Echo Team, there to save the world.
This was the first time we had all been together in weeks.
“Got to go home,” I said for the fifth or sixth time. No one responded. Ghost didn’t twitch. Sam opened a fresh pair of Stone IPAs and handed one to me. We didn’t toast. You do that when you want to remember something.
A bit later Bunny asked, “Is this it, then? Is the DMS going down the crapper?”
I shook my head. Not to deny that possibility, but because I didn’t know.
“How the hell have we managed to drop the ball this many times?” asked Montana.
“I know,” grumped Brian. “When did we become the guys who mess up?”
“Dreamwalking,” I said, putting it out there.
“Which means what?” asked Montana.
“Don’t mean nothing,” growled Top. “Some voodoo bullshit.”
We drank.
Bunny grunted. “At least we stopped whatever the hell was going on down there under the ice.”
We drank some more. The world turned.
“Even so,” said Montana after a while, “you guys pretty much blew a hole in the map.”
Bunny took a long pull on his beer and studied her down the barrel of his bottle. “You weren’t there.”
“No,” she said, “I was not.”
“Kind of glad I wasn’t there, either,” said Brian.
Everyone nodded. Everyone drank.
“Wish we were in on that Kill Switch thing,” said Lydia. “Feels wrong to be watching from the sidelines.”
Far out there over the black horizon a piece of ancient space iron scratched a streak against the darkness. It seemed to last longer than most shooting stars and we all watched it.
No one said a word.
Not about the star.
Not about anything. For a long time.
It was Sam who finally broke the silence. Making a statement that was also a question.
“So,” he said slowly, “penguins?”
No one said anything for a long, long time.
I think it was Top who started laughing. A quiet trembling of the shoulders, and for a crazy moment I thought he was crying. Then, as he shook his head I saw the gleam of white teeth in the starlight. A moment later Bunny burst out with a donkey bray of a laugh.
Then we were all laughing.
Even if we didn’t think it was funny at all.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
I was dead on my feet and was in the parking lot, reaching for my car key, when my cell rang. Church. I leaned against the fender of my replacement Explorer and wondered what would get me in more trouble — throwing the phone against the wall real damn hard or finding out what Church wanted to tell me. Ghost gave me a “don’t do it” look.
I did it.
“Just for once,” I said instead of a hello, “tell me something I want to hear.”
“Would it change the complexion of your day if I told you we had a lead?”
“On what? On who’s hiring ex — SpecOps shooters?”
Church made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Maybe we can turn this around.”
“How?” And I surprised myself by really wanting to know.
“Aunt Sallie sent a team to Washington armed with federal warrants.”
“How’d she get those? I thought we didn’t have any friends left in Washington.”
“She asked nicely,” said Church in a way that suggested that Aunt Sallie did not, in fact, ask nicely. Auntie looks like Whoopi Goldberg but her personality is closer to Jack Bauer from 24, with a little Charlie Manson thrown in to make her more personable. It is very difficult to summon enough courage to say no to her.
“What are the warrants for?”
“Majestic,” said Church, “and anything related to Gateway, Dr. Erskine, and Oscar Bell. The first two came up dry. We probably have all of the Majestic records that exist under that label. As for Gateway, Bug keeps hitting walls. But Bell was married to Erskine’s sister and there is a real chance we can establish collusion because Erskine was working for the DoD when he bought Bell’s God Machine project. A federal judge agreed and Auntie’s team has obtained several dozen boxes of paper records. They’ve done spot-scanning of the paperwork and so far none of it is on the Net or in the computer records of the DoD or DARPA.”
“Ah,” I said, getting it now. “They kept it all on paper to keep it away from us. Shit, that’s smart.”
“We have those records now. Auntie flew twenty-five analysts down to D.C. to join the retrieval team. Bug sent Nikki and Yoda, too. We have every available eye reading and scanning those records. They’ll work through the night and with any luck we’ll have some leads by noon tomorrow.”
“Jesus, I hope you’re right.”
Church said, “Captain… Joe… I want you to have some faith.”
“In what?”
“In me,” he said. “In the DMS. I know things look bleak, and I certainly share your frustration for feeling like we’re closed out of the important cases—”
“We are. I’m a damn soldier, and so far the most I’ve done is beat up my best friend and a couple of surfer boys.”
“You’re not a soldier,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“I didn’t hire you to be a soldier,” said Church. “Or have you forgotten? When I recruited you it was because you were a detective, an investigator. You’re a cop, Captain Ledger. That’s what you are and that’s what you do. The combat, the warfare, the killing… those are unfortunate side effects of our job. Of your job. They are not your defining characteristics. You are tearing yourself apart for the wrong reason. You want to get back into the war, I get that. I do. However, we aren’t being called to fight. Not at this moment. We are being called to make sense of this, to find answers, to build a case.”
I said nothing, but damn if I didn’t feel every single one of the punches he’d slipped under my guard.
“This is what I need you to do,” he said. “Go home and get some sleep. Get plenty of it. Then report to work tomorrow and take over this investigation. I am telling you this as your boss and as your friend. You need to stop being a bystander. You need to refuse to be marginalized. You need to be the cop that you are. You need to solve this.”
The phone went dead in my hand.
I put it in my pocket and walked over to the parking garage window. It looked directly out over the surf. How long did I stand there watching the waves crash down on the sand?
Maybe five minutes. Maybe ten.
There are times I’m afraid of Mr. Church. There are times I hate him. Right at that moment, though, I’d have walked through fire for him.
I looked out at the tumbling waves, listened to the hiss as the frothy bubbles popped, watched starlight glisten on the wet sand.
Then I went home and went to bed.
CHAPTER SIXTY
In the morning I got up and kissed a sleepy Junie who had gotten in late and didn’t look like she was quite ready to face the day. I showered hot enough to boil all of the sickness, indolence, and self-pity off my skin, then I shaved, dressed in jeans and one of my more sedate Hawaiian shirts — this one had tropical fish on it — put down bowls of glop for Ghost and Cobbler, washed down a fistful of vitamins with my first cup of coffee of the day, and then set off to work.