The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller (26 page)

“Check the colonel.”

Berman stepped out. A moment later, he was back. “Colonel's gone, but the desk clerk checks in at eighty-eight.”

The wing was completely infiltrated. He went back to the secure phone. Diana answered immediately. “You need the secretary to send out an order that all missile operations are to stand down.”

“How is that going to work?”

“Just do it!”

“Only the president has that authority, Flynn.”

“Claim it's a presidential order.”

“Flynn, that would be treason.”

“Do it!” He closed the phone. He knew that she'd try her best, but that it was hopeless. No doubt every missile wing in the United States was infiltrated just like this one, and in Russia, and in the rest of the world, too.

He now had an idea what might be happening, but he wasn't sure of the physics, if it was even possible.

He thought back to Al Doxy, to the file he had been carrying and the implant that had been removed from him. The Iranians had taken it because they were hungry for mind control technology. They'd used a weapon from Aeon, but it was an unimportant one, given to them, no doubt, to gain their trust, the same way European colonists bought off Indians with steel knives.

Iran had some sort of a role, obviously, but it wasn't central. Or was it?

He would have to deal with that later, because he did have a job left to do here.

His radio crackled. He drew the thumb-sized transceiver out of his pocket. “I have some information.” It was Linda.

“Where are you?”

“Echo 1 LF, and the first warhead I did an emission analysis on came up as not a hydrogen weapon.”

“Means?”

“Whatever they've got on that missile, it's not a normal warhead. It looks like one, but it doesn't have the emission signature—”

There was a roar, then the radio went dead. “Linda?”

Nothing. No signal at all, no carrier, nothing. Her radio was history.

“Missile rising,” an intercom voice announced from the outer office. “Unauthorized firing. Repeat, an unauthorized firing.”

Flynn rushed out. “Call the LCC, get them to blow it! NOW NOW NOW!”

The clerk just stared at him. “Sir, I don't know who you are!”

Flynn went to the desk.

Over the squawk box there came a laconic voice. “Missile destroyed. We will need a cleanup team to the site of impact at once.”

The launch control officers had acted on their own initiative. So this place was infiltrated, yes, but it didn't belong to Aeon completely, not yet.

“How can I talk to those guys?”

“Sir—”

Flynn pulled out the Raging Bull. “I repeat, put me through to those officers. Now!”

“I can't!”

“Do it!”

“The communicator is in the colonel's office.”

He went back and looked over the ancient intercom system he'd seen on the desk. Old, predigital systems were still in use on missiles because they couldn't be hacked. Everything was analog and at least forty years old. Among the many keys were four labeled with Launch Control Center identifiers. Flynn opened all of them.

“This is an emergency. The colonel isn't available and a missile has just—”

He was hit from behind so hard that it almost knocked him unconscious. He flew into the intercom console and over it, landing on his back on the floor of the office.

The colonel stood over him, his face impassive. The Bull had flown out of its shoulder holster and was across the room, but the smaller pistol was still in Flynn's ankle holster. Flynn drew it and did a head shot. The colonel flew backward into the wall and sank down. From outside there came a cry of “Jesus God,” and then nearly incoherent screaming into a phone. The air police were being called, and Flynn had to get out of here. There would be no way to explain to these people what was happening. As far as they were concerned, a completely unknown civilian had barged in and blown their commanding officer to kingdom come.

A glance at his watch told Flynn that the specialized aircraft that Diana was sending would be here in forty minutes, but he did not have forty minutes. He probably didn't have forty seconds. He grabbed his big pistol off the floor and stepped quickly into the outer office, brandishing both guns.

“OK, stay calm,” he said. “This is official business. This base is under attack from within.”

The clerk had his hands up. “Don't hurt me,” he said. “Everything's fine, we believe you.” He plastered on a smile that looked like it had been bought in a costume shop, and not a very good one. “We believe you!”

Flynn headed into the corridor, then out into the parking lot. Three AP vehicles came screaming up to the building as he flipped the locks on an elderly Ford, slipped into the driver's seat, and wired it. As the APs rushed into the building, guns drawn, Flynn drove slowly out of the lot and headed for the main gate.

He got on the secure phone. “Di, you need to get eyes on a gray Ford Fusion now exiting the base. This place is crawling with bios and I had to off the commanding officer.”

“Oh, great. I'm so happy.”

“I've got the thing figured out. The warheads have somehow been altered, and my guess is that this applies to every warhead on every missile on the planet.”

AP vehicles appeared behind him.

“Shit, I'm blown. I'm gonna have to take extreme measures in a second.”

“What measures?”

“No idea. But you need to get that transport to wherever I am when it arrives.”

“What's with the missiles? I see here that there was a launch and remote destruction.”

“Only way they could kill Linda Bartlett. She was in the silo reporting to me on the warhead. There can be only one logical solution. The warheads will now emit intense radiation fields with low-level blast effect, and the radiation will be short-lived.”

“They're going to sterilize the human population but leave the wilderness intact.”

“You got it, and it's going to happen right away.” The AP cars were coming up his tailpipe. Ahead, he could see the flashing light bars of a state police vehicle. “I'm going to run this thing into a field. Where's the aircraft?”

“Twenty minutes out.”

He swung the wheel and the car leaped off into the stubble-covered field. Then he smashed the gas pedal to the floor and the car lunged forward.

“Why in hell did you do that?”

“You'll see.”

Behind him, the state police vehicle slowed down, then the three AP trucks fanned out, centering on the trooper car. The group of them came forward, keeping pace with him but no longer attempting to close.

“They don't realize that I'm going to have transport. The troopers will have vehicles ahead of me in a few minutes. They think I'm trapped.”

“Flynn, it's going to be a near thing.”

“Then you better be prepared to get me out of jail.”

“How?”

“Not my problem.”

A shuddering
crack
startled Flynn. “They're damn well shooting at me, and somebody's good.” The state police vehicle swerved and stopped in a cloud of dust. “The APs just shot out the state cop's tires. They want me dead and they don't want civilian authority in the way. They're coming in for the kill.”

“Turn due west. At sixty miles an hour, you'll intersect with your transport in four minutes.”

The car bucked as bullet after bullet struck it. Flynn began twisting the wheel, but his pursuers were very good shots. Machine-like in their skill … just like him.

He realized that he had to take them down or they were going to win this. In a situation like this, four minutes might as well be four years. Even with his Bull, a shot at this distance, which he estimated at about 2,450 feet, was going to be difficult on a moving vehicle.

He had to stop. He had to aim. He had to do this, now.

He pulled the car around so that its length was between him and the oncoming AP vehicles, fronted by the bulk of the engine.

“What are you doing?” Diana screamed into the phone.

“Getting screwed to the wall. Where's that plane?”

“Three minutes out.”

The AP vehicles opened fire. “I'm looking at eight weapons—six pistols, a machine gun, and a sniper rifle,” he said. “Can't that thing go any faster?”

“It's maxing out!”

He braced the Bull and fired into the radiator of the lead vehicle, then repeated the action on the other two.

Nothing happened.

He fired again, this time trying the windshields.

One of the vehicles stopped, the other two sped up.

He waited. Their guns blazed away. The car shook and clattered as bullets poured into it. He began to smell gasoline.

He fired again, and a second vehicle stopped. But all three of them continued to fire at him. He stopped the third vehicle, which was just five hundred feet away. Two APs rolled off into the dirt. They began working their way around Flynn's flanks.

A shadow flickered past. He looked up into the base of the blackest thing he had ever seen. Its darkness was so deep that it looked like a triangular hole in the blue sky. Then he could make out the black-on-black image of an American flag on the fuselage. One of ours.

The two air policemen engaging in the flanking maneuver broke cover and came running toward him. He hated to do it, but they were probably under Aeon's control one way or another. He neutralized them both with shots to the legs. If they were just innocent kids doing as ordered, they would survive. If they were biorobots, they would be destroyed by their infuriated masters.

He ran toward the black fuselage, in the sweet of morning, in the birdsong and the whipping autumn breeze, and heard geese far above.

The plane, if it was a plane, offered no way to enter, no ladder or stair. He found a curved metal lip, and drew himself up into a dark interior crowded with cabling, which at first he could not even begin to understand.

Then a cylinder wrapped in wire that dominated the center of the cabin began to rotate, and he saw the land below dropping rapidly away.

“Hello, passenger.” A female voice, young, a kid.

He could see no sign of a cockpit. “Where are you?”

“At base.”

“This is a drone?”

“It is. And stay where you are. You're in the service bay. You don't want to get near that cylinder above you. It's gonna fry you
.
”

“What the hell is this thing?”

“A dirigible, basically, but a lot smaller, obviously. The helium lift is supported by electrostatic propulsion. It's capable of six hundred klicks an hour and it can reach near space. But not with you aboard. It's not pressurized. Close the port, please. It's setting up drag that I don't need.”

The world was racing past below him. “There's a handle?”

“Feel forward, you'll find one. Pull it toward you.”

When he slid the door closed, all sound ceased. There was no wind noise whatsoever. Around the whirling cylinder just above his head there was a blue glowing cloud, some sort of ionizing energy, he thought.

“Aren't people seeing this?”

“Sure, it'll show up on YouTube. UFO, whoa! AFOSI types will slay it with negative comments. Prove it's a computer graphic.”

“Nice of them.”

“I dated one. They're not nice. Hey, we've got observers. You are a popular boy.”

“What observers?”

“Dunno. Up there, though. Way high. Incoming. We're gonna evade.”

A thick electricity filled the air, the blue glow extending out from the engine until the entire interior danced with St. Elmo's Fire. It got hot, then hotter. The airframe shuddered a little, then more, then a lot more.

“What's going on?”

“Who are those guys, mister? They do not like you.”

“Lady, I can't see, I don't know where I am, and at least tell me what the hell they look like. Are they planes?”

“You know they aren't. Right now, we're invisible to them. Radar is being absorbed and light's being bent around our fuselage. We're at an altitude of three meters.”

“That's nine feet!”

“Very close.”

“You can't fly at nine feet! How fast are you going?”

“Classified. I'll have you home in twenty minutes.”

This thing went a hell of a lot faster than any three hundred miles an hour. In fact, it must have been going thousands of miles an hour, and practically at ground level.

He found himself feeling proud of it. What an incredible engineering achievement. The relationship with Aeon might not have worked out, but we had gained some technology, at least.

What else might there be, and how might it help him? He had so much trouble with travel, but he could fly anywhere in a thing like this. So why had it been withheld from him? He was fighting a war alone, and he needed all the help the government could put in his hands.

He thought of the birds singing out in that bloody field. He thought of how nice it would be back in the bath with Di, splashing in their big tub. He imagined himself floating, the stars flowing past … and then—what the hell? What in
hell
was he thinking?

The ship around him seemed vague, as if it was becoming insubstantial, disappearing.…

His ears popped, then his head seemed to crack. It was getting cold, very cold.

“We have a problem,” he said.

“I know it. I don't know what's happening.”

“I'm losing consciousness.”

“It's ascending at a thousand klicks a minute; you're passing through twelve grand.”

They were hijacking it. They'd take him up till he died. “Get the engine shut down.”

“It might not restart.”

“Do it now!”

The whirring that had filled the air abruptly stopped.

“It's descending,” she said.

He could feel his head clearing. “Can you still maneuver?”