Extinction Machine

Chapter Nine

The Rose Garden

The White House

Sunday, October 20, 3:25 a.m.

Agent Jeremy Nunzio had his weapon in a two-handed grip as he ran along the row of hedges outside the Oval Office. The radio in his ear was a crazed jumble of yells, commands, contradictory orders, questions, and desperate demands for fresh intel.

“We’ve got movement,” cried one of the other agents. Sziemesko. “We’ve got movement.”

Sziemesko shouted the location and everyone was in motion, a fist closing around a specific point outside the White House. Nunzio was the closest, he got there first, rounding a corner, bringing his weapon up, finger laid along the trigger guard, all his years of training bringing him to this moment. He saw Sziemesko standing a few yards away, his back to the building, staring into the darkened lawn. Suddenly a dozen additional security lights flared on.

“On your six,” Nunzio called, as he caught up with Sziemesko. The other agent’s gun was also raised, pointing to a specific spot within the darkness. Nunzio sighted down the barrel of his own piece.

And saw nothing.

Just darkness and security lights and …

He and Sziemesko moved at the same time, their guns jerking left as one of the lights moved.

“Freeze!” bellowed Nunzio.

“Step into the light with your hands raised,” yelled Sziemesko. “Do it now.”

But no one stepped out of the darkness and into the glow of the lights. The light itself moved. It looked like a lightbulb, but there was no flashlight attached to it; it projected no beam. It was simply a light. Simply there.

Drifting slowly from left to right in front of them. Unattached, unsupported.

Just a light.

“Freeze!” Nunzio repeated.

The light continued to move. It was forty feet away from them.

“The f*ck—?” murmured Sziemesko.

The two agents edged forward, weapons ready. Voices in their earbuds told them that the White House was now in full crash mode. Doors and windows were locked. Every agent on duty was involved in a search for the president.

Nunzio felt panic exploding in his chest.

The president was gone. Missing from his room.

And what the hell was this thing?

The light stopped moving for a moment, then it dropped down to the grass and hovered inches above the lawn.

“Go,” said Sziemesko, “I’ve got your back.”

Nunzio edged tentatively forward.

The light suddenly rose from the lawn and began moving away. Nunzio broke into a run, yelling at it to stop. Yelling at a person to stop, even though he could not see anyone out here. The light moved faster and faster and Nunzio almost—almost—took the shot.

Two things happened to prevent that. Two things that made him almost forget he was even holding a gun.

The other five security lights, the ones that had switched on when he’d run to this part of the lawn, also began to move. The movement was abrupt, without warning, and they accelerated until they caught up with the first light. They moved across the lawn in a straight line of retreat from Nunzio, then they slowed and formed a circle of lights that seemed for a moment to be frozen against the night. Then the circle rose.

Straight upward.

Very fast.

Too fast.

As Nunzio watched, the circle of lights tightened until there was only one large light.

It pulsed once.

Twice.

And shot away into the eastern sky so fast that it was gone before Nunzio was aware that it was in motion.

Nunzio stood there, gaping up at the sky. The dark and empty sky.

“Nunzio!”

He whirled at the sounds of Sziemesko’s shrill yell. Nunzio ran back to the other agent and skidded to a stop, remembering his gun, fanning it right and left.

Sziemesko stood with his pistol hanging limply from his right hand, his slack face staring in total confusion at the lawn. Nunzio realized that there was something wrong with the grass. The lawn had been trampled as if a hundred people had run through here.

He thought that, but even as that idea formed the rest of him rebelled at the assessment. The lawn was not trampled. No one else had been out here. No one had been out here since Nunzio had come on shift.

He glanced at Sziemesko and their eyes held for a moment. Then slowly, wordlessly, they began backing away from the trammeled grass. They backed up almost to the White House itself, then they stopped. Nunzio heard Sziemesko say something under his breath. A denial, maybe. A curse. A prayer. He wasn’t sure.

For his own part, Nunzio had no idea what to say. What words would really fit?

The grass was not haphazardly smashed down. The blades looked folded. Nunzio knew that there was a name for something like this, but his mind did not want to think it. That name was connected to something that had nothing at all to do with the White House, and the president, or anything in Nunzio’s world.

Except that maybe it did.

The name, those two words, despite all his denials, whispered inside his head anyway.

This was a crop circle.