Extinction Machine

Chapter Thirty-three

Over the Atlantic, due east of Hilton Head

Sunday, October 20, 7:26 a.m.

“Hey, Tully, we’re getting something,” said Aldo. “An update from Bones. He says that they managed to put a bunch of those pigeon drones on most of the DMS offices. He forwarded this clip from the Warehouse in Baltimore. One of the drones is on the ledge outside of the Deacon’s office window.”

He turned up the volume and replayed a series of audio clips. They were conversations between the Deacon and various individuals. The Ghost Box voice recognition software pinged the other parties as Captain Joe Ledger, Dr. Rudy Sanchez, Secret Service Director Linden Brierly, and computer expert Jerome Taylor. They listened to all the calls.

Most of it was intel they already had, but Aldo replayed one section over again. Jerome Taylor—the geek they called “Bug”—was telling Church and Ledger about a UFO expert living in a lighthouse.

Aldo’s face went pale. He switched the audio files off and turned to Tull. “We are in some deep shit, son.”

Tull grunted. “Why do you say that?”

“Didn’t you listen? Ledger’s going after Junie Flynn.”

“Why is that a problem? She’s a civilian.”

Aldo gaped at him. “Are you serious? She’s way too dangerous to—”

But Tull shook his head. “You’re looking at this the wrong way, Aldo. You always look at these things like piecework. You need to step back and look at all of this as one project, not a bunch of items to be checked off a list. Junie Flynn is dangerous, no doubt, but she’s only as dangerous as M3 wants her to be.”

“Bullshit, Tull. They should have let me clip her when she first started talking about the Black Book.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why? Dude, if it wasn’t for her nobody outside of the Project would ever had even heard about the Black Book, that’s why.”

“And that is exactly why the governors gave a no-touch order.”

“That doesn’t make any kind of sense,” groused Aldo.

“Sure it does, but not from close up. You have to step way back and look at it from a distance. M3 see things from a big-picture perspective.”

Aldo eyed him suspiciously. “How do you know about this stuff? Since when are you that far into this that you know the inside track?”

Tull laughed. “I was born into it.”

That shut Aldo up for a few seconds. Then he said, “So what do we do about this? This Ledger character’s on his way to pick her up.”

“Hey,” said Tull, “we’re quarterbacking this thing, remember? You and me. What do you think we should do?”

Aldo considered. “Big picture?”

“Yes.”

“I’m leaning toward a scorched earth approach, man. I don’t want to engage these cats hand-to-hand. Not that I’m turning into a p-ssy in my old age, but I’ve read the reports. I don’t need that kind of grief.”

Tull reached over and patted Aldo’s thigh. “You see, now you’re getting the idea. That, my friend, is a big-picture way of handling things.”

“You agree?”

“Absolutely.”