“Link’s up, General. We got comms.”
“Get me General Waddell. Tell the operator this is a flash precedence call.” Eight minutes.
Gwen sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed her face with her hands.
Jessamine settled into the same seat Stafford had occupied. There were dried tear tracks on her cheeks and her hands were trembling. She sat there with her eyes closed, completely withdrawn. For want of something to do, Stafford picked up the coffeepot, sniffed it, and decided to pour the contents down the sink.
“Why on earth would they shoot the back door?” Gwen wondered aloud.
“Somebody probably saw their own reflection. Those suits make them look luce alien storm troopers, but in reality, those are probably nineteen-year-olds. My guess is that they were pretty scared.”
She nodded wordlessly and glanced over at the girl, who appeared to have gone to sleep in the chair. Stafford went down to Gwen’s end of the table and slipped into the chair next to her. He spoke quietly. “I don’t suppose I’m ever going to know what happened in here, am I?” “Do you really want to, Dave?’ she said, giving him a warm, sad smile.
He looked down at the table. “My investigator’s brain wants to know,” he said. “The rest of me is yelling to leave it alone. I figured you brought her in to do what she did in the airport. He was certainly in an agitated state. I thought he would pass out again, and then I could get his gun. Something like that.” He looked over at her. “But he was ready for that. He knew what she’d done in the airport. He wasn’t just agitated; he was enraged. Crazy. Out of Jus damn head. He challenged her. And yet she melted him down.” He looked over at the girl. “That’s not just a passive capability, Gwen,” he said softly. “That’s a serious power.”
But Gwen was shaking her head. She took his hand. “No, I don’t think that’s what happened at all, Dave. I
think he melted down, but not because of some special power on her part.
He was running a high fever: All you had to do was look at him. I think he worked himself up into having a stroke. Everything he tried had gone wrong. He was out of his head, just like you said. I predict they’ll find a cerebrovascular accident of some kind, assuming he survives the infection. This wasn’t Jess. Look at her. She was much too frightened.”
He leaned back in his chair, not knowing what to say. As he remembered it, the only one in the room who had been frightened had been him. A sudden yawn ambushed him as the adrenaline began to subside. His yawn set off one from Gwen. “I guess,” he said. “Maybe now we’ll have some peace. They’ve got their damned cylinder back.” “Actually,” they don’t,” she said, glancing at the refrigerator and the mess on the floor.”;
“Oh. Right. They’ll be back.”
Gwen got up and walked over to the refrigerator. She opened the freezer compartment and ran her hand down the length of the cylinder, which now had a faint covering of frost on it. “So much destruction over just one package.”
“Nothing compared to what that package could do.”
“Not anymore, I think,” she said, closing the freezer door. “Why did they just run out?”
Stafford tried to think of an answer to that, but his mind was still grappling with what had happened to Carson.
“What will happen now?” Gwen asked.
“The Pentagon and the Justice Department will point fingers at each other behind closed doors until it threatens to become public,” he said.
“Then they’ll get scared and bury it. I don’t know what they’ll do to Carson. How on earth did you know to come back?”
“Word came” was all she said. “What will happen to you? After what Carson said, that FBI man practically accused you of being part of this.”
“I think he’ll get over it, especially once the big boys stop shouting long enough to think it through. I’ve already resigned. To link me to it would mean opening the whole thing back up. The only thing I’m very, very sorry about is John Lee.” She nodded. “I know,” she said, sighing.
“I haven’t absorbed that, I’m afraid,…”
“You saw that guy. He was a mess. I can’t imagine how in the hell he could get the drop on John Lee, shape he was in.”.
“John Lee probably thought the same thing,” she said. “And forgot to pay attention.”
Just then there was the roaring, clattering sound of two military helicopters battering the morning air overhead. They both jumped in their chairs, and Jessamine literally jumped out of her chair, her knuckles in her mouth.
“Now what the hell!” Stafford exclaimed, and he ran out the front door.
Two Warthogs and one Cobra gunship helicopter were arcing in formation down the valley toward Graniteville. A second Cobra helicopter executed a wide, slow circle over the farm, while a third helicopter, a Blackhawk configured a for passengers, set up for an approach on the field next door, where the Army Suburbans were parked. The Cobra looked like some giant prehistoric insect, with glistening Perspex eyes and claws of armament racks dangling beneath it. Loaded armament racks, he realized.
That’s why the Army guys had bailed out.
Stafford walked over to the field as the Balckhawk touched down in a cloud of dust and a barrage of rotor noise. The soldiers were still partially dressed out in their MOPP gear, and one of them picked up his Armalite as Stafford approached. Stafford ignored him and headed for General Carrothers. By the time he got near the helicopter, one of the pilots was out on the ground and handing over his flight helmet and harness to the Army captain, who was standing just outside the radius of spinning blades. One of the Suburbans turned around and headed back over toward the house.
Stafford signaled the general that he wanted to talk. Carrothers pointed away from the helo and they walked together down the field until they could hear each other without shouting.
“We all done here?” Stafford asked.
“I think so, Mr. Stafford,” Carrothers replied. There was a hint of a frosty smile on his face. “Personally and professionally, in all likelihood.”
Stafford smiled back, knowing exactly what Carrothers meant.
“Those soldiers are going in to retrieve the cylinder,”’ Carrothers said. “It’s still intact, I take it?”
“Yes, sir. It’s in the freezer.”
Carrothers nodded. “The captain is going to escort it to Anniston.”
“Won’t it just heat up again?”
“They’re going to fly at max altitude and keep the windows open.”
Stafford had visions of the captain flying in the helicopter with the cylinder held out the window. Carrothers must have read his mind, because he just shrugged.
“What will you do with Carson?” Stafford asked. He could just see Carson’s slumped silhouette in the backseat of one of the Suburbans, with a soldier standing beside each back window. The medic was sitting in the backseat with him, and he had an IV running.
“For starters, they’ll put him in a rubber room up in Washington. St. Elizabeth’s probably.” Carrothers looked at his watch. “What did you want, Mr. Stafford?”
“I think you and I need to make a deal, General,” Stafford said. “Each of us knows something the other would rather keep secret, don’t you think?”
Carrothers eyed him and nodded. “What do you propose?”
“You know I had nothing to do with Carson’s little scheme, right?”
“That’s my take, yes.”
“Okay. I may or may not need some support in that area later on. But more importantly, I want nothing to Surface about the girl, Jessamine.
Best I can tell, Carson suffered a stroke in there, that’s all. No psychic probes, no mental telepathy or anything like that. In return for those two concessions, I’ll forget everything I know about this incident. And I mean everything. Under oath, if necessary.”