Chapter Ten
Aboard the Secret Escape
Chesapeake Bay, off the coast of Virginia
Sunday, October 20, 3:28 a.m.
Linden Brierly was still awake. He lay in his bunk, staring up through the skylight at the infinite starfield that was spread like a jeweler’s display above the Chesapeake. His boat, a thirty-six-foot custom Beneteau, rocked gently, keeping him at the edge of sleep but not yet tumbling him over. His wife lay curled against him, soft and warm and beautiful. Her hair was still tangled from lovemaking, and the cabin smelled of her expensive perfume, superb wine, and sex.
Brierly stroked her hair, careful not to coax her to the surface of her dreams. By starlight her naked body was alabaster perfection. After nine years of marriage he still marveled at her, lost in the graceful lines and curves that only he knew with such intimate familiarity.
He glanced at the luminous face of the bedside clock and watched it turn from 3:29 to 3:30. He and Barbara were three and a half hours into the tenth year of their marriage.
Nice.
The boat rocked on a series of small, slow rollers.
And then Brierly’s cell phone rang.
His hand snaked out and snatched it off the night table, his thumb hitting the ringer mute halfway through the first jangle. He cut a look at Barbara, but she was still down deep. Then Brierly looked at the screen display and his heart lurched in his chest.
No name. Instead there was a coded symbol: ***!!!***
Jesus Christ, he thought. No, no, no …
He answered the call.
“Brierly.”
“Sir,” said Lyle Ames, “we have a Jackhammer situation. Please verify that confidential protocols are in active play.”
Brierly’s heart was thundering now.
Jackhammer.
God almighty.
He punched in the three-digit code that activated the scrambler.
“The blanket is down,” said Brierly.
“Verified.”
“What’s happening?”
“Linden,” said Ames in a voice that was strained to the breaking point, “the president is missing.”
Beside him, deep inside a dream, Barbara Brierly groaned as if in pain.
Extinction Machine
Jonathan Maberry's books
- A Brand New Ending
- A Cast of Killers
- A Change of Heart
- A Christmas Bride
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked
- A Delicate Truth A Novel
- A Different Blue
- A Firing Offense
- A Killing in China Basin
- A Killing in the Hills
- A Matter of Trust
- A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
- A Nearly Perfect Copy
- A Novel Way to Die
- A Perfect Christmas
- A Perfect Square
- A Pound of Flesh
- A Red Sun Also Rises
- A Rural Affair
- A Spear of Summer Grass
- A Story of God and All of Us
- A Summer to Remember
- A Thousand Pardons
- A Time to Heal
- A Toast to the Good Times
- A Touch Mortal
- A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
- A Vision of Loveliness
- A Whisper of Peace
- A Winter Dream
- Abdication A Novel
- Abigail's New Hope
- Above World
- Accidents Happen A Novel
- Ad Nauseam
- Adrenaline
- Aerogrammes and Other Stories
- Aftershock
- Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can)
- All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy)
- All the Things You Never Knew
- All You Could Ask For A Novel
- Almost Never A Novel
- Already Gone
- American Elsewhere
- American Tropic
- An Order of Coffee and Tears
- Ancient Echoes
- Angels at the Table_ A Shirley, Goodness
- Alien Cradle
- All That Is
- Angora Alibi A Seaside Knitters Mystery
- Arcadia's Gift
- Are You Mine
- Armageddon
- As Sweet as Honey
- As the Pig Turns
- Ascendants of Ancients Sovereign
- Ash Return of the Beast
- Away
- $200 and a Cadillac
- Back to Blood
- Back To U
- Bad Games
- Balancing Act
- Bare It All
- Beach Lane
- Because of You
- Before I Met You
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Before You Go
- Being Henry David
- Bella Summer Takes a Chance
- Beneath a Midnight Moon
- Beside Two Rivers
- Best Kept Secret
- Betrayal of the Dove
- Betrayed
- Between Friends
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Binding Agreement
- Bite Me, Your Grace
- Black Flagged Apex
- Black Flagged Redux
- Black Oil, Red Blood
- Blackberry Winter
- Blackjack
- Blackmail Earth
- Blackmailed by the Italian Billionaire
- Blackout
- Blind Man's Bluff
- Blindside
- Blood & Beauty The Borgias
- Blood Gorgons
- Blood of the Assassin
- Blood Prophecy
- Blood Twist (The Erris Coven Series)
- Blood, Ash, and Bone
- Bolted (Promise Harbor Wedding)