Without Warning Part 8

The French girl climbed in carefully, as if unwilling to touch the belongings of the unknown owner. Caitlin swore softly as she sparked the engine to life, giving herself a small electrical shock in the process. A brief glance over her shoulder revealed a growing knot of people on the steps of the hospital, all of them gesturing in her direction, some of them shouting. She threw the car into reverse, stamped on the gas, and peeled out backward from the parking slot with a squeal and the harsh smell of burned rubber, reefing on the hand brake to tighten her turning circle. Both she and Monique jerked forward in their seats and she slammed the disk brakes, changed gear, and accelerated away, barely missing the taillights of an adjacent Fiat.

"You are not Cathy Mercure, are you?" asked Monique as they negotiated a twisting course through the parking lot toward the exit and out into the traffic stream.

Caitlin's first, unthinking reaction was to lie. Deceit and betrayal were so deeply ingrained by her training and the demands of her work that they had become elements of her true nature. But unless she was psychotic, her mission concerns were no longer relevant. Something bigger had happened, something infinitely worse than anything she had been prepared to fight. A painful throbbing on the injured side of her head grew more insistent as she allowed herself to contemplate anything beyond fight or flight for the first time since the shooting had begun back at the hospital.

"No," she conceded to Monique. "I'm not Cathy Mercure. My name's Caitlin. That's all you need to know. That, and also that you're in a lot of trouble."

Blaring horns and some m.u.f.fled Gallic abuse greeted their high-speed entry into the crowded Parisian road net. Caitlin opted to cut across the main flow of traffic, where they would be jammed in place, and forced her way through an intersection onto a lesser boulevard. She wasn't familiar with the road, but it had everything she wanted right at that moment. It was navigable at a good speed and it was taking them away from the place where somebody had just tried to put the zap on her.

"I'm in trouble?" protested Monique. "I have not killed anybody or stolen a car. I am not some sort of criminal. I did not get my friends shot back at..."

Her voice hitched and cracked as the emotional blowback of the battle at the Pitie-Salpetriere finally struck her. She had seen at least one of her friends shot down in front of her eyes, before watching another morph into a homicidal destroyer. Monique's mouth gaped and her shoulders trembled as a squall of wild animus blew through her. Caitlin rammed the little blue car through a series of gear changes as she threaded a course through a thicker pulse of traffic. When they cleared the moving obstruction, she plucked a couple of paper tissues from a box jammed into the cup holder that lay between them.

"I didn't get your friends killed, Monique," she said firmly, but quietly. "I didn't pull that trigger. But I took down the a.s.sholes who did. They're avenged, for what it's worth."

"Nothing! It's worth nothing," shouted Monique, as the tears came at last.

"Fair enough." Caitlin shrugged, checking the mirrors for any sign of pursuit as she dialed back on their speed to blend into the surrounding traffic flow, and began to look for a landmark with which she could place them. She didn't fancy asking the French girl for anything just yet. The street had narrowed to just one lane running in each direction. Stunted, leafless trees lined the footpath, which was thick with people hurrying home from work, or out to dinner in one of the many bistros and wine bars that huddled up close together on the ground floors of the old four-and five-story buildings. Warm golden light spilled out through their windows, which gave onto brief glimpses of packed tables and bars at which drinkers stood beneath thick clouds of cigarette smoke. For all the cosmopolitan charm it was all so conventional. Had she been able to drive along here twenty-four hours earlier, Caitlin was certain she would have pa.s.sed by almost exactly the same scene. Surely the only topic of conversation at those crowded tables would be the day's news from the U.S., but from the driver's seat of the stolen Renault, she could not tell.

Beside her, Monique was trying valiantly to control her crying, but she had already gone through at least a third of the tissues. She searched inside a pocket for a small flip-top cell phone, sniffling as she tried to key in a number. Caitlin slapped it out of her hands.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing? Don't you read your own conspiracy theories? You can be tracked with that thing. In fact..."

She reached over roughly and jammed her hand between Monique's legs to retrieve the little Samsung.

"I'm just calling Billy!" she protested. "He can come for me. I don't want to be alone with you, or anywhere near you, whoever you are."

Monique gasped in shock as Caitlin threw the phone out the window.

"It won't be Billy who comes for you if you make that call, darlin'. It'll be more guys in ties, toting big f.u.c.king guns."

"You b.i.t.c.h! That was my phone!" cried Monique, genuinely affronted.

"No. That was a chip tracking your every movement," said Caitlin. "And forget about your boyfriend. His phone is being monitored, too."

Caitlin checked her watch. They had been driving for nearly fifteen minutes, more than enough time for their descriptions and the car's plate to have been pushed out over the police nets.

"We have to change cars, Monique," she said. "I'm going to pull off the street up ahead at that corner and ditch this ride. I'm gonna ask you to come with me, but I'm not going to make you."

She allowed herself a brief, measuring glance at her pa.s.senger. Monique's eyes were puffy, and tear tracks had washed runnels of makeup from her face. It must have been expertly applied. Caitlin hadn't even noticed before. She was upset, naturally, but she was angry, too. Very angry.

"Why should I come with you? I should go right to the police and report you."

"You could do that," she said as she turned the wheel to take them off the narrow street and into an even narrower alleyway. "But those men I killed? The men who shot Maggie in the head? They were from your state security service. Secret police, if you like. If you walk in to the gendarmes and tell them what happened, your details will go onto their network and within half an hour more guys like that will turn up at the police station and take you away. The cops won't stop them. But they will stop you leaving if you try."

"But why? That is ridiculous."

Caitlin pulled over, running their wheels up onto the very narrow footpath. It couldn't have been more than two feet wide. She was glad she hadn't had to reverse park. Her head and neck were aching painfully.

"They were after me, and I was with you, so now they're after you, too. You have family? They're being watched. Your boyfriend? Him too. It's not you. It's me. Your security service is conducting a hard target search for me, and as of half an hour ago, you are the key. Every phone call you have made for the last five years, every address you've lived at, or just stayed at, that can be tracked is being tracked. Every movement across every border, every purchase with your credit card, every transaction in your bank account, every mailing list your name appears on, every e-mail you've ever sent, every chat room or website you've ever visited, every Net search you've ever done, they are all being sifted and a.n.a.lyzed right now, by people way smarter than you, because you are alive, and free, and running from them. With me."

Monique shook her head, refusing to believe what she was hearing. As she spoke, her words became clipped and fiercer.

"This is bulls.h.i.t. You are bulls.h.i.t. You come to us as a friend. You say you are against the war. But you are part of the war. You are a killer just like Bush and Blair. Those men, if they were from the police or the secret service, it was their duty to arrest you. And you killed them and got Maggie killed as well."

Monique's anger overwhelmed her and she emphasized her last point by slapping at Caitlin's face. The American woman brushed off the ineffectual blows with one swift hand, not even flinching as Monique cried out with frustration and attempted to rake out her eyes. Caitlin grabbed one of the girl's hands and turned it sharply back in on the wrist, making her gasp with pain and shock.

"Knock it off, princess. I didn't come here to hurt you or your dumba.s.s friends. I came to protect you."

"What?"

Three young men, obviously drunk and in high spirits, came around the corner and past the car, banging on the windows and calling out to the two women to come out and play, to have a drink and celebrate with them. Caitlin glared at them, but they just laughed. One held up two fingers in a V and stuck his tongue between them, waggling it obscenely. This was obviously the funniest thing his friends had seen all night, and they fell into the cobbled roadway, laughing hysterically.

"a.s.sholes," muttered Caitlin.

"What did you ..."

"I said, a.s.sholes."

"Non. What did you say about protecting us?"

The drunks helped each other off the cold, damp road surface and continued on their way to the next bar, one of them turning awkwardly to grab his crotch and give it a bit of a squeeze for the benefit of the two d.y.k.es.

"See what you are missing, ladies?"

"How could you have been protecting us?" Monique repeated, ignoring her oafish countrymen. "From those skinheads at the tunnel? You couldn't have known about that."

Caitlin opened the door and stepped out, taking a handful of banknotes from the handbag with her. She left the door ajar. The Renault would not be here for long. Monique squeezed out on the other side, the car's proximity to a brick wall making for a tight fit. The wall was covered with an inch of peeling posters, most of them for awful French rock bands, but the uppermost layer calling for a "National Day of Action" to stop the "Anglo War." That was the gig her merry little band had been headed for when set upon by the National Front thugs who got lucky and put her in the hospital.

Where I got lucky and caught a f.u.c.king brain tumor!

Caitlin had to stop for a moment and lean against the wall as her head reeled. Whether it was from the illness, her injuries, or an adrenaline backwash she couldn't tell. She stood still, closed her eyes, and sucked in a long draft of air. It was unpleasantly cold now, but the alleyway still reeked of garbage and dog s.h.i.t, the signature smell of Paris behind the coffee and pain au chocolat.

"Are you all right?" Monique asked grudgingly.

"I'll be fine. Just give me a second."

And the dizzy spell did pa.s.s quickly. She felt a little light-headed as they stepped off toward the high street again, but nothing too crippling. Monique supported Caitlin at the elbow anyway, a gesture she was happy to accept.

"You didn't answer my question," she said, a little petulantly. "What did you mean before, about protecting us?"

"You wouldn't believe me, not yet."

"Try me."

"No. If we're still alive in a few days, I'll tell you, and you will believe me, every word I say. But for now, no. Come with me, or make your own way home, where they'll be waiting for you. It's all the same to me."

They stopped at the intersection, where bright lights and heavy foot traffic created an effect a little like stepping back into the real world from some underground realm. A bus rumbled by, coughing thick gouts of acrid smoke into the air. Shoes scuffed and clicked on wet, gray flagstones, and around them roared hundreds of voices, all discussing the same thing: "the Disappearance."

Caitlin's heart sank. She had been hoping irrationally that the apparent normality of the street scene spoke of some disorder within her, some malady of the brain caused by her illness, that had manifested itself as a perverse hallucination of cataclysm. But no. The Parisians were agog with the news, and confirming for her that it was real was the sound of so many voices raised in good cheer and even merriment. That is what the three jerks who'd abused them before were drinking to. A world without America.

f.u.c.king a.s.sholes.

"Pardonnez-moi?"

"Sorry. Didn't think I was speaking aloud," said Caitlin. "It's nothing. We've got to get moving. Let's go."

They set off again, heading uphill. Caitlin's eyes swept the road and the sidewalk ahead of them on both sides of the street for any sign of hostile action, but all she could see was late-rush-hour traffic and throngs of boule-vardiers, many of them seemingly toasting the day. Not all, admittedly. Here and there arguments raged in that Gallic way, all sound and fury without any real danger of violent contention.

"... It is a disaster, I tell you, a world-ending disaster ..."

"No. A second chance is what we have been gifted by the G.o.ds ..."

"So. You are a believer now, eh?"

"... this will mean horror, horror on an unimaginable scale ..."

"... I shall be leaving for my farm this very night. Mark my words. Leave the city now or you will have ..."

"All I will have is another gla.s.s of Billecart..."

Caitlin set her mouth in a grim, thin line and pushed on with her head down. Monique fell silent beside her. After a few minutes it became obvious that for each individual who saw the Disappearance as a malign catastrophe, another two or three thought it a fine thing. From the s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation she picked up as they hurried along it seemed that in this part of the world at least, a rough consensus had settled on a conspiracy theory about the Americans having destroyed themselves when testing some superweapon for use in Iraq. n.o.body seemed to imagine that any such fate might befall them here in Paris. But then, if they did, they'd hardly be out scarfing down aperitif and dinner, would they? Perhaps the freeways out of the city were jammed with more people like the man she'd heard planning to leave for his farm later that night. Although why he thought he'd be safe there from something that gobbled whole continents was a mystery.

"I am sorry."

Caitlin almost didn't hear her. Monique's voice was small and timid and nearly lost in the roar of the busy street.

"What?"

"I am sorry, Cathy-Caitlin. I can hear what they are saying as well as you. It is disgraceful. Drinking to a tragedy. Saying your people deserved it."

"Oh, f.u.c.k that," replied Caitlin in pitch-perfect French. She really didn't want to get tagged as an American at the moment. "This is one street, Monique. One little neighborhood where people of like minds will gather all the time. It's just human nature. If some Algerian madman set off a nuke in Paris I could take you straight to a food court in any city in the U.S. and it'd take me all of three seconds to find some fat, doughnut-sucking slob who said you deserved it. People everywhere are f.u.c.ked, that's all."

"No. Not everyone ... Caitlin. Some people are led by the better angels."

At that moment they pa.s.sed a cafe outside which stood a small, elderly gentleman in a black jacket and red beret, both hands holding the crook of a walking stick, which he was banging into the ground for emphasis while arguing with a couple of men who looked to be a fraction of his age.

"I was with the Americans at Carentan. I saw them shed their blood for France. Your dishonor them and you dishonor France with this rubbish talk ..."

Caitlin gifted the old man with a sad smile and a wink as she pa.s.sed by. A siren brought her head up slowly, lest she draw attention to herself, but it was a fire engine a block over. She caught a glimpse of it muscling through traffic as they crossed an intersection.

"Down here," she said, veering off toward a line of parked cars in a street of private houses and apartments. Only one shop, a liquor store, was open.

"Are you going to steal another car?" Monique asked warily.

No, thought Caitlin. I'm going to buy a couple of magnums of champagne and pa.s.s them around the surrender monkey set back there to help celebrate the cosmic cornholing of the great Satan.

Aloud she simply said, "You got it."

Three minutes later they were cutting back across town in a gray Volvo station wagon, a late model V40. A suction cup held a black plastic cradle to the windshield just below the rearview mirror. Caitlin leaned across Monique as they came to a red light, popping the glove compartment open.

"Sweet," she said as she pulled out a small Magellan Meridian GPS receiver. "Is there a power cord in there? Look for a sort of flexi cord and an adapter to plug into the cigarette lighter."

Monique couldn't find one, but the little yellow and black unit had three-quarters of a charge anyway. Caitlin powered it up as the light changed and waited for the chime that would tell them it had linked to enough satellites to fix their position. A frustrating few minutes pa.s.sed during which time she had to force herself to concentrate on the road. As full darkness covered the city, she could see the telltale glow of fires burning on the outskirts of the old center, explaining the large number of emergency vehicles. Apparently not everyone was content to celebrate with a smirk and a snifter of Courvoisier.

The Magellan chimed once, eliciting a small "Oh!" from Monique.

"Is this us? Here, near the rue Ricaut?"

"Yeah. That's us. Does it have a route function? Can you work out how to get us to ..."

The windshield suddenly cracked and starred with a huge, hollow boom.

Event horizon, Cuba

As a boy, Tusk Musso had loved visiting the city with his grandfather. For the Musso clan, that meant New York, the greatest city in the world. In the whole G.o.dd.a.m.ned history of the world, except maybe for Rome, according to his grandpa Vinnie Musso. There was a game they played, which Grandpa insisted little Tusk never tell his mother about, where they lay on the sidewalk at the base of the highest building they could find, and then just stared up at this monster looming over them, looking like it went all the way to heaven. They had to be quick before the cops or security guards chased them off. The very first time they'd done it, when Tusk was only six, it had been a cool, overcast day, with a slight breeze dragging clouds across a lowering sky, and it looked for all the world like the Chrysler Building was gonna fall right down on top of them. Tusk had squealed with laughter, and not a little fear. He wasn't allowed to say anything to Momma about it, of course, because she would've had a blue fit if she'd known that Grandpa Vinnie, whom she considered a very poor influence at best, had been letting her precious bundle roll around on the filthy pavement with the dog t.u.r.ds and cigarette b.u.t.ts.

Thank G.o.d they're long gone, he thought, as he stood about two hundred yards back from the base of the event horizon and craned his head back to watch it climb away to heaven, feeling as small and insignificant as he had all those years ago at the feet of the tallest buildings in the world. Clouds drifted overhead, and Musso narrowed his eyes against the still-intense glare of the day and watched as a patch of white that reminded him of a Spanish galleon floated serenely into the silvery haze at the edge of the affected area. At that distance it created an effect similar to a stationary waterfall, all glistening silver hanging down like a curtain.

And like a curtain, it moved. Not much, just a lazy drift back and forth, across the ground, no more than a couple of yards in either direction-just enough to wake up the primitive creature dwelling in the darkest parts of Musso's mind, to fill him with an atavistic fear of whatever danger lay in the darkness just outside the mouth of the cave.

Musso the modern, rational man, dressed in a short-sleeved khaki shirt and olive-drab pants, ground down on that ancient terror and watched, fascinated, as the cloud drifted into the energy wave. It seemed completely unaffected as it pa.s.sed through. Its form became less distinct on the far side, but it was discernibly the same shape and size.

"Seen any birds fly into it, or out of it?" he asked, still peering upward.

Major Nunez shook his head. "None. Some of my men say they saw large flights of birds moving away from here earlier today, but I do not know where they came from. And there are none here now. Not one."

Musso dropped his gaze. They stood by the crumbling edge of a two-lane road, the asphalt surface shimmering in the heat a few hundred yards behind them, a natural phenomenon. The much more powerful haze directly in front was decidedly unnatural. The small convoy of Hummers and Cuban vehicles had pulled up ten minutes ago, and his heart was still beating hard from the sight. Any last, lingering doubts placed in the way of belief by his rational mind had been banished as soon as he'd seen the haze. Visible from well over the horizon, it not only reached up to the stratosphere, it curved away toward the horizon in both directions like a giant standing wave, raised by an unknowable deity.

It was alien.

It sat there, in front of him, utterly removed from any human context to give it meaning. He had no idea what it was, and having seen it for himself he doubted that anybody ever would.

"You still got nothing, Lieutenant Kwan?" he said.

Lieutenant Jenny Kwan shook her head. She seemed too young to Musso, almost baby-faced, but she was one of the smartest, scariest individuals he'd ever met. An MIT grad, Kwan was a marine first lieutenant, the boss of an incident response unit, a bland name for a bunch of very smart people trained to look for and respond to some of the worst things in the world-chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Her crew and equipment took up three of the seven Humvees that had driven deep into Cuban territory, escorted by Major Nunez and a platoon of his men in a couple of old Soviet-era BMP-2s. Musso had to hand it to the Cubans. This monstrosity wasn't an abstract proposition for them, something to be intuited from indirect evidence provided by web links or satellite data. It was sitting literally a stone's throw away, bisecting their country. Given all that, he was impressed by their professionalism and no-bulls.h.i.t att.i.tude, although Nunez had probably picked his Praetorian guard for this gig.

They helped Lieutenant Kwan whenever she asked for it, and kept to themselves when she didn't. Not that Kwan was having any luck with her equipment. No matter what sensors or sniffers or magic wands she waved at the haze, it made not a d.a.m.n bit of difference.

"According to my readings, General, that thing isn't even there," she said.