Kill Switch (54 page)

“I'll speak to the president,” said Church.

“Good luck with that,” I said, “but I need to run Santoro down and get that code. If he's in L.A., then I need to be there.”

“My dad just grounded you,” said Harry weakly.

Church picked up his phone and called Brick. “I want you to locate Director Bolton. He's in his office? You're sure? Good. Prep Captain Ledger's helo. Do it as quietly as possible. If anyone asks, it's for me and I'm heading to the airport to fly back to New York No, that's a cover. Have Bird Dog on board with a full field kit. I want it fueled and smoking in five. Contact any Echo Team members currently in the building and have them meet the captain on the roof. We're going off the reservation. Thank you, Brick.”

Church turned to me. “I'll reroute ops from here to the Hangar. Bug can hack into CCTV to try and locate Priest.”

I smiled, and maybe in the back of my head I heard the Killer turn over in his sleep. “You trust me to do this?”

“I never lost faith in you, Captain.”

Violin said, “Wait, what about me?”

Church smiled. “I have something else I'd like you to do.”

Harry Bolt looked very much like the fifth wheel he was. “Okay … well, what about
me
?”

I walked over to him. “A lot of that will depend on whose side you're on. Your dad seems to want to tear the DMS down. Maybe you hit the nail on the head when you said he was jealous. Whatever. He's going to drag his feet and play this wrong and a lot of people are going to die. So, ask yourself, kid, where do you think you fit?”

There were a lot of ways Harry Bolt could have played it. He was a schlub, so he could play dumb and sit it out. He was CIA, so he could side with the home team. He was Harcourt Bolton's son, so maybe blood was thicker than water.

He straightened and although he was seven or eight inches shorter than me he did his best to look me in the eye.

“My father's wrong,” he said.

“So where does that put you?”

His gaze shifted from me, to Church, and then settled on Violin. She gave him the kind of smile I'd only ever seen her give to me. Once upon a time. It jolted me.

Then Harry Bolt looked at me again and held out his hand. “Good hunting, Joe.”

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

OCEANSIDE HARBOR FUEL DOCK

OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 9, 7:22
P.M.

“There they are,” whispered Bunny.

He eased away from the narrow slot in the curtains so I could take a look. We were in the marina office. Bunny, Top, and me, each of us dressed in black BDUs and balaclavas. We were the only field agents at the Pier when the call came in.

“We can take them right now,” said Top. He had his Heckler & Koch HK416 in his hands, the barrel lowered, finger laid along the curve of the trigger guard. The effective range of the HK416 is four hundred yards. The cluster of men was less than fifty feet from where we crouched. If I gave the word, Top would send them to Jesus without so much as a flicker. “Say the word, Cap'n, and we can all clock out early.”

There were seven men on the dock. All dressed in boating clothes, or some approximation of them. Shorts, boat shoes, Polo shirts or lightweight Windbreakers. One of them wore a Hawaiian shirt with brightly colored tropical fish on it. Sunglasses and ball caps. Looking like people who belonged among all these expensive seagoing play toys. Looking ordinary. They didn't look like Closers.

“Not until we're sure,” I murmured. We were all killers, but we were soldiers, not assassins.

Dr. Kang's report was that Priest had exited the building carrying a metal briefcase in which were several portable high-capacity external drives. One with the scans of the Unlearnable Truths and the master code sequence Kang's people had interpolated from the books; and several others with lots of information related to projects owned by either Erskine or San Pedro. None of them, according to Kang, said either “Majestic” or “Gateway” on them. Nothing labeled “Kill Switch,” “God Machine,” or “Dreamwalking,” either. We didn't know what the data was, but we damn sure didn't want it to get into the hands of whoever was behind all of this. ISIL or someone else. My guess was that it was going to be “someone else,” and I was beginning to get a nasty idea of how this was all being managed.

Priest's photo had been fed into the facial recognition feeds of security cameras all over this part of California, with MindReader interpreting the data. The target used some of the most devious tricks in the evil bad guy playbook to avoid capture and make it from Los Angeles all the way down to the marina here in Oceanside. By car in good traffic that's two hours, but when you're trying not to get arrested and sent to Gitmo it can take a lot longer. In this case five and a half hours, with long heart-stopping gaps when we all thought he'd slipped the leash.

If that happened, and the Mullah or whoever was in control of Kill Switch got their hands on that control code, then America was going to experience a new Dark Age. And if our worst fears were realized, inside that darkness the SX-56 pathogen was going to spread every bit as aggressively as the Black Plague had, as the Spanish flu had. Why? Because every aspect of emergency response, from cops to doctors, depended on electricity. Shutting off the lights would give us no chance to get in front of the bioweapon. So, yeah, I almost told Top to take the shot.

Almost.

But we needed the drives and we needed to ask questions and you can't ask those questions of a corpse. I wanted a name and I was damn sure Mr. Priest—Esteban Santoro—was going to want to tell me. I planned to ask very nicely. In a manner of speaking, “nicely” being a relative term. I am not a fan of torture, but these bastards wanted to kills thousands—perhaps millions—of children. There's nothing I wouldn't do to prevent that from happening. Nothing.

I kept expecting the Killer in my soul to roar out his blood challenge. He was the ultimate protector of the innocent because to his primitive sense of survival, the young were a guarantee that the tribe would survive. You had to protect them, and I remember the things that part of me has done when the bad guys have targeted kids. Those memories will haunt me until I die. Letting those children die, though, would kill me.

We'd arrived at the dock in a boat belonging to a close friend of Mr. Church. It was a very expensive XSR high-velocity speedboat. If this came to a sea chase we had a clear edge.

“Call the play, Boss,” murmured Bunny. He had an AA-12 drum-fed shotgun. He calls it Honey Boom-Boom. Bunny is working out some issues. “Time to rock 'n' roll.”

“We need him with a pulse,” I said. “No one's clocking out until we get those drives, feel me?”

“Hooah,” said Bunny, the disappointment clear in his voice.

“Hooah,” said Top, his tone more workmanlike and philosophical.

I tapped my earbud to get the command channel. “Cowboy to Deacon.”

“Go for Deacon,” said the voice in my ear. Mr. Church was in one of our mobile tactical operations vehicles, with all communications routed to him rather than through the Pier. “Give me a sitrep.”

“Target is acquired,” I said. “Santoro plus six. We are about to make our run.”

“Do you have eyes on the package?”

I began to say no, but then another man came walking along the dock with something tucked under his arm. He stopped in front of Santoro, his back to me so that what they were doing was briefly obscured. I heard a faint murmur of conversation and when he stepped aside I saw that Santoro now gripped the handle of a small waterproof black plastic case. They must have transferred the drives to something safer for boat travel.

“That is affirmative,” I said. “I have eyes on the package. Repeat, I have eyes on the package.”

“Copy that. Bring it home.”

“Roger that,” I said.

I moved away from the window and knelt on the far side of the door. Top took up station beside the door and Bunny squatted like a linebacker.

We counted down and moved.

Top opened the door quickly and we went out. I went left, Top went right, and Bunny moved straight toward the men. The gas dock was wood and concrete, with three benches, a trash can, and a long row of fuel pumps stationed at the ends of a line of finger piers. There were several boats in slips, their bumpers nudging the dock in the mild swell. A dockhand was swiping the credit card of one of Santoro's men. Nice that they were paying for the gas. Made it almost seem like they were ordinary citizens.

Almost.

We moved instantly into concealed shooting positions before the bad guys could turn and draw their weapons. We yelled real damn loud.
“Federal agents! Hands on your heads. Get down on your knees with your hands on your heads or we will kill you.”

Santoro turned toward us. Slow. Without hurry, without much surprise. His expression was on the amused side of bland, his body language calm. He gave us the kind of look you'd expect to see on someone like … well, on someone like me. But only when I was being fronted by a pack of cranky Cub Scouts. He looked at us as if we were expected though unwanted.

“Let me see if I can guess,” he said, his voice a soft and cultured baritone. “Not FBI. Not NSA, either. So who are you? Definitely not SEALs.” He nodded toward Top. “You're too old.” At Bunny. “You're too big.”

“And I'm too charming,” I said. “Put your hands on your head, asshole, and get down on your fucking knees.”

His eyes clicked toward me. “Ah,” he murmured, “now I know who you are. Captain Joseph Edwin Ledger. The Deacon's pet scorpion. I believe you knew my brother. What a pleasure.” He glanced again at my guys. “Top Sims and Bunny Rabbit. Your right and left hands. The two cornerstones of Echo Team. I've heard some interesting reports about you fellows.”

“You read anywhere that we're known for taking bullshit? No? Then get down on your knees and keep your hands where I can see them or I will kill you.”

The rest of Santoro's team was still frozen where they were, and right then they looked more like confused bystanders than a crack team of henchmen. There was a glazed look in their eyes. Not exactly blank, but
off
somehow. Like nobody was home. That sent a chill up my spine.

Santoro looked at me. His eyes were sharper than the others', more intense. On the docks and in some of the boats people were watching. Scared, surprised, and fascinated despite the presence of big men with guns.

“You can't kill us all,” he said.

I shifted my aim downward, confident that I could put one through his thigh without endangering the onlookers. We had them dead to rights. We were holding every card.

It was perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

Which is when it all went wrong.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

OCEANSIDE HARBOR FUEL DOCK

OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 9, 7:24
P.M.

Bunny yelled,
“On your six!”

I spun and had a millionth of a second's peripheral vision warning as someone swung a boat paddle at me. It was light aluminum with a plastic blade, but it hit like a Louisville Slugger. My gun went flying, hit the deck, bounced once and hit our borrowed XSR, and then dropped like a stone into the salt water. I spun and blocked a second swing, caught the oar with my other hand, snapped out a low kick, and as my heel smashed his knee to junk I saw with mingled shock and horror that my attacker was the sixty-year-old dockmaster. He screamed and collapsed against one of the pumps, clawing at the ruin of his knee.

I whirled toward Santoro, who had spun around and was running flat out for one of the boats moored to the dock. A slate-gray Picuda that was two slips down from the big XSR that we'd come in. Santoro tossed the briefcase into the boat and jumped after it.

His crew was still standing where they'd been, hands half-raised, eyes blank as zombies'.

“He's mine,” I snapped, and pelted after him. But I got maybe six steps before another figure rushed out of nowhere and attacked me.

Wasn't one of Santoro's goons. Wasn't the crippled dockmaster, either.

It was a teenage girl. Fifteen, maybe sixteen, dressed in flowered shorts and a bikini top, sunglasses, and a cute straw sun hat. She had no gun, no oar, no weapon except a cell phone, but she did her level best to brain me with it.

Yeah. A kid. With a cell phone. The day had already tilted sideways and now it was sliding down the rabbit hole.

I slap-parried the swing, which was surprisingly fast and skillful for a kid, and I backhanded her across the mouth. Blood flew from her mashed lips and the force spun her halfway around, but instead of falling down dazed and weeping, she used the momentum of her turn to fire off one hell of a kick. A short, chopping side snap with the blade of her right foot. I bent my knee and took it on the big muscles of my thigh, then when she tried to rechamber for a second attack I swept her standing leg. She went down hard enough for her head to bonk on the hard surface of the dock. That turned her lights off for a moment and she fell over on her back.

I spun toward my quarry.

That's when Santoro's crew joined the fight. One moment they were statues with Top and Bunny holding guns on them, the next they swarmed at me. It was crazy. They didn't go for my men. Just me. Three of them tackled me with all the force and aggression of defensive tackles at their own five-yard line. As we crashed down I heard the roar of Bunny's shotgun. One of the men still standing was plucked off the ground as buckshot tore him to red rags. Almost in the same instant Top opened up with the HK416 and I heard the distinctive sound of hot rounds punching through living flesh.

No screams, though. Not a one. It was the same with the guys who'd piled on me. There were grunts of effort, but not a yell, not a curse. Nothing. All three of them were swinging wild, full-power punches, just like the surfer boys had done. Like Rudy had done. I wrapped my arms around my head and let them break their knuckles on my elbows and forearms. They went totally batshit, hitting each other as much as they were hitting me. Their eyes may have been dead but they fought with a frenzy that bordered on mania.