The Book of Truths (22 page)

“Cut the feed!” McBride screamed. “Cut the feed!”

Except it had never been live.

Hannah’s reach from her office deep underneath the National Security Agency was long and efficient.

“We’re in lockdown! Security code bravo-tango-six-eight-two.” The tall woman stalking down the Cross Hall emanated total command.

The Secret Service hesitated at the lack of recognition.

“Move, people!” Moms snapped, holding up one of her real fake badges. “Listen to the security code for the day! Bravo-tango-six-eight-two. Seal off the residence from both wings and the outside. NOW! We are in one hundred percent lockdown and isolation.

“We have a contagious pathogen loose in the White House. No one gets out!”

Brennan had always thoughts tears would eventually run dry, but he had not stopped sobbing during the trip.

The Secret Service agents had whisked him to a helicopter with no markings at the helipad behind the White House. The chopper was waiting for them, blades turning. The smirker had shoved Brennan, still cuffed, out the door, causing him to fall facedown on the concrete. Two contractors, black balaclavas covering their faces, picked him up and tossed him in the back of the chopper. It lifted off immediately.

That was his first hint he was in more serious trouble than Debbie knowing about the blowjob he’d gotten from Mary McCarthy in the chem lab. He started to beg and they gagged him and put a black hood over his head. They were speaking to each other in some language he could only guess at but remembered from the interrogation room. They were on the radio and seemed concerned about something they were hearing.

After a flight of indeterminate length, but not overly long, during which Brennan’s mind kept replaying over and over all the many mistakes he’d made and people he’d harmed, the helicopter landed. He was dragged off and hustled along through doors he could hear clanging into an elevator that dropped fast
and far, then out of the elevator and through another door that slammed shut with a very solid thud.

One of those thuds that seemed to intimate the door would never, ever open again.

Between the thud and the screams and arguments echoing ahead in what was apparently a large chamber, Brennan knew he was in very, very deep shit.

Then there was also the burst of automatic weapon fire.

From helicopter to military jet with afterburners to Area 51, Nada had made it from LA to Nevada faster than a degenerate gambler snorting coke off a whore’s ass on a private Learjet. At least that’s the way Roland dissected it.

That it made little sense meant it was pure Roland. Everyone was very impressed that Roland knew the word
degenerate
, although Kirk privately bet Mac that Roland had no idea what it meant. Mac reminded him that Scout had used the term during the “Fun in North Carolina,” and Kirk argued that still didn’t mean Roland knew what it meant.

The rest of the team had come in on the Snake just before Nada landed on the Area 51 airstrip. The Snake was being refueled and they were mission prepping around the craft, waiting for Ms. Jones’s voice to brief them on the mission, which was unusual.

Unusual in that they were at Area 51; unusual in that Moms wasn’t with them; unusual in that they were waiting after an alert. Nightstalker Protocol, called Standing Operating Procedures elsewhere, was Nada’s Bible. Every team member carried an acetate
copy on their person. He had twenty-three items in the pre-op load Protocol. He’d erase the checks when they got back in order to be ready for the next mission.

Nada was busy making sure the team box in the cargo bay of the Snake was fully stocked, directing each man to check their part: Roland weapons; Mac demo and engineering; Kirk commo; and Doc medical.

Mac carried the heavy plastic demolitions case into the cargo bay and secured it next to the larger team box that stayed in the Snake at all times. That box held a wide variety of gear, from climbing ropes to arctic clothing to chemical/biological protection suits, parachutes, dry suits, spare radio batteries, two million in gold coins for barter, etc., etc.; someone with an extremely paranoid and inventive mind had packed it. And then repacked it. The contents changed slightly after every mission as they went through a detailed After Action Report.

Doc was checking his med kit, making sure everything was up to date.

Roland easily carried a machine gun in one hand and a Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle in the other while his ruck bulged with ammunition for both, along with other deadly goodies. Roland slapped the machine gun into a mount that could extend when the back ramp went down. He slid the Barrett upright into a sheath along the forward bulkhead, then checked his MP5 submachine gun while Kirk dialed up the proper frequency, linked his PRT with the radio, and did a satcom check, locating the nearest Milstar satellite to bounce a signal off of. Then he found two backups, just in case. He updated the current set of codes.

All they knew was that there was no time to go back to the Ranch. Wherever they were going next, they were launching from Area 51.

“Better not be another nuke,” Mac groused as he flipped shut his pocket-size team Protocol, satisfied his gear was ready. “So much for peace on earth.”

“I bet it’s not a Rift,” Kirk said as he looked over the latest frequencies and security codes, which changed daily. He looked up at Doc. “Right? You’re on top of everything that goes on in the Can,” he added, referring to the device buried deep under their feet that gave warnings of a Rift beginning to form anywhere on the planet. Kirk had his suspicions about Doc’s motivations regarding research into the Rifts, unsure what Doc’s end game was.

“There has been no muonic activity,” Doc said succinctly, zipping shut his med kit. “I called Ivar and he said everything is quiet.”

“So it’s not a Rift,” Kirk said, over-making his point, but that was lost because they were all a half step off, being pulled in from the points of the compass where they’d just been and the unusual circumstances in which they’d been involved.

Eagle came walking up the ramp, satisfied the Snake was topped off. He gave a thumbs-up to Nada, who used his black felt-tip pen to make a check mark in his acetate Protocol. Those check marks accumulated until every box was checked and they were ready to lift and fly.

“Where’s Moms?” Roland asked, frowning over the new M249 light machine gun resting on his lap. He missed his old one already. This one lacked the worn sheen of heavy action and hadn’t been test fired, coming right out of the crate. That made Roland very uncomfortable, as if he were going on a first date with a virgin. He was hoping for some action but uncertain how good it was going to be and what the results might be.

“I don’t know,” Nada said. “All I got was the recall and nothing further.” He looked at the other five. “Any of you hear
anything
?”

Five shakes of the head.

This too was unusual.

“Maybe she’s at the Ranch getting briefed?” Kirk suggested.

“Then why are we waiting
here
to get briefed?” Nada asked. “We should be picking her up. Meeting at the Barn at least.” He looked at Eagle. “You guys didn’t come from the Barn, did you?”

Four sets of boots shuffled uneasily on the metal grating.

“What were you up to?” Nada asked.

The speaker above them crackled and they all looked up, even though there was nothing to see. Ms. Jones’s voice crackled out. “They were up to no good. An indiscretion that will be dealt with later. Ms. Moms is in the White House.” She quickly briefed them on the little that was known:

Cherry Tree. The president infected.

“Moms has containment at the White House,” Ms. Jones concluded. “She’s also done a good job on concealment.”

“But what about overall?” Doc asked. “How is this thing spreading? It had to come from somewhere.”

“It came from the DORKA facility in Virginia,” Ms. Jones said. “How exactly it made the leap to the White House isn’t clear yet.”

“I can research it en route,” Doc said. “If—”

Ms. Jones cut him off. “By the time you get to DC, it will be too late one way or the other. Moms has the White House under control and is working with the Secret Service to ensure containment and keep up concealment. The DORKA facility outside DC
that originated the pathogen has been externally locked down, so that’s contained.”

“Fucking DORKA,” Nada muttered. There were several entries in the Nightstalkers’ Dumb Shit Scientist Protocol dealing with incidents initiated by a DORKA screwup somewhere in the world.

Ms. Jones either didn’t hear or most likely pretended not to hear as she continued. “We’re uncertain how it made the leap to the White House but we’re checking on it. Another agency is also working on that.”

Everyone in the cargo bay glanced at each other. They had a standing wager going whether there were other Nightstalker teams out there. If so, how come it always seemed this team got the crap missions? And then why were they being called in from leave? Then again, they knew there were other secret units who had different missions.

“If you don’t need us for containment,” Nada said, “what do you need us for?”

The Nightstalkers worked under the doctrine of the Three Cs:

Containment. The first priority was to always make sure whatever the problem was, it didn’t spread.

Concealment. Keep the civilians, and in some cases the authorities, from knowing what was going on to avoid panic. Pretty much everything the Nightstalkers dealt with would cause panic if people found out about it. Nada always pointed out to each new team member the effect “War of the Worlds” had on citizens. And that was just a made-up show on radio. Nightstalkers dealt with the real shit.

And finally, Control. Which had three levels: damp, dry, and wet. Dry was something that could be contained and concealed without the need to destroy it. Damp was something to be contained,
and maybe even studied, but the decision was always made to err on the side of caution, so damp usually went wet, which meant that whatever the problem was, it was to be utterly and completely destroyed.

Wet didn’t seem to be an option in this case since destroying the pathogen meant wiping out everyone infected, from the president on down.

Ms. Jones continued. “The missile in Nebraska on your last mission. The ‘Clusterfuck in Nebraska’ as Mister Nada has so elegantly described it…” When Ms. Jones cursed, it didn’t sound like a profanity. Perhaps because English was her second language, perhaps because she didn’t put the proper emotional inflection in it. “It wasn’t a simple oversight that left it there. We believe it was deliberately left in that silo.”

Nada frowned at the
we
. Ms. Jones never talked in the plural, unless including the team.

“It also had two predetermined targets programmed in its guidance system back in 1962. Actually, it had a primary target before 1962, and then a secondary target was added that year.”

They all waited, then finally Ms. Jones continued.

“One, of course, was Cuba. That was the one added. The primary target was where you are standing.”

Roland looked down, a frown on his forehead. “The Snake?”

“Geez!” Mac exploded.

Roland poked a finger the size of a baton into the smaller man’s chest. “Got you.”

A flash of anger raced across Mac’s face at being suckered by Roland, but he got it under control quickly.

“Who would target Area 51?” Nada asked, shaking his head at the two.

“That does not make sense,” Doc added. “There are nuclear safeguards, a nice way of saying bombs, already in place here. A self-destruct sequence in case of a catastrophic event.”

“Like an uncontrolled Rift,” Kirk added, staring at Doc.

“Yes,” Ms. Jones said, as if they were discussing the weather rather than nuclear weapons. “But that self-destruct is under my control.”

“Fuck me to tears,” Nada said as he realized the implications and Eagle articulated them.

“
D-O-D
.” Eagle said each letter clearly and with absolute certainty.

“Very astute, Mister Eagle. We have known for a long time that there was an element in the Department of Defense that has been secretly stockpiling nuclear warheads. Whether taking ones slated to be destroyed or acquiring them by other means. The first known incident where we became suspicious was in 1950.”