The
Warehouse, Baltimore, Maryland
Sunday, August 29, 5:37
A.M.
Time Remaining on the
Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 23 minutes
Church set down his phone and placed it
neatly on the table. Then he stood up and walked to the far end of
the room and stood looking out at the choppy brown water of the
harbor. His back was to us, and I could see his broad shoulders
slump. We all looked at one another.
“That was Jerry Spencer,” Church said
without turning. “They found Jigsaw.”
We waited, not asking, not wanting to hurry
bad news.
“Spencer found sets of tire tracks out in
the foothills. He figured the Russian team drove to within a mile
and walked in, and he followed the tracks back into the hills and
found their vehicles. The Russians had come in a couple of vans.
But there were two DMS Hummers there, too. Spencer said it looked
like both Hummers had been taken out with RPGs. Hack Peterson. his
whole team. They never had a chance, probably never saw it coming.
The vehicles had been sprayed down with fire extinguishers-probably
so the smoke wouldn’t attract attention-and then covered with
broken tree branches.”
“Dios mio,” murmured Rudy. Bug looked
stricken, and even Dr. Hu had enough humanity to look
upset.
Grace closed her eyes. Her hands lay on the
tabletop and slowly constricted into white-knuckled fists. Hack
Peterson was the last of the DMS agents who had worked for Church
as long as Grace had. They were friends who had shared the line of
battle fifty times. Without any bit of exaggeration it was fair to
say that together they had saved America-and a big chunk of the
world-from some of the most dangerous and vile threats it had ever
faced. Hack was a genuine hero, and those were in damned short
supply.
I took her hand. “I’m so sorry,” I said
softly.
She raised her head. There were no tears,
but her eyes were bright and glassy, her face flushed with all the
emotion I knew she would not release. Not here, not on the job.
Maybe not at all. Like me, she was a warrior on the
battlefield.
“God,” she murmured, “it’s never going to
stop, is it? Are we going to go on and on fighting this sodding war
until we kill everyone and everything? We’re a race of
madmen!”
I squeezed her hand.
Church turned back to face us. His tinted
glasses hid his eyes, but his mouth was a tight line and muscles
bulged and flexed in the corners of his jaw. Just for a moment, and
then his control fell back into place with a steel
clang.
“Spencer said that he also discovered how
the other team escaped. He followed the blood trail from the
Haeckel unit. He said that there were two sets of spatters, one
that fell from at least five feet, which is probably the one you
stabbed in the mouth, Captain, and the other showed heavy blood
loss that fell with less velocity from a lower point. Spencer
figures it for a leg wound. They took an elevator up to the
surface. Spencer figures in Haeckel’s bin you’d have been too far
away to hear the hydraulics. Then they climbed up through the air
vents to the roof and dropped down the side opposite where Brick
was positioned. Spencer was able to follow the blood trail for half
a mile to a side road, and from there tire tracks led away. He
found two sets of footprints. Size twelve and size fourteen shoes.
He’s doing the math on the impressions, but he estimates that the
men were well in excess of two hundred pounds. probably closer to
three.”
I said, “That’s pretty nimble for big guys,
even if they weren’t hurt.”
Grace nodded. “If they left a blood trail
that long, then they must have been bleeding badly. so you have
heavy men who, even if they are very muscular and fit, had to climb
up air shafts, scale walls, and run into the hills while injured.
And this after they’d killed a dozen men with their bare hands. I’m
finding this all a bit hard to accept.”
“Maybe not,” said Church. “I’m leaning
toward Captain Ledger’s exoskeleton idea. Some kind of enhanced
combat rig that gives them strength and supports their
weight.”
“We’re not living in a science-fiction
novel,” said Hu. “We’re years away from that sort of
thing.”
Bug stared at him. “Um, Doc. you’re
defending scientists who can make unicorns and you call an
exoskeleton sci-fi?”
Hu conceded the point with a
shrug.
“I can’t believe Hack’s gone.,” said Grace
hollowly. “For what? For nothing!”
“That’s not true, Grace,” I said. “We may
not know the full shape of this thing yet, but we will. and that
means that their deaths will matter, because they are part of the
process of stopping and punishing whoever did
this.”
“Why? To clear the way for some other bloody
maniac to do even more harm?”
“No,” I said, “because what we do matters.
We take the hits so the public doesn’t. We save lives, Grace. You
know that. It’s what soldiers do, and Hack Petersen knew that
better than anyone. So did everyone on Jigsaw
Team.”
Grace turned away and I knew that she was
struggling to control her emotions. “All we ever see is the war,”
she said bitterly. “All we ever do is bury our
friends.”
I said nothing. The others in the room held
their tongues.
There was a knock on the door and the deputy
head of our communications division leaned into the room. “Mr.
Church. we have another video!”