The 4400® Promises Broken (8 page)

“That’s an insurance policy. A last resort, not a first option.”

Kyle straightened and dismissed Jordan’s argument with a wave of his hand. “Call it what you want, Jordan. But Cassie and I play hardball. If the U.S. Navy shoots a missile at us, they’re getting a missile back. We won’t strike first, but we will definitely strike last.”

Jordan sighed. “Let’s see if we can avoid any more strikes today at all, shall we?” He frowned as he pressed a button to activate the intercom to his assistant. “Jaime, could you come take a memo, please?”

Moments later the door opened, and Jordan’s perky young assistant walked in carrying a digital recorder the size of one of her fingers. She placed herself in front of Jordan’s desk beside Kyle, activated the recorder, and nodded to Jordan.

“Please issue an official statement to the media and the United States government,” Jordan said. “Offer our sincere and deepest condolences to the families of those who perished in this training exercise gone tragically awry. If our people can be of any assistance in helping the Navy figure out why their Tomahawk missile malfunctioned, or to help them recover any part of the ship, we’re ready to lend a hand.” He waved the assistant out as he added, “Tack on the usual signatures. Thanks, Jaime.”

The attractive young woman stepped out and closed the door behind her. Kyle turned back toward Jordan, who once again had fixed his countenance into the very model of beatific calm. “You want to learn how to fight a war, Kyle? Then learn this: sometimes the deadliest weapon of all is a press release.”

D
ENNIS
R
YLAND sat
in his office at Haspelcorp and shook his head in disbelief at the TV, which was tuned to live news coverage of a Promise City spokesperson reading a press release about the
Momsen
incident.

“Are you watching this?” he groused. “A malfunction? An accident? During a training exercise? Are they kidding me?”

A streaming media player on his computer monitor offered him a real-time video link to the three scientists working in the Nevada bunker laboratory.
“You have to give Collier credit,”
said Dr. Jakes, whose voice warbled from the digital processing being applied to the secure, hard-line signal.
“He’s a coy one.”

“He’s a goddamned liar,” Dennis said, swiveling his chair to turn away from the TV and look out his window at dreary downtown Tacoma, Washington, and, far away, the majestic snow-covered peak of Mount Rainier. “Who’d believe this bullshit?”

Dr. Kuroda replied,
“It’s not about what people believe,
Mister Ryland. It’s about what they hear. So far, all they’ve heard is Jordan’s side of the story.”

“That’s because no one in D.C. knows what anybody else is doing. The president’s firing missiles, but no one tells DOD or Homeland Security. Keystone Kops are running the country.”

“You should be more concerned about Collier’s spin on the situation,”
said Dr. Wells. The African-American scientist continued.
“He’s played the PR game admirably. By characterizing the incident as a training exercise and as an accident, he’s set the narrative. And offering his help and condolences makes him seem charitable while he lets the United States off the hook for botching an attack on his headquarters.”

Dennis felt pressure building behind his eyes, like a sinus headache. He slid open his desk drawer and fished out a pack of cigarettes while the scientists kept talking at him.

“Now the government has a serious problem,”
Dr. Jakes said.
“Because Collier got his story out to the media first, if the government wants to contradict him, they have to paint themselves as either aggressors or incompetents.”

“Or both,”
Dr. Kuroda interjected.

Only half listening, Dennis pulled a cancer stick from the pack of Camels and stuck it between his parched, cracked lips while he tried to find his lighter.

“In any event,”
Dr. Jakes went on,
“if the U.S. lets Collier’s version of events stand, it’ll still look incompetent, and he’ll still come off as magnanimous. Either way, more public sympathy is likely to shift to Collier and his movement.”

Lighter in hand, Dennis ignored all of Washington
State’s laws against smoking inside public buildings and places of employment. This was his office. If they wanted to come and get him for lighting up, they were welcome to try. A push of his thumb over the flint coaxed out an orange flame, which he touched to the tip of his cigarette. He inhaled and savored the oddly satisfying sting in his throat, the acrid taste, and the soft, barely audible crackle of the cigarette paper igniting. Then he exhaled two long jets of white smoke from his nostrils.

It had been decades since he’d smoked on a regular basis, but as with so many things it was like riding a bike. And with the world spiraling down the drain one day at a time, he no longer saw any reason to deny himself this long-forbidden pleasure.

Contemplating the smoldering white roll of paper and dried tobacco between his fingers, he indulged himself with a tight-lipped smile. “Everything you’ve said is true,” he admitted. “But there is at least one glimmer of hope in all this: the simple fact that no matter how Collier spins it for the public, he and his promicin-powered freaks just sank a U.S. Navy warship with all hands—and the government knows it.”

“Very true,”
Dr. Jakes said.
“It shouldn’t take much more to draw him into an all-out conflict. And when that day comes, our promicin-neutralizer will be the secret weapon that brings him and his people to their knees without a shot being fired.”
Flashing a taut, malicious smile, he added,
“Push him, Mister Ryland. Push him until he breaks.”

July 23, 2008

M
OST PLACES IN
the daily life of Marco Pacella deserved to be called lonely, but none so much as the NTAC Theory Room.

Sequestered in the basement, behind a door decorated with a sign that read
WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD
, the miniature think tank had always been sparsely staffed. At its peak, its roster had numbered three: Marco and his colleagues P.J. and Brady. Then, in the span of a few months, P.J. had gone to prison for using an ability that he had gained by illegally injecting promicin, and Brady had died after being exposed to the airborne promicin virus released by the late Danny Farrell.

P.J.’s successor in the Theory Room had been an attractive young woman named Abigail Hunnicut. Her tenure at NTAC had come to an abrupt end a few months ago, when it had been revealed that she was illegally creating clones of Danny Farrell in an effort to replicate his fifty
percent lethal promicin virus. A converted “true believer,” she’d hoped to use her own promicin-based ability for rearranging DNA to complete Jordan Collier’s now abandoned mission to unleash airborne promicin around the globe, killing billions in the name of “progress.”

Instead she’d succeeded only in getting herself killed while holding Tom and Diana hostage, and that had left Marco at a bitter crossroads. He had been deeply smitten with Abby, which had made him blind to her deceits. Now he desperately wanted to hate her for betraying him and NTAC in the name of some apocalyptic ideology, but he had a deeper need to mourn her.

Two peers dead, one in jail
, Marco brooded.
And now there’s only me
. He sipped his lukewarm Diet Coke and studied the hash of numbers projected in high definition on the room’s back wall.
This would’ve gone a lot faster if Brady were still here.

He heard the doorknob turning behind him, and the soft groan of the door’s hinges as it swung inward. Glancing over his shoulder, he lifted his chin in greeting to Tom and Diana. “Hey, guys. Thanks for coming.”

“Sure thing,” Tom said. He and Diana navigated their way through the room’s labyrinth of computers and other high-tech gadgets. Diana hovered over Marco’s left shoulder. Tom loomed behind his right and inquired, “What’ve we got?”

“Bad news, and lots of it,” Marco said. He pushed himself up from his chair and strolled toward the projection on the wall. “The NSA sent over a mountain of raw data yesterday. I ran a difference filter to see what they had that
we didn’t.” He picked up a remote control off a table and clicked a button to advance the presentation. “Here’s what I found.”

A new screen of data snapped into focus against the wall. Marco pointed out details line by line as he continued. “Most of what got blanked from our servers had to do with transfers of high-tech components, state-of-the-art composites and materials, and—here’s the fun part—a radioactive sample from CERN.”

That item raised Diana’s eyebrows. “CERN? As in the Large Hadron Collider?” That hint of excitement in her eyes reminded Marco of the days—not so long ago but now gone—when Diana had seemed to be excited about him. Ending their brief romantic relationship had been her choice. It was one that he had always respected but in truth had never really accepted, not even now.

“Yeah, that CERN,” Marco said, keeping his personal feelings and professional duties strictly segregated. “The protocols used to move that sample had the hallmarks of a nuclear fuel shipment.”

Tom wrinkled his brow in confusion. “Wait a second,” he said, pointing at the screen. “Why would anyone ship nuke fuel into the U.S. from Europe when we can make our own at Livermore and Los Alamos?”

Before Marco could answer, Diana replied, “If it’s from the LHC it might be antimatter, or a new transuranic element—something heavier than we can produce.”

Horrified understanding shone through Tom’s widened eyes. “In which case, we’d be talking about something that puts a lotta punch into a small package.”

“Exactly,” Marco said.

Diana stepped around Marco’s chair and walked right up to the projection on the wall. Turning sideways to minimize her shadow, she traced lines with her fingers, as if it might help her to find the meaning of each detail in the puzzle of data.

“Marco,” Diana said, “I’ve seen parts lists for homemade nuclear bombs before, but I’ve never seen one like this.”

“That’s because it’s not for a nuke. You wouldn’t need that many kilos of superconductive composite, or a magnetically partitioned shell. Those are the building blocks for something completely different.”

Crossing his arms, Tom asked, “Care to be more specific?”

Marco hesitated to answer, because the type of device that would utilize such technologies was, as far as he had known until that morning, purely theoretical. But, since Tom had asked … He shrugged and said, “If I had to guess, I’d say someone’s figured out how to build an antimatter bomb.”

Tom looked back at the projected data and muttered, “I don’t like the sound of that.”

Diana turned back toward Marco and squinted into the projector beam. “Where’s this stuff being shipped?”

“No idea,” Marco said. “This was all the data the NSA was able to back up before its own cache got wiped. Whoever scrubbed these records zapped ‘em like a pro.”

“So we’re talking about someone with a top-level government clearance,” Diana said.

“Or a promicin ability,” Marco said.

Tom sighed. “I
really
don’t like the sound of that.”

“P
ARDON THE INTERRUPTION
, Dennis. I need a moment of your time.”

Dennis Ryland’s lunch had just been served. He looked up from his bowl of lobster spaghetti to see his visitor. Miles Enright, Haspelcorp’s executive vice president in charge of research and development, stood in a pose that was as casual as his expression was severe. The man was in his mid-fifties, gaunt and pale. He kept his perfectly round skull shaved, and he wore impenetrably opaque black sunglasses all the time, even indoors.

Gesturing with his fork at the otherwise empty, earth-and-brick-toned private dining room of the Pacific Grill, Dennis said, “I don’t suppose it’s a coincidence running into you here?”

“No, it’s not,” Enright said. He pulled out the chair opposite Dennis’s and sat down. Folding his hands on the table, he continued. “I notice you’ve been incurring some interesting charges on the R&D budget lately.”

Masking his ire with a tight-lipped smile, Dennis kept his stare level and unblinking. “Have I?”

“Yes. I admit, accounting can be a bit slow on the uptake from time to time, but even the most lethargic bean counter tends to notice when two billion dollars gets spent in less than two months with nothing to show for it.”

To buy time and annoy Enright, Dennis shoveled a forkful of gourmet pasta into his mouth. Tender chunks of Maine lobster meat and jumbo shrimp mingled with the subtle richness of oven-roasted tomatoes, julienned zucchini, and crushed red pepper in a lemon-butter sauce with fresh basil. He took his time and savored as he chewed. Then he swallowed and picked up his glass for a sip of his Bonterra Viognier, a crisply acidic white wine made from organically grown grapes.

Enright sat as stoically as a golem while he watched Dennis chew, sip, and swallow.

“Order something, Miles,” Dennis said. “I hear the steak salad’s fantastic.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Enright said. “You haven’t asked one,” Dennis said.

A waitress approached the table. The slim young Asian woman moved with a light, almost soundless step through the elegantly appointed space. She set a plate and a wineglass in front of Enright, then handed him a white cloth napkin and put down a set of utensils in their correct places on either side of his plate.

“Would you like to see a menu, sir?” she asked.

Enright shook his head. “Not right now, thank you.” She walked away and left the two men alone in the dining
room. His face a cipher, Enright said, “Very well, Dennis.” He folded his hands together. “What are you up to?”

Dennis smirked as he twirled more spaghetti into a tight coil around his fork. “Business.”

“But not business as usual,” Enright replied. “What do you really think I’m going to tell you, Miles?”