On the Fifth Day (48 page)

"If they have sonar," he said, "they'll probably find us any

way, but there's no point screaming to them."

"Still think that 'them' is the Catholic Church?" said Thomas. "Dropping out of helicopters with machine guns?

Doesn't sound right to me."

"The power, ruthlessness, and ignorance of religion never surprises me," said Parks.

"And you think these are the people who have taken my wife?" said Thomas, only realizing after he said it that he didn't use the habitual "ex."

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"Yes. And you should forget all that stuff about Christian mercy. If you aren't with them you are against them. Forget all your nuanced, gray-area arguments; these people are waging a war against you as fiercely as if you fought for the Devil him

self. Don't expect her to live through this, Thomas. You'll only make it tougher on yourself when you find her body."

CHAPTER 102

The phones had started ringing at the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. Meetings were hastily con

vened and Agent Cerniga's voice bounced by secure satellite into a room full of serious-looking men and women whose eyes were fixed on a series of projected maps and satellite im

ages. Among them were photographs taken the day after the March thirteenth attack by a pair of rogue Predator drones on a remote fishing village in the Philippines. Most of the serious conversation went on after Cerniga's call was politely con

cluded with a formal thank-you to him and his agency for their diligence.

"Well?" said the deputy director. "Anything to it?"

A black woman in glasses spoke up.

"If the incident was the result of computer malfeasance, it was cleverly concealed to look like a system failure," she said.

"Is it possible, Janice?"

"It's possible."

"And had that possibility occurred to you before . . ." he checked his watch, "about a half hour ago?"

"Of course," she answered, with a hint of defiance. "It's my job to consider such possibilities."

Someone gasped, and it was only then that she realized that she had said the wrong thing. The deputy director stared at her 363

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

and she felt the tension in the room escalate, as if everyone were holding their breath. He held her eyes with his as he spoke:

"I was told it was a system malfunction," he said. "No question. No doubt. Mechanical error." He paused, but if there was a question there, no one answered it. He spelled it out. "So I'm hearing about this other possibility
now
because . . . ?"

Everyone shifted. The deputy director was not a man to be left out of the loop without all manner of stuff hitting the fan if said loop didn't close satisfactorily. Janice removed her glasses and looked him in the face, conscious that her career might be about to take a punch from which it would never recover.

"We thought we could deal with the matter internally until we had some definitive sense of the chain of events, sir," she said.

"But questions are already being raised external to the ser

vice, yes?" he said, his calm suspended by tightening steel cable.

"Apparently. Yes, sir."

He watched her for a second without blinking.

"When this all blows over, Janice, you and I are going to talk," he said, without malice or bluster.

"Yes, sir," she said.

"For now I need a list of possibilities as to how it could have been done, how many people would have been involved, and who those people would be," said the deputy director. "I want that within the hour. Till then, I want all Predator flights grounded."

"Sir," said a middle-aged man with nicotine-stained fin

gers, "that might not be possible . . ."

"Make it possible," said the deputy director. "Till the sys

tem gets a clean bill of health and we know it cannot be hacked, nothing goes up. Clear?"

CHAPTER 103

Night had fallen on the tiny Philippine island. Parks had brought the submarine into the sheltered cove with the lights off, relying solely on the cascading sonar screen for a sense of their surroundings. They had sat on the bottom, thirty meters down, for four agonizing hours, waiting for the sun to set, sit

ting silent in the dark. For Thomas, who loathed cramped spaces and immobility, it was a good approximation of Hell. They moved inland slowly, still without lights, coasting ghostlike to the surface and in to the beach, their engines barely turning over so that they seemed to drift with the tide. Before the light had gone entirely the formerly clear water had seemed blurred, presumably because of sand from the beach, and their view from the sub's cab had become thick and un

specific. Once the sun went down, of course, the darkness was absolute, and Thomas started to feel that he had been relying on his other senses for days. The emergency kit contained a flashlight, but they didn't want to attract attention to them

selves and kept it off. They brushed the sea floor before fully surfacing, making the sub turn, oscillating into the current be

fore inching forward and settling completely. Parks popped the hatch and the night air flooded in like re

lief. All around them were the sounds of the ocean and the piping of insects from the trees. Thomas clambered out, the diver's knife pushed into his belt, still clutching the flare pis

tol. He looked around. A thin filament of moon rode high over the forest, and in its light the beach glowed white. If anyone came down to the water they would see the submarine, but they had run aground close to some hunks of deep-set rock, and from farther up the beach the yellow submarine might re

main invisible. He splashed onto the shore and looked about him. No one was there.

"Now what?" said Parks.

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He was still exuding the jaundiced air that had thickened the longer they sat in the sub without searching for his pre

cious fishapod.

"Now we get into the trees and make our way east, to the beach where the
Nara
was anchored," said Thomas. He had had more than enough time to consider his plan, but its details were still imprecise. Even if Jim and Kumi were alive, even if he could save them, he had no idea how they would get off the island or where they might hide till that was possible. The entire place was only a couple of miles across. But maybe they wouldn't need to stay hidden for long. Maybe the coast guard or the Philippine military would be on hand, following up reports of unauthorized helicopter presence. Maybe the
Nara
had even managed to get off an SOS before they lost their radio . . .

And maybe your attackers have the kind of authority that
can push unwanted foreign governments away if they get too
inquisitive . . .

Maybe.

At the head of the beach was a mango tree, dark and fra

grant. Thomas stood under it for a moment while Parks caught up, and then led the way into a screen of coconut palms and yucca. Something in the treetops--a monkey, perhaps--

called out, a great booming whoop of alarm at their approach, and then fell silent.

"I guess we're not in Kansas anymore," said Parks.

"Just stay close and keep quiet," said Thomas, pushing through the undergrowth in search of something like a path.

"You were very close to Ed," said Jim into the darkness. "Do you mind if I ask how close?"

"We were good friends for all the time I was in the States after Japan," said Kumi, "but that's not what you mean, is it?"

"Not really. I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

It was too dark to see her face, so the sound of her chuck

ling caught him by surprise.

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A. J. Hartley

"Ed was just a friend," she said. "Nothing more."

"So why does Thomas say he broke up your marriage?"

"Because Thomas needs someone to blame," she said, and there was no trace of a laugh now. "We met in Japan, and though I was second generation, the place was strange to both of us. When we left it was like something had gone away that had been part of the glue that held us together, if that makes sense. Ex-pats cling to each other in strange places. Out of that context, they have nothing in common."

"And that's why you split up?"

She sighed. "It's part of it," she said. "We committed to each other, determined to build something together, holding on to the history we had made together. But we're not easy people to get along with, and we drifted apart. The baby just focused it all, made it seem unfixable."

"So it had nothing to do with Ed at all."

"Ed advised a trial separation," she answered. "I had been confiding in him for years. He knew Tom better than anyone, knew how distant he could be. After Anne--the miscarriage, I mean--Tom was no help at all. I guess we weren't much help to each other."

Jim could hear that that last remark was something she had not thought before, that it was a concession.

"Anyway," she concluded, "I was going into a downward spiral and Ed suggested that we take a break from each other. So I left and never went back. Tom never forgave him."

"I can see how that would work."

"I know Ed meant well."

"In my experience," said Jim, "he always did."

"Tom said he helped you out, that you'd had a rough year,"

said Kumi.

"You could say that," said Jim. His voice was soft and she couldn't get a clear sense of where he was in the dark, but he sounded nostalgic, even sad. "There was a family in my parish called Meers. Single mom and two teenaged kids. Poor, sort of screwed up, in and out of trouble. Every month they struggled to pay their rent, every month I tried to help out with some 367

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

parish funds. Borrowed some from the bishop a couple of times. Anyway, it came to a head after one of the kids--a fifteen-year-old, DeMarcus, his name was--got picked up for shoplifting once too often and everything went to hell. I met with the landlord and the police but I couldn't stop it. They wound up being evicted just as the first snowstorm of the year came in. Chicago's a rough city to be homeless in. Anyway, they refused to leave, the cops came, and there was some trou

ble. Nothing too bad but . . ."

"You were there," said Kumi.

"I was there," he said. "Threw a punch I probably shouldn't have, and woke up in a cell. The bishop did what he could but it was a mess. I was 'on leave' for a while, and that was when Ed was sent over to take up the slack. I wouldn't have got through it without him, and not just because he took on a lot of my duties."

"Your faith?"

"Took a hit, yes," he said. "Such things make the universe feel random and vicious. It's tough to feel that no matter what you do there are some things you just can't fix."

"Yes," she said.
A child-sized hole in your gut.
"Yes." She waited, then said, "How's the family now?"

"Eileen and the younger boy are doing well," said Jim.

"They have an apartment and she's working a couple of jobs."

"And DeMarcus?" said Kumi, not wanting to ask.

"DeMarcus died his third night on the street. Walked into a drug deal, or said the wrong thing to somebody . . . We never knew for sure."

"God, Jim," said Kumi. "I'm sorry."

"Yes," he said. "Me too. Funny, isn't it, the way death throws everything into perspective? It made me feel . . . lost. Useless. Ed got me through it, but part of me still feels that if I gave it all up tomorrow, no one would really notice. Not really."

"I'm sure they would," said Kumi.

Jim thanked her, but he didn't say he thought she was right. 368

A. J. Hartley

* * *

Thomas pressed on through the dense vegetation, following thinly beaten sand tracks that were already being over

whelmed by stiff grass and vines. Not so long ago there had been a fishing village on the island, but after the bomb--or whatever it was that had killed his brother--the survivors seemed to have moved on. There was no trace of habitation now and only the movement of bats, tarsiers, and lemurs hunt

ing fruit and insects in the treetops. He kept the sea to his right as he moved, but the forest was disorienting and he dared not venture too close to the shore, so that after a half hour he was unsure whether they had bypassed the beach.

"We might be able to see the
Nara
if it's still where we left it," he said, gazing out toward the water. The moon was setting and the darkness had thickened.

"If the boat had moved off before we left the sub, our sonar would have picked it up," said Parks. "Nothing carries through water like boat propellers."

"So where the hell is it?"

"We can't see anything from here. One of us will have to go closer to the beach."

Thomas sighed, but Parks was right.

"Follow me," Thomas said, dropping to a half-crouch and edging through a mass of ferns toward the shore. There was a heavy clump of palms arcing up into the night sky, then only sand. Beyond that he could hear the lapping of the sea but could glimpse no sign of the boat. Hugging the tree line, he began to move, tracing the slow curve of the beach, till he saw it, quite clear, a soft white shape a good way from shore, the decks dark, but a pinprick of light showing through what he took to be a distant porthole. It looked perfectly placid.

"You think they are all on board?" whispered Parks. Thomas shrugged.

He walked another thirty paces and stopped. There was something big and dark on the sand ahead of him, something the size of a hut, but irregular and somehow ominous. It was 369

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

what had blocked the
Nara
from view. He skulked back into the trees and watched for a moment, but could make no more sense of the thing in the darkness.

"What is that?" he mouthed.

Parks shook his head. Then, without warning, he stepped back out onto the beach and turned on the flashlight, directing it at the strange, dark hulk on the sand. It took only a second for the dread of the thing to register in both men's minds.
Helicopter.