himself up onto the back running board, hanging on, barely, as it accelerated away.
Wind whipped at his hair and threatened to knock him off his perch, but he clung tightly to the round metal bar and pulled himself as close as possible to the body of the truck.
There was no traffic behind him, for which he was grateful, as it might be a bit hard to explain what he was doing there if an alert motorist noticed him.
The traffic was light heading back along Dalecarlia Parkway to Friendship Village, and the trip passed without incident.
He stepped off the back of the truck at the first intersection they came to in the town center, seeing the lights of a taxi stand at the end of the street.
He heard sirens now, not fire but police sirens, only a few blocks away, without doubt sounding for him. Brewer must have found a way to raise the alarm.
Sam strolled casually along to the taxi stand, opening the door and sliding into the backseat of the first cab at the stand.
“Where to, guv’nor?” the driver asked, sounding just like a London cabbie, or at least what Sam’s impression of a London cabbie was like from TV shows and movies. He had a passing feeling that he had seen this driver before, but that was surely impossible.
“The train station,” Sam said calmly. He didn’t want to sound like a prisoner on the run, even if he was one.
“Bethesda or Silver Spring?” the driver asked. “Bethesda is closer, but the express goes through Silver Spring.”
“Bethesda,” Sam answered. He’d checked that out too. The express didn’t run this late at night, but Bethesda was on the red line, and he could catch a train to Union Station. From there he could disappear anywhere he wanted.
“Rightio, Bethesda it is, then, guv,” the driver said, turning around to face him.
He was surprisingly young for a cabdriver, Sam thought. No more than eighteen and completely bald under a peaked cap. His face was long and thin, but there was a glint of a chuckle in his eyes. Sam had never seen him before in his life, and yet …
Then he got it. It was the voice. The accent, it was unmistakable.
The driver grinned, a slightly macabre, almost demonic, smile, even without the face paint. He tilted back his cap, revealing the tattoo of a biohazard symbol on his forehead.
“Skullface!” Sam cried out, and the driver laughed.
“Took your bleedin’ time gettin’ out, ya muppet,” he said. “Another day an’ we’d have had to send you home.”
REVELATIONS
12 | SILICON VALLEY
“You’re Sam Wilson?”
The man in front of Sam was tall, his back straight, his head erect. Ex-military, Sam thought. A scar ran sideways across his face, crossing just below the bridge of his nose.
“Yes. Yes, sir,” Sam managed, trying not to stare at the scar.
“Come with me, son.”
Sam stood up from the chair in the waiting area and tried to keep up with the man as he made quick yards down a long, featureless corridor.
A woman was waiting for the man at the end of the corridor, by the open door to an office. She was short and plump and less than five feet tall, but with a huge frizz of orange hair that added another six inches. She glanced briefly at Sam before handing the man a folder.
It was only for a half second, but in that time he felt as though he had been x-rayed. That her small, black eyes had burned their way through to his soul.
The tall man opened the folder, reviewing its contents.
“How good is the intel?” he asked the woman.
“As good as it gets,” she said. “We just don’t know when. It could be this afternoon, or it might not be for months.”
The man nodded and returned the folder. “Okay. We’ll raise the threat level. Go to lockdown.”
“I’ll tell the team,” the woman said, glancing again at Sam.
“Thanks. I’ll be along shortly.”
The woman disappeared back along the corridor with the folder as Sam followed the man into the office.
“Sit down, Mr. Wilson,” he said, taking a seat behind a large desk.
Sam sat on a chair on the other side. A photo of the man in a marine uniform sat on a bookshelf to his right, confirming the military background. The man in the photo had no scar, though.
“My name is John Jaggard. Welcome to Homeland Security,” the man said.
“CDD?” Sam ventured, and Jaggard nodded.
“I don’t quite understand why I’m here,” Sam said carefully. “Am I in trouble?”
“You should be,” Jaggard said, punching something on his keyboard that brought up Sam’s file on a screen they could both see. He handed Sam a thick sheaf of papers. “But as it happens, we need people with your skills. We want you to work for us.”
“Work for you?”
“That’s what I said.” Jaggard smiled. The scar echoed the smile. Sam thought back to the whirlwind of the last few weeks and shook his head, confused.
“But the White House? Neoh@ck Con?”
“There is no Neoh@ck Con,” Jaggard said. “Think of it as a job application.”
“And Recton Hall?”
“The job interview.”
Sam was still having trouble comprehending it all. “What’s this?” he asked, holding up the sheaf of papers.
“It’s a job offer,” Jaggard said, although he clearly thought that was obvious. “You can take it or leave it.”
“I’m only seventeen,” Sam said, thinking they must already know that.
“Sam”—Jaggard looked at him appraisingly—“everybody at that meeting in the old warehouse was given the same information. Hack into the White House for the Neoh@ck Convention. You want to know how many of them got through?”
Sam shrugged.
“Just you, Sam.”
Sam looked again at the figure on the bottom line of the contract. It seemed extraordinarily generous for an annual salary. Almost too high, in fact.
“What does that work out to be per month?” he wondered out loud, trying to do the math. His brain seemed to be running in slow motion.
“That
Sam gasped.
“You can take it or leave it,” the man said again.
He didn’t expand on that, but Sam had the strong sense that if he left it, that would mean a return to Recton.
“If you take it,” Jaggard continued, “you’re on probation for three months. If you survive the probation”—he’d said “survive,” Sam noted, not “pass” or “succeed”—“then that figure doubles.”
