t human. I think it was a monster.”

Chapter Ninety-two

Toys wondered if Junie Flynn knew about Church’s connection to Circe. She seemed to be on the inside track of a lot of things, but that secret was huge — and she was, after all, a civilian. Toys knew about Circe from Hugo, and he’d had one very uncomfortable conversation with Church about it after finding out.

Church had said, “You understand that very few people in the world know that Circe is my daughter. It complicates things that you know it, that Hugo told you. It would be easier for me, and safer for Circe, if I put a bullet in you now. Do you understand that?”

“I do,” Toys had said. “And if you need to do that, then go ahead.”

Church had been a long time considering his next comment, and it had taken Toys off guard. “In my life,” he said, “I’ve met several people with complicated histories who claimed to be on the road to redemption. Some of them, in fact, made their journeys. A few — a very few — of those people are friends of mine. The majority of them are not. And a fair percentage of those who are not are now dead.”

“You really think you need to threaten me?” asked Toys.

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Church replied. “Should I ever feel the need to threaten you, there will be little doubt as to what’s happening. What I’m doing is establishing the parameters of our shared understanding. Protecting the connection between Circe and myself matters more to me than almost anything else.”

Toys remembered that Church had said “almost.” The man had interesting priorities. Then again, the scary old bastard was saving the world. Pretty often, too. So there was that.

That conversation had happened years ago, and for the most part Toys had shoved the knowledge that Circe was Church’s daughter into the very back of his mental closet. Even now, he could hardly connect the woman he’d worked with so often at FreeTech with this hard, unemotional, dangerous man. They barely seemed like they belonged to the same species, let alone the same family.

After more than half an hour, Church pulled back the curtains and opened the door. For once, his legendary cool seemed shaken. He was pale and looked much older than the sixty-something Toys figured him for. Church walked past him without comment and spoke quietly with a trio of doctors. He shook their hands and then went and consulted with his agents. Toys waited him out. He had nowhere else to be.

Finally, Church glanced at him, nodded briefly, and walked toward an empty corner of the ICU. Toys dutifully followed.

“Junie told me about what happened to Aunt Sallie,” said Toys. “How bad is it?”

“Bad enough.”

“Pity. I mean that, really. I mean, sure, she hates my sodding guts, but she’s a character. She’s an interesting woman. Hugo was afraid of her.”

“That’s not an unreasonable feeling. They sent a team of Kingsmen after her, and they’re all dead,” said Church, then switched the subject. “Per our earlier conversation, is there anything else you wanted to tell me?”

“No. Nothing of use other than to warn you to be careful of that psychotic son of a bitch Nicodemus. Sebastian and Hugo all but worshipped him, and everyone else was terrified of him. I know I was. I…”

“What?”

“No, you’ll think I’m daft.”

“Try me.”

“I … I don’t think Nicodemus is exactly what he appears to be.”

“And what does he appear to be?”

“Human.”

Chapter Ninety-three

Aaron Davidovich knew that hitchhiking was out of the question. He had no money, no shoes, no chance of being seen as anything except a vagrant or a threat. By now, the Kings would have people out looking for him. They would be driving the roads, listening to police reports.

He needed to stay off the grid.

The biggest problem was that this part of Fox Island was upscale. Big homes. Money. And with the money came the domestic security systems. He knew he could bypass anything, but he lacked even a basic set of tools.

He was scared, cold, desperate, and wild.

All of that was what made people make stupid mistakes. He could not afford to make a single mistake. Not one.

It would get him killed, and it wouldn’t help Matthew.

It would also guarantee that the world — the whole damn world — would fall apart. There were only hours left until the Kings used Regis and the other programs to change the world.

To destroy it.

To destroy Matthew’s world.

“No,” he told himself as he staggered along a service alley between estates. It was the kind of passage used by meter readers and landscapers. He was shivering badly, and the pain in his feet was awful.

Then he saw it. Fifty feet ahead. Just standing there as if planted in his path by providence.

An open gate.

A goddamn open gate.

How or why it was open didn’t matter. A utility-company man who didn’t care. A lawn cutter who wasn’t doing his job. What did it matter?

Davidovich approached it cautiously, ducking down to use the cover of a thick row of hedges. As he approached the gate, he knelt down and crawled the rest of the way on hands and knees, then cautiously peered around the gatepost. Beyond it was a half acre of green grass, flowerbeds, a swing set, and a toolshed.

A toolshed.

A fucking toolshed.

It would be locked, of course. But no one puts an alarm on a toolshed.

A sob broke in Davidovich’s chest as he crawled through the gate and onto the soft, cool grass. He stumbled getting up and ran most of the way on hands and feet, hunched over like a dog.

Chapter Ninety-four

Toys knew he should leave the hospital. He’d shared his information with Church and showed his support for Circe and Junie. But now he was doing nothing more useful than being a gofer. He fetched coffee, did a run to the nearest sandwich shop, and read a lot of magazines.

Church had somehow commandeered a doctor’s office and turned it into a situation room. Technicians arrived with portable computers. More armed guards showed up, too. The whole hospital was becoming an armed camp, though if anyone in administration had a problem with it, Toys didn’t hear them complain out loud.

Junie and Banshee were camped out in Circe’s room with Lydia Ruiz standing outside.

Toys was sipping a diet Dr Pepper when he heard a sound and turned to see a pale and shaken Rudy Sanchez limp slowly out of his room. Rudy wore a hospital gown and a troubled look. When he spotted Toys, he beckoned him over and retreated back into his room.

“Are you sure you should be out of bed?” asked Toys as he came into the room.

“I’m certain I shouldn’t be,” said Rudy. “Why are you here?”

Toys explained. He’d met Sanchez a number of times, and, unlike Joe Ledger and some of the soldiers, Rudy never showed him disrespect or hostility. Rather, the reverse. The doctor was always gracious to him. Toys wasn’t sure if that was good manners or if Sanchez believed in Toys’s reformation. Not that it mattered, but it was nice not to see open contempt in someone’s eyes.

“Can I get you something?” asked Toys awkwardly. “A nurse, some food … anything?”

Rudy attempted a smile. It was appalling and false. “You can go find me some clothes. Hospital scrubs will do. I still have my shoes, and my walking stick is somewhere around here…”

“Clothes? Why?”

“So I can get out of here. I want you to help me.”

Toys shook his head. “Uh-uh, no way am I helping you do that. Mr. Church will have my guts for garters.”

Rudy shook his head. “Not if we don’t tell him where I got the clothes. Come on, Mr. Chismer. As I recall, you have a reputation for accomplishing anything asked of you. This is asking very little. See what you can do.”

Chapter Ninety-five

I forwarded all the information to Church’s computer. It took a dozen tries to get the big man on the phone, though. He was a busy man at the best of times, and right now he was like one of those circus performers who puts spinning plates on the top of slender wooden sticks and keeps adding more until he has a lot of plates spinning. Every few seconds, the performer has to shake one pole to keep a plate from wobbling and falling, then spins another and another. Soon, his entire life is nothing but going from one near disaster to another.

Church was very good at it, and today he had a lot of crockery up in the air.

When we spoke, he was already reviewing the notes I’d sent. He wasn’t happy.

“I think you’ve found the back-trail,” he said. “Congratulations on that.”

“Top and Bunny did more than their share.”

“No doubt. It’s troubling — but not entirely surprising — that the Kings have found a way to block MindReader.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Of course. They have Davidovich, and he built a quantum computer for them.”

“Can I quit now and go live in a monastery?”

“Save me a seat,” said Church.

“It’s pretty clear why they targeted Bug’s mom,” I said. “They wanted him out of the game.”

“At the same time,” added Church, “they wanted him to be a witness. They wanted him to see the failure of MindReader.”

“It’s a kind of torture, isn’t it?” I said. “What they’re doing. Hurting those we love. Scaring us.”

“Are you frightened, Captain?”

“Sure.”

“Is it likely to stop you?”

“Of course not. Nothing’s going to stop me. No way in hell.”

“What does that tell you?”

I thought about it. “Either they’re underestimating us…”

“Or?”

“Or they don’t need to stop us. Just slow us down. Make us react wrong.”

“Why?”

“It would have to be a timing thing. It’s like a magic trick. The magician shows you the inside of his hat, let’s you look up his sleeve, and all the while the bunch of flowers is stuffed into a hidden pocket.”

“Yes,” he said.

I sighed. “Does that mean Regis is only a distraction?”

“Impossible to say in the absence of more information. However, even as a distraction, they are doing considerable damage with it.”

“Which leaves us where? Do we keep following Regis and the drones? Or should we be looking somewhere else?”

“And where would that be?” asked Church.

I said nothing because there was nothing to say. The Kings were giving us one trail to follow and then abusing us for following it.

Church changed the subject and brought me quickly up to speed about what was going on at the hospital, which was mostly a goddamn frustrating holding pattern.

“I’m leaving San Diego in a few hours to meet with the president in Los Angeles. This reaction to the Resort tape seems to have leveled off at a high boil but hasn’t gotten worse.”

“Can it actually get worse?”

“It can, if Congress decides to impeach.”

“Will they?”

“Many will want to, but cooler heads realize that we’re in the middle of a national crisis. The timing might work for the president. If he can respond effectively against the Seven Kings, then he’ll likely save his presidency. This term, at least. I wouldn’t bet heavy money on a second term at this point. In either case, the hit in Philadelphia has given him some room to maneuver. I want to make sure that he uses that time to act intelligently and not politically.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“We need to be adults about this,” he said.

“No argument.”

“About the material you sent. Unfortunately, I have to agree that there is a definite pattern, but that means I need to agree with Nikki as well. The Kings have found a way to block MindReader.”

“I can take a wild guess how. With that quantum computer thingee?”

“Clearly. Yoda is working on it, but I’m afraid he’s out of his depth.”

“I hate to be a total prick here,” I said, “but what about Bug? Could he figure something out? I mean … if he knew about the QC. With that in mind, could he find a way to either block the block, or remove it, or whatever you’d call it?”

Church took a long time with that.

“Perhaps. Bug is a genius, but he would be the first to agree with me that he is not in the same league as Aaron Davidovich.”

“Is anyone?” I asked hopefully.

“No. That is the problem with radical supergeniuses. The world always catches up, but the lag time is problematic.”

“What can we do about it?”

“About things like autonomous drive systems in cars and public transit, I doubt there is anything that anyone can do. Not in the short term. We can hardly have the president tell the nation to abandon their cars and avoid all public transit. The country would grind to a halt, and there is no infrastructure prepared to address or correct the situation. We are talking several million cars with some version of SafeZone. And virtually every commercial airline.”

“We have to do something…”

“We can advise caution. We can advise the FAA to instruct all pilots to keep autopilot systems off.”

“Which will result in a backlash. Pilots will go on strike.”

“Or try to,” agreed Church. “The same for inner-city rail.”

“So far as I see it, the only break we caught was the fact that the ballpark hit was on a Sunday when the market was already closed.”

“It’s a break, Captain, but I would hope you’re as suspicious of it as I am. It would be too catastrophic an error for the Kings to make to choose the wrong day for their attack.”

“Yeah, damn it…” I sighed. “Damn, I wish there was something or someone I could hit. Or shoot. Shooting would feel good, too.”

“For once, I reciprocate the sentiment.”

I believe he meant it, too.

“Any new disasters?” I asked.

“The biological attack in Chula Vista is on the front burner. I’m waiting for the lab analysis of the pathogen.”

“It’s viral?”

“General term. It could be any of a number of things. Viruses and bacteria are at the top of our list, though. You’ll take charge of that once you’re on the ground. If any fresh intel comes up before you’re wheels down, I’ll let you know.”

He ended the call.

I put my phone away and went to look at the wall again. Lots of disasters, lots of deaths. It was clear to all of us that the Seven Kings were not only playing a game whose rules were unknown to us. They were winning hands down, too.

Chapter Ninety-six

Rudy used his cane to knock on the door of the room Church was using as his command center. Church glanced up and waved him in.

“Did your doctor clear you to get out of bed?” asked Church.

“No,” said Rudy, “and we’re not having a conversation about my going back to bed.”

Church leaned back in his chair. “What would you prefer to talk about?”

“I want to help.”

“How?”

“Doing anything that you’ll let me do.”

“How are you feeling?” asked Church. “Accurate assessment, if you please. I’m not in the mood for games.”

“Nor am I,” said Rudy with asperity. “I’m useless lying in a hospital bed. Someone has attacked my wife, my friends. You are pressed for resources right now. I’m a resource. Use me.”

There was a plate of cookies on Church’s desk. Mostly vanilla wafers but also some Oreos and animal crackers. He pushed the plate toward Rudy.

“Have a cookie.”

Chapter Ninety-seven

Aaron Davidovich crouched beside the toolshed and watched the house for almost twenty minutes, fighting to keep his teeth from chattering. The curtains were drawn. There were no toys in the yard. No dogs barked.

He snuck around the side of the house and looked at the big front yard and the strong, high security fence. It was closed. No cars in the gravel turnaround. When he peered through the garage, he saw a single car in there, but it was covered by a big tarp. There was a spiderweb strung between the mailbox and the light pole beside the front door. The web looked old, abandoned.

When he opened the flap of the mailbox, there was nothing inside. If no one was home and there was no mail in the box, there was a good chance whoever lived here had stopped mail delivery.

That was a blessing.

There were small metal signs on the lawn and stickers in the window from a well-known and highly respected security company. Davidovich almost laughed. Home-security systems could costs thousands, sometimes tens of thousands. But even the very best of them relied on technology that a first-year computer-engineering student could bypass in his sleep. Davidovich had designed the world’s most sophisticated software and hardware systems. Regis and the QC. This kind of security wasn’t a challenge. It was a gift.

Returning to the yard, he used a decorative rock to break the hasp and remove the lock on the toolshed. Inside, he found a lawn mower, rakes and shovels, bags of compost, stacks of empty clay pots, weed killer, and a yellow plastic toolbox. Inside the toolbox were beat-up old tools. Screwdrivers and hammers, an odd assortment of screws and nails. Wire cutters, a socket-wrench set for fixing the mower.

He selected the tools he’d need and hugged them to his chest.

Davidovich said, “Thank you.”

He did not, however, know exactly whom he was thanking.

Chapter Ninety-eight

I landed in San Diego and was met by Mike Harnick, the head of the motor pool and vehicles design shop at the Pier. He was actually polishing the hood with a rag when we came out of the terminal. Mike has something of an unhealthy relationship with the cars and trucks that he oversees. He kind of hates that he has to turn them over to guys like me who might, in the course of a day’s work, get them blown up.

Ghost saw him and began wagging his tail. Mike usually has treats in his pocket. Totally outside combat-dog protocols, but I have so far not been able to get that point across to him.

When Mike spotted us, he tucked the rag in his back pocket and came over to shake hands. Mike was one of several key players from the Warehouse whom I’d coerced into moving to Southern California. Unlike some, who were dedicated East Coasters, Mike had embraced the change. He wore a Hawaiian shirt with a pattern of classic cars and Route 101 signs. He wore shorts and sandals and had a pair of Oliver Peoples sunglasses pushed up on his hair. Ghost went running to him, tail wagging, and I made sure I didn’t see the Snausages Mike covertly slipped him.

Mike’s smile, though, looked a bit like it was hammered in place with roofing nails.

“Hell of a day,” he said as we shook.

“Hell of a day,” I agreed.

He turned and swept an arm toward the car. “Say hello to Ugly Betty.”

Ugly Betty was a brand-new Escalade with a lot of aftermarket work. I believe Mike prays nightly in a church dedicated to Q from the James Bond flicks. The car looked like every other black Escalade, but I knew that it was reinforced like a tank, weighed an absurd amount, and had an engine that could push all that weight up to about ninety and hold her there all day. Oversize armored gas tank with battery backup. Wi-Fi with satellite uplink. Machine guns, fore and aft rocket launchers. Everything.

“How’s it take a curve?” I asked suspiciously. “Black Bess looked pretty and all, but she steered like a damn cow. This one any better?”

Mike grinned. “Depends on whether you know how to drive.”

I showed him a lot of teeth. “I get into a wreck with this ’cause it’s a slow piece of unmaneuverable elephant shit, you and me are going to have a long conversation. Knives may be involved. Warning you ahead of time.”

“Damn, Joe, you’re getting cranky in your old age.”

“Keep talking, Doctor Truckenstein, but don’t come crying to me if you wake up dead one morning.”

Harnick’s grin never faltered, and he mouthed the word “Truckenstein.” I suspect it was going to be his new nickname.

He handed me a set of keys. “She’s gassed and ready. GPS is programmed with the crime scene and the hospital where they took the bodies.”

I thanked him and climbed in. The vehicle was absurdly comfortable, which felt good on all the parts of me that still hurt from the ballpark disaster. I saw that Mike had gone the extra yard and left a bag of extra-large dog biscuits. Ghost jumped into the back seat and came to point staring at them like he’d just discovered the Holy Grail. I gave him one, and he retreated into the back bay with his booty.

I wasn’t sure I was up for a lot of driving. The scalpel cut on my forearm was beginning to itch under the bandage, my head hurt, and all of those other little aches and pains were still loitering around. I’d popped a couple of nondrowsy painkillers on the plane, but they were accomplishing exactly nothing. So I winced and cursed and damned Mike and everyone I ever knew to hellfire as I buckled up and adjusted the mirrors.

Mike stepped back and waved at me while I headed out of the airport. I wasn’t even on Route 5 yet when I got a call from Rudy.

“Hey, Rude,” I said, relieved to hear his voice, “how the hell are you?”

“A borderline mess, Cowboy,” he admitted. “As, I suspect, are you.”

“Not what I meant, Rude. I know who jumped you. How are you?”

“My answer holds.”

“Okay,” I said. “Got it. And … Circe?”

“No change.” There were miles and miles of hurt in his voice. And twice as much fear. If that was Junie lying there, I’d be out of my fucking mind.

“Damn,” I said. “I’m heading over there now and—”

“Listen, Joe,” said Rudy, cutting me off, “Mr. Church doesn’t want you to come here right now. We got word from the doctors at the hospital where the bodies were taken. Joe, we both need to get over there right now.”

“Why?”

“We don’t have all the details, but the doctor over there — Alur, I think his name is — has implemented a class A biohazard lockdown and wants to evacuate the entire facility.”

“Christ. Any clue what the disease is?”

“No, but Doctor Alur said they should have that answer by the time we arrive.”

“We? You’re supposed to be in bed, or was that a different one-eyed Mexican psychiatrist friend of mine who got kicked in the damn face?”

“Joe, I don’t want to argue with you,” said Rudy. “I convinced Mr. Church to have me discharged and to let me get back to work. I’m not seriously injured. The burn is minor; the head injury is not worth discussing. You’ve had worse. Many times.”

“But—”

“And quite frankly, if I don’t get involved in this, if I don’t have the opportunity to participate in this case, to use what skills I have, I’m going to go out of my mind.”

He did not sound like he was making a joke.

That scared me, because Rudy isn’t the type to throw himself into the active side of one of the DMS cases. He was a therapist, a doctor. He counseled the operators between jobs, he kept the spiders locked inside my head, and he worked with victims afterward. He was not a field man. Wasn’t trained for it and didn’t have the right mental attitude for it. Rudy is the kind of decent human being guys like me try to protect so he doesn’t have to run head-on into the fire.

Except …

Circe was in a coma, and a psychopath pretending to be a priest had brutalized Rudy. And Rudy had been at the ballpark; he’d seen people blown apart by the drones. He’s friends with Bug and Aunt Sallie and was feeling their hurt.

He has skin in this game. A lot of it.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

“Brian will drop me off at the hospital. I think you should meet me there.”

Brian Botley was the newest member of Echo Team. A hazardous-materials expert who also knew how to cook up useful things that went boom. Code name: Hotzone, which really wasn’t much of a stretch.

“Okay, pardner,” I said, “but if you look wobbly, I’m putting you back on the bench.”

It was the same threat Top had used on me. Rudy ignored it, exactly as I had.

Chapter Ninety-nine

It took Aaron Davidovich very little time to bypass the security system of the empty house. Then he was inside. The house was cold, but it was the warmest he’d been since he’d waded into the waters off the Seven Kings’ island.

First thing he did was look for a telephone. Found it. Snatched up the receiver.

Heard nothing. Not even a hiss.

The place was as empty as a dead battery. The furniture was covered in plastic. There was no food in the fridge. The gas and water were turned off. Because of the needs of the security system, the electricity was still on, and the oven was electric. He turned it on and warmed himself by the open oven door. Then he went prowling and found several useful things.

Clothes, neatly folded in moth-proof plastic tubs. Most of what he found didn’t fit him, and he soon realized that it was a woman and two kids living here. The kids were young. The woman was short but, he discovered, plump. He could stretch a couple of her sweaters around him. He stripped off his own clothes and draped them around the stove to dry. In one of the cabinets, he found canned tuna, and he opened three cans and devoured the cold fish.

In the attic, he found a trunk with clothes that clearly belonged to an older man. Probably the woman’s father. The man had been very tall — inches taller than Davidovich. That didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that the clothes smelled of cedar chips and old man. There were no shoes, but he found a pair of good slippers. He stuffed the toes with socks and put them on.

Dressed comfortably in useful layers, he searched in vain for a cell phone. There was no chance he’d find one, but he had to look.

No topcoat, either.

Wearing a dead man’s clothes and bedroom slippers, carrying pocketsful of tools, Davidovich slipped out of the house and went into the garage. He wanted his luck to hold long enough for the car to be functional and fast.

It was a classic 1965 Mustang.

It had no engine.

“Fuck,” he said.

But he wasted no time mourning the car. Instead, he left the property through the back gate and headed toward the bridge to the mainland. Caution took time, though, and with every minute he used ensuring his anonymity, he felt a minute of his son’s life burning away.

Chapter One Hundred

We pulled into the hospital ER roundabout. That whole section of the facility had been evacuated, and someone had brought in a set of police barricades. Two soldiers in hazmat suits stood on the other side. I recognized them through the plastic visors. New guys working for me at the Pier. A couple of MPs I borrowed from the army. A third man, Brian Botley, came to meet us, but he stopped a dozen paces away and nodded to a stack of folded hazmat suits.

“You’re going to want to suit up,” Brian said. “Believe me.”

We each put one on. Since they don’t make them for dogs, I’d had to leave Ghost in the car. He wasn’t happy about it, and I knew it would be on me if he peed on Mike Harnick’s new leather seats.

“They redirected ER function to another hospital,” said Brian. “Nobody was happy about it until the staff got a look at what we were bringing in. After that, it was assholes and elbows to clear this place out and button it up.”

Another figure in a hazmat suit appeared and came limping toward us, leaning on his cane, which was wrapped in plastic and sealed with duct tape. We didn’t shake hands, of course. Didn’t go for the big bromance hug. Best friends in protective clothing have to be content with a manly and stoic nod.

“I just got here myself,” Rudy said. “I was about to go looking for Doctor Alur.”

Brian said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Stay here,” I said. “Make sure nobody else comes in here unless they know today’s secret password.”

He frowned. “Um … we have a secret password? What is it?”

“Fuck the Seven Kings,” I said.

Brian grinned. “That works.”

He went to take up his station. I gave Rudy an up-and-down appraisal. “You look like shit.”

“Thank you very much. You’re so kind,” he said. “I reciprocate the sentiment.”

“How’s your head?”

“It hurts. How is yours?”

“It hurts.”

“Aren’t we a pair?”

I nodded to his hands. There were puffy bandages beneath the plastic gauntlets. “I heard something about burns?”

“Yes.” Shadows seemed to drift across his face.

“Rude?”

“Yes, Cowboy?”

“We’re going to get them.”

He said nothing.

“All of them,” I said. “Including that sinister little psychopath.”

He said nothing.

“This may be damage done, brother,” I told him, “but there’s life on the other side.”

“Joe,” he said in a soft but strained voice, “please stop. I don’t need the trash talk. I don’t respond to it the way you do. All it does is make me realize that I am not strong, that I’m not a fighter. Even if you do manage to take down the Kings and Nicodemus, I will carry the memory of that encounter for the rest of my life. And, before you embarrass us both by trying to explain the effects of trauma, please remember that I do know this. The effects I’m feeling are the very things I treat people for. The parasitic part of my mind is shining light on the irony and looking for the hubris that would be the dramatic root cause of my downfall. I understand that I am going through the victim process in textbook fashion. Nothing you can say will help. Truly. No threats against them. Not even a successful victory over them will help. This is mine to resolve with myself and for myself.”

I nodded. “You’re my best friend, Rudy. What can I do?”

He smiled. It was faint but genuine. “Just be my friend. That does more than you might think.”

He offered me his hand, and I took it — very gently, mindful of his burns.

Above us, the San Diego sky was a flawless blue. We took a moment and looked up at it.

Rudy cursed very quietly under his breath. When he wants to, he can conjure the vilest expletives known to the Spanish language.

We went inside.

Chapter One Hundred and One

It was and cool inside the hospital. The place seemed deserted, and we were dressed like spacemen.

Rudy shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

“I suppose I’m having déjà vu. Have we been in this exact hospital in this same kind of situation?”

We paused, each of us looking around and looking backward into memory.

“Damn,” I said softly. “I know what you mean. Feels like half a dozen times I can name. Maybe more.”

“More,” Rudy agreed, then added. “Too many.”

A door opened down the hall and a doctor came out, spotted us, and came to meet us.

“I’m Doctor Alur,” he said. “Infectious Diseases. They called me in.”

We introduced ourselves.

“Good to meet you, Doctor,” I said.

“Yes,” said Alur, “though I’m sorry it’s under such unfortunate circumstances.”

“Exactly how unfortunate are we talking? What is this? Ebola or—?”

“No,” said Alur, “but I’m not sure we should be relieved. The two victims both exhibit symptoms consistent with a disease that cannot do what it apparently has.”

“You lost me.”

“Please explain,” urged Rudy.

“Disease symptoms follow patterns,” Alur explained. “Even in the cases of mutation, the symptoms are part of a logic chain. We can understand the pathology because we know what diseases of various kinds are likely to do. There isn’t much room for them to do things entirely outside of their symptomatological profiles. Do you follow?”

The question was directed at me, the thug without a medical degree.

“Right,” I said. “If you catch a flu, your ass won’t fall off. Got it.”

He almost smiled. Managed not to. “In cases of extreme mutation, where an unforeseen acceleration of the disease has occurred, we can still look for — and generally find — a chain of cause and effect.”

“But not in this case?” I asked.

“Not so far.”

Rudy frowned. “What disease are we talking about?”

He took a breath. “We believe that this is some kind of extreme or mutated form of necrotizing fasciitis.”

I stared at him. “Necrotizing —? Wait, are you talking about the flesh-eating disease?”

“That’s a misnomer,” said Alur, “but yes. Are you familiar with it?”

“Not really. I know about it, but from a distance.”

“Doctor,” said Rudy, “Captain Ledger has been around weaponized pathogens for some time. Please give him what you have. If he has questions later, I’ll be able to fill in the blanks.”

Alur nodded. “We call it NF, though the press likes to call it the flesh-eating disease or the flesh-eating bacteria syndrome. It’s a very rare infection of the deeper layers of skin and subcutaneous tissues. Even in ordinary cases, it progresses rapidly, having greater risk of developing in patients who are immunocompromised. In patients, say, with cancer or diabetes. Understand: even in ordinary cases, it is known as a severe disease of sudden onset. Treatment usually involves high doses of intravenous antibiotics and debriding of the necrotic flesh. It’s typically fatal when untreated.”

“This is a bacteria, not a virus?” I asked.

“Yes, but it’s more complicated than that.”

“It’s always more complicated than that,” I muttered.

“This disease agent is a Type One polymicrobial, so, actually, quite a few different types of bacteria can cause NF. Group A streptococcus — Streptococcus pyogenes — Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium perfringens, Bacteroides fragilis, Aeromonas hydrophila, and others. And there are other kinds of NF: Type Two, which are triggered by a single kind of bacteria. And since 2001, we’ve cataloged another serious form of monomicrobial necrotizing fasciitis that has been observed with increasing frequency, caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—”

I held up a hand. “Not studying for a test, doc. Hit me with what I need to know.”

He looked momentarily flustered, then nodded. My guess was that this was all so big and scary to him that he was letting his clinical knowledge prop up the rest of him. I’ve seen it a hundred times.

“When we encounter patients presenting with signs of cellulitis, we have several tests we can perform to determine the likelihood of NF. C-reactive protein, total white-blood-cell count, hemoglobin, sodium, creatinine, and glucose. We ran all of those on the deceased, and we hit the right bells each time. This is, without a doubt, necrotizing fasciitis.”

“The police and your own people have determined that the disease was spread through contaminated food. Specifically, some Mexican food that was delivered via one of those drones.”

“NachoCopter,” I said. “It’s one of those five-prop commercial drones. A quintocopter made by Sullivan Airdrop in Pasadena. We’ve got people on there way now, and we had local law shut the place down and quarantine the staff.”

Alur shook his head. “I read about those kinds of companies, about the drone deliveries, but I can’t believe the FAA granted approval.”

“Supreme Court overruled the FAA,” I said. “The corporations that want to use commercial delivery drones swing a lot of political weight.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked or appalled by that.”

“Shocked, no? Appalled — yeah, I think you can run with that. Their ads say that the drone will deliver hot food in under twenty minutes. Domino’s is doing the same thing. So are Papa John’s, McDonald’s, and others. Fact of life that this shit’s happening. However, it doesn’t explain what happened today. How did that happen? Was the NF introduced to the food at the restaurant?”

Rudy consulted a notebook. “From phone records we were able to determine that Mr. Quiñones ordered his food by phone and the drone made the delivery nineteen minutes later.”

“Has anyone talked to the drone operator?” asked Alur. “I read that there’s someone in a room using remote control—?”

“That’s the thing, doc,” I said, “NachoCopter doesn’t use remote pilots. They’re using autonomous piloting software.”

Rudy knew about Regis, but there was no need to explain it to Alur. Not yet, anyway.

“Oh.” Alur looked deeply troubled. “Was that same drone used for other deliveries today?”

“Yeah, it was,” I said. “Seventeen more. And before you ask, our team rolled cars to each location. So far, all of the other customers are okay. No one else is sick. So far, at least. What’s the timetable if someone else was exposed?”

“With this version of NF? I don’t know. I’d be guessing…”

“Guess,” I suggested.

“Under two hours. Mr. Quiñones and Ms. Santa Domingo apparently collapsed after eating the food. Possibly no more than sixty to ninety minutes later. They succumbed to deterioration of their tissues and died shortly after that.”

I whistled. Rudy shook his head, not in refusal of the doctor’s words but because it was like taking another arrow in the chest. Idealism and optimism glow pretty brightly, and that gives the bastards of this world something to aim at.

“Last delivery before we shut it down was four hours ago,” I said. “Give it forty-five minutes’ max time before someone eats something they’ve ordered delivered. That gives us three hours for there to be more dead bodies. Why aren’t we seeing that?”

Rudy nodded to Doctor Alur. “Are we positive the bacteria was in the Mexican food?”

“Yes,” he said. “We were able to analyze the stomach contents.”

“How long should it have taken them to die from exposure under ordinary circumstances?” I asked.

“If left untreated, NF could kill in only a few months. Some cases take years.”

“Big scary question,” I said. “How contagious is this?”

Rudy fielded that. “Generally, not very. However, it’s possible for uninfected people to come into contact with patients with the disease and become infected with an organism that may eventually cause necrotizing fasciitis. Transmission from one person to another usually requires direct contact with a patient or some item that can transfer it to another person’s skin. Infection usually requires a cut or abrasion for the organisms to establish an infection. However, once contracted, mortality rates can be as high as twenty-five percent.”

Alur nodded. “We see about six hundred to a thousand cases each year.”

“Here in Chula Vista?” I asked.

“No, here in the United States.”

“So, how do two people like this die of a disease like that in a couple of hours?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Can you take a guess?”

Alur paused, then said, “Come and look at the bodies.”

We followed him down the hall and through one of those big leather and plastic doors that flap open and shut. Like they have in meat lockers, which is a visual I wish I hadn’t made for myself. We went through several layers of hanging sheets of thick plastic into a biohazard isolation suite. We didn’t pass through the last layer of plastic but instead stared in horror at what lay on two identical steel tables. At two bodies. If you could call them bodies. You certainly couldn’t call them people.

Not anymore.

There were red lumps on two side-by-side stainless-steel tables. They had arms and legs. There were bony nobs that were about the size of heads. The rest?

God.

They really did look like the kind of melted corpses you see in those old horror movies. But no movie, despite great scripts and acting, despite computer-generated special effects and brilliant cinematography, can capture that one element that will always separate fantasy from reality.

Those were actual people there. Not actors, not stunt doubles. Not animatronic monsters.

These were people, and this disease had stolen their lives, stolen their faces, consumed their futures. Robbed them not just of heartbeat and breath, but of all those moments that make up a life. Small joys, intimate conversations, unexpected excitements, casual insights. Happiness and love. Family. All gone.

Devoured.

“Jesus Christ,” I breathed. “How could this happen?”

The doctor’s eyes looked strange. Haunted. Deeply frightened.

“If I had to guess,” he said softly, “I’d say that this was a deliberate mutation.”

Chapter One Hundred and Two

The big flap door behind us opened and a man peered in. Hard to say what he looked like beneath the hazmat suit except that he was black, medium height, and wore wire-frame glasses. His head jerked a bit in surprise.

“Oh! Pardon me,” he said quickly. “I was looking for the physician in charge.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Are you the doctor?”

“I’m the man asking who you are,” I said, my tone on the sharp side of friendly.

“Sorry, the ER staff sent me down here to ask the doctor to come look at someone they just brought in. They think it might be the same thing.”

“Brought in?” cried Alur. “Brought in where? Is the patient alive? Is he conscious?”

The man, who was still only head and shoulders into the room, turned to face Alur. “You’re the doctor?”

“Yes,” said Alur.

“Okay, great.”

The man stepped into the room, and as he did so he brought up the combat shotgun that he’d been hiding.

There was no time to do anything.

Not soon enough.

The blast caught Doctor Alur full in the chest. One magnum twelve-gauge shell tore the man to rags. It shredded his chest, vaporized his heart, and blew out his spine. At that distance — less than fifteen feet — there was no way for Alur to run. Just as there was no way for the killer to miss.

I was in motion before Alur’s body could even fall.

I shoved Rudy behind a table and dove for the gunman. My sidearm was in my shoulder holster under the hazmat suit. These weren’t combat overgarments, not like the Saratoga hammer suits we usually wore for combat in hot zones. I was unarmed against a shotgun.

But I was so close. Too close for him to swing the barrel toward me. Not in time. Beyond him, I could hear other men shouting. There was another shot. Down the hall.

This was a full-out assault.

That flashed through my brain as I leaped inside the space of a moment, caught the barrel as he tried to bring it to bear, grabbed the barrel with my right, and jerked it high, catching him across the face with a left-hand cutting palm. It spun him as surely as if I’d hit him with a baseball bat. Feels about the same, too. His chin spun around, and his body wanted to follow, but he still had a solid grip on the gun. That grip created resistance. Maybe it sprained his neck. I don’t know — I didn’t ask. I chop-kicked him in the knee, feeling the cartilage and bones crumble; and as he sagged back, I tore the shotgun from him, reversed it in my grip, jammed the barrel against his cheekbone, and blew his head all over the door.

He toppled outward, spraying the floor outside with blood and brain matter.

Two men stood a dozen yards away, staring in shock and horror at the nearly headless corpse. Maybe they knew who it was. They were all carrying similar weapons. I didn’t know who they were, didn’t know where Brian and the rest of my team was.

I didn’t wait to find out. The Benelli M3 combat shotgun in my hands held twelve shells. Two were gone. I hosed the guys in the hall with the rest. They tried so hard to bring their guns up. To make a fight of this. To have a chance.

I took that chance from them.

The shells tore them into scarlet inhumanity.

The front door opened, and Brian Botley staggered in. He was splashed with blood, and his hazmat suit was torn. He had an M5 is his hands.

“They ambushed us,” he gasped. “Riker and Smalls are down.”

“How bad are you hurt?”

“Body armor took the hit. I think. Cracked some ribs.”

He was wheezing and could barely stand. I pointed the way I’d come.

At the far end of the hall, I heard another shotgun blast. There were more of these pricks.

“Call it, sir,” said Brian.

“Alur’s dead. Rudy’s not. Make sure he stays safe. Go.”

He didn’t like it, but he was half gone, so he staggered past me through the leather flap doors.

As I ran, I yelled, “Get us some damn backup.”

“Hooah.”

He vanished inside.

I began running along the hall, bent low, weapon ready. No idea what I would find around the far corner. No idea what horrors would be waiting.

On the other hand, they had no idea what was coming for them.

Chapter One Hundred and Three

As I raced toward the end of the hall, my mind tried to assemble this into a shape that made sense.

Why kill the doctor investigating the case? Surely if they were smart enough to concoct a superstrain of NF and cook up the idea of delivering it in takeout food brought by a UAV, then they were smart enough to know that killing the doctor would not end the investigation. Or even stall it. Ambushing the ambulance might have done that. This was too late in the process.

On the other hand, their choice of weapons was significant. Shotguns. Except when using certain solid loads, shotguns typically fired pellets of varying size. Once the round leaves the barrel, the pellets disperse into a wide spray.

I wonder what would have happened had I not attacked? Would the gunman have fired a second shell? If so, would he have tried to kill or wound? Alur had been unlucky enough to be the closest, but a second blast would have wounded the rest of us. The pellets would have punched through the thin hazmat material.

They would have actually killed us.

Not in a room that might have some of the NF bacteria. All they’d have to do was damage the seals.

I skidded to a stop at the end of the hall, then crouched and listened to what was happening around the corner.

There were three separate sounds.

Voices pleading.

Voices weeping.

Voices yelling.

No gunshots at the moment.

I hunkered low and did a quick look around the corner and pulled back, letting what I’d seen in that flash assemble itself into useful details in my head.

Nine people.

All of them in identical white hazmat suits.

Three of them lay on the floor. Bloody and torn. Impossible to tell how badly injured they were.

Three men stood near them, each of them armed with a shotgun.

Three cowering people, who had to be hospital staff.

One of the shooters was yelling orders. “Get a gurney. Bring the bodies outside. Do it now or I will kill you. Do you understand?”

The cadence of the voice and the clarity of the instructions had a military feel. Not surprising. This hit was military in its form, though not the highest grade. Not what I’d call special ops.

Not Kingsmen-level, though that wasn’t much of a comfort. Top-of-the-line special operators could sometimes be reasoned with. They were professionals, and, when presented with a no-win situation, they often put a higher premium on their own asses than on their employer’s agendas. Second stringers were either zealots of one species or another, or they were amateurs. Both are unpredictable, and each tended to jump at the wrong time and in the wrong direction. And if they worked for the Kings, then they were likely as bug-nuts fanatical as the Kingsmen.

I was stepping into something that was bad and could only get worse.

I didn’t know if the air was rife with NF, or if it was even an airborne pathogen. We hadn’t gotten that far in our discussions before Alur was killed.

I tried tapping my earbud to get Nikki on the line, but all I got was a whistling buzz.

Jammer?

That was weird as shit, because an active jammer would almost certainly cut off the signal for the intrusion team as well. Unless they had some spooky toys I didn’t have.

Rat balls.

I took a second look, noting how the bodies had shifted. I had clear shots at two of the men. I’d have to move in order to safely take the third without spraying the civilians with pellets. I needed to save the innocent and stop the bad guys, but also have someone with a pulse I could interrogate.

So, I decided to take a gamble.

I stood, turned toward the empty hallway behind me, and began firing my shotgun as I backed around the corner.

“They’re coming!” I bellowed.

“How many?” demanded one of the shooters, assuming — as I’d intended — that I was one of the other team.

“There’s a whole team down there.”

One of the shooters ran up to stand beside me, our guns pointed at the bend in the corridor, waiting for the rush that would never come.

I didn’t wait for him to realize his mistake.

I pivoted in place and, from a distance of three feet, fired at his midsection.

At that distance, he caught the whole spray, and it scythed him in half.

“Yuri!” screamed someone behind me, and I whirled as the second shooter darted forward, his gun coming up fast. I shot by reflex, and the buckshot caught him in the thighs and groin. His legs and pelvis were yanked out behind him, and he flopped onto his chest.

The cowering staff shrieked in terror and horror as blood splashed the floor and walls. It was lucky for them that gore was the only thing splashing them.

If even one pellet had hit them and punctured their suits …

The third gunman was frozen into a moment of bad decision. He could fire, but I was coming fast, and he didn’t have his gun up yet. He could surrender. Or he could take a damn prisoner.

I saw his eyes cut toward a staff member. The smallest of the three. A woman.

“Don’t do it!” I bellowed.

He did it anyway. The killer bounded sideways, hooked one arm around a slim waist, and jerked her in front of him as a shield. He jammed the shotgun barrel up under the woman’s chin.

“I’ll kill her,” he declared.

I pointed my gun at his head. “I believe you.”

“Put your gun down.”

“Or, how about — fuck you?”

“I mean it.”

“I know. Me too.”

He stammered. The conversation had started badly and already begun to slide down an icy hill.

“Listen to me, Sparky,” I said. “Your friends are dead. The two bozos here and the Three Stooges out there. All of them. Dead. You, on the other hand, have the Willy Wonka golden ticket. That means you get the chance to walk out of here alive and in one piece. Now — look at me. I just killed five people. Do you think I’m going to let you walk just because you’re hiding behind a hostage? Ever heard the phrase ‘collateral damage’?”

The woman’s eyes opened wider and filled with even more terror at my words.

“Bullshit,” he fired back. “Cops don’t risk civilians.”

“Not a cop, sorry. Try again.”

He jammed the gun harder into the woman’s soft chin.

“Please—!” she begged. “Oh God, please.”

“Shut up,” he growled, jabbing her again.

I moved closer to him. He backed away, but I kept pace with him. We both knew that there were very few options left to anyone. He’d kill her, and we’d fight. He’d let her go, and we’d fight.

He went for option number 3.

With a sudden grunt, he shoved her at me and then leveled the shotgun to try and catch us both.

That was the move I was expecting. The one I wanted him to try. I’d been watching his body language, waiting for the shift of weight he’d need to make in order to push her. As soon as I saw it, I was moving. The girl had time for one staggering step before I snaked out a hand and caught her arm, whipped my hips around for torque, and flung her roughly into the other two civilians. They all went down. That left the gunman free and clear. I swung the stock of my shotgun to try and knock the weapon out of his hands. I liked my chances in a hand-to-hand fight and really did want to have that meaningful chat with him.

But, damn it, he was too fast for his own good.

He evaded my swing, brought his shotgun up, and fired.

I spun out of the way and felt pellets tug at the loose fabric around my middle.

Shit, shit, shit!

Terrified as well as desperate, I used my turn to corkscrew myself down into a kneeling position, shotgun snugged against my chest as I fired.

The blast caught him in the side, and the pellets opened his hazmat suit like an envelope. He toppled backward, geysering blood for torn arteries. I immediately dropped my weapon and scrambled over to him, trying to staunch the arterial bleeding. Needing him alive.

Needing him not to be dead.

Not yet.

“Goddamn it, Sparky,” I muttered as I worked, using gloves to staunch wounds that were truly dreadful, “now see what you’ve gone and made me do.”

He tried to tell me to go fuck myself, but he couldn’t manage it. His voice was already faint, receding like a train whispering its way down a tunnel. Blood bubbled between his lips and misted the inside of his hood.

“You got one chance to change things for you,” I said. “Don’t end the game on the wrong team. Tell me something I can use. Who sent you here? Do you work for the Seven Kings?”

“Say good-bye to your world,” he gurgled. “Because your world is going to burn.”

Then he spat a mouthful of blood at me. While still wearing the hazmat hood. Dumb fuck. It struck the plastic and obscured his face. I couldn’t risk taking my hands away from the torn arteries to remove his mask.

Soon, however, I realized that I didn’t need to.

The blood stopped pumping.

A last breath exited from him in a bubbling, directionless sigh, and he settled back. Gone.

I sagged back from him.

“Goddamn it,” I breathed

Your world is going to burn.

What the hell did that mean?

The three civilians had climbed to their feet and stood in a tight, deeply frightened cluster. I heaved a sigh and stood. However, when I took a step toward them, they all but leaped back, squealing in fear.

“Hey!” I said. “I’m a federal agent. I’m one of the good guys.”

But it turned out that wasn’t what they were afraid of.

Then I remembered about the spray of buckshot I’d dodged.

I plucked out the loose fabric and stared blankly at a dozen small holes that had been punched through my hazmat suit.

Chapter One Hundred and Four

Aaron Davidovich knew that he was a dead man.

Apart from wishing he were dead, and wishing even more that he possessed the courage to kill himself, he assumed that he was being hunted. They had to know he was gone. He’d left enough of a mess.

They would be hunting him. Maybe Boy would be hunting him. Not an agent of the Kings, but her. In the flesh.

Not to bring him back. That ship had sailed. The Kings’ project was rolling forward, grinding its way into the history books. All they needed to do now was to cut his throat. They wouldn’t even bother to torture him. What would be the point? They didn’t need anything from him except his silence.

That would be the thing.

Kill him and silence any possible threat he could pose.

Davidovich stood in the shadows behind a billboard advertising premium real estate. He had no idea how long or how far he’d walked since leaving the house he’d broken into. There was no foot traffic, which meant that on foot a pedestrian would be noticed, so he stayed in the shadows and hid when cars passed. The sun had just tumbled over the nearest clumps of pines, and it felt much later than it was.

He needed something, though. He needed a car. More urgently, though, he needed a phone or a computer with Internet access. He tried to find a pay phone, but if such a thing existed on Fox Island, he couldn’t find one. And, looking as he did in ill-fitting clothes and bedroom slippers, no one was going to let him borrow a phone or laptop. No one was likely to float him the money to use a pay phone, providing he could even find a relic like that.

Across the two-lane was a small roadside restaurant. Dilley’s Classic Roadside Café. A retro-trendy place with expensive cars in the lot. The exceptions were two medium-sized movers’ vans. Davidovich figured they had just moved someone into one of the fancy homes and were refueling before driving back to their home base. Dilley’s exterior looked like a carhop diner from the fifties, with bright red Coke signs and tin cutouts of burgers piled high with tomatoes and pickles.

His stomach clenched, and he realized that he was hungry. The three cans of tuna he’d eaten earlier seemed to have done nothing for him. He wanted one of those burgers …

“Focus, you moron,” he told himself, and flinched at the sound of his own voice. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

Headlights flared as a late-model Ford pickup rattled around the curve and angled toward Dilley’s. The truck bed was piled high with bagged grass cuttings and lawn equipment. It rolled to a stop at the far end of a line of parked vehicles and tucked into a slot between the moving vans. Two men got out. A small man with skinny legs and a bulky Seahawks hoodie and a fat man in a thermal vest.

“You going to get something to go?” asked the skinny man.

“I don’t know. Need to take a wicked whiz first. If I get something, you want anything?”

“Coffee and a couple of those almond rolls. I’ll wait for you. Got to call Gary to tell him we need to go back tomorrow to finish. And we still need to put the mulch down on the Carsons’ flowerbeds. Probably need all morning.”

“’K,” said the fat man as he hurried inside, prancing the way men do who have an urgent need. It made him look like he was walking on fragile glass.

Davidovich was moving out of the shadows and across the street before the door banged shut behind the fat man. The skinny guy had removed a cell phone and leaned his right shoulder against the closed driver’s door while he dialed.

Most of the way across the street and over the cracked macadam of the parking lot, Davidovich told himself that he was just going to ask. That was all. Just ask to use the phone. He’d say that he had an accident and needed to call the police. Something like that.

That was all he was going to do.

When he bent and scooped up a piece of rock that had popped loose from a pothole, he did not admit to himself that he was going to use it. Even when he was raising the rock over his head, he kept telling himself that he was not that kind of person. He didn’t attack strangers. He didn’t hit them in the head with rocks.

The moment of commission came and went, and no amount of denials could change the fact of what he had just done The rock and all of the fingers curled around it were dark with blood. The back of the man’s head glistened.

The man fell strangely. His upper body seemed to stiffen, but from the elbows down, the man’s arms and fingers twitched wildly. From the knees down, the muscles and tendons seemed to turn to rubber. The man made a small, meaningless gagging sound, and then he fell.

Onto kneecaps and then onto his face, making no effort at all to stop himself from colliding lips and nose first onto the cold, cold ground.

Aaron Davidovich stared at him. He was absolutely shocked to silent immobility.

The man lay sprawled on the ground like an empty suit of clothes. The shape of the bones between collar and baseball cap were …

Wrong.

The skull shape was flattened. No. Dented.

Not as grossly misshapen as Steve’s head had been, but bad enough. Wrong enough.

His cell phone had fallen from his hand and lay in a pool of light. Davidovich stared at it. The phone was so perfectly placed it was as if a cinematographer had arranged it there for maximum visual impact.

There was a soft thud, and Davidovich looked down to see that he’d dropped the bloody rock.

He heard another sound. Faint and high-pitched, like the whine of a small dog. Pleading and desperate.

The sound came from his own throat.

“I’m damned,” he said aloud.

No one and nothing raised a voice to refute him.

Davidovich quickly bent down and snatched the phone with greedy fingers. He clutched it to his chest, turned, and began to run.

Then stopped.

The truck still had the keys in it.

He licked his lips, flicking nervous glances at the diner.

It took less than a minute to roll the dead man’s body beneath the bulk of the semi parked next to the Ford. Fifteen seconds later, he was driving off in the Ford. He watched in the rearview mirror for the fat man to come out. The man still hadn’t appeared by the time Davidovich turned onto the main road.

He never stopped whining like a frightened little dog.

Chapter One Hundred and Five

Rudy said four words that were not as much of a comfort as we all hoped.

“It’s probably not airborne.”

“‘Probably’ not?” I said. My voice may have been a tad shrill.

“We’re, um, working to determine that, Cowboy,” said Rudy.

We were in a room that had been prepped as a replacement for the biohazardous exam suite in which Doctor Alur had been murdered. The walls, floor, and ceiling had been thoroughly covered in plastic and sealed with a medical-grade duct tape. It looked like the kind of serial-killer murder room you see on reruns of Dexter.

I wore a hospital johnny and had all sorts of tubes running in and out of my veins. Rudy looked even more frightened than me. Behind the thick plastic of his hazmat suit, his face was beaded with sweat and his eye was glassy with shock.

We were alone for the moment, though there were two armed guards outside. Two of my own guys from the Pier.

“Let’s circle back to the word ‘probably,’” I suggested.

Rudy licked his lips. “That means, Cowboy, that we think its serum-transfer-only but don’t have the lab work back yet.”

I took great pains to keep my tone very reasonable and not at all like a hysterical Chihuahua. “Can you request, please, that they not dawdle?”

He almost smiled. “I guarantee you, Joe, no one is wasting time on this. I made some demands, and Mr. Church has been on the phone with the hospital administrators.”

“You spoke to Church?”

“Yes. He expressed his concern for you.”

“Did he really?” I asked.

“Well, no, but it was implied.”

“Uh-huh.”

Rudy said, “You’ll be happy to know that Top and Bunny are on their way back here.”

“To do what? Watch my skin rot off?”

“Joe, so far you have no symptoms at all.”

“Falling apart here, Rude. I can feel it. I think my spleen is melting.”

“Let’s face it, Cowboy, falling apart is something of a work in progress for you.”

“Oh, hilarious. Psychiatry humor. I get it.”

“I don’t think you’re infected.”

I nodded.

“Though, knowing you as I do, you probably think you deserve some kind of injury as penalty for being unable to take one or more of those gunmen alive. You think you failed, don’t you?”

I said nothing.

“Joe — you were in a desperate fight with six men armed with combat shotguns. You began that fight unarmed and yet managed to shoot all six of the attackers, and in doing so saved my life, Brian’s, and the rest of the staff.”

“I didn’t save Doctor Alur.”

“You couldn’t have. That was a surprise attack. Even if you hadn’t been wearing a hazmat suit and had been able to draw your sidearm, Alur would still be dead.” He shook his head. “You are seldom an unfair person, Cowboy. When you are, it’s almost always directed at yourself.”

Chapter One Hundred and Six

Linden Brierly sat next to the president on the battered old couch in the faculty lounge. Secret Service agents blocked the door and guarded the hall. Alice Houston stood next to the couch, her hand pressed to her mouth. The TV was on, and the cameras showed bodies being removed from a townhouse in Park Slope. Three laptops stood open on a table and set for video chats. The director of Homeland Security was on one; the national security advisor was on another. And Mr. Church was on the third, clearly speaking via cell-phone video.

They were all listening to Church, who was explaining the DMS theory that the Regis system had been compromised by the Seven Kings. The room was as silent as a tomb except for Church’s voice.

The silence endured for several moments after Church had finished, though every pair of eyes in the room turned to the president.

Finally, the president blew out his cheeks and said, “I should have stayed in Congress.”

No one laughed.

To Church, the president said, “This is still conjecture? Do we have anything concrete?”

“Not at the moment.”

“But you believe this to be the case?”

“I do, Mr. President.”

“You understand what it would mean to try and shut down everything with Regis installed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re aware of how vulnerable it would make our country? Not just in terms of attacks from foreign powers, but in defense of what’s happening right here.”

Church said nothing. Instead, he ate a cookie.

The president fidgeted. Everyone in the room knew that Church had advised against Regis in the first place. Years ago. Just as he’d advised against a delay in responding to the Resort video.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” said the president.

“Mr. President, there is a time for deliberation and there is a time for action,” said Church. “We need to—”

The president leaned forward and slapped the laptop closed. He heard the gasps but did not acknowledge them. Instead, he sank back into his chair and glowered at the closed computer.

After a shocked moment, Alice Houston said, “Mr. President, how would you like us to respond to this?”

“Respond?” The president laughed. “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer. Church is an alarmist. This is his damn fault.”

“How so, Mr. President?” asked Brierly.

“Because it was his job to dismantle the Seven Kings organization, and he failed.”

Brierly clamped his mouth shut so tightly his jaw creaked. He tried to catch Houston’s eyes, but she looked away.

However, the chief of staff said, “Church is coming here to fly back east with you on Air Force One. Shall … I tell him not to?”

“Oh no, don’t do that,” said the president. “I want him with me so I can have a nice little private chat with him. I want to tell him how I will be pulling the DMS charter as soon as this crisis is past. I was warned about him before I took office, and now I can see that those warnings were accurate. Church is a megalomaniac who bullies people into getting what he wants.”

“Sir,” said Brierly in a tight voice, “what possible motive would Mr. Church have for spinning a story like this if Regis was not a genuine threat?”

The president cut him a savage look. “I don’t know, and I damn well don’t care. He’s done. That’s what I care about. And now let’s us focus on the realities of what’s happening. The ballpark and the video. That’s our focus.”

Chapter One Hundred and Seven

Davidovich pulled the truck off the road and drove halfway up the winding private lane to someone’s darkened house. He idled there for a few minutes, studying the landscape by moonlight. The place was shuttered up, probably closed since last fall and not yet opened.

Perfect.

He took a breath and drove the rest of the way, then pulled behind the house and parked in the utter blackness of the porte cochere that connected the main house to a large gazebo. He killed the engine and sat for nearly five minutes, gripping the wheel, unable to make himself move.

Although his right hand gripped the knobbed vinyl of the steering wheel, his skin could still feel the exact size, shape, and texture of the rock.

His ears could still hear the meaty crunch as the rock smashed through hair and flesh and bone.

And brain.

“God,” he whispered, but the word came out wrong because his teeth were chattering. Or maybe because that word didn’t fit into his mouth anymore.

Tears traced hot lines down the cold flesh of his cheeks.

He wished he felt more pity for the dead man than he did remorse for his own damaged life. He ached to feel that much humanity.

But it wasn’t the truth.

He sat there and mourned for himself. For the death of all that he had been and all that he could have been.

The death of a great man.

The death of Aaron Davidovich.

It took a lot of willpower and physical strength to unclamp his hands from the steering wheel. When his fingers finally came free, his hand flopped onto his thigh and then crawled like a white spider over to the passenger seat, searching in the shadows for the cell phone.

He froze.

What if the number wasn’t good anymore? What if it had been changed after he’d been taken?

What if there was no one to take his call?

What if?

What if?

Davidovich punched the steering wheel with the heel of his left hand. Over and over again. It hurt. It jarred the bones in his delicate hands. It sent little stinging shocks up his wrist.

It steadied him.

He drew in a breath so ragged that it hurt his lungs.

And picked up the cell.

Even after all these years, he knew the number by heart. It had been drilled into him when he went to work for DARPA and reinforced by the CIA when he was asked to go to Israel for the conference.

The number of his handler.

He punched in the ten digits. Expecting failure. Expecting nothing.

There was a vast, empty nothing for a long moment.

And then it rang.

Once.

Twice.

Before the third ring could start, there was a click and a voice said, “Receiving office.”

Davidovich sagged back, fresh tears boiling under his lashes.

“I need to arrange a delivery.”

A pause at the other end.

“Foreign or domestic shipping.”

“Domestic,” he said hurriedly. “I’m here. I’m back in the States.”

Another long pause. The voice was not one he recognized. Young but formal. Detached.

“Do you have a billing code?”

Davidovich had not spoken the number for three years, but he never forgot a piece of data.

“Four-six-one-one, M as in Mary, nine-nine.”

The young man read it back, but as he did so he transposed the six and the first one.

“Is that correct, sir?”

Davidovich repeated it exactly as the young man had said, with the same numbers transposed.

Another of those long, long pauses.

Then …

“Good evening, doctor.”

Chapter One Hundred and Eight

We had to wait through the incubation period to see if anything nasty happened to Brian or me. It didn’t. They tested every type of fluid and skin sample possible to take from a human being, and they found nothing.

Nothing. We were clean.

Rudy came to disconnect all the tubes.

All he said was, “Thank God.”

By the time we were dressed and officially discharged, Top and Bunny were on their way back from the crime scene. The bodies of our two fallen comrades were in the morgue, but there were blood splashes outside to show where they’d been cut down. I hadn’t known them very well, but you don’t need to be best friends with a fellow soldier to grieve for him. The same went for Alur. He seemed like a decent guy. All of them should have more chapters in the books of their lives.

Another debt to put on the Seven Kings.

The killer had put it in flat terms. Say good-bye to your world.

Yeah, motherfucker, I thought, say good-bye to yours.

Because your world is going to burn.

That was a scary threat. Very, very scary.

I wish I knew what to do about it. Where to go with it. While I waited for Top and Bunny, I settled into a doctor’s lounge. There was a whiteboard on the wall, so I busied myself listing the timeline we’d come up with on the plane so I could show it to Rudy when he came for me. He was somewhere else doing doctor stuff. I was spinning my wheels.

You know the expression “hurry up and wait”?

I hate that expression.

Especially when it defines my workday. Doubly so when bad things were happening to good people and the best I could manage was killing time.

Oh yeah, “killing time.” Another expression that, in context, blows.

Even more so when it becomes the most accurate assessment of the progress of a critical case.

A voice behind me said, “Here—”

I jumped about a foot, spun around, and almost pulled my gun.

It was Rudy holding a cup of Starbucks coffee out to me, his hawthorn and silver cane hooked over the crook of one arm. His expression was halfway between shocked and amused.

“Nerves a little taut, Cowboy?” he said dryly.

“Yeah, well, fuck you, too,” I snarled.

“And cranky, too. It’s unbecoming.”

“And the horse you rode in on.”

I took the coffee and sipped it. Hot and delicious, but I was too caught up in the dramatics of the moment to do anything but scowl.

Rudy nodded to Ghost, who had barely managed the energy to swivel one ear when I jumped. “At least somebody around here is managing to keep his blood pressure below the boiling point.”

“Don’t be fooled,” I said, “Ghost is poised for action.”

Ghost yawned and rolled over onto his back, legs curled and splayed like a dead chicken.

“So I see,” observed Rudy. “As always, I am in awe.”

For lack of anything cool or witty to say, I shot him the finger.

“When are we leaving?” he asked.

“Top and Bunny should be here any second. Then we’ll go see Circe, Junie, and the others.”

Rudy nodded, but there was some reserve in his face, which I immediately — and unfairly — misread.

“My guys swept the hospital,” I said, “Nicodemus isn’t there. But if you don’t want to go back, I—”

That made Rudy stiffen, and he looked at me with one dark brown eye that burned like a laser all the way through me. “Cowboy, my wife is in that hospital. I left with great reluctance in order to come here. If you are suggesting that I am afraid to go back, then I—”

I set my coffee cup down and held up my hands. “Stop. That was me being stupid. I apologize. As you, better than anyone, know, I have more than my share of jackass moments. No excuses. I wasn’t thinking, and I’m sorry.”

Rudy burned me for another few seconds, then turned off the heat. He nodded, exhaled, sipped his coffee.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said.

“What?”

“You have an inordinate amount of jackass moments.”

I grinned. “Guilty as charged.”

We toasted each other with Starbucks — I, with Pike, and he, with his iced half-caf ristretto quad grande, two-pump raspberry, two-percent, no-whip, light-ice, caramel-drizzle, three-and-a-half-pump white mocha. Normally, I would abuse him for the girly-man nature of that drink. Now was not the moment.

“How’s Brian?” I asked.

“Bad bruise but nothing broken, thank God. The new spider-silk Kevlar is quite amazing. It’ll save a lot of lives. It certainly saved his.”

We toasted to that as well.

Church called and told me that he’d struck out selling the Regis shutdown to the president.

“Well … shit on toast,” I said.

He grunted and said, “Politics.”

“What’s our play now?”

“I’m still scheduled to fly east with him. First to New York and then Philadelphia. That will give me some time to work on him.”

“Working him over would be more useful.”

“And probably more fun,” agreed Church. “I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, you’re heading here?”

“Yes. Maybe I can whip up some kind of game plan.”

“I wish you luck.”

The line went dead.

Chapter One Hundred and Nine

I told Rudy about the call. He made a face of disappointment. Maybe it was a frown of contempt. Hard to say. Either seemed appropriate. We walked outside to wait for Top and Bunny.

“Joe,” said Rudy, “I’ve been thinking about the Seven Kings information we’ve collected so far. I’m trying to work up a psychological profile on whoever is directing this particular campaign. When the Kings orchestrated the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, they used the faux religious zealotry of Osama bin Laden as their mask. With the Ten Plagues Initiative, it was easier to understand because Vox’s mother, the self-styled ‘Goddess,’ was a classic megalomaniacal subtype. The same went for her consort, Sebastian Gault. That plan had their fingerprints all over it. Had they survived and begun another plan together, we may have been able to counter it sooner because of how much we were able to learn about them. You know, profiling isn’t always the shot in the dark it’s made out to be in movies.”

“Okay, and—?”

“Well … have you noticed that there is no face on these attacks?”

“Face?” I asked.

“Think about it, Joe. With the Ten Plagues, the Goddess used social networking to infuse the attacks with a biblical feel. She drew on the heat of racial and religious intolerance and fanned that into a fire so that people were committing hate crimes that were not actually directed by the Kings themselves. Like an avalanche picking up debris. And Mother Night more or less did the same thing. Yes, I know she wasn’t part of the Kings, but she’d learned from them. She was with us when we took down the Kings, and she knew Vox. She’d been point person on the science team that dismantled the Kings’ operation after the gunplay was over. Surely it’s occurred to you that the way she rolled out her pseudo-anarchical Burn to Shine program was modeled after the Kings, just as it was modeled after aspects of her own personality. And she constructed the Mother Night persona to sell it. These things are always more effective when there is a devil among the details. Hitler, Manson, Jim Jones. There are plenty of examples, and it almost doesn’t matter whether the face is the directing force or a figurehead.”

I nodded.

“Take the seif al din matter,” continued Rudy, “the thing that brought us both into the DMS. Most of that case was built around the terror-for-profit mind-set of Sebastian Gault. His methodology, his personal intensity. And, let’s face it, it’s no surprise that he was later recruited by the Kings. He already used a similar style of grand theatrics and showy misdirection to roll out his plan. Only the last part of that, the attack at the Liberty Bell Center, was different, because that bore the more aggressive personality of El Mujahid. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“I think so.”

“So, with this campaign,” Rudy said, “where’s the element of personality? Why does this seem so” — he fished for a word and chose one that shouldn’t fit but somehow did — “clinical? Or, maybe, mechanical.”

I repeated the words, tasting them.

“I mean, look at us,” said Rudy, “we typically find ourselves giving a case a nickname, and so far no one has done so beyond ‘the drone thing.’”

“Regis?” I suggested, but he shook his head.

“No, that’s a by-product, and we’re still waffling on whether it is, in fact, the core of their plan.”

“I’m already sold. Regis is another word for ‘king,’ for Christ’s sake. They put their brand on it, wouldn’t you say?”

“Sure, everyone in the DMS seems to agree with that, Joe, but Mr. Church has not had much luck selling that to the president or the Department of Defense. That’s complicated by the fact that the earliest proposals for Regis predate our first encounters with the Seven Kings.”

“C’mon, that proves nothing. We know for a fact that the Kings have been around, moving behind the scenes for a couple of decades now.”

“So Mr. Church has attempted to explain.” He made a sour face and repeated, “Politics.”

“Politics,” I agreed, loading it with the same bile Church had used earlier.

“And the Kings themselves predate the current administration by several years. It’s my opinion, Joe, that the president is unwilling to accept that the Kings organization could rebuild itself to this level of threat on his watch.”

“Fucking politics,” I amended, and he nodded.

I sat on a stone ledge and sipped my coffee. Ghost put his head on my lap. It was clearly time for me to pet him. I did.

“There may be no overall face on this,” I conceded, “but their foot soldiers are acting the way we’ve seen with Kingsmen in the past. They’re true believers. The last shooter used his dying breath to drop a tagline on me: ‘Your world is going to burn.’”

Rudy nodded. “It shows that internally, at least, the Kings are acting like the Kings. Or, the organization is on an administrative level. But, tell me, Joe, what do you infer from the man’s comment?”

I shrugged. “That we’ve only seen the coming attractions. The main feature hasn’t started yet.”

Another nod. “And—?”

“Whatever’s coming is big.”

Rudy looked annoyed. “That’s an imprecise analysis, Cowboy. You’re smarter than that. What do you, Joe Ledger, senior DMS field agent, head of the Special Projects Division, infer from what that man said?”

I brooded on it, scratching Ghost’s fur.

“The line is too dramatic to be an actual dying declaration,” I said. “It comes off as scripted.”

Rudy nodded. “It certainly does.”

“My favorite working theory — one that accounts for the sophistication of their current weapon — meaning drones, the software hijacking, like that — is that Doctor Davidovich is working with the Kings.”

“Mr. Church told me you thought so. Why ‘with’ rather than ‘for but under duress’?”

“The QC drive in the pigeon drones,” I said.

Rudy frowned. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Developing a workable quantum computer is apparently a very big thing. From what Bug and his geek squad have told me, it should have taken a decade or two. But Davidovich did it in a few years.”

“Which means what, exactly, Joe? That under duress Davidovich would only do good work but not outstanding work?”

“Something like that. I know some pretty creative people, Rude. They can do a lot of great stuff under a deadline. But the QC is the kind of thing that will make Davidovich a household name for the next century. How many people create masterpieces at gunpoint?”

Rudy nodded thoughtfully. “An interesting point. I’ll consider it. Mr. Church has asked for a profile of Davidovich as a possible player for the Kings.”

“At this point I don’t think we can discount it.”

A police car pulled into the turnaround, lights flashing but no siren. A cop hopped out and opened the rear doors for Top and Bunny. They shook hands with him and then came to meet us. They both looked angry and upset.

“I can’t leave you alone for five goddamn minutes,” complained Top.

They shook hands with Rudy and asked about Circe, getting the same answers I got. It was still a heartbreaking holding pattern.

Brian Botley came out wearing bloodstained clothes and was no longer in a hazmat suit.

“Glad to see you fellows,” he said.

“Glad to see you still sucking air.”

Brian looked sad. “Not everyone was so lucky.”

Top seemed really furious. “We should have been here, not at the damn crime scene. Nothing new’s happening there,” he said to me.

“Don’t go there, Top,” I countered. “There was no way we could have anticipated this hit. And even so, we had three armed agents here.”

“‘Had’ is the damn point, Cap’n,” he snapped. “Farm Boy and me would have cut those assholes off at the knees before they ever drew down on our guys. No offense, Botley.”

“None taken,” said Brian. “I wish you’d been here, too. All the math would be different.”

“Top,” said Rudy, “please understand something. The only fault lies with the Seven Kings. They are clearly and effectively stretching our resources. Giving us a crime scene and a medical investigation would certainly split our forces. They counted on that, and they used it against us. Instead of looking to blame ourselves, we have to keep in mind the subtlety of their planning. And then we have to develop a response that is appropriate and effective. Do you agree?”

Top looked at him for a three count, then nodded.

“Going to make someone burn for this,” he said.

Say good-bye to your world.

My earbud buzzed and I tapped it. “Go.”

“Hey, Cowboy,” said Nikki. “We ran the prints from the six shooters and got pings on all of them. All six members of the team are ex-military,” she said. “Four army, one navy, one marine. All six worked in some aspect of the security industry. All have ties to Blue Diamond Security.”

“Figured that.” Blue Diamond was a massive private security company that provided shooters to everyone from Monsanto to Uncle Sam. We’ve had messy run-ins with them in the past, but even though some of their men went to the hospital, prison, or morgue, upper management never took a fall. Contractually, they were not responsible for actions taken by contract employees. Or some legal bullshit like that. When the attorney general tried to sue them, they outlawyered us. They had an apparently unlimited amount of cash to throw at the legal process; the AG had a way smaller budget.

“What about the serial numbers on their weapons? Any leads from those?”

“All of it was stolen from a shipment that went missing back in 2009.”

“Ah. And their vehicle? They arrived in an ambulance.”

“Stolen the day before from a private EMT service in Rancho Santa Fe. It was actually reported missing, too. The GPS tracker and security lockout systems were hacked and disabled. Plates were swap-outs stolen from another ambulance company in Solana Beach. Very professional.”

“What about the NachoCopter. Anything there?”

“Kind of. We figured out what happened, but that doesn’t get us very far,” said Nikki sadly. “The UAV left with the food order, and everything was normal for the first four minutes of the flight. Then it landed on a rooftop of a one-story gas station that’s been closed for three years. We think that someone hacked into the GPS controls and forced the machine to land so they could plant the disease pathogen in the food. It was done fast, though, and the drone was on its way in under three minutes.”

“Anyone see who was on that roof?”

“We have one vague description of a quote ‘guy with a San Diego Padres cap and a dark colored T-shirt. Maybe jeans. Maybe the guy was white. Maybe he was black. Maybe he was Latino.’ Unquote. The witness wasn’t looking and didn’t much care. Old retired guy on his porch.”

“I used to like you, Nikki. But you’re about to fall off my Christmas-card list.”

“Doing the best I can with what you give me, Cowboy.”

“We anywhere with the drone itself?”

“No. Doctor Hu’s team pulled it apart. Everything. It’s standard. No QC drive. But it does have the commercial version of SafeZone, so there’s that. Yoda’s looking for a Trojan horse with a virus, but none of the MindReader scans are pinging anything. Bottom line is the drone was hacked with software that, right now, anyone and their grandmother seems to have access to. SafeZone’s everywhere. There are ten versions of it at BestBuy. Any kid in eighth-grade computer-science class could install it.”

“Balls.”

“The hard part wasn’t the UAV,” she continued. “The hard part was that NF disease. I spoke with Hu half an hour ago, and he’s been working with John Cmar down at Johns Hopkins and a few other top infectious-disease docs. So far, they’re all impressed, but none of them know who cooked it up.”

“No clue at all?”

“Well…” Nikki said diffidently. “Doctor Cmar said it reminds him of something he heard about from a World Health Organization conference ten years ago. A lab in Angola was trying to do something with necrotizing fasciitis, but Barrier shut them down. Supposedly all materials, records, and samples were destroyed. MindReader verified this, and there’s nothing else we can find about anyone else trying to develop something along the same lines.”

“Another dead end.”

Rudy cut in, “Nikki, can you get us a list of everyone who attended that conference? Maybe someone there might have ties to the Kings.”

“Um … sure. No problem.”

She signed off.

We left the hospital and piled into Ugly Betty. A sore, heartsick, and angry Brian Botley was with us. However, Bunny hadn’t even started the engine when Nikki called back.

“Joe, oh my God, Joe! I think we caught a break. I think we have something big.”

“Talk to me.”

“Do you remember the code name Doctor Detroit?”

I stiffened. “Yes, I do.”

“I … I think he just called the CIA.”

Everyone in the car froze.

Doctor Detroit.

Yeah, we all knew that code name. It was the name assigned by DARPA.

It was the name of a man every law enforcement agency in the world looked for.

Doctor Detroit.

Otherwise known as Doctor Aaron Davidovich.

Chapter One Hundred and Ten

We burned a long patch of rubber heading back to the Coast Guard air station. Instead of taking Shirley, we hopped aboard a muscular C-130 Hercules that had been arranged for us by Church. That allowed us to take Ugly Betty with us as we flew north to Washington State. The five of us — Top, Bunny, Brian, Ghost, and I — loaded Ugly Betty aboard, and we were wheels up in minutes. I had Montana drive to the airfield to bring Rudy back to San Diego. She wanted to come with us, but I told her I needed the rest of Echo to secure the hospital. The Kings were coming after us from all angles, and Nicodemus had already proved that they could get past the hospital security. She didn’t like it, but from the look in her eye I knew she’d take her frustrations out on any Kingsmen who had the bad luck to show up.

Our flight plan was straight as an arrow, and we were riding an executive order. It’s about eleven hundred miles, runway to runway, and I told the pilot to push it all the way to the red line. He didn’t like it, but he did it.

Once we were airborne, I played the message from Doctor Aaron Davidovich the CIA had passed along to us.

“… not sure if this is the right number. Been a long time since I had to use it. First chance I’ve had to get near an untapped phone. Please, I need you to pass this along to the Department of Military Sciences. They’ve dealt with this before. No one else. Please, no one else. Don’t try to figure out a better way. Trust me, nothing you do other than to contact Mr. Church’s people will work. Tell them this is Doctor Detroit. That’s not a joke. It’s a code name. This is not a hoax. Tell them Doctor Detroit is alive and he needs help.”

The CIA handler had tried to stem the flow of words and hold an actual conversation with Davidovich, but the scientist was in full-blown panic mode. His words tumbled over each other in a nearly unbroken flow that floated near the high-water mark of hysteria.

“Is that his voice?” asked Brian. “This was all before my time.”

“It’s him,” said Top. “No doubt about it. That whiny rich-boy voice? The contempt for lesser beings? Yeah, even scared, it’s still there in his voice.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it, Top,” said Bunny.

“Guy’s an asshole. Always was.”

“Yeah, okay, fair enough. Play the rest, Boss.”

I played the rest.

“I am in Washington State. I’m using a stolen phone. I had to kill someone to get it. I stole some money, too, and a pickup truck. I’m going to find a store where I can buy some burners. Track this phone if you know how to do that. I’m not taking it with me, but it will get the DMS into this area. I’ll call again once I find a burner, and then they can come find me. I’ll call this same number.”

“Doctor, tell me where you are,” said the CIA handler. “We can—”

“You can’t do shit. You guys were supposed to be protecting me in Israel, and look what happened. The Seven Kings came in and took me anyway. Fuck you. I want the DMS. I want Colonel Riggs or Captain Ledger.”

“Doesn’t know Riggs is dead,” said Bunny. “He’s been out of touch.”

The CIA handler kept trying to work his way into the scientist’s confidence. “Doctor, believe me, we can keep you safe. Let us know where to find you and—”

“Hey, moron, are you listening to me?” snapped Davidovich. “I’m not telling you squat. I’ll tell the DMS where I am. For now, all I want you clowns to do is track this phone. I’m not going to give any specific locations. You have to track me, and you have to get in touch with the DMS. Use the GPX-11 cellular satellite system and triangulate my call between that and ground cell towers. Even you should be able to find where I’m leaving this phone.”

The handler tried, but there was no more from Davidovich. After a few minutes, it was clear the scientist had simply abandoned the phone without hanging it up.

I called the CIA handler and grilled him pretty thoroughly. Even with an executive order, he was reluctant to turn over the case. I insisted. I’m good at insisting. I also had Nikki take control of the number Davidovich had used, and now it was routed directly to us, closing the Agency out completely. There would probably be a sternly written memo. Fine. I can always use fresh toilet paper.

The GPX-11 satellite Davidovich mentioned was another DARPA Tinkertoy. Specifically for ultrafast tracking of cell phones. Davidovich was using burners, though, and that complicated things. Burners were cheap, disposable cell phones that came preloaded with minutes. No plan or contract needed. They are the go-to phone for everyone from drug dealers to global terrorists. Very efficient, but a bitch to trace. I told Nikki to do her best.

I called Church and went over it with him, but he had nothing new to add to my game plan because the plan was simple. Get to Washington and wait for Davidovich to call again. Church took my call while aboard his own plane, which was about to touch down in LA, where he would transfer to Air Force One.

“How’s the political shitstorm?” I asked.

“Raging,” said Church, and he disconnected.

Our plane was nearly to the airfield in Seattle when Nikki called me.

“Cowboy, we have Doctor Detroit on the line again. New number. A burner. Routing it to you now.”

“I’m in a stolen pickup, heading north toward Seattle,” said a familiar voice. “Did you idiots get in touch with the DMS yet?”

“Doctor,” I said, “this is the DMS. We are attempting to locate you now.”

“Who is this?” Davidovich demanded.

“We don’t use names on an open line,” I reminded him.

“Christ, is this Joe Ledger? Holy fuck, it is you.”

“Nice use of protocol, doc,” I said. “Proves you’re smart. Now be smarter and tell me where you are.”

“Oh, bite me, Ledger. Like I give a shit about protocol? Where was the protocol when I was taken and—?”

“Really, doc? Now’s the time for that conversation? How about you tell me where you are so me and a whole bunch of very scary guys with guns can come and rescue you? Sound like a plan?”

“All right, all right. Let me see. There’s a road sign up ahead. I’m on Route Five, heading north. Just saw a sign for Edgewood.”

Bunny had a map out and said, “West of Tacoma. Route Five turns north and runs all the way up. We’re less than an hour from him.”

“Doc,” I said, “we can get to you in less than an hour.”

“Oh … wait,” said Davidovich.

“What’s wrong?”

“That SUV behind me. I’ve seen it before. A couple of times now. God. I think they found me.”

“Keep driving,” I ordered. “Don’t stop for anyone. Run red lights if you have to, but don’t take any unnecessary risks. We’re going to find you, and we will keep you safe.”

“Listen, Ledger,” he said, “you don’t know what’s happening. You may think you do, but you don’t, and you need to. Those maniacs on the island are totally batshit crazy. I’m not joking. I can help you stop what’s coming. But you have to help me first. You need to get me out of this, you understand? And you need to get people to my son. You need to protect Matthew.”

“We can do that, but—”

“No. You do that right now. You make sure he’s safe. My mother, too. I’m not going to tell you a thing until you can prove to me they’re safe. What’s the expression? Proof of life? Get them into protective custody, and then I will tell you everything. Screw it up, and this whole world is going to catch fire and burn. Think I’m joking?”

Top signaled to me that he was on it, and I heard him speaking to someone at the tactical operations center in Brooklyn.

“No, doc,” I said, “I really don’t think you’re joking. Neither am I. We’re sending teams right now to take your family into protective custody. My people, not the FBI or anyone else. I know you trust us. We’ll protect them, but we don’t have time to play games here. People are dying. Tell me what’s going on and—”

That’s where the call ended. There was no sound, no gunshot or anything. Just a drop-off.

The call was gone.

Chapter One Hundred and Eleven

“Jesus jumped-up Christ in a motor-driven sidecar,” I snarled as I jabbed my earbud for a line to the Hangar. “Nikki, please tell me you tracked that call.”

“No, there wasn’t time. We’re working on it.”

Then she was gone.

“What happened to Davidovich?” asked Brian. “He playing games with us?”

“There’s a game,” I said, “but he’s not running it.”

Bunny nodded. “The Kingsmen could have tracked his call, too. If he just escaped from them, they’re closer. They might even have a tracker on him. Don’t know. But maybe they worked a car stop or ran him off the road.”

“You mean killed him?” asked Brian.

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. We lost the call, but it doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

“Hope your angels are listening to you, Boss,” said Brian, “because we could use a damn break right about now.”

While we waited for more, I made calls to scramble Odin and Java Teams out of Seattle and told them to get onto the road heading south in unmarked cars.

The Hercules pilot bing-bonged to tell us we were on final approach.

“If Davidovich is still on Route Five,” I said, tapping the route on the map, “then we might be able to catch him between us and the Seattle teams.”

“We don’t know how many Kingsmen are out there,” said Bunny.

“I don’t fucking care,” I said. “There won’t be enough.”

“Hooah,” he said, and bumped fists with Brian. They seemed happy about the likelihood of an impending firefight.

Top ended his call. “Okay, Cap’n, we’ve got three four-man teams on pickup duty. Wife, mother, and son. Local law’s running backup. Cars and helos. Anyone looks funny at the doc’s family, they’re going to get their dicks handed to them in Ziploc bags. All three will be taken to a secure location for assessment and then flown to the Pier.”

“Outstanding,” I said.

Suddenly Nikki was shouting in my ear. “Cowboy, he’s back. He’s on the line.”

“Christ, kid, put him through.”

Just as the wheels thumped down, there was a click, and suddenly I heard the nasal voice of Aaron Davidovich in my ear.

“—another burner … they … oh, God…”

The call was nearly drowned by static, and Davidovich’s voice was thick and nearly unintelligible.

“Doc, what’s happening?” I yelled. “Are you injured—?”

“… oh, Jesus … I can’t stop it … can’t find the bleeder…”

After that, nothing but static.

But it was the static of an open line.

“Nikki,” I said, “tell me something I want to hear.”

“The call’s still going,” she said. “I think he dropped the phone.”

I heard Bunny whisper. “Did he fucking die on us?”

The plane stopped rolling.

“What’s happening with the trace?” I asked.

Nikki said, “We’re closing in. Looks like it’s north of you. I’ll send you the location as soon as we complete the trace.”

Top spun around, and in a leather-throated voice bellowed at the flight crew. “Offload this vehicle. Do it right goddamn now.”

They did it right goddamn then.

We scrambled into Ugly Betty, and Bunny hit the gas. Despite the car’s size and weight, Mike Harnick hadn’t lied about its power. The machine leaped forward and continued to accelerate. The needle was tapping ninety-five when Nikki came back on the line.

“Got it, Cowboy. Twenty-nine point four miles north. Signal is moving. It’s on Highway Eighteen heading northwest.”

“On Eighteen? Confirm?”

Brian found it on the map. “Eighteen spurs off from Route Five and cuts inland past Tiger Mountain State Forest toward North Bend and Snoqualmie.”

“The signal’s stopped moving,” said Nikki.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“Signal’s steady but — no, wait. Yes, confirmed the signal is heading southeast again. Looks like he’s heading back to the Five.”

“Get me a satellite, damn it.”

“No satellites in range, Cowboy.”

“Find me one.”

“Proceed south on the Five,” she said. “If you hurry, you might reach where it intersects with Eighteen before he does.”

“You heard the woman, Farm Boy,” said Top. “Stop driving like my Aunt Gertie.”

“Your Aunt Gertie’s dead,” said Bunny.

“Exactly my point.”

The Escalade roared down the road.

“Cowboy,” said Nikki, “Java Team has a drone in the air, and we’re waiting on a picture.”

“Gosh,” said Bunny. “A drone. How lovely.”

“At least it’s one of ours,” said Brian. “Got to be some irony in that.”

“Fuck irony.”

Nikki said, “Okay, Cowboy, we have the feed. Sending live feed to your computer now.”

Top, Brian, and I bent over my screen. The gray-tone image from the drone painted a bull’s-eye on what looked like a landscaper’s pickup truck hauling ass along Route 18. There were two black SUVs with it, one behind and one in front, maintaining the exact same distance from the pickup truck.

“What are you seeing?” asked Bunny as he weaved in and out of traffic.

“Classic pickup,” said Top. “I think our boy’s in the center vehicle, lead and follow cars have his truck boxed. Looks like they grabbed him and are taking him and the truck he stole.”

“Nikki, does our drone have thermals?”

“Switching to thermal scan,” she confirmed.

The lead SUV had four glowing dots; the follow car had five. The pickup had three.

“Count fourteen signatures,” said Nikki. “Maybe thirteen hostiles and Doctor Detroit.”

“Copy that,” I said. “How many assets do we have from Java?”

“Four agents in two cars. Sending a detail map.”

My screen changed to show a map of the area. The three cars in the convoy were assigned green lights. Java and Echo Teams were yellow. We were all heading toward each other at high speeds.

“Thirteen to eight,” said Brian. “Pretty good odds.”

“Not for them,” said Bunny.

“Thirteen to nine,” said Top, scratching Ghost between the shoulder blades. Ghost showed his titanium teeth.

Brian grinned. “Almost doesn’t seem fair.”

“Don’t get cocky, kid,” I said in a fair approximation of Han Solo. At least I thought so.

“Call the rules, Cap’n,” said Top as he began a final weapons check.

“Priority one is to retrieve Davidovich alive,” I told them. “I need to ask that son of a bitch a few thousand very important questions. After that, try to bag some bad guys while they still have a pulse so we can get some idea of what the hell these ass-clowns are up to. But don’t take risks. We all go in, we all come out. Capisce?”

“Hooah,” they said.

Bunny crunched down on the gas pedal.

“Any ideas what the ‘big thing’ is that these Kings guys are about to throw at us?” asked Bunny. “So far, this shit is already pretty frigging big. Not sure I want to know how much bigger they want to take it. But … not knowing makes my nuts want to crawl up inside my chest cavity and hide.”

Top grunted. “And all this time I didn’t think they’d dropped yet.”

“Blow me.”

“Point taken.”

I said, “We don’t know, but it more or less corroborates what the shooter at the hospital said. ‘Say good-bye to your world.’”

Brian shook his head. “Seriously, where do they get this stuff? I mean, is there a class these goons take to learn how to drop cryptic messages while they’re bleeding out? Are they trying to die as clichés?”

“Apparently they are,” I said, “but that doesn’t change the fact that we should probably be scared out of our bloomers. The pattern Top, Bunny, and I came up with on the flight from Philly suggests that the Kings have been testing their systems and their efficiency. The nature of those tests did not, as far as we could see, jibe with the kind of attack they launched at the ballpark. That actually might have been either a last test or an opening salvo.”

“Yeah, but what’s the main attraction?”

“Let’s hope we can grab Davidovich before we have to find out.”

Brian nodded. While we talked it out, he reached over to pet Ghost. Brian had only been out on two jobs with us, and Ghost hadn’t been part of either.

“Wouldn’t do that, son,” warned Top.

“It’s okay,” said Brian, “I’m a dog person.”

Ghost wrinkled his muzzle in what was clearly not a smile.

“He’s not a people person,” explained Top.

“And he had a bad day yesterday,” I said. “But, hey, if you can shoot a gun with no fingers … by all means.”

“Taking it back,” Brian said, withdrawing his hand and smiling at my dog. Ghost continued to show his teeth. “Nice doggie.”

“No,” said Bunny, “not really.”

Chapter One Hundred and Twelve

Air Force One taxied to the runway. Although the plane did not usually fly with fighter jets in escort, the current situation required a military presence. A pair of F-18s were already in the air, circling the airport to fly close support. Like Air Force One, the F-18s had been retrofitted to replace Regis with the safer Solomon program.

Church found this significant but did not comment on it to the president. A better moment for that kind of observation would likely present itself.

Church and Linden Brierly sat with the president in the onboard conference room as the plane lifted off. The commander in chief looked worn and much older than his years. He had his jacket off, tie loosened, and there was a sallow cast to his skin and red rime around his eyes.

“God, this is a nightmare,” said the president.

“We’ll get it sorted out, sir,” said Alice Houston, and Brierly gave a tight-lipped nod. The look in his eyes told a different story.

POTUS nodded but cut a look at Church. “You’re unusually silent, Deacon. Hope there are no hard feelings about how I ended the conference call earlier.”

Mr. Church offered a faint, bland smile. “You are the president. I work for you.”

That put a slight frown on the president’s mouth. As intended.

Brierly cleared his throat, but he said nothing.

“Tell me, Deacon,” said the president, “how confident are you that we’ll get in front of this? Brierly seems to think you do magic. Is he right, or is he just stroking my political fur?”

Church shrugged. “Do you want a straight answer or a political one?”

Brierly turned away to hide a wince. Houston’s face became a slab of wood. Even the generals in the jet’s conference room seemed to wilt into the background.

The president leaned back and considered Church. “You really don’t give a damn about me or my office, do you?”

“My first concern is doing my job, Mr. President. All other concerns are of less importance to me.”

“Damn, you aren’t afraid of shooting from the hip, are you?”

Church said nothing.

The room was silent for several heavy seconds.

“You really think this is the Seven Kings manipulating Regis?” asked the president.

“It is the leading theory,” said Church. “No other scenario holds as much water.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then I’m wrong. Fire me if it suits your needs.”

The president’s face flushed red, and he clearly had to bite down on something he wanted to say. Another few moments dragged by. The others in the conference room wore expressions like they were holding their breaths.

“You’re not going to let me off the hook on this,” said the president. “Are you?”

“I was not aware, sir, that you asked me aboard to massage your feelings. Perhaps I should be sitting back with the press corps.”

“Christ, Deacon,” growled the president, “you’re more thin-skinned than I am.”

Church chose not to reply to that.

Brierly interjected and tried to change the subject. “Is there any word on Aunt Sallie?”

“Nothing new,” said Church. “And nothing new with any of my people who have been hurt by this.”

The president sighed. “Right. I’m sorry. I guess I’m being an insensitive ass.”

No one commented. Church opened his briefcase and removed a package of Nilla Wafers. Tore it open, ate one.

After a moment, the president tried a different conversational path. “Will your boy Ledger get Davidovich? Alive, I mean?”

“As my psychic powers aren’t working at the moment, I won’t hazard a prediction. I trust, however, that Captain Ledger will do his very best. His best is considerable.”

The president looked away for a moment. He was angry but also clearly frustrated. “I don’t know how to have a damn conversation with you today,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”

Church looked at the cookie he held, sighed, and set it down. “And I’m not making matters any better by my attitude. I apologize, Mr. President.”

The president grunted. “Wow. I was warned that you never apologized.”

“I try to avoid having to do so, but I’m wrong here. I think it’s fair to say that we are all under considerable strain.”

“That’s generous of you.” The president looked at the tabletop for a moment. “I’ll give some genuine thought to Regis. It would be useful to have something more concrete to work with. My stock with Congress is at an all-time low right now.”

Church finished his cookie. At no point did he offer one to the president.

After a moment, Brierly said, “I was reading over the report from the attack on the hospital in Chula Vista. One thing stands out for me.”

“Oh?” said Church.

“That pathogen. The fast-acting necrotizing fasciitis. My people tell me there’s nothing like it. Nothing that made it beyond the initial experimental stage. So I called your friend, John Cmar, the infectious-disease doctor at Johns Hopkins. He said that the possibility of it was discussed once at some World Health Organization conference years ago and that an Angolan lab was raided that had been trying to develop it. Barrier shut them down, correct?”

“Correct. All notes and samples were destroyed. Nothing was kept.”

“Then how is it in California?”

Church said, “I think we’ve figured that out. The conference was held some years before DMS first encountered the Seven Kings. Before, in fact, Captain Ledger joined the DMS. One of the speakers at the conference was an internationally known and respected pharmaceuticals manufacturer, a man who was also a brilliant pharmacologist. He gave a rousing talk about how all bioweapons research should be shut down, and those seeking to develop new weaponized pathogens needed to be tracked, shut down, and arrested. The bulk of his speech was quoted verbatim in Time magazine, and it’s available on YouTube.”

“I vaguely remember that,” said the president. “That guy’s dead, though, isn’t he?”

“He is,” said Mr. Church. “He was killed by Hugo Vox.”

“Oh? Did the Seven Kings target him because of his stance against bioweapons?”

“Hardly,” said Church. “The scientist in question was a member of that organization but apparently had a fatal falling out with Vox.”

Brierly narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute … are you talking about the King of Plagues? Christ, are you talking about Sebastian Gault?”

“I am. Gault gave that speech back when his cover was that of a global power for good. This was before his true nature was revealed during the seif al din matter, which preceded the Ten Plagues Initiative by nearly a year.”

“What of it, though?” asked the president. “Gault’s dead, Vox is dead, and as far as we know, all of the original Seven Kings are dead. Bin Laden was the last of them, and we damn well know he’s dead. For real, I mean.”

“Gault may be dead,” said Church, “but that doesn’t mean his research is.”

“Are you saying that Gault developed this new strain of NF?”

“It seems likely. After the raid on that lab in Angola, there was such a fear of NF that several foundations and at least nine governments including Great Britain channeled millions into research for a treatment or some prophylactic measure. Gault’s company was one of several that led the way in research for those treatments.”

“Why would he do that if he was behind it?” asked the president.

“Because it’s a very controlled way to do supply and demand. Create a demand for what you can supply. We’ve since learned that Gault created several pathogens — and in some cases introduced new viral and bacteriological strains — and then rushed to market with treatments so quickly that he was universally viewed as a great man. He was compared to Salk. And he produced treatments for unfashionable diseases that afflicted isolated third-world populations. Treatments we now believe were invented for diseases he had developed or modified. In the case of NF, his company made tens of millions from research and development. In the case of, say, African river blindness, it was to elevate himself as something approaching a living saint. A great man.”

Brierly nodded. “I remember that very well. We all thought the man walked on water. Even the release of seif al din was done to scare us into putting billions into new R and D to combat it. He never really planned to release it. But the threat of it had to be real or the plan wouldn’t have worked. It almost worked, too.”

“Still leaves Gault dead and the NF in Chula Vista,” said the president. “What are we supposed to think about that?”

“It seems pretty clear to me,” said Brierly.

Church nodded. “Whoever the Seven Kings are now … they apparently have Sebastian Gault’s research. And that is a very, very troubling thing.”

Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen

“Heads up, guys,” said Brian as he studied the electronic map. Nikki had switched the drone’s video-surveillance controls to him. “They’re making a turn.”

The truck turned left onto a fire-access road in the state park.

“Where’s he going?” I asked Brian, who was integrating the drone feed with Google Maps. He hit some buttons to overlay the image with data collected by MindReader.

“Nothing out there except a two-man ranger station,” he answered. “And after that there’s a whole lot of nothing.”

“Side roads?”

“Hiking paths, some utility roads. Scattered Forest Service buildings. Mostly empty this time of year.”

“What about a clear space for a helicopter?” I asked.

“Plenty of places if the pilot has some stones. Oh, wait — on the far side of the park, there’s a concrete slab used by fire department helos. No birds on it now, but that could be where they’re going. You could put a Chinook down on it.”

I tapped my earbud for the team channel. “Cowboy to Java and Odin. Be advised, target has gone into the forest. Sending possible coordinates. Find an alternate route in to take them from the far side.” I growled at Brian. “Where’s that drone feed? All I’m seeing is trees.”

He put the thermal scan back online, and the heat signatures from the three vehicles flared from under the dense canopy of leaves.

“Got ’em.”

“Jumper to Cowboy,” said a voice in my ear. Jumper was the top kick of Odin Team. “We’re fifteen minutes out. Can you hold the party for us?”

“Doesn’t look like it.

“Traffic’s a bear, and there’s construction on the shoulder. Can’t get around it in time, so this in on you. Don’t stop for coffee.”

“Copy that.”

“I have a gravel road that cuts around to the far side of the landing pad,” said Brian. “Sending coordinates to the GPS now.”

“Got it,” said Bunny, and he swung the wheel to send the Escalade crashing through some weeds. He thumped and bumped over underbrush and then skittered onto the gravel.

“Boss,” said Brian, “we’re going to hit the road they’re on directly in front of them. Shit, this is going to be close.”

“Perfect,” I said.

We left the gravel road, and Bunny spun the wheel as we thumped back onto the service road. In the side-view mirror, I saw the convoy right behind us. The lead SUV braked for a moment, then began accelerating toward us. The passenger-side window opened, and an arm leaned out with an AK-47. Even over the drone of engines, the buzz-saw roar of the machine gun filled the air, and rounds pinged and whanged off the armored skin of Ugly Betty.

“Okay, kids, party time,” I said. “We’re going with a Baltimore slam. Hit it!”

Bunny punched a button on his steering column that popped the rear hatch and launched a spike net. It shot backward as a rolled bundle but immediately sprang open and dropped flat sideways across the road. The spike net was fifteen feet long and shaped like a carpet runner, except that it was covered with heavy-grade steel spikes. The front wheels of the lead SUV hit the spikes and exploded.

The driver tried to control the vehicle, but he was going too fast, and there was no room for ballet. The pickup truck slammed into the back of the SUV and sent it into a wild fishtail. We could all feel the thump as the SUV crunched sideways into a ponderous maple tree.

The pickup driver was in trouble from the impact, too. It began a long, bad turn that chunked the sides of two tires against the uneven side of the road. The truck canted over and went crunching down into a slide, the metal skin hissing as it rasped over stones and tree roots.

That left the follow car.

“Can I, Boss?” asked Bunny.

“Have some fun,” I told him.

“Fun with what?” asked Brian.

Bunny just grinned and hit another button. We heard the rumble as the rear taillights swung down and two M242 Bushmaster 25 mm chain-fed autocannons rolled out.

“When you only care to send the very best,” said Bunny. He pressed the button again, and the air was filled with thunder. The heavy rounds punched into the SUV and tore it apart.

No joke.

The armor-piercing Sabot rounds killed the engine, blew apart the windshield, and turned everything inside that car to junk. Red, screaming junk.

The vehicle slowed to a smoking stop and died.

Bunny stamped on the brakes, spun the wheel, and turned us around so fast that a tower of smoke rose all around us. We were out and running before the echoes of that screeching turn had reached the far wall of trees. I had my Sig Sauer P226 in a two-handed grip and began firing as I stepped through the smoke. Top and Brian had CQBR carbines, and Bunny had his drum-fed combat shotgun.

Men were crawling out of the crashed SUV and up through the windows of the fallen pickup. They were all dressed in unmarked black BDUs. None of them looked like Aaron Davidovich.

I have to give them credit for trying to make a fight of it.

We weren’t here for a fight. Not a fair one, anyway.

We cut them down, and we didn’t feel a flicker of mercy, compassion, or regret.

One of the men staggered away from the SUV and was clearly dazed by the crash. His face was covered with blood, and his eyes were wild. His pistol was in his hand, but it was pointed at the ground. He looked at the bodies that littered the grass and the road and then at us. We stood in a line, our smoking barrels pointed at him.

I aimed my Sig at his face. “Drop the weapon.”

Blood ran from a broken nose into his mouth, and he spat it at me. Too far to reach me, but he made his point. I took a step closer.

“Drop the weapon or I will kill you.”

He suddenly smiled at me. His teeth were bright red. “Say good-bye to—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. My world’s going to burn. Blah, blah, blah. Put the gun down right now.”

The man kept smiling.

He was still smiling when he jammed the barrel of his pistol up under his chin and blew off the top of his head.

Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen

Brian Botley said, “Well … holy shit. Why did he do that?”

“Fanatic much?” murmured Bunny, annoyed but unimpressed. “Frigging Kingsmen.”

“Welcome to the DMS,” grumbled Top. “Okay, stop gawking. Hotzone, check the lead car. Green Giant, check the follow. Go.”

Brian and Bunny ran forward, weapons up, eyes wary. Top and I approached the pickup from two sides.

“Clear!” called Brian, and a second later Bunny echoed it.

I squatted down in front of the shattered windshield of the pickup. The interior of the truck was a shambles. There was a lot of blood but only one body.

And thank God it still had a pulse.

Strapped into the passenger seat, his wrists bound by zip ties, a trickle of blood on his forehead from a small cut, was Doctor Aaron Davidovich. He looked absolutely terrified.

“Please,” he begged. “Please don’t hurt me.”

I lowered my gun. “Doctor Davidovich,” I said, smiling at him, “we’re the good guys. No one’s going to hurt you again.”

He stared at me in doubt, in disbelief. Then his eyes widened. “J-Joe…?”

“Good to see you alive, doc.”

“My … my son?”

“We have him. Your wife and mom, too. All safe.”

A fragile smile blossomed on his face. Then he put his face in his bound hands and began to weep.

“Doc,” I said, “we need to get you out of there.” I took out my knife and cut the zip tie. “How badly are you hurt?”

“It’s my thigh. I was shot!” He said it as if that was the most extraordinary thing that had ever happened to anyone. He raised his head, and I could see that he was a few ticks away from falling off the edge of the world. I had no idea what he’d been through since he’d been taken from the CIA safe house, but there wasn’t a lot of what you’d call sanity burning in his eyes.

“Let me take a look,” I said, and I climbed into the truck. He had a rough field dressing taped to his thigh, and I peeled it back to reveal a nasty-looking exit wound. The wound was bleeding sluggishly, though no arteries were ruptured. From what Davidovich had said on the radio, I expected something far worse than this. Of course, to the average person, any kind of violent wound was huge. I replaced the dressing. “It’s not too bad. You’re not in any immediate threat, and once we get you out of here, we can give you something for the pain. First, though, we need to get you out. Looks like you’re in here pretty good, though. I’ll need to get some tools from my truck.”

He tried to protest, but I assured him that I wasn’t going to abandon him. I began worming my way out when he caught my wrist.

“Joe,” he said, gripping me with desperate force, “you swear that my son is safe? You swear that Matthew is going to stay safe?”

“You have my word of honor, Doc. No fucking around.”

He studied me for a long moment, his eyes jumpy and wild. “You’re telling the truth? You’re not lying to me so I tell what I know.”

“No, Doc,” I said, “we’re helping your family, and we’re here to help you, but you have to help us. If you know what the Kings are doing, then tell me. Help us stop them.”

“God, you have to stop them. They’re insane. Pharos and the Gentleman. They took me and tortured me and did things to me…”

His voice trailed off and he started to cry, but there was something about it that seemed like performance.

“Who’s Pharos?” I asked. “Who’s the Gentleman?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. They’re crazy, and you have to stop them before they can hurt Matthew.”

“Focus, Doc. Did they make you work for them?”

He nodded, not meeting my eyes.

“Doc, did they make you tell them about Regis? We think they’re hacking it.”

“Of course they are. Those maniacs … They’re going to use the system to launch missiles, make ships crash, open valves on submarines, take over firing controls on jets. And not just military. It’ll cause autonomous cars to crash. I think they even want to override active controls on planes in flight and initiate a suicide firewall.”

“How can we stop them?”

“The reset codes will shut the whole thing down.”

I almost sobbed with relief. Reset codes. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

“What are the codes?” I begged. “And how do I—?”

He shook his head. “There’s a whole set of them. You have to input them manually. No cut and paste or it triggers a deadfall subroutine.”

I knew about those from other jobs. If you try too many times to input a password, or in this case use the wrong password, the deadfall kicks you out and won’t allow your computer to connect again. Ever. Bug has stuff like that in MindReader.

As if he could read my thoughts, he said, “And don’t let Church use the MindReader system. I built countermeasures for that. My QC can spot MindReader a mile off, and it will retaliate by giving all the go codes at once. You have to log on with a regular computer and Wi-Fi.”

“Okay, but where are the reset codes?”

“They’re still on the island in my notebooks, hidden in a piece of old game code that I stopped working on. It looks like junk unless you know the key to using it.”

“Which fucking island?” I said, losing patience with him.

He didn’t answer but instead kept rambling. “Get my notebooks. The key to finding the codes Pi from nine, backwards,” he said, as if that should mean something. “Page two. I’d have put them in myself, but I had to get out and took the first opportunity I could. Had to go right then.”

“Doc, you’re not making sense. Tell me what—”

“Fuck it!” he snarled. “You’re too stupid to understand. You all are. Get me out of here. If I can get to a computer, I can—”

Suddenly a voice yelled in my ear. “Jumper to Cowboy, Jumper to Cowboy, do you copy?”

I touched my earbud. “Go for Cowboy.”

It was Nikki, and she sounded hysterical. “Be advised, we have lost control of the drone.”

“Say again?”

“We have lost operational control of the drone. We’re getting signals that the bird has gone weapons hot. Jesus Christ, Cowboy, it’s coming right at you. Get out of there!”

Outside, I heard Top and Bunny and Brian yelling.

I heard gunfire.

Hands reached through the smashed hole where the windshield had been. I fought them, fought to hold on to Davidovich as he tried to cling to me.

There was a hissing sound outside, above me.

Then the world seemed to come apart. There was so much heat, and yet my brain seemed to go dark. I felt my body moving through the air, pushed by a burning fist of superheated gas. Then leaves and branches were whipping at me. I was falling, crashing, tumbling as I plummeted through the brush. I still had hold of Davidovich’s hand. Somehow, impossibly, I still clutched his hand in mine.

It was only after I landed that I realized that his hand was all I held.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen

On the big screen, they watched the lawn-service truck erupt into a fireball. The plume of fire rose, carrying pieces of the truck and its occupants with it. Smoke billowed up and was torn by the forest winds.

Doctor Pharos was surprised that he felt some sadness at the death of Aaron Davidovich. Not much, but some.

The burned man’s reaction was different.

“Good,” he said, nearly spitting the word at the TV monitor. The screen was dark now, though a moment ago it displayed the video feed of the hijacked DMS drone. “There’s an end to it.”

“He was more useful to us alive than smeared over half of Washington State.”

“How so? We have Regis. We have the other programs. We milked that cow for all there was.”

Pharos shook his head. “He can control all of the programs.”

“We control them.”

“We use them. It’s not the same thing.”

The Gentleman chuckled. “Of course it is. A soldier doesn’t need to know how a bullet is made. He needs to be good at killing his enemies with it. Davidovich loaded our guns very, very well.”

Pharos got out of his chair and walked around to the foot of the hospital bed so that he could be face-to-face with the burned man. He leaned on the steel foot rail.

“Most of his programs are running now. The rest will kick in automatically according to the timetable, but—”

“Which is exactly what we wanted.”

“Please, let me finish. Your bullet-and-gun analogy is flawed. What Davidovich did for us is much closer to building a nuclear reactor than casting a bullet. We are going to use the power of that reactor to accomplish every item on our checklist, and that’s fine. But once all of that has been accomplished, we have to be able to shut the reactor down; otherwise it becomes a danger to us every bit as much as to our enemies.”

“It will shut down by itself, Michael. That’s part of the timetable, too.”

“Theoretically, yes. Optimistically, yes. But tell me, my friend,” said Pharos, “what if it doesn’t? What if runs on and on until it goes critical and melts down? Which, as Davidovich so often warned us, is a real possibility unless carefully managed. What then?”

The Gentleman turned aside and did not answer.

What disturbed Pharos most was that the burned man kept smiling.

Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen

Short version, Top shot the drone down with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Saved everyone else’s lives, because the thing was turning for another pass.

Long version? Well, time would tell. Doctor Aaron Davidovich was dead. Blown to bits, burned to ash. Taking all of his secrets with him.

The reset code.

The notebooks.

The identities of Doctor Pharos and the Gentleman.

The name of the goddamn island where the Kings had held him.

Gone.

All of it, just … gone.

Me?

I was flash-burned and bruised. My hearing might never be right. And I had about a hundred small cuts to add to the damaged suit of skin I was already wearing. None of which I cared about.

Davidovich was dead, and so was our only lead.

I sat on a log and drank water while Brian applied some kind of burn salve to my skin. Odin and Java Teams showed up and milled around and made the kind of too-little, too-late grumbling comments you’d expect them to make.

I called Church and told him.

He didn’t say much. Didn’t tell me he was happy I was alive. I guess he had about as much enthusiasm and optimism as I had.

Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen

The boat was named for a former president of the United States, but the class of submarines was named after a fast and aggressive Atlantic fish. The USS Jimmy Carter was a Seawolf-class nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine. Lethal, powerful, and reliable. And rare. Twenty-nine of the boats had been planned, but only three built once the Cold War ended and took a big chunk of the defense budget with it. Instead of building more Seawolf hulls, the navy switched to the less expensive Virginia-class subs.

The Jimmy Carter kept sailing, though. Above and below the waves. Doing her job, making a difference in both direct enforcement and covert operations. Built to go toe-to-toe with the Russian Typhoon missile boats and still be agile enough to duke it out with the Akula-class attack subs, these subs were a perfect balance of muscle and speed: they were armed with eight torpedo tubes and laden with fifty UGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The Jimmy Carter was easing out of its home port at Naval Base Kitsap and edging toward the deep blue Pacific water. The stay in port had been at the end of thirteen months of continuous duty. The boat had been part of a new series of exercises in the troubled waters between Japan and China and had twice been sent to openly lurk in plain view of the North Korean navy. No shots were ever fired, however its presence was a statement made with cold eloquence. Since returning to Washington State, the Carter had received a thirteen-million-dollar computer upgrade. Hardware, software, and firmware. A team of DARPA engineers had crawled like ticks all over the boat, removing old systems, installing new ones, uploading software that was supposed to give the boat a new level of operational efficiency that would ensure a lightning-fast reaction-time counterpunch.

The crew and officers were used to this sort of upgrade. The Department of Defense loved its toys, and refits were a fact of naval life.

Now the refit was done, the systems double and triple checked, and the boat was on its way to a run to Pearl Harbor and back to test the systems.

Doctor Sarah Ghose tried not to be a total obstructive pain in the ass, but she knew that everyone thought she was. She wasn’t a sailor, and despite her degrees and a lifetime of advanced schooling, she couldn’t reliably tell starboard from port or fore from aft. Every time she thought she had that down, she discovered she was wrong. She also found herself transgressing against the countless rules and policies aboard a naval fighting vessel, and a submarine in particular. She often called the chief of the boat “Chief,” which was apparently wrong; and she called him “sir,” which was clearly a sin against God.

The only reason she hadn’t been loaded into a torpedo tube and fired into the depths of the ocean was that she understood the BattleZone and Enact software packages and could debug any glitches as they happened.

Which is why the captain allowed her to remain on the bridge.

Or, as she’d been told at least fifty times, the control room. The bridge was that tall conical thing that sometimes stuck out of the water.

Ghose was sure he loathed her as much as everyone else.

She watched as the crew went through the process of preparing to dive the boat.

“Stop engines,” ordered the diving officer. “Switch to battery power.”

Ghose watched as this was done. Everyone seemed to move without concern and with a fluid and practiced ease.

“Close main induction.”

Ghose remembered some of what they’d told her the first four times the boat had gone through this process, and if she couldn’t remember policy, she could grasp the mechanics. The main induction was a large air-intake pipe, located at the rear of the conning tower. It has to be closed before diving or the engine rooms would fill with water. The executive officer told her that this happened once way back in 1939 to a submarine called the USS Squalus. The boat sank and half the crew died. She licked her lips nervously, hoping this crew was doing everything right.

The diving officer went through the rest of it with the crew. Making sure the main induction opening was sealed and checking this against a row of green indicator lights. Testing it by releasing air pressure into the hull.

“Open main vents,” said the officer, contriving to sound bored. Ghose wasn’t fooled. No one in their right minds could be anything but terrified by willingly sinking a big iron casket into the depths of the ocean.

“Rig out bow planes,” said the officer. “Close vents.”

As this was done, Ghose felt her heart hammering in her chest.

“Blow negative.”

There were sounds and creaks, and the big metal coffin dropped down into the water. Ghose could not see this, but she was sure she could feel it.

“Level off. Slow to one third.”

After a moment, the diving officer turned to the captain and informed him that everything had been done right and that the boat was at the proper depth and speed — and, Ghose hoped, that they were not about to implode like a crushed Dr Pepper can.

The captain, who had spent this entire procedure leaning over a light map table, straightened and said, “Very well.”

He turned to Doctor Ghose, a big, bland smile on his face. Everyone in the control room looked at her.

Today, after all, was the big day.

It was her day.

“Doctor … are we ready to play our game?” asked the captain. He gestured toward the computer console that had been installed at Kitsap. It looked simple enough. A deck-mounted swivel chair and a computer workstation that had a thirty-inch screen and an extended keyboard. There were two key ports on the upper right side, similar in design to the key slots used on the missile control system. Most of the new systems could be activated and managed by a trained specialist even for one feature, ADAD — the autonomous drive and defense package. ADAD was for submarines what the ComSpinner was for planes. In the event of catastrophic injury to the crew — such as a fire, loss of breathable air, or flooding — the self-contained system would continue managing all systems on the boat, from lights to defensive countermeasures, following a very specific set of the rules of war. In an extreme emergency, such as a nuclear attack on the United States, the president could transmit a control code that would authorize a deeper level of software that would direct ADAD to launch its Tomahawks in retaliatory strikes.

Today’s exercise would not take things that far. What Doctor Ghose and the captain would do was similar to what happened during a missile-testing exercise. They would agree to proceed, break and read authorization codes, insert their keys, turn the keys, and step back to let ADAD do the rest. Except that ADAD was loaded in safe mode only.

If the emergency was real, the captain and any surviving officer who had a key could activate the system.

If everyone was dead or incapacitated, ADAD would self-load after a certain span of time. At any time, a human operator could input a reset code and stop the launch of weapons.

In theory.

“Doctor—?” prompted the captain.

Ghose licked her lips. “Yes, of course.”

She unfastened the top button of her blouse and fished for the metal chain, hooked it with a finger, pulled it out, and held the red key up for the captain’s inspection.

He smiled at her. A tolerant smile.

“Say the words, doctor.”

“Oh,” she said flustered, “right.” She cleared her throat. “Captain, I have the red key.”

“And…?”

“And I am ready to continue.”

“Very well,” he replied. “I acknowledge the red key.”

He dug under his collar and found his own chain and brought a second key out. He showed it to her.

“I have the blue key. I am ready to continue. Do you agree?”

“I agree.”

He nodded approval and crossed to the computer station, gesturing for her to join him. She did, but remained standing as he punched in his personal code on the keypad of a small safe built into the wall. The door popped open to reveal a pair of plastic envelopes slightly longer than playing cards. They were identical and marked ADAD / TESTGROUP C / AUTH.

He took them out and handed one to her.

“Chief of the Boat,” said the captain, and a stocky man with a Cherokee face stepped up, “will you witness and verify that I have removed the code sleeves from my safe?”

“Yes, sir. I verify that you have removed two code sleeves from your safe.” He then described the code sleeves in a very loud voice.

“Chief of the Boat,” continued the captain, “will you witness and verify that I am handing one code sleeve to Doctor Sarah Ghose? And verify that Doctor Ghose has received a code sleeve.”

The chief of the boat did, and Ghose had to fight to keep from rolling her eyes. She understood the need for procedure, but some of it seemed awfully silly to her. Still, she waited it all out.

When she held the plastic envelope, the captain addressed her. “Doctor Ghose, I am breaking the seal of my code sleeve.”

He did so by bending it in half. It broke with a sharp sound. The captain pulled it apart and removed a white plastic card on which a short string of numbers and letters was printed in bold typeface. She broke hers, and they compared the codes, agreed that they were identical, showed them to the chief of the boat, who verified all of this, and then turned to the control console. Doctor Ghose slid into the seat and tapped a few keys to bring up a pair of empty fields. She deliberately typed in her code, had it witnessed and verified, and then watched as the captain did the same.

Immediately, the previously quiet computer came to life. Lights flared and a series of small overlapping windows appeared. One gave detailed information about the state of the boat and its readiness for action. Another screen fed telemetric intel from the RFID chips each of the crew had in the fatty tissue under their arms. A third screen showed the status of the weapons systems, and a fourth was a direct link to a roomful of sailors, scientists, and engineers who were clustered around ranks of computers to oversee this test. Because of the attack in Philadelphia and the pervasive belief that a greater threat was poised to strike the United States, everyone wanted this shakedown cruise to succeed. If it worked on this boat, then the Regis systems already being installed on the navy’s ten active carriers and more than two hundred and eighty fighting vessels would be brought to the highest possible level of combat readiness.

The air force was doing the same with its jets, as were the army and marines with everything from helicopters to tanks. A lot was riding on the success of ADAD.

“System is green and fluid,” said Ghose. “All meters are at midpoint, and the redundancies are showing online.”

“Very well,” said the captain. He removed his keychain and waited for her to do the same. He inserted his key and nodded to her to do the same. They made eye contact, and she saw it then, hidden behind his blasé expression, that spark of excitement. He was enjoying this. He wanted it to work, too. There was a twinkle there.

She smiled at him. He managed to keep a poker face.

“On zero,” he said. “Two, one, zero, turn.”

They turned the keys.

The ADAD system came online smoothly and without pause. All throughout the control room, the lights changed as the autonomous systems activated and took operational control of the submarine. The chief of the boat ordered everyone to stand down, and they obeyed, standing or sitting at their posts, watching as software did what it had been trained to do. The ADAD ran through a series of diagnostics that included making subtle changes to airflow, trim, position, speed, course, and every other system. The telemetry was sent back to Kitsap, where it was analyzed.

Ghose could not see the smiles on all those faces, but she knew they had to be there. She wore one of her own. And now, so did the captain.

“Running a weapons check,” said Ghose, and the captain turned to see the lights on the torpedo and missile systems flick on and off. The mine-deployment systems flashed. The countermeasure-deployment systems did likewise.

Everything was running perfectly.

“Well, Doctor Ghose,” said the captain, “I must admit that this is mighty damn impressive. You and your team have done something remarkable here. On behalf of my officers and crew, I want to congratulate you.”

He held out his hand.

Ghose took it.

And then the lights went out.

Everything except the screen on the ADAD console. In the one second she had left to live, Doctor Sarah Ghose saw something that was impossible. According to every safeguard, every design feature, every failsafe bit of computer code, it was absolutely impossible.

All fifty of the Tomahawk cruise missiles went live.

Every single warhead on the harpoon torpedoes went from inactive into the green.

All of the firing systems instantly went from disabled/inactive to active launch.

In a microsecond. Faster than any human involvement could manage.

Far too fast for any human intervention to stop.

The torpedo tube doors and missile launch doors, however, did not open.

Ghose saw all of this in a second.

And then there were no more seconds of her life.

Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen

The president asked Church to go over the Regis thing again for the benefit of the gathered generals and senior advisors. Church took them through it step by step, adding to it the fact that the Kings clearly had abducted Doctor Davidovich and had hacked a DMS drone to kill the scientist.

As Church spoke, though, the president shook his head and kept shaking it. So did most of the military officers. Alice Houston sat next to Linden Brierly, and they kept exchanging worried looks. This was not going well. No matter how it would ultimately play out, it was not going well.

Finally, he slapped his hand flat on the tabletop with a sound as loud as a gunshot.

“Damn it, Deacon,” he growled, “you do realize that what you’re asking is impossible.”

“It’s not impossible, Mr. President,” said Church. “It’s merely difficult. You need to shut down every piece of military hardware that has had Regis installed, and then you need to remove that program. There is no other reasonable alternative.”

“I can’t and won’t do something like that on the say-so of a captain in the DMS.”

“You don’t need to take Captain Ledger’s word for this, Mr. President. Would you like me to replay the tape of him interviewing Doctor Davidovich inside the crashed truck? You heard him say, in no uncertain terms, that the Seven Kings have control of Regis.”

“But nearly everything has Regis. Most of the fleet, most of—”

“We don’t need an inventory, Mr. President. We need leadership.”

The president bristled and pointed a finger at him. “You watch yourself, Deacon. My predecessor and half of Congress may have been afraid of you, but I’m not.”

“I won’t budge from this request, Mr. President.”

“And I won’t damn well do it. You’re wrong about this. Davidovich was a traitor and a liar and—”

There was a sharp knock on the door, and Bain, the national security advisor, burst in. He looked shocked, even horrified.

“Mr. President,” said Bain, “we have a situation.”

“God. Now what…?” said the president.

“It’s the Jimmy Carter…”

Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen

Brian sat in Ugly Betty’s passenger seat, and the rest of the team stood around the open door and watched the news Nikki forwarded to us. The Jimmy Carter was lost with all hands.

While test-driving the new Regis system.

Top closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the frame of Ugly Betty’s open door. He murmured a prayer for sailors lost at sea.

“We commit your bodies to the deep,” he said, “to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the sea shall give up her dead…”

Instead of saying “amen,” Bunny punched the side of the car with a sound like an iron gong.

I felt like the ground beneath my feet was turning to quicksand.

If there had been any doubt left about whether the Kings controlled that software, it had blown itself into atoms along with a lot of good people aboard that boat.

Gone. All gone.

At that moment, I got a phone call from the unlikeliest of sources. I stepped away from the others and punched the button.

“Junie?” I said. “This really isn’t a good time.”

“I know,” she said, “we’re all watching the news. It’s so horrible.”

“It is. Look, baby, let me call you—”

“No, Joe, I need you to talk to someone. He might be able to help.”

“Who?”

She paused. “Toys.”

“Toys?”

“He’s here at the hospital. He wants to help.”

“I’d like to help him by putting my foot up his ass. I told you he shouldn’t be there, Junie, and you know it.”

“Mr. Church said it was all right.”

“Oh, please.”

“Joseph,” she snapped, and damn if I didn’t snap to attention. If the guys had seen this, I’d be Mr. Whipped for the rest of my life. Damn it. “You need to speak with him. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think this was important.”

“Yeah,” I said, “okay. Put him on.”

The next voice I heard was someone I hated with every fiber of my being. I am not usually an inflexible and unforgiving prick, but I have my moments. Toys was a pet project of Mr. Church, I get that. I know that Junie and Violin worked with him at FreeTech. I know that he is supposed to be trying to redeem himself. But …

“Ledger?” said a familiar voice.

“Toys. Tell me why I’m talking with you.”

“It’s not to swap recipes or gossip about celebrities,” he said dryly.

“Glad to hear it. You have thirty seconds. You’ve already wasted ten of them. Tell me something that I need to know, or we’re done.”

“They’re saying that Aaron Davidovich escaped from the Seven Kings.”

“People shouldn’t be telling you anything. Fifteen seconds.”

“I heard something about him escaping from an island.”

“So what? Ten seconds.”

“An island in Washington State,” said Toys. “Near Seattle. Or maybe near Tacoma?”

I said nothing.

“You stopped your countdown,” he said.

“No, I haven’t. You’re telling me what you heard. Now tell me what I need to hear or fuck off.”

“I think I might know the name of the island,” he said. “Would that be what you need to hear, or should I go and fuck off now?”

In a voice I didn’t even recognize as my own, I said, “Tell me what you know and how you know it.”

Toys said, “I’ll admit I’m guessing, but I think it’s a good guess. A few years ago, after Sebastian and I joined the Kings but before your lot tore them down, there was one night when Hugo, Sebastian, and I were having drinks and talking about the future. About what we might do after. You understand? After the Kings had stopped playing their games. After we’d had our fill and wanted out. Hugo often talked about that. He liked the idea of retirement, though I don’t think he would ever have retired. Anyway, we talked about where we’d like to live. Sebastian wanted to live in the Caribbean or the Bahamas, but Hugo said it would be too risky. Even with good plastic surgery and enough money. Hugo said that it would be better to pick a place that was inside the protection and financial stability of the United States but outside the mainstream flow. He favored the Pacific Northwest because there are so many private islands up for sale. If you remember, his estate during the Ten Plagues thing was on an island he owned in the Saint Lawrence River.”

“Get to a fucking point, Toys,” I warned.

“I am. Keep your balls on. I’m telling you what Hugo said. He told Sebastian that there were some good prospects that would allow a boat to slip out to sea or a seaplane to make a quick getaway to somewhere in Canada.”

“Toys…”

“Hold on. Remember, this was just conversation. This was Hugo being Hugo, telling everyone what the best way to do anything was. He always wanted to be seen as the one who knew things. I don’t think any of the Kings actually owned property in Washington, but Hugo talked about his ‘great escape’ so often that everyone knew it was a solid bet as a safe haven.”

“A name. Give me a name.”

“The one Hugo liked the most was a small island in Puget Sound called Tanglewood. After what Davidovich said, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s where the Kings are.”

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty

The president sagged back against the leather cushions of his chair. The conference room was utterly silent. On the screen, video footage from a helicopter showed the massive whirlpool that was all there was of the USS Jimmy Carter.

The president dragged a trembling hand across his mouth.

“How many men?”

“Fifteen officers, one hundred and twenty-six enlisted. Four members of a DARPA team.”

“Merciful God,” said the president.

Linden Brierly looked past him to where Mr. Church sat, his fingers laced tightly together on the tabletop.

Those two words seemed to hang in the air, a mockery of their own meaning.

Into the silence, Church said, “This is the Seven Kings.”

“But … why target the Carter?” asked the president blankly. “Is it something tied to his presidency? Something about the class of submarine?”

“No,” said Church. “This is Regis. This is exactly what I’ve been telling you about.”

“Why that sub, though?”

Church leaned forward. “I still don’t think you understand, Mr. President. This isn’t about the Jimmy Carter. I’m not sure how else to make my point. The Seven Kings are hacking Regis. Do you understand what that means? They have just proved that they have the technological reach to take control of any U.S. military craft which has been fitted out with the Regis autonomous command software.”

“But…”

“Right now, to a very real degree, they can turn our own weapons of war against us. The Carter was a statement. There may be demands to follow, or they may choose to make other statements before issuing those demands.”

“What can we do?” snapped one of the generals. “Every damn thing has Regis in it. We can’t very well shut down our entire military.”

Mr. Church’s eyes were ice-cold. “We may have to.”

“That would leave us vulnerable to attack,” said the national security advisor.

“Vulnerable?” said Brierly. “What do you think we are right now? This isn’t just about shutting down our military. It’s about preventing those automated systems from turning every plane and warship we have against us.”

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-one

We were already in motion when Church texted me to say that the president was issuing an executive order for all land, sea, and air craft to have their autonomous systems shut down. Since Regis controlled so many ordinary functions on ships and aircraft, it meant that for now the bulk of our military power would be inert. Even the Seventh Fleet in China.

I told the others, and Bunny’s only response was to step harder on the gas.

“The whole fleet?” gasped Brian. “The air force? All of it?”

“Most of it,” I corrected.

“Goddamn big set of paperweights,” mused Top. “And right now that’s all they’re good for.”

Brian looked worried. “What’s going to happen? What if someone attacks us?”

“We’ll throw rocks,” said Bunny. Then he shook his head. “It won’t happen. Nobody’s going to start a war with us. They know we’ll recover.”

I wish his voice carried more conviction. He didn’t get any “hooahs” for that.

“If we can find that reset code,” Brian said, “we can get it all back online. Right?”

“Kid,” I said, “I am completely open to suggestions.”

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-two

The demonstration of the new generation of QF-16X Pterosaur superdrones was delayed by the news about the Jimmy Carter. However, after the initial shock, that same news galvanized everyone into action.

Unlike the other jets in the new tactical-combat-drone program, the Pterosaurs did not run on the Regis software. The team at DARPA had wanted to try something newer and better. The Pterosaurs were pure Solomon.

The advisor from the congressional oversight committee, Senator John Langan, had been a champion of the Solomon package. It had no commercial version, and it had never been in the hands of Aaron Davidovich. It was clean. And it was, in many ways, his. He had spearheaded the approval for the new project, and he’d made sure it was funded and watchdogged. No leaks of any kind.

He was here in Marysville to see the drones in action. Until a few minutes ago, this test had been on the verge of being canceled because of the national emergencies. Now it was more important than ever. Solomon was easier to install than Regis, and it could be used to replace that other corrupted package in almost twenty percent of the infected ships and twenty-eight percent of aircraft. Langan felt like a hero. Anything with Solomon was going to be part of saving the whole damn country.

He was absolutely sure he would be able to ride that wave out of the Senate and into the Oval Office. Oh hell yes.

If the North Koreans, Russians, or, more likely in his view, the Chinese, tried anything during the scramble to pull Regis and upload Solomon, then Langan was going to help the military kick ass and take names.

The other men and women in the stands here in Marysville were probably thinking similar thoughts. They were all, to one degree or another, part of Solomon. They would all stand between America and those Seven Kings parasites and whoever wanted to exploit the Regis vulnerabilities.

Langan genuinely thought it would be the Chinese who would jump.

Bloody Chinese were waiting for something like this.

Langan did not consider himself a racist by any stretch, so it was nothing against the Chinese people. But the government? They were the most ruthless political force he had ever encountered, and he thought they were the most dangerous force on earth. Look at how they treated their own people, not to mention the things they did to the rest of the damn world. And they were hypocrites while they were at it. The core of the People’s Republic didn’t care a single speck of dog shit for anything Marx had to say. That wasn’t communism. They hid behind the “dictatorship of the masses” bullshit and used it as a platform for establishing a tyrannical empire larger than any the world had ever seen. Financially canny, merciless, built on misinformation and disinformation, and hungry for conquest.

No, Langan was not a fan of the Chinese government. If there was a government behind the Seven Kings, he would bet it was China. If he ever made it to the White House, then maybe China’s communist government would be to him what the Soviet Union had been to Ronald Reagan.

On the dais in front of the stands, General Dearborn stepped up to the microphones. His face was grave for about a millisecond.

“Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished members of Congress, our friends in the press,” he began in a stentorian voice that, when amplified by the speakers, sounded like the voice of God. Langan knew that Dearborn was aware of the effect. The general had white hair and bright blue eyes and looked like central casting had sent him to play the Lord of All Creation. “Tragedies like what has happened in Philadelphia and in Puget Sound are proof that our nation is not as safe as it should be, not as safe as it needs to be. We live in an age where our enemies are dangerous, and they are devious. They hide in the shadows, they strike without warning, they fight without honor. And they are many.”

He paused; the sea of faces on the bleachers were all turned toward him. Langan knew they were all eating out of his hand.

“Here in the twenty-first century, we have fought two terrible wars,” continued Dearborn. “One of which was the longest in the history of this great country. It was one where we suffered great losses and constant threats. Our brave men and women in Afghanistan not only had to deal with the Taliban, they were frequently betrayed by members of the Afghani military — by spies hidden within that military. Lives were lost that should never have been at risk. That is the nature of the twenty-first-century terrorist. They hide in plain sight. They do not and cannot put an army in the field. They know that in a stand-up fight they can’t hope to defeat American power, and so, like the cowards and bullies they are, they set bombs and take cheap shots.” He paused for effect. “This, my friends, is the war we are forced to fight.”

Another, longer pause.

Senator Langan covertly glanced around, noting — as he had at other times — how completely Dearborn owned this audience. Langan knew that the invitation list to this event was a careful job of crowd seeding. Many of these people were already supporters of Dearborn, and the others were those who had known interests in the drone programs. Manufacturers and designers, researchers and developers. Even the members of the press in attendance were science writers of the kind who typically broke stories in support of advanced weaponry systems.

For his part, Langan was ambivalent. He was all in favor of what UAVs, properly managed, could do. They reduced risks to American lives, and that was always at the top of Langan’s personal agenda. But he did not believe they were the surgically precise instruments they were touted to be. The disaster at Eglin Air Force Base showed that. Langan wanted this technology to go through many more months of field-testing. General Dearborn, on the other hand, was lobbying to become the “Drone General,” as some of his pet reporters had already begun labeling him. Dearborn wanted the history books to remember him as the man who reduced the military human element — and its associated human danger — to less than forty percent. To take the soldier out of the field and out of the cockpit. Even, if he had his way, out of the driver’s seat in most of the submarine and surface fleets.

That was what Langan expected Dearborn to say today, and the general went in exactly that direction. Langan listened to him rattle off impressive statistics, cite case studies, quote remarks — often taken out of context — by eyewitnesses to drones in combat.

The general’s remarks went on and on, very nearly to the point of tedium. But the general stopped short of actually boring his own packed crowd. He gave another of his dramatic and, Langan had to admit, effective pauses, and then he turned to the field that stretched out, broad and green beyond the stands. Thousands of acres of grass bisected by asphalt runways. A control tower stood like a lighthouse on the far side. Above the field, a few puffy white clouds sailed through the endless blue, all of it providing a picturesque backdrop to what was about to happen.

General Dearborn nodded to a lieutenant, who in turn spoke into a small mike.

Within seconds, there was a screaming roar as a flight of six jets swept into view.

Each sleek smoke-gray aircraft had crimson wingtips and tail fins — a different color scheme than the charcoal and orange used on the QF-16 aerial-target drones. These were not targets. That’s what the general told the crowd.

“Welcome to the new age of aerial combat,” announced Dearborn with obvious pride. “The QF-16X Pterosaur is a true variable-use combat aircraft that can be remote-piloted by two qualified ground-based pilots, or, at the flick of a switch, they can become fully autonomous fighters. That means that in the event of an interruption of power or a disruption in communication with ground support, these aircraft will continue to carry out their missions against preselected targets. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are switching to autonomous flight. Let’s see how these babies can perform with no one but a computer at the joystick. Prepare to be amazed.”

The Pterosaurs flew at one thousand feet above the grass, soaring straight and true above the ground, then they split apart, with two peeling off high and left, two going high and right, and the remaining two curving directly upward. Then each pair of fighters began a difficult maneuver, rolling as they climbed so that they moved around each other like two moons in an orbital dance. The jets rose and rose until they were black dots. Then they turned and split apart once again so that all six arched downward toward the field, like the petals of some vast flower. Their vapor trails chased them down, down, down. When it seemed like they were far too low to possibly avoid crashing, the jets turned with incredible precision and perfect synchronicity, leveling off less than five hundred feet above the deck.

As Dearborn had promised, the crowd was, indeed, amazed. The jets circled and turned, flew at each other and passed so close it looked like they must have scraped paint off each other’s wings. They swept apart, came together, made shapes in the air, and even buzzed the grandstands. It was all great theater. The crowd oohed and ahhed at all the right moments.

“And now,” said the general, “let me show you why American air superiority will remain unchallenged despite adversity, despite treachery, despite attacks by terrorists and world powers. This will be a live-fire exercise — but don’t worry, it’s all going to happen up there in the wild blue yonder.”

There was another growl of heavy engines as four more jets flew over the stands. Langan recognized them as F-18s. Very fast, very reliable jets on the cutting edge of air combat.

“We have teams of pilots operating the four F-18s. These pilots are all experienced, and they are the best of the best. Let’s see how they stack up against our Pterosaurs and the latest generation of the BattleZone tactical combat system.”

The F-18s flew over the field and then, just as the QF-16Xs had, they split apart and rose into individual climbing turns, racing toward the four corners of the field. The Pterosaurs were circling high up now, and suddenly four of them broke off and blew off into wide circles that would bring them into direct opposition of the F-18s. Like four mirrored images of the same encounter, the superdrones zoomed toward their enemies at incredible speeds.

Air-to-air missiles burst from beneath the wings of all eight aircraft. Instantly, the Pterosaurs banked and dropped. The F-18s were a second later in breaking away from their flight paths, but they did, each of them accelerating to shake the computer locks in their heat signatures.

Missiles flashed across the sky.

Boom!

One of the F-18s transformed into a glowing orange fireball as an AIM-7 Sparrow punched into it and detonated. The blast was six miles up and out, but the sound of it came rolling and tumbling across the field to buffet the crowd in the stands.

“Shit,” muttered Langan, though not loud enough for anyone to hear above the roar of engines, the echo of explosions, and the sound of delighted gasps.

A moment later, two more of the F-18s blew up.

“Shit, shit.”

The fourth F-18 slipped the missile that had been fired at it and began a series of very deft, very clever maneuvers. Langan could imagine the ground-based pilots trying every trick they’d learned from their own combat missions to slip the punch of these new superdrones. He was impressed. This was superb flying, even if it was remotely done.

But it couldn’t last. The drone that had targeted it was now joined by the three that had destroyed their targets, and, like a flock of flying monsters, they pursued the F-18. The four Pterosaurs belched out a collective sonic boom as they throttled high and broke the sound barrier. Langan had to squint into the distance to see the smoke as two of the craft fired simultaneous Sidewinders.

It took a long time for the explosion to roll all the way to the stands.

The crowd sighed with an almost orgasmic release as the last of the four F-18s fell like fiery rain to the ground far below. Langan sagged back, blowing out his cheeks, knowing full well that this demonstration was far too perfect for him to be able to offer any objections. All four F-18s had been taken down in seconds.

Seconds.

From start to finish, the whole dogfight — if such an antiseptic slaughter could be called that — took nineteen seconds.

“Holy mother of shit,” he mumbled.

Then he heard someone say something that snapped him instantly out of his own political musings and fully back to the moment.

“Where are the other drones?”

He turned to the man who’d spoken, the junior senator from Ohio.

“What—?”

The Ohioan pointed to the empty sky beyond where the four Pterosaurs were regrouping. “The other two drones. Where are they?”

“Maybe they landed,” said another congressman.

“No,” said a fourth, pointing. He had a good pair of binoculars and held them to his eyes. “There they are. Way over there.”

Langan borrowed the glasses to take a look. Indeed, the two remaining Pterosaurs were up there, but they were no more than dots, fading quickly into the distance. Heading northwest at high speed.

“That’s weird,” he said, then turned toward Dearborn. The general was also looking off to the northwest. He was no longer smiling. His face was cut by a deep frown of confusion.

The general suddenly bent and said something to the lieutenant, who apparently repeated it into his mike. The lieutenant didn’t look confused. He looked frightened.

No … “frightened” was wrong. It was too weak a word, and Langan knew it.

The man looked absolutely terrified.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-three

Doctor Pharos turned to the burned man.

“See? See?”

“Yes,” said the Gentleman. “I see.”

He was pale beneath his burns. His hands shook with palsy and spit glistened on his lips.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

The burned man was impotent and crippled, disfigured and incontinent, but in that moment there was such heat in his eye that even Pharos recoiled. Never once in his entire life had he ever seen such malevolence, such fundamental hatred in the eyes of another man. In the eyes of another person. The looked that flared in the Gentleman’s eye rivaled the inhuman hatred and contempt of the freak Nicodemus.

Or … maybe in some impossible, unnatural way it was the evil priest himself staring out of that one baleful eye. That single orb was like a hole burned through the floors of this world from the ceiling of hell.

That was the thought, the startled reaction that filled Pharos’s mind.

And in that moment the color of the Gentleman’s eye seemed to change. To metamorphose from a human blue to a swirling mélange of colors. Feces-brown. The mottled green of toad skin. Jaundiced yellow.

Pharos felt himself leaning too far back, sliding from the chair, falling onto the floor. That eye followed, tracking his collapse. The mouth below it curled into a snarl that was unlike anything that had ever troubled the mouth of the Gentleman — before or after he was maimed. And yet it was such a familiar smile.

So familiar.

“I see,” said a voice that was not at all the voice of the burned man. “I see very well.”

Pharos scuttled backward, a small cry bursting from his throat.

“Dear God!”

“I see,” said the voice. Then, in a voice that was filled with the promise of pain and horror, he said, “Now show me more.”

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-four

Bain, the national security advisor, took a call on his reserved line. When he stiffened and went white with shock, everyone else in the conference room fell suddenly silent. Bain instantly began snapping his fingers for his aide.

“Channel nine, channel nine!”

The aide snatched up a remote and began punching buttons to reach the channel, which was one of four secure feeds from the Department of Defense. The big screen on the wall burst with sudden color and movement.

“What is it?” demanded the president. “What’s happening?”

“There’s been another incident,” barked Bain.

“No,” said the president very softly. “No more. No more.”

“It’s the base commander at Beale Air Force Base in Marysville, California,” said Bain. “They’ve been testing the QF-16Xs out there, and two of them have gone rogue.”

The president bristled. “What do you mean ‘gone rogue’? I ordered that all drones with Regis be grounded.”

On the screen, a satellite was tracking the flight patterns of two jet fighters traveling at thirteen hundred miles per hour. Fifty nautical miles behind them was a pack of other fighters.

“Mr. President, these drones aren’t using Regis. They have a different software package. Something new. Nothing that connects them to anything Davidovich worked on.”

“Christ,” said Brierly, “they’re heading toward San Francisco.”

The jets were blurs as they tore across the screen.

“What’s our response?” demanded the president.

“We scrambled four F-18s from Vanguard Group. They’re in close pursuit. Permission to—”

“Granted,” barked the president. “Shoot them down before anyone else gets hurt. Don’t let them reach the city.”

One of the generals spoke into a phone. “This is Air Force One to Vanguard Group, do you copy?”

“Copy, Air Force One. We are forty miles back and closing.”

“Permission has been given to go weapons hot. Vanguard, you are cleared to engage. Repeat, you are cleared to engage. Put them down.”

“Roger that,” said a voice that, typical of fighter pilots, was calm despite the circumstances. Brierly thought that level of calm was admirable but unnerving.

“This is Vanguard Two, fox one,” said a second pilot, and everyone tensed as they waited for the AIM-20 AMRAAM missiles to burst from beneath the wing and drill their way through the air toward the rogue drone at Mach 4.

The moment stretched.

Nothing happened.

“Vanguard One, I detect zero missiles fired. Confirm.”

The radio was silent.

“Vanguard Two, do you copy?” yelled the general.

Silence.

Then …

“Air Force One, we are experiencing—”

The voice vanished.

A moment later, another voice cut in, clearly from the tower at the airbase. “Vanguard One, I am reading a system malfunction. Confirm status.”

As if struck by a harsh sideways wind, all four of the pursuit craft shuddered, their tight formation wobbling. The operator of the satellite video feed tightened the focus to show thin streamers of smoke or steam whipping backward from the cowls of each jet.

Then the tower voice was back. Yelling for each of the pilots to respond.

The jets flew on, still gaining on the two drones.

But no one was answering.

The president turned to Church. “I don’t understand. What’s happening? Why aren’t they responding?”

Church set down the water glass he had lifted to his lips. “Dear God,” he said.

“What? Will someone please tell me what just happened?”

Mr. Church said, “The eject controls of all four pursuit craft have been activated.”

“What? Where? I didn’t see anyone eject.”

“In order to safely eject the cockpit, cowling has to be removed. It’s done by firing explosive bolts.”

“But—”

“Those bolts never fired. The cowling is still in place.”

“But the pilots…?”

“The pilots are dead, Mr. President,” said Linden Brierly.

“Jesus Christ! Is this Regis…?”

No one answered.

“Is this fucking Regis,” screamed the president.

“No, sir,” said the air force general. “We scrambled jets that did not have the Regis upgrade.”

“Then how—?”

“Solomon,” said Church. When the president turned to him, the DMS director looked as stricken as everyone else in the room.

“Yes,” said the general. “They were part of the first test group for Solomon.”

“Oh my God,” said the general, but it was not in sympathy with the president’s words or in mourning for the dead pilots. Everyone turned back to the screen and watched in absolute horror as all six jets — the two drones and the four pursuit craft — fired their missiles.

Each of them.

Missile after missile.

The weapons flew from under the wings at four times the speed of sound. They streaked across the sky above the California landscape. Flying straight.

And true.

Toward a giant of steel that stretched its arms from Marin County to San Francisco. Steel that glinted gold in the light.

No one spoke.

No one could.

As the missiles slammed into the vast span of the Golden Gate Bridge and blew it into fiery dust.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-five

We went in like silent birds.

Like the ghosts of some great old predators of the air.

Echo Team riding the breeze, coming through slanting rain out of a leaden-gray sky, carrying within us an even deeper darkness in our hearts.

The TradeWinds MotorKites were something Church had commissioned from a company that made ultralight aircraft. The frame was made from a new aluminum-magnesium alloy that was lighter than a lawn chair but far stronger. Big silk bat wings filled the frame and extended beyond it, ribbed with flexible polymers. The motors were tiny two-strokes built for stealth rather than speed. Virtually silent.

No one heard us coming.

And unless they could make out shadows against shadows, they couldn’t see us.

We wore a new generation of combat sealskin that had a network of cooling wires to keep the surface temperature of the suits in harmony with the air around us. Our own thermal signatures was masked. The rain helped with that, too. It was a dreary April morning. No one would be outside looking up.

I led the way, with Bunny riding shotgun on my left. Top was on my right, and his kite pulled a second machine from which Ghost was suspended. He was in a close-fitting dog-shaped outfit that hid him as effectively as ours did. The motor of his kite was synched with Top’s, and the fur monster had been well trained for this kind of landing. Ghost loved the kites. Unlike his pack leader, who hated heights.

Brian Botley brought up the rear.

We were all still reeling from what was going on in San Francisco.

The Golden Gate Bridge? Gone? And all those people.

More innocent lives.

More proof that we were losing this fight to the Seven Kings.

Who even knew if Tanglewood Island was the right target? If it was, did that mean we had our first real chance? If it wasn’t … then what?

Really. Then what?

I would have liked to have had a bigger team in case this was the big play, but this is what we got. Odin and Java Teams were on their way down to San Francisco to help with the disaster and offer support to Homeland. We had a SEAL team inbound, but they wouldn’t be here for nearly an hour. I didn’t think we had that much time. No, check that, I couldn’t risk wasting that much time.

Ten miles over the horizon, our launch ship rocked on the waves. Not a military ship. No one trusted any of them right now. No, we commandeered a fishing trawler. Not much of a ship. It had engines and not much else. We didn’t need much else.

In my ear, I heard Nikki’s voice. “We have an Osprey in the air with an E-bomb.”

“A trustworthy Osprey or—?”

“They pulled all of its computers.”

“Welcome to the world of the Luddites,” I said.

We sailed closer and closer to Tanglewood Island, our kites and gear invisible against the storm clouds. The winds were steady but not heavy. No gusts — and the rain was a relentless drizzle rather than a crushing downpour. We had our Google Scout goggles on, and telemetric feeds projected onto the lenses gave wind speed, altitude, angle, pitch and yaw, distance to the island, and other data.

“Okay, listen up,” I whispered. “We go in exactly as we rehearsed.”

I thought I heard a soft grunt from Bunny. Our rehearsal had been all of twenty minutes. That had been all the time we could spare. It wasn’t much, and I prayed that it was enough. The smallest mistakes could cost lives. Not just among Echo Team, but across the nation. We needed those reset codes. If we bungled the landing, if we failed to take the island, if we couldn’t gain access to the chamber of the Kings, if, if, if …

If we made any mistakes, America was going to grind its way into a new dark age. Although the president was grounding all military aircraft, there were still a lot of ships with missiles. Crews aboard each one were cutting cables to the computer systems in a desperate rush to keep Regis from launching a self-inflicted war.

In some cases, though, the efforts were too little and too late. A destroyer, the USS Momsen, leaving Pearl Harbor tried to self-launch Tomahawk missiles. The crew managed to secure the launch tubes, but the warheads went live. The Momsen blew itself in half. Rescue crews were searching for survivors. At last count they had only found three.

In the waters off Yokosuka, Japan, the USS Ronald Reagan’s engines and navigation system went active and autonomous. Before the crew was able to physically disable the motors, the massive aircraft carrier had smashed its way through twenty-six commercial vessels in a fishing fleet and rammed the helicopter carrier JDS Izumo. Both ships were taking water and listing badly.

The butcher’s bill kept growing, tightening the knot of tension around our throats. Thousands of lives. Billions of dollars.

And no end in sight.

All banking in the United States had been shut down. Schools were closed and most other activities were canceled. All trading was suspended. However, around the world, the stock markets were going wild, much of the panic fed by our own news media.

The Seven Kings were winning.

Winning.

It was like playing chess when the other guy had all the pieces.

It was impossible to know if the Regis agenda was working as planned. If this was exceeding their expectations, then fuck them. If this was falling short of their hopes, it was still bad enough.

The DMS computer team was working to track whoever was raking in profits from the swings in the global market. The problem was that there were so many people getting rich that it was hard to point at anyone who stood out as clear agents of the Kings.

Already, Yoda’s computer models were suggesting that the system couldn’t take much more of this. Some kind of collapse was coming. All it needed was one more push. One more punch.

Echo Team rode the dark winds trying to beat that punch.

We had no idea if we were already too late.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-six

On the conference-room screen, the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge were bowing toward the water. Fire was woven inside great cables of smoke, and they coiled upward toward the clouds. Small dark objects continued to fall.

Cars.

People.

Lives.

“Goddamn you all to hell, you miserable pricks!” screamed the president as he whipped his arm across the table, sending laptops and papers and coffee cups flying, showering the generals and Marcus Bain and Alice Houston. “You let this happen. You fucking let this happen.”

The conference-room door burst open, and two Secret Service agents stepped in, hands reaching for their sidearms. Brierly waved them back.

“Mr. President,” said Bain, pawing hot coffee from his eyes, “we couldn’t stop this.”

“You should have seen this coming!”

“Mr. President,” barked one of the generals, “no one could have foreseen this.”

For a moment it looked like the president was going to go over the table at him.

The moment held, stretching as taut as a fiddle string. The tension hummed in the air of the small conference room. Then the president shoved himself back from the brink of violence and turned toward the big man who sat at the far end of the table.

“Mr. President,” said Church, “which control system was installed on Air Force One?”

The president gaped at him. He tried to say the name, but he simply could not. For a moment, none of them could.

So Church said it. “It’s Solomon, isn’t it?”

The president whispered, “God save us all.”

Mr. Church launched himself from his seat, pushed past the dazed advisors, and made for the door.

He almost made it before all the lights on Air Force One winked out and plunged the interior of the aircraft into total darkness.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-seven

Below us, the rain-swept island swelled from a dot to a lump to a piece of rocky terrain with features I could now pick out. There was a long, slender pier thrusting out into the choppy waters of the sound, and a smaller boat dock on the far side that allowed medium-sized pleasure crafts to offload under a canopy. From what we’d been able to determine via the satellite images, the best angle of approach was the northeast, between the long pier and the maintenance wing of the hotel.

“Cowboy to Echo, Cowboy to Echo,” I said. “Let’s go in and end these evil sons of bitches.”

“Hooah,” they all said.

On the way here, Top and Bunny and Brian called this for different people. For Bug and Auntie. For Dilbert Howell. For Circe. For Philadelphia and San Francisco.

In truth, though, it was for everyone from sea to shining sea. No joke, no trash talk. This one was for everyone.

I dipped my kite to spill the air from the black wings, and then I was falling, falling, dropping toward the black water fifty yards from the jagged rocks. The altimeter told me I was fifty feet up, forty, thirty. I usually sweat heights, but today wasn’t the day to give in to little fears. Not when people were dying right now. Not when people were in pain right now.

At twenty feet, I angled the wings to stall my rate of drop; and at ten, I hit the big release button on my chest. The wings collapsed backward, the tubing and frame slithered around my chest and thighs and waist, and I was in free fall. I pressed a hand to my goggles to keep them from bouncing and bashing my face to Ledger paste. Then my heels hit the surface, and I went down into the cold waters of Puget Sound.

Behind me, the others dropped down.

As the waters closed over me, I kicked hard and shot back to the surface, angled forward, and struck out hard for shore. My gear weighed a ton, but we’d prepared for that. I popped a cord on my chest harness, and two small tanks shotgunned compressed air into a buoyancy bladder. My body rose toward the surface, and I broke through and gulped in the clean air. Fifty feet away, I saw Top and Ghost break the surface, too. Then Brian. Bunny was somewhere off to my left, too far away to see.

Even with the bladders, the gear was heavy, but if you wanted to survive, you pulled your weight. Otherwise, you either went unarmed onto the beach or you drowned. Not a fan of either.

We’d picked an angle where the visibility and the movement of the tide were in our favor, but soon the danger shifted from drowning to being smashed on jagged black rocks. I lowered my feet until I found the bumpy surface and then reached for handholds among the boulders. I let the waves help me move forward one awkward step at a time. The surf splashed up to slap me in the face, but that was okay. The noise masked our sounds. The water shoaled quickly, and suddenly my knee was on a muddy slope.

The water thrashed and flew in wild directions, and a misshapen form shot past me, bounding through the cold water and rushing up to solid ground.

Ghost.

He ran low and fast, as silent as his name, head whipping to either side. There are times he looks a lot less like a dog and a lot more like some kind of primitive wolf. I am very glad he’s my friend. I’ve seen what happens to his enemies.

Then two more shapes rose up like gods of the deep. One vast and tall, with a monstrous sweep of shoulders, the other shorter but no less broad.

Bunny and Top.

Behind them, Brian Botley stood up as if he were coming out of a pool after a leisurely dip. He even grinned at me as he stalked up the beach. Weird kid.

We clustered together in the dense shadows beneath a corner of the building that jutted out into the sea. There was a narrow wooden walkway with a slat rail and, beneath it, stout pilings driven deep into the rock. Rain pinged and popped on the pressure-treated lumber.

Without Sam Imura we had no sniper, but Top was a pretty good shot. Better than Bunny or me. He took a sniper rifle and crawled up onto the island to find a shooter’s perch that provided good angles.

Bunny and I went in opposite directions as we circled the island on the rocky slope, keeping to the shadows under the walkway. We met again at the same spot.

“I got four guards on the east and north sides,” he reported. “Plus one guarding the finger pier. There’s a speedboat out there, too.”

“Three on this side,” I told him. “And another pair inside a boathouse.”

“Lot of guys. Everyone I saw was in black battle dress uniforms. My guess is either Kingsmen or Blue Diamond.”

“None of them are friends of ours,” I said quietly.

“Call the play.”

“I want it quiet until I’m inside. I’m going to see about taking out the two in the boathouse. There’s a door with a keycard scanner, and sentries working that spot will probably have cards. You watch my back. If anyone comes close or gets nosy, take them out as quietly as possible.”

He nodded and began screwing a Trinity sound suppressor onto his sidearm.

I did the same. Ghost saw it and actually seemed to perk up. Dog loves a fight.

“Hotzone, I want this whole place set to blow. Every load-bearing timber. And put up a few party favors we can use as a distraction. Something to call them out so Top can have some fun.”

Brian grinned like it was Christmas. He drummed his fingers on the canvas cover of the big bag that was slung across his chest. It was crammed with small but very powerful waterproof explosive charges. Like C4’s angrier cousin. Something Doctor Hu’s team cooked up for us. Each bomb had a radio detonator keyed to our mission channel. Any of us could detonate the bombs one at a time or all at once. Without a word, Brian moved off around the underside of the building to begin planting his charges on the support struts. He was smiling as he worked. Brian likes blowing things up. Everyone needs a hobby.

I checked the mission clock. It read: 00:09:33.

I nodded to Bunny, and we moved off to get this party started.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-eight

Nicodemus came out of a closet that had been checked three times. Everyplace in the hospital had been checked. That did not matter to Nicodemus. He went where he wanted to go. It amused him when the soldiers with their hard eyes and their guns looked at him and did not see him. They saw shadows. They saw clothes on pegs. They saw corpses on slabs or patients in beds. They did not see him because he did not allow it.

Once he looked out from between the curtains around a dying woman’s bed and saw, far down the hall, a man that he had entertained in the chapel. Dense and slow, one-eyed and lame, tok-tokking his way down the hall on his cane with a soldier walking behind him like a Chinese bride.

Nicodemus could have taken him then. He almost did — it was that tempting.

But the moment wasn’t right.

He had agreed to do it a certain way, and he was bound to that bargain. Annoying, but there it was. A deal was a deal was a deal.

Now, though …

Well, now the time was as ripe as a peach.

Smiling to himself, Nicodemus walked out into the hall.

Where everyone could see him.

He loved the look of shock on their faces. He loved the way they turned. He loved the sound of their shouts. So bold, full of military jargon. He simply adored the sight of guns coming up, of barrels pointing his way.

He even raised his hands.

“It’s okay,” he called to them. “I’m not armed.”

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-nine

The door locks clicked into the locked position. When Church tried the manual control, he found it frozen.

A Secret Service agent pushed him aside. “Let me try.”

“Protect the president,” called Linden Brierly.

“What’s happening?” asked another voice. Then everyone was yelling. Fists hammered on the door from the other side, and there were more muffled yells from agents trying to get in.

“Where are the lights?”

“Turn on the security lights.”

“I have a penlight.”

A small light flared on and swept around the room, sweeping across faces filled with panic and fear.

Then the president’s voice rose above everyone’s. “Will someone tell me what the hell is happening?”

Everyone tried to, all at once; but it was Mr. Church who made himself heard.

“Enough!” he roared, and in the brief silence that followed, he spoke in his usual controlled tone. “Mr. President, it is clear that Solomon has been compromised. We need to assess our situation and regain control of the plane.”

“How?”

Church said, “Everyone with a laptop, open it and turn up the brightness. Cell phones, too. We need light to operate. If you have a flashlight feature, turn it on. Do it now. Then I want everyone back in your seats.”

Although Church’s voice was filled with calm command, the senior staff looked to the president for confirmation.

“Do what he says.”

They did.

“Linden,” said Church, “is your radio controlled through the plane’s Wi-Fi?”

“We have battery backup and our own hot spots. But our cell phones are—”

“One thing at a time. Tell your men to use a breaching tool to open this door. President’s orders.”

Again the president nodded. Brierly gave very specific orders to breach the door but leave weapons holstered.

“Everyone else get back from the door,” said Church. “Cover your faces with your arms. There will be splinters.”

Everyone complied, and within seconds there was a heavy thump on the door that shook the cabin. The door shuddered but did not open. Three seconds later, the agents on the other side tried again. This time the lock tore itself from the frame. Bits of metal and a storm of wood splinters filled the air, grazing arms, lodging in hair. Secret Service agents began to pile into the cramped conference room, but Brierly ordered them to stand down.

“Mr. President?” said Church.

“Go,” said the president. “Do whatever you have to do.”

As he spoke, though, there was a ghostly movement in front of his face. They all saw it. And for the first time they all felt it.

“What—?” murmured Bain.

“The heat,” said Brierly. “They cut the heat.”

The jet flew through the air at 506 miles an hour, flying at thirty-six thousand feet. The temperature outside was fifty-seven degrees below freezing.

Church left the conference room and moved quickly through the darkened plane. He pulled his cell phone and switched on the beam.

“On your six, Deacon,” said Brierly.

“You should stay with the president.”

“He’s secure. You’ll need help with this.”

They reached the cockpit door. Two Secret Service agents were fiddling with a keypad, trying to bypass the security.

“What have you got?” asked Brierly.

“We got a dead lock,” said one agent. “All electronics are frozen, and the onboard countermeasures have kicked in. Door is sealed against hijackers. Can’t get in without force. It’s hardened against breaching tools.”

“Can you contact the flight crew?”

“No, sir. They are totally unresponsive.”

Brierly glanced at Church. “Solomon controls everything, including oxygen. It can also release a sedative vapor. Nonlethal but effective. And … yes, it’s part of the countermeasure package your team advised against.”

“What other surprises are there?”

Brierly shivered. “The same system is shipwide. They can freeze us, dope us, or kill us. And the system controls explosive bolts on the doors in case of emergency evacuation after a crash that’s killed the crew.”

“You knew about this and didn’t tell me,” said Church. It wasn’t a question or an accusation. It was, however, an eloquent statement of disappointment.

“This was approved by the president and—”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, Linden. All we need to do is focus on solving this.”

“How?”

“Not sure yet.” Church reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and removed a small device about the size of a paperback book. From another pocket he removed a leather case that opened to reveal an array of very delicate tools. He knelt and shined his phone light on the keypad of the security-bypass terminal fixed to the bulkhead outside the cockpit. The terminal was there for emergencies and could only be accessed under very specific circumstances.

“Is Solomon keyed to defend against this system?” he asked.

Brierly was too long in answering.

“Solomon was built as a can’t-fail system in the event of a hijacking by technologically savvy intruders.”

“How clever. You must be proud.”

Church removed a set of wires and plugged the leads into ports on the terminal. Several lights flicked on along the face of the device he held. The lights were all red.

“Is that good?” asked Brierly. “Can you access the system?”

Church ignored the question. He pressed a button that caused two thin panels to open like wings from the lower part of his device. As they locked into place, tiny lights switched on to illuminate a holographic touch-screen keyboard. Church peeled away a strip of plastic film and pressed the top end of the device to the bulkhead below the terminal, held it in place for ten seconds, and then released it. The device stuck fast.

“What is that?” asked Brierly, his breath pluming with frost. “Portable MindReader?”

“Something like that.”

“Will it allow us to bypass Solomon? Or should we wait for—?”

“For what, exactly, Linden?”

“The Kings to make their demands. We can negotiate something with them.”

Church turned and looked at him for a moment. “Linden, do you grasp what’s happening here?”

“Yes, the Kings have taken over the plane. They probably want to kill POTUS, or hold him hostage for some kind of payoff.”

Church shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Then what?”

“The Seven Kings have spent a lot of time and money to infect the Regis and Solomon systems. They’ve outsmarted us at every single turn. If this was a grab for money, they’d have made their first hit on a Monday after opening bell at the market. They didn’t. They hit the park and killed a great hero of the war in Afghanistan while also inflicting an injury on the American people at the launch of our national pastime. Seen together, that looks more like a symbol than an attempt to influence the market. In fact, it’s become harder and harder to connect the chain of events with any kind of big-ticket swindle.”

“Then what?”

“I think the Kings may have other motivations.”

“Like?”

“Revenge comes to mind,” said Church. “We did considerable damage to their organization. It is entirely possible they built a fail-safe into their infrastructure. Something to throw the last punch. It would be very much like Hugo Vox to do that kind of thing. Even if he loses, he wins.”

“Wins how? Wanton destruction?”

“Or a historical statement. Perhaps a political one. After all, the last King to be killed was Osama bin Laden.” He nodded to indicate the plane around them. “This would be a very apt statement.”

“How?”

“Because the very first major attack by the Seven Kings was to hijack planes and fly them into the World Trade Center. Into the symbol of American financial power. And into the Pentagon, the symbol of our military superiority. If the fourth plane had hit its target instead of being forced to crash, it would have hit the White House, the symbol of leadership. Using Solomon is so appropriate.”

“I don’t see how. By killing the president?”

Church sighed. “Where are we headed, Linden?”

“New York.”

“Correct. The Seven Kings have taken control of Air Force One, turned it into a drone, and aimed it at New York. Would you like to guess what their target is going to be? Now that it’s been rebuilt? Now that it’s a gleaming spike symbolizing how America rises from any defeat? You tell me, Linden. What could the Kings do to strike a more devastating blow than that?”

Brierly said nothing. His mouth hung open.

Church pointed toward the window. “They blew up the Golden Gate Bridge. Now they’re going to destroy the World Trade Center with Air Force One. From sea to shining sea. And we are all fools for not seeing it soon enough.”

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty

Ghost and I moved along the dock as silently as we knew how. Any noise that rose louder than the rain, and we were dead. Maybe my whole team was dead. There were rows of wooden barrels on shelves and stacks of supplies in metal or plastic tubs. Through the plastic I could see canned fruits in one tub, boxes of medical gauze in another.

The two sentries were not winning points for alertness or vigilance, which meant I liked them a lot. But they were on an island, inside a boathouse, carrying automatic weapons and wearing microphones. They probably felt safe.

Suddenly I heard a voice and nearly had a fucking heart attack.

“Deacon for Cowboy. Deacon for Cowboy.”

The earbud transmitted directly into my ear. No one else could hear it, but I froze and became part of the stacked supplies. I think I even adopted a wood-grain pattern on my skin. I was that determined not to be seen.

The guards didn’t turn my way, and after about five seconds my sphincter unclenched, and my heart started beating again. I shifted slowly to my right and ducked down behind a stack of wooden boxes. There is a trackball stitched into the lining of my pocket, and I used it to activate my Scout glasses. The screen display flicked on and confirmed that the incoming call was indeed from Church. I used the cursor to indicate that I couldn’t make a verbal reply but was able to receive intel. Church began speaking quickly and quietly.

He told me very bad things.

He told me about Air Force One.

He told me about a bunch of people freezing to death in a drone that was heading for New York.

“Bug thinks he can help me bypass the security and gain access to the cockpit. If that happens, I’ll be able to key in an override. Have you secured the reset codes from the target?”

I tapped the cursor once to indicate that I had not.

Church’s voice was calm. Too controlled, too dry. “We’re running out of time, Cowboy. You know they can’t let this plane cross into New York airspace. Not near the city. They’ll shoot us down before they let that happen.”

He disconnected the call.

I sat there, stunned. Horrified.

And really goddamn pissed off.

I raised my Sig Sauer and took it in a comfortable grip, left hand cupping the right and supporting the gun, finger laid along the trigger guard. I made a small clicking sound to tell Ghost to stay back and stay silent. He sat and seemed to turn to stone.

Then I moved forward. Not running, but taking many small steps that allowed me to limit sound, move quickly, and keep the gun rock steady. The guards were looking in the wrong direction, laughing at something one of them said, unaware that I was there.

I opened fire from twenty feet away.

Shot after shot.

Taking them both in the body and then the head. Watching them go down. One of them fell over the edge into the water. The other collapsed like a scarecrow onto the deck. Four shots, two seconds.

Dead.

“Ghost,” I said quietly, and he bounded forward. “Clear.”

He veered off and moved as silent as his name around the dock, looking with keen dog eyes and sniffing with his incredible dog nose. Then he cut and returned to me. If there had been another man standing somewhere out of sight, Ghost would have taken him.

I slipped my gun into my shoulder rig and squatted down over the dead man, praying that it wasn’t the other one who had the keycard.

I sighed with relief when I found the keycard in his trouser pocket.

Unfortunately, that’s where my hand was when the door behind me opened.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-one

Lydia Ruiz saw the man first.

Him.

The priest.

For reasons she could never explain to herself, she touched her chest, where, beneath her clothes and body armor, a silver cross hung over her heart. Her mother had given it to her for her first confirmation a million years ago. Another life ago. She wasn’t even sure she believed in God anymore. Not after the things she’d seen. The things she’d done.

But now the cross and all that it meant to her mother, her aunts, her grandmother, her family seemed to pull at her hand. She touched the shape of it beneath her clothes.

Lydia had never met this man before. Not in the flesh. She’d been on the fringes of DMS actions involving him, including the thing in Iran with the Red Knights.

The priest smiled at her.

“I’m not armed,” he said.

Lydia’s hand left the cross and drew her gun faster than she had ever done anything in her life. The Glock was in its holster and then it was in her hand and her finger was inside the trigger guard and she was firing.

The priest was forty feet away. At twenty-five feet, she could put nine rounds into a hole the size of a dime. At fifty, she could kill anything she aimed at. Even at fifty yards, she could put eighty percent of her shots through a six-inch dirty-bird target. She was a superb shot, and she’d killed hostiles with handguns and long guns on five continents.

The priest did not fall.

Did not stagger.

And he did not stop smiling.

When the slide of her Glock locked back, Lydia dropped the magazine and reached for a fresh one with the smooth fluidity of years of practice, even though her mind was reeling. As she slapped it into place, she heard her own voice reciting a prayer the nuns had drilled into her.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Nicodemus said, “Amen.”

Behind him, the doors to the stairwell banged open and a horde of Kingsmen came rushing out.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-two

There was no time to draw my gun. I wheeled and saw another pair of guards in the doorway. Shift change? Who knows. Two men. Big, startled, armed.

“Ghost,” I said. “Hit!”

He was a blur as he shot past me and leaped high at the first man. Ghost is one hundred and five pounds of muscle and teeth. All that weight hit the guy in the solar plexus and drove both guys back inside. As I leaped after Ghost, I whipped my rapid-release folding knife from its pocket sheath. It flicked open and snugged into my palm.

Ghost sank his teeth into the first man’s throat, and blood sprayed up and hit the ceiling. I jumped over him, slapped aside the barrel of a machine gun the second guard didn’t quite have time to raise, and slashed him across the throat. The short, wicked blade took him just below the Adam’s apple and cut a two-inch red trench.

He staggered backward and sank down to his knees, eyes bugging out as he used both hands to try and staunch a flow that could not be stopped. I bashed his hands aside and shin-kicked him in the throat. He flopped backward and down and stopped moving. I pivoted to see the man beneath Ghost give a final frenzied kick of his legs and then settle back into that terminal stillness that can never be mistaken for sleep. Blood pooled out beneath him, and Ghost raised his head and turned toward me.

When he does a kill there is a little bit of a disconnect from the dog I know and love and the predator that lives inside his heart. I’m sure there is a similar look in my eyes when I let the killer out to play. So for a moment we stood there, two monsters, linked by the blood we had just spilled.

Then I pulled myself back from the edge and listened to the building around me. For shouts, for alarms. Heard nothing except the slap of water against the pilings outside.

When I was certain that no one was coming, I tapped my earbud for the team channel.

“Cowboy to Echo. The boathouse is clear. Four hostiles are down. I’m inside the building.”

“Copy that,” replied Top. “Did you get the message from Deacon?”

“Affirmative. Clock is ticking. I’m going for it.”

“Call the play,” said Top.

“Give me five minutes and then kick the doors.”

“Hooah,” he said.

I glanced at Ghost. He was himself again, but I knew the wolf was not far away.

“Let’s go,” I told him, but he was already moving. He’d tasted blood, and he wanted more.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-three

“How’s it coming?” asked Brierly. He was shivering and stamping his feet.

Church knelt with a blanket draped around his shoulders. His fingers were nearly blue, and the tools kept slipping as he gradually lost muscular control to the biting cold.

“Questions aren’t particularly useful right now,” said Church.

“I need to do something.”

“Then go find me a satellite phone. I don’t care if you have to take it away from the president. I’ve hit a wall here and I need to call in an expert.”

Brierly nodded and backed away, then turned and ran. In the main cabin, the press and the White House staff had clustered together into huddled masses under layers of coats and blankets. The air inside the jet was subzero and falling. He could hear people weeping. A few were praying.

When he reached the conference room, he saw the president hunched in his chair with the others sitting close. Not quite a communal huddle, but it was getting there. The president wore his blue parka and gloves. A few others had coats, but there weren’t enough on board for everyone.

The president had the satellite phone to his mouth and was speaking softly, tenderly, soothing someone at the other end. The first lady, no doubt. POTUS looked up as Brierly came over.

“Any luck?”

“Some,” lied Brierly, “but the Deacon needs the sat phone.”

The president looked reluctant, but he nodded. “Honey,” he said into the mouthpiece, “I need to call you back. No … no, listen to me. I will call you back. Just trust me. We have the best people in the world working on this. It’s all going to be fine.”

He ended the call and handed the phone to Brierly.

“Did I just lie to my wife? Is this going to work out?”

“I’m sure it will,” said Brierly, because lying was the only thing they could all do right now.

He hurried back to Church and gave him the phone.

“Thanks,” said Church and immediately punched a number and waited through five rings before it was answered. Brierly was close enough to hear the voice on the other end. Small, lost, filled with pain.

“Y-yes?”

“Bug,” said Mr. Church, “I need your help.”

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-four

Lydia dove behind the nurses’ station as the Kingsmen opened fire. Heavy-caliber bullets chased her and tore the counter to matchwood. Lydia hit, rolled, kicked herself around, and reached around the end of the counter with her gun hand. Blind firing was usually a waste of bullets, but the hallway was packed with killers. Even behind the wave of gunfire, she heard screams.

And then she heard more guns open up, and for a wild moment she thought she was caught in a hopeless crossfire. But the sound signature was wrong. The Kingsmen all had AK-47s, and the new shots were Heckler & Koch CQBR carbines firing NATO rounds. She turned to see Montana Parker crouched in a doorway, her rifle snugged into her shoulder. Two other DMS agents were running up the hall, firing as they came.

The three Kingsmen at the forefront of the charge staggered and collapsed, blood flying front and back from through-and-through wounds. But more of the killers kept pouring from the stairwell.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-five

Ghost and I moved through a silent building. I knew there were people here, but it didn’t feel like it. The place had a dead vibe to it that was hard to describe. There was a wrongness to it that went beyond even the evil of the Seven Kings, and yet I didn’t feel the kind of malevolent vitality I expected.

The halls were lined with dark wood that was polished to such a high shine it looked like a museum display. The carpets underfoot appeared to have never felt a footfall. We knew there were people in this hotel but somehow the place had a disused quality. Or, maybe it was soulless. That’s how it felt.

The hall was lined with doors. None of them had a fancy lock or anything requiring a security keycard. Most were unlocked, and when I checked I found evidence of occupancy. Men’s clothing, mostly. Many pairs of black BDUs and rubber-soled shoes. Weapons and extra ammunition. Porn magazines. Books of all kinds. Laptops. Nothing that looked like a room where a short computer genius might have been held. I plugged uplinks into the USB ports of each laptop I found, hoping that none of them were of the quantum variety. I doubt I could tell the difference.

I exited the next-to-last room along that hall. My knife was back in its pocket, and I had a fresh magazine in the silenced Sig Sauer. The door to the very next room down the hall opened, and I instantly ducked back inside as a woman dressed as a maid emerged pushing a small cart laden with towels. She began moving off, then stopped and looked my way. She couldn’t see Ghost or me, but she frowned as she looked at the runner carpet. I didn’t have to look to know what she was seeing. Footprints. Wet and new.

What she did next was going to determine her future. If she was an ordinary maid and decided to turn and run for help, I’d catch her and juice her with horsey. If she wasn’t an ordinary maid, then she wasn’t going to have a future.

Still frowning, she crept down the hall, and as she did so she reached under the sweater she wore over her maid’s costume and pulled a Glock 26.

I stepped out of hiding and shot her through the heart and the forehead.

Bad guys come in all shapes and sizes, and sexes.

I hooked an arm under her and caught her as she fell. There was no time to hide her body, so I laid her down on the carpet. I tucked her gun into the back of my belt, clicked my tongue for Ghost, and ran up the hall. I paused to peer into the room she’d just left. It was empty, but I knew as soon as I stepped inside that I’d struck gold.

There was a pile of clothes on the floor that looked way too small to belong to one of the Blue Diamond thugs and a pair of shoes that couldn’t have been larger than a seven.

“Ghost,” I said, “watch.”

He went back into the hallway.

I tore through the room. I wanted to find a computer, but there was nothing. No electronics. Not even a Gameboy.

Fair enough. Once Davidovich had bugged out, they would have taken his computers to see if he’d left anything useful on them. Would they do the same for his notebooks?

I cut over to the desk and saw that it was piled high with papers of all kinds. Reams of computer printouts, scores of file folders, three-ring binders, and loose pages torn from yellow legal pads. Nothing that I could see screamed “Hey, this is what you’re looking for!”

Until it did.

Sitting on one corner of the desk was a stack of spiral-bound notebooks with cheap cardboard covers. The kind they sell for a buck at Staples. There were maybe forty of them bundled together in sets that were bound with oversize rubber bands. Either Davidovich had stacked them haphazardly or someone had already gone through them. I tended to believe the latter. Davidovich had many flaws, but sloppiness was not one of them.

I set my gun down and picked up one of the books, flipped it open. On the inside cover I saw a handwritten name. Not Aaron Davidovich’s own name. It was Matthew. His son’s name. Written over and over again. In pencil, in felt-tip marker, in three different colors of ballpoint. Hundreds of times. The pages were filled with computer code. Meticulously written in pencil in a small, crabbed hand. Flipping through, I saw that the book was completely filled. Almost. There were a few blank pages, maybe to separate one program from another, or one set of functions. Something like that. I’m talented with spoken languages, but computer speak isn’t even Greek to me. I can speak and even write Greek. This was an alien language. What had Davidovich said?

They’re still on the island in my notebooks, hidden in a piece of old game code that I stopped working on. It looks like junk unless you know the key to using it.

Then he’d rambled on and on, losing his shit in the midst of panic. I picked through my memory everything he said. Every detail, fishing for something useful. He’d said something … something … I closed my eyes and willed my brain to replay the conversation.

Pi from nine, he’d said. There was more and I had to claw for it. I mouthed the words I remembered, and as I spoke them aloud they congealed into something that maybe sense. A kind of sense.

“Pi from nine, backwards,” I murmured. “Page two.”

That’s what Davidovich said.

I opened the notebook to page two, but it was merely the middle of a code string that began on the previous page. I tossed it down and began going through the others and very quickly discovered that I was totally out of my depth. None of it looked right to me. The only thing that I could understand was the name Matthew. Davidovich had spent a lot of time writing his son’s name on the inside covers of his notebooks. Why? Obsession? Regret? Who knows.

So I took a risk to break radio silence and tapped my earbud to get Yoda on the line. In the absence of Bug, Yoda was the software genius of the DMS. His real name, by the way, is Yoda. He has a sister named Leia. His parents could use some therapy.

“Mmmm, what have you got, Cowboy?”

“I think I found Doctor Detroit’s notebooks, but there are a lot of them and I don’t have time to exfil with them.” I tapped the camera on my Scout glasses so Yoda could see what I saw. “He said it was game code on page two.”

I could hear Yoda take a breath. “Okay,” he said, “start with the, ummm, first one.”

The clock kept ticking.

Ticking.

Ticking.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-six

“Is that thunder?”

Rudy Sanchez and the infectious-disease specialist looked up from the NF reports they had been discussing. Above them, the building seemed to tremble.

The doctor had asked the question, but he was frowning.

“No,” said Rudy.

“It sounds more like fireworks,” said a nurse who was on the other side of the room taking updates from the printer.

Rudy murmured, “Ay Dios mío. That’s not fireworks. Doctor, call the police. Do it right now.”

He reached for the silver handle of his cane and pushed himself up. Rudy tapped the earbud Lydia required him to wear. He tapped it to bring her online, but there was no answer. He tried Sam. Montana.

No one answered his call.

He tried Church. Nothing.

Finally, he contacted the DMS headquarters at the Hangar on Floyd Bennett Field. The duty officer answered at once.

“This is Doctor Rudy Sanchez—”

“Combat call signs only on this line—”

“To hell with that. I am at UC San Diego Medical Center. Send immediate help. We are under attack.”

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-seven

Doctor Pharos felt his phone vibrate, and when he looked at the display, he smiled.

“Boy,” he said into the phone, “I was waiting for your call.”

“Father,” she said, “it’s started.”

“Ah. Excellent.”

“And … Father?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“After this, I get to come home?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“No, honey, thank you.”

The line went dead. Pharos slipped the phone back into his pocket and glanced at the burned man, who in turn was watching the news coverage coming out of San Francisco.

“So beautiful,” said the Gentleman. “So beautiful.”

Pharos said nothing. Instead, he stood and walked without haste to the door. This was all accelerating now. He had to make sure that the twelve separate escape routes he’d arranged were all prepped and ready. Once he had the codes from the burned man, he was going to be out of there like a bullet leaving a gun.

And if those codes were never to be his…?

So sad.

But his feelings were soothed by all of that gold.

He was smiling as he left the dying man’s room.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-eight

Bug sat in his hotel room. His clothes were draped over the edges of his suitcase, empty sleeves reaching like dead arms, head collars collapsed in defeat. A pizza box stood open, one slice missing, the cheese cold and congealed. More than a dozen cans of Coke stood on the night table or lay on the floor. The TV was on, and news footage of the horrors in San Francisco was like something from a summer disaster movie. A box of tissues was within reach on the small dining table. Dozens of crumpled tissues overflowed the metal trash can.

Bug listened to what Mr. Church was telling him, and as he did so he could feel the malaise in his mind and the grief in his heart fusing into a wall of indifference. He didn’t care about the president, the ballpark, the bridge, the submarine, or any of it. He wasn’t even sure he cared about Mr. Church. He certainly didn’t give a shit about the president or anyone on Air Force One. None of it was quite real.

Only one thing was real to him, and it was going to be buried in a closed coffin. He wasn’t even sure all of her would be in there. The blast had torn her to pieces.

Pieces.

The thought was too horrible to fit into his head.

His mother had been torn to pieces. Bloody chunks. Broken bits of bone. Burned blood.

That face, the one that was always filled with smiles. The first thing he had ever seen in this world. Those eyes, brimming with laughter and love. That heart. That noble and loving heart. The hands that had bathed him. The laugh that could burn away the darkest shadows. The mind that held a fierce intellect and a generous nature. The personality.

Gone.

All of it blown to pieces by a bomb.

All of it gone.

All of her gone.

Gathered up in bits and put into a bag so it could be buried in a box.

So sorry, the police and the doctors and all his friends had said. So sorry.

Now the world itself was being blown to bits, and that seemed only right. It should all blow up, all fall down, all go into the cold, cold ground.

Like Mom.

Like her.

Like his own heart, which was so badly broken that Bug knew it could never be fixed. Some things can’t be fixed. Some things had no reset button.

“Bug,” said the voice on the phone.

“I can’t,” Bug told him.

“Please.”

“Get someone else. Get Yoda.”

“Yoda isn’t up to this,” said Mr. Church.

“I’m not up to this.”

“Bug…”

“It’s not fair!” Bug suddenly screamed into the phone.

After a long moment, Mr. Church said, “No, it’s not. They took your mother away from you, Bug. They’re trying to take my daughter away from me. They may have killed Aunt Sallie, and they will kill me.”

“I’m sorry … but you shouldn’t have called me.”

“Who else could I call?”

The silence washed back and forth on the line.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Bug. “If they have a quantum computer, even MindReader can’t beat it.”

“They may have a QC, Bug. They probably do. But if so, it’s not on this aircraft. The Solomon program is.”

Bug said nothing.

“I need to bypass a computer lockout system with a set of pocket tools and a Warlock handheld. I’ve tried everything that I know how to do. I can get about a third of the way in, and then it locks me out again.”

Bug said nothing.

“We have about forty-three minutes of flight time left before we cross a certain line.”

“What line?”

“The president cannot let Air Force One cross into the New York metropolitan area. If we cannot take control of the plane in under twenty-five minutes, the president will have to order ground-based missiles to blow us out of the sky.”

Bug said nothing.

For a long time.

Then he sobbed once and pressed a tissue to his eyes and clenched his jaws to stifle the scream that he wanted to give as the only reasonable answer.

He struck himself in the forehead with his cell phone. Once. Again. And again.

Then he dragged a forearm across his eyes, sniffed to clear his nose, and mumbled a single word.

“Okay.”

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-nine

A figure emerged from the crowd of Kingsmen. Small, slim, female, with a Cambodian face and eyes like a shark. She wore a full set of high-tech body armor and carried a .22 automatic in her hand. Nicodemus hissed something at her and vanished into a doctor’s office. The Cambodian took charge and immediately yelled to the Kingsmen, who began overturning gurneys to create shooting blinds. Lydia rolled out and fired four quick shots, catching one of the men in the throat and sending the others for cover. The Cambodian woman spun and fired and bullets chipped the desk an inch from Lydia’s face.

She squirmed back under the desk, peering through a splintered hole as she reloaded.

The Cambodian knelt quickly, aimed, fired. There was a sharp cry, and one of the DMS team simply sat down, coughed red, and fell over onto his side.

“The cow is in the room at the end of the hall,” yelled the woman. “Take her. Kill the others. Do it now!”

The Kingsmen began pouring it on even heavier, turning the hospital floor into a whirlwind of flying lead and jagged splinters.

Lydia slapped the magazine in and then leaned out to fire at the newcomer, but there were two shooters in the way. She shot one through the side of the head, and he fell sideways into his companion, dragging them both down. That gave Lydia a clear shot at the Cambodian, but the slim Asian wheeled and snapped off a shot that punched into the center of Lydia Ruiz’s chest.

Lydia collapsed backward, the air rushing from her lungs. Fires ignited in her eyes, and for a moment she could neither move nor breathe. She turned to see the Kingsmen rushing forward, howling as they fired.

Circe O’Tree-Sanchez’s room was across the wide hallway from where Lydia lay. Bullets hammered into the glass and exploded it inward, filling the room with a million glittering splinters. There was sudden movement as two figures came up off the floor and threw themselves down across Circe. Junie used her body to cover Circe’s chest and face; Toys bent his body like an arch over her distended belly. Not touching her, but shielding her as the glass tore through their clothes and painted their bodies red.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty

“Tell me something good, Yoda.”

“Ummmm, Jesus, Cowboy, this is very advanced stuff. Some of this must be for the, ummm, QC and—”

“We’re not looking for the frigging QC,” I snapped as I threw down one notebook and opened another. “We’re looking for old game code. Does any of this fit?”

He started to answer, faltered. Started again, faltered again.

“Goddamn, focus. The clock is ticking.”

“I know, I know. Mmmmmmm, God … I wish Bug was here.”

I flipped through the pages of the notebook. “He’s not. Pay attention. Is this game code?”

“I don’t know. I think it might be, but…”

I wanted to scream. Somewhere in the skies over Ohio or some Midwestern state, Air Force One was racing to punch into the New York airspace. Minutes were breaking off the clock. My heart was racing so hard it hurt.

“No,” said Yoda. “Not that one. Ummm, let me see the next one…”

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-one

Lydia pressed her fingers to her chest and looked at them, expecting to see blood.

All she saw was her own copper-brown skin.

Kevlar. She wanted to laugh, but it hurt too much. The vests stopped the bullets, but they could only do so much to diffuse the pounds of force.

“Get the cow!” screamed the Cambodian woman.

Then another voice, older, male, snarled, “Bring her to me.”

Nicodemus.

Lydia growled, took a big bite of her pain, and rolled back to her knees. The Kingsmen were racing toward Circe’s room. Montana took three of them down, but it didn’t even slow their rush. Then a heavier weapon spoke from the far end of the side hall. A big, throaty cough, and in the same instant one of the Kingsmen seemed to fly apart. There was a second shot, a third, a fourth, and with each one a Kingsman died. Heads exploded. Chests ruptured.

Lydia could not see where Sam Imura was positioned, but he kept firing, killing everything he aimed at. He’d brought his “indoor” gun with him, an M21 semiautomatic with a twenty-round box magazine.

Except that the gun needed to be reloaded and the hall was choked with Kingsmen. How many magazines did Sam have? One spare, tops?

As Lydia shifted back into a shooting position, she saw another DMS agent go down, his upper chest torn apart by a dozen rounds. The fusillade drove Montana back from the doorway. Police officers and the support team from Homeland poured out of the fire tower, down near Sam. They opened fire at once, and the Cambodian woman sent half her team down the hall to intercept them. There were a lot of DMS, SWAT, and Homeland shooters in the hospital.

There were five times as many Kingsmen.

Nicodemus and the Cambodian woman had brought an army.

An army.

Why? Lydia couldn’t understand why they would send such overwhelming force to abduct one pregnant woman. Who was Circe to them? Why did she matter?

These thoughts and questions ran through her head as she fired and fired, killing and wounding, emptying her gun, dropping the spent magazine, reloading, aware of how many rounds she had left.

Not enough.

Even if she put one bullet in every Kingsman here, she did not have enough ammunition to win this. Nowhere near enough to survive it. And far too little to protect Circe and her baby.

Nicodemus came stalking along the hall, his wizened body canted forward like some predatory dinosaur. His smile was an awful thing to see. Totally inhuman, filled with obvious delight at the chaos and blood that swirled around him. Again, Lydia tried to shoot him, but a pair of Kingsmen rushed at her, and she had to waste bullets on them instead of taking out that perverse parody of a priest.

“The cow is mine,” said Nicodemus, his thin voice rising above the din. “Mine!”

Suddenly something came bounding out of Circe’s room. With a howl that momentarily stilled the fighting in the hallway, it leaped through the shattered window frame and struck a Kingsman with such force that the man bent backward, folded nearly in two. The man’s spine snapped with gunshot clarity.

“Banshee…” breathed Lydia.

The enormous wolfhound drove the dead man to the floor and sprang forward, tearing the throat out of a second man.

“Kill it!” shrieked a voice. “Kill it!”

The voice belonged to Nicodemus. He pointed at the dog as he backed quickly away.

“Kill it!”

He sounded different.

Not boastful. Not confidant.

Nicodemus sounded terrified.

And Lydia Ruiz was certain of it.

Immediately, a half dozen of the Kingsmen hurled themselves at the hound and dragged it down out of sight.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-two

“The green wire’s next,” said Bug. “I think.”

“Bug,” said Church as he lifted the green wire in the jaws of a pair of needle-nose pliers, “I need something better than ‘I think.’”

Church’s teeth were chattering, and his fingers had turned a dusty purple.

“I know, I know, but I can’t see the circuits. Move the light.”

Church picked up the light, dropped it, picked it up again, dropped it. He took a breath and tried once more and managed to position the light. He could not actually feel the cell phone he was using as a flashlight. Almost all nerve conduction was gone from his fingertips. Where his fingers weren’t completely numb, they screamed with pain. Strange how the pain of frostbite could feel like fire.

“Can you see it now?” he asked, forcing his voice to be calm.

“Yeah. It’s not the green wire. It’s the blue one. Strip it and hotwire it to the white one. That should connect you to the battery and give you power to run the locking computer.”

“You’re sure, Bug? I won’t be able to do this twice.”

“Blue and white. Absolutely.”

Church began stripping the wire. His dying hands were clumsy, and the tools kept falling. Each time he picked them up and continued. He didn’t waste time with cursing or any of the dramatics of frustration. He worked as efficiently as the biting cold and thinning oxygen would allow. He could feel the beginnings of confusion at the edges of his focus. Carbon dioxide was building up in the cabin.

Bug said, “I … I wish I was there to do this for you.”

“You are here with me, Bug,” said Church.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-three

“Ummmm, Cowboy—?” said Yoda, “I, ummm, think that’s it.”

“Wait … what’s it?”

“That page. No, no, the book you just put down. Let me see that one again. Second page. Hold it steady so I can take a screen shot. Got it. Okay, give me a minute.”

“We don’t have a minute.”

“Half a minute.” Yoda said, and then just hummed at me for what seemed like an hour. Probably only fifteen or twenty seconds, but it felt longer. Too long.

“Yoda…”

“Umm, holy shit, Cowboy,” he blurted. “That’s definitely it. Flip the page. No go to page nine. Davidovich said it was Pi and to work backward from nine. The value of Pi is 3.141592653. Keeps going from there to infinity. The ninth value is three. Hold it so I can see line three.”

I did, and I noticed that in his excitement he’d stopped humming.

“Let me input the code from the third line. Got it. Now page eight, line five…”

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-four

Rudy Sanchez took the elevator up to the floor where his wife lay pregnant and helpless. He gripped his walking stick with hands that were slick with sweat. He had to clutch his hands into fists to keep them from trembling. Never in his life — not even when the burning helicopter plunged into the brown waters of the Baltimore Harbor — had he been this terrified.

Circe.

Dear God, he prayed in Spanish, please … not Circe. Not her.

He could hear gunfire and screams. And through it all the bone-chilling howl of a monstrous hound.

Banshee.

Rudy had no gun. Joe had tried many times to teach him, but, even before he lost an eye, Rudy had been an indifferent marksman. Now, with the loss of depth perception that came with being one-eyed, he was worthless with any gun except a shotgun. He didn’t have a shotgun.

All he had was the hand-carved walking stick made of hawthorn and topped with an ornate silver handle. He had used that stick to try and fight back against Nicodemus and failed. He clutched it now and wondered if he was rushing to help his wife or to simply be murdered.

Dear God and all Your saints … not my wife. Not our child. Take me instead. If you need a life, take mine. Show them Your mercy.

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened to reveal a scene from hell itself. Hieronymus Bosch could not have painted a more horrific tableau.

Bodies lay sprawled on the floor; the walls were pocked with black bullet holes and splashed with red blood. Shell casings glittered like discarded jewels. The combatants fought at close quarters. With guns. With clubs and stun guns. With knives. With bare hands. Rudy saw four DMS agents, including Agent Cowpers, lying dead. SWAT officers and agents of Homeland’s tactical response teams lay entangled with Kingsmen.

Lydia Ruiz knelt beside the nurses’ station, firing into the crowd. Across the hall, Rudy could see Circe’s room. The big window was gone except for a few jagged glass teeth. On the bed, Rudy could see one sprawled form. A man’s body. Bloody and inert.

He could not see his wife at all.

Oh God … where was Circe?

Please, God of all. Not my love. Not Circe.

A man stood directly outside the elevator car, and as the doors opened he turned toward Rudy. A Kingsman. He grinned as he turned. He had a marine bayonet in his hand, and with a cry of murderous glee he threw himself at Rudy.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-five

“That’s the last one,” I said. “Do you have it all?”

“I do.”

“Then upload the rest of the fucking code. Do it right damn now.”

I could hear his fingers hammering on keys.

Then, “Oh Jesus…”

“Don’t ‘oh, Jesus’ me, man. Tell me it went through. Tell me you’re shutting this down.”

“No,” he said. “It’s, ummmmm, not working. There was a URL built into the code. It brought up an, ummmmm, Web site. Password-protected.”

“What’s the password?”

“How would I know?” Yoda protested. “I, ummm, don’t know it…”

Ever been punched in the face? Really hard? The kind of punch that knocks the air out of your lungs and all of the thoughts from your brain?

Yeah.

That’s what I felt.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-six

Rudy Sanchez fell back as the Kingsman rushed him. With a desperate cry, he brought his cane up in both hands to try and parry the fall of the knife. The Kingsman’s wrist slammed into the hawthorn shaft and rebounded, and the jolt — against all hope — hit the right nerves. The man’s hand sprang open, and the knife flew over Rudy’s shoulder and fell behind him.

The Kingsman looked as surprised as Rudy felt, but the killer recovered at once and swung a punch that caught Rudy across the jaw, spun him, and dropped him to his knees. Then the man grabbed Rudy’s chin in one hand and knotted the fingers of his other hand in Rudy’s hair. He began to twist, forcing Rudy’s head to turn on his neck. First to the edge of comfort and then past it.

Too far past it.

Rudy could feel the bones in his neck begin to grind.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-seven

I staggered as if I’d really been punched and had to catch the wall to steady myself. I stared down at the stack of notebooks.

Then I stiffened.

“Yoda!” I cried. “I think I know the password. Christ — it’s Matthew. His son’s name. Matthew, type that in.”

“Cowboy, if you’re wrong, then the system could lock me out.”

“It’s Matthew. I’m sure of it. He wrote it on every single book, over and over again.”

“Okay. Putting that in now.”

I heard him type.

Then I heard a sharp, scolding ding of a computer-generated bell.

“Ummmm, Cowboy … that wasn’t it. I have a pop-up screen telling me that I have two tries left before it goes into permanent lockout.”

“How about his birthday. Matthew’s. We have it in our files.”

“Mmmmmm, okay. I have it.”

“Put it in.”

He did.

We heard that same goddamn bell.

“Mmmm, one try left and then we’re dead, Cowboy.”

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-eight

It took Mr. Church five times longer than it should have to twist the wires together. He could smell how the electricity burned the skin of his fingers, but he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel his fingers at all. Even applying pressure was done through observation rather than feel.

“It’s done,” he told Bug.

“Good, now see that little gray switch? Hit that.”

Church took a breath and flipped the tiny switch.

Immediately, the control panel flashed with lights. At first they were all red, and then one by one they popped with a bright and promising green.

Church closed his eyes for one moment.

Then he punched in a five-digit code on the keypad.

There was a sharp metallic click as the locks disengaged and the cockpit door swung open.

“Thank you, Bug,” he said quietly.

“Boss, I can see your hands. You’re getting frostbite.”

Church didn’t comment as he rose shakily to his feet. His knees hurt, and his body was still with intense cold. He pushed open the cockpit door and stepped inside. The air from inside smelled of chemicals, and the members of the flight crew were toppled sideways in their chairs, unconscious. Solomon’s hijack-defense system had released the tranquilizers. Church opened and closed the door like a fan to dissipate the drugs, wafting it out into the main cabin. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his nose and mouth and then entered the cockpit.

As he expected, all of the flight controls were still locked by Solomon.

However, there were manual systems for cabin airflow, lights, and heat.

Church staggered forward and collapsed against the wall by the controls. His fingers were turning black now, and he had to fight with the dying nerves to make them work. In the end, he had to paw with the side of his hand, slapping sloppily at the switches.

Around him the cabin lights came on.

Air hissed from the vents.

Church looked out of the windows to see if the fighter escort was still there. And, if so, would they shoot Air Force One down to keep it from hitting its target?

The skies around the plane were clear. The jets were gone.

Where? Forced to crash by Solomon?

Or sent out to do more harm?

Church could feel the first tentative touch of heat rising from the floor, and he sank slowly to his knees and pressed his hands against the vent.

Air Force One, however, still hurtled through the skies toward New York City. The irony was not lost on Church that now he and the others would be alive, awake, and able to feel everything when the plane hit the World Trade Center.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-nine

Boy sent wave after wave of Kingsmen down the hall toward the room where Nicodemus’s prize waited. The pregnant woman. “The cow,” the priest called her.

However, Boy knew what she really was to the old monster.

Not a victim. Not exactly. Victims were a dime a dozen. Everyone associated with the Seven Kings was ankle-deep in the blood of victims.

No, Circe O’Tree-Sanchez, daughter of Mr. Church, key to the destruction of the DMS, was a sacrifice.

Nicodemus had plans for Circe. And for all of the psychosis that Boy knew she kept penned in her own soul, the things Nicodemus had planned sickened Boy.

Still …

It would help the Gentleman. It would help her father.

When this was over, when the fires of this world had burned down, then she and Pharos would walk away from it all. They would find a quiet, beautiful place to live. A place where they could be family together forever.

Off to her right, she heard the great wolfhound howl, though if it was a cry of triumph or of pain, Boy did not know.

She held the thought of her father and her in the front of her mind. As a shield against the fundamental disgust of what Nicodemus was going to do. As armor to keep her moving through this fight.

Boy set her jaw, raised her gun, and fired at the Latina who had foolishly leaned out from behind cover.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty

They say that the most dangerous person is the one who has nothing to lose.

I believe that’s true for some.

Not for me.

When Yoda told me that the second password attempt failed, I didn’t lose hope. No. That’s not how I operate.

When they try to steal away the last shreds of my hope, then I go cold.

So cold.

The kind of hate that lives inside me isn’t a flame. It’s an emptiness. It’s the deep arctic nothingness that once upon a time had been filled with my innocence. When Helen and I had been attacked, when they raped and brutalized her, when they stomped me and nearly killed me, they tore a hole in me. Innocence leaked out, and into that vacuum flowed an icy wind.

We couldn’t access Davidovich’s program. We couldn’t upload the reset code.

There was now only one way to stop this thing.

At the source.

I stuffed the notebook into my shirt and turned toward the door. Somewhere in this building were the Seven Kings. Some or all of them.

And some or all of them would know how to stop their own program. Solomon and Regis, the kings of destructive programs, had their own masters.

Here in this building.

I drew my pistol, checked my magazine, and looked down into Ghost’s dark brown eyes. I’ve trained him to obey hundreds of verbal and hand signals. He’s a smart dog. He understands his job, and he understands me.

However, I didn’t say anything to him. The killer in me looked at the killer in him, and the coldness flowed between us, more eloquent than any language.

I smiled at him. He snarled at me. It all meant the same thing.

Without a word I turned, and together we went hunting.

Killers with nothing left to lose.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-one

As he exerted his strength to crack Rudy’s neck, the Kingsman bent and whispered in his ear.

“I know who you are,” he sneered. “Your that doctor. The cripple. The husband of the sacrifice. You should be thankful you won’t live to see what the Trickster will do to her. And to that worm inside of her.”

Rudy Sanchez screamed.

It was a huge sound that tore itself from his chest as he raised his good leg and stamped down as hard as he could atop the killer’s foot. Smashed with the heel, grinding. Just as Joe had taught him. He felt the metatarsals collapse, felt the hardness of the foot become like a crushed shell. The Kingsman screamed, and in the same instant Rudy’s bad leg buckled. They fell together.

Rudy could feel his consciousness becoming separate from his body, and at first he did not know if this was death. Was this the separation of the spirit that is sometimes reported by those who are at the edge of the abyss? Do victims of murder get to watch their own slaughter?

However, his body was not collapsing, and it was not dying.

His body was fighting back.

He was still inside that body and yet standing apart from it, watching himself fight for his life.

Rudy twisted around and drove an elbow backward into the Kingsman’s face, hitting a blocking arm, hitting a collarbone, hitting a cheekbone, then a nose, then a mouth. He felt punches hammering into his back. He felt his own ribs crack.

His arm kept hammering.

The Kingsman suddenly shoved him and turned to reach for Rudy’s walking stick. He laughed as he snatched it up.

Rudy felt something hard beneath his thigh. He snatched at it, swung it blindly. Saw the flash of silver.

Saw the look of triumph in the Kingsman’s eyes disintegrate as the point of his own bayonet punched through his chest. Rudy screamed as he drove the knife deep. The Kingsman screamed, too.

But the killer’s scream did not last as long, and it was filled with a gurgling wetness.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-two

I tapped my earbud and got Top on the line.

“Go for Sergeant Rock,” he said.

“The plan’s for shit,” I said. “Kick the doors.”

There was a brief pause, and I could imagine him wincing with the pain of it. Then he growled a single word. “Hooah.”

“Nobody here’s our friend,” I told him. “The Kings are mine. Kill everyone else.”

He said “Hooah” again. This time it held a different, darker meaning.

I ran on with Ghost ranging ahead. The corridor fed into a lobby, and as I entered I saw three people. A thin man behind a reception desk, a tall bearded man in an expensive suit, and a Blue Diamond guard standing just behind him.

Ghost shot forward and was in the air before I could say a word. The security guard shoved the bearded man and tried to pull his sidearm. Ghost hit the guard like a missile and drove him down into an overstuffed chair that tilted backward and fell. Screams and snarls filled the air.

I saw the guy behind the counter reaching down for something. Probably a gun or an alarm bell. I put two center mass, and he went down hard. That left the bearded guy in the suit. I figured him for midforties, fit, tanned, with Greek features and an air of importance.

Was he important enough to have some answers for me? It was his bad luck that I had to find out.

“Who are you?” he demanded, edging backward, reaching into a pocket of his expensive suit.

“I’m Joe fucking Ledger,” I said, and blew off his left kneecap. His scream was enormous, and he fell into a twitching, thrashing heap.

I don’t know why I announced my name. There was no way for me to think he’d know it. Maybe it was because this fight had become so personal. I didn’t want these pricks to think this was all cops and robbers. This was people.

He stared up at me in abject horror.

And he mouthed my name.

“L–Ledger … oh my God.”

Despite the pain, he managed to pull a little .25 Raven Arms pistol out of his pocket. Tried to point it at me.

I shot him through the elbow, and the gun thumped to the floor.

The man screamed.

And screamed.

I knelt in front of him and put the hot barrel of my gun into his crotch.

“Stop screaming,” I said. I only had to say it once. His screams ended on a strangled note of new fear. He stared bug-eyed at me, his olive complexion turning a greasy gray-green.

“Who are you?” I asked. I did not ask nicely.

“F-f-fuck you.”

“Wrong answer,” I said, and shifted the pistol. I blew his other kneecap off. “Try again.”

He screamed and screamed until I used my free hand to slap the screams from his mouth. Then he started crying. This time I placed the barrel against his temple while I picked his pocket, flipped open his wallet, and read the name on his driver’s license.

“Michael Stefan Pharos, M.D.,” I said.

Ah … now that was a name I’d heard before.

I leaned close. “Listen to me, shitheels, we both know this is over for you. Question is how you want it to end. Alive, with good doctors fixing your parts and lawyers trying to keep you alive for a long time. Or do I fuck you up right now so badly that your last hours are going to be a screaming hell? You think you’re in pain now? Look into my eyes, Doctor Pharos. Look at me and tell me if you think there are any limits to what I am willing to do to you. If you know who I am, then you know you are in the wrong place with the wrong damn person.”

His eyes were huge and filled with absolute understanding.

“You need to tell me right now,” I said.

“T-tell you what?” he gasped.

“Reset codes. Tell me how to stop Regis and Solomon.”

He wanted to lie. We both knew it. Even now, with three gunshot wounds, with shock setting in, with his blood pooling around him, he wanted to lie. But you can only lie when you think you have a chance to get away with it. The mistake he made was doing what I told him to do. He looked into my eyes.

He saw what I wanted him to see. The killer, crouched there, hungering to take him into that world of endless cold. He knew that death wouldn’t be his ticket out any more than lies would.

“The … King…” he said. “The last … King.”

I leaned so close that our faces touched. A kind of intimacy that only exists there at the edge of sanity.

“Where is he?” I asked.

Very softly.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-three

Top Sims rose from behind a boulder and aimed his pistol at the Blue Diamond guard. He said nothing. He was not the kind of man who needed to mark an event of this kind with a comment. A joke. A smart-ass witticism. They did that in movies. Real soldiers just pulled the trigger.

He shot the guard in the back. One, two. The bullet punched in between the shoulder blades, shattering the spine, severing the spinal cord, bursting the heart. The man was dead before he knew he was in threat. Before the body could even react to the loss of central nerve conduction, Top turned and put another two rounds into the second guard, who was smoking a cigarette and looking out at the slanting rain.

Brian Botley saw Top’s face as he fired those shots. And he saw no flicker of emotion.

Jesus, he thought.

Then he tightened up his own resolve and followed Top over the rails and onto the porch.

Bunny was somewhere on the far side of the inn.

He heard the big man’s voice in his earbud.

“Green Giant to Sergeant Rock. Three down, no problems.”

“Copy that. Two on the deck here.”

“Ready to kick some doors and make some noise?”

Top smiled then. “Yes, I am, Farm Boy. Yes, I damn well am.”

He turned to Brian. “You’re up, Hotzone.”

Brian nodded and held up his sequential detonator. “Fire in the hole.”

He pressed the trigger, and the finger pier exploded in a fireball. The force lifted the speedboat out of the water, turned it over, and smashed it down on the rocks.

Three seconds later, the doors of the inn banged open, and Blue Diamond security operatives came pouring out, weapons ready.

Brian clicked the button again.

And again.

And again.

With each click, one of the charges planted beneath the decking exploded. Huge fingers of flame and smoke reached for the men of Blue Diamond and crushed them in fiery fists.

While the blasts were still rolling outward toward the mainland, Top, Bunny, and Brian began firing into the smoke.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-four

Lydia and Boy fired and dodged, fired and dodged as the fight raged around them. And in a freak moment of combat synchronicity, both guns locked empty at the same moment.

Instantly, Lydia was up and running straight at the Cambodian woman, even as they both fished for fresh magazines. Out of the corner of her eyes, Lydia saw something, though, that nearly stopped her midstride. Someone stood in the doorway to Circe’s bedroom. Bloody, gasping, holding a chair as he swung and smashed at Kingsmen. The killers were not shooting. They clearly wanted to take Circe alive, and they had the numbers to overwhelm the sole defender.

Lydia slapped the magazine home and threw it even as she bellowed out a name.

“Toys!”

He looked up to see the pistol pinwheeling through the air toward him. One of the Kingsmen made a grab for it, but Toys kicked him in the groin and then snatched the weapon out of the air. That was all Lydia saw before Boy tackled her and drove her down onto the floor.

The fight was immediately intense.

The Cambodian woman was lethally quick and much stronger than she looked. The wiry kind of strength that is always surprising. Always dangerous.

Boy hit her in the face with a palm heel, kneed her in the crotch with a bony knee, head-butted her, and tried to spoon her eyes out with hard thumbnails. All of it in a tumbled tangle of two frenzied seconds.

Lydia knew she was in trouble.

This woman was so god-awful fast.

The kind of person who had the power of confidence because she’d probably won every important fight she’d been in.

The blows kept coming from every direction.

If she tried to defend herself, Lydia knew that the Cambodian woman would simply dismantle her. There are times when a defense is no defense at all.

So Lydia said, “Fuck it.”

And attacked.

She slapped her palms together like a diver and thrust them up between the pummeling arms. Then she whipped her arms apart and grabbed Boy’s biceps. At the same time she bucked her hips up to shove Boy forward and flopped sideways to roll along the inside of the woman’s thigh. The leverage swatted Boy onto the floor, and Lydia immediately hip-checked into the woman’s crotch. Lydia wore a full equipment belt, and even though Boy did not have testicles, everyone is vulnerable to a sudden, harsh assault in the groin.

“Like head-butts bitch?” snarled Lydia, and thrust her head between both sets of struggling arms, aiming to explode the woman’s nose.

But Boy was too good a fighter to become helpless because of pain and surprise. She twisted her face and took the blow on the point of her cheekbone. It hurt, but it hurt Lydia more. She reeled back, and the world began whirling around her.

Boy tore her arms free and hit Lydia in the face and chest and throat.

And then Lydia was falling backward toward a great darkness that reached up to take her.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-five

Doctor Pharos told me where to find the King.

The last King.

The only King.

He told me that the King had the codes. And the password.

Toward the end, he begged to tell me everything he knew. Everything.

Here’s the thing, though. I don’t think he was so completely forthcoming because I’d shot him or because of the threats I made. Sure, that was a part of it. A big part.

No, there was something else.

When he spoke about the King, his face was twisted into a mask of horror and disgust. And hatred.

Something else, too. Hurt, maybe? Hard to tell, but my gut told me that was it. All of those emotions wrapped up into a tangle of contempt that allowed Pharos to betray this man.

Who Pharos was and what his part in all this was, I had no idea. That was for later, if there was a later.

For now, all that mattered is that he told me where I could find the last of the Seven Kings.

I stood up and stepped back from him. He was a broken doll on the floor. Blood still flowed from the bullet wounds in knees and elbow. I was tempted to end it for him there, to pop one last cap and say adios.

Didn’t, though.

Instead, I left him there to bleed.

If he was still alive when I was done, maybe we’d explore a first-aid option.

Maybe.

“Come on,” I said to Ghost, and we went running. The building shuddered with explosions, and outside I heard men shouting and guns firing. The soundtrack of war. Maybe the last movement in the symphony of the American apocalypse.

Too soon to tell.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-six

Alexander Chismer — Toys to everyone who knew him — was a monster, and he knew it. A murderer and enabler of murderers. A killer with so many deaths on his conscience that he could not name all of his victims.

Had the Kingsmen’s bullets killed him, he would have accepted it as justice. Ironic, but just.

Had the shattered glass of the window cut him to pieces and left him bloodless on the floor, he would have thought it equally just.

Instead, he was alive.

Behind him, Circe O’Tree-Sanchez lay in her bed. Junie Flynn knelt next to her. Unarmed, lacerated, bleeding, terrified.

In front of him, a knot of Kingsmen rushed forward to take Circe. Behind them stood the impossible figure of Father Nicodemus. Toys had heard enough stories to know what kinds of things the priest would want to do with the woman and her child.

Death was the kindest gift Nicodemus ever bestowed on his victims. Being alive and in his custody was far, far worse.

Toys knew all of this.

Just as he knew that he was the worst kind of person to stand between Nicodemus and his prey. Hugo said that a valiant soul could do it, but he was probably joking.

Toys’s soul was as sullied and black as it was possible for a human soul to be.

When Lydia threw the gun, he considered letting it pass over his head. He considered grabbing it and giving it to Junie.

He even considered grabbing it and turning it on the two women. Killing them rather than letting them discover how much worse being alive could be.

He watched his hand rise toward the gun, not sure if he would slap it away or catch it. The world seemed to have slowed, to become unreal.

The plastic grips of the pistol handle smacked into his palm. Real and immediate. The weight of it pushed his hand down.

The Kingsmen came at him.

Nicodemus laughed aloud with a sound like screaming cats.

And then there was the thunder of gunfire. The glitter of a spent cartridge flying up and away out of sight. The thud of the handle punching back into his palm. The shiver of shock running up his arm.

He saw the face of a Kingsman break apart three feet in front of him.

Another bang. A chest burst open and red flowers filled the air.

Toys did not know how many bullets were in that gun. He did not consciously aim and fire. But his finger tightened and his arm shifted, and with every shot a Kingsman died.

Every.

Single.

Shot.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-seven

I was expecting a long elevator ride to a hidden dungeon far below the inn. I was expecting an airlock or some kind of high-tech security wizardry to bar my way.

Instead, when I followed Pharos’s directions I found a big set of wooden doors.

The sons of bitches weren’t even locked.

I turned the handle, took a breath, kicked the door, and leaped into the room.

Big room. Wall covered with TV monitors. Hospital bed in the center of the room. Couple of chairs. Five people.

Two of the Blue Diamond thugs right inside the door.

A pair of guys who looked like grad students.

And a wreck of a man in a hospital bed.

On the TV screens I could see bridges burning. I could see ships sinking. Columns of smoke rising from the hearts of cities. Massive multicar pileups on highways. Planes falling from the skies.

I saw what the King saw.

Regis and Solomon at work.

When I entered the room, the man in the bed was watching the screens and smiling.

I knew immediately that he was the last of the Seven Kings.

A withered, broken scrap of a man.

This was what the Seven Kings had become? A dying man and his stooges.

I raised my gun and pointed it at the King.

“Nobody fucking move!”

Everyone fucking moved.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-eight

Lydia hit the floor hard. She could barely see through the bursting white lights in her eyes. She saw Boy raise a foot to stamp and forced herself to turn. The kick clipped her hip but struck only the floor. Lydia rolled into the leg as hard as she could and sent the Cambodian flying face-forward.

The woman caught herself with a skillful front fall and then stabbed out with a counterkick to Lydia, catching her midthigh. Lydia rolled away and got to toes and fingertips and started to rise, but it was a fake; the Cambodian jumped high to intercept, and Lydia flattened and dove low, catching her around the thighs and bearing her down. It made the woman sit down hard on her tailbone. The shock snapped the woman’s teeth together and dimmed the lights in her eyes.

It was Lydia’s doorway back into the world. She fell on her side and chop-kicked the woman in the face, knocking her onto her back. This time the woman fell badly, rapping her head on the ground. Lydia reached over and clawed her way atop the Cambodian. She shimmied forward and dropped her knees onto the woman’s biceps, trapping both arms.

Lydia could have wasted time pummeling her. She could have broken her own hands by hammering at the woman’s face with her fists. But Lydia wasn’t stupid. That kind of fighting is for ring competition, where there are rules. Instead, Lydia grabbed the woman’s ears, used them to pick her head up and them slam it back down. Then she slapped her left palm flat over Boy’s face, drew back her right hand, folded it into a half fist, and punched down with her secondary knuckles. Once, twice. A third time.

With each blow, the shape of Boy’s throat changed.

After the last punch, there was no useful shape left to it.

“Besa mi culo, puto,” she snarled and then spat into Boy’s face.

Gasping, nearly spent, Lydia toppled off of the thrashing, dying woman.

Immediately, something brushed her face, and she swung a punch, but her knuckles brushed something soft, and a dark blur passed above her. She gaped at it.

Banshee. Covered in blood, foam flecking her muzzle, racing for a fresh kill.

Lydia turned to see that behind the hound lay a dozen bodies that had been torn to red ruin.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-nine

The two Blue Diamond guys were the closest. They tried rushing me while going for their guns at the same time. I shot one, but the other one body-blocked the guy I shot, so they collided into me. We all hit the edge of the doorway. Ghost went after the second security thug, got his titanium teeth locked into the guy’s wrist, and pulled him down for some fun and games on the floor.

That left the grad students. I wasn’t sure what or who they were. I was hoping they were computer nerds or part of the tech team. But from the enthusiastic way they rushed me, I knew that wasn’t it.

The guard I’d shot had a death grip on my gun arm, and as he fell his two-hundred-plus pounds tore the Sig Sauer from my hand. I had to let it go or fall with him. I let it go and danced sideways as the first of the grad students slashed at me with a double-edge British commando dagger that he produced from God knows where. The thing was razor-sharp and cut through the top shoulder strap of my Kevlar.

I backpedaled and then jumped back as he darted in, quick as a cat, with a second and third slash. The little bastard was good. In and out.

The other kid began circling to my right, and as he did so he snapped his arms toward the floor, releasing a pair of weapons that fell right into his hand. Not knives. Scalpels.

I don’t like knives at the best of times, but there is something appallingly frightening about scalpels. They glide through whatever they cut, and in the hands of an expert they are dreadful. From the way he moved, I could tell he was an expert with them. His weight was on the balls of his feet, knees bent and springy, elbows bent and tucked close to protect his body, blades up to protect his face and throat. He moved like a dancer, gliding across the floor.

I began moving with him, retreating in a broad circle so that I moved to Surgeon’s left and away from Boy Commando. They followed and immediately began adjusting to my retreat.

In combat, the worst thing you can do when fighting multiple opponents is to retreat in a straight line because it allows them to get closer to each other while creating an aggressive wall in front of you. Circling helps, but if they know that trick and are used to working together, they can make a lot of small, quick shifts to cut you off.

“That’s Ledger,” yelled the man in the bed. He had an English accent, clipped and cold. “Be careful.”

The grad students only smiled. Their confidence was disheartening.

Ghost was having his own time of it. The Blue Diamond guy was tough, and he had clearly been trained in how to fight a dog. Maybe the King had all of his best guys here.

I would much rather have had to deal with the Marx Brothers or a couple of the Stooges.

Suddenly another explosion shook the room. Dust puffed down from the ceiling. Now it was my turn to smile.

“Hear that, your highness?” I said, continuing to circle. “That’s my team breaking this place apart.”

“Who cares?” he said. “Let them come.”

Surgeon darted into me with a one-two lunge that was so goddamn fast that, even though I spun out of the way, I trailed blood from a pair of burning cuts on my arm. No idea how deep they were. Blood welled through the slits in my sleeve.

He lunged again, but as I shifted to avoid him, Boy Commando made his move. He whipped his hand high, turned it into a fake, checked and slashed a vertical line down that would have severed the femoral artery in my leg if he’d connected. He missed by maybe a quarter inch.

Then Surgeon was in again, using my evasion as his opening in exactly the way an expert would. He used a right-left-right jab combination and then went for the long reach to try and take me across the eyes. I couldn’t counterslash him, but I used my left to punch upward into his arm. I caught him wrong — hitting elbow instead of triceps, but it knocked his arm high. It was a tiny window, but I took it and threw myself at him, hitting the exposed rib cage with my shoulder and barrel-slamming him ten feet across the room. He hit the edge of the bed and cried out in pain as the steel rail punched him in the hip.

I could hear Boy Commando rushing up behind me, so I grabbed Surgeon and spun him. I felt something bite me in the side and knew it was one of the scalpels. Pain exploded beneath the right side of my rib cage.

But Surgeon screamed.

We were face-to-face at the end of my spin, and when I saw the horror in his eyes, I knew that my timing had been good.

Good for me.

Totally sucked for him.

He was pressed all the way back against Boy Commando, and over his shoulder I could see his partner’s eyes bug wide as he realized what had just happened.

The double-edged British fighting knife is excellent for slashing, but it also makes one hell of a hole on a straight thrust. Boy Commando had tried to drill me in the kidney, but instead his blade was buried to the hilt in the Surgeon’s back.

My knife was free.

I let go of Surgeon, reached over his shoulder, grabbed the back of Boy Commando’s head with my left, and used my right to bury my knife into his left eye socket. I corkscrewed half a turn and tore it out, then buried it again, this time in the center of his throat.

They collapsed together, locked in a terminal embrace that seemed somehow intimate. As they dropped away from me, I felt something jerk at my side and looked down to see blood trailing from the scalpel that was still clutched in Surgeon’s dying hand.

That’s when the pain hit me.

Enormous pain.

He’d gotten me good. Beneath the ribs. Maybe in the liver.

I was bleeding inside and out, and I knew it.

The clock was ticking.

Ticking.

I wheeled around to see what was happening with Ghost.

Ghost stood panting by the wall. There were parts of things around him that probably added up to one Blue Diamond guard.

Ghost looked past me to the man on the bed. He snarled with all the primitive ferocity of a wolf. With all the hatred of a member of my tribe.

I leaned on the bed frame and looked into the face of the man who had orchestrated so much harm. The face I looked into showed no fear. Only disappointment at the failure of his men to kill me. If there was compassion for their deaths or their suffering, none of it showed on this man’s face.

He was hideous.

His face had been melted away by some terrible blaze. He had no legs and only one arm. One eye was a boiled egg white in his skull; the other was filled with a kind of calm hatred that I’d never seen before. As if he had no fear of whatever I might say or do. Or threaten.

His mangled lips wore a contemptuous smile.

“Somehow,” he said, “I knew it would be you. Joe Ledger. Thuggish captain of Echo Team.”

“I like it,” I said, hissing a little with the pain. “I can put that on my business card.”

“Please do. Truth in advertising.”

“You know why I’m here,” I said. “Mind if we skip the banter section of this and go right to the point where you take it as read that I own your ass and you give me what I want?”

“Let’s not.”

“Dude,” I said, “not sure if you’ve taken inventory yet, but the Kings are dead; your men are dead or dying.”

As if to emphasize my point, there was a rattle of gunfire from down the hall. A man screamed. Pretty sure it wasn’t one of Echo Team.

“I don’t give a fuck about them,” said the burned man. “And I don’t give much of a fuck about you, Ledger. You’ve invaded the island fortress of the mad scientist. Bravo. You’ve killed the villains and all the supporting characters. Now you are going to threaten to kill me. Or torture me.”

“I’m open to it. ’Specially the last part.”

“To what end?”

“Reset codes.”

“Ah. And would you like the password to access Davidovich’s Web site? That way, you can save the world just like that.” He snapped the fingers of his good hand.

“That would be nice. It would save you a lot of discomfort.”

He smiled at me. “No,” he said. “Of course … no. There’s nothing you can do to me that you haven’t already done. You’ve ruined my life over and over again. Well, here’s the kicker, Ledger — I’m already dying. I have enough diseases and conditions firing all at once that I’ll be dead inside a week. And if you torture me, all you’ll do is hasten the inevitable. You see, you have no leverage. I get to watch you fail, and I get to go to my grave knowing that I destroyed you and that I destroyed this country.”

“Why?” I asked. “You’ve got a real hard-on for me. Who am I to you? What the fuck have I ever done to make you this pissed off? I mean … if you want me to suffer, shouldn’t I know that much?”

He cocked his head to one side.

“Seriously?” he said. “Even now, you don’t recognize me?”

“Nope. You look like a can of fried SPAM. Somebody cooked you over a nice slow flame. Makes it hard to figure out who the hell you are.”

He flinched. Ever so slightly at that.

“Hugo said that you were tough but stupid.”

And I think that’s when it all went click. A lot of little clues, a lot of floating pieces. It all fell into place right there. He watched my face, and from the delighted smile that he wore, I could tell that he knew that I had it. That I finally recognized him.

You see … we’d never actually met. He was a photo in a case file, a body in a piece of video. And he was supposed to be dead.

I had to take a breath, because there was no air in my lungs to speak his name.

But I said it.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’re … Sebastian Gault.”

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty

The elevator doors opened again, and Rudy staggered out.

There were more bodies scattered around, but the fighting still raged. Montana Parker had a collapsible metal rod in her hand and was smashing at a Kingsman with a knife. Sam Imura sat on the floor with his hands pressed to his stomach and blood trickling from his mouth and nose. Lydia Ruiz stood above him, firing an AK-47 that had bloodstains on it.

But across the hall was the worst of it.

Toys stood in the doorway to Circe’s room battering at Kingsmen with an empty gun. Five feet away, the massive wolfhound, Banshee, was tearing at their throats and groins.

Twenty feet way, closer to Rudy than to Circe’s room, stood Nicodemus. He was looking the other way, yelling at his men, directing the relentless attack. In fact, for the moment, no one was looking at Rudy. Everywhere he looked, people — Kingsmen, police, Homeland agents, the last few members of Echo Team, even Toys — were trapped inside their own fragments of this drama. A sea of violence separated Rudy from his wife and their unborn child.

Rudy bent and picked up a gun. It was another AK-47, dropped by a dead Kingsman. Rudy had no idea if it was loaded, or how to check that. He simply hooked his cane in the crook of his arm, raised the gun, pointed it at Nicodemus, and opened fire.

The gun bucked heavily in his hands, and fire burst from the barrel, sending a dozen rounds into the crowd around the priest. Kingsmen spun like dancers, collapsed like dolls.

And then the bolt locked back, the magazine spent.

Nicodemus turned toward him. He extended his hand and pointed a withered finger at him.

“You,” he said. “I’m so glad to see you.”

Rudy let the gun clatter to the bloodstained floor as the priest walked slowly toward him.

The battle raged around them, but the priest and the doctor stood facing each other across five feet of space. The wild glee of battle faded from Nicodemus’s face, and for a moment he looked like an ordinary man.

“Why are you doing this?” asked Rudy.

“Even a man as smart as you pretend to be,” said the priest, “would never understand.”

“Try me.”

“No, sir, I do not think I will. I would much rather have you wonder about it. There are few things more entertaining than letting the worm of doubt have its way with someone.”

“No,” said Rudy, taking a step forward. His limp was very bad and he swayed. That seemed to amuse Nicodemus. “Why us? Why my wife? What could she have possibly done to offend you?”

“Her?” Nicodemus laughed. “I couldn’t care less about that slut. Or you. Or the wriggling grub in her belly. Not you as people. I care less about you than dog shit on my shoe. Lordy-lord, how arrogant you must be to think such thoughts.”

Rudy gripped his stick like a club. “They why, damn it? She is helpless. Our baby is innocent…”

“And nothing hurts him more than to see the innocent suffer.”

“‘Him’? Who…?” Rudy’s voice trailed away.

Nicodemus watched him like a cat. “Ah, I can see that you’re getting it now. At least the tiniest part of it.”

“This is about Church?”

Nicodemus snorted at that name. “Church. Oh, he does love his little jokes, doesn’t he? The names he picks for himself. Church. The Deacon. Sexton and Pope, Eldritch and Saint Germaine. Magus and Prospero. How many others?” He took a step toward Rudy, and now they were close enough to touch. “Ask him your question, doctor. Ask him why I will burn worlds to have my revenge on him. Ask, but don’t expect an answer. He’ll never hear you over the screams of all those who have died for him. All those who have died because of him.”

“You’re insane. And you’re not making sense.”

“Do you think not, doctor? Your Mr. Church is the cause of more hurt and misery than you can possibly imagine. Why, I suspect it would burn you to know who and what he is. Yes, sir, it would pure burn the heart right out of you. And to know that you sleep with his daughter. That your child carries his seed. Good lordy-lordy-lord. And you think I’m a monster.”

Between clenched teeth, Rudy said, “No, I think you’re a liar.”

He slashed at Nicodemus with the hawthorn cane.

Not with the shaft.

This time, he used all of his strength, all of his hurt and rage and terror, to swing the carved silver handle at the priest’s face.

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-one

“Yes,” said the burned man. “Sebastian Gault. Would you like to gloat now?”

I stared at him.

This man was the reason that I joined the DMS. He paid to have the seif al din pathogen created. He very nearly caused an outbreak that, according to every statistical model, would have ended the world.

Ended.

We all thought he died when the laboratory of his lover, Amirah, the scientist who actually created the plague for him, was destroyed during a geothermal explosion. We later learned that Toys saved him, dragged his burned body through a tunnel and out onto the sands in Afghanistan. Months later, after extensive plastic surgery and recuperation, Gault and Toys were brought into the Seven Kings by Hugo Vox. There, Gault became their King of Plagues, and he created several terrible bioweapons for them, including a version of airborne quick-onset Ebola. That was the cornerstone of the Kings’ Ten Plagues Initiative.

Once more the world trembled on the very edge of a global pandemic.

Vox told Toys that he had blown Gault and the Goddess — Vox’s treacherous mother — to bits with a bomb he’d planted aboard her yacht. The Coast Guard only ever found small fragments of the yacht in the Saint Lawrence River. Gault was once more presumed — hoped, wished — dead.

And now here he was again. The sole surviving King. No longer just the King of Plagues, but the only reigning member left.

Crippled and burned, but still vastly powerful.

Still cruel. Still vindictive.

And, with the protection of certain death a short step behind him, he held all the cards.

He knew it, too.

He watched my face, watched me work it out, and he laughed.

I shook my head. “So all of this — the Regis and Solomon programs, the hijacked drones, the attacks on the ballpark and the bridge—”

“And Air Force One,” he said. “Let’s not forget about that.”

“No, let’s not. All of this is what? Revenge?”

He held his hand wide to indicate what was left of him. “What else do I have?” he asked. “What else have you left me?”

“Whoa, dickhead, we didn’t actually do this to you.” I paused, wheezing. My side was bleeding heavily, and I tore open a package of gauze and pressed it against the wound. It hurt like a son of a bitch. There was surgical tape on a side table, and I wound it around my waist to hold the bandage in place. I was going to need more than that. Maybe surgery. Maybe a lot of surgery. The room was spinning. “As I recall,” I continued, “it was you who blew up Amirah’s lab.”

“Of course. To stop her destroying the world.”

“With your fucking doomsday weapon.”

He shook his head. “That was designed as a threat and you know it. Don’t pretend to be even stupider than you are. I wanted to be rich and to live rich, and I couldn’t very well do that in a dead world. I saved the world.”

“Yeah, good try. If you build a doomsday weapon, you don’t get points for not using it.”

He shrugged. “Oh, fair enough.”

“And as for the boat thing. Hugo Vox blew up the damn boat. We didn’t.”

“He was on the run from you and cleaning up loose ends.”

“Still doesn’t put it on our tab.”

Another shrug.

“Then who’s the revenge against?” I asked.

His eye glittered with hatred. “For everyone who is going to be alive tomorrow and next week and next year.”

“Wow. You’re doing this because you got yourself all fucked up so everyone else has to pay?”

“Small minds can make anything sound petty.”

“If there’s a better explanation, then tell me. Historians will want to know, and that is actually not a smart-ass comment. We both know you’ve made your mark. No one is ever going to forget this week. No one. And Sebastian Gault will be remembered forever. Bravo for you. You’ll be universally hated, but you’ll be remembered.”

“One takes the immortality that’s afforded them.”

“I suppose.”

I began walking around the bed. I was careful to make it look casual, but my feet were getting wobbly. “Let me see if I get this straight, though. You have the codes to reset Regis and Solomon, yes?”

“Of course. I’d be an idiot not to have that information.”

“And you know that Davidovich built a Web site that allowed him to control those programs.”

“Yes.” He watched me as I paced. It was difficult for him to turn enough to see me. “We knew everything that he was doing.”

“Then you have the password for that Web site, right?”

“I do.”

I passed above the headboard and came down the far side of the bed. His head swiveled around to watch me again.

“Is there anything I can say or do that would encourage you to give that password to me?”

He smiled. “Nothing comes to mind.”

“If you’ve read my file, you know I can play rough.”

He held up a withered hand so I could see his burned flesh. “Really? Rougher than this? They pulled me from the sea while I was covered in burning oil. I felt my own skin melt. There’s nothing worse than that, Ledger. Go get your thumb screws if you think it’ll help, but I’ve already been through hell.”

I kept circling. As I completed one circuit, I saw that I was leaving a trail of bloody drops.

“I could just kill you,” I said. “Deny you the chance of seeing the end. Air Force One hasn’t crossed into New York airspace. Not the metropolitan area, at least.”

“That would be disappointing,” conceded Gault. “But I would die knowing that it was inevitable. Stop fucking circling like that. It’s childish.”

I stopped at the foot of the bed. “And there is absolutely nothing I can say or do? Nothing? Not one thing?”

“No,” he said with finality.

I nodded thoughtfully. The sound of gunfire was dying away. None of the recent shots came from AK-47s. Top and the others were cleaning things up. Ghost started to come over, but I waved him off. “Family,” I told him. “Find family.”

He paused, then turned and ran out of the room. Looking for any of my guys who were still alive. Once he was gone, I tore open a Velcro flap and dug something out of my pocket, holding it out for him to see. It was a small cylinder about two inches long, set with a tight screw top.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Let’s find out.” I unscrewed the top and shook the contents out into my palm. There were six of them. I leaned over the steel foot rail and showed them to him so he would understand.

Gault said nothing, but there was doubt in his eye.

I picked up one of the objects. It was wooden and had a red bulb at one end with a dot of white at the tip.

“Wooden kitchen match. My grandpa used to call this kind a Lucifer match. Know why? ’Cause it’ll light anywhere. Has its own sulfur.”

I scraped the match along the steel rail.

Nothing happened, of course — the metal was too smooth. But for a moment Sebastian Gault flinched. Fear bloomed in his eye, and he recoiled as far as the mattress would allow.

I held up the unlit tip and gave it a comical frown. “Oops. No friction. My bad. Almost anywhere.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

I removed my pistol from its shoulder holster and scraped the match along the crosshatched grip. It ignited at once. Gault flinched again.

“Stop mucking about,” he cried. “You’re wasting your time. I won’t tell you.”

“I know,” I said. “But I guess I’m like you. Since I can’t have what I want, I might as well sit and watch my enemies burn.”

I bent and held the match to the sheet.

He screamed and tried to kick hard enough to prevent the cloth from catching. Might have worked if he had legs.

“Stop it, you fucking maniac.”

I straightened and blew out the match, leaving only a black scorch on the sheet.

“Five more matches,” I said. “I have those five, and I have a gun.”

He stared at me.

“Maybe you don’t know,” I said, “but Amirah didn’t die in that blast. She escaped, too. Or, at least the thing she’d become had escaped. I went hunting for her in the Afghan mountains. I found her. She was a mess. Rotting away. Being tortured by soldiers. It was horrible. I offered her a choice. The existence she had or a quick trip to paradise and peace.”

He said nothing, but his lips parted.

I showed him the matches in one hand, the gun in the other. “I’m going to offer you the same choice. You can give me that password, and I put a nice, quick bullet into what’s left of your head. I’m a very good shot. You’d never feel it.” I leaned forward again. “Or I’ll burn you. I have matches, and I have time. Tell me, Sebastian, do you want to burn? Again? Is that how you want this all to end? Do you want to bet that you have enough healthy nerve endings left to feel every inch of flames as they crawl over you? And don’t think I’ll let that happen fast. Fuck no. You’re a monster, and you’re going to kill people I care about. I’d want it to last.”

A small whimpering sound came out of his mouth. A tear, bloody and viscous, broke from the corner of his eye.

“Now you tell me,” I said in a voice that came from that cold, dark place, “this or paradise?”

I lit another match.

“Give me the password.”

Sebastian Gault screamed.

“Matthew!” he shrieked. “It’s Matthew.”

I held the match closer to the sheet. “It’s not Matthew. We tried Matthew.”

“No … no! It’s Matthew. In binary code. Type it in. The ones and zeros that make up the boy’s name. Type it in just like that.”

I straightened and tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Yoda, do you copy?”

“Right, mmmm, here, Cowboy. We can’t figure out—”

“It’s the boy’s name. Matthew. Type in the binary code for his name. That’s the password.”

“Are you sure? If this doesn’t work—”

“Do it!”

I shook the match to extinguish it. Gault lay there, weeping, panting, hating himself and me with equal intensity. I heard Yoda’s fingers hitting the keys.

Then nothing.

Nothing.

No bell.

“It worked,” he cried. “We’re in.”

“Start uploading the reset codes. Do it now!” I bellowed. But I don’t think Yoda was even listening to me.

I sagged back and collapsed into the leather guest chair. The room was filled with the dead and dying. I figured I was one of the latter.

“You’re a bastard,” said Sebastian Gault.

I holstered my pistol. He frowned.

“Aren’t you going to kill me? Isn’t that what you said? This or paradise?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Then do it, you sick fuck. Take your shot. End this.”

I looked at the four remaining matches.

After a moment, I got slowly, wearily to my feet. The pain in my side was a white-hot howling thing. I went to the foot of the bed again and leaned on it. Sweat was running down my face. Even with the bandage, I was losing way too much blood. I still held the matches.

“Well, damn you,” he said, “go on! Do it. If you want to send me to bloody paradise or bloody hell, then fucking do it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I will.”

I took a match. Popped it alight with my thumbnail. Held it to the others. They all flared.

“What the hell are you—?”

I dropped the matches onto his sheet.

One at a time.

In different spots.

He began screaming, thrashing, wailing.

I staggered over to the guest chair, pushed it ten feet back, and lowered myself into it.

Gault screamed so loud, I thought it would crack open the world.

I sat and watched.

The fire caught fast, spread too quickly for him to escape. The air shimmered, plumed outward, touching me, touching my skin. I know that it was hot.

So hot.

Hot as hell.

But to me, all I felt was a deep and endless cold.

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-two

“Church,” said Linden Brierly. “Good Christ, Church!”

Church heard the voice, but it seemed so far away.

So far.

He knew that he must have collapsed.

The cold.

The lingering chemicals in the cockpit.

He knew. He understood.

But there was nothing he could do about it. The darkness was so big. Too big.

All of his life, he had stood against that darkness, and now it had come for him. Vast, shapeless. And so powerful.

So powerful.

As the darkness took him, Church spoke a single word. A name.

“Circe…”

And then he was gone.

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-three

Rudy Sanchez stood there, holding the walking stick in his hands. The silver handle was gone, snapped off midway down the shaft.

It lay on the floor. Half melted. The wood that was still attached to it was charred.

Behind him, men were running.

Kingsmen fleeing. Screaming. Mad with terror.

Soldiers with guns. Police with guns.

Lydia and Montana, the only two members of Echo Team left on their feet, fired at them. Everywhere, from all of the fire towers, poured uniformed men in riot gear.

So many guns.

So many screams.

Rudy looked down at the twisted figure on the floor. Broken, bleeding. Dressed in black rags. Smoke curled upward from hollow eye sockets in a face that was nothing but white bone.

It made no sense.

Because nothing made sense.

The massive hound, Banshee, stood amid the carnage, sides heaving, eyes filled with magic. Mouth dripping red, steam rising from her coat. The dog looked at him for a long, long time. Then threw back her head and howled.

The cry echoed through the halls and slowly, slowly faded into silence.

“Rudy!”

A voice cut through the fog and damage in his head. It was as crisp, as clear, as a vesper bell. It hit him with the force of cold water on burning skin. He turned, stared.

“Rudy,” she said. She spoke his name. Rudy.

He took a single staggering step toward her, and his bad leg buckled. He fell. Onto the bloody linoleum.

“Rudy. Oh god … Rudy!”

Because he could not run to her, Circe O’Tree-Sanchez ran to him.

Junie Flynn held one arm to steady her. Toys held the other. Both of them were painted in blood. Splinters of glass glittered like diamonds in their skin.

They crossed the battlefield, where only the dead lay. He got to his knees as she came to him, and he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his face to the side of her swollen belly. He kissed her, and then he used her hands and Junie’s to pull himself up. He kissed her belly. He kissed her over her heart. Then he took her face in his hands and kissed her lips.

“Oh God,” he said, kissing her lips, her cheeks, her eyes, her hair. “Oh dear God … it’s over.”

Circe gasped.

And Toys said, “It’s not quite over, mate. I think her water just broke.”

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-four

It was Brian who found me. He followed a barking, blood-spattered dog and found me on the floor beside the chair. Between the seat I’d slid out of and a bed on which a twisted thing was wreathed in fire and slowly turning to blackened ash.

“He’s in here!” he yelled. “Christ! We need a medevac.”

I opened my eyes and saw shapes over me, around me. The hulking, improbable shape of Bunny. The face of Top, lined with concern. Ghost’s big nose.

Brian looked past me to the dead thing on the bed. “What the hell is that?”

I told them. I mumbled a name.

But they all thought I was delirious.

That was fine. Maybe I was.

Maybe none of this happened.

I closed my eyes and let it all go away.