“We were too busy trying to destroy it. I didn’t notice the colors either. I think they may be poisonous, but for obvious reasons I haven’t personally checked.”
Yaya laughed nervously and repeated, “Haven’t personally checked.”
Holmes gave him a hoary eye. “You gonna be all right, SEAL?”
The Egyptian-American’s wide, expressive eyes flashed as he nodded.
“Okay, then hold still.” Holmes held the spike out in front of Yaya until it was only a few inches away.
Holmes brought the spike back and then held it out to Ruiz.
“What’s the big deal, Yaya? The homunculi were far more dangerous than this.”
“Were they?” he asked, transfixed by the spike. “Kind of hard to take them seriously when they looked like buffed-out action figures.”
“Fucking new guy,” Ruiz said, as if it were the saddest thing to say in the world.
“Okay, Mr. Wizard,” Holmes said, holding out the tweezers. “You get to test your own theory.”
Ruiz was surprised that Holmes would let him take the lead like this. He grabbed the metal tweezers as if they held a vial of nitroglycerin.
As soon as Holmes let go, he leaned back and put his hands behind his head. He took on the face of a curious scientist about to watch an experiment.
Walker noticed this and narrowed his eyes. “What do you think is going to happen?”
“You tell me,” Holmes countered. “Feel anything?”
“I felt something as soon as you brought out the box.”
“Through the metal? Interesting. What does it feel like now?”
“You know how your feet tingle after you’ve been sitting Indian style for a long time? My whole body feels like that.”
“What about now?” Ruiz asked as he quickly brought the spine within a foot of Walker.
The result was instantaneous.
Walker’s entire body went rigid. His eyes popped to what seemed like twice their size. His teeth snapped together and began to grind like a meth addict’s in the middle of the second day of a rock.
Holmes leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “How are you feeling right now?”
Walker grunted as he tried to get his face under control. He brought a hand up but it was shaking too violently to be of any use. He dropped it back to his lap, where it flopped like a dying fish.
“Does it hurt?” Yaya asked.
“Nuh—no.” He managed to close both of his hands. They were now vibrating fists.
“Can you stand? Could you operate a weapon?” Holmes asked, frowning.
Walker couldn’t respond. Instead, he merely stared back at Holmes, helplessness and fear shining from his wobbling eyes.
“Enough.” Holmes reached out and took the spine back from Ruiz. He placed it in the box, closed and locked the lid, then took it into his room.
Walker sat back gasping. “Oh, my God.” He rolled his eyes at Ruiz. “That was way stronger than the Stretch Armstrongs.”
“Dude,” Yaya said, standing up and snapping his towel. “That was badass! Can we do it again?”
“Not if you want to live.”
Holmes came back out of his room talking on the cell phone. A moment later he snapped it shut. “NRO’s going to conduct their overflight in twenty-five minutes. We’re going over to SPG to see it live. Grab your shit and let’s go.”
38
SPG OFFICES. MORNING.
Both human and canine members of SEAL Team 666 climbed into the van. Fifteen minutes later, they were strolling into the offices of SPG. Past the reception area, they continued into the SCIF, where access was made through a safelike door. The SCIF, or Sensitive Controlled Information Facility, was especially suited for the transmission, reception, and creation of information at the top-secret level and beyond. Besides its offices, the centerpiece of the SCIF was the Strategic Information Center. A Navy lieutenant passed them through, not even giving Hoover a second glance. With a pair of floor-to-ceiling flatscreen monitors as well as a battery of computers, this was the place where SPG could render assistance to the special-operations community when necessary.
Watching the men and women working at their stations, Walker felt certain this was the location from which SPG had assisted them when they’d been on the ship. He’d known the SIC was in the building because Jen had spoken of it, but until now he’d never seen it with his own eyes.
And there she was.
She walked swiftly into the room. Dressed in a business suit with her hair pulled tight, it seemed hard to believe they’d lain together in her bed just a few hours ago. She met Holmes and shook his hand. When she saw Walker, toward the back of the group, she nodded, but smiled only slightly.
He mimicked her greeting.
“We’ll be up in two minutes,” she said. “We’ve already established coms with NRO command. We’ve sent them access to our secure node and are just waiting for the handshake.”
“Handshake complete,” said one of the men working at the computers in the room.
The image on the monitors scrambled and pixellated for twenty seconds as the information protocols were passed and synced between SPG and NRO. Then the image slid into focus. Both screens showed the subcontinent of India. To its east lay Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Myanmar. The screen to the left remained fixed on this image, while the screen to the right began to focus down.
Dropping like the gaze of an intrusive god, their view went from one hundred miles to one mile in a single moment, then focused further until they were passing over land. Trees covered squalor and farms, barely visible beneath the heavy canopy. They passed from forest to pasture, then from pasture to ocean.
“Coming to the port,” came a man’s voice.
“Match left and right screens,” Jen commanded.
The screens were again synced to the close-up.
“On my mark, capture screen at max resolution.”
Boats began to appear in the view on the flat gray water. Warehouses and cranes passed in and out of view as the water returned.
Walker wondered if they might be too late. Had their delay put them all at risk? If the ships had sailed in the last twenty-four to forty-eight hours, they’d have to depend on their global array of subsurface tracking buoys to detect them. But that meant that the ships had to pass near the buoys. And although they were strategically placed in water bodies such as the Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden, and along the U.S. coastline, they were an imperfect solution to a possible attack.
Suddenly a fleet of cargo ships filled the screen.
“Begin mark. Capture.”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Ruiz asked. “Those are the ships we’re after.”
As if to answer his question, one of the SIC personnel said, “Hull numbers and names match manifest.”
Ruiz grinned as he turned to Walker. “Think we’re going to see them get blown to bits?”
Walker wasn’t sure. He was too busy watching Laws and Holmes, who were conferring quietly with each other.
Then the image was back to canopy.
“Please pass to NRO Command our regards. Capture and separate digitals of each of those ships so we can examine them.” Jen turned to Holmes. “Give me a few moments, and I’ll put together a targeting set.”
“No need,” Holmes said. “How soon can we get another pass?”
Jen looked taken aback. “You don’t want to see the images?”
“We’d like to see them. There might be some intel that can help, but the ships are empty,” Laws said, pointing at the screen. “Either the crates are loaded on different ships, or they have yet to be loaded. Either way, we’re back to square one.”
