Extinction Machine

Chapter Seventeen

On the road

Baltimore, Maryland

Sunday, October 20, 6:17 a.m.

I took a corner on two wheels and as my Explorer thumped down onto the side street I tried to kick the gas pedal through the floor. Ghost yelped and dove for the footwell. He was trained to be passive during high-speed driving, but I think he had doubts about my skills while hungover. Fair enough.

Church put me on hold to take a call from Washington. While he did that I switched from cell phone to the tactical communicator—a tiny earbud for a speaker and a high-fidelity mike that looked like a freckle next to my mouth. One of the guys at the Bose lab makes these special for Mr. Church.

He came back on the line, but before he could say anything I yelled, “How in the wide blue f*ck does the President of the United States go missing from the goddamn White House?”

“We don’t have answers,” said Church. “The vice president has assumed temporary power—”

“That shithead shouldn’t be allowed to manage a Taco Bell.”

Church agreed with a sour grunt. He related his recent call with Brierly. It did nothing to improve my view of our temporary commander-in-chief. Vice President Bill Collins was, at best, an opportunistic dickhead who had a hard-on for the whole DMS and once used the NSA to try and tear us down. At worst, he was a closet traitor who may have been in bed with the Jakoby organization, one of the worst cabals the DMS ever tackled. Or he could just be a total damn fool. Whichever way, Collins was a wizard when it came to keeping shit off his own shoes. Even Church hadn’t been able to prove that Collins was bent. Knowing that Collins was now in power, however conditionally, made my nuts want to climb up inside my chest cavity.

“So,” I asked, “what’s our official involvement?”

“Official? None. Linden Brierly has been expressly ordered to keep us out of this. Apparently President Collins believes that we may be tied in some way to the cyber-attacks. No, Captain, don’t try to make sense of that, you’ll hurt yourself.”

I didn’t. Instead I cursed a lot, in several languages. Church rode it out; he neither stopped nor contradicted me. I did some weaving in and out of traffic. Lot of horns blared; lot of people flipped me the bird. I spread love and peace everywhere I go.

“What’s the alert status?”

“The military is bulking up at all the appropriate hotspots, notably the Middle East and the Taiwan Strait. The official word is that this is an unscheduled preparedness exercise, so nobody is launching missiles,” said Church, “but we’re not far enough back from the brink. Everyone is suspicious of ‘exercises’ because they can be used to hide just this sort of emergency protocol.”

In the White House there are protocols for everything. Presidents have been assassinated, they’ve died in office. There have been shots fired at the White House, there have been bomb scares. There’s even a protocol for an armed invasion of the capital by enemy troops, crazy as that sounds. Depending on the scale of the crisis, phones ring throughout the city, causing the pillars of government to shudder.

“However,” Church said, “the base commanders have not been told the nature of the alert.”

I could understand that. Ever since 9/11 and the subsequent wars, we’ve gone to high-alert status way too many times. Homeland and the Department of Defense don’t always share the “why” of this, even with base commanders. The Joint Chiefs have become very cagey—you could use the word “paranoid” without too much exaggeration, and for good reason. Sure, most of those alerts were false alarms, but there have been a number of times when something very big and very bad was looming and everyone had to be ready—just in case. Often it was the DMS who put the monster back in its box.

“We need to keep this totally away from the public,” I said.

“No doubt. A whiff of this would cause panic and likely crash several of the world markets.”

The yellow light ahead was about to turn. I did something fast and irresponsible, and as I shot through the intersection a pedestrian threw a bottle of Coke at me.

“Hey, the sky is falling, jackass,” I yelled out the window.

“Captain?” said Church mildly.

“Almost there.”

I laid on the horn as I blew through another intersection. My Ford had lights and sirens, and if the local cops ran my plates they’d get a message that basically said “f*ck off and leave him alone.” But this was my town and I knew most of the cops anyway. Didn’t hurt at all that my dad, former chief of police, was mayor of the fine town of Baltimore.

Ghost barked continually, his nerves jangling in rough harmony with mine.

To Church I said, “How does someone kidnap the president out of the White House? Isn’t that supposed to be impossible? I mean actually impossible?”

“Yes,” said Church, and disconnected.