“I’m doing my job, Al. Best I can. Under the worst conditions any American general has ever experienced.”
Slowly, as if his arm itself was unwilling, Al raised his hand and saluted. “Yes, Sir,” he said.
“Okay, I have an appointment with the president. I want you in attendance, Al.”
That surprised him so much he almost gagged. He’d seen himself as being on the way to Diego Garcia for a tour managing the fuel dump. As if there still was a Diego Garcia, let alone a base, let alone fuel.
Face time with the president was a gift. Normally, he couldn’t go on his own unless called, and Wade was not in the mood for squash, although there was a good court down here, he’d looked it over when they first came in and this was all exciting and interesting, and they were gonna nuke those suckers to glowing dust balls and go back home in triumph.
As they went along the hall together, Tom put a hand on Al’s shoulder. “We’re not friends.”
“No.”
“But we need to put our personal battle on hold. We’ve got warfighting to do, and we are in trouble. You’re about to hear a report that is going to disturb you. Maybe also give you a ray of hope. But I want you to maintain strict military discipline in there. He will ask for your opinion. It will mirror mine.”
“Yes, Sir.” He realized that this was how it had to be. He just hoped to God that Tom was right. That business about congregating still sounded wrong. It sounded like intentional sabotage.
They went through the outer office. No pretty furniture here, this place was constructed for work and work only. If the president was here, a catastrophe was unfolding. Communications equipment dominated. Secret Service agents with machine guns lined the halls, young men with stricken eyes, all watching the generals pass. Angry, bitter eyes. Mostly, the families of these people lived in places like Arlington and Bethesda, and those communities had been worked for a full week, all of them, and the fleeing lines of cars had been worked out on the interstates.
Whoever was doing this knew exactly how to proceed. If you break the enemy’s organization, you neutralize his warfighting capacity even before he’s aimed a weapon. Of course, down here there was no question of the light being a threat, but this was obviously a special place.
There were numerous corporate and private bunkers as well, he knew, not to mention government facilities all over the planet, but with all satellites fried and most land-based switching stations so loaded with atmospherics that they’d shut down, there was little communication except by messenger—and they could only run during daylight hours.
They entered the presidential office, and Al was horrified at what he saw. The president looked like he’d lost fifty pounds. His eyes were dark, brooding shadows. Trapped, animal eyes.
He looked mean, in the same way a struggling cur looks mean when you’re trying to stuff it into a cage and be done with it.
He raised his head, and at once the misery in the face was replaced by a beggar’s grin. Now he was a used car salesman who’d spun his last lie. “Sorry,” he said, gesturing at papers on his desk. “Signing death warrants. Line of duty desertions, hundreds of them.”
“You’re ordering executions, sir?”
“Do me a favor, Al. Call me Jimmy. You guys. Should I, you think? Yeah, it’s total bullshit, isn’t it. They came from CIA, not DoD. There is no DoD, of course. And Bo Waldo’s gone. This shit’s from staffers.” He crumpled one up. “Kids like to kill.”
“They’re operating out of a unit in Maryland,” Tom said. “Above-ground, so it won’t matter much longer, be my guess—Jesus, what was that?”
The president looked up, they all looked up. There had been a sound coming out of the ceiling, a low noise, loud enough, though, to drown conversation.
“Call the contractor,” the president said, acid in his voice. “Try flushing my toilet sometime, you want a hell of a damned surprise.” He sighed. “I wish I knew where my wife and kids were. Do you fellas know where your families are?”
“I’ve been divorced, Jimmy—oh, long time,” Al said. Sissy had packed it in when they were still base bums, shuffling around the world. He’d never bothered to remarry. The air force was his wife, his kids, his mistress, all that and more. As far as his rocks were concerned, he got them off the way monks did.
“My wife is whereabouts unknown,” Tom said.
They’d worked together a long time for Al not to know that Tom was married. But it had never come up. Come to think of it, they’d never even shared a round of golf together, or a game of squash, or had a drink. Then again, maybe Tom didn’t drink. Addicts don’t, do they?
The sound came again, and this time it was in the wall-moving down from above.
The president stood up. “Is that normal?”
“It’s the plumbing,” Tom said. “What we need to talk about is I want to reach out to this man, Martin Winters. I want to reach out to other people with knowledge of the deep past. I have a list, Graham Hancock, William Henry, Laurence Gardner, John Jenkins—all leading experts who used to be considered wrong. I want them all located.”
The president went to the wall, felt it. “There’s heat,” he said. “That should not be.”
“Call security,” Al said.
Tom gave him a look that said he had just overstepped his bounds. Don’t speak unless spoken to.
“I have come to believe that what’s happening has to do with the deep past,” Tom continued.
“That’s not news,” the president snapped. “Tell me something I can use, please! And don’t ask me for permission to convene meetings. I don’t care who the hell you talk to, just save our asses, here, Tom! For God’s sake, Homeland Security—what’s left of it—tells me we’re losing a half a million people a night just in this country. Wanderers—well, they aren’t wandering. They’re all heading to three points: northern Nevada, central Nebraska, and northern Indiana. Now, why? You might ask, right, Al?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir…The FBI is in total meltdown, so that leaves military intelligence. So, here’s my question to you fellas, do you have any assets working?”
“We’ve got assets,” Al said.
“Oh, good. Then reach out and get me reports.” He laughed a little. The beaten—dog look returned—beaten dog turned mean. “Or just tell them to fucking nuke themselves. I mean, why wait around? Wandering’s hard on the tootsies, I hear.” He took a fabulous silver-clad forty-five automatic out of a desk drawer. Laid it on the desk. “Can you guys imagine what it is like to be a pregnant woman now? Out there?” He sucked air through bared teeth. His color had deepened so much that Al thought he might be having a coronary. “My God, but it was all so very, very beautiful. And how odd that we didn’t know it. All that yelling, all that scheming, the money, my dear heaven, the money—and what was it, in the end? I have come to this: a single child seeing one single leaf that has turned in the fine autumn air means more than all of that. A child clapping because the leaf is red and it was green.”
“Mr. President—”
“Of course I’ve gone mad, Tom. For God’s sakes, in this situation, madness is sanity. Millie, where are you, baby, are you out there walking the dark path with all the others? Oh, Millie. Forty-four years she walked beside me, fellas. Forty-four years. She gave it all. Everything she had to give. And I can’t even think about Mark. Somewhere, I trust. My poor boy.” He picked up the gun. “Gentlemen, would you like to join me in a bite of bullet?”
“Mr. President!”
“Al, you know what? You are the nicest man I have ever known.” He laughed. “That’s why I gave shitheel here your job. He can do it, he’s a real bastard. I’m sorry, Al, but you came along at the burnt-out end of the age. No more room for good men.” He sighed. “’What rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem…’ I had a great-uncle who knew Yeats. Met him by simply going up to his door in Dublin and knocking. Oh, my God, the voice of the man! The voice of Yeats!” He wept, and Al almost wept with him.
There came, then, a sort of chuckling sound. It was really a very strange sound, so strange that Al knew at once that it was no noise ever heard on this earth before—at least, not in this cycle of history.
The president’s head snapped to the left. He stared at the wall. Then he turned back, his eyes liquid with pleading. “Why?”
He was pleading with Tom. But Tom didn’t need to be pleaded with, he was an underling.
Something then happened that must have looked to Al like the arrival of the Spaniards on their horses must
