The smoke stung his face so badly he couldn’t open his eyes. He put the receiver to his ear, but heard nothing.
Dead.
My cell?
In all of the confusion he hadn’t thought of using his own phone. He pulled it from his pocket, put his finger on the print reader, then pulled up the directory to call his security desk. Only after pressing the phone icon did he notice the message at the top indicating that he had no service.
He almost threw it down in anger, but stopped himself. It was important, it was critical, to remain calm, to be calm, to think.
Think.
They know we’re here. They’ll send help.
Maybe a ladder truck.
The ledge outside. It’s wide enough to stand on.
Massina knew this from experience — unfortunate experience, but then he’d lived to tell about it, so how bad could it have been, really?
Not as bad as this.
“We’re going out the window, Jason. Come on.”
Vendez didn’t answer. Massina tried to get him over his back, but it was difficult without the use of one hand and arm.
I’m never going to be able to climb up to the roof with only one hand. I can barely make it with two.
He pulled Vendez with him anyway, moving backward along the floor. As he reached the glass, a red flare shot into the room near the door. A black cloud rolled in behind it.
Massina lowered his chest to the floor, trying to find clean air.
There was a loud pop, then a crash and a crackle, a thousand glasses falling from a cabinet to the floor at the same instant. Massina looked toward the window — a piece of metal had flown through.
Another aircraft?
The metal moved back and forth quickly. Another probe appeared, then a dull gray cloud — it was RBT PJT 23-A, better known as Peter, smashing its way inside to rescue them.
Ten minutes later, Peter deposited Massina in the second-floor lounge, where Smart Metal’s nurse had established a triage center. The bot had taken Vendez down first, then raced back to get its maker.
It was a quick and dizzying ride down the face of the building. Peter’s clamps were quite tight — Massina’s first thought when he arrived was that would have to be adjusted.
Gulping pure oxygen from a tank, he cleared his head and looked for Beefy. Instead, he found Johnny Givens striding across the room.
“Everyone’s accounted for,” Johnny told him. “We have thirty-three people hurt, two with probable internal injuries, a lot of broken bones, some smoke and light burns. But everybody’s alive.”
“Where’s Beefy?”
“He had a head injury and a compound fracture of the arm. Maybe a busted rib. He’s conscious downstairs. The nurse gave him a shot of morphine to ease the pain.”
“Chelsea?”
“On her way to the Mountain.”
“The machines?”
“Everything downstairs is fine. They went into shutdown mode automatically.”
“All right. I’m going to the Box.” Massina patted him on the back. “Good decision, sending Peter.”
“I didn’t,” said Johnny. “Near as we can figure, he went on his own.”
103
Chelsea’s head throbbed. The scent of diesel filled her nose, diesel and something caustic, ammonia-like. She tried to move, but her hands were restrained behind her back — she was in a straitjacket.
No, just restraints. Not too tight, but enough. No escape.
Where was she?
Moving.
A van.
Have to get out of here.
She pushed her arms, trying to free them. But that only made the restraints tighter.
No one will know where I am.
They can track my phone.
Where is my phone?
She didn’t feel it in her pocket. They’d taken it and her wallet and her keys. Everything but her watch.
The watch.
The backing.
Scrape it off, said the voice in her head — her father. Press it against your skin.
I can’t.
Stop your whining and do it.
Yes, Daddy.
Chelsea twisted her hand, scraping as best she could. The watch, loose on her hand, flipped over. She kept scraping.
“Coming back to us, princess?” sneered Ghadab. He loomed over her. “Don’t fear. I haven’t killed you yet. There’s still more time for that. This, this I want.”
Ghadab leaned down and Chelsea felt something poke her in the wrist. Her watch flew off. Her wrist stung.
“Bandage her,” Ghadab told someone behind her she couldn’t see. “I don’t want her dying yet. There’s much more to enjoy before that deliciousness.”
104
A storm of emotions flooded through Massina as he parsed the different media reports. There had been as many as a dozen bombing attacks spread across the city, not counting the ones at Smart Metal. But there were no reports of hostage-style attacks like those that had hit the city months before. Nor had there been a direct attack on any of the power plants in the region, or the airport. With the exception of areas hit by suicide bombers — including his building — electricity was still flowing.
Which wasn’t to say that the city was going about its business as if nothing had happened. Boston was in lockdown, with the National Guard rushing to close all of the major highways in and out. The monuments were closed; city and state police were enforcing a curfew.
Ghadab obviously was behind this, Massina realized. So where was he?
“Why isn’t the line to the Annex open?” he asked Telakus, who was handling the com section at the consoles.
“We’re having trouble with all our lines,” Telakus replied.
“We shouldn’t have trouble with that. It’s direct. Try Chiang’s cell phone.”
“I did. It went straight to voice mail.”
Oh, no.
“Get one of the Nightbird UAVs up, and fly it over the Annex,” Massina told Telakus. “Have it feed us video.”
Neither the city police nor the FBI emergency posts had any information on Ghadab. Massina tried calling Johansen, but he went directly to voice mail.
By the time he finished leaving his message, the UAV had been launched. He walked over to the console where the controller was sitting — they were using a remote setup, having flown the bot from one of their test yards near the river — and watched as it sped northward.
If you subtracted the police vehicles and troop trucks, there wasn’t much traffic. In sharp contrast to the first round of attacks, the city looked amazingly calm.
Is this all you got?
Massina saw the smoke from the wreckage of the SUV miles before the drone closed in. He kept telling himself not to jump to conclusions, not to worry, not to think the worst.
It can’t be our vehicle.
But it was.
The aircraft circled several times so they could examine the wreckage. There were two bodies inside, both in the front seat.
“Johnny, you better come down here,” Massina said over the company circuit.