Predator One (47 page)

The killer had put it in flat terms.
Say good-bye to your world.

Yeah, motherfucker, I thought, say good-bye to yours.

Because your world is going to burn.

That was a scary threat. Very, very scary.

I wish I knew what to do about it.
Where to go with it. While I waited for Top and Bunny, I settled into a doctor’s lounge. There was a whiteboard on the wall, so I busied myself listing the timeline we’d come up with on the plane so I could show it to Rudy when he came for me. He was somewhere else doing doctor stuff. I was spinning my wheels.

You know the expression “hurry up and wait”?

I hate that expression.

Especially when
it defines my workday. Doubly so when bad things were happening to good people and the best I could manage was killing time.

Oh yeah, “killing time.” Another expression that, in context, blows.

Even more so when it becomes the most accurate assessment of the progress of a critical case.

A voice behind me said, “Here—”

I jumped about a foot, spun around, and almost pulled my gun.

It was Rudy
holding a cup of Starbucks coffee out to me, his hawthorn and silver cane hooked over the crook of one arm. His expression was halfway between shocked and amused.

“Nerves a little taut, Cowboy?” he said dryly.

“Yeah, well, fuck you, too,” I snarled.

“And cranky, too. It’s unbecoming.”

“And the horse you rode in on.”

I took the coffee and sipped it. Hot and delicious, but I was too caught
up in the dramatics of the moment to do anything but scowl.

Rudy nodded to Ghost, who had barely managed the energy to swivel one ear when I jumped. “At least somebody around here is managing to keep his blood pressure below the boiling point.”

“Don’t be fooled,” I said, “Ghost is poised for action.”

Ghost yawned and rolled over onto his back, legs curled and splayed like a dead chicken.

“So I see,” observed Rudy. “As always, I am in awe.”

For lack of anything cool or witty to say, I shot him the finger.

“When are we leaving?” he asked.

“Top and Bunny should be here any second. Then we’ll go see Circe, Junie, and the others.”

Rudy nodded, but there was some reserve in his face, which I immediately—and unfairly—misread.

“My guys swept the hospital,” I said, “Nicodemus isn’t
there. But if you don’t want to go back, I—”

That made Rudy stiffen, and he looked at me with one dark brown eye that burned like a laser all the way through me. “Cowboy, my wife is in that hospital. I left with great reluctance in order to come here. If you are suggesting that I am afraid to go back, then I—”

I set my coffee cup down and held up my hands. “Stop. That was me being stupid. I
apologize. As you, better than anyone, know, I have more than my share of jackass moments. No excuses. I wasn’t thinking, and I’m sorry.”

Rudy burned me for another few seconds, then turned off the heat. He nodded, exhaled, sipped his coffee.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said.

“What?”

“You have an inordinate amount of jackass moments.”

I grinned. “Guilty as charged.”

We toasted each
other with Starbucks—I, with Pike, and he, with his iced half-caf ristretto quad grande, two-pump raspberry, two-percent, no-whip, light-ice, caramel-drizzle, three-and-a-half-pump white mocha. Normally, I would abuse him for the girly-man nature of that drink. Now was not the moment.

“How’s Brian?” I asked.

“Bad bruise but nothing broken, thank God. The new spider-silk Kevlar is quite amazing.
It’ll save a lot of lives. It certainly saved his.”

We toasted to that as well.

Church called and told me that he’d struck out selling the Regis shutdown to the president.

“Well … shit on toast,” I said.

He grunted and said, “Politics.”

“What’s our play now?”

“I’m still scheduled to fly east with him. First to New York and then Philadelphia. That will give me some time to work on him.”

“Working him over would be more useful.”

“And probably more fun,” agreed Church. “I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, you’re heading here?”

“Yes. Maybe I can whip up some kind of game plan.”

“I wish you luck.”

The line went dead.

Chapter One Hundred and Nine

Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center

Medical Center Court, Chula Vista, California

April 1, 5:07
A.M.

I told Rudy about the call. He made a face of disappointment. Maybe it was a frown of contempt. Hard to say. Either seemed appropriate. We walked outside to wait for Top and Bunny.

“Joe,” said Rudy, “I’ve been thinking about the Seven Kings information we’ve collected
so far. I’m trying to work up a psychological profile on whoever is directing this particular campaign. When the Kings orchestrated the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, they used the faux religious zealotry of Osama bin Laden as their mask. With the Ten Plagues Initiative, it was easier to understand because Vox’s mother, the self-styled ‘Goddess,’ was a classic megalomaniacal
subtype. The same went for her consort, Sebastian Gault. That plan had their fingerprints all over it. Had they survived and begun another plan together, we may have been able to counter it sooner because of how much we were able to learn about them. You know, profiling isn’t always the shot in the dark it’s made out to be in movies.”

“Okay, and—?”

“Well … have you noticed that there is no face
on these attacks?”

“Face?” I asked.

“Think about it, Joe. With the Ten Plagues, the Goddess used social networking to infuse the attacks with a biblical feel. She drew on the heat of racial and religious intolerance and fanned that into a fire so that people were committing hate crimes that were not actually directed by the Kings themselves. Like an avalanche picking up debris. And Mother Night
more or less did the same thing. Yes, I know she wasn’t part of the Kings, but she’d learned from them. She was with us when we took down the Kings, and she knew Vox. She’d been point person on the science team that dismantled the Kings’ operation after the gunplay was over. Surely it’s occurred to you that the way she rolled out her pseudo-anarchical Burn to Shine program was modeled after the
Kings, just as it was modeled after aspects of her own personality. And she constructed the Mother Night persona to sell it. These things are always more effective when there is a devil among the details. Hitler, Manson, Jim Jones. There are plenty of examples, and it almost doesn’t matter whether the face is the directing force or a figurehead.”

I nodded.

“Take the
seif al din
matter,” continued
Rudy, “the thing that brought us both into the DMS. Most of that case was built around the terror-for-profit mind-set of Sebastian Gault. His methodology, his personal intensity. And, let’s face it, it’s no surprise that he was later recruited by the Kings. He already used a similar style of grand theatrics and showy misdirection to roll out his plan. Only the last part of that, the attack at
the Liberty Bell Center, was different, because that bore the more aggressive personality of El Mujahid. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“I think so.”

“So, with this campaign,” Rudy said, “where’s the element of personality? Why does this seem so”—he fished for a word and chose one that shouldn’t fit but somehow did—“clinical? Or, maybe, mechanical.”

I repeated the words, tasting them.

“I mean, look at us,” said Rudy, “we typically find ourselves giving a case a nickname, and so far no one has done so beyond ‘the drone thing.’”

“Regis?” I suggested, but he shook his head.

“No, that’s a by-product, and we’re still waffling on whether it is, in fact, the core of their plan.”

“I’m already sold. Regis is another word for ‘king,’ for Christ’s sake. They put their brand on it,
wouldn’t you say?”

“Sure, everyone in the DMS seems to agree with that, Joe, but Mr. Church has not had much luck selling that to the president or the Department of Defense. That’s complicated by the fact that the earliest proposals for Regis predate our first encounters with the Seven Kings.”

“C’mon, that proves nothing. We know for a fact that the Kings have been around, moving behind the
scenes for a couple of decades now.”

“So Mr. Church has attempted to explain.” He made a sour face and repeated, “Politics.”

“Politics,” I agreed, loading it with the same bile Church had used earlier.

“And the Kings themselves predate the current administration by several years. It’s my opinion, Joe, that the president is unwilling to accept that the Kings organization could rebuild itself
to this level of threat on his watch.”

“Fucking politics,” I amended, and he nodded.

I sat on a stone ledge and sipped my coffee. Ghost put his head on my lap. It was clearly time for me to pet him. I did.

“There may be no overall face on this,” I conceded, “but their foot soldiers are acting the way we’ve seen with Kingsmen in the past. They’re true believers. The last shooter used his dying
breath to drop a tagline on me: ‘Your world is going to burn.’”

Rudy nodded. “It shows that internally, at least, the Kings are acting like the Kings. Or, the organization is on an administrative level. But, tell me, Joe, what do you infer from the man’s comment?”

I shrugged. “That we’ve only seen the coming attractions. The main feature hasn’t started yet.”

Another nod. “And—?”

“Whatever’s
coming is big.”

Rudy looked annoyed. “That’s an imprecise analysis, Cowboy. You’re smarter than that. What do you, Joe Ledger, senior DMS field agent, head of the Special Projects Division, infer from what that man said?”

I brooded on it, scratching Ghost’s fur.

“The line is too dramatic to be an actual dying declaration,” I said. “It comes off as scripted.”

Rudy nodded. “It certainly does.”

“My favorite working theory—one that accounts for the sophistication of their current weapon—meaning drones, the software hijacking, like that—is that Doctor Davidovich is working with the Kings.”

“Mr. Church told me you thought so. Why ‘with’ rather than ‘for but under duress’?”

“The QC drive in the pigeon drones,” I said.

Rudy frowned. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Developing a workable quantum
computer is apparently a very big thing. From what Bug and his geek squad have told me, it should have taken a decade or two. But Davidovich did it in a few years.”

“Which means what, exactly, Joe? That under duress Davidovich would only do good work but not outstanding work?”

“Something like that. I know some pretty creative people, Rude. They can do a lot of great stuff under a deadline. But
the QC is the kind of thing that will make Davidovich a household name for the next century. How many people create masterpieces at gunpoint?”

Rudy nodded thoughtfully. “An interesting point. I’ll consider it. Mr. Church has asked for a profile of Davidovich as a possible player for the Kings.”

“At this point I don’t think we can discount it.”

A police car pulled into the turnaround, lights
flashing but no siren. A cop hopped out and opened the rear doors for Top and Bunny. They shook hands with him and then came to meet us. They both looked angry and upset.

“I can’t leave you alone for five goddamn minutes,” complained Top.

They shook hands with Rudy and asked about Circe, getting the same answers I got. It was still a heartbreaking holding pattern.

Brian Botley came out wearing
bloodstained clothes and was no longer in a hazmat suit.

“Glad to see you fellows,” he said.

“Glad to see you still sucking air.”

Brian looked sad. “Not everyone was so lucky.”

Top seemed really furious. “We should have been here, not at the damn crime scene. Nothing new’s happening there,” he said to me.

“Don’t go there, Top,” I countered. “There was no way we could have anticipated this
hit. And even so, we had three armed agents here.”

“‘Had’ is the damn point, Cap’n,” he snapped. “Farm Boy and me would have cut those assholes off at the knees before they ever drew down on our guys. No offense, Botley.”

“None taken,” said Brian. “I wish you’d been here, too. All the math would be different.”

“Top,” said Rudy, “please understand something. The only fault lies with the Seven
Kings. They are clearly and effectively stretching our resources. Giving us a crime scene and a medical investigation would certainly split our forces. They counted on that, and they used it against us. Instead of looking to blame ourselves, we have to keep in mind the subtlety of their planning. And then we have to develop a response that is appropriate and effective. Do you agree?”

Top looked
at him for a three count, then nodded.

“Going to make someone burn for this,” he said.

Say good-bye to your world.

My earbud buzzed and I tapped it. “Go.”

“Hey, Cowboy,” said Nikki. “We ran the prints from the six shooters and got pings on all of them. All six members of the team are ex-military,” she said. “Four army, one navy, one marine. All six worked in some aspect of the security industry.
All have ties to Blue Diamond Security.”

“Figured that.” Blue Diamond was a massive private security company that provided shooters to everyone from Monsanto to Uncle Sam. We’ve had messy run-ins with them in the past, but even though some of their men went to the hospital, prison, or morgue, upper management never took a fall. Contractually, they were not responsible for actions taken by contract
employees. Or some legal bullshit like that. When the attorney general tried to sue them, they outlawyered us. They had an apparently unlimited amount of cash to throw at the legal process; the AG had a way smaller budget.

“What about the serial numbers on their weapons? Any leads from those?”

“All of it was stolen from a shipment that went missing back in 2009.”

“Ah. And their vehicle? They
arrived in an ambulance.”