“Son of a bitch,” said a voice and Snider saw that it was the senator who was the chairman of the arms appropriation committee. “Son of a goddamn bitch.”
Snider picked up the walkie-talkie. “Locust One, come out of the closet and go head to head.”
“Roger that, Ground.”
The Locust appeared again and in a part of the sky where it should not have been, clear evidence of its ability to turn and accelerate. The pilot of the last of the F-35s, Lightning One, growled something that sounded like, “You’re mine, asshole.” Everyone laughed.
The two jets were three miles apart and high above the desert, flying toward each other at incredible speeds. This would be over in seconds.
The crowd was cheering, stamping their feet, waving hands and shaking fists. The Locust screamed toward its prey.
And suddenly the sky was filled with fire.
The blast was silent for a moment and then the shock wave of an incredible BANG punched its way down out of the sky and slammed into Snider and all the spectators. They staggered, some fell. Snider stumbled backward and would have gone down had not the young lieutenant leaped forward to steady her. Then the two of them froze, staring upward at the fireball. Flaming pieces of metal fell slowly down toward the desert. There was one piece that did not look like debris. It looked like a person. A man. Burning as he fell.
The Locust was gone.
The F-35 peeled off and angled away from the burning cloud.
Snider snatched up the walkie-talkie and screamed into it. “Ground to Lightning One—what the fuck have you done? Who gave you permission to go weapons hot? My God!”
The pilot responded at once and his voice was clearly shaken. “Lightning One to Ground, that is a negative engagement. Weapons are off-line, repeat, weapons are off-line.”
“Then what the hell just—?”
“Ground, report hostile at eleven o’clock.”
“Identify, identify!”
“Hostile is … holy God…”
But now Snider could see the hostile. Everyone in the stands could see it.
The craft was larger than the fighters. Sleeker. Triangular.
There were no visible wings.
No visible markings. No windows. No rocket pods.
No one spoke. They stared. They pointed. They covered their gaping mouths.
For a long, terrible moment the hostile just sat there in the sky. Unmoving, gleaming like a drop of molten silver.
“Ground, permission to engage,” called Lightning One, “permission to engage.”
“Engage with what?” murmured Snider. The F-35s had flown with dummy missiles and unloaded guns. All to prevent any chance of a mistake.
The F-35 to flew as tight a circle as its design would allow, turning to meet this craft, determined, at least, to do a close flyby. Maybe catch some identifying marks. Maybe to …
To what? thought Snider.
Then the hostile moved. Not merely away from the jet that screamed toward it. The bogey rose straight up.
Straight.
Up.
Five miles above the sand, it changed direction without slowing and shot away toward the west. It moved so fast that the eye could not follow it.
All of this in front of eighty-one witnesses and twenty-six high-definition video cameras.
The last of the burning wreckage of the Locust crashed to the salty sand, sending up a dust plume that looked like a mushroom cloud.
“Colonel,” said the lieutenant in a child’s frightened voice, “what was that?”
Snider didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Everyone there at Dugway, in the stands, in the control booth, and even the pilot up in the F-35 knew what it was.
No one wanted to say it, though.
Because this was the U.S. military, and the U.S. military does not believe in flying saucers.
Chapter Forty-four
VanMeer Castle
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Sunday, October 20, 10:04 a.m.
Mr. Bones and Howard Shelton sat side by side on the couch in one of the small salons in VanMeer Castle. One wall was dominated by a massive plasma screen on which was the feed from a discreet high-quality camera clipped to the lapel of the senator from the great state of Arizona. A man whose entire political career had been financed by Shelton money. A man who understood without reservation on which side his bread was buttered.
Right now they could hear that same man panting like a nervous dog on a stormy night, the gasps interspersed with small protestations and prayers.
Not that Bones or Howard were really paying attention to those cries. They were making almost identical sounds as they watched the flaming wreckage of the Locust bomber drop in improbably slow motion toward the unforgiving desert below.
Even that, even the wreckage did not dominate their minds.
All they could really see was the craft.
Or the empty sky where the craft had been.
The impossible, impossible craft.
Mr. Bones turned very slowly to Howard Shelton. He tried to say something, but words utterly failed him.
Interlude Three
Gurgaon, suburb of Delhi, India
Nine years ago
The five of them met in a lovely little house on a quiet street. Green trees cast soft shadows during the hottest part of the day, and there were always songbirds hiding among the leaves. Children played on the lawns. They were well behaved, well dressed, and their games were innocent. Small feet kicking footballs, a make-up-the-rules-as-you-go version of cricket, adventures with ornate dolls.
Erasmus Tull saw all of this through the sheer curtains. Behind him, Tull heard the chink of ice on glass as his employer built another drink. His second since they’d arrived. Tull did not like that his employer drank while they were on a meet, though he had to admit, however reluctantly, that it had never seemed to interfere with the man’s ability to negotiate.
“Anything?” asked Howard Shelton.
Tull was about to say no when a white Land Rover turned the corner and drove slowly up the street.
“They’re here,” he said.
Behind him Howard knocked back the second Scotch, sighed and said, “Let the games begin.”
The driver parked the Land Rover outside and four men got out. The driver remained with the car—Tull evaluated him and discounted him as a significant threat. Two of the others were different. They were small but very fit young Nepalese men with clean-shaven faces and the erect postures and expressionless faces of former Gurkhas. Considering the buyer—a slippery man named Sheng—these two were probably from the Gurkha contingent based in Singapore. Tull’s appreciation for the buyer went up a notch. Gurkhas had a centuries-old reputation as fierce and efficient warriors who were also intensely loyal and disciplined. Although they would willingly die to protect anyone in their charge, they would also very likely pile up a hill of bodies on the way down.
The Gurkhas flanked a waddling fat man. Sheng. Half Chinese and half German, though his looks clearly favored his Asian side. His personality, however, favored that of head lice. This was the third time Howard had met with the man to barter goods for goods. The last two times Sheng had been accompanied by a pair of former Yakuza from some Japanese slum, but the grapevine said that last March one of Sheng’s buyers in Cambodia turned out to be with Interpol. Some creative mayhem ensued. Sheng escaped with his life, and everyone else managed to die. Now Sheng had an upgrade in personal protection.
At the soft knock, the governor sank into a chair and Tull answered the door.
One of the Gurkhas stood between Tull and Sheng, dark eyes suspicious and alert. He struggled with the English translation of the code phrase.
“We are looking for the home of Mr. Patel.”
Tull pulled the door wider. “Mr. Patel is on a call. Would you like to come in and wait?”
The Gurkha gave a single sharp nod and entered as Tull faded back, keeping his back casually to the wall. T
he Nepalese glanced around the room, then turned and said something very quick and rapid to Sheng in bad Cantonese.
Sheng beamed a great smile as he waddled into the room. “My friends,” he said in passable English. “So good to see you again.”
Howard did not stand to shake hands. No one offered to shake hands, not even Sheng. Nor did he bow. The smile was all the cordiality that this encounter was likely to have, and that was false.
“Feel free to make yourself a drink,” said the governor, waving a hand toward the wet bar. There was a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of gin, and a bottle of tonic standing next to a tray of cheap glasses and an open plastic bag of ice cubes. Everything was disposable. Howard wore latex gloves. Tull did not, but aside from the doorknob he hadn’t touched anything in the house, and he’d deliberately smeared his fingerprints on the knob. If, for some reason, he didn’t have the time to properly wipe the door, then the residual prints would be useless.
The six Styrofoam containers lined up on the coffee table would not take a fingerprint; and Tull had been careful not to touch the tape that sealed each container.
Sheng looked at them with interest. His Gurkha guards stood on either side of him, but well back, hands clasped lightly in front of their lower abdomens, feet wide apart. Tull noted that they kept their bodies tilted slightly forward so that their weight was balanced on the balls of their feet. The posture looked moderately casual, but these men were ready to spring into action. Tull approved of it.
“I see you have brought some presents,” said Sheng.
“As agreed,” said Howard.
“And … how many were you able to obtain?” asked Sheng, eyebrows arched, mouth smiling.
“There are three in each container,” said Howard. “Eighteen in all. And if we like what you’ve brought us, we’ll give you the key and location of a cold storage unit where you can find the other eighty.”
“So many! How wonderful. And the, um, provenance…?”
“They were donated.”
“By?”
“Local laborers who signed release forms and who were paid. Twenty-five hundred per.”
“That is a good price,” said Sheng. And Tull knew that he was doing the math. Eighteen kidneys from healthy donors at a per-unit cost of $2,500 meant an investment of a quarter million. Sold locally, the kidneys would bring in at least double that, probably triple. In certain places—Europe, for example—they would fetch as much as five times that amount. A broker as clever as Sheng would opt for the better market, which made a million and a quarter easy money for someone like him.
It would all be pure profit, Tull knew, because he knew for certain that Sheng did not pay a dime for the item he planned to trade for the organs. Sheng would barter with the devil himself, and probably come out at least even on the deal.
Sheng went over to the first of the Styrofoam containers, slit the tape with a thumbnail, opened it, waved aside the dry-ice vapors and studied the contents. Then he nodded to himself and closed the container.
“Where is this cold storage unit?” he asked, his voice very casual. Like someone asking the time of day.
Howard smiled. “Somewhere in India. We give you the location and the key once we see what you’ve brought us.”
Sheng’s smile momentarily flickered, and suddenly Tull understood the play, and why Sheng had brought the two Gurkhas with him. Sheng had no intention of making a swap. Or, at least he hoped he didn’t have to. Which brought up the ugly question of whether Sheng had brought the thing he promised.
“Do we have a deal?” asked the governor, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs.
Sheng licked his lips. “Of course, of course.”
Howard nodded, his smile as false as Sheng’s. “Then let’s see it. This is already taking too long. I’ve shown you mine, now you show me yours.”
For one fragile moment Tull thought Sheng was going to go for it. The man’s eyes flicked from the row of containers, to the door, then to the nearest of his guards. But, ultimately he gave a heavy sigh, as if having agreed to sell his virgin daughter into slavery, and barked out a command to the Gurkha closest to the door. The man nodded and opened his jacket.
That fast Tull had a gun in his hand and the barrel screwed into Sheng’s left temple.
“No,” he said.
The Gurkhas froze in postures of near-attack, their hands caught in motion toward their concealed weapons.
“No,” Tull said again. Very quietly.
Sheng hissed something at the Gurkha by the door. Tull didn’t know the language but whatever Sheng said it sounded vile. The Gurkha winced a little and colored.
In English, Sheng said, “Slowly and with care.”
The Gurkha nodded, bowed slightly to Tull, and used two fingers to very gingerly pull back the flap of his jacket. There, tucked into the waistband of his trousers back near his hip bone, was a small parcel wrapped in green silk. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly at Tull.
“Like the man said … slowly and with care.”
The Gurkha used two fingers of his other hand to remove the parcel. It was about the size of a paperback book, though narrower and a little longer. The green silk was bound with red cord.
“Put it on the chair,” said Tull, indicating an empty easy chair with an uptic of his chin. “Good. Now step back and stand by the door. Hands in plain sight.”
The man did as instructed and backed away.
Sheng said, “You are denting my head.”
He tried to make a joke of it, but his voice trembled too much.
“Sir?” said Tull, and Howard uncrossed his leg, leaned over and picked up the parcel. He weighed it in his hand.
“Feels light as balsa wood.”
“Better make sure it’s what we’re paying for.”
“It is,” insisted Sheng. “It is exactly what I promised to bring. I am not cheating you. No one here is cheating you. Please, let us all be calm about this.”
“Sure,” said Tull, though he didn’t move the gun away.
Howard unwrapped the parcel, peeling back the layers of silk with great care and delicacy. Inside was a second wrapper, this one of tissue paper, and Howard peeled that back as well, revealing a piece of metal that was nine inches long and four inches wide. The metal was a dull gray, flat, and unremarkable. The governor picked it up and turned it over in his hands, studying it from every angle and holding it up to the light to look for scratches or pits.
“It’s perfect,” he said, and his voice was now filled with wonder and passion. “God, Tull, it’s fucking flawless. Not a scratch on it.”
“It’s real?” asked Tull. “Not a phony?”
Howard removed a small device from his pocket, activated it with his thumbnail, and ran it along the side of the device. A tiny digital meter showed a series of colored lights that fluctuated for several seconds before turning all green.
“Oh, it’s real. Holy shit, Sheng.” He looked up and grinned at the broker. “Holy mother of shit. You weren’t lying. You delivered the goddamn goods.”
Sheng’s eyes kept darting nervously sideways toward the gun. “As promised,” he said, “Sheng delivers. Now … if you please…”
The governor began rewrapping the bar. “You got any more of this stuff? Tell me you can get me some more.”
“Alas, no,” said Sheng. “That is the only specimen to have come into my possession.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“You can’t swing some deals and get me something else? This is only one component, there are others that—”
“I am quite familiar with these items, sir,” said Sheng. “And if you had approached me last spring we might have been able to do considerably more business. But those other items have moved on, and although the demand is very high, the market is quite threadbare.”
“Who bought the other pieces?” demanded Howard.
“Oh,” said Sheng, contriving to look pained, “as a business
man of some reputation I could not possibly tell you that.”
“My man still has a gun to your head. Doesn’t that put you in a mood to share?”
“I…”
Howard suddenly laughed. “Sorry, I’m just fucking with you. We know you sold one piece to North Korea and two to China.”
Sheng’s face went pale.
“It’s all cool,” said Howard. “It’s all about business.”
“Of course,” said Sheng. “Business is—”
Erasmus Tull shot him through the head.
The Gurkhas were shocked for one fraction of a second and then they moved. Tull shot the one by the door in the face. The second one managed to whip out his kukri knife and Tull had to danced backward to keep from losing his gun arm. As it was the deadly blade struck the pistol barrel with such force that the weapon was torn from Tull’s hand. It hit the carpet with a heavy thud as the Gurkha lunged at Tull.
Tull was unarmed against a Gurkha—one of the fiercest warrior classes in history. The man was a master of that blade and he came at Tull with blinding speed and terrible precision.
Erasmus Tull took the knife away from him and cut the Gurkha’s throat. He stepped aside to avoid the spray of blood.
The whole thing had taken less than four seconds.
Howard stood up and smoothed his trousers. He looked down at the three dead men and wrinkled his nose at the mingled smells of cordite and fresh copper. Gunpowder and blood.
“Messy,” he observed.
Tull shrugged. Howard carefully rewrapped the component. His eyes held an almost erotic glaze
“We made a good start,” said Tull as he began wiping every surface they may have touched. “We’re nearly halfway there.”
“Halfway is a long way from actually being there,” grumbled Howard. “The frigging Chinese are going to beat us to the finish line if we don’t put some topspin on this.”