Extinction Machine jl-5 Read online

  Here in this forest.

  I could feel my mouth wanting to smile at those memories, but that’s always tough for me, because I have to view them through the lens of what happened so soon after.

  And yet …

  We’d played here. Helen and me, when her family came camping with mine. My brother and me, the two of us hunting for Apaches and dinosaurs and savage tribesmen on those forgotten trails. Maybe one day, maybe when the war let me stop long enough to catch my breath, I’d come back here and find one of those old trails and walk it. With Ghost beside me and ghosts around me. Would I be able to hear the echo of old laughter here? Does the world ever grant a killer that much mercy?

  It was a bad day to ask those kinds of questions.

  The shadow of the Black Hawk flickered across a flat green lawn and flitted up the white tower of the Turkey Point Lighthouse. From a distance the lighthouse looked blunt and squat, but it was deceptive. A hundred feet high and as white as a gull’s breast.

  I was surprised to see that there was a house adjoining the tower. Our scoutmaster had told us that the lightkeeper’s house had been torn down in 1972, years before I was born. But now there was a two-story Victorian cottage that had an improbable number of porches and cupolas and little towers sticking out in all directions. In contrast to the stark simplicity of the lighthouse, the cottage was on the charming side of untidy. Japanese black pines stood guard beside an inviting walkway, and an herb garden was embowered by beach plum, bayberry, and hydrangeas.

  The pilot, Hector, set us down on the far side of the two-acre lawn.

  “You want backup, Cap?” he asked. We’d left Baltimore with a crew of three: Hector at the stick; a former field agent with an artificial leg called Slick riding shotgun; and a red-haired woman nicknamed — creatively — Red along as crew chief. They were support staff, but they were also combat vets; each partially disabled but still tough as nails.

  “Stay on station,” I told Hector. “I don’t know if this is a hello-goodbye waste of time or if we’re going to need to get this Flynn woman back to the shop. Cut the rotors but stay ready.”

  “You got it.”

  Red rolled back the door and once I hopped out she handed me a ruggedized laptop bag. A MindReader substation. She gave Ghost a wink as we got out. She said, “Don’t go chasing no ’possums.”

  Ghost gave her a snooty look and followed me through the fading rotor wash. The turbines whined down to a whisper and then fell silent as I approached the garden path.

  The day was cool and clean. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and despite the time of year the air was alive with the last of the season’s hummingbirds. They whipped and whizzed around us, dancing with swallowtail butterflies, and Ghost jumped and barked like a puppy. The scent of roses was infused by the rich salty air, and as the breeze shifted I could smell rosemary and sweet grass. As I approached the cottage I marveled at the variety of flowers, some of which were way out of season. Pansies, impatiens, and dianthus thrived alongside tulips, crocuses, and a dozen kinds of roses. And there was a row of hollyhocks with their paper-thin blooms fluttering in shades of pale pink, lemon yellow, and deep magenta, some of them towering nearly ten feet high.

  I stopped and looked around, and despite everything — my errand, the video, the crisis — I smiled.

  Then the door opened and Junie Flynn stepped into my life.

  I know how that sounds. Absurd, dramatic, corny. But there are moments in life — precious and rare — when no matter what else is hanging fire or clawing at your attention, you have to simply pause and focus all your attention. You do so because something of great importance is happening and you are suddenly aware of it. Maybe not in a conscious away, but deep down, on the level where your instincts trump your thoughts. The voice of your essential self whispers to you: Behold. And you stop because you must. You know that to fumble the moment through inattention or to pollute it through triviality is to lose something of great value. Even if you cannot then — or ever — ascribe precise parameters to that value. You are acutely aware, though, that if you blunder through the moment without giving it its proper due you are one very dull fellow. This, you are sure, is an event in life so rare and significant that it can only be described as having a flavor of importance.

  That is what I felt when the lighthouse door opened and Junie Flynn stepped from soft interior shadows into the golden sunlight of early afternoon. She wore a loose peasant skirt with a complex Mexican print, a white long-sleeved sweater unbuttoned over a coral t-shirt with a deep V, and no shoes. Her wavy blond hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. She wore no makeup, but there were silver rings on most of her fingers, a jangly ankle bracelet on her left leg, and at least a dozen bracelets on each wrist — layers of silver, white gold, red gold, and copper. An emerald pendant hung from a gold chain around her neck, half lost in the shadows between her sun-freckled breasts.

  She walked up to me, smiling and asked, “Are you here to kill me?”

  Chapter Forty-six

  VanMeer Castle

  Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  Sunday, October 20, 10:11 a.m.

  The golf cart’s top speed was twelve miles an hour, and Mr. Bones tried to will it to go faster. The labyrinthine underground structure of basements, subbasements, laboratories, warehouses, firing chambers, and other rooms was more than triple that of the massive castle above. They had to endure two freight elevators and more than a mile of tunnels in order to get to Howard’s design lab. It was a ponderous distance at the best of times, and now it was excruciating.

  “Why don’t you move the fucking lab closer to the elevators?” Bones growled.

  “Why don’t you stop whining and steer? Nearly clipped my elbow back there.”

  The sniping war continued all the way to the big security door. Then they piled out and went through the steps necessary to open the airlock door. It required two palm prints simultaneously applied. There was a secondary entry method for those times when Mr. Bones was not at the estate, but that had a number of extra steps and many safeguards in case Howard was being made to access the lab under duress.

  The airlock hissed open, belching refrigerated air at them. Despite the nervous hostility during the trip, they weren’t mad at each other. They were terrified. The disaster at Dugway was dreadful.

  Beyond the airlock was a large laboratory with state-of-the-art computer systems lining three of the walls. The fourth wall was completely covered by a line of heavy gray drapes.

  Once inside they hurried to the central Ghost Box station, which was a massive affair with over twenty networked screens built in a semicircle around a console with two wheeled leather chairs. Mr. Bones held the chair for Howard and paused to feel the old man’s pulse and press a palm against his forehead. Howard was flushed, but the blood pressure medicine seemed to be keeping him stable. His pulse was elevated, but not dangerously so.

  Howard waved him away with mock irritation.

  They logged onto Ghost Box and immediately called Yuina Hoshino. A hologram of her appeared above them, almost life-size but just her head and shoulders. She wore her glasses and peered owlishly at them.

  “Howard? What is it? I’m in the middle of—”

  “I tried to call you, damn it.”

  “I turned my phone off,” she said. “We’re working on the slave circuit and—”

  “To hell with the slave circuit. Never turn your goddamn phone off,” snarled Howard. His voice carried such savage emotion that Yuina straightened and removed her glasses. “Look at this.”

  Howard replayed the last few seconds of footage from Dugway.

  Her face was a total blank. No expression, no emotion.

  “Again,” she said. “Play it again.”

  They played it twice more and then a third time in slow motion. Mr. Bones opened some video-editing software, froze the best image and blew it up, but as good as the senator’s lapel cam had been it was still not sophisticated enough. As the pictur
e expanded it began to blur and then to fragment into blocks as the computer isolated individual pixels and assigned them colors. Annoyed, Mr. Bones reduced the magnification until they had the largest clear picture.

  “They’re back,” said Howard. “Holy mother of God, Yuina, they’re back and—”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” said Yuina slowly. She put her glasses back on and bent over her keyboard for a few seconds. Then a second image appeared in an inset box. The craft in this picture was a triangle of unreflective black metal with one bright light near each of its three points and a larger light in the exact center. The sides were dark, alternating black and smoke gray. The top and bottom of the machine were slightly larger than the center section, creating an eavelike overhang all the way around. In the second picture, the craft stood on three metal legs made from steel struts. The vehicle was apparently in a cave with rough walls but on the closest wall there appeared to be some kind of rough structure. When Yuina increased the size of the inset box it became more evident that the structure on the wall was the reconstructed skeleton of a dinosaur.

  The craft in the inset and the craft at Dugway were a perfect match.

  “Wait, wait,” said Shelton. “What are you saying here?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” answered Yuina. “The ship in the cave is the one found at the Dadiwan dig in the excavation site in Zhangshaodian Village, in Tianshui City. The one they found in 2013.”

  “Bullshit … that ship was trashed,” Howard fired back. “Tull got in there. He took photos of everything.”

  Yuani gave him a pitying look. “Haven’t you ever put used parts from one car into another? Or am I the only tomboy in this group?”

  “Son a bitch,” breathed Mr. Bones. “The fucking Chinese did repair it.”

  “Are you sure they’re the same?” demanded Howard. “Look, the lights aren’t exactly—”

  “If there are differences it’s because the Chinese rebuilt or remodeled the craft,” said Yuina.

  “This craft just shot down the Locust bomber they’re testing out at Dugway,” said Howard. “That’s an act of war, Yuina. You actually think the Chinese are looking to declare open war on the U.S.?”

  Her face was impassive. “I’m not so sure I’d call this war, Howard.”

  “Then what?”

  “A war is two-sided. The DoD has been hoping to use the Locust to put us way ahead in the international arms race. Much like we’re hoping to do with Specter 101. But if that vehicle is Chinese, then they’ve just told us in no uncertain terms that the arms race is over.” She leaned toward the screen, dark eyes intense. “And they just won.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Turkey Point Lighthouse, Elk Neck State Park

  Cecil County, Maryland

  Sunday, October 20, 10:12 a.m.

  Junie Flynn’s words seemed to hang burning in the air.

  “Kill you?” There may have been a crooked smile on my mouth, but I wasn’t sure. “That’s a pretty strange way of answering your door.”

  Ghost whined faintly.

  Junie Flynn shielded her eyes with her hand and squinted up at me. “You landed on my lawn in an unmarked black helicopter. What else would I think?”

  My crooked smile twitched. “Actually, I can make a pretty good list of reasons why someone would land on a lighthouse lawn. That list includes free rides for lucky kids and extremely aggressive Jehovah’s Witnesses. Killing people, however, would be moderately low on the list.”

  “Only ‘moderately low’?” she asked, smiling.

  “I could be Santa Claus gone high-tech.”

  “It’s October.”

  “The Great Pumpkin, then?”

  “In a black helicopter.”

  “It’s not entirely black. Look, we have snazzy red sports trim. It’s just an ordinary everyday heli—”

  “‘Ordinary’? Why would an ordinary helicopter have — and this is just a guess off the top of my head — a pair of GAU-19/A Gatling guns, seventy millimeter Hydra rockets, probably a round dozen AGM-114 Hellfire laser-guided missiles, and thirty millimeter M230 gun pods?”

  “Geese are a hazard to air traffic,” I said. “We’re being proactive.”

  Junie Flynn laughed.

  I laughed with her. Ghost wagged his tail.

  Not sure in what proportions our laughter was constructed of false and honest humor. In the background, the Black Hawk crouched on her lawn like a giant insect from a Godzilla flick. She glanced down at Ghost, who, despite extensive and costly training, was wagging his tail like a puppy. She held out her hand to him.

  “Don’t,” I warned quickly. “He’s a trained combat dog.”

  My trained combat dog licked her fingers and then flopped on the ground to show his belly, tongue lolling and tail thumping. Junie squatted down and began rubbing his tummy while Ghost’s eyes rolled up and one leg started kicking.

  “Who’s a good little combat dog? Who’s a good little combat dog?” cooed Junie Flynn in a singsong voice.

  “Um … he’s not usually like that with people.”

  “Dogs understand me.”

  Ghost was apparently understanding that her clever fingers on his fur was the equivalent of a crack pipe.

  “Why did you think I was here to kill you?” I asked.

  Junie stood up and shrugged.

  “That’s it?” I said. “Shouldn’t there be a whole ’nother part to this conversation?”

  “You haven’t read a single one of my books, have you?”

  I said, “Um…”

  “If you had, you’d know that I am not a cheerleader for any part of the government that employs bullies and thugs. And you’d know that I’ve had my share of bullying and thuggish behavior.”

  “I’m not here to bully you, and I am seldom thuggish to total strangers.”

  “Just close friends, then?”

  “Cute, but no. Look, Ms. Flynn, I’ll admit that I haven’t read your books, watched your videos, or listened to your podcast. In fact, until this morning I’d never even heard of you.”

  “Oh?” Her blues eyes flashed with challenge. “Do you know anything about me?”

  “Just basic stuff. You were an orphan who was adopted at age five by Jericho and Amanda Flynn. Your foster dad was a physicist, your mom was a developmental psychologist. They were killed in a car accident when you were in your senior year of college. They had no other children, no family except for you, so you inherited. You finished college, but you switched your major from art history to political science. After college you went to grad school at the University of Pennsylvania, but dropped out a year later after you were injured in a car bombing while on vacation in Egypt. After you returned to the States, you began to write articles about conspiracy theories, UFOs, alien abductions, shadow governments, and the Majestic Black Book. You’ve published twenty-three books, four of which were New York Times bestsellers and two of which were USA Today bestsellers. You are on the UFO and conspiracy theory lecture circuit, which means that you travel at least half the year. You are the go-to expert for several topics related to UFOs, though the real basis of your celebrity is the Black Book. You wrote the first books on it — which, I admit, I haven’t read — and you’ve filed over one hundred requests via the Freedom of Information Act in an attempt to have the contents of the book released.” I paused. “Did I leave anything out?”

  Her face remained bland through my recitation, with only a momentary tightening of her mouth when I mentioned the death of her parents and her own injuries in Egypt. “You didn’t mention my arrest record.”

  “Eleven arrests in seven years, all related to organized protests to humanitarian issues. You’ve been on talk shows with Martin Sheen, Don Cheadle, and George Clooney following various arrests.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  “That you’re a social activist and I probably agree with some of your politics.”

  “Says the man with the gun, the helicopter, and the comba
t dog.”

  “Being a patriot isn’t the same thing as being a radical. Right or left.”

  She digested that. “You left out that I’m a freak. That shows up in a lot of field reports. I’ve seen some of them, so I know.”

  “‘Freak’? I wouldn’t use that word.”

  “What word would you use?”

  “Gifted?” I suggested. “Maybe uniquely gifted. In middle school you demonstrated qualities consistent with eidetic memory — photographic memory — but later that diagnosis was modified to include hyperthymesia, which I believe is what they call a superior autobiographic memory. In short, you don’t forget anything.”

  “Can’t forget,” she corrected. “And … it’s not very much fun.”

  “I’ll bet. There are whole years of my life I’d like to forget.”

  “Me, too.”

  We looked at each other for a moment, letting all of that sink in.

  “What do they call you?” she asked, shifting topics abruptly enough to strip the gears.

  I offered my hand. “Captain Joseph Ledger.”

  She didn’t immediately take my hand. “Captain of…?”

  “You won’t have heard the name of the organization I’m actually with. We don’t have badges.”

  “Let me guess. It’s one of those ‘we’re so secret that if you told me the name you’d have to kill me’ things?”

  I laughed. “That’s almost exactly what I said to my boss the first time I met him.”

  “He didn’t kill you.”

  “Not so far. Guy’s twitchy, though, so we’ll see what my retirement plan looks like.”

  “A gold watch and two in the back of the head?”

  I liked this Junie Flynn. She was a civilian and I could have stood there and sold her some kind of bullshit, but with some people deception is like lying in church.