The Dragon Factory

It always hurt to come here, but it hurt worse to miss a week. In the two years since Helen’s suicide I’d missed maybe four weekly visits. Last week was one because I was busting up a lab in Virginia where a couple of absolute fruitball scientists were trying to create a weaponized airborne strain of SARS to sell to terrorists. We had to dissuade them. I figured Helen would forgive me.

As I laid the flowers on the bright green grass on her grave my cell vibrated in my pocket.

“Excuse me, honey,” I murmured, placing my palm briefly on the cold headstone, “but I have to take this.”

I pulled the cell out and knelt down as if praying, so that my body hid the phone as I flipped it open. There was no name on the display, but I knew it was my boss. “I’m having an interesting morning,” I said. The alert word was “interesting.”

“This line is secure. Sit rep?” asked Mr. Church. I’ve worked for him for almost two months now and I still didn’t know his real name. I’ve heard people refer to him as the Deacon, Colonel Eldritch, the Sexton, and a few other names, but when I’d met him he introduced himself as Mr. Church, so I used that. He was somewhere north of sixty but not where it showed. My boys had a pool going as to whether he was an ex-Delta gunslinger or a CIA spook who’d moved up to management.

“Have we pissed off anybody in Washington lately?”

“Not so far this morning,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m at the cemetery. Couple of NSA stiffs have asked me to accompany them saying it was a national security issue, but they dodged my questions when I tried to find out what the deal was.”

“Do you have names?”

“Just one. John Andrews.” I described him and the others. “They’re not waving warrants around, but it’s pretty clear this isn’t a request.”

“Let me make some calls. Do nothing until I call you back.”

“These goons are waiting on me.”

“Do you care?”

“Not much.”

“Nor do I.”

He hung up. I smiled at the dragonflies that were hovering over Helen’s tombstone and let a few minutes pass. Inside I was churning. What the hell was this all about? Even though I knew I hadn’t done anything bad enough to warrant this kind of thing, I still had that guilty feeling inside. It was weird, because I didn’t think cops got that from other cops.

So far this made no sense. The book was closed on my last mission and I had nothing new on the griddle, and the last time I’d even had a brush with the NSA was last month, but that had been on a job that had ended satisfactorily for everyone involved. No stubbed toes or hurt feelings. So why did they want to pick me up?

My worry meter jumped a few points when I saw two government Crown Vics roll in through the gate and park on either side of my Explorer. Four more NSA agents climbed out and moved quickly to take up positions on logical exit routes. Four exits, four two-man teams. Slab-face was by the cars; the Nose and one other agent were between my car and the exit.

“Aw, crap.”

My cell vibrated and I answered it.

“Listen to me,” said Church. “Apparently we have rattled someone’s cage in D.C. and the situation has some wrinkles. As you know, the President is undergoing bypass surgery, and while he’s out that officially puts the VP in charge. The VP has never liked the DMS and has been very vocal about it. It looks like he’s making a run at dismantling it.”

“On what grounds?”

“He’s somehow convinced the Attorney General that I’ve been blackmailing the President to give the DMS an unusual amount of power and freedom of movement.”

“That’s kind of true, though, isn’t it?”

“It isn’t as simple as that, but for legal purposes the NSA have permission to arrest and detain all DMS staff, seize all of our facilities, et cetera.”

“Can he do that?”

“Yes. He’s the de facto Commander in Chief. Though once the President wakes up and resumes command the VP’s probably going to face some heat, but that will be in a few hours and the VP can do a lot of damage in that time. Aunt Sallie says that the NSA has landed two choppers at Floyd Bennett Field and is deploying a team. They do have warrants.”

Aunt Sallie was Church’s second in command and the Chief of Operations for the Hangar, the main DMS headquarters in Brooklyn. I’d never met her, but the rumors about her among the DMS staff were pretty wild.

Church said, “The Veep is operating in a narrow window here. We need to stall him until the President regains power. I can stall the Attorney General.”

I almost laughed. “This is really about MindReader, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

MindReader was a computer system that Church had either designed or commissioned-I still didn’t know which-but it could bypass any security, intrude into any hard drive as long as there was some kind of link, WIFI or hardline, and get out again without leaving a footprint. As far as I knew, there was nothing else like it in the world, and I think we can all be thankful for that; and it was MindReader that kept the DMS one step ahead of a lot of terrorist networks. My friend Maj. Grace Courtland had confided her suspicions to me that it was MindReader that gave Church the clout he needed to keep the President and other government officials off his back. Freedom of movement kept the DMS efficient because it negated the red tape that had slowed Homeland down to a bureaucratic crawl.

MindReader was a very dangerous tool for a lot of reasons, and we all hoped that Church had the kind of clarity of vision and integrity of purpose to use it for only the right reasons. If the VP took control of it, we’d be cooked. Plus, Church didn’t trust the MindReader system in anyone else’s hands. He had almost no faith in the nobler elements of the political mind. Good call.

“Major Courtland says that three unmarked Humvees are parked outside the Warehouse,” he said.

“What’s the Veep’s game plan?”

“I don’t know. Even as Acting President I can’t see him risking force to stop us. That gives us a little elbow room.”

“So why’s he want me? I can’t access MindReader without you personally logging me in.”

“He doesn’t know that. There are NSA teams zeroing four other DMS field offices and team leaders. They’re going for a sweep. But whatever they’re doing has to be bloodless, which is probably why Agent Andrews gave you a few minutes with Ms. Ryan.”

“Maybe, but he called for backup. Two other cars just rolled in. Lots of Indians, only one cowboy.”

“Can you get away?”

“Depends on how I’m allowed to go about it.”

“Don’t get taken, Captain, or you’ll disappear into the system. It’ll take six months to find you and you’ll be no good to me when we do.”

“Feeling the love,” I said, but he ignored me.

“This is fragile,” Church cautioned. “Anyone pulls a trigger and they’ll use it to take the DMS apart.”

“I may have to dent some of these boys.”

“I can live with that.” He disconnected.

As I pocketed my phone I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. My ten minutes were up. Andrews and his Goon Squad were closing in.

These guys shouldn’t have come out here. Not here.

“Okay,” I said to myself, “let’s dance.”

Chapter Three

The Deck, southwest of Gila Bend, Arizona