The Archangel Project

by C. S. Graham

  The Humvee crested a rise and the driver screamed, “Jesus Christ!”

  A white Toyota sped up the hill toward them, dust billowing behind it into the night. Hot on its tail, a Kiowa helicopter materialized out of the dark sky, its whirling blades beating the crisp desert air, the insectlike spread of its landing gear and loaded pylons looming over them. Through the Toyota’s grime-coated windows, Tobie caught a glimpse of a woman’s covered head and half a dozen small, wide-eyed faces. Then the helicopter belched a missile and the Toyota exploded. Caught in the fireball, the Marine medics’ Humvee flipped.

  Tobie was thrown clear. She landed on her back, the impact driving the air from her chest. For what seemed an eternity all she could do was lay in a gasping agony, surrounded by the broken, burned bodies of the Iraqi family who’d tried to run in the Toyota. The Marine medics were dead, too.

  But the guys in the Kiowa Warrior weren’t through yet.

  Pivoting at the top of the hill, the helicopter swooped back toward the wreckage, its machine guns spitting fire. Frantically scrambling for protection behind the upturned Humvee, Tobie felt a round tear through her thigh and heard the bone snap. She was lucky it was just a glancing blow; a direct hit would probably have taken off her leg.

  Then all hell broke loose as the full-scale attack on the encampment below began. Pinned down by her broken leg, Tobie could only watch, helpless, as the tents below burst into flames. Screaming women erupted into the night, to be mowed down by withering machine-gun fire. Rockets shrieked, their explosions punctuating the endless rattle from the helicopters that filled the sky. The last thing she remembered was the sight of a crying child silhouetted, alone, against the fire’s light.

  The next thing Tobie knew, she was on a stretcher. She was babbling to anyone who’d listen about the wedding and what she’d “seen,” until a nurse with a worried frown stuck a needle in her arm.

  They flew her to Kuwait first, then to Germany. Whenever anyone asked her what in the hell she was doing out in the desert, she told them. A sad-eyed Air Force surgeon in Wiesbaden kindly suggested she might want to reconsider what she was saying, but Tobie refused to shut up. In the end, they gave her a psycho discharge.

  She’d been lucky. Lieutenant Costello had tried to have her court-martialed.

  “Excuse me, miss. You need to get back.”

  The crackling roar of the fire still loud in her ears, Tobie turned to find a short, squat policewoman studying her through narrowed eyes.

  “I’m October Guinness. I’m the one who called 911.”

  The policewoman sniffed. She had peroxide hair and a broad, plain face prematurely hardened by overexposure to the ugly side of life. “Live around here, do you?”

  “No. I was coming to see Dr. Youngblood.”

  “He’s the guy you reported was in the building when it blew?”

  “That’s right. Dr. Henry Youngblood. He’s a professor of psychology.”

  The policewoman fished a notebook out of her pocket. “And your name and address?” She wrote down the information, then said, “You his student?”

  “No.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  Tobie watched the policewoman’s head come up and swore silently to herself. The tone of that last response had been all wrong and Tobie knew it. She didn’t deal well with people in uniform—one of the many reasons she should never have gone into the military. “I work for him,” she said, giving a half smile.

  The smile was not returned. “Were you supposed to work for him tonight?”

  “No.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “He tried to call me about half an hour ago. I got the impression he was working late.”

  The policewoman lowered her notebook and looked pained. “So you don’t actually know for sure that he was in the building?”

  “That’s his red Miata there, in the driveway.” What was left of his Miata. Tobie stared at the blackened ruin of Youngblood’s car and wondered how the policewoman would react to what she was planning to say next. “He left a strange message on my voice mail. Something about having made a mistake, and dangerous people. I thought he meant someone was threatening the funding for his research project, but now I wonder…”

  The policewoman blinked. “Those were his exact words? ‘Dangerous people’?”

  “Yes.”

  The policewoman wrote it down. “You say this guy is a professor of psychology? Is he working on anything in particular?”

  Tobie hesitated. The giggle factor, Youngblood called it. Tobie had learned to be careful about what she said about remote viewing and how she said it. “He was, um…He was looking into different forms of cognitive mental functioning. But I don’t see how the project could have had anything to do with this.”

  The policewoman flipped her notebook closed. “Right. We’ve got your name and address. If we need anything more, we’ll be in touch. In the meantime, I suggest you get out of the way and let these men do their work.”

  Tobie felt a pain pull across her chest. She drew in a deep breath of smoke-tinged air to try to ease it. “But they’re not even trying to rescue him. His office is in the back, on the left—”

  “It’ll be hours before anyone can get in to check and see if he really was here when the place blew. For all we know, this Dr. Youngblood of yours could be sitting in a coffee shop someplace sipping a latte.”

  “But—”

  The policewoman took an aggressive step forward, one hand hovering suggestively near her hip. “Look, miss. I don’t want to have to tell you again. Now get back.”

  Tobie clenched her jaw against an unwise response and swung away.

  She walked across the street to Newcomb Boulevard, but she didn’t go back to her car. Worried about Dr. Youngblood, frustrated by her inability to do anything, she stood on the sidewalk in front of the big brick bungalow on the corner until the lady who’d been hovering on the house’s broad porch called her over.

  Elegantly dressed in linen shorts and a silk blouse, the woman was excited and wanted someone to talk to. Tobie sat on the porch steps and let the woman rattle on about the rash of fires since Katrina and the continuing shortage of police. The flames from the fire felt hot against Tobie’s face, but the damp chill from the bricks seeped up through the cotton of her skirt as she watched the Psych Annex burn.

  9

  Lance Palmer considered himself one of the good guys. As a kid he’d been Luke Skywalker, battling the forces of evil with a plastic light saber. He’d charged into imaginary jungles as a war-painted Rambo, rescuing anyone who needed it and killing as many gooks as he could. Later he’d been a star running back on his high school’s football team in Lawton, Oklahoma, and joined the ROTC at Oklahoma State. He’d signed up with the Army right after graduation.

  Lance loved the Army. He’d made it into the Rangers, then Special Forces. He’d spent thirteen years doing the kind of things he’d dreamed of doing as a kid, fighting America’s enemies from Nicaragua to Afghanistan and advising U.S. allies on how to handle dissidents and other lowlifes.

  But as much as he loved the Army and the action, Lance had eventually grown discontented with the money. The Army provided its officers with a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle, but he wanted more. He wanted a Beamer and a stock portfolio, while his wife Jess hungered for a beach house in Florida and skiing vacations with the kids in Aspen. Luxuries beyond the reach of an Army major.

  But luckily for him, modern American warfare was changing. More and more, the United States was coming to rely on what they called private security firms—no one ever used the word “mercenaries,” which was of course what they were. Some of the outfits the United States and Britain were sending to Iraq were full of crazy cowboys who’d as soon shoot a rag-head as look at him. But Global Tactical Solutions was a professional organization. Yeah, they signed up some South Africans, but they drew the line at hiring the Pinochet-trained Chileans that some of the
other firms were sending into Iraq.

  After just one year at GTS, Lance had been appointed head of their Special Operations. He was a troubleshooter, the guy who handled their sticky stuff. Basically, he was doing exactly the same kinds of things he’d done as a major in the Army, only now he was getting paid a whole lot better.

  “Hey, look at this,” said Hadley. He was in the backseat, flipping through the stream of information coming in over their laptop as the Suburban headed toward the river. “Our girl was in the Navy. She’s even an Iraq War vet.” He let out a low whistle. “We’re talking psycho discharge.”

  Lance twisted around in the seat. “Let me see that.”

  He’d handpicked the two men working most closely with him on this assignment. They made a complimentary pair: a former Navy SEAL, Michael Hadley was an expert on everything from computers and electronics to explosives, while Sal Lopez, an ex–Green Beret, was always handy to have around to do any necessary heavy lifting.

  As Lance took the laptop from Hadley, Lopez turned down a narrow street crowded on both sides with lines of parked cars. He slapped the steering wheel with the flattened palm of his hand in frustration. “What the hell is going on around here?”

  Looking up, Lance nodded toward the empty shell driveway of a darkened two-story on the corner of Patton and Nashville. “Just pull in there.”

  Lopez rolled the Suburban to a stop and killed the engine.

  They were parked across the street from October Guinness’s house. Lance had spent enough time in New Orleans to recognize the style. Shotgun doubles, they called them. A kind of duplex built without halls, each side of the house had one room opening right behind the other so that if you fired a shotgun in the front door, the blast could pass out the backdoor without hitting anything. Or so Lance had heard.

  “Doesn’t look like she’s home yet,” said Lopez. Both sides of the double lay dark and silent, the ornately turned wooden balustrades and colonnettes of the front gallery in deep shadow. “What’s she do now that she’s out of the Navy?”

  Lance scrolled through the information. “She’s a student. Tulane. Twenty-four. Single.” They had photos from her passport, her driver’s license, her old military ID. Not a bad looking woman, if you liked the type. Dark blond hair. Brown eyes. A square chin. He flipped through her Navy records and grunted. “Almost failed her PT twice. Can’t run. Can’t shoot. She was only in for two years.”

  “And the psycho discharge?” said Lopez.

  “Post-traumatic stress syndrome. Iraq. Looks like something weird happened out in the desert when she was wounded.” Lance glanced through her medical report, catching key phrases: “reported seeing visions…suffers from hallucinations…poor grasp of reality.” He wanted to laugh. From the sound of things, the girl had reacted badly to a spontaneous viewing experience. The Navy, in its infinite wisdom, decided she was crazy and kicked her out.

  “This is good,” said Lance. “We’ll set the death up to look like a suicide.”

  Lopez smiled. “She sounds easy.”

  Lance grunted. He had no qualms about what he was about to do, just as he had no regrets about what he had already done tonight. The girl had seen enough to be dangerous if she—or someone else—put it all together and started asking questions. Collateral damage, that’s what the military called civilian deaths. There was always collateral damage in a war. Regrettable, but necessary.

  And they were at war. The President was always telling them that. Lance was simply doing what needed to be done to protect his country. He was fighting for freedom and democracy and to make the world a better place. Henry Youngblood and October Guinness had become threats not just to the security of this country but to the future of the world. They had to be eliminated. Quickly.

  With the air conditioner off, the interior of the Suburban was already heating up. Lance slid down the window, his trained gaze studying the neighborhood.

  The shotgun double had a small side yard, dark now beneath the heavy shadows of the spreading oaks that lined the street. Beyond that stood an old corner grocery store that someone had turned into a combination nursery and florist shop. Two other houses faced the small, narrow street on this block, both shotgun doubles with camel-back second floors. Only the house on the corner showed any lights.

  “Who lives in the other half of our girl’s double?” he asked.

  “A guy by the name of King,” said Hadley, back on the computer. “Ambrose King. A musician. Works at some club down in the Quarter.”

  “Which means he won’t be home anytime soon.” Lance opened the door. “Hadley, you stay here. Lopez, come with me. Let’s take a look around before our girl gets home.”

  Silencing her was going to be a cakewalk, Lance thought as they crossed the darkening street. They just needed to make sure all knowledge of the results of her little session with Youngblood would die with her.

  10

  New Orleans: 4 June 7:30 P.M. Central time

  Pushing aside the memories of Iraq, Tobie got in her car and headed home. She kept telling herself that maybe the policewoman was right; maybe Henry had been sipping a latte in some local coffee shop when the Psych Annex exploded into kindling. But every time she tried to call him, she went straight to voice mail.

  With a sigh, she flipped her phone closed and pulled into the covered parking lot of the Whole Foods on Arabella and Magazine. She could still smell the bitter reek of smoke clinging to her clothes and hair, pinching at her nostrils. All she wanted was to go home and stand under a hot shower. But she was out of cat food, and while she wasn’t the least bit hungry, she knew she needed to eat.

  Twenty minutes later, a bag of groceries on the seat beside her, she pulled out onto Magazine. This was the part of New Orleans near the river that hadn’t flooded, although the storm’s winds had taken their toll on the neighborhood. The houses here were old, a mixture of stately Victorian mansions and tiny nineteenth-century cottages that all had one thing in common: a serious lack of off-street parking. Many of the narrowest streets—including hers—had been made one way, which meant she had to swing around in a wide loop in order to get home.

  But even before she made the turn from Constance onto Eleanor, Tobie knew from the lines of cars on both sides of the street that parking, tonight, would be more difficult than normal. Glancing up the block, she caught sight of a stretch limo disgorging a white satin and tulle decked bride in front of the steps of St. Francis of Assisi, and groaned.

  Oh, no. Not tonight. Weddings at one of the neighborhood’s two churches were even worse than back-to-school nights at the nearby elementary. She’d be lucky if she could find a place to park for blocks.

  One glance up Patton was enough to convince her not even to try her own street. She had to go down to Laurel and over another half block before she got lucky and was able to squeeze her little yellow Bug into the gap between an Explorer and a Lexus.

  So far the rain had held off. But she could see lightning flickering in the distance as she shrugged into her cotton jacket, hefted the grocery bag, and set off walking. She smelled the coming rain in the air. Felt it. A clap of thunder exploded like an artillery shell, and she startled so badly she almost dropped her groceries.

  She stopped, her arms clutching the bag, her heart pounding uncomfortably in her chest. She told herself she was being silly. The policewoman she’d spoken to at the fire didn’t seem to attach much significance to the message Dr. Youngblood had left on her voice mail. The fire was probably due to a gas leak, she’d heard them say; the building was old, after all. They told her she was lucky she’d still been outside when the building blew. She had no reason to be acting like—well, like she deserved that psycho discharge from the Navy.

  She quickened her step down Patton, her breath coming easier as she swung open her low gate and headed up the short brick walkway to her front gallery. An orange cat leaped over the edging of monkey grass and threaded through her legs, nearly tripping her. She laughed.

&nb
sp; “Hello, Beauregard,” she said, and fumbled for her keys. It was good to be home.

  11

  Great Falls, Virginia: 4 June 8:35 P.M. Eastern time

  The rolling hills and gently wooded glens to the west of Washington, D.C. sheltered an exclusive community of sweeping country estates and genteel horse farms known as Great Falls. There, in an imposing Tudor-style building at the end of a long, private drive, lay the Fox and Hound, an exquisite restaurant frequented by ambassadors and ex-presidents and defense industry executives. Lower level CIA officials and operational personnel like Jax Alexander rarely saw the inside of places like the Fox and Hound. But then, Jax wasn’t a typical field agent. And he wasn’t the one paying.

  He’d been named James Aiden Xavier Alexander, a mouthful that just about everyone who knew him shortened to Jax. The only person who insisted on called him “James” was his mother, and that was because she refused to acknowledge the existence of his two middle names, both of which were on his birth certificate at the insistence of his father.

  “I don’t think it’s too much to ask that my only child make an effort to attend his mother’s wedding,” said the elegant woman who sat across from him. Born Sophie Winston, she’d married Jax’s father and become Sophie Alexander the same week she turned twenty-one. But in the decades since then she’d had so many different husbands and names, Jax wondered how she could remember what to sign on the bottom of her credit card slips.

  Jax reached for his wineglass and decided, judiciously, to refrain from pointing out that he’d already attended six of her weddings. “I said I’ll try. Matt is talking about sending me out to California next week.”

  “Really, James. I can understand how this job might have appealed to you when you were younger. But don’t you think it’s time you looked around for something more…” She hesitated.