Extinction Machine (7 page)

Brierly said nothing.

Ames sighed. “I guess we’re all done. I know I am. POTUS goes missing while I’m shift supervisor? I won’t be able to get a job guarding a landfill after this.”

“If you do, put in a good word for me, ’cause I’ll be the first one out on my ass.”

Brierly knew that he would be in the crosshairs because some people were going to try and use this to build or protect their own careers by making sure they were seen as executioners of the guilty. Brierly would go down as the Secret Service director who had managed to lose the president. You don’t recover from a career stumble like that. Even if this turned out to be something completely beyond Brierly’s control, he would take the bullet. A head must always fall, otherwise the system looks like it’s driving on a bad tire.

They traded small, grim smiles, then turned to survey the bedroom.

There were a dozen people in there. Forensics techs dusting and collecting. Photographers. Agents looking everywhere in hopes that they’d be the ones to find the first thread. Every single person in the room looked frightened, even the techs who had no reason to be.

He stared down at the empty bed, and its emptiness seemed to mock him. The heavy covers, the rumpled sheets, the dented pillow. The absence of sense.

“Let me see that goddamn photo again.”

Ames handed it over. Brierly scowled at it. It was bullshit. Total bullshit. No way it could be connected.

“God … we need the Deacon and his geek squad. We need the DMS.”

“It’d be your ass, Linden. The president said not to call him.”

Brierly bared his teeth. “
My
president didn’t give that order.”

Chapter Twelve

VanMeer Castle
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Sunday, October 20, 6:07 a.m.

Mr. Bones was Howard Shelton’s minion. It was not how it was supposed to be, but it played out that way. It was an arrangement that developed over time and it settled into a relationship that worked for them both. Bones—whose real name was Alfred Bonetti—knew that he was never going to be the alpha of their little pack. Howard was, and that was clear from the first time they met.

“Minion” was, perhaps, an inexact word, but after nine years Mr. Bones did not know which would be a better fit. Ostensibly he and Shelton were colleagues, two of the three governors of Majestic Three. In practice, Howard was the mastermind and Mr. Bones was…? What? Assistant was the wrong context. Lackey was too weak. Henchman was a bit old-fashioned. Enabler was too New Age. Number two sounded scatological.

He liked “minion.” Minion had a strangely appealing ring to it. It made Mr. Bones feel like he was an acolyte in some secret cult of immortals.

Fun stuff.

There were even sacrifices. Last week it was the entire staff at the Wolf Trap lab. Some good people, too, including that redheaded secretary. Yum. A body in a box now, of course, but yum once upon a time.

He and Howard were in the big kitchen at Shelton’s estate in Pennsylvania. The kitchen was enormous and the estate was positively obscene. Howard had the entire VanMeer Castle disassembled and brought over from Europe, then rebuilt with a few alterations. Howard and Mr. Bones referred to it as their “secret lair.”

They were mad scientists, after all, and that was a hoot.

Howard poked at half a grapefruit. “How the fuck am I supposed to feed my brain with this shit?”

Mr. Bones peered at him over the glasses that were halfway down his nose. “You’re not. The protein drinks and the vitamins and the flower essences are for your brain. This is to keep your waistline and your IQ from reaching parity.”

“Tastes like sour piss.”

“And you’d recognize that taste how?”

“Oh, very funny.” Howard speared a chunk of fruit, shoved it in his mouth, winced, and chewed.

Bones poured himself a fresh cup of coffee, added some hot to Howard’s, and went back to studying the data flow on his laptop. It was an odd-looking computer, known within M3 circles as a Ghost Box, and it was unlike anything on the market. There were two wings that folded out from the screen to form a three-sided box above the keyboard. This allowed for some very nice holographic imaging. There was also a unit attached to the back that looked like an extended-use battery, but wasn’t. This was an encryption-intrusion drive that allowed the Ghost Box to operate in almost the same way as the MindReader system. It was a much newer technology than MindReader, and it combined elements of the Chinese GhostNet along with a few radical design jumps drawn from technology sources particular to M3.

“What’s happening in the world?” asked Howard.

It was not a general question. The information that flowed across the laptop was a very private news feed comprised of information, updates, and intelligence from hundreds of sources within the M3 network, including quite a lot of it that came from sources that had no idea they were reporting to senior members of a secret cabal hidden within the U.S. government. Some of those people would have rebelled at the idea and they would begin inconvenient witch hunts. As neither Mr. Bones nor Howard Shelton fancied having their heads on poles, they kept such information on a need-to-know basis.

“It’s been a busy night.”

“Give me the highlights,” said Shelton. “Don’t tell me stuff I don’t need to know about.”

“Okay … well, the air show is still on track, though two more exhibitors have dropped. Belmann-Kruas and Mitsubishi are out.”

“Good. That’s what—eight gone?”

“Seven, GE decided to stay in. Apparently they were able to transfer their entire project to Houston, so all they really lost is four days.”

“Hm. Should we hit them again?”

“Oh, I think we have to.”

“Do it.”

Mr. Bones nodded. For seven weeks now they had been running a very carefully crafted series of cyber-attacks. Ghost Box’s intrusion technology allowed them to sneak into virtually any company’s computer and, once in, introduce viruses of all kinds. Some were tapeworms with very specific agendas, some were what Howard called “romper-stomper programs” that just randomly destroyed things. So far every major private contractor working with the Department of Defense had been hit, and the DoD itself had taken a few punches below the belt. Even Shelton Aeronautics had been attacked, though this self-immolation had been carefully planned to give a very realistic appearance of maximum damage to their new Specter 101 ultra-high-speed stealth aircraft program. As far as anyone in the upper echelon of the industry was concerned, Specter 101 promised to be the first of a brand-new generation of stealth craft. A Mach 20 masterpiece that was a ghost to everybody’s radar.

It was the lamb that Howard was placing on the altar that was the Project.

The
real
Project.

The Project that M3 had been working on for a very long time.

Everything else—even the quite lovely Specter 101, mattered so much less. Just like the sixty employees at Wolf Trap mattered so much less.

“If you want to hide in plain sight,” Bones had said when he’d suggested the slaughter to Howard, “and even get some sympathy from people who would ordinarily love to see your spleen on a platter—namely the boards at Boeing, Lockheed, and all the rest—then become a victim. Let them console you, Howard. Hell, let them pity you. God knows they will. So will everybody who reads a newspaper or logs on to a news feed. You’ll be the heroic Howard Shelton, publically mourning at funerals, donating gaudy amounts of money to trust funds that provide for the offspring of whoever works at Wolf Trap. You’ll embody the tragedy so much that you’ll receive more sympathy cards than all the families together.”

Howard Shelton had stared at Mr. Bones for nearly a full minute before he said, “You are an actual evil genius.”

“This I know.”

“If you had a twin sister I’d bang her silly.”

“That is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard,” laughed Mr. Bones.

That discussion was two months ago. The slaughter was a little over two days ago. The offices of Shelton Aeronautics were so crammed with sympathy bouquets that it looked like a tropical rain forest. The president had called. The CEOs of every major defense contractor called. Celebrities had called. It was delicious.

“How would you like to hit GE this time? Cyber or something more physical?”

Howard thought about it as he winced his way through another chunk of grapefruit.

“Let’s up the game. I think a fire in the corporate offices might do it.”

“Done,” said Mr. Bones and sent a coded e-mail to someone who loved to play with matches. Then he wired a third of the payment to a Cayman Island account. Good faith money for a useful contractor.

“What else?” asked Howard.

“Well … if we’re going to keep this up, then we’re going to have to give the feds someone to look at. Too much blame is being directed at China, and they’re starting to complain to us.”

“Pussies.”

“Agreed, but they do have a point.”

Howard pushed the grapefruit aside. “God, I’d rather eat a dead rat than another piece of that shit.”

“Lose forty pounds and we can discuss pancakes.”

Howard sipped his coffee. “So, you want to throw someone to the wolves. Good call. But who?”

“I still want to point them at Mr. Church.”

“Good luck.”

“Oh, come on. He’s mysterious, he’s devious, and people don’t even know his real name. He’s perfect.”

“He’s a Boy Scout,” said Howard. “The only reason you think he looks good for it is because he has MindReader, but it’s a bad fit.”

Mr. Bones scraped butter onto a cold piece of toast. “Has to be one of his people, then. That nerd who runs their computer department, what do they call him? Bug?”

“No. He’s too small fry. He looks like a puppy. No one would buy him for it.”

“Aunt Sallie?”

“Not a chance. Besides, she scares me more than Church.”

They thought about it through toast and coffee refills.

Then Howard snapped his fingers. “Christ, I know … and it’s been staring us right in the face.”

“Who?”

“Church’s pet psychopath. I mean, he was right there at Wolf Trap for fuck’s sake. He found the bodies. He’s perfect. People will think it’s like an arsonist calling in a fire.”

It took no time at all for Mr. Bones to recall the name. “Ledger?”

“Ledger.”

Mr. Bones nodded. “Oooh—I like it.”

He sent some e-mails to get that process going and at high gear. The phone rang as he was finishing. There were three cell phones laid side by side on the kitchen table. This was a gray one. The coded one. Mr. Bones picked it up and listened.

After fifteen seconds of listening, he said, “Jesus Christ.”

“What?” demanded Howard, but Mr. Bones held up a hand.

“Bullshit. Don’t tell me that there’s no information, goddamn it. You fucking well find out, and get back to me right away.”

He closed the phone with a sharp snap. His hand was trembling as he set the phone down.

“What the hell was—” began Howard, but the look on Mr. Bones face stopped him.

Mr. Bones said, “The president of the United States has been abducted. He was taken from his bedroom at three twenty this morning. There was no intrusion, no attack. The Secret Service agent at the door heard and saw nothing. There is no physical evidence, no trace. He is simply … gone.”

“What? Who did it? How did they do it?”

After a dreadful silence, Mr. Bones said, “If it’s true that he simply vanished from his bedroom without a trace of physical evidence … Well, Howard, there’s only one way to do it that I know of.”

Howard Shelton stared at him.

“Oh … shit,” he said.

Part Three

The Majestic Black Book

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

—NIELS BOHR

As the bomb fell over Hiroshima and exploded, we saw an entire city disappear.

I wrote in my log the words: “My God, what have we done?”

—CAPTAIN ROBERT LEWIS

Chapter Thirteen

Camden Court Apartments, Camden and Lombard Streets
Baltimore, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 6:09 a.m.

Really bad time for the phone to ring.

The naked woman in my bed picked my phone up and, without looking at it, threw it across the room.

“Wrong number,” she said. The phone landed under the dresser and rang through to voice mail.

I peered at the lady from between eyelids that had been welded shut a moment before. What was left of my brain was still deep in a dream that was a sweaty replay of the party last night. The dream wasn’t specific because my brain was too deeply pickled for that. Instead there were flash images. The slideshow started off with an R-rating for content. The guys from Echo Team serenading Rudy Sanchez with a song from
Mamma Mia!,
with a few significant modifications of the lyrics. Our version of the lyrics would have been too extreme for the letters page of
Penthouse
magazine.

We didn’t go as low as hiring hookers, but there were strippers.

Lots of strippers.

Rudy had asked for something small and tasteful, but let’s face it, he asked the wrong guy. Me. No way was I sending my best friend down the aisle with anything less than a blowout of epic proportions. Creating an international incident was a real likelihood at one point, no joke. I believe the police were involved for some of it, but I’m pretty sure we wound up cuffing some of them to the toilets in the ladies’ room.

It was that kind of a party.

For what it’s worth, even though I may have kissed several people—and I pray that most or all of them were women—I did manage to go home with the woman I came with.

Violin.

A luscious Italian shooter-for-hire who had a psychotic mother who frequently wanted me dead. Violin had warrants on her from several countries that had extradition agreements with the U.S. She also had a set of curves that made me not care about any of that, and more importantly, she was one of “my” people. That’s a small group of folks who I trust completely. Violin and I had history, we’d been through fire together, which meant that if anyone ever took a run at her they’d have to go through me. That would get very expensive in ways most people don’t want to pay.