Then I was up and running. My handgun was lost but I grabbed my Wilson folding knife from its pocket sheath, flicked the small, wicked blade into place, and ran to the far end of the wreck.
There was a loud Tok! and the SUV suddenly lifted into the air, rising ass-first as if it had been punched by a giant. It turned over in midair and smashed down on the hood and windshield of Betty Boop.
There, getting to his knees, was one of the Closers, an MPP gripped in both hands. His face was painted with the luminous green. The other Closer lay facedown on the ground in a pool of the weird paint. I saw him move, though. He was alive.
Somehow, impossibly, they were both alive.
In the crushing silence I heard sounds. Ghost gave a single uncertain bark. A foot crunched on the roadside to my right as Bunny staggered into view. A car door opened and Top came hurrying up.
I heard the agent speak the same words as he rose. “We are not your enemy.”
I had my knife but my legs did not want to move. The uninjured agent studied me.
“You were warned, Captain Ledger. We thought you understood.”
“What…?”
“We are not your enemy.”
He reached down and pulled his companion to his feet. The second agent was hurt, that much was obvious. His face was torn up and I could see the gleam of teeth through a cheek that had been totally ripped open.
Bunny said, “What…?”
An existential question. Him needing someone to explain the shape of the day to him — or the shape of the world — because the terrible wounds on the agent’s face were bleeding green. There was not a drop of red to be seen. Not on either of them. Not on their clothes or the ground. Nowhere except on Top and Ghost and Me.
The agents were bleeding, though. Intensely, profusely.
A sound suddenly filled the air and we all looked up.
And then there was darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Speaker of the House Andrew Jackson Howell gave no warning. No one saw this coming. Not his colleagues in the House of Representatives. Not his family or friends. Not the press. Not even his political enemies.
Until that morning he had been viewed as a fit, active man of middle years. Lean from his free-time hobby of playing soccer with classmates from law school. He was not ill; at least not that anyone knew. He rarely drank, his marriage was in good shape, and his two daughters were both successful young women who were making their way toward good careers, one in law and one in medicine.
So, no one saw it coming.
His chief of staff, Amanda Grel, briefed him that morning, and later, when interviewed by the Secret Service, police detectives, and others, said that the Speaker looked a little tired. That was all. A little tired.
Video security footage of the Speaker as he entered the Capitol, walked the hallways, and entered the House showed him moving slowly, but if the day ended in any other way there would be nothing on those tapes to suggest a problem. He moved slowly, but that was not a red flag. The House was voting on a bill to fund an aid package for Ukraine, which was reeling from the third major earthquake in as many months. The representatives had been split because most of them would rather have seen the bulk of that money go to their own states, but common sense had won out. The earthquakes had done extensive damage to key Ukrainian military bases, including those where American and United Nations advisors were situated. Without that funding, Ukraine would have been weak against strategic incursion by the Russians. The Speaker and key representatives he trusted had wrangled for weeks, so a case might have been made that he was tired from long nights and political lobbying.
The only unusual blip in the Speaker’s actions before entering the lower house, and it was completely overlooked at the time, was that he skipped a meeting with the majority whip. But since the last count showed the odds in favor of passing the bill, the whip — at the time — figured the Speaker felt that any last-minute strategizing was a time-waster.
It was truly a surprise. A shock.
Aunt Sallie stood staring. She had no authority here. And even if she did, there was nothing she could do. The man was dead. It was over. There were screams and shouts and voices raised in anger, in fear, giving orders, yelling for EMTs. Someone kept shouting for someone to call 911. As if that would help.
“What…?” asked a voice, and Auntie turned to see a congressional aide standing there, white-faced, horrified, irreparably marked by what just happened. The aide was a girl, a child. Twenty, perhaps. Still in college. Too young for this.
But then Auntie realized that she had been twenty when the CIA had recruited her. She’d been only twenty-five the day she met Mr. Church. Still a child, but one who had walked knee-deep through a stream of blood. Innocent and guilty. Much of it spilled by her.
She reached out and took the aide’s hand and held it. The girl turned toward Auntie, buried her face in the hollow between chin and shoulder, and began to weep like a broken thing. Asking the same question over and over again.
What?
Auntie had no answers at all.
CHAPTER FORTY
I blinked and it was suddenly pitch black. Like the middle of the night, only darker. A total absence of light.
I blinked again and it was daytime. A gray day, with drizzle falling around me and on me. I was no longer standing by the side of the road. I was in the rear seat of the Betty Boop. Ghost was there, asleep, his head on my lap. Top was behind the wheel, Bunny was in the shotgun seat. The engine was off and rain pinged on the roof and popped on the windshield. My clothes were damp but not soaked. My face was dry, but I could see a grittiness as if rain had dried only recently. Top suddenly jerked and it was clear he just woke up. As I had. As Bunny did a few seconds later. Then Ghost. We woke up, but we sat there, oddly still. Staring.
Bunny said, “What…?”
Fair question. Impossible to answer. Top turned very slowly, as if his body was still more asleep than awake. He wiped rainwater from his eyes and looked at Bunny, then turned more to look at me.
The engine was running and the heat was on. I realized that now. Had it been on when I woke? Maybe. No way to tell. Top certainly hadn’t turned it on. Ghost whined and cowered against me.
We got out of the car. It took a lot of doing. I felt clumsy and sick and strangely stiff, as if I’d been sitting too long without moving. Top moved like he was old and riddled with arthritis. We tottered around to the far side of our car. I had to help Ghost down, and he stood on trembling legs with his tail curled under.
Bunny slid down to the ground, his back to the front wheel, eyes staring and half vacant.
“They’re gone,” said Top, looking around.
Bunny shook his head, and, without saying a word, raised a shaky finger and pointed to the near woods. There, lying crumpled like a toy thrown away by a bored child, was the SUV. Riddled with pocked bullet holes from the chain guns. It was on its side with the smashed windshield toward us. Empty.
When I managed to shamble over to examine it, I saw that there were no smudges of the green… blood? Did I want to call it that? Was that how this day was going to go? My mind rebelled. The Cop told me I was wrong, that trauma made my memory faulty. The Modern Man was hiding under the bed. Only the Killer part of me seemed able to accept it on its own terms. He was much more practical about such things. Things are what they are. The green stuff was gone. That was a fact.