Kill Switch (53 page)

“He mentioned the children,” I said, my voice thick, my head filled with hornets. “Jesus Christ, Church, he has the SX-56 and he's going to use the Kill Switch to hit us with it.”

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY

HUMPHRIES-BELMONT ELECTRONICS SOLUTIONS

THE ABSALOM FOGELMAN BUILDING

6082 CENTER DRIVE

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 9, 1:16
P.M.

The call came fifty-eight minutes after Mr. Priest left Dr. Kang's office. During every second of those fifty-eight minutes Kang sat stock-still at his desk, his hands gripped like vises around the arms of his chair. He was too terrified to move despite the sodden stink in his trousers. The digital numbers on his desk clock had stubbornly refused to hurry through what felt like a thousand years of waiting.

When the burner rang, Kang screamed.

Very loud.

There was no one in the outer office to hear the scream. Mr. Priest had—either by luck or design—chosen a day when Kang's secretary was out sick.

The ring was not particularly loud, but it shattered the silence in Kang's office.

Kang snatched it up and then froze again, caught in the horrible indecision of wanting to hear that his family was unharmed and dreading a message to the contrary.

It rang again.

And again.

Then he began stabbing at the green button with numb and trembling fingers. Punched it on and then nearly ended the call. Finally he clumsied it to his ear.

“Yes, yes … are they all right? Please?”

“Dr. Kang,” said the smooth, familiar voice of Mr. Priest, “I appreciate your courtesy and cooperation. You are now free to do as you please. And rest assured, your family is safe.”

“You motherfucker, I'll—”

“Shhh, Doctor. You've come up from the underworld, but don't assume that you will ever be entirely in the upper world. Now is not the time to turn and look for Eurydice. She is as safe as anyone ever is in such a world as this.”

The reference to the myth of Orpheus was not lost on Kang, even with so much stress burning its way through him. “Orpheus” was the code name for one of the major defense projects in the databanks he had allowed Mr. Priest to plunder. One of many.

“You promised to leave them alone,” growled Kang. “You promised not to hurt them.”

“And I haven't,” said Mr. Priest. “Good-bye, Dr. Kang. It has been a genuine pleasure.”

The line went dead.

For a terrible moment Kang did not know whom to call first. His wife or the security office.

He called his wife. She answered on the second ring. Kang almost screamed. He told her to get the kids and get out of the house, to come here to the lab, to do it right away.

Kang hung up before she could ask any questions. Then he called his control officer at the Department of Defense.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

THE PIER

DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 9, 1:26
P.M.

Harcourt Bolton came hurrying into the conference room.

“Christ!” he yelled. “Did you see it? Did you see that damn thing?”

“We saw it,” I said.

“I've been on the phone with the president,” he gasped, breathless from running from his office. “I assured POTUS that we have local teams inbound. Jerry Spencer and his forensics people are on their way, too.”

Church gave him a long, appraising look, but his only response was a small nod.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, standing up. “Echo is ready to rock.”

Bolton looked embarrassed and didn't meet my eyes. “Captain Ledger … Joe … I think I'd rather have you here for, um, tactical support.”

It was awkward and clumsy. He did not come right out and say that he did not have confidence in me or in Echo Team, but it was right there burning in the air.

“If you saw the whole thing, Bolton, then you have to know they have the smallpox bioweapon. We need to move on this.”

“We are,” said Bolton, and he leaned a little too hard on the word “we.”

“What he's trying to tell you, Captain,” Church said quietly, “is that this is still not our case.”

“Bullshit,” I snarled. “You're using our people.
My
people. That makes it my case.”

“Look, Joe,” said Bolton, “I'm sorry, but the president was very clear on this. I can use DMS resources, and I'm happy to do so, but the Central Intelligence has operational control.”

“Then use me as a liaison.”

“I … can't…,” said Bolton. He put a hand on my shoulder. “I'm sorry, but after Gateway, POTUS doesn't want you in play on anything this sensitive.”

I slapped his hand away. “This is bullshit and you know it. You're treating Gateway like it was a failure. We shut down a bioweapons program that had gone off the rails and killed the whole staff. We kept it from getting off the leash. And now we've proven that Gateway is tied to Majestic. And that they were developing a psychic spy program that Central Intelligence said wouldn't work. We've proven that there are Closers in the field trying to locate more Majestic materials. We're close to locating the sequencing code to the machine that controls the Kill Switch technology.” I pointed to the screen, where they were rerunning the message from the Mullah of the Black Tent. “Maybe that master code sequence could allow us to stop this shit. Did you think of that? We're closing in on it. Us, the D-fucking-MS. Not the C-fucking-IA. We're already doing
our
jobs, Harcourt. What have you and your Agency boys done that's worth a shit? Nothing. How can you bench us now?”

Bolton's face slowly transformed from a look of embarrassed concern to a scowl of red-hot anger. He got up in my face, stepping toward me. “Who the fuck do you think you're talking to,
Captain
Ledger? I've been trying to be civil with you and the rest of the screwups around here, but quite frankly my patience is wearing thin. I've run interference for you and you want to throw it in my face? You are every bit as arrogant and pigheaded as everyone says. You think you're a superhero, don't you, Ledger? You think you're the new face of government service, the top of the game, but you know what? You're a thug who gets lucky sometimes. That's it. You got too many people inside your head and none of them have any real chance of solving this thing. So, take it from someone who actually knows what he's doing and stand
down
.”

“Yeah, well,
fuck
you, old man. You may have been hot shit once upon a time, but then right around the time you started losing your swing, early humans invented the wheel and you got left behind. And—”

He shoved me.

A really good, incredibly fast two-handed shove to the chest that sent me sailing backward. I lost my footing and fell, hard and clumsy. I scrambled to my feet but Violin and Harry were already up. The kid caught her arm as she went to swing on Bolton, but then Church's voice cut through everything.

“Enough!”
he roared.

Everyone froze.

Church came around the table, hooked a hand under my arm, and hauled me to my feet. He was not gentle about it. Then he put one hand on Harry's arm and the other on Violin's shoulder and pushed them to the side so he could face Bolton. Bolton and Church were about the same size, they looked like they were the same age, and I knew they both had years and wars behind them. Bolton stood with balled fists, ready to swing. I thought he was going to hit Church. Or try to, anyway.

In a quiet, cold voice Church said, “I think it would be in everyone's best interests if you were to go attend to your duties, Harcourt.”

Bolton fixed Church with a look of pure, unfiltered contempt.

“You run a sloppy shop, Deacon. Maybe it's time you thought seriously about getting out of the game.”

Church nodded. “I'll take it under advisement.”

They held their ground for a long moment. Any trace of civility and affability was gone from Bolton's face. He looked at Violin and dismissed her as nothing, and his eyes swept past Harry as if the kid wasn't even there. Bolton focused on me and raised a finger to point at me. “You're done, Ledger. You're a psychopath and it was a mistake to ever give you a job here. Consider yourself relieved of duty. You and your team are to turn in your badges and weapons. Security will escort you out. If you have a lawyer, I'd call him, because we will be filing charges for negligence and wanton destruction of government property because of what you did to Gateway.” He shook his head. “I can't believe I ever tried to be nice to you.”

Then he turned, whipped the door open so hard it banged into the wall, and stalked out.

Violin wanted to go after him. I saw her touch one of the concealed knives she always carried. I wanted to either shoot Bolton or throw myself out of the window. Even split. Poor Harry Bolt looked like he either wanted to run away or cry. He was deeply embarrassed. He sat down on one of the chairs and looked at his hands, and said nothing. Church had a calculating look in his eyes as he walked over and sat down.

My phone rang. Bug.

“What?” I asked listlessly.

“I got something, Joe,” he said, his voice charged with excitement.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

THE PIER

DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 9, 1:39
P.M.

Bug laid it on us. I put him on speaker so they could all hear. Mr. Priest, aka Esteban Santoro, the Gateway book sequence decryption, the coercion. All of it.

“Wait, I'm confused. Why would this guy Priest or Santoro or whatever his name is need to steal it?” asked Harry. “Isn't he
part
of Gateway?”

“Doesn't seem like it,” I said. “He's running the Closers who raided FreeTech and hit Toys's place last night. And the crew that was at San Pedro's office. If I had to guess, he got left out in the cold when everything went to shit down at Gateway. Maybe he's freelance or maybe his contract has been picked up by someone else who's now after the Kill Switch master code sequence.”

“The latter would be my guess,” said Church.

“Dr. Hu thinks there has to be some kind of master control unit,” said Bug. “Maybe it's a full-sized God Machine like they had down at Gateway. Hu thinks the master code sequence would allow that machine to interface with all the others. That way one person would have control over a fully functional and fully regulated process.”

“Who?” asked Harry. “This Mullah character?”

“I suppose,” said Bug. “I mean, who else? Everyone at Gateway is dead. And I don't read this Priest guy as brains. He's muscle.”

“Agreed,” said Church.

“Then the code sequence is our target,” I said. “We need to find Priest and get it from him, and it would be nice if he resisted arrest.”

Church got up and went to a quiet corner of the room to make a call. He spoke for several minutes. When he was done he turned and stood there, lips pursed, thinking for a long moment. “I spoke with Dr. Kang. He did not personally work on the master code sequence from the Unlearnable Books, so he put the project supervisor who did on the line. After scanning and collating the pages from each of the Unlearnable Truths, a numerical pattern did, in fact, emerge. The numbers are coordinates.”

“Coordinates for targets?” I asked. “We can put teams in position and—”

Church shook his head. “They are coordinates for three stars as seen from Antarctica. The Large Magellanic Cloud, Sirius, and Alpha Centauri. If you calculate their positions, you come up with set numbers. The Large Magellanic Cloud is fifty-seven degrees altitude, azimuth one hundred ninety degrees. For Sirius you have six degrees of altitude and two hundred and sixteen degrees of azimuth. And Alpha Centauri is seventy degrees of altitude and three hundred twenty-one degrees azimuth.” Church paused. “However, if we can place any stock at all in the writings of Lovecraft—and so far his work, however fantastical it may appear, seems to be our most reliable source—it indicates that the builders of that city arrived there one billion years ago. References in two of the Unlearnable Truths pin the time down to within half a million years. This changes things considerably. The Large Magellanic Cloud would be altitude sixty-three degrees and two hundred seventy-three degrees azimuth, Sirius would be fifty-two degrees altitude and one hundred thirty-five degrees azimuth, and Alpha Centauri would be thirteen degrees altitude, two hundred sixty-eight degrees azimuth. These are the local coordinates; what you would see by eye, looking up. Astronomers use a different set of coordinates to plug into our telescopes and map the sky. Right ascension and declination. These coordinates are not dependent on location, but are dependent on time. And we have those, as well.” He read off the numbers. “The first set, however, matches the code lifted from the Unlearnable Truths by Dr. Kang.”

“Then we have the code,” gasped Violin. A great smile bloomed on her face.

“But … we don't know where the God Machine is,” said Harry. “Jesus … we're screwed.”

“Santoro's on the run,” I said. “He knows we're going to be on his ass. If he's as smart as he's supposed to be he'll figure we'll be throwing a net and putting eyes on roads, trains, airports, boats. That's going to slow him down. Even if he slips past us, he's not going to do it fast. And then the code has to be input and his team has to coordinate with the ISIL dickheads. We might have two or three days before they hit us.”

“Can we shut down all the airports?” asked Violin. “Minimize the potential damage?”