Page 15

10

Washington DC

M arcie Thompson was amazingly easy to track down. Her cell was on the masthead.

Sometimes Kearns thought people were too stupid to live.

Her cell showed she was in a bookstore. He checked it online, The Political Reader, on Connecticut Avenue. The internet kindly gave him a view of the facade—broad book-filled windows, purple awning with the name of the bookstore in white font—and a view of the shops nearby. A dry cleaner to the left, an organic produce shop to the right.

There was a talk going on about Freedom and Information. Or Information and Privacy. Some kind of nonsense with a talking head whose name he recognized, but knew to be a blowhard who made a very good living writing idiot books and appearing on TV as an expert on everything.

So she was attending a cultural event.

Well, he had ways.

And some docs and an accent, too. In an instant he became Liam Nelson—the name close enough to that of the actor to reassure people subconsciously—a Dublin-based writer for the Irish Times. Everyone loved the Irish and Kearns did a really good accent.

Marcie Thompson had given a TED talk—whatever that was—and he listened to about a quarter of an hour of it before he closed the screen. Political responsibility and freedom of the press and the right to privacy, yada yada.

Anyone who led a life online had no business talking about privacy. Kearns could know her menstrual cycle if he really studied the FB feed hard enough.

That wouldn’t be necessary. He didn’t want to fuck her, he wanted to kill her.

He put on his journalism duds. Thick, heavy fake beard shot with gray. Porkpie hat with IR lights along the brim. Linen collarless shirt with a photographer’s vest over it. Cargo pants and sockless loafers. He hesitated at that last touch because, Christ, what if he had to run? He was used to his combat boots and could run miles in them. The loafers would slip off in the first five hundred yards.

But onscreen Marcie Thompson was pretty, earnest, thin. No match for him. He wasn’t going to need to run. He needed to convince. But it stung because no warrior in the history of the world wore loafers on an op.

The bookstore was huge, larger than it seemed from the outside, stretching almost a block in depth. Kearns could hear a droning voice from another room, rounded a corner and saw about sixty people on folding chairs listening to the talking head. Some former something or other. Considered an expert on Africa.

You want expertise on Africa? Go fight in Sierra Leone, with two rebel armies and a rag tag government military force trying their best to kill each other and kill you, every minute of every day.

This weenie had probably never ventured outside the air conditioned confines of his hotels when visiting Africa. There were no chairs left so Kearns leaned his shoulder against the corner of a bookcase and listened to crap for about two minutes then tuned the guy out.

There she was, at the end of the third row, taking notes on a tablet connected to a tiny wireless keyboard. God knows what she was noting down, the speaker wasn’t saying one smart thing.

She was a little less pretty than her photo on the masthead. Or maybe she’d had a tiring day. Well, it was a day that was going to end very badly for her. She seemed to be sitting alone, unconnected to the old lady sitting next to her.

Good. It was always hard having to cull out a victim from a crowd.

Without moving his head, Kearns studied the terrain. There had been a security cam at the door, right over the shoplifting detector, and a few in the front room but none in this meeting room, designed for author talks. None of the staff were paying them any attention at all. He debated going back outside and waiting for her on the street but if he approached her here, harmless Irish journalist, in a bookstore, she’d be lulled. Easy to fool.

Finally the writer stopped his interminable pitch for his new book and sat down with a pile of copies to sign. People shuffled toward the author and toward the door. Marcie Thompson walked past him and Kearns made sure she heard his intake of breath.

He let her get five yards, ten yards away, then walked up to her, tapped her on the shoulder. When she turned he smiled and stepped back, hands down. Very clearly not invading her personal space. The very picture of enlightened manhood.

He pretended to peer as if she were a mile away. “Ms.—Ms. Thompson? I’m sorry but are you Marcie Thompson of Area 8 ?”

She gave a tentative smile, body language closed, clutching her satchel as if it could defend her. “Ahm, yes. Yes I am.”

“Wow. This is a stroke of luck,” he said, a half smile on his face, Ireland in his voice.

He’d deliberately put on loose clothing to hide his soldier’s physique, and he rounded his shoulders and ducked his head—body language for a non-threatening male. He smiled shyly, held the smile for a couple of seconds too long.

“Oh!” Shaking his head ruefully. “Sorry.” He dug in his backpack, which he’d been holding by a strap. He handed her a laminated card with a fuzzy photograph of his bearded face and IRISH TIMES across the bottom. “Name’s Liam Nelson, I’m a journalist for the Irish Times . I’m over here for a series of articles on issues of privacy and the new media. And, well, you’re one of the top people on my list to contact. I would have called from Dublin, but my editor assigned this to me at the very last minute and I had to rush to make the flight. I was going to call you later today, but I saw this really interesting talk advertised, he’s a well-known expert and I read his book last week and thought I’d treat myself to his speech before starting to contact people?—”

Kearns broke off, smiling sheepishly, showing her the sheet of paper with a list of digital media people, a thumbnail photo, contact info. Marcie Thompson’s name was top of the list.

“Sorry. I tend to babble when I’m nervous. Anyway, I was going to go back to my hotel and start making appointments for tomorrow and—here you are! One of the editors of Area 8 . Everyone back home reads it, it’s brilliant. Do you think I could buy you a cup of tea—or coffee if that’s your tipple—and interview you?”

He cocked his head, eyebrows raised, looking at that thin neck and thinking— I could snap that with my left hand .

She stood, staring, turning this over in her head.

I’m on a timeline here, darling, Kearns thought. Ideally you should have been dead two hours ago. “Please?” he asked. “It won’t take long. I’m so jetlagged I’ll probably fall asleep halfway through. I’ll ask follow up questions via email, how does that sound?”

She sighed. “Okay, fine. There’s a quiet coffee shop on Nebraska, about a ten minute walk away.”

I know, darling.

“Yeah? Excellent. I hope they have tea. I’m not much of a coffee drinker.”

She relaxed completely at the mention of tea. Clearly a tea drinker could never be a homicidal maniac.

“Shall we go?” He opened his hand and she turned and made for the door, Kearns keeping a step behind her, head down, shambling a little as he went through the front door with its video cam. Later, he’d wipe it out remotely, well before her body could ever be found. He watched with care but no one paid them the slightest bit of attention. Marcie Thompson wasn’t a rock star the way Summer Redding was. Redding would never go unnoticed.

Out on the street, the day was cloudy, cold, with gusty winds. There was no one on Connecticut Avenue on this block. Excellent. The next security camera was on the next block. It had to be done before crossing the intersection.

He’d parked right next to an alleyway, a dirty white Transit van with mud on the plates, front and back.

“So,” he said casually, “my editor is going to want to know Area 8 ’s policy on the new NSA regulations. And I’ll want to know your personal opinion, because I know the webzine allows its contributors to have a personal opinion that doesn’t have to be in line with the editorial opinion.”

She smiled faintly. “That’s right. Summer is good that way, andoh!” She looked at him in alarm as he jabbed her with the injector just as they were pulling up to the van. She rubbed her arm, frowning, but her eyes were already unfocused.

Kearns made it look quite natural. A couple reaching their vehicle, him opening the door for her, buckling her seat belt for her, getting into the driver’s seat. He pulled out slow and steady, following the speed limit exactly.

He knew where to take her where she wouldn’t be found for fifty years. An hour away on the I-495. Laurel, Maryland. Outside Laurel were the ruins of the Forest Haven Asylum, set in two-hundred acres that had been closed amid scandal in 1991. There were twenty-two buildings in the compound, all ruins. Ownership was contested and no one had claimed it in twenty-five years. Even better—there were plenty of bodies buried there. Some were of inmates who’d died under mysterious circumstances while it was a working asylum, some dumped by the mob.

No one went there, no one asked questions.

She’d be one more decaying stiff, identifiable only by DNA or her teeth, if they ever found the body.

She was slumped forward against the seat belt and he nudged her back with his forearm, checking the time. He’d be back in DC well before dusk.

All in all, a very good day.

En route to Portland, Oregon

Summer had fallen into a deep sleep that looked like a coma. Not even her eyes stirred as she lay on the comfortable seats. Joining the Mile High Club would do that to you.

Jack rose from his lie-flat seat and covered her with a blanket. It was a plane so the blanket was made of a non-flammable material, but it was soft and comfortable, gray and cream, the colors of the ASI logo.

He smoothed the blanket over her carefully but she was out for the count. It was a miracle he could stand up himself. That had been the most intense sex he could ever remember having. He had blacked out for a second there at the end. He had a feeling he’d fucked her too hard but he’d been completely unable to stop. It was one of the few times he’d ever been out of control during sex.

He stood and looked down at her, something weird going on in his chest. She was so pretty and he appreciated that. There hadn’t been much of anything pretty in his life these past years. But she was so much more than just pretty. She was smart and had a kind of resilience he recognized in himself. That ability to bend but not break. She’d been through a traumatic twenty-four hours—she’d lost her home, her business and knew that bad people were after her. He hadn’t heard a peep of a complaint out of her.

This was her new reality and she was facing it head on, without a whiff of self-pity, which she’d have been perfectly justified in feeling. She’d also have been justified if she wanted to blame him, because trouble followed him around and had rubbed off on her.

But no. She was holding it together and he admired the shit out of that.

He rubbed his chest where there was something warm, that hurt. Weird mix of feelings. Intermixed with the strange was something it took him a whole minute to identify, it was so rare. He was feeling…happiness. And hope. For the first time since the Massacre, he was looking forward to something.

He’d mourned his family for six months, heartsick and grief-stricken. Lying awake at night, tears seeping out of his eyes, feeling the oppressive weight of darkness inside and out on his chest.

Isabel had survived but he’d kept away from her.

But now he was reunited with Isabel. He’d connected with a great group of guys, even if they were squids. They’d worked instantly as a team when setting the trap for Hector and he and ASI and Nick were on the same wavelength. Not like those last years in the Clandestine Service where there was something rotten in the CIA and the only person he could trust was Hugh.

But above all, the reason he was feeling this absolutely strange and new happiness thing—if that’s what it was and not heartburn—was lying down on the comfortable jet seat, sleeping.

Jack was having sex again after a very long dry spell, so that was great and newfound hormones were part of why he felt so good. But mainly it was because the sex he was having was with Summer . Sex with anyone else wouldn’t be anything like it was with her.

There was this great flow to being with her, so smart and so alive. The future was dark—whatever these fuckers were planning it was going to be bad. Worse than 9/11. But Jack had an alternate view of the future that revved him up and Summer was front and center in that picture.

He had no idea how they could make it work, all he knew was that he was going to do his damnedest. Her life was back in Washington and even if they were able to unmask the conspirators and stop the disaster that was coming, Jack didn’t want to go back to Washington. It was a political city, full of poison.

He would never work at the CIA again. If what he and Nick and the Director of the FBI suspected was true, the CIA would be disbanded and there would be a century’s worth of Senate hearings. There was nothing left for him in DC.

Portland, on the other hand…

He’d been offered a job in an offhand way by John Huntington, one of the two partners. Then offered it again by Douglas Kowalski, the other partner. And man, was that tempting. The team was great, the work very interesting, the gear they had beyond cool. They had better gear than the government, that was for sure.

But Summer would be in DC. And now that he’d found her, he wasn’t letting her go.

It made his head hurt.

Time for a shower.

The plane had a tiny shower, but still certainly better than the rusty showerhead back in the safe house. Jack felt better after a shower and a clean tee, clean shirt and clean briefs, all of which he had in his go bag.

Food was next, then work.

He went back out into the cabin, expecting to have to wake Summer, but found her sitting up, reaching for the blouse he’d thrown to the cabin floor at the end.

He checked inside himself to see if he felt guilty for throwing her blouse to the floor. At the time, he’d been wild to touch and taste her gorgeous breasts, so…nah. Some things you don’t regret.

“Hey,” he said gently, sitting down. She’d brought her seatback up, was searching for the blouse. He handed it to her, ran the back of his forefinger down her soft cheek. “How you doing?”

“Fine.” She buttoned it, smiled. “Is that a nice way of saying I look like hell?”

Her hair was mussed, there was a small wrinkle in her cheek from the crumpled airplane pillow. She looked adorable. “Nope.”

“Good. So—what’s the plan?”

“There’s a shower on the plane, did you know?”

Her eyes rounded. “A shower? Oh God, yes, please!”

“Thought so. Then we have coffee and breakfast—” He checked his watch. “More like lunch. Then we start going over our notes, what we have.”

“But not Hector’s laptop or his flash drives. Felicity has to check them first. They might be booby-trapped.” Summer slid out and stood up, pulling her pants back up over her long, slim legs. Jack remembered those legs around his waist, tightening around him as he pumped into her…

He mentally checked the time they had en route.

“Jack.” Summer snapped her fingers in his face. “We’ve had quite enough fooling around. Don’t even go there.”

He sighed. “There’s no such thing as too much fooling around, but you’re right. We have work to do. Oh! Forgot! You’re going to love this.” He pulled up his cellphone and showed her a sixteen digit number. “So I want you to log onto the Portland Macy’s or Nordstrom or wherever it is you shop for clothes and order yourself a whole bunch of stuff from there online. Go to town, head to toe, and make sure you include a big down coat, lots of scarves and some floppy hats with brims. Use this credit card, in the name of Charles Iverson. I was told to tell you if you buy from Macy’s to use either the Fifth Avenue Macy’s or the Macy’s at the Lloyd Center. Someone will pick the stuff up, so you’ll have plenty of clean clothes once we arrive in Portland.”

She took the piece of paper, looking uneasy. “I don’t know, Jack. Who is this Charles Iverson? As soon as I can use my credit card I’ll pay him back, but?—”

“No need.” Jack waggled his eyebrows. “Felicity—did I tell you she is a genius? She hacked one of Hector’s many offshore accounts and found he had a whole bunch of credit cards in various names. So she gave us the number and identity of a couple. She said she was going to use it too except she was going to buy some gear. So, basically, you’re spending a dead man’s ill-gotten gains. The more you spend, the better. Isabel said she was buying ten cashmere shawls. Four ply. I don’t know what that means.”

“Expensive.” She was grinning. “It means expensive. Good for her.”

“Cool. Take your shower, then we’ll have a bite to eat and we’ll talk to the ASI crowd and come up with a plan.” Jack swallowed. Slid his hand through her hair to cup the back of her head. It always surprised him to feel her hair cool against his hands. It looked like banked fire and he always expected it to be hot to the touch. “But not before you order a whole bunch of expensive stuff online, courtesy of that fucker, Hector Blake.”

Summer laughed and moved to the back of the plane. A minute later, he heard the shower come on. The galley was well-stocked. All he had to do was haul stuff out onto the table. The laptops and tablets were all fully charged. There was a printer and he knew there was a secure comms system. They were good to go.

He sat down, plucking a grape from a fruit platter, and waited for Summer.

It felt good, waiting for her. Felt right. They’d had spectacular sex. Now that he was back to having sex in his life, after having that tap turned off for more time than he cared to count, he wanted more. Right now. But—he was also an adult and capable of deferring gratification. There would be more sex just like that in his near future, he’d make sure of it.

But more than the sex, it was great just sitting here waiting for her. She’d smile at him as she came out and he’d smile back. They’d eat together and start working together. He was really looking forward to that, almost as much as he was looking forward to the sex.

Summer was smart. Smarter than he was, for sure. She understood human psychology and she had a strong grasp of geopolitics. The ASI guys had all looked at this from a military strategic point of view. Nick was all over the law enforcement aspect. The ASI team just wanted to smoke the bad guys. Nick wanted to put bad guys behind bars. Jack was more of the smoke-’em philosophy but above all, he wanted to understand what and why. Just like Summer.

Summer understood this stuff on a deep level. Not only her childhood in third world countries, but her education and her training gave her an ability to cut through smokescreens and grasp hidden patterns.

Jack wanted to sit next to her while they tried to figure this stuff out. He wanted to be with her as she did her thing.

He wanted to be with her, period.

Something profound was settling inside him, some sense of homecoming and it was all centered on Summer. He wanted to protect her but above all, he wanted her by his side.

He had his sister back. He had found his woman.

Now if he could only fuck the fuckers who’d fucked with him, his world would be complete.

“Food.” Summer sat down next to him and he breathed in warm woman, smelling of airline soap and her own smell he’d recognize in a dark room.

“Glorious food,” he replied. The summer she’d been around his parents had appeared in an amateur production of Oliver and they’d spent the summer singing “Food, glorious food!”

“I ordered about five thousand dollars’ worth of clothes and I enjoyed every single second of it,” she announced, putting cheese, a chicken wrap and apple slices on a plate. “Man, I’m hungry.” She dug in, eating enthusiastically. “Like I said, I don’t dare open Hector’s laptop or his flash drives. Felicity needs to do that in case he installed a fail-safe, though knowing Hector, he didn’t. He wasn’t exactly what you’d call computer savvy. Though who knows? Maybe he improved these past years. But I am going to link to my cloud files and start going through them, putting some order in my notes from the past few days and adding what you know. Then I’ll—” She stopped, looked at him. “What? Do I have lettuce in my teeth?”

He had to smile at her, he just had to. “No, sweetheart. No lettuce in your teeth. You look great. I’m just really glad you’re here with me.”

She sat back in her chair, unsmiling, food forgotten. Summer looked at him for a long time.

“You broke my heart,” she said finally.

There it was. Jack had been expecting it. He met her gaze directly. “I know I did.”

They stared at each other and Summer broke the link. Jack wasn’t going to back down, make excuses. He’d behaved badly. He had broken her heart. He didn’t have any excuse other than he’d been a dick. He’d been a kid. Okay, technically a man. Definitely of age. But considering what he’d been through since then, he’d been like a careless child who’d had fun with a toy but tossed it away when a newer, shinier toy came along. He deeply regretted it and if she wanted to scream at him, hit him, he had no objections. He deserved it.

“I was devastated,” she said simply and he nodded.

“Why?” she whispered, and a long ago grief flitted across her face. For an instant she was the young Summer, barely eighteen, who’d had a tragic childhood and had fallen in love with him and he’d unforgivably walked away from her without a second thought.

“I don’t have an answer for that,” he said evenly. “Not one that makes sense. All I can say is that I was another person. Literally. They say that every cell in our body is renewed every seven years. I’m not that person, twice removed. I can apologize but it wouldn’t mean anything, nor should it.” Jack leaned forward, took her hand, placed it between his. Surreptitiously, he held his thumb across her wrist. She looked calm but her heart was racing.

Ah, honey.

Again, Jack opened himself to her, let her see his expression without concealment. He put everything he felt right there on his face for her to see.

“I behaved unforgivably. I have no excuses to offer, none. But the one thing I can say is this. I won’t leave you again, ever.” Her pulse gave a small kick under his thumb and speeded up. “Life has given me a second chance. Believe me when I say I understand what I would lose if I walked away again. Not going to happen. As a matter of fact it would take bolt cutters to get rid of me. And while you’re in danger? I’m going to stick to you like glue. So get used to it.”

Jack meant every word.

Under his finger, the surging heartbeat had slowed. Her breathing was calm and steady.

Hold that thought, sweetheart.

His cell rang. From Joe, his soon-to-be brother-in-law.

“I have to take this,” Jack said.

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Yo, Joe. Now’s not really the?—”

“Jack.” Joe’s voice was sharp. “You’ve got a TV monitor in the plane. Turn it on. Or link to USNewsNetwork on your laptop, whichever is quicker.”

“What’s wrong?” Summer asked. “What is it?”

Jack switched on the monitor hanging from the ceiling and turned on one of the laptops. The monitor showed a USNN talking head with helmet hair and a map of North Carolina in the background. A moving chyron read Possible terrorist attack on Fontana Dam, tallest dam in the East.

“For those who have just joined us,” the talking head was saying, “we are receiving reports that the Fontana Dam, the tallest dam in the Eastern United States, situated along the Appalachian Trail, has been bombed. The dam holds over 630 million cubic meters of water. Early reports indicate there are heavy casualties down river. Here is footage that was posted on YouTube a few minutes ago.”

Behind the news anchor was shaky footage of an explosion near the foot of the dam. There was no sound and at first it appeared nothing was happening. Then a crack appeared, snaked its way to the top of the dam, water leaking from the crack. A chunk of the wall came away and water spilled out like a small waterfall, then a big, powerful waterfall. The image grew shaky then stopped. Another image, tall and narrow, a cellphone image, showed the breach in the dam from the other side of the valley. The same sequence from another angle. The puff of smoke and debris, the thin line snaking up to the top, chunks falling away, the line becoming an open crack, the growing waterfall.

Summer watched, face pale, and reached for his hand. Jack held on tightly.

The screen showed the anchor again, wide eyed, speaking unscripted. “So far, ahm, reports are sporadic. There is a strong X feed relating to the incident.” The screen showed a feed—#AttackOnFontanaDam with thousands of tweets scrolling down.

“Joining us now by telephone is Dr. Alvin Norris of MIT, a structural engineer and considered one of the world’s greatest experts on concrete dams. Dr. Norris, what could cause the breach in the dam’s wall, other than a bomb? Is there a possible natural explanation?”

Jack switched channels, another news cable feed. But the backdrop was not the dam. Instead it was shaky footage from a helicopter of an overturned train, steam rising from the cars. Men and women in hazmat suits were approaching the center of the train. The helo was circling overhead, a more professional camera being used instead of cellphones.

Another anchor with helmet hair, this time male, with a very serious expression. “Reports are coming in of a train wreck just outside of Los Angeles. We have been told that the train was carrying barrels of highly toxic radioactive waste.”

Jack switched channels, this time showing a smoking plane wreck, parts scattered all over a field. “—reports are of a loud explosion followed by the plane falling out of the sky just after taking off. We repeat, Flight 725 from Boston to Denver has apparently been brought down by an RPG, a shoulder fired missile.”

Jack turned the tablet on, using an ASI proprietary Zoom-like program Felicity had designed for them. Joe’s face appeared. He looked drawn. “Christ, Joe, what’s happening? Is this it? Is this what Blake was planning? A whole series of attacks, one after another?”

Jack could see a wall of big monitors behind Joe. Each monitor was tuned to a different channel or website and even without hearing the sound feed, it was clear that a series of disasters was taking place.

Besides the feeds he’d already seen, of the dam, the radioactive train and the plane wreck, there was a scene with hazmat trucks with flashing lights outside a hospital, with heavily-gowned medical staffers offloading patients from gurneys. The chyron at the bottom read: Chicago: 123 cases of Ebola.

Summer had the plane’s laptop open and was scrolling. “They are announcing even more disasters, Jack.” She looked up at him, face pale. “Gas mains or a bomb took out twenty city blocks in Dallas.”

The plane’s intercom beeped. “This is the pilot. We’re coming in to Portland International. We will land in twenty minutes. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. The weather is rainy, ground temperature 45 degrees.”

They were going directly in to ASI where they’d contact Nick and the Director. If this was the other shoe dropping, they were in trouble, because there didn’t seem to be an end in sight to the attacks.

“See you on the ground, Joe.”

“Yeah. Jacko will be at the airport to pick you guys up. He’s leaving now, in fact.”

“Roger that.”

Joe reached out a finger to shut off the connection then frowned, looked behind him. In the background, Jack could hear a female voice. Joe’s frown deepened.

“What’s Felicity saying, Joe?” Jack asked.

“She’s—” Joe shook his head. “She’s saying these are fake attacks. Or at least the first one is. She says the dam breaking up and the water spilling out are CGI.”

Summer’s head jerked up. “What?”

“And she says she had an algorithm study the X feeds and she can’t trace the tweeters back more than a month. None of them.”

Summer contemplated that for a second. “So they would be fake identities.”

“Yeah.” Joe stretched the word out. He turned his head. “You sure, Felicity?”

The high-pitched female voice in the background became agitated, indignant.

The tablet was picked up and Metal’s face appeared. “Dude,” Metal said calmly to Joe. “Please. We’re talking Felicity here.”

In the little time Jack had been around the ASI crew, he’d learned that Felicity, Metal’s fiancée, was always right. She wasn’t arrogant and she was fun and she beat the pants off everyone at video games. And she was always right.

“What, darling?” Metal got up and walked over to Felicity, looked at something on her computer then walked back.

Felicity’s computer was like the magic dragons on Game of Thrones . A dangerous, mythical creature. It had been destroyed by Hector Blake and she’d had another one arrive from a secret lab in Hong Kong, more powerful than the last one. No one was allowed to touch Felicity’s computer. They weren’t even allowed to breathe on it. Jack had seen her work miracles with it. If Felicity and her computer said something was true, it was true.

“Dude,” Metal said again. His normally super placid face was furrowed. “The Ebola case is fake, too. Felicity just, um, checked the records of all the hospitals in Chicago.” By checked he meant hacked. “The footage is from the Ebola cases two years ago. And the train and plane wrecks—all fake. I think all of these disasters are fakes.”

Summer picked up the tablet. Jack made the intros. “Summer, this is Metal O’Brien, Felicity’s guy. Metal, this is Summer Redding.”

“Summer.” Metal dipped his head. “An honor. Everyone here reads Area 8 . You do really good work.”

“Did,” Summer answered sadly. “Did do good work. For the time being, Area 8 is down and I don’t know when it will go back up again. So, Metal, these attacks, fake attacks. Someone’s flooding the media with fake information, correct?”

“Looks like it.”

She leaned forward, beautiful face intense. “It’s a diversionary tactic. The media are kept confused. I have no doubt hazmat teams and SWAT teams and FEMA teams all over the country have been scrambled. If they have any smarts at all, these guys, the ones behind all this, will disable communications among them, just like they cut off cellphone and tablet connections during the Washington Massacre. Right now, all news teams are paralyzed. We’re really dependent on news feeds and tweets and Facebook postings. This looks like a team has been working on this for a long time, if Felicity says the tweeters have an established identity. How many fake identities do you think there are, Felicity?”

Felicity’s pretty face appeared, a hand on her guy’s shoulder. Metal reached up a big hand and covered hers.

“All the ones I looked at. This is bad juju. Law enforcement agencies will be called out and they won’t be able to tell the real thing from the fake. The entire country is on alert and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pentagon raised the DEFCON Level to III.”

Metal and Joe nodded.

“How deep is this?” Summer asked.

“Depending on the prep time, which at this point I imagine is at least several months, it’s pretty deep. I’m guessing tens of thousands of fake identities. It doesn’t cost anything except in terms of manpower. I’ve followed some of the tweet identities back in time and they’ve got some generic responses to issues of the day and movies and music that have been retweeted over and over. Some of that can be done by bot, some was done by hand. Some of the responses were automated, didn’t make much sense in the context of the discussion, but it looks like each identity has been around a while. Legit. They’re mostly software.”

“Someone’s been planning this for a long time.” Summer said softly.

“Scary shit.” Joe turned to look into the camera directly. “Jack, whatever happens, I’ve got Isabel covered. She’s in the house, I just talked to her and you know we’ve got a good security system there. I’m going home right now and I’ll wait for you and Summer and everyone else. We’re meeting at Isabel’s for dinner.” He dipped his head. “Summer, nice meeting you. See you tonight.”

Summer nodded. “Joe. Nice meeting you, too. And tell Isabel I’m really looking forward to seeing her again.”

“Will do.”

He disappeared and Metal spoke. “So Jacko will be picking you guys up at the airport. Felicity wants to see Hector’s laptop and flash drives in the worst way. See you in about an hour.” The tablet screen went dark.

“Something really awful is happening,” Summer whispered. Her hand reached out for his and Jack took it. To give her comfort. To give himself comfort.

He nodded, kissed her on the forehead. “Whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”