Kill Switch (42 page)

“What?” I cried, nearly leaping over the desk at him.

“It's not much, but it's something I caught wind of ten, twelve years ago. I was working an industrial espionage case that involved one of the tangential players from Gateway.”

“Our case,” I corrected, and he winced.

“Okay. Our case. The espionage thing involved Oscar Bell, who used to be married to Marcus Erskine's sister. Bell's files had been hacked and I recovered them because he was working on several important defense contracts. I, ah, may have
peeked
into Bell's private files.”

“Naughty, naughty.”

“I know,” he said with a straight face, “I'm so ashamed.”

“And—?”

“And that's where I first saw mention of the God Machine. Bug probably told you that it was a bit of weird science cooked up by Bell's son, Prospero. Brilliant kid, incredible IQ, but quite mad, I'm afraid. Died in a fire, I understand. Anyway, from what little I read, the God Machine was designed to facilitate interdimensional travel. And I'm pretty damn sure that's what Erskine was building down there. I think that's what you and your team saw. And,” he said, “I'm equally sure that's why Erskine called his project ‘Gateway.'”

 

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

THE PIER

DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 8, 8:22
P.M.

“Interdimensional travel?” I asked. “Okay, we're now having a conversation in which interdimensional travel is a thing. Sure. Why not? My day hasn't been nearly weird enough. But seriously … why? What's the appeal, I mean in terms of Washington bean counters and Defense Department paranoids?”

Bolton shrugged. “It was sold to the government as a source of cheap, renewable energy and endless raw materials.”

“How so?”

He launched into an explanation of the omniverse theory and how, if such a theory could be proved, it might mean that there are an infinite number of worlds like ours which could be mined for fossil fuels, minerals, clean water, and so on.

“And you believe this?” I asked, smiling.

“I didn't used to,” he said, “but then I read your after-action report. Something weird happened down there. Something very weird that you and your team—three intelligent, experienced agents and trained observers—could not explain. Something our current science can't explain. And we know for a fact that Bell and Erskine were tied to a project to explore this. Someone in government believed in it enough to fund it. So … sure, I'm keeping an open mind.” He paused. “That said, if such a technology exists and infinite worlds do, in fact, exist, this whole process is in its absolute infancy. There is no chance in hell they are going to get it right without a lot of things going badly wrong. The fact that the Russian, Chinese, and American stations down in Antarctica all went dark at the same time is suggestive. Maybe they opened a doorway and something bad came out.”

“Something like what?”

His eyes drilled into me. “You said you saw something that looked like a giant monster. Maybe what you saw was some kind of animal. Something from one of those other worlds.”

I said nothing.

“And consider this,” Bolton added. “You were exposed to a strain of the Spanish flu that is unknown to science. Unknown to
our
science. I asked Dr. Hu about that and floated the theory that this could have been a virus from an adjacent dimension.”

“How'd he take it?”

Bolton laughed. “He threw me out of his lab.”

“Yeah.”

“He's a dick,” said Bolton.

“He is.” I loved it that Harcourt Bolton despised the same cretinous jackass that I did. Made me feel special.

“Tell me, Joe,” he said, amusement twinkling in his eyes, “are you buying anything I'm saying? Does this give us a working theory?”

“My considered opinion,” I admitted, “is that it beats the shit out of me.”

He blew out his cheeks and rubbed his eyes. “I'm right there with you, Joe. I've been chewing on the God Machine concept for years now, ever since I recovered Bell's files … and now there's the Gateway incident. Quite frankly I don't know what to believe. Over the last twenty years I've seen science twisted into new shapes that I don't recognize. Makes me almost long for the days when the worst thing we had to deal with were Soviet spies smuggling nuclear secrets and plans for the stealth bomber. Now this stuff? Joe, I'm more than half-glad I'm too old to go out into the field anymore. I sure as hell don't envy what you went through down at Gateway.”

I said, “Has anyone ever actually proven that alternate universes exist?”

“Oh, hell no. In quantum physics, in superstring theory, they've gone pretty far in making a case for additional dimensions beyond the common ones we know. But they're mathematical constructs at this point. And that's an attempt to understand complex quantum dimensionality. No one's crossed the line and done the math to build a credible case for other universes.” He paused. “Except maybe Prospero Bell.”

“And Marcus Erskine believed in it enough to get a gazillion dollars' worth of covert funding.”

We sat there and stared at each other.

“Shit,” I said.

“Shit,” he agreed.

 

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

THE PIER

DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 8, 9:44
P.M.

Late in the evening on a hot September night.

Bunch of us sitting around on the back deck of the Pier. Top and Bunny were back and the rest of Echo Team had returned from the make-work assignments they'd been sent out on. We talked about the Closers, about the fight at San Pedro's office, about Gateway, about Rudy, and about the surfers. We talked and talked and we got exactly nowhere. Junie wasn't home yet and I really wanted to pick her brain about Prospero Bell, but she was out of cell phone range.

So we sat and let the day burn its way into night.

Bunny was sprawled on a lounge chair, shorts, no shirt, a Padres cap pulled low to throw shadows over the line of six stiches. Lydia sat next to him in a bikini top and cut-off military camo pants. Montana Parker, Brian Botley, and Sam Imura were all in civvies. Top was in sweats and I was wearing one of my most obnoxious Hawaiian shirts—fluorescent toucans and bright blue howler monkeys doing a line dance. Every flat surface was littered with empty beer bottles. An impressive number of them.

Or, seen from our viewpoint, not nearly enough of them.

There was no moon and the sky above us was filled with cold little diamond chips that bathed us in blue-white light. Beneath the Pier the endless waves slapped against the pilings and washed against the beach. The surf roar sounded like faint and distant crowds of people talking, talking, talking, and saying nothing.

Echo Team, there to save the world.

This was the first time we had all been together in weeks.

“Got to go home,” I said for the fifth or sixth time. No one responded. Ghost didn't twitch. Sam opened a fresh pair of Stone IPAs and handed one to me. We didn't toast. You do that when you want to remember something.

A bit later Bunny asked, “Is this it, then? Is the DMS going down the crapper?”

I shook my head. Not to deny that possibility, but because I didn't know.

“How the hell have we managed to drop the ball this many times?” asked Montana.

“I know,” grumped Brian. “When did we become the guys who mess up?”

“Dreamwalking,” I said, putting it out there.

“Which means what?” asked Montana.

“Don't mean nothing,” growled Top. “Some voodoo bullshit.”

We drank.

Bunny grunted. “At least we stopped whatever the hell was going on down there under the ice.”

We drank some more. The world turned.

“Even so,” said Montana after a while, “you guys pretty much blew a hole in the map.”

Bunny took a long pull on his beer and studied her down the barrel of his bottle. “You weren't there.”

“No,” she said, “I was not.”

“Kind of glad I wasn't there, either,” said Brian.

Everyone nodded. Everyone drank.

“Wish we were in on that Kill Switch thing,” said Lydia. “Feels wrong to be watching from the sidelines.”

Far out there over the black horizon a piece of ancient space iron scratched a streak against the darkness. It seemed to last longer than most shooting stars and we all watched it.

No one said a word.

Not about the star.

Not about anything. For a long time.

It was Sam who finally broke the silence. Making a statement that was also a question.

“So,” he said slowly, “penguins?”

No one said anything for a long, long time.

I think it was Top who started laughing. A quiet trembling of the shoulders, and for a crazy moment I thought he was crying. Then, as he shook his head I saw the gleam of white teeth in the starlight. A moment later Bunny burst out with a donkey bray of a laugh.

Then we were all laughing.

Even if we didn't think it was funny at all.

 

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

THE PIER

DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 8, 10:56
P.M.

I was dead on my feet and was in the parking lot, reaching for my car key, when my cell rang. Church. I leaned against the fender of my replacement Explorer and wondered what would get me in more trouble—throwing the phone against the wall real damn hard or finding out what Church wanted to tell me. Ghost gave me a “don't do it” look.

I did it.

“Just for once,” I said instead of a hello, “tell me something I want to hear.”

“Would it change the complexion of your day if I told you we had a lead?”

“On what? On who's hiring ex–SpecOps shooters?”

Church made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Maybe we can turn this around.”

“How?” And I surprised myself by really wanting to know.

“Aunt Sallie sent a team to Washington armed with federal warrants.”

“How'd she get those? I thought we didn't have any friends left in Washington.”

“She asked nicely,” said Church in a way that suggested that Aunt Sallie did not, in fact, ask nicely. Auntie looks like Whoopi Goldberg but her personality is closer to Jack Bauer from
24,
with a little Charlie Manson thrown in to make her more personable. It is very difficult to summon enough courage to say no to her.

“What are the warrants for?”

“Majestic,” said Church, “and anything related to Gateway, Dr. Erskine, and Oscar Bell. The first two came up dry. We probably have all of the Majestic records that exist under that label. As for Gateway, Bug keeps hitting walls. But Bell was married to Erskine's sister and there is a real chance we can establish collusion because Erskine was working for the DoD when he bought Bell's God Machine project. A federal judge agreed and Auntie's team has obtained several dozen boxes of paper records. They've done spot-scanning of the paperwork and so far none of it is on the Net or in the computer records of the DoD or DARPA.”

“Ah,” I said, getting it now. “They kept it all on paper to keep it away from us. Shit, that's smart.”

“We have those records now. Auntie flew twenty-five analysts down to D.C. to join the retrieval team. Bug sent Nikki and Yoda, too. We have every available eye reading and scanning those records. They'll work through the night and with any luck we'll have some leads by noon tomorrow.”

“Jesus, I hope you're right.”

Church said, “Captain … Joe … I want you to have some faith.”

“In what?”

“In me,” he said. “In the DMS. I know things look bleak, and I certainly share your frustration for feeling like we're closed out of the important cases—”

“We are. I'm a damn soldier, and so far the most I've done is beat up my best friend and a couple of surfer boys.”

“You're not a soldier,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“I didn't hire you to be a soldier,” said Church. “Or have you forgotten? When I recruited you it was because you were a detective, an investigator. You're a cop, Captain Ledger. That's what you are and that's what you do. The combat, the warfare, the killing … those are unfortunate side effects of our job. Of your job. They are not your defining characteristics. You are tearing yourself apart for the wrong reason. You want to get back into the war, I get that. I do. However, we aren't being called to fight. Not at this moment. We are being called to make sense of this, to find answers, to build a case.”

I said nothing, but damn if I didn't feel every single one of the punches he'd slipped under my guard.

“This is what I need you to do,” he said. “Go home and get some sleep. Get plenty of it. Then report to work tomorrow and take over this investigation. I am telling you this as your boss and as your friend. You need to stop being a bystander. You need to refuse to be marginalized. You need to be the cop that you are. You need to solve this.”

The phone went dead in my hand.

I put it in my pocket and walked over to the parking garage window. It looked directly out over the surf. How long did I stand there watching the waves crash down on the sand?

Maybe five minutes. Maybe ten.

There are times I'm afraid of Mr. Church. There are times I hate him. Right at that moment, though, I'd have walked through fire for him.

I looked out at the tumbling waves, listened to the hiss as the frothy bubbles popped, watched starlight glisten on the wet sand.