Deep Silence

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Got it, Cowboy,” Bug said.

  “So, Gadyuka is either the Big Bad, or she’s the shop foreman for the Big Bad. In either case, Valen, dangerous as he is, works for them. What’s that tell us?”

  “Nikki’s still tearing Valen’s life apart for more clues. And she has three people on Gadyuka. There are so many theories about her that it’s hard to tell if any of them are accurate or if all of them are crap. But, you know Nikki … if there’s something to find, she’ll find it.”

  “What do we know about Pushkin Dynamics?” I asked. “We have anything on them?”

  “Looking at it now,” said Bug. “At first glance it looks pretty normal. Ships to dozens of international markets. Legit on the surface, but I’ll drill down to see what’s really going on. Hey … it’s already getting interesting. They have some impressive firewalls, though. Way, way, way above the industrial level for companies like that. This is Russian military stuff.”

  “Gosh, that’s a surprise.”

  “Might take a minute to punch through it but, hey, this is me. I’ll upload everything to your tactical computer.”

  “Make it fast.”

  “I was going to go out for a sandwich and coffee first,” he said.

  “Don’t make me hurt you, nerd boy.”

  “Don’t make me create a Tinder profile for you that’ll put you on watch lists,” he countered.

  I laughed. “Touché.”

  While I waited, I worked the room. I plugged a MindReader uplink into Rolgavitch’s computer and the little lights began flashing as the Q1 drive began gobbling up every scrap of data. Once finished, it would exit and rewrite the security software on the target computer to erase all traces of having been hacked. It would, however, leave behind some truly nasty Trojan horses that would, in a very real sense, turn my friend Yuri’s computer into MindReader’s yard bitch. Doing this stuff is so much fun it gave me a tingle in my happy place.

  Next, I used a scanner to locate Rolgavitch’s hidden office safe behind a section of false paneling. The safe was protected by eight levels of ultrasophisticated security software. A top-grade professional thief might walk away from that kind of protection; however, I came armed with lots of nifty toys. These included a Tick, which is a proprietary intrusion device designed by Doc Holliday. The Tick was something she’d put together in an afternoon while—she insists—binge-watching the first two seasons of Stranger Things. It combines the comprehensive ass-kickery of MindReader’s new quantum computer system and decryption software with some of her own devious tweaks. I swear I could hear the little Tick snicker as it bypassed all the security levels in a microsecond. High-tech, baby, it’s the only way to fly.

  Did I hum the Mission: Impossible theme while I worked? Why yes. Yes, I did.

  I opened the safe and removed over four million rubles—roughly eight hundred grand—as well as some flash drives, another pistol, and a Patek Philippe Henry Graves wristwatch that was probably worth as much or more than the cash. The money and watch went into a bag I’d brought along for that purpose. Then I plugged the flash drives into a handheld uplink, stole the data, and tossed them onto the floor like they were of no value to a common burglar.

  I was about to turn away when I glanced at the screen on the Tick and saw that it was displaying readings for a second security system. I bent close to the safe and peered inside and the Tick chittered and beeped and then the back wall of the safe clicked and opened inward as hidden locks were disengaged. Immediately a green glow leaked out around the edges of the small door. From across the room, Ghost gave a nervous whuff.

  Just to be safe, I ran a radiation scanner over it, but the rad scanner blipped. Seriously. It made a tiny blip sound and the needle twitched and then it settled back.

  “Bug…?” I said quietly. “Assure me this isn’t something weird and that my nuts are not going to shrivel up and fall off.”

  “Everything’s in the green, Cowboy.”

  “I can see that it’s green,” I said, eyeing the glow with unease. “Literally green.”

  “No, I mean it’s all good,” Bug insisted. “Telemetry says there’s no source of dangerous radiation in there.”

  “You better be right. If I die, I’m going to haunt your ass and yell Boo every time you take a shit.”

  “Funny,” he said, not meaning it.

  I put that scanner away and tried my BAMS unit—more formally a bio-aerosol mass spectrometer—but found no traces of viruses, bacteria, spores, or fungi.

  I took a breath and opened the little door the rest of the way, not sure what I thought I’d find. A big stack of emeralds, maybe, or a vial of the Incredible Hulk’s urine. It was neither. Instead I found something that looked like a novelty water pistol carved out of a chunk of green crystal. When I picked it up I was surprised how little it weighed. More like plastic than stone, but it was very dense to the touch and definitely crystal of some kind. The handle was curved and half again as wide as my palm, like something made for a bigger hand. And there was a ridged button instead of a trigger. The barrel, though, was broken off and ended in a jagged stump, and some chips were missing from various places as if it had been roughly handled. There were smaller chips and granules of the same material in the safe, but they looked too small to matter, so I left them there.

  The gun was translucent, and I could see the internal workings, but it wasn’t a water reservoir and pump, nor was there the standard machinery of either a pistol or a dart gun. I bent close to examine it and saw what looked like circuitry. The whole thing was immaculate and looked to have been highly polished, and yet I had a weird feeling that I was holding something very old. There was nothing at all to hang that feeling on, though. It was rock. All rocks are old. Even so, the feeling persisted.

  “Okay,” I said, addressing Bug and anyone else in the TOC—the tactical operations center back at the Hangar in Brooklyn. “I’m open to suggestions as to what I’m holding.”

  “No idea. Looks like a ray gun from a video game. Hold on, here’s Doc.”

  “Cowboy,” said Doc Holliday, “what can you tell me about that weapon?”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me something.” I described the weight of it and turned it at different angles so she could see every part of it. I knew cameras were recording it all. “It’s broken in a couple of places. This make any sense to you?”

  “Maybe,” she said slowly. “I need to check some things. In the meantime, don’t pull the trigger.”

  “There is not one chance in holy hell that I would do that,” I said.

  “Good.” And she was gone. I slipped it carefully into my pocket.

  “It’s okay, fuzzball,” I told Ghost, and now that the gun was out of sight he relaxed by maybe one tenth of a percent. Even so, he kept cutting looks at the pocket. Very reassuring.

  The clock in my head was ticking, so I decided to get the hell out of Dodge. I stood up and stretched, feeling the bruised muscles in my back protest. I’d popped as many painkillers as I could on the way to Russia, and they were wearing off. Fun.

  I wanted to leave the right impression in the office for whomever found my snoring buddy. I went through his office and smashed a bunch of stuff, slashed chairs, flipped over the area rug, and dumped desk drawers onto the floor to set the stage. Then I tore a bunch of paintings from the walls to sell the idea that I’d had to search for the safe. I used a felt-tip marker to write crude graffiti on the walls in Russian slang. I even encouraged Ghost to pee on the rug because thieves sometimes do that, and Ghost was happy to oblige. Then, as promised, I bound Rolgavitch’s wrists and ankles, and wrapped his tie around his eyes. I left behind no traces of anything that didn’t look like the fiction I knew my pal Yuri would earnestly want to sell, if he even remembered the conversation, which was unlikely. Horsey tramples all over short-term memory.

  Then Ghost and I got the fuck out of there. A black sedan was waiting for us two blocks away.

  CHAPTER NINETY-SIX

  TH
E HANGAR

  FLOYD BENNETT FIELD

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  Doc Holliday and Junie Flynn sat on chairs in the Playroom—the massive, sprawling complex of labs that formed the inner sanctum of the DMS Integrated Sciences Division. Scientists and technicians moved like silent robots around them, each of them pretending not to listen to the conversation the two women were having.

  “I’m not going to sugarcoat this, sweetie,” said Doc, a smile lighting up her face, “but there’s a pretty darn good chance that you’re completely out of your mind. You know that, right?”

  Junie’s smile was all freckles and light. “Sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  Doc looked down at the thick file on her lap. It was a sub-report of the Extinction Machine case, and it was currently open to Junie’s account of her own complex heredity.

  “Alien DNA? Bug told me that, but I thought I was being pranked.”

  “Really?”

  Doc looked away and studied the middle of the air for a long moment. Her shoulders rose and fell. “No,” she said.

  “No,” agreed Junie.

  “But I guess I don’t want to believe it, and that’s a hell of a thing for me to admit out loud to anyone. I’m a scientist. I’m a damn good top-five-in-the-blessed-world scientist, and I don’t want to believe it.”

  “Yeah? Try looking at it from inside my head. I grew up with this.”

  “So, we’re talking what, here?” asked Doc, still smiling. “Little green men?”

  “I have no idea if they’re little,” said Junie, “but I doubt it. The pilot seats on the original T-craft were built for very tall beings.”

  “Bipeds?”

  “Yes. And, I think, reptilian.”

  “As in the Reptilians? ’Cause I’ve read a lot of wacko conspiracy theory stuff about aliens called that. Big, nasty green guys.”

  Junie shrugged. “Reptilians, Draconians, reptoids … there are a lot of names. Some of them going back to antiquity. The idea of reptile people interacting with humans is not exactly new. Most people think the idea started with a short story, ‘The Shadow Kingdom,’ written by Robert E. Howard, the author of Conan the Barbarian and King Kull.”

  “Right,” agreed Doc. “In pulp fiction.”

  “There’s a theory—one I agree with—that the pulp fiction movement, with all of its fantastic imagery, otherworldly and metaphysical story elements, were the result of the firing of an early prototype God Machine.”

  “Right,” said Doc cautiously. She set down the report, picked up a cup of tea, and tried to take a sip, but it was empty. “You also said that the surrealist movement was caused by the same thing. And the same for parts of the hippie acid rock stuff of the sixties.”

  “I can give you a lot of evidence to support that supposition,” said Junie with a thin smile. “And I can give you the pharmacology, the psychology, the social culturalism, and a lot more to support it.” She paused. “Besides, we know that the T-craft exist. We know that whoever designed the original machines threatened us to acquire and turn over the Black Book. This isn’t science fiction, Doc. It’s science fact.”

  Doc Holliday stared into the empty cup. She was no longer smiling. “I know,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t want to believe it.”

  Junie put her hand on Doc’s knee. “I know. Believe me … I know.”

  CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN

  ROLGAVITCH TECHNOLOGIES

  KOTELNICHESKAYA EMBANKMENT

  MOSCOW, RUSSIA

  I climbed into the passenger seat of the sedan. Bunny was behind the wheel, huddled in a fur-trimmed anorak and shivering his Southern California cojones off.

  “How’d it go, boss?” he asked as I fished in the glove box for my bottle of painkillers.

  “It went well,” I said, removing a packet of pain pills from an inner pocket and dry-swallowing two of them. “We have a new target.”

  “Something good?”

  “To be determined. But it’s a better lead than any we’ve had.” I gave him the address of Pushkin Dynamics and forwarded the same info to Top, who was waiting with Echo Team somewhere discreet. Bunny put the car in gear. While we drove, I filled him in on what happened in Rolgavitch’s office. He seemed amused by it until I got to the part about the green gun. When we stopped at a traffic light I showed it to him. Bunny started to touch it but withdrew his hand.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He shook his head and either didn’t want to answer, or couldn’t. The green glow made him look ill. I put the crystal gun back into my pocket and we drove in silence. I caught him glancing at me in the rearview mirror, looking troubled and uncertain.

  CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

  PUSHKIN DYNAMICS

  VOSTOCHNY DISTRICT

  RUSSIA

  “Here we are,” said Bunny. He pulled off the street into the parking lot of a big factory that was shrouded in shadows.

  Pushkin Dynamics looked exactly like the fiction they were trying to sell. A big, sprawling, old, two-story weather-stained brick factory. It should have had “nondescript” painted over the door. There were a few cars in the lot, clustered together as if for warmth.

  I tapped my earbud. “Bug, we’re at the second location. Where are we with the security cameras?”

  “Their external camera system is connected via Wi-Fi to the security office,” said Bug, “and there’s a hardline backup. So, naturally I hijacked it. Recorded a ten-minute loop, and it’s on continuous playback. You’re good.”

  “Owe you a case of Red Bull.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  Another vehicle that was parked in deep shadows flashed its lights and Bunny parked beside it. I got out and shook Top’s hand, nodded to the others.

  “Gear up fast,” I said. “Full kits. Lethal and nonlethal guns, the Toybox, all of it. Mission briefing starts now.”

  I was the only one in civvies, and I stripped down to thermal underwear and pulled on DMS versions of ACUs—the all-black army combat uniforms we wore for gigs like this. Nonreflective, without insignias or patches of any kind, and made from a special blend that made virtually no rustling sounds even when running. We all put on utility belts with plenty of gadgets and gewgaws, as well as lots of extra magazines. I still had my gas dart pistol, but now I also wore a shoulder rig with a Croatian HS2000, one of the handguns favored by ISIL. All of the weapons we carried were of the kind favored by those guys. If it came to a gunfight, we wouldn’t stop to pick up our brass. Let the Russians get pissed off at ISIL for any damage we did. Oh, what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.

  I watched the team covertly as I shrugged into body armor. I saw Top checking the gear of the only woman on the team, Tracy Cole, a former soldier-turned-cop from South Carolina. Cole had signed on during the Dogs of War gig and had, in the short time she’d run with us, been through the storm lands enough times to have the souvenir key chain. And some scars. She was practical, tough, smart, and reliable. Couldn’t ask for a better combination. We’d had one DMS candidate who thought women couldn’t handle the rigors of combat as well as men. Notice I said “had.” That boy is still working through physical therapy, after which he’ll likely go off in search of a clue. Cole’s combat call sign was Gorgon, and like her namesake, you wouldn’t want to try and stare her down.

  Standing by himself was Steve Duffy, call sign Spartan; a sturdy guy with an Irish face and cold eyes. He’d been attached to the Warehouse in Baltimore, and I arranged his transfer to Echo Team last year. Duffy had been personally trained by Sam Imura and earned his hard-won seal of approval as an expert with any long gun. Second best in the DMS, which put him in the top three or four worldwide. Unlike most snipers I’ve known, Duffy was not a laconic loner with questionable social skills. He was the hammer of God with a rifle, but off the clock he was hilarious and affable and … well, normal. Not sure why I found that mildly disturbing.

  To his right were the two newest DMS members, Bre
ndan Tate and Pete Smith. Tate’s combat call sign was Coffey, because he looked like the huge black guy from that old Stephen King movie, The Green Mile. He wasn’t as tall as that actor had been, or even as tall as Bunny, for that matter, but Tate had the kind of stocky build that gave his enemies serious pause. Duffy once remarked that Tate looked “like he could bench-press North Dakota while getting a blow job.” Now … why or how oral sex factored into, or indeed validated, that observation is one of those things about military humor that makes sense without making sense. You have to understand how soldiers think for it to be funny. We all thought it was hilarious. Tate was our team’s tech geek, and he had a lot of Doc Holliday’s nasty toys with him.

  Pete Smith, call sign Darth Sidious, was Tate’s former patrol partner from their cop days in Durham, North Carolina. He didn’t look like a soldier at all, or even a cop. Looked more like a high school gym teacher or Little League coach. He was easygoing, eager to please, and served as our utility infielder. Pete was the kind of cat who could play any position and never got ruffled.

  For Smith and Tate, this was their first field op. It was Duffy’s first time on a gig outside of the continental U.S. Cole had been on a short thing in Mexico, but that was it. So, the nervous Nellie part of me wasn’t all that happy about taking a mostly green team into a mission as covert and critical as this.

  On the other hand, Top had trained Cole, Tate, and Smith, and that meant I had no doubts at all about how they would handle themselves. Top is a nice guy, except when he’s running team exercises or under live fire. Actually, I think he’s at his meanest and most inflexible when he’s teaching. A lot of people get booted by him, and even more quit to do something easier. Like giving rectal thermometers to cranky honey badgers. The candidates who make it all the way through and earn Top’s grudging seal of approval are the kind you can genuinely trust to have your back no matter how much shit is raining down.

  That said, the stakes were high.

  We worked in silence and got as ready as it is possible to get for facing the unknown. Ghost sat watching me, and it was odd because he sat a little farther away than he normally would. And he watched me with a steadiness that was borderline creepy. Like he expected me to do something wrong. I smiled at him, but his expression and body language did not change a bit.