Predator One Read online

  He said, “Nope. Just noting it.”

  We nodded to each other. Each of us aware of the conundrum’s souring our collective moods.

  “Feeling the need to vent a little here, Boss,” said Bunny. “Might slash some tires and break some windows.”

  “Hooah,” Top said again.

  “None of that goes outside of the mission protocols as far as I’m concerned,” I said. “Indulge yourself.”

  We tapped back into the mission channel. “Tell the helo pilot to brew a fresh pot of high-test, and I don’t want to hear the word ‘decaf,’” I said. “Going to be a long night.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Capitol Building

  Washington, D.C.

  October 13, 1:15 A.M.

  “Home, James.”

  It was a running joke every time the president climbed into the back of the Beast, the presidential state car.

  The driver, a sergeant in the White House Military Office, was actually named James. The driver grinned, as he always did, even though the joke was as stale as Christmas fruitcake. But the basic rule was that the president’s jokes were always funny, even when they weren’t. The rule applied to any joke told by any president. As a result, a lot of former commanders in chief left office convinced that they were hilarious.

  Being seen to visibly appreciate the joke was even more important tonight, because the man sharing the backseat with the president was Linden Brierly, director of the Secret Service. Brierly, though not James’s boss, had unquestioned influence over all matters of security personnel.

  So, the driver, Leonard Allyn James, chuckled at the joke and waited until the senior motorcade NCO gave the go signal. The long line of vehicles switched on their red and blue flashers and the procession pulled away from the Capitol for the six-minute drive to the White House.

  The Beast was a heavily armored Chevrolet Kodiak–based, Cadillac-badged limousine. It was referred to in most official documents as Cadillac One or Limousine One but called the Beast by everyone in the presidential motorcade.

  Another running joke was that the motorcade was longer than the route between the two buildings. Most often there were forty-five cars in the procession, with one or two dummy versions of the presidential state car. All for a drive of one-point-seven miles. For what would otherwise be a nice stretch of the legs.

  In the back, the president rubbed his eyes and sank wearily into the cushions.

  “Long night,” said Brierly.

  “Long damn night,” agreed the president.

  The third person in their conversational cluster nodded, but added, “Good night’s work, though.”

  Alice Houston, the White House chief of staff, somehow managed to look fresh and alert despite this being the middle of the night. Everyone else who had spent the last fourteen hours hammering away at the budget bill looked wasted. The elderly congressman from West Virginia had drifted off to sleep five times and had to be shaken vigorously to give his opinion on alterations in a bill that would keep the lights on in government facilities across America. Later today, the House would receive the bill and vote on it, hopefully in time to beat the midnight shutdown.

  “I think we have something we can all live with,” said the president. It was not the first time he’d said that. Not the tenth. They all repeated it like a mantra. In truth, the bill was a pale shadow of the one they’d tried to pass. The original bill, drafted by a close supporter of the administration, took several hard stances that were fiscally sound. They were also politically indefensible. They required the kind of bipartisan cooperation that only ever happened in heartwarming and naive political comedies. That bill assumed that the phrase “in the best interest of the American people” meant just that.

  “I wish we could have taken Donald’s suggestion,” muttered the president.

  Donald Crisp was a junior senator whose idealism was dying a quick death in Washington. His suggestion, intended only as sarcasm, was that all further discussion of the merits of the bill be conducted only after every person in the room had been hooked up to lie detectors. That was a riff on a Jimmy Fallon bit about how cool it would be if the participants in political debates were hooked up to polygraphs. A nice idea, but it would cause armed insurrection on Capitol Hill.

  Everyone in the room tonight had laughed. A lot.

  Even Donald Crisp.

  Now, in the car, the chuckles were less jovial. There was more evident regret that the world did not, and never would, spin in that direction.

  “Can’t wait to see what the press does with the bill,” continued the president.

  “I don’t think it will be too bad,” said Brierly. “Nobody wants to see the government shut down. Again.”

  “Sure they do, Linden,” said Houston. “News is news is news. And it’s pretty quiet out there.” She gestured to indicate the world as a whole. With the war in Afghanistan more or less over and things in the Middle East simmering on a moderately low boil, the big story had become the impending shutdown. With a bill that was all compromise, the pundits would have to feed on something, which meant that they would milk the bill—and the participation of the key players—for as much sustenance as they could. “Once the ‘shutdown averted’ headlines have their fifteen minutes, then they’re going to go snipe hunting in D.C.”

  “That might be an imperfect metaphor,” murmured the president.

  Houston opened her mouth to reply, but the car suddenly jerked to a halt with such abrupt force that they were pitched forward against their seat belts.

  Brierly punched the intercom. “James—what’s wrong? What’s happening?”

  “No threat, sir,” said James. “The brakes locked up.”

  The whole motorcade screeched to a stop. Doors opened and sergeants swarmed the Beast. Most of them had guns drawn.

  Brierly turned in his seat. “Mr. President, are you okay?”

  “Yes, yes, sure. No problem,” said the president, waving him off. He unbuckled his seat belt and reached a hand toward Houston. “Alice—?”

  Houston was flustered, but she nodded. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  “James,” growled Brierly, “talk to me.”

  “Must be a malfunction. Hold on, I think I—.”

  Then the car suddenly lurched forward, snapping them back against the cushions. The president had been half turned toward Houston, and Brierly had been leaning in toward him, but the jolt bounced them together. Brierly’s forehead struck the president’s cheek with a meaty crack.

  The car stopped and oscillated on its springs. The siren blared on and off. The headlights cycled from running lights to driving lights to high beams to off, and then through the same pattern. Door locks popped up, then down, then up.

  “Jesus Christ!” cried the president, reeling back, a hand clamped to his cheek.

  “What’s happening?” shrieked Houston, terrified.

  “Goddamn it, James!” snarled Brierly. Then he yelled into his cuff mike, calling for a medic.

  The car jerked forward again, and once more Brierly and the president collided. The president snapped a hand out to fend off a second collision and accidentally struck Brierly’s mouth. Blood erupted from the director’s mashed lips.

  “The onboard computer’s going crazy,” bellowed James. “I can’t turn it off.”

  The doors of the Beast were whipped open and hands reached in, closed around the president, and pulled him out. He was immediately surrounded and, in a run-walk, taken to a second car. Two WHMA sergeants piled into the Beast. One released Houston from her belt and began guiding her to the doorway; another slid in beside Brierly, whose lower face was painted with blood. James was pulled out of the driver’s seat.

  The car jerked forward again. And again, throwing Brierly and the sergeant to the floor. The edge of the door clipped Houston’s ankle and tripped her, and as she fell, she dragged her escort down.

  Then the lights switched off, the horn stopped blaring, and the Beast’s engine growled
down to silence.

  WHMO sergeants and Secret Service agents assigned to the motorcade pointed guns in a dozen useless directions, including at the car itself. One agent took a risk and leaned quickly in to throw the car into park. But it already was. When he turned, confused, he saw James hold out the keys.

  Four heavily armored cars peeled off into a smaller motorcade and whisked the president away. The rest of the vehicles and all of the remaining agents stared at the car, uncertain about what had just happened. The driver had put the car in park, turned off the engine, and removed the key. However, the car had still jerked forward, and its engine had run for several seconds after that.

  Linden Brierly, holding a compress to his torn lips, expressed the thought that was on everyone’s mind.

  “What the hell—?”

  Chapter Ten

  The Resort

  208 Nautical Miles West of Chile

  October 13, 1:23 A.M.

  “I uploaded a lot of data to MindReader already,” I told my guys. “Do the same with any computer you see. If bin Laden told them anything about what the Kings have running, maybe it’ll be on the drives.”

  “You think that’s likely?” asked Bunny. “It’s my impression that the assholes in the splinter cell were still more or less on our side, just going about it the wrong way. If they caught wind of anything, there’s a dozen ways to slip that info to us.”

  Top shook his head. “You more trusting than I remember, Farm Boy. I think you been hit in the head too many times.”

  We left it at that. Everyone went about their jobs.

  The lab building was mine. I placed Bug’s uplink doodads into the USB ports of every computer I could find. MindReader gobbled up all of their data.

  “Geez,” said Bug, “there’s a lot of stuff here. A lot of eyes-only and above-top-secret files. Encrypted, but that won’t be a problem.”

  “Let me know if you get anything on the Kings.”

  “There might be, but you know the Agency. They have code names for everything. They might have reams of stuff hidden under some name we won’t recognize. I’m seeing files labeled Dora the Explorer, Getaway Weekend, Cinco de Mayo, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. These guys are hilarious.”

  “Yeah, I’m laughing my balls off. Pull it apart.”

  “Sure, just know it’ll take time. Nikki’s doing a simultaneous pattern-and-keyword search as this stuff comes in.”

  While that process ran its course, I scouted around for anything else of use. Except for the computers and some personnel records, there wasn’t anything lying around with the word “Evidence” stenciled on it. These guys were careful. Had to keep looking, though. Found a porn stash in one guy’s desk. DVDs with cover images of Asian girls who looked way too young to be in the kind of horror show they were in. Some of those kids couldn’t have been older than ten or twelve. Disks were from some illegal pirating group in Malaysia. I found the name of the person who sat at that desk and matched it to the sleeping prisoners. The guy with the kiddie porn was a big slice of white bread with lots of tough-guy tattoos. I kicked him in the balls. Real damn hard.

  Will I kick a man when he’s down?

  Nah.

  But I’ll kick a pedophile from any angle at any time.

  I went back to my search without a flicker of guilt.

  Interlude Three

  The Imperial Condominiums

  Unit 6A, Edgewater Drive

  Corpus Christi, Texas

  Four Years Ago

  The car idled outside the Imperial Condominiums, engine quiet, driver silent. No radio, no conversation, even though there was a second man in the front passenger seat. They sat and waited.

  They were slim men. Midtwenties. Average height. Average weight. Average in every useful way. Forgettable.

  The car was a medium blue Ford Focus.

  The men were dressed like grad students. The driver wore a print dress shirt and moderately tasteful Dockers. The passenger wore a Texas A&M, Corpus Christi, basketball sweatshirt over pressed jeans and New Balance running shoes. They looked like what they wanted people to see. They did not look like who and what they were.

  The man in the Dockers was currently using the name Jacob. It was listed as the most popular name for boys based on statistics from the Social Security Administration. The man in the jeans was using the second most popular name, Mason.

  Before coming here they had been at a Starbucks on Ocean Drive. Jacob pretended to read the paper. Mason pretended to surf the net on his iPad. They sat near each other, but not together. When they left, Jacob went out first, walked around the corner, and got into his car. He circled the block and picked up his companion one street away. The driver made sure he was not being followed.

  They were both very careful men.

  Then they drove over to Edgewater and parked outside the condos. Engine on, both of them waiting.

  Jacob had a Ruger SR22 pistol snugged into an ankle holster. Mason had an identical gun in his zippered tablet case. They always carried the same make and model of handgun. It made it easier for sharing ammunition. These were efficient men.

  However, both of these guns were their backup pieces. Neither of them preferred to kill with them.

  They used something else for that.

  The cell phone that rested on the dash vibrated.

  The driver picked it up, thumbed the green button, and said, “‘Āllō.”

  He listened and then disconnected without a comment, switched the engine off, and got out of the car. The other man removed a small hemp-handled paper bag. The bag was from Starbucks. Two plump one-pound bags of Pike Place blend peeked out of the top.

  Together, Jacob and Mason approached the building.

  They pressed the call button for unit 6A. A moment later, it buzzed and the door lock clicked.

  They entered and took the stairs. They did not go to unit 6A. Instead, the driver led his companion to unit 12B. It was at the end of a short hallway. The hall was completely empty and very quiet. They knocked on the door and waited until a woman answered it. She smiled expectantly at them. They were unobtrusive and well-groomed young men. Everyone in this building worked at the university. Nearly every tenant was a professor. It was not at all unusual for a couple of grad students to visit.

  “Yes?” said the woman.

  “Mrs. Harrison?” asked Jacob.

  “Yes.”

  “We work with your husband. Doc Harrison asked us to bring this over.”

  He held up the Starbucks bag.

  She was still smiling, but there was as much frown as smile on her mouth. “He’s in the shower, but I can—”

  Mason punched her.

  Once, very hard, in the throat. He used the folded secondary knuckles of his left hand. A leopard’s-paw punch.

  The blow crushed her hyoid bone and larynx. It silenced her voice. She collapsed immediately, and he stepped forward to catch her. He smiled at her as she turned purple. Trying to breathe, trying to find even a whisper of breath in a throat filled with shattered debris.

  Mason caught Mrs. Harrison and laid her very gently on the floor, holding her down to keep her heels from hammering on the hardwood as she died.

  Jacob closed the door. He took the coffee out of the bag and removed a pistol. It was not another .22. It did not fire bullets at all. The weapon looked vaguely like a silvery space pistol from a bad science fiction movie. It didn’t look entirely real.

  It was.

  The weapon was a Jarvis USSS-2A pneumatic mushroom-head nonpenetrating stunner. Very effective for the quick and humane slaughter of cattle. Unlike the captive-bolt stunners, this one did not even break the skin. No risk of contaminants. No need to meticulously clean the fittings to remove DNA.

  “Doris—?” called a man’s voice from down the hall. “Who was at the door?”

  They could hear the shower water running.

  Jacob nodded to Mason, who rose from the corpse, and together they walked down the hall toward the
bathroom.

  Sixteen minutes later, they were in the Focus driving away.

  The two men were in the front, Boy was in the back. She had been waiting for them in the lobby.

  There were three corpses in the condominium.

  Professor Milo Harrison, deputy department chair of applied robotics at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi, and his wife, Doris. And Professor Harry Seymour, chairman of the school’s experimental aeronautics department.

  The car moved at a comfortable pace along Edgewater.

  Away from the three dead bodies.

  Away from the Imperial Condominiums.

  Away from the column of dense smoke that rose from that building.

  Several fire engines screamed past them. Five separate police cars roared by. No one took note of the nondescript car with its nondescript passengers.

  They drove to a motel outside the city limits and checked into their rooms. They left all of their equipment in the car. A minute later, a silver-gray Toyota Camry and a beige Honda Civic pulled into the lot and parked in front of the rear exit. The drivers of those cars got into the Focus and drove it away. They took it to a scrapyard on Holly Road, got into a black SUV, and left. The Focus was crushed within minutes. Later, it was added to a load of scrap metal that would be taken by heavy truck to the docks and included in a shipment bound for Japan.

  At the motel, Boy went into one room and the two graduate students went into another.

  Boy stripped off her clothes and stuffed them into a plastic container. All other personal effects went into the same container. Naked, she went into the bathroom, took a shower, dried herself thoroughly, removed an aerosol can from a bag on the sink, and doused herself with a dark spray-on tan. She put contact lenses in her eyes, injected collagen into her lips, slipped on a blond wig and padded clothing. The last thing she did was put on padded shoes that added two inches to her height.

  After she left, a cleaning woman came in, took a hazmat suit from her cart, put it on, and proceeded to clean every inch of the room with industrial cleaner and bleach. She poured acid down the drains to dissolve any traces of hair or other DNA. Another cleaner did the same in the room used by the two young men.