But we erupted from the lot and onto the street and fled into the dawn.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE
DMS SAFE HOUSE
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
NEAR MOSCOW
Duffy parked behind the safe house and left the key in the ignition. Someone would come and take the SUV away to be sanitized, repainted, and sold in a legitimate used car lot. Two new cars were parked nearby and the keys for those were on the kitchen table.
We closed all the curtains, made coffee, made food, and sat in the kitchen without touching any of it. Lots of staring. Lots of eyes not making contact. Except for Bunny and Top, who glanced significantly at each other and covertly at me.
Eventually the others looked my way, too. It was a weird moment. We all had what felt like gallons of adrenaline supercharging our blood, and if they were anything like me, it was triggering more of the flight than fight response.
And it was Duffy who broke the silence. He held his hand up to his head, little finger and thumb splayed to mimic talking on the phone. “Hi, Mom? How was my day? Oh, you know, the usual. Alien lizard guys and spaceships.”
We all cracked up. Fist-thumping, eyes running with tears, coughing and choking laughter. It happens like that sometimes. When it faded, it left us giddy, which was all nerves. Smith raised his hand like a schoolboy.
“Ask it,” I said.
“Can I be excused and go back to the real world?”
“No. Next question.”
“Then, okay,” said Tate, “we got all this weird shit going on, and I’m going to need therapy for like ten years. But what does it mean? How’s it all fit together? Does it even make sense?”
I turned my chair around backward and leaned my forearms on the back splat.
“It makes sense,” I said. “Let me fill in the blanks of what you don’t know, and then I want you to explain it back to me.”
I went over every detail, starting from the Secret Service coming after me at the cemetery. I backtracked to hit the highlights of the Extinction Machine and Kill Switch cases. I told them what Doc and Junie told me. I gave them everything I had from Bug and Nikki. I told them about Violin and Harry. All of it.
It took a while. We ate scrambled eggs and toast and drank three pots of coffee. The morning burned on, chasing away the Moscow chill. Birds sang in the trees and the world turned as if everything was normal. When I was done, we had another long time of silence. I could see their eyes shifting to look inward at their own thoughts; I could hear gears turning. They were professionals, even the newbies. This was what the DMS was all about, and they were each members of Echo Team for a reason, and that meant it ran much deeper than their skills in a firefight. They were all smart and they possessed insight and intuition. Useful tools for this kind of work.
“So,” I said, “talk to me.”
“We need to get home,” said Cole. “They shipped a lot more God Machines than they used in D.C.”
“Yeah,” said Tate, nodding, “if they hit us once, they’re going to hit us again.”
“It’s more than that,” said Top, and everyone looked at him. “Those guys in the T-craft ain’t joking. These God Machines belong to them every bit as much as the Majestic Black Book did. Valen and the Russians may have trashed Washington, but it was the original owners of that tech who shoved Pushkin down the drain. One of them saw you, Cap’n, and if they’re the same cats we saw on the road in Maryland, then they’re trying to make a point. They told us they weren’t our enemies, but they aren’t our friends, neither. They let us get out of the building. That was them making a point.”
Smith frowned. “What point?”
“Give us back our toys and do it right damn quick,” I said. “Don’t think they’re going to give us a third chance.”
Top nodded. So, after a moment, did everyone else.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR
THE HANGAR
FLOYD BENNETT FIELD
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
Bug had a large team, one that grew faster than any other department within the DMS. Cyberterrorism and cybercrime were the greatest threat to governments around the world since the creation of atomic weapons—and far more insidious. They could cause incredible destruction without scorching the earth or irradiating the air. And the weapon of choice in the twenty-first century was a laptop with good Wi-Fi.
Bug was on the other side of that battlefield. He—like many of his employees—had begun his career as a gray-hat hacker. Some of his people had actually been black hats, though when faced with a choice of using their skills to help rather than harm, had made sensible choices. Others Bug had tried to recruit hadn’t made the right call, and they were in prison cells, denied any access to computers.
This did not mean that Bug and his people respected laws. That was hardly the case. They routinely committed felonies of all kinds. The difference was the reason. For Bug and his department, it was very much a philosophy of the ends justifying the means.
When he forwarded requests through proper channels to initiate a nationwide search for the male identified as Valen Oruraka, a suspected Russian agent, his request was denied. The refusal came down from the highest office in the land, and was front-loaded with a blistering reprimand and all manner of threats should the Department of Military Sciences try to hijack already overtaxed systems for a wild-goose hunt. And various words to that effect. The doors of free and unfettered access to the various databases of the American intelligence networks were slammed in his face.
“Fine,” said Bug, “be that way.”
He called a brief meeting with his department heads and told them what he wanted them to do. None of the people in the meeting looked particularly dangerous. An outsider might label them geeks or nerds. Those labels were fair enough; however, they were very dangerous geeks and nerds. They were, in their way, every bit as dangerous as Joe Ledger, Top, Bunny, or any of the shooters who went into the field. None of Bug’s team carried a gun; most wouldn’t know how to even load one. They didn’t need to. They had MindReader Q1.
“Find Valen Oruraka,” said Bug. “No mercy.”
The “no mercy” thing was an unwritten in-house protocol. It meant that the full power of the world’s most powerful, sophisticated, and subtle computer system, with all of its super-intrusion software, would be aimed at those closed doors and the trigger pulled.
The vast databases of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security never saw them coming. They did, however, brace for an attack, because the White House told them to expect some kind of trickery from the DMS. They looked, but they did not see the bullet. Neither did the CIA, the DIA, the Secret Service, or any of the dozens of other departments and agencies in the collective law enforcement, intelligence, and investigative community. MindReader Q1 walked past all of their watchdog programs, invisible and unfelt. It accessed trillions of files and rewrote the host software to erase even the slightest trace of its presence. No footprint was left, no echo, no scar.
Bug’s intercom buzzed and he punched the button. “Thrill me,” he said.
“On your screen,” said Delilah, one of his best gunslingers.
An image appeared, showing a man with black hair, a goatee, Wayfarer sunglasses, and a cowboy hat walking into a convenience store attached to a gas station across from the Econo Lodge in Livingston, Montana. The black-and-white surveillance cameras got good views of him from three different angles. He wore boot-cut jeans and a Western-style shirt. The boots had thick soles and thicker heels. He did not look remotely like the man they were hunting.
Bug smiled anyway. He bent close and looked at a dozen pop-up windows that overlaid the video feed. Minute measurements of ears, cheekbones, nose, and other features flashed as they lined up with the college identification photo of Valen Oruraka.
“Got you, you son of a bitch,” murmured Bug.
PART THREE
HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN TONIGHT
The darkness drops again;
but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
—“The Second Coming” William Butler Yeats
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE
IN FLIGHT
OVER CANADIAN AIRSPACE
“Cowboy,” said Bug via the command channel, “the pilot says you’re not going to Montana.”
“No,” I said, “I’m going hunting for Valen Oruraka.”
“But Valen’s in Montana,” insisted Bug.
“Maybe,” I said, “but that’s not where he’s going.”
Doc Holliday said, “Activating the ORB. I think we need to have us a little powwow.”
Suddenly she was there, with Junie, Church, and Bug, along with my whole team.
“Before I explain where I’m going, I want to go over some things. Let’s take this one piece at a time. Honest opinion, guys … is Valen our Big Bad?”
“No,” said Bug. “It’s Gadyuka.”
“I agree,” said Junie. “Valen is a scientist and an idealist. He’s fighting for a cause. Two causes, really. This New Soviet thing, and family. He thinks his uncle was unfairly blamed for Chernobyl. It’s been the focus of his whole life to learn enough to be able to prove what he believes.”
“He’s still a bad guy, though,” said Bunny. “Heartbreak or not, he’s just killed nearly two thousand people.”
“Two thousand one hundred and nine, as of this morning,” corrected Doc. That hurt. It really goddamn hurt. I saw Top wince; Cole turned away, unable to look at anyone for a moment.
“Let me change the question,” I said. “Is Gadyuka the Big Bad?”
“Yes,” said Bug.
“Yes,” said Doc and Junie.
“No,” said Church. “Gadyuka is a spymaster and, possibly, an assassin, but the setup at Pushkin Dynamics could not exist without substantial political juice. Someone had to authorize the money for it, make sure it was left alone, guarantee that the tax returns would not be looked at too closely, and grease the wheels for the exports. That takes an infrastructure of considerable size. Gadyuka seems more likely as the director of field operations, but I can’t buy her as being senior management. It would be too risky to run an op of that size from the field. That, for the record, is why I do not go into the field anymore. Any chain of command needs to be solidly anchored.”
Doc frowned for a moment. “When you say ‘infrastructure,’ you’re not talking about Russian Mafiya? Do you mean a ghost organization within the Russian government?”
Church shrugged. “That, or something bigger.”
“What’s bigger…?” began Bunny, then he stopped and goggled. “Wait … you’re talking about all the way big, aren’t you? Like the actual Russian government. Are we talking Uncle Vladimir as the Big Bad?”
“Anything is possible, Master Sergeant.”
I said, “No way something like this was happening without key people at the very top being involved. The risk is too big, for one thing. If a single shred of proof ever gets out connecting Russia to D.C., then it’s an act of war. Such an event would splinter all global alliances. Countries would have to decide if they wanted to move fast to help crush Russia completely to prevent the use of the earthquake weapon; or they might align themselves with the New Soviet for fear of devastating retaliation. We have proof that Pushkin was shipping, or planning to ship, those machines to China, England, and other countries.”
“Well, we have the shipping records from a building that no longer exists,” corrected Bug. “That’s not going to be enough for declarations of war. We’re going to have to be careful how we break this.”
“I agree,” said Junie. “This news is like a nuclear bomb. Last thing we want is politicians overreacting and demanding that we put missiles in the air.”
“For the record, guys,” said Bug, “I’m not a fan of that whole mutually assured destruction thing. I’ve seen those movies. First bombs, then giant radioactive cockroaches and gorillas on horseback with carbines. No thanks.”
“He’s right,” said Junie. “As much as I’m usually for full disclosure, there is no way to spin this that wouldn’t result in a panic or a war. Or both.”
“Can’t let it go unanswered,” said Top.
“No,” agreed Church.
“Who do we tell?” asked Doc. “Last I heard everyone in Washington was hanging up on you.”
“First things first,” I said. “Valen is still out there. Bug, have you been able to decrypt the shipping records? How many God Machines were sent to America?”
“Well,” Bug said, “some of it is still rough guesses, and not all of the shipments went to the United States. But if you include Canada, to places where there’s a lot of interstate trucking heading down to the States, then it’s a lot of them. Possibly as few as eighty and as many as two hundred.”
“Two hundred?” cried Cole.
“Maybe more,” said Bug. “It breaks down like this. Fifty of them were sent to Baltimore via container ships. The dockyard records show them coming in from three different points of origin, none of which are Russia. The shipments were moved around a lot. Any customs computer whiz would have missed it, because the guys at Pushkin were very smart about it. But … y’know … MindReader and all. So that accounts for all of the D.C. machines, and maybe some others as backups, or defective. There are no records at all after they were picked up by local trucking companies and delivered to a warehouse in Baltimore. They were probably picked up from there by Valen and his crew. The warehouse has been swept and is clean.”
“Big question,” said Doc, “but where’d the rest of the gol-dang machines go?”
“Five different ports in Western Canada. Coming from all sorts of fake destinations, but I can prove they started at Pushkin. The cargo was picked up by truckers and came into the U.S. via the standard routes through Canada Route 99, to Route 5 in Washington, and then west along 90, and probably south on 15.”
“That means we can track them,” said Duffy. “Good. Let’s roadblock these sons of bitches.”
“Bug, tell them the complications.”
Bug sighed. “First thing is that most of the parts shipments were sent to their destinations months ago. Not sure how long it takes to assemble one of these God Machines, but from our experience with Gateway and Prospero Bell, it’s tricky. There are all sorts of alignment issues, and you really don’t want to get the math wrong.”
“Assuming they know how to build them,” said Top, “what’s the timetable?”
“I think the clock’s ticking down to boom,” I said. “Bug spotted Valen in Montana. I think he’s out there to oversee the next phase. But before we get to that, let’s backtrack and add the other big piece of the puzzle. The why.”
“About that,” said Cole, “what’s his beef with us? Unless I skipped that day in history class, we didn’t sabotage Chernobyl.” She glanced at Church. “Did we?”
“No,” said Church. “We did not sabotage Chernobyl.”
“Then why did he wreck Washington? And why’s he out there maybe setting up some other attack?”
“Why did the Soviet Union collapse?” asked Church.
Cole thought about it. “It was economics, wasn’t it? Trying to keep up with us, building up their military and all that. We have more natural resources and a stronger economy.”
“Top marks,” said Church. I’m sure if he’d actually been in the same room with us he’d have given her a cookie. “There were other elements, but as is often the case, it comes down to money. We have more of it, and we used it more effectively. There was tremendous economic turmoil, poverty, corruption, and internal strife in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. We prospered and even offered financial aid, which seemed like compassion and forgiveness, but wasn’t. It never is in such circumstances. The ideal outcome for America would have been to turn Russia into another postwar Japan or Germany. That nearl
y happened, too, but there was too much resentment and it lasted much longer than the tensions between America and its enemies during World War Two. The Cold War never truly ended, at least for key players in Russia.”
“There’s a conspiracy theory,” said Junie, “that the influx of Russian Mafiya to America was a deliberate tactic. After all, so many of them were former Soviet military.”
“There may be a great deal of truth in that, Miss Flynn,” conceded Church. “Which supports the view that the Cold War hasn’t ended. When the Wall fell, the Cold War went dark, but it is still being fought as a long-game special operation. There are hawks on both sides, and in times when those hawks were not in open political power, they worked tirelessly behind the scenes. It’s only been more recently that the hawkish views in Russia have become less well hidden. Maybe because they knew that they were going to finally win that war.”
“So, wrecking D.C. was what? Their opening move?” asked Duffy. “Are they going to hit New York next? If so, why aren’t we going there? That’s where the money is. That’s the heart of the economy, unless I’m reading Forbes magazine wrong.”
“Money passes through there,” said Church. “It’s the brains of the national economy, just as Washington is the center of the infrastructure. But it’s not the heart of the economy.”
“Then what is?”
I bent and tapped some keys on my laptop, and some pictures I’d preloaded popped onto the virtual walls of the ORB. Oceans of wheat blowing in the wind; thousands of acres of corn and barley and soy; groves of fruit trees. “This is America,” I said. “This is what Valen is going to destroy.”
Duffy shook his head. “How? He’d need a million God Machines to cause that many earthquakes.”
“No,” said Doc Holliday, her face draining of all color, “he won’t. He could do it with the machines they’ve already sent to America.”
“But … how?”
“Tell them, Cowboy,” said Doc.
I could see the precise moment when Junie got where I was going. She went pale as death. Doc, too. They looked like they wanted to flee. As if that was even possible.
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