Mariposa (25 page)

Chapter Forty-Nine

The White House

The president's chief of staff entered the room and sat at the long table across from Alicia Kunsler and beside Daniel Haze.

Rebecca had not met him before. He was a short, unimposing man with small, watchful eyes, pale skin, and a fleshy lower lip. He wore a toupee, she noticed—everyone noticed, it was a standing joke with the press corps. Nevertheless, he had a quiet confidence that showed he did not much care what people thought, or how he looked—though his suit was tailored and his soft reddish-brown loafers fit the current Beltway style—or established it.

Thalia Ripper stood by his side, laying out a series of zip pages. He looked down at them, then said, "Here's all that we've been given—all that's been presented. The president is listening to the Quinn sound file. Because Talos Corporation has been implicated in illegal and possibly treasonous activities, I've taken the precaution of removing their executive protection team and reinstating the Secret Service. Director Haze joins us for that and other reasons. Daniel, what can you tell us about Quinn's death?"

"Cumberland is keeping us out," Haze said. "Justice is pushing hard, but it's possible even some of their people don't want to know the truth. There's a lot of tendrils in law enforcement that lead straight back to Talos."

"Suicide?" the chief of staff asked.

Haze shook his head once, dubious. "He was supposed to be on suicide watch. It's a major cock up. People all over are hiring counsel and updating their résumés."

The chief of staff allowed himself a tired grimace. "Poor bastard. What about Mr. Price?"

Kunsler removed her spex to concentrate on the people in the room. "We await the opportunity to give our report directly to the president," she said.

The chief of staff touched his earpiece and stood abruptly. "Yes, Madam President," he said. "All of us. I understand. We're on our way."

Ripper gathered up the zip pages and followed as he led them through the door. In the windowed hallway outside, Ripper spoke in low tones to the tightly assembled group. "What you're about to see must be kept strictly confidential. The president places her utmost trust in you."

Kunsler glanced at Rebecca, a peculiar look that was at once apprehensive and somehow relieved, as if she were about to share a huge burden.

"We'll be making an announcement in two days . . . if we have that long," Ripper concluded, before they entered the residence. She dropped her gaze to the floor and squared her shoulders as she opened the door to the president's bedroom.

From the opening wafted unmistakable smells of soap, antiseptic, medicine—a sickroom.

The heat struck them next—in the nineties and humid.

One by one, the chief of staff ushered them through the door, starting with Rebecca.

President Larsen looked up from a four-poster piled high with comforters and blankets. Her cheeks had sunk almost to the bone and the skin on her arms and clavicle appeared parchment-thin. Her veins and arteries stood out like a medical diagram.

"Sorry to put this off for so long," she said, and invited Rebecca closer. The president's labored breath was like a hot tropic breeze.

The change was startling—she looked more dead than alive.

Chapter Fifty

Lion County

Little Jamey hadn't said a word since Kapp had been killed. The truck roared and bounced west along the old frontage road, followed by at least three surveillance birds—and probably soon to be tracked by larger craft, old Reapers or sleek new Condors, equipped with Hellfire missiles or worse.

William swung the truck hard left, then slammed it to a grinding halt in the middle of brush. Dust swirled.

He cleared his throat. "Best to get out here. Where I'm going, you don't want to follow."

Curteze had bitten his tongue on the last big bounce. Blood stained his lower lip. His voice was thick. "We need hostage rescue. They can't just abandon us out here. Someone has to stick their necks out and extract us."

"That isn't going to happen," William said. "We knew this was going to be tough going in."

Curteze glared out the window. "We were doing this for the old FBI. No joke. They
owe
us."

Dawn was five hours away. No extraction. No HRT. They both knew it.

"Thanks, guys," Jamey said from the backseat. His eyes were puffy, exhausted. "We still got some water, right? I can make El Paso easy."

"They'll track us down and blow us to bits!" Curteze shouted.

"The desert is full of targets—hundreds every day coming north—men, women, children," William said. "They can't track them all. Your best chance begins right here."

Jamey opened his door and got out, then walked around the Tahoe and tapped William's side window. William rolled it down.

"Hell of a ride," the boy said, and they shook hands.

Curteze looked between Jamey and William.

"You're going back to the airport?"

William nodded.

"Right now, the way this shit's going down, they don't care—they won't hesitate to blow you right off the road."

"You're probably right," William said.

Curteze swore and pushed open his door, half falling, half jumping out. He straightened and slammed the door shut. He still had some of Kapp's blood and brains on his sleeve and shoulder.

"Thanks for nothing," he said to William. "Come on, kid," he said to Jamey.

They slunk off through the brush, crouched low.

William swung the Tahoe back around, raising another big cloud of dust. That would look like panic, but also hide the pair in the brush for a few minutes, at least. Maybe the drone trackers would keep their focus on the truck.

Only idiots would jump out in the middle of nowhere.

On one deep bounce, William's head almost hit the roof of the cab. The headliner pressed his hair. Angrily, he swerved right and found the access road the GPS had said was there, back when it was still working: part gravel, part patched asphalt.

A single small car honked and veered into the shoulder as he nearly ran it down.

He roared through a dusty suburb, low flat houses on either side, parked Diesel semis surrounded by weeds. This was within a mile of where he had started. And here, it seemed a good time to talk to himself, just to keep up the illusion of company.

"I'll head to the airport and hope for the best. Planes coming in at all hours. Limos going 24/7," he said. "They won't take
that
risk."

To this, he answered, "Hell, they'd gladly blow me up in front of everybody, take me out with a pinpoint blast—call it a tactical
demonstration
.

"Two miles from the airport. There's the highway."

The highway was almost deserted. No line of cars blocked his path. Somehow, he had evaded Price's posse—or the posse had split up, pulled back, not to alarm the incoming guests. A bunch of good ol' boys in pickup trucks, standing up with assault rifles locked and loaded . . .

Through the dusty windshield, he saw a glint in the high sunlight of the coming dawn: a big drone at about a thousand feet, doing aerobatic loops.

"Fucking angel of death," he said.

William slowed and then gunned the truck up the frontage road. The road joined with an onramp to the highway. There were headlights ahead; at this hour, it had to be either ranch trucks or traffic from the Lion City airport.

A big black limo passed on his left.

He grunted. "An audience," he said, and wiped his mouth. Two more limos and a phalanx of eight or nine shiny black SUVs swooped by.

William could no longer see the high glint. He easily imagined the drone stooping like a hawk, then flinched and almost swerved off the road as a midsize jet roared overhead: a beautiful Citation making its final approach. It sported Arabic markings. The Texans and Saudis had always had a lot in common: deserts, guts, tribes, and oil.

Now he was passing pretty thick traffic on the other side of the four-lane road. Everyone arriving, no one leaving. If he stayed in the left hand lane, near the oncoming limos, someone would have to be very confident in their targeting skills—or very stupid—to try to take him out.

The truck or its debris—a flying tire or chunk of cab, even a body, William could see that clearly enough—could easily vault the divide and go through the windshield of a visiting prince in exile.

The Tahoe was much quieter on the highway. The smooth ride was unnerving. William could imagine all sorts of noises.

He turned his head left and stiffened up like a rail. "Well, looky who's here," he said. The drone was less than twenty feet to his right, flaps down, swinging like a huge seagull to keep pace. "Cannon, 20 mil, front turret mount," he added, as if admiring the features of a good-looking sports car. "And—yep—two Hellfires." He was half drunk with fear. "What idiot sold these cowboys tactical weapons?"

The highway up ahead was almost empty.

A lag in the airport traffic.

The drone dropped back, long wings wagging as if in warning.

William hunched over. He knew what was coming. These guys were happy to put on a show. He saw a spark in his rearview mirror, braked the Tahoe hard, skidding and fishtailing on the road, then threw open his door and jumped out—at thirty miles an hour. He tried to roll like a pro but got caught up in a painful rubber tangle of arms and legs.

He ended up on his back.

The Tahoe cruised on for a hundred feet, driver's door swinging, and was swiftly intersected by a brilliant streak corkscrewing from the rear.

The truck flew up a column of fire like some awful flaming insect, then fell back spinning and burning, lighting up the highway and the west Texas landscape.

Chapter Fifty-One

The White House

"The bullets killed me after all," the president said, motioning for Rebecca to take the chair beside her heavily blanketed bed. "Have you ever heard of something called a synthobe?"

"I have," Rebecca said.

"Do tell."

The chief of staff and Thalia Ripper stared in undisguised shock at their president. Alicia Kunsler, Daniel Haze, an Air Force colonel, and several others Rebecca did not know waited at the back of the bedroom like guilty children, unable to decide what to do with themselves, other than numbly watch.

"Little factories," Rebecca said. "They were used in the soft drink canisters that blew up the Los Angeles Convention Center. Like bacteria, only more efficient at doing one thing."

"Well, in me, they're efficient at making a poison," Larsen said. "Synthobes were in the bullets that didn't quite kill me. They're destroying my connective tissue, strand by strand. First I'll freeze up like I'm made of stone. My lungs will seize. Then my heart will stop. I've got a day, maybe two. My doctors tell me there's nothing they can do. I've listened to Quinn's confession—'Two-step assassination,' he calls it. He knew about it more than a year ago." She looked up, still hoping it was all a nightmare. "Is it really Eddie on the file, Thalia?"

"That's been confirmed, Madam President," Ripper said.

"He wanted to be president—but my God, what would there be left to be president of? First blow—shooting me—knocks the markets down a peg. Second blow—timed with a series of other strikes . . . my unexpected death, after an apparent recovery. Like clockwork. And then everything will go to hell. All at the same hour, in the same news cycle—with MSARC looking over the world's shoulder. Do you know what else Price has arranged for?"

"We're receiving that data now," Alicia Kunsler said. "Jane Rowland is in Texas sending it back to us."

"And where is she getting it?"

"From the blood of an agent, smuggled out in a snake," Kunsler said.

Larsen's barking laugh turned into a fit of coughing. "Give me the fairy-tale stuff slowly, please, and warn me when it's coming," she said, half strangled. The chief of staff handed her the first of the zip pages. She read it with jerky motions. "We do get clever," she said, her chest still heaving, then took a puff from an inhaler and looked around the room. "One guess who's behind all this."

Her eyes had difficulty tracking both the zip paper and the people around her. Her vision was going.

"No need to guess," Kunsler said, and touched her earpiece. "MSARC has definitely been compromised."

"Devil's bargain from the beginning," the chief of staff said.

The president weakly waved her hand as if shooing flies.

Kunsler synopsized. "Price will in effect throw a switch from his office—and instantly control more than a third of America, through his proxies: non-nationals, banks, hedge funds in other countries."

"Is that all it takes?" Larsen asked.

"MSARC's judgment will be triggered by assassination and sabotage," Kunsler continued. "Compromised security, military personnel and police officers—"

An aide entered the room with a portable display pad and placed it delicately on the president's lap. "She can read it for herself," she said in a reverent whisper.

"Talk normal. I'm not dead, for Christ's sake—not yet," Larsen growled, and held the display closer. "Price has stationed snipers around key stations on the power grid, with deep-steel penetrating rounds, ready to take out custom-made transformer components that will require months to replace . . . Total power collapse across North America."

The president handed the display to her Chief of Staff. He took up the report as if joining in the family reading of a last will and testament.

"We'll be back in the dark ages. Then—the
coup de grâce
. MSARC will declare the U.S. financial situation dire and call back all our loans, the flexible bonds, cancel contingent purchase of bonds . . . all of it, America insolvent, incapable of paying its bills internally or externally, triggering a massive retreat from American investment—whatever's left by then. He'll declare most of the south financially and politically independent—from Kentucky and Tennessee down to Louisiana and Florida—whether the states agree or not. He's stockpiled the components necessary to repair the power grid—on a state-by-state basis. States that opt in get back their power sooner—days, not months—and become part of Price's governing coalition."

She controlled another fit of coughing, then took a glass of water from Ripper. "Singapore, Amman, Beijing, Dubai, Qatar and the Saudis in exile will offer to extend financial aid and give Price the mandate to repair the situation. He'll have autonomy. And that will be the end of the United States of America. Pretty sweet, huh?"

The chief of staff balled his hands into fists. "They'll rejoice. They'll dance around a bonfire of civil rights and try Abe Lincoln for war crimes."

Rebecca listened in growing shock. The room seemed to be getting larger—more detail, harder to process. She blinked and wiped her eyes. Difficult to concentrate with so much to see. Her eyes hurt.

"My options are few and desperate," the president said, leaning forward. Ripper removed her pillows and plumped them. "We can't protect everything—we can't move that many troops fast enough, and in some states, the National Guard has already declared independence from federal rule. They answer only to sympathetic governors. Poor Governor Kinchley in Idaho—looks like she's first on their takedown list. The military will refuse to conduct any sort of preemptive strike within sovereign U.S. territory. Some of the Joint Chiefs sympathize with Price. All but one or two of the rest treat me with contempt. The generals know that a third of the troops would go over to Price. Maybe more. It doesn't help that we're months behind on payroll."

"What can we do, Madame President?" Kunsler asked.

"Tell us what's happening in Texas," Larsen said.

"They're gathering in Lion City," Kunsler said, "getting ready to throw one big party—all the would-be rulers of the world. The financiers, the politicians, the scientists and engineers . . . state's rights fanatics and amoral opportunists and every shade in between. Protected by Price's most loyal soldiers, as well as cadres of mercenaries from Haiti. They're practically daring us to drop a nuke on them."

The president crossed her arms over her knees for support, to relieve the pain in her stiffening back. "I refuse to be the first president to nuke Texas. I still have one or two friends down there. Options?"

Kunsler and Haze seemed to share something unknown to the others in the room. "Madam President," Kunsler said, "the Bureau has been working with loyal elements in the intelligence community and the military to keep track of the situation both in Texas and Geneva—a clandestine surveillance program centered on MSARC. We began contingency planning three years ago, when the loan documents were signed—by you—in secret."

"Congress and I had no choice," Larsen said. "We were heading over a deficit cliff."

"A general at Bolling Air Force base has offered a possible solution," the chief of staff said, "ready to deploy—on your express command, and upon a presidential finding of gross civilian insurrection. These officers are his representatives."

"What is this solution?"

The colonel stepped forward. "Generally speaking, less than lethal, but terribly inconvenient for any high-tech operation—and very clever."

"I really hate
clever
," the president murmured.

"Given the terrain and the technological savvy of Talos—and their fanatic devotion to surveillance and security—our device can incapacitate a high percentage of their personnel. And destroy virtually all electronic capability within the affected area."

"You'd shut down their computers," Kunsler said.

"Damned near everything that runs on chips and wires," the colonel said, and handed the chief of staff another zip page, which he passed to the president.

From her chair beside the bed, Rebecca caught a glimpse of what looked like flaming donuts.

"
Tesla bombs
," the president murmured. "
Jerichos. Brights.
Where
do
they get these names?"

"Technically known as TEMPs, Tactical Electromagnetic Pulse," the colonel said.

The president nodded when she was finished. The colonel retrieved the zip pages and wiped them by breaking their corners.

"To complete our mission," Kunsler said, "I'm prepared to offer volunteers from the Bureau's Hostage Rescue Team to enter Talos and destroy their capacity to cause us more harm. Also, we have plans to secure all necessary evidence, in case this should ever become a matter of public controversy."

The colonel said, "On your express order the Air Force will authorize transfer—"

"I so command," the president said. "Colonel, if our good general needs a signed paper, hand me a pen. Screw the rest of the protocol. We're all way outside the law here. On my head be it—I'll be dead in a few hours anyway."

The chief of staff summed it up. "Certain loyal officers in the Pentagon are arranging for the loan of a hardened and stealthy executive transport aircraft. Secret Service and Air Force will transfer two Brights from Air Force One to supplement our aircraft's current capabilities. Looks as if we have a hundred or so military and agency volunteers, happy to beg, borrow, or steal the necessary equipment and fly or drive it to Texas. Up against ten thousand of Price's best troops and security—his own private army."

"Nothing can save me," Larsen said. "But a few of you, working together, can save this country. How many in this room are ready to step up and put an end to this travesty?"

Kunsler counted around the bedroom. "You can't go, sir," she said to the chief of staff. "Nor you, Ms. Ripper. The president needs you, and very likely we're all going to get killed.

"Nor you, I regret to say, Madam President."

Everyone had raised their hands.

"Hell, I wanted to fly a fighter one last time," Larsen said. "Rebecca Rose. We've been here before, you and me, haven't we?"

"Yes ma'am."

"As much as possible, this needs to be a civilian operation—law enforcement, not military invasion."

"Pretty fine distinction," the colonel said.

The president ignored him.

"You and director Kunsler share operational command. Rebecca, you lead HRT into Talos and rescue our agents. And along the way, please convey my message to Axel Price. On occasion, the tree of freedom needs to be watered by the blood of arrogant bastards. Nobody can fucking
own
America."

She fell back onto the pillows and was beset by another fit of coughing. Flecks of pink appeared on Ripper's kerchief as she held it to the president's lips.

The White House physician pushed through and ordered them out of the room. "She's a human being, not a robot! She needs some rest. Give her peace, for God's sake."

Rebecca caught Larsen's eye just before leaving. The president gave her a trembling thumbs up, then was hidden from view by nurses and the closing door.

The chief of staff escorted them back into the hall. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Raphkind's probably going to be sworn in as president tomorrow morning. He hasn't been briefed. Knowing him, he wouldn't agree to any of this anyway. He might even strike a deal with Price. If this team can't get itself organized and do the job, our nation is worse than dead. Alicia, Daniel—thanks. Rebecca, I know you by reputation—an amazing reputation, I must say. You've all put up with a trainload of grief on behalf of this country. Only true patriots . . ." He stopped for a moment, genuinely choked up, perhaps for the first time in his political career. In embarrassment, he lightly slapped his own face. "Excuse me. This is going to be a hard night."

Kunsler gripped Rebecca's arm as Haze led them to staff cars. "If I'd had a choice, I would have brought you in six months ago," she said under her breath. "You won't believe who's waiting for us down there. Like old times."

"Damn," Rebecca said. The whole world seemed huge—massive clouds in an impossibly vivid sky the size of six or seven ordinary lifetimes.

"We're going to be in Texas in less than four hours. Any messages I can send?"

"Not a one," Rebecca said, ducking her head as she sat in the limo.

"The Bureau's operation in Lion City . . . we're in this with Spider/Argus, and there are two parts," Kunsler said, sliding in beside her. "One of the parts, Nabokov, delivered the information we needed, but the agent cannot withdraw. What—you know this already?" Kunsler looked prepared to be pissed off.

"Vladimir Nabokov loved butterflies," Rebecca said, shielding her eyes against the glare of headlights through the tinted windows.

"Right," Kunsler said, pulling back her irritation. "The other part is strictly hail Mary, and it's not going well. Let's join our HRT boys. I told them about Mecca, and they all want to meet you."

"Great," Rebecca said.

"I'll fill you in on the plane."