“No,” I said through gritted teeth as I pulled an ID wallet out of my pocket and showed her a badge. “I’m with the Department of Homeland Security and he’s my dog.”
Despite the badge she looked skeptical, but her phone rang before she could say anything. She answered, listened for almost fifteen seconds, then frowned and looked at me again.
“Are you Captain Ledger?”
“Yes. Why?”
The nurse held out the phone. “It’s for you.”
I took the receiver, expecting it to be Bug, but it was Church.
“Captain,” he said, “this will be quick. First, thank you for getting Auntie to the hospital. I have specialists on the way.”
“I figured.”
“Right now, though, I need you back in the field. I know you’re injured, but we are resource poor. Can you manage it?”
“Yes,” I said without even asking what it was first.
“Something is happening back in D.C.,” he said. “A series of small but unusual explosions. We’ve been tracking them via drones and by hacking into feeds from news helicopters and other aerial surveillance. No one else has pegged them as anything more than additional damage from ruptured gas lines or other damage related to the earthquake.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“Nikki has been running pattern recognition on them and she’s seeing a clear pattern. The explosions have been occurring in a wide ring around the Capitol. Too perfect a circle around the epicenter of the quake. Police and firefighters are too badly stretched to be able to check it out. And Sam has virtually emptied the Warehouse. Everyone down to the janitorial staff is on the streets helping with the rescue operations. I’ve sent him in, too, because there are curious gaps in the ring of blasts. It may be that the devices, whatever they are, have been disrupted by the quake. Some may have misfired.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Go back to D.C. Sam can’t check out all of the unexploded bombs, if they are indeed bombs, and if they are there at all. We can give you probable locations of two of them. Sam is checking out three others. If these things are somehow tied to what’s happened — either the earthquakes themselves or the violent behavior of the people, then we need to identify what kind of tech nology this is. My guess is that they are involved and the explosions are part of a post-event cleanup. We don’t want a clean sweep. All of the details will be sent to Calpurnia. Go.”
“I’m gone,” I said, and ran for my car. As best I could, with Ghost having to slow down to keep from outrunning me.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
When I got to the car there was a pigeon drone sitting on the hood. It had a small package attached to its metal legs that, once opened, proved to be a new earbud kit, complete with booster pack. A gift from Sam. Nice. I put it on.
I let Calpurnia do some of the driving while I dug out the first-aid kit and shot myself up with enough painkillers to keep me from crying like a newborn, but not so much that I fell asleep at the wheel.
Ghost gave me a subtle whuff, reminding me that, why yes — food would be most appreciated. I had nothing. He sat there looking wistfully out the window as we passed McDonald’s and Burger King.
Calpurnia is a learning computer, so she adjusted her driving to the way I’d driven from D.C. Meaning, she became reckless and drove too fast. I thoroughly approved.
En route, I caught up on the intel about Washington, D.C. The miles melted past and yet somehow it felt as if I wasn’t traveling fast enough. When I looked out at the cars on either side of the road, they seemed to be traveling from normal places to normal places as if the world wasn’t falling apart. How is that even possible? I’ve seen it in a thousand places around the world. People going through a Starbucks drive-through half a block from a fatal shooting. Happy kids on swings in a playground near where Echo Team had stopped drones filled with weaponized Ebola. A couple old guys playing chess in the park half an hour after EMTs took a stabbing victim away. There is a reset that happens, and I suppose it needs to happen. When something horrible happens, it really physically only happens in that spot; the rest of the world still turns, still goes on with its day.
Along the way I got a briefing. When you’re not driving, the inside of the windshield turns into a computer monitor with an intense high-def 3-D screen. The first face to pop up was that of Doc Holliday.
Doc also brings with her some geeky-cool heritage. She is the great-granddaughter of the actual John Henry “Doc” Holliday, the noted gunslinger, dentist, and gambler who accompanied the Earp brothers to the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Apparently, the historical Doc Holliday had an affair with Mary Katherine Horony-Cummings, a prostitute known as Big Nose Kate.
Doc’s a character. She is the actual definition of larger than life. She’s a six-foot-one-inch natural blond — I think — whose raw energy and obvious intelligence dominate nearly any room into which she strides. She doesn’t walk — she strides. Doc walks forward with such purpose and confidence that people get out of her way and walls cringe for fear that she will plow through them. She has big hands, big eyes, big hair, big boobs, and big lips that part for frequent big smiles. Think of Dolly Parton on growth hormones. A borderline cartoon character who loves playing it up. She flirts with everyone — male, female, potted plants. It doesn’t matter to her. Not sure I’ve ever heard of her going out with anyone, but she goes after life with an enormous and infectious passion and a tongue firmly in cheek. However, it was the fact that she has a mighty damn big brain that Church hired her away from DARPA to run the Integrated Sciences Division of the DMS. She was brought in to replace the supergenius Dr. William Hu, and from the talk around the watercooler, she’s exceeded expectations. The catchphrase that’s begun to circulate is telling: “Glad she’s on our side.”
Doc brought a bunch of her own science with her and has used the apparently limitless finances and resources provided by Church to go further. Like Hu, Doc is a multidiscipline scientist. Her back ground is in physics and engineering, but she knows enough about medicine, genetics, chemistry, and other fields to be a forward-thinking — and, let’s face it, devious — manager for our team of top experts. When she popped onto the screen, she was smiling as if it was a sunny day and all was right with the world.
“Howdy, Cowboy,” she said. “Boy, do I have some fun stuff to tell you.”
INTERLUDE TWENTY
They sat on deck chairs and watched a city die.
Ari thought about the money they were going to make after today. Buyers would be lining up to kiss his ass. Valen was thinking about how much damage he was going to do to his soul if this all worked. If the machine did what he and Ari thought it would do.
Gadyuka had pressed them for a practical demonstration in a place where there was no possible connection to the politics of the United States or Russia. Other players within the new party were already at work with different tools. Computers, the Internet, and social media. None of them were likely to draw blood. He couldn’t contribute to the New Soviet without bloodshed.
Ari looked at his watch. “Any second now.” When Valen did not respond, Ari sighed and shouted, “Turn your fucking hearing aid on, you deaf son of a whore.”
Valen winced. “No need to yell. It’s on.”
“This is going to be beautiful,” Ari murmured. He wore a shit-eating grin and his eyes were glazed from drink, pot, and some small pills he popped when he thought Valen wasn’t looking. “Any… second… now…”