The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller

by Whitley Strieber

  “You’ve been practicing,” Flynn said. He’d find out later how she had defeated Morris’s sonic incapacitation, which was one very powerful tool. He looked over at Morris. “She won’t miss.”

  “Help me,” Morris said, his voice dead and hopeless. Flynn could hardly imagine how it would feel to know for certain that death was the end for you. Not good, especially if you also suspected that others survived the death of the body—or, as in Morris’s case, knew it.

  “What the hell is going on here, Flynn? Do you realize who this is?”

  “I do.”

  “Then—what?”

  He stepped over to Diana, but when he reached to take the pistol, she swung away from him. In that instant, Morris darted between them.

  “Shit!” She whirled, but it was too late—he was already out the front door and gone. Following him would be futile.

  She came into the library and slammed the pistol down on the desk. “What in hell?”

  “I was going to tell you.”

  “Just not right now. What are you two up to?”

  “He claims that he wants to work together against Aeon.”

  “That I do not believe.”

  “We flew here together from Dubai.”

  “That is the first thing you should have told me.”

  “I didn’t and it was a mistake. I’m sorry.”

  “Flynn, we can’t afford mistakes. If I hadn’t come down here when I did, God knows what would have happened.”

  “You should have been knocked out until morning.”

  “I was never knocked out.”

  “His device didn’t work?”

  “There’s a counter-acoustic barrier covering the entire house. Nobody in here can be knocked out with a sonic pulse device.”

  “So you heard everything.”

  “And I am now more certain than ever that you have a fatal flaw. Your fatal flaw is, you’re a compulsive loner.”

  “I could’ve told you that.”

  She picked up Flynn’s Raging Bull. “I sure have been practicing,” she said. “Do you know we have your entire body mapped, inside and out? Those functional MRIs you did have enabled me to learn just how you make your moves, and train my own body to do the same. And train others.” In a split second, the Bull was raised pointed at him. “It’s a learning curve, Flynn, nothing more. It can be taught.”

  “But not tonight. We need to get out to Langley.”

  “We can patch in from here via the QX.”

  “We need to leave. If he can penetrate, they all can. This place is a death trap.”

  He went upstairs and threw on some clothes, and she followed and did the same. They went across to the garage. Instead of taking one of their own cars, Flynn chose one that was well crusted with dust, an elderly Oldsmobile, entered it, and wired it.

  There was half a tank of gas. The engine clattered like a sewing machine.

  They pulled out into the street and drove slowly off toward the Key Bridge and, beyond it, the GW Parkway.

  Morris had said three days, but what truth was there in it? Flynn’s sense was that they might have less time than that, maybe a lot less. And still, even at this late moment, they still had no real idea what they were up against.

  The U.S. president. The football. Mind control. The extinction of mankind, but without destroying the planet in the process. “So how,” Flynn said into the darkness across the bridge.

  “How what?”

  He didn’t reply. There was no reply. He drove on, deep into the night.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE LANGLEY Central Intelligence Agency complex never really sleeps, but as the night wears on, the shifts grow thin and the long corridors grow quiet. In the main building there are many different types of restricted areas, ranging from the secret to the highly classified. There are a few areas that are so secret that finding them would require detailed knowledge of the structure and of the misleading names on the doors that conceal them.

  Diana and Flynn walked across an empty open-plan office belonging to a group of economic statisticians and went through a door marked simply with the word STAIRS. In silence they went down one flight, then another. There was a discreet number keypad on another door. Diana punched in the code and they entered another corridor. With a whir and a final clunk, the door they’d just come through closed and locked itself.

  Concealed from them around a corner of the hall they had entered, a guard drew his weapon. He did not show himself, but if either of them failed the body identification and recognition scan that they were now undergoing, he would step out of his post and kill them both.

  The identification system was invisible, embedded in the walls. If they had failed, their first awareness of this would have been death itself. You don’t hear the bullet that kills you.

  As they passed, the guard pulled the door that concealed him closed. He waited until he saw them entering the facility itself to open it again. He did not know who they were. He knew only his duty, and he fulfilled it with absolute dedication. His orders were never to allow himself to be observed. Diana had given him those orders when she had appointed him.

  By contrast with the empty, silent corridor that seemingly led only to a storage room, the detail’s bullpen was brightly lit and humming with intensity. As always, Flynn tried to minimize contact. It was compulsive with him: Of course everybody in here knew what he looked like; everybody knew what he did. He strode quickly between desks, heading for the refuge of Diana’s office.

  “Flynn?”

  He went through the door and closed it. In Diana’s outer office there were four desks. Now only one was manned. “Mr. Carroll! Hello!”

  “Who are you?”

  The woman behind the desk jumped to her feet. “Sly Crawford.”

  “You’re a spy and your name is Sly? Fix that.” He headed for the inner office and Diana’s overnight suite behind it, the most secure area in the facility.

  “Flynn!” Diana had come storming in behind him.

  “No.”

  “Get out of here! We’ve got work to do that doesn’t involve your various neuroses.”

  “Security isn’t a neurosis.”

  “It is when you’re in one of the most secure facilities on the planet.”

  “There are no secure facilities on the planet.”

  “Oh, fine. OK. That makes it simple. We’ve lost and we all need to go home. Why did we even bother to come over here?”

  “Look, Di, I’m here because I’m willing to try. In fact, I’m willing to die trying.”

  “No need for melodrama. We’re all desperate and we’re all terrified.”

  He didn’t say it, but when it came time to be on the front line, it was going to be him, not her and not the rest of the staff. Still, she was right about what he had to do, and right about the fact that there was no reason to hide back here. It was instinct, though, and far from illogical. In a war like this, without boundaries and with an enemy that could penetrate the deepest recesses of your secure areas with undetectable surveillance, there was every reason to be more than normally careful—to say the least. Unless, of course, it just didn’t matter.

  He went out into the bullpen. “OK, folks, listen up. We want patterns. Anything that suggests some kind of plan behind it. Right now, though, I need reports. As much as you have. Map it all and throw it up on the screen in Di’s office. Do it now.”

  He returned to her office and sat down in her chair.

  “Thank you,” she said, sitting in one of her office chairs. “What are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  An image appeared of a world map. On it were dozens of circles and triangles, green, yellow, and red, each representing an unknown object present in the sky. Gene Fox, director of data services and former Wire technician, came in.

  “Green are identified, yellow are possible, red are definite unknowns. Let’s roll through it over the past seventy-two hours.”

  The
map began to animate, with circles and triangles appearing and disappearing.

  “Can you drop out the civilian reports?” Flynn said. “There’s too much static; you can’t see a pattern.”

  “There are no civilian reports here.”

  “Military only?”

  “Military and airline flight crew. These are all from classified channels.”

  “My dear God,” Diana muttered.

  It was, in fact, a huge worldwide incursion. Normally, there would be ten or twelve of these on a given day, if that many.

  “We’re looking at something like three hundred an hour, and those are just reports of things that were observed and tracked. And it’s escalating.”

  “Zoom in on CONUS,” Flynn said.

  The map of the United States grew until it filled the screen.

  “Now roll back until the level was normal, then roll forward to the present. Slo-mo.”

  He watched as the number of objects declined to almost none, then rose day by day. The image stopped at the present. As they watched, two more triangles appeared on the screen, reports from control towers at Hobby Airport in Houston and a radar facility in North Dakota.

  “Thanks, Gene,” Flynn said. “Keep us posted.”

  Gene took that as a cue to leave.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Ditch him like that. Not exactly a morale builder.”

  “Need to know. By the way, are those thermometers here?”

  “Yes, in the outer office.”

  He returned to the map, looking at the sea of dots. “Do you see a pattern?”

  “Not so far.”

  Taking one of the thermometers with him, he went back out onto the floor. Gene was huddling with members of his staff. Silently, he ran the device over the group. It threw an infrared beam, which measured temperature from a distance. No cold spots in the group. He drew Gene aside. “What I need are all the individual courses you have, each one you can verify as being a single object. I know it’s complex. A lot of calculation. Your expert judgment.”

  “Can do. Take some time.”

  “Gene, we don’t have time. I need it within ten minutes.”

  “It’s a day’s work at least!”

  “Not in wartime, it isn’t.” He left Gene gaping at his back. As he returned to Diana’s office, he heard the man start barking orders.

  Soon, tracks began appearing on the map, showing where objects had been first and last sighted, with dotted lines for probable courses.

  “See that?” Flynn said, pointing to two courses that both ended in the same place.

  “I do not.”

  “You know what’s in Minot, North Dakota.”

  “Malmstrom. Now I see it. My dear God.”

  He went back out onto the floor. It was silent. People were working furiously, deeply concentrated. “Gene, I need you to do the same thing for Russia.”

  “Our data isn’t as robust, obviously.”

  “Concentrate on their ICBM launch facilities.”

  “There are hundreds of them, plus a lot of mobiles. They’re not as centralized as we are.”

  “Do what you can as fast as you can.”

  The U.S. watched Russia’s ICBM launch facilities from eyes in the sky, in addition to listening in on any and all communications.

  The map changed, showing the vastness of Siberia. Over the intercom came Gene’s voice: “This is without courses yet. But you need to see it.” The map went to a point where there were few circles and triangles, but by that time, Flynn was already at Gene’s side.

  He reached over to the intercom button on his console and switched it off. “Next time, knock.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No intercom. Could be a surveil on it.”

  “In here?”

  “In here.”

  Flynn returned to the inner office. Once again, he watched as the number of objects blossomed. He returned to Gene. “I want you to overlay a map of all Russian ICBM launch facilities.”

  Yet again, he went back to the inner office. In a moment, the known locations of all of Russia’s fixed ICBM bases appeared, then the locations of all parked mobile launchers.

  “Where are we going with this, Flynn?” Diana asked.

  “Look closely.”

  Slowly, Diana got to her feet. She walked over to the map, then stood back from it. “What’s their point? Why are they doing this?”

  “That I don’t know. But they’re sure as hell overflying ICBM sites in both countries. Doing it again and again.”

  “They are, I agree. But I can’t see why our missile defense would matter to them. We target against each other, not them.”

  “It matters, though.”

  Silence fell. Could they be retargeting the missiles? That had happened before, back years ago, to both countries.

  She said, “Are they developing an ability to fire them?”

  “If they do that, then they don’t get the planet.”

  “What it if they don’t actually care about the planet? After all, planets are plentiful. We know that much.”

  “I need you to put together a team for me. First, I want nuclear experts. At least two leading nuclear scientists, people who know everything there is to know about nuclear weapons. No air force personnel.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “We’re going on a tour of Minuteman bases. Inspection. And I’ll need an identity that’s far enough up the chain of command to smooth my way.”

  “You want to impersonate a general? Could backfire if you run into somebody you’re supposed to know.”

  “I need to be Department of Defense. Civilian. Undersecretary level. Somewhere down in the cracks.”

  “I’ll make certain all verification requests come my way.”

  They set about preparing the team, which turned out to take many phone calls and more explanations than Flynn liked. While Diana and her assistants worked the phones, he discreetly moved through the big room with the temperature sensor. He didn’t pick up anything unusual, not from this shift, anyway.

  He returned to Diana’s office as she put down her phone. “You getting on OK?”

  “Did you know that most of the scientists involved in nuclear weapons research are dead?”

  That was disturbing. Maybe also a clue. “Meaning?”

  “Nothing sinister I don’t think. They got old and died. Cold War’s over. Nuclear weapons design is a backwater. Pencil-pusher country.”

  “So get me the best pencil pushers you can find.”

  “What do I tell them they’re looking for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Flynn, you are so damn difficult.” She went back to her phone. A few moments later, she said, “Madame Secretary.” She and the secretary of the air force spoke together for a few minutes. “That was Secretary Culpepper. She’s got me a name. Guy at MIT. He’s got major cojones when it comes to nukes. Plus he knows the facilities. He’s an expert in weapons miniaturization, which is about the only active field of research at present.”

  Flynn thought about that. “That would be the cutting edge right now, for sure.”

  She shrugged. “He’s the best nuclear engineer she knows and he’s got a heavy-duty clearance, so we don’t have to worry about getting him to sign his life away; he’s already done that. I know you’re not gonna want to fly from here, so I’m assembling your crew at Wright-Pat.”

  “OK, good.”

  “It’s four now. If you drive all night, you’ll be there by dawn. Your group will be assembled on the flight line. You can pick a plane at random and you’ll be taken to Malmstrom.”

  “As long as it’s not like the last time. That general was ready to have me shot.” He’d commandeered an air force general’s plane during a previous emergency.

  “You took the man’s plane while he was actually going aboard. You threw him off his own assigned aircraft. So yes, he was a little annoyed. This time, you outrank th
e generals.”

  “So when I’m on the flight line, I can get in a plane at random?”

  “Of course not, Flynn. You’ll have a plane and crew assigned. A flight plan filed.”

  “Scratch that. I’ll tell them where they’re going once we’re rolling.”

  “But not a random plane. That I cannot do.”

  As was his established procedure, he left without saying anything to anybody—not a goodbye, not a word. He never, ever forgot that his life depended on his skill at deception, and Aeon was very damn good at seeing past most of his tricks.

  This time, he would use a new procedure. Instead of going to the parking garage and pulling out the car that was kept there for him, he’d take a company car to Dulles, signing in under one of his working aliases, Richard Kelvin. Kelvin had retired two years ago, but his identity had not retired, and could still be used for chores like acquiring a car and driver.

  He waited in the vast, sterile lobby until the car pulled up in front. Head down, he walked quickly to the vehicle. He instructed the driver to take him to the Silver Spring Metro station, then sat back with his eyes closed and, as far as was possible, blanked his mind. But of course, the mind keeps on, and that’s what Aeon’s surveillance experts counted on. Once they had a DNA signature—and they had Flynn’s—they could find a person by the electromagnetic pattern generated by his brain, the same pattern that we measure with an electroencephalogram. Worse, they could do this from an unknown distance, probably from Aeon itself. A unit in the National Reconnaissance Office, as secret as their own, was supposed to be searching for some sort of base in our solar system, but so far nothing had been found.

  As he hurried down into the Metro station, a cold, wet autumn wind blew reefs of leaves down the street. People huddled past in coats and jackets. The station was crowded, which was good. He boarded a train bound for Union Station. There, in the echoing hall, he bought a Greyhound ticket to Pittsburgh, using cash. The bus would leave at 7:55 and get in at 2:15 in the morning. He then went to a newsstand, where he found throwaway cell phones for sale. He bought four, again with cash. He used one of them to call Cassey Air Charter at the Allegheny County Airport, chosen at random. The GSMK phones were possibly secure, but only when calling other phones that were similarly equipped. He had taken one of them with him, but he wouldn’t use it unless he had no choice.