Written in Fire (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 3) (21 page)

“Want another?”

“No. Thanks.” Smith inhaled a short, fast breath and rolled his shoulders. “You should know. Killing me isn’t the same as beating me.”

Cooper said, “It’s a step in the right direction.”

Then he pressed the trigger and blew three holes through John Smith’s heart.

The report echoed out across the plain to the distant mountains beyond. A bird startled from a nearby roof with a screech. A few blocks down, a trucker flung himself to the ground.

John Smith blinked. His head drooped as he looked at the wound. For a moment, his muscles held him in place, wobbling.

He fell over.

“Target located,” Cooper said, triggering his earpiece. “Come get him. Bring a body bag.”

Then he lowered the weapon and stared across the corpse at one of the women he loved. She stared back.

Neither spoke.

Not with words, anyway.

CHAPTER 27

Cooper didn’t know what to feel.

Killing Smith had been the best option. Sure, he could have captured him, tried to interrogate him, but the man had been
the
game player. They wouldn’t have been able to believe a word he said, couldn’t have trusted any cage to hold him. Ending him was the safe, sane tactical decision.

It wasn’t that he had regrets. There was no cop-who-came-to-understand-the-criminal RKO Pictures vibe, no sense that they could have been friends under other circumstances, no reluctant respect for John Smith. The man had had options, same as anybody, and the choices he’d made had left the world a darker place.

But still, there was a strange void in Cooper. He wasn’t overjoyed, didn’t feel victorious. And maybe it was just that. After years of fighting Smith, some part of him had expected more out of the moment. Like after he pulled the trigger the music should have swelled and the credits rolled.

In the absence of emotional or philosophical clarity, though, there was always the job. The same job as always, he’d joked with Quinn more than once: saving the world.

He imagined Bobby responding, saying,
Yeah? How’s that going?

Same as always, Bobby.

“Huh?” Shannon looked over at him; evidently, he’d spoken aloud.

“Nothing.” Cooper realized he’d been staring blankly out the windshield. He turned the key and the SUV started with a rumble. A quick three-point turn, and the scene was behind them, a team of Wardens zipping John Smith’s corpse into a body bag.

He glanced sideways, saw Shannon glancing in her side mirror. She was a slight woman, but looked especially so now, her shoulders tucked in, something in her diminished. Before he could decide if it was a good idea, Cooper reached across the space between them and touched her hand. For a moment, she hesitated, then laced her fingers in his.

The roads were packed, the sounds muted by bulletproof glass. He steered one-handed for a few silent blocks. Finally, he said, “Are you okay?”

She seemed to consider the question. “Yeah.”

“I know he was your friend.”

“Yes,” she said. “He was.” She looked like she was going to add more, but decided against it. “I heard about Quinn. I’m sorry.”

He nodded.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Maybe later.”

The street outside the warehouse had been transformed into a confusion of vehicles, the trucks they’d arrived in, plus Holdfast security vehicles with lights spinning, ambulances, prisoner transfer vans, all surrounded by a ring of gawkers. Cooper steered through the crowd and parked by the door. When he turned off the ignition, he could hear the ticking of the engine and the soft sounds of her breath.

He looked over, found her looking back. Her expression was complicated. He imagined his was too. They held the gaze. There was a moment when they could both lunge in, hands and lips and skin finding each other. Then it passed, and they were still sitting there.

“I should go check on Ethan,” Cooper said.

She nodded.

He started to get out, paused, looked back. “Do you want to come?”

After-action, and the warehouse had that surreal filter that battle overlaid on the normal. Normal drywall, apart from the bullet holes; normal rooms, apart from the blood spray. The Wardens had cleared the building, found the last stragglers hiding in closets and cupboards. Most had surrendered and were awaiting transport, their arms and legs flex-tied, their eyes filled with hate and shock. Those who had fought back waited considerably more peacefully.

Cooper and Shannon walked to the lab in silence, found it busy with people in white coats. He asked one of them where to find Ethan, and she jerked a thumb over her shoulder without looking up from her terminal.

The door she pointed to led to what once might have been a supply closet. Ethan was standing in it, his back to them, facing a cage. It was made of metal lattice, seamless and strong. There was a man inside.

Strike that
.

There was a body inside. It was so badly mangled that it took Cooper a moment to catalog details—he was white, older, thin. His flesh had been torn in a hundred places, some shallow red scratches, others deep gashes with pale flesh bulging through. His eye sockets were ragged and ruined. Cooper had seen him before, a few days ago, on the streets of Manhattan. Dr. Abraham Couzen.

Ethan didn’t turn, but Cooper could tell by the tightening of his shoulder muscles and a quiver in his throat that the scientist knew they were there. Cooper auditioned a dozen statements, then another dozen, but couldn’t find anything that sounded even remotely helpful.

“I’d say rest in peace”—Ethan’s voice sounded flat—“only Abe believed the afterlife was a lie idiots told to make it past breakfast without killing themselves.”

“John did this?” Shannon asked.

“No. Look closer.”

Cooper squatted down. He could see what Ethan meant. The way the cuts were angled didn’t seem right. And fingernails hadn’t been ripped out, they were broken backward, the pads of the fingers worn to the bone. It was almost as if the man had been scrabbling at stone, trying to dig his way—oh. “He did this to
himself
? Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“The serum? The side effects Vincent told us about?”

“I don’t know.”

Cooper rose, positioned himself so that he was between Ethan and his old boss. “I’m sorry.”

Ethan didn’t respond. His eyes were wide and wouldn’t meet Cooper’s.

“Let’s get out of here. You don’t need to see this right now.”

“What?”

Cooper put his hands on the other man’s shoulders, shook gently. “I really am sorry. And I know what I’m going to say next makes me sound like an insensitive bastard, and I’m sorry for that too. But you can’t go into shock right now.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because your wife and daughter are nearby.” Cooper tried for a tone that was firm but not harsh. “For Amy and Violet.”

The names seemed to do what his other words hadn’t. Ethan blinked, swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, all right.”

“Come on. We need to secure that virus, Doc.”

“Well. I’ve got bad news and bad news.” Ethan started out of the closet. “There’s a ton of information here, years’ worth of clinical notes. But just looking through the last couple of days, it’s clear that Smith’s people were successful in mounting the serum onto a disease vector, a custom strain of the flu. A nasty one, best I can tell, something they’ve been working on for a long time. Influenza is an RNA virus and our serum is built around non-coding RNA, so they basically could just splice it into junk genes included for that purpose. They fast-bred it, used an aerosolized suspension medium, total volume about three hundred CF.”

“In English?”

“They made what John Smith wanted. A lot of it.”

“And the other bad news?”

“According to the lab notes, the virus was stored in standard high-pressure tanks. Two of them, each about four feet tall, probably fifty pounds apiece.”

“So?”

“So,” Ethan said, and gestured around the lab, “you see anything that looks like that?”

Cooper looked, but he already knew what he’d find. On some level, he had already known the moment before he shot John Smith.
Killing me isn’t the same as beating me.

“Oh,” said Shannon. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” Ethan replied drily. “That about sums it up.”

Cooper wanted to scream. It was a feeling he’d had a lot lately. All of this. All he’d done. And even dead, John Smith was outplaying him.

“Okay,” he said. “Focus on the job.”

“What does that—”

“You’re in charge here, Ethan. Run your team. See if you can figure out where those tanks went. Failing that, figure out how we can beat the virus.”

“Cooper—”

“A vaccine. A shot. A fucking antidote. I don’t care. But you dig in and you work until you find something, you hear me?” Cooper gripped the man’s biceps, squeezed hard. “This was your project, Doc. You and Abe built this. Clean up the mess.”

“But—”

“Just
do it
.” He stalked away, had to find a place to think, to reach out to Epstein, figure out the next move. Maybe together they could pattern John Smith well enough to guess what he intended. Everything had happened fast, Smith couldn’t be that far ahead of them—

His phone rang, and he was about to silence it when he saw the name. He answered, said, “Natalie.”

Across the lab, Shannon stiffened. He didn’t blame her, but there wasn’t time to worry about dating niceties right now.

“Nick? Are you okay? You don’t sound good.”

“Busy. John Smith is dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“I killed him.”

“Oh,” Natalie said, her voice strange. Why? Natalie had never loved violence, but she had always known what he did. And after the way they had mourned Bobby Quinn, he would have expected, maybe not elation, but something other than the flat tone she used as she said, “That’s great.”

“What’s wrong?”

“So you haven’t seen the news.”

“No.”

“The militia, the New Sons of Liberty. They’re approaching the Vogler Ring.” She took a ragged breath. “And they’re marching children in front of them.”

CHAPTER 28

“—this footage, streaming live from a CNN newsdrone, shows the New Sons of Liberty approaching the farthest borders of Tesla, capital of the New Canaan Holdfast. Now, at this altitude it’s a little hard to make out details, but when we zoom in, you can see that these smaller figures at the head of the column are children, approximately six hundred of them. Given current relations with the Holdfast, information is limited, but sources have confirmed that all of these children are abnorms captured by NSOL since their dramatic attack—”

The news was always playing in the Situation Room, and the Laurel Lodge conference room at Camp David was no different. What was unusual was that the volume was turned up, and the people around the table were silent.

It can’t be considered a positive,
Owen Leahy thought,
when the American president is watching the news to find out what’s happening.

Beside the tri-d was a larger screen showing a similar angle, although this one was far more distinct. Government satellite footage, dialed up high enough to make out individual faces. The video rotated through different perspectives, a montage of roughly edited abominations:

A ten-year-old girl weeping as she walked, tears carving clean streaks down her dirty face.

A teenage boy carrying a four-year-old child in one arm and a ratty stuffed bear in the other.

A kid stumbling, rising hurriedly, his pants torn and his knee stained with blood, fear in his eyes as he looked over his shoulder.

And behind them, a long line of men carrying rifles. The ones in the front had them aimed at the children. The column stretched for half a mile.

Leahy checked his phone for the fiftieth time. Still no response.

The newscaster continued, “The New Canaan Holdfast has long been rumored to have a defensive perimeter surrounding the city of Tesla, and we presume that the purpose of these children is to serve as a kind of human shield—”

“Enough,” President Ramirez said, and an aide quickly cut the sound. “Owen, how quickly can we intervene?”

“Madam President, we can’t.”

“Bad enough when the New Sons were burning abandoned cities. Now they’re using children as mine detectors. I want American troops in there—”

“Ma’am,
we can’t.
” Leahy caught his tone, quickly reeled it back in. “The militia is only five miles out of Tesla. We simply cannot get a sizable enough military presence there in time.”

“What about drone strikes, or tactical bombardment? Even just as a warning, to turn them around.”

“Most of those capabilities have been disabled on your orders, ma’am.”

“Re-enable them.”

“That would take time. And it would be a terrible risk. The only way we could intervene would require using the same technologies Epstein’s virus took advantage of. Simply put, if it’s more advanced than a bayonet, it might be turned against us.”

“Why would the Holdfast do that? We’d be coming to their aid.”

“Frankly, ma’am, I doubt they’d believe that. I certainly wouldn’t, in their position. You’d be asking a man who killed seventy-five thousand soldiers and blew up the White House to let you bring your deadliest weapons into his living room to ‘protect’ him. Besides”—he gestured at the tri-d—“they already have defenses. The Vogler Ring isn’t a minefield, it’s a microwave emplacement. Casualties won’t weaken it.”

“Meaning that even if the New Sons march children into it to burn alive, they still won’t breach it.”

“It’s horrific, but it’s not our defense grid, and it’s not our army. Think of it like it’s happening on the far side—” Leahy’s phone vibrated. There was no name, but he recognized the number immediately. He should; it belonged to a radiation-shielded cell he’d delivered himself. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I need to take this.”

“Go. DAR, what’s your view—”

Leahy rose swiftly and headed for the door. Leaving was a breach of protocol, but he was betting no one would call him on it under the circumstances. He kept his eyes down and his steps quick through the door, past the Secret Service agents, down the hall, and outside.

Camp David had a winter wonderland look, all evergreens and Christmas lights and fresh powder. The network of paved paths had been shoveled and salted, but there were too many people on them. Leahy stepped off the porch toward the woods, his leather oxfords sinking into the snow as he accepted the call and said, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“What we said we would.”

Leahy froze.
That’s not Sam Miller.
He checked the phone display; the number was correct. The voice was one he’d heard before. It took him a moment to place it—Luke Hammond, the lean soldier with the killer’s eyes. “We never discussed taking children hostage. Or using them to try to break through the Vogler Ring.”

“We’re doing what’s necessary.”

“Necessary for what? I told you, genocide isn’t the goal.”
Why does no one get that?
There was a balance to be maintained, a utility to conflict, so long as it was held in check. The political scientist Thomas Schelling had pinpointed that back in 1966, when he’d written that the power to hurt—the unacquisitive, unproductive power to destroy things that somebody treasures, to inflict pain and grief—was a kind of bargaining power. Arguably the most foundational statement of geopolitics, and yet some days it seemed like Leahy was the only person to understand that the word was
hurt
, not
obliterate
. “We don’t want to destroy the Holdfast. We just want to bring Epstein to—”

“That’s your goal. The New Sons of Liberty aren’t part of your army. We’re patriots fighting for our nation’s future.”

“Come on. Wake up. Chest beating is for football games. ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends,’ is not a real-world policy.”

There was a long pause. “Mr. Secretary, you’re talking to a career soldier with forty years of special operations experience. Do you realize how ridiculous you sound?”

Leahy leaned against a tree and rubbed his eyes so hard they hurt. “I’d like to talk to General Miller.”

“He’s busy.”

“Put him on, please.”

“He’s busy.”

Leahy imagined having the power to reach through the phone and wrap his hands around the man’s neck and squeeze until his eyeballs bulged. What was Miller thinking, going off the reservation and then not even answering the phone?
You’re losing control of the situation.
“Luke. May I call you Luke? We don’t know each other well, but I was a soldier too.”

“I know, Mr. Secretary. Four whole years, right?”

“Followed by decades in intelligence before serving as the secretary of defense to three presidents,” Leahy snapped. He caught himself, took a breath. “It should go without saying that I respect your service. You’re right, you are patriots. But now the patriotic thing to do is stop. You’re risking civil war.”

“We’re not risking it. We’re declaring it. And we’re going to win.”

“By burning civilian cities? Kidnapping children and marching them out to die?”

There was a pause. “That’s war.”

“Luke, listen to me. Even if you succeed, you think anyone will thank you? President Ramirez already wants to label you all criminals.”

“Up to her.”

“Hammond,” Leahy said, using his command voice, “I am ordering you to stop. This isn’t a discussion. You are acting against your country’s interests. You are wounding America. Maybe mortally.”

Luke laughed. “You know what the problem with politicians is? They always think they can control things they can’t. The genie doesn’t go back in the bottle, no matter what the story says.”

“Goddammit, listen to me. You’ve made your point. Turn your men around. Please. I’m begging you.”

Silence was the only response. A cold wind rattled the branches of the trees, dumping snow in a fine filigree like ashes. His socks were wet, his shoes ruined.

“Luke?”

More silence.

“Hello?”

And it was only then that it occurred to Owen Leahy that he’d been hung up on.