Kate blinked. “Come again?”
Flynn stood with a hunch, looking even more haggard in the dim light. “I didn’t know anything about him when he was suddenly assigned to lead the SSA late last year. Prior military, his records showed. But there wasn’t anything prior about it. Everything became clear when the military arrived two days ago, and our director ditched his black suit for his old dark navy one, featuring quite a few medals. I can see by your expression that everything is suddenly coming very clear. Feel free to take a seat.”
“I’ll stand, thank you,” Kate said. “I’m not involved in the strategic planning of director personnel in government offices, but it’s certainly not unusual for a member of the military to be asked to step in to lead an obscure agency—”
“Please, Senator. It’s called infiltration. It was their plan all along. We were all snowed. I figured you deserve to know, given your role in it. And why you won’t ever see your nephew again, or your mother, if they find her. Which they will. They won’t stop until they do.”
“They? It’s your agency—”
“The military is now running the show, Senator. We’re just worker bees doing their bidding. My counterparts across the world are reporting pretty much the same story. Every military in every nation in the world is scrambling, just as ours is, to collect the abducted, now that the SSAs have delivered our findings. We should have known better. Of course, only the US has found the host, the conduit. It means we have the means to control. Even direct, if the occasion calls for that.”
Kate felt the dread spread across her. “Obviously the priority is to stop the abducted before they are activated….”
“You have been too long convinced that you hold the cards. You are blind to what even your president has been convinced to do. Yes, contain the abducted, stop the disasters. But just imagine what they can be used for. What wars can be won, who will emerge the true superpower if we, and only we, have someone to control them all.”
The agent leaned forward. “Senator, you have helped deliver the key weapon in the greatest arms race of all time.”
The van drove down the street, slowly enough for the photographer behind the wheel to glance down at the map on his phone. No way is this address right. There’s nothing out here.
Still, he double checked out the address on the printed-out email and compared it once again to the map. Hell, it was the same.
The crowd confirmed he was at the right location, which stirred a sense of relief and dread. It had been a long day, and if this became the lead story at six o’clock, he’d have to stay out here until it was over, which meant driving all the way back to the station, droping off his gear, handing over his P2 cards with all this video, then another hour and a half commute home. The McDonald’s bag from lunch winked at him. See ya at dinner.
He rolled down the window as two people walked past, signs under their arms. “Hey, is she here yet?”
“Supposed to be any minute,” a woman responded.
He pulled over the lumbering van. No need to raise the mast yet, the news release said this was where they were supposed to meet and then walk to the location. It better not be far. The LiveU, that enabled anyone to go live from any location, was as heavy as the old three-quarter-inch gear.
Strapping it on his back and grabbing his camera and tripod, he saw people were already holding up their signs, like runners stretching out before a race. He grabbed a few establishing shots and then some tighter close-ups on the bold writing: “WE WANT THE TRUTH.” “THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.” “THE WORLD DESERVES THE TRUTH.” “WHERE ARE OUR MISSING?”
He made sure his lavalier mic was ready to go because he wanted to capture the natural sound when those freaks started chanting. Hell, they’d probably let him pin the mic to their shirts to get good, close sound. Whichever reporter was rushed down here would appreciate it.
Better get close ups of the T-shirts, too. He saw more than one that were homemade, with the picture of that redhead dude who everybody thought got abducted by aliens when he was a kid. “BEAM ME UP, WILLIAM,” one shirt read. “TAKE ME TO YOUR WILLIAM,” read another.
He saw the crowd begin to crane their necks as a car with tinted windows pulled up. One of the people, who he decided was clearly an organizer, based on her shaved head and her Stranger Things T-shirt, rushed over and talked to the driver.
“OK!” the woman shouted out after a moment. “Follow the car to the meeting space!”
It was only when the crowd began to walk that the photographer realized just how large it was, given that he’d been unaware of all the people who were now coming from a side street.
Were there two hundred… no, three hundred people? Jesus.
None of it will matter unless she shows.
He kept pace, getting tight shots of the feet, medium shots of the walk. No one was chanting, so the mic stayed in his gear bag.
The van stopped, and the crowd began to gather around it. He pushed to the front, seeing Jason from Channel 11 and Sarah from the Fox affiliate jockeying to do the same. Only photogs had been sent, no reporters, given that no one knew if this was just going to be a loony parade.
As the crowd settled in, the passenger door opened, and a Birkenstock-clad foot extended. He could hear a few sighs of disappointment as an old woman with a head full of crazy hair stepped out, wearing a quilted vest over a denim shirt. She reached for the door to the back seat and pulled it open.
The crowd let loose.
“Shit,” he whispered as people stepped into his frame. He struggled to turn on the LiveU. He moved forward, zooming in as he scrambled to hold the phone up to his ear.
“She’s here,” he blurted out to the assignment editor who answered. “I’m streaming. Get one of the reporters down here pronto.”
The cheers and applause intensified as Lynn Roseworth made her way through the crowd. Jason had already begun to assemble a mic stand, with Sarah hurrying to attach her mic flag to it. He’d have to just stick the lav on it, which would make his news director pissed that his station wouldn’t have representation in the shot, but there wasn’t time.
The streaming technology wasn’t always perfect, but the signal would be good enough to give the other stations that chose to ignore the cryptic news conference email a true case of the craps. Ever since the old broad had been found at that house in Maryland and her daughter claimed she was being held against her will by the government, Lynn Roseworth had been on the radar of every media outlet in the world.
The email had hinted at her appearance for the protest in the warehouse district in DC. His assignment editor had just rolled her eyes and told him to check it out.
And there she was. Freakin’ Lynn Roseworth.
He hustled to get right up in front, and in the process accidentally bumped the shoulder of the other old woman who had stepped out of the car.
“Watch it, jerk off,” she said.
“Roxy,” he heard Lynn quietly chastise.
“That lens nearly took me out!” the woman said. “We want you here, but don’t crawl up my ass.”
Liking her already, he whispered an apology. To his delight, the woman moved up to the mics.
“OK, listen up. Thanks, everybody, for coming. Lynn will be making a very brief statement—oh, looks like another friend in the media, make that two now, are coming on up, so while they’re getting ready to join us, I want you all to share this everywhere. Stream this on your phone. Put it on Snapchat or whatever crap you prefer. Hurry up with those cameras, guys. Alright, alright, don’t run people over. Just put that mic with the others. OK, you rolling? Alright, ladies and gentlemen, may I present Lynn Roseworth.”