Brennan blinked, because thinking of planting reminded him of Cherry Tree.
“What is wrong with you?”
“You’re right,” Brennan said, with a tremor in his voice, the anger gone. “I know you didn’t do the quarterback.”
“How do you know that?” Debbie demanded.
Brennan started to cry, startling her. She’d never seen him cry. “I made it up and pushed it onto you because I’d been with Mary McCarthy. She told me I couldn’t go to the prom with you if I wasn’t going with her.”
Debbie stared at him. “What do you mean ‘been with Mary McCarthy’? The girl with the braces in senior year?”
Brennan glumly nodded. Between sniffles: “She gave me a blowjob in the chem lab after school one day when we were making up an extra-credit project.”
“At least someone got a blowjob,” Debbie said. “Surprised she didn’t rip your dick off with those braces. In fact, I’m kind of wishing she had.”
“It was the best blowjob I’ve ever gotten.” With that Brennan grabbed the tablecloth in panic, knocking over both flutes and stuffing his napkin in his mouth to shut himself up. He started giggling insanely, having no idea why he was saying these things to her.
Debbie’s jaw dropped, then a flush of anger over years of accusations and missing the prom flooded her face. And the projection of betrayal, which hit deepest of all.
“I hope you got the extra credit in chem!” she said as she threw her napkin down and jumped to her feet.
And at that moment, Brennan’s cell phone chimed, the tone that meant the text was Top Secret, no bullshit, check it the fuck now.
Brennan spit out the napkin as he read it. “Oh no, no, no!” Brennan cried out as he accepted he had just admitted his darkest secrets.
A couple of them at least.
Give him some more time and the rest would come, but luckily for him, time was up. The Secret Service agents had begun moving when the flutes went over and now they were hustling Debbie toward the limo, screeching to the curb. Like Brennan was some nutcase standing outside the Washington Hilton. All he’d done was knock over some glasses.
And tell the truth.
Brennan was stunned for a moment too long, enough to let Debbie get halfway to her waiting Secret Service car before he bolted out of the seat and ran after her. “Stop! I can explain!”
The agent — the smirky one — who slammed him to the ground seemed to take a bit too much relish in doing so. The other agent grabbed Debbie over her protests and pushed her into the limo.
The car door thudded shut and Debbie was whisked off to the White House while Brennan was whisked off to wherever it is the Secret Service whisk people off to.
Chapter 7
Where they whisk people off to is a place named Deep Six.
Not very subtle, but who said you had to be subtle? The facility was run by contractors who, interestingly enough, were all non-American. They were from countries that did not have extradition treaties with the United States. Besides their excellent pay, part of their contract guaranteed them a helicopter ride to an airport, from which they would be flown to a place where they could retire in style should the need arise.
Deep Six was part of a large facility in a part of the Pennsylvania countryside called Raven Rock. After the Russians exploded their first nuke in ’49 and the US no longer had a monopoly on blasting the hell out of another country, those in power in Washington decided they did not want to get blasted to hell (or heaven, depending on their optimism and beliefs).
Since Shangri-La, as it was nicknamed by President Roosevelt (Eisenhower changed the name to Camp David in honor of both his grandson and father), was located just over the Maryland border, someone suggested looking for a site near there. They found a mountain made of granite, Raven Rock, and started blasting and digging, and then blasting and digging some more to the tune of almost a million cubic yards, ultimately hollowing out a large part of the mountain.
Then they built office buildings inside. Because a government runs on bureaucrats and bureaucrats need offices. Or cubicles, depending on rank. There were also tunnels going hither and thither. Some say there’s a six-mile tunnel from Raven Rock to Camp David, but the government denies it.
It also denies there’s an Area 51.
One of those first tunnels used to end at a massive underground reservoir because man does not live on bread alone. Except as the facility grew, as many government facilities have a tendency to do (like weeds), there was a demand for more water. Another, bigger reservoir was built for potable water. And then another one for industrial water — cooling, waste, sewage, waterboarding, etc. The original reservoir developed a crack during some of the adjacent construction and all the water eventually leaked out, leaving a dark, damp, dank, disgusting cavern.
The perfect place to put a prison for prisoners whom the government didn’t want to admit it had and who would most likely never see the light of day. Plus, they had all that industrial water for the waterboarding nearby.
Primarily, it was a very secure place.
After his interrogation in Springfield, Wahid had been whisked back to Deep Six by a contingent of contractors via helicopter. They landed at the helipad on top of the peak and then were hustled into an elevator, dropped down into the bowels of the mountain, and taken along tunnels to a thick steel door that barred the way to Deep Six.
Those who worked in the other part of Raven Rock and caught glimpses of armed men dragging hooded subjects along the tunnels were smart enough not to stare or ask questions. What happened in Deep Six, stayed in Deep Six.
By the time they got Wahid back in his cell, he’d already infected one-third of the guards.
Colonel Sidney Albert Johnston sat in his office, deep inside DORKA, ignoring the blinking lights on the phone as he checked to make sure his 9mm pistol was loaded, then tucked it in his belt. He imagined this is what Robert E. Lee must have felt when his scouts told him Hooker’s Army of the Potomac was approaching Chancellorsville and had twice as many men. It was not a time for timid action. It was a time for audacity.
Perhaps his imagination was being a bit overly dramatic, but he was from the South, he was in a crisis, and he was in charge.
“Sir?” Upton intruded on Johnston’s martial thoughts and earned a steely-eyed glare.
Johnston picked up the slender file folder Upton had brought to his office: the After Action Report on the lab trials of Cherry Tree. “You don’t know dick about this thing your people invented, do you?”
“I told you we didn’t have time for—”
He didn’t wait for more, because he knew Upton was going to cover his ass. “You don’t know possible vectors, do you? How did Rhodes get Cherry Tree?”
“It can’t be airborne,” Upton said, “or you and I would have it.”
Johnston looked at the screen where a team was working on Rhodes wearing masks and gloves, sticking needles in both his arms. The clerk from the ice cream store was there too, but so far, he seemed all right.
“Then why are they wearing masks?” Johnston asked.
“Precaution,” Upton said. “We think he must have jabbed himself with the needle accidently and—”
“Bullshit,” Johnston snapped.
First, the stupid dog and pony show Upton had pulled, then the lie about the first test. He’d locked the lab down as soon as he got the contain call, and on the video monitors he could see white-coated scientists milling about in confusion and muted anger. Upton had arrived minutes ago with Rhodes in tow, but it hadn’t been handled right. You think scientists could handle a contain correctly?