Predator One by Jonathan Maberry
“Who’s running the Hangar?”
“I pulled Juan Esposito from Boston.”
I nodded. Juan was a good guy who ran three teams out of Beantown. Former Army Intelligence. Very solid.
Church started to go, but I touched him on the arm.
“Church,” I said, “I know the world’s on fire, but take a moment. If Rudy was here, he’d tell you to—”
“Let me head you off at the pass, Captain. I am well aware that all of this puts a great deal of stress on me. I know that there is a danger of my judgment and clarity of mind being compromised by what’s happened to Circe and Aunt Sallie. This is not my first rodeo. This is hardly the first time I’ve had to deal with personal issues while still working a case. It would be nice to say that I am inexperienced at this sort of thing, but we both know that’s not the case.”
“Okay, so you got that part. Rudy would approve. But here’s the other thing. Circe is down, Rudy is down, Aunt Sallie is down. I was down for a day. This is more than a matter of us having to function under stress. I think that is part of the point. We know how devious the Seven Kings are. I see all this stuff happening, and I have to look at the timing. It’s more than a series of punches. They know we can take punches. Who better? No, this is like dodging punches while somebody is throwing firecrackers into the ring. It’s shock an awe.”
Church went over and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You think this is more than an attack on us?”
“I damn well do. Everything we know about the Kings’ MO is that they always have a hidden agenda. They love misdirection. They love coercion, and even though they aren’t strapping us to chairs with electrodes on our nuts, this is coercion. They’re hurting us by hurting the people we care about, and they know it has to have an impact.”
“Get to your point,” he said. “You’re drifting.”
“Maybe I’m not. I think they are trying to take us out of the game so that whatever they’re planning is something we won’t be ready or able to stop.”
Church nodded, and for a moment he seemed to go into his own head. I know that he would never admit to being shaken, but he was. So was I. Finally, he nodded to himself and stood, and he stood very tall. His energy seemed to fill the room, and the look in his eyes was as vicious and inflexible as a knife to the heart.
“Captain Ledger, if their intention was to remove us from the chessboard,” he said mildly, “they have failed.”
“Then let’s go kill the evil sons of bitches.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Let’s.”
I offered him my hand. “Good hunting,” I said to him.
He took my hand and shook it, and held it for a moment. “This is a time for clarity of purpose,” he said. “Not for mercy.”
He gave my hand a final squeeze.
With that, he left.
Chapter Sixty-eight
Tanglewood Island
Pierce County, Washington
March 30, 6:56 P.M.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” said Doctor Davidovich.
The Gentleman ignored him; however, Pharos turned and smiled. They were sitting in a row—the burned man on the far end, swathed in bandages and connected to his wires and tubes, and Pharos and the scientist on his left. The two mercenaries stood fifteen feet behind the row in postures approximating parade rest. The screens on the walls were alive with noise and movement as the day continued to crack apart.
“Do I go by myself?” asked Davidovich. “Or—?”
Pharos allowed a slow smile to form on his face. “You’re one of us now, doctor. You don’t need to ask permission. Merely directions.” He gestured to the door. “Go out and left. Third door along the passage.”
Then he turned back to watch the screen.
He did not see Davidovich, but he could imagine the uncertainty, the fragile trust warring with horrible doubts on his face. That was fine. This was a teaching moment.
Pharos heard the scrape of the scientist’s chair, the hesitant footfalls as the man walked toward the door. The steadier, more confident pace as no one said anything or did anything to stop him. The door opened and closed.
After a moment, the Gentleman said, “You think he’s actually buying it?”
“Certainly,” said Pharos. “And why should he not? He is one of us.”
The Gentleman snorted. “Whatever that means.”
“Exactly,” agreed Doctor Pharos. “Whatever that means.”
They smiled at one another for a moment, both of them in perfect agreement for once. Then they turned back to watch the drama.
Chapter Sixty-nine
Thomas Jefferson Medical Center
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
March 30, 7:02 P.M.
Church wasn’t halfway down the hall when I saw him stop to take another call. He looked at his phone like it was a friend who was betraying him.
He listened and then lowered the phone as if unable or unwilling to hear the rest of it. He stood that way for a long two seconds, then finished his call.
Finally, he turned and came walking back, his steps heavy, his face stern and sad.
“There’s more,” said Church.
“Circe—?”
“No. And not Junie, either.”
“Then—?”
“A bomb went off at the home of Bug’s mother,” he said. “She’s dead.”
I stared at him.
What do you say to that?
What can you say? Church told me what he knew. It wasn’t much, but it was too much. The most telling part was that one of the neighbors saw something fly in through her window. It wasn’t a bird. A model airplane.
A goddamn drone.
“Does … Bug know?” I asked.
Church shook his head. “I have to tell him.”
He stood up slowly and walked into the hallway again. For a moment he stood there, looking at his cell phone like it was something hateful. Something he wanted to smash and grind underfoot. Then he leaned one hand against the wall and made the call. I watched him, watched how pain and a shared grief changed his posture. He was the strongest person I knew, but no one is really Superman. No one. Aunt Sallie was his closest confidante and oldest friend. I didn’t like her at all, but at that moment I was feeling pain, too. I could only imagine what Church was going through. The doubt, the fear, that clenching of the soul as you prepare for the worst.
And Bug.
Christ.
We all loved Bug. He was the kid we all wished we could still be. He was the innocent heart and soul of the DMS. This was going to kill him. Crush him. Maybe extinguish the light that burned in him. The light we all hovered next to in order to rekindle our own optimism.
I’d only met his mother once, briefly, at his sister’s wedding. His mom kept getting my name wrong. Called me Jim. It didn’t matter. She was a sweetheart. She loved her son but had no idea how much he had contributed to a nasty war. Bug’s genius had helped save the lives of every field operative in the DMS, which meant that we were able to go save the world. Over and over again. Bug owned a major piece of that. His mother had died without really knowing what kind of a hero her son was.
I had no cell phone and no earbud. No way to reach out to anyone. Then I saw Bunny in the hall, and I waved him in. From the look on his face, it was obvious he already knew.
“How’s Bug?”
Church sighed. “Hurting. That poor … poor young man.” He shook his head. Even for him this was getting to be too much. “He wanted to stay on the job, but I told him to fly to Florida. Yoda and Nikki can handle things.”
“Not to be a prick, Boss, but can they? With everything falling apart…”
His look and, I suppose, my conscience stopped me from saying the rest of that statement and thus from showing how insensitive and stupid I can be. Church shook his head, dismissing it.
I said, “Are you sending someone with him?”
“Of course. We take care of our own.” He paused. “Except wh
“Church, about what I said earlier, about the Kings targeting us on a personal level? This is proof of that. But there’s something else. Hugo Vox had the list of DMS employees and their families from back when he used to be a good guy. Or pretended to be a good guy. Whatever. He was willing to give that list to the Red Order and their Red Knights. We have to go on the assumption that the list is now in the hands of the Seven Kings. They know they can’t take us in a stand-up fight … so they’re doing this instead. Hurting us.”
Church nodded. “I’ve already initiated the protocols to protect our families, but—”
I knew what he was going to say and cut him off. “I know. The resources. We have how many people in the DMS now? Eleven hundred?”
“Closer to twelve.”
“And all their families. That’s a lot of people they’re making us spend on protection. It’s taking most of our chess pieces right off the board.”
He nodded. “Local law can handle some of the protection, but we have to face the possibility that we might not be able to protect everyone. There is a national crisis and we’re already hurt, Captain. I don’t yet know what this will do to our operational efficiency.”
“The hit on Auntie didn’t involve drones, but they used one to kill Bug’s mom. Drones are at the heart of this. It’s got to be Regis. Can we shut it down? I mean, is that even possible?”
“I doubt it. There is a reset code built into the system, but to shut it down would mean shutting down more than three-quarters of our mechanized military.”
“Why? It’s just one program—”
“It’s one program built to oversee them all. To uninstall it means shutting down each piece of equipment—each ship or plane—while the software is stripped out. And then some kind of other software would need to be installed as a placeholder.”
“Christ.”
“This is why some of us advised against using Regis at all.”
“Okay,” I said, “but even with all that, we’re going to have to do something, right?”
Church gave another shake of his head. “The Department of Defense committed itself to Regis with a will. It is universally viewed as the central solution to our military problems. Even now, we only have a suspicion that it might either be infected or vulnerable to outside manipulation. We have no solid proof, and no one is going to act on a suspicion.”
He turned, and I watched him square his shoulders slowly, take a breath, and go out. I wondered if he was dreading the ringing of a phone as much as I was.
Probably.
More so, I suspect.
Chapter Seventy
Tanglewood Island
Pierce County, Washington
March 30, 7:03 P.M.
While Davidovich was gone, Doctor Pharos had the Gentleman wheeled out onto an enclosed patio where they could sit together and watch the shorebirds. The wind was cool, but the nurses had bundled the burned man up nicely, and one of Doctor Rizzo’s cocktails was buzzing its way through his bloodstream.
The Gentleman even smiled.
If the twist of mangled lips could accurately be called a smile. Pharos had his doubts, though he gave the burned man points for effort.
They watched a brown gull float on the wind.
The burned man started to say something, stopped, tried again, stopped again. Pharos waited for him to get around to it.
“About our new ‘family member,’” said the Gentleman. “About Davidovich…”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you were right about him after all.”
Pharos turned, always suspicious of anything that sounded like a compliment. Few things coming from this man were. But this time the Gentleman seemed in earnest.
“You said he would turn.”
“I thought he might,” Pharos gently corrected. “I hoped he would. There was enough of a tendency toward sociopathy in his psych profiles to suggest that he was not welded to his moral compass.”
“Apparently not.”
They watched the gull. A second shorebird drifted on the same current half a mile beyond it. They seemed frozen against the sky.
“Your, um, daughter,” began the Gentleman. “Boy. How much do you trust her judgment?”
“Quite a lot. She’s turned other hard cases before.”
“Mmm. No one of Davidovich’s intellect, though.”
“There are very few people in the world of Davidovich’s intellect. But intelligence, even genius, doesn’t necessarily come with a high emotional IQ, and it certainly doesn’t automatically come with built-in loyalty or ironclad ethics. History tells us that much.”
The burned man nodded. Pharos made a mental note to give Doctor Rizzo a bonus. The latest cocktail seemed to have balanced the man out nicely. This was the most genial conversation they’d had in five or six months.
“What about his family ties? He had a wife and son. A mother, too.”
Pharos smiled. “Ah, but that’s where Boy shows her genius. She’s made sure that good things happen to Davidovich’s family. The mother is in a very expensive retirement community in Boca Raton. She has many friends, and even some suitors.”
“How many of them do we own?”
“Nearly all of them. Though she’s an attractive woman for her age, and she appears to be moneyed, so some of the suitors are genuine. Possibly gold diggers, but nonetheless genuine.”
“Nice. The son…?”
“Matthew’s GPA has improved, thanks to some computer hacking and a little money shifted to the right bank accounts. Teachers are poor, and some of them can be purchased for far less than you’d think. The same goes for sports coaches. His son has become a starter in two sports and gets a lot of extra coaching, which also gives him good male role models. He’s prospering. The boy is prepping for college, and will be accepted into any college to which he applies. That’s been taken care of. He thinks his father is dead, so he’s completed his grief process and is very well-balanced. We steer some girls his way, and he has earned a reputation as a ladies’ man.”
“Teen hookers? I thought that wasn’t your thing.”
Pharos sighed. “It’s not. Each of these girls looks like a teenager but is actually older. One is twenty-six but can pass for seventeen.”
The Gentleman chuckled. “You have that ridiculous soft spot. Bloody silly, if you ask me.”
I didn’t ask, you poached asshole, thought Pharos. Fuck off and die.
“And the wife?” asked the burned man.
“We corrupted her, of course. Lovers and pills. She’s a train wreck, and that seems to be a comfort to Davidovich. He likes to watch videos of her throwing up or lying passed out in her own piss.”
The Gentleman grunted. “Even so, Davidovich has to remember that we kidnapped him and threatened to murder his family if he didn’t—”
“He remembers. But he also understands,” said Pharos. “He’s come to embrace our philosophy. And he has more than demonstrated his willingness to participate in his own corruption. He has not only done more than he was asked, he made improvements on the project without being told. He made suggestions for ways to increase operational efficiency. He’s been innovative. He’s clearly taking pride in our version of his Regis project. You can track his progression in the interviews and transcripts of the conversations Boy taped, including those done when he didn’t know he was being taped. Casual dinner chatter. At first he referred to it as ‘that thing you want me to do.’ Then it was ‘your project,’ then ‘the project.’ Then ‘this project’—a change that suggests a connection to something immediate. Last summer, he began slipping, calling it ‘our project.’ That was a major jump forward. Major. But the real change began occurring around the first of this year, when he several times called Regis his project.”
“Well, technically, it is…”
“Only technically. On one hand, he built it for DARPA, and on the other, he knows that we hijacked it. It was taken away from him. What he’s proved, th
“Even though he’s still a prisoner?”
“Yes,” said Pharos. “Though I think he hopes that our bringing him here is a step toward changing that relationship.”
“Even though he knows that if he betrays us even now his family will suffer?”
“Even so. He’s at that stage of acceptance and rationalization when he views this as protection for them rather than a threat.”
The burned man shook his head. “Bloody hell.”
They sat and watched the birds, sipping tea, enjoying each other’s company for the first time in a very long while.
“So,” said Pharos, “what do you think about bringing Davidovich into the family? To let him become an employee rather than a caged bird?”
“If we did, I would still want him watched.”
“Of course he’ll be watched. And even if we tell him that his family is no longer in immediate threat, he’s smart enough to know that it won’t mean they’re safe from us. By now he has to have an excellent sense of the kind of power, the kind of reach, we have. A man as smart as him would make sure that he is always of use, always valuable, and therefore his family, by extension, is too valuable to hurt. Just as he’ll know that a member of our group, rather than its victim, would be able to do more direct and obvious good for his son and mother.”
“And the wife—?”
“How much would you like to wager that within a year of joining us Davidovich would ask a special favor of Boy?”
“What? Have her killed?”
Pharos spread his hands. “We’ve seen that pathology before.”
The Gentleman nodded. A nurse came and refilled their cups and brought a plate of nutrient-rich cakes. Pharos knew that the Gentleman’s cakes were laced with more of Doctor Rizzo’s cocktail.
It was the Gentleman who finally broke the silence.
“It’s all going to start soon,” he said, and then a moment later amended that statement. “It’s all going to end soon.”