The crowd held their ground as he advanced, so he tilted his head forward to look at them under his brow, spread his arms like a predator's claws, and let instinct cow them. He crossed the grass at a deliberate walk, and now Jason's followers shied back. The priest only dusted himself off, grimacing with the effort – probably the result of a cracked rib or two – and glared with eyes ablaze, a worm of blood squirming on his fattening lip. "You dare defy the will of God?"
Matt rolled his eyes at his onetime friend and projected as much contempt as he could into his reply. "Don't presume to threaten me."
Head high, again, Jason rallied the crowd around him, calling them forward with his fingers. "It is not I who threatens you. We have no power in this world. You squander your God-given gift to wallow in the sin and violence of Satan, and the Lord God will not withhold His judgment."
The crowd muttered, "Amen."
Matt sneered as he said aloud what he'd shied away from thinking about for three years. "You of all people know where my gifts came from, how my son got twisted by tainted magics. Adam's no saint, and neither is my wife. The world's going to shit, and you're not helping."
Jason's eyes fell. "It isn't this world that concerns me, but the next."
The crowd said, "Amen."
"Yeah, I got that. Meantime, I'm taking my family where you can't reach them, and we're not coming back to this town, ever. So enjoy the view from your fucking church."
The crowd rumbled, and Jason shushed them. "Peace, brothers and sisters! Do not give the devil a reason to use this man to his violent ends. He means us no harm, but only has difficulty accepting what we already know."
A smile had never felt so cold. "I think I mean you a little harm. Anybody want to go first?"
Every one of them met his challenging glare, but not one stepped forward.
"Are there only cowards among your flock, Rees?"
Matt held no illusions of beating up a thousand people, even with his speed, strength, and reflexes, but it would never come to that. The fight-or-flight instinct tilted only one direction when one faced an insurmountable foe and had room to run, and panic remained the most contagious of human conditions. He stalked forward, shifting his path as the crowd shied away, always advancing toward the closest person – except Jason, who didn't move.
As their spirit broke he turned and put a hand on Jason's shoulder from behind, an echo of their former friendship, an innocence burned to ashes in the furnace of obsession and fanaticism. He leaned in close and spoke just loud enough for his words to carry. "She's out of your reach now. Let her go, or you're going to learn what the wrath of God really looks like. We both know our parents still live here. They have nothing to do with this, so if you touch them, if your people touch them, if they ever even make them feel unsafe, I'm going to kill every single one of your pathetic followers and snap your neck on the burning embers of your church. Do you understand?"
Jason said nothing for a moment, then, "You've threatened me before."
Matt dug his fingers into muscle just enough to hurt, and the whispers cajoled him to keep going, tear Jason's arm off at the shoulder and wade into the rest of the crowd. "Yeah, back when I thought you might try to fuck her again. This is different, and you know it. Leave my family alone. Leave her family alone. This is your last and only chance. So please, tell me you understand."
"I understand."
Matt let go and walked away, turning his jog into a sprint to catch up with the retreating cars. He very much doubted Jason understood anything, least of all the conviction behind his threat.
* * *
Matt carried their bags into the safe house, a two-story modular home with vinyl siding, one of dozens just like it on the same cul-de-sac in Sterling, Virginia. The plain furniture looked new enough, and cinnamon potpourri mostly covered the smell of dust and old pizza. Ted trotted into the middle of the beige carpet and flopped on his side, exhausted from most of a day staring out the car window.
"This place is a hole." Hostile disappointment tinged every one of Monica's words.
"A temporary hole." He set the bags on the floor and closed the door after Jake Martin, the bodyguard assigned until the morning shift. As the security here depended on secrecy they would have only two guards on shift at any given time, one at the front door and one at the back.
A young man in a suit a little too big, Jake ran a hand through his sandy brown hair and gave them a constipated smile. "No need to worry about anything, Mrs Rowley. This place has got state-of-the-art security, and the hall closet upstairs is really a panic room. Come hell or high water, we'll keep you safe as can be."
"Splendid," she deadpanned, turning to unbuckle Adam from the car seat. He yawned as she picked him up and gave Matt a sleepy smile over her shoulder.
"Pantry's full," Jake continued, either oblivious or ignoring her mood as he showed them the first floor. "So's the fridge. You've got food for at least a week, and if there's anything you want special we can make that happen."
Next to the kitchen he opened a door, stepped in and turned on the light. Food loaded three high shelves, everything from cereal and pasta to canned goods and soda. Against the back wall sat two cases of cheap beer and two boxes of wine. Monica whirled away, and Adam's head banged off of the doorframe.
"Fuck!" she said, as Matt pointed at the booze.
"Martin, get that shit out of here. Don't you know she's an alcoholic?"
Adam blinked and raised a hand to his head, and tears brimmed in his eyes. "Sorry, Momma."
"Oh, no, baby." She kissed his head and her lips came away red. "It was Mommy's fault." Her tone snapped as she looked at Matt. "Can you get me some paper towels? And the baby bag?"
He found a roll of towels on the counter, pulled it off the holder and tossed it to her, then went into the living room to get the bag. Jake passed him on the way out, carrying half the alcohol in one trip, the other guard on his heels with the rest, both red-faced. Jake passed off a smile more constipated than happy. "I'll stash this in the garage until morning. Don't worry, we'll keep it under guard. I… I'm sorry."
Matt held his gaze, bag in his hand. "You guys need to do your homework."
Jake nodded and pushed through into the garage, the other guard right behind. Matt joined Monica in the kitchen, set the bag down next to her. As she rummaged for bandages and Neosporin he took the bloody paper towels – only a small dot of red – and tossed them in the garbage.
An hour later they'd gotten the crib set up and Adam laid down, and had settled into a strange bed in a strange house, Monica fast asleep a minute after her head hit the pillow. He didn't want to tell her he had to leave in the morning, but it beat telling her now.
* * *
Jake Martin pulled the bloody tissue from the garbage and inverted his latex glove, tying it closed to contain the sample. He put it in a cooler of ice, set it in his car, then sent a text: 'I left the mail on the porch'.
That gave him sixteen hours to deliver the sample to General Freudenberg, the first six of which would be standing guard over the most dangerous family in the world.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The ICBM complex in Truckee, California had never been on any official maps, and nuclear disarmament talks had never included it or, presumably, a thousand more just like it hiding under the landscape of the United States. It housed four units comprising three buildings each – the missile silo, the access staircase, and the control center with sleeping quarters, each connected to the others by corrugated metal pipe like the kind you'd find in drainage culverts, only much bigger.
They accessed the broken arrow through its only entrance, a ten-inch thick steel hatch buried in the hillside that led to a metal staircase descending into the artificial depths. Lieutenant-Colonel Buck Jones led them past several unoccupied murder holes, their walls still stained with blood that looked dark brown in the was
hed-out fluorescent lights. Fifty-something with salt-and-pepper hair and deep bags under his eyes, he spoke with an Alabama drawl and looked like he hadn't skipped a meal in decades.
They ignored the blast lock leading to the control center and accessed the blast door to the 'cable way', a steel-floored hallway lined with cables and wire, the only way in or out of the silo itself. The hall should have ended in another airlock-style blast door, but instead a jagged, torn-out circle of concrete opened into the silo. Sixty feet across, the launch shaft descended over ten stories down, most of that space filled with an enormous white missile, the top of which had been torn open in jagged sheets of metal.
"That the warhead?" Matt nodded toward the damaged tip.
Jones smoothed his mustache and pretended to spit. "MIRV. Held twelve warheads, now it's got eleven."
"Why did they take only one?" Sakura asked.
"Don't reckon I know, Miss Sakura. Seems they loaded the one on a truck, and didn't have another truck."
"How'd they get it out of there?" Matt asked.
"Cameras don't look at the top of the missile, but as far as we can tell they peeled the capsule like an orange and removed the slice."
"Plates on the truck?" Sakura's eyes didn't leave the gash in the missile.
"They already found it down near the res."
"Res?" Matt asked.
"'Bout five hundred Miwoks own a bit of land down near Shingle Springs. Ain't much there but the casino and a wellness center. They ditched the truck right outside the casino parking lots, past where the cameras see. Ain't nothing—"
The ground shook, and dust rained from the ceiling. Jones steadied himself on the wall, Sakura and Matt rode out the tremor for ten seconds.
Matt touched his COM. "Janet, was that an earthquake?"
Jones shook his head. "You're in a giant Faraday Cage sixty feet underground. You're not going to get any kind of signal unless we go back upstairs."
"Yeah," Matt said. "Let's do that."
As they popped the access hatch his COM pinged and a waiting message played automatically. Janet's voice said, "Check in now."
He tried again. "Janet?"
"We've got a political insurrection in San Francisco. A group of insurgents kidnapped the mayor and his family and sent a tape to the news promising earthquakes if their demands aren't met. The first one hit the moment the guy on the video promised a warning to make sure the authorities know they're serious. Looks bad."
"Sounds bad." Matt stared westward toward a city and ocean too far away to see. "What do they want?"
"Nothing much, just sovereignty over the greater Bay Area and two billion dollars in restitution."
He closed his eyes. "Let me guess. Miwok Indians."
Marcia Stein broke in. "What do you know that we don't?"
"Getting there, Stein. Clear the channel." The annoyance in Janet's voice could cut a man in half.
"Nothing," Matt replied. "We just learned the truck they used to take the bomb was swapped for another ride at the Miwok Reservation. You want us there or the city?"
"The city, but you'll need a chopper. The bridges are out of commission and traffic is a fustercluck."
"Roger that. We'll—"
"This is a trap."
He opened his eyes, looked at Sakura, who still stared into the distance.
"Wreck the bridges, bait us in, set off the bomb. Flynn's been toying with you, and already knows he can't take you in a fair fight. Doubly so with me here. It's a trap."
Jones looked from Matt to Sakura, back to Matt. "Do you really think he'd nuke a city just to kill you?"
Matt nodded. "He'd probably nuke a city just to kill a million people. Add killing me into the mix? No question."
"Fuck." Jones grabbed his hair with both hands, and all the blood drained from his face.
"How big is this warhead?"
Jones dropped his hands. "The W92 is tactical, four hundred and seventy five kilotons, like the W88. Call it a million people killed or crippled, give or take. Plus fallout."
"Great. What's an Aug's chance at close range?"
Jones snorted. "I'm no doctor, but within a mile you're dead, four miles most people are dead and you're going to be very, very hurt. And maybe worse, the W92 doesn't exist – it's not covered by SALT II or any other treaty, because nobody knows we have them, especially not in twelve-clutster MIRVs. This thing goes off, or gets identified, we're in for a world of shit."
Nodding to cover how little he cared about the political ramifications of the United States violating its own treaty, Matt said, "So how do they detonate it?"
"Step one is know a lot about nukes. You program it, and when the conditions hit, boom."
"What conditions can you program?"
"Modern nukes need GPS and at least one other condition – air pressure, altitude, impact force. The W92, you have to calibrate all of those conditions, and impact isn't an option. The priority being that it only goes off where and when you want it to."
"Roger that. So how do we diffuse it? Cut the red wire?"
Jones shook his head. "They're precision machines, and they're not going to go off from a fire or impact. Sufficient damage should trigger the disabling failsafes without the weapon detonating, and that'll render it inert."
"That's good."
"But," he put a finger in Matt's face, "if you breach either of the cores you're going to have a hot mess on your hands, radiation-speaking."
"Could I survive it?"
He spat, for real this time. "You're the superman. Did ICAP do any studies of augmentation versus radiation?"
Sakura shook her head. "I don't think so."
"Then your guess is as good as mine."
"Great."
* * *
Terry looked out the window at the cars and their flashing lights, the SWAT vans and the snipers on the rooftops, all circling the wrong buildings half the city away. The weight of his body dragged him down, sluggish and impotent, and the mewling whine of the fifteen-year-old boy grated down his spine. "Can somebody please shut him the fuck up?"
"Scalp him," Coyote said. A dangerous man who'd taught them ancient magic, Terry had no doubts about Coyote's authenticity or sincerity – had had none. Irish through and through in looks and accent, he promised them too much and respected their culture too little. They were being used, but Terry held out hope they were using him in turn.
"Miwoks aren't scalpers."
Coyote turned, white teeth flashing in the yellow city lights. "Miwoks weren't scalpers, right is right. It's never too late to pick up a hobby."
Terry bristled as the boy's whimpers turned to blubbering sobs. "We are wolves and eagles, a noble people that once ruled this land. We will not debase ourselves to your racist stereotypes."
"Racist, am I? A wolf, are you? I think I can arrange that."
Black words poured from Coyote's mouth, and Terry faded. The world brightened as he grew dim, and the smells of the night assaulted his consciousness. A shrieking, incoherent intelligence settled in the crannies of his consciousness. Blood lust clawed at his belly, and the hearts of the mayor's family beat in his ears.
"Not here, ya dog, we need these ones a bit. Go outside where you belong, and don't hunt too close."
Terry slunk to the door on all fours, drool dropping from his jaws to evaporate in the light that streamed across the floor from the hall.
"Take your friends."
The pack of shadow wolves bolted downstairs, slipping through the crack in the door into the night, their howls a silent call to the blood red moon. Terry led them south and east toward the bay, far from the police and their useless guns. Not to find more worthy prey, but more tender.
A twinge of guilt tore at his heart as the dark thing in his mind chose their hunting ground, a false memory of another life. Ha
d he had children of his own, before Coyote came into the casino and promised him unimaginable power? No. That belonged to a softer thing, a colder thing, a thing of meat and blood. And now the white man would pay for centuries of theft and oppression with blood of their own.
Guilt drowned in anticipation as he slipped under the loading dock door into the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.
* * *
Sakura dropped from the speeding helicopter ten feet from the hospital roof. As gravity brought her down she tucked into a ball around her REC7. Her shoulder hit first and she rolled to her feet, took four skidding steps to arrest her momentum, turned, and hopped backward off the roof, rifle now in her right hand. Ten feet down the fingers of her left hand caught the granite edge above the sixth-floor window. With a jerk she spun inward, smashing through the glass into the blood-streaked hallway.
It smelled of gore and shit and bleach and antiseptic – the four horsemen of combat and her daughter's death. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, courtesy of the hospital's generators. A black woman in pink nurse's scrubs gaped up at her from the floor, her hands wet and slick from trying to hold in the ragged remains of her entrails. Her mouth worked but no sound came out, only bubbles of spit and blood.
She snapped the woman's neck with her boot on the way by, as close to mercy as she could offer in a world this cruel, and stalked down the hall in the wake of a flurry of Dragonflies. Her HUD blipped on two probable friendlies hiding in a closet and a hot infrared spike at the nurse's station down the hall. The drone closest to it vanished, its datastream disappearing from the cloud of information, and a low rumble carried through her ear bud as its speakers shuddered and then failed.
She touched the new button on the side of her helmet and FADE's weird strobe bathed the area in white-blue. Subtlety irrelevant in light of it, she charged the desk and the beast hiding behind it. The wolf-thing rose on its hind legs, standing to a full height of almost seven feet tall, its muzzle of serrated teeth dripping with red. Sparks crackled between black strands of nothing-fur, highlighting taut muscles and long, hooked claws.
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