“Well fuck you and your mama, too,” he roared as he gave the door a second kick. A third. Then I was there and we kicked it together. Once, twice, three times. On the fourth kick the door did not open, instead the whole wall simply cracked apart and collapsed backward away from us in huge chunks.
“Jesus Christ,” said Cole. “You boys sure know how to impress a lady.”
Top and I exchanged a wild grin. We knew we hadn’t done it. The building was dying. But it was funny in the way things are funny to soldiers in the heat of battle. Cole ran past us, with Ghost at her heels. Top and I leaped after her, and not a moment too soon, because the rest of the ceiling came down with such a tremendous clap of thunder that the force picked us all up and hurled us into the parking lot. I tucked and rolled as I landed, but there was so much impetus that I rolled three times before I could get to my feet, and even then I pitched into a stumbling run. Ghost flew like an overgrown Underdog past me, yelped on impact, but did not fall. When I turned to see how Top and Cole were, they ran past me and skidded to a stop. We stared in horror as Pushkin Dynamics collapsed amid clouds of dust that was peppered with debris. I looked around but could not see anyone else.
Bunny and Tate came staggering and coughing out of the smoke to our left. Smith came running around from the right, his weapon up and ready. Then other figures emerged. Five of the Russians who had been inside the building. Two of them raised weapons. Smith put one down and a bullet from Duffy exploded the other one’s head. The three remaining Russians bolted and ran. One of them looked up in the sky and screamed.
We looked up, too.
I heard Cole and Tate cry out. Smith hissed like he’d been burned and Ghost began barking wildly. Top, Bunny, and I merely stared.
There, hovering in ghastly silence above the building, was the largest T-craft I’d ever seen. It was massive, and the three glowing lights on its wings pulsed with that awful, familiar green. In the first hint of dawn I could see a faint shimmer in the air beneath the craft. At first I thought it was the antigravity drive, but then I understood.
“Run!” I yelled.
We ran.
We ran likes maniacs.
The deepest, loudest rumble yet made me turn back just in time to see what was left of Pushkin Dynamics crumble and fall into a massive sinkhole that kicked up a towering whirlwind of dust. Huge chunks of the parking lot snapped off and dropped down, too, and as I turned to run I caught the faintest hint of a glow from deep inside the cloud. Not the red or orange of fire and not the blue of burning gas. No, this was that same eerie green glow. It was there and then it was gone, totally obscured by the dust clouds.
We ran so hard and so fast, but the ground seemed intent on devouring us.
SUVs tilted and rolled down. Trees snapped off and fell. The air was filled with thunder and dust and death. A great geyser of water shot up from a ruptured main and hammered down on us.
There was a different kind of roar and I saw one of the SUVs — the one Echo Team had arrived in — racing toward us. It spun into a skidding, screeching turn and stopped and I could see a wild-eyed Duffy behind the wheel. We piled in and Duffy was moving before the doors were closed, his foot welding the gas pedal to the floor. We blew past the other Russian SUVs and Tate whipped an arm out of the window to deliver some going-away presents. As our car sped away I craned my neck to see a ball of black-veined orange lift the cars and hurl them at the trees, which immediately burst into flame.
The earthquake tried to kill us.
It tried.
But we erupted from the lot and onto the street and fled into the dawn.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE
Duffy parked behind the safe house and left the key in the ignition. Someone would come and take the SUV away to be sanitized, repainted, and sold in a legitimate used car lot. Two new cars were parked nearby and the keys for those were on the kitchen table.
We closed all the curtains, made coffee, made food, and sat in the kitchen without touching any of it. Lots of staring. Lots of eyes not making contact. Except for Bunny and Top, who glanced significantly at each other and covertly at me.
Eventually the others looked my way, too. It was a weird moment. We all had what felt like gallons of adrenaline supercharging our blood, and if they were anything like me, it was triggering more of the flight than fight response.
And it was Duffy who broke the silence. He held his hand up to his head, little finger and thumb splayed to mimic talking on the phone. “Hi, Mom? How was my day? Oh, you know, the usual. Alien lizard guys and spaceships.”
We all cracked up. Fist-thumping, eyes running with tears, coughing and choking laughter. It happens like that sometimes. When it faded, it left us giddy, which was all nerves. Smith raised his hand like a schoolboy.
“Ask it,” I said.
“Can I be excused and go back to the real world?”
“No. Next question.”
“Then, okay,” said Tate, “we got all this weird shit going on, and I’m going to need therapy for like ten years. But what does it mean? How’s it all fit together? Does it even make sense?”
I turned my chair around backward and leaned my forearms on the back splat.
“It makes sense,” I said. “Let me fill in the blanks of what you don’t know, and then I want you to explain it back to me.”
I went over every detail, starting from the Secret Service coming after me at the cemetery. I backtracked to hit the highlights of the Extinction Machine and Kill Switch cases. I told them what Doc and Junie told me. I gave them everything I had from Bug and Nikki. I told them about Violin and Harry. All of it.
It took a while. We ate scrambled eggs and toast and drank three pots of coffee. The morning burned on, chasing away the Moscow chill. Birds sang in the trees and the world turned as if everything was normal. When I was done, we had another long time of silence. I could see their eyes shifting to look inward at their own thoughts; I could hear gears turning. They were professionals, even the newbies. This was what the DMS was all about, and they were each members of Echo Team for a reason, and that meant it ran much deeper than their skills in a firefight. They were all smart and they possessed insight and intuition. Useful tools for this kind of work.
“So,” I said, “talk to me.”
“We need to get home,” said Cole. “They shipped a lot more God Machines than they used in D.C.”
“Yeah,” said Tate, nodding, “if they hit us once, they’re going to hit us again.”
“It’s more than that,” said Top, and everyone looked at him. “Those guys in the T-craft ain’t joking. These God Machines belong to them every bit as much as the Majestic Black Book did. Valen and the Russians may have trashed Washington, but it was the original owners of that tech who shoved Pushkin down the drain. One of them saw you, Cap’n, and if they’re the same cats we saw on the road in Maryland, then they’re trying to make a point. They told us they weren’t our enemies, but they aren’t our friends, neither. They let us get out of the building. That was them making a point.”