The strongest of the soldiers were crawling towards the gate, while the rest lay twitching in the sand, emitting choked, gobbling screams and crying for help into radios that still didn't work. Willing his mind to retake the reins of his body, he gathered his legs and hauled himself to his feet against a school bus that lay on its side amid a mountain of sun-bleached aluminum cans. "Ms. Orozco?" Ms.? Shit, for all he knew, she was happily married, or gay, or—
"Storch! Do you see it? It's beautiful!" Stella Orozco clambered out of the hollowed-out engine compartment of a Duster and crossed the open center of the junkyard towards him. She looked like an angel in the light, somehow her face and the way she gleamed in it turned it all back on itself, this was no end, it was a new beginning, nothing that she could welcome this way could be deadly. His body was lying to him. There she is. He ran to her.
When Stella Orozco saw Sgt. Storch lumbering out of the maze of wrecked cars and into the open field beside the motor pool pit, her heart leaped. First the light had come, in spite of all, and she knew in her bones that she was cured, though she felt as if the cure might kill her dead in the first seconds, and now here was the man the Mission and Radiant Dawn together couldn't kill, come to take her away. It was like the next rung of fate bodying forth out of the dark, and all the troubles and terrors of the last week bound themselves up in a lesson, for what was this, if not deliverance and the chance to remake herself, reinvent her life?
With a step that was half a dance, Stella ran to Zane Storch. The light swirled between them like a curtain of plumed serpents changing them, freeing them, uniting them. When the ground beneath her feet rose up like the skin of a bubble and burst, she thought it was her own step that threw her so high into the air, for didn't she feel as if she could fly? When he was only inches from her fingertips, the earth cracked like a bullwhip, hurling Storch high into the air and back among the maze of cars, and opened up beneath her earthbound feet in a ravening fissure and commenced to suck the whole junkyard into itself. For a second, she floated in the air, looking into the empty space where Storch had just been a moment ago, when it had looked as if she'd broken through some invisible barrier and into someone else's life. Then she fell, into the black, fiery hole of her destiny.
36
Cundieffe had been on the phone from the moment the chopper dusted off, leaving him and Agent Hanchett standing beside the wrecked, partially buried pickup truck. While Hanchett arranged for a Bureau-flown chopper to come pick them up, he'd been in touch with his team at China Lake, who were fielding reports from spotter teams and satellite interpreters across the state. As closely as he could, he'd followed the flurry of pursuit as the helicopters switched from fishing to actively hunting the two aircraft, piecing the third-hand stream of information into a model in his head. On his laminated pocket road atlas of California, he'd drawn dots for the patrol choppers, and speculated with dotted lines on the most likely destination for the two rogues. By shading out the zones negatively proven by searchers, he still found himself looking at a corridor half the width of the state. They were headed north at the one brief visual sighting, but he knew that meant nothing. Even if the eyewitness were to be believed, the choppers were following the Inyo mountains, and might change course at any time to strike anywhere between Reno or Nellis Air Force Base and Fresno or Bakersfield. Worst case scenario, they had more than expected fuel capacity, and were already well on their way to Los Angeles. There were too many possibilities hovering around the one sighting, which might be a false alarm. Most telling, however, was the way the Delta Force soldiers had reacted. There would be legal repercussions that would be felt at the Joint Chiefs level, if Cundieffe knew Assistant Director Wyler. Somehow, they'd felt it was worth it to get to them first, and unobserved by the DOJ. All Wyler's spooky talk about space-age softkill weapons technology and a Pentagon conspiracy now seemed less far-fetched than it had a few days ago.
Not long after the chopper arrived and took them out of the canyon, Cundieffe received the first of the reports about the fire in the Owens Valley. A hospice community was on fire, the flames clearly visible to anyone on the street in the town of Big Pine, seven miles to the north. Big Pine's volunteer Fire Chief called for reinforcements from Bishop and Independence, then reported that the village was being bombed.
He'd made a critical error then, he now realized, mistaking authority for power in trying to rein in Greenaway even as he turned him loose on the terrorists. He'd assumed that Greenaway could, and would, handle the situation responsibly. That was the last he'd heard of Greenaway.
All the news after that had concerned the Bomb.
The awfulness of it dug icy claws into his brain. Only by massaging blood into his temples had he been able to keep from fainting. The pain was like his father's voice.
On your watch.
A handful of terrorists in Army surplus helicopters crossed California and dropped napalm on
—for the love of God!—
a hospice village. Knowing they were coming, you let it happen A hospice village called Radiant Dawn. RADIANT.
Then they nuked it. They cremated God only knew how many sick, innocent human beings, and then they dropped an atom bomb on their ashes. And then they got away.
On your watch, Martin
.
It was all over, the flurries of apocryphal sightings tailing away from the explosion, like the Doppler waves from a passing siren, dwindling down to nothing. Out of opaque blackness both physical and political, they had materialized, and just as swiftly vanished. Cundieffe had been sitting down to dash off a memo, head in hands, stricken mute as all the vast, jagged implications of the case's unspeakably disastrous outcome came tumbling down onto the blank screen before him. He'd been sitting there still when SA Hanchett had come in, her eager little hands clutching sheaves of printouts.
"Sir? Lieutenant Colonel Greenaway just issued an order to all the military search parties and Delta Force squads onbase."
That's news," he answered in as neutral a tone as he could muster. "Where is he?"
"At a payphone at a gas station outside Big Pine. Apparently, he crashed. He scrambled them to a location near Baker. He then rattled off a bunch of code-phrases, and got confirmations back from ten choppers in the field and three squads onbase. They're on the move as we speak, sir."
Baker was less than ten miles from the eastern perimeter fence of Ft. Irwin Military Reservation, China Lake's next door neighbor. Eight choppers in the air with FBI agents onboard were in the sortie, but the agents had not called in, and presumably were not allowed to. It was as if the lieutenant colonel knew where they were—or where they were going.
Cundieffe clapped his hands excitedly. Something could still be snatched out of this debacle; the perpetrators of this act, their technology, or at the very least, a military scapegoat. He couldn't simply contact Greenaway again and let him know he was under scrutiny. "Put together every available agent with some tactical gear and let's get out there."
"An excellent idea, but I'm afraid I'll be needing your talents right here, Special Agent Cundieffe."
A long shadow fell across his desk. He looked up and saw Assistant Director Wyler himself standing in the doorway of his office. He waved Hanchett away and folded his arms across his chest, his head cocked at a tired angle. He sighed and seemed to shrink six inches. "This situation appears to have spiraled out of our collective control."
On your watch. He almost fainted again.
"What—I'm—Sir! This is a surprise. I was working to prepare a preliminary report, when—the—new developments—"
"Put nothing down on record for the time being, Martin. This is going to get much worse before it gets any better." His face was grave and deeply lined. His toupee sat a few degrees off the beam. Had he ever noticed the Assistant Director wore a toupee? Did anyone else know?
"Worse, sir?"
"Oh, yes. What happened tonight was a declaration of war. A second civil war, the consequences of which could be far more devastating than the first." He turned and walked away, his hand absently gesturing for Cundieffe to follow. "But in every war, Martin, the most pivotal victories often pass beneath history's notice. Such a victory will soon fall to us, Martin."
Cundieffe stood up and started to follow, but balked when he saw where the Assistant Director was going. Wyler stopped with his hand on the door of the Men's restroom, his brow furrowed.
Cundieffe took another step, then froze again. What the devil was the Assistant Director playing at? President Johnson dragged many of his policy briefings with White House staffers into the lavatory in a crude but effective demonstration of alpha male dominance. According to a tale he'd overheard a retired Secret Service agent tell his father at a barbecue, when then Attorney General Ramsey Clark had encouraged Johnson to force the Director into retirement, the President had pronounced his fiat by "accideliberately micturating" on the AG's sensible black brogans. If that was the Assistant Director's strategy, what could he expect in compensation for allowing an atomic bomb to be dropped on American soil?
Then again, there was that oily, uninvited sensation he'd gotten in the limousine at the airport. That fleeting twinge at the physical intimacy of the Assistant Director's presence. Surely it was his own insecurity projecting itself on his superior. AD Wyler wasn't the first bureaucrat to be tarred with that brush, first and foremost among them the Director himself, for choosing duty over family. Dear Lord, what if it was him?
Get a hold of yourself, Martin! If you're going to panic, at least concentrate on the real situation, there's plenty to keep you wetting your pants, there, too.
This is some sort of briefing, that's all it is. Damage control. Mustn't allow anything to embarrass the Bureau.
He realized with relief that his feet were carrying him towards the Assistant Director. They were alone in the office, but Wyler waved impatiently. "God's sake, Cundieffe," he stage-whispered, "get inside. It's imperative that we speak privately, and immediately, but I desperately need to micturate."
Cundieffe edged past the Assistant Director into the restroom, glancing around as he crossed the painfully white tiled room to stand beside the last sink, pointedly not looking into the mirror. Assistant Director fumbled out a set of jingling keys and locked the door.
Cundieffe turned and started to protest, but Assistant Director Wyler was climbing onto the first sink and, steadying himself against the fluorescent light fixture, he pried an adhesive air freshener off the wall, just inches below the assiduously scrubbed ceiling. Cundieffe helped him climb down and followed him as he went to a toilet stall and tossed the air freshener into the basin, flushed. To Cundieffe's blank stare, he asked, "You didn't know that was in here?"
"We—was that a surveillance device?"
"Yes, audio-video, installed by Naval Intelligence. Didn't your people sweep for bugs?"
"We never thought we had anything to hide from the Navy, sir. I mean, really—"
Wyler brushed past him and went to a urinal, unzipped his fly and looked over his shoulder at Cundieffe, who retreated again to the sink. "You have no idea what this is about, do you?"
"What this would that be, sir? If you're referring to the terrorist situation—"
"—Is only the beginning, Martin. We stand at the cusp of a watershed moment in human history. The future has never been closer, but we have never been closed to complete and utter chaos. Order is going to be tested, and the enemies, many of them, are already among us."
Cundieffe looked around blearily, resumed scrubbing his hands. The soap was the good old abrasive powder variety, not that glutinous syrup most public restrooms offered. He ground the pumice-based soap into the meat of his palms, one after the other long after both were pink as boiled lab rats. "I don't know what to say, sir. I've always felt a calling to serve the Bureau."
"That's right. It's in your blood, isn't it? Your father and your mother both, sixty-five years of service between them. You're trustworthy, utterly selfless, the model of a Bureau agent. It's hard, not being not like most other people, isn't it, Martin?"
"I don't follow you, sir."
"Your perceptive and cognitive faculties have always made you a keen observer of human behavior, but it only isolated you from your peers. You never excelled in physical, manly pursuits, and others resented you, treated you as if your intellect made you less of a man. The Bureau was your instinctual niche, it's where you could excel by using your natural talents, and serve the public good by preserving order. Am I right so far?"
"Sir, are you—can I turn around now?" He stole a glance at the mirror before him. AD Wyler still stood before the urinal, one hand planted against the wall. His head turned, his eyes met Cundieffe's and glittered.
"Have you ever wondered why you felt this way, Martin? Why you felt compelled to give over your life to protect a populace that never made a place for you? Have you ever felt a deeper cause for the—stirrings that drive you?"
Cundieffe braced himself against the sink, focusing on a relatively fresh wad of chewing gum affixed to the spotless chrome neck of the faucet. Wrigley's Spearmint, he observed, noting its uncanny resemblance to brain matter after a thorough chewing. Probably left there by Special Agent Normand, he must remind Normand about careless hygiene—
"You're not alone, Martin." He heard a hushed clink of metal on tile. It was the sound of a belt buckle.
He sucked wind for a long, long moment before he let himself talk. "Sir, I'm not a judgmental person in the least, and my—I'm extremely discreet, but—I think you should know that I'm not a—"