Critical Mass (18 page)

Logan said, “Your speechwriters—”

Fitz turned to his loyal chief of staff. Tried a smile. Didn’t work. “They can’t help me,” he said. “I’m alone now.”

As he left the room, he felt as if he carried a weight of stones. Polly came to him. “Daddy, we’re so proud of you.”

Anger suddenly came up in him, deep, raw, helpless. “Get out of Washington,” he rasped.

She stepped back, her face flushing, her dry lips opening with surprise.

He turned, took her in his arms. “You’re so young,” he said. “So very young.”

As he passed along the corridor, flanked by Marines in full battle dress, preceded by two and followed by three, he gave the order to release the communication that had been received from the so-called Mahdi. In five minutes, Fitz would speak. Now, however, on TV screens, on websites, read over the radio, slapped into newspaper extras, the words of the only man who had ever come close to conquering the world were seen for the first time.

And not one intelligence service anywhere on the planet knew his true identity.

Or no, that wasn’t quite true. One knew. It knew him well.

BLUE SKIES OF HELL

Ressman had successfully landed Jim in Piedras Negras. Jim had done what he
had to do there, then crossed the Rio Grande in some shallows and made his way to Kenneally’s little love nest. Jim had been watching the mobile home for an hour. From inside he could hear the president’s voice on the television, could catch a few words. It was seven twenty in the morning now, full light. He hung back in a grove of twisted mesquite trees, moving as little as possible in order to take advantage of the dark trunks as camouflage.

He knew the contents of the terrorist website. He’d heard it read on the car radio. Everybody on the planet, he assumed, was aware of it by now. Whether the president embraced Islam or not, Jim thought that Washington would be destroyed, probably at midnight tonight. He knew all too well how hard it was to prevent such an attack once the bomb was in place.

They would try to interdict this, of course—even now, Homeland Security operatives were doubtless moving through the city with radiation detectors, filling its streets and skies with surveillance mechanisms, watching every detail of desperate life as the place unraveled. God help Nabby. He could only hope she had made it to her dispersal point.

He moved closer to the double-wide. Thankfully, there were no children. He didn’t know if he could do this with children present. It was now
seven thirty. His target was moving about inside, so he was probably on an eight-to-four. He would leave in about ten minutes.

Carefully Jim pressed his ear against the wall of the trailer. A female voice, high, quick, full of sobs. Him then, lower, quieter, an edge of tension that suggested a possible vulnerability to Jim.

He went along the gray wall, staying below the line of the windows. He reached the screened back door, grasped the handle. He saw that the door was spring-loaded and would make a distinctive creaking sound as it was opened. There was no way to surprise them; they were going to know that he was coming in.

He took a breath, deep. He was going to have to face a gun. He was going to have to terrorize people and hurt them, maybe kill them. He thought of the towering cloud and the dead, and pulled the door open.

The moment the springs creaked, there came a challenging male voice: “Hey!”

Jim stepped in, finding himself in a kitchen—green linoleum, a countertop range crowded with four small burners, a narrow fridge. The window above the sink looked out on a black Tahoe. The room, the whole trailer, was thick with cigarette smoke. From the living room a parrot chattered above the droning, mournful voice of Anderson Cooper on CNN.

“Who are you?”

Jim smiled at Kenneally. “A ghost. That’s why you couldn’t kill me. Who’s your contact?”

“Get out.”

“No can do. Who paid you?”

The wife called out, “Arthur, who is that?”

Arthur Kenneally was big, hulking even. Like some big men, he could move quickly—too quickly. But Jim was also quick. He stepped past Arthur and into the living room, where a handsome woman of perhaps twenty-eight sat in the dark watching the television. She had a large cross in her hands.

He reached down and closed his fist around the lace collar of her nightgown and dragged her to her feet.

Her eyes widened; her body flopped, a fish dragged to the surface. She would scream, but not just yet. He swung her around and slammed her against the fake wood wall beside the door. The whole trailer shook; the wall snapped; she cried out.

“Who paid you, Arthur?”

“Freeze!” He pointed a pistol at Jim.

Foolish move. Jim needed a gun. He wheeled, putting Mrs. Arthur between himself and his adversary. “She can die; it’s okay by me.”

“Arthur!”

“Who paid him, love?” Jim threw her against Arthur, who stumbled back into the kitchen, his gun flailing.

It was a Colt .45, U.S. Army issue, heavy and hard to handle. Probably Arthur’s daddy’s gun. Customs and Borders weren’t issued weapons like this. Jim saw the two pounds of pistol shaking, its muzzle wobbly. Using a quick, accurate step, he raised his foot and connected with the man’s wrist. The pistol hopped, then flew from the man’s flopping hand.

With a crash, it slammed into the ceiling. Jim hurled Arthur’s woman into his face and caught the weapon as it fell. “New rules,” Jim said.

They lay in a heap, both now in shock, Arthur still believing that he was going to be able to control a situation that was far from his ability to handle.

Jim grabbed a fistful of collar and dragged Arthur to his feet. “Who paid you?”

“
What?
”

Carefully restraining himself, Jim pistol-whipped him.

Arthur slammed into the wall. In the living room, the parrot began screaming.

Now Jim got the woman to her knees. So pretty, the face tiny and delicate, the skin almost translucent.

He jammed the gun into her mouth, shoving hard enough to make her gag, jerking it so that there would be blood for Arthur to see. Then Jim pulled it out and threw her on top of Arthur. “Who paid you, Art?”

“Get out,” the woman shrieked, blood flying from her mouth. “Get out!”

Jim took her by the hair and dragged her into the living room. As Arthur came to his feet, Jim waved the gun at him. “I excite easily,” Jim said. “It’s a fault.” He pressed her face against the television. “Arthur did this. Las Vegas is burning and Arthur is personally responsible. Arthur will be executed, and if you don’t tell me everything you know right now, you’ll take a needle, too.”

Jim drew her away from the television and threw her onto the couch. When she hit, she cried out.

“I had nothing to do with this!”

“Don’t even try, Arthur.”

“But—what? What did I do?”

“Removed the ASPs from Bridge One. Who was out there in the
brasada
with you, Arthur? Who was in command?”

“Arthur, what is this? What is this man saying?”

“What I am saying is that your husband took out a major U.S. city, goddamn it! He killed a million people!”

“Arthur?”

“Shut up!”

Jim felt a fiery pain in his back, and realized that she had pulled a knob off a cabinet and gouged him with the screw in its base.

Roaring, Arthur pushed toward Jim. His aggression told Jim that he understood that something was wanted from him and therefore that the gun was only a prop.

Jim stepped aside with a dancer’s ease, and Arthur crashed into the kitchen table, bending its aluminum legs and causing it to slide to the floor.

Now the woman leaped on Jim’s back. He ducked forward, twisted his arms behind him until he could find purchase in her clothing, then hurled her forward and out into the living room, where she fell hard against the birdcage, releasing the terrified parrot, which flew out screaming, his green plumage gay in the clutter of the wrecked space. As he fluttered around and around the swaying ceiling light, his shadow made the walls dance and the woman screamed and screamed, cringing on the floor.

Arthur came back and found out that the gun was not quite a prop when it slammed into the side of his head, knocking him into the stove.

Jim leaped on Arthur and pinned him. “You tell me or I will turn on this burner in three seconds.” An otherworldly calm had descended on Jim, as it always did in these situations. Afterward, he knew, he would turn into a knotted mass of agony, his throat burning with acid, his guts sour with bile. But now, he was moving in his zone of balance.

He turned on the burner, which was under the back of Arthur’s neck. As Jim expected, the whole body lurched, the face turned purple, the eyes bulged, and spitting, orange flames came out around Arthur’s head, making him look for a moment like a crazed saint.

In Arthur’s howl Jim heard the tone of assent, and he turned off the burner. As Arthur chewed, his face bright with grimace, Jim drew well back. Arthur’s vomit was white froth. “Egg Beaters for breakfast,” Jim said. “Good idea. You oughtta stop smoking, too.”

Jim yanked Arthur up off the range. His burnt hair added a nauseating stench to the fetor that already filled the house. Now a new smell—piss. Arthur’s sphincter was releasing. “Now, Arthur, tell me.”

“It was an order!”

“From?”

“Channels. An ordinary order. And we’d gotten them before, when that system was first being deployed, and it turned out not to work.”

“The order is filed?”

His wife began screaming again. Jim turned toward her. “Shut up,” he said. She didn’t. “What’s her name, Arthur?”

“Gloria!”

“Gloria, if you don’t settle down, I have to kill Arthur.”

As Jim dragged Arthur back into the living room, she gobbled the next scream. Jim tossed the big man onto the couch, then picked Gloria up and threw her down beside him.

“Now, let’s all understand each other. I am here for two reasons. First, Arthur destroyed or disabled the advanced spectroscopic portal radiation monitors on Bridge One, which enabled Mr. Emilio Vasquez to smuggle at least one atomic bomb into this country, which was detonated at midnight over Las Vegas. And Arthur tried to kill me when I found out.” He smiled at Arthur. “So let’s see if we can get past that bullshit about you following orders. Unless somebody ordered you to come after me. Who might that have been?”

Gloria’s face contorted so much she took on the appearance, almost, of something not human. Jim was reminded of ancient busts of Medusa. It was terror so great it appeared as rage. He knew it, he’d seen it before, and it shamed him to know that he was responsible for such suffering—but not enough to make him stop.

“Tell him,” Gloria said.

“Shut up!”

“You tell me if you know, Gloria, and you’ll be spared the needle.”

Her eyes were furtive now, stopping at the door, stopping at the window. The parrot flew round and round, his cries as precise as a metronome.

She lifted a hand, as if to capture the bird. “He’ll fly into the window!”

Jim braced the pistol in her face. “Last night, Arthur burned sixty thousand or so children to death.” He had made up the number. “So you can understand why I don’t give a shit about the damn bird.”

“Don’t tell him anything,” Arthur snarled.

Jim put the muzzle of the gun against Arthur’s knee. “This will blow your leg in two.”

“I’ll go into shock.”

“She knows, Arthur. And I know she knows. So your life no longer matters.”

Arthur closed his eyes. “We had an ONI officer come down here. He met with me and we went over to Piedras Negras together and had dinner with Vasquez. That night, I was ordered to stand the bridge detail down for twenty-five minutes between four and five in the morning, which I did. I saw men in the river; then I heard noises under the structure. That was it.”

“The ONI officer showed a badge?”

“He sure did, and it checked out.”

“You did a GSA secure database run? You personally compared the officer to the photograph?”

“It was the same guy.”

“Name?”

“His name is Franklin Isbard Matthews. He’s in ONI security, works out of Washington.”

Probably a real person who had no idea that he was following orders generated by the enemy. In other words, a dead end, not even worth following.

The parrot flew past screaming and Jim reached up and caught the little green guy, and carefully returned him to its cage.

“God, you’re fast.”

“Fast,” Jim responded without interest. He pushed the gun into his belt. “Thanks for the piece.” He would not leave them bound. They were useless now, and nothing they could do would change anything.

As he left, though, he went along the side of the building until he found their phone line. He ripped it out and shattered the switch box with his heel. Then he stepped into the yard, backed up until he could see their satellite dish. He drew the gun from his waist, aimed it, and fired. This produced a deafening roar and the predictable hard kick. But he was practiced with many pistols, and he loved a .45 automatic, and one of the reasons was what happened on the roof, as the dish and its box of electronics shattered into dozens of pieces, accompanied by another scream from Gloria and the cries of grackles that rose from the mesquite trees surrounding the house.

He went to the Kenneallys’ car, opened the hood, and pulled off the distributor cap. Taking it with him, he faded back into the brush, moving as if he was angling toward the road their property fronted on. He passed mesquites and cacti, inhaling the dry air, faintly sweet with autumn rot, the smell of the ripe mesquite beans the grackles were eating.

When he was invisible from the house, he shifted direction, and headed for the actual location of his car, a little-used fence road two miles back on a neighboring ranch. On the way, he tossed the distributor cap aside.

When he got to his car, he opened the bottle of water he’d left on the seat and drank it down, then ate the power bar he’d bought after he’d crossed the river. His first stop had been Piedras Negras, where Mr. Vasquez and his entire family now lay dead in their house. Unpleasant task. Horrible, even. But Jim was past caring about small deaths.