Keller turned and put his hand on William’s shoulder. ‘We’ll take care of Griff. Keep your heads down and look to your careers, both of you,’ he advised.
Fouad came down out of the hills with a backpack and a sack of provisions, followed by Harris, who was clutching a pistol in one hand. The brown plain ahead was dotted with yellow dust devils. Blue-gray clouds to the east and north threw long shadows over the red-painted mountains. It was empty and beautiful. There was no place to hide out there. It would be better to stay in the rocks.
They had fled the Superhawk’s wreckage as soon as they could, as soon as they had made sure there were no other survivors, to avoid being found and killed by whoever had shot them down.
The small aluminum case filled with the Kifri tissue samples hung from Fouad’s hip clip. He touched the radio attached at chest level to his flak vest, then turned back to watch Harris. Their analog voice signals were being jammed. The digital signals were not getting through, either, which was pretty surprising, considering they were transmitting directly to at least ten possible satellites. Someone was using chaff, aerostats, pop-ups, or possibly even other satellites to actively jam basic communications over the entire area—probably the Russians but perhaps the Turks as well. Having a nuke go off in your backyard tended to do that to people.
Or the radio was simply busted. The M2GPS on his belt was haywire, working only about half the time.
Their last hope was the C-SARB that relayed their position and aircraft ID in microbursts at irregular intervals. To
enemy trackers, it would sound like cosmic hash—or nothing at all.
When Harris caught up, Fouad handed him a bottle of water from the pack. Harris was trying to look in all directions at once. His broken arm, slung close to his chest, was obviously hurting but now was no time for painkillers. They had about a week’s worth of food. The water would last at most two or three days.
Harris took a drink from the bottle. ‘They’ll find us,’ he said. ‘To them, it’s like a day in the country picking flowers. They’ll track us from the wreckage. They’ll kill us and take pictures and spread our headless corpses out on the desert to dry. That’s how screwed we are.’
Fouad did not feel much more sanguine about their chances.
They had pulled Fergus and as much equipment as they could from the smoking ruins of the Superhawk. Master Sergeant, the Captain, the co-pilot and crew chief, and two other crew members, whose names Fouad had never learned, had been inaccessible, along with the more powerful weapons and most of the survival gear.
The forward bulkhead and the floor beneath Fergus, Harris, and Fouad had been ripped up and slammed to the back of the cabin by the initial impact and that had saved them when the helicopter had finally bounced off one boulder and ploughed into another. Fouad was not clear on all this. Some of the memories were returning, but right now, they were simply not relevant.
Fergus had died while they were still in the air. They had dug a quick grave and covered him with a hatch, the most they could do under the circumstances.
‘Well, pilgrim,’ Harris said, trying to stand straight. ‘What’s say we hide like furry little rodents.’
Fouad checked his compass and the chart from the map pack. He had looked at the stars the night before, after
arranging the sling for Harris’s arm. They had not traveled far from the high barren field before being shot down. Or had they? He had been napping. Still, he thought he knew where they might be within twenty or thirty klicks. He hoped he knew.
Any crumb in a famine.
‘You take the blanket,’ Fouad instructed Harris, who was already shivering. ‘Sleep. I will stand watch.’
‘I’m not going to argue,’ Harris said. He found a crusty, sandy place next to a large boulder, lay down gingerly, and pulled the silvery thermal blanket over himself. The sun was past zenith and the air was already chilly and dry. Fouad’s throat hurt and his legs ached and his bruised chest felt tight. Breathing deeply hurt, as did pressing on his right side. Very likely ribs were broken. Finally, he was grateful for the extreme fitness regimen at Quantico. Victory over pain, Pete Farrow had called it.
‘Any guess?’ Harris called from the side of the boulder.
‘Still in Iraq,’ Fouad said. ‘Near no place we would know the name of.’ He walked over, held the chart out to Harris, and pointed to a square several centimeters across. ‘Somewhere in here.’
‘Very good,’ Harris said. ‘Awesome. That’s totally reassuring.’
‘Now sleep.’
Harris saluted and lay back with a groan.
A few minutes later, Fouad heard him shout ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ Harris shuffled past him, brushing his pants with his good arm.
‘Scorpion,’ he said. ‘Got my trousers but missed my leg. Fuck this. Fuck this to almighty hell. Did you know scorpions out here produce cytotoxic venom? Like a recluse spider. Haemolysis, necrosis, ankylosis, kidney failure, you can even go off your head—even. Very nasty shit.’ His eyes were red-rimmed and his face looked hot from fever. He
danced from foot to foot for a few seconds, then let out his breath with a whoosh and barely controlled his fall to one knee.
‘Again, you are lucky,’ Fouad said.
‘Yeah, lucky,’ Harris said. ‘Do you think anybody cares what’s in this box?’ He reached up to tap the aluminum case.
‘For the sake of Fergus and Master Sergeant and the others, yes,’ Fouad said.
‘Did you ever learn Master Sergeant’s name?’ Harris asked.
‘No.’
‘Wait. I’ve got it here.’ Harris pulled out the duplicate tags that had been slung by the rear hatch, fanned through them with one hand, and read the stamped label above the ID chip. ‘Jerry Walton. Jesus. We’re as dead as Jerry Walton.’
‘Sit and be still,’ Fouad suggested, patting the ground beside him. ‘They could have infrared.’
‘I don’t want to take a pain pill,’ Harris said. ‘I want to be clear-headed when they kill us.’
‘Shh,’ Fouad said.
‘Fuck, it hurts.’ Harris squatted beside him and they watched the skies over the plain. Soon, Harris was on his back again, asleep but restless. The last of the dust devils had cleared. The sun was within minutes of setting. Soon it would be dusk, then night.
Fouad used his compass and quickly oriented himself, then laid down the flap edge of the sack and knelt on it to pray. He had to begin before sunset. Eventually he would have to catch up on the missed prayers. To pray was more than relief, far more than duty; it was a marvel of renewed strength.
He performed four
raka’at.
A few minutes later, Fouad heard Harris cursing softly in his sleep. This was a profanation, but what could be done? His companion was in pain. He finished his prayers, then added a
Ya Latif.
As the evening deepened and the plain was covered in a veil of gray, Fouad spoke in a soft voice,
‘
You who is gentle with children still in the wombs of their mothers, exhibit thy gentleness and grace towards us, a grace that befits Your Generosity and Your Mercy, O You who is the Most Merciful…
’
He did not often pray for relief from his distress. It was his thought that God, even in his deep and abiding love, had many concerns and should not be bothered for petty ills and sorrows. This his father had taught him, though his mother had also said that God never tired of listening. But now was definitely the time for extraordinary help and guidance.
When night fell, they could not risk using any light, and so they would not see the scorpions.
‘I am no longer your boss,’ Rebecca said. ‘You’re buying the first round.’
‘You’re still senior,’ William said. This brought a look from her that seemed at once angry and vulnerable. She turned back to the bar menu.
‘For someone of my age and seniority, I
am
hungry,’ she said with forced cheer.
‘Not what I meant, of course,’ William said. He smiled at their figures in the mirror behind the ranked collection of bottles filled with amber, green, blue, and pale fluids. ‘We could buy all of those and forget for an entire evening. That’s what blue people often do.’
‘Tell me more about people who are blue.’
‘All right,’ William said. ‘We are few. We are blue. We protect him and her and
you.
I had a partner when I was working OCID—’
‘Organized Crime Investigations Division,’ Rebecca said. ‘Right after getting kicked out of vice. That’s how you got into FBI. The joint taskforce.’
‘That’s part of it. My father’s reputation preceded me like Cyrano’s nose.’
‘Cyrano? Was he a goombah?’
‘Cyrano de Bergerac. He had a huge nose and flew to the moon. You know Cyrano. He wrote letters for a guy who was in love with Roxanne. But he was in love with Roxanne, too, so it was tragic.’
Rebecca gave him a you-are-shitting-me stare.
‘Steve Martin, Darryl Hannah,’ he said.
‘Right.’ Rebecca lifted her martini. ‘Here’s to romantic poetry and big noses. Tell me more about your partner. What was he like?’
‘She, actually. We used hang out after work, plotting how to improve our record in the department. We were both pretty marginal.’
‘No hotshots?’
‘Our instincts were hinky,’ William said. ‘We just naturally liked people.’
‘Bad juju,’ Rebecca said. She tapped the bar and asked for another. ‘This one is on me.’
‘Thanks,’ William said. ‘Anyway, it was good, and it was bad. We were great at interrogations. Together, we could get under the skin of a perp so soft and easy he didn’t even know we were injecting verbal truth serum. My partner was great at psychology. Big brown eyes, plump, sort of a Mediterranean mama. The goombahs, as you say—and the Russians, but not so much the Cambodians or Vietnamese—just wanted to open up and spill their guts. There, there, she’d say, and pat their wrists as they signed off on their confessions. But we weren’t all that good at pegging them, not right away.’
‘Bad for a cop,’ Rebecca said. ‘But good for the soul.’
‘Her name was Karen Truslow. Upstate New York money, but to her folks’ dismay, she turned blue. We spent a lot of time in the backs of vans listening to taps, and when things were slow we made up a dictionary of slurs. We could use them, blue people, but nobody else. “Cop” is mostly okay, but “Copper” or “Flatfoot” or “Screw” or anything a Dick Tracy villain would say is a mortal insult.’
‘You liked her,’ Rebecca said. ‘But she died a tragic death and now you cherish her memory and feel guilty.’
‘No, she’s still in OCID. She recommended I go FBI. “They’re not so blue. They pass.”’
‘That’s a lie,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’m deep midnight. But wait. I’m senior, so I’m wrinkled and faded, like old denim.’
‘You’re fishing,’ William said.
‘That means you think I’m hitting on you,’ Rebecca said, turning on her stool. ‘That I need to hook a compliment out of that manly, tall, broad chest…Whatever. Christ, I’m a cheap drunk. But tell me, young William Griffin. You saw me in my nightie. Is it all over for me?’
‘You’re tired.’
Her expression drooped. ‘I’m gone. I’m dead. I’ll crawl back to my desk and shuffle papers for the rest of my career. I’ll retire with blue hair, my stomach hanging below my knees, and dream of filing cabinets. I’ll be a faded blue bag hag.’
William shook his head. ‘Let’s pay.’
‘You don’t like my company.’
‘I don’t like my liquor talking with an anger chaser.’
‘What?’
William’s serious face broke. ‘I’m tired, too.’
‘You’re translucent. Milky blue. I can hardly see you.’ Rebecca waved her hand in front of his face. ‘Agent Griffin, is that you?’
‘Anything else?’ asked the bartender, a slender brunette with huge eyes.
‘Some food,’ Rebecca said. ‘We’ll take the buffalo wings.’
‘We call them angel wings,’ the bartender said. ‘Hot, mild, or boring?’
‘Hot,’ Rebecca said. ‘Olives in parmesan. Goat cheese plate. Anything that tastes good to hungry people who are blue.’
‘Blue cheese dip for the wings,’ the bartender suggested.
‘Right.’
The bartender asked if they wanted more drinks. Rebecca asked for club soda, William, tomato juice.
‘This will not be a problem, not for you,’ Rebecca told him. ‘This will be a void, a blank space in your record. You’ll
go to New Jersey and act as if nothing happened.’
‘Flaming TP,’ William said.
‘No, seriously,’ Rebecca said. ‘Start over again.’
‘It’s real, though, isn’t it?’ William asked. ‘Something’s going on. Something bad.’
‘Of course it’s real. Would Hiram Newsome lead you astray?’
‘I know
you
wouldn’t.’
‘Ah, well. That’s a pity.’ She took the club soda and downed it. ‘I seldom drink this much,’ she said. ‘White wine with dinner. I have a delicate metabolism.’ She set down the glass with a thunk, blowing an ice cube onto the bar. ‘We’ve known about biohackers since at least 2000, but in the last ten years, they’ve grown unimaginably more common and powerful. They have journals, websites, they exchange little tricks of the trade. Right now, you can buy a gene sequencer on eBay for five grand. Using online recipes you can make your own RNA, your own DNA, which means you can make viruses—real ones, not computer viruses—including smallpox or Ebola. You can create plasmids that turn ordinary bacteria into killers. Amerithrax was probably one of the first killer hackers. We were too blind to see it. Now, it’s international. People will die, and there is nothing we can do. We’re focused on a single nuclear explosion—still chasing old nightmares. But some screwball S.O.B. who doesn’t give a damn about atom bombs is up to something that could kill hundreds of millions, and six months from now, a year from now, if any of us are still alive, OPR will have us on the carpet, testifying about how the FBI missed another sterling opportunity. Congress critters will dine off our carcasses—if any of
them
are still alive. Maybe by then I’ll have slipped into early retirement. I’ll drown while fishing in a lake in Minnesota. But that won’t help you, dear boy.’
‘Crap,’ William said.
‘You dare disagree with the drunken blue lady?’ Rebecca asked, eyes intense.
‘It’s not a tasty future. How do you hunt down a thousand killer nerds?’
‘All I want to do is find one—just one—and make an example out of him.’ Her slate chimed. She put on reading glasses—the first time William had seen her do this—and examined the small screen at arm’s length. ‘My God,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Hiram Newsome has been dismissed. The director’s purging the Ay-Dicks.’ She scrolled through the message and her face turned gray. ‘I need to go to the little girl’s room.’
Rebecca left him at the bar. The food arrived but William was no longer hungry. Still, he picked at a chicken wing and, despising blue cheese, dipped it in his tomato juice, hoping it would dilute the spiciness. It did not. But globs of chicken grease made the juice undrinkable.
Rebecca returned ten minutes later. ‘I made myself throw up,’ she informed him. ‘An old trick from my bingeing days in college. You should go do the same.’
William shook his head. He had never seen Rebecca Rose look so vulnerable, even when she had had her blouse ripped in half, soaked in sprinkler water and tussling with a man twenty-five years younger. It made him sick inside.
Rebecca called to the bartender. ‘Got a pot of coffee?’
‘Always,’ the bartender answered from the end of the bar.
‘We are going to make phone calls,’ Rebecca said to William. ‘You will talk to New Jersey and tell them you’re on your way. Don’t make waves. And don’t mention News or me in your résumé.’
‘Is it official?’
‘Reuters and AP. Keller must have seen this coming.’
The bartender brought two mugs and a stainless pot. ‘Anything for blue people,’ she said, and winked at William.