by Sean Parnell
Steele and Goodhill stood there ramrod stiff like a couple of plebes at West Point. They knew Lansky well enough to understand when he wasn’t really asking a question.
“The only reason Rockford’s been able to claim to the Russian ambassador that he knew absofuckinglutely nothing about this, is because he didn’t.” Lansky stuck his pipe back in his teeth and pounded the table with a fist. “And the only reason he’s been able to say with a straight face that there’s no such thing as the Program, which the Russians apparently knew everything about, is that the goddamn thing no longer exists!”
“Well, sir,” Goodhill ventured, “then it looks like we took appropriate and completely deniable action, at precisely the right time.”
Lansky cocked his head, lowered himself into a dusty plush chair, and said very quietly, “You know, Goodhill, I can have you disappeared. I can have frigging Alcatraz opened up again, just for you and your half-cocked trigger boy here.”
“Yes, sir.” Goodhill chose to not respond anymore, and Lansky turned on Steele, using his pipe stem as a gun barrel again.
“There’s only one reason you’re not going to some Supermax as a toilet boy, Steele. The president is currently dealing with an international issue—not of your making, for once. The Red Chinese are cranking their games to a lethal level. He wants the Program revived.”
Steele and Goodhill both raised their chins at that, but they didn’t dare look at one another or speak.
“He not only wants it revived,” Lansky went on, “but he wants it done yesterday, and you’re both going to do it. That means us finding the budget, rehiring personnel if we can, recovering Alphas from whatever they’re doing, or training up new ones, etcetera ad nauseam.” Lansky reached to the table and picked up the pile of law codes again. “You don’t have to volunteer, of course. The choice is, you can spend the whole weekend talking to some very ambitious FBI agents, who’ve already been inquiring about your travel habits, or you can play ball. Are we clear?”
“Sir.” Steele raised a finger like a schoolboy. “You keep saying ‘us.’”
“I’m going to be running the new Program myself, for one year. And you two clowns are going to work for me. Good enough?”
That was a shocker to both men, but they were smart enough to save their feelings about Lansky taking the helm for later, and in private. Or so Goodhill thought until Steele opened his mouth.
“All right, sir, but then I have one question,” Steele said while Goodhill glared at him sideways and wished he could cut out his tongue. “If the Program had still been up and running, would you have sanctioned our hit on Millennial Crude? Because if not, to be honest, I don’t think I’ll be able to work for you.”
Goodhill mentally face palmed himself. Lansky turned another shade of scarlet.
“Both of you be here at 0700 tomorrow, ready to work your asses off,” he fumed. “Now get the hell out of my TOC. And if you fuck this up, I’ll turn you over to the Russians myself.”
Chapter 6
Washington, D.C.
Ralphy Persko still lived in Crestwood, halfway between Silver Spring, Maryland, and Washington’s National Mall.
He still occupied the top-floor flat of a classic old brownstone on Sixteenth Street NW, and ever since he’d been involuntarily retired as the Program’s top geek and computer genius, his landlord, Mrs. Jepson, had been much more pleased with his tenancy. There were no more late-night comings and goings of his strange friends, except for his cherub-faced roommate, Frankie, and thank the Lord no helicopter had ever landed on the roof again. And while Ralphy’s cover story about losing his job as a digital librarian at the Smithsonian surely engendered Mrs. Jepson’s sympathy, at least he was still paying the rent.
Mrs. Jepson had no idea, of course, that the pudgy, curly-haired lad who often helped her take out the recycling was in fact a national hero. And Ralphy would never have called himself that, even though he’d received a Presidential Medal of Freedom, as well as the National Intelligence Medal for Valor, alongside Frankie, Eric Steele, and Dalton “Blade” Goodhill, right there in the White House, in a quiet evening ceremony attended by no one but the president and his immediate staff. After the event, their medals and accompanying certificates had all been retrieved, with apologies, and locked in a safe. Then the four of them had gone over to Lost Society in northern D.C., stuffed themselves with thick sirloins, gotten drunk, and split up.
Ralphy hadn’t done very much since then, and neither had Frankie. They both lived on their government separation allowances for a while, took on odd jobs doing computer coding over the net, and Ralphy pursued his flight simulator hobby with desultory lack of enthusiasm. He suffered from a form of PTSD, though he wouldn’t have termed it that.
Intelligence analysts and computer geeks weren’t supposed to be kinetic-action types, but in the waning weeks of the Program, Ralphy had been sucked into the dark vortex of special operations, and not of his own volition. Eric Steele needed him, and you didn’t say “no” to a guy like Stalker Seven, who could inject you with a call to duty using nothing more than a look. During the course of Ralphy’s “voluntary assist,” three Program Alphas had been horrifically murdered by that international terrorist Lila Kalidi, and he was only thankful that he hadn’t discovered their corpses himself, because Kalidi took ears for souvenirs. Then she’d tried to murder Steele as well, and somehow Ralphy had wound up with Steele and that semihuman pit bull, Dalton Goodhill, aboard a helicopter insanely piloted by that former Apache tank-killer flygirl, Allie Whirly, and had nearly puked his heart out along with his guts.
And finally, like the culmination of a bad acid trip—something that Ralphy had actually experienced, because Frankie believed that mind expansion might be the key to neurological thought transference—he and Eric Steele had defused a massive load of Semtex in the bowels of the National Cathedral, and he still often woke in the middle of the night, his trembling fingers trying to decide which wire to cut, and his curly mop drenched in sweat.
Frankie would fetch him a cold beer and pet him for a while till he fell back asleep. She was sweet, but she knew he was damaged.
Ralphy and Steele hadn’t seen each other for months. Like battle buddies who’d endured something together that they couldn’t speak of to anyone else, they still texted on occasion with short phrases like “Just checking in” and “How’s it going?” just to show that each still cared. But aside from Steele’s recent request for some overhead surveillance of Romania, the Program was gone, Steele was probably working security on an oil rig or bodyguarding some billionaire, and Ralphy was thinking about opening a vape shop with Frankie somewhere—like maybe a place without political turmoil, riots, deadly diseases, and social justice warriors who’d go after your job if you used a horribly offensive term like “gal.” He was thinking it might have to be OCONUS (Outside the Continental United States), like the Caribbean isle of Grenada, and all of these current musings and broodings made the knock on his door very late this night the last thing he expected to hear.
Eric Steele could be quiet as a hunting cat, so tonight he’d arrived at Ralphy’s door after jacking open the downstairs entrance and taking the four flights with barely a boot sole whisper. He rapped his knuckles on the door five times, waited half a minute because he knew Ralphy would be fetching his Glock, then rapped again and stood back. The peephole popped, the four locks pinged and clacked, and then Ralphy was standing there in the weirdest getup, clutching his handgun down by one leg, wearing sandals, shorts, a Top Gun T-shirt, and with a full jet pilot’s oxygen mask, hose, and red jet jockey helmet on his head, sun visor up and his big eyes blinking.
“Think you might be taking this virus mask thing a little far, Ralphy?” Steele said.
Ralphy’s answer through the rubber mask sounded like somebody talking with a cardboard box on his head.
“Steele. What the heck are you doing here?”
“Happy to see you too.” Steele stepped inside and closed the
door. “Thanks for inviting me in, Dr. Who.”
Ralphy took a step back and unsnapped the O2 mask, which fell away to one side like a hotshot fighter jock’s. “I’m not wearing it for that. I was in the middle of a simulation.”
Steele looked over at the center of Ralphy’s living room. The big couch he remembered was gone, and so was the coffee table where Ralphy had set up a computer dedicated to flight simulation, with a high-end joystick and a pair of rudder pedals under the table. Now there was an actual full cockpit there, like something Ralphy had bought on eBay from a video arcade. He’d clearly enhanced the flight panel and head-up display with his own monitor, programming, and controls, and Steele could even hear a set of surround sound speakers burping out jet engine noises and the tinny voices of other players who were probably thousands of miles away.
“I hope you guys are raiding an Iranian nuclear reactor,” Steele said. “The Israelis need a break.”
Ralphy put the gun down on a side table, pulled off the helmet and tucked it under his arm. “Really, Steele, I’m glad to see you, but you never show up just for a beer.”
“I’m that transparent, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Well, I wanted to thank you for the recon.”
“No sweat, dude.”
“Where’d you get the overheads? Commercial satellite firm?”
“Planet Labs.”
“Not bad, though a couple of features were off, maybe PL’s behind on real time.”
“Uh-huh.” Ralphy was still waiting.
“By the way,” Steele said. “Rumor is, Snipe and his crew have retired . . .”
“What is it, dude?”
“The Program’s being revived.”
Ralphy just stood there and blinked while thousands of thoughts and flickering images flashed through his mind like an old film strip on fast-forward, backward. Frankie, who’d been reading in bed, had heard Steele arrive and had just wiggled into an oversize Mickey Mouse nightshirt. She stumbled out of the bedroom on the right and held onto the doorjamb with both hands, her bug-eyed expression matching Ralphy’s. Steele smiled down at her. With her petite figure, floral tattoos, ankle bracelet, full lips, and huge hairdo of ringed black curls, she looked like a hippie throwback from Woodstock. She also had a large and wickedly fast brain, and she adored Ralphy, which in Steele’s eyes made her pure platinum.
“Seven, did I just hear you say what I thought you said I heard?”
“Hi, Frankie.” Steele’s smile held as he realized that Frankie’s shock and perhaps pleasure at the news had twisted her tongue. “Want to rewind and try that again?”
“Did I just hear you say the Program’s coming back?”
“That’s what you heard.”
Frankie looked at Ralphy, who returned her gaze as they both chewed their lips and read each other’s minds. The last time Frankie had seen Steele at the apartment, he’d just stumbled inside, after having pulled Lila Kalidi’s stiletto out of his back. Frankie’d had no choice but to clean the awful wound and sew him up, so she had a few nightmares of her own, and at the moment seeing him again caused her an olfactory sense memory of his blood all over the floor.
“Tell us more, Steele,” Ralphy said hoarsely.
“There’s nothing much more. President’s chief of staff, Ted Lansky, will be taking Mike Pitts’s old job, at least for now. Me and Goodhill are tasked with reassembling assets, so I figured I’d start right here.”
“What’s the compensation?” Frankie asked, always the practical participant.
“Not sure yet,” Steele said. “Probably standard G-12 package.” He looked around the apartment, past Ralphy’s simulator, and saw that the formerly active high-powered computer banks that had always hummed and whizzed on their long worktable before were mostly swathed in dust covers. “I’m sure you two love what you’re doing these days, but you know, for the sake of nostalgia . . .”
Frankie slipped an arm around Ralphy’s waist and pulled him close.
“I’m not sure, Seven. Ya know, Ralphy’s a little damaged from all that stuff. . . .”
Ralphy looked at her. He’d never heard her say anything like that before.
“We’re all damaged,” Steele said. “And this is cute, kids, but I need answers right now.” He looked at his watch, as if he were about to click a lap button.
“Okay, we’re in,” Frankie said quickly.
“We are?” Ralphy asked her.
“Good,” Steele said. “We’re going to start the revamp tomorrow, but you two stand by for another day till I call you for in-processing.” He looked directly at Ralphy. “Meantime, I need you to do me a favor.”
“Sure.”
“I need you to recon any unusual activity in China over the past two weeks. Look mostly for anything of military preparations in nature, like troop movements, tanks, planes, warships, and so forth. But also scan for anything more unusual that still might be relevant, like shifting large numbers of vehicles or personnel. It might even be something off the mark, like moving five thousand Uyghur prisoners, or something kinetic, like a thermal plume. And do it fast. Got it?”
Steele turned, pulled the door open, and stepped into the hall.
“Seven, wait,” Ralphy called after him. “How am I supposed to do all that?”
Steele smirked. “Hack into the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, dude.”
He closed the door hard, the locks all pinged, and Ralphy shook his head slowly and muttered, “How come every time he asks me for a favor, it always starts with a crime?”
Chapter 7
Lower Mongolia, China
It snowed when Colonel Ai Liang finally crawled across the Mongolian border.
Of course it did. Her luck had been running that way.
She was soaking wet, her lips were blue, and her teeth were chattering like a monkey mimicking his observers in a zoo. The blood still oozed from her waist wound, where the bullet had pierced her tunic from the rear, ripped through her flesh, and exited the front. It had coagulated somewhat in the cold, but every time she raised her right arm, it tore again and gushed as she grimaced. The breaths poured from her lungs in runnels from her small nose and steamed her glasses. She had to swipe at them often with her other sleeve so she could see.
She’d fallen down the lower half of Toqui 13’s mountain, even though she’d tried to climb down carefully. The slope was just too steep and slippery, with hardly any handholds, and every rock she tried to grab was like an oiled saddle pommel, and every brittle branch cracked off and sliced her palms until they bled. Then she tried to do it on her rump, like a child too small and scared to take the stairs, but she only rolled and scraped and tumbled. When she finally hit the bottom, she lay there panting for twenty minutes, until she was fairly sure she hadn’t broken anything.
She struggled to her feet and walked. The sky above was black as coal with purple clouds scudding in the wind, but enough stars winking here and there for her to find the Little Dipper and the North Star, and she staggered that way, wondering why the bastards who’d murdered her friends and comrades hadn’t come back around to hunt her down and kill her. Maybe they assumed she’d died with all the rest, incinerated in their thermite inferno, but it was strange that they hadn’t double checked. She would have, in their place. She was a scientist, but a soldier as well, and very thorough.
It didn’t make her happy to be right. She’d just come upon a wide rushing river and knelt there on the bank, washing her aching hands and slurping freezing water from her trembling cupped palm, when she heard the helicopter. One of those killers had clearly been chastised when he reported that she’d fled into the lower levels of the lab, and no one had seen her after that, eye to eye, dead or alive.
The rotors pulsed the air as they grew louder. The machine was winging in from the north, straight above the rushing rapids of the river, and she panicked as her eyes flicked right and left, finding only low scrub, gnarled trees stripped bare by the wind, and no
where to hide from its searchlights or their guns. Those Harbin Z-20s were state-of-the-art helos, with Forward Looking Infrared, and in less than another minute they’d spot the image of her overheated body and shoot her into shreds.
She tore her glasses off, stuffed them in her pocket, sucked as much air as she could, held her breath, and flung herself straight down into the roiling black water. Her hands scrambled for a hold on something at the bottom, weeds and underwater brambles, and she twisted them around her forearms and wouldn’t let them go as the roaring rapids pummeled her and flailed her boots behind her. She’d been a fine swimmer once at the military academy. Back then when she was young she could swim the whole Olympic pool, end to end and back again, fully submerged with just one breath. She counted fifteen seconds, then thirty, then a minute, while her lungs burned and screamed for mercy and she held it even longer, and then had nothing left.
She exploded from the surface, spewing silt and water from her mouth and gasping, and she rolled onto her back and bugged her blurry stinging eyes at the heavens. But it was gone. Nothing there. Silence, except for the wind. She weakly flopped her arms and legs, swam over to the bank, crawled up through the mud on hands and knees, and wept.
She staggered north again, for hours, her sodden uniform so heavy on her small form it felt like chain mail armor. Everything she’d ever done in her life came back to her in visions—her youthful loves, her Party dedication, her hopes and dreams and foolish plans, all so meaningless here and now, where she knew she was going to die soon if she didn’t find some shelter. But maybe . . . maybe . . . if she could only cross the border . . .
And there it was, a long line of gleaming barbed razor wire, left to right across a high black berm, silhouetted against a thick foamy sky of gray fog. She stumbled up that long shallow rise and had no choice except to fling herself across the ripping shards of steel. She tore herself free on the other side, bleeding from fresh rents everywhere.
