Kill Switch (56 page)

In the distance I could hear the wail of police sirens. Behind me was the growl of the XSR.

“Get in the boat!” I roared as I unwound the bowline.

Top lingered for a moment, still caught inside the bubble of horrified realization. Then he took a wobbly step forward. Bunny was a statue, gaping at the red inhumanity on the ground before him, the shotgun hanging limply from his right hand.

“What?” he asked. “What?”

“Get in the fucking boat!”

Like a couple of men woken from a drugged sleep, they came limping over.

Top jumped in and landed clumsily, hardly trying to break his fall. Bunny fell over the gunnels as I moved away from the dock. When the boat was clear I turned the wheel and hit the gas. The Picuda threw a bow wave high enough to drown the
NO WAKE
sign and rock every other boat at the dock.

I tried not to hear the sounds of misery and outrage that chased us from the dock. When we were clear of the dock I pointed her nose toward the water that still thrashed from the XSR's passage, opened up the throttle, and went for it.

Bunny and Top clawed their way to their feet and pulled themselves along the rails, fighting the drag as I cranked the engine higher and higher. Top managed to get into the copilot chair. His face was streaked with blood. I had to shout to be heard over the engine roar.

“What the fuck happened?” he demanded.

But we both knew. Someone had been inside our minds. Someone who had access to the Dreamwalking technology, the Stargate technology. It was the worst kind of rape because the violation forced us to become complicit in murder and mayhem.

Top put his face in his hands and his shoulders trembled as heavy sobs broke like waves on the shores of his soul.

Out on the salt the XSR was pulling ahead.

“Top, we need air support,” I barked.

No answer.

“Top!”

Nothing.

I punched him hard on the shoulder. Once, twice. Finally he snarled and fended off the third punch. He glowered at me with eyes that were rimmed with red and filled with the awful awareness of things he could not undo. I think that if he still had his gun he'd have blown his own head off.

“First Sergeant Sims,” I bellowed, “get your head out of your ass and get me some air support. Do it right fucking now. That is an order.”

That got through to him. Don't ask me how. Years of training, maybe. Or perhaps the mind intrusion was over, the invaders abandoning the minds they had wrecked, their job done. I don't know, but Top bent instantly forward into the cockpit so the wind didn't snatch his words away and tapped his earbud. I heard him yelling to Lieutenant Flaherty at San Nicolas. Then he straightened and turned to me. “They're putting a couple Jayhawks up. Two more on deck if we need them. And I scrambled a team for cleanup back at the gas dock.”

His voice broke on that last part, but I didn't say anything. Instead I punched his shoulder again. “Are you here?” I demanded. “Are you with me?”

He ran a palsied hand over his face, then nodded. “Yeah,” he gasped, then took a breath and said it with more conviction. “Yes, sir. I'm with you.”

I had the throttle wide open and the engine howled at us. Bunny was still sitting like a zombie except for the tears that ran down his flushed cheeks. Top turned and without preamble belted the big young man across the face. Bunny slammed into the wall, rebounded, and Top stopped him with a flat palm on the chest.

“You good, Farm Boy?”

Bunny started to say something, stopped, squeezed his eyes shut, took a breath, then looked at Top. The glaze was gone. Only pain and confusion remained. And anger. So much anger.

He turned to me as if seeing me for the first time, then he glanced at the XSR.

“Let me drive,” said Bunny thickly.

“I got it,” I said.

“He's getting away.”

“I can drive,” I snarled.

“You drive like an old lady, Boss, and you're losing him. I know boats, you don't.”

He was right about both. Bunny grew up in Orange County and he knew boats. I'm from Baltimore and I've seen boats. Not the same thing. It was a comedy act getting me out of the seat and getting his bulk into it. We managed with a lot of cursing, yelling, and a few threats. Finally I was kneeling in the gap between the two seats, holding tight to the seat backs. Top was mumbling prayers to the Virgin Mary. Or maybe Buddha or Odin. Whoever the hell was on call. I was beyond the capacity for rational thought. I held on and hoped we wouldn't hit anything harder than a lazy pelican, because at that speed we were going to die.

“He's getting away,” yelled Bunny for like the fifth or sixth time. If he wasn't driving I'd have kicked him overboard.

Top drew Bunny's sidearm but the range was too great. Even if we had our team sniper, Sam Imura, here, I doubt he could have tagged Santoro. Distance and moving boats made for piss-poor accuracy. Maybe Top did the same math or maybe he could not bear to discharge the weapon, but he lowered it and punched the dashboard with his other hand. Very damn hard.

The sky above us was clear. Which pissed me off. There were supposed to be two angry birds from San Nicolas up there. Helicopters with machine guns and rocket pods would have been mighty damned useful right about then.

I tapped my earbud. “Bug, where's my frigging air support?”

What I got in return was an earful of static.

“Yo, Cap'n,” yelled Top, nodding to the horizon, “we got company.”

Far ahead, beyond the fleeing boat, a dark bulk was skimming along only a dozen feet above the wave tops. For one moment my heart lifted as I thought that we'd managed to close the trap on Santoro after all.

A
chopper
.

Then the smug
I-got-you
smile that was forming on my face froze in place and began to crack. The sun was still high and shone down on the bird with clear light. The paint job was wrong. It was black, with no visible markings.

Beside me, Top said, “Shit.”

The chopper turned and a figure leaned out of the side door with something big and nasty. There was a bloom of smoke as he fired.

The rocket-propelled grenade whipped over the waves, arching over the XSR without pausing, and then sweeping down toward us.

Bunny tried to turn, tried to evade, but it was the wrong call.

“Move!”
I screamed, but Top was already in motion. He hooked an arm around Bunny and went over the side. At that speed it was like falling out of a moving car. I had a brief glimpse of them bouncing and flopping across the waves like rag dolls, then I was diving into the drink on the opposite side.

Yeah, just like falling out of a car. You can't really appreciate how hard water is until you slam into it at close to fifty miles an hour. I hit the way you're supposed to, which didn't seem to matter a damn bit. The water hit me with the fists of giants.

And one millisecond later the RPG blew the Picuda into a million pieces. The fireball shot upward and the blast shock wave whipped outward through the water. Catching us.

Punishing us.

Pushing us down into the big blue.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

NAVAL OUTLYING FIELD SAN NICOLAS ISLAND

VENTURA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 9, 7:34
P.M.

“Let's go, let's go, let's go,” yelled Lieutenant Mick Flaherty as he and his crew bent to run through the rotor wash from the big Sikorsky MH-60T Jayhawk. The pilot was already at the stick and the big General Electric gas turbines were filling the air with an urgent whine.

The normal crew of four ran with two extra men, both of them sharpshooters from the SEALs. A second crew ran toward the other helicopter. Both birds were painted with the red and white of the Coast Guard, though neither was actually attached to that service. This joint special operations group worked as extensions of the DMS Special Projects Office. They extended the reach and added extra muscle to the field teams based at the Pier and at Department Zero, the big office in Los Angeles. Most of the men and women in this unit were candidates for promotion to the DMS. Each of them had flown combat missions many times.

And all of them understood the severity of the current assignment.

Capture or kill Esteban Santoro.

Failure was not acceptable.

Flaherty slapped his people on the back as they climbed inside, then he went forward and slid into the copilot's chair, put on his headset, and twirled his finger.

“Don't take the scenic route, Duffy,” he yelled.

The pilot powered up and the heavy machine lifted free of the tarmac, then it swept around in a high-climbing turn, heading toward Oceanside.

There was a sudden piercing burst of static on the radio that stabbed Duffy and Flaherty and both men flinched back from it.

“What the hell was that?” demanded the lieutenant.

But the pilot didn't answer. Instead he began yelling into the microphone.

“Power's out,” he roared. “I've got a dead stick, repeat, I've got a dead stick.”

The engine stopped.

Just like that.

The blades continued to whip around, pushed by their own momentum, but then they stopped, too, as the helicopter suddenly tilted down toward the earth.

Like a dead bird, it fell.

Duffy screamed as he fought to restart the engines.

Flaherty screamed as he tried to help.

Inside the chopper, all of the men screamed.

All the way down to the unforgiving ground.

None of them saw the other helos cant sideways and fall, too.

Like dead things.

Both of them.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

PACIFIC OCEAN

SOMEWHERE WEST OF SAN NICOLAS ISLAND

SEPTEMBER 9, 7:48
P.M.

I wasn't dressed for swimming. Black battle-dress uniform, military-design cross-trainer shoes. All of it soaked and heavy and conspiring to try and drown me.

My head was ringing from the explosion and every inch of my body was bruised from the punishing collision with the water. Drowning would probably feel better. And there are times that it's tempting to let it go, to give in to the darkness. That's a battle I've been fighting for a lot of years, and more than once I've had to struggle to come up with good reasons to stay on this side of the big black. Far as I can tell there's no pain once you take that step. A little fear, sure, but it would probably go away once the lungs stopped trying to breathe and the heart stopped pushing all that blood around. Then it would be the long, slow, easy slide down into the void.

Yeah, so damned easy. And I would pretend that I didn't have those thoughts. Even while I was kicking off my shoes and fighting my way out of pants and shirt.

Even then a little voice in the back of my head kept telling me that I should let go, that it was time to stand down. To rest. It used some dirty tricks, too, telling me that I would see old friends who were long gone, and that I'd see them happy and whole. And healed. Helen and Grace. My mom. Khalid and John Smith and all of the brave men and women who'd been insane enough to follow me into battle and who fell along the way. Others, too. As I sank lower and lower into the brine I could hear them whisper to me, calling me, telling me that it was better, that it was safe.

I closed my eyes.

I almost let it happen.

Almost.

But there was another voice in my head, and it found me down in the salty, deadly darkness. A soft voice that spoke only a single word.

“No,” she said.

No.

She was up there. Close. Probably in our condo in Del Mar, or in her office in La Jolla. Close. And maybe in that moment, maybe as I fell, she knew it. I could even imagine her stopping as if touched, closing her eyes as she listened to the things only she seemed able to hear. Maybe listening for my heartbeat. I don't know. She's my lover but even I don't know everything that goes on inside her. No one does, I'm sure of that. Maybe no one could. She's not like anyone else I ever met or ever expect to meet.

Junie Flynn.

“No.”

It was as clear as if she whispered it in my ear.

Funny thing is, I didn't hear it as “no.” Not really. I heard it as “yes.”

As in, yes, stay with me. Yes, be alive.

Yes, there is a reason to keep going.

Which is really all you ever need.

One reason.

One good reason.

I kicked off my trousers, let them fall, taking my gun belt into the deep, and kicked upward. Free of the weight I shot toward the surface. It seemed like a long, long way.

It was.

When you suddenly realize you want to live, that's when the panic tries to set in. The world with all of its perils wants to make a fool out of you, it wants to cheat you of that glory of survival. It wants to steal everything from you at the moment when you understand the value of what you have, and what you have to live for.

So I kicked.

Kicked harder.

Fought my way up.

And up.

Until I broke the surface like a dying seal. Gasping, vomiting seawater, blind from the black and red fireworks that were detonating behind my eyes. Choking and coughing and trying to be alive.

Something splashed in the water and I turned, pawing the water from my eyes, expecting to see Top or Bunny come porpoising up.

It wasn't.

A double shot of spouting water vapor burst upward past me like a V-shaped geyser as something monstrous rose from the churning waves. It was simply fucking vast. Forty-five feet long if it was an inch. Gray and white mottling on slate-gray skin. Two blowholes. Barnacles crusted onto its sides.

A gray whale.

So close that as it rose to the surface the displaced water shoved me backward. I was actually close enough to see a line of stiff hairs on its upper jaws.