A Better World (39 page)

“You lost him?”

“For a while, then picked him up in a bank, lost him again, got him robbing a gas station.”

“Seriously?” That was way out of character with the pattern he’d built. “I thought he was a geek. He turned criminal?”

“Yeah, well.” There was a note of embarrassment in his friend’s voice. “I took a risky play, called him at the bank and tried to talk him in. He panicked.”

“Where was the gas station?”

“Place called Cuyahoga Falls, outside of Akron.”

Cooper laughed. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. Why?”

“Guess where I’m calling from?”

“No shit? Huh.”

“What does ‘huh’ mean?”

“Well, our boy Ethan is smart. He took the gas station attendant’s truck, but he didn’t try to run. Laid low instead. It took some time to scan satellite feeds, but we found him. He’s in a cabin not far from there. I was just about to send cops in to pick him up.”

“Local PD? No way. Bobby, we can’t lose him. If some rookie sees he’s got a gun and takes a shot—”

“Yeah, I know, but I got no choice, Coop. I have no resources, none. Have you turned on a tri-d? Everything is focused on Wyoming. Right now, I couldn’t order a pizza.”

“So sit on him. You’ve got him tagged; he can’t go anywhere.”

“That was the plan, until your playmate turned up in Ohio.”

“My playmate?”

“Soren Johansen. You remember, asshole with a knife?”

“
Soren?
He’s here? How do you know?”

“I know because I pulled every favor I’m owed to implement a nationwide random camera scan. Nobody kills my partner and walks away, I don’t care if World War III
is
about to start. With everything as it is right now, I could only get public safety cameras, you know, government institutions, airports—”

“Airports?”

Quinn read his tone. “Where exactly—you said you were in Akron. Are you at Fulton International?”

“Couldn’t get into Cleveland with the city shut down, so I came here.”

There was a long pause. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but so did Soren.”

Cooper felt a tightening in his chest, a weird and sudden pressure. His heart seemed to stick, a beat and then nothing, like a burp that wouldn’t come. An animal panic flooded him, fingers tingling, and then his heart jumped again, the beats coming, fast now. His vision went a little wobbly, and he leaned against the back of the pilot’s seat.

“Coop? You okay?”

It wasn’t fear, although that was there as well. It was something mechanical, like his heart had lost its rhythm.
I guess a patched tire isn’t as strong as an undamaged one.
He took a breath, concentrated on smoothing out the beats. “I’m fine. Listen, if he’s here, it’s for Ethan.”

“No kidding. That’s why I’ve got no choice but to send the cops.”

Cooper considered it. Why not let the police help? Surely he didn’t have to save the world single-handedly. Especially now.

Then he remembered the scene in the restaurant. The ease with which Soren had murdered Epstein’s highly trained guards. Add to it a scared father with a gun, a man who had no idea about the forces swirling around him. Stir in a handful of suburban cops thrilled to have a little excitement. It would be a disaster.

“Don’t send the cops, Bobby. There’s another option.”

The car was a Porsche 911, one of the new models that on a government salary he’d never even allowed himself to look at. A rear-mounted, turbocharged engine capable of zero to sixty miles per hour in 2.9 seconds, set in a candy-apple red body that screamed sex.

Looks like Epstein took you seriously about needing it to be fast.

Bobby had taken convincing, but in the end, he’d agreed to give Cooper the address of the cabin where Ethan and his family were hiding, as well as a thirty-minute head start on the police. But Soren had a head start too.

Cooper got in the car, fired it up, and was about to blast off when he realized that with his hand in the shape it was, he couldn’t use the stick shift. He pushed in the clutch, pinned the wheel with his right wrist, and then leaned across to shift with his left hand. A wave of exhaustion and frustration washed over him.

What are you doing?

Sitting in the hallway of Epstein’s clinic, he’d heard the truth behind Natalie’s words, good and bad. The truth was that as much as he loved his children, as much as he felt he should be sleeping in the chair next to Todd’s hospital bed, he was too much of the soldier to believe that made sense. It was romantic to believe that he would go ten rounds with the Grim Reaper for Todd’s life, but the truth was that sitting there would have been useless. The world was about to be at war, bombs were about rain on New Canaan, and he had a chance to stop it. So, yeah, better to go.

But the plan had been to find Ethan Park. To use his mind and his gift to track down a scientist and convince him to share what he knew. Not to go into combat. Not to face John Smith’s best friend and best killer.

With every beat of his heart, pain coursed through Cooper, a throb that started in his chest, echoed in his hand, and grated through his head. His vision was a little jumpy—not blurry, but
lagging half a frame behind. As he skipped second gear and jump-shifted into third, he remembered the fight in the restaurant. The terrible economy of Soren’s movements, the way he danced around every blow like it hadn’t even been thrown.

For the first time in a long time, Cooper felt real fear. Not nerves or tension or concern. Not panic at an unexpected moment or terror for the safety of those he loved.

The idea of facing Soren again scared him.

And yet, what choice did he have? If Soren got to Ethan first, any hope of the war being averted was doomed. The military would attack New Canaan. The fragile dream would be destroyed, along with tens of thousands of its young dreamers. And after that, America would be over. At least the America he loved.

Not to mention the fact that Natalie and your children are dead-center of the crosshairs.

Once again, it came down to everything. Just as it had in DC months ago, when Peters had kidnapped his family. Once again, Cooper’s whole life lay on the table as fate’s roulette wheel clattered and spun. Only this time, he could barely—

Enough.

Win here, or lose everything.

Let’s see what you’ve got, soldier.

CHAPTER 39

As far back as she could remember, Holly Roge had wanted to fly.

Dad had been part of it, a navy man, a pilot who parked jets on moving aircraft carriers. When other little girls had been lulled to sleep with tales of princesses and unicorns, Dad had lain beside her in the dark and told her what it was like to scream in low and steep, dark water below, a tiny target ahead. How precise the angle had to be to catch the landing cable, how if you screwed up you could slide right off, bounce out into the ocean.

“Was it scary?” she’d asked, always.

And always he’d say, “Sure. But in the good way.”

And after he had kissed her forehead and told her to have beautiful dreams, she’d lie awake staring at her ceiling, wondering what that meant, scary in the good way.

Now, suited up and sitting in the ready room at Ellsworth Air Force Base just east of the Wyoming border, she wondered what Dad would think of all of this. He’d died while she was still at the academy, an aneurysm that took him in his easy chair, fast as a missile with hard lock. He’d never seen her earn her wings, never known that she made top of her class. Never known that she’d been the first woman selected to fly an F-27 Wyvern, that gorgeous piece of $185 million equipment, her second true love. Sixty-seven feet and sixty-five thousand pounds of high-performance glory, capable of soaring eighteen miles high, of after-burner blasting at Mach 2.9, twenty-two hundred magnificent miles an hour. A machine so sophisticated that the computer in the helmet read
her brain’s alpha waves, allowing her to control the gauges and secondary systems just by thinking in coded patterns.

A fighter jet that she had been flying over American soil, buzzing low over a city of her own countrymen, carrying a full load of ordnance.

That was the part she didn’t dig, and she didn’t think Dad would have either. She was a warrior, had flown peacekeeping missions all over the world, been selected to fly in the honor guard for Air Force One on President Walker’s trip to India. Her job was to protect America, not threaten it. And no matter what you thought about the abnorms, last she’d heard, Wyoming was still part of the fifty.

The fact that today’s briefing was being given not by Major Barnes, as usual, but by the big dog himself, Lieutenant Colonel Riggs, didn’t make her feel any better about the situation.

“—continued state of high alert. Now, you all know that the Holdfast has antiaircraft batteries.” Riggs paused, a slight smile on his lips as twenty pilots chuckled. “And though it’s true that they would be particularly dangerous to MiG-19s”—more laughter—“that doesn’t mean I want any of you getting careless. Everything by the numbers, people. I want all of my pilots back without a scratch. You’ll be carrying . . .”

Holly knew the load, the same she’d flown the last sorties with. Military life, though, never double-check when you could quadruple-check.

It had to be posturing, she figured. A message to the Children of Darwin and all the other terrorists out there. Sure, you may be able to take out a few trucks, but can you do
this
? There hadn’t been a declared war since Korea, which meant that most of the time, military assets were more about communication than they were about offense. A way for the politicians to talk to one another, play their games of high-stakes poker.

Thing was, who were they talking to here? The Holdfast was a bunch of kids living in the desert, pretending it was a new world
instead of a bunch of rocks. Fine with her, so why the full load? Each Wyvern carried enough ordnance to wipe out half of Tesla. Flying a full wing of them over the scrub town was like bringing an A-bomb to a backyard brawl.

“Any questions?”

Holly looked around. Wanted to raise her hand and ask,
Sir, respectfully, what the hell are we doing here?
She wouldn’t, of course, but maybe someone would. The nineteen other pilots in this room were among the best in the world, and that came with a hot-shot sense of entitlement.

If it had been Major Barnes giving the briefing, maybe one of them would have. But the vice chief of the air wing was another matter. They all sat ramrod straight and steely-eyed, ready to snap salutes and mount up.

It was only ten minutes later, as the cockpit windscreen closed and her HUD glowed to life, that it occurred to Captain Holly Roge to wonder if that was exactly why it had been Riggs giving the briefing.

CHAPTER 40

Soren drifted.

He couldn’t try for nothingness, not in a moving Escalade with the radio news in the background, announcers practically selling war bonds; not with three strangers checking their weapons and talking in rough voices. Nothingness would have to wait. For now, he simply leaned back in the seat and let his eyes go soft. Let the world wash over him, past him, a leaf on a river swept away in the current.

He understood John’s decision to send Bryan VanMeter along. The situation was fluid, and if Ethan Park had moved, they would need to hunt him. Better to have a team that could talk to people, could persuade and bribe and convince, things Soren could not do. Still, he felt the presence of the three soldiers, the testosterone charge and rough competence grating at him, making the moments longer.

You need to go back into exile. All this noise. You’re losing your nothingness.

Soon. John would have his war. The grand cause and glorious battle meant nothing to Soren, but he hoped that his friend was happy for it.

For himself, he hoped only that Samantha would come with him. There hadn’t been time to say good-bye, the kind of irony that had never amused him. The flight here had been on a military jet, as fast an option as existed, but with his time sense, he had
perceived it as more than thirty hours long. A day and a half on a plane, and yet no time to see his love.

You are a leaf, and the current will carry you away.

VanMeter briefed his team, and Soren tried to ignore it.

“Cuyahoga Valley National Park . . .”

“No neighbors in sight, but . . .”

“Tactical advance, two front, one rear . . .”

Out the window, faded pines scraped at a gray sky. The wind stirred dead leaves. The knife was so light that he had to concentrate to feel it, a good meditative exercise. Be the muscles of your chest, be the skin against your shirt. He wondered how Nick Cooper had survived. Remembered the look in the man’s eyes as Soren’s elbow met his son’s temple, the raw agony in it, as damaging a blow as piercing his heart had been. Idly, he wondered what it would be like to have a child, to have created life. If that would be the thing that brought meaning to the endlessness, or if it would only make things worse.

“Okay,” the one called Donovan said, “but why all the trouble? He’s an egghead. Let’s just roll up, do the thing, get out.”