Extinction Machine (20 page)

Bunny grabbed one man by the sleeve and hair and whipped him around in a half circle, giving the swing a vicious upward tilt so the man left the ground and crashed into two of his colleagues. Then Bunny grabbed one of the big mess tables and with a growl like an angry bear upended it atop men who were trying their best to get out of his way.

But Lydia was there. She was lightning fast, firing beanbag rounds as fast as she could pump, but when that ran dry she didn’t bother reloading or switching to the Taser. She waded in with wickedly precious kicks to calves and knees and groins, and used crosscutting palm strikes to wrench necks and smash noses.

“Warbride,” Top called to her, “on your six.”

She whirled to face a big man with a steak knife in his fist, but Top sat him down with the Taser, and took out a second man who was swinging his pistol up. Those were the last two charges of his Taser, so Top dropped it and drew a short black rod holstered at his hip. With a flick of his wrist it snapped down to the length of a baton. It was made of durable sponge rubber over a tight spring. The rubber kept it from being lethal, but it was not a toy. Bones broke and men screamed.

One of the Blue Diamond men managed to get off a single shot, but suddenly he pitched back and out of the corner of his eye he caught Sam Imura leaning in through the window, a smoking shotgun in his hand.

Counting the two men at the gate, there were eighteen Blue Diamond guards to Top’s six-person team.

Eighteen wasn’t enough. The flash-bangs had changed those odds, and the brutal efficiency of Echo Team had skewed the math in their favor. When the last man fell—Ivan head-butted the man; Ivan wore a helmet, the other man did not—the room dropped into sudden silence.

“Cuff ’em,” snapped Top, and everybody pulled out fistfuls of plastic flexcuffs.

Some of the men were conscious and very vocal, threatening legal action, threatening worse. One, a shovel-jawed bruiser with a gray buzz cut and a livid bruise in the shape of Lydia’s fist over one puffed eye, seemed to be in charge.

Top directed Bunny to bring the man into what was left of the other room. The man wasn’t yet trussed up, so Bunny hauled the man to his feet, screwed a pistol into his ear and said, “This one’s loaded with hollowpoints, dickhead.”

When they were in the adjoining room, Top kicked a chair toward the prisoner and Bunny shoved the man down into it.

“What’s your name?” asked Top.

“Fuck you.”

“Well, Mr. Fuck-you, would you like to tell me why four of your people thought it was a good idea to pull a car stop on a federal agent this morning?”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, Tupac, but I’m going to hang your balls from my rearview mirror.”

“Is that a genuine fact?” asked Top, raising his eyebrows as if interested. “Bunny … why don’t you go in the other room. Mr. Fuck-you and I are going to sort out a few talking points. I believe he wants in his heart of hearts to tell me who ordered a hit on Captain Ledger.”

Bunny looked from Top to the seated man, then he smiled and left.

Top was smiling, too.

Chapter Thirty-nine

VanMeer Castle
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Sunday, October 20, 8:47 a.m.

Mr. Bones knocked quietly and came into Howard’s bedroom. The old man was awake, sitting propped up, a Ghost Box on his lap and open file folders scattered around everywhere.

“So much for resting,” said Mr. Bones, arching an eyebrow.

“I’ll rest next week.”

“It’s Sunday, it is next week.” Mr. Bones dragged over a heavy hand-carved wooden chair, flopped into it, crossed his ankles, and laid his heels on the edge of the bed.

Howard waved a hand. “You know what I mean. The doctor said it was stress and exhaustion. Big surprise. Said all I needed was some rest … so I’m resting.”

“How are you feeling? No bullshit.”

The old man took off his reading glasses and tossed them onto the bed. He rubbed his eyes and sighed. After a moment he said, “I know this is what I wanted,” he said. “I know this is what I’ve worked my life for … but sometimes getting what you want is such a goddamn pain in the ass.” He cut a look at his friend. “No, don’t say it: It’s like a man complaining because he has to count every penny in a heap of treasure he found. This isn’t something that’s going to take me off the path. I’m not going to come to my senses and devote the rest of my life to charity and good works. I’m a monster, Bones, and I like being a monster.”

“But it’s still a pain in the ass to count all that treasure,” said Mr. Bones softly.

“It is. Am I weak for saying that?”

“You’re human. And I’ll bet every hero and every conqueror in history had these moments. Alexander the Great probably needed to hang out in his tent, get drunk, fart, read some trash scrolls.”

Howard nodded. “They should show that in the history books. Downtime of the rich and powerful.”

“We can fund a reality show,” said Bones, “
Kicking Back with Kings.
”

They laughed about it. Quietly, respecting the needs of the moment. And then they sat in companionable silence for a time, listening to the drifting music from the speakers mounted high in the corners of the room. A playlist of old blues. All covers of Willie Dixon tunes.

“We could bag it,” said Mr. Bones, and when Shelton looked at him in surprise, he continued, “We could. All of it. We could let the air show be just an air show. We’ll have everyone here to fly their planes and we’ll be affable hosts. We could let Yuina continue to do what she already thinks she’s doing. We could stop the cyber-attacks and let Ledger and the DMS dig their way out from under without any further interference from us, we could call off the Closers and tell Tull to go back to trying to be a person.”

“What about the Chinese? I can’t help feeling that they’re closer than we think.”

Mr. Bones shrugged. “We initiate the tapeworm and turn their project to junk, and let the rest of the world go back to the arms race they think they’ve been running since the Cold War ended. We could do all of that, Howard.”

They both nodded, thinking about it. It wasn’t the first time they’d had some version of this conversation. It wasn’t the tenth time.

Howard said, “What’s wrong, Bonesy? Nervous there at the wobbly end of the high dive?”

“Of course. No matter how many times we run the math, there’s still a chance this could all go flooey.”

“‘Flooey’?”

“Flooey,” agreed Mr. Bones. “There might be something we haven’t thought of, some X-factor that makes it all go wrong.”

“There isn’t.”

“That’s what we believe, Howard, but we can’t know everything. No one has ever done what we’re about to do.”

“That’s what makes being the first so much fun.”

“What if the joint chiefs and the DoD suits won’t be bullied? What if we lay it all out and give them our terms and they call our bluff?”

“We’re not bluffing,” said Howard.

“What if they force our hand?”

Howard Shelton lay back and stared at the ceiling for a few moments. “I said I wanted to get out of the fast lane for a few minutes, collect my wits, get my second wind. I never said that I wanted to lose the race.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “No fucking way.”

Chapter Forty

Over Maryland airspace
Sunday, October 20, 8:53 a.m.

My cell rang again. Church.

“Dr. Hu has watched the video,” he said, “and he’d like to share some thoughts.”

I thought that I probably didn’t want to hear anything else. The day was already sliding downhill, but I flipped open my tactical laptop and the screen showed Mr. Church with a Chinese-American man in his mid-thirties. William Hu was an awkward, ungainly man with an incredible brain filled with deep knowledge in a lot of areas of science. A genuine supergenius, which is why Church hired him. Church doesn’t employ many second-stringers.

When I first joined the DMS, Hu and I had failed to bond on an epic level. He regards me as a mouth-breathing semiliterate Neanderthal and I think he’s a heartless prick who would improve the world by stepping in front of a bullet train. Neither of us pull any muscles trying to play nice.

“Okay, Doc,” I said, “what’s your take?”

Hu wore an X-Men T-shirt—vintage Dave Cockrum—and thick glasses with bright red frames. He removed them and polished the lenses thoughtfully on his shirt. “The president looks doped,” he began. “Not drunk, nothing like that. He’s too rigid for sodium amytal or scopolamine. Maybe amphetamines of some kind, considering the way he kept running his sentences into one another. Could also be one of the compounds that Ukrainian guy, Keltov, was playing with a few years ago. Whatever it was, the president appears to be acting according to chemical coercion.”

“Could be more than that,” I said. “Some of his nervousness could be from the fact that he was abducted, and his captors could have threatened him.”

Hu gave a derisive snort. “No way. You can’t bully someone like him.”

“You can threaten anyone,” I said. “Especially if the threats aren’t directed at him. He’s a husband, a father.”

Hu shook his head. “I don’t buy it.”

“Says the man who lacks the compassion to reach for a fire extinguisher if his own family was on fire,” I said.

Hu ignored that. “I’m drawing a blank on the Majestic Black Book, whatever that is.”

Church did not yet elucidate. Nor did I.

“The rest of it’s pretty clear, though,” said Hu.

“Clear?” I asked, and he gave me a pitying look.

“Obvious to anyone with half a brain, sure. They showed a series of natural disasters and each time they cut to the president telling us that we have to find this book. Simple enough, find the book or bad things will happen.” He smiled at me. “You didn’t get that?”

“Yes, I got that,” I lied. “But you said it yourself, they were ‘natural’ disasters. How can you threaten someone with that? Last I heard Mother Nature wasn’t taking contract hits.”

Hu rolled his eyes, just like a thirteen-year-old girl having to explain an iPhone app to her Luddite maiden aunt. “That’s why they showed us the volcano.”

Church gave a small nod; apparently he was right there with Hu.

“What about the volcano?” I asked.

“Well,” said Hu smugly, “the short-bus version is that either we get this book or they’ll arrange a disaster for us. We have all sorts of toys that could simulate a natural disaster. Hence the movie footage at the end. Speaking of which, I don’t recognize—”

“
The Day After Tomorrow,
” I supplied.

“Oh. Right.” Hu looked annoyed that I’d known that. I didn’t mention that Bug had told me. “And before you ask, they used fake footage because we haven’t had a tsunami hit the U.S. yet. They wanted to drive home a point, make it personal.”

Though it galled me to admit it, he was right. That was exactly the message and I could see it now. “At the risk of getting a demerit from Professor Snootypants,” I said, “is it really possible to engineer a tsunami?”

“Sure,” said Hu. “An artificially induced earthquake could do it. Drop a nuke in a volcano, or detonate some underground device on a fault line. Maybe hit the exterior wall with nonnuclear cruise missiles. Couple of bunker busters at the right spot might do it. But, artificially induced or not, that volcano could definitely do it. No question about it.”

“Why that particular volcano? Is it active?”

“It doesn’t need to be,” said Church.

Hu nodded. “Absolutely. That volcano, even cold, is a disaster waiting to happen.”

“How do you know? Did Bug find it for you?”

“No, I recognize it,” said Hu smugly. “It’s Isla de La Palma in the Canary Islands, and the volcano is Cumbre Vieja.”

“So?”

Hu traced the edge of the volcano with his forefinger. “See that ridge? It’s a known scientific fact,” he said, leaning on the word “known” as if everyone of even marginal intelligence was in on this, “that a failure of the western flank of Cumbre Vieja could cause a mega-tsunami.”

“What kind of ‘failure’?”

“Like I said, an eruption would do it,” said Hu, “but if you wanted to guarantee the right effect, then you’d need an application of explosive force at the right point so you’d break off the western half. We’re talking something like five hundred cubic kilometers of rock falling in a massive gravitational landslide and smashing down into the Atlantic Ocean. Local amplitude of the resulting wave would have to be about six hundred meters—two thousand feet for those who haven’t learned their conversion tables.”

“Bite me,” I said quietly.

“So there you are with a six-hundred-meter-tall wave going hell-bent across the ocean at—what?—a thousand klicks an hour. That’s—”

“Six hundred twenty-one miles per hour,” I cut in. “Like I said, bite me.”

He grinned. “That’s your basic mega-tsunami rolling outward from the drop point at the speed of a jet aircraft.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Likely damage?” asked Church.

“Shit,” said Hu. “You’d lose the whole African coast in the first hour. Southern England a couple of hours later. And then in five, six hours it would hit the eastern seaboard of North America. Mind you, by then it would have diminished to, say, thirty to sixty meters, but that’s more than enough to wipe out Boston, New York, maybe as far inland as Philadelphia … all the way down to Miami. Call it fifty million people wishing that evolution hadn’t taken away their gills.”

I gaped at him. “Are you fucking kidding me here?”

“No,” said Church. “He isn’t.”

“How do people not know about this?” I demanded, appalled.

“
People
do,” said Hu. “How do
you
not know about this? Don’t you ever watch Nat Geo?” He cocked his head to one side then snapped his fingers. “Actually, now that I think about it, this wouldn’t actually be the first mega-tsunami to hit America. There was one in Alaska. Lituya Bay, I think, back in 1958. Five-hundred-meter high wave stripped trees and soil from the opposite headland and swamped the entire bay.”