Predator One (57 page)

The president looked reluctant, but he nodded. “Honey,” he said into the mouthpiece, “I need to call you back. No … no, listen to me. I will call you back.
Just trust me. We have the best people in the world working on this. It’s all going to be fine.”

He ended the call and handed the phone to Brierly.

“Did I just lie to my wife? Is this going to work out?”

“I’m sure it will,” said Brierly, because lying was the only thing they could all do right now.

He hurried back to Church and gave him the phone.

“Thanks,” said Church and immediately punched
a number and waited through five rings before it was answered. Brierly was close enough to hear the voice on the other end. Small, lost, filled with pain.

“Y-yes?”

“Bug,” said Mr. Church, “I need your help.”

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-four

UC San Diego Medical Center

200 West Arbor Drive

San Diego, California

April 1, 3:47
P.M.

Lydia dove behind the nurses’ station as the Kingsmen opened fire. Heavy-caliber bullets chased her and tore the counter to matchwood. Lydia hit, rolled, kicked herself around, and reached around the end of the counter with her gun hand. Blind firing was usually
a waste of bullets, but the hallway was packed with killers. Even behind the wave of gunfire, she heard screams.

And then she heard more guns open up, and for a wild moment she thought she was caught in a hopeless crossfire. But the sound signature was wrong. The Kingsmen all had AK-47s, and the new shots were Heckler & Koch CQBR carbines firing NATO rounds. She turned to see Montana Parker crouched
in a doorway, her rifle snugged into her shoulder. Two other DMS agents were running up the hall, firing as they came.

The three Kingsmen at the forefront of the charge staggered and collapsed, blood flying front and back from through-and-through wounds. But more of the killers kept pouring from the stairwell.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-five

Tanglewood Island

Pierce County, Washington

April 1, 3:51
P.M.

Ghost and I moved through a silent building. I knew there were people here, but it didn’t feel like it. The place had a dead vibe to it that was hard to describe. There was a wrongness to it that went beyond even the evil of the Seven Kings, and yet I didn’t feel the kind of malevolent vitality
I expected.

The halls were lined with dark wood that was polished to such a high shine it looked like a museum display. The carpets underfoot appeared to have never felt a footfall. We knew there were people in this hotel but somehow the place had a disused quality. Or, maybe it was soulless. That’s how it felt.

The hall was lined with doors. None of them had a fancy lock or anything requiring
a security keycard. Most were unlocked, and when I checked I found evidence of occupancy. Men’s clothing, mostly. Many pairs of black BDUs and rubber-soled shoes. Weapons and extra ammunition. Porn magazines. Books of all kinds. Laptops. Nothing that looked like a room where a short computer genius might have been held. I plugged uplinks into the USB ports of each laptop I found, hoping that none
of them were of the quantum variety. I doubt I could tell the difference.

I exited the next-to-last room along that hall. My knife was back in its pocket, and I had a fresh magazine in the silenced Sig Sauer. The door to the very next room down the hall opened, and I instantly ducked back inside as a woman dressed as a maid emerged pushing a small cart laden with towels. She began moving off,
then stopped and looked my way. She couldn’t see Ghost or me, but she frowned as she looked at the runner carpet. I didn’t have to look to know what she was seeing. Footprints. Wet and new.

What she did next was going to determine her future. If she was an ordinary maid and decided to turn and run for help, I’d catch her and juice her with horsey. If she wasn’t an ordinary maid, then she wasn’t
going to have a future.

Still frowning, she crept down the hall, and as she did so she reached under the sweater she wore over her maid’s costume and pulled a Glock 26.

I stepped out of hiding and shot her through the heart and the forehead.

Bad guys come in all shapes and sizes, and sexes.

I hooked an arm under her and caught her as she fell. There was no time to hide her body, so I laid
her down on the carpet. I tucked her gun into the back of my belt, clicked my tongue for Ghost, and ran up the hall. I paused to peer into the room she’d just left. It was empty, but I knew as soon as I stepped inside that I’d struck gold.

There was a pile of clothes on the floor that looked way too small to belong to one of the Blue Diamond thugs and a pair of shoes that couldn’t have been larger
than a seven.

“Ghost,” I said, “watch.”

He went back into the hallway.

I tore through the room. I wanted to find a computer, but there was nothing. No electronics. Not even a Gameboy.

Fair enough. Once Davidovich had bugged out, they would have taken his computers to see if he’d left anything useful on them. Would they do the same for his notebooks?

I cut over to the desk and saw that it
was piled high with papers of all kinds. Reams of computer printouts, scores of file folders, three-ring binders, and loose pages torn from yellow legal pads. Nothing that I could see screamed “Hey, this is what you’re looking for!”

Until it did.

Sitting on one corner of the desk was a stack of spiral-bound notebooks with cheap cardboard covers. The kind they sell for a buck at Staples. There
were maybe forty of them bundled together in sets that were bound with oversize rubber bands. Either Davidovich had stacked them haphazardly or someone had already gone through them. I tended to believe the latter. Davidovich had many flaws, but sloppiness was not one of them.

I set my gun down and picked up one of the books, flipped it open. On the inside cover I saw a handwritten name. Not
Aaron Davidovich’s own name. It was Matthew. His son’s name. Written over and over again. In pencil, in felt-tip marker, in three different colors of ballpoint. Hundreds of times. The pages were filled with computer code. Meticulously written in pencil in a small, crabbed hand. Flipping through, I saw that the book was completely filled. Almost. There were a few blank pages, maybe to separate one
program from another, or one set of functions. Something like that. I’m talented with spoken languages, but computer speak isn’t even Greek to me. I can speak and even write Greek. This was an alien language. What had Davidovich said?

They’re still on the island in my notebooks, hidden in a piece of old game code that I stopped working on. It looks like junk unless you know the key to using it.

Then he’d rambled on and on, losing his shit in the midst of panic. I picked through my memory everything he said. Every detail, fishing for something useful. He’d said something … something … I closed my eyes and willed my brain to replay the conversation.

Pi from nine,
he’d said. There was more and I had to claw for it. I mouthed the words I remembered, and as I spoke them aloud they congealed
into something that maybe sense. A kind of sense.

“Pi from nine, backwards,” I murmured. “Page two.”

That’s what Davidovich said.

I opened the notebook to page two, but it was merely the middle of a code string that began on the previous page. I tossed it down and began going through the others and very quickly discovered that I was totally out of my depth. None of it looked right to me. The
only thing that I could understand was the name Matthew. Davidovich had spent a lot of time writing his son’s name on the inside covers of his notebooks. Why? Obsession? Regret? Who knows.

So I took a risk to break radio silence and tapped my earbud to get Yoda on the line. In the absence of Bug, Yoda was the software genius of the DMS. His real name, by the way, is Yoda. He has a sister named
Leia. His parents could use some therapy.

“Mmmm, what have you got, Cowboy?”

“I think I found Doctor Detroit’s notebooks, but there are a lot of them and I don’t have time to exfil with them.” I tapped the camera on my Scout glasses so Yoda could see what I saw. “He said it was game code on page two.”

I could hear Yoda take a breath. “Okay,” he said, “start with the, ummm, first one.”

The
clock kept ticking.

Ticking.

Ticking.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-six

UC San Diego Medical Center

200 West Arbor Drive

San Diego, California

April 1, 3:51
P.M.

“Is that thunder?”

Rudy Sanchez and the infectious-disease specialist looked up from the NF reports they had been discussing. Above them, the building seemed to tremble.

The doctor had asked the question, but he was frowning.

“No,” said Rudy.

“It sounds more
like fireworks,” said a nurse who was on the other side of the room taking updates from the printer.

Rudy murmured, “
Ay Dios m
í
o
. That’s not fireworks. Doctor, call the police. Do it right now.”

He reached for the silver handle of his cane and pushed himself up. Rudy tapped the earbud Lydia required him to wear. He tapped it to bring her online, but there was no answer. He tried Sam. Montana.

No one answered his call.

He tried Church. Nothing.

Finally, he contacted the DMS headquarters at the Hangar on Floyd Bennett Field. The duty officer answered at once.

“This is Doctor Rudy Sanchez—”

“Combat call signs only on this line—”

“To hell with that. I am at UC San Diego Medical Center. Send immediate help. We are under attack.”

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-seven

Tanglewood Island

Pierce County, Washington

April 1, 3:52
P.M.

Doctor Pharos felt his phone vibrate, and when he looked at the display, he smiled.

“Boy,” he said into the phone, “I was waiting for your call.”

“Father,” she said, “it’s started.”

“Ah. Excellent.”

“And … Father?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“After this, I get to come home?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“No, honey, thank
you
.”

The line went dead. Pharos slipped the phone back into his pocket and glanced at the burned man, who in turn was watching the news coverage coming out of San Francisco.

“So beautiful,” said the Gentleman. “So beautiful.”

Pharos said nothing. Instead, he stood and walked without haste to the door. This was all accelerating now. He had to make sure
that the twelve separate escape routes he’d arranged were all prepped and ready. Once he had the codes from the burned man, he was going to be out of there like a bullet leaving a gun.

And if those codes were never to be his…?

So sad.

But his feelings were soothed by all of that gold.

He was smiling as he left the dying man’s room.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-eight

Fort Myers, Florida

April 1, 12:53
P.M.
Eastern Standard Time

Bug sat in his hotel room. His clothes were draped over the edges of his suitcase, empty sleeves reaching like dead arms, head collars collapsed in defeat. A pizza box stood open, one slice missing, the cheese cold and congealed. More than a dozen cans of Coke stood on the night table or lay
on the floor. The TV was on, and news footage of the horrors in San Francisco was like something from a summer disaster movie. A box of tissues was within reach on the small dining table. Dozens of crumpled tissues overflowed the metal trash can.

Bug listened to what Mr. Church was telling him, and as he did so he could feel the malaise in his mind and the grief in his heart fusing into a wall
of indifference. He didn’t care about the president, the ballpark, the bridge, the submarine, or any of it. He wasn’t even sure he cared about Mr. Church. He certainly didn’t give a shit about the president or anyone on Air Force One. None of it was quite real.

Only one thing was real to him, and it was going to be buried in a closed coffin. He wasn’t even sure all of her would be in there. The
blast had torn her to pieces.

Pieces.

The thought was too horrible to fit into his head.

His mother had been torn to pieces. Bloody chunks. Broken bits of bone. Burned blood.

That face, the one that was always filled with smiles. The first thing he had ever seen in this world. Those eyes, brimming with laughter and love. That heart. That noble and loving heart. The hands that had bathed him.
The laugh that could burn away the darkest shadows. The mind that held a fierce intellect and a generous nature. The personality.

Gone.

All of it blown to pieces by a bomb.

All of it gone.

All of her gone.

Gathered up in bits and put into a bag so it could be buried in a box.

So sorry, the police and the doctors and all his friends had said. So sorry.

Now the world itself was being blown
to bits, and that seemed only right. It should all blow up, all fall down, all go into the cold, cold ground.

Like Mom.

Like her.

Like his own heart, which was so badly broken that Bug knew it could never be fixed. Some things can’t be fixed. Some things had no reset button.

“Bug,” said the voice on the phone.

“I can’t,” Bug told him.

“Please.”

“Get someone else. Get Yoda.”

“Yoda isn’t
up to this,” said Mr. Church.

“
I’m
not up to this.”

“Bug…”

“It’s not fair!” Bug suddenly screamed into the phone.

After a long moment, Mr. Church said, “No, it’s not. They took your mother away from you, Bug. They’re trying to take my daughter away from me. They may have killed Aunt Sallie, and they will kill me.”