Extinction Machine (31 page)

Church nodded.

“But every once in a while someone comes along with a product that is a radical jump,” continued Junie. “It’s so innovative that it’s freaky, and even if you take it apart and look at the science you can’t backtrack it to any kind of developmental process. It appears to be the result of an intuitive design leap.”

“Right,” I said. “So?”

“So, sometimes it’s only that. Someone has a dream about a new kind of widget and it’s nothing more than a true flash of intuition. However, the seven people on this list have done this time and again. They’re not doing it in ways that clearly build off each other’s research. The products are in totally different areas, as if they have agreed not to compete with one another. That’s not normal, and those design jumps definitely aren’t. An intuitive leap is really rare. It might make a fortune for a company, that’s happened plenty of times, but it’s usually going to be in a single area. Even if that kicks off a new avenue of design philosophy, it’s still a single line. The people on this list seem to be able to come up with patents for radical jumps in a lot of different areas of technology. Military and private sector stuff. Big jumps, where there’s no backtrack at all. Nothing.”

“Unless,” I said, feeding her the prompt she wanted.

“Unless he’s drawing on another source,” she confirmed.

“Like the Majestic Black Book?” said Church.

“Right. It’s more than just a catalog of parts. The Black Book has measurements, weights, schematics, information on material composition, stuff like that. It also has a complete list of the ACL.”

“Isn’t that a ligament in the knee?” I asked.

“Alien Code Language,” explained Bug. “Don’t you ever watch Nat Geo?”

“I watch the
Dog Whisperer,
” I added. Beside me, Ghost whuffed at the mention of that show. Cesar Millan was a god to him.

Junie smiled at me. “There are symbols on most of the T-craft and on all the parts recovered from crashes. They look like the pictograms you see on Egyptian tombs. A language based on images rather than letters or words.”

“All of that’s in the Black Book?” asked Rudy.

“Yes. That and a catalog of all the parts. Not just from Roswell, but from every crash. There have been a number of them. Kecksburg, Tunguska, Rendlesham, other places. Some estimates say that there have been as many as sixty crashes, some of them centuries ago, maybe longer than that.”

Bug said, “I heard there was a black market for stuff from crashes.”

Hu made a face of complete contempt.

“There is,” said Junie. “My source said that occasionally the governor of Acquisitions would bring in a brand-new piece, something obtained from unnamed sources. My source believed that M3 was purchasing or bartering these D-type components.”

“If this crap really existed,” said Hu belligerently, “why the hell would anyone ever part with any of it? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Two hammers,” said Junie.

“What?”

“If you have two hammers and no saw, wouldn’t you consider trading with someone else who had a saw?”

Hu glared at her, but he didn’t attack the logic. It was too sound. He sulked instead.

There was a brief pause as we all considered this.

Church said, “Could you put these seven names in order of most likely, by your estimation?”

“No. I keep rearranging that list, but I really don’t have it locked down other than I think they’re all involved in some way. Some of them are old enough to have been governors who have since stepped down.”

“David Robinette is pretty young,” said Hu. “I’ve seen him at trade shows. He’s not even thirty-five. And he’s no scientist.”

“He’s one of my votes of the current governor of Acquisitions.” She shrugged. “He’s a wildcard, but his family has long-standing ties to Defense Department contracts, and he goes missing for long periods of time. No one knows where.”

“You think he’s on buying trips?” I asked.

She nodded.

“One more thing,” said Church, and he hit the key to bring up the picture taken by the helicopter early this morning. “What can you tell me about this image?”

Junie didn’t even blink. “It’s a crop circle—though it looks like it’s on a lawn somewhere.”

“Do you recognize the pattern?”

“Of course. It’s the pi crop circle, like the one that appeared in a field in Wroughton, Wiltshire, England, in June 2008. But this isn’t that one. Where was this taken?”

“This appeared on the White House lawn at approximately the same time the president disappeared.”

Junie stared at him. She was surprised, but not totally shocked.

“There seem to be a lot of theories as to what crop circles are,” said Church, “including strong evidence that many of them are faked.”

“Sure. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley have made a bunch of the ones in England. There are companies that pay to have them made with their logos as advertising gimmicks. There have been over ten thousand of them since the early seventies. All over the world, too, and probably eighty or ninety percent of them are faked.”

“Not all?” asked Rudy.

“You tell me,” she challenged. “Did a couple of pranksters put that one on the White House lawn?”

No one answered that.

“What are they?” Rudy asked.

“No one knows for sure, but when you see something like this one, I think that the point is pretty clear.”

“Tell us,” encouraged Church.

“Communication,” said Junie. “Pi is a universal constant. Pi is math, and math is immutable. It will be the same here as it will be across the galaxy. Ten plus ten equals twenty no matter where you are. Same goes for, say, geometry? A circle is always a circle and its circumference is always calculated the same way no matter where you are. The same holds true for any other geometric figure like triangles, squares, or rectangles.” Her eyes shifted to Hu. “Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

Hu grunted something unintelligible.

Church nodded and gave Junie a pleasant smile. “Thank you. Bug, do you have enough to begin a comprehensive pattern search on the names Ms. Flynn provided?”

“More than enough.”

“I’ve run those kinds of searches,” said Junie. “Hundreds of them, with all kinds of software, but I hit too many walls, and there are simply so many variables.”

Bug laughed. So did I.

She looked from him to me. “What?”

“We have a pretty spiffy computer,” I said.

“I’ve used university networked supercomputers and—”

“And we have a pretty spiffy computer,” I repeated.

She stared at me, her eyes imploring me to explain but she didn’t ask. She understood that I couldn’t. After a few moments she nodded, then turned to Church.

“Mr. Church,” she said, “this—all of this—is really about stopping a disaster? About saving the country?”

“Our country, England, and a good part of Africa.”

“And you believe that if you get the Black Book you’ll really be able to do that?”

“It’s our hope and belief, yes.”

She sat there, chewing on her lip, fingers twisting nervously in her lap, clearing agonizing over a very difficult decision.

“Maybe…,” she began hesitantly, “Maybe there’s an easier way…”

Mr. Church opened his mouth to ask what she meant.

Suddenly the MindReader screen went blank and then dissolved into the static of white noise.

“Ah, crap,” I said, reaching for the controls.

“What’s wrong?” asked Junie.

“Looks like we lost the satellite connection. Damn it.” I tapped my earbud. “Bug, I need a new—”

There was static in my ear, too.

“Joe?” asked Junie, a note of doubt creeping into her voice.

I pulled my cell.

The display told me that there was no service.

Junie looked down at the screen and then up at me. “Joe, what’s going on?” Doubt was turning into the first faint traces of alarm.

Before I could say anything there was a knock on the door.

“Must be my guys,” I said, rising and crossing the living room to reach for the knob. “Radio must be out on the Black Hawk, too.”

But as I turned the knob I heard Ghost begin to growl. I told him to be quiet as I pulled the door open.

Two men stood there.

Big men. Strangers.

Both of them were dressed in black.

Both of them were pointing guns.

Chapter Fifty-five

The Warehouse
Baltimore, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 10:37 a.m.

Mr. Church sat in Joe Ledger’s leather chair and stared at the blank square of screen that moments before had held the image of Joe Ledger and Junie Flynn. Now all it showed was static.

“Bug?” he snapped.

“Working on it.”

“Work faster.”

Rudy Sanchez sat on the other side of Joe Ledger’s desk, fists balled in his lap.

Dr. Hu smiled down from the wall-mounted plasma screen. “Ledger probably spilled his coffee on the keyboard,” he suggested.

“Stop being a child,” said Rudy, and it shut Hu up as surely as a slap across the face.

In the lower corner of the big screen was the digital clock that Church had started after receiving the second video.

4316:12

4316:11

4316:10

“Bug,” he said again.

“This is weird, boss. We got a total communications dead zone that extends in a perfect circle around the lighthouse.”

Hu looked suddenly interested. “A jammer?”

“A mother of a jammer. It’s even killing the satellite uplink.”

Rudy frowned. “I thought Joe once told me that a jammer couldn’t do that.”

“It can’t,” said Hu. “C’mon, Bug, you’re reading it wrong.”

Bug flashed information onto the screens from half a dozen sources, including a Defense Department satellite and two general communications satellites. “Yeah? Then you show me how to read it right.”

Hu stared at the data. So did Church and Rudy.

Church snatched up his cell phone and hit a speed dial. “Gus. I want Echo Team wheels up for Turkey Point Lighthouse right now. Make it happen. Captain Ledger is in trouble.”

4315:55

4315:54

Chapter Fifty-six

Turkey Point Lighthouse, Elk Neck State Park
Cecil County, Maryland
Sunday, October 20, 10:38 a.m.

“Oh God,” cried Junie.

“Get inside,” said the taller of the two men.

There was a black SUV parked on the lawn halfway between Junie’s front door and the helicopter. A third man stood by the car. There was no movement at all from the chopper, and that did not make me feel good. Hector and the others should have signaled me. They should be out in the field and up in the faces of these three goons.

They weren’t. The chopper sat there as silent and cold as a dead bug.

Junie touched my shoulder from behind and whispered, “Joe…”

Behind me, Ghost continue to utter a low growl of obvious intent.

One of the two men in the doorway shifted his pistol from my heart to Ghost’s head. The other one looked me in the eye. The gun he held was not an automatic. It was square and clunky, with four curved contacts at the business end. A microwave pulse pistol, an MPP. It was a scary-looking piece of hardware and it was pointed at my dog.

“You call the play,” said the man.

I half turned. “Ghost, ease down.”

Ghost stopped growling and sat. The man turned the MPP away from Ghost and pointed it at me, and the man who’d spoken gave me a nod, pleased that I’d made the sensible choice.

We’d see about that. “Ease down,” in the private and coded language I’d created when I trained Ghost, did not mean what these guys apparently thought it meant. Misunderstandings can be very useful.

“Get inside,” the man said again. He was the leader of this team. Unlike the clown act that had attacked me on the street in Baltimore, these guys were younger, tougher looking, and dressed in black battle-dress uniforms. No insignia of any kind. No rank. Everything was black, and their trousers were neatly bloused into black boots. They wore gun belts with extra magazines. They had white wires curling behind their ears and small wire mikes hovering at the corners of their mouths. The leader was a light-skinned black man, the guy behind him was white. They both wore identical mirrored sunglasses, right out of every cheap 1970s highway cop flick you ever saw. Neither of them was smiling. Mr. Black raised his barrel from my heart to my head, the four metal contacts were aimed right between my eyes.

Despite the exotic guns, the rational part of my mind wanted me to believe that these were a couple of working stiffs from the FBI or NSA and that we’d get this all sorted out as soon as we swapped IDs, and then we’d all laugh about it over tea.

The rational part of my mind was sometimes a fucking idiot.

The rest of me knew who and what these guys were, even if I hesitated using the word.

Closers.

Jesus.

I backed up with my arms wide to shield Junie but also guide her backward. Ghost rose and backed up, too, as the Closers herded us inside.

When we were all inside, Mr. Black looked past me. “Are you Miss June Cassandra Flynn?”

“I—” she began, but I cut in.

“Hey, let’s dial this down, fellows. I’m a federal agent. Please identify yourself and your reason for being here.” I pitched it in my best officer’s voice. Flat and authoritative.

Mr. Black and Mr. White turned their mirrored glasses toward me for a microsecond.

“Shut up,” said Mr. White.

“Look, chief, I think there’s been a big misunderstanding here,” I said, still keeping it in neutral. “If this is a jurisdictional thing, then we can get it straightened out. Who cut your orders for this pickup?”

“Raise your hands and do not interfere,” said Mr. Black.

“I can show you my identification,” I said. “NSA. We’re on the same—”

Mr. Black lashed out with the barrel of his pistol and slammed me across the face. A line of heat exploded along my cheek and the force spun me around and dropped me to one knee. Ghost barked and started to go for the man, but even with my eggs scrambled I knew that they’d kill my dog and then me. Which would leave Junie alone and probably the target of the next Shot. I lunged sideways and hooked my arm around Ghost’s throat.