“If we want to end this, if we want to keep things from escalating, if we want to win, we have to neutralize John Smith. And this is a way to do it.”
“Not a way,” Peters said. “A chance.”
“That’s better than no chance.” Cooper took a swallow of scotch. He was exhausted, and the drink smoothed some of the rough edges. Cooper waited. The director gave nothing away, but the tiny muscles of his nose, his ears, the miniscule tensing of his shoulders, all said he was considering it.
“You understand what would be entailed? Just naming you rogue wouldn’t be enough,” Peters said. “I’d have to designate you a target.”
“Yes.”
“I won’t be able to hold back. The preliminary reports I’ve seen put the dead at more than a thousand. And this attack was in the heart of Manhattan. There will be no half measures. I’d have to cast you down like Lucifer. I can keep you off the news—probably—but within the agency, there’d be nothing I could do for you.”
“I know.”
“You’ll be more hated than John Smith ever was. Because you were one of us, and you betrayed us. Every resource in the department’s power will be aimed at you. There will be thousands of people hunting you. Literally thousands. If you’re captured, I can reveal the truth. But—”
“But no one is going to try to capture me. If they have a shot, they’ll take it.”
“That’s right. And meanwhile, you’re going to be on your own. No resources. No requisitioned helicopters, no phone taps, no surveillance teams. No backup. Nothing.”
Cooper just sipped his scotch. Nothing Peters was saying was a surprise to him. He’d had time to think it out on the flight down.
All commercial flights had been grounded, so he’d badged his way onto a Marine Corps C-130 and ridden in with a squad of jarheads. The boys were extra gung ho under the circumstances, but he could see the hurt under the oo-rah. America wasn’t used to being hit this way, to an attack in the heart of its strength.
The response would be devastating. There would need to be a blood payment. The country would demand it.
It wouldn’t be long before it got out that the bombing was John Smith’s work. And in America’s overwrought state, most people wouldn’t make the distinction between abnorms and abnorm terrorists.
After all, it was abnorms who had forced the stock market to close in the first place. Abnorms who were taking the lead in every field. Abnorms who were making the rest of humanity feel small and secondary.
You can’t stop the future. All you can do is pick a side. Alex Vasquez’s voice in his head.
Not an easy choice. And more complicated than she would have admitted. Was he a government agent hunting terrorists, or a father whose daughter was in danger? Was he a soldier or a civilian? If he believed in America, did that mean he had to accept the academies?
All right, Alex. I’ve made my choice. But right now, this hour in the sky, this hour is for me. He’d leaned against the metal skin of the airplane, felt the thrum of the turboprops, the cold of the air rushing past, and he let himself think of what he was about to risk. All that he might lose. The staggering costs of the plan he was proposing.
And when he landed, he’d pushed that kind of thinking aside and begun to act. Now he stared across the table at the director, at the man’s pale, calm eyes, and he said, “I can do this.”
“There will be no going back. None. You succeed or you die.”
“I know.”
“Even a chance to get rid of John Smith is worth a gamble. If we don’t, he may well tip this country into outright civil war.” Peters looked away and tapped his fingers lightly on his desk. The news channels were playing footage of the explosion, and reflected in his rimless glasses, the Exchange fell again and again.
Finally, he said, “Last chance, son. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. I’ll kill John Smith for you.” Cooper set his glass on the desk and leaned forward. “But there’s one condition.”
Natalie’s house.
A tantalizing hint of silhouette flickered across one of the curtains. The lights were on, and the windows glowed buttery warm. Del Ray was too much part of the city for the sky to be truly black, but the queasy purple of light pollution was lonelier than night. It made those windows, and the life within them, all the more attractive.
Cooper stared out of the windshield. Took a deep breath, blew it out. There was an emptiness in his stomach, a hollowness he hadn’t felt in years. A childish sort of yearning pain, the way he’d felt when he was twelve and all the rewards he’d ascribed to adulthood—love, freedom, certainty—seemed a million years away. The emptiness of the morning bed after a glittering dream of girls and adventure.
Now that things were in motion, he wanted more than anything to stop it all. To beg the director to call it off. It was too much. The costs were too high.
But then he remembered what this was really about, and he put childish fantasy away.
He climbed out of the Charger—something else he’d have to abandon soon, his beloved car and its even more beloved license-to-speed transponder—and crossed the street. The night air nipped but didn’t bite. Everything smelled clean. He was sore and tired, but he tried to record every detail, to move with heightened awareness. It would be a long time before he could walk this path again.
At the front window, he paused just out of the spill of light. The curtains were parted a couple of inches, and through them he could see his children. Todd was staging an elaborate action-figure battle, the pantheons all mixed up, armored knights fighting alongside World War II soldiers and space monsters. The tip of his tongue protruded from the corner of his mouth as he mounted a robot on a horse. Kate sat on the sofa with a picture book in her lap, turning the pages backward and talking softly to herself. Through the open archway he could see Natalie in the kitchen, washing dishes. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her hips swayed as she scrubbed, semidancing to music he couldn’t hear. The quiet peace of the scene, the warmth and safety and domesticity, was a jagged knife through his belly. Cooper closed his eyes. You’ve already chosen sides.
He took out his phone and dialed. Through the window he saw his ex-wife dry her hands on a towel and pull her phone from her pocket. “Nick. Are you okay? I called you a bunch of times and left messages—”
“I know. I’m okay. But I need to talk to you.”
Even at this distance, he could see her stiffen. “Is it about Kate?”
“No. Yes. Sort of. Listen, I’m outside. Can you come out?”
“You’re outside? Why didn’t you knock?”
“We need to talk first. Before the kids know I’m here.”
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
Cooper pocketed his phone. Took one last look through the window, felt his stomach slip and his heart squeeze, and then stepped away. He moved over to the lone tree, a maple down to a last handful of leaves. Quick flash of memory, the tree as it had been when he and Natalie had bought the house, a runty little thing held in place by wires.
Natalie came out a few minutes later. She paused on the step, screening her eyes from the porch light, then spotted him leaning. The subtle shifts of expression on her face might have barely registered with a stranger, but each emotion was as distinct to him as if the words had been projected on her forehead. Happiness that he was alive. Guarded concern about the way he’d asked to meet her. Fear of what he had to say about Kate. A quickly overcome desire to run back inside and slam the door. “Hey,” she said.