BETA - Project Avatar, page 39
“Oh, for God’s sake, Anderson, you don’t honestly believe that, do you?” Grimmer said angrily.
Dee yelled, “You can’t shoot me—not legally, anyway. Your whole operation is unauthorized. All of it!”
Oliver let go of one of her arms and turned her so he could look at her face. She seemed no more substantial than a rag doll in his hand.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“Goddamn it, Major Oliver!” the general yelled. “You will not interrupt these proceedings. Our unit is not leaving this facility without that computer. Now, why don’t you do something useful and break her arm?”
“Two-minute burn warning,” blared the building’s emotionless tenor voice. “All personnel must now be beyond the orange line.”
The general snapped his fingers impatiently at Holtz. “As for you, get the hell outside and across that safety line, Agent. Corporal Anderson, take his gun. I have command of this situation.”
Holtz turned a few degrees, the barrel of his Uzi stopping, as if accidentally, aimed at the center of the general’s chest. The general straightened with an arrogant frown.
“Actually, no, General,” Holtz said. “It appears that I have command of this situation. I have always had command of this situation. Remember, I’m the one who salvaged Project Avatar from the scrap heap. I’m the one who recruited your assistance, not the other way around. That software is mine and always has been.”
“What was that about our operation being unauthorized?” Oliver demanded. He had a big voice, imposing even over the hoot of the alarm. “General, was this manhunt cleared by Fort Meade, or wasn’t it? And what about Operation Hydra?” He raised his voice a further notch. “Does Agent Whylom have authority here, or not?”
“I thought I told you to shut up,” the general bellowed at his aide, not taking his eyes off Holtz.
“Now,” Holtz said, staring at the general, “I’m going to start by taking off her left hand.” He moved his gun barrel over, and without even looking he aimed it directly at Dee’s hand, which was frozen in Oliver’s beefy grip. “Then I’m going to collect the software, and the rest of you are going to wait outside. Any arguments?”
John took a half-step forward, reaching out his hand for Holtz’s gun. A general clacking of bolts and hammers and safety switches on various weapons made him step back.
Dee held up her free hand. “You don’t need to shoot anybody,” she said to Holtz. “If you want my computer and my smartphone, they’re still where I left them: in room 108. You can confirm that I haven’t made any copies or transferred the program to anyone else. I swear, it’s the truth—I never asked for the damn thing in the first place.”
Holtz paused and looked at her. He seemed to be judging whether he could trust this story that hadn’t even been extracted under duress.
“One-minute burn warning,” boomed the disembodied voice that now ruled the building. “All personnel remain outside the orange line and avoid looking directly at the blue and white incendiary flames.” The alarm stopped suddenly, replaced by a loud, rhythmic beep counting off the remaining seconds.
“Major Oliver!” the general shouted. “Bring me that computer! Now!”
Dee heard Oliver make a scoffing noise deep in his throat. Then he nearly yanked her off her feet as he bolted for the exit, dragging her along behind him.
As soon as her feet were under her, she matched Oliver’s long stride and glanced back over her shoulder. The two young UMBRA soldiers and the agent called Giacomo were running full tilt in Oliver’s wake, abandoning the old general to his own devices. John, unguarded now, was right behind them.
But the general and Holtz were running in the other direction, directly away from Dee, heading for the interior hallway in a mad death race. Despite his years, the general seemed to be using his head start to full advantage, with Holtz right on his heels.
Oliver hit the crash bar of the front door with his considerable mass, knocking the door half off its hinges as he barreled through it. As they burst out into the gray and drizzly light of the parking lot, Dee had one more moment to glance back into the dimly lit entryway of the Clearinghouse.
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw Holtz lift his gun, and the old general fall on the stone tile floor at the back of the lobby.
Then she was stumbling across the parking lot, with Oliver holding her firmly by the wrist as he ran with her toward safety. The rest of the fleeing group caught up with them as they approached the orange safety line on the grass beyond the edge of the asphalt. She saw a dark form on her right. Was it John? Then something hit her, and she was flung bodily onto the wet ground. A heavy body fell directly on top of her, knocking the wind out of her and squashing her face into the wet grass. She had the fleeting thought that if Oliver had just landed on her, she probably had a few cracked ribs to show for it.
An impossibly loud noise, as if a thunderbolt had struck right beside her, filled her vision with darting bright spots. After that, though she covered her ears with her hands, they rang so loudly, she couldn’t make out any sounds at all. A few shards of smoking concrete and metal fell out of the sky, plopping onto the grass with heavy, sizzling thuds. They were large enough to break bones and possibly kill someone Dee thought to herself as she lay pinned under the weight of her protector.
After a long delay, Dee’s vision returned amid the strange, ringing silence, as the big body rolled off of her. She saw that John, not Oliver, had been pressing her to the ground during the explosion. He was sitting up now and brushing himself off, saying something to her—something glib, no doubt, though she would never know what it was. She pointed at her ears and shook her head. Then she looked over at the building.
Whoever had planted the shaped charges inside the Clearinghouse foundations had done an extraordinary job. The immense building had been razed to ground level in a single stroke, with nothing sticking up except a few piles of concrete rubble and rebar. A great hissing cloud of dust and smoke struggled up out of the ruins against the relentless drizzle of rain.
Then the incendiary charges began to go off. Blue-white suns appeared, first three or four, and then dozens, scattered throughout the ruins. They were as bright as welding arcs, and the sight was so extraordinary that she stared in awe for a second before remembering to close her eyes. The afterimages would take days to fade from her retinas. The noise built to such a furious roar that she could hear it even through the ringing in her ears.
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, she turned her head and opened her eyes to find that she was looking into John’s gently smiling face. Beyond his shoulders, she could see the gaping crowd of Clearinghouse personnel standing twenty or thirty yards away, well back from the orange line, their hands held out before them to protect their eyes, the pallid glow of the fires’ incandescence making strange shadows across their faces.
The four surviving members of the UMBRA team were trotting across the grass to join that crowd, moving a safer distance away from the fires and, perhaps, attempting to distance themselves from the humiliating aftermath of their misfired operation. Major Oliver and the man called Giacomo were having an animated discussion.
John was shouting something, and she realized she could make out some of the words.
“I believe this may be our cue,” he seemed to be saying.
She shook her head and shrugged, and he pointed a finger at the main gate, which was unguarded and hanging wide open. Looking around her, she realized that no one was paying any attention to them at all. She had apparently ceased to be of any special interest to the U.S. government.
John flashed that charming smile of his. She watched his lips and understood him to say, “I believe that was the whole show. Shall we be off?” He took her hand and helped her up, then wrapped his arm around her shoulder and walked with her toward the gate.
Chapter 37
Something seemed to be nagging at Agent Whylom. He leaned back in his sturdy old swivel chair, looking out his broad window at the view from the third floor of the CIA Headquarters Building in Langley, Virginia. His office was on the good side of the building, not the parking lot side, and the view was dominated by a row of cherry trees. He rocked slightly in his chair, tapping his fingertips together before his chest and gazing intensely into the canopy of leaves. The spring was too far advanced for any of the cherry blossoms to remain, but the early leaves were still in that yellowish shade of green that expresses freshness and hope. Whylom scrutinized the eager foliage with a cold, fish-like gaze, his face revealing no emotion of any kind.
Whylom's secretary was standing in his office doorway, and she addressed him now for the fourth time. This time, she raised her voice. She saw Whylom start up in his chair, but nonetheless he turned away from the window only very slowly, almost reluctantly, and took several seconds to pivot his chair 180 degrees to face her. His face was shockingly pale, as if his head had been completely drained of blood. He stared at her for several seconds with no sign of recognition, then, making matters quite a bit worse, his lips curled up into a polite smile. The expression was probably intended to reassure her, but it looked rather like rigor mortis.
“Are you . . . all right?” The secretary was a mature woman, a career woman, and it was quite rare for her to be stumbling over her words.
He ignored the question. Despite his appearance, his voice came out, as usual, in controlled tenor cadences. “What is it, Justine?”
She made a visible effort to pull herself together. “It's the director, sir. His office just called me. Apparently he's on his way over here already, and he wants to see you.” This announcement was unusual enough that, after a moment's pause, she decided to add: “You personally.”
“The assistant director,” he corrected her.
She shook her head emphatically. And just at that moment, as if to vindicate her, the distant chuffing of helicopter blades became faintly audible through the window. Both of them turned unconsciously to gaze out at the sky, looking for the source of the sound. Although they couldn't see it, they both knew it was the director's helicopter, flying in from the north—from Washington.
Whylom pivoted away from the window again, letting his chilly eyes rest on the face of his secretary. She smiled tentatively, then quickly erased the expression when it failed to rouse any smile in return. Perhaps she was hoping that congratulations were in order. Perhaps she imagined that he was about to receive some sort of plaque, or a certificate to put on his wall.
“Thank you, Justine. That will do.”
His secretary backed out of his office quickly, and closed the door quietly behind her. Whylom let out a shallow breath, and turned back to glance again at the cherry trees. Such a poignant shade of green.
His hand reached out idly to toy with the smartphone that sat beside him on his desk. This was the dedicated smartphone that he always had with him, and it had never once rung before today. He found himself grabbing it up again, propping his elbow on the desk and tipping the screen to his face so he could stare at it some more, although he had already memorized the message.
!!!SECURITY ALERT!!!
Source: Auto.
Flag: Ultra Urgency.
Effective: Immediate.
RE: Operation Hydra -- confirmed Level Four security breach.
All recipients of this alert are advised to terminate all secure activities associated with Operation Hydra. Follow Contingency Plan M for dissolution of unit.
He read the message slowly, three times in a row. Then he got bored with reading it, and put the phone down again. It was what it was. He could read it a hundred times, but it simply was what it was.
He slapped the edge of his walnut desktop very hard, making a sharp noise that seemed to restore a little life into him. Then he grabbed his regular office telephone, punched into an outside line, and dialed his wife's cell phone number.
She answered on the seventh ring. “Mark?”
“Yes. It's me.”
There was a lot of low-key, excited chatter in the background, with an echoey sound that suggested a large public space. “Aren't you still at work?”
“Yes, I am. I just want to talk for a moment.”
She paused to say something to someone else, then spoke into the phone again. “I'm out shopping with Renée, dear. Can I call you back in a couple of hours?”
“This will only take a moment.”
She sighed with evident irritation, then said, “Well, just a second.” She punched the hold button on her phone, leaving Whylom's receiver dead in his hand. He noticed that the sound of the helicopter had already passed its peak volume, and was now getting quieter as it eclipsed itself over the rooftop, settling toward the helipad. After a few moments, he heard it bump down on its skids. Its engine noise began winding down.
His wife came back on the line, with a little less background chatter now. “Okay, go ahead,” she said, with a familiar nuance of forced patience.
“I . . .” His voice caught. He swallowed and tried again. “I just want you to know . . .”
As Whylom paused a second time, his wife was suddenly and completely silent. She seemed abruptly riveted to his every word. When his silence dragged on a few more seconds, she prompted him with a whisper: “Yes?”
He pinched his eyes closed and said firmly: “I have always loved my country.”
She let out a puff of air, apparently suppressing a laugh. Then, making very little effort to conceal her amusement, she said, “Well, I knew that!” Suddenly she stopped. Her voice serious now, she said earnestly into the phone, “Wait a moment. Mark, what are you trying to say?”
Whylom opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. His free hand, which had been clutching his knee, slowly rose up, as if of its own accord, to cover his face. Then the hand with the telephone handset moved back over the cradle and hung up.
Alone again, Whylom adjusted his chair to center himself at his desk. He spent a few fastidious moments straightening up his desktop, placing everything in neat piles and ninety degree angles. Then he drew open the top right-hand drawer and took out his old but well-oiled Colt M1911 service pistol. He rummaged out a box of ammunition from the back of the drawer and extracted a single round. He pulled back the slide on the pistol and slipped the round into the chamber. He closed his eyes with a connoisseur's look of appreciation at the sound of the fine, sturdy action as the slide snapped home. Then he pushed back a few inches from the desk, pivoted to face the window again, and let his eyes unfocus into a blur as they took in that amazing yellow-green of the new leaves atop the cherry trees.
In the adjacent room, Whylom's secretary dropped a pile of folders as the sharp, percussive noise snapped out through the thin panels of the office door. Dozens of highly classified papers fell from her hands and fluttered down over the carpet, burying her shoes under a paper snowdrift, mingling the sordid details of a dozen ongoing classified operations.
Chapter 38
Dee awoke from a light, drowsy sleep to find herself looking at the side of John’s face. He was sleeping on his back with his arm around her shoulder, his gentle, beatific expression bathed in moonlight. Her mind was still half asleep, and she had no idea where she was. She was in no hurry to remember. Wherever this was, it would do just fine.
They were lying together on the warm, smooth deck of a power yacht as it plied its way across a peaceful night sea. Dee was in a bathing suit, with a light wrap tied like a sarong around her waist. One of her legs was draped across John’s hips, and his hand rested on it lazily. The warm night breeze blew her hair, and she could hear the lap of tiny swells against the hull. High above hung a brilliant full moon and the edges of the sky were dotted with winking stars, crowding among the velvet blackness beyond the reach of the moon’s silver glow.
As she watched, his eyes slowly opened. John caressed her cheek.
“The crossing may take awhile,” he murmured, gazing at her. “A boat looks less conspicuous if it’s not racing along. Fortunately, I believe we are still well stocked with champagne.”
“Where do you suppose we are?”
He shook his head. “Haven’t the foggiest. Of course, Enrique knows—he’s sailed this route a hundred times.”
She nodded. It was all coming back to her. The tall Dominican boat captain who seemed to know John so well. The informal deal, arranged on the commercial dock at George Town under cover of darkness—a deal that she hadn’t been privy to. Not that she minded. John had his secrets, to be sure, but then, she still had quite a few of her own.
“You’ve done business with Enrique before,” she said, prying a little.
He smiled. “Never under such pleasant circumstances,” he said leaning over to kiss her tenderly.
She smiled, sat up a bit, and looked around. “Look how high the moon is,” she mused, and lay down on the deck again to rest the back of her head on her palms and gaze up at the glowing sky. “We must have been sailing for hours. Do you think we’ll arrive before dawn?”
“I should think so. Rather a shame, really. A few days of this would probably do both of us a bit of good.”
“Where will we go?”
“You mean after Jamaica?”
“Yes. After Jamaica,” she said.
John settled back, and the two of them lay side by side, gazing straight up into infinity. “There are quite a lot of choices, aren’t there? No need to be hasty, making decisions like that,” he said. “Actually, it’s a wonderfully large world when one isn’t on a Priority Alpha target list.”
“Somewhere warm,” she inserted immediately. “Not Iceland.”
“Warm can be done. There are so many warm places in this world. And becoming warmer all the time, if you believe what you read. Still, it would be prudent to stay off the beaten track for a few months. Let various injured parties lick their wounds, all that. You can lie low, and I’ll raise my head every now and again to sniff the air, as it were. See if the moment has arrived for us to insinuate you back into society.”
