I brought a bag of treats for Ghost, who ate one but then sat looking at the closed door of Auntie’s room.
We continued our vigil. Nobody bothered us. There were empty chairs around us, but after taking a look at the four men and the big dog, other folks decided they’d rather sit anywhere else. Or stand. Guess we gave off a vibe.
We talked to Bug and Doc Holliday because Top and Bunny had tweaks to our keyword list. We hashed out my theory. Then Bug told us about the Speaker’s family and what was written on the wall. Deep Silence.
“The hell do you think that means?” asked Bunny.
No one had a theory that covered that phrase, though something tickled at the back of my mind. Something I could not see clearly enough to understand. Silence. Deep and profound silence. Yeah, there was something there, but the harder I tried to catch a glimpse of it, the more elusive it became. Exhaustion, pain, and pain meds were not helping.
Hours passed.
The body count on the news was close to thirteen hundred. Thousands more hurt, and scores missing and unaccounted for. Experts kept insisting that this wasn’t the worst natural disaster in the United States, but other experts refuted it. Thousands died in the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. This was the second worst in U.S. history, they insisted. This was the worst of the twenty-first century in the U.S. It was the worst East Coast quake, both in terms of deaths and damage. They kept finding new ways to frame it. Some experts were giving predictions for what the final butcher’s bill would be. Others were floating dollar amounts for destruction.
“Bunch of damn ghouls,” muttered Bunny.
No one disputed him.
Church joined us and told me that Junie was flying to Brooklyn to bring FreeTech’s mojo to bear. My heart did a small skip and jump, though I wondered why she hadn’t called me directly. When I looked at my phone I saw that the screen was busted and dark.
“Was working earlier,” I said pointlessly, and could not actually remember if that was true or not. I was so goddamn tired.
“Bug is using MindReader and Calpurnia to help facilitate legitimate rescue and support services,” said Church. “He’s also assigned Nikki to hunt down and destroy any fake donation sites that pop up.”
“Thank God,” said Rudy. That was a pet peeve of Rudy’s and Bug’s. They hated when people used catastrophes to scam good-hearted people who tried to help. With MindReader, Bug was not only able to identify bad guys and return the donations to the donors, he also outed the perps to the FBI and did a few other nasty things. Not sure of the details, but I’ve heard that these scam artists suddenly had very, very unsavory search histories on their computers that they were unable to delete. So sad.
I went through every detail of what happened, and the four of them listened. Top dismantled a ham sandwich and fed it in bits to Ghost as I spoke.
“Designer earthquakes?” said Bunny. “That’s weird, even for us, isn’t it?”
“We can never be certain where the ceiling is when it comes to malevolent use of technology,” observed Church. “Science is evolving faster than our ability to predict its growth.”
My earbud suddenly came to life, and it was Bug. “Cowboy, is the Big Man with you? If so, tell him to log in to this channel.”
We all tapped our earbuds to get onto the same call.
“Talk to us, Bug,” said Church.
“Something’s happening, and it’s bad,” said Bug. “There are tons of cell phone videos showing up on social media and the news. And, Cowboy, it’s all you and Aunt Sallie. Ghost, too. All three of you beating the shit out of a bunch of unarmed civilians.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
When he heard the knock, Valen fairly leapt to his feet and hurried across the room.
“Ari,” he cried as he opened the door, but then he stopped. It was not him. It was her.
Gadyuka pushed him inside and kicked the door shut.
“When did you last sweep the room?” she asked, but before he could answer she removed her own scanner and spent five minutes assuring herself that there were no active or passive listening devices. Only then did she shrug out of her coat, lock the door, and make a beeline to the vodka bottle, skipping the available glasses and taking a deep swig. Then she turned and leaned back against the desk, studying him with her cold, calculating eyes.
“Did everyone report in?” she asked.
“All but Ari. I haven’t heard from him yet.”
“Ari isn’t coming here.”
“What do you mean? Where did he go?”
Gadyuka took another, smaller drink, and set the bottle down. “Ari Kostas is dead.”
It took three full seconds for her words to make sense to Valen. “What…?”
“The other device exploded. He was killed instantly and a DMS field agent was sent to the hospital.”
Valen tried to speak, but could not. Instead he lurched to his feet, blundered past her, and ran for the bathroom.
Later, when he came out, his face tingling from washing after he’d thrown up, he slumped down on the edge of the bed. Gadyuka studied him like he was a display in a museum of oddities.
“You are a difficult man to understand,” she said. In his absence she’d gone to fetch ice, and now handed him a glass. He took a sip and his hand shook so badly the ice tinkled against his teeth. “You have worked so long, so hard, with such brilliance to bring us to this moment, and now that we’re so close we can taste it, you’re losing your nerve?”
“I’m not losing my nerve,” he spat, surprised by his own harshness. “I think I’m losing my goddamn mind.”
She began to say something but Valen cut her off.
“No. Don’t. I can’t bear any more of your political pep talks. I know that what we are doing will allow the New Soviet to exist. I know that if we carry it out to the end then we will have changed the world forever. I know that America will be both punished for old crimes and removed from the political equation. I know all that, Gadyuka. I know the math and I know the propaganda.”
“It’s not just propaganda,” she insisted, rising and taking the glass from his hands. She looked him in the eyes. “We are saving our country. What we are doing — what you are doing — is no different than what our partisans did to the Germans in World War Two. They blew up trains and factories and airfields, and not everyone who died was a Nazi. There has never been a war fought without civilian casualties. Not once in history.”
He sneered at her. “That’s hardly an argument in favor of what we are going to do next.”
“No, because what they did were half measures. Even the dropping of the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were half measures. The war was won. That was America threatening the world and forcing its way into becoming the global superpower and corrupt empire that it has become. They nearly dropped a bomb on Moscow at the end of the war. You know that to be true. If they knew we would obtain nuclear weapons technology as quickly as we did, they would have bombed us. They would have done worse to us than we are going to do to them. Much worse. They would have turned Russia into an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland.”
“How is that better? America will be uninhabitable when we’re done.”
“For how long? Three years, at the most? None of the survivors will have radiation sickness. There won’t be generations of genetic disorder and rampant cancers. They will bury their dead and, over time, they will become an agrarian culture and never again threaten the world with their nuclear arsenal. We will have not only pulled their fangs but given them no one left to hate. There will be no villain in this, Valen. Russia — the Novyy Sovetskiy — will offer unlimited help. Medical aid, cultural and agricultural aid. We will even offer to protect them against other countries that might seek to exploit their weakness.”