There were shouts upstairs, more gunfire.
“Hold your fire!” Snake yelled. “Hold your fire.”
The chatter of automatic gunfire dwindled down to silence, the last of the brass tinkled onto the ground.
Feathers floated on the smoke and mingled with plaster dust.
The couch was torn apart. So were the two thick pillows that had been positioned under the blanket.
“Where’s the target?” growled Snake.
“Thermals are saying it’s here,” insisted his sergeant.
Snake whipped left and right, his team kicked over chairs, tore open closets.
They found the heat source.
It was under the couch. A device about the size of a TV remote.
“It’s a signal relay,” said the sergeant. “These fuckers are getting cute. They’ve forwarded a thermal signature here to draw us away from where they are. Christ, boss, they could be anywhere.”
Which is when the house blew up.
* * *
IN THE BARN, seated on a folding chair next to stacked boxes of Jack Ledger’s personal possessions, Gunnery Sergeant Brick Anderson tossed the detonator onto the floor.
“That’s for Baltimore,” he said.
Outside he heard a few sporadic shots. Birddog, cleaning up the leavings.
Brick switched off the jammer that hid the true thermal signatures. He stood up and walked to the barn door. The house was a burning pile of sticks.
“Joe’s not going to be happy about that,” he said.
A man moved out of the shadows.
“He’ll get over it,” said Mr. Church.
Chapter One Hundred Fourteen
VanMeer Castle
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Monday, October 21, 7:57 a.m.
I landed on my side with Ghost cradled against my chest; the impetus of my dive sent us sliding fifteen feet across the polished floor. The shock wave kept us going until my shoulders slammed into a table on which was a huge bouquet of flowers. The blast flattened the table, withered the flowers and splattered us with splinters and chunks of masonry.
The aftershock of the explosion echoed away from me, rolling down the halls. The screams of the maimed mercenaries filled the air. Ghost staggered to his feet, barked once, and then fell over on his side. It was only then that I saw the blood smeared on the left side of his head. A piece of debris had struck him, ripping open the flesh.
I lunged over to him, touching his chest, and my heart almost stopped while I searched for his. Found the beat. Rapid, thin. But there.
He was alive, but he was out cold. Maybe crippled. Maybe dying.
I tapped my earbud.
“Cowboy to Echo Team, I have the package. I need extraction and backup right now.”
Nobody answered me.
Across the room, Howard Shelton laughed weakly.
I turned to him.
“You dumb fuck,” he said.
I heard a sound behind me. There was nothing but empty wall, but as I spun around, something hit me. I had a vague image of light coming through a doorway that shouldn’t be there. There were figures in the light. Men. One small man with glasses. Several very big men.
I saw the stock of a rifle swing toward me and then blackness screamed in my head.
Chapter One Hundred Fifteen
VanMeer Castle
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Monday, October 21, 7:59 a.m.
I never really went out.
Out would have felt better.
Instead I floated in a haze of sick disorientation. I was floating. Not in a good way. There were hands under my armpits, holding me almost off the ground. The toes of my shoes scraped along as they carried me for about a million miles. At one point they threw me into the back of a vehicle. A golf cart, I think. I may have drifted off for a while. They woke me by dragging me out of the golf cart and hustling me down another hall.
By the time we got where we were going, they were grunting and wheezing. And I was not quite as out of it as I was at the start of our journey.
I made damn sure not to let them know that.
When they dumped me onto the floor, I collapsed in a suitably boneless heap and didn’t move.
There were voices.
Shelton. Weak, but getting stronger. And a lot of people fussing over him. I heard him gasp and curse when someone gave him an injection. I heard the puff-puff-hiss of a blood pressure cuff. Lots of technical medical terms. Lots of cursing. Mostly Shelton, telling everyone that he was okay, ordering them to leave him alone.
One voice was consistent throughout. Male, fussy, nasal. I think I heard Shelton call him Mr. Bones.
Minutes passed and the room settled.
Then I heard footsteps coming toward me. Slow at first and then speeding up with the unmistakable gait of someone about to punt the ball into the end zone, and I had no doubt at all what that ball was.
So I stopped faking it and rolled into the kicker, jamming the kick short as I looped a punch up and over and into something that squished like a bag of figs.
I pried my eyes open to see a medium-size man with a bow tie and round glasses stagger back from me, hands cupped around his balls, eyes absolutely bugged wide, mouth locked into an O of indescribable pain.
And one second later there were gun barrels screwed into both of my temples.
The little guy I’d punched was turning an interesting shade of puce. He dropped to his knees and it was clear he was trying his level best not to cry.
A dozen feet away, Howard Shelton sat in an expensive leather chair, his shirt unbuttoned, his color bad but better than it had been upstairs. I saw his Ghost Box laptop on a wheeled table next to him. The Majestic Black Book lay on his lap. A second Ghost Box rested on a table by a low couch. “Bones … get off the damn floor. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Bones shot him a look of pure hatred. I don’t think it was particularly directed at Shelton, but he had to fire off at someone. “Kill that son of a bitch.” He spat the words at the guards, but nobody pulled a trigger.
Shelton nodded past me. “Burke, help him up.”
I turned to see that there were other guards there. My friend Burke was there. He didn’t look like he was enjoying the day. He walked past me to help the man called Mr. Bones. As he passed me, Burke whispered, “I’m going to cut your balls off.”
So, fuck it, I swung a nice one into his nutsack, too.
Hey, these guys had me dead to rights. I had no illusions about getting out of there alive. Might as well enjoy myself.
Burke’s eyes flared wide in genuine surprise. Guess he figured a guy on his knees with guns to his head wouldn’t try it. Wrong guess. He tried to twist out of the way, but I caught him good. He dropped down right next to Bones.
The guards reversed their guns and beat the shit out of me.
So, there were three of us down on the floor.
“Enough,” snapped Shelton and the hammering stopped.
Blood leaked out of my ear.
Guards helped Mr. Bones up. I saw that the front of his pants were wet and dark. Not the first guy to piss himself after a good punch to the balls. Burke’s pants were dry, and he was getting to his feet all by himself. His face was as red as a ripe tomato and if I thought he hated me before, I’m pretty sure he’d found a new definition for murderous rage. That was okay. It’s not the enraged ones you have to worry about. It’s the calm ones.
“You’re quite something,” said Shelton. He drummed his fingers on the cover of the Black Book. “I very nearly like you, Ledger.”
I didn’t say anything.
“No, really,” he said. “You’re a breath of fresh air. You’re a reality check. I ought to give you a consultant’s fee for quality control. Here we are thinking we’re the toughest, scariest sons of bitches in the world. You know, super-rich industrialist and his henchmen, right here in my own castle surrounded by a million dollars’ worth of security and my own priva
te army, and you roll up in a fucking Ford Explorer, torture the shit out of me — well, okay, mind-fuck me — and make me give up the most important single document since the ten fucking commandments. You blow five of my guys to Swedish meatballs, and you punch the nuts off my fellow governor and my chief of security. This is all very important to know, considering what I have going on, and with the guests we have coming.” He chuckled. “But I got to tell you, Ledger, you are a lot of fun.”
“Give me a chance to catch my breath,” I said, “and I’ll be happy to entertain you some more.”
He pretended to think about it. “Nah. Attractive as that offer is. I think I’ll pass. What do you think, Mr. Bones?”
Bones had crawled to the low sofa and pulled his legs up to hide the stains on the front of his pants. “He’s a piece of shit. Kill him.”
“Burke? What about you?”
Burke had to clear his throat to find a voice that didn’t sound like the soprano section of the church choir. “I apologize for any deficiencies in the security. I’d like to thank Captain Ledger for all his help. I think making him eat his own dick is a start.”
“Yes,” hissed Bones.
“Jesus, you guys are brutal,” said Shelton. “But it’s an interesting thought. Let’s keep it on the table.”
“I should have cut your fingers off for real,” I said.
“Yeah, well, that’s why you’re who you are and why I’m who I am.”
I struggled to get to my knees, which was as far as they were going to give me.
“Tell me something, Shelton,” I said. “When you kept blubbering that they were going to kill you … who exactly are ‘they’?”
Howard laughed. “Nobody. Just screwing with your head.”
“You thought I was cutting your fingers off and you were screwing with me.”
He shrugged. “I was in the moment. And it worked, too. You bought it. You tried to bargain with me. Nice.”
I shook my head. “Shit.”
In his chair, Mr. Bones made a sound like a tiny, hysterical giggle.
“I wasn’t joking when I said that you helped us out. We shouldn’t be vulnerable here. And you should never have gotten your hands on the book.”
“I’m clever as all get-out,” I said. “Ought to have my own reality show. Joe Ledger Pisses You Off.”
“I’d watch it.”
“So, tell me, Howard — what the fuck are you doing? I mean. I get why you’re reverse-engineering flying saucers. Big bucks in patents for new technologies, and you get to feed shiny new toys to the military market. That’s a sustainable market, and I don’t really give much of a cold crap about it.”
He nodded. “It pays the light bill.”
“Sure. But I’m pretty sure you’re behind what’s been going on these last few weeks. The cyber-attacks…? That was misdirection, right? Hiding among other victims?”
“Sure.”
“Killing the staff at Wolf Trap?”
“Dual purpose,” he said. “That way I become the main victim, and poor me, everyone rushing to send me flowers and condolences. But we suspected there was a leak at Wolf Trap. Didn’t know who, so…”
“Sixty people to plug a leak?”
Howard smiled. “People don’t mean shit to me. Or, haven’t you figured that out yet?” He tapped his forehead. “I’m brilliant but most of what’s up here is a bag of cats.”
“Don’t bait him, Howard,” said Mr. Bones. “He’s crazier than you are.”
“Um,” I said, “not really looking forward to a contest on that point. Though being framed as a terrorist kind of rattled my marbles. That was you, too, right?”
“Don’t complain,” said Mr. Bones, “we made you a very rich man.”
“I’m public enemy number one.”
“You want us to apologize?” asked Mr. Bones. “Really, go ahead and kiss my ass.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay. But what about the ship?” I said. “Big black triangle. That’s yours, right?”
“Kind of.”
“‘Kind of’?”
“We’re not the only ones with a T-craft.”
“But that was you buzzing the Seventh Fleet, right?”
“Nope. That was China out there making a point. And I think they made a pretty solid point. They used what we perceived was their state-of-the-art fighter, a J-22, to lure the American Hornets into a game of chicken, knowing that the Hornets would take them apart. But … the J-22 was the warm-up act and it exited stage right so the real star of the show could make an appearance.”
“The T-craft.”
“Yup. And it flew right through the heart of the fleet at Mach twenty. Ripped past them in a way that said You can’t catch me and you don’t have anything that can shoot me down. It was a damn bold statement and I bet it left skid marks in the drawers of everyone from admiral to mess hall cook. It told the fleet and our government that China just won the arms race.”
“Unless we also have a T-craft,” I said. “I mean, that’s what the Majestic Project is all about. It’s what you’ve been working on since the forties.”
“Well…,” Howard said, drawing it out. He stood up, holding the Black Book to his chest with the reverence of a priest holding a Bible. “Yes and no. You see, M3 has been working on this, ’round the clock, since Harry Truman cracked the whip. The three governors have overseen that project with great diligence and dedication. But … that’s not the only game in town. Mr. Bones and I, being two of the three current governors, think the M3 project has spent way too much time spinning its wheels. I mean, okay, we made an ungodly amount of money, but it began to occur to us that building a spaceship as a weapon of war was a damn poor way to win the arms race.”
I frowned. “But you just said that’s essentially what the Chinese just did?”
“Not exactly,” he said with a dark smile. “Bones, you want to show him?”
“Not really,” complained Bones, but he got up anyway, looked down at his soiled pants, glared acid lava death at me, and limped to the big curtained wall that formed one side of the room. He touched a button and the curtains whisked back. From where I sat on the floor all I could see through the revealed windows was the rocky ceiling of a cavern. I hadn’t realized how deep we’d gone. When Bones saw that I was still on the floor, he snapped, “Well, come on.”
Under the watchful eye of the guards, I climbed slowly my feet. The room took a sickening sideways lurch and I staggered toward the windows, catching myself on the sill. Then I forgot about bruises, an aching head, or a sick stomach.
Beyond the glass was a massive natural limestone cavern. Longer and wider than a football field. Maybe eight times that big. Dozens of technicians in white coveralls crawled all over the skin of a massive black triangular ship.
But even that wasn’t what kicked me solidly in the gut.
Beyond that ship squatted another. And beyond that, another. And more of them, filling the entire cavern.
Shelton and Mr. Bones had an entire fleet of T-craft.
“Surprise,” said Mr. Bones. “Now you know why we risked everything. Now you know why we couldn’t allow anything to get in our way. China launched the first T-craft. They threw down the gauntlet. This is going to be our response.”
I licked my lips. “You’re going to start a war with China?”
Shelton and Mr. Bones laughed.
“You’re a very small picture guy, Captain Ledger,” said Shelton as he came to stand with us by the window. “We have no interest in fighting a war with a nation of one-point-four billion people. That would be nuts. That would be suicide.”
“Then what…?”
Howard looked at his watch. “Our guests should be arriving in a few minutes. They probably have exactly the same thoughts about this that you do. Small thinking.”
He placed one palm flat on the glass as if he could touch the row of T-craft.
“We do not want to fight a war with China,” he said again, his voice softer now, almost dista
nt. “Why fight a war when you can just simply win it. No, Captain Ledger, in a little over two hours we will blow the People’s Republic of China off the map.”
Chapter One Hundred Sixteen
VanMeer Castle
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Monday, October 21, 8:06 a.m
Top Sims tapped his earbud. “Sergeant Rock to Cowboy, copy?”
It was the fifth time he’d repeated the call.
“Damn, Top,” whispered Bunny.
“Is Joe all right?” asked Junie. She knelt between the two soldiers, a small, pale figure in the night, bracketed by hulking shapes in black combat gear.
Top touched a finger to his lips and nodded as a car came rolling over the hill and stopped at the main gate. The guard waved him in. Top watched the car all the way to where it parked by the side of the castle. As the two passengers got out he handed the binoculars to Junie.
“New arrivals,” he said. “Do you recognize either of them?”
She looked — and gasped. “The driver, that’s Erasmus.”
Top nodded and tapped his earbud again. “Sergeant Rock to Deacon, do you copy?”
“Go for Deacon,” said Mr. Church, his voice as clear as if he was standing right there.
“Bookworm confirms visual on Erasmus Tull at Shelton Castle.”
Junie looked at him. “‘Bookworm’?” she echoed.
Bunny leaned close. “It was that or ‘Stargirl.’”
“God.”
Mr. Church said, “Sergeant Rock, I cannot impress upon you strongly enough how important it is for this sighting to be without question. How high is your confidence in the target?”
Junie said, “It’s him. There’s no doubt about it.”
There was the slightest of pauses. “Thank you,” said Mr. Church. “That information is our lifeline.”
Then there was a subtle change in the white noise on the line.
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