Extinction Machine

Chapter Thirty-six

The Warehouse

Baltimore, Maryland

Sunday, October 20, 8:38 a.m.

“So,” said Top to the five members of Echo Team, “that’s what we got so far. Questions?”

They were in a mission briefing room and Top had brought them up to speed on the president, the Black Book, the video, and everything else that had happened.

“UFOs?” said Lydia Ruiz, the only woman on the team. “Holy shit.”

Bunny had a pair of Oakleys pushed up on his head, a mouthful of pink bubble gum, and an expression of profound indifference on his face. “We are not alone. Got it. What’s the big?”

The others looked at him.

“Um, dude,” said Sam Imura, the team’s new sniper, “aliens and all? That’s kind of big, wouldn’t you say?”

Bunny shrugged. “After all this shit we’ve seen you guys are actually surprised that this was going to happen at some point? Wait till you cats have rolled with the captain a couple of times, Sam. Aliens don’t even seem that bad. I mean, on my first gig with Echo we did zombies.”

“Read about that,” said Sam. “Zombies. Jee-sus. I wish I could tell my little brother, Tom. He’s a total Night of the Living Dead freak.”

“I did genetic supersoldiers when I was on Hotrod Team in Detroit,” said Ivan Yankovitch, a lantern-jawed piece of granite who had transferred to Echo right after the Red Order mess in Iran. “A Russian kill team that had twenty percent more muscle and bone mass. The smallest of them could bench six-fifty. That was some serious mad scientist shit.”

“Well that’s my whole damn point,” complained Bunny. “I mean, after all that stuff, if they told us the op was taking down radioactive cockroach ballerinas I’d just lock and load, but I wouldn’t get my panties in a bunch. I am officially not surprised by anything.”

There was a ripple of laughter, but it all sounded a bit forced. Top said nothing, letting them absorb it and deal with it in their own way.

“But,” continued Bunny, “we have an even longer list of stuff that wasn’t anything at all. ’Member that thing in May, when Al-Qaeda said that Bin Laden’s ghost was advising them? Fricking stooge dressed up as Bin Laden. And remember how everyone panicked when we got a report that there was a seif al din outbreak in Times Square on New Year’s Eve? Turned out to be a flash mob dressed as zombies doing the Thriller dance. More than half the stuff that comes onto our radar is bullshit. We get all worked up, teams get scrambled, and half the time we find out that our supervillain du jour is some toothless hillbilly cooking meth in a cave.”

“My little Bunny’s got a point, Top,” said Lydia. “Do we even know if this is real? I mean, how do we know if the shit is about to hit the fan or if somebody just farted in a draft?”

“We don’t know,” Top said, “but, to paraphrase Mr. Church, do you really think we have the luxury to wait and watch?”

Sam shook his head. “No, First Sergeant, we do not.”

Ivan cleared his throat. “What’s the status? Are we at DEFCON One?”

“We’re in an elevated alert state,” said Top. “The official status for the military is REDCON-2 as part of an unannounced training exercise. The DMS status is FPCON Charlie.”

There were five levels on the Force Protection Condition scale. FPCON Charlie was the fourth level, one used in situations when intelligence reports that there is terrorist activity imminent. Similarly the military had its Readiness Conditions. REDCON-2 had all personnel on alert and ready to fight, but they had not yet kicked the tires and lit the fires on the fighter jets.

Top added, “All of this was initiated when the president went missing because it was presumed that terrorists had somehow infiltrated and therefore compromised White House security. The joint chiefs advised the acting president to maintain that alert for now, at least until we have some confirmation that there is no immediate threat.”

“What kind of confirmation they lookin’ for?” asked Pete Dobbs, a shooter recruited from an ATF team working the drug wars in the Appalachians. “ET hanging ten on a monster wave rolling up Pennsylvania Avenue?”

No one laughed.

The phone rang and Top took the call, listened, said, “Yes, sir.”

As he hung up he grinned at Echo Team.

“Turns out the thugs who pissed off the cap’n this morning work for Blue Diamond Security.” He saw sour and hateful expressions blossom on their faces. Like their chief competitor, Blackwater, Blue Diamond was a global security company, which is a polite way of saying that they provided top-of-the-line mercenaries to power players in American politics and big business. They were the go-to company for everything from protecting U.S. oilmen in Iraq to serving as “advisors” for commercially inconvenient political uprisings in third world countries.

“Mr. Church would like us to go have a few words with them.”

All five of them grinned liked wolves.