Extinction Machine

Chapter Eighty-four

Elk Neck State Park

Cecil County, Maryland

Sunday, October 20, 12:14 p.m.

Even with all of the pain he had to be feeling, the Closer had enough control to understand. He was not being murdered in this moment. His ticket to a longer life was silence.

He clamped his teeth and lips shut to hold back the screams.

I bent close, my lips near his ear. The position, the closeness was an awful parody of intimacy.

“Who sent you?” I whispered.

His mouth remained shut.

I touched the point of the knife to the soft flesh below his eye. “Is it worth dying for?”

Nothing. But he tried to scare me to death with his he-man steely stare.

With the knife in place, I used my free hand to tear open his shirt. He wore the same kind of body armor I’d see on the Closers down in Wolf Trap. I tore open the Velcro straps and pulled it down. No dog tags underneath. In fact he had no ID anywhere.

I bent close and spoke very quietly to him. “Who are you working for? What’s your agency? What unit are you with?”

He said nothing.

“Who’s your commanding officer?”

Nothing.

“Listen to me, a*shole, you’re hurt but you’re not over the line. We can change that real fast.”

Nothing. His eyes were bright with pain but he kept that glare going.

I am not a big fan of torture. Kind of don’t ever want to do it, but there are moments when your options are limited. Top calls them “L.A. nuke moments.” The logic goes this way: If you know for certain that there is a nuclear device about to detonate in L.A., killing millions of people, and you have in custody a terrorist who knows where that bomb is, which is the better moral choice—to stick by your guns and say “No, America does not believe in torture” or to ruin one guy’s day and save millions? It’s not a good choice, bad choice thing because they’re both bad choices. In that situation, you have to make the right choice, the smart choice, even if it’s one you may have trouble living with later.

Add to that the fact that the Warrior was running the show right now.

The man talked.

Not much, but enough.

He confirmed that they were here to collect Junie Flynn. Alive, if possible, but dead was within the mission parameters. He confirmed that I was to be terminated with extreme prejudice. When I asked him why, he said something really funky.

“They told us about you,” he said. “They told us that you’re trying to tear the whole thing down.”

“What thing?”

“Everything. The country, the Project. You’re out of control, Ledger, and they will stop you.”

“Wait—suddenly I’m the bad guy? You dickheads attacked us. You blew up a freaking lighthouse with missiles. How did I get to be the bad guy?”

He sneered at me. “We did what we had to do to protect the United States. Maybe we don’t wear the uniform anymore, but every goddamn one of us would die for this country.” Then he gave me a pitying, disgusted look. “They said you used to be a good guy, Ledger. What happened to you? How much did you sell your country for?”

I wanted to drop a flag on the play and sit down to reread the rulebook. He was making my speech. Okay, maybe it was a badly worded and needlessly clichéd version of my speech, but even so.

“They must have sold you a pretty amazing line of shit,” I told him. “You actually think I’m the bad guy?”

“We know you are, a*shole. You and that crazy UFO broad want to see this country burn. You want to see Chinese troops marching up Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Dude,” I said, “you lost me a couple of turns back. What the f*ck are you talking about?”

And that’s when the silly son of a bitch made his move.

With slashed arms and a killer crouched over him and no genuine options, he went for it. He tried to buck me off while simultaneously twisting his hips and turning his face away.

I killed him for trying it.

It didn’t take much. He made his move, and I made mine.

Damn it.

I crouched over him, watching this man die. I don’t know if I have ever been more conflicted about killing an enemy combatant before. Inside my head the Modern Man was appalled at what I’d done. The Cop detested me for losing control of the moment and thereby silencing my only information source. The Warrior …

Oh, man, the Warrior was howling with red delight. He saw that blood pouring into the dirt and he wanted to roll in it like a dog. Like a werewolf.

This was a very bad place to be, a very dark place. My feet were at the edge of the abyss, and down there things howled up at me in a voice that was far too familiar, far too personal.

I staggered back in both mind and body, and I turned away.

The knife was in my hand. It was red with blood, but strangely there was not even a drop of it on my flesh. As if I had used an innocent hand to pick up a guilty weapon.

What a dreadful illusion that was. And I marveled at how many lies are sewn into the fabric of our awareness.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing who it was meant for. The dead men, the people in my life who might suddenly be in danger because of me, Junie? Or was it meant for myself? If you are a sane and moral person, then with every act of violence there is less of you. I know this to be true. I’ve been aware each time the scalpel of experience pares away a chunk of me. Rudy Sanchez is fond of the expression, “Violence always leaves a mark.”

As a therapist and an empathetic man I know he understands that, but Rudy’s experience is largely that of an observer. The violence he’s seen has been from a distance. Not always, but mostly. When you are ankle deep in blood, however, the truth of that saying is both more profound and horribly understated.

These thoughts shambled through my brain as I quickly searched the pockets of the other dead men. I did not expect to find ID, of course. Instead I found other MPP pistols, knives, hand grenades, and a few small electronic gadgets I did not recognize. I crammed my pockets with the stuff, as much as I could carry. In the front pants pocket of the last man I’d killed I found a compact satellite phone that was no larger than a cell.

I flipped it open. Instead of offering me an open line, it immediately went to autoconnect. It was set to call only one line. Only two seconds passed before a voice said, “Condor One to Six, copy.”

I took a gamble.

“Copy, Condor One, go for Six.”

“Give me a location and a sit-rep?”

As I spoke I crunched a few dry leaves in my palm. Sounds like crappy reception. Great for disguising your voice. I also dropped parts of words to make it sound like the signal was fluctuating. My buddies and I used to do this at fast-food drive-throughs, too.

“—three klicks no—west of—lighthouse and—”

“We’re getting some heavy interference, Six. Adjust your squelch.”

I crumpled more leaves. “Negative,—ondor,—phone took—hit—”

“Give me a target status.”

“Have engaged—and terminated—hostile.”

“Six, I’m reading that you have engaged and terminated one hostile? Confirm.”

“—onfirm—d.”

There was a pause, then, “Initial or secondary target?”

Junie had to be the initial target. They could only have found out about me within the last few hours.

“Secondary—arget has—neutralized.”

“Do you have eyes on initial target?”

I made the fake static worse, but paused long enough to say, “—southeast—”

Then I switched off the phone. With any luck they’d shift their search.

But off in the distance, I heard a dog bark. Ghost.

And more helicopters coming.

To kill Junie and to kill me. And they thought I was the bad guy.

“Christ,” I breathed.

And ran.