“Sorry, it just popped out.”
“Oh, snap!” said Bunny, high-fiving Tarzan.
“And this is Conlan O’Malley,” said Spooky, ignoring the byplay. “Comms, urban warfare, backup pilot.”
“What do we need another pilot for?” asked Flyboy. “You already have the pilot.”
“Call me Buzz,” said O’Malley.
“Spirit,” said Long Knife, shaking hands with everyone.
“Welcome to Reaper’s Rangers,” said Hawkeye.
“All right, people,” Reaper said firmly, “playtime’s over. Go get your gear and be back here in two hours. Send your letters, get in one last quickie with your lovers, and show up with your heads on straight. Bring everything you think you might need. We’ll work the loadout plan on the fly. Now go!”
Chapter 9
The newly nominated and confirmed Vice President of the United States sat in the southwest corner office of an impressive house built in 1893 on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory, located in D.C. about two miles northwest of the White House, near Embassy Row. Since 1974 it had been the official residence of the Vice President. A large, comfortable mansion of nearly ten thousand square feet, it was much more modern than the President’s picturesque but rather overcrowded residence.
The White House was larger, but it was a working building and not a mere home, the epicenter of America’s power that just happened to serve the President as a comfortable place to sleep and eat and shower. In her job as the National Security Advisor, Prudence Layfield had spent most of her workdays in the White House, but resided in a small brownstone in Alexandria.
Now, though, Layfield hated it. Not only being the Vice President, but the mansion as well.
The first thing she’d noticed was how large and quiet the place was. She was the first Vice President to live in the mansion without a family, not even a spouse. Her husband had abandoned her and she’d divorced him in absentia. Her son Toby had been taken by the Eden Plague and was dead to her now, not even human anymore. She pushed the painful thoughts aside.
When the previous President and Vice-President had been forced to resign after the disaster at Haines Junction, for the first time in history the U.S. Constitution’s extended line of succession had to be employed. Those among the populace who’d forgotten their civics classes were surprised that the Speaker of the House of Representatives came directly after the Vice-President.
So, Congressman Zachary Brenner from the great state of Alabama had been sworn in as President, and as a hardline Unionist had looked for an equally staunch vice-presidential candidate to fill that vacancy. Layfield had called in all her markers and twisted a good many arms, eventually succeeding in becoming what she’d thought of as the second most powerful person in the world.
Oh, how naïve she’d been.
She’d had more power and far more influence as National Security Advisor. In that position she’d been able to affect the policy and decisions of the President, and thus the entire federal government. It had been she who’d directed and won the War of Texas Reunification. It had been she who’d forced through a tacit, undeclared invasion of Canada in order to squash the Alaskan rebellion.
It had been she who’d moved the United States into a position to annex all of North America, both Canada and Mexico, if that fool above her and his cabinet would just open their eyes and grow a single pair of balls among them all.
It had been she who’d preserved their nation from the growing threat of the Eden Plague, the most terrifying and dangerous menace to ever face the human race.
Now she spent her days presiding over the Senate, which was about as exciting as watching grass grow and paint dry. She could cast a single vote whenever there was a tie, an unusual occurrence. She also attended ceremonial functions in the name of the President. Sometimes she stood behind him when he made speeches on camera.
Finally, when allowed, she offered her counsel and advice to the President, something he desperately needed and usually ignored. However, it was his cabinet that had his ear, a cabinet she’d imprudently promoted herself away from.
But Prudence Layfield was not without her own Party-based power and influence, if only she had the guts to use it. She looked up at the muted television that hung in the corner of her office. It showed thousands of the poor and disenfranchised protesting the current Mexican administration, an oligarchy composed of wealthy elites. It was just the sort of chaotic situation that would welcome U.S. intervention.
Layfield had used every tool at her disposal to undermine the Mexican government after their traitorous complicity and failure to act in the Texas Rebellion came to light. The ragged commoners, many of them Edens themselves, would never support U.S. involvement in their affairs. The elite, though – bankers, intellectuals, “enlightened” ones – knew the benefits of a grateful America: money, power, support for their ambitions. Status they’d never had before. Hope that Mexico would ascend from its position as a third-rate power to finally take its place on the world stage as the equal of such influential nations as Germany and Japan.
They had done their part, and now all it would take was for the U.S. to do theirs.
She gazed at the television and whispered, “I did that.” A thrill of excitement and power ran through her as she saw tear gas give way to bullets as the panicked Mexican soldiers started to break and run, firing behind themselves to deter the mob’s pursuit.
But would the President act? Or would he miss this opportunity?
If he were merely disloyal to the Unionist cause, that would make everything so much easier. No, it was not that simple. Like his predecessor, the President and his cabinet were not disloyal; they were something much worse.
They were myopic and mediocre.
Bureaucracies were often stuffed with mediocre people, she knew. Those who advanced by not making mistakes seldom accomplished anything. Gutless, self-important creatures cloaked in puffed-up power. That is what she had to deal with.
She punched a button on her phone, putting the call on speaker.
“Yes, Madam Vice President,” came the answer from her secretary.
“Set up a meeting with Director Sturgeon,” Layfield said. “Make it a private lunch here.”
“How about tomorrow? Your calendar looks clear then.”
Layfield suppressed her frustration. Her calendar was almost always clear. That was part of the problem. When she was National Security Advisor, she was scheduled sixteen hours a day. “Tomorrow will be fine.”
“I’ll set it up.”
As Director of National Intelligence, Sturgeon headed the vast U.S. intelligence apparatus. Layfield believed Sturgeon was exactly the sort of visionary man who would be willing to work with her behind the scenes for the greater good, and he’d joined the Party.
Others had also agreed to work with her, out of the limelight. The President may have intended to sideline her, but she knew many dirty secrets, which gave her a different sort of power.
But that’s not my purpose, she told herself. For all her frustration with the President and his cabinet, the real enemy was the Free Communities. The real threat was that parasitic life form that used human beings as hosts.
She forced herself to look at the corner of her desk. There sat a sphere of lead crystal, flat on the bottom so it didn’t roll. It was perfectly clear except for the very center, where a red ball the size of an olive floated.
Reaching out with trembling fingers, Layfield steeled herself to pick up the object and draw it close to her face. She stared into the red swirling sphere, still alive. Still unimaginably evil.
Forcing herself not to draw away, she gazed at the small mass of blood infected with the Eden virus. Unlike normal blood, it didn’t clot and decay. Instead, it waited there like some alien thing, patient and malevolent. Her son’s blood. Toby’s.
Only he wasn’t her son anymore.
Pulling her face away from the ball, she moved to place it back on the corner of her
desk.
The heavy thing slipped from her fingers.
A shriek escaped her lips as she clutched frantically, but it rolled away from her and bounced heavily on the thick wood of her desk before falling over the side.
There came a thud, and then a dull rumble like contained thunder as the ball rolled across the hardwood floor and came to rest against a bookcase, where it wobbled unbroken before settling.
Layfield rose from her desk and carefully walked around to its opposite side. A small but thick woolen rug lay on the floor there. It was something her predecessor picked up on one of his travels to some dirty, backward country. She’d intended to have it removed, but until now had forgotten.
That’s what softened the fall, she realized. Otherwise the ball containing the Evil might have struck the hard floor and shattered.
It’s not an airborne virus, she reminded herself, trying to calm her frayed nerves.
“That’s what they say. But life forms mutate,” she muttered.
Layfield almost called her assistant to come in and pick up the ball for her, but that would make her appear weak. The story would make the rounds. As a former staffer, she knew how gossip flew. She forced herself to walk slowly forward on shaky legs and pick up the ball, setting it carefully on the desk and making sure her new favorite rug lay beneath the nearest edge.
Peering deep into the red center, she thought it swirled even more vigorously than before. It seemed to be looking out at her. Waiting. Hoping for escape, when it would come for her.
Turning her eyes away, she forced herself to gaze out the window at the gardens there. “I can’t let my plans be derailed,” she said aloud. “I will not fail.”
She buzzed for her assistant. When he entered, Layfield asked him, “When’s the next Cabinet meeting?”
Let them try to keep me out.
Chapter 10
In The Hague, Netherlands, Skull climbed carefully off an express train from Paris. He moved awkwardly, dragging a large wheeled piece of luggage. He leaned heavily on a cane to disguise his height, and to sell the appearance of a lame foot.
He’d learned long ago that people felt uncomfortable around others who exhibited any sort of disability, a deeply buried biological imperative that overrode higher thought. The handicap also made him seem less threatening, and if anyone did remember him, they remembered the handicap, not the man.
Limping slowly down the train platform, Skull caused an open space in a sea of humanity, the crowds parting around him. People came close to him, and then noticed the cane. Without even thinking about it, they looked away from his face to avoid eye contact.
He waited patiently outside for an available taxi as people on bicycles filled the streets. In a nation without mountains and with hardly a hill to its name, the inexpensive and eco-friendly bicycle, not the automobile, was a citizen’s primary transportation.
Eventually hailing a cab, Skull told the driver to take him to the Kurhaus Hotel, where Larry Nightingale had stayed before disappearing.
After checking in and making his way to his room, Skull opened his laptop and utilized a hacking tool. Within moments he’d burrowed through the flimsy firewall of the hotel server and had gained administrator access.
Like most establishments these days, the hotel found it cheaper to set up partitions on one network instead of running entirely separate networks for guests, employees, and their security department. It took him less than a minute to pull the historical logs and find out what room Larry had been staying in, under the name Alex Crester. He pulled up the security footage of the hallway outside Larry’s room, as well that of the main entrances and exits.
It took some time to filter through it all, but when he saw the image of his former comrade-in-arms, he couldn’t mistake it. The giant could have likely passed for just about anything except a diplomat.
What was Cassie thinking? He answered himself in a whisper. “She was thinking she had no one else to trust. Not for something like this.” A guess only, but the one that seemed most reasonable.
Skull saw Larry check into his room, and then after about an hour leave the hotel, presumably for dinner. He wasn’t one to miss a meal, even before the Eden Plague. Skull had heard, though, that Elise Markis and her team had cracked the hunger problem recently, genetically modifying the virus to be more efficient. However, it would obviously take a long time for the new version to spread and replace the old.
Skull hoped for Larry’s sake he already had the new one.
Larry had come back later that day. Except for dinnertime, he’d stayed in his room that night, no visitors or anything else unusual.
The next day, he’d gone to breakfast, come back for a time, put on his overcoat and then left – and never returned. The Do Not Disturb sign remained on the door, so no maids visited his room.
The next day several men in suits, accompanied by police officers, entered the room and took away all of Larry’s belongings.
They didn’t look as if they were investigating his disappearance. Rather, they seemed to be covering it up, sanitizing the room. So, some sort of government job, with the complicity of local law enforcement.
Checking the phone logs, Skull saw that Larry didn’t make or receive any calls on the landline, but that wasn’t surprising. He’d have used his mobile phone. His internet activity showed him only checking news and sports, except for periods that seemed to have no record. Skull was no tech wiz, but he figured Larry had used some kind of special software to cover his tracks. Presumably, that was when he’d communicated with the people he’d come to see. Unfortunately, it also suppressed any clues.
Skull looked out the large windows at the cold North Sea. Sitting transfixed for a time, he watched the waves blown into heavy whitecaps by the stiff breeze. The scene helped to clear his mind and he allowed his imagination to wander.
A government job, he thought again and closed his eyes. He mentally filtered through the list of useful contacts he’d memorized and pulled out a U.S. Homeland Security Liaison Officer who worked at the Europol headquarters in The Hague.
Maybe he could shed some light on why the Dutch were interested in Larry. Maybe they could tell him something that would lead to where Larry was now. And maybe he’ll give me a nice fat target so I can take care of two birds with one stone, thought Skull, checking his weapons.
Chapter 11
On the surface, the plane carrying Spooky, Reaper and the team appeared to be a commercial Airbus transport flying from the Dominican Republic to Boston. Their tactical gear was piled atop high-value spices and delicacies from the Caribbean country. This mission aside, the virus-infected foodstuffs would be sold at bargain prices to a restaurant supplier. Spooky tried never to waste an opportunity.
He’d kept security tight. Only he had known the details until the last minute. There seemed little chance anyone had tipped off the Americans. Still, he checked the high-altitude wing-suit and parachute he wore, the same as the rest of the team. They had donned the specialized gear at one hour until jump time.
Then he lay back, soon looking for all the world as if he were deep in sleep, yet that was far from the truth. Instead, he concentrated. He thought.
Plans within plans. Contingencies within contingencies. Everything that could go wrong and so little that might go well, but this was how it had always been. Special ops troops weren’t merely good at reacting to changing circumstances; they were trained to plan for and think through all the possibilities they might face. Spooky arranged these contingency plans like a deck of cards in his head.
The first potential contingency would be an intercept by the Air Force or Navy, to force down or, if necessary, shoot down the plane. This would only happen if the U.S. authorities suspected something out of place. Everyone aboard was ready to jump out and evade within the populace rather than land and be taken.
Even if everything went smoothly, they would jump. On paper it seemed the best way to get everyone and all the equipment into the State
s covertly.
The next contingency would be some kind of mid-jump issue. Everyone on the team was fully qualified in all aspects of freefall, but they’d only had time to jump all together once, and without the cargo, though they’d done dry runs on the ground.
This was complicated by the need to guide several large pallets of equipment during the freefall and landing. The wing suits should help, but as far as Spooky knew, they’d never been used this way before. The team would act as rudders to steer the pallets, but despite everything, the pallets might be hard to handle.
Spooky knew this was the most dangerous and complicated high altitude insertion he’d ever attempted. It was the sort of mission he’d have scoffed at in his Special Forces days, the type of mission that mid-grade staff officers with a minimal amount of field time dreamed up, likely to get the operators injured or killed.
But I dreamed this one up, Spooky thought, gazing down the inside of the plane’s fuselage. Desperate times call for desperate measures. With great risk comes great reward.
He watched Reaper and her team’s casual banter founded solidly in trust, a camaraderie of a temper only forged in the trials of combat and danger. Spooky felt a tinge of envy that he was too honest to dismiss – envy not for the feeling, but for its ability to control others.
He usually thought of envy as a useless emotion, but perhaps it could instruct him this time. Maybe it was telling him he should emulate Reaper, adopt her methods, since they seemed more effective.
Would I be doing this if I were one of them? One of the normal ones?
But you’re not one of them, Tran, he said to himself. You’re different. You always have been, even before your mind was opened and the clarity came. The road you must walk is lonely and heavy with responsibility.
And you only have one family.
The sentiments that bound him to his family might be muted by the narcissism with which he struggled, but they existed. Besides, the thickness of blood would be useful to him in the future.
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