“Why?” asked Lydia.
“You’re soldiers,” said Junie, “so let me put it in terms you’d understand—having a working T-craft is the equivalent of bringing a nuclear bomb to a knife fight.”
“Bullshit. How the fuck would you know?” Lydia’s tone was so sharp that Junie jumped.
But Top snapped his fingers as loud as a gunshot. “Secure that shit, Warbride,” he snapped. “This lady is a civilian advisor and you will treat her with respect.”
“Yes, First Sergeant,” barked Lydia, straightening in her chair. To Junie, she said, “Please excuse my tone, ma’am.”
Junie shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I understand. To you people I’m a nonmilitary UFO freak and probably a severe pain in the ass. I get that, and I’m sorry. But Joe and your Mr. Church reached out to me because I understand this stuff. I know about the T-craft and Majestic Three and the secret arms race that’s been going on since 1947. And I want to help.”
Lydia and the others studied her and then one by one their eyes turned toward me.
I placed my cell phone down on the table. “None of us knows exactly what the fuck is going on. But here’s a news flash—each of us knows something the others don’t, and Brick Anderson just sent me the case notes from Mr. Church. This is everything that Church and our friends at the Warehouse had been able to put together, right up until they died. This is our field intel. This is what we have to go on. That—and what’s inside Junie Flynn’s head. As of now she is an official liaison to this team and will be afforded every courtesy and access. You think she’s an outsider? Think again. These motherfuckers murdered her parents to try and bury this information. That buys her a ticket to our club. That means everyone here has lost a friend or loved one.” I leaned on the table. “Does that make you mad? Does that make you want to go out and cut some heads? Good—it damn well ought to. It damn well better. But first we need a name. We need to put somebody in the crosshairs. It’s up to us or no one. We go through this material. Everyone works it. Everyone has a voice. I want to hear every theory, every possibility. And once we know who set off that bomb at the Warehouse, then we are going to go after them and show them what hell is really like. Do you hear me?”
Their eyes bored into mine. I saw rage and resentment, anger and bloodlust.
“Hooah,” they snarled.
Lydia stood up, grabbed Junie by the sleeve and pulled her—firmly but gently—over to the table. “If you’re one of us then you’re one of us,” she said.
I saw Top silently mouth the word, Hooah.
Chapter Ninety-one
The Oval Office, the White House
Sunday, October 20, 5:19 p.m.
Acting president William Collins slammed the door of the Oval Office and wheeled around to glare at Mark Eppenfeld, the attorney general.
“Where do we stand with Ledger and the DMS?”
Eppenfeld stared at him, appalled. “Mr. President … surely this matter can wait until a more appropriate time. The DMS is clearly under attack. America itself appears to be under attack. Between Dugway, the cyber-terrorism, and this terrible, terrible incident in Baltimore…”
“That’s why we need to jump on it. How much more proof do we need that Ledger has gone rogue and is waging a terror campaign against this nation? As soon as we try to execute a warrant to gain access to his office the whole place blows up. Do you want to stand there and tell me that he didn’t rig it to blow if somebody started looking too close?”
“That’s supposition, Mr. President, and I don’t think it’s the next natural link in the chain of logic.”
“And I’m saying it is,” replied the president very sternly. “How many times do I have to say that Ledger is an enemy of the state?”
“Mr. President, the money and stock certificates found at Captain Ledger’s apartment are clean. No fingerprints.”
“So?”
“Does something need to have leaves and sap before we call it a plant?”
The president sneered at him. “Don’t try to get cute, Mark. And let me caution you … some people might find your constant defense of a known terrorist like Joe Ledger to be a matter of some concern.”
Eppenfeld straightened. “Mr. President … are you threatening me? May I remind you that until you relieve me of this office or I choose to resign, I am the attorney general of the United States. Threats made against me are—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mark, get off your high horse,” Collins said quickly. “I’m trying to help you make the right choice here.”
Eppenfeld’s face was a stone. “And what, sir, is the right choice in this matter?”
“The right choice is to prevent this thing from escalating. As long as Joe Ledger—or anyone working with him—has access to MindReader then he will continue to pose a grave threat to national security.”
“I already informed you, Mr. President, that we do not have just cause to confiscate that computer system as it is the personal property of Mr. Church. As his body has not been identified we cannot confirm that he is among the victims of the explosion, and therefore his property rights are in force.”
“No, Mark, you misunderstand me … I’m not saying we should go after the computer. If we can’t touch it, then nobody should be able to touch it. I’m saying that we need to shut the Department of Military Sciences down. Shut it all down, and shut it down right now.” He leaned forward and smiled, then opened a blue folder on his desk. Inside was a document written on official stationery. “Every field office is on property owned outright or leased by the United States. In the interests of national security I am issuing an executive order for that purpose, effective immediately.”
He handed the document to Eppenfeld, who read it through. The AG’s shoulders slowly sagged.
“The DMS is finished, Mark,” said the president. “Done.”
Chapter Ninety-two
House of Jack Ledger
Near Robinwood, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 7:41 p.m.
The October sun was a memory and darkness rose up, immense and absolute. The lingering summer heat vanished, leaving a cold mist that filled the hollows and valleys of northern Maryland.
We downloaded the case files to the laptop and began going through them. Junie sat at the other end of the table, between Top and Lydia, but she kept darting covert glances my way. I only caught them with my peripheral vision and by the time I looked up each time, she’d already looked away or bent over the material again. I wasn’t sure what kind of message she was trying to send me.
One of the first things I found were Rudy Sanchez’s notes from a series of phone calls he’d made to friends of Mr. Church—and friends of their friends. A lot of it confirmed things that Junie had already told me. T-craft. Alien-human hybrids. The Majestic Project. M3. And a long list of suspected members of that mysterious group. I took special note of the names that kept coming up most often. Then I looked at the reports on the cyber-attacks.
“Time to put all of our cards on the table and play twenty questions so we can all see what we know,” I said. “Let’s start with this: Do we believe this or not? Are we, a group of rational adults and trained special operators, going to sit here and say yes, we believe in aliens, and crashed UFOs, and all of it? Show of hands.”
I waited. Junie chewed her lip.
The first hand that went up was the one I thought would be last.
Top.
Everyone looked at him, startled. Top was a hard sell on a lot of edgy issues, and a lot of the times his doubt proved to be a steadying and sobering reality check.
Top said, “I’m not saying I buy all of it. Lot of it seems like science-fiction bullshit to me, but … there’s a sense to it. These cocksuckers are throwing a lot of assets at us to keep us out of this, and all of that started as soon as we started looking for the Black Book. If the book is some made-up shit, then why bring down all this heat?”
It was a soldier’s response, an operator’s re
sponse.
Pete Dobbs nodded. “I’ve pretty much been on board since I heard about the president. I know some guys in the Secret Service and they keep their shit tight. And we all talked about it some,” he said, indicating the rest of Echo. “We came up with four or five good ways to snatch the president, but none of them would leave zero traces.”
“Plus there’s that crop circle thing,” said Ivan, nodding. “That’s some freaky shit right there. No way you’re going to tell me that a couple of jerkoffs with flat boards and string faked that thing on the White House lawn right when the Secret Service was crashing the building. So … count me in.”
The next hand to go up was Sam Imura’s. “Not a big believer in anything up there or out there,” he said. “But … somebody’s building flying saucers.” He cut a look at Junie. “Sorry, T-craft. If it’s us, then we’ve suddenly gotten a lot smarter. Those things are way past anything we have that I’ve ever seen, and one of the upsides to working for Mr. Church is you get to see next year’s stuff this year. I don’t know what year that stuff belongs to.”
He’d used Mr. Church’s name so casually, and it chilled the air in the kitchen.
“The big man always loved having the best toys,” said Bunny softly. “Damn, I still can’t believe—”
Lydia suddenly turned in her seat and punched him in the chest.
“Hey!” she snapped. “We’re on a mission clock, pendejo. Go to the funeral later.”
He blinked at her in surprise, then his eyes hardened and he nodded. “Yeah, shit, sorry.”
“Where do you stand, Staff Sergeant?” I asked.
“I’m with the team on this, boss,” said Bunny. “If this is aliens and stuff, then it’s aliens and stuff.”
Everyone else agreed.
“Does any of this answer the question of who took the president? Is that M3? Is it the Chinese or the Russians? Or is it the aliens?”
Top, Junie, and I all said it at the same time: “Aliens.”
“Okay,” said Pete, “but why?”
“I think that’s pretty obvious,” said Top.
Junie and I nodded.
The others looked perplexed.
“If these aliens are here,” Top said, “then you got to ask yourself why they didn’t scavenge their own stuff. If these D-type components are so damned valuable and dangerous, then it seems foolish to let ’em lie around where we can pick ’em up. Maybe that’s the point. Not to belittle the human race, but there’s also the possibility that we’re part of a controlled experiment. Give the monkeys a bunch of Legos and see what happens. Maybe for most of the last sixty years we’ve been shoving those Legos up our asses, but now we’re building a set of stairs that we can use to climb out of our cage. We might have crossed that line from ‘oh, isn’t it cute that the humans are flying those quaint little airplanes’ to ‘holy fuck, they’re actually building T-craft.’”
“Or maybe they left that stuff there as an alarm,” said Junie. “As long as we play with the toys then they know we’re no threat. But now we’re figured out how their science works. Maybe that’s what triggered the response.”
I nodded again. “Might even be as simple as the aliens not knowing who was doing this research. They’re high tech, but that doesn’t mean they can see through walls. On a planet this big—and with the kind of communication gaps there have to be between them and us—maybe they needed us to step out of the shadows and announce ourselves.”
“Like flying a T-craft?” asked Bunny.
“Like flying one—and doing shit like trying to provoke a war in the Taiwan Strait and shooting down stealth aircraft. That looks the same from every angle: Someone has built a T-craft and is trying to use it to start a war. That might be the kind of alarm that might make them take steps. Like nabbing the president, like threatening big-ticket destruction. And maybe worse.” I looked around. “I think maybe the aliens have decided that they want their toys back.”
Chapter Ninety-three
House of Jack Ledger
Near Robinwood, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 8:19 p.m.
Headlights flashed through the windows and suddenly everyone was instantly on their feet, weapons in hand. Ghost ran growling to the door.
“Ivan,” I said, “take Junie into the basement. Stay there until you hear one of us tell you it’s safe to come out. Everyone else, on the team channel.”
Junie did not argue. She nodded and let Ivan escort her through the cellar door, however she paused in the doorway and gave me a brief, encouraging, radiant smile.
I smiled back, but as I turned away Top was right there. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to.
“Head’s in the game,” I said quietly.
He said, “Hooah,” just as quietly.
We darkened the lights. Pete and Lydia took up shooters’ positions inside the living room and Sam ran upstairs with his sniper rifle. Top faded back and vanished through the back door. Bunny walked out onto the porch with me, weapons low and out of sight. Just a couple of farm guys coming out to see who was being neighborly. Ghost sat in the shadows behind one of the chairs, invisible and totally alert.
There were three vehicles coming along the road, but I couldn’t see anything past the headlights. Two of them were trucks, but I couldn’t tell much through the glare. As the lead truck reached the entrance to the big turnaround in front of the house, the driver flashed his brights at me. Once, twice, three times. Then the truck turned and I saw what it was.
I heard Bunny say, “Well kiss my ass.”
He was grinning as he stood up.
The lead vehicle was a big, white Mister Softee truck, but I knew that it wasn’t here to sell ice cream to kids. I caught a glimpse of the massive form behind the wheel. The second vehicle was a Ford Explorer—not mine, which would have been destroyed along with everything else at the Warehouse—but one very much like it. There were several figures behind the smoked glass.
When Bunny saw the third vehicle, he nodded and said, “Fuck yeah.”
It was Echo Team’s tactical vehicle, Black Bess.
The door to the Mister Softee truck opened and I saw a mechanical leg step out first. Sleek and alien-looking, but it was definitely local manufacture. It was attached to the formidable figure of Gunnery Sergeant Brick Anderson. Brick looked like the actor Ving Rhames, except for the metal leg and a network of shrapnel scars on his face.
The man who stepped out of Black Bess was Brian Bird—Birddog to everyone. Also tall, but not as overwhelmingly massive as Brick. Few people are. Some rhinos, maybe.
“Oh look, Gunny,” said Birddog, “I believe that’s Captain Ledger, a wanted felon.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” agreed Brick. “We should make sure we lock these here vehicles because we wouldn’t want dangerous firearms and high explosives to fall into the hands of such an enemy of decent society.”
“You two,” I said, “are invited to kiss my ass.”
I reached up to tap my earbud to tell everyone to stand down, then the doors of the Explorer opened. The driver was a man I didn’t know, and he was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, black tie.
The man who stepped out of the passenger side of the vehicle. Yeah, I knew him.
He was big and blocky, with bandages on his face and one arm strapped to his body.
Ghost leaped to his feet and began barking.
In my earbud I heard Top gasp. Bunny said, “Jesus Christ.”
The big man looked up at the house. He could not see my shooters at every window, but he had to know they were there.
“Good evening, Captain Ledger,” said Mr. Church. “I’m delighted to see that you’re safe and sound.”
I rushed down off the porch, delighted to see him alive, but with every step I became more intensely worried about the fact that there was no sign at all of Rudy.
Church waited for me. He looked awful. Covered in cuts and scrapes, stitches and bandages. Pain and loss aged him. As I slowed to a wa
lk, he caught my eye, saw me looking past him.
“Dr. Sanchez is alive,” he said.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Alive.
“How is he?” I demanded. “Where is he?”
“The Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins.”
“What?”
“We were in a helicopter about fifty feet above the building at the time of the explosion. The pilot lost control of the bird and we went into the bay. The pilot was killed, as were two of the crewmen. Dr. Sanchez was unconscious when we made it to shore. Shrapnel from the blast and structural debris on impact with the water. He sustained some head trauma and a deep laceration across his face. The doctors are optimistic they can save his left eye. The right … well…” Church shook his head.
“God.”
“He has some fractures, cuts, and burns, of course, but they’re secondary.”
I felt stunned. It was like being kicked in the face. On one hand I was overjoyed that Rudy was still alive; but then to hear about him being so savagely injured.
“Will he live?”
“I believe so. It’s too soon to evaluate brain function.”
I closed my eyes.
Church pitched his voice to a confidential one. “I … have not contacted Circe yet. However, Aunt Sallie has agents en route to pick her up and bring her to Johns Hopkins.”
“Did anyone else get out?”
“No. The estimated body count is one hundred and sixty-nine DMS personnel. Seven of the eight FBI agents who came to serve a warrant on you, Captain. Two NSA agents who were with them. Sixteen civilians from the surrounding buildings.”
“Gus?” asked Top.
Church’s face was wooden. “No.”
“Ah, jeez…”
Gus Dietrich had been with Church for years. He was the big man’s personal assistant, bodyguard, aide, and friend. A good friend of mine, too.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Gus was a good man.”
Church’s eyes were black metal orbs. “Gus was family.”
“Yes.”
“They were all family.”