Kill Switch (58 page)

It was the voice of Dr. Erskine. When I turned to look, though, he was not there.

Another voice spoke. One I almost recognized, but it was strangely distorted, almost mumbled. “You can't expect to look at the face of God and not go crazy. It stands to reason.”

There was no one there.

But I was wrong. When I went over to one of the capsules I could see that there was a person inside. He wore pajamas. How strange was that?

I realized that he wasn't dead. The man was sleeping. He wore a metal cap with all sorts of wires attached to it, and he was sleeping an electric sleep. His face twitched and his mouth moved as if he was speaking, but there was no sound. There was another person sleeping in the next capsule, and the next. More than twenty people. All of them sleeping. And when I got to the last one I saw that the person asleep in the tube …

 … was me.

Frightened, I ran from the room.

Across the hall there was another door and I ran through it.

I stopped because I smelled something bad. Like burned meat. I was in another laboratory, but this was much bigger. And stranger. There, in the gloom at the far end of the laboratory, I saw it. A God Machine. Huge, gleaming. Bigger than the one I'd seen down at Gateway. It hummed and pulsed with power.

Standing before it was a twisted shape that almost—but not quite—looked human. He wore white pajamas that were smeared with food and snot and piss and blood. His skin was wrinkled and puckered and blistered. He heard me and turned to look at me with emerald green eyes.

“You're not wearing your hat,” said the man.

When he smiled his teeth were white in his burned red face.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“They killed me,” he said, “but I didn't die. Now I'm going home.”

And then something came whipping out of the mouth of the God Machine. Huge, twisting things with suckers and claws and spikes and …

 … and …

I woke in the cold water.

Alone and dying. Lost and forgotten.

Terrified beyond belief.

And … angry.

I was so goddamn angry.

Because I knew.

Son of a bitch.

I
knew.

It's a bitch when clarity comes so sharply but so late. In dreams we are so receptive to the truth, even when it comes to us wearing a disguise.

I knew who we were fighting.

I
knew
.

ISIL, Santoro, the Closers … they were like arms, like tentacles attached to the same monster. As I drifted out there I thought I knew the name of the monster. And I was going to die out here and never be able to tell anyone. I was going to float into oblivion, a useless piece of flotsam drifting out on the tide. And because I was too slow to understand, everyone I loved and everything I cared about was going to die when darkness fell. All of those children would scream in the darkness and I wouldn't be able to do a thing to save them.

 

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

PACIFIC OCEAN

SOMEWHERE WEST OF SAN NICOLAS ISLAND

TIME UNKNOWN

There was a sound in the darkness.

Not a weird cry or my own voice talking nonsense words. This was different. A mechanical sound. Or was that my mind breaking further open? When you first hear something like that it's so easy to doubt your senses, to believe that it's a fiction created by desperation, wishful thinking, and a failing psyche.

It was faint and far away, both muffled and distorted by the sound of the ocean. I made myself go still in order to hear it, to try and determine where it was. Not east, I thought. Probably not a Coast Guard rescue craft unless they'd gone out looking and were on the way back to the barn after giving me up as shark food. Wasn't west of me, either. I found Venus and used that to orient myself. The motor sound was off to the south. How far off, though?

In this gloom there was no way in hell anyone could see me. Could they hear me? The engine, though a ways off, had a throaty rumble. Something powerful but small. A boat engine, not a ship engine.

Going slow.

Slow.

In these waters at this time of night a slow engine could be a night fisherman out for yellowtail or bluefin tuna. Or maybe there were squidders. I rode a couple of swells upward and looked in that direction.

There.

A light.

Two lights. A bow light and the harsh white glow of a searchlight.

Someone was out looking for us. Had they found Top and Bunny? Please, please, let that be the case. Those men had followed me through hell and today they'd followed me into an ambush. If there was blame, then it was totally on me. They deserved better.

The boat was a couple of hundred yards off and it might as well have been on the far side of the moon. To them I'd be a dark dot on a dark ocean.

On the next swell I yelled as loud as I could.

“
Ahoy the boat!”

Did it again on the next, and the next.

Kept doing it until my voice was sandpapered away.

Kept at it, though. Kept yelling. Hailing them. Begging for help.

When the engine noise changed from a rumble to a roar, I had that terrible feeling all survivors get when they see rescue within reach and then it begins to pass them by. I screamed and waved my arms, and the motion pushed me right down into the drink where I took a mouthful of water.

Then light filled the world. Bright as the sun, pure and perfect. And a voice bellowed louder than the motor.

“
There!”

And another voice roared back, “Goddamn it, I can
see
him, Farm Boy. Why don't you drive the boat like you ain't drunk?”

I knew those voices.

Impossibly, I knew them.

When they got closer I knew the boat, too.

It was an XSR military interceptor. The boat Church had lent me, which had been stolen out from under me by Esteban Santoro. As the engine slowed to a muffled idle and the boat swung sideways toward me, I saw the faces of Top Sims and Bunny. Battered, worried, panicked, and relieved. I saw hands reaching toward me.

And they were real. No illusion, no wishful thinking. They were actually here. Somehow, impossibly, after all these hours and in all of this darkness, they'd found me.

I wanted to scream out their names.

A sudden swell picked me up and flung me toward Top and Bunny.

 

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

PACIFIC HOLIDAY MARINA AND YACHT CLUB

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 10, 2:13
A.M.

Top and Bunny told me the story of how they found the XSR drifting in the water, the key still in it. They called in for help and there were at least a dozen other boats out looking for me. How the hell I managed to drift right through them is a logistical puzzle none of us will ever figure out. Top used the radio to call Church. He told him everything. And during that call he learned about what had happened to our air support.

Church directed them to a private marina in San Diego owned by one of his friends. DMS support team members helped us ashore and took each of us into a different cabana, where medical teams treated our wounds but asked no questions other than what they needed to know. My soaked and salt-caked clothes went into a trash can and an EMT brought me a Walmart bag with fresh clothes. New stuff with the tags still on them. Socks and shoes, too. I just finished dressing when there was a light tap on the door and Mr. Church came in. It was a small room with a shower stall, a dressing table, and two chairs.

He came and stood in front of me, studying my face, looking deeply into my eyes. I knew what he was doing.

“I'm me,” I said.

Church made a small noncommittal sound and sat down on one of the chairs, waving me to the other.

“Tell me,” he said.

“We don't have time.”

“Brick is on his way here with a tactical support vehicle. Until he gets here we cannot and should not act. And I need to know what happened yesterday. Tell me what happened, and I do mean everything, Captain Ledger.”

So I told him. Every single detail of what happened on the gas dock and on the salt. He listened without comment. When I was done he studied me for a long, uncomfortable time. Seconds cracked off and fell around us and the cabana was dead silent.

“And it is your assertion,” Church said at last, “that you were not in full control of your actions?”

I shook my head very slowly and decisively. “I've been in enough fights to know the difference between losing my shit in the heat of the moment and not being in my own right mind. I know what happened.”

Church nodded. “And what should we infer from that?”

“I had a lot of time to think out there,” I told him. “There are a lot of pieces to this, so that so far it's felt like we were cruising the edges of things. Like we were catching glimpses of several different cases. ISIL and the Kill Switch. Gateway and all that interdimensional shit. The breakdown of the American intelligence community. The theft of SX-56. The Mullah of the Black Tent. The Unlearnable Truths. The Closers. The plague of … whatever you call it. Insanity, treason … the DMS falling apart.”

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“It's not a dozen cases,” I said.

“No,” he agreed.

“This is all the same goddamn thing.”

“Yes.”

“And I'm pretty sure I know who's behind it. I maybe even know why. It's just that it's crazy … and … I'm not sure I can trust my own judgment on this.”

“Even after all of that time floating and thinking?”

“Don't joke,” I said.

“Believe me, Captain, I am not joking. There are eleven dead in Oceanside, and another sixteen injured. Three of the injured are critical, including a six-year-old boy.”

I closed my eyes because that hurt worse than any punch, knife cut, or bullet wound I've ever had. Much worse. I wanted to turn away from him, from those numbers, from the horror. But no matter where you turn, the truth is going to be right there in clear line of sight.

“There are videos of it on the Net,” said Church. “You three were wearing balaclavas, which means your faces are not out there. Police are looking for three men matching your approximate physical descriptions. Luckily for us there are conflicting statements and the cell phone videos are shaky and unreliable. If need be, Bug can create a tapeworm to find all copies of these videos and erase or modify them. He's prepping that in case we need it.”

“Jesus.”

“I interviewed First Sergeant Sims and Master Sergeant Rabbit. They are both in shock and say that they don't remember much about what happened. Dr. Hu can test them for drugs and neurological damage, but I don't expect he'll find much. Will he, Captain?”

“No.”

Church took his glasses off, removed a handkerchief from his pocket, and polished the lenses very slowly. He has very dark eyes. Brown with flecks of gold and green. They are not kind eyes. They are not forgiving eyes. And they are not young eyes. You can look at him and know—as I knew the first time I ever got a good look at him—that he is a man who has seen too much and who knows exactly how the world is constructed. He's studied the materials used in construction and he knows when and where it will break.

“The person you've encountered in your dreams,” he said as he put his glasses back on. “You never saw his face.”

“No.”

“Do you think this is a real person?”

“Yes.”

“Key question. Is this the person who you believe has been influencing your actions?”

“Yes.”

“Is it your belief that he, and perhaps others like him, have used this technique to influence the actions of Sergeants Sims and Rabbit?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“Is it your belief that this technique is responsible for the failure of other DMS field operatives?”

“Absolutely fucking yes.”

“Speculate for me, Captain,” said Church. “If such a thing as dreamwalking is possible, might it also be used to negatively influence field commanders and soldiers deployed in the Middle East?”

A day ago that question might have startled me. This wasn't yesterday. I said, “Yes. And I think this explains why our entire intelligence network is for shit. This dreamwalking thing may have been developed as a weapon to let us spy on our enemies, but I think it's pretty clear that it's being used against us. It's destroyed the operational effectiveness of the DMS and it's opened us up to ISIL and whoever else might be on the inside track of this. Can I prove it? No. Not yet. But do I believe it? Yes, I do.”

“So,” said Church, “do I.”

“And I'll go you one better,” I said. “That guy on the ISIL video, the Mullah of the Black Tent…? Did you see his eyes?”

“I did.”

“That was the same expression—the same
lack
of expression—I saw in the eyes of Top and Bunny. The same blankness I saw in Rudy and those surfer boys, and on some of the people on the gas dock in Oceanside. I caught a glimpse of it in Santoro's eyes, too.”

“You think this is a signature?”

“Or a side effect of the dreamwalking,” I said. “Yeah, I do. I think it shows that the conscious mind of the hijacked body has been—not sure what the word is … displaced, shoved back. Something like that. I think our Big Bad stepped into Santoro's body during the fight. I told you that his accent changed. That would make sense if the person doing the dreamwalking didn't have the same accent.”

Church crossed his legs and then smoothed his tie. He nodded slowly. “Agreed. The Mullah was a cleric in a small village and his rise to become a leader and an effective military strategist happened too quickly to be reasonable. I would not be surprised to learn that the man himself is surprised by what he is doing. It's likely he thinks he is having religious visions. The clarity and veracity of these visions, coupled with the undeniable military gains, has cemented him as a prophet of jihad. This is a very dangerous thing, because most of Islam is not unified in their hatred of the United States. Until now it has only been a vocal and violent minority. The emergence of someone who demonstrates knowledge and abilities that are seemingly impossible outside of religious visions could—and very likely will—change that. Even our staunch Muslim allies might question their alliance with us, and more so with neutral Muslims. Our enemy has found a unique way to shove the world toward an actual war with Islam.”