It was the Devil’s land, now.
Howard reached for his virgil. Who to call? The local cops were down there shooting people. They needed help, and they needed it bad.
Toni had come with him this time, and he was glad to have her here. Along with Toni was Jay Gridley. It was seven P.M. on a Sunday, but they wouldn’t be going home tonight.
“All right, here is what we have so far,” Michaels said. “It’s still kind of sketchy. Late this afternoon, people inside what appears to be a rough circle ten miles across and centered in the Westmoreland area of Portland, Oregon, went nuts. So far, there are sixty-seven confirmed deaths — murders, self-defense, traffic and freak accidents. There have been hundreds of people hurt bad enough to require hospitalization, and thousands more lesser injuries. Whatever caused it seems to have stopped, but the city is in chaos. The numbers of dead and injured keep climbing.”
“Lord, Lord. How is General Howard?” Jay asked.
Howard had been the one who’d called it in. He’d gotten hold of the National Guard, then Michaels.
“He and his family are fine. They were apparently right at the outmost edge of the phenomenon’s effect. A couple hundred meters closer in, and they’d have been in a lot more trouble. What have you got for me?”
Jay said, “If we assume this is coming from some very powerful broadcast station, then it’s a matter of figuring out which one, and who is running it. I played a hunch and put in a call to HAARP, talked to a guard there. They are supposedly on hiatus, except for some calibration tests.”
“That’s what Morrison told me,” Michaels said.
“Well, Morrison is up there right now running one of these tests. And guess what — according to the guard’s logs, he was running other ’calibrations’ on the same days those two villages in China went bonkers.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Awful coincidental, ain’t it?”
“Toni? What do you think?”
“I think maybe you ought pick up this Dr. Morrison for a serious chat.”
Michaels nodded. “I’ll get a federal warrant and some marshals on the way.”
“You don’t want to toss this one over the fence to the mainline feebs?” Jay said.
“Not yet,” Michaels said. “This looks like our mess. We should clean it up on our own if we can.”
Maybe Morrison wasn’t involved with this, but given the situation in Portland, they couldn’t afford to take the chance. The next incident might happen anywhere — New York, Chicago, even Washington, D.C. While the thought of senators and congressmen beating each other to bloody pulps sounded fine as a joke punch line, the reality of it was different.
Getting a warrant would be easy enough, and there were probably federal marshals somewhere in Alaska who could serve it. And while he was at it, he would give General Howard a call. After his personal experience, John might like to go along to have a few words with Morrison himself. In his position, Michaels knew he would.
22
Ventura looked at his watch. It had been six hours since the real test had ended, but Morrison felt he had to play out the fiction of conducting his calibrations. In the end, Ventura knew that wouldn’t matter, but Morrison felt the need. It was late, and Ventura, while not tired, was feeling somewhat edgy. There had been no contact from the Chinese, and he didn’t much like sitting in one place for so long, not this far into the game. The trailer had a stale smell to it, and the night had cooled some, because an electric heater kept kicking on and off.
As the HAARP system did its automatic thing, Morrison himself was lying on the ugly brown fake-leather couch at the end of the room, fast asleep.
Ventura’s com vibrated soundlessly against his hip. He touched the mouthpiece of the small wireless headset he wore hooked over his left ear. “Yes?”
“We have company. Two cars, four men. They just passed Rim One.”
“Talk to me.”
“Tan Fords, unmarked, new, blackwall tires, what looks like government fleet plates. Three men, one woman, couldn’t get much more than that. Cunningham will get a better view with his digital scope when they go under the rail overpass.”
“Got it.”
Ventura felt chill bumps rise on his neck, the gooseflesh warning him of danger. Who would come here in the middle of the night? He looked at his watch again. If they were traveling the speed limit, they’d be reaching the overpass… right… about… now…
The phone vibrated.
“Go.”
Styles said, “From the front, three men, one woman. Clean-cut, mid-thirties, matching dark windbreakers, blue maybe. Hold on, they are going past… Angle is bad here, I can’t see their backs. I got a flash of what looked like some kind of logo on the jackets from the side, can’t get it all, last letters look like H-A-L… That’s it. Plates are like Zach said, U.S. permanent fleet.”
Sounded like feds. H-A-L. Last few letters of “Marshal,” as in reflective yellow letters on the back of a windbreaker: U.S. Marshal. Of course, if it was him coming to collect Dr. Morrison, this was the kind of thing he’d do. Disguising your kidnap team as cops or firemen or federal agents was clever. Who stops a fireman on the way to a fire? Or a cop on his way to an accident?
Unless, of course, they were real feds.
“Got it. Discom.”
Ventura called the leader of the two men watching the gate into the compound. “Let them pass, but see if you can get an ear on the guard at the gate if he lets them in.”
“Copy.”
Ventura broke the connection, walked to where Morrison lay sleeping. “Wake up, Dr. Morrison.”
“Huh? What—?”
“Listen carefully. My people report that there are two cars that look like they belong to the feds on their way here.”
The phone vibrated yet again.
“Go.”
“Our shotgun mike picked up the exchange. Guys in the car say they are U.S. Marshals, come to serve a federal arrest warrant. They asked where they could find Morrison. The guard told them, and let them pass.”
“Got it. Pull back to Rendezvous A, call the other teams and tell them.”
“Copy.”
Ventura made another call. “Mercury falling,” he said.
“Copy. We’ll be there.”
“Discom.”
Ventura looked at Morrison. “These guys convinced the gate guard they were U.S. Marshals. They’ve come to collect you.”
Morrison shook his head. “No way. They can’t know I had anything to do with this. I covered myself.”
“Convince me.”
“Nobody actually took anything from the computer files; it only looks like they did. I got into the HAARP system from a Mac store in San Francisco, using a floor demo model connected to the net. I had a password, but I banged on the door a few times to make it look good before I used it. I damaged a few files on the way in. It was a crowded Saturday morning, nobody noticed me, I didn’t speak to anybody in the shop. Even if somebody could backtrack it through the store’s server, it ends there — I was just another customer browsing the hardware and I used voxax to light the system. No hands, so no prints, no DNA. Nobody could possibly connect it to me.”
“All right. So if they aren’t real feds, then they must be from the Chinese.” He shook his head. “But that doesn’t scan.”
“Why not?”
“The Chinese know I’m with you, and they know who I am, at least partially. But they only sent four people. They must be banking on us buying the trick, and that’s too many eggs in one basket. Unless… this is a feint. A ploy designed to keep our attention while they try something else. Yes, that makes more sense.”