Early Warning

by Michael Walsh

  Maryam looked away as he tried to meet her eyes. “Why don’t you trust me? I mean, what else do I have-”

  “I do trust you. That’s just the problem. If I didn’t trust you I’d take you inside with me, and maybe get you killed. If I didn’t trust you, I’d miss you, I’d mourn you, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But I do trust you. I don’t know why, but I do.”

  “Which is why-”

  “Which is why I’m sending you elsewhere. Somewhere important. Somewhere where you can help me…”

  “…find the source of the DoS attack.” She’d got it in one. That was another of the reasons why he loved her, and trusted her.

  “We find that, we know who we’re up against.” She was already punching keys as he continued: “And that’s another reason why I have to go in and you have to get out. You’re never going to be able to hack into the CTU’s computers from here. Oh, you might be able to take them down for a stretch if you had enough typing robot monkeys, but they’re off our grid. So I’m going to have to find this Byrne character and check it from the inside.”

  “Where should I go? I can’t stay here.”

  For the first time, Devlin smiled. Outside, the world might be going to hell, but in this last quiet moment, it was just the two of them.

  “We’ve got one clue.” Devlin punched some keys and then, to her astonishment, Maryam realized she was listening to conversations recorded inside the Counter-Terrorism Unit of the New York City Police Department that very day:

  “Hard to tell until we take a closer look, but first guess is the Chinese.”

  “First guess is always the Chinese. Another reason to hate Nixon…never mind. Continue.”

  “But upon closer review, they might be Indians. There are some indications of a redirect via Mumbai-that’s Bombay to you, buddy-but now that I look at it, I think this is a flea flicker too. So I-we-are going with Azerbaijani. Baku, probably.”

  “What happened in the window?”

  “Running a recap now…And it’s not Baku. It’s Budapest.”

  Maryam looked up with a half-smile of disbelief on her lips. “You bugged the NYPD?”

  Devlin shrugged. “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

  “ Budapest,” she said.

  “It’s as good a place to start as any. Besides, you know your way around that town, as I recall.”

  Devlin stood and punched in some codes on one of the overhead storage compartments. He could have opened it with the latch, but that would have gotten him nowhere. It might even have gotten them both killed. Any plane authorized for use by the Central Security Service came fully equipped with extreme-prejudice countermeasures should any trolls or doubles be aboard. The easiest and most effective preventative measure was the sudden injection of poison gas into the passenger compartment, on the theory that once the mission was compromised there was no point in trying to preserve any of the operationals; all had been lost and all must be liquidated in the name of Op Sec.

  Codes were a good thing.

  The latch opened and the compartment door popped open, but instead of revealing pieces of luggage and presents for the kids, the rear of the space opened up and moved forward, offering Devlin a wide choice of personal weapons.

  He outfitted himself the way he liked to fight. Throwing knives inside each of his back pockets, a KA-BAR in its scabbard down the back of his jeans, and a couple of grenades in his jacket. Twin Glock 37s with ten-shot magazines under each armpit, with a pair of Colt.38s revolvers for the special pockets that were always sewn into the front of his pants. Anything else he needed, he could pick up in combat. The bad guys always came armed, and one of his first orders of business was to disarm them with extreme prejudice and appropriate their weapons as necessary. Most often of Chinese or old Soviet manufacture, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  And then, just as promised, there was the Judge.

  The Taurus Judge was, at its cold little heart, simplicity itself. Most of the time you used a handgun, the target was standing nearly directly in front of you. Sure, the movies showed cops trading shots with.38s from distances of several hundred feet, but in real life that hardly ever happened-and besides there were better weapons for that sort of killing. A handgun was more like a sword, a weapon best wielded as close-in distances; marksmanship was less important than a steady hand and willingness to pull the trigger. It so happened that Devlin was a marksman with a handgun, as he was with every other weapon he had ever trained on or been instructed in. But the Judge was something different.

  Originally invented for outdoorsmen who spent a lot of time in snake country, or at least quickly adopted by them, the Judge was a five-shot Tracker.45 revolver with a lengthened frame and cylinder, which meant that not only could it take a standard.45 Colt round, it could also fire a.410 shotgun shell, buckshot, or rifle slugs, and in any combination. Even the best shot sometimes found it difficult to nail a sidewinder on the first shot, which is why the dispersing firepower of a shotgun shell came in mighty handy at close quarters. So whether you were shooting at something fifty feet away or just about to bite you on the ass, the Judge made a perfect defensive weapon. Even the most appeasement-oriented State Department official couldn’t miss with one of these, although whether he’d want to take the shot, even in the interests of self-preservation, was another matter. Devlin briefly wondered at the suicide cult the American diplomatic establishment had become. Sometimes he felt like he was fighting a civil war against his own government, and half his own people.

  “What about you?” Maryam’s voice intruded upon his lethal reverie. Devlin turned to look at her. Standard-issue saucer eyes, deep dark brown. Light olive skin that allowed her to pass for almost anything: Indian, Italian, Spanish, American Indian, Afghani. A generic Third World woman, if you viewed her that way. He did not. She was the woman he loved.

  Perhaps, by any rational analysis, not a woman worth dying for. She was short and compact, like most Iranian women, and eventually she’d run to fat and turn into a little Persian butterball, able to spout Hafiz as well as Horace as she whipped up some champa, naan, beryani, and chai, and woe betide any son of a bitch that interrupted their repast. Hafiz, after all, had stared down Tamerlane, and she could do no less. In Devlin’s world the future was as ever-receding as the horizon, but not half so trustworthy.

  “Bulbul zi shakh-i sarw be gulbang-i pahlavi / Mikhwand dosh dars-i maqamat-i ma’navi.”

  “What did you say?” He never ceased to surprise her. It was one of the many things she loved about him.

  “Last night, from the cypress branch, the nightingale sang-”

  Without hesitation, she finished the couplet for him. “In Old Persian tones, the lesson of spiritual stations.” Although we could translate ‘spiritual’ as ‘meaningful,’ which sort of ruins it. Poetically, I mean.”

  “Hafiz is never ruined, only misunderstood.”

  “Like Horace?” She never ceased to surprise him. It was why they were perfect together even if they could never really trust one another…

  He moved to kiss her, then refrained. It might, after all, be their last kiss, and he wanted it to mean something. Wanted it to mean more than any other kiss they had ever exchanged, whether in Paris or Los Angeles or Budapest. Whether in passion or friendship or love or opportunity or greeting or good-bye. No kiss could mean more than the next kiss he would give her. Unless it was the one, inshallah, that he would give her when they next met. Whenever and wherever that might be.

  “Time to go,” he said, punching a last few keys on the computers. He grabbed a few things and made ready to leave.

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “You know what to do. I’ll contact you there.” She didn’t bother to ask how. She just knew he would. If he was still alive.

  Devlin rose and handed Maryam the computer. She was going to need it more than he was, and besides, he’d have others waiting for him on-site. “Use this. It’s got a secure link to anypla
ce you’ll need to go. Guard it with your life. If anything happens, make sure to get this before they get you.”

  He was about to go when he got another pingback, this one on his iPhone. He glanced at the screen. It was a message relayed from The Building. Devlin smiled as he looked at the screen.

  “Who is it?” asked Maryam.

  “Martin Ferguson.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Someone who lived and died in 1951,” he replied. “He used to be somebody. In fact, he used to be an assistant district attorney in New York. Now…he needs a friend. And that would be me.”

  He kissed her like it was the last time. And then he was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  New York

  Hope lay amid the rubble, listening for the sounds of her children breathing. She had no idea what had happened, only the knowledge that something terrible had occurred, another manifestation of the evil that had visited her and her family back home in Edwardsville. Lightning never struck twice in the same place, except when it did. Some people went for years without an automobile accident, then had two of them in the space of a week. The law of averages held except when it didn’t, and that was when it was evening things out for someone else, somewhere else in the great wide world. We were all prisoners of numbers, and of ruthless dispassionate Nature. And of such singularity were religions born.

  This Hope knew as she lay there in the choking blackness. How many stories had she read in which someone-a survivor-had said that God had singled him out for protection, even as others died? Such items were staples of the media because, after all, the dead could not speak, whereas the lucky among the living were there to bear false witness that Somebody Up There cared for them, had saved them, preserved them, from the fate of their comrades. Until, of course, they met the same fate, as eventually everybody must. Hope’s faith, never very strong, had now entirely evaporated.

  “Mama?” A voice out of the bleak, endless darkness, soft but not weak. It was Emma. She was alive.

  “Where’s your brother?” Hope asked. “Rory? RORY?”

  For a moment, silence. Then-

  “I’m over here, Mama. I’m okay.”

  “Can you walk? Can you move?” Even in asking, Hope realized that she herself could not move. Gingerly, she tested her legs. They seemed to function, but they could not get herself up off the ground. Something was pinning her to the floor.

  Hope tried to stay calm. Losing it now would help neither her nor the children. She tried to collect herself. Tried to think.

  How could this be happening to her, again? What she had gone through in Edwardsville was nothing put up against what her children had gone through. What Jack had gone through…

  She felt herself starting to break down. No: stop. Crying wouldn’t bring Jack back, wouldn’t erase what had happened. Jack was gone, and yet she was still here, and so were Emma and Rory. That was the way he would have wanted it, she was sure. No, she knew. That was the kind of man he was.

  So why was she thinking of Danny?

  Hope had often read of characters in the chick lit novels she sometimes glanced at, when Janey Eagleton slipped them to her, because she would never buy that kind of trash when Jack was alive, the kind of women that would forget their man the minute they met Fabio, or whatever name he was going by in this particular incarnation, how they would be literally swept off their feet, caught up in his strong arms, smothered by his kisses, their bodies thrilling to his harsh touch and his soft caresses, driving them crazy with the combination of tenderness and violence, sending their minds into paroxysms of confusion, torn between modern shibboleths and ancient passions and with everyone, author and reader, and character alike, knowing which side of the equations they were all about to come down upon in politically incorrect unison.

  “Mom?” It was Rory. He had been brave before, not just once but many times, and now her young hero had come to her rescue once more.

  The air was filling with smoke from what Hope knew was a raging fire below. They had to get out of here, and fast, or they would suffocate. But she couldn’t let on. She had to stay calm. If only she could get free…

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Rory was saying. “I can handle it, I think.” She felt something move, something scraping across her legs, an awful weight being shifted, rearranged but not lifted.

  “Try again, Rory.”

  “Emma! Help me.”

  In dread, Hope waited for Emma’s assent. Please, God, let her be able to move. Otherwise, they were all lost…

  “I’m here, Rory,” said Emma. “I’m right beside you. Come on-push.”

  Hope bit down hard as the heavy weight slid across her legs. Something warm and sticky ran down her calves. She could feel the fabric of her skirt rend, her flesh tear-but it was worth it to finally get that awful weight off her limbs.

  No matter the pain, she managed to stand. “What was it?” she asked.

  “The popcorn machine, Mom,” replied Rory. “Now let’s get outta here. I think the whole place is about to blow.”

  At the moment, the building shifted on its foundations. The tilt was noticeable. They were at least ten stories in the air and while that was nowhere near the height of the World Trade Center as it collapsed, she had no wish to experience even one-tenth of the terror those poor souls felt as the Port Authority’s underpinnings failed them, and they were sped on their journey to heaven by a sudden, irrevocable plunge toward hell.

  “Fire escape,” she managed to breathe. The air was getting heavier now. In a couple of minutes, they would have to crawl along the floor, searching for the outside exits.

  “But where is it, Mama?” cried Emma.

  She had no idea.

  “Try your phone,” shouted Rory. “Get a map.”

  Hope had no idea how to do what her son was suggesting. She could barely make him out in outline as she handed the instrument over. “You find it.”

  Rory slid his fingers over the display. You no longer need to punch keys: now everything was touch-screen, the lighter touch the better. No need to hit anything anymore, no keyboards to pound. No longer even any need for the clicks that IBM once electronically tethered to its keyboards, just so the typists could have some sort of audible feedback. The digital world had replaced the analog, cause and effect were now irretrievably disconnected. It was a metaphor for the brave new world of nothing they were entering: a world in which everything mattered, and nothing caused it.

  “Nothing, Ma. We’re shut down.”

  “Then let’s get out of here. Any way we can.”

  There was a great groan as the building shifted again, this time distinctly listing to one side. Hope didn’t know much about architecture, but she knew enough about the groans she was hearing to understand that the structure was in great distress, and was soon about to give up the unequal struggle. The building was going down, and the only question was whether they were going to go down with it.

  “Come on!” shouted Rory, grabbing his sister’s hand. Hope would just have to fend for herself, but that was her generational role; she had done her duty to the species, to the culture, to the country. Now it was up to her children to survive, live on, fight on.

  And then the floor fell out from beneath them.

  It could have been worse. They could have plummeted four, five, six stories down as the huge structure collapsed upon itself. Instead, they dropped only a few feet, although the creaking of the structural steel continued to resonate throughout the theater complex.

  “Mom-what’s happening?” screamed Emma. Hope knew her girl was the weak link. They had spent so many hours with the shrinks back home, making sure that she would be okay, no matter what, not that they or anyone could have foreseen this, but even so, Hope always knew that Emma would be the first to break should anything ever happen again, and now here it was, happening again, and so soon thereafter, and there was nothing she could do about it except reach for her baby and hold her and, if necessary, die trying to pro
tect her.

  “Come on, Emma-come to Mama!” she shouted She reached…reached…reached.

  The AMC Theaters groaned, shifted, settled. Whatever had caused the explosion had happened on the ground floor, and it was only a matter of time before the entire building entropically headed to the source of the derangement. The scream of the wounded metal was terrifying, but to the Gardner family, it was as from a distance, a call to death that they would not heed.

  Hope reached in the dark-and realized that reaching in the dark was all she had ever done. At the moment she had determined to do something about the Edwardsville hostage situation, she had begun to grope her way toward her ultimate goal. When she had crawled across the frozen blacktop on her hands and knees, she began to see it more clearly. When she had come up and fallen into the arms of that horrible man, when she was so close to her children, could practically hear them calling out to her, when she realized that she could only save one, that somebody would have to help her, when that somebody turned out to be her husband, Jack, and when he died…

  Somebody else had to save them, then-Danny…

  And in death there was life. In death for both of them there was life. And in death they had found each other, amid blood and misery and grief and loss. Oprah would have wept, but her audience would have understood-you took love where you found it, and damn the circumstances, the only principle of life was, after all, life itself, and no amount of death, or death cults, or people who loved death more than they loved life could defeat life itself.

  And fuck everybody who didn’t understand that simple, fundamental principle of America and Americanism.

  Again, Hope felt violence welling up inside her-a violence that she thought had long since been bred out of her, beaten out of her, beaten out of the America she had been born into, an America she had grown up with, an America she had been raised to think of as good and noble and true and honorable. And yet for years, they had been telling her-they, the impersonal they that ran the media, that ruled in Washington, that she saw every night on her TV set, the chirping anchors and the serious graybeards, the snarky commentators who celebrated what she had grown up to think of as deviancy, shoved it right in her face. She had often wondered, sitting at home with Jack watching the TV, why they let them get away with this, when she finally realized that the “they” she had long assumed were in charge of the America she had once known were no longer the “they” in charge, that the moral rules had changed, without even an election, that the rules were new, that the snarky commentators were on the other side, that without even so much as a press release, the power structure had changed, and she and everybody else she knew had suddenly come up on the short side of the equation. How did it happen, and how did it happen so fast?