Blackmail Earth

Chapter 22





A thick, funereal haze hung over New York City. From Jenna’s window seat, she could catch only blurry views of the buildings and bridges below, gloomy glimpses that seemed to mirror the dim prospects of a planet under siege.

Inky waterways appeared as the Airbus descended, and daytime headlights glistened like glittery scales on the snakelike expressways that curled around JFK.

Jenna and Nicci were nearing the end of a full day of travel, sleeping when they weren’t keeping abreast of developments in the Maldives. But gruesome as the tanker takeover was, Jenna worried even more about those North Korean rockets. She hadn’t received a single call, text, or e-mail from Vice President Andrew Percy’s office, despite having left messages twice during a two-hour layover in Dubai.

Nicci, who prided herself on being a “cat napper of the first degree,” was shedding her blanket and awakening from her most recent snooze.

“Are you heading straight home?” Jenna asked. Nicci had a one-bedroom apartment in the West Village with more charm than half a dozen high rises in Midtown.

The weather producer nodded and yawned. “I’m planning on at least one day to chill after I call Mikey.” Her agent, who looked as boyish as his name suggested, would soon go head-to-head with the suits on the eighth floor. Jenna had already texted her own agent, a former Marine who had issued his opening salvo within minutes of receiving her message.

“Keep your phone handy,” Jenna said. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything from Elfren or Percy.” Though she was increasingly doubtful about the latter. Granted, the vice president was a key player in the cabinet, which had plenty on its plate, but in the IM age what would it take to text her? She was on his frickin’ task force, after all. Meantime, the sulfate rockets in North Korea awaited a launch order from a leader widely regarded as a nutbar of the first order.

How does that happen? she asked herself. How does a total demento get to the point where he can end the world?

With a seat-jarring thump the jet touched down, and an hour later Jenna was in a taxi heading to Penn Station, bypassing her own apartment for a direct trip to Dafoe’s arms.

The familiar smells of the city—not entirely unappealing with their kindred associations of home, excitement, and meteorology—greeted her in force as she fled into the station’s bustling main concourse. She might not have noticed an Asian man in a black shirt and slacks if he hadn’t had his eyes fixed so firmly on her.

Jenna let her vision glide right over him. She’d learned in her first few months on The Morning Show that any kind of eye contact could generate the exclamation, “You’re Jenna Withers!” Her fans were the nicest people, but once she stopped to say hello, it was practically impossible to get moving again.

But the Asian man didn’t look like the others. His gaze felt as sharp as a bone saw.

You’re paranoid, she told herself as she stepped onto the down escalator. Who’s going to be tailing you here? They would have had to have been listening to your calls and reading your messages.

But Jenna had developed a clear sense of how it felt to be watched. It happened everywhere she went. She’d never bemoaned this, but at the same time she’d never felt so baldly observed as she did at this very moment.

As she walked down the platform, she turned and swept her eyes intently over the crowd of afternoon commuters who were making an early getaway.

She boarded the same train that she’d taken on her first trip up to see Dafoe. Today, she anticipated her lover’s lair even more keenly, the memory of their frantic lovemaking suddenly as fresh as her feelings of longing.

Lost in reverie, Jenna idly scanned the platform. That’s when she spotted the Korean’s purposeful gait. She did not look at him directly, but from the corner of her eye she tracked his progress toward her train until he disappeared into the car behind her. She particularly noted how his gaze moved over the windows, including the one that framed her unmistakable face.

She didn’t think he’d spotted her. His eyes never lingered, and Jenna had an urge to slip off the train and make a run for it. Or stay and call the NYPD.

And then what? she scolded herself. Tell them that a Korean caught your eye at Penn Station, and then caught the same train you’re on—along with hundreds of other people? That’s not even a coincidence. That really is paranoia. How idiotic would that sound on Page Six?

But the scolding she gave herself didn’t ease the eerie sense of eyes boring into the back of her head. In seconds, hairs on the nape of her neck sprang up, a sensation so uneasy that she tried to press them back down, but those pushy little Cassandras would not lie still for long.

Jenna looked back several times, but never saw the Asian man. An hour north of the city, she called Dafoe, catching him at his computer.

She greeted him warmly, then quickly told him what she’d been experiencing. “I feel silly,” she added sheepishly.

“Trust your feelings,” he responded. “At times like this, that old reptilian brain of ours can protect us from the animals still out there. Sounds like your brain is sending you a warning and then some.”

Words that brought to mind the almost preternatural awareness that she’d once had of a bear in the Colorado Front Range—confirmed when her group’s guide pointed out the critter’s unmistakable scat, and seconds later noted a grizzly across a broad glen.

But this creature had left no trace—except for those recalcitrant hairs.

The train pulled into another station. Four more stops and she’d be with Dafoe. “I’ll feel a whole lot better just seeing you.”

He assured her that he’d be waiting.

She hung up and looked around, then impulsively stepped off the train to see if the Korean followed her, only to find him on the platform, looking quickly away from her.

With a torpedoed stomach, she moved back on board.

“Are you okay?” a conductor asked her.

She nodded before telling herself not to be such a hero. “I think I’m being followed by a Korean man in the car behind us.”

“That guy?” The conductor nodded at the man, who was walking away from the train as purposefully as he had hurried to it only an hour ago. She felt so ridiculous that she blushed. “Sorry. That’s him and he’s clearly got more important things on his mind than me. I’m really sorry.”

“Hey, that’s fine,” the conductor said. “And I like the way you do the weather. Been missing you the last few mornings.”

“Thanks. I’m coming back from a long trip and I think I need to get some sleep.”

The final leg of the train trip felt interminable. Her worry lightened only when she spotted Dafoe on the platform, looking as scrubbed and cheerful as he’d appeared only a few weeks ago. His appearance reminded her of how disheveled she felt from a full day of travel. But she hugged him unabashedly. Then they embraced, and she didn’t care, in their fiercely rekindled passion, that a busybody with a cellphone might be shooting video of her and planning a YouTube entry called “Weather Woman Kisses Up a Storm.”

As their lips separated, she realized, astonished, that Dafoe was “the one.” She’d never felt that way before, not with Rafan, not with anyone. But why would you have, she asked herself, if he’s really “the one”? You had to wait and now he’s here.

He took her suitcase, and as they turned to leave the wooden platform, Jenna spotted another Korean man. Like the guy who’d gotten off the train a few stops earlier, he was dressed in black. Like they’ve got uniforms. She squeezed Dafoe’s hand in panic.

With a glance of his own, Dafoe took note and led her to his pickup. She slid to the middle seat and buckled up, watching the Korean open the rear passenger door of a black Expedition with smoked windows.

Coincidence? she asked herself, and then Dafoe.

“We’ll keep an eye on them. Forensia and Sang-mi might have been followed yesterday by Koreans in a RAV4.”

“I hate even talking like this.” As she spoke, the black SUV pulled away. “And thar she goes,” Jenna said. “Okay, that’s it, I’m just going to chill.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and took a great big breath of him, smiling at the faintly sweet scent of hay and sunshine that rose from his skin and clothes.

“You want to hear the latest on the GreenSpirit case, or do you want to take a break from that, too?” Dafoe asked, checking his side view before driving off.

“No, tell me. What’s up?”

“They arrested a kid for the murder.”

“A kid? Who?”

“A high school senior named Jason Robb. The team quarterback. They got him yesterday.”

“Why do they think he did it? Did they say?”

“He threatened Forensia and the other Pagans on the night that she was initiated. Which was the night before GreenSpirit was murdered.”

“Do you think he did it?”

“The cops do. The sheriff found a bandana of Jason’s with GreenSpirit’s blood on it. The FBI lab confirmed it.” He rested his hand on Jenna’s leg. “I don’t mean to alarm you but that car is behind us now, and it left the station before we did.”

“Don’t go to your place,” she said right away. “It’s too isolated.” She adjusted the rearview mirror, as if she were checking her lipstick or hair, and saw the hulking SUV about six car lengths back. “Let’s head to town, and if they follow us, let’s go right to the sheriff’s office.”

Dafoe executed a quick turn on to a narrow country road. “Are they following us?” he asked Jenna, who still had the rearview.

“No, they kept going straight.”

“We might be okay.”

But Jenna felt jumpy and hoped like hell that Dafoe knew where the tight country lane would take them.

He made a series of turns that led them back to the road to his farm. He reached over and took the mirror, adjusting it and assuring her that he’d keep his eyes open for the Expedition.

Jenna nodded and tried to breathe, but it wasn’t easy. Those hairs on the back of her neck were making their prickly presence known again.

Dafoe slowed and entered the long driveway to his house. Seconds later, he said, “They’re still here,” with no attempt to hide his uneasiness.

“What?” Jenna twisted around, expecting to see the Expedition churning up a tunnel of dust behind them.

“I’m sorry. I meant Forensia and Sang-mi. You thought I meant that black car?”

“No apologies necessary. But you did sound worried.”

“Just disappointed,” Dafoe said. “They told me that they’d be done with their work and gone so we could have some privacy.”

Privacy would have been nice, but at this moment Jenna was happy just to feel safe.

The feeling didn’t last long. When they reached the porch, they saw Forensia sitting by the window with Dafoe’s rifle in her hands and Sang-mi by her side. Bayou rose gingerly, wagging his tail.

They hurried inside. “What’s going on?” Dafoe asked. “And give me that rifle. You’re making me nervous.”

Forensia handed it over. “You shouldn’t be worried about me making you nervous.” She spoke with her eyes still on the driveway. “You should be worried about the big, black SUV that was here right after you left. It was idling out on the road when I saw it.”

Dafoe and Jenna shared a quick glance. “An Expedition?” Jenna asked.

Forensia shrugged. “I don’t know. All I can say is that it was big and had dark windows, and it was the second one in two days.”

Dafoe peered at the driveway. “How’d you even see it all the way down on the road?”

“That damn calf we spend half our time chasing got out of the pasture again, and we ended up having to go get him. He got all the way down to those trees near the road. I saw the car when I caught up with the calf.”

“Did they see you?”

“Maybe. I grabbed the little pain in the ass and dragged him back before he got out in the open. But they could have seen me; I wasn’t thinking about hiding when I went down there. Why? Did you guys see it, too?”

“Yeah, we did,” Dafoe said. “At the station. I guess they made you plenty nervous.” He glanced at his rifle.

“After being followed yesterday? Yeah, I’m starting to get anxious, you bet.”

“The one we saw kept going straight after we turned,” Jenna said.

Sang-mi shrieked and pointed. Everyone stared down the long driveway. The Expedition was coming, whipping up dust like a precisely plotted hurricane. Dafoe thrust the rifle into Jenna’s hands, raced into the kitchen, and returned with the pistol that he kept stashed in a cabinet.

“This is a pathetic amount of firepower, so let’s get out of here now,” he shouted.

He led them out on the far side of the house, and they raced to a copse about two hundred feet away, Bayou hobbling till Dafoe scooped him up. They heard all four doors of the SUV slam as they stumbled through the patch of forest. Dusk was claiming the land like a looter.

“Assassins,” Sang-mi said sharply.

“This way,” Dafoe ordered. In less than sixty seconds, he brought them to a dry stream. Jenna had her cell out for a 911 call.

“Tell them to come with sirens, lights, everything,” Dafoe said breathlessly.

Jenna spoke in a voice muffled by danger. The 911 operator coolly collected the information. “Please hurry,” Jenna pleaded before snapping the cell shut.

Night fell quickly, as it always seemed to after Halloween, when daylight behaves like it’s too scared to breathe. The four of them ran through a stand of birch trees, stopping at the edge of an open field.

“Where are they?” whispered Jenna, ears straining beyond the hard exhalations that rose around her. She eyed a spot about fifty yards back, the way she’d once studied brush for grouse and pheasants when she’d been a young girl hunting with her father. She’d always enjoyed the shooting, but the blood and gore of gutting had proved repulsive. And she’d been gunning for game, not people. Who are chasing you.

Jenna spotted unmistakable movement behind thick vegetation studded by tall trees—and heard a hard, metallic, snapping sound. Were they trapped by men already creeping around them, closing in from the sides? But if the four of them ran, they’d lose even the spotty cover of narrow-trunked trees. Behind them stood only that clearing.

“We can’t go any farther,” she whispered.

“I know,” Dafoe agreed.

They would make a stand here. To fight assassins? Isn’t that what Sang-mi called them? Even thinking this made Jenna feel surreal, like she was living somebody else’s life.

A loud crack froze her thoughts. A bullet snapped a tree limb several feet away and it crashed to the ground. Sang-mi started to bolt. Jenna grabbed her. “No,” she whispered. “They’re trying to flush us out.” Bullets like bird dogs.

Without warning, Bayou barked. Dafoe grabbed his jaw to silence him, but the damage was done and a fusillade exploded. From the muzzle flashes, it looked like half a dozen weapons had unloaded on them.

Bullets ripped into trees or shrieked past. Jenna, crouching, figured that their assailants were shooting blind. Not missing by much, though. And all we’ve got is this thing? She looked at the varmint rifle in her hands. And a pistol?

She aimed and waited for another flash, then fired back with the small caliber rifle, knowing that she’d have to pierce a vital organ to bring down an attacker. At least they know we’ve got guns, though from their cautious approach the shooters must have assumed that the four of them were armed.

Dafoe put Bayou on the ground with another command to be quiet, then rose up and aimed into the darkness. When the next shots erupted, he also fired back.

A distant siren reached them, faint at first, but growing steadily louder. The incoming ceased.

Jenna tried to hear whether their assailants were fleeing, but the sirens were so shrill that they blocked any other sound. Then the Expedition’s headlights arced across a pasture to their left. The vehicle turned into the field and raced down its gentle slope, speeding past them about a hundred feet away. Jenna and Dafoe both opened fire on it. She guessed that they hit their target, but their light weaponry sure hadn’t stopped it.

“Is there a road down there?” Jenna had to shout above the sirens drawing ever nearer.

“Yeah,” Dafoe shouted back. “There’s an old wooden gate.”

Seconds later, they heard the gate shatter. The SUV’s headlights rose and fell three times in swift succession as it bounded onto a cattle path.

Dafoe watched and said, “I was hoping they’d lose at least one headlight. Make them easier to track.”

They began to work their way back to Dafoe’s farmhouse, moving cautiously in case one of the attackers had stayed behind or left them an explosive “gift.” Side by side, weapons raised, Jenna and Dafoe took the lead. She found the sirens increasingly distressing because they blocked every other noise.

Only as they inched closer to the house did they find the sheriff’s presence helpful. His Bronco’s headlights tore a wedge in the night, but revealed little more than cow pies and hoofprints.

Tossing aside caution, they raced toward Sheriff Walker and the New York State Police officer who stood beside him. Everyone started talking at once. The sheriff hushed them with a wave. “One at a time, please,” he said, as if they had all night.

Dafoe went first, telling them about the firefight and the escape of the SUV. The sheriff stopped him quickly.

“You engaged in a gunfight with those fools?” He took Dafoe’s rifle from Jenna and sniffed it, as if he didn’t believe what he’d just heard.

“I’ll get out an APB,” the state policeman said.

“You do that,” Walker replied, amazing Jenna with how much condescension one man could squeeze into three simple words.

“Going to be tough at night to nab anything on the New York State Thruway, assuming that’s where they went,” the sheriff added. “Anything notable about that vehicle that you can tell me?”

Dafoe replied that it had crashed through a wooden gate. “But both headlights were still working.”

“It might have bullet holes on the driver’s side,” Jenna volunteered.

The sheriff took a detailed report and suggested that they find somewhere else to spend the night.

Where? Jenna wondered. “Can you give us protection?”

“Protection?” he asked, as if she’d made the most absurd suggestion in memory. “My budget’s been cut three times in the past three years by the State Assembly. I don’t even have a deputy anymore. I can call the feds in the morning and see if they can spare anyone, but I wouldn’t hold my breath—I’d find somewhere safe and go there. Give me a ring tomorrow.”

Is this what we’ve come to? Jenna wondered. We can’t even protect our citizens?

The sheriff and state policeman did pore over the grounds with flashlights, and found where the Expedition had flattened grass in the pasture, but no useful tire tracks turned up until they came across a cow patty with a distinct tread pattern.

After they left, Jenna, Dafoe, Forensia, Sang-mi, and Bayou trooped into Dafoe’s house. He locked the door behind them. Jenna looked out a window, worried about other dangers the darkness might hold. Chills climbed her spine. She turned to Sang-mi and Forensia. “Why were they trying to kill us?”

“You have to tell them,” Sang-mi said to Jenna.

“Tell who what?” Jenna asked impatiently. “I want to know why they’re trying to kill us. If they are North Korean agents, you’d think they’d have bigger fish to fry.”

“They’re trying to kill you.” Sang-mi stared at Jenna. “That’s why they didn’t do anything till you got back. They know that you can tell the world about the rockets. GreenSpirit said you will do that.”

“I can’t tell anyone about anything: I’ve been suspended from the show. And besides, I’m not about to go on air and start spouting because a dead Pagan witch supposedly said so. That’s just—”

“It is true,” Sang-mi said. “My father knows about them.”

“Then our government also knows about the rockets, right? Because he’s being debriefed by the CIA.”

“Then why are we getting attacked?” Dafoe sounded honestly bewildered. “It could be because of you, Sang-mi. You said that they go after family members, too.”

The Korean nodded.

“Maybe because something else is also happening,” Forensia said. “That’s what GreenSpirit is saying, in a way.”

“Oh, please,” Jenna said. “Can we at least agree not to quote conversations with the dead?” Her cell phone rang before she could say anything more: UNKNOWN NUMBER appeared on the screen. She answered with a brisk hello.

A voice asked her to hold for Vice President Andrew Percy. Jenna pressed the phone closer to her ear and walked away from her companions, who looked at her curiously but fell silent.

“This is Vice President Percy,” she heard a moment later. “I haven’t been able to get back to you till now. My apologies.”

“That’s okay,” Jenna said. “I understand. I just wanted to make sure that you knew about the rockets in North Korea that are loaded with sulfates.”

Silence.

Jenna soldiered on. “The rockets are designed to explode in the stratosphere. The North Koreans are planning to bring years of winter to the whole planet in retaliation against the U.S. And other countries, too,” she added hastily.

“Where did you hear that?” The vice president made no attempt to hide his incredulity.

“From an impeccable source.”

“I think you can dismiss your ‘impeccable source’ out of hand,” he replied.

“Why, sir? With all due respect, it’s a viable geoengineering technique. One of the simpler ones, in fact.”

“Is that why you’ve been trying to track me down?” His tone turned harsh. Even though he was the vice president of the United States, Jenna bristled when she heard it.

“Yes, sir, that’s exactly why I’ve been leaving messages. I guess you wouldn’t mind me bringing it up on the air tomorrow,” she said, trusting that he’d heard nothing about her suspension.

“I wouldn’t say anything about any rockets,” Percy said. “That kind of speculation can be very harmful.”

“Not if it’s just speculation.” His response intrigued her because it didn’t add up: If there were no threat from North Korea, telling a TV audience about the rockets would amount to no more than mindless media chatter. But if it were real—

The vice president interrupted her thoughts: “May I confide in you?”

“Yes, sir, by all means.” Though Jenna didn’t believe for a nanosecond that he would say anything of substance, she played along—and a moment later found out how wrong she could be:

“If you breathe a word about any of this, you’re going to end up in a supermax for a long, long time,” Percy said.

A heavily fortified federal prison? What’s going on? “Why are North Koreans trying to kill me?” she asked.

“Trying to kill you?”

Jenna thought he snorted with derision. She quickly told him what had happened.

“And you’ve reported this, you say, to the police?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you say anything about North Korea or rockets to them?”

Curious that he was back to that again. “No, I did not.”

“Remember what I said: a supermax.” He hung up.

Jenna forced herself to take a big breath before turning to the others, who had listened to her every word.

“The vice president?” Dafoe asked.

She nodded. “And he just threatened me with a long stay in a supermax, if I said a word about the rockets.”

“You have to tell people,” Sang-mi said.

“Stop saying that,” Jenna snapped, “and just let me just think.” She turned back to Dafoe. “What worries me is I can’t stop thinking about bin Laden. For years before 9/11 he threatened the U.S., blamed us for everything. He even had the North Tower bombed in ’93. There were people in government trying to get the attention of the White House and the defense agencies, trying to go through all the proper channels, and no one listened until those goddamn planes slammed into the towers and killed three thousand people.”

“The Koreans are going to kill the whole world,” Forensia said.

Jenna nodded. “North Korea’s leader is doing the same thing bin Laden did,” she said. “He’s blaming the U.S. and threatening us because of his country’s droughts and famine, climate change and—”

“He’s got a point there,” Forensia said.

“No!” Jenna said furiously. “I won’t give that bastard even that much. You can’t let psychos like him justify anything because that becomes a way of their justifying everything, even rockets that would end the world.”

Jenna sat heavily on Dafoe’s couch. “You know what I think? I think Percy just confirmed everything that Sang-mi’s been saying.” Jenna stared at the young Korean woman, who said nothing, perhaps sensing that the ground had shifted in her favor.

“I remember you saying,” Dafoe nodded at Jenna, “that in your book you wrote about how North Korea likes to piggyback on crises whenever they can. You look at the situation in the Maldives, and it’s hard to imagine that they’ll ever find a bigger crisis to jump on than that tanker.”

“There’s another reason the North could be moving now,” Jenna said. “Because if you’re going to be doing something against us, what better time to do it than on election day.”

“You’re right,” Dafoe said.

“You wait till everybody goes to the polls, and then you launch,” Jenna added. She pulled out her phone and called Nicci, catching her on the second ring. In a voice as bright and casual as cotton candy, Jenna asked Nicci to meet her at the Shaughn Hotel at five the next morning.

“The Shaughn? Really?” Nicci said.

“I can’t go back to my apartment.”

“What’s up?”

“Can you trust me till then?” Jenna asked.

“You know I can.”

“See you. I’ll be registered under Dafoe’s last name, Tillian.”

Jenna looked at Dafoe’s rifle and pistol. “Are these all the guns you have?”

“That’s it. Up till now, all I’ve been fighting are coyotes.”

“Let’s grab whatever ammunition you’ve got and hope for the best, because I’ve got a nasty feeling that we’re going to be fighting animals a lot more dangerous and devious than coyotes.”

“Are you going to tell everyone?” Sang-mi asked.

“If I can get on the air, I’ll say plenty. But that’s a big ‘if’ because I’ve been suspended.”

“We may have bigger problems than that,” Dafoe said with a telling glance at the dark world outside.

Jenna nodded and grabbed the pistol. “Let’s head down to the city. We’re sure not spending the night here.”