The Breach

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

His hands went to Shaw's rifle again and lifted it. They were caked with clay; he could barely get his finger into the trigger well.

In the silence, only a soft breeze moved. The boughs of the smallest saplings rose and fell with it.

What had Shaw yelled? Eyes open for a weapon. Would the killer's gun be visible?

Travis swept his gaze left to right, slowly, trying not to focus on any one thing. With no other sound or movement among the trees, maybe he'd see something.

Then he did see something-but not in front of him.

At the bottom edge of his vision: a shimmer of blue. Against all instinct to keep his eyes on his surroundings, Travis looked down. His last handful of dirt had exposed a dime-sized portion of the Whisper's surface. The color swam across the face of the sphere. It looked like a little world, all ocean, all in twilight at the same time, somehow.

Something stirred in the trees.

He snapped his gaze up but saw no sign of movement. He couldn't even be sure which way the sound had come from. He pivoted, still kneeling, but saw nothing on any side.

The killer was being careful, now that it was just the two of them, but there was no question of how this would end. The question was how many seconds of his life remained.

If you have to wake it up…

He took no hope from the idea. Whatever the Whisper did, how could it possibly help him in this situation? This was far beyond any danger Paige could have foreseen.

Ten seconds? Did he have even that much time left? Ten seconds on his knees in the dirt, wondering if he'd feel it when the bullet fragmented in his head?

It wasn't much to lose.

He dropped his free hand from the rifle's barrel guard, drew the cellophane key from his pocket and plunged it into the hole, mashing it against the Whisper as he pulled it free of the dirt.

Light flared from the thing, searing blue, so brilliant that even over the pulse of his own fear a new thought dominated: it was a star, somehow he was holding the heart of a star Then that thought was gone as well, like a scrap of paper in jet exhaust, and his mind filled with a voice more beautiful than the blue light, and he realized he knew it, though he hadn't heard it in years: Emily Price, when she was seventeen and he was seventeen; Emily's voice in the humid dark of the tree house in her parents' yard, the night she'd told him it all felt right, that the moment was right But she wasn't saying any of that now.

"Behind you," she said, "two feet left of the double pine. He's drawing. Go. GO."

Travis spun, the rifle coming around in his right hand, stopping just before the twin pine that came up in a V from its roots, fifteen feet away.

He heard a man gasp-surprise laced with anger-and in the same moment he saw the impossible: a silenced pistol slipping into view as if from a fold of nothingness.

Travis fired.

The heavy rifle gutted the air, the cyclic recoil maybe three times harder than the M16's had been, pushing him off target almost immediately-but it didn't matter. Even over the blast-chatter of the rifle he heard the killer scream, and the pistol went sideways, end over end in a pitched arc. A second later the lowest bough of the double pine bent violently downward; it seemed to pin itself to the ground.

Travis let go of the trigger. Silence. Then he heard the man crying and fighting to breathe.

Travis looked at the sphere in his hand. The blue light was strobing now, the rhythm matching his own accelerated pulse.

Emily's voice cooed in his head, and he heard her giggle.

"Gave him a hurts donut, didn't you? Gave him a whole box of them with sprinkles and cherry filling."

Travis felt his logic slipping. He understood that the voice wasn't Emily at all, that this thing had nothing to do with her, but even that understanding began to fade-by the second-as he held the thing. He felt the clarity of his thinking being washed out, like visual details lost in light glare.

It was time to let go of it. Let go fast, like Paige had said.

He opened his hand The rifle fell and clattered on the roots at his feet. It took him a full breath to realize his mistake.

"Sweetie, you don't want to drop me, do you?"

Now that he thought about it, no, he really didn't want to let her go.

Her? It.

"You can think of me as a girl if you like. It's all the same to me. I haven't even minded being called the wrong name all this time. I promise to tell you my real name someday. It's a lot cooler than 'Whisper.' "

With each passing moment-each heartbeat of the sphere-the voice soothed him more deeply. Soothed him and took him back there, to that night, to those few hours he'd long remembered as the best of his life.

"There you go."

Emily kissing him, her need almost a tangible thing, her breath mixing with his, pulling away just long enough for her to tear off her shirt up over her head.

"You hit him with three of your twelve shots, in case you were wondering."

So beautiful. It didn't matter what she said now. The voice was enough. And what had Paige been thinking? Who in their right mind would let go of this thing? This lovely thing.

"Your third bullet hit the collarbone and glanced down at a forty-five. It fragged just in time to shatter the T6 and T7 vertebrae. Ouch and a half. He's not even in shock; he's feeling ninety-four percent of the pain capacity of the human nervous system. And judging by his systolic, he's gonna keep feeling it for another eighty seconds or so."

"I love you," Travis heard himself whisper. "I always loved you."

"Oh honey, Emily Price is dead. You know that."

"Yes, I know." It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Everything was wonderful.

"Tough on her family that no one alive knows where she's buried, don't you think?"

"The worst." He sighed, his heart beating faster, the light keeping up with it.

"Briar Lake, the dunes west of the nature center parking lot. There's a stand of eight birches on the crest of the backdune. She's under the smallest one, more or less. It wasn't even there when they put her in the ground; now its roots are coiled through her rib cage."

So wonderful, so savagely wonderful. Travis drew the light closer to his eyes. How had he mistaken this dear thing for a star? It was so much more.

"You should really be thinking about Paige Campbell."

Who was Paige Campbell? Who cared?

"That kiss may have been only practical, but my hunch is that she'll be up for the real thing once she gets to know you. My hunches tend to be right, by the way."

"Oh. That's nice."

"If both of you survive what's coming, you'll have a chance with her, in spite of your resume. Surviving is the trick, though, isn't it, considering where the two of you are going soon. Seven Theaterstrasse in Switzerland. Never mind that it's the linchpin of her enemy's plan. The fact is, it's the most dangerous building in the world-if you don't count places where they store radioactive waste. And c'mon, who's counting those?"

"Seven Theaterstrasse…" He loved the way that sounded, coming from her.

"Everyone in Tangent is terrified of that place. Imagine the kittens they'd shit if they knew its real purpose."

Travis laughed. He didn't know why. Didn't care, either.

"But since you're going there, let me give you something you'll need."

As soon as she said that, Travis felt a prickling inside his head, the sensation diffused, everywhere at once. Then gone.

He heard Emily giggle. "Now don't say I never helped you, irony notwithstanding. A girl has to have her fun, right?"

"Whatever you want, I want," Travis whispered.

"Do you mean that?"

He nodded, and the sphere grew silent for a moment, contemplative maybe. Then the light changed. Just noticeably. Darker but not dimmer-somehow.

"Because what I want is trouble."

"Trouble," Travis agreed.

"It's what I do. It's what I'm for."

"Mmm-hmm…"

"That's why your enemies want me. They've got all manner of mischief planned. But their ambitions don't concern us here, do they? We can make our own mischief right now. A whole world of it, if we want to. Would you like that?"

"Oh yes…"

The sphere went silent again, and Travis had the impression it was weighing options of some kind. He turned it left and right in front of his eyes, watching the light play in its depths.

"Let's see now… That would work… but it's on the boring side; I want to do something big. Go big or go home, right? How about-" Suddenly the light flickered, and Travis heard Emily laugh. "Yeah. Oh yeah, that would turn a few heads. And there might just be time to do it, before the helicopter arrives. All right then, it's settled. Go to the Black Hawk and take the satellite phone from the forward bulkhead of the troop bay. Run."

Travis ran. It was all he could do not to skip like a little kid. When had he ever been this euphoric? Heroin had been nice, but it might as well have been chewable aspirin next to this. He slipped a little on the soft ground outside the Black Hawk, laughed, and climbed in with his muddy feet. The briefcase on the front left wall had to be the phone. He pulled it from its clamps and laid it on the floor.

"Turn it over and open the rectangle-shaped access on the lower right."

He flipped it, pressed the thumb tab and removed the panel to reveal a circuit board.

"We're going to change a few things before we make the call, or else it'll never work."

"Okay."

"An inch to the left of the processor are seven jumpers, half the size of phone jacks."

He saw them. Each jumper was stuck onto a set of twin prongs, closing a bridge in the circuit.

"Remove the jumpers at J4 and J6."

It was tricky, but he got them off after a couple tries.

"Put one of them back on, at the empty position J12."

Easy. So easy to please her.

"Now open the red tool case on the wall to your right. Take out the smallest precision screwdriver."

She kept speaking as he followed each order; he thought he could hear urgency in her voice. A lover's urgency, begging him to take her to the edge.

"Use the screwdriver's tip to carve a gap into the silicon pathway marked PRC21. Do not damage any other pathway."

He finished the job in seconds.

"Good. Now switch on the phone."

He turned it over and pressed the red button marked I/O. The phone's LCD lit up with a red frame, and a message: MASTER SETTING MODE SELECTED. ENTER DOD AUTHORIZATION CODE.

"Use the keypad to enter 98104801, followed by the star sign."

When he finished, the red frame disappeared and a menu came up.

"Select option four, 'Change ID Prefix.' Answer all three questions with Yes, by pressing 1. Then enter 77118-star-945 as the new prefix. Pound key to verify it. Faster, sweetie."

He shuddered in response to her rising excitement; his fingers trembled on the keys as he finished the sequence.

"Now exit the menu, just keep pressing 9 until it says, 'Ready.' Good, my love. We're ready to call them. Pick up the handset and dial 82-star-375-121-9188."

He dialed. It rang once, and a man answered. "CINC-Pacific forward hub, please authenticate."

Travis opened his mouth to speak, and experienced bliss incarnate: the Whisper took control of his voice, bypassing his decision process. What came out sounded like him, though slower, and with the ghost of a drawl: "November, hotel, one, four, eight, juliet, echo, oscar. This is a priority card from Trap Door."

The man on the other end took a quick breath, then spoke evenly. "Trap Door, I agree with authentication. Go ahead."

Travis felt his mouth open to speak again-but stopped. He turned his ear to the open bay door behind him.

From far away came the sound of rotors. At the same time he felt the sphere in his hand tense somehow; the light flickered like a nervous twitch.

Then he was drawn back to the phone, and spoke rapidly: "Relay the following EAM to USS Maryland. By order of the president of the United States and the chief of staff, Navy, set condition four-alpha, immediate launch of two Trident ICBMs against Target Package 3261, Nanjing ballistic missile complex, East China, Jiangsu Province."

The man on the phone didn't reply right away, and Travis said sharply, "Commander."

"Yes, sir." Another pause, not even a second, and the man said: "In accordance with protocols governing the release of strategic weapons, the senior controller will ask you for the president's and the Navy chief's nuclear launch codes. Those are the final authorizations required."

"Put him on," Travis said.

"Go go go," Emily whispered in his mind. The light was strobing so quickly now it was almost smooth again, like a bad fluorescent bulb.

The rotors were getting loud; the echoes off the valley walls made it hard to guess the distance.

A soft-spoken man came on the line. "The president's code first, please."

"Six, one, nine, three, three, three, two, eight."

"Now the Navy chief of staff's."

"Four, nine, six, eight, five-"

Suddenly the chopper sounded much closer; it must have just passed the last ridge and entered the airspace over the valley.

"Sir?" the soft-spoken man said.

"I'm sorry," Travis said. "Starting over, four, nine, six, eight, five, seven, seven, one."

"Thank you, sir, EAM is authorized and will transmit about thirty seconds from right-"

The man's last word was cut off by a shriek of metal as autofire ripped through the Black Hawk. Instinct overrode Travis's euphoria and he threw himself clear, toward the back of the troop bay. His wrist collided with the rear bench, and the Whisper broke from his grip. It hit the floor and rolled to the back corner.

Travis cried out, not from pain but from a swell of anguish. Losing hold of it-her, losing hold of her-felt like losing a loved one. Like losing his only loved one.

The chopper passed overhead with a turbine scream and a downrush of air that rocked the Black Hawk. The gunfire stopped and Travis saw the aircraft arc out over the valley, making a wide loop to come back.

He got up on his knees and reached for the Whisper Three inches shy, he stopped.

Clarity filtered back in, like blood to a deprived limb. He withdrew his hand as if from a serpent. What had he done? What had he fucking done?

A voice, tinny and just audible, issued from the phone unit behind him. "Sir? Are you still on?"

The preceding minutes came back to him now, laid bare to his logic. Outside, the helicopter had completed its semicircle and was returning, ten seconds out.

"Sir?"

Travis spun, dove for the handset and screamed into it, "Call it off! It's bullshit! Call it off!"

"Excuse me?"

"Call someone and check on it, it's all bullshit!"

"Who the fuck is this?"

Through the window he saw the gunner's muzzle flash overhead. He vaulted backward and fell from the bay door into the dirt, as the Black Hawk was shredded by a much more sustained burst than before. He got to his feet and-catching a last glimpse of blue light under the bench seat-sprinted into the trees.

He was forty yards away when he realized the helicopter wasn't following. The thunder of its rotors remained constant; it had gone into a hover, and now the turbine pitch dropped. Travis reached a grove dense enough to provide a screen and stopped. Looking back, he saw the chopper descend and set down beside the Black Hawk.

The men inside had the look of the hostiles who'd tortured Paige. One of them, wearing heavy gloves that went to his elbows, jumped from the chopper and ran to the Black Hawk's bay door, his face momentarily bathed in the Whisper's glow. He reached in and took hold of the sphere, and despite his protection, he swayed on his feet, his face relaxing and then his mouth turning up in a child's smile. Behind him, two others hauled a heavy steel box from the chopper, roughly the size of the cobbled one inside the Black Hawk. They reached the man with the Whisper and had to shout and nudge him to get his attention. At last he seemed to notice them. Nodding, he opened the container and shut the sphere inside it.

Twenty seconds later, its cargo secured, the helicopter revved to a scream again and climbed away over the valley.