“Look, let’s not argue about me.”
“I want to argue about you! This is not good enough!”
“Hold off!”
“You hold off! And you listen. Because this is urgent. Our whole damn program is in jeopardy. The freedom of the human species!”
“Because somebody didn’t do their job,” Alex murmured.
“Hold off, all of you,” Charles said softly. “Go on, Mike.”
“My expectation is that they’re going to install something in him that links him to their collective.”
“An implant does not a demon make.”
“In this case, it does. This child’s intelligence will enable him to use vastly more information than an average human being can.”
Silence fell. He watched each face as each man explored the implications of this.
“Gentlemen,” Mike said, “if this child survives, mankind survives. When the grays show up in 2012, dinner is served.”
“Now,” Tim Greenfield asked in his soft Georgia drawl, “we are absolutely sure that their coming is bad for us?”
“You cannot seriously entertain a question where we can’t know the answer until it’s too late. Good or bad, we can’t take the risk!”
“Why not approach the child, get him on our side?” Todd asked.
“When we approach him, we approach the grays,” Mike said acidly.
“So, do the child, Mike,” Charles said. “Shouldn’t be hard, not for a pro like you.”
“I might remind all of you that every life I took because of this damned thing, I took under orders.”
“I repeat, do the child.”
“Which is why I’m here.”
Charles slammed his hand down on the table. “You don’t need our permission! For God’s sake, Mike, this meeting is a waste of time. Do the damned child!”
“Charles, Goddamnit, will you please give me a chance to talk!”
Charles glared at him.
Mike continued. “My problem is that the grays are not alone in protecting this child. They have the help of some people within our own organization who appear to have come under mind control.” He took his iPod out of his briefcase, plugged in its tiny speaker, and played for them the conversation that had taken place on Lost Angel Road.
“It’s pitiful,” Henry said. “Those are good men, all of them.”
“The hard part is,” Mike said, “I can see where their choice is coming from. There’s a lot of life going to be lost doing it our way. A lot of life.”
“You’ve made no headway finding this child, I presume.”
“No, Henry, I have a description, obtained from Adam this morning. And I will undoubtedly find a child who fits it on Oak Road. And kill the wrong child.”
Todd said, “Unless they’ve given you a description of the right child in hope that you’ll assume that it must be the wrong one.”
“Kill all the children,” Henry said. “And what in the world are we going to do with Lewis and Rob and Dr. Simpson?”
“Tell you what,” Tim Greenfield said, “let’s suck them up in the terrorist thing and ship them to Saudi Arabia. That’ll do it.”
“It will also bring in the CIA, AFOSI, and the FBI, not to mention the Saudis. We need a plane crash, an auto accident, a fatal robbery attempt, a nice heart attack, stuff like that,” Charles said. “Take a year doing them. There’s no hurry.” He looked toward Mike. “The sort of thing you’re expert at.”
“The child is our urgent problem, and please let me repeat: the grays are protecting him—”
“—and so are our friends from Lost Angel Road, don’t forget that, Mike.”
Tim said, “Gentlemen—excuse me, Charles, but I think you’re panicking, here. We have years to deal with this child, and—”
“We do not have years,” Mike said. “Please get rid of that misconception.”
“I’m sorry, Mike, but we have until 2012.”
“WE DO NOT! GODDAMNIT! Let me tell you how this will work. The second they possess that kid or parasitize him or however you’d like to describe it, he is going to become invulnerable.”
“Oh, come on!”
“I have spent the last fifteen years of my career sparring with Bob and Adam, and I am warning you, if we let that kid go
Alex said, “Let’s put a nuke on the damn town. Pick up the phone and call the president.”
“I can’t imagine him agreeing to that,” Charles said. “In any case, we need to keep this in-house if at all possible.”
“Which gets me to my next question,” Henry Vorona said. “Mike, you have a big rep. Given that you’ve been sitting at the bottom of a hole for fifteen years, may I know why we should believe you’re qualified to go operational again?”
Charles said, “Henry, you surprise me. Mike is my choice and that ought to be enough. But if it’s not, let me lay things out. Mike didn’t always spend his days licking the heinies of those damn gray bastards down in that hole. He did a lot of hard, sad, wet work in the early days.”
“Okay, I get it.”
“No! You’re questioning my authority, Henry. You’ve done it before and you’ll do it again. That’s fine. You want to run the show. Very ambitious. Maybe, if they vote me out and vote you in, you’ll do okay.” He looked around the table. “Do we want a vote of confidence? Gentlemen?”
No hand was raised.
He went on. “Suffice to say that Mike here had the unfortunate need, back some years ago, to become a master of untraceable murder. He’s got quite a number of notches in his little cap pistol, am I right, Mike?”
“I’ve done a few,” he muttered.
“Using everything from a chemical that induces cancer to a mind-control technique that makes people kill themselves. And he’s never even come close to being caught.”
Vorona smiled at Mike. “Then I’m relieved,” the CIA representative said. “We can count on you.”
Todd spoke up. “Obviously, the nuclear option isn’t available to us, but I think Alex’s concept is a good one. We could do a training accident, say, compliments of Alfred AFB, which is out there in Kentucky, if I’m not mistaken. Blow away the neighborhood with a stray incendiary, say.”
“ ‘Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.’ ” Wilkes paused. “But, of course,” he added, “Herod missed. If we just do that one little cluster of houses, we might miss, too.”
“However we do it, we have to do it now,” Vorona said.
“Gentlemen,” Charles said, “I think we’ve heard enough. Mike, we need to find this child. Would it help if you had a TR?”
“A triangle is essential. It enables me to enter the community with minimal risk. The grays will inevitably discover me, but at least it can get me to the scene undetected. Once I’m there, I figure I have a couple of days.” He stood up, signaling that the meeting was ended. Vorona was right about one thing: there must be no delay now.
“Wait just a minute,” Vorona said. “You’re not walking out of here without telling us how you’re going to proceed.”
“I think we have mind-control capabilities of our own that can be brought to bear on the situation. We can do this without revealing to the grays that we’re responsible.
