Kill Switch

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Mr. Ledger,” I said, hurrying around the desk and offering my hand. “I’m Captain Bolton.”

  His smile was warm, amused, and patient. He shook my hand—and, yes, his grip was firm and dry—and he made no comment as what I’d said caught up to my stripped-gear brain.

  “Um, I mean I’m…”

  “Call me Harcourt, Captain,” he said. “May I call you Joe? It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve been following your career with great interest. The Deacon was right to rely on you as his right hand. You put my record for big-ticket saves to shame. I’m honored to shake your hand.”

  It is entirely possible I said, “Eeeep.” Not sure, but let’s not rule it out.

  It was in that moment that I became incredibly aware that my office was a mess, with a cluttered desk, stacks of folders everywhere, an open box of half-pawed-over doughnuts on the credenza, and the stale odor of overworked idiot perfuming the air. I wanted to tuck in my shirt and check to see if my fingernails were clean.

  “And who’s this?” said Bolton, nodding to Ghost. “That’s a handsome dog. Combat trained, I expect. A beautiful example of the breed.”

  He held out his hand to be sniffed. Ghost took his scent but then backed away, ears flattened, eyes narrowed. He even started to growl.

  “Stop it,” I snarled, and Ghost jerked backward from me.

  “No, no, it’s okay,” said Bolton easily. “I was petting Bastion and your dog probably smells that.”

  I ordered Ghost to lie down. He obeyed, but it took me three tries. That was embarrassing, too, but Bolton did not comment on it. Too classy a guy for that.

  “So sorry to intrude on you without a call,” said Bolton, “but with everything going on … well, you understand. Do you have time for a quick catch-up chat?”

  “Oh, geez, I’ve got no manners at all. Please, come in.” I swept files from a leather guest chair and very nearly pushed him into it. “Rose, bring coffee and—”

  “Tea for me, if that’s okay,” said Bolton.

  “Tea. Sure. We have tea. Rose, do we have tea? Get some tea. Right now. Milk and cookies, too. And send someone out for pastries.”

  “Just tea,” said Bolton, smiling, trying not to be too openly amused by my circus clown performance. I tried to straighten my desk without looking like I was straightening my desk. I opened a drawer and put my old coffee cup and the ham sandwich I was about to eat into it. Sadly, I wouldn’t find that sandwich for days. Then I sat down.

  Yes, I am fully aware that I was acting like a moron. No, like a Trekkie who suddenly found himself in an elevator with Captain Kirk. I don’t actually have many heroes, but when I go bromance I go full bromance.

  Bolton sat back and crossed his legs. He did it with great elegance. Very nice suit, polished shoes with rubber soles made to look like leather. Great for walking quietly while still looking nonchalant. Those shoes jumped onto my Christmas wish list.

  Yeah, I said it. I coveted the man’s shoes.

  Bolton said, “The Deacon tells me you’ve been working the Gateway case. Where are you with that?”

  And suddenly I was back in the real world. I laid my hands flat, fingers splayed, on the files that still covered most of my desk. “This,” I said, “is a grade-A prime example of a clusterfuck. Pardon my French.”

  “I’ve heard the word before, Captain. And as I work for Uncle Sam I’ve had cause to use it more times than I can count.” He paused, looking briefly uncomfortable. “Let’s get this out into the open right from the start, okay? I didn’t ask for this post. Being director of the Special Projects Office. I think this is the president taking a cheap shot at the Deacon. I think it shows a remarkable lack of faith in an organization that has done more measureable good for this country than anyone else. Including the CIA, and that’s my home team. And I am embarrassed to have to act as your boss. That’s wrong.”

  I said nothing.

  “Between you and me and the wallpaper, Captain, this is your shop and this is your op. You call the shots. I’ll be happy to file reports to mollify POTUS, but I’m not going to come in and piss in your yard and pretend I’m the dog with the biggest dick. Are we clear on that?”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That means a lot. More than I can express.”

  We shook hands. But I sagged back, feeling how weak and sick I still was.

  “I heard you got beat up,” he said, nodding to my bruises.

  “It worked out in my favor,” I told him. “But thinking about it hurts my head.”

  He nodded. “Another case like what happened with your friend Dr. Sanchez?”

  “Yes. If you have any suggestions or theories I am all ears.”

  “Sadly, no. This is a strange case.”

  “Strange doesn’t begin to cover it. This started off weird and got weirder.”

  Bolton said, “You mean the Mountains of Madness and the connection to pulp horror writers? I know, it’s maddening. However, the reference to the God Machine in what your man, Bug, found…? I think I might have something useful on that.”

  “What?” I cried, nearly leaping over the desk at him.

  “It’s not much, but it’s something I caught wind of ten, twelve years ago. I was working an industrial espionage case that involved one of the tangential players from Gateway.”

  “Our case,” I corrected, and he winced.

  “Okay. Our case. The espionage thing involved Oscar Bell, who used to be married to Marcus Erskine’s sister. Bell’s files had been hacked and I recovered them because he was working on several important defense contracts. I, ah, may have peeked into Bell’s private files.”

  “Naughty, naughty.”

  “I know,” he said with a straight face, “I’m so ashamed.”

  “And—?”

  “And that’s where I first saw mention of the God Machine. Bug probably told you that it was a bit of weird science cooked up by Bell’s son, Prospero. Brilliant kid, incredible IQ, but quite mad, I’m afraid. Died in a fire, I understand. Anyway, from what little I read, the God Machine was designed to facilitate interdimensional travel. And I’m pretty damn sure that’s what Erskine was building down there. I think that’s what you and your team saw. And,” he said, “I’m equally sure that’s why Erskine called his project ‘Gateway.’”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  THE PIER

  DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 8, 8:22 P.M.

  “Interdimensional travel?” I asked. “Okay, we’re now having a conversation in which interdimensional travel is a thing. Sure. Why not? My day hasn’t been nearly weird enough. But seriously … why? What’s the appeal, I mean in terms of Washington bean counters and Defense Department paranoids?”

  Bolton shrugged. “It was sold to the government as a source of cheap, renewable energy and endless raw materials.”

  “How so?”

  He launched into an explanation of the omniverse theory and how, if such a theory could be proved, it might mean that there are an infinite number of worlds like ours which could be mined for fossil fuels, minerals, clean water, and so on.

  “And you believe this?” I asked, smiling.

  “I didn’t used to,” he said, “but then I read your after-action report. Something weird happened down there. Something very weird that you and your team—three intelligent, experienced agents and trained observers—could not explain. Something our current science can’t explain. And we know for a fact that Bell and Erskine were tied to a project to explore this. Someone in government believed in it enough to fund it. So … sure, I’m keeping an open mind.” He paused. “That said, if such a technology exists and infinite worlds do, in fact, exist, this whole process is in its absolute infancy. There is no chance in hell they are going to get it right without a lot of things going badly wrong. The fact that the Russian, Chinese, and American stations down in Antarctica all went dark at the same time is suggestive. Maybe they opened a doorway and someth
ing bad came out.”

  “Something like what?”

  His eyes drilled into me. “You said you saw something that looked like a giant monster. Maybe what you saw was some kind of animal. Something from one of those other worlds.”

  I said nothing.

  “And consider this,” Bolton added. “You were exposed to a strain of the Spanish flu that is unknown to science. Unknown to our science. I asked Dr. Hu about that and floated the theory that this could have been a virus from an adjacent dimension.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  Bolton laughed. “He threw me out of his lab.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s a dick,” said Bolton.

  “He is.” I loved it that Harcourt Bolton despised the same cretinous jackass that I did. Made me feel special.

  “Tell me, Joe,” he said, amusement twinkling in his eyes, “are you buying anything I’m saying? Does this give us a working theory?”

  “My considered opinion,” I admitted, “is that it beats the shit out of me.”

  He blew out his cheeks and rubbed his eyes. “I’m right there with you, Joe. I’ve been chewing on the God Machine concept for years now, ever since I recovered Bell’s files … and now there’s the Gateway incident. Quite frankly I don’t know what to believe. Over the last twenty years I’ve seen science twisted into new shapes that I don’t recognize. Makes me almost long for the days when the worst thing we had to deal with were Soviet spies smuggling nuclear secrets and plans for the stealth bomber. Now this stuff? Joe, I’m more than half-glad I’m too old to go out into the field anymore. I sure as hell don’t envy what you went through down at Gateway.”

  I said, “Has anyone ever actually proven that alternate universes exist?”

  “Oh, hell no. In quantum physics, in superstring theory, they’ve gone pretty far in making a case for additional dimensions beyond the common ones we know. But they’re mathematical constructs at this point. And that’s an attempt to understand complex quantum dimensionality. No one’s crossed the line and done the math to build a credible case for other universes.” He paused. “Except maybe Prospero Bell.”

  “And Marcus Erskine believed in it enough to get a gazillion dollars’ worth of covert funding.”

  We sat there and stared at each other.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Shit,” he agreed.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  THE PIER

  DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 8, 9:44 P.M.

  Late in the evening on a hot September night.

  Bunch of us sitting around on the back deck of the Pier. Top and Bunny were back and the rest of Echo Team had returned from the make-work assignments they’d been sent out on. We talked about the Closers, about the fight at San Pedro’s office, about Gateway, about Rudy, and about the surfers. We talked and talked and we got exactly nowhere. Junie wasn’t home yet and I really wanted to pick her brain about Prospero Bell, but she was out of cell phone range.

  So we sat and let the day burn its way into night.

  Bunny was sprawled on a lounge chair, shorts, no shirt, a Padres cap pulled low to throw shadows over the line of six stiches. Lydia sat next to him in a bikini top and cut-off military camo pants. Montana Parker, Brian Botley, and Sam Imura were all in civvies. Top was in sweats and I was wearing one of my most obnoxious Hawaiian shirts—fluorescent toucans and bright blue howler monkeys doing a line dance. Every flat surface was littered with empty beer bottles. An impressive number of them.

  Or, seen from our viewpoint, not nearly enough of them.

  There was no moon and the sky above us was filled with cold little diamond chips that bathed us in blue-white light. Beneath the Pier the endless waves slapped against the pilings and washed against the beach. The surf roar sounded like faint and distant crowds of people talking, talking, talking, and saying nothing.

  Echo Team, there to save the world.

  This was the first time we had all been together in weeks.

  “Got to go home,” I said for the fifth or sixth time. No one responded. Ghost didn’t twitch. Sam opened a fresh pair of Stone IPAs and handed one to me. We didn’t toast. You do that when you want to remember something.

  A bit later Bunny asked, “Is this it, then? Is the DMS going down the crapper?”

  I shook my head. Not to deny that possibility, but because I didn’t know.

  “How the hell have we managed to drop the ball this many times?” asked Montana.

  “I know,” grumped Brian. “When did we become the guys who mess up?”

  “Dreamwalking,” I said, putting it out there.

  “Which means what?” asked Montana.

  “Don’t mean nothing,” growled Top. “Some voodoo bullshit.”

  We drank.

  Bunny grunted. “At least we stopped whatever the hell was going on down there under the ice.”

  We drank some more. The world turned.

  “Even so,” said Montana after a while, “you guys pretty much blew a hole in the map.”

  Bunny took a long pull on his beer and studied her down the barrel of his bottle. “You weren’t there.”

  “No,” she said, “I was not.”

  “Kind of glad I wasn’t there, either,” said Brian.

  Everyone nodded. Everyone drank.

  “Wish we were in on that Kill Switch thing,” said Lydia. “Feels wrong to be watching from the sidelines.”

  Far out there over the black horizon a piece of ancient space iron scratched a streak against the darkness. It seemed to last longer than most shooting stars and we all watched it.

  No one said a word.

  Not about the star.

  Not about anything. For a long time.

  It was Sam who finally broke the silence. Making a statement that was also a question.

  “So,” he said slowly, “penguins?”

  No one said anything for a long, long time.

  I think it was Top who started laughing. A quiet trembling of the shoulders, and for a crazy moment I thought he was crying. Then, as he shook his head I saw the gleam of white teeth in the starlight. A moment later Bunny burst out with a donkey bray of a laugh.

  Then we were all laughing.

  Even if we didn’t think it was funny at all.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  THE PIER

  DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 8, 10:56 P.M.

  I was dead on my feet and was in the parking lot, reaching for my car key, when my cell rang. Church. I leaned against the fender of my replacement Explorer and wondered what would get me in more trouble—throwing the phone against the wall real damn hard or finding out what Church wanted to tell me. Ghost gave me a “don’t do it” look.

  I did it.

  “Just for once,” I said instead of a hello, “tell me something I want to hear.”

  “Would it change the complexion of your day if I told you we had a lead?”

  “On what? On who’s hiring ex–SpecOps shooters?”

  Church made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Maybe we can turn this around.”

  “How?” And I surprised myself by really wanting to know.

  “Aunt Sallie sent a team to Washington armed with federal warrants.”

  “How’d she get those? I thought we didn’t have any friends left in Washington.”

  “She asked nicely,” said Church in a way that suggested that Aunt Sallie did not, in fact, ask nicely. Auntie looks like Whoopi Goldberg but her personality is closer to Jack Bauer from 24, with a little Charlie Manson thrown in to make her more personable. It is very difficult to summon enough courage to say no to her.

  “What are the warrants for?”

  “Majestic,” said Church, “and anything related to Gateway, Dr. Erskine, and Oscar Bell. The first two came up dry. We probably have all of the Majestic records that exist under that label. As
for Gateway, Bug keeps hitting walls. But Bell was married to Erskine’s sister and there is a real chance we can establish collusion because Erskine was working for the DoD when he bought Bell’s God Machine project. A federal judge agreed and Auntie’s team has obtained several dozen boxes of paper records. They’ve done spot-scanning of the paperwork and so far none of it is on the Net or in the computer records of the DoD or DARPA.”

  “Ah,” I said, getting it now. “They kept it all on paper to keep it away from us. Shit, that’s smart.”

  “We have those records now. Auntie flew twenty-five analysts down to D.C. to join the retrieval team. Bug sent Nikki and Yoda, too. We have every available eye reading and scanning those records. They’ll work through the night and with any luck we’ll have some leads by noon tomorrow.”

  “Jesus, I hope you’re right.”

  Church said, “Captain … Joe … I want you to have some faith.”

  “In what?”

  “In me,” he said. “In the DMS. I know things look bleak, and I certainly share your frustration for feeling like we’re closed out of the important cases—”

  “We are. I’m a damn soldier, and so far the most I’ve done is beat up my best friend and a couple of surfer boys.”

  “You’re not a soldier,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t hire you to be a soldier,” said Church. “Or have you forgotten? When I recruited you it was because you were a detective, an investigator. You’re a cop, Captain Ledger. That’s what you are and that’s what you do. The combat, the warfare, the killing … those are unfortunate side effects of our job. Of your job. They are not your defining characteristics. You are tearing yourself apart for the wrong reason. You want to get back into the war, I get that. I do. However, we aren’t being called to fight. Not at this moment. We are being called to make sense of this, to find answers, to build a case.”

  I said nothing, but damn if I didn’t feel every single one of the punches he’d slipped under my guard.