“I—” I began, but she cut me off.
“There is quite a lot,” she continued, “about psychic disturbances. We know from that case that when a large God Machine was idling at the lowest power settings, it caused a number of effects. The Gateway Project, which was the ugly stepsister of the larger and better-funded Majestic program, was experimenting with those machines, and there were a number of suicides reported at their base in the Antarctic. Which, I believe, you blew into orbit, Cowboy.”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time,” I said.
“Ain’t arguing, sugar,” she conceded, “given what they were working on. Remote-viewing, mind control, psychic spying, and—the big enchilada—trying to open an interdimensional gateway without actually knowing what was on the other side of it. As stupid goes, that’s the prize hog. They could as easily have opened a doorway to a toxic environment, the airless vacuum of space, or a dadburn black hole. I’m frequently forced to push back the limits of my understanding of human stupidity, and that goes triple when the Department of Defense is involved.”
“Not always,” I said lamely.
“You’ve just had your tight white ass handed to you, Cowboy,” said Doc, “so we’ll all pretend you didn’t just hashtag-NotAllMen the DoD.”
“Shutting up now,” I said.
“The takeaway here,” said Church, “is that we have a bead on the technology used to cause the mass suicides and other violence. How many explosions have you tracked?”
“A total of forty-six devices were detonated,” she said. “The one taken away by the bad boy with the Taser makes forty-seven, unless that is somehow different. Considering the situation—a bunch of cars wrecked by the earthquake—we can postulate that that device was damaged and not able to detonate according to plan. The telemetry from Sam’s RFID and his car tell us that the first biker was also there to retrieve a faulty device that was in a car partly buried by debris. So, of the known machines we had eyes on, two faulted out, and in both cases someone was sent to retrieve them when they failed to detonate.”
“Why would the first biker blow himself up?”
Calpurnia played the video on the screen inside the car but Doc narrated the key points. “It’s likely he was trying to use his cell to deactivate the detonator and was unable to do so. When Sam confronted him, the biker dropped the cell, and the resulting jolt to the burner somehow made the firing sequence work. I believe that’s what you military boys call a clusterfuck. Unfortunate for him and for Sam. Before you ask, Cowboy, the biker was blown to rags. We can run DNA and dental, if they find enough of his face, but that’s going to take time. His body will be collected and hopefully there will be papers or some other kind of ID.”
“Calpurnia’s drones are hunting for the second biker,” I said. “And her dashboard cam should have—”
“Yes,” she said, cutting me off again, “we got the license plate of the Kawasaki. It’s stolen, as was the other bike. Both thefts were done after the earthquake started, which is a narrow time frame, so it’s likely they had eyes on possible vehicles to steal, and they certainly weren’t worried about being chased by the cops. Not today.”
I rubbed Ghost’s soggy neck. He was looking a little better.
“Okay,” I said, “someone has the God Machine technology and they’re using it to drive people batshit crazy. Are they using it to cause earthquakes, too?”
There was silence on the line.
“Kind of like an actual answer to that one,” I said.
Doc sighed. It was so long and hard that it sounded like a hot-air balloon deflating. “Your little sweetheart seems to think so.”
“Junie?”
“She’s here. In the computer room with Bug, and they’re jabbering on about this and that. Aliens and reptilians and all sorts of New Age weirdness. I think they’ve both lost their damn minds.”
“I’ve found,” said Church very dryly, “that Junie Flynn speaks from great experience and insight. She has been correct far more often than she’s been wrong. Wouldn’t you agree, Captain?”
“Yeah, damn it.”
Doc sighed again. “That,” she said, “is what I’m afraid of. So, the short and less facetious answer to your question is that we’re working on it.”
“Which leaves me where?” I demanded.
“Sam Imura is on his way to Johns Hopkins,” said Church. “Aunt Sallie is already there. I’ll be there shortly. Why don’t we make that the center of our operations for now? We can get you and Ghost some treatment as well. We’ll close ranks and be family with our injured until we have our next move planned. Meanwhile Doc Holliday, Bug, and Miss Flynn will continue to work the problem from their end.”
So, I drove the hell back to Maryland. Thinking bad, confused, alarming thoughts as the miles fell away behind me.
INTERLUDE TWENTY-ONE
THE SUICIDE KINGS
THE PACIFIC OCEAN
TWENTY NAUTICAL MILES WEST OF VALPARAISO, CHILE
TWO YEARS AGO
Gadyuka called while the coastline of Chile was dwindling over the horizon. “You promised a six point five at least.”
“I did,” he said, and there was a small flicker of doubt in his chest. Gadyuka purred when she was angry as often as when she was happy.
“Early reports are calling it a six point nine,” said Gadyuka. “That is very, very impressive.”
If she had been there and stabbed him in the stomach it would not have hurt as much. Being thanked for this.
“Now,” she said, “let’s talk about the next phase. Now that we know it works, how quickly can you orchestrate another one? Something inland this time.”
Valen cleared his throat. The boat was cutting through the water at high speed. Ari was below and Valen tried not to hear the screams of pain and horror that came up from the cabin. He forced himself to focus on the science. “It depends on how far inland,” he said, “and on what kind of terrain. It depends on existing geology. We’d have to get precise seismographic information and then look for a stress point we can exploit.”
“What if there are no stress points?”
“There always are,” Valen assured her. “Even if they’re old and haven’t had any appreciable activity in ten thousand years. The Earth is a big cracked egg and the pieces are always in motion. Always.”
“Very well,” said Gadyuka, “that’s fair enough. Crunch some numbers for me. And a related question—what can you do with a dormant, or semidormant, volcano?”
“Volcano…,” mused Valen. “We never even considered it because, let’s face it, that’s pretty dangerous.”
“More than an earthquake?” asked Gadyuka.
“Different. A lot harder to control. There’s more than damage to surface structures; there’s lava and, more critically, all that ash. A volcano has a bigger overall environmental impact. Besides … if we hit a volcano with our gear, it would not just blow, it would blow big.”
“How big?”
“You know that famous one, Krakatoa? It’s in Indonesia, in the Sunda Strait. It blew in 1883 with a force that was thirteen thousand times more powerful than the bomb the Americans dropped on Hiroshima. They say it was the loudest sound ever heard. People reported hearing it in Australia. It hit six on the VEI, the Volcano Explosivity Index. It kicked out over twenty-one cubic kilometers of rock, ash, and pumice. It caused tsunamis that killed something like thirty-seven thousand people. More, if you consider the effect on air quality and damage to crops and livestock. If we’d used our tech to ignite Krakatoa it would have been worse. A lot worse. So, yes … big.”
“Big,” said Gadyuka slowly, like a cat licking a trapped and trembling mouse. “Big is exactly the right word.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
They treated me at the hospital and wanted to keep me for observation. I told one doctor that he could observe me putting my foot up his ass, so the rest
of that conversation got shelved. Instead they jabbed me with a bunch of needles, shoved some pills into my hand, and told me to take it easy.
Yeah. Top of my to-do list.
Sam and Auntie were both still clinging to the edge of life’s cliff, and from the looks the staff gave me—or turned away to avoid giving me—I was feeling pretty scared. And really angry, but still had no one to paint a target on.
Who were the damn bad guys?
I paced the hallways, drank too much coffee, told people to fuck off when they tried to tell me Ghost wasn’t allowed in there, and was close to going out of my damn mind, when a voice called my name.
“Joe!”
I whirled and saw Dr. Rudy Sanchez walking toward me, arms out to take me in a brother’s embrace. We hugged and slapped and when I winced, he recoiled.
“Ay dios mío, Joe,” he cried. “Are you hurt?”
Rudy sounds exactly like Raul Julia from those old Addams Family movies. A rich Puerto Rican baritone that carries gravity and sobriety and comfort, which are all weapons he brings to bear in his version of the war. Rudy is a top-notch psychiatrist who specializes in trauma and PTSD. He joined the DMS when I did, and without him most of us shooters would have been crippled by the scar tissue on our souls.
He is also my best friend. One of those rare ones you can tell any damn thing to. No filters at all. And, although Church is usually the adult in any given room, Rudy is the adult you like in those rooms.
We went into a small solarium and I explained about my injuries and how I got them. He sat, with Ghost’s head on his thigh, and listened without interruption.
“This has been a terrible day, Cowboy,” he said. “For us and for everyone in Washington. Have you heard the latest numbers? More than eleven hundred dead and almost eight thousand still missing. And now you tell me that God Machines may be involved? What are we into here?”
It is a sign of Rudy’s empathy and compassion that he said “we” and not “you.” He may not go into battle, but he doesn’t stand on the sanitary edges of the swamp of emotional involvement.
“You now know as much as I do, brother,” I said. “Which is somewhere between jack and shit.”
He pursed his lips and stared into the middle of nowhere for a few silent moments, then began shaking his head. “No, I don’t think that is true at all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rudy leaned back and crossed his legs. “Joe, the Kill Switch and Extinction Machine cases were two of the most traumatic of your career since joining the DMS. The possibility of alien life, psychic invasion, threats so big that they forced all of us to reevaluate what we believe about the world. No, about the universe. Listen, as we grow from childhood into adolescence and then adulthood, our worldview is forced to change. The simpler things that comforted us at each stage are torn down and replaced by new structures that are no longer built as shelters for us but as inarguable truths that force us to accept that we are not the center of the universe. We are parts of a greater universe that is always going to be too large to grasp in any one lifetime. As we mature we try to build structures around us that help us contain the infinite into something easier to grasp. If we are careless, then we once more come to see ourselves as the centers of finite worlds whose rules we understand and whose structures we accept.”
Ghost began sniffing at Rudy’s pockets, and he smiled and produced a few liver treats he’d brought with him. Rudy’s like that. Ghost ate them with his peculiar delicacy.
“When the former president was abducted out of the White House at the beginning of the Extinction Machine case,” continued Rudy, smiling at Ghost, “we had a choice. Accept that some kind of alien intelligence exists, or bury our heads in the sand. I am a psychiatrist and my profession is always about seeking the truth. And you are a special operator, and if you refuse to accept facts—what you call ‘intelligence’—then people will die and so will you.”
I nodded.
“The DMS was built around a kind of martial pragmatism. We have to look for the truth in any given situation, otherwise our actions will be questionable, and people will die. If we had not had to accept hard and occasionally dangerous truths, then billions of people would have died. The Jakoby ethnic cleansing project, the weaponized Ebola the Seven Kings tried to deploy … sadly, many other examples come to mind … all of these required that we accept the truth for what it is.”
“You’re going to quote Marcus Aurelius at me, aren’t you?”
“I am. Two quotes come to mind,” said Rudy, nodding at me like I was an attentive schoolboy. “First, this is one I was thinking while you were telling me about what happened. Aurelius wrote, ‘Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.’ And do you know what ‘weapons’ he was referring to?”
“Logic, analysis, perception, and practicality.”
He offered me a dog treat and I smacked his hand away.
“The other quote,” he said, “is one misquoted by Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. The actual quote is more apt anyway. When confronted by things we do not understand but truly want or need to understand, Aurelius suggests, ‘This, what is it in itself, and by itself, according to its proper constitution? What is the substance of it? What is the matter, or proper use? What is the form, or efficient cause? What is it for in this world, and how long will it abide? Thus must thou examine all things that present themselves unto thee.’ And later, in that same book, Aurelius writes, ‘As every fancy and imagination presents itself unto thee, consider (if it be possible) the true nature, and the proper qualities of it, and reason with thyself about it.’” He studied me. “Do you understand what that means?”
“I do,” I said, “but I don’t want to.”
“But you must.”
“I must,” I agreed.
“There is no such thing as an alternative fact,” said Rudy. “The truth is only ever the truth. What changes is whether we accept it, even if it is inconvenient and contrary to the truth we’d prefer.”
I sighed and rubbed my face with my callused hands. “Yeah, damn it.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “What then, is the truth? Or, what is the likely truth. Construct a workable theory to explain recent events. If you go outside of your mental comfort zone, what then is probable?”
I gave him a sour look. “Is this how you comfort all of your traumatized patients?”
“You’re not on my couch, Cowboy. This is how I talk to my friend, who is one of the truest, wisest, and most capable people I’ve ever met.”
I sighed. And told him. He listened with his whole being, which is what he always does. I watched his olive skin grow pale. He wears a small silver crucifix under his shirt; it hangs down over his heart. He touched it absently, as he always does when his own worldview changes gears without a clutch.
When I was done he spent a few minutes not looking at me or anything. The distant hospital ICU noises were the only sound.
“Then this is what you have to tell Mr. Church and Joan Holliday,” he said at last, his voice hushed. “Junie, too. She’ll need to be in on this. God.”
“What is it you need to tell me?” said a voice, and we turned to see Mr. Church standing in the doorway.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
COURTYARD BY MARRIOTT—NEW CARROLLTON
LANDOVER, MARYLAND
Valen ditched the stolen motorcycle twenty blocks from where he had recovered the God Machine. As he had worn leather gloves the whole time, there were no prints to worry about.
His rental car was parked near the border of Maryland and he got in and drove through packed traffic to the hotel in Landover that was the rendezvous point for the six members of his team. Ari would no doubt be waiting, having gone for the closest device. The other five were agents supplied by Gadyuka—three men and two women who had lived in America for most of their lives. People who were above suspicion. They
would be debriefed and then sent back to their handlers and probably fold back into their affected daily routines.
Valen wondered if they would be given safe passage out of the country before things got really bad. Knowing Gadyuka, he doubted it. A mass exodus of any kind would raise red flags, and from what the viper said about the DMS, a pattern like that would be noticed.
So, they would be left to die, or—best-case scenario—shelter in place until such time as they could be extricated.
He went to his room without haste, and spent a few minutes sweeping the place for bugs. Then he opened a bottle of vodka and poured himself a generous shot, knocked it back, and poured another.
Over the course of the next two hours, five of the agents arrived, knocked discreetly, and were let in. Only one had actually been required to retrieve a damaged machine. The others were in the field to make sure that each of the remaining devices had thoroughly detonated. They had. The thermite AXL compound, coupled with the timer that sent the machines into overload, resulted in a fireball that was intense and effective, though short-lived.
The agents did not know Valen’s name and referred to him by the false identity under which he’d checked in. James Wilson, a systems software salesman, which was as vanilla as it got.
The agents came and went and Valen sat alone, waiting for Ari.
Minutes crawled past.
Valen tried calling his friend, but there was no answer. Not even voicemail.
He sank into a chair and thought about the day. The cop and his dog—or government agent, or whatever he was—had been a frightening surprise. Gadyuka and Ari would both likely mock him for using a Taser instead of something more lethal. He could even imagine the shape of that mockery—the God Machines had just slaughtered more than thirteen hundred people, and he could not bring himself to shoot a cop and a dog face-to-face.
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