Death and Conspiracy

by Seeley James

  Mercury said, The robot guys went over the house with a fine-tooth comb. There are no options. Tania disconnected the internet. Then she shot out the electric lines. And then, without your permission, she shot out the generator. Nema had a lot more time to build a complex system for her command center. Everything is running on a battery system now. It has a couple minutes of juice left. There are no movie-magical endings here. When the battery runs out—BANG!

  I jumped.

  Everyone looked at me. “We need to go. C’mon, Paladin. You can come with us. We’ll tape it down and walk away.”

  Paladin shook his head slowly. He lifted his shirt. A small box with a blinking green light was taped to his body. “Proximity backup with biometrics. I can’t take it off and I can’t cross the threshold.”

  Mercury said, Holy Bellona, your little Nema has more evil in her head than Caligula ever dreamed possible.

  “What happened to your little place with trees and springs?”

  “You waste time,” Hugo snapped.

  Miguel tapped my shoulder and nosed toward the exit. We’d seen it in battle. The Joe who knows he can save the squad by throwing himself on the IED. He dies, his friends live. A terrible and heroic bargain.

  Hugo knew he was going to die. His hard eyes never left Paladin’s. His regal bearing never wavered. “You must go now.”

  I grabbed two phones and yanked them from their cables.

  “Hey!” Paladin shouted.

  While his eyes followed my actions, Hugo grabbed his wrist with one hand and clamped his other hand down on top of Paladin’s trigger thumb. The two started wrestling for control of the button.

  Miguel grabbed my shoulders and pushed me out of the room. We took off in a dead run. Through the front door. Up the rise and over the sand dune and through the beach weeds where I tripped and somersaulted down a ten-foot hill.

  The explosion blew five feet off the top of the rise. The shock wave pounded every square inch of my body. The fireball lit up the peninsula. Heat singed my feet. Smoke filled my lungs. Pieces of clapboard and shingles and structural beams and plumbing flew over my head. Miguel grabbed my arms, hauled me to standing. We took off running again as the bigger objects began falling from the sky and landing around us like mortar shells.

  CHAPTER 52

  Tania, camouflaged to blend in with the beach weeds, appeared out of thin air, running for all she was worth. I patted her back, the only way I could say thanks for taking out all the critical points on the house. If she could’ve seen Paladin through the window, she would’ve blown the trigger out of his hand. It might’ve worked.

  Weighing on our hearts was the final analysis: we won the war because of Hugo’s sacrifice. The man died with honor.

  The three of us reached Dalsgaard’s mobile unit and ripped the door open.

  Everyone cheered when we staggered in.

  We wanted shelter. They wanted heroes.

  I uploaded the two phones stolen from Paladin to Bianca’s people.

  She called. I put her on speakerphone. “Nice work, Jacob. We’ll get these broken down and send messages to the terrorist groups. We’ll tell them to stand down. When they read their messages, we’ll have a fix on them. The CIA, FBI, and every international law enforcement group is standing by, ready to take them down.”

  Ms. Sabel broke into the conversation. She said, “The French gave us a bodycam feed from Hugo. We are deeply saddened by his loss and thankful for his sacrifice. What he did was the most heroic act of selflessness I’ve ever witnessed. What the three of you did is equally heroic. You’ve made us proud. More importantly, you’ve saved hundreds of lives.”

  President Charles Williams broke into Ms. Sabel’s praise and offered some of his own. Then it was Director Shikowitz’s turn. I put the phone down.

  Hugo’s two aides stood silently in the corner. I approached and started to speak. One guy shook his head. “We know.”

  “He was a brave man.” It was all I could think of.

  “He believes in duty above all else,” the other one said. He paused. “Believed.”

  Dalsgaard produced a bottle of akvavit, the Danish version of schnapps, while Jannik passed out shot glasses. No mobile command center is complete without shot glasses. Dalsgaard poured for the French aides first, then the rest of us. He said something long in Danish, then French. A tear formed in everyone’s eye. Except Tania and me. We spoke neither language. But we could tell it was a good eulogy.

  The Frenchmen appreciated his gesture. They drank, hugged everyone, turned, and walked out. A minute later, the French bird fired up its engines and roared into the night sky. They didn’t wait around because they knew there wouldn’t be enough pieces of Hugo to bring home.

  Dalsgaard was happy and sad. He would smile for a minute, then shed a tear. We wondered where the mastermind, Nema, had gone. And her victim-accomplice Arrianne, for that matter. In the end, we decided they were a problem best left to the FBI or Interpol. They would soon be rounded up with their killers.

  We ran out of things to say or do. The press began piling up outside. Someone needed to make a statement. We figured we should be gone before that statement came out. We said our goodbyes.

  I grabbed my phone. Someone was still talking. They were congratulating us on a job well done. I mouthed to Tania, “Who is that?”

  “Secretary of the Interior, I think.”

  “Homeland,” Miguel said.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “No, but every Indian knows that Interior jerk. He still owes us a mess of blankets from 1873. They all say the same thing, ‘soon.’ Anyway. That’s not him.”

  I pulled up the phone. “Uh, hey, excuse me. They need our statements here. We have to go. Probably. Thanks. And everything.” I clicked off.

  Miguel and Tania stared their disappointment at me.

  I said, “What?”

  “Ain’t that god of yours supposed to be eloquent or something?” Tania asked.

  Mercury stood behind her. If you’d asked me, I would’ve told you to say, “Who alone suffers, suffers most i’the mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind. But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip, When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship.” But you were winging it. Which is an eloquence of its own kind. In a way. For you.

  I said, I don’t even know what all that means.

  Mercury sighed and tossed up his hands. I give up.

  “Let’s go.” I walked out, and they followed.

  Miguel drove us to the jet, and the jet flew into the night sky, heading toward home. I stretched out on one of the sofas. Miguel took the other one. Tania lowered two facing seats to form the third bed. We were dead tired. I closed my eyes as we crossed north of Scotland, south of Iceland, and then the tip of Greenland heading toward Newfoundland and Labrador.

  The whole trip, I tried to visualize Jenny. Instead, I kept seeing Nema laughing her little pixie head off.

  Finally, it dawned on me. I jumped to my feet. Holy shit! She has a backup site. There are still a thousand lives at stake.

  Mercury said, Why do you say that, homeboy?

  I said, The house was wired to blow. She didn’t care about Paladin—she was going to kill him the minute he sent the orders to attack. But just in case something went wrong, she still wants her darkness to descend on the world.

  Mercury said, That bothered me, too. How could anyone with her cleverness not have a redundant system?

  I said, I keep going over the numbers in my head. The original plan called for five guys for each of thirteen sites. She had forty-nine terrorists when I bailed, but she picked up five, including Caleb. Holding out Lugh and Paladin left her with four per site, smaller crews than she wanted.

  Mercury said, What’re you saying, brutha? If she wanted a backup system to Paladin, she would have to do it herself?

  I said, But she’s not technical at all.

  Mercury said, Which leaves you?

  I said, Arrianne.
r />   Mercury touched his nose. Whad’ya know? Some of y’all white boys aren’t so dumb after all.

  I let it go. Arguing with god never works out for me.

  I said, Where did they go?

  Mercury said, Remember what she told you?

  He looked at the video display on the bulkhead. If you don’t put on a movie, the screen shows a map of your flight path. We were going home to Washington DC. The map showed us 700 miles away. Over an hour out. I looked back at my forgotten god and shrugged. He waved his arms in the air, then aimed his hands at the display again, like Vanna White turning letters on that show, Wheel of … something.

  He was giving me a clue. I hate that deities never tell you stuff. If they did, having faith wouldn’t be a question. We would all believe. But they like to confuse us to the point we never know for sure. Even the people who say they believe without a doubt, have doubts. The gods love to watch us suffer. Sadistic bastards.

  I got up and looked at the map. Quebec City, Montreal, Albany, Philadelphia, then home. We flew at 41,000 feet because private jets like to keep out of the lanes for commercial flights.

  The screens held my attention for some reason I couldn’t place. Something about the big cities on the left and right of our flight path caught my eye. I zeroed in on Quebec City, Montreal, Albany. I checked the map. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York.

  Then it hit me like Arrianne’s perfume. Vermont because it’s 92% white.

  Mercury was right. She had told me.

  I called Bianca. She had been asleep. She was not happy with me. I said, “When you sent out the stand-down message, did one of them go to Vermont?”

  “I think so. I can check.”

  “We also need to check for a signature. They would have a system of proof that the text came from Paladin and not someone pretending to be him.”

  “We thought of that. They were all signed with the single letter P. We did the same when we sent our note.”

  “A while back, you told me you guys in management sent emojis in texts that were programmed to respond when us regular people read a text.”

  “That’s not public information, Jacob,” she said. “But it’s true. Why?”

  “Were they sending a letter P—or one of those emoji-things that looked like a P?”

  “Holy shit. We didn’t check for that. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. It has to be an emoji because an app could check the code on it to make sure … Damn.” I heard her tossing the covers back and jumping to her feet.

  I said, “Then we have to find out if the cops found anyone at any of the phone locations. If the Free Origins terrorists knew it was a fake message, they would’ve abandoned the location.”

  Mercury waved his hand to get my attention. Because they would’ve been waiting for the order to attack in a safe house, but they’d also have a backup safe house. When they get the fake message, they abandon the first spot for the second and leave the phone behind. All except one person. Who would that be, homie?

  I said, Nema is using Arrianne’s mill house for the backup command center. She can’t leave, so she runs out and puts the phone in a passing car. Holy crap. We’re hours behind them now.

  Mercury said, Lucky for you, blowing up Paladin set their timetable back a day. You have until sunrise to find little Nema and wreck her party.

  I said, “Bianca, there’s going to be a phone in Vermont. I’m sure of it. Can you find its location at the time it received your stand-down message? Not where it is now, but where it was then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get me those coordinates. And get the international police on alert. This isn’t over.”

  “I’m on it.” She clicked off.

  I ran to the cockpit. “Can you veer a bit west of our flight path and drop to 30,000 feet?”

  “We can check with traffic control. Why?”

  “I need to do a HALO jump.”

  I ran back to wake up Tania and Miguel. They huffed and complained and swore at me, then got up. They followed me to the baggage compartment.

  Tania, bless her still-cursing soul, had repacked all the HALO suits and readied the wingsuits as part of our ready-for-anything plan. I would’ve kissed her were it not for the likelihood she’d deck me.

  We donned the suits, checked our oxygen, and grabbed pistols and rifles from the armory chest.

  Bianca sent the coordinates for the Vermont phone via text. She also noted the State Police sent a SWAT team out of Burlington, but the destination was rural. Very rural. Their ETA was forty-five minutes.

  I texted Bianca back, “We’re five minutes away. We’ll get there first. Tell them not to shoot us. Please.”

  The co-pilot came aft to close the door behind us. When we reached the right place, the pilot dove, leveled out, then gave us the signal. We opened the cargo door and jumped into the darkness.

  Our wingsuits worked great. Falling five miles down at 100 miles per hour doesn’t take long. We zeroed in on the target in two minutes.

  We landed at the end of an old grass airfield at 0319 hours. We ditched our gear, put on our Sabel Visors for night vision and thermal sensing. We saw our surroundings as bright as day, with a touch of video-game feel. Earbud communications fed an open channel between the three of us and sent livestreamed video back to Bianca’s team in Maryland. We snuck up on an aging and dilapidated mill house. A big wheel creaked slowly as the stream flowed beneath it.

  All the lights were on.

  CHAPTER 53

  Tania took the back. Miguel took the side. I went for the front porch. We peered in windows, measured rooms, checked corners, counted doors. We met back behind a stand of poplar trees.

  “Yagi antennas on the shed roof,” Tania said. “Kitchen’s a mess. One guy wandered in for a Diet Coke. He wasn’t with them in Spain. He seems like an IT loser, not Arrianne’s kind of guy.”

  “Nema has a boyfriend?” I asked. Tania shrugged.

  “Saw Arrianne working on computers,” Miguel added. “From what I saw on her screens, she was working on alternate sites. Nema was pacing behind her with a dead man’s trigger. She hadn’t pressed the switch yet.”

  “I saw that room from the other angle.” There was something wrong with the scenario. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. “Did anyone see any explosives?”

  They shook their heads.

  Miguel said, “She’s not the type to die for her cause. But she’s fond of bombs. Has to be something different this time.”

  “So where is the bomb that goes with her trigger?” Tania asked. “Only places we haven’t seen are the attic and basement. Let’s start with the basement.”

  We snuck silently back to the mill house and found a door to the lower level near the stream. There were no windows.

  Bianca texted us, “They’re active on the internet researching targets. We need to disconnect the Yagi antenna and take them offline.”

  Miguel, Tania, and I exchanged glances. We wouldn’t take them offline until we had the bomb disabled. If Nema knew we were here, they might choose to blow us all up. Tania went to the shed where she’d seen the antenna. She would deactivate it on my command and not before. Miguel went to the window where he had a good view of the command center. I went through the basement door.

  There wasn’t enough light in the pitch-black space for night vision to work. I flipped on the infrared we use in these situations. It wasn’t a basement. It was the working room of the mill. The shaft from the wheel had long ago rusted out, but stone wheels, six feet across, stood ready to grind.

  Mercury stood in the dark, looking around. Shame about that door.

  I said, What do you mean?

  Mercury said, What did they call these places back in the day? Drafty. Opening that door sucked air from upstairs. Unless she’s clueless, she’ll be down here in a minute.

  I said, Couldn’t be helped. Had to get in somehow.

  My visor caught a heat signature in the corner, obscured by something.
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  Moving cautiously, I pulled back a plastic shower curtain. The spitting image of Arrianne, only male and maybe two years younger, faced me. He wore a suicide vest with a lot more wires sticking out of it than Jenny’s. His eyes were wide with terror. He trembled so hard he could barely keep standing.

  Nema wasn’t big on family. She killed her brother and broke off contact with her parents. Using Arrianne’s little brother was as evil as the rest of Nema’s plan. All part of her darkness. Then it came to me. I understood why Nema hated so many people.

  A bright light came on. It lit up the mill room.

  “Don’t move, Jacob.” Nema’s voice.

  I stepped away from the bomb and faced her. She stood at the top of a long wooden staircase with a rifle aimed at me. “Or what?”

  “Don’t think I won’t shoot you.”

  “I don’t doubt you’ll try.” I tugged at my body armor. “But you’ll have to hit my face because the rest of me is covered. I don’t think you’re that good a shot. You’ll be lucky to pull the trigger before I respond. From this angle, I can hit your thalamus and medulla with one bullet. The thalamus controls your sensory information, sending data off to different parts of the brain for processing. The medulla tells your heart to beat and your lungs to breathe. Doing it that way, you won’t feel a thing.”

  She gulped and regrouped. “Why didn’t you, then?”

  “Because this poor bastard might end up dead.” I thumbed over my shoulder at her victim. “I’ve not figured out how to disable the vest.”

  “Pulling the battery won’t work this time. We figured it out. The only way you could’ve freed those kids was to unplug it. We built in a secondary.”

  “We?”

  Nema realized she gave something away.

  Bianca’s voice slipped into my earbud. “Jacob, can you get a close up look at the wiring on the vest?”

  I said to Nema, “You mean that guy upstairs? The one you’re saving yourself for? Or so he thinks.”

  “Shut up, Jacob. Get up here.”

  “And leave Arrianne’s innocent little brother to die? I don’t think so. Make you a deal here. Let me take the vest and give him the body armor.”