Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 41

"It's unlikely," conceded Church. "He hasn't gone public with anything, but he made some challenging remarks in the Oval Office in front of the senior staff members. Word has already begun leaking."

"So much for top secret."

Church made a small sound that might have been a laugh. "The Speaker of the House and several other key members of Congress have begun demanding information about the team shown in that video. Some of them unofficially know about the DMS but they are reluctant to reveal that knowledge until they sort out how it might reflect on them. That buys us a little time."

"Which is all well and good, but how close are we to knowing anything at all about Mother Night?"

"I wish I could say that we were close to putting her in the crosshairs, but we are no closer now than we were when she first surfaced in April."

"That's not making me feel good. How much more has to blow up in our face before we can put a name at the top of our hate list?"

"We are working on it, Captain. If there's a method of discovery you know about that you feel we've missed, I am all ears."

"Yeah, sorry. Just feeling a bit frustrated."

"Is that all you're feeling?" he asked, and I nearly snapped at him before I realized what he was asking. I took a moment then said, "It was a bad scene down there."

"I imagine it was."

With most people a comment like that is lip service. Not with Church. I don't know much about his history, but from what I've been able to put together he's waded through more blood and fire than I've ever imagined.

"You had three new members on the team today," he said, and for a moment I had an itchy feeling like he could see me and Montana in that car. But I dismissed it, sure that Rasheen or someone else told him who drove out with whom. In either case he knew that I wasn't alone and was feeding me a cue. So I took it.

"Echo Team performed superbly," I said, but I made sure I wasn't looking at Montana as I did so. "Everyone did their jobs."

"Any casualties?"

I knew Church well enough to know that he wasn't asking about KIA or physical injuries.

"Unknown but I don't think so," I said. "A lot will depend on how things play out today. I would hate to see anyone's name surface in either a news report or in congressional testimony."

"You have my word on that, Captain," he said. It was a h.e.l.l of a promise to make, but then again, I'd like to see the son of a b.i.t.c.h who could force or bully information out of Church. On his weakest days Church scares the cat p.i.s.s out of me.

The line went dead.

The traffic moved at a glacial pace. Montana kept staring at me. It felt like a couple of lasers burning on the side of my face. I let that slide for a few blocks.

Finally I said, "It'll be okay."

"Really?" It came out sharp and sarcastic. In any other circ.u.mstances it would have been insubordinate, but let's face it, we were miles past that kind of policy.

"No," I said, "actually I don't know how this is going to play out."

She stared at me, appalled. "Then why did you say that?"

"Had to say something."

She turned away so I wouldn't see her mouth the word f.u.c.k. Or maybe it was f.u.c.ker. Could have been that.

"It's okay if you want to call me an a.s.shole."

"Wouldn't dream of it," she said, then added, "Sir."

I had to grin. "Lose the 'sir' bulls.h.i.t. We don't use it in the DMS and I don't like it."

Montana said nothing.

"The first time I met Mr. Church," I said, coming at her from left field, "he put me in a room with one of those walkers. No gun, no knife, and no clue what I was facing. He gave me a pair of handcuffs and told me to go in and cuff a prisoner."

I paid attention to the traffic but I could feel her eyes on me. "He didn't tell you what it was?"

"Nope."

"Just sent you in there?"

"Yup."

"Bulls.h.i.t."

"G.o.d's honest truth."

"What happened?"

"I got bitten and turned into a zombie, and now I have my own reality show-Real Zombies of Baltimore," I said. "What the h.e.l.l do you think happened?"

"You cuffed him?"

"Actually, I beat the s.h.i.t out of him and then broke his neck."

"Bare-handed?"

"I was in the moment."

"d.a.m.n," she breathed.

We sat in heavy traffic for a while. I debated using my lights, but the street was gridlocked. All that would do was add noise.

After a while she said, "They never told us any of this when we were invited to try out for this gig."

"Well, they wouldn't, would they? I mean, how many of you would have showed up if the recruiters said hey, join the DMS and fight zombies, supersoldiers, and vampires."

She smiled at the word vampires, but then she took a better look at my face and went dead pale. "Oh ... come on ... don't even try to tell me that there are vampires..."

"Not the sparkly kind," I said, "but, yeah, vampires."

I told her about the Upierczy, the Red Knights. Then I told her about some of the other things Echo Team had come up against. Several different kinds of enhanced supersoldiers, including a group of men given gene therapy with insect DNA that resulted in a kind of freakism that still gives me nightmares. All of those soldiers are, I hope, dead. I told her about the Berserkers and what they did to Shockwave Team this morning. Her face went dead pale under her tan.

"Can we do that?" she demanded. "I mean, can science really go that far?"

"Science is all about pushing back boundaries. If you're willing to sidestep the restrictions about testing on human beings, or disregard all safety precautions, then it's possible to make huge jumps forward."

"That's horrible."

"Pretty much why we call them the 'bad guys.'"

She thought about that as I shifted into a lane that had started to move. "What about us? Do we do that kind of thing? Off the radar, I mean?"

I sighed. "I wish I could say that we don't, but that would be a lie. But here's the thing ... the DMS doesn't approve of it. Mr. Church doesn't approve of it. He has a bit of a hard-on for people who misuse science like that. That's why he hires shooters like us."

"How can he do that if some of this is government-sanctioned?"

"First off, a lot of what goes on inside the government isn't sanctioned. There are levels and levels of secret research going on funded by black-budget dollars. We're talking about stuff the president never hears about. All of it's supposed to be-and pardon me if I throw up while saying this-in the 'best interests of America.' Some is. A lot isn't."

That's when I told her about what happened last year with Majestic Three, the T-craft, and the general feeling it left us that we are definitely not alone in this big ol' universe. Even then, recounting the details of that investigation, I felt like it was something that I'd seen in a science-fiction movie rather than a series of events I'd lived through. It had taken a h.e.l.l of a lot of effort to keep the main details off the public radar and to find acceptable explanations for those events that played out where everyone could see them.

Montana said nothing for quite a while as we inched through another traffic snarl. When I glanced at her I could see that she was sweating. She kept shaking her head.

"It's a lot to process," I said. "I wish there was a better way to do this than to dump it on you."

"No," she said. "No." I waited to find out what no meant in this context. Eventually she said, "All this is going on all the time? The DMS is fighting this kind of war all the time?"

"All the time."

"Alone?"

"Mostly," I said. "But we have a few friends. There's Barrier in the U.K. They were actually the first group like ours. Church helped build that and used its success to sell the idea to Congress here. And there's Arklight. You'd like them. A bunch of totally bad-a.s.s women warriors."

"Are you saying that because I'm a woman?" she asked sharply.

"Yes, I am. You have a problem with that?"

"I ... guess not."

"Good. You might get to meet them. They were in on a part of this." I told her about the stuff in Poland and Lithuania. "One of their operators is in New York right now. Combat call sign is Violin. She's top of the line."

A hole appeared and I steered through it. Soon we were away from the congestion that was turning that part of Brooklyn into a parking lot for rubberneckers. Above us the thrum of news agency helicopters was constant.

Montana had gone into her own head and seemed content to stay there while she worked some things out. That was fine. I put the radio on and listened to the news. The story of the Subway Ma.s.sacre, as it was now being called, dominated everything. No one knew who the soldiers in black were, but on the news we were being labeled "monsters."

I'm not sure if I objected.

You see, there are really three people living in my head. They are the result of a psyche that was fractured when I was fourteen. A group of older teens trapped my girlfriend, Helen, and me in a deserted place. They stomped me almost to death and then, while I lay there, dying and unable to help, they destroyed Helen. We both survived the day and later, after surgeries and rehab, we went back into the world; but in a lot of important ways we were only pretending to be alive. I found that my mind began splitting off into separate parts, and it was only through intensive therapy that I found my footing again. Later, when I met Rudy Sanchez, he helped me pare away the inner voices until only three remained, and those three became more or less stable. They didn't go away, though, and I've learned to accept that my life is always going to be shared among the Civilized Man, the Cop, and the Warrior.

The Civilized Man is closest to who I might have been if life had been kinder. He is the idealist, the humanist, the optimist. He also gets his a.s.s comprehensively kicked every time I go to work. The Cop is pretty much my central personality. He's balanced, astute, precise, and cold in a useful, detail-oriented way. He's the puzzle-solver, the investigator, and, in many ways, the protector.

The other aspect is the Warrior, or as he prefers to be known, the Killer. That's the part of me who was truly born on that awful day when Helen screamed and I bled and innocence died. The Warrior is always vigilant, always ready to go hunting in the jungles of my life, always aching to bring terrible harm to those who in any essential way resemble the people who destroyed Helen's life and changed mine. That part of me grieves most for Helen, because he could not save her when she went looking for a permanent way out of her personal darkness-and found it.

As I drove back to the Hangar, the Civilized Man was too numb to comprehend the enormity of what was going on. The Cop kept trying to make sense of something that refused to be understood. The Warrior wanted to find Mother Night and everyone who worked for her or with her, and he wanted to do red, wet things to all of them. As punishment for bombs and murders, and-I have to admit it-for putting me in that subway tunnel with the wrong people walking into my spray of bullets.

I-we-drove on, thinking some of the darkest thoughts I have ever had.

Chapter Sixty-three.

Guitar George's Tavern and Grill Nashville, Tennessee Sunday, August 31, 3:01 p.m.

A priest and a rabbi walked into a bar.

The priest was a tall man with lots of red hair and intensely blue eyes. The rabbi was shorter and dark, with intensely black hair and blue eyes. Their eyes were the exact shade of blue. An improbable electric blue with a metallic glitter.

The bar was packed with a Sunday holiday-weekend crowd and a five-piece band was playing down-and-dirty swamp blues. In what little s.p.a.ce was available more than fifty people were dancing. Some well, some not, all happily. The priest and the rabbi stopped at the edge of the dance floor. They each carried a bulging plastic shopping bag on which INTERFAITH MINISTRIES was printed in a blue that matched the eyes of the two clerics. The bags were heavy and the men carried them with some effort.

Some of the crowd-those that noticed the two men-reacted in a variety of ways. Some gave them sober nods. Some raised gla.s.ses to them. A few avoided eye contact with one or the other and shifted away to be outside of whatever implied field of guilt emanated from the men of the cloth. One very drunk woman curtsied to them with all of the elaborate grace of a tipsy lady of the court.

The priest and the rabbi smiled at her. They smiled at everyone.

They smiled and smiled and smiled.

A waitress came up to them, approaching with a nervous and tentative smile.

"Um, can I get you a table or...?" Her words faltered as she noticed their eyes. Working in a bar, she'd seen a thousand kinds of false contact lenses, everything from bright green lenses on ordinary brown eyes to Marilyn Manson glaucoma chic to slit-pupiled cat's eyes. She'd even seen eyes as metallic and blue as those of the priest and rabbi. But she had never seen novelty contacts on a priest or, for that matter, a rabbi. It was a kind of freaky that wasn't funny and wasn't cool, and wasn't even nerdy comical cool. What it was, was weird.

It was a funny day to be weird.

That's how she saw it.

What with all that was going on in Pennsylvania and Kentucky and New York. The day had enough freakiness in it already. It was probably why so many people were out getting hammered. Not merely drinking, but guzzling the stuff.

She tried on a smile, hoping that it would somehow let her in on the joke.

But their smiles were bigger and brighter and totally ...

Well ... weird was the word that stuck in her head.

Another word occurred to her, too.

Those smiles were wrong.

The rabbi opened his big shopping bag and for a moment the waitress thought he was reaching for a gun. The news reports were still running through her head.

But then she saw what the rabbi had.

It was a water balloon. Bright red. With a happy face on it. He showed it to her and his grin widened.