An instant later, there was a loud explosion, followed by many more.
Every bridge along the Potomac through to the Anacostia, from the Francis Scott Key Bridge to the John Phillip Sousa exploded in a mass of fire and debris. The structural roads collapsed.
Next to him, Genevieve opened the Sea King’s throttle to full, and yanked the collective up. The helicopter climbed rapidly. Heat from the multiple explosions could be felt through the windshield. Sam ran his eyes across the burning remains of the capital. More than a hundred smaller explosions were taking place.
As the helicopter climbed, he noticed that for the most part, the ordnance set were more for show than actual damage. Throughout the capital buildings, thick purple smoke rose, shrouding the entire area in darkness.
Genevieve set a course for the Pentagon.
Sam looked back over his shoulder. “Congressman Peter Grzonkowski?”
“Yes, sir,” came a congenial reply. “You must be Sam Reilly.”
“That’s me.” Sam beamed with pleasure. “Next to you is Tom, and your pilot today is Genevieve.”
The Congressman smiled. “Not that I’m complaining, but I have to ask, why me? Why did you come get me?”
Sam grinned. “I have a letter and a ship’s manifest from the Clarion Call that’s been waiting a long time to reach you.”
Chapter Sixty
Sam Reilly followed the FBI Special Weapons and Tactics team into the building.
They moved quickly, running up the main stairs at the front and securing the entire building within minutes. Alex Goodson was home by himself. He didn’t put up any resistance. In fact, because he was wearing gaming headphones and was absorbed in his video game, he didn’t realize that a SWAT team had invaded the privacy of his house until he was in handcuffs.
Alex was already in his pajamas but didn’t appear disturbed or surprised by the intrusion of some thirty or more FBI agents. He caught Sam’s eye. “Hey, Mr. Reilly, didn’t I tell you it was probably too late to play another game?”
“Afraid this isn’t about games,” Sam replied.
Alex smiled, but wore a vacant expression of insouciance. “Oh yeah. What’s this about?”
A federal agent tightened the handcuffs until they dug into Alex’s wrist. The young man didn’t react. “The terrorist attack on Washington, D.C.”
“Hey, you caught someone did you?” Alex looked at Sam. “I always knew you had it in you. You’re a smart guy, Mr. Reilly. So, who was the terrorist? I mean, who would do such a terrible thing, like threaten our nation’s capital?”
Sam said, “It’s not a joke. Lives were lost. Infrastructure was significantly damaged.”
Alex shrugged. “I heard that only one life was lost, and that the terrorist wasn’t even involved in that one.”
“Game’s over, Alex. You can cut the crap.”
Alex cocked his head to the side. “What crap?”
“The video game you were playing. It wasn’t a game was it? It was a real-time projection of your battlefield in Washington, D.C. and those soldiers in your game, weren’t just characters, those were the men on the ground who you were giving orders to.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed, his lips formed into a practiced smile. “You think I was behind the terrorist attack on our capital? You’ve got to be crazy. I’ve been here the whole time. You should know, someone had four agents running surveillance on me since this started. One in the van out the front, one on my neighbor’s roof, one working on the powerlines, and one in the shop beneath my apartment. So, you see, there was no chance that I could’ve been involved in anything as far away as Washington, D.C.”
Sam moved to the video game controller and switched the TV back on. An urban warfare game was paused. He clicked the un-pause button and the game continued to play in real-time. The FBI agents watched for a minute, while Sam maneuvered the gaming console so he could visualize the location.
It was a city with two large rivers, branching off to form a large Y-shape, in the middle of which, a large dome-shaped building rose from a city shrouded in purple smoke. Bridges along both lengths of the two rivers had been razed. Their foundations still smoldered.
All eyes in the room remained on the city.
But it wasn’t Washington, D.C. — it was Budapest. As the purple smoke dissipated, it revealed that the domed-building wasn’t the Capitol, but the Central Dome of the Hungarian Parliament, and instead of the Potomac, it was the Danube River.
Sam’s lips curled into a wry smile. “This doesn’t prove anything. You’ve been playing me all along. You must’ve changed games. You knew I was coming for you.”
Alex shrugged. “If that’s what you think. We all make up things from time to time. I particularly have that trouble. The trick is to remember what’s real and try and differentiate it from one’s imagination.”
The FBI agents searched his house from top to bottom. A team of computer hackers from the cyberwarfare division analyzed his gaming set up.
All told, it was nearly midnight before they were complete.
The FBI agent in charge unhandcuffed Alex. “Sir, I’m sorry for the intrusion. All I can say was that we were fed poor intel. Good night.”
Sam met the agent’s eye. With his arms spread, his palms facing upward, he said, “You’ve got to be kidding me! I was here! I watched him move his men around, setting up the dynamite that would level the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge.”
“No, you didn’t,” the agent replied. “You saw him setting up an urban battlefield in a game, set in Budapest.”
Sam shook his head. “I know what I saw. Besides, I know how Alex thinks. He’s been leading me around the city for the past twenty-four hours!”
The agent shrugged. “What can I say? He’s clean. His gaming TV isn’t even connected to the internet. In fact, his server down below hasn’t even been connected to the fiber-optics node yet.”
“All right,” Sam said. “I could’ve sworn that it was Washington, D.C.”
One by one, each of the Federal Agents left the building.
Sam was the last to leave.
At the door, Alex shook his hand and patted him on the shoulder paternalistically. “You know what, Mr. Reilly?”
Sam met his gaze with a dimpled smile. “What?”
“Your grandfather was a crook, and your father’s not much better, but you’re okay. You’re okay.”
Bemused, Sam shook his head and smiled. “Thanks. Hey Alex…”
“Yeah?”
“What was this all really about?”
“You tell me?” Alex replied. “You were the one trying to investigate a terrorist. I was just playing a game. You’re the professional. You take care of yourself, Sam. Don’t let Washington and all your other powerful connections corrupt you.”
Sam stepped out of the kid’s apartment and started walking down the street. He hadn’t made it more than a block when his cell phone received a text message. Not his cell phone, but the one the terrorist had given him. He opened the message.
Written on it was a single set of GPS coordinates.
Underneath it, it read:
Thanks for playing the game. A.G.
Chapter Sixty-One
The Secretary of Defense leaned back into her chair inside the Command Center. Her eyes watched the operation to recover the World War II era German Nuclear Bomb. The GPS coordinates Sam had been given — although where and by whom, he refused to divulge — were followed by a team of Navy SEALs and an elite team of bomb disposal experts out of the 832nd Ordnance Battalion US Marine Corps led to an old, rundown, farm property on the outskirts of Virginia.
The property was purchased in 1946 by a man named Reilly Finney — an Alias for Wilhelm Gutwein — and despite being maintained, no one had ever moved onto the farm. On the property the team found an old red tobacco style barn. Despite its dilapidated appearance, a series of modern CCTV surveillance cameras hung surreptitiously from its ceiling and followed their every move.