Trust Me

by Jeff Abbott

  ‘There could be thousands of lives at stake. Tens of thousands. I don’t care if you get exposed.’

  ‘I’m not authorized. I’m just one guy.’

  Just one guy. ‘Quicksilver. What exactly is it?’

  Frankie Wu said, ‘Quicksilver? Just an element. Just another name for the fleet-footed god Mercury.’

  ‘Yeah, you all are real fleet right now.’ Luke lifted his Saint Michael’s medal from his shirt. ‘You wear one?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Wu said, but he didn’t take his hands off the wheel.

  ‘Why Saint Michael?’

  ‘When people in the Roman Empire stopped worshipping Mercury, a number of his temples were rededicated to Saint Michael – a symbol of good overcoming evil.’

  His father must have been thinking about starting Quicksilver before the Book Club was wiped out. ‘The successor to the Book Club. Thinking in new ways about how to fight threats. Except Quicksilver is much more about the fight, not the theory.’

  ‘What ever you say.’

  ‘My father belonged to a secret State Department think-tank called the Book Club. So did my stepfather and Drummond and the guy who died in Houston.’

  He waited for Frankie Wu to speak but Wu just arched an eyebrow.

  ‘So. The Book Club kept predicting with accuracy how the world was changing but kept getting ignored and pushed aside due to political concerns; no one wanted to give credence to a bunch of eggheads who weren’t part of the power structure. But someone knew about the Book Club, and knew my dad was right. Maybe someone in State who’d moved to CIA. Dad got a better job offer and decided to play dead. Maybe to do what he was already doing, concepting and identifying forthcoming threats. The government finally decided to give him a real job. One that no one could know about. The CIA isn’t supposed to operate on American soil…’

  Frankie Wu shook his head. ‘You’re wrong. We’re not CIA.’

  He thought of the papers he’d seen in the Paris apartment before the bomb blast incinerated everything. The memos, the reports, all were old State Department, not new, annotated to reflect new thoughts, new threats, the notes in the memo. The relatively minor costs of attacks, compared to their huge inflicted economic damage. He remembered the account of the pipeline bombing a few days before in Canada: a few thousand for the explosives, but millions in unrecoverable economic damage.

  It was very cheap to wage highly effective war on the infrastructure of civilization.

  What had Drummond said? Quicksilver grew out of our earlier work, a new way to fight the bad guys, to stop terrorism before it starts, to bring new thinking to the problem.

  A new way.

  And after those attacks, we are simply supposed to trust that government will do its job. Protect us. That the various governments of the world, and their multitude of agencies, with their well-intentioned but million moving parts, handcuffed by law and order, will shift into a hitherto unseen efficiency and suddenly develop all the human capital and infrastructure to fight and eliminate every shadow and nutcase, every asshole with a laptop and an agenda.

  Uneasiness settled into Luke’s chest. ‘I get it. Quicksilver is funded by private industry. Not any government.’

  Frankie Wu met his gaze in the rearview. ‘Should the world’s most powerful companies just sit and wait to get bloodied again? Trust law enforcement and the military and the government to win every battle in a shadowy war? The good guys need help beyond political donations. Help not constrained by legal bureaucracy or political expediency that tries to fight global terrorism like it’s the West versus the Soviets or the Nazis again. It’s not two armies battling each other. It’s not even nations battling each other. It’s networks of people battling each other.’ Wu leaned back. ‘Which is basically the same as corporate warfare, except this time with guns. Your father was a genius.’

  Was. Like he was dead again.

  ‘He was the real brains behind the Book Club. Your stepfather was just a wanna-be, an opportunistic coat-tailer. And while your father took his philosophy to help those who want peace and stability and trade, your stepfather signed on with the opposite team.’

  ‘Henry thinks he predicted 9/11,’ Luke said. ‘And that no one listened to him.’

  Wu snorted. ‘Jesus and Mary, man. Do you think if anyone had written a detailed forecast of 9/11, it would have been ignored? I saw his paper; Drummond sent it to us all when this hell started breaking loose, as part of a psych profile of Henry Shawcross. It was vague in the extreme; he only suggested the possibility that jetliners could be weapons, and he never identified specific targets or groups that could carry it out. Henry Shawcross convinced himself – and only himself – that he was the ignored prophet who could save the world and then got pissed when no one paid attention to him. He’s crazy.’ Wu shook his head. ‘With the bad guys is the only place a man like Shawcross could be a star.’

  Quicksilver. A private CIA for the world’s most powerful corporations. Luke could see it, money funneled carefully into security initiatives or perhaps hidden inside fat corporate contracts. Or research. It would be comparatively cheap insurance; fund and field a group of operatives who worked beyond the law to fight terrorists. The operations cost might well be less than the economic damage they would suffer in another cataclysmic attack. You could hide just enough financing, spread out among enough of the companies most sensitive to terrorism. And even if such a group couldn’t be entirely invisible to governments – would they turn a blind eye? Perhaps governments would even offer subtle or implicit support. Another army to fight the rising darkness, one with its hands not tied so closely by bureaucracy, could be a help. Or a disaster.

  ‘You all aren’t legal.’

  ‘No. But, until now, we get the job done.’

  ‘Until now,’ Luke said. ‘Now you’re all too scared to fight back.’

  ‘What exactly were you planning to trade for your dad?’ Wu asked. ‘They weren’t just going to give him to you.’

  ‘Trade? Get real. I was just going to kill them and get my dad and my friend back.’ Luke spoke with a matter-of-factness that would have appalled him a week ago. But he meant what he said.

  ‘Are you suicidal?’

  ‘No,’ Luke said quietly. ‘But I helped build the Night Road. My stepfather tricked me, but the Night Road exists as a network because of me. I have to stop them.’

  ‘We have to think big picture,’ Wu said.

  ‘Big picture?’ He remembered the words often in his father’s mouth. ‘How’s this for a big picture. They are launching a huge attack.’ He checked his watch. ‘The planning meeting for the attack is taking place right now. You can decapitate their organization, but only if you act,’ Luke said, his voice rising.

  ‘As you said, you helped build the Night Road. You can help us reconstruct who’s involved, where they might be. We can’t risk losing you in an ill-planned attack on a terrorist cell. We’ll hide you. Find a way to put you to use. You know them better than anyone, you’re a valuable resource.’

  Which meant walking away from his life. Leaving it all behind.

  He believed Wu. Quicksilver was not bound by law. He had no idea if they were bound by decency, although he wanted to believe that any group his father had a hand in founding would be guided by good.

  ‘Please. Please. I need to help my dad. You may never get another opportunity to take down Mouser. And thousands of lives are at stake

  …’

  ‘Orders say no.’

  ‘Screw your orders. I thought you were supposed to be nimble and fast and responsive. Well, I’m handing you these assholes on a plate and you’re too afraid.’

  The stubbornness – bureaucratic idiocy – frustrated him. He gave Wu the details of the rendezvous at Aubrey’s office; it made no difference.

  ‘I won’t tell you a thing I know about the Night Road unless you help my dad.’

  Wu acted like he hadn’t spoken.

  ‘What is wrong with you? You’re no
better than the bureaucrats you claim to replace,’ Luke said. ‘At the least, call the police or the FBI, tell them that Mouser and these bad guys will be there.’

  Wu said, ‘That would expose us, potentially, but I’ll consider it.’

  Luke heaved back in the seat in complete frustration.

  He glanced at his watch. I’m only one guy, Wu had said. Well, so was Luke. And he had made it this far. Sometimes one person had to be enough to make a difference.

  He lapsed into silence and conjured up a half-baked plan. Drummond told him not to get cornered. Wu was a trained Quicksilver operative, and who knew what that meant? Ex-CIA or ex-FBI or maybe just a guy who wasn’t afraid of trouble if he was paid enough. He was trained to fight. So Luke would have to be smarter.

  Scare him in a way he wasn’t expecting.

  ‘I have a confession,’ he said.

  Wu glanced at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not going with you.’ Luke threw open the Navigator’s door. At sixty miles an hour.

  ‘What the hell?’ Wu yelled. ‘Get the hell back in here.’

  Luke stood in the open doorway, firming a grip on the Navigator’s roof.

  Wu wasn’t slowing down.

  Luke hoisted himself onto the car’s roof just as Wu veered across the lanes of traffic, horn blaring as he made for the highway exit. ‘Are you crazy?’ Wu screamed.

  He was forcing his hand, at huge risk. He could not fight Wu without crashing the car; and he needed the Navigator. He just needed Wu lured out of it, and he didn’t have time to wait for Wu to get him to a safe house. He had to move now.

  The car veered without slowing, and Wu swerved to avoid another car and the swerve nearly threw Luke from the speeding Navigator.

  The Navigator careened toward the shoulder, which was all railing rushing by as the driver sped toward an exit.

  They kissed the railing, sparks showering from metal biting against metal, erupting past Luke. The roaring of a honking semi tore within ten feet of them. Wu veered hard, taking the next exit, which was in downtown Chicago.

  The car peeled through a red light.

  He’s not slowing? Why? Because, dummy, he needs the speed. To toss you off. You’ve pissed him off. And he needs you unable to fight.

  Wu aimed the careening Navigator toward the parking lot of a convenience store and as he crossed into the lot he slammed hard on the brakes. But Luke timed Wu’s approach toward the building, and slid back in the car through the open window as Wu jammed the brakes.

  The brake slam threw Luke into the front seats, landing him on Wu’s head and sending him crashing into the front windshield, which buckled and cracked. But the force of his body hammered Wu into the steering wheel.

  The car skidded to a stop.

  Luke, dazed, bleeding from the back of his head, slid onto Wu, fumbled for the gun under the jacket. His fingers found it and he yanked it free as Wu struggled to grasp the weapon himself.

  Luke put the gun to Wu’s temple. Wu went very still.

  ‘Stop! Out! Leave the keys in the ignition,’ Luke ordered.

  ‘You won’t shoot me,’ Wu said.

  Luke moved the gun to the side an inch and fired. The bullet shattered the driver’s window. ‘Yes, I will.’

  Wu stepped out of the Navigator. ‘You’re a suicidal idiot.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Luke said. ‘I’m just one guy.’ Luke kept the gun aimed at him, slid behind the wheel and roared off, the wind hard in his face.

  56

  Luke knew he’d be a cop magnet, driving with a shattered windshield.

  But he had to risk it. If a cop pulled him over he would tell everything he knew. He’d given Wu information that could stop the attack, even if he couldn’t. Calling the police now would take too much time, involve too much explanation – they might not believe him. He was wanted in connection with the death of a Chicago cop. And the Night Road could meet and vanish, carrying their deadly cargoes to the target cities.

  He had to act. Now.

  I’m just one guy. Wu’s words. But one guy could make a difference in fighting the worst impulses of humanity.

  Which was exactly what Mouser and the rest of the Night Road represented. Take away choices, take away security, and replace it with a twisted, bitter view of the world they thought best. It was the common thread linking the ideologies of the various fringes in the Night Road. They wanted the strength they would get – that they could only get – from creating a grave and constant terror that undermined everyday life.

  He pulled back into the road and headed for Aubrey’s export/import business.

  The meeting place for Hellfire was a small, sad, decrepit strip mall south of downtown. The night was cool and foggy and traffic was light the farther Luke drove from the freeway. He drove past the strip mall and saw a sign: PERRAULT IMPORTS. Aubrey’s company.

  Eric – or Henry – had set up her office space as the departure point for the bombs. It made sense. An export/import company would not raise eyes by having a number of vans arriving and departing at odd times. Frequent deliveries would be seen as a part of that kind of business by any curious neighbors.

  It made him feel sick, Aubrey pulled into Eric’s world and used this way. Even if Eric had developed real regard for her, he had hijacked her life into the darkness – just as Henry had hijacked his.

  He parked the Navigator behind a closed strip mall down the street. Few streetlights dotted the road. He opened his door, checked the clip in Wu’s gun. There was a silencer mounted on the end – he’d never fired a gun with one before. He tucked the gun in the back of his pants.

  He had the vaguest shape of a plan in his mind, but it depended on whether his father and Aubrey were being held at the office. He thought they would be. If they weren’t, then he didn’t have to worry about getting them out. If they were – he would face a choice. A hard one. Hellfire had to be stopped, no matter what.

  No matter the cost.

  He crossed the road. Aubrey’s import emporium was the anchor at one end of the mall; the other stores belonged to an accountant and tax preparer; a women’s clothing store; a nail and hair salon; a liquor store. Everyday America.

  He could see six small moving vans parked in front of Perrault Imports. All from the same rental company.

  He walked toward the vans and twenty feet away from the first one a shadow stepped out from between them.

  A guard. He was skinny and looked scared and wasn’t much older than Luke. ‘Hi,’ Luke said. ‘I’m here to see Mouser. I’m late, sorry.’

  The guard said. ‘Password?’

  He prayed the password Henry gave him hadn’t been changed. ‘Determination.’

  The guard nodded.

  ‘I got orders to come here and get a van,’ Luke said.

  ‘You walked?’

  ‘I wanted to be sure cops weren’t here. I look less suspicious walking than driving.’ He stopped now, five feet from the guard.

  ‘Come here, put your hands on the side of the van. Everybody’s got to be frisked.’

  He stepped close to Luke and Luke thought that’s the kind of mistake I would have made. Luke hit him hard, once in the face, and then pistol-whipped him with the gun. The guard collapsed, unconscious. He didn’t need to use a bullet.

  Luke searched the guard’s clothing. He found keys with the van rental agency tag on it. He tried the door of the nearest van. Locked. He tried the one next to it. The door opened.

  The van was empty. Which meant that some of the bombs, at least, were still inside. He pulled the guard into the van, left him there. Luke figured either he would have won or would be dead by the time the guard was awake.

  He tried the passkey he’d taken from Henry. The door clicked open.

  The first floor was the wholesale showroom and delivery area. It was stuffed with decor, a melange that showed just how small the world was getting. He made his way through a maze of cheap reproductions of African masks and wooden fertility symbols, Chinese lantern
s and Asian-inspired furniture, stacks of china from eastern Europe. A stairway with a bright orange arrow reading MORE BARGAINS UPSTAIRS. He came to the bottom of the stairs and heard voices.

  He thought. The bombs would have been delivered here, since Snow could not distribute them from Houston. Chicago was central. But where would they be kept? Presumably the store had not been open with Aubrey gone, or she might have told her employees she was closing down if told to by Eric. Aubrey had not mentioned a staff. The bombs would have to be kept where they would not elicit surprise or alarm if found.

  He headed toward the back storage area. Boxes were stacked high in the dim light.

  He saw unopened boxes of Chinese figurines, knockoffs of Swedish furniture, a desk, a scattering of papers. On the bulletin board were photos of Eric and Aubrey: at dinner, on a boat, walking along Lake Michigan.

  Where would they hide the bombs? He started to open a box and thought: no. Mouser’s here, he would have checked them, and plus he has to show them how to work the mechanisms. Whatever packaging the bombs were in, they’ve been opened.

  He pulled one box open. Inside were gray uniforms and surgical-style masks, folded neatly. There were a stack of photo IDs, for a company called Ready-Able. At least twenty. They were photo IDs, with bar codes for electronic access. The first ones read NYC in small print. He thumbed through the others. Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Boston.

  Each was keyed with the name of the mass transit system in the city. DART for Dallas, MARTA for Atlanta, CTA for Chicago, MBTA for Boston, Metro for Washington, MTA for New York. Henry had lied. It wasn’t shopping centers. It was the transit systems. A hundred-plus bombs for the rail and bus systems in six major cities, separated by only a time zone, so a simultaneous attack would be devastating. Thousands would die; the sheer number of bombs would ensure a mind-numbing tally.

  On a table across from the desk he saw a half-dozen boxes that had been opened. In Spanish they said on the side Botiquin de Primeros Auxiolios. His Spanish wasn’t good and he looked inside the box.