by Brian Nelson
“Who the hell are you?” Jack said, rising up to his full height.
“My name is Broc O’Lane,” he said, “I’ll be your driver this evening. My employer is very interested in meeting you.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Lucky Break
General Chip Walden came awake slowly, the sound of the phone feeling like part of a dream. He reached for it and saw that it was Captain Kacey, his personal assistant.
“Yes?” he said.
Walden’s face went slack with shock as Kacey told him the news of the abduction. No, he thought, not now. Not when everything was going so well. First the success of the Global Hologram and his open access to the president. Then the sacking of Curtiss. But now this. The two top scientists at the lab. Gone.
“Was it Finley?” he asked Kacey.
“We don’t know, sir. But it’s a definite possibility.”
His first fear was that he would take the blame. After all, he had assigned the bodyguards himself. Yet he could spin that if he had to . . . blame it on someone else.
That’s right, he thought. The key was how to spin it. He had to turn this to his advantage.
“It was her,” he said emphatically, “I know it.” He paused, the ideas suddenly connecting in his head. Yes, no matter whether it was her or not, he could use this to his advantage. In many ways the timing was perfect. His plan had been to use the Global Hologram to take control of most of America’s existing surveillance programs. The more data the NSA, CIA, and the Pentagon fed into Eleven, the smarter it would become and, by extension, the more powerful and indispensable he would become.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he told Kacey and hung up.
Riona Finley would clinch the deal for him.
His words to the president were already being dictated in his mind. He would call him first thing in the morning. The president would be shocked by the news, perhaps even angry. Walden would share his outrage but steer him to a solution.
Mr. President, we have to face the possibility that Finley could have a functional weapon within four or five months. She has already shown she has no reservations about killing large numbers of Americans to advance her radical agenda, and with access to the weapons that Eastman and Berhmann can make, the results could be catastrophic. He would pause to let that sink in. But if you can fast-track our work on the Global Hologram, sir, I’m confident we can find her and recover Berhmann and Eastman.
And that would be a big win for you, sir.
Walden knew that the president would have little choice: green-light the Global Hologram or risk looking weak on terrorism.
He smiled. It was all about how you spun it.
Thank you, Riona, he thought. Thank you so very much.
Epilogue
“Mom?”
Olivia Rosario’s heart skipped a beat at the sound. She sat up in her bed, wondering if she had dreamed it. She kept perfectly still, listening in the darkness. It had been nine months since Emma had last uttered a sound. Olivia waited a minute, then two, listening with all her might. From outside she heard the distant siren of an ambulance.
“Mom!”
Olivia threw off the covers and ran to Emma’s room. The voice was weak, but it was not a dream. Tears were running down the woman’s cheek as she crossed the threshold. Please be true. Please be true. At the sight of her mother, the girl reached for her.
“Oh, my baby!” Olivia enveloped the girl in a tight embrace and, to her amazement, the girl hugged her back, albeit weakly.
“Oh my gosh, I don’t believe it. My beautiful Emma.”
“Mom, I’ve been so scared.”
“It’s okay, baby, Mommy is here. Mommy is here.” Olivia’s heart seemed to swell from emotion. She held the girl, swaying and crying. “Everything is going to be all right. I’ve got you and I’m never letting you go.”
“Mom, I feel like I’ve been dreaming forever. There was a war and it seemed to go on and on.”
“It’s over now, sweetie. Don’t you worry about a thing.” Olivia was amazed. She had assumed that even if the gene therapy worked, Emma would need months of physical and speech therapy. But her voice . . . it was so clear. And different somehow, in a way she couldn’t quite say, definitely deeper than she remembered. Of course it’s different, she told herself, she’s almost a year older.
“Where am I?”
“You’re home, sweetie, in your bed. Don’t you remember? We moved to Washington, DC.”
“What’s Washington, DC?”
“It’s the capital, silly. Don’t you remember?”
The girl shook her head. “I remember California. Horseback riding and playing soccer.”
“We moved here for you. For your treatment. And it worked. Thank God, it’s worked.” She hugged her daughter again. “You are going to be okay. Everything is going to be all right now.”
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, my enormous thanks to my beta testers: Will James, James Bowie, Jennifer Otto, Randy Earle, Marcelo Alonso, Kathy Morrow, Erika Nelson, and Don Nelson. I know that reading a manuscript (sometimes more than once) and giving thoughtful feedback is not only time consuming but hard work. Know that your advice and encouragement were particularly helpful this time around.
For assistance on military matters and helping me connect with subject experts, I’m indebted to Guy Tchoumba and Sam Waltzer.
My thanks to Karen Hurst for helping me understand AI and quantum computing. For information on explosives and how bombs work, I’m indebted to Sabastian C. Also thanks to the excellent science writer Michio Kaku whose books sparked my imagination and helped me envision some of the motivations of the mysterious inventor.
In researching Sān culture I’m indebted to Laurens van der Post’s seminal book The Lost World of the Kalahari and Craig and Damon Foster’s excellent documentary The Great Dance: A Hunter’s Story. Other documentaries that helped me visualize the culture and the hunting sequences were John Marshall’s The Hunters and David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals, among others. For general information on tracking, I’m indebted to the books of Tom Brown Jr.
There are numerous Sān societies with different rituals and customs. I decided not to depict a specific Sān culture; instead I created an amalgamation from the different groups I learned about. In this way, the group becomes a synecdoche of not just early African cultures, but all hunter-gathering societies that maintained a homeostasis with nature. Ultimately, however, this is a work of fiction, so there are certain things about my Sān tribe that are unique to them. For example, Sān women are not permitted to hunt, but I thought that they should be.
To Jill Marr and Andrea Cavallaro at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, who helped nudge this book along and were there with the crucial advice I needed each step of the way.
Generous thanks to the team at Blackstone Publishing, especially my editor Peggy Hageman for her wonderful guidance and support, Deirdre Curley for your thoughtful copyedit, and Sean Thomas for his excellent art and design work on the book cover.
I’m also indebted to the very talented artist Josh Newton who helped create some wonderful concept art that was morphed and fine-tuned into the final cover.
It was a pleasure working with all of you.
Last and most important, my enormous thanks to my wife Natalia, who has always kept her faith in my aspirations to be a writer. Even when I was fresh out of grad school, unpublished, mowing grass to make ends meet, and—most dubious in the eyes of a young woman—(temporarily) living with my mother. We have come a long way since then. Thank you and I love you.
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