He hung up, but Amber heard him whisper something as the connection was broken. A single word.
“Delicious …”
Chapter Forty
The Warehouse / DMS Tactical Field Office
Baltimore, Maryland
December 19, 9:02 A.M. EST
Top Sims found his team waiting for him clustered around a big black Tactical Vehicle in the main garage. The TacV looked like an oversized SUV, with a bulked-up back bay filled with weapons and equipment. Each of the team—DeeDee, Khalid, and John Smith—affected a posture of cool disinterest. A passerby would have thought they were waiting for a train. Only Bunny stood apart, hands in his pockets, head down, staring at the concrete between his feet.
The team nodded to Top, who returned the nod and headed over to talk with Mike Harnick, the chief mechanic at the Warehouse. Harnick was leaning on the hood writing on a clipboard and he looked up and smiled as Top approached.
“How we doing, Mike?”
“Black Bess is good to go. The extra armor adds weight, so I put a sixty-gallon tank on it.”
“What’s that extra weight do to the speed?”
Harnick shrugged and patted the hood. “She’ll get to about eighty and that’s it, but she’ll drive straight through a wall, and nothing short of an RPG is going to dent her.”
Top clapped him on the shoulder and then walked over to where Bunny stood.
“How you doing, Farmboy?” Top asked.
Bunny shrugged.
Top stepped closer. “We lost people before.”
“In fights, Top. Not like this.” Bunny shook his head. “When I was incountry in Afghanistan and Iraq we lost a lot of guys. During the surge, hunting the Taliban in the hills. I collected a lot of dog tags and folded a lot of flags. But this … it’s like someone just swatted them off the planet. They never saw it coming, never even had the chance to go down swinging.”
“It’s the way cowards fight, kid,” said Top. “They don’t have the numbers and they don’t have the balls to come at us in a straight fight, so they plant bombs. They don’t care who dies. It ain’t war. There are no rules, no ethics, no mercy, no honor. That’s who we’re fighting these days.”
Bunny turned to him, and Top could see that the young man’s eyes were puffed and red. Top would never mock him for those tears, and neither would anyone in the Warehouse. But Top knew those tears burned.
“That’s the point,” Bunny said harshly. “They’re blowing up buildings all over the world and they won’t stand up and fight. Fuck, man, I don’t know who to hate.”
Top nodded. He felt it, too. The anger, the rage, was there in his chest, a self-perpetuating and self-consuming ball of heat that had nowhere to go.
“I need to get into this fight, Top,” Bunny said. “I need to get into it or I’m going to have to walk away from it.”
“Well, guess what, Farmboy? We just got orders to drive up to Philly and rendezvous with Cap’n Ledger.”
Bunny gave him a sharp look. “The captain’s back?”
“Yeah, and he’s already chasing this like a hound dog. Got into some shit in England. Cap’n put three of ’em down.”
Bunny straightened. “Does that mean we know something?”
“Don’t know what we know, but when were you ever around Cap’n Ledger when the bad guys weren’t trying to take a shot? Ain’t a good place to stand if you want to be safe, but if you want to go hunting in Indian Country, then saddle up.”
Bunny sniffed and let out a breath, blowing out his cheeks and stretching his big arms until his shoulders popped. “Okay, then. If he’s in it, then I’m definitely in it.”
Top slapped him hard on the shoulder as they walked over to the SUV.
Khalid stood by the rear passenger door and had overheard the conversation. “We’re all in it now, big man,” he said. “They drew first blood.”
John Smith leaned against the rear fender, a plastic coffee stirrer between his teeth. He nodded.
“Then it’s their ass,” said DeeDee. “Let’s bring the pain.”
She held out her fist and took the bump from Bunny and then the others.
They piled in with DeeDee driving and Top riding shotgun. The TacV was armored and stocked like a rolling arsenal. It also had Sirius radio uplink and DeeDee dialed it over to Classic Blues. The song that was playing as they rolled out of the Warehouse was Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail.”
They took that as a sign. Or maybe a credo, because they were the Hellhounds.
Interlude Twenty-nine
The Seven Kings
Three Months Ago
Toys touched Gault’s arm just as they were about to enter the Chamber of the Kings. “Sebastian,” he said, “please consider what you’re about.”
Gault smiled, but it lacked warmth. “Oh my God, will you stop with this bullshit? You’ve been whining about this for weeks now.”
“It’s my job to give you a perspective check, don’t forget.”
“It’s not your job to advocate small thinking.”
“Oh, please, that’s not—”
“Besides, since when did you become squeamish?”
Toys stepped back and folded his arms. “Squeamish? Is that what you think?”
“Pick a better word, then. ‘Timid’?”
Toys felt the blood drain from his face. “Oh … be careful now, Sebastian,” he said softly.
Gault stepped toward him so that their faces were inches apart. “I’m going to tell you for the last time, Toys … stop pushing me. Learn your fucking place.”
With that he turned and swept into the chamber.
Inside, the other Kings were on their thrones, their Consciences by their sides. The screens on the walls showed charts and maps or ran with lines of carefully gathered intelligence. Eris sat on her throne, a magazinethin laptop on her thighs. She had half-glasses perched on her nose and Toys thought that for the first time she looked closer to her age.
Here’s hoping you have a stroke and die, you bloodsucking hag, he thought.
When Toys and Gault were in their seats, the King of Lies stood. The Saudi was dressed in a European suit, his beard trimmed short, and he wore no ghutra on his head. It made him look like a different man, and Toys wondered if the longer beard was indeed part of a disguise.
“Thank you all for coming on such short notice. I trust you’ve all had a chance to read through the preliminary report prepared by Plagues? Yes?” He looked around, saw general nods, and continued. “Gold has reviewed the financial requests and informs us that the overall cost for this operation is three percent higher than anticipated, but I think we can all agree that it will be worth the investment of those additional millions.”
More nods.
“The next phase is twofold. The logistical phase will be jointly managed by Fear and Gold, for all of the obvious reasons. The Goddess and I will continue to oversee the disinformation program. Goddess?”
Eris raised a hand to acknowledge the applause. Toys glanced at Gault and saw that he was fairly glowing with pride and lust. The fool. Toys cut a look at the American and saw that his hands barely touched as he pretended to applaud.
Lies then introduced Gault, who stood to a renewed wave of applause. He bowed to Eris and then stood silent for a moment, his dark eyes drifting from face to face around the table, waiting as the chamber gradually fell into an expectant silence.
“I’ve reviewed all of Kirov’s work,” began Gault, “and although I hold my predecessor in great esteem, there were some serious flaws in his theories. The short version is that some of the science is simply not going to work. We can push the boundaries of science, but we cannot break them. Not yet, anyway. I know this comes as a blow, because for years now the frontiers of paleomicrobiology have been crumbling as scientists like Professor Kirov hammered away at them with innovative ideas and radical research. But it is the nature of science that some experiments do not succeed even when most of the evidence seems to lead toward success.”