answers will say, 'Black granite.' If you hear anything else, hang up and call me back.'
'You will respond, 'Quarry master.' This person knows about you, not who you are, but that you are mission capable and in the field.'
'Affirmative, sir. Five rings. 'Black granite'; 'quarry master.''
'This person will locate Stone.'
Without waiting for a reply he pressed the 'end' button as Gabriel walked up.
'Everything's set,' Gabriel said 'Security's deploying, but you and I'll need to leave now if we're going to walk the whole way without being late.'
Braxton looked at Gabriel for a silent moment, weighing the commitment in the man's eyes, the dedication in his voice. The leading presidential contender scrolled through years of vivid memories, weighed the debits and credits of favors accumulated, and came down on a balance due that added up to loyalty.
'Sir?' Gabriel broke the awkward silence.
'I'm ready,' Braxton said. 'As it happens, something important has come up I need to talk to you about.'*****
Jael St. Clair drove carefully though darkness. At the speed limit of sixty-five miles per hour, she was the slowest thing on the road, but she didn't need to be stopped by the highway patrol. She pressed the numbers Braxton had given her.
South of her, in a clean, plain, business-budget motel room within sight of the Jackson airport, a cell phone sounded its short, sharp, distinctive tone. Video of the law enforcement briefing in Greenwood played on the motel's television, connected by cables to a laptop computer sitting alongside. The briefing had been captured with a concealed camera and burned onto a DVD.
The phone rang a second time. David Brown, formerly of half a dozen anonymous government agencies whose budgets were laundered through other well-known agencies, completed sit-up number eighty-seven. Brown got to his feet, stretched his tall, lean physique, and ran his hand over his close-cropped, gunmetal-gray hair. He glanced at the mirror at the long, thin strawberry birthmark emerging from his hairline. When he was younger, it had been completely hidden in a dense thicket of hair. The phone, one of three he carried, sat next to the laptop and sounded a third time. For one last second, he focused on the video. He'd watched it the first time on the half- hour helicopter ride south from Greenwood. Something about the black sheriff and his assistant bothered him.
The phone rang again. Brown clicked the pause button on the DVD software control panel and picked up the phone. He waited for the fifth ring, then pressed the green button. 'Black granite.'
'Quarry master.'
'How can I help?'
'Intel.'
Still focusing on the paused video of a black sheriff's deputy named Myers, Brown sat on the end of the bed and listened to the woman.
When she finished, Brown said, 'I can help you. Call this number back at precisely noon tomorrow.' He severed the connection before she could reply.
'Fuck you!' Jael St. Clair wrestled again with the unrequited anger burning inside her. 'Noon! You fucking asshole!'
She struggled to keep the car on the road and her mind locked on reality. She tried controlled breathing. She tried visualizing the last hit, the last release, but that only made the pain worse. She had to kill Stone before the anger got her first.
The anger threatened to tip her over, so she pulled onto the shoulder and fumbled about in her shoulder bag. Finally, she pulled out the amber plastic drug bottle and shook out a capsule and washed it down with a swallow from a plastic bottle of water.
Then she waited. Finally, the heat cooled, and as it did, a plan formed in her head.
There would be someone, she thought as the traffic rocked by on her left. There is always a connection, someone who can always find the quarry. Someone to watch, to follow. It would be in the dossier she had downloaded from them.
She took another sip of water and with calm steady hands pulled back into traffic.*****
Had this been an ordinary night, the ragged visions that haunted me would have jolted me awake. But even visions of Camilla, Vanessa, Lashonna, and the nightmare of the past days could not break through my desperate need for sleep.
I have no idea how long I had been asleep when I dreamed that Jasmine came in and gave me a gentle kiss. In the dream, she undressed me, threw a quilt over me, then snuggled in beside me and we went to sleep.
CHAPTER 52
Pacific breezes kept Dan Gabriel and Clark Braxton cool as they followed the security detail out to Constellation Boulevard, where armed motorcycle outriders idled near the General's armored limo.
'Project Enduring Valor still concerns me,' Gabriel said.
'Go on,' Braxton said evenly.
'Xantaeus robs a soldier of free will without their knowledge, overrides their sense of compassion… neutralizes the fear of injury.'
'Battle can do that all by itself,' Braxton said without hesitation. 'Natural two percenters do it all the time. Compassion and fear can kill all the wrong people.' 'Maybe I'm not expressing myself very well. One very big issue here deals with free will. Without it, without the ability for soldiers to make moral decisions, we turn them into inhuman, meat-based robots.'
'Don't talk to me about free will,' Braxton snapped. 'Every man who freezes, who doesn't pull the trigger, has had his free will robbed by the irrationality of fear. That, sir, is robbing men of their free will and thwarting the very moral decision to protect themselves, their comrades, and their country. Your argument doesn't hold water.'
'I see your point,' Gabriel persisted. 'But what about the practical issues? You know as well as I do that battles are won when one side breaks the other's spirit. One side surrenders or runs before it's completely destroyed. This preserves lives, talent, knowledge-resources which can be harnessed for reconstruction once a war is over. 'But if both sides have the drug,' Gabriel continued, 'then neither side breaks, and battles end only when every member of the losing side is killed or wounded so gravely they can no longer pull a trigger. It alters warfare like never before.'
Braxton merely nodded as they reached Avenue of the Stars and crossed with the light. Loud traffic moved the two men shoulder to shoulder so they could hear each other. 'It's the reason America needs to keep it for ourselves.'
'That didn't last very long with nuclear weapons,' Gabriel said.
'That's a good analogy.' Braxton said. 'Because Project Enduring Valor will turn every soldier into the perfect killer, the ultimate weapon more fearsome than nukes. And don't forget: the Cold War's nuclear mutually assured destruction gave the world a longer period of peace than ever before. Now look at all the bloodshed since the fall of the Soviet
Union. Controlled Xantaeus proliferation should bring back an era of mutually assured destruction and a return to an enforced global peace.
'Dan, the Russians and the Chinese'll have their own nondepleting neurotrops soon. So too the Indians, Pakistanis, Israelis, and Saudis. Without deploying Xantaeus first, we'll be at their mercy.'
'Just like with nukes,' Gabriel said. 'Get' em or die. Damn.'
'Damned if we do, damned if we don't,' Braxton agreed, 'We're either out front or we're toast.'
Gabriel shook his head slowly. They approached Century Park East. 'You're right yet again, sir. Absolutely correct. We either have to ride the tiger or get eaten.' 'War really is hell. Always has been. Your agony over Xantaeus has been repeated every time a new generation of weapons has come on the scene from bows and arrows to guns and nukes. There is always a new tiger to ride. But the only thing worse than fighting a war-'
'— is losing one,' Gabriel finished the General's oft-repeated motto. 'You're right again, sir.'
