Bittersweet.
Jack took in a gulp of air and forced his mind back to the parking lot, to the problem at hand. Angela was doing her job with Layton and so he did his, too, keeping watch, making sure they were safe, recalling just how quickly they’d found themselves surrounded, how fast they’d almost taken her from him.
We need to be more careful, he thought, scanning the periphery of the parking lot, of the corridors connecting it to the academic quad, for a moment catching a glimpse of something by those palmettos, before he saw him, a shifting shadow in the corridor, there one instant and gone the next.
Jack narrowed his gaze at the potential threat, spotting him again, standing at the edge of the dark corridor, not far from where he had disabled that first mercenary.
He checked the rest of his field of view, peering beyond the windshields of every parked vehicle, looking for sudden changes in shadows, in coloration, in anything that suggested additional surveillance.
So it’s just you, he thought, feeling slightly better since it probably meant they didn’t know Jack and Angela were holed up here, otherwise he would have expected many more operatives, especially given the way Jack had handled the first three.
He looked over at Angela, entangled with Layton in some formula taking up half the board, each armed with a black marker, taking turns adding to it numbers and symbols that might as well be Greek or Chine—
There.
Jack spotted another operative, a shadow moving inside a parked car. But a moment later he realized it was just a young couple making out in the front seat.
Get a room, kids, he thought, grinning, before resuming his hunt, peering into every vehicle again while checking back with his first mark, verifying he was still in place, and again, finding no one else, deciding that Pete must have deployed men to cover every section of the campus after the disaster two hours ago.
And while that made this location safe for the time being, it would make their getaway a little—
“Jack?”
He glanced at her across the lab, a somber look on her face.
“Yeah?”
She stretched an open hand in his direction. “Come on.”
“You guys finished?” he asked, walking over and taking her hand.
“For now,” said Angela, staring at him in a way that almost made him feel uncomfortable. “We … we think we got it.”
“You figured out how I got here?”
She looked at Layton, who smiled and slowly shook his head.
“What?”
“Jack, we solved that an hour ago,” she said, her eyes suddenly filling.
“Then what, Angie? What did you—”
She hugged him, stretching a finger at the incomprehensible scribbles on the large white board, before whispering in his ear, “Jack … we think we just figured out how to get you … home.”
* * *
Pete had to restrain her the moment she came about and her gaze landed on Riggs.
“What’s that bastard doing here?” she asked, staring at the large man across the room while Pete held her from behind.
“Easy. He’s on our side.”
“On our side? He held a fucking gun to my head! He’s Hastings’s pit bull, Pete!”
“I’m a federal agent, Dr. Taylor,” he said matter-of-factly, sitting with his legs crossed in a corner chair in a strange living room, hands on his lap.
Angela just stared at him for a moment before mumbling, “Are you shitting me?”
Riggs shook his head. “No games, doctor.”
“You’re … FBI?”
“I’ve been undercover for almost three years trying to dig up evidence on the general’s operation.”
She looked at Pete, who slowly released her while saying, “It’s true, Angela.”
She took a deep breath, wincing in pain when trying to stretch her back.
“What happened to me?”
“Taser,” Pete said.
“Damn,” she replied, staring at the bruises on his face. “And what happened to you?”
He looked at Riggs, who shrugged.
“Let’s just say that we beat each other up before Riggs decided to mention that he was a Fed.”
“So now you’re working together?” she asked.
“Something like that,” replied Riggs.
“Where are we?” she said, looking around the small living room facing the woods.
“FBI safe house near Orlando,” replied Riggs. “We’re isolated and secure here. Closest neighbors are almost a half mile away.”
“Where are my guys?” she asked.
“Your hacker friend wanted to take off when he found out that Riggs was FBI. He was mumbling something about not working for The Man.”
Angela tried to suppress a smile.
“But anyway, Dago convinced him to stay. He’s in the next room plugged in to his computer.”
“And Dago?”
“Taking a nap in another bedroom.”
Angela processed that for a moment, her mind trying to catch up. She looked outside and noticed it was still dark. “How long have I been out?”
Pete checked his watch. “About four hours.”
“FBI safe houses have any water?” she asked.
Riggs stood, went to the kitchen, and returned with bottles for everyone.
Angela twisted the top and nearly drained half before asking, “How did you two hook up?”
Pete took a minute to bring her up to speed, starting with Hastings figuring out that Angela and her ragtag crew were operating out of his house.
“How did you track me down?”
“Riggs and I followed Hastings’s people to Olivia’s house. Somehow the general figured out that you had followed her there and sent a termination team. You were lucky to escape alive.”
“What about her daughter? Did Dago’s guys—”
“She’s somewhere in Miami with his biker friends,” Riggs said. “I wanted to bring her into protected custody but Dago said it would be up to you.”
“I made a promise to Olivia that I’d look after her daughter,” Angela said.
Pete and Riggs exchanged a glance before looking at her in silence.
“And I don’t break my promises. I’m going to keep her hiding in Miami for now. At least until I can trust the FBI,” she added, before taking another swig of water, swallowing, and asking Riggs, “Did you say that you’ve been undercover for three years?”
“Yes, doctor,” he replied.
“Good. When are you arresting Hastings?”
Riggs looked at Pete before standing. “It’s not that simple. We need proof. Evidence.”
Angela cocked her head at the oversized man. “You mean to tell me that after three fucking years you still haven’t gathered enough evidence against the man?”
Pete was about to intervene but Riggs raised a hand. “It’s okay, Pete,” he said before spending a few minutes giving Angela an overview of Hastings’s mode of operation, which in many ways resembled that of organized crime, with several layers of buffers between him and his illegal activities, from embezzlement of government funds to kidnapping, blackmailing, and assassinations.
“It took me almost two years before he trusted me enough to run his private detail. But I still couldn’t go beyond that … at least officially.”
Angela bit the corner of her lip. “What does that mean?”
Riggs looked over at Pete.
“It was my idea, Angela,” said Pete. “The Feds have to follow protocol. They’re bound by a set of rules that prevents them from gaining traction fast enough, especially against someone as slippery and well connected as Hastings. But it’s pretty obvious that you and your guys—and I for that matter—don’t like to play by those rules.”
“Like what you did tonight in that compound,” Riggs said.
“Art told us,” Pete added. “It was a brilliant move.”
“And very gutsy.”
Angela looked at Riggs and said,
“My family’s on the line. I don’t have a choice.”
“Well, doctor. That’s the reason I’m here instead of at the FBI. My family—my wife and son—are under protected custody at the moment, but Pete brought up a good point. Hastings owns people everywhere, including the FBI.”
“So you think…”
“I can’t afford to take any chances. My handler’s keeping their location off the system for now, just in case Hastings decides to get back at me. But Pete’s right. Eventually the general may find a way … so, that puts my family on the line, too.”
Angela slowly nodded. “I’m sorry … for being such a dick.”
Pete looked down, failing to suppress a smile.
“Can’t say I blame you, doctor.”
“It’s Angela, please.”
“Very well, Angela. Now, where do we start?”
Angela considered that for a moment, before walking to a window overlooking the ocean. She stared at it long and hard, once more trying to think like Jack would.
As unfortunate as Riggs’s situation was, it had presented Angela with the first lucky break since Jack had vanished into thin air. Officially or unofficially, she now had the FBI on her side plus Pete’s connections in the government.
Slowly, she turned around to face her audience of two and said, “Strap on your seat belts, boys. Because the ride’s about to get a hell of a lot more exciting.”
12
THE BIG KAHUNA
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
—Plato
His legacy began in the American Civil War, where his great-great-grandfather fought valiantly for the North. Private Theodore Hastings had been young back then, barely seventeen when he first witnessed the horrors of war at Shiloh, tasting bitter defeat on the bloody banks of the Tennessee River, walking among thirteen thousand Union soldiers killed and wounded and another ten thousand Confederates—more dead than in all previous American wars combined.
But young Theodore had been spared, had survived to fight again at the Second Battle of Bull Run, where once again Union forces were defeated, retreating to Washington. It was there, during a short one-week leave, that Theodore married the daughter of an affluent attorney, consummating the marriage before he was called back to face what became known as the bloodiest day in U.S. military history: Antietam.
Theodore fell that day on September 17, 1862, among the twenty-six thousand dead, wounded, or missing. It was never clear if he had died on the battlefield or from his wounds, but his commanding officer awarded him the Medal of Honor for extreme courage under fire—an award delivered to his young wife, who was already with child, giving birth eight months later to George Washington “GW” Hastings.
GW grew up among the aristocracy of the nation’s capital in those post–Civil War years as the nation healed, attending the finest schools, educated by the best teachers money could buy. But his heart belonged to the battlefield, like his father, eventually making his way to the United States Military Academy at West Point, and kicking off the first long-term military career of the Hastings family, fighting alongside Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War before birthing seven daughters and one son, Ulysses, Hastings’s grandfather.
Unlike Theodore, GW lived to the ripe old age of sixty-three and took joy in watching his only son graduate from West Point, marry, and give him three grandsons before shipping off to Europe to fight in the War to End All Wars. But it seemed that the young Ulysses didn’t possess his father’s luck in the battlefield, perishing in the death fields of Europe shortly after the first American troops landed in France in June of 1917.
GW looked after his grandchildren when news of his son’s death reached his estate in Maryland, but only the oldest boy, Michael, survived the devastating Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918. His brothers perished among the five hundred thousand casualties of the worst single U.S. epidemic, which also took the life of Michael’s mother. GW raised the boy until his death in 1926, when Michael was just seventeen, but old enough to enroll in West Point and continue the legacy.
Like GW, Michael became the second member of the family to enjoy a long military career, earning the Medal of Honor for his courage under fire in Omaha Beach, driving his platoon inland and securing the area for the following waves of the American fighting forces of Operation Overlord.
Hastings remembered his father with respect. Brigadier General Michael Hastings had not only fought in World War II, but he had also served his country in the Korean War as a senior officer under General MacArthur, retiring in 1961 as a one-star general, the highest ranking in the Hastings family.
Until now, he thought, staring in the mirror at the two stars adorning his shoulders.
Hastings had come a long way in his military career, serving four tours in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division. He had been a “Screaming Eagle,” making a name for himself, earning promotion after promotion, award after award, until the Pentagon brass realized his potential and pulled him from the battlefield, planting him in the middle of its inner circle, where his power and influence grew year after year, administration after administration.
Until he became his own universe, master of his destiny, controlling the actions of hundreds of legislators, politicians, lobbyists, and policy makers, never afraid to make the hard decisions, to bend the rules—even break them—to return his country to the glory of yesteryear, when America was America, feared by many, respected by all.
And they will respect us again, he thought, watching technicians install the salolitite modules into the next batch of Orbital Space Suits.
SkyLeap was his baby, his creation, America’s future. He had envisioned it, funded it, staffed it, drove it, and protected it from short-sighted politicians, from leaders who lacked the vision and conviction of Theodore Roosevelt, of JFK, of Reagan. He had seen the once greatness of NASA, leader in every aspect of technical innovation, brought to its knees through lack of funding, lack of executive support, and lack of a long-term strategy.
Don’t they realize that whoever controls technology controls the world?
Hastings crossed his massive arms and frowned, amazed at the inequity of elected officials, and more so at the sheer stupidity of those who voted them into office.
But the general wasn’t about to let idiots elected by idiots define the future of his nation. His family had fought too damned long and hard to pass on not just the gift of freedom, but that of world leadership, of respect and fear, from generation to generation.
And I’ll be damned if the trend’s broken on my watch.
So he did what he had to do, call it vision, investing for the future, or embezzlement. Hastings took tax money and placed it in the hands of the scientists, of the innovators, of the visionaries. But not to innovate for the sake of innovation. That was for academic prima donnas. Hastings wanted to innovate to control, to rule, to leapfrog the technological advancements of the Chinese, the Germans, the Koreans, even the damned French. To reverse the unthinkable trend of American astronauts using Soviet-era Soyuz technology to reach space, or worse, Chinese rovers paving the way for control of the moon.
But to do that he had to change the rules of the game. He had to compartmentalize his operation, shielding it from the public, the politicians, and even the foreign powers determined to never allow American innovation to lead again. Hastings had to protect his vision at all cost, nurturing it, allowing it to take root, grow, and blossom. He had learned from the masters, from world leaders who had managed to unify their nations and transform them from the ashes of failure, financial deficit, and unparalleled unemployment. He had studied their approaches, their strategies, their successes and especially their failures, the iron fist with which they had to rule to succeed. He had analyzed their tactics—often brutal and unsavory—to incubate an idea, a concept, a vision, until the time was right, until it was ready to be unleashed.
And the time has come, he thought, as Dr. Salazar walked up to him.
“We’re almost done for this week, sir.”
Hastings barely acknowledged him, his eyes on the suits being transported around the assembly line, where a mix of technicians and robotic arms handled the delicate process of creating hardware capable of jumping to other dimensions, to other points in space. And he knew that was just the beginning of the almost-magical possibilities that salolitite had enabled. His army of scientists, like Salazar, were hard at work to allow jumps to other worlds, other galaxies, bridging the universe. And if the laws of space travel could be bent—or even redefined—so could the laws governing time.
“So everything’s back to normal at your facility, Doctor?”
Salazar nodded. “Yes, sir. IT has gone through the network. We’re clean.”
“Check everything again. Dr. Taylor was seen leaving your building, Doctor. She did something, and you need to figure out what it was. I don’t care if you need to tear down that building brick by fucking brick. I want to know what that bitch did. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he said, before walking over to the other side of the lab, past the glass accelerator, to take a look at the ISS module. Salazar silently trailed along behind him.
“Still on schedule?” Hastings asked.
“Two weeks,” he said. “Then we move it to the Cape for launch preparations.”
“No more mistakes, doctor,” he said. “I mean it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Salazar, visibly shaken.
Hastings left him like that, in fear, and walked out of the facility and into his waiting SUV, settling in the rear seat before getting on a conference call with his security team, ripping them a new asshole for failing to silence Flaherty and Dr. Taylor at Olivia’s house. Plus he added Riggs to his special list of bastards who belonged six feet under, along with his family.
Hastings pinched the bridge of his nose in silent anger, having a very difficult time accepting the fact that Riggs had turned out to be FBI. The thought burned a hole in his stomach, making him question every damn member of his inner circle, from investors, mine owners, and politicians to his key scientists and military officers. Everybody was now a suspect in his mind. Everyone needed to prove to Hastings that they were worth keeping their families alive.
The Fall Page 26
