The real bitch was that despite having clashed with groups supported by the Seven Kings, we didn’t have a frigging clue as to who or what the Kings were. It was like fighting an invisible empire … and yes, I know that sounds like an old movie serial. But there it is.
Chapter Six
The Royal London Hospital
Whitechapel, London
December 17, 10:52 A.M. GMT
Church said, “The Kings have been busy during your ‘vacation.’���
“Deep Throat been calling his BFF again?”
“I see isolation and contemplation haven’t matured you. Pity,” Church said. “We’ve had five additional tips. Three out of five of the tips resulted in action taken. We recovered prisoners in several of the raids, but none of them were above street level. They knew the name Seven Kings but nothing else of substance.”
“Did Deep Throat warn you about today?”
“Not specifically. He said, ‘Watch out; the next one will be epic.’ However, if this is a Seven Kings attack, it would be their first hit on foreign soil.”
“That we know of.”
“Yes.”
“You any closer to finding out who Deep Throat is?”
“No. But I have some friends in the industry working on this.”
The blaze looked even hotter than before. The crowds surrounding the Hospital had to number in the thousands.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is a terrorist hit,” I said.
“Even if no one comes forward to take credit for this, we’re likely to see a rise in hate crimes.”
I agreed. After 9/11 there was an insane wave of violent hatred toward Muslims even though we were not—and never had been—at war with Islam. Echoes of the Japanese internment camps. Xenophobia is one of humankind’s most embarrassing traits.
I said, “Destroying a medical complex of this size had to have taken enormous and very detailed planning. Can’t have been a matter of someone walking in the front door with a C4 vest or a car bomb in the parking garage. This place is massive and it all went up at once. Someone put some real thought into this and—”
Church interrupted me. “How are you doing?”
Church is borderline heartless, so the fact that he was asking made me stop and do a quick self-check. I realized that I was speaking way too loud and way too fast. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and in doing so I could feel how much of it was stale air that had been turning to poison in my chest.
“I’m good,” I said more slowly.
He didn’t comment. He wouldn’t.
“Dr. Sanchez will be on the first thing smoking.”
“I don’t need a shrink,” I began irritably, but he cut me off.
“I’m not sending him to hold your hand, Captain. Dr. Sanchez has a great deal of experience with post-traumatic stress, and much of that can be ameliorated if dealt with from the jump.”
That was true enough. Rudy was an old friend and he was my own post-trauma shrink before he became my best friend. Since we both signed onto the DMS he’d been the voice of reason and everyone’s shortest pathway to a perspective check. Even, I suspected, for Church himself, though Rudy refused to discuss it.
Church said, “You’ll liaise with Barrier and offer them any support you can. Barrier knows that anything they tell you will be processed through MindReader, and they’re comfortable with that. They don’t have anything as sophisticated, so we may get some hits before they do.”
Barrier was the global model for effective covert counterterrorist rapid-response groups, and it actually predated the DMS by several years. Church had tried to get the DMS in place first, but when Congress wouldn’t green-light the money he served as a consultant to the U.K. to build Barrier. When that organization proved itself to be an invaluable tool against the rising tide of advanced bioweapon threats, the Americans finally got a clue and Church built the DMS. The Barrier agents I’d met were every bit as good as our guys, most of them having been handpicked from the most elite SAS teams.
However, hearing the name Barrier inevitably conjured the image of Grace Courtland.
Damn.
Maj. Grace Courtland had been Church’s second in command at the Warehouse, the DMS field office in Baltimore. She was a career military officer and the first woman to join the SAS as an active operative, and the permanent liaison between Barrier and the DMS. She was tough, smart, and beautiful, and she was my direct superior in the chain of command. At the end of August, against all common fucking sense, we fell in love. That was wrong in a whole lot of ways. Rudy tried to warn me, but I brushed him off and told him to mind his own business. And yes, I know that as he was the DMS shrink this was his business, but when was the last time someone falling in love listened to good advice?
Grace and I knew that a love relationship, no matter how discreet, made us fly too close to the flame. As agents of the Department of Military Sciences we tackled the deadliest threats imaginable, so personal entanglements could only end in trouble. In our case, it ended in disaster. We faced off against a threat so huge that books will be written about it. At the end of it, the good guys won and I lost. I lost Grace. She died saving us all, and I think I died, too. Part of me, anyway.
Since then I’ve knocked aimlessly around Europe with my dog, Ghost, a specially trained DMS K9. We got into a couple of scrapes together while doing some unofficial stuff for friends of Mr. Church. I hadn’t actually quit the DMS, but I didn’t want to return to the Baltimore Field Office. Grace would not be there. The place would be full of echoes, of shadows and memories. Of ghosts.
Originally, I had come to Europe on a hunting trip. The bastard who shot Grace escaped the bloody resolution of that case. He escaped and went into the wind. As a going-away present, Mr. Church left me a folder full of leads, travel documents, and money, and, without ever saying so, his blessing.
Ghost and I went hunting, and after many weeks we ran our prey to ground. There’s an unmarked grave on one of the Faroe Islands off the coast of Denmark. I pissed on it after I hand-shoveled the dirt and rocks over what was left of the body.
It didn’t bring Grace back, but I believed that somewhere—maybe in Valhalla—her warrior’s soul approved.
Ah … Grace.
Damn it.
Church apparently got tired of the silence on my end of the phone and plowed ahead. “Your current credentials will get you into the investigation. I advised the President and Prime Minister about your participation. And … I’ll likely be on the same flight as Dr. Sanchez. Do you want me to bring Jerry Spencer as well?”
Jerry was the top forensics man I knew. He’d joined the DMS at the same time I did. His genius was in walking a scene and letting the evidence talk to him.
“Absolutely. As soon as the ashes are cool enough to walk, I want Jerry in the smoke. It should all be over by the time he gets here, because at this point it doesn’t look like the fire department is doing anything but containment on this. It’s all going to burn down. What’s my play?”
“Be available to the Brits. They’ll tell you what they need.”