Exodus 2022 (21 page)

The Mustang tore through the alley, clipping garbage cans and recycle bins as it shot forward. Black smoke billowed up from Stanton’s backyard, just ahead.

“Aw, fuck!” Kehler cried, as a fire engine squeezed into the far end of the alley, trundling past Joe and Ella, who had to flatten themselves against a fence to let it pass.

“Shit!” 

Kehler slammed the Mustang into reverse, then hit the brakes as an air horn blared behind him, so close it shook his car. The pumper truck—the one he’d cut in front of—was there.

He was trapped. Not going anywhere.

“Goddamnit, shit, motherfucker!” Kehler yelled, punching his door panel and steering wheel. He looked up to find a huge fireman glaring at him. In the side mirror, he could see cops squeezing past the pumper, coming for him. He tried to open the door, but the fireman blocked it with his thigh.

“You got some explainin’ to do, pal,” the big man grunted.

ALLEN DODD DROVE
the Crown Vic three blocks to Vance Boulevard, pulling over twice to avoid rampaging emergency vehicles. He heard Kehler swearing on the radio, and assumed his cohort had been delayed or detained, but didn’t have time to sort it out. He had to find Stanton and the girl. Had to at least spot them and track them until the rest of Beck’s team arrived.

Dodd turned left onto Vance and was forced over yet again, this time for an ambulance and the Fire Chief’s Ford F-350, flashing like a Christmas tree. The vehicles’ horns and sirens left his ears ringing.

Dodd scanned the hill ahead. Vance rose sharply, cresting at an intersection with Wheaton Way.

He stared. And saw them. Joe and Ella walking fast, hand-in-hand, turning right onto Wheaton.

The emergency vehicles passed and Dodd gunned the Crown Vic. Tires squealed, the car shot forward, and he was at the top of the hill in a couple of seconds. The light was green and he swung right, then hit the brakes.

“Aw, shit,” he yelled.

There were people everywhere. Couples, families, kids. Old people, twentysomethings, teenagers. Big groups and small clusters, some carrying coolers, folding chairs, and picnic blankets. All out for a good time on the Fourth of July and the first day of Seafair, the biggest celebration in the Puget Sound. Stanton and the girl could be anywhere.

Dodd pulled to the curb and scanned left and right. Forward and back. He spotted the FedEx van and a Suburban ferrying Beck’s operatives in oncoming traffic and reached for his radio, then hesitated as he thought about how Beck would react to the news that he’d lost a couple of unarmed civilians in a residential neighborhood.

He thought about running, but knew it would be no use. Beck would find him, and kill him, for sure.

“Guys,” he said, into the radio. “We have a problem.”

JOE AND ELLA HURRIED ALONG
Wheaton Way, cut right onto Edgewood, walk-jogged east for three blocks, turned onto Milton, and entered a well-used footpath leading into Wheaton Ravine Park.

Sirens wailed all the while, and dark thoughts swirled in Joe’s mind:
I set my rental house on fire. I made a 911 call, then fled the scene. I’m running from the police now, as well as from Beck. I’m endangering Ella, putting her in harm’s way and making her a party to an insane, incomprehensible mission.

Then he remembered the implant, and his guilt eased. Beck’s people had operated on him. Placed instruments in his head, without his knowledge or permission. Aboard the
Northern Mercy
they’d lied to his face. Lied to him, and Ella, and Detective Palmer. Joe touched the side of his head, near his right eye. It was still tender there, where Mia had fried the implants. Melted the wires.

Joe didn’t know the reason for the implants, but one thing was clear: if Beck and crew were capable of such mutilation, such deceit, they were capable of anything. They would feel no compunction about hurting or killing him and Ella.

They emerged from Wheaton Ravine into the asphalt lot flanking St. Anthony’s Episcopal Church and made a beeline for the church van, parked amid the weeds at the far corner of the lot. 

Church members and staff used the Econoline for everything from youth backpacking trips to nursing-home visits, and Joe was one of three people with a key. As vicar of St. Anthony’s, he had every right to use the vehicle, though as he climbed into the driver’s seat now, he wasn’t sure the Bishop’s Committee would approve of this particular outing.

The air inside the van was warm. Stagnant. As if the vehicle hadn’t been driven in a while. There was a newspaper on the dash, already yellowing from the sun, though it was only a few days old.

Joe grabbed the paper to toss it out of the way, then stopped and stared at the headline on the open page: “4th of July and Seafair Planning Guide.” Joe scanned the article below the banner and his heart rate ticked up.

“Where to?” Ella asked.

“Ferry terminal,” he said. “I’ll explain when we’re on the boat.”

COLLINS FOUND BECK
in
Marauder
’s high-tech indoor shooting range, firing an MP5N submachine gun at lifelike projections of Taliban fighters.

Collins loitered behind a clear Kevlar safety shield until Beck noticed him and raised his hand. The simulation paused, midbattle.

“What?” said Beck, pulling his headset down around his neck.

Collins stepped around the shield. “Stanton, Sir. It seems he, um, started a fire.”

The range was dark and cool, but Collins was sweating.

“A fire?”

“To mask his escape. He and the girl, um, got away. Apparently.”

Beck repositioned his headset and stared at Collins through his thousand-dollar shooting glasses. Collins didn’t like the look in his boss’s eyes.

Beck signaled the controller, ensconced in a bulletproof booth at the back of the range, and the cacophonous sounds of an Afghan street market filled the chamber once more. A gunman leapt from behind a produce stand just ahead and Beck opened fire.

The noise was rock-concert loud, and Collins jammed his hands over his ears. It wasn’t just Beck’s MP5N, unleashing eight hundred nine-millimeter parabellum rounds per minute, but also alarms, horns, sirens, other weapons at close range, and people screaming. This was full-on combat immersion played with live ammunition. 

Some on the ship referred to the range—which used state-of-the-art projection technology, lasers, and infrared cameras to track a shooter’s score—as Beck’s five-million-dollar video arcade, though never to his face.

Beck signaled for another pause, and confronted Collins.

“So, we had what…twelve guys on the ground there?” He waved the submachine gun’s muzzle in Collins’s direction. “Should I have sent fourteen?”

The range had gone abruptly, utterly silent, and Collins was suddenly aware of the
thump
,
thump
,
thump
of his heart and the sweat on his forehead.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“To bring in an unarmed priest and his girlfriend?”

Beck edged the MP5N closer to Collins.

“Maybe, what?
Eighteen
guys? Would that be enough?”

Collins didn’t answer. He half expected Beck to kill him on the spot.

“So, where is he?”

“We don’t know, sir. We’re trying to figure it out.”

“Trying to figure it out,” Beck said softly. “Trying to figure it out.”

He leaned forward and his whisper changed to a full-throated scream so abruptly that Collins nearly wet himself.

“He has a fucking chip in his head!
In his head!
It emits a fucking pulse every thirty or so fucking seconds. Makes a little chirp on our monitors. We should be able to track that, don’t you think?”

“It’s not working. Ring thinks it’s been disabled.”

Beck lowered his weapon. “How?”

“Ring thinks
she
did it.”

“She?”

Collins averted his eyes. Ring’s theory seemed so absurd he couldn’t bring himself to say it to Beck’s face.

“The whale. Ring thinks the whale may have disabled the chip and thought-capture hardware. With her sonar.”

Beck handed the submachine gun to a flack-jacket-wearing range attendant and Collins felt his sphincter muscles relax a miniscule amount. Beck wasn’t going to kill him. Not yet.

“Since when is the whale female?”

Collins shook his head. “Ring says he has more information now.”

“Well, I’d better go talk to him then.” 

“Yes, sir,”

“And you, Mr. Collins, had better find Stanton and his girl and bring them in.”

Collins exited the range, and Beck took his gun back from the attendant.

“Let’s finish the scenario,” said Beck, “and call it a day.”

“Yes, sir.”

The attendant vanished into the shadows, the countdown strobes flashed, and Beck was back in the Afghan market.

He stepped forward. Alert. Ready. Like stepping into a 3-D movie.

The market was deserted. The civilians had all fled after the firefight, and bodies of Taliban fighters and coalition soldiers covered the ground. Carts and stalls lay smashed and broken in the street. There was blood on every surface. Lots of it.

The simulations were astoundingly lifelike. Even the smells. A scent generator pumped odors into the range based on the particular scenario being run. Beck considered the scent generator a gimmick that didn’t begin to approximate the stench of real combat (
thank God
, he thought). But it was a touch that impressed visitors and Erebus clients.

Beck took a step, and caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. Up high and to the left. A sniper.

He turned, fired, and dove for cover. The sniper crashed to earth, smashing through a market stall as he fell.

Not real combat, but close. And it always got Beck’s adrenaline pumping.

He got to his feet. The sim was almost done. He could see the clock in the corner of the range ticking down. He was ready to leave and talk to Ring.

Almost done.

There was another fleeting twitch of movement, this time on his right. At the edge of his peripheral vision. He pivoted.

Beck was a soldier. The best of the best. Trained to assess and act in a split second.

But what he saw now paralyzed him. Bolted him to the ground and caused him to convulse, head to toe.

The computer-generated character lurking in the shadows a few feet away wasn’t a Taliban fighter. Or a suicide bomber. Or another SEAL. It was Dalton Ellis. The reporter. The enemy he’d fought and thrown overboard.

Ellis was just standing there in profile, staring into the distance, and Beck could see that there was something wrong with his face. Very wrong.

The reporter turned, stepping into the light, and Beck nearly dropped his gun.

Ellis’s eyes were gone. His eyes were gone and maggots wriggled in both sockets. Filled both sockets completely.

Ellis’s mouth formed a tight black “O,” an expressionless, depthless pit. Shards of jaw and cheekbone glistened through ribbons of rotting flesh.

Beck experienced another convulsion. This time it was vomit rising in a wave. He choked it back.

The major injury he had personally delivered to Ellis—the stab wound to the reporter’s thigh—stood out from the man’s other wounds in almost fluorescent relief. The gash shone bright against the later insults—the tooth and claw gashes caused by the brown bears of Admiralty Island.

Beck stood frozen, willing his muscles to work, forcing—or trying to force—his brain to reengage.

Ellis’s black pit of a mouth widened and worked and suddenly it was there in the front of Beck’s mind. A whisper. A statement. A declaration.

You will carry me.

The statement was delivered with confidence. Arrogance.

Beck couldn’t look away.

You will carry me!
A little louder now. A little more force. Almost mocking this time.

There was more coming. More thoughts or words from that black pit of a mouth. But Beck didn’t wait.

His paralysis ended. He lifted his MP5N, opened fire, and emptied the weapon into Ellis’s body.

Almost before he’d begun, though, Ellis vanished—as if that part of the projection had simply winked out.

The roar of Beck’s gun subsided, the scenario ended, and Beck screamed.

“What the hell was that?”

The range attendant hurried from the booth.

“What was what, sir?”

“Don’t give me that shit!” Beck shouted, waving his rifle at the spot where Ellis had stood. “Who added that to the sim?”

“Sir?” The attendant looked like he might have a heart attack.

“Rewind the program, goddamnit! Replay the last sixty seconds. After the sniper.”

The attendant scurried back to the control booth, and a few moments later the scenario lurched to life once more. The sounds and smells. The market in the immediate aftermath of the firefight.

The sniper fell from the rooftop and crashed through the market stall, just as Beck remembered.

He stood there, waiting for the rest of the scenario to unfold, for Ellis to step from the shadows on his right.

There.

A flicker of movement exactly where Ellis had been. In precisely the same spot.

Except it wasn’t Ellis this time. It was an Afghan woman, covered, robed head to toe. Only her eyes visible. She was staring into the distance, just as Ellis had been. And then she turned, as Ellis had, stepped forward, and vanished into the market.

The scenario ended, the sound died, and the entire marketscape disappeared. The attendant hurried from the booth once more.

“The ending was different,” said Beck. “What happened to the other ending?”

“Sir?”

“It was a woman that time, goddamnit. Where Ellis was standing.”

The attendant looked confused. Frightened. He was just a kid.

“Sir, the ending was exactly the same. I mean, it can’t change…The program—“

“Don’t fucking tell me about the goddamned program!” Beck screamed. “Ellis was in the scenario. Someone added him. Someone’s fucking with me.”