by Marcus Sakey
In less than a second, the man’s entire body weight and all of Luke’s strength came to bear on the slender cord against his throat, shutting his windpipe and the carotid artery. His hands flew to his neck, scratching futilely as his legs kicked spasms in the dirt. His strength was gone in three seconds; after eight, he stopped moving entirely. Luke counted another twenty, unwound the cord, and confirmed the job with his knife.
Then he rose and waved his team forward.
They came quickly, automatic weapons ready. Led by Reynolds, six of them moved to the inflatable dome. Gorecki’s team spread out to surround the compound. Decker was of the amphetamine-thin variety of biker, a tattooed scarecrow with long hair bound back by his hat. His eyes didn’t widen as he took in the dead guard and the blood steaming against the cold ground.
Luke pointed to the nearest trailer. He’d hoped the door might not be locked—they were miles from the nearest town—but a gentle twist gave nothing. The fourth key on the guard’s ring did the trick. Luke opened the door and slid inside, Decker behind.
Night glow through the windows revealed a tiny living area. The kitchen was to the left, and on the wall to the right an open door led to what had to be the bedroom. Luke slid to it, footfalls silent on the carpet, then peered in. Pitch-black. He took the flashlight from his pocket, covered it with his palm, and let the blood-warm light trickle in. A desk, the door to a bathroom, a twin mattress with one figure in it. Six steps brought him alongside the bed.
In one move, Luke straddled the sleeper, covering his mouth with his right hand and using the left to aim the flashlight in his eyes. The man woke with a jerk and a gasp against Luke’s palm.
“Don’t fight.”
The man froze, his face pale and eyes wide, pupils constricting visibly in the sudden light.
“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth. Try to scream, you die. Understand?”
A trembling nod.
“What’s your role?”
“Wh . . . what?” Voice cracking.
“Your job. What is it?”
“I’m a counselor.”
“What’s your name?”
“Gary.”
“How many children are here, Gary?”
“Umm.” It was the first time the man had consciously hesitated.
Decker pulled a long bowie knife from a leg sheath, twisted the blade to catch the light, then slid it across the man’s throat, painting a thin line of blood. The counselor jumped, started to yelp, but Luke had his hand down before he could make a sound.
“We got one warning before Epstein tried to kill us. You get the same. Hold back again, or try to lie, and we’ll gut you.” Luke took his hand away. “Now—”
“Six hundred and four!”
For a moment, Luke almost ordered Decker to kill him, but the fear in the counselor’s eyes was pure and uncalculated. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I swear—”
“Lower your voice.”
“I swear, it’s true, I swear.”
“This is where Epstein brought the kids who escaped from Davis Academy two weeks ago. There were only about three hundred students in the whole school.”
“We p-p-paired them. With other children.”
“Why?”
“The academies—these kids were taken from their parents, brainwashed. Taught to hate each other. For years. They need care, help. That’s why we’re all the way out here, the middle of nowhere. Please, don’t cut me again.”
“What other children?”
“Huh?”
“You said you paired them with other children.”
“Oh. Holdfast kids. V-v-volunteers.”
Luke weighed that. It made sense; it wasn’t that different from the kind of counseling veterans with PTSD had access to. It’s a gift. It’ll make Miller’s plan twice as effective. “You an abnorm?”
“Yes. I’m a tier-four reader, with a master’s from—”
“I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to read me and think very carefully before you answer.” He leaned forward. “How badly do you want to live?”
The man stared at him. For a long moment, Luke could see him wrestling to hold on to notions of honor and duty. But abstract concepts were slippery, especially in the middle of the night with a bowie knife resting on your throat.
“What do you want me to do?”
“How many therapists are on staff?”
“Uhhh . . . about ten professionals, plus administrators.”
“If you could pick two others to survive the night, who would they be—and where do they sleep?”
Twenty minutes later, Luke and Decker had recruited a couple more therapists.
It would have been quicker, but two of them didn’t want to live as badly as Gary.
Considering how packed it was, the big dome of the gymnasium was eerily calm. The children sat on the floor, some in pairs, most alone. The ones from Davis Academy had simply lined up and held out their arms to be zip-tied, one at a time. Gary and the other two counselors had been useful; when the children saw adult faces they recognized, they’d just mutely done what they were told.
The only ones who had argued or offered resistance were the Holdfast kids. But the sight of commandos with automatic rifles had kept them in line.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Gary said, his voice trembling. “These men have promised that no one will be hurt.” He stood in the center of the gym, spinning slowly as he talked, trying not to look directly at the armed men surrounding them.
Luke walked the perimeter, taking a headcount and wondering what the academies must be like to have so cowed these kids. He remembered assemblies from his grade school days as noisy affairs, no matter how loudly the staff yelled. And those had been regular kids; these were gifted, mostly tier ones. It wasn’t just that they could do things straights couldn’t, it was that they would have known that. He’d expected them to be cocky, sure that their abilities allowed them special privilege. And even though they were young, there were more than six hundred of them against a dozen soldiers.
Of course, they didn’t know that he had no intention of hurting a child. Whatever the academies were like, the people who ran them must not have operated under the same principle. Ugly, but useful. As he’d told General Miller, they were accustomed to taking orders.
500, 502, 504.
Decker and two of the others came in from the outside in a wash of loud, cold wind. The biker nodded to Luke. Good. It was done, then. The rest of the staff had been neutralized, leaving just Gary and his fellow therapists.
The facility belonged to the New Sons of Liberty.
A wave of exhaustion rolled across Luke. No doubt the rest of the team was in the same boat; it was nearing dawn after a long day. They’d left in the middle of the night following the drone attack, and marched hard to get here, covering almost fifty miles in twenty-four hours, breaking only briefly for meals, lying in thorny scrub as they waited for traffic to clear on the roads they’d crossed, nervously eyeing gliders soaring high above them. Add to it the adrenaline of action, even action without resistance, and what he wanted more than anything was to snatch a couple of hours of rack time.
You’ve still got a long day ahead.
580, 582, 584.
They’d managed the raid because no one in the Holdfast had expected it. General Miller had estimated as many as two thousand people would desert after the drone strikes, and while many would go back the way they’d come, groups would scatter in all directions, too many to track and intercept, especially with the New Sons pushing on toward Tesla.
At least his team wouldn’t be walking back. The buses he’d seen in the parking lot, no doubt the same ones that had brought the children here, would return them to the militia quickly enough.
“I know you’re scared,” Gary said. “We all are. But it’s going to be okay. Everyone stay with your buddy and do what you’re told, and we’ll all get through this.”
&nbs
p; 598, 600, 602 . . . 603.
Luke frowned. On the first headcount, he’d assumed that someone had swapped places, or that his own tired mind had made a mistake. But either Gary had lied to him, or else a kid was hiding somewhere.
On one hand, it didn’t matter. A single child wouldn’t make a difference. But if the kid was bright enough to try to reach a phone, they’d lose their advantage. The only way they were going to be able to return to the militia was if the powers that be in New Canaan didn’t realize what had happened.
As Gary droned on, Luke moved to Reynolds, the former tactical cop. He’d done well, his team taking down the guards inside the facility without alerting anyone. “We’re missing one.”
Reynolds cursed. “Want me to search?”
“No. Stay here, and stay sharp.” Luke cut around the perimeter, trying to ignore the stares of frightened children. The dome was modular, with the gymnasium being the largest section, and inflated halls led to group dorms and classrooms. The good news was that there couldn’t be too many places to hide. Doubtless he’d find the missing one under a bed.
At the door, a thought struck him, and he turned around and did another quick headcount. 2, 4, 6, 8 . . . 9. Ten counting himself.
Something in him went icy, and he unsnapped the strap on his sidearm.
The hallway beyond the gym was quiet, just the moaning of the wind against the fabric, and, faint, the sound of a voice and something that might have been a whimper. Luke started out as swiftly as silence would allow, then decided screw silence, and ran.
He found them in one of the classrooms, the sound of pleading coming through a zippered canvas door. The girl was blonde and crying, stretched face-first over a desk. She flopped and yanked, but she was probably sixteen, and thin. Gorecki was behind her tugging at her jeans, while one of the others, a guy out of Michigan named Healy, held both her arms in beefy hands.
When Luke ripped the door open, Healy straightened, an oh shit look on his face. Gorecki turned awkwardly, his pants around his ankles to expose his weapon.
For a moment they all stared, Luke and his teammates and the girl too, her head turned sideways and tears streaking her face.
Gorecki said, “She’s just a twist, man.”
Luke thought of his boys, his fine sons, burning alive. Josh burning in the sky, Zack burning in his tank. Soldiers, both of them. Both murdered by abnorms, by the work of a tier-one computer programmer. A tier one like this girl.
He drew his sidearm, braced it in both hands, and shot Gorecki twice through center mass and once in the head, swiveled, and did the same to Healy.
Then he holstered the weapon and went to look for a blanket for her.
CHAPTER 18
Cooper died again.
The knife was a Fairbairn-Sykes, a slender dagger useful only for killing. Made of carbon-fiber sharpened to a point a molecule thick, it slid through clothes and flesh and muscle to skewer the left ventricle of the heart. Death was almost instant.
Soren withdrew the blade and started away, his face expressionless.
“Repeat,” Cooper said.
The projection jumped back ten seconds. Breakfast out for him and Natalie and the kids, a couple of weeks ago. It was security footage, but taken in the Holdfast, so both the coverage and resolution were extraordinary. He could remember the conversation perfectly, Todd talking about soccer here, how the rules were different because of the brilliants, and Cooper was listening and joking around, and then on the edge of the screen Soren slit the throat of one bodyguard, then took three steps and opened the brachial artery of a second. Blood spray lashed nearby tables.
In the footage, Cooper didn’t hesitate. He stood and hurled a chair as he charged. The fight was brief and pitiful: the chair missed, his jab missed, and his hook was blocked by the edge of the dagger, which split his hand in half. And that was as good as it got.
What came next was a nightmare. Todd, seeing his dad hurt, ran to help. Soren cocked an arm and spun with terrible force, his elbow colliding with Todd’s temple, snapping the boy’s head sideways. In the footage, Cooper screamed, then launched himself at Soren, who positioned the dagger precisely to slide through clothes and flesh and muscle to skewer the left ventricle of the heart.
Cooper died again.
Even now, knowing that Todd was going to be okay, that Soren had failed—that Cooper had later beaten him—it still tore shreds from his sanity to watch that elbow whistle through the air, to see his son’s eyes go glassy.
That’s the point of this exercise, right? Remind yourself what you’re facing.
He’d been so pleased with himself for thinking of the carrot for Soren. He’d hated it, too, the notion of presenting comfort to the monster who had attacked his son. But sitting in the virtual chapel beside the assassin, he had again felt an emotion he didn’t want: pity.
It was the wetness in Soren’s eyes. Tears prompted by hearing music for the first time. Imagine the strength it must have taken to yank himself from that dream. To possess what he had always wanted but never believed possible . . . and to refuse it.
Cooper was still reeling. Soren’s will had inspired something like awe in him, and he couldn’t afford that. Which was why he’d found this quiet conference room to relive the worst moment of his life again and again.
He was about to tell the terminal to repeat the video when his phone pinged. Funny, his phone used to be practically a living thing, always buzzing with a message, an e-mail, an alert, a status update. But in the last months, he’d dropped out of that world. Out of the world at large, really. Now it was something of a novelty to get a message.
QUINN: NEED TO TALK. ASA-F’ING-P.
Cooper started to type a reply, then remembered he was in a conference room. “System. Begin video call.” He rattled off Bobby’s number.
“All communications with locations outside the Holdfast are temporarily—”
“Override.”
“Enter authorization code, please.”
“Ask Epstein.” He waited, imagining a message popping up in Erik’s subterranean lair, one more point of data amidst a river of them. His head throbbed, one of those killer headaches right behind the eyeballs, and he rubbed at them as he waited.
A moment later the air shimmered, the footage of his death replaced by the view of a bright office, white walls with picture frames leaning against them, moving boxes stacked beside a desk. Cooper smiled. “Bobby. Scored an office in the new building, huh? I like it, a window and everything. All your ring-kissing paid off.”
Quinn wore a trim suit and an amused expression. “That took, what, forty seconds? You know, the boys will like you better if you play hard to get.”
“Just can’t help it when you’re involved.”
“Got some friends who want to say hello.” Quinn leaned forward to tap a button, and the video feed split into two.
“Jesus, boss,” Luisa Abrahams said, “you look like you spent the night blowing homeless dudes at the bus station.” Beside her, Valerie West strangled a laugh.
Not so long ago, the four of them had been a team, the most decorated in Equitable Services. They’d tracked terrorists and assassins, planned operations that spanned the country, served as the long strong arm of the United States. Years of hunting bad guys together, of late nights and delivery food and twanging nerves and last-second saves. Seeing them all now, he realized how much he’d missed that. Missed them. “Weezy,” he said, and ran a hand through his hair. “Poetic as ever. This better?”
“Oh yeah, I’m ready to switch jerseys. Sorry, babe,” she said as she nudged Val, “but I just can’t resist him any longer.”
“Enough,” Quinn said. “Is this line secure?”
“Not even a little bit. I’m in the Holdfast.”
“What? Why?”
“Pursuing my lifelong dream to become a cowboy.” Cooper shrugged. “What do you think? I’m hunting John Smith.”
“Ah. On that note, after our last chat, I got to th
inking,” Quinn said. “Most of the department’s resources are focused on Epstein these days, but I was curious what our old playmate was up to. I asked Val to do a little pattern scanning.”
“Yeah, um.” The data analyst shifted in her chair. She had the pallid skin of someone who received most of her light from a computer monitor. Which was true, and part of why she was so great at what she did. It was Val who had tipped him and Ethan off to Abe Couzen in Manhattan. “Look, this is just a theory.”
“I rate your theories over other people’s facts. What have you got?”
“I think John Smith is about to attack. Like, immediately.” She paused. “You play chess, boss?”
“I know how the pieces move.”
“Okay, well, there’s basically three phases. In the opening, both sides are positioning their forces. So for Smith, that was his time on the run, building a network, recruiting followers. Then comes the midgame, which is a lot of testing weaknesses, trading pieces. It can be bloody, but it’s not the real conflict. Like the last few years: assassinations, the explosion at the stock exchange—”
“The Children of Darwin?”
“No,” she said. “They were the beginning of the endgame. Nothing is safe in the endgame—your most powerful pieces, the positions you’ve spent the whole game building, all of it can be sacrificed. All that matters is winning.”
Sounds like John Smith in a nutshell. “So what’s his play?”
“I don’t know. But it’s big, and it’s imminent.”
“Tell me.”
“So, first warning is that Smith’s lieutenants have fallen off the radar. They all ran pretty deep anyway, but we’d always get ripples: a face-match arriving too late, some credit activity, coded messages in online havens, that sort of thing. Over the last days, that’s all stopped. I mean, gone. Then there’s the financials. You remember his smurfed bank accounts in the Caymans and Dubai?”
