There was no point in trying to hide what had happened. “We lost the client,” he said, and gave a brief account of the disaster. “What do you want us to do now?”
“Return to your home and wait,” the voice said, finally. Davenant disliked not knowing who he was working for, but the money was good enough to overcome his scruples. “We will deal with the situation.”
Davenant blinked in surprise. “But we had to leave bodies behind,” he objected. “The authorities will track us down.”
“There will be no bodies,” the voice said. “We will see to that. Return to your home and wait.”
“…Breaking news in Washington DC,” the newsreader said. The Colonel tapped the volume control, turning it up so they could hear the speaker better. “General Elliott Thomas, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been the victim of an attempted assassination by unknown personages. Thomas, who resigned from the Joint Chiefs over controversial government programs, was targeted by a number of terrorist gangs who intended revenge for missions carried out by men under his command. We can confirm that Mrs Thomas was murdered by the terrorists, while the General is critically injured and in an unknown location. Speaking at a hastily organised press conference…”
“Turn it off,” the General snarled. “My wife is dead and they blame it all on terrorists?”
“Quite understandable,” Packman said. “Islamic terrorists have one hell of a motive to hunt you down and behead you. It gives the people the sense that the story is already out, so they don’t have to think about it much more. The vast majority of people are sheep…”
“Shut the fuck up,” the General said. “I should go and tell them I’m alive…”
“And then you will be targeted again,” the Colonel snapped. He hadn’t expected the General to be so balky, but then he hadn’t expected the General’s wife to be murdered either. The General could simply walk into a military base, yet if he showed himself too soon he would simply draw a targeting crosshair on his head. And the aliens would be watching and waiting from high overhead. “Your country needs you to wait until we can confirm that you’re clean…”
He sighed. It had taken two hours to reach the safe house, a dingy little apartment of the kind normally rented to Chinese or East Asian illegal immigrants. The owner was the kind of person who would take a few hundred dollars in exchange for keeping his mouth shut and not insisting on any kind of documentation. It would suffice as long as the money kept coming.
“And then we can find a way to hit back,” he concluded. One plan was already going through his head, but it would require the help of a very old friend — and one hell of a lot of luck. “We can show them that humans won’t roll over so easily.”
“They’ll be laughing,” the General predicted, gloomily. “Or didn’t you realise that the country just rolled over for them?”
Chapter Eighteen
Washington DC/Virginia
USA, Day 27
“So you’re saying that you recovered no bodies?”
“I’m saying that the ongoing investigation prevents us from sharing any information with the press,” the officer said. He was a young Chinese man who bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a young Bruce Lee. Jayne might have been tempted to flirt with him if she hadn’t been convinced that he was trying to lead her up the garden path. “There is a very real danger that the terrorists who launched this cowardly attack will be able to escape using information released into the public domain.”
So if no one gets caught it’s our fault, Jayne thought, coldly. The once-peaceful Washington suburb had been shattered by a scene out of a gangster movie — and the Washington PD had, somehow, failed to respond within anything like an acceptable time. Apparently, Jayne had heard through a blogger who currently served in the police force, there had been a series of errors with the computerized system for directing patrol cars and SWAT teams to the scene of the incident. The locals weren’t happy at all about how the police force — paid for with their taxes — had failed to protect them. She could see several overweight men — lawyers or lobbyists — making that point to the nearest police officers. Behind them, lines of police tape kept them from returning to their homes.
Jayne shivered as she took in the scene. Someone had been tossing explosives around, according to her source, and a number of cars and gardens had been wrecked by the detonations. There were bullet holes everywhere, suggesting that someone had been indiscriminate with their fire. It was sheer luck that no one had been hurt, apart from General Thomas and his wife. There had been no official announcement of his death, but Jayne couldn’t see how anyone could draw any other conclusion. He’d definitely been the target of the terrorist attack.
“Of course,” she said. “I’d hate to help terrorists escape a police force that failed to react in time to the reports.”
The officer’s face darkened, but he refused to rise to the bait. Jayne smiled to herself, although she had to admit that something was badly wrong. Shaking her head, she turned and left the officer to brief the next curious reporter, while she walked up to one of the men who were trying to pick a fight with the policemen. He was balding, almost certainly in his fifties, bristling with righteous indignation. His children, after all, had been in the house when the shit hit the fan and all hell broke loose. It was a point he was making to the policeman with more force than was actually necessary.
“And when,” he demanded, “can we return to our homes? We cannot stay out here until you boys have finished your investigations — I have to get back to work and the wife has to cook. I tell you…”
“Excuse me, sir,” Jayne said. She held up her BAN card. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about what happened here…”
“World War Three breaks out on our street and the police don’t send anyone to do anything about it,” the man said. “I’m telling you that I will not stand for it! My neighbours and I will launch a joint suit against the Washington PD for failing to protect us from drug-dealing terrorists who turn our street into their private battleground!”
“I’m sure you will receive very favourable mentions in the press, sir,” Jayne said. The lawyer didn’t recognise the sarcasm, or he chose to ignore it. “What actually happened, from wherever you were?”
The lawyer took a more careful look at her, allowed his eyes to drift over the tops of her breasts, and then decided to be more cooperative. “I was in the study, working on the brief for the case I have to present at court next week,” he said, in a slightly calmer voice. “The next thing I know; the computer’s failed and my notes are lost. The lights have gone out, so I thought it was a power cut, but the batteries refused to work too. I get to my feet and shout for Sofia — that’s my wife, you know — to see if she’s lost power too. The boys are screaming because their latest video game projector has failed, so I yell at them to shut up… and at that moment we hear gunshots.”
He looked down for a moment. “I yell at everyone to get away from the windows and get my cell phone out,” he continued. “The phone’s dead. I check the landline and its dead too; they’re all dead. I go climbing for the gun I keep stashed away, fearing that one of my enemies has come to extract revenge for putting him in jail, and yell at the family to get under cover. And then the shooting grows louder and there are explosions…