Extinction Machine

Chapter One Hundred Nine

VanMeer Castle

Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Monday, October 21, 7:41 a.m.

I said something clever like, “Um … what?”

Shelton smiled.

Then everybody was pulling guns. The three guards, me. Ghost crouched, waiting for my command to hit.

Shelton’s smile turned into a belly laugh.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said with a rough guffaw, “put your damn guns down. There’s expensive stuff in here.”

You could taste the compassion for my physical well-being.

I didn’t put my gun down. I pointed it at Shelton’s head.

“Them first or you first, take your pick,” I said.

He shook his head, really enjoying this. He even gave me a couple of seconds of slow, ironic applause. “Nice tough guy line. I dig it.”

The moment still burned around us. Shelton flicked a glance at Burke. “You heard me. Put them away.”

It wasn’t a suggestion.

The three guards immediately lowered their pistols, peeled back their jacket flaps and reholstered. Burke was about a half second slower than the others. Making a point, I suppose. It was lost on Shelton, who clearly didn’t give a shit. I filed it away, though, adding it to Burke’s tab.

I still had my gun out but I was beginning to feel like the kid who wore a costume on the day the Halloween party was canceled.

“Do you mind?” asked Shelton. He settled into the cushions of his leather chair and picked up a delicate china teacup, sipped it, and looked at me over the rim.

I lowered my piece. “Ghost,” I said, “ease down.”

Ghost laid down in his sphinx posture, ready to rise and leap at a moment’s notice.

Shelton cocked an eye at my gun. “You going to put that thing away?”

“Let’s wait and see,” I said.

“Whatever. Have a seat, or do you want to stand, too?”

One of the guards—not Burke—pushed over a guest chair that cost more than my car. Rich red leather that was soft as butter when I sat down. I laid my Beretta on my thigh.

“So,” said Shelton, “why am I so fortunate as to have the famous Captain Joseph Edwin Ledger here on a chilly October morning?”

“Publishers Clearing House sent me. You may be a winner.”

We smiled at each other. The guards glared at me. Ghost glared at them.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I know who you are?” asked Shelton.

“Why bother? You caught me on at least fifty cameras between the front gate and here and I’m pretty sure you can afford a facial recognition software package.”

“I own the patent on the one the FBI uses,” he said.

“So there you go.”

“It doesn’t bother you that I know who you are?”

“Actually it does,” I said. “And I have a slot open between nine and nine-oh-five this morning during which I plan to faint.”

“Funny,” he said.

“Not really.”

“Want to tell me why you’re here?”

“Depends on how much of your business is open to a public forum.”

He considered. “These guys have been with me for years.”

“That’s your call, but I wonder if you spelled their names right in your little black book.”

It was all about those last two words. That wiped the shit-eating grin off Shelton’s face faster than a good slap. He stared at me for a heavy three count, then without looking at his guys or changing the tone of his voice he said, “Get out. Close the door behind you and make sure nobody bothers me.”

“Mr. Shelton,” began Burke, “I don’t think that’s a good—”

Shelton’s eyes swiveled toward Burke. “Get the f*ck out. Now.”

This time there was a different tone.

The three men headed for the door without another word. I turned to watch them go. Burke shot me a look that would have burned holes in sheet metal. I pointed my right index finger at him and used my thumb to drop the hammer. He lingered long enough to respond with a single nod.

Yeah, I’d be seeing Burke around the playground.

When we were alone, Shelton appraised me. “The question,” he said, “is whether you know something or if you’re on a fishing expedition.”

I said nothing.

He really seemed to be enjoying this. “Those sunglasses … they wired? Is this going to be on YouTube or some shit?”

I took them off, folded the earpieces and tucked them into an inner pocket. In my ear, Bug said, “Hey!”

I ignored him. I still had my lapel cam, though the image was crappy.

“Happy now?” I asked Shelton.

“No,” he said. “And I don’t trust you for shit.”

He opened his desk drawer, being very slow and careful about it so as not to alarm the big scary guy with the gun and the dog. He removed a device that looked like a small TV remote, but wasn’t. He showed it to me, then pressed a button and set it down on the desk.

“Jammer?” I asked.

“Jammer,” he said. “And don’t worry—I don’t have cameras in my office. I watch people, they don’t watch me. It’s just you and me.”

“Good. Can we stop f*cking around now?”

Shelton nodded and sipped his tea. “I know your file. Army Rangers for four years, during which you didn’t do squat.”

“At the time,” I said, “there was no squat that needed doing.”

“Then you were a cop in Baltimore. Baltimore? Seriously? That shithole?”

“Says the guy from Pittsburgh.”

“Hey, Pittsburgh’s come a long way in the last twenty years. Used to be a dump but now it’s a center for the arts. Watch your mouth.”

“Baltimore … has an aquarium,” I riposted.

He grinned at that.

“Okay. Getting back to who the f*ck you are. You were a uniform, then you were a detective and after 9/11 they put you on some dinky Homeland taskforce, and then you went away. The official story is that you went to Quantico and are doing something for the FBI, but that’s horse shit. You somehow got onto the radar of that psychopath Deacon—what’s he calling himself these days? Mr. Church?—and for the last couple of years you’ve been indulging your own inner psychosis by shooting everyone you don’t like. All in the interests of national security and Mom’s apple pie.”

“That’s a nice profile. Can I put that on my Facebook page?”

“And according to everyone you think you’re funnier than balls.”

“Balls are pretty funny,” I admitted. “But I am funnier, yes.”

“And now you’re here throwing around the wrong words. Why is that?”

“You tell me.”

He made a face like innocence abused. “Me? What do I know?”

“You nearly popped a vein when I mentioned the Black Book.”

Shelton tried to smile through that, but there was a little tic in his left eye. “What black book would that be?”

“Really? We’re all alone and you want to get cute?”

He chuckled. If I wasn’t sure that he was who he was, I might have bought it. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes, that legendary twinkle. Teeth so bright I could shave by them.

“The thing is,” he said, “I don’t know what you know. We haven’t actually confirmed whether you’re here fishing for something or if you know something.”

“That’s pretty much a two-way street,” I admitted. “I don’t know if you’re a remarkably well-informed innocent bystander, a supporting character in someone else’s mad scientist dream, or if you’re the supervillain I’ve been longing to meet.”

“Not knowing what goes on your head, Ledger, I have no idea how to answer that. What is this supervillain of yours supposed to have done?”

“Blown up a lot of people in Baltimore.”

“Ah, yeah … I saw that on the news. So sad.”

I held up a finger. “Some things we joke about,” I said. “Some things get you hurt.”

“Fair enough. But give me something more than vague threats and we’ll see if we can have a conversation.”

“This isn’t a conversation?” I asked.

“No. We’re kind of jerking each other off here. I don’t mean that in a gay way, you understand. It’s a figure of speech.”

I had to admit that, even though he was a piece of pond scum, he was charming. He hid his silver-spoon upbringing with just the right amount of trash talk. Some of it was almost certainly cribbed from old Sopranos DVDs. I kept expecting him to call me a “chamoke,” but Shelton was pure WASP going back to forever. When the Mayflower landed, his ancestors were there at the rock selling deeds to swampland.

“What would you like to know?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Something that you couldn’t have gotten off the Internet. Oh, what, you look surprised? You don’t think my name comes up when you search for the Black Book?”

I said nothing.

On the floor, Ghost gave me a look like he was losing confidence in who was the actual pack leader here.

I could see his point.

“Let’s try this,” I said. “Ever heard of Junie Flynn?”

“Sure. I watch TV. I even listen to her podcast. According to what she said the other night, either she has the Black Book or she is the Black Book. Works out the same either way.”

“You read the Cliffs Notes version of this, haven’t you?”

Shelton looked at his watch. “I have a busy day, Captain. Can we speed this along a little faster?”

“Sure,” I said. Using the same slow care that he’d used, I opened my jacket and snugged my pistol back into the shoulder rig. Then I removed a small device from my pocket and showed it to him. It was about the same size as the unit he’d taken from his desk.

“What’s that? Another jammer? I already told you, no one can hear us in here. Room’s soundproof and—”

“Good,” I said as I pointed the device at him and pressed a button. A compressed gas charge shot a tiny glass dart at him at six hundred feet per second. Not as fast as a bullet, but much faster than a middle-aged scumbag could dodge. He got a hand up, but the dart stung his palm.

He gave a single, small cry and then fell face forward onto his desk.