Red Equinox (15 page)

The calm, ice-eyed commander put his gloved hand on Soulpatch’s chest to restrain him from retaliation. Becca fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around Django as he snapped and barked and tried to break free.

“I’ll let you cuff me, but you have to
let me crate my dog first!”

“Where’s the crate?”

“By the TV.”

“Copeland, bring that dog crate over here and make sure it’s empty.”

“Yes sir.” One of the men closest to the living room slung his rifle across his back and carefully removed the blanket from the crate as if he hadn’t ruled out the possibility of finding a bomb in it. He brought the crate over, set it down at Becca’s feet, and opened the cage door.

She guided Django in and latched it, still kneeling on the floor, then put her hands on her head. She could feel her body and mind shutting down as they pulled her hands behind her back and cuffed her, and ransacked the apartment.

They went for the studio first, where they pulled the partition walls and tapestries down before unplugging and packing her computers and hard drives into metal attaché cases. They sealed her SD cards and USB memory sticks in Ziploc bags, checked the scanner bed, and packed up her cameras and notebooks.

The last thing they bagged was Becca Philips. They didn’t read her the Miranda, just zip-tied her wrists and slipped a black bag over her head, and marched her up the clanging metal steps to the rooftop where they shunted her into the helicopter, strapped her down, and lifted off in a whirlwind.

*   *   *

When Becca came to, she wasn’t wearing the bag anymore, but the room she lay in was dark. She figured she must have passed out from the reduced oxygen. The bag had smelled like stale coffee. The room reeked of disinfectant. It was either in an empty building or one that was well soundproofed. She felt around in the darkness and found a cushioned pad that she might have been placed on, and might have rolled off. She was still dressed in her cargo pants and favorite black TOOL T-shirt. The only visible feature of the room was a thin rectangle of light, a little thicker at the bottom, delineating the door. She got up and went to it. Tried the handle just for a laugh. It was of course locked. But the attempt earned her the attention of the guard on the other side. The lights came on—florescent bars behind a cage in the ceiling—and the door opened. A kid with a crew cut blocked the opening. He was dressed in khaki fatigues with a shoulder patch that said SPECTRA BOSTON, the heel of one hand casually resting on the butt of his sidearm.

“Glad to see you’re awake, ma’am.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll let them know.”

“Water. Please.”

“You got it.”

He closed the door. She looked around the room. There were no chairs but she didn’t want to be sitting on the floor when they came in, whoever
they
were, so she leaned against the wall facing the door, knee cocked, arms crossed. A closed-circuit camera on a ceiling-mounted bracket watched her from the corner.

When the door opened again, the crew-cut kid came in with a pair of folding chairs and set them up in the middle of the room. Behind him was a redheaded guy with a bit of a grizzled look. He didn’t have fatigues on like the kid, but a shirt and tie—sleeves rolled up, a titanium watch on his wrist among the ginger hair and freckles. He didn’t smile but handed her a cold, perspiring bottle of water and said, “Rebecca Philips, I’m Agent Jason Brooks. Please have a seat.”

Becca ran her thumb around the top of the water bottle. The cap was sealed, and she didn’t feel any pinprick holes from where they might have put a syringe in it, but that probably didn’t mean much. They could easily have put a needle in her arm after she’d fainted, anyway, so she cracked the seal and took a gulp.

Brooks sat and flipped his tie out of his crotch. He looked like the kind of detective who would never get used to wearing one. Becca sat down facing him, elbows on knees, bottle dangling between them. She was exhausted, even though all she’d done since waking up was write an email and get abducted at gunpoint.

“What the fuck is SPECTRA?” she asked, “Is that some kind of new surveillance arm of the government?”

“SPECTRA?”

“The patch on Opie’s shoulder. Looks like the Pink Floyd logo.”

Agent Brooks laughed, and for a second she could imagine him hanging out at her favorite bar and buying a round for everyone when the Sox hit a homerun. She didn’t want to like him, but that was probably why they’d sent him in here first, because he had some charm he was about to use on her like some kind of interrogational jujitsu. But the whole situation was absurd anyway because she had nothing to hide; she was nobody and knew nothing. They had bagged the wrong girl.

Tentacles.
She almost said it aloud when she remembered the call from Neil, but stopped herself. Why would that word trigger such a heavy-handed reaction? She decided she wanted to at least hear some questions before she started blindly tossing out answers.

Brooks ran his thumb and forefinger across his stubble, still grinning. “Yeah,” he said, “I don’t really get it either. Covert agencies have logos now. I guess the lawmakers like to see something for the money.”

Becca nodded. “What does it stand for?”

“Wouldn’t make any sense to you.”

“Try me.”

“Special Physics Emergent Counter Terror Recon Agency.”

“
That’s
a mouthful. So…you think I had something to do with what happened on that train. Well, I didn’t even hear about it until I turned on the TV today.”

“We’ve been through your camera cards and computers and there are quite a few photos of subway tunnels. MBTA stations that have been closed since the flood, station gates where the locks have been removed with bolt cutters. Doesn’t look good.”

Becca crinkled the water bottle in her hands. She suddenly felt the need to tread very carefully. There had been stories over the years about people—sometimes the
wrong
people, sometimes American citizens—getting lost in the labyrinth of the War on Terror. The word
Rendition
floated up from the back of her mind like a warning written in red light.

She needed support from outside. She needed people to know where she was. She thought of Rafael and wondered if he too was in an interrogation room. The possibility filled her with both hope and dread: that he might be in the same building, that he might not be free to find out
she’d
been taken and tell someone. Tell who? The media?

She felt sweat beading at the base of her hairline as she realized she had no idea where this room was. They’d taken her by helicopter and she had no idea how long she’d been blacked out or if they had drugged her. Was she even in Boston anymore? Massachusetts? Was it even the same day?

In spite of the water, her mouth was dry again. She opened it and spoke in careful, measured sentences. “I think I’m here because of my friend, Neil Hafner. He had a career in law enforcement. Do you know him?”

“We’ll get to that. Why the pictures of subway features, Ms. Philips?”

“Urbex.”

“That sounds about as meaningful as SPECTRA. What’s URBEX?”

“Urban exploration. Google it. It’s like…part hiking, part exploring, part archaeology, only in modern cities. My friends and I do it mostly for the photography. It’s sort of an art school thing.”

“Trespassing in restricted areas of public transportation is art now?”

“We’re not even vandals. You have all my pictures, so you know I shoot all kinds of abandoned places, not just the T.”

“We are analyzing your photos, yes, and I’m sure we’ll have many questions about them soon. But let me ask you something. Your answer will determine how this is gonna go for you, so think about what we already know and what we will know by the end of the day before you try to lie to me.”

Becca raised an eyebrow.

“We’re getting to know each other here. I belong to SPECTRA. You belong to URBEX. Do you also belong to the Starry Wisdom Church?”

“No.”

“Then why do you have photos of the leader of that organization on your computer? Photos of the Reverend John Proctor taken at Allston State Hospital on what members of that church consider to be a holy day?”

“I photograph anyone who looks interesting.”

“Yeah. So do we. We read their web sites too, and these people happen to believe that mankind’s greatest accomplishment was raising the sea level a few feet to make coastal cities more comfortable for their dark gods. They want to
sacrifice
us all to their dark gods. Sound familiar? Have you visited any of these web sites? Don’t fuckin’ lie to me, it’ll take me five minutes to find out.”

Becca turned the cap of the water bottle back and forth: clockwise and counter, bit her lip, and said, “Think I’m gonna need a lawyer.”

“We’re not the police.”

“So I’m not being detained?”

“Ms. Philips, this city is in the grip of a National Security crisis. You don’t get a lawyer until it’s too late for him to save you from the consequences of the choice you make right now to help or hinder.”

“What’s your name again, Agent?”

“If you’re going to help me, you can call me Jason.”

“Jason, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m not a cultist or a terrorist, okay? I take pictures of fucked-up, abandoned places because I’m fucked up and abandoned. I’m just looking for beauty in the cracks.”

Brooks took a device from his pocket—about the same size as a phone, but with a hooded lens. He swiped through some options on a touch screen and the lights in the cage overhead went dark while the wall to Becca’s left was illuminated with a crystal-clear slide projection of one of the fractal tentacle shots she’d taken at the mill.

“Is this the kind of beauty you’re taking about?” he asked her, the image shuddering slightly when he couldn’t keep his hand perfectly still. “Because that looks pretty fuckin’ ugly to me. What is it?”

She gazed at the photo in awe. Seeing a picture she’d taken of a wall now projected on another wall, she could finally ascribe a sense of scale to the writhing anatomy. It shallowed her breathing. “I don’t know,” she said. Her voice sounded hollow in her ears, and she was grateful for the darkness in the room masking the vulnerability she felt when confronted with a power that made the full weight of the government seem meek in comparison. “And you know I don’t know because you’ve read the email I wrote to Neil, and that’s who I want to talk to.”

“Not happening.”

“Get me Neil and send someone to feed my dog. Otherwise I’m not talking.”

The image shuddered across the wall and disappeared as Brooks threw his metal chair at it. Becca flinched and held her hands up in front of her face. She could feel him towering over her in the dark as he shouted. “You do
not.
You do
not
get to make the rules, and we are
NOT FUCKING AROUND HERE!
People died in that tunnel. I was there, and
kids
died.
Parents
who are never going home to their kids died. I don’t give a shit about who you want to talk to and I sure as hell don’t give a shit about your damned dog!”

He drew a ragged breath and waited for her to dare reply. The silence and darkness welled around them.

“You’re wasting time on me,” Becca said. “Neil knows how to read photos and he’s the only person I’m talking to.”

When the lights came up Brooks was already at the door. He left without looking back.

Becca sighed. She probed her right wrist with her left thumb, gingerly flexing the joint, and feeling for shattered bones. It hurt like hell from the impact of punching the Kevlar vest.

Brooks stepped into the hall, into the gray wash of cloud-attenuated sunlight spilling in from the windows overlooking Government Center and Faneuil Hall. He stepped up to the glass and looked down on Congress Street, scratching the back of his head and thinking about how Becca Philips had no idea how close to home she was right now. Just a few miles to the east across the Channel, they were still taking her apartment apart, searching for anything she might have kept off of her computers: a handwritten journal or little black book of contacts tucked away behind a vent grill, under a floorboard, or inside a mattress.
Wouldn’t it be nice if she really
was
a conspirator?
But he already didn’t believe she was, just as he knew he was going to have one of the guys over there feed the damned dog.

He had lost it in there and needed to regain his composure. The kids on the train had shaken him. He’d held it together until now, but the clock was ticking on catching this monster. He would need to try another tack with Philips. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew something or suspected something that she wasn’t willing to give them. And why should she be holding back? Well, Blue Team would be rounding up the entire congregation of the Starry Wisdom Church presently, and within two hours everyone would be talking about everyone else, hoping to cut a deal. Then he would see if Ms. Philips was still singing the same song.

Reluctantly, Brooks raised his gaze over the gray buildings, the silver and black shimmer of the New Waterfront, and let it drift to where it always did now whenever he could stand to let it: that corner of the sky where the black sun pulsed like a migraine. It was still there, but he’d known that as soon as he’d approached the window. It was almost always in his peripheral vision when he was near a window or on the street. And always in the same region of the heavens. The sun and moon moved through their courses, but the black star remained fixed at what appeared to be low altitude. It did not orbit, and if it rotated, it kept pace with the earth, with the city. Didn’t they call Boston The Hub? If it was, then this damned thing was a playing card stuck in a spoke.

“What are you on about Brooks? Playing cards?” Dick Hanson had emerged from the monitor room and taken a place beside him at the window. Shit. Had he been talking aloud? This was exactly the kind of thing that made him worry that the event in the subway had scrambled his brain. Was he cracking? Didn’t people with tumors sometimes experience weird ocular effects? Brooks wondered if he should take a leave, get an MRI, tell Hanson he was seeing shit that wasn’t there.