Extinction Machine

Chapter Sixty-eight

Elk Neck State Park

Cecil County, Maryland

Sunday, October 20, 11:12 a.m.

Ghost tore ahead of us, plunging through the brush, picking out a rough path for us, and we followed. Junie next, me behind her, watching her back. Studying this enigma of a woman.

Despite the shock and trauma of the last fifteen minutes, she ran well, moving with a flowing grace, her stamina impressive. I’m bigger, heavier, and I’ve had more wound-repair surgeries than most people have had hot dinners. On a short sprint I’m a pale Usain Bolt, but after about fifty yards my knee starts sending me hate mail. After half a mile at full speed I can feel each separate inch of scar tissue, each area of knitted bone, each screw and pin.

Junie Flynn ran like a deer. Ghost was right beside her.

“No,” I said in a grouchy wheeze, “I’m good, don’t stop for me.”

They didn’t hear me and weren’t meant to.

The land angled downward and wound through the woods. I looked over my shoulder and could no longer even see the column of smoke from the ruined lighthouse. The manicured lawn and beds of wildflowers were gone, replaced by a primal forest filled with deadfalls, gullies, hairy vines, twisted roots, and unexpected marshes. Once I heard a gunshot—the harsh boom of a shotgun—but it was ahead of us, far deeper into the woods. I almost stopped, but Junie flung two quick words over her shoulder.

“Deer hunters!”

Swell.

The lingering temperature kept fooling me about what time of year it was. It was fall, and fall meant hunting season was underway. Beginning in September, deer hunters begin walking these woods, armed with bows, shotguns, and even muzzle-loaders. And there are waterfowl blinds on the bay and along the Elk River. It would be so hilarious to have escaped helicopter-fired missiles and actual Men in Black with freaky weapons only to take a load of buckshot in the teeth. I’d die embarrassed.

As Junie jumped over a fallen log something fell from the loose pocket of her sweater. She felt it fall and turned, but I bent and picked it up.

It was one of the freaky-looking pistols. There was a single smudge of blood on the handle. Junie looked at it and then at me. She shrugged.

“I picked it up from the man in the kitchen.”

“Do you even know what it is?”

She nodded. “Microwave pulse pistol.”

“You say that like it’s something everyone knows about. I play with guns all the time and I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

Junie held her hand out for it, but I held on to it for a moment. “I need a gun.”

“You need to answer a bunch of questions before I put a weapon in your hand.”

We heard muffled shouts far behind us.

“Move!” I snapped, shoving the pistol into my waistband. Junie gave me a furious look, but she didn’t press the issue. Not then, anyway.

We cut across a well-worn hiking path that I knew as the Lighthouse Trail. Junie wanted to go that way, but I pulled her back into the brush.

“We’d make better time,” she insisted.

“And they’ll know that. This is where they’ll look for us.” I flipped open my rapid-response folding knife, went ten yards deeper into the brush, cut a leafy branch, and used it to wipe out our tracks on the road. Then I tossed some stones and loose gravel across the spot I’d cleared, and picked up some leaves and let them fall haphazardly over the stones. The old trick of brushing out your trail is useful for fooling the inept, but a trained tracker will see the distinctive erasure marks. The key is to then disguise the marks of the branch. Best way to do that is with casual debris. If I had time I’d have found some deer poop and dropped it there, too. The older and dryer, the better. But in a poopless scenario, stones and dry leaves would do it. You work with what you have.

We started running again and I took the branch with me, finally discarding it a quarter mile away.

“Junie,” I said, “we are going to have that talk.”

She looked at me, then turned away and pretended to concentrate on picking a path through the woods. If we were back in the world and if what happened this morning in D.C. hadn’t happened, then maybe I’d cut her some slack. She didn’t strike me as an agent of evil or a closet supervillain, but she was clearly hiding something. A little time alone in a holding cell or an interview room might give her a chance to sort through her options and make the right decision.

But we didn’t have that kind of time. We had no damn time at all. With the jammers on I couldn’t even check the countdown from the video, but I could feel the seconds burning, burning …

After ten more minutes I touched her shoulder to stop her, then sent Ghost out to scout. He’s trained to do that several ways. For this I wanted him to stay out there as long as he saw nothing. If there was anyone within five hundred yards of us, he would come back at a fast, silent run.

“Okay,” I said, “we’re good. Let’s talk.”

She kept moving.

I took a big step forward and wheeled around in front her, forcing her to a stumbling halt.

Junie exhaled a ball of tension and nearly collapsed. She put her face in her hands and sat that way on the weedy edge of a shallow ravine, feet propped on a rock, body hunched.

I let her have about two minutes of that.

“Junie,” I said, “we’re going to have to have a conversation, you know that, right?”

She said nothing.

“I’m not screwing around here. This is more than just your life.”

That did it. She raised her head and gave me a long, flat, uncompromising stare. “You think I don’t know that, Joe?”

“Frankly, sweetheart, I don’t know what you know. You’re hiding something from me and my patience for that kind of bullshit is wearing pretty thin.”

She whipped an arm out and stabbed a finger in the direction we’d come. “Those men are trying to do more than kill me,” she snapped. “They’re trying to kill the truth.”

“Oh, very nice. Can we use that as the tagline if someone makes a movie of your life?”

Junie glared at me. “I’m not being overly dramatic. The Closers want to shut me up because of something I said on my podcast last night.”

“Which was?”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then raised her face and looked up at the sky. “Last night I announced that I had a complete copy of the Majestic Black Book and that I was going to share it with the entire world.”

I stared at her for a long five seconds. “Well kiss my ass. Why in the world would you want to do something like that?”

She stared at me. “Do you even grasp what these people are trying to do?”

“According to you and my friend Bug, they’re reverse-engineering UFO parts and making a shitload of money. What else do I need to know?”

“How can you be so naive?”

“I’m not naive,” I said. “I lack information, and I feel like I’m being dicked around here. Instead of the dramatics, why not come straight out and tell me what’s going on?”

“Joe…” She winced as if saying anything were physically painful for her. “During the conference back there … I didn’t exactly tell you the truth.”

“Really? Well gosh, Junie, I’d have never figured that out.” I sighed. “If you’re thinking that now’s a good time to unburden your soul, then I’m all for it, ’cause we’re ass-deep in it right now. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been this confused in my entire life, and believe me that is saying a hell of a lot.”

She took a steadying breath. “Okay, I told you that I had a source who told me about the Black Book.”

“Right, and the Closers cooked him in a rigged car crash. What about him?”

“He was more than a casual contact, Joe.” Her eyes were bright with pain. “He was my father.”

And I said, “Yeah, no kidding.”

“Wait … you … know?” she gasped.

“I know.”

“When did you figure it out?”

I grinned. “Right around the time everyone else did. My boss, Bug, Rudy, even that jackass Dr. Hu. I think Ghost knows, too. It’s not like you built a mind-boggling web of deception around that part of it.”

“Oh,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was relieved or deflated.

“But…,” I said, “I’m sorry, Junie. For your dad, and your mom.”

She sighed and nodded. “Thanks.”

“Right now, though,” I said, “I need you to tell me how he got involved with M3, what he knew, why they decided to kill him, and why on earth you painted a bull’s-eye on yourself by broadcasting that you’re going to share their secrets with the world.” I paused and gave her my most charming smile. “Really … start anywhere.”