Auntie stood watching, scanning for familiar faces among the Republicans on the right side of the center aisle and Democrats on the left. Found a few, caught no one’s eye. Everyone was focused on the Speaker of the House, Andrew Jackson Howell. The bill was read and the debate was waived because this was a bipartisan agreement that had already been worked over so that it was palatable to both sides. Even so, there were steps to follow and rituals to be honored, so Aunt Sallie leaned against a wall and waited, expecting this to be tedious and probably a waste of her time.
It was neither.
Speaker Andrew Jackson Howell sat with his head bowed during the reading of the bill and through some points of order. He did not say anything when the voting began. It was not until the eleventh member of the House was asked to cast her vote that Speaker Howell abruptly stood up and screamed out eleven words that shocked the whole chamber to silence.
“My God, my God, why is it so quiet in here?”
His scream was so loud, so high, so raw that bloody spit flecked his desk.
Everyone froze, staring at him. Gaping. No one knew how to react to a moment like this. Even Aunt Sallie was shocked to gaping stillness.
Howell glared around, turning this way and that like a trapped animal. His eyes were huge, unblinking. Filled with madness. He suddenly snatched up the fountain pen and shook that fist at the representatives and the staff and the press.
“They can walk through walls, you know!” he roared, and then Howell rammed the pen into his own throat.
He tore it free and arterial blood shot from the wound like spray from a hose.
And he stabbed himself again. This time in the right eye.
His knees buckled and he collapsed face-forward, and the impact drove the nib of the pen all the way through his eye socket and into his brain.
Andrew Jackson Howell was dead before anyone could reach him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SCARLET TANAGER LOOP
MARYLAND CITY, MARYLAND
I flew through the air, propelled by a cloud of green fire. This isn’t too bad, I thought. Then I hit a tree, crashed through a mass of pine needles, feeling the sharp ends of twigs slash at me. A moment later I was falling the other way. Down. Hitting every fucking tree branch on the way to the grassy ground. The grass did nothing to cushion the impact. I lay there, flattened and gasping.
Something else crashed down beside me. It yelped and howled. Ghost. Alive. Hurt, but alive.
Raising my head was next to impossible, but the Killer within me roared. Pain drives him. He eats it and lives off it. I found myself on my knees, blinking to clear my eyes. I couldn’t see Bunny. No way to tell if he rode the wave of superheated air, like Ghost and I had, or if he’d been burned to nothing. The agents were hiding behind their wrecked car, no longer bold, because Top had opened up with the chain guns. The agents were clearly wearing some kind of shock-dampening body armor under their suits, but a heavy-caliber machine gun doesn’t give much of a shit about that. Both agents were, weirdly, splashed with luminous green paint. I had no idea why, how, or where it came from.
They each held pistols that were very familiar to me. Not firearms in the conventional sense. They had round, blunt barrels, but instead of an opening, the flat end of each gun was ringed by three curved metal spikes that ended in tiny steel balls. The guns didn’t fire bullets or even Taser flechettes. No, these weapons discharged short and intense bursts of superheated microwave energy, except that the green color was a new touch. I’d fought against men armed with microwave pulse pistols before. Those killers had also been dressed like this. Black suits, white shirts, black ties. Men in black. The name they went by was “Closers.” The first ones we’d met had worked for a group called Majestic Three. The DMS had shut down M3, wiped out the Closers, and acquired several of the MPP weapons.
I wished I had one right then, because the SUV had soaked up the machine-gun fire and the agents were still alive.
I tapped my earbud for Top. “Sergeant Rock, ram the vehicle. Do it now.”
If he responded, I couldn’t hear it over the gunfire, but a moment later the engine roared and he hit the gas, sending the Betty Boop forward like a battering ram. Mike Harnick built the frame to be able to take a head-on collision with an armored personnel carrier. The beat-up SUV belonging to the Closers had no chance at all. Top smashed into it with a horrendous shriek of metal on metal. The smaller SUV jumped backward and I saw both agents vanish beneath its bulk.
Then I was up and running. My handgun was lost but I grabbed my Wilson folding knife from its pocket sheath, flicked the small, wicked blade into place, and ran to the far end of the wreck.
There was a loud Tok! and the SUV suddenly lifted into the air, rising ass-first as if it had been punched by a giant. It turned over in midair and smashed down on the hood and windshield of Betty Boop.
There, getting to his knees, was one of the Closers, an MPP gripped in both hands. His face was painted with the luminous green. The other Closer lay facedown on the ground in a pool of the weird paint. I saw him move, though. He was alive.
Somehow, impossibly, they were both alive.
In the crushing silence I heard sounds. Ghost gave a single uncertain bark. A foot crunched on the roadside to my right as Bunny staggered into view. A car door opened and Top came hurrying up.
I heard the agent speak the same words as he rose. “We are not your enemy.”
I had my knife but my legs did not want to move. The uninjured agent studied me.
“You were warned, Captain Ledger. We thought you understood.”
“What…?”
“We are not your enemy.”
He reached down and pulled his companion to his feet. The second agent was hurt, that much was obvious. His face was torn up and I could see the gleam of teeth through a cheek that had been totally ripped open.
Bunny said, “What…?”
An existential question. Him needing someone to explain the shape of the day to him—or the shape of the world—because the terrible wounds on the agent’s face were bleeding green. There was not a drop of red to be seen. Not on either of them. Not on their clothes or the ground. Nowhere except on Top and Ghost and Me.
The agents were bleeding, though. Intensely, profusely.
A sound suddenly filled the air and we all looked up.
And then there was darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE CAPITOL BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Speaker of the House Andrew Jackson Howell gave no warning. No one saw this coming. Not his colleagues in the House of Representatives. Not his family or friends. Not the press. Not even his political enemies.
Until that morning he had been viewed as a fit, active man of middle years. Lean from his free-time hobby of playing soccer with classmates from law school. He was not ill; at least not that anyone knew. He rarely drank, his marriage was in good shape, and his two daughters were both successful young women who were making their way toward good careers, one in law and one in medicine.
So, no one saw it coming.
His chief of staff, Amanda Grel, briefed him that morning, and later, when interviewed by the Secret Service, police detectives, and others, said that the Speaker looked a little tired. That was all. A little tired.
Video security footage of the Speaker as he entered the Capitol, walked the hallways, and entered the House showed him moving slowly, but if the day ended in any other way there would be nothing on those tapes to suggest a problem. He moved slowly, but that was not a red flag. The House was voting on a bill to fund an aid package for Ukraine, which was reeling from the third major earthquake in as many months. The representatives had been split because most of them would rather have seen the bulk of that money go to their own states, but common sense had won out. The earthquakes had done extensive damage to key Ukrainian military bases, including those where American and United Nations advisors were situated. Without that funding, Ukraine would h
ave been weak against strategic incursion by the Russians. The Speaker and key representatives he trusted had wrangled for weeks, so a case might have been made that he was tired from long nights and political lobbying.
The only unusual blip in the Speaker’s actions before entering the lower house, and it was completely overlooked at the time, was that he skipped a meeting with the majority whip. But since the last count showed the odds in favor of passing the bill, the whip—at the time—figured the Speaker felt that any last-minute strategizing was a time-waster.
It was truly a surprise. A shock.
Aunt Sallie stood staring. She had no authority here. And even if she did, there was nothing she could do. The man was dead. It was over. There were screams and shouts and voices raised in anger, in fear, giving orders, yelling for EMTs. Someone kept shouting for someone to call 911. As if that would help.
“What…?” asked a voice, and Auntie turned to see a congressional aide standing there, white-faced, horrified, irreparably marked by what just happened. The aide was a girl, a child. Twenty, perhaps. Still in college. Too young for this.
But then Auntie realized that she had been twenty when the CIA had recruited her. She’d been only twenty-five the day she met Mr. Church. Still a child, but one who had walked knee-deep through a stream of blood. Innocent and guilty. Much of it spilled by her.
She reached out and took the aide’s hand and held it. The girl turned toward Auntie, buried her face in the hollow between chin and shoulder, and began to weep like a broken thing. Asking the same question over and over again.
What?
Auntie had no answers at all.
CHAPTER FORTY
SCARLET TANAGER LOOP
MARYLAND CITY, MARYLAND
I blinked and it was suddenly pitch black. Like the middle of the night, only darker. A total absence of light.
I blinked again and it was daytime. A gray day, with drizzle falling around me and on me. I was no longer standing by the side of the road. I was in the rear seat of the Betty Boop. Ghost was there, asleep, his head on my lap. Top was behind the wheel, Bunny was in the shotgun seat. The engine was off and rain pinged on the roof and popped on the windshield. My clothes were damp but not soaked. My face was dry, but I could see a grittiness as if rain had dried only recently. Top suddenly jerked and it was clear he just woke up. As I had. As Bunny did a few seconds later. Then Ghost. We woke up, but we sat there, oddly still. Staring.
Bunny said, “What…?”
Fair question. Impossible to answer. Top turned very slowly, as if his body was still more asleep than awake. He wiped rainwater from his eyes and looked at Bunny, then turned more to look at me.
The engine was running and the heat was on. I realized that now. Had it been on when I woke? Maybe. No way to tell. Top certainly hadn’t turned it on. Ghost whined and cowered against me.
We got out of the car. It took a lot of doing. I felt clumsy and sick and strangely stiff, as if I’d been sitting too long without moving. Top moved like he was old and riddled with arthritis. We tottered around to the far side of our car. I had to help Ghost down, and he stood on trembling legs with his tail curled under.
Bunny slid down to the ground, his back to the front wheel, eyes staring and half vacant.
“They’re gone,” said Top, looking around.
Bunny shook his head, and, without saying a word, raised a shaky finger and pointed to the near woods. There, lying crumpled like a toy thrown away by a bored child, was the SUV. Riddled with pocked bullet holes from the chain guns. It was on its side with the smashed windshield toward us. Empty.
When I managed to shamble over to examine it, I saw that there were no smudges of the green … blood? Did I want to call it that? Was that how this day was going to go? My mind rebelled. The Cop told me I was wrong, that trauma made my memory faulty. The Modern Man was hiding under the bed. Only the Killer part of me seemed able to accept it on its own terms. He was much more practical about such things. Things are what they are. The green stuff was gone. That was a fact.
There was none of it on the road, either. In fact, the whole road looked like it had been steam cleaned. The shell casings were all in the weeds on either side, as if the same force that had scoured the blood had swept everything to the sides. Even our spike net was over in a drainage ditch.
“Who came and cleaned this up?” asked Top.
I shook my head. A shiver whipped through me and then I rubbed my face vigorously with my hands and then clapped in front of my face. Hard and loud.
“Okay,” I said, forcing my voice to sound normal. Or, normal-ish. “We don’t know what happened, but we have the vehicle and we have a forensics field kit. Let’s start acting like professionals instead of Victorian ingénues with the vapors.”
“I think that’s sexist, boss,” muttered Bunny.
“Fuck it,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s a good point.” He held out a hand and allowed Top to haul him to his feet. Then he blew out his cheeks and nodded, turned, and went to fetch the forensics kit that is built into every DMS vehicle. I checked the time on my watch and froze.
“Hey, Top … what time do you have?”
He studied his watch, frowned, tapped the crystal face, and shook his head. “It stopped. Must have happened when I fell.”
We compared our watches. They’d all stopped at the same time. To the second. I checked my cell phone, and then the dashboard clock. They’d all stopped at exactly the same time. Calpurnia was offline, too.
“Okay,” said Bunny, “this is freaking me out a little.”
“A little?” Top hit the reset button on the AI system and the digital clock was one of the first systems to come online. We looked at the time. Then we looked around at the road, at the day. The sky was too overcast to see the sun, but we knew that the online time was telling the truth. We’d lost time.
We’d lost two whole hours of our lives.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
SCARLET TANAGER LOOP
MARYLAND CITY, MARYLAND
I called it in. Or tried to. My cell phone was acting funky, so I turned it off and back on again. While it rebooted I tapped my earbud, but it gave me a lot of painful static. So I took the booster pack out of my pocket and hit Reset on that, too.
I slid into the driver’s seat and said, “Calpurnia, open a line to the TOC.”
Calpurnia did not do that. Instead she began singing a Barry Manilow song. Not playing one—singing one. Top and Bunny stared at the car as if expecting it to suddenly break out into a dance routine.
“Cancel,” I growled.
Silence.
“Calpurnia,” I said with great patience, “open a line to the TOC.”
She said, “Playing Top Forty hits of the week ending May 26, 1973.” Immediately the song “Frankenstein” by the Edgar Winter Group blasted out with the volume turned to 11.
“Cancel!” I roared.
“I think Calpurnia’s having a moment,” murmured Top.
“I love working for the DMS,” said Bunny, not meaning it.
My cell finished rebooting and that worked fine, so I called the DMS and got Doc Holliday on the line. She listened while I went over everything.
“That’s amazing,” she cried. “Ever since I signed on to this rodeo I’ve been waiting for something fun to happen. I’m happier than a tornado in a trailer park.”
“Yeah, well, Doc, you wouldn’t have enjoyed it all that much if you just had your ass handed to you by guys who I’m pretty sure aren’t from a local zip code.”
“Point taken,” she said, but the excitement was still in her voice. Even a hint of a giggle. “You said they bled green? Could the green fluid have been gel from their body armor?”
“Well, I sure as hell hope so.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“Ah, jeez, Doc, I really don’t know. I mean, this is weird, even by my standards. I saw facial lacerations and did not see red blood. I don’t know what that means. M
aybe they’re taking some kind of drug, maybe a compound that gives them enhanced strength or something like that. Maybe they’re men from Mars. I don’t know. If I did know I’d call to tell you what’s going on instead of calling to ask for help.”
Top shifted fully into my line of sight and made a small patting gesture in the air, and it was only then that I heard, like an afterthought, the rising panic in my own voice. I took a breath, let it out slowly, nodded acknowledgement to him.
“We’re collecting evidence now,” I said more calmly, “and then there’s a good chance we’re going to find a bar and get drunk. And, no, that’s not a true statement but can I get an amen from my team?”
“Amen,” said Bunny under his breath. Top merely nodded.
“So, please get a forensics team rolling ASAP. It’s raining on the scene and we don’t have the right supplies to maintain integrity.”
“I’ll have a team there faster than the babysitter’s boyfriend when the grown-ups drive away,” promised Doc.
“And we still have to get to Washington,” I said. “Auntie was heading to the Capitol Building to ambush some congressmen, and if she’s still there I’ll—”
“Well, damn,” said Doc, “you haven’t heard?”
“Heard what? Far as I know I’ve been nowhere for two hours. I think those men in black hit us with one of those flashy-forgetty things.”
“Well, then … buckle up, Cowboy,” Doc said, and told me about the dramatic suicide of the Speaker of the House. I exchanged a look with my guys.
“What’s the bottom line?” I asked. “Are we thinking this is something else? A murder, or—?”
“So far, no,” said Doc. “Local law’s coordinating with the Secret Service and other agencies. The wheels are turning, but no one’s talking about this being anything but a tragedy. But … Aunt Sallie was there. She saw it. D.J. thinks it really rattled her, too. Pretty horrible thing to see, though I expect she’s seen worse, from what I’ve heard.”
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