An Armageddon Duology (53 page)

“
I
still can’t get used
to the quiet.”

Lightfoote stood in the middle of the stealth transport cargo bay. A constant purr and muffled sound of wind filled the cramped space. A black SUV with tinted windows sat chained to the floor several yards behind them, the vehicle unusually long with a substantial bed. The glow of a laptop screen painted the dim interior in a ghostly sapphire. She stared up at the surrounding walls, her body still. Her computer rested on a makeshift table culled together from small boxes. Lopez and Houston sat on either side, watching her quietly. After several more seconds, she shook her head and sat down with them.

“Invisible to radar and hardly makes a sound. Pretty amazing.” She looked at Houston who grimaced while repositioning her leg. “How’s the thigh?”

“Better, but crouching in this black box isn’t doing wonders for it.” Lightfoote continued to stare. “I’ll kick plenty of ass when we get there, little girl. Don’t worry.”

Lightfoote half-smiled. “You better. Looks like we’re going to be hitting a fortress.”

Lopez pointed to images on the monitor. “So, these are aerial images that see underground?”

Lightfoote nodded. “They’re brand new. NORAD moved fast on our request, using some of the newer imagining satellites. Infrared. Archeologists love them—found new pyramids buried in the sands in Egypt. Pretty powerful and high resolution.”

“Looks it,” he said. “More than one floor underneath, I think. It’s at least three times the size of the above-ground structure.”

“And it’s not a parking lot,” said Lightfoote. “I couldn’t find anything about underground structures associated with the Bilderberg Hotel. As far as the internet is concerned, it’s just a simple four-story structure in Oosterbeek.”

“Can we get a sense of the security?” asked Houston.

“The resolution is good, but not miraculous,” said Lightfoote. She switched to regular aerial photographs. “Nothing topside to raise any suspicions. But there has to be something serious given what we’re dealing with. I assume it really starts near the entrance to the underground bunker.”

“But we have no idea where that might be,” said Houston. “We’re going to be awfully exposed hunting around for that.”

“Yes,” said Lightfoote. She bent over, staring at the screen. “But maybe we can make some educated guesses.”

“The power lines?” asked Houston.

Lightfoote nodded. “A hotel that size doesn’t need so many cables. And look at the asymmetry here. A few lines to the main structure, and then what,
five
running where? To this wing only. What the hell is going on there? Stadium lighting?”

“You’re right,” said Lopez. “The entrance is there.” He pointed to the satellite imagery. “The forest comes close to the extended wing
here
. If we can make our way to this point, we can recon the wing. Maybe remain unseen until we move on it. I bet there’s a network of cameras sweeping the place.”

“I wouldn’t assume the forest is safe, Francisco,” said Houston.

His face darkened. “Haven’t forgotten, Sara. We’ve seen a few examples of paranoids wiring nature to hell and back. Still, I think it’s the best approach. Remember, it didn’t save the occupants we came across.”

Houston nodded, her eyes distant, remembering. She snapped back. “I agree. We conduct sweeps through this sector. If we identify surveillance, we avoid or deactivate.”

“We might alert them,” said Lightfoote.

“We might,” replied Houston. “But we don’t have too many options coming in this fast. Unprepared.”

“I also had NORAD compile the satellite imagery over the last few weeks,” said Lightfoote. “I’ve strung the frames together, run it several frames per second. Watch.”

She double-clicked on a file and a video player opened, displaying a still frame of the top of a building surrounded by land and roads. She pressed play. Cars and trucks came and went at blinding speed, shadows running across the frames right to left, repeating over and over. “Their birds get several photos a day. Notice anything?”

“Deliveries?” asked Houston. “Guests arriving? What?”

“The number of trucks is pretty low. About enough to handle a hotel that size and not much more. Unless they have an underground railroad bringing in supplies, what you see is what they get.”

“They’re minimally staffed,” said Lopez. “We’re not going to hit an army.”

Houston smiled. “You’re right. It’s the best news we’ve had yet.”

“I’m not sure why it’s so minimally guarded,” said Lightfoote. “I sure as hell hope we aren’t wrong.”

“The Nash equations? A huge and secret underground bunker with a massive supply of electricity?” Lopez shook his head. “
Something
highly unusual is being hidden there. We aren’t wrong.”

“Maybe they never feared discovery,” said Houston. “Maybe automatic security systems with a few guards seemed enough. If they’ve been around as long as they have and never discovered, they might have gotten cocky.”

“Maybe,” said Lightfoote. “But let’s keep our eyes open. I don’t want any surprises.”

Houston smiled. “I don’t either, except the one we’re going to drop on them.”

B
osworth opened the front door
, using his foot to kick the scuffed wood at the bottom to force it through a sticking point. He lost control of the handle and the door swung wildly on its hinges, slamming into the wall behind it.

“For cryin' out loud, Barric! You ’bout gave me a heart attack.” His wife stood in an apron over a gas stove. “I’ve told you to fix that damn door!”

“Have a seat,” he said, ignoring her. He placed his shotgun beside the door, drawing the shades to the windows.

As Savas helped York through the entrance, he noticed the wall behind the doorknob had numerous indentations. Mr. Bosworth’s kicks over the years had made their impression. The house was built of knotted planks of wood, stained a rich honey, the polish long worn away. A small fire crackled on the right side and helped to dispel the cold air invading from outside.

“We need to use your phone,” said York. “I’ve got to contact NORAD and let them know where I am.”

“Honey, the phones have been out since that interweb virus thingy shut everything down,” said Mrs. Bosworth. “And look at this, my computer.” An older model desktop PC sat with a dark monitor on a table by the wall. It appeared to be covered in dried foam. “Soon as the bomb went off, every damn thing with wires ‘bout caught on fire. My computer did, sparks flying everywhere.”

“Irene had to pull out that old extinguisher,” laughed Bosworth. “Miracle it still worked.”

“Laugh all you want, Barric, but it had all our records.”

“I don’t think Uncle Sam’ll be feeling up to any audit right now,” he replied

York looked between them. “So, no computers. No landlines. Cell phones?”

Mr. Bosworth shook his head. “We ain’t got one, but I heard they’re all down, too. Stuff takes longer to fix out here. That’s why all the kids leave.”

“So we’re completely cut off,” said Cohen.

“Welcome to the prairie,” said Mrs. Bosworth. She looked at Cohen. “Your name again, honey? I can’t remember my own, somedays.”

“Rebecca.”

“Rebecca. Nice church name.”

“I’m Jewish.”

“So was our Savior, honey. So was he. Can you hand me some of those candles on the shelf there? Night’s gonna fall soon and there ain’t been electricity for weeks.”

Cohen reached behind her and grabbed a sack of candles, walking them to the old woman. “How do you keep warm?”

Mr. Bosworth grunted. “Battery back-up for the furnace helped, but course it wouldn’t last. Couple of days we lost heat. That weren’t no fun, let me tell you. I switched off the A.C. to the furnace and wired up a nine volt in place of the normal one. Fooled the damn thing. Gas valve opened and furnace started fine. To get things flowing, I popped the inspection cover. No fan running, but we got a good bit of heat. With the fireplace over there, everything was fine. Well, the blower safety switch kicks out and shuts things down every now and then and we got to let everything cool down. But it works. Until the gas supply quits.”

Irene snorted. “That makes as much sense as government cheese. Just don’t get him started.”

“I was only answerin’ her question.”

Irene huffed and placed several candles on a long wooden table in the middle of the room. The light had begun to fail outside, and already the warm radiance of the fireplace and candlelight tinted the room orange. She placed a fat kettle of soup on the table.

“Haven’t had guests for years.” She looked at York. “Last gov’ment man we had was Jim Wilson from the local IRS in KC.” Her face darkened. “I guess he’s dead too now, ’long with that pretty family of his. I never was much for hostin’, and we ain’t got nothin’ proper for a president. Anyways, come eat up. You look starved.”

Eagerly, the three descended on the table, the first nourishment in days drawing them greedily. Conversation halted for several minutes as the famished visitors devoured the broth.

“Sorry to say, ma’am, I didn’t vote for you,” said Mr. Bosworth, opening conversation.

York laughed. “Well, that’s quite all right, sir. I don’t take opposition personally. Unless they’re shooting at me.”

“It weren’t that I
opposed
nothin’,” he said.

Mrs. Bosworth shook her head. “He just don’t want to say he thinks a man ought to be in the big chair.”

“Now, Irene, I never said—”

“Never said! You don’t have a thought in your head I don’t know beforehand, Barric.”

York helped herself to a second bowl. “You have no idea how nice it is to think about someone voting against me rather than trying to kill me. It’s what all this is about, you know.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Some people want to take your say out of what the country does. They want to rewrite the rules, remove the people opposing them. As you see, they’ll stop at nothing.”

“I knew you were tough as any man for the job,” said Mrs. Bosworth. “I kept telling Barric during the election. ‘She’s army! What else you want?’ Pair of dangling ovaries I guess.”

Mr. Bosworth didn’t answer but shook his head, slurping loudly with a spoon to his mouth. Cohen turned to the president.

“How did you end up in Iraq? Can’t have been too many women serving in combat areas back in the nineties.”

“There weren’t,” said York. “It’s a long story, starting with enlisting. And it never would have happened if my father hadn’t been so damn pushy for me to enter politics.” She laughed. “Try to imagine a young girl flipping her big name politician dad the finger and signing up for the army. Boy, was he pissed. Had the roadmap already laid out for me, probably when my mom was in labor. I was determined to blow it all to hell. Of course, he did spin it for the press and gained some points for his patriotic children.”

“And yet,” said Savas, “after it all ended, here you are. President of the United States. Dad would have been proud.”

“Life’s never short on irony. But right now my title is on the ropes.” She placed her spoon down in the empty bowl. “And what about you, Agent Savas. Your father an officer of the law, like you?”

“He did clash with the mob,” said Cohen, smiling.

“Sounds promising,” said York.

Savas shook his head. “The last thing my father wanted was to be part of the law or crime. Now, my paternal
grandfather
is another issue entirely. I really don’t want to know what he had to do to become one of the biggest shipping magnates in Asia Minor.”

“So, you’re from money?” asked York.

“Could have been. But there was too much chaos in the Balkans those decades. My grandfather lost everything, every boat he owned during the Greek genocide a hundred years ago.”

“Greek genocide?” asked Mr. Bosworth. “Ain’t never heard of it.”

“Yeah, not as well advertised. And like the Armenian genocide, the Turkish government would like to keep it that way.” He stared off into the distance. “But more than a million perished, the entire Hellenic population in Asia Minor either killed or driven West into Greece. An entire culture perished. So did my grandfather’s boats and our family’s wealth.”

“That’s a horrible story,” said Ms. Bosworth.

“Just one of thousands in Europe of the last century. Genocide after genocide. Ethnic cleansing—love that word. Like they gave all the Greeks a bath or something. Not as civilized as we like to pretend we are.”

York exhaled. “No need to remind me.”

“Afterward, my family settled in northern Greece. A piece of land belonging to three different countries off and on before my father was twelve. For the next Balkan wars, he was conveniently drafted into three different armies. My grandparents put him on an Italian boat to the New World.”

“At twelve?” clucked Ms. Bosworth.

“He did pretty well. My father was a charmer and entrepreneur. By the time he reached New York, he was fluent in Italian and had a Sicilian girlfriend. Ran a restaurant under the Brookline Bridge for more than thirty years.”

“And the mob connection?” asked York.

“Getting to it. He refused to pay the protection money.”

“The money you pay the mob to protect yourself from them,” said Cohen.

Savas continued. “They set fire to his restaurant three times. Three times he borrowed, built it back, and had better digs than before. I guess they finally just gave up.”

“Amazing,” said York. “But now I see why you joined the police. You were police before FBI, right?”

“Does it show?”

York smiled. “I’ve been around a lot of law enforcement. Got a good eye.”

Mr. Bosworth nodded. “So how’d you get from the police to the FBI?”

Savas tensed but forced himself to relax. “My son followed in my footsteps. Joined the NYPD a little before the World Trade Center attacks. He died as a first responder.” All eyes were fixed on him. “I joined FBI counterterrorism afterward.”

Cohen reached over and put her hand on his shoulder. Savas drank down a glass of water quickly as she spoke.

“My story’s similar,” she said. “I had a lot of relations killed in Israel. Bombings. I remember as a kid my mom coming to me. ‘Aunt Yael won’t be coming to visit this year.’ ‘Cousin Ziva got hurt.’ I was precocious: I watched the news. Looked things up in the papers. I loved detective stories. I decided before I was out of braces that I would be a detective.”

York stared intently at the pair. “Your division has a lot of people familiar with trauma.”

Savas nodded. “No accident, as you might have guessed. Intel 1 was set up by a man who had a dark but effective vision. He recruited some characters, including one who’s now with the pair who rescued you in Washington. He felt we’d be highly motivated.”

“If he could keep you sane,” said York. “This was Larry Kanter?”

“Yes,” said Savas. “Killed by Mjolnir five years ago. Blew his house up.”

Mr. Bosworth stared at Savas with his mouth agape. “Well, goddamn, son. Sounds like you’ve gotten the tour of hell.”

“More like he’s been stationed at the turn off to hell, Mr. Bosworth,” said York. “He and the others have had to stand in the heat and steer the rest of us away from it.”

Savas put his spoon down. He smiled at Ms. Bosworth and changed the subject. “This meal has been as close to heaven as I could imagine food to be. And as thankful as we are for all of it, we need to consider soon what we’re going to do next. The president can’t stay here. Seeing what’s happened, you shouldn’t want her to stay here for long, unless you like a big bullseye painted over your house. We’ve got to get her to NORAD.”

“I’ve been thinkin’ on that,” said Mr. Bosworth. “You need something you can hide out in. Car or truck, you’re open on the road. You’ve got to find a place to sleep. You can’t count on motels or anything. Most are closed. But I’ve got an idea.”

“You don’t mean that old camper?” asked Mrs. Bosworth.

“I surely do,” he said. “I’ve got me a nineties Coachmen Leprechaun. She still runs.”

“And smells like a swamp inside.”

“She’ll keep you on the road, out of sight, no need for doing much but driving—straight shot to Colorado on I-70 should run you a day, and if you need more, motel goes with you. I ain’t got no more real use for it. You want it, she’s yours.”

Savas stared at him. “It will get us six hundred miles to Colorado?”

“No promises,” he said. “But I’ve kept her in shape. I ain’t no mechanic, but I can tinker the hell out of things. Like the heater. I wouldn’t push her too hard: Keep an eye on the temperature. Stay under sixty. She should get you there.”

“Beggars can’t be choosy,” said York. “We’ll have a look. But we might just take you up on your offer, Mr. Bosworth. The nation doesn’t have much more time. We have to end this conflict soon.”

He nodded. “Nothin’ truer said. We can fill you up with a few days’ supplies. You shouldn’t need more than that to get there.” He stood up and walked to a floor-to-ceiling cabinet, pulling a key from several on a chain. He unlocked it and swung the doors open. “And we can supply you with more.”

The interior of the cabinet was lined with shotguns. Boxes of shells were stacked along the bottom.

“Barric’s been a collector for years,” said Mrs. Bosworth. “’Bout drove me nuts with guns all over the house. Different makes, special handles, all kinds of money thrown away. I always said: ‘What are you buying all these for, a war?’”

Savas stood up and walked alongside the cabinet, examining the interior.

“Well, Mrs. Bosworth, it looks like he was.”