NINETEEN
THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Colby, I’d like to turn your attention to a budget item under the document, “BLACK CHAMBER, Goals and Accomplishments.”
MR. COLBY: Mr. Chairman, as I stated, I cannot verify the authenticity of that document.
THE CHAIRMAN: It was my understanding that the Black Chamber was an intelligence group abandoned during the Hoover administration.
MR. COLBY: That was my understanding as well.
THE CHAIRMAN: Then how do you explain the continued payments under this budget in the amount of several hundred thousand dollars?
MR. COLBY: I’m at a loss, Mr. Chairman.
THE CHAIRMAN: Sir, you’re the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. If you don’t know, who does?
COUNSEL: Mr. Chairman, if I may, I believe this can be explained, but we should move to closed session.
THE CHAIRMAN: I have to warn you, counselor, I’m running out of patience. The goal of these hearings is to shed more light on these subjects, not push them back into the dark.
COUNSEL: Yes, sir. And we are doing everything we can to cooperate.
THE CHAIRMAN: Very well. Clear the room, please.
—Transcript, Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, also known as the Church Committee, 1975
T
his is what I get for showing up early in the morning, Candle thought.
No one else was there. Not Bell, not Book, not even Barrows. He was alone in the office.
He was surfing for Internet porn, bored out of his skull, when Hewitt reappeared.
He nearly jumped out of his skin. He’d never get used to that.
“Where’s Book?” Hewitt asked.
“Out,” Candle said. “What’s up?”
Hewitt looked unhappy. “I need Book. I found the place where Barrows took Bell.”
“Why don’t you handle it?”
“Not supposed to engage. Graves’s orders.”
Candle knew better than to argue. The Shadowmen were for surveillance, not combat. He’d asked why once. “You don’t want them getting a taste for blood” was all Graves had said.
Candle stood up. “Well, he’s not here. Let’s go.”
Hewitt looked at him. He didn’t say anything.
Candle puffed up his chest. “Dude. I said let’s go.”
Hewitt wavered. “It could be messy.”
Candle opened his desk drawer and took out a government-issue SIG Sauer. He racked the slide and leered.
“I hope so. I’m ready to do some damage.”
Hewitt just looked at him again.
“What?” Candle said. “What? You think I’m some kind of pussy? I’ve done things, man.”
Hewitt still didn’t speak. He just turned around and headed for the door.
“Well, I have,” Candle said, jamming the gun into his belt at the small of his back, then hurrying to catch up.
CANDLE NEVER REALLY FELT like a secret agent, despite his fervent hopes when Graves recruited him. When they first met, he’d tried to introduce himself. The older man cut him off. “First rule,” he said. “Never give your real name. True names have power. You can call me Graves. And from now on, you’re Candle. Got it?”
Candle loved it. A code name. He thought he was going to get a gun and a license to kill. Instead, he got a desk and a computer.
Before he joined the Company, Candle received a regular stipend from the CIA as part of its psy-ops division.
In plainer language, he lied. He wrote op-eds for friendly politicians, distributed talking points and cash to talking heads in the media, and engineered cover-ups when necessary, like when a precision-guided Predator drone mistook an elementary school in Iraq for a terrorist hideout.
After he jumped, he did the same thing, but on a much bigger scale. He generated reports to make Archer/Andrews look like a vital piece of the national security machine. He’d been personally responsible for two elevations of the threat level. One of those times had been with a story about female suicide bombers having surgery to get plastic explosive breast implants.
Candle spent a lot of time commenting anonymously on blogs, starting chain e-mails and planting rumors on message boards. It didn’t take much effort. He planted the seeds, and they grew like kudzu.
But he thought he should be closer to the action. He’d been excited when Graves pulled him in to work counterintelligence on Barrows. He thought he’d finally get to see some real action.
Now that he had his chance, however, he felt a little nauseous.
Hewitt’s special skills unlocked doors and got Candle into the tunnels—the geek part of him was pretty psyched about the secret tunnels. But after that, he was on his own. He got lost twice, even using the detailed turn-by-turn map programmed into his phone.
He was sweating and queasy by the time he found the morgue. He had his gun in one hand, his phone in the other, but he didn’t feel particularly dashing. He was pretty sure a secret agent’s underwear wasn’t supposed to ride up his crack while on a mission.
He peered into the morgue. It was a disaster area. Carefully, he shoved the door open, sweeping first with the pistol, the way he’d been taught at A/A’s firearms course. However, he insisted on holding the gun sideways, despite all the times his instructor had yelled at him about that.
It just looked so damned cool.
The lights flickered in the room. Something really bad had happened in here. He could tell. His foot came down on something sticky, and he knew it was blood.
But the bubble of his fantasies—
I’m really doing it! I’m a spy!
—was thick enough to be a force field. Candle literally couldn’t imagine anything bad happening to him. In his head, this was all part of the script. This was where he found the way to pry Barrows loose from their group, where he learned a way to control Cade, and he got Graves’s approval and Bell would have sex with him.
Then he heard the hissing.
He turned in time to see the Snakehead, battered and half-frozen, a crusted scab over its chest. It looked pissed. And worse, it looked hungry.
Candle pulled the trigger—and just like his firearms instructor warned him, the gun ejected a hot shell casing back into his eye. He recoiled in pain, blinded. He kept pulling the trigger.
He couldn’t see a thing between the tears and the pain. He kept firing, bullets spanging all over the metal surfaces of the room, hoping for a random hit.
His slide locked open. The clip was empty. He still couldn’t see. Deafened by the gunshots, he couldn’t hear the hissing either.
But he was still alive.
Maybe he got lucky.
Then a heavy weight landed on his back, and he felt the skin separate as something sliced through it.
His bubble of fantasy popped. The real world was right in his face, and it was a small square of tile on a cold floor. It finally occurred to him that he was not the secret-agent hero of this movie. He wasn’t the plucky sidekick. He wasn’t even the damsel in distress, because no one was coming to save him.
TWENTY
Operation OFTEN was the name given by Sidney Gottlieb to the CIA’s attempts to “weaponize” black magic. Gottlieb, who was already famous among conspiracy theorists for his part in the CIA’s mind-control experiments (see: Operation MK-ULTRA), used untold amounts of taxpayer dollars to hire psychics, astrologers and mentalists in an effort to tap into real magical power for America to use against its enemies. It was even rumored that OFTEN conducted séances to debrief CIA personnel who’d been killed in action. No wonder Gottlieb’s nickname was “the Black Sorcerer.” A similar operation, code-named CONNECTICUT-HULU, was reported to extend OFTEN’s research by using cult rituals and techniques, although no documentation exists to support this charge.
—Cole Daniels,
Black Ops: The Occult-CIA Connection
A
helicopter rose over the
Virtue
, its spotlight sweeping the deck. It revealed six of the Snakeheads feeding on a single corpse, their slit pupils contracting in the sudden glare. They looked like animals on the highway, feasting on roadkill while caught in the headlights of a car.
Cade didn’t drop from the chopper as much as launch himself out into the air. Thirty yards to the deck, then he hit and rolled to his feet, right in the center of the carnage.
The Snakeheads stared at him. He was smiling.
No. Not smiling. Snarling. Showing them his own fangs.
To Cade’s surprise, they did not come right for him. They stood, looking as if they considered the idea, then seemed to sniff him out.
Interesting, Cade thought. They sensed his inhumanity. They weren’t going to try to eat him; he didn’t suit their tastes.
Cade realized they would only fight him if they perceived him as a direct threat.
He could manage that.
“All right,” Cade said, still snarling. “Who’s first?”
HE PICKED THE BIGGEST ONE, absurdly clothed in a hospital gown still strung around one arm and its neck.
He leaped high above it and kicked.
His heel cracked the Snakehead right at the neck. The kick would have killed one of the creatures on the yacht.
But instead of the familiar snap of bone, Cade felt only a dull thud of impact. The Snakehead fell down, but it wasn’t dead. It was barely even hurt. They were like jerky; tough but flexible.
No question about it now. This was an entirely different generation of creature. They were evolving rapidly—too rapidly to be random chance. Someone was refining the virus with each new strain; deliberately producing tougher breeds of the creatures.
Cade just hoped they hadn’t gotten any smarter.
It scrabbled back to its feet and slashed at him. He grabbed the Snakehead by the neck and hurled it to the deck. It slashed at his gut with the talons on its feet; Cade moved barely in time to avoid being disemboweled.
The others left them alone, concentrating on the meat. They had no herd or pack instincts, apparently. They just wanted to eat.
The Snakehead suddenly barreled forward and pinned Cade to the deck. Cade held its neck just far enough to avoid those needle-sharp teeth snapping at his face.
The creature kept shifting position, snapping crazily. It didn’t want to devour Cade; it only wanted to kill him. Cade had learned he could make them angry. That was a sort of progress, he supposed.
He knew he couldn’t keep its jaws away much longer. He was on his back, at a disadvantage. Sooner or later, the Snakehead would get past his guard.
So Cade let it.
He slipped its thrust, driving it face first into the deck behind him. At the same time, he turned his head and bared his fangs.
He bit as hard as he could, tearing free the leathery hide of its neck.
Blood poured over his chin and neck, even dribbling into his ears.
The Snakehead rolled away with a strangled kind of hiss that could only be a shriek of pain.
Cade spat out the snake flesh. It wasn’t human anymore; not even close. It made him slightly nauseous.
But Cade noticed the other Snakeheads didn’t have any reservations.
Their heads lifted as one from the body, and they narrowed their eyes on the thrashing, bleeding Snakehead.
They ran headlong at it, shoving one another out of the way in their eagerness for the kill. Primal instinct took over. They saw weakness and they pounced on it.
In a second, the creatures were tearing at one another, all trying to find a fresh chunk of the wounded Snakehead. Inevitably, they tore open new wounds, and the fresh blood drove them even crazier. Several more, attracted by the hissing cries of the scrum, joined in the slaughter.
Cade watched from a safe distance as the Snakeheads ate one another.
Now Cade knew how to kill them all.
FIRST, HE MADE a trip to the bridge. He had not piloted a boat in years, but it was easy enough to set the
Virtue
moving forward. He hoped it wouldn’t run into anything before he was done.
In the stairwell to the lower decks, Cade found another Snakehead waiting. It sniffed the blood on him and attacked immediately.
Cade was ready. He ducked, grabbed the Snakehead by the leg and slammed it into the metal stairs.