bulletproof vest. He had a riot helmet dangling from one hand and a twelve-gauge Remington pump-action shotgun slung over the other shoulder. A bandolier held a mixed assortment of CS (tear gas) shells and solid slugs for the shotgun.
“What has these people so revved up?” Smith asked. “President Castilla and the media aren't due here until the day after tomorrow. Why all the outrage now?”
“Somebody offed a couple of Lazarus Movement-types last night,” Diaz said. “The Santa Fe PD found two bodies stuffed into a Dumpster. Down behind that big outlet mall on Cerrillos Road. One was stabbed, and the other had a broken neck.”
Smith whistled softly. “Damn.”
“No kidding.” The Army veteran hawked and spat. “And those fruitcakes over there are blaming us.”
Smith turned to look more closely at him. “Oh?”
'Apparently the dead guys were planning to cut through our fence last
night,“ Diaz explained. ”For some big act of civil-fricking-disobedience. Naturally the radicals claim we must have caught the two of them and slaughtered 'em. Which is all bullshit, of course….'
“Of course,” Smith agreed absently. He ran his eyes over the stretch of chain-link fence in sight. It seemed perfectly intact. “But they're still dead, and you're the designated bad guys, right?”
“Hell, Colonel,” the ex-Ranger noncom said. He sounded almost aggrieved. “If I knocked off a couple of punk-ass, eco-freak infiltrators, do you think I'd be stupid enough to just dump them in some trash bin behind a goddamned shopping mall?”
Smith shook his head. He could not stop a quick grin from flashing across his face. “No, Staff Sergeant Diaz. I really do not believe you would be that stupid.”
“Damned straight.”
“Which still leaves me wondering, who was that stupid?”
Ravi Parikh kept his attention focused closely on the highly magnified image on his monitor. The semiconducting sphere he was looking at seemed well within its design specs. He zoomed in even closer, scanning the front half of the nanophage. “I cannot find a problem with this sensor array, Phil,” he told Brinker. “Everything is just where it should be.”
Brinker nodded wearily. “Which makes ninety-nine out of the last hundred.” He rubbed at his eyes. “And the one flawed build we've found so far didn't form a sensor array at all, which means the onboard power source would never have gone active.”
Parikh frowned thoughtfully. “That is a nonfatal error.”
“Yeah, for the host, at least.” Brinker stared into the monitor gloomily. “But whatever ran wild in Mouse Five was pretty damned fatal.” He fought off a yawn. “Man, Ravi, this gig is like looking for a single needle in a haystack the size of Jupiter.”
“Perhaps we will get lucky?” Parikh suggested.
“Yeah, well, we've got… oh, say… forty-seven hours and thirty-two minutes to do it in.”
Brinker swiveled around in his chair. Not far away stood the head of the Secret Service team assigned to secure their lab ahead of the president's visit. He was a big man, well over six-foot-six and probably weighing 250 pounds, most of it in muscle. Right now he was busy watching two members of his unit carefully place what they called “anti-bugging” and “hazard detection” devices at various points in the lab.
The scientist snapped his fingers, trying to remember the agent's name. Fitzgerald? O'Connor? Something Irish anyhow. “Uh, Agent Kennedy?”
The tall auburn-haired man turned his head. “The name is O'Neill, Dr. Brinker.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” Brinker shrugged. “Well, I just wanted to thank you again for letting Ravi and me stay here while your guys do their stuff.”
O'Neill smiled back. The smile did not reach his bright green eyes. “No thanks are necessary, Dr. Brinker. None at all.”
“LET LAZARUS LEAD! NO TO DEATH! NO TO NANOTECH! LET LAZARUS LEAD!”
Malachi MacNamara stood close to the speakers' platform, near the very heart of the angry, shouting throng. Like those around him, he rhythmically jabbed his fist in the air in rage. Like those around him, he joined each deafening chant. But all the while his pale blue eyes were busy scanning the crowd.
Now Lazarus Movement volunteers were moving through the mass of protesters, handing out new signs and posters. Eager hands grabbed at them. MacNamara pushed and shoved his way through the jostling, agitated mob to get one for himself. It carried a much-enlarged and hurriedly color-copied photo of Paolo Ponti and Audrey Karavites — a picture that must have been taken very recently indeed, because they stood silhouetted against the white peaks of the Sangre de Crista Mountains. Scrawled above their young, smiling faces in bold red letters were the words: THEY WERE MURDERED! BUT LAZARUS LIVES!
Still chanting, the pale-eyed man nodded to himself. Clever, he thought coldly. Quite clever.
“Jesus Christ, Colonel,” Diaz murmured, listening to the sound of raw hatred spreading through the mob outside. “It's like feeding time at the goddamned zoo!”
Smith nodded, tight-lipped. For a moment he wished he was armed. Then he shook the thought away. If things turned ugly, fifteen 9mm rounds in a Beretta clip were not going to save his life. Nor had he joined the U.S. Army to shoot unarmed rioters.
The sight of flashing lights out on the access road attracted his attention. A small convoy of black SUVs and sedans was moving slowly up the access road, steadily forcing its way through the swelling crowds. Even at this distance, Jon could see angry fists being shaken at the vehicles. He looked over at Diaz. “You expecting reinforcements, Frank?”
The security guard shook his head. “Not really. Hell, barring the National Guard, we've already got every unit available within fifty miles.” He peered closely at the oncoming vehicles. The lead car had just pulled up outside the gate. “And that sure ain't the National Guard out there.”
The Army veteran's tactical radio squawked suddenly, loud enough for Smith to hear it.
“Sarge?” a voice said. “This is Battaglia, at the gate.”
“Go ahead,” Diaz snapped. “Make your report.”
“I've got some more Feds here. But I think there's something really-screwy going on….”
“Like what?”
“Well, like these guys say they're the Secret Service advance team. The only one,” the other guard stammered. 'And there's a Special Agent
O'Neill down here who's madder than spit because I won't open the gate for him.'
Diaz lowered his radio slowly. He stared at Smith in utter confusion. “Two Secret Service teams? How the hell can there be two goddamned Secret Service teams?”
A shiver ran down Jon's spine. “There can't.”
He fumbled through the inner pocket of his leather jacket and tugged out his cell phone. It was a special model, and all transmissions to and from the phone were highly encrypted. He punched a single button, triggering an auto-dial emergency sequence.
The phone on the other end rang once — just once. “Klein here,” a quiet voice said calmly. The voice belonged to Nathaniel Frederick Klein, the reclusive head of Covert-One. “What can I do for you, Jon?”
“Can your people patch into the Secret Service's internal communications system?” Smith demanded.
There was a brief pause. “Yes,” Klein replied. “We can.”
“Then do it now!” Smith said urgently. “I need to know the exact location of the presidential advance team for the Teller Institute!”
“Wait one.”
Smith cradled the phone between his shoulder and his ear, temporar-ilv freeing both of his hands. He looked at Frank Diaz, who was watching him with a strange expression of disbelief. “Did your boss give that first Secret Service unit your tactical radio frequencies?”
“Yeah. Naturally.”
“Well, then, Staff Sergeant,” Smith said coolly, “I'm going to need a weapon.”
