Extinction Machine

Chapter Twenty-five

VanMeer Castle

Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Sunday, October 20, 6:59 a.m.

Mr. Bones left Howard with the staff doctor and went into his office to take a call. He listened to a very trusted and capable operative tell him very bad news.

Per his e-mail of earlier that morning, a team was sent to pick up Captain Joe Ledger of the DMS. They were supposed to hold him for a length of time, then release him. During the detention, agents were to collect his fingerprints for use in building an evidentiary case that Ledger was involved—or perhaps directing—the cyber-attacks. They would also drug him with one of the many compounds useful for eliciting a cooperative mental state. In such a state a subject could be asked to sign his name to any kind of document, or make simple calls, record messages, and even stand for photos. The memories and personality tics would still be in play, but the conscious control would be detached from the events. It was a lovely thing to see; something the Russians had developed a bit too late for it to be of value in the closing days of the Cold War.

The whole process would have taken Ledger out of play for an entire day, and additional drugs like some of the modern benzodiazepine variations would do that. The newest generation of midazolam was always fun for these sorts of things. Then Ledger would be returned to his car with a mild sedative, where he would have awakened to a world that had suddenly decided that he was a very bad man.

It was a simple operation. Ledger would never have been able to adequately explain his brief absence and the evidence would be ironclad. Mr. Bones had ordered variations on this at least a dozen times, never with a hitch.

Except that today there was a definite hitch. Captain Ledger had brutally beaten all four men sent to handle the pickup. Suddenly a very minor detail in a day that had much more important concerns was now a major issue.

“That is very disappointing,” said Mr. Bones.

The caller was silent. Mr. Bones let him sweat for a while.

“I will have it cleaned up, sir,” said the caller.

“Well that would be nice,” said Mr. Bones icily and disconnected.

The good news was that Erasmus Tull was on his way to Maryland. Tull would never have fumbled so easy a play as this. In Mr. Bones’s knowledge, Erasmus Tull had never fumbled anything. The worst that could be said of him was that once or twice he retreated from overwhelming odds, but that was simply good sense.

Mr. Bones activated Ghost Box and began reading updates and reports.

The air show was still on schedule. The prototype of Specter 101 had been safely delivered to VanMeer Castle, and the grandstands were already erected. Not that it really mattered, he mused. He really didn’t care about the plane, nor did Howard, who privately referred to it as the “flying red herring.” But for now, for today, all appearances must be maintained—and that was even more important if the thing in D.C. caused the air show to be postponed.

Christ, that really would give Howard another heart attack. It was a mercy that the minicrisis brought on by the news from Washington was only a “concern” rather than an “event.”

Mr. Bones clicked on to the next item.

The tech teams had managed to launch several flocks of the new pigeon-size surveillance drones. How lovely. Ten flocks in Baltimore, ten in Brooklyn, and five each in nine other locations. The drones were one of Bones’s own toys. Darling little machines. When Howard discovered him, Mr. Bones was the senior designer at AeroVironment, a nano aerial vehicles shop funded by DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. He’d been building unmanned aerial vehicles that looked like birds. The one that sold the project to the DoD was the hummingbird, which was beautifully painted and could flit and fly just like a bird—unless the observer was an expert on hummingbirds. The pigeon drones were more durable and their larger bodies allowed for the inclusion of technical packages for secondary objectives.

It amused Mr. Bones to imagine those flights of pigeons winging their way toward the Warehouse in Baltimore, the Hangar in Brooklyn, and the nine DMS field offices.

Another check mark on his to-do list.

Nice.

He scrolled through more items. More reports of UFOs. He dismissed any sightings in Washington State, Pennsylvania, Utah, Nevada, New Jersey, and New Mexico because the rubes were seeing experimental craft of one kind or another. With the air show pending, everybody in the industry was out test-flying their latest machines. That was fine. The reports from Upstate New York, Rhode Island, Iowa, Wyoming, and Central California were not as easy to dismiss. Frowning, Mr. Bones coded that for investigation and forwarded it to the field team supervisor with a request for twice-daily updates.

The minutes ticked by as he waited to hear from the doctor.

His phone rang and he saw the code word “Aqualung.”

Erasmus Tull. Odd to get a callback so soon after initiating an assignment. It was too soon for Tull to even be at the airport yet. He picked up the phone, engaged the scrambler, and said, “Yes?”

“I need a cleanup.”

“Already?”

Tull did not reply.

“Where?” asked Mr. Bones.

“The bungalow at Little Torch.”

Mr. Bones took a moment to put that together. Tull was down there with the daughter of Matthijs de Vries, CEO of Donderbus Elektronica.

“Oh, dear,” said Mr. Bones. “Has there been an accident?”

Tull said nothing.

The line went dead.