“That has my vote,” said Wilson, and Doc nodded.
“Don’t matter which side of the issue you’re on,” said Doc, “when Americans start arguing over guns, you’re gonna have trouble.”
“It has potential as our target,” said Church, “and the timing is right.”
“If you want to jump to really big crowds, the next couple of mega-events are coming up,” Nikki said. “The biggest is Going Viral, that big beg-a-thon concert to raise money for families hit hardest by last year’s shutdowns. But no one’s throwing stones at that because people right across the electorate were affected. Right, Left, whatever. They expect the concert to raise something like eighty million, between ticket sales, merch, and online donations. And because this is in the South, there’s a high proportion of country artists, though there are R&B and hip-hop, too. A bit of everything.”
“How many people are expected for that?” asked Wilson.
“At the venue? Eighty-five thousand, not counting tailgate parties and all that. Lots of small ancillary events, too. Autograph booths, celebs visiting local families. That kind of thing.”
“When is the concert?” asked Church.
“This weekend,” said Nikki. “It’s all over the news, trending on social media.”
Wilson looked at Church. “Are you thinking that’s the target?”
“It fits the profile for a big-ticket hit,” said Church.
“Right, but the trucks from the Pavilion would barely have time to make it.”
“Barely is not can’t,” said Church. “Reach out to the organizers, call in any markers you have. If we can’t shut it down, then we need to have our people in the venue and with official status. Get Homeland on this as well. You know who to call.”
“On it,” said Wilson, and he left the room at a brisk walk.
Church stared at the long list of other events.
“Walk us through all of it,” he said.
CHAPTER 150
ABOARD THE SOPHIA YIN
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA
Ghost was fine.
“The big thing, apart from potential infection,” said Jean, “was the pressure on a nerve cluster. Once he wakes up, he’ll be pretty much pain-free. Just be sure he drinks water and eats as much as he can manage.”
“He can manage a lot.”
“Good. A juicy steak will help. All that protein.”
“He’ll love you forever.”
“He’s your dog.”
I smiled. “I can’t thank you enough, Jean.”
“He’s your dog,” she said again. “That makes him family.”
It was an oddly touching thing for her to say.
I nipped out and came back with some truly heroic steaks, which we grilled and ate with steamed vegetables, mashed sweet potato, and wine. I put Ghost’s steak—which looked like it was cut from a woolly mammoth—in the fridge because he was snoring.
Jean and I went up to the sundeck where we watched a line of pelicans coast on the thermals, and we sipped dark Mexican beer. There was a sun tarp angled to block casual observation from the pier, and I had a hat with a floppy brim, a Miami Dolphins T-shirt, and sunglasses. Protective coloration.
For reasons that I can never adequately explain, I opened up to her. Sometimes what one needs is a disinterested third party. Like a lawyer or a shrink. Not a friend, per se, but an ally. Someone who understands the way the world is assembled and who put which piece into place. Jean was like that. Few people are on her level of insight.
We sat together for the next hour before she broke into my brooding silence. I caught her studying me for long periods of time, and after trying to ignore it, I said, “What?”
It came out more belligerently than intended.
She smiled. “Have to say, Joe, you look like fifty miles of bad road.”
“I thought the expression was ‘forty miles.’”
“Have you looked in a mirror?”
“Funny.”
“No,” she said, “it’s not. By any metric, you’re a goddamn mess. You’ve lost too much weight, your skin color can best be described as an unhealthy pallor, your fingers keep twitching, and there’s a sense of wrongness about you.”
“Wrongness? Since when are you metaphysical?”
“Since never. Just telling you what I see.”
“I’m fine.”
“Ri-i-i-i-ight,” she said. “And I’m the queen of all the mermaids.”
I drank my beer. The sun inched toward the horizon, lengthening the shadows.
“You haven’t called Junie yet, have you?”
I shook my head.
She said, “I nearly did while you were in the head taking a shower.”
I looked at her. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because you didn’t say it was okay,” she said.
I sipped my beer. “Thanks.”
“But I’ll call her after you leave.”
“Please don’t.”
She shook her head. “You don’t get to ask that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“House rules,” she said. “No deliberate cruelty.”
“It’s not your business, Jean.”
She snorted. “It became my business when you came on this boat.” She paused to drain her bottle and then fished a pair of fresh ones from the cooler between us. She unscrewed the tops with deft twists of her strong brown hand and offered one to me. I took it. We didn’t clink because it wasn’t that kind of day. “I don’t know you that well, Joe. I knew your dad better. Actually had my eye on him for a while, even though he was older than I was.”
“Oh god, don’t tell me that.”
“Hush now,” she said. “Your dad talked about you a lot. I know what happened when you were a kid. I have some idea what it did to you and what it’s still doing. To use precise clinical terms, Joe, you’re out of your freaking mind.”
“I can see why Dad liked you. It’s the sexy technical jargon.”
She threw a peanut at me. “My point is that Junie knows all of this, too. Probably better than anyone except that ol’ teddy bear Rudy Sanchez. She knows about your damage, and she loves you anyway. Loves you with her whole heart, and that is a considerable thing to say, especially when there’s no exaggeration in the observation. And before you open your mouth and say something dumb, I have a bit of insight into her, too. We had a lot of long, good talks. She opened up to me. I know about her—how should I phrase this?—unusual genetic history. I know that she has been badly hurt a few times because she’s in your life. That maniac who shot her, all those glass cuts she got during that hospital attack, and then getting impaled Christmas Eve.”
“That’s my point,” I said. “All I can offer her is pain. I’m nothing but bad luck to her. And, besides, she doesn’t know about the Darkness.”
Jean got up, walked over to stand in front of me, leaned down to place both hands on the arms of my chair.
“You listen to me, Joseph Edwin Ledger,” she said sternly. “Junie Flynn is my friend, and you will not sit on my sundeck and bad-mouth her.”
“I didn’t,” I protested. “I’m talking about myself and—”
“Do I have to hit you? I know you’re fast, but I bet you I’ll get a damned good one in if you keep talking like that.”
I said nothing.
“Do you think that Junie defines her life, her happiness, her love on whether you can keep her safe? Do you think she’s such a fragile maiden that she needs you to protect her from the big bad world? God, and here I thought you were one of the enlightened ones. A male who doesn’t think his woman revolves around him like a moon.”
“I—”
“Do you think she’s so shallow that she’d just bail when it all got tough? She was born to a tough life. Every bit as tough as yours, but without the support system you had with your folks and with Rudy. She’s brave and brilliant and, for some damned reason, is committed to you. Sure, there’s no marriage certificate, but she’s in i
t for better or worse, in sickness and in health.”
“She doesn’t know what I’ve done,” I said. “What I’ve been through since—”
She was right; she did get in a good one. Two, actually. A sharp slap that knocked my face sideways and a backhand that banged me straight again. Then she leaned forward until her nose was an inch from mine.
“You think you’re in hell, Joe,” she snarled. “Imagine the hell Junie’s been through these last weeks. Do you know how many times she’s called me? And I’ve called her? And you have the audacity, the arrogance to think she’s so weak that this will break her? Sure, she’s a vegan post-hippie new age tree hugger who doesn’t like guns and would rather watch a chick flick than binge-watch the latest season of The Boys with you, but that doesn’t mean she’s weak. Don’t forget your history, Ledger. Benevolence, compassion, honesty, loyalty, honor—qualities that define her were also tenets of the goddamned samurai.”
My face stung, but the burn of my flushing cheeks hurt more.
“You call her soon, or so help me, I’ll find you and break something you don’t want broken.”
She pushed off the arms of my chair and slumped back into hers. We drank.
We drank a lot.
After an hour, she got up, yawned so loudly her jaw creaked, gave me a long, frank, disapproving glare, and trundled off to bed. By then, the sun was down and I stayed there, drinking the last beer very slowly, watching the sky to see what stars were going to catch fire. There was laughter and music from nearby boats, and the soft-heavy slap of water against the hull as the last of the day’s fishing boats made their way to their slips.
CHAPTER 151
ABOARD THE SOPHIA YIN
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA
It’s the small things that can kill you or keep you alive.
I fell asleep in the deck chair and drifted into some truly awful dreams. Nicodemus hunted me through a burning city. Towers flared like candles and melted like wax. The glass windows of every store were a cracked mirror reflecting hundreds of distorted versions of me. Each aspect was that of a dying man infected by some horrific plague that was quickly turning my skin to a sickly red black. Ragged black birds fled across the sky, but the fingers of flame reached up from the buildings and set them alight. They fell, burning and screaming like children.
Behind me, Nicodemus stalked in relentless pursuit. He was a hundred feet tall, and his eyes were fire. A black serpent’s tongue lolled from his laughing mouth, and his teeth were filed to dagger points.
There was nowhere to run, no safety to find. No shelter from the awareness that I was fighting something that could never be defeated. A monster without pity or reason or vulnerabilities.
I was aware that I was dreaming, but no matter how I tried, the dream would not let me go. I couldn’t escape it.
And then I heard a creak of a heavy foot on wood. Even way down deep in the dream, I could tell that it was stealthy, because it stopped so suddenly and there was a hiss of a voice. No words, just the kind of sound one person makes when someone else has been incautious.
And I knew that I was in trouble.
I came awake all at once and launched myself out of the deck chair, diving, rolling, coming up ten feet from where I’d been just as lightning cracked and thunder boomed. Only it was really a muzzle flash and a bullet punching into the chair.
In that split second of fiery light, I saw them.
Two men, guns in hand, standing at the top of the gangway.
I had no gun, but there was a shark rifle under the topside control panel. I dived for that, tore it from the clips, and came up firing.
A hollow click. Of course it was unloaded here in port.
I was already in motion, though, using the darkness, swinging the rifle like a club even as both of them fired. Something burned a line along my right side, but I didn’t care. The rifle stock caught the first man on the temple. I’d put all my strength and all my fear into that swing, and his face disintegrated. He sagged sideways and would have fallen if not for the hand ropes.
The other man turned and fired at me, but I was ducking and surging forward in a driving tackle that took us both down the gangway. His next shot went high, and I kept ramming until we were on the dock. The angle of the gangway and the force of my impact made him stumble and fall, and I landed on him, dropping my knee into his crotch with devastating effect. He screamed, but I chunked him in the forehead with the stock of the rifle, and the scream died.
Lights were coming on in the neighboring boats. People began yelling, telling whoever was setting off fireworks to damn well stop.
There were no more shots.
I crouched over the second shooter.
“Sorry!” I yelled into the darkness, trying to make my voice sound like a drunk’s.
The unseen neighbor told me to sober up and go the hell home.
My heart was hammering as I fished for his handgun, but it was gone. Dropped in the fight. I rose up into a crouch and scouted around, sticking to the darkest shadows. No one else seemed to be moving.
I ran back up the gangway and saw a shape detach itself from the blackness. There was a glint of moonlight on a pistol barrel.
But it was in Jean’s hand.
“Joe…?”
CHAPTER 152
ABOARD THE SOPHIA YIN
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA
It took some effort and a lot of stealth to get the two attackers aboard, below, and trussed up. The one I’d hit in the temple was in bad shape—not dead but clearly a skull fracture. Jean did what she could for him, which demonstrated a level of kindness that I did not share.
“He needs an ER,” said Jean. “And a lot of surgery. You really mashed him. They’ll be picking bone chips out of his brain, and he may lose an eye.”
“He’s lucky the shark rifle was unloaded,” I said coldly. “And maybe he’s lucky you’re standing right here.”
She studied me, then gave a small shake of her head.
The other man was hurt and maybe had a fractured pelvis, but he’d live. She gave him some painkillers. I searched the two men, found car keys and extra magazines for their guns. Then I went topside, found the pistol the first guy dropped, and went prowling. The keys belonged to a Chevy pickup truck with a camper body parked in the marina lot. I did a quick search and saw food wrappers, more ammunition, duct tape and plastic bags, and a bundle of leaflets for a group that called itself the New Founding Fathers. The rhetoric was all about a skewed set of American values, the righteousness of God’s plan for the white race, and a lot of anti-Semitic garbage.
Then I returned to the Sophia Yin. Jean made coffee while I went through the stuff in their wallets. Head Wound was Brett Kovacks, thirty, of Saint Louis Street in LaBorde, Texas. Cracked Pelvis was Al Carson, twenty-seven, also of LaBorde. Their voter registrations listed them as Independent. Guess there wasn’t an option for asshole as party affiliation.
Carson began to snore.
“How much painkiller did you give him?” I asked.
“Enough to put him out and keep him out.”
“I wanted to question him.”
Her eyes were hard and uncompromising. “I know, Joe, and I have a pretty good idea of how you’d phrase those questions.”
“I—”
“No,” she said, cutting me off. “This is my boat and my home. I’m not exactly a pacifist like Junie, and I’m okay with you doing whatever damage you needed to do to keep from getting killed, but I won’t be a party to torture. I won’t have that in my house.”
And there was no way to move her from that stance.
Sure, I could have hit her with humanism and patriotism and all of that, but … I really did understand.
“They’re probably not on the policy level anyway,” I said, then sighed. “What do you want me to do? It’s still dark. I can carry them up the pier a bit, dump them there, and make an anonymous call.”
“That seems best.”
So, that’
s what I did. Let the cops and the doctors at the local hospital figure out what happened, who gave them first aid, and what happened to their truck, because … yeah, I stole it.
Ghost slept in the camper body, and I drove. It was sixteen hours to LaBorde at posted speeds. I was pretty sure I could do it a lot faster.
CHAPTER 153
THE PAVILION
BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER
STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON
Another group of Fixers was in the main turnaround, loading more crates and gear onto a truck. There were more of the fighting machines, and what concerned Top was that they had their ammunition packs already in place. That would only make sense if the machines were about to be deployed into combat.
Then Top saw the humped stack of parachutes. Personal ones—enough for every Fixer—and larger cargo chutes. Armed sentries stood guard, and HK’s last administrative assistant was there to oversee the process.
Top and Bunny watched this from the jogging path.
“Population’s getting a might thin ’round here,” said Bunny. “Guess we’re next.”
When Top didn’t answer, Bunny turned to him.
“What…?”
Top shook his head. “What the hell are we doing, Farm Boy?”
“What do you mean?”
“We got all the intel we could,” said Top, “but I’m starting to feel like the circus left town without us.”
“This was the job, old man. Watch and report.”
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