Mr. Bones sat and listened in silence while Howard Shelton had a screaming match with Admiral Xiè, the head of the experimental aircraft division of the People’s Army. Bones sipped an unsweetened iced tea and listened with total fascination.
The call had started with at least a show of civility. Compliments and respectful acknowledgments. All right and proper, all total horse shit.
Once that was out of the way—and once Howard was convinced that Admiral Xiè was alone—Howard became much more direct.
“I trust your spies have been keeping you up to date on certain events around the world?”
“There have been some reports,” agreed Admiral Xiè.
“Like the unfortunate incident in the Taiwan Strait?”
“Like that, yes.”
“What about Dugway? Did you hear about that, too?”
Admiral Xiè was quiet. “Why would you ask me about that?”
“Why do you think I’d ask you?” replied Howard.
“I do not know, Mr. Shelton. There is a tone in your voice, or is it a quality of a bad connection?”
“Seriously, Admiral? You want to play these kinds of games? Are you going to tell me that you don’t know a single thing about what happened at Dugway this afternoon?”
“I—”
“And I suppose you don’t know anything about the sightings of a black triangular craft seen buzzing through the skies near Changxing? Right where a certain testing facility is rumored to be located.”
Admiral Xiè said, “What can I tell you, Mr. Shelton? What is it you would like to hear?”
“I would like to hear that you aren’t invading U.S. fucking airspace and shooting down U.S. fucking stealth jets is what I’d like to fucking hear.”
“Are you deranged?” demanded Admiral Xiè. “Running test flights on a prototype craft is one thing, but do you think everyone here has taken total leave of their senses?”
“Don’t you goddamn lie to me, Xiè. We had a deal and—”
“And I kept my part of that deal,” the admiral fired back. “It is you who cannot be trusted to leave your toys in the toy box rather than succumb to the childish desire to play with them.”
The conversation went downhill from there. Mr. Bones spoke good enough Mandarin to appreciate the vulgar acts Admiral Xiè said were common among the female members of the Shelton family. He also liked Howard’s replies, which, though not as flowery, hit home just as solidly. He knew for certain that had the two men been in the same room they would be wrestling on the floor, kneeing crotches, spitting in eyes, and probably biting.
Somewhere in the middle of the shouting match, though, there was a bit of a sea change and it took Mr. Bones a couple of minutes to figure it out. The tenor of the conversation shifted from a straight-up mutual defamation competition to something resembling unqualified attack and unflinching defense.
That was very troubling. What he expected to happen—what Howard had predicted would happen—was that the admiral would reach a point where denial was no longer useful, convenient, or fun and then he’d go on the attack. He’d throw the truth in Howard’s face and make him eat it uncooked.
So … why wasn’t that happening?
Chapter Eighty-eight
Elk Neck State Park
Cecil County, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 12:33 p.m.
I found Junie and Ghost where I’d left them, and I popped a flare for the Echo Team chopper to pick us up. If there were any Closers left in the forest, they steered clear.
Bunny and Lydia and Pete pulled us into the Black Hawk and we dusted off immediately. Everybody wanted to do a lot of back-slapping, but I growled for some damn quiet so I could yell at the pilot.
“Get us the hell out of range of this damn jammer. Pedal to the metal.”
The chopper rose high and turned to the southwest. Ivan and Sam were crouched down behind the two miniguns, the barrels depressed toward the forest.
Nothing and no one shot at us.
We thought we’d come through the fire.
Then we passed out of the jam zone.
I called the Warehouse. And got nothing.
I tapped over to Bug’s channel.
He was there.
He was crying.
He told me why.
Everyone was on the team channel. They all heard it.
It punched the air out of my lungs. The interior of the helo began spinning as if we were trapped in the heart of a cyclone.
“What?” I whispered. “What?”
A big sob broke in Bug’s chest. This was killing him.
“Bug … what about Rudy? What about Church?”
“Oh, Jesus, Joe,” he said, his voice breaking with pain, “I don’t know. The whole area around the Warehouse is gone…”
I spoke to Aunt Sallie, to Dr. Hu. I spoke to several other DMS officials. There was a scramble to get the staff out of every field office. Bomb squads were searching the buildings, inside and out.
No one knew anything.
There was no word about Church and Rudy, or about anyone else who had been at the Warehouse.
Auntie went over everything. Stuff I knew about, stuff I didn’t want to hear. It was all bad. The events at Dugway. The Chinese pilot who got shot down trying to make a suicide run at a carrier in the Taiwan Strait. And the thing that had appeared in both places. A massive, triangular craft that destroyed the Locust and shot down the Chinese fighter and then vanished at impossible speeds. She told me about sightings of UFOs all over the country. All over the world.
And she told me about the warrant out for my arrest on charges that I was a terrorist.
When I told her that I had Junie Flynn and that she was, for all intents and purposes, a living version of the Majestic Black Book, all Aunt Sallie said was, “Okay.”
She ordered me to go to a safe house. I told her that I had one in mind and explained where it was. Then I hung up and went back into the main cabin. We clustered around the computer in the back and listened to the news. Dozens of buildings were on fire, hundreds of people injured. The number of known dead was forty, but the newscasters couldn’t have known that the entire staff of the Warehouse had been called into work. All of them. Two hundred people.
Gone now.
I felt totally numb.
I looked at Junie, who was huddled in a seat, hugging Ghost to her chest. I looked at the shocked faces and horrified eyes of Top and Bunny and the others.
None of us spoke.
None of us could.
Chapter Eighty-nine
House of Jack Ledger,
Near Robinwood, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 1:17 p.m.
What do you do when your world is turned upside down?
How do you react when suddenly fate in the form of some madman’s will takes a crude scalpel and carves a hole in the skin of your world? What mechanism is there in us that prepares for the moment when dozens of people you know—friends, colleagues, employees, associates—are simply edited out of your day-to-day existence?
We shriek at the sky, demanding how this could happen. Needing to know why it had happened. What was the point?
What did it serve?
Where will it end?
These are unanswerable questions of course. After 9/11, after Haiti and the tsunamis in Thailand and Japan, after hurricanes and tornados, after wars and terrorist bombings, there are millions who have looked up to the sky or inward into personal darkness and demanded those answers. And they, too, were left bereft, adrift, unanswered and afraid.
Junie Flynn came and sat next to me. She took my hand and held it. In many ways she was still a stranger to me, and she knew none of the people at the Warehouse, but her touch was warm and alive. When you are sinking you grab any rope that’s offered. Ghost came and snuggled against me, catching the mood aboard the helicopter, whimpering softly, needing reassurance, giving comfort in closeness and with simplicity.
The pilot asked, “Where,
Captain?”
I told him. My uncle Jack had a farm near Robinwood, right on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. I called ahead, told my uncle we were coming. Told him to pack a bag and go visit his daughter in Wildwood, New Jersey. I told him it was a matter of national security. Jack Ledger is a good guy, a retired career cop. I never told him what I do for a living but his brother, my dad, has probably hinted. All he asked me was, “Are you okay, Joey?”
“I’m okay,” I lied.
Maybe the biggest lie I ever told.
Rudy Sanchez was my best friend. He was the only person who knew me. The only one who understood the mysteries of my fractured mind. He was closer to me than my brother, Sean.
I had brought him into the DMS. That meant that, however indirectly, I got that good man killed.
And Church?
Church was the ultimate good guy. He was as close to an actual superhero as this world is ever likely to have. A legendary warrior in a very old and very dirty game. Infinitely dangerous, incredibly smart and wise. If he was dead, then the bad guys had managed to score one of the biggest wins in a long time. Maybe the biggest in my lifetime.
I had nowhere to put all this in my head.
It wasn’t made to fit.
We flew on.
The “farm” was that in name only. Once upon a time it had been a dairy farm, but Jack wanted to be a cop like his brother. He and my dad sold half of the thousand acres, split the money, and my dad bought a big house in Baltimore. Jack rented out the farm while he worked as a cop in Hagerstown, and then once he had his twenty-five in, he gave it up and settled down to paint landscapes. He was very much a loner—just him and his dogs, Spartacus and Leonidas.
I sent the address via encoded text to Aunt Sallie and requested information and any tactical support that could be managed.
She texted back this message: “K”
By the time the Black Hawk reached the farm, Jack was long gone.
Where once there had been miles of grasslands for the cattle, now there was a forest of young pines and hardwoods. Beautiful, serene, and excellent cover.
We touched down behind the barn.
Bunny oversaw the removal of all our gear. Junie went into the house with Ghost. Top and I sat down on the porch while I called Aunt Sallie for an update.
“Do we know if anyone got out?” I asked.
“We’re still waiting on word,” she said. Auntie was an abrasive woman, given to barbed jokes and sarcasm, but not today. Her voice was as subdued as a nun’s. I had the irrational desire to give her a big comforting hug.
“Nothing from Church?”
“Nothing.”
I reminded her that Junie Flynn had the entire Black Book in her head, so in a way we had possession of it.
“We need to broadcast this on the frequency they gave us in the videos. We have to let them know that they can stop the countdown.”
“What’s your plan, Ledger? To hand over the woman?”
“Well, no … maybe they only need information from the book and…”
It sounded lame. It was lame. Auntie mumbled something about giving it a try, but we knew that this wasn’t going to save the East Coast. Whoever took the president surely wanted the actual Black Book. Which we did not have and were no closer to having than we were this morning. Maybe less so. Without Church, without my whole staff at the Warehouse. Maybe we were nowhere at all.
Auntie ended the call quickly.
Top parked a haunch on the porch rail. “How are you doing?”
I started to snarl at him, to tell him what an incredibly stupid question that was, and then I caught the look on his face. Not a noncom’s look. Not a fellow soldier’s look. It was a father’s look. Grave, aware, composed.
I closed my eyes, exhaling a big lungful of air, feeling the aches in muscle and soul, feeling the weariness that was burning like a plague through my body.
“I don’t know how I feel, Top,” I said after a while. “If Rudy was there … then I lost the best friend I ever had. And everyone at the Warehouse. I—can’t wrap my head around it.”
“I can see that.”
Again I almost barked at him, but he shook his head.
“If this was the regular army, Cap’n,” he said, “you’d be able to tell me to shut the fuck up. If we were just friends, you could do that. But this is the DMS and I’m your topkick and we’re at war. We don’t get to be like regular folks. We waived that right when we joined.”
I looked at him.
“You’re in shock,” he said. “You came straight out of a combat situation into a deep personal loss. You barely said two words on the flight here. You never introduced Miss Flynn to anyone, and most of the time you sat and stared into the middle distance.”
“I lost friends down there, damn it.”
Top got up, pulled a chair over, and sat down in front of me.
“Yeah, you lost friends down there. So did I. So did Bunny and Lydia. Even the new guys had friends down there. The pilot, Jerry, he had friends down there. But here’s the news, Cap’n, you don’t own the pink slip on grief. We’re all in this together. We’re all in it right now. You know what everyone else was doing while we were flying over here? They were watching you. They were looking to you. You are the captain. You are the leader of the team, and more than that, you are the DMS for them. Mr. Church might be dead and gone. Rudy, too, and Gus and a lot of other people who were higher on the ladder than this bunch of shooters. So, they look to you.” Top gave a soft snort, almost a sigh. “The bad news is that you don’t get the luxury of falling apart and you don’t get to let this kick your ass. Those soldiers in there have probably never been more scared than they are right now. They need to see you nut up and stand up and yell ‘fuck you’ to the gods of war.”
I stared at him.
“’Cause the war isn’t over,” he said, then he stood up and walked away.
Chapter Ninety
House of Jack Ledger
Near Robinwood, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 4:59 p.m.
Before I went inside, I used my cell to make a call. I reached Gunnery Sergeant Brick Anderson at the Shop.
“Cap Ledger!” he cried. “Sweet Jesus I thought you were dead. Holy mother of—”
“Listen, Brick, we don’t have much time,” I cut in. “First, have you heard from anyone who was at the Warehouse?”
“Gus Dietrich called me a couple minutes before the place blew, said that Dr. Sanchez and the big man were on their way over—but they never got here.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, but didn’t interrupt.
“Gus sent over all the updated files, though,” said Brick. “There’s stuff coded for you. Want me to send it?”
“Yes,” I growled. “And right goddamn now. I’m running blind here.”
“Sending it now. What else can I do?”
“I need Black Bess and at least one other vehicle. I need them loaded with everything you can squeeze in, including a MindReader substation. And I need all of it right now. I’m about an hour and a half from you, up in Robinwood.”
I gave him the address.
“Give me ten minutes and then we’re on the road.” Brick Anderson was a good man who’d lost a leg in combat.
“Brick, this is getting messy out here, so you don’t have to bring it yourself.”
He hung up on me.
I put the cell back into my pocket and went inside.
They were all in the kitchen, seated around the big table. There was a lot of food on the table but it didn’t look like anyone was eating. Junie stood apart, leaning against the counter near a Mr. Coffee that was brewing a fresh pot. No one was looking at anybody, except Top and Junie, who were both looking at me.
“Coffee will be ready soon,” she said, then she cleared her throat. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” I said. “You’re welcome to stay, but I have to talk to my team. Then they’re going to need to hear what you have to say.”
She nodded and pulled a stool over next to the counter and sat on it. Top turned a chair backward and sat down at the far end of the table. I stood by the door.
“We haven’t lost,” I said.
It took a moment, and one by one they glanced up at me.
“It feels like it. It feels like we got our asses kicked. We lost Hector, Red, and Slick, and that was bad. That would have been the worst day of the week for us. I wish I could say that it would have been the worst day this month, but that wasn’t true even before the bomb.”
No nods, but they were looking at me.
“We don’t know who we’re at war with. Not exactly. Maybe it’s Majestic Three. Maybe it’s someone else. Or maybe we’re caught in the middle of something. But no matter how it swings, we’re at war.”
A few nods.
“People die in war. Sucks to say it, sucks worse to mean it, but people die. Friends die. Family dies. And what really sucks is that this is worse than we think.”
Bunny looked up at that. “Worse?” he asked. “Excuse me, boss, but how the fuck can it be worse?”
I told them about Dugway and the dogfight in the Taiwan Strait.
It was Junie who broke the silence. “Wait—Joe, tell me that part again. About what the craft looked like.”
I described it exactly as Aunt Sallie had described it to me.
“A black triangle,” she said, nodding. Then for the benefit of the others she explained, “They call it a T-craft. Most of the really reliable UFO sightings don’t describe a flying saucer—what they see is a T-craft just like this. That’s the kind of craft M3 and groups in other countries have been scavenging. When President Truman initiated the Majestic Program, that’s the kind of ship he wanted them to either repair or make. The T-craft is powered by a special engine, either one made from original parts or a facsimile—a Truman Engine.”
“What are you saying, miss?” asked Sam Imura. “Are these ships aliens? Or are they ships we’ve built?”
“I don’t know. If they’re alien, then it would be the first time they’ve ever attacked us. If this is something we built—the U.S. or another world power—then it will change everything. War, the arms race … all of that is going to change.”