The God Wave (32 page)

On the opposite side of the room, in a rear corner, Mike was seated among his toys—a scattering of construction robots of varying shapes and sizes—drinking his first cup of coffee. The robots were grouped very much as if they were a class huddled around a favorite teacher. The big, mechanical arm—the one Mike called Fezzik—was rocking gently back and forth. Sara wondered if Mike was even aware he was doing that.

Other than her two teammates, the large room was empty except for one security guard, who occupied a tiny office between Tim's workstation and Sara's workspace at the front of the room. She could just see the guard through the Plexiglas window in his office door. He was on the phone.

She hesitated at her console, looking around at the desks that fanned out from hers in a rough arc. Usually members of their classes would already be in the lab, working on projects. Sara set down her tote and moved to the coffeepot on the opposite side of the room.

“Where is everyone?”

“Dunno,” said Tim. “Don't particularly care. Just means there's less of a line at the bagel station.”

“It doesn't strike you as odd that not one of our eager-beaver recruits is here?”

“Maybe they had a drill.”

She glanced at Mike. He looked relaxed, but she realized with sudden certainty that he was far from it. He was watchful in a way that only Mike could be. She moved over to lean against his workbench.

“Talk to me, Mikey. What are you thinking?” she asked him quietly.

“That this isn't a drill.”

“I wonder how long we'll have to wait to find out what it is.”

“Not long,” Mike murmured.

Sara followed his gaze. A pair of MPs had appeared in the hall outside the lab door. Her cell phone, which she'd slipped into her suit coat pocket, buzzed. She took it out and looked at the screen. She saw one sentence in a green message bubble: “They're deploying SOON. CB.”

CB . . . Chuck Brenton?

“What?” Mike asked, his eyes on her face.

“I think we've got a situation,” she said. “I'm just not sure what kind.”

She watched as the MPs conferred with one of the Smiths, then all three entered the lab. The MPs were armed with rifles. A moment later the lab security guy came out of his office. He had his sidearm holstered, but the flap was open. Sara was intensely aware that the three zetas were effectively cornered in the back of the room.

She cleared her throat. “What's going on, Agent? Is there a problem?”

“This facility is in lockdown, Ms. Crowell. There's been a development. Some of your colleagues infiltrated and vandalized
a lab and stole proprietary information earlier this week. Now they've disappeared.”

Which means we're on our own
. “What's that got to do with us?”

“That's what we need to determine.”

“I see. How long are we going to be in lockdown?”

“Until we have answers to our questions, ma'am. And until we find your colleagues.”

“We have lives, Agent Smith,” Sara objected. “I teach a college night class.”

“You'll call in sick, ma'am.”

“What about my family?” Mike asked mildly. “Am I gonna call in sick at home?”

“We'll take care of that, sir.”

“Will you?”

Something in Mike's voice made Sara look down at him. His expression was opaque, his eyes narrowed. When their eyes met, she was pretty certain the moment had come. When Mike stood up, she was sure of it.

“You're right—I am calling in sick,” he said. “From
here
. I'm sick of this place. I'm gonna go home.”

The two MPs lifted their rifles and moved closer—into Mike's little den of mechanisms. The lab security man also drew his weapon and stepped between Sara's and Tim's workbenches.

Sara glanced over at Tim. The two moved away from their workstations in an instant as Tim threw a flicker of thought at his monitor, which exploded in a shower of sparks and a cloud of smoke. The security guard shouted and doubled over, trying to shield his face from the spray of metal and plastic.

The MPs flicked their rifles up. The one closest to Sara tracked her movement with the muzzle of his gun, shouting, “Don't move!” The other moved swiftly toward Mike, his gun already aimed at the engineer's head.

Tim glanced sharply at Sara's computer monitor; it blew out, showering the MP with debris. Above the man's head, the fluorescent lights shattered, raining bits of plastic, glass, and ceramic down on his head and shoulders. The room dimmed.

The second MP hesitated for only an instant. In that instant Mike made a move so subtle, Sara barely caught it. Fezzik the robot arm ceased its aimless rocking and swung wildly toward the MP. It caught him on the shoulder, knocking him down and ripping the weapon from his hands. He dove to retrieve it but tripped over a power cable that had snaked out of nowhere to whip around his ankles. He fell hard, entangled in cable. Tim laughed, and five more overhead lights blasted apart, forcing the fallen man to throw his hands over his head in defense.

The Smith had been backpedaling toward the doors during all of this. Now he turned and bolted.

“I don't think so,” Sara said, and the doors slammed shut in the man's face.

The agent whirled back into the room, drawing his sidearm. Before he could unlatch the safety, an overhead beam fell with such force, it knocked the gun to the floor, almost taking his hand along with it.

“Sorry, pardner,” Sara said with a smirk. “Guess you're not the fastest gun in this part of town.”

The agent looked up from the fallen beam, raising his eyes to the three zetas.

“What are you people?”

“Right now, Agent Smith, we are the ones in control.” Sara looked from Tim to Mike. “Time to shut them down, gentlemen.”

Mike smiled very slightly, and all the lights went out, leaving the room in complete darkness.

Chuck and his band of fugitives left Albuquerque International Sunport with Dice behind the wheel of the rental car, headed toward the closest auto mall. Next to him, in the front passenger seat, Chuck compulsively checked all his contact accounts for the third or fourth time since they'd picked up the rental. This time there was a LinkedIn message. From Matt.

“What does it say?” Dice asked.

“‘A daring takeover has roiled the deep. They gotta catch some Z's.'”

“Takeover?” Dice repeated.

“Catch some Z's,” said Lanfen from the backseat. “Some zetas . . . Do you think he means Sara's team has taken over Deep Shield? Is that possible?”

“Okay, okay, okay.” The word was a chant, a prayer for something Chuck couldn't even articulate. He called Matt's number. It went direct to voicemail.

What had the zetas done?
Damn.

“Damn,” said Dice at the same moment Chuck thought it. “Check the rearview, Doc.”

Chuck did, glancing up into the mirror. At first he didn't see it. Then Dice veered a bit toward the outer lane, and he did. Weaving out of the traffic two cars behind them—as if to keep their rented station wagon in sight—was a dark blue, late-model Mercedes.

“Are you sure that's . . . anything?” asked Chuck.

Dice signaled and pulled into the leftmost lane. Seconds later the Mercedes joined them.
Funny,
Chuck thought.
In the movies they always drive black SUVs.
We got ourselves a tail with some taste.

“I see it. Looks like we're being followed.”

“How?” asked Mini. Her voice was high and tight, partly from fear but mostly exasperation. “How the hell did they find us?”

“I don't know,” Dice said, “but I'm willing to bet they're better at this than we are. What do I do?”

Chuck took swift stock of the situation. They were on a four-lane boulevard heading out of town toward a local auto mall, where they had planned to buy a used car with the cash they'd withdrawn from their bank accounts. That plan would have to be scrapped if they couldn't shake the Benz. The area was newly built up; shiny new shopping centers lined both sides of the road. There was a particularly big mall on the left, with popular anchor stores and a parking garage at either end.

“Make a U-turn at the next light, fade into the right lane, and turn into that mall parking lot.”

Dice nodded, gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles went white. He pulled the car into the left-turn lane without signaling; the dark Mercedes glided past them.

“Guy in the passenger seat looked right at us,” said Eugene. His voice broke. “I'm pretty sure I saw a gun.”

Dice tapped his foot on the floorboards, his eyes on the traffic light. “C'mon, c'mon, c'mon.”

Chuck watched the Mercedes. It had sped up and was already signaling for a left turn at the next light. Dice's light turned green, and he made a hasty U-turn with a delicate squeal of the tires. Halfway up the block, he turned into the mall parking lot. Straight ahead was the mall's main entrance, with a three-story Nordstrom right behind it.

“Turn right,” Chuck said, and Dice turned the car and headed it toward the Target, where the traffic was especially zoolike for a weekday.

“What're you thinking, Doc?” Dice asked, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror.

“I'm thinking a parking garage might be just the place to get lost.”

“Or trapped,” said Dice. “What if there's more than one of them? They see us go in, they might be able to trap us as we come out.”

Mini leaned forward between the front seats. “Don't go in.”

“What do you mean?” Dice asked at the same moment Lanfen said, “I see them. They're coming up the main avenue.”

Chuck glanced into the rearview mirror as the Mercedes turned right along the storefronts. It was coming right for them, much too fast for a shopping mall parking lot. He hoped no one would get hurt.

“Oh God,” said Eugene.

Dice asked, “What should I do? Tell me what to do.”

They were coming up swiftly on the entrance to the parking garage, with the Mercedes gaining on them.
What can the Deeps do?
Chuck wondered. Surely they couldn't whip out their guns and take them by force without witnesses calling 911. Even as he framed the thought, the man in the passenger seat of the Mercedes opened his window and perched a rotating light atop the car's roof.

Don't need to call the cops when they're already here,
he thought with grudging admiration.

Mini bounced forward again and laid a hand on Dice's shoulder. “Drive by the garage and turn left at the end of the building.”

“But what's—”

“Just do it!”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Chuck turned to look out of the back window of the station wagon as Dice sailed by the parking garage's entrance. If anyone had asked him later what he had seen or felt, he couldn't have told them. From inside the car, it seemed as if the vehicle were squeezing out of its own skin, like some large, alien insect. The shed carapace went one way, turning left and disappearing into the dark maw of the parking garage; the real station wagon kept moving toward the corner of the Target store. Chuck couldn't shake the idea that he felt as if the ghostly vehicle passed straight through him.

As they negotiated the left-hand turn at the corner, Chuck saw the Benz sweep unhesitatingly left, following the decoy into the garage. He shifted his gaze to Mini. Her fierce focus evaporated so completely, she slumped against Lanfen's shoulder, panting a little.

“I had to let go of it after the first turn because I couldn't see any farther than that,” she said. “But if we're lucky, they'll get lost in there looking for us.”

Chuck wanted to laugh. Once more he was glad he had insisted on keeping Mini and her extraordinary gift in the program. He felt a warm rush of relief, which lasted only until he saw several more identical Mercedes-Benzes making their way purposefully toward their end of the mall from several different directions, cop lights rotating silently on their rooftops.

“Dice.”

“I see them. Dammit.” He swung the wheel hard right and drove up a row of parked cars.

One row over, one of the Deep Shield Mercedes passed them going the opposite direction. It sped up at the end of the aisle and careened around the corner in pursuit. A second joined the chase a moment later.

“Now what?” Dice asked.

“Now this,” said Lanfen, her eyes narrowing.

Between their rental and its nearest pursuer, a car backed unexpectedly out into the aisle. The lead Mercedes swerved to avoid it, which put it right in the path of a second car that rolled out from the opposite side. As it squeaked by that obstacle, tires squealing, Lanfen mentally worked the mechanisms of three more cars, plunging them into the aisle: left, right, left. In a matter of moments, the route was completely blocked.

The Deeps driver slammed on his brakes, but it was too late. He collided violently with the rear of an unmoored pickup truck, inside of which a small dog yapped in frenzied outrage. The Mercedes behind it was no more successful; it slammed into the rear of the first car with enough force to set off half a dozen car alarms.

Chuck scanned the lot. They weren't out of it yet—a third Mercedes was barreling the wrong way up the next aisle over, obviously intending to cut them off at the top of their lane.

“There!”

Lanfen turned her head sharply in the direction he pointed. She pulled another quartet of vehicles out into the aisle to block the Mercedes's way. It scraped past them, leaving long scratches in its dark finish, and kept moving until another car pulled into the top of the row and met it head-on. Horns blared; brakes squealed. The Mercedes rocked to a stop, and Lanfen sent one last car careening into it broadside. More car alarms blared.

Dice juked left at the end of the aisle and fled the parking lot into the neighborhood behind the mall. No cars followed.

Lanfen exhaled. “Remind me to thank my dad for teaching me how to drive stick.”

After that they drove in silence until they were a half mile from the auto mall, with no suspicious Mercedes-Benzes or other vehicles making appearances. Chuck's heart was still beating too fast.

“My God, that was close,” murmured Dice, sweeping a shaking hand across his brow. “That was too close. You ladies are scary.”

“Yes, they are,” said Chuck, “and what they just did suggests the sort of uses the zeta wave can be put to, the sort of manipulation it allows. Think of General Howard—or any other paramilitary commander—with that sort of force.

“Imagine if our pursuers just now had been zetas.”

Apparently no one wanted to imagine it. Dice immediately turned the subject to their next move. The rental car had clearly been identified; they needed to lose it. They avoided the high-traffic center of the auto mall and drove to a neighborhood peppered with smaller car lots. They parked the station wagon, left the keys in it, and walked three zigzag blocks to an independent used car lot that they chose by consensus.

They found a suitable vehicle within minutes—a silver Ford Escape hybrid. Perfect. Small, nondescript color, darkly tinted rear windows. There were thousands of them on the roads. Plus there was that word.
Escape
.

The group nominated Dice as their spokesperson, with Chuck as his second. While the two men tracked down a salesman, Mini stood sentry with Lanfen in the outdoor lot, where they pretended to be browsing for cars while really keeping their eyes on the street. Eugene stood just inside the lot's small showroom, watching the two women watch the roads.

Mini, Chuck noted, did not look like Mini. With the makeup and straightened hair, she actually looked her age or possibly five years older even. She looked like she could be a suburban mom out shopping for a Subaru instead of his friend's daughter.

My friend's daughter
.

In their various layovers in airports, he had done some thinking about the friends and families they'd left behind. How long would they be away from them? What if Howard and his foot soldiers showed up on their doorsteps, hoping to pry information out of them?

Or worse.

His eyes sought Lanfen. She was standing near the Escape, wearing dark glasses and a soft hat into which she'd tucked all of her hair. She also slumped, looking nothing like a world-class martial arts expert. She looked lost. Her movements unsure, unfocused, and Chuck wondered how much of that was an act.

Chuck patted the cell phone in his jacket pocket. As soon as they were on the road, he'd call Matt again, try to find out what was going on. Try to get some sense of how bad it really was. Of what they'd unleashed by running and leaving Sara's team behind.

He pulled out of his reverie in time to hear Dice announce to the salesman that the hybrid was just what they were looking for, that its record looked clean, and that they'd be paying cash.

The salesman seemed surprised by this. He glanced from one of them to the other. “Family car?” he asked tentatively.

“Ski team,” said Chuck without thinking about it. “We're heading to Oregon for a competition, but our old van broke down. We decided to pool our resources and buy something more trustworthy and newer.”

“Skiing. Cool,” the guy said, nodding. He indicated they should follow him into his glassed-in cubicle.

Chuck glanced out into the car lot and saw Lanfen jerk suddenly upright. She crossed to Mini's side and spoke urgently in her ear. Chuck felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He caught Dice's gaze and gestured toward the front of the building.

“You've got this. I'm going to—” Chuck didn't finish the sentence but dashed across the showroom and out the front doors.

Eugene was already halfway across the car lot, heading for the Escape and the two women standing in its lee. Chuck ran the last several yards to join them.

“What's wrong? What is it?”

Lanfen nodded up the street. “Deeps. About a block north. Saw them crossing the intersection. Two cars, lights and all. They're trolling, Chuck. And if they find us, it's going to get very ugly, very quick—I doubt they care about keeping inconspicuous.”

“Maybe,” Eugene said, “we should all just go back inside the showroom.”

Mini uttered a sharp cry and grasped Chuck's sleeve. He turned to find her pointing in the opposite direction down the street. Two more of the Mercedes-Benzes were approaching the intersection, slowing as they reached the corner.

“Don't stare at them, Min,” Eugene whispered. He grabbed her arm and started to hustle her into the showroom.

“Too late,” said Lanfen. “Too late.”

The Deeps were moving, suddenly and with purpose, speeding across the intersection and up the street toward the dealership. There was nothing their quarry could do but stand and wait for the inevitable. There were no further illusions that Mini could use to save them, no machinery with which Lanfen could clog the street. She might block the driveway, but that was unlikely to stop them.

Chuck drew in a breath. It was over.

The two Deep Shield cars barreled up the street and past the entrance to the dealership without even checking their speed. They squealed around the corner to the north and disappeared up the cross street. A heartbeat later three more units sped toward the same intersection from the opposite direction, careened around the corner, and followed their comrades out of sight.

Chuck and company stood staring after them in stunned silence.

“Guys? What're you all looking at?”

Chuck turned. Dice was standing at the rear of the Escape with the keys dangling from his fingers.

“I'll tell you when we're on the road,” Chuck said. “Let's go.”

They were back on the road in minutes, heading for California. While the others explained the scare they'd had at the car dealership, but couldn't explain why the Deeps sped off, Chuck called Matt again. This time he got through.