When it comes to politics and tragedy, in the end people need someone to blame.
A nation aching with loss and reeling with disbelief had chosen Blackmon. Piousness and ultraconservative views felt like the perfect counter to the science-minded liberal who ran the show when a mushroom cloud blossomed over Detroit.
When the landslide election results came in, Murray had hoped Blackmon’s religious rhetoric was just a way to get her into power. It was politics, after all — say whatever you have to say to get elected. But Murray had come to realize that her brilliant election strategy wasn’t a show.
Sandra Blackmon believed.
In closed-door meetings like this, President Blackmon accepted that America had nearly been invaded by some kind of strange force. She also acknowledged that Gutierrez had played the only card available to stop a disaster that could have taken out the entire Midwest, possibly the nation, maybe the entire world. The problem was, she didn’t believe that force came from somewhere other than Earth. Most of the time, she acted like the attack had to have come from another country: Russia, China, maybe even India (for which she had an inexplicable hatred).
Sometimes, however, the president of the United States of America said things that made it sound like she thought the attack was Satanic in nature. The fact that she might believe that, and she had her finger on the button? The thought made Murray’s balls — what were left of them, anyway — shrivel up into little fear-peanuts that tried to crawl up into his belly and hide.
Blackmon turned to André Vogel, a man who — in Murray’s humble opinion — should have walked around with a coating of slime all over him and his fancy clothes.
“Director Vogel,” she said. “What about spies? Any more information on Lieutenant Walker’s background? Could she have been turned?”
“It’s possible,” Vogel said. “So far, however, we have nothing.”
Murray knew that people sometimes said his department, the Department of Special Threats, was the second-most-important government organization you’d probably never heard of. The first? The Special Collections Service. Part NSA, part CIA and all black-budget, Special Collections existed well outside the framework of official government business. André Vogel was exactly the kind of shifty motherfucker needed to run it.
“Walker seems to be as red, white and blue as they come,” Vogel said. “Naval Intelligence and the FBI are looking into the entire crew of the Los Angeles, Madam President. That’s a big job. But if a foreign power is at the root of this, we will find out.”
Typical Vogel-speak: casually mention the difficulty of the task, but also promise results.
Blackmon leaned back in her chair. “What about the Chinese? The NSA reported there was chatter shortly after the attack. Can we be sure the Chinese weren’t involved?”
Vogel shook his head. “No, Madam President, we can’t be sure. We’re listening. They know something crashed into Lake Michigan five years ago. President Gutierrez informed the whole world that we had visitors, so it’s easy for the Chinese to put two and two together. Regardless, though, they can’t do anything with that knowledge. Even if they had a sub within a hundred miles of our coast, they couldn’t get it through the Saint Lawrence Seaway and into the Great Lakes.”
“They’ve got money,” Murray said. Heads turned to look at him, eyebrows raised because he’d spoken out of turn. He ignored them all, just stared at Vogel.
“The Chinese have more money than they know what to do with,” Murray said. “Do we really know for sure they couldn’t just quietly hire locals to go down and get the thing?”
Vogel smiled, looking smug. “The probable crash site is seven hundred to nine hundred feet deep. You need specialized gear for that. The intelligence community has been consistently monitoring all domestic companies that have the right kind of equipment, with a special eye on Lake Michigan outfits, of course. Canadian and Mexican companies as well. The navy task force made short work of discouraging filmmakers, reporters, documentarians, even conspiracy theorists from venturing into a maritime exclusion zone.”
He sat back, gave his bald head a quick, damp rub. “The only way anyone could steal our alien technology, which we haven’t even secured yet, would be to invade the United States of America and occupy Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.”
The man knew his business, no doubt, but after all this time he still didn’t get the big picture.
“I’m not talking about stealing it,” Murray said. “I’m talking about touching it. We just lost a nuclear sub, a destroyer, a cutter and over four hundred brave men and women. That didn’t happen by accident. If the wreckage was somehow contaminated with any of the contagious shit that forced us to nuke Detroit, then the Chinese don’t have to get the thing out of the country, they just have to be dumb enough to go down and try. That alone could be enough to goat-fuck us right in the ass.”
“That’s enough,” President Blackmon said.
Murray didn’t know if she’d had that voice of unquestionable authority before she took over as commander in chief, but she sure as shit had it now.
“This briefing is over,” she said. “I think Director Vogel has clearly illustrated that the site is protected against espionage. He’s doing his job. Murray, you do yours. Find out what turned the crew of the Los Angeles into traitors, and find out fast.”
DAY THREE
NIGHT FLIGHT
Margaret’s belly wanted to be sick, but Margaret was in charge of such things and she was not going to let this helicopter ride make her throw up.
She’d spent most of the last three years sequestered in her house. Now here she was, at 4:00 A.M., in a loud-as-hell helicopter streaking across the black surface of Lake Michigan, strapped tightly into an uncomfortable seat and wearing an ill-fitting helmet. Her soon-to-be-ex husband sat next to her, a constant reminder of her failures as a wife.
How had Murray talked her into this?
Maybe it hadn’t been Murray at all. Maybe it was because the infection had returned, and she couldn’t stand aside while others fought that evil for her.
Before “Project Tangram,” before she and Amos stumbled onto something that would turn out to be one of humankind’s biggest and worst discoveries, she had been an epidemiologist with the CDC. She hadn’t been a “nobody,” by any stretch, but no one had really known who she was.
The infection changed all that.
She moved from a back room to the front line. She had become the one, the person who figured it out, who stopped it. Doing so had cost so many lives; it had destroyed hers as well.
She should have been a celebrity, a hero. She should have been an icon of the scientific world. Instead, she had suffered so much in the past five years. Lost so much. She wasn’t going to let that be for nothing.
You will not win. I WILL beat you.
The pilot’s voice came over the headphones built into her helmet.
“We’re coming up on the task force,” he said. “We’re on high alert, so this will be a slow approach as they make sure everything is okay. If you look out the port side, you can see the task force coming up pretty quick.”
Margaret readjusted her loose helmet as she looked. Rain pounded against the helicopter’s windshield. She could see no stars, nothing but black above and below. Then, in the distance, she saw the glow of lights.