The Breach

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

There was nothing left of the pole barn on the surface. The walls and roof had been blown away by the same blast that had ripped open the top of the elevator shaft. Probably a football-sized lump of C4 dropped from high above by one of Pilgrim's men, on the way down.

Travis stood next to the gaping hole in the concrete, surrounded by open desert, cool in the predawn twilight. To his left, the pile of old cars that had leaned against the back wall of the building had been sent sprawling. All that had withstood the explosion had been a heavy-duty charging station for the all-terrain electric carts. Two of the three carts were wrecked, but one of them, plugged in and charging on the far side of the station, had been sheltered from the blast wave and remained intact.

After all the strange things he'd experienced in recent days, he'd just set the bar a few clicks higher. Somehow the word replica didn't quite capture the feeling of looking down at a perfect copy of your own body. Because, in a real sense, it hadn't been a replica. It'd been him. Him, to the last atom.

Only dead.

There was a vague silver lining: once you'd stomached the surreality of looking into your own corpse's glassy eyes, it didn't take much more grit to shove it over the edge of an elevator shaft.

He put the Doubler back into the backpack, then set the pack aside and opened the black plastic case. He felt for the suit and found it.

He smiled.

This was going to be fun. Forget whoever Paige had wanted him to call for help. He had all the help he needed, right here in his hands. Just put on the suit, head back down the ladder, and kill Pilgrim and every last one of his people.

He had the suit halfway onto his shoulders when a thought stopped him.

Was this the Whisper's intention?

Was this the plan?

Was he still on the horse, heading for Samarra?

For five seconds he stood there, the cadence of night insects filtering in from the desert.

This move made sense.

But maybe that was the problem. Maybe that made it predictable. Fuck, everything was predictable to the Whisper. Like Paige had said, even trying to be unpredictable was probably predictable, to that thing. The zigzag logic made his head hurt. He dropped the suit's upper half back into the case and cursed quietly.

Who had Paige wanted him to call?

He crouched over the backpack and took out her phone. The ninth number on the speed-dial list had no name beside it. Just the number. He selected it and pressed send.

A man answered on the first ring. "Go ahead, Miss Campbell."

"I'm calling on Miss Campbell's behalf," Travis said. "My name is Travis Chase. She instructed me to call this number."

The man on the other end hesitated. Then Travis heard someone talking in the background, and a sound like the phone changing hands.

Another man spoke. Travis recognized his voice. "Mr. Chase. This is Richard Garner. What's going on there?"

Richard Garner. The president of the United States.