The 4400® Promises Broken

by David Mack

  Turning his attention to another live image of the burning oil slick on Puget Sound, Tom felt his jaw clench and his fists curl shut. He had been dreading this day ever since Jordan Collier had challenged the U.S. government by declaring a one-square-mile chunk of Seattle as sovereign territory under his authority and renaming it “Promise City.”

  Marco sidled up to Tom and fixed his stare on the TV screen. “This is bad,” the young Theory Room director said, adjusting his thick-rimmed, black plastic eyeglasses.

  Tom glanced at the shorter, slightly built man. In his tweed jacket, linen shirt, blue jeans, and flat-soled sneakers, Marco looked more like a graduate student than the professional intelligence analyst and scientific theorist that he was.

  “It’s even worse than it looks,” Tom said.

  Cocking one eyebrow, Marco asked, “How do you figure?”

  “Forget about the implications of the U.S. firing the first shot at Promise City,” Tom said, fighting to stay calm and keep his temper in check. “You and I both know how powerful Jordan’s people are. They could’ve ended this a dozen different ways. They could’ve self-destructed that missile, or ditched it at sea, or turned it to confetti. But they chose to use it as a weapon.” Unable to hold back the tide of his wrath, Tom pounded the side of his fist on a desktop. “They killed almost four hundred men and women on that ship!”

  “Not to play devil’s advocate,” Marco replied, “but maybe sinking the ship was an accident.”

  Scowling at the scene of smoking destruction on the TV, Tom shook his head. “No, that was no accident. That ship had a missile-defense system. The only way it could take a direct hit like that would be if someone compromised its defenses. Jordan and his people sank that ship on purpose.” He turned and looked at Marco. “Which means that Jordan Collier thinks he’s ready to go to war with the United States.”

  TWELVE

  “I AM NOT READY to go to war with the United States!”

  Pointing at the moving images of destruction at sea on his office’s television, Jordan continued. “There were nearly four hundred people on that ship! What the hell were you thinking?”

  Kyle stood silent in front of Jordan’s desk, staring into the ruddy sky outside the office’s windows, where a blood-red sun dipped in slow degrees below the horizon. “I did what Cassie told me had to be done. She’s never been wrong before.”

  Jordan massaged his temples. He was usually a calm and contemplative figure, not prone to outbursts, but the last few days had seemed to test his patience. “I don’t care what Cassie said. I told you specifically not to use force without consulting me. Did you forget that conversation?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Kyle said. “It was an emergency. We did what had to be done to keep us safe.”

  Recovering his Zen-like composure, Jordan reclined his chair. He kept his attention on Kyle, who avoided eye contact, choosing instead to look past Jordan and into the distance.

  The leader of Promise City stood and walked past Kyle to stand in front of the television. “We always have nonviolent options, even in a crisis,” Jordan said. “Using them allows Promise City to retain the moral high ground. Spilling blood when we don’t need to only begets more violence and tarnishes the Movement.”

  Between them, but seen only by Kyle, his phantom counsel Cassie said with a sneer, “Tell him what a hypocrite he is.”

  Goaded into the confrontation, Kyle snapped at Jordan, “You didn’t seem to care about spilling blood for your Great Leap Forward. You were ready to accept fifty percent fatalities worldwide from promicin. That’d be, what? Three billion people dead? And you want me to feel guilty for taking out a few hundred military personnel who tried to kill us?”

  “That was different,” Jordan said. “At the time, I believed the potentially fatal risk of taking promicin was one of the prices we had to pay for progress as a species. I see now that I was wrong. We don’t need to kill half the world in order to save the other half. What you did today was criminal.”

  “What we did was self-defense,” Kyle said, stepping into Jordan’s personal space.

  Jordan held his ground, unfazed by Kyle’s challenge. “Self-defense isn’t the same thing as vengeance, Kyle. That’s not what the Movement stands for.”

  “No, apparently it stands for rolling over and playing dead,” Kyle replied. Cassie planted her hands on his shoulders, stoking his courage. “The Feds in Washington aren’t going to take a hint, and they won’t reward us for our restraint. They don’t respect people who bring knives to gunfights. The only language they understand is mutually assured destruction.”

  “I refuse to accept that,” Jordan said, stepping away from Kyle, who followed him. Jordan returned to his desk and slipped back into his chair. “There are better paths that we can take.”

  Planting his knuckles on Jordan’s desk and leaning forward, Kyle asked, “Then why do you have people positioned all over the world, waiting to take out major cities on your order?”

  “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.”

  THIRTEEN

  DENNIS RYLAND 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 trainin
g 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.”

  FOURTEEN

  July 23, 2008

  MOST 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.”
r />   FIFTEEN

  “PARDON 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.