Brick, timber, and glass exploded inward as the Mack thundered ahead and came to a rest inside the house’s cavernous foyer. Matt kept the engine running as he pulled his gun out and climbed from the cabin just as another heavy appeared from a side room, dumbstruck and gun drawn. Matt had the advantage of surprise and blew him away with two rounds to his chest. Matt stepped away from the truck, sizing up what was left of the house’s entrance hall, and yelled, “Rydell.”
Like a killer-bot on a mission, he advanced through the house, using his handgun like a divining rod, looking for his quarry. He checked the main living room, then a media room next to that, and was on his way into what looked like the kitchen area when a large double-door in a hallway to his right opened up and Rydell’s head popped out.
The man looked stunned and confused. Matt recognized him immediately. He looked more gaunt than the photos Jabba had shown Matt on his phone’s browser, but it was definitely him.
Matt raised his gun, rushed to him, and grabbed him by his shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
He manhandled him back toward the truck, jabbing the gun into his back. Rydell’s mouth dropped when he saw the truck squatting in the entrance hall, surrounded by debris, a twelve-foot-square gash eaten out of the house’s front façade. As Matt nudged Rydell forward, he heard some approaching footsteps, turned, and saw another guard rushing at them. By now, the adrenaline coursing through him was in control, and Matt was riding its autopilot of heightened awareness. He swung the gun away from Rydell, aimed, and squeezed, dropping the man to the floor.
“Is that all you’ve got, huh?” he barked furiously at Rydell. “Is that the best you can do?”
Before the shell-shocked Rydell could answer, Matt grabbed him by the neck, pushed him to the back of the truck, and shoved him against it. Matt glared at him and pointed at its rear-loading bay.
“Get in,” he ordered.
Rydell stared at him, terror-stricken. “In there?”
“Get in,” Matt roared, raising the gun so it hovered a few inches from the bridge of Rydell’s nose.
Rydell studied him for a beat, then climbed in. Matt glared at him crouched there, cowering, and hit the compacting switch. The hydraulic paddle churned to life and inched its way down, swinging over Rydell and herding him into the belly of the truck.
Matt hit the switch again to block the paddle in position, sealing the hold, then made his way back through the debris to the truck’s cabin and climbed in. Another man appeared, another drone in a dark suit with a big gun aimed at Matt’s face. He fired, the bullets punching through the windshield and hammering the back of the cabin behind Matt’s head. Matt ducked, crunched the gear lever into reverse and floored the accelerator. The truck extricated itself from the battered house and emerged onto the gravel drive again. The man followed, still shooting, his bullets digging themselves into the truck’s thick carcass. He wasn’t doing much damage—the way the truck was built, it was like trying to stop a rhino with a blowpipe. Matt swung the orange beast around and slammed it into first. The truck’s smokestack let out an angry bellow of black smoke—its engine probably hadn’t ever had such a workout—before hurtling down the drive and out onto the narrow lane again.
He was halfway to the main road when the first of the armed response cars appeared, a yellow SUV with a blaring siren and a rack of spinning lights on its roof. The lane wasn’t wide enough for both, and its driver knew it. He didn’t stand a chance. He swerved just as the big Mack reached him, but there was nowhere for him to go. The truck plowed into the side of the SUV and flicked it out of its way and into the trees like a hockey puck. The second armed response car didn’t fare much better. Matt encountered it just before the intersection of the lane with the main road, clipping its back and sending it pirouetting on its smoking tires before coming to a violent stop in a sewer ditch.
He slowed down at the mouth of the lane, picked Jabba up, and motored on, his neurons teeming with life. He had Rydell, which was good, and Matt was still alive, which was even better.
Chapter 57
Washington, D.C.
Too bad, Keenan Drucker thought. He liked Rydell. The man was a great asset, in any circumstance. And none of this would’ve happened without him. The term visionary was bandied about a lot, but in Rydell’s case, he truly was such.
Drucker’s mind traveled back to how it had all started.
Davos, Switzerland.
The two-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-table black tie dinner. The Aberdeen Angus beef and pink champagne jelly. Yet another gathering of the planet’s rich and famous, the powerful elite who aspired to solve the world’s big crises. Insecure egotists and well-meaning philanthropists, getting together not just to assuage their guilt by handing over some money to help a thousand or two poorer souls, but hoping to trigger change that could save the lives of millions.
Rydell and Drucker had sat together, late into the night, going over the growing mountain of data on global warming. Fourteen thousand new cars a day hitting the road in China. The booming industries there and in India building new coal-fired electricity plants every week. The developed world embracing cheap, coal-burning energy more than ever. Congress giving the oil and gas companies back home one tax break after another. The energy companies’ disinformation campaigns helping people duck the issue and avoid making hard choices. Every new study confirming that if things looked bad, they were actually far worse.
They were both in agreement: The planet was hurtling toward the point of no return. We were living a defining moment, the defining moment for our continued existence on this planet, and we were ignoring it.
The question was, what to do about it.
Throughout, Drucker couldn’t escape the feeling that Rydell was testing him, sounding him out. Seeing how far he’d go.
Drucker smiled inwardly as he remembered how Rydell had finally let it out.
Drucker had said, “All this,” gesturing at the lavish setting around them, “it’s something, but it won’t change much. Governments, big business . . . no one wants to upset the apple cart. Voters and share options, they’re the only things that matter. Growth. People don’t really want change, especially not if it costs something. The price of oil has quadrupled so far this century, and nothing’s changed. No one cares. The ‘don’t worry, be happy, it’s all a load of crap’ message the fuel lobby keeps pumping out—deep down, that’s what everyone wants to hear. It’s heaven-sent.”
“Maybe heaven should send them a different message,” Rydell had replied, a knowing—and visionary—blaze in his eye.
The rest had followed on from that.
At first, it had seemed Rydell was talking theory. But the theoretical soon became the possible. The possible became the doable. And when that happened, everything changed.
As far as Drucker was concerned, a whole host of possible uses were on the table. What Rydell and his people had come up with could be used as a weapon that could tackle any number of threats in different, and potentially spectacularly effective, ways. Problem was, Rydell wouldn’t be open to that. As far as he was concerned, there was only one major threat facing us.
Drucker disagreed.
There were others. Threats that were far more immediate, far more dangerous. Threats that required more immediate attention. For although Drucker was a concerned citizen of the world, he was, more than anything, a patriot.