Once inside, Church stood for a long time saying nothing, because the woman in the bed could not hear him. She was deep down in a dark place.
Instead, because he was alone and because he cared, Church bent and kissed her very gently on the forehead.
“If you have to go,” he murmured, “then go. My love and blessings go with you.”
There was no answer but the steady beep of her heart monitor.
“If you choose to stay, then you will always have a place with me. You are my sister and my family, Alexandria Sally Peters. Knowing you has made me a better man.”
He kissed her again and straightened.
Brick entered the room and offered Church a paper napkin. Church nodded and dried his eyes. They both cast a last look at Aunt Sallie, then they left, heading for the elevator and the waiting car, and the jet that was already fueled. Neither spoke. They understood each other so very well.
The war was waiting.
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
I shot Rolgavitch with the gas dart.
I mean, c’mon… I’m not actually a monster. Mind you, if I thought for a second that he was complicit in the attack on Washington, it wouldn’t have been a gas dart. Might not even have been a bullet. The Killer in my head had very specific ways of dealing with his enemies.
He went instantly limp and slid out of the chair onto the floor. The chemical cocktail in the darts works that fast. When he woke up he wouldn’t remember much, and would probably pee in his pants, but he’d be alive. The horsey would break down in his bloodstream, too, so there would be nothing for anyone to find except a poor schlep who got blindsided and robbed. I’d even given him a very precise and careful rap on the back of his head so he’d have physical proof to sell the whole robbery thing.
Oh, and for the record, I had no intention of laying a finger on anyone in his family. Sure, I’d mind-fuck him all day, but I’m not evil.
I tapped my earbud and Bug was right there. “You get all that?”
“Got it, Cowboy,” Bug said.
“So, Gadyuka is either the Big Bad, or she’s the shop foreman for the Big Bad. In either case, Valen, dangerous as he is, works for them. What’s that tell us?”
“Nikki’s still tearing Valen’s life apart for more clues. And she has three people on Gadyuka. There are so many theories about her that it’s hard to tell if any of them are accurate or if all of them are crap. But, you know Nikki… if there’s something to find, she’ll find it.”
“What do we know about Pushkin Dynamics?” I asked. “We have anything on them?”
“Looking at it now,” said Bug. “At first glance it looks pretty normal. Ships to dozens of international markets. Legit on the surface, but I’ll drill down to see what’s really going on. Hey… it’s already getting interesting. They have some impressive firewalls, though. Way, way, way above the industrial level for companies like that. This is Russian military stuff.”
“Gosh, that’s a surprise.”
“Might take a minute to punch through it but, hey, this is me. I’ll upload everything to your tactical computer.”
“Make it fast.”
“I was going to go out for a sandwich and coffee first,” he said.
“Don’t make me hurt you, nerd boy.”
“Don’t make me create a Tinder profile for you that’ll put you on watch lists,” he countered.
I laughed. “Touch é.”
While I waited, I worked the room. I plugged a MindReader uplink into Rolgavitch’s computer and the little lights began flashing as the Q1 drive began gobbling up every scrap of data. Once finished, it would exit and rewrite the security software on the target computer to erase all traces of having been hacked. It would, however, leave behind some truly nasty Trojan horses that would, in a very real sense, turn my friend Yuri’s computer into MindReader’s yard bitch. Doing this stuff is so much fun it gave me a tingle in my happy place.
Next, I used a scanner to locate Rolgavitch’s hidden office safe behind a section of false paneling. The safe was protected by eight levels of ultrasophisticated security software. A top-grade professional thief might walk away from that kind of protection; however, I came armed with lots of nifty toys. These included a Tick, which is a proprietary intrusion device designed by Doc Holliday. The Tick was something she’d put together in an afternoon while — she insists — binge-watching the first two seasons of Stranger Things. It combines the comprehensive ass-kickery of MindReader’s new quantum computer system and decryption software with some of her own devious tweaks. I swear I could hear the little Tick snicker as it bypassed all the security levels in a microsecond. High-tech, baby, it’s the only way to fly.
Did I hum the Mission: Impossible theme while I worked? Why yes. Yes, I did.
I opened the safe and removed over four million rubles — roughly eight hundred grand — as well as some flash drives, another pistol, and a Patek Philippe Henry Graves wristwatch that was probably worth as much or more than the cash. The money and watch went into a bag I’d brought along for that purpose. Then I plugged the flash drives into a handheld uplink, stole the data, and tossed them onto the floor like they were of no value to a common burglar.
I was about to turn away when I glanced at the screen on the Tick and saw that it was displaying readings for a second security system. I bent close to the safe and peered inside and the Tick chittered and beeped and then the back wall of the safe clicked and opened inward as hidden locks were disengaged. Immediately a green glow leaked out around the edges of the small door. From across the room, Ghost gave a nervous whuff.
Just to be safe, I ran a radiation scanner over it, but the rad scanner blipped. Seriously. It made a tiny blip sound and the needle twitched and then it settled back.
“Bug…?” I said quietly. “Assure me this isn’t something weird and that my nuts are not going to shrivel up and fall off.”
“Everything’s in the green, Cowboy.”
“I can see that it’s green,” I said, eyeing the glow with unease. “Literally green.”
“No, I mean it’s all good,” Bug insisted. “Telemetry says there’s no source of dangerous radiation in there.”
“You better be right. If I die, I’m going to haunt your ass and yell Boo every time you take a shit.”
“Funny,” he said, not meaning it.
I put that scanner away and tried my BAMS unit — more formally a bio-aerosol mass spectrometer — but found no traces of viruses, bacteria, spores, or fungi.
I took a breath and opened the little door the rest of the way, not sure what I thought I’d find. A big stack of emeralds, maybe, or a vial of the Incredible Hulk’s urine. It was neither. Instead I found something that looked like a novelty water pistol carved out of a chunk of green crystal. When I picked it up I was surprised how little it weighed. More like plastic than stone, but it was very dense to the touch and definitely crystal of some kind. The handle was curved and half again as wide as my palm, like something made for a bigger hand. And there was a ridged button instead of a trigger. The barrel, though, was broken off and ended in a jagged stump, and some chips were missing from various places as if it had been roughly handled. There were smaller chips and granules of the same material in the safe, but they looked too small to matter, so I left them there.