“The last eruption at Yellowstone was about six hundred and thirty thousand years ago,” said Doc. “To get things rolling now, if it was all left up to Mother Nature, and if she was in a bitchy mood, then you’d need the underground magma chambers to fill up and build pressure before it blows.”
“What can Valen do with his damn machines?”
“Well, since I haven’t had a chance to actually study the machines, I guess he’d have to use it to open conduits — cracks, in other words — from depth to allow magma to flow upward beneath Yellowstone. That happened around the Long Valley Caldera in California in the 1980s. Lots of earthquakes and dome-like swell ing were thought to indicate an imminent eruption. They evacuated people, but luckily it never blew.”
“I saw the green reptile guy do something that folded the stone walls in the hallway at Pushkin like they were shower curtains. If that’s how the technology works, then Valen can use them to open channels to the magma chambers.”
Bug asked, “If they could do this, then why hit Washington?”
Doc Holliday walked around the hologram of the God Machine, then turned to look at a series of photos of Valparaiso, the military base in Ukraine, and newer pictures of Washington.
Junie fielded that. “Joe once tried to explain boxing to me. He said some boxers like to batter their opponents’ arms to make them too sore and achy to lift, which makes them too slow to block a solid punch to the face. Other boxers go a different route and try to hit their opponent on the nose early on. Especially if it looks like the other boxer’s nose hasn’t been broken before. It’s a psychological and physiological thing. I mean, what happens when someone gets a broken nose?”
Doc shrugged. “Intense pain. Bleeding. Externally, of course, from torn tissue, and internally. Blood in the throat and Eustachian tubes. The eyes water. If the punch is heavy enough there’s even a chance of whiplash. And there’s possible disorientation and loss of balance if the synovial fluids in the inner ear are disturbed.”
“Right. All of that is disorienting and distracting. Joe says that he’s won more fights by punching the nose than by any fancy martial arts moves. Plus, he says that we tend to ascribe emotional meaning to physiological effects. Break a nose and the boxer’s eyes tear. For an experienced boxer that’s nothing; but to someone far less experienced, the tears are equated with crying, with weakness or fear.”
“Which then becomes an internal and therefore greater distraction,” said Bug. “Okay, I get it. It’s what boxers call ‘taking the enemy’s heart.’ They lose the fight because they are too distracted, too emotional, too confused, and no longer confident in their own strength.”
Doc gave him a dazzling smile. “Well, well, you’re more than a sexy mind and clever fingers, aren’t you. I’ll text you my private number.”
“Behave,” said Junie.
“Where are you going with this?” asked Cole, steering the conversation back to the point.
Junie spread her hands over the satellite image of Washington, D.C. “This is America’s broken nose. We have a new administration, a president who isn’t a politician and hasn’t handled a major crisis, fractured infrastructure, political infighting, and party polarization. Then the earthquake hits. Now we have pain, distraction, indecision, the practical — or perhaps impractical effects of party politics, disorientation, and too much raw emotion.”
Cole’s eyes went very round as the full impact of this hit her. “God almighty. If Yellowstone blows, we’re not going to be able to react or respond in any way except badly. Jesus H. Christ, Esquire. If we can’t stop this, we’re going to lose the whole damn country. Not just the crops… we’ll lose everything, including any chance we have of protecting the survivors.”
Duffy gave a weird little smile. “But, hey, no pressure.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT
The hotel door was heavy and it took effort to shove it off of herself, but as soon as it thumped away, Gadyuka scrambled to her knees, raising the gun, aiming it through the falling sprinkler water.
At nothing.
The older woman was not there.
Water splatted down on the carpet, making bloody droplets dance. Then there was movement coming from her right, from the wrong side of the room. Gadyuka snarled and spun and fired at the same time a foot lashed out and caught her in the hip. Gadyuka whirled and tried to use the impact to spin her all the way around so she could slam her attacker with the butt of the pistol. She put all her fear and anger into it, but the gun whistled through empty air as the woman ducked and punched her hard in the ribs. Gadyuka coughed and staggered, and then the woman chopped down with an elbow, nearly breaking her hand and sending the gun spinning away.
Gadyuka struck with her left hand, landing a brutal blow over the attacker’s heart that sent her staggering back. They paused for a moment, taking each other’s measure. The woman was bleeding from a gunshot wound to the lower left side, though based on the speed with which she moved she was either not badly hurt or insane. Maybe both.
“Who the fuck are you?” demanded Gadyuka.
The woman smiled a killer’s smile and there was blood on her teeth. “Call me Lilith.”
Gadyuka could actually feel her blood turn to icy slush. Lilith. Dear God.
The savage smile brightened. “Good. You’ve heard of me. I’ve heard of you. Your pet toad, Ohan, told us so many interesting things about you before we skinned him alive and cut his throat. He was only a lackey, but you actually gave the order. Imagine what I am going to do to you.”
Gadyuka dove for the bed, bounced onto and over it, and snatched up her purse. She dug something out, flung the purse at Lilith, and rose into a fighting crouch, snapping her wrist to release a telescoping spring-metal fighting stick.
“Come and take me, you old hag.”
Lilith reached into an inner pocket and drew out a knife with a blade so long and slender it looked like a needle. A boning knife.
“If you insist,” she murmured.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE
Bug called me just as we were dipping toward the runway.
“I think I have something,” he cried, sounding agitated to the point of near hysteria.
“Hit me.”
“It was you mentioning the Chechnya thing during the ORB conference. About the Apocalypse Cult? Well, a bunch of the members of that cult came from prepper groups. Not the normal survivalists, but the lunatic fringe. The ones who want the world to end so they can be proven right. The ones who seem to think it’ll solve their problems, cancel their debt, and get the government off their back.”
“Yup. So what?”
“We ran backgrounds on them and have kept tabs on the scarier ones. Some are dead now, some are in jail, and a few dropped off the grid to the point of no Wi-Fi or cell phones and no utility bills in their names. But there’s a bunch of them — just over forty — who are very much on the grid because they work for one of two big trucking companies based in Washington state.”
“Ah,” I said. “And now you’re going to make me happy by telling me that these are the same companies Pushkin Dynamics sent their boxes of God Machine parts to, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am,” he said, and almost giggled. “It gets better, though. When I hacked the records for the companies, I found shipping records for a last batch coming from one of Pushkin’s dummy companies. The trucks carrying those shipments arrived this morning.”