Alien in Chief

by Gini Koch

  “You think the engineer and conductor were part of Club Fifty-One’s plan?” Jeff asked.

  “Yes, because if the train was going to derail, I sure wouldn’t want to be on it. Why else would they leave? Christopher’s right—if they were being attacked, they’d have shared that with someone, and they had the means to do so. They didn’t share, there’s no sign of violence in here, meaning they weren’t killed. So they left of their own accord, meaning they had a reason to leave whenever they did.”

  “There were plenty of areas where jumping off, even with the train going fast, wouldn’t have been too dangerous,” Adriana mentioned.

  “Yeah, so let’s take that as our working hypothesis until we know more.”

  “The Invisible Commandos have an invisible helicarrier where our people are being held,” Jeff said. “My guess is that they also have invisible helicopters. I heard far more than eight people land on the train.”

  “So, what does this knowledge, or the assumption of knowledge, do for us?” Christopher asked as “Big City Train” by No Doubt came on. Had to hand it to Kyle—he’d really created a cool train-centric playlist. It was also keeping me relaxed and thinking, so a double for the win column.

  “It confirms the most important point of this entire day.”

  CHAPTER 54

  “AND THAT IS?” Adriana asked politely after a few moments of silence.

  “Sorry, thought you were all following me. The most important point is that the three attacks weren’t coordinated.”

  “Okay,” Jeff said. “Don’t get mad, baby, but so what?”

  “The what of that so is that this raises the key question—why did the Crazy Eights take off earlier when they could easily have caused us a lot of damage and possibly even won? Only to be waiting to shoot all of us at Rocky Mount?”

  “Grandmother would say that we need to think like whoever is in charge.”

  “Okay, Gustav Drax is in charge of the Invisible Commandos and probably Huntress, too. And he appears to want to sell his new tech. That all his crap is a sales pitch seems likely, considering the fact that the commandos weren’t really trying to kill us. I mean, they’d have killed some of us if they could have, but considering they had no guns with them and most weren’t using their knives, the kill order was clearly not given.”

  “I agree,” Jeff said. “And I also agree that the theory that makes the most sense about the engineer and conductor is that they’re part of Club Fifty-One. Even without blowing up the bridge, with no one controlling the train we’d derail or crash somewhere along the way.”

  “And it sounds like them,” Christopher said. “They really shoot for the grandiose plans.”

  “So, we know that Harvey Gutermuth is in charge of Club Fifty-One, and we can include Farley Pecker and the Church of Hate and Intolerance in there, too. Supposedly they were brokering a deal with the Crazy Eights, but Dier didn’t seem to agree. In fact she point blank told me they hadn’t sent that message and have no intention of turning themselves in.”

  “So the Club Fifty-One contingent used the prisoners’ escape as an opportunity,” Jeff said. “Not the first time that’s been done, baby.”

  “Right, but that means that they aren’t the ones who activated the Crazy Eights. Dier seemed more down on them than she is on us, and that’s saying a lot.”

  “The Mastermind is the obvious choice for who activated the Crazy Eights,” Adriana said. “He probably activated the Club Fifty-One people, too, but Grandmother feels that it takes almost nothing to stir those people up, so they could have come up with this on their own.”

  “Oh! I forgot—I saw Casey Jones, she formerly of Club Fifty-One. She’s our number eight. She was shooting at us and clearly with the other Crazies.”

  “She could easily have activated Club Fifty-One then, too,” Jeff pointed out.

  “She could have. I presume she’s our mystery welder. For all we know, she got the engineer and conductor out, too.”

  “She could have been in here with them when we left,” Adriana said. “I doubt the Secret Service checked that bathroom.”

  “Even if they did, she could have been hiding under here,” Christopher shoved open a panel near his feet. “I think it’s for storage, but someone could fit in here for a while, rolled into a ball. If the conductor and engineer were in on this, then they wouldn’t have said the panel opened and it doesn’t look like it should. I kicked it accidentally when they were shooting at us, which is the only reason I know it’s here.”

  “So she was working both plans. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, especially since she’s high ranking in Club Fifty-One.”

  “Meaning she’s taking direction from the Mastermind,” Adriana said.

  “Aren’t they all?” Jeff asked with a sigh, as “Downtown Train” by Rod Stewart hit my airwaves.

  “Truly. But that brings us back to the main question then—why were the Crazy Eights sent? All you’d need for the Club Fifty-One plan to work was Casey. She’s done this sort of thing before, helicopter escape especially, and was never caught after we saw her during Operation Destruction.”

  Jeff jerked. “If Stephanie isn’t working with them, Casey’s probably the one who let the others out of the supermax.”

  “Somehow. Of course, if whoever let the seven of them out wasn’t an A-C, then the ‘how’ is Casey being helped by some Club Fifty-One infiltration. Again, I might add.”

  “I can buy it,” Jeff said. “But we’re still no closer to answering your question. Unless the plan was simply to kill the President and the rest of us. I mean, they were waiting for us at Rocky Mount.”

  “The Mastermind would know that the President wasn’t on the train anymore,” Christopher pointed out. “I had the White House hooked in and I know they had other agencies alerted to what was going on.”

  “So, why try to shoot us at Rocky Mount, then?” Jeff asked. “And don’t say to kill us. They had that opportunity already and ran off before they really had to, at least based on what Kitty and Adriana both said.”

  “Where were the security teams that Mom said would be at Rocky Mount and all the other stops, too? I can understand why we didn’t see them at our two uneventful stops, but they should have been trying to get civilians to safety and take the Crazy Eights out, but if they were doing so, then they’re as invisible as our commandos.”

  “Drax or the Crazy Eights took them out,” Christopher suggested. “And my money’s on Drax, since he’d have been doing his sales pitch at Rocky Mount.”

  Wished the phones were working. Checked mine. Still no service. Heaved a sigh. Forced to do this without help from Reader, Chuckie, Tim, White, or the girls. Frankly, I’d have really liked to get the entire team’s input. But if what I wanted always happened, I’d have a normal life and that apparently wasn’t in my particular deck of cards.

  “Okay. We’ve got nothing but time, so let’s look at the three plans individually. Club Fifty-One wants us eliminated, so we can absolutely put them into the Terrorist Attack Section. We’ll assume that Casey is playing a double game and is activating and directing Club Fifty-One activities, either with Gutermuth’s blessing or without his knowing. Their goal was to derail the train.”

  “Right,” Jeff said. “So, we take them out of all of this and then what? The Invisible Commandos were doing a live action sales pitch, right?”

  “Right. So we take them out, too. Let’s look at the Crazy Eight’s plan and try to imagine what would have happened if the other two plans hadn’t been active at the same time.”

  “Pretty much what did happen,” Christopher said as “Last Train to Clarksville” by The Monkees came on. “We heard people land on the roof and we flipped into protection mode.”

  “Per Nerida, they felt that they knew exactly what we’d do based on Dear Sam’s input.”

  Christopher sh
ot Patented Glare #3 out to the world. For once, I was pretty sure he was glaring in a general sense, not at me specifically. Always nice to have a change. “The Secret Service hasn’t changed what they do in situations.”

  “You’re sure?”

  This time I got Patented Glare #2 just for me. “Yes, I’m sure, Kitty. I’ve spoken to them about it, more than once. The ‘this is how we do things’ speech is one they all know. Even Evalyne, Phoebe, Joseph, and Rob cling to that party line. And considering that they’re all used to dealing with you and Jeff, you’d think they’d be more open to adaptation, but they’re not.”

  “So, Nerida was right—they absolutely did know what would happen the moment we realized we were under attack.”

  “Even if the Secret Service had changed things up, the War Room is there for the express purpose of protecting the President and his key staffers in the case of any kind of attack while on Rail Force One,” Jeff said. “So they knew we’d herd Vince and the others there.”

  “We should have been in there, too . . .” Something was nudging at the back of my brain. Something important.

  “What?” Jeff asked. “I know that look.”

  “Not sure yet. Let’s say that we let them shove us into the War Room, or that Joseph had been faster than us somehow and kept us in. What, then, would have happened?”

  “We’d all have been taken by the Invisible Commandos,” Adriana said.

  “No. Remember, we’re thinking about this as if only the Crazy Eight’s plan was in effect. So . . . what would they have done if they’d gotten us, me and Jeff, into the War Room?”

  “Taken over?” Christopher asked. “I mean, that’s their plan, right? Commandeering the train? Capturing the President?”

  “Then why fly off? They couldn’t see the Invisible Commandos and they didn’t know about the Club Fifty-One plan. I’m sure if Casey was in on both plans that she didn’t tell the others about blowing up the tracks. And maybe she wasn’t in on that. The engineer and conductor could still be Club Fifty-One and willing to help her out just ’cause.”

  “You think the goal was to get us all into the War Room?” Jeff asked. “Why? They didn’t try to blow it up, and even though they shot the hell out of it, it wasn’t breached.”

  My music switched to “Miss Jackson” by Panic! At the Disco. This had nothing to do with trains or traveling. Focused, because this was likely to be one of Algar’s Musical Clues.

  “Miss Jackson.” Hadn’t meant to say that aloud, but whatever.

  “Why are you mentioning Lizzie?” Jeff asked.

  Because Algar was mentioning Lizzie, at least as far as I could tell. Looked at my phone. I had one bar. “Hang on.” Hit speed dial and thanked ACE, Algar, and all the other Powers That Be that he answered.

  “Kitty, you guys okay?” Chuckie asked.

  “Yes. You were worried about other people being sick earlier. Why?”

  One of the many things I loved about Chuckie was that he rarely asked me “why are you asking me that” questions and rolled with my vertigo-inducing conversational shifts without missing a beat. “Because I’m a suspicious person and see conspiracies everywhere.”

  “And you’re normally right. So, who else is sick?”

  “Everyone who was in the meeting Jeff was in that he left due to the attack on Cleary. Other than Cliff Goodman.”

  Algar had said that we had no way of preparing for the real attack. And now I knew why. “Oh. Crap. I know why the Crazy Eights attacked the train. The first time.”

  CHAPTER 55

  “AND THE SECOND time, too,” I added, “but that’s not as important.”

  “Putting you on speaker,” Chuckie said. “No idea how long we’ll hold service. This is the first call I could get or get through to since Rocky Mount.”

  Talked fast and brought the others up to speed on our situation in the engine as well as the theories. “So,” I finished, “I think the Crazy Eights attacked so as to get everyone into a contained room for a significant period of time.”

  There was silence for a few long moments. Verified that I still had bars. Did. Two now, as a matter of fact. Either we were moving into a better cellular coverage area or whatever the Crazy Eights had hit us with was wearing off.

  Chuckie finally broke it. “Your mother, Raj, and Tito were in that room.”

  “And Malcolm, Evalyne, Phoebe, Joseph, and Rob.” Took a deep breath and let it out slowly. None of us could help anyone if we were panicking. “And tons of other people. Lizzie’s father came up with a biological weapon. What are the odds someone’s finished his work?”

  “High,” Reader said. “Very high. I can’t get calls through but I can text, and I’ve been texting with Raj. The Planetary Council have arrived. Apparently they were monitoring for when the President hit NASA Base because they arrived shortly after. Once we get into Savannah we need to take a gate to get over there ASAP.”

  “Kitty, we’ve been able to reach William and I’ve put the Embassy onto lockdown,” Lorraine said. “No one in, no one out.”

  “As far as we know, no one in the Embassy has been exposed,” Claudia added. “Unless Jeff was.”

  “I’m not sick,” he pointed out. “And those others are.”

  “Why are Mom and Elaine less sick? At least they sounded less sick.”

  “I’m texting with Tito,” Tim said. “Everyone who was in the War Room car once it went into lockdown is showing symptoms. Including the A-Cs.”

  “It needs to incubate,” Chuckie said. “Whatever this is, it needs a more closed environment to spread.”

  “That’s why the Crazy Eights attacked. To get as many of us as possible into the War Room and locked in it for as long as possible.” As always, our enemies found new reasons for me to hate them. They were creative that way.

  “Cliff was in the meeting I was called out of,” Jeff said. “And you said he’s not sick.”

  “So he released the bioweapon and has already taken the antidote,” Chuckie said without missing a beat.

  “Meaning that there is an antidote,” I pointed out. That was me, Susie Sunshine.

  “But everyone on this train was exposed,” Gower said, bringing things right back down to reality. “And we were in contact with the Crazy Eights and all the Invisible Commandos.”

  “The commandos in particular,” Stryker said. “And they’re now at Guantanamo.”

  “And Falk is with the dead bodies at Dulce, too,” Christopher said.

  “What are we going to do?” Vance asked.

  “First, we’re going to verify that this is something more than a mere cold or flu,” White said firmly. “I realize that it could indeed be a deadly bioweapon, but cold and flu incubate and pass along in the same way, and half of the people in the War Room were exposed to the President. If he merely caught a bad case of influenza or a terrible cold, it would and could pass as it has.”

  “Richard’s right,” Jeff said, Commander Voice on Full. “Until we can verify that this is something more than a bad case of the common cold, we’re not going to panic, or panic anyone else.”

  Wanted to tell White and Gower—who also knew of Algar’s existence—that he’d told me to think of Lizzie. But I not only couldn’t, because Algar didn’t allow us to talk about him with anyone and shielded our thoughts about him, too, but the thought occurred that Algar might have meant something else. Like maybe I should phone home.

  “Keep the Embassy in lockdown, just to be on the safe side. I’m going to give Lizzie a call and make sure she’s not freaked out by the lockdown and such. And, you know, see if she knows anything about an antidote to whatever horrible thing her father was creating. Just in case and all that.”

  “Chuck, call me back if you can,” Jeff said. “I think Kitty’s right to check in.”

  I hung up and dialed Lizzie as Jeff’s phone ra
ng. I had more bars now, and reception was back to what I was used to.

  “Hey Kitty, why are we in lockdown?”

  “Just a precaution, and not because we have a teenager in the house. How are things there?”

  “Fine. Your dad has everyone doing a play.”

  “Cool.”

  “Totally not age approps, though. We’re doing Julius Caesar. And by ‘we’ I mean all the kids. Even Charlie.”

  “Wow. Um. I don’t think I want to know. Who are you?”

  “Brutus. I wanted Marc Antony but he gave that to Raymond.”

  “I’m going to stop asking. So, does anyone seem like they’ve caught a cold or anything?”

  “Hang on.” Heard Lizzie telling my dad she’d be right back, then the sound of a door closing. “What’s really going on? Do you think someone’s found my dad’s formula?” She didn’t sound casual and relaxed now—she sounded frightened and angry.

  “Why would you assume that?”

  “Because you called to ask me if anyone’s sick. And I’m the one with the traitor dead parents who were trying to kill everyone using a disease. Makes sense.”

  Contemplated what to say. Decided that I wasn’t going to do what my family had done and lie to her. “You’re a smart kid. Yeah, we’re concerned. A bunch of people are sick and we just kind of want to be hyper-cautious.”

  “Who can blame you? Should I tell your dad?”

  “No.” My Mom was sick. The last person I wanted to share these concerns with was my dad. “I think, if you can, let’s just keep it between us.”

  She snorted. “I’m the adopted daughter of an assassin. I can keep a secret.”

  “Good point. Just pay attention and let me know right away if anyone starts sniffling or sneezing or anything else.”

  “Maybe they’ve just got colds,” she said hopefully.

  “That’s the prevailing optimistic hope. Also, please let your father and the uncles know what we’re worried about. And mention to them that we were attacked four times so far on this trip and are wondering if them coming was all an elaborate ruse so they could vacation in Florida.”