Headquarters of SecureOne
Manhattan
December 20, 2:18 A.M. EST
The American sat behind his desk and smoked a cigar. Beyond the big glass windows the city glimmered with a million jewels. Stars above and
streetlights below. He loved the city. He loved its size and its arrogance, its muscle and its swagger. It was like looking in a mirror.
His phone rang. Toys.
“You somewhere safe?”
“Heading back to the castle,” said Toys.
“Okay, but keep your head down and your eyes open.”
“Why? Because of my call to Ledger?”
“Partly. But mostly ’cause I’m about to piss in the punch bowl here. It’s not going to do Sebastian or Mom any good. Not going to do the Kings any good, either. Not in the short term.”
He explained what he intended to do.
“God!” said Toys, but there was as much admiration in his voice as fear.
A light flashed on the phone unit on the American’s desk.
“Look, kiddo, I got to run. Keep that phone handy. I’ll be in touch.”
With that, the American pocketed the cell phone and heaved himself out of his chair. He lumbered over to a cabinet and removed a set of schematics. He placed them on his desk blotter, used a red pen to write a note, and then straightened. He cast a last look around the office, sighed again, and went into the bathroom, pushed back the curtain, and stepped into the shower. Then he pushed three tiles on the wall and waited as hidden hydraulics pulled the entire shower wall aside. The American stepped through, tapped another button, and let the wall close behind him. The DMS would find the elevator eventually, but by then he would be long gone.
FOUR MINUTES LATER Sgt. Gus Dietrich kicked open the heavy oak doors of the American’s office and surged inside with Liberty Team at his heels. The red pinpoints of their laser sights danced on the floor, the walls, and the big desk.
There was no one home.
Dietrich ordered his men to do a thorough search, and while they were at it he walked over to the big desk and looked at the schematic. And at the note the American had left.
He tapped his commlink.
“Bulldog to Deacon,” he called.
“Go for Deacon.”
“No one home. But the big guy left us something. You’ll freaking love this.”
Dietrich bent over so that his helmet cam projected a clean image of the blueprints of the USS
Sea of Hope
.
Written across it in red ballpoint was:
Merry Christmas!
(Tell Circe I’m sorry.)
It was signed:
Hugo.
The South Atlantic
December 21, 5:17 A.M. EST
I looked out of the helicopter window at total blackness. A full day had burned away since Dietrich found Vox’s parting gift. Now I sat in a helo with Circe, Church, Dietrich, and Echo Team. Ghost lay asleep at my feet, his legs twitching as he dreamed of the hunt.
I still felt breathless from the double shock of Vox’s betrayal and the plans for the
Sea of Hope
. Vox was someone Church had trusted. Circe O’Tree had worked for the guy for years. Aunt Sallie regularly had Vox over for New Year’s Eve parties and the Super Bowl. Now the mask had been peeled away to reveal a villain. A monster. Possibly one of the Seven Kings, and certainly a significant member of that organization.
They are everywhere.
Vox had run Terror Town. He knew the inner workings of every counterterrorism team in the world. That knowledge would ripple through the foundations of world governments like earthquake tremors.
After shock comes planning. We had to make a radical shift in gears with no time to pause at the sheer scope of the Kings’ real plan.
“Can’t we just off-load everyone?” Dietrich had asked as soon as he returned from Vox’s office with the
Sea of Hope
schematics. “We got ships and subs ghosting the cruise ship. Why don’t we just frigging
take
it and worry about separating sheep from wolves later on?”
“Because that’s the very first thing the Kings would expect,” said Circe, “which means it’s the first thing they’ll have prepared for. I think that if we order the ship to heave to, or board by force, then some kind of fail-safe plan will be initiated. Bombs would be the easiest.”
“And,” I added, “we have to keep repeating the mantra ‘they are everywhere. ’ The Kings are going to have agents planted aboard. A firefight would work more in their favor than ours.”
“Balls,” grumped Dietrich. He loved a plain and simple frontal assault.
I nodded to Circe. “You worked security for the event, Doc. How are we going to get onto the ship?”
Circe chewed her lip. “The problem is that everyone is prescreened.”
“We have MindReader,” said Church. “Bug can infiltrate the system, plant security profiles, and exit without leaving a footprint.”
“We’re using the MI6 encryption package,” Circe countered. “Not even MindReader can intrude there. Hugo told me—”
“Hugo knew only as much about MindReader as I allowed him to know.”
“Why? Were you suspicious of him before this?”
“I’m suspicious of most people.”
I hid a smile.
“Then what’s our cover?”
Circe gave me a considering stare. “That depends on if you can speak French.”
“I speak a lot of languages.”
“With the proper accent?”
“Continental or Canadian?”
Circe smiled. “What do you think of Avril Lavigne’s music?”
“If it’ll get Echo Team onto the
Sea of Hope,
I’ll start a fan club.”
“She was a late addition to the lineup. She’s probably already aboard, but a lot of stars have bumped up their security teams since the London event. You can be a cultural attaché bringing additional security. It’ll actually work for us, having DeeDee, because she can be the personal guard for Avril.”
“What about the star?” I asked. “She’ll need to be briefed.”
“Not really. All of the performers have additional security beside the entourage they know. Most of the guards are hired by their record label or
studio, so these will be strangers. As long as you don’t get chatty with the stars, it’ll work.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I’m more of a classic-rock kind of guy.”
Church stood up. “Then we all have work to do. Circe, you and Auntie will coordinate with Bug to access the right security files.”
She nodded and hurried out.
“Captain Ledger,” Church said to me, “brief Echo Team and prep for the mission. I want to be wheels up in one hour.”
NOW WE FLEW through the predawn sky for a fight that had worst-case scenario written all over it.
The
Sea of Hope
was one of the largest cruise ships afloat. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand gross tons. One thousand, one hundred, and eighty-one feet long, with a 155-foot waterline beam and a 31-foot draft. There were sixteen passenger decks holding fifty-four hundred passengers and over twenty-one hundred crew members. Seven thousand, five hundred people in all. That was a thousand people more than live in the average American town. We had no way of knowing how many of them belonged to the Seven Kings. Of those, how many were unwilling slaves, how many were Chosen, and how many were Kingsmen? We did know, however, that scattered through the passengers, rock stars, comedians, and political figures were dozens of the children of the most powerful people on earth. A few were the children of Bonesmen, but most were not. The children of the current president. The two young princes of England. Children of not just the rich and famous but also the globally powerful. Some of these actually were children, the youngest being ten; the rest were adult sons and daughters who were using their parents’ positions to make a bid for social change, for compassion, and for basic humanity.
If we made a single misstep, we could get them all killed.
If we did nothing, that was a certainty.
At least we had plenty of backup coming. Two DMS teams in a C-17 Globemaster a few hours behind us. If a fight broke out, they’d swoop down on TradeWinds Combat Motor Kites, which look like batwing hang gliders but with motorized flaps for steering and braking. The kites can support an operator and his entire combat kit. Operators can even fire small arms while flying them.
A hundred feet below the cruise ship was the US S
Jimmy Carter,
one of the new Virginia Class attack subs. There were two SEAL teams aboard, plus a platoon of Marines.
“Coming up on her,” called the pilot. “Portside.”
I peered out the window and saw it. The ship looked like a floating city, and even at night it was ablaze with lights.
I looked over at Circe, who was curled asleep with her head on Dietrich’s shoulder. She looked very young. It hurt me to think that she’d be carrying the memory of betrayal and violence around with her for the rest of her life.
I reached over and tapped her arm.
“We’re here,” I said.
Chamber of the Seven Kings
December 21, 5:19 A.M. EST
Toys sat alone in the Chamber of the Kings. Now that the second phase of the Initiative was rolling, the individual Kings and their Consciences had all left McCullough for undisclosed locations. If something went horribly wrong tonight, none of them wanted to be in any predictable spot. Considering what was happening, it was too dangerous to congregate; and trust only went so far, especially bearing in mind the lengths to which Aunt Sallie or Mr. Church would go in order to get information.
Rabbits gone to ground,
Toys mused darkly, looking at all the empty thrones.
Gault and Eris were on her yacht, far out to sea. Probably shagging like rabbits, too.
Toys put his feet up on the table, crossed his ankles, and stared at the screens. The wall of screens showed ninety different news channels. The London Hospital bombing was no longer the lead story. Nor was the catastrophic drop in the stock market or even the massacre at the Starbucks in Southampton. Now it was the “Death of the Firstborn.” CNN was the first network to put the story together—fed, Toys knew, by agents of the Goddess—that the children of America’s elite families were being murdered. All of the other stations had similar titles, rife with biblical references.
Most had nice graphics, and Toys wondered if each network had a graphic artist on standby or if titles of this sort were premade and ready for their inevitable use.
He sipped a martini—his third since he arrived—and watched the reporters give hysterical accounts of the mounting death toll. Every law enforcement organization in the country was “being mobilized” or was “racing against time” or “actively hunting suspects.” All bullshit. Toys sipped and scowled. No mention of the Department of Military Sciences, of course.
The martini was nearly gone before the ABC News anchor speculated on a connection between these murders and the shootings in Southampton and Jenkintown.
“Took you bloody long enough!” Toys yelled at the screen.
He sighed and set down his glass, and as he leaned forward to do so his gaze fell on the phone the American had given him. Toys’ nerves were still jangling from having called Joe Ledger. Few things had ever scared Toys as much as hearing that psychopath’s voice on the other end of the call. Toys snatched up the phone and shoved it into his pocket. With a grunt he thrust himself out of his chair and staggered over to the wall of screens, carrying the half-empty pitcher with him instead of the glass. A glass was too slow.
Toys drank from the pitcher and watched the press chow down on the firstborn story.
“First-bloody-born,” Toys said, and then laughed at the slur in his own voice. “I’ll bet you’re watching this, aren’t you, Sebastian? Does it make you feel like a god? You and that wrinkled slut. Gods? What a laugh.” He suddenly bent forward and pressed his face against the screen and yelled at the top of his voice, “
This isn’t even your fucking fight!
”
He beat his fist on the screen. Over and over and over again until the screen cracked and blood splashed across the hissing, distorted image. Then a fit of laughter rippled through him like an uncontrollable shiver.
He drank a huge mouthful, but the motion of leaning back to drink made him lose balance and he staggered backward five wobbly steps and then sat down hard on the floor. The American’s phone fell out of his pocket and the pitcher dropped, too, and smashed, splashing him with booze and broken glass. He stared at it for a long moment, and then burst into tears.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he said between sobs. “I’ve become a sloppy crying drunk.” Weeping turned to laughter and back to sobs.
Eventually, drunk and exhausted, his face streaked with tears, Toys climbed slowly to his feet and brushed glass gingerly from his clothes. He picked up the phone and stared at it, suddenly horrified about what he had done.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the empty room. “Oh, God … I’m sorry.”
“There are no gods here,” purred a voice behind him. Toys screamed and whirled. “Only a fool and a King.”
A man stood in the doorway to the Chamber of the Kings. He was tall and handsome, and he was smiling.
Sebastian Gault raised his pistol and pointed it at Toys.