Any Minute Now (35 page)

Turning to his computer terminal, he began to type in the long log-in code from the readout on the RSA encryption tag he kept with him at all times. The electronic tag changed the log-in code every twenty minutes, ensuring the highest level of security.

Once in, he started an investigative folder. Typing in St. Vincent's name brought up line after line of information pulled from all of the federal data banks, including the NSA's. Then, he settled in and started reading. He wasn't sure what Julie was looking for, but he would note any red flags and pass them on to her, just as she had asked.

*   *   *

For the second time since she had been taking care of him, Valerie drove Lindstrom to Big Planet Comics on U Street, NW. As it happened, Lindstrom was an avid reader of Hulk comics. Not too surprising, when you thought about it, Valerie told herself as she stared at the garishly colored covers of comics filling the layered racks. The Hulk was Dr. Bruce Banner, a shy physicist who, when he got angry, turned into a huge green monster who wreaked havoc wherever he went. That was the beginning. These days, however, in the manner of comics' new universes, there were many Hulks, confusing her no end.

That Paulus Lindstrom loved The Hulk said quite a lot about forces hidden deep in his psyche. While Lindstrom picked up the latest issues, she leafed through a comic called “Gang War.” The cover depicted a human eyeball pierced by the tip of a switchblade. Good god, Valerie thought, shoving the comic back onto its rack.

She went over to Lindstrom. “Paulus, are you ready to go?”

“As soon as I pick out a Hulk T-shirt.”

At length, she shuffled him over to the register, where she paid for his haul with cash.

Back in the car, they buckled up, and she headed home.

Lindstrom had taken his comics out of their plastic bag and was staring at them as if he could not believe his good fortune. Valerie, her caution verging on paranoia after the incident in the DARPA parking lot, kept an eye on the side mirror, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“Do you like the shirt I picked out?” Lindstrom asked, holding it up.

“Why does it say ‘The Incredible Hulk'?” she asked.

Lindstrom smiled, as if at a faraway memory. “That was the title of the comic when it first came out. Everything was either Incredible or Amazing at Marvel in those days.”

She maneuvered her way through the traffic and passed a corner packed with a group of teenagers horsing around, bringing up all sorts of memories, good and bad. “Why is he green?”

Lindstrom laughed. “That's the way Stan Lee conceived of him.”

“Who's Stan L—?”

A truck, running the light, slammed into her side of the car, drove them sideways into an SUV. Her car collapsed in on itself like an accordion, the vicious force crushing Valerie and Lindstrom together like doomed lovers.

 

38

Flix, hunkered down beside Whitman as sunlight gained ground on nighttime shadows, said, “
Compadre
, I gotta know. You gotta tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Whitman was studying Charlie's face in profile as she scanned the hilly horizon with field glasses. A hundred different memories went off in his mind like fireworks.

“What did you do to me?” Flix persisted.

“I saved your life,” Whitman said.

“Yeah, well, okay. But, I mean,
how
the fuck?”

“If I told you, you wouldn't believe me.”

“Whit…”

Whitman turned, put a hand on his friend's shoulder. “Listen to me, Flix. What's done is done. You're here, alive, back from the dead. Isn't that what's important?”

“Okay.” Flix nodded. “I get it.”

No, Whitman thought, because if you did, you'd be about a mile from here, never looking back. Charlie knew something of what he was—but not all, god no. The only ones who did were the Alchemists, and the less he thought about them and what they had made him do the better.

But the bayous of Louisiana blazed in his memory, like an unnatural fire that burns too hot and for too long, and never goes out.

“Hereabouts, they call me Preach,” the man of indeterminate age said. “You may think you know my name, but you don't. I'm Preach, even when my women cry out my name when they're in
la petite mort
.”

Preach pursed his lips, considering, and his eyes became slitted. “I can see into your mind; I can see clear through you.”

“I can't say I like the sound of that,” Whitman said.

Preach cawed. “I mean t'tell you! No one likes the sound of what they can't understand.” He nodded. “We'll soon remedy that.”

“Why?”

Preach put a hand on Whitman's shoulder, transmitting a fearsome strength without tightening his grip. “You're one of us. That's what I see. You're one of us, yes, you are. And you're going to be instrumental in building the newer, better world to come.”

*   *   *

When you're out here, Charlie thought as she peered through the field glasses, it's like nothing else exists. No supermarkets, shoe stores, restaurants of the moment. Everyone has a gun, everyone is out to kill you, and that's what happens here—death, destruction. No one gets out alive, or at least unscathed. How had Whit managed it, all these years? she wondered. This kind of life would eventually drive her mad, she was sure of it. She was also sure that when this mission was over she was going to take up something supremely banal, knitting, maybe. Then she laughed silently. Fat chance. But, in any event, she'd be quits with this job. Besides anything else, working with Whit was like sticking her head in a beehive—unpleasant and perilous in and of itself. She could even learn to hate him—really hate him, not the little-girl spite of their fiery breakup, but true hate with a passion she had not known she possessed. On the other hand, would that be so bad? she wondered. But her thoughts didn't dwell there for long.

Movement. A column of dust, like a djinn materializing out of the fire of the desert.

“Whit,” Charlie called softly. “Company.”

He and Flix joined her. Blue Eyes, the man known only as Dante, could finally be seen beneath the inferno of the blinding white West Pakistan sky. The thin cloud cover seemed to have spread light over the entire bowl of the sky, so that it appeared as if the sun had expanded to ten times its size.

Dante was driving a dust-coated half-track truck. He was alone, Charlie saw through her powerful field glasses: where were the two girls, the replacements for Alice and Beth? Hidden in back? Charlie was willing to bet not. The promise of release from bondage another lie they had had to swallow.

She frowned. Did Dante know the mercs were no longer in control of the compound? Did he know he was driving into an ambush? If so, he gave no sign of it. He continued down the dusty track that wound through the foothills, and which, at length, arrived at the outer walls of Seiran el-Habib's hideout.

“Places,” Whitman said softly, and they all deployed.

They were ready for this moment, every move meticulously designed—they all had their parts to play. Charlie was pleased with the plan. She had to give Whit credit; out in the field he knew what he was doing. She could imagine no one better, and this assurance provided a sense of security she would not otherwise have had.

“Wait,” Whitman said. “Wait.”

And then, just as the truck was within range, they heard the signature
whup-whup-whup!
of rotors, and the gunship appeared over the top of the highest hill, heading straight toward them.

*   *   *

Strange days have found me, Julie thought as she walked through Foggy Bottom's rain-soaked streets. Faces come out of the rain—and they're strange. She jumped at every horn blare, flinched if any passerby came too near her. She walked and walked, crossing the bridge into Georgetown, turning right off M Street past the sturdy brick façade of the Four Seasons, walking uphill past neat town houses with gardens, trim and tiny out front.

It was the hour when, on a clear day with the sun low in the western sky, shadows would stretch out like cats yawning. She entered the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks, her favorite place in Georgetown, perhaps in all of D.C. The weather had turned it into a ghost town. The laden branches dipped and wept beneath the downpour, petals spilled on the ground.

Sadness gripped her, whereas before, on the streets, it was fear. At least she felt safe here, standing beneath the stone portico, gazing out at her beloved garden with its double oval of American hornbeams, a delicious bower in summer's heat.

Even in this weather she could not resist them. Stepping out from beneath the portico, she went across to the oval. The rain had simmered down to a light drizzle. She felt it on her face. It netted her hair like a bride's veil. She would get married here, of course she would—if she ever divorced her gay husband and married for real, which seemed more improbable with each passing day.

Her tears mixed with the tiny raindrops, and she shook herself, growing angry at her self-pity. Stop it! She admonished herself. Just stop it!

She lifted her head, wiped away her last tear, and that's when she saw the shadowy figure, lurking beneath the portico where, moments before, she herself had stood. When he saw that she had seen him, he stepped out from the shadows and came very quickly toward her.

*   *   *

Whup-whup-whup!

“Flix!” Whitman called. “The truck!”

Whup-whup-whup!

He turned. “Charlie! Take cover!”

Charlie leapt out of the way as the Hellfire missile came shrieking at them. She scrabbled through her pack. Before they had left, she had loaded it with compact, ultra-lightweight weapons of every new design she had come up with in the past eighteen months, even the unproven prototypes. Unfortunately, to deal with a missile-spitting gunship she was going to have to employ one of those. All or nothing at all, she said to herself with a half-smile, knowing Foxtrot-loving Whit would appreciate the allusion to the 1939 Sinatra song.

She brought out what looked like a blunt instrument, fitted it into the muzzle of a twelve-inch shoulder cannon she had created that used compressed carbon dioxide as a propellant. The blunt instrument contained a highly volatile payload; a normal propellant wouldn't do.

The gunship was swinging around, machine guns chattering, sending up sprays of gritty soil as it prepared to release another Hellfire. She settled the cannon onto her right shoulder, sighted through the scope. She was about to pull the trigger when she felt Whitman beside her.

“Can you do this?” he whispered in her ear.

Something tightened in the pit of her stomach. “Watch,” she said, “and learn.”

The entire tail assembly was in her crosshairs. She had only a split instant before the gunship was in position to fire the missile. She took a deep breath, let it out, and squeezed the trigger. There was almost no sound from the CO2 propellant. The blunt instrument shot upward. When it struck the tail of the gunship the explosion, a blinding blue white, burned so hot it literally melted the aluminum and steel frame. The rear end of the gunship vanished as if it had never existed. What was left of the vessel canted over to one side and plummeted down in a drunken line.

The edges of the rotors began to plow up the ground, acting like a kind of paddle wheel, impelling the ruined helo forward, directly toward where Charlie and Whitman lay.

“Jesus Christ!” Whitman grabbed her elbow as they both scrambled up and began to run. The weird, wrecked mechanism continued to follow them as if it were alive, the rotors whirling closer and closer until their sound was all they could hear, and its oily breath overtook them.

*   *   *

Julie's first instinct was to turn and flee, but then she recognized the London Fog raincoat with the bit of tar on its flapping hem, the Tilley hat, battered and creased by years of wear, and she waited, heart pounding, as he crossed to where she stood.

“Julie,” Omar Hemingway said gently, “it's time you came in from the cold.”

She stared at him. “How did you find me?”

“I like to think I haven't lost my tradecraft.” He smiled, gesturing. “Why don't we get out of the rain?”

She glanced over his shoulder, then at the far corners of the garden. “I'm as far out of the rain as I care to get.”

“Hmm. Well, as to that, being out in a quiet place like this is one of the least secure spots, as far as the NSA is concerned.” Seeing her wince, he added. “NSA's expertise is with electronic, not human surveillance.”

“Even Directorate N?”

Hemingway's eyes narrowed. “Now you've begun to worry me. How does Directorate N figure into the mess you've gotten yourself into?”

“Not Directorate N, per se,” she said. “Luther St. Vincent.”

Hemingway studied her for a moment. The drizzle gathered at the low point of his hat brim, coalesced, and plopped down into the space between them. “I have heard,” he said slowly and deliberately, “that St. Vincent is nursing a broken shoulder.” He peered at her. “D'you know anything about that?”

“I know everything about that,” Julie said softly.

 

39

Flix, having scrambled out of the line of sight of the Hellfire missile, set his weapon's sights on the truck driven by Dante. He knew he needed to be exceptionally careful. He could have shot Dante through the vehicle's windshield, but that would have served no purpose and would rob them of whatever intel Dante might possess. How to tackle the situation? But when he saw Dante throw the truck into reverse, his mind was made up for him.

He still could not get his head around everything that had happened to him in the last several days—being drugged, becoming some kind of experiment for the NSA, and, most mysterious of all, having Whitman reverse the effects. Nothing made sense to him, but then, in war, nothing ever did. Time to put one foot in front of the other and not look back.