Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 44

"I will definitely make a note of that. And if it turns out I'm lying, you have my blessing to rip out my f.u.c.king lungs. Fair enough?" said Toys. He sat straight, jerked his s.h.i.+rt into some order, and turned away from her. He did not ask for an apology.

Violin sneered at him and turned back to the television. There was a knock on the door and two men came in without waiting for a reply. Junie recognized them as security personnel from the Hangar. Reid and Ashe.

"Ma'am," said Reid to Junie, "we're here to escort you to your hotel."

Junie turned to Violin. "Joe sent them. Do you ... I mean, would you like to join me?"

Chapter Sixty-nine.

Frontierland, Disney World Orlando, Florida Sunday, August 31, 3:34 p.m.

Sammy Ramirez always thought he'd either end up in Hollywood or end up in prison. He had that kind of life. Two of his brothers were in jail. Ishmael was doing three to five for armed robbery after he used a plastic gun to steal sixty-two dollars and a can of Red Bull from a 7-Eleven in Miami. Jorge was on his second fall for grand theft auto. The sad part of that was, the car he boosted was a piece-of-s.h.i.+t Chevy Suburban. He couldn't even get respect for having stolen an Escalade. A Suburban. Jesus.

Sammy had done a few small crimes, but always stupid little things. He sold some weed in high school. He shoplifted a cell phone charger from a strip-mall CVS. Like that. Peer pressure from his brothers or his friends had been involved every time.

It wasn't who he was, though, and it wasn't who he wanted to be.

Who he wanted to be was the first major Latin action hero. He had the speed, the reflexes, a little bit of tae kwon do, and the best smile in the neighborhood. He had no trace of an accent and was sure that with a little training and the right breaks, he could be to Latinos what the Rock was to whatever the f.u.c.k ethnicity he belonged to.

That was what Sammy thought about every day. He thought about it when he woke up, he thought about it before he went to sleep. He even prayed about it sometimes. And he thought about it all day at work.

Sammy Ramirez, star of his own series. Legal Aliens, a cross-border science fiction thing. Yeah, that would not suck. Or maybe something generic where none of it was based on race. Just on good looks, the ability to kick a.s.s on screen, and charisma. Sammy knew he had bags of charisma.

That's why the kids loved him so much.

After all, he wasn't the only one dressed as a cartoon dog here at Disney, but G.o.dd.a.m.n it, more kids wanted their picture taken with him than any two of the other Goofys combined.

Booyah, motherf.u.c.ker. That was star power.

Working at Disney was not exactly the most direct route to an action franchise of summer blockbusters, but it was technically acting. Disney called its staff "cast members." He was working on getting into one of the shows, which was a shortcut to getting an Equity card. That was the plan. Get into Actors' Equity and then leverage that to get some screen time, enough at least to get a SAG card. That would get him an agent, and an agent could get him some auditions, which would in turn allow him to fire his charisma guns on full auto.

Neither his friends nor his brothers knew he earned his pay as a cartoon dog. Specifically as a mentally challenged cartoon dog dressed in a cowboy outfit. You couldn't lay that rap on your homies and ever walk it off. They all thought he worked maintenance at Epcot.

Sammy was posing with a bunch of fat little German tourist kids when he spotted the two men in hoodies. They both wore dark hoodies on a hot Florida night in August. Sammy was boiling the pounds off in his Goofy suit, so he knew how hot it was. But he had to; why were these kids in hoodies, with the hoods up? That seemed odd to him.

And they both had backpacks.

Not uncommon in Disney. People walked all day long. A lot of them carried water, souvenirs, and other stuff.

But Sammy knew what was going on today. Everyone did. That's why all of the off-duty security had been called in.

The guys in the hoodies were drifting along behind a large group of girls dressed in cheerleader costumes. There were always cheerleading contests and events at the park. Had to be fifty, sixty girls in three or four different school colors, all of them laughing. None of them paying attention to the men in the hoodies. The whole group melted into the lines waiting to take photos with him. There were more than a hundred people in line. The park was jammed, even this late, and the costumed staff was working overtime. Fireworks were exploding in the sky. And Sammy did not like those two f.u.c.kers in the hoodies.

There was something about them.

Maybe if Sammy had grown up in the richer parts of town he might have looked right through those guys. But he'd grown up hard in Was.h.i.+ngton Sh.o.r.es. He was used to seeing trouble coming long before it ever got up in his face.

So, when the two men stepped out of line, moved to stand by a trash can near the heaviest part of the crowd, and shrugged out of their backpacks, Sammy knew that something bad was about to happen. The men did it together, smoothly, like it was something they had rehea.r.s.ed. The men set the packs down and started to turn to walk away.

That's when Sammy knew for sure. For absolute G.o.dd.a.m.n sure.

He was running before he knew he was going to do anything. In his huge, ungainly costume and floppy oversized feet, he blew past the startled German kids, shoved a Korean tourist with a video camera out of the way, drove right through the suddenly shrieking gaggle of cheerleaders, and threw himself into a flying tackle that slammed him into the two men. He hooked an arm around each one and drove them forward and down onto the hard concrete. They landed with a m.u.f.fled thud and yelps of surprise.

Instantly the two men tried to get away.

Not to struggle with him. Not to fight him. Not to demand to know why a cartoon dog had just tackled them. They wanted out of there.

They clawed at the ground to get out from under him.

Sammy wore big, fuzzy gloves, so he had no fists. So he raised an elbow and drove it down as hard as he could between the shoulder blades of one of the men. Sammy was not a big man-only five ten-but he was all muscle. He was lean to a rock hardness from sweating in that suit. And he was madder than he had ever been in his whole life.

The elbow hit with so much force, the first man's head snapped back and then nodded nose-first into the concrete. The second man twisted under Sammy and simultaneously tried to shove him away and pull something from a pocket. A gun, a knife, Sammy couldn't tell.

He raised himself up and dropped down full weight on the man, crus.h.i.+ng the air from him. Then he elbowed the man's face into a red mess. The item the guy had been reaching for tumbled to the ground.

Not a gun.

Not a knife.

It was a cell phone.

In a flash of clarity, Sammy understood.

It was like Boston and those other places. He tore off his mask and at the top of his lungs yelled one of those words you are never supposed to yell in a crowded theater, on an airplane, or in a theme park.

"BOMB!"

Sammy heard the screams, felt the tide of panic swirl around him. This was America and most of these kids had been born after 9/11. They understood bombs. Even the tourists from other countries. America didn't own terrorism; that belonged to everyone everywhere.

They ran.

Sammy didn't.

The two men, bleeding as b.l.o.o.d.y as they were, were still game, still struggling. One of them kept reaching for the cell phone.

Later, when the reporters interviewed Sammy about what he did then, his initial answer was "f.u.c.k, man, I just went ape-s.h.i.+t."

He would be asked to give them a new sound bite. Many hundreds of times.

However, in all fairness, he did go ape-s.h.i.+t. He beat the two men into red pulp. Putting one into a coma, maiming the other. Then he picked the cell phone up and threw it into a pond.

The two backpacks did not blow up.

Bomb squad crews came and took them away. Sammy later learned that there were enough explosives in each to kill dozens. But that wasn't the worst threat. Mixed in with all the screws and nails and other shrapnel were tens of thousands of tiny pellets filled with ricin. A dose the size of a few grains of table salt can kill an adult human. Each pellet had twice that amount.

In all of Mother Night's dozens of orchestrated attacks, it was the only one in which no one died.

No one.

All because of a cartoon dog.

Sammy Ramirez did not become the first Latino star of summer blockbusters. Instead Disney cast him as a Jedi in their ongoing series of Star Wars movies. They would later hire actors to play Sammy Ramirez at their theme parks, so kids could get an autograph with him.

Sometimes the good guys actually win.

Chapter Seventy.

The Hangar Floyd Bennett Field Brooklyn, New York Sunday, August 31, 3:36 p.m.

We met in the big conference room. Church was at the head of the table, Rudy and Circe to his right, Dr. Hu and Aunt Sallie on his left. I grabbed the seat at the other end.

"What's the good news?" I asked.

"Your optimism is an inspiration to us all," said Church dryly. "Today's events are accelerating downhill."

I sighed.

"There's no good place to start," he continued, "but let's begin with something Bug has worked out. He's a.n.a.lyzed the video cameras from the subway and several others obtained from other attacks. Even though some are different brands, they're all of a type and each has received an aftermarket upgrade from Mother Night. Bug was able to determine that the reason we haven't been able to interrupt the video feeds is that some of the technology being employed is strikingly similar to certain elements of MindReader."

That had the effect of tossing a flash-bang onto the table. Heads jerked up, eyes bugged out, and if anyone said anything, I was unable to hear or process it.

"How the h.e.l.l is that possible?" I demanded. "Do we have a leak?"

"Unknown. Bug says the technology is similar, but there are some subtle differences."

"What differences?" asked Hu. "Our systems are constantly being updated. Can we compare the software in the cameras to versions of ours? If so, we could probably put a date on when it was stolen."

Church nodded approval of the question. "The software matches ours at two points, both a little over two years ago. Nikki is preparing employee lists from that time and matching them against team members with access to the software."

"You said that 'some' of the technology was ours," I said. "What's the rest?"

"That opens up an entirely different can of worms. The cameras have a chip specifically designed to make traces impossible via a random and encrypted rerouting process. That chip was designed specifically to foil MindReader searches."

Another kick-in-the-teeth moment.

"Wait a G.o.dd.a.m.ned minute," I said, "we know that chip."

"Yes, we do," said Church, tapping crumbs from a vanilla wafer.

"Hugo," breathed a stricken Circe.

She'd been Hugo Vox's protegee for years and he'd been like family to her. The revelation that he was a world-cla.s.s traitor and terrorist damaged something in her. It was like discovering why your beloved uncle Adolf didn't like your Jewish friends. It left a huge, ugly hole carved in her life. During our battle with Vox and the Seven Kings, he'd stymied us with technology that had been, at the time, impossible to trace. The key to that tech was a certain chip.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," I said. "Does that mean Vox is a part of this?"

Church nibbled his cookie and stared at nothing for a moment. "Hugo Vox is dead."

"How do you know that?" asked Rudy. "He was never-"

"Hugo Vox is dead," repeated Church. "There is no doubt."

The silence was big and filled with unspoken conversation. I wondered if Church would ever share the details. Probably not.

"Then someone has his science," said Hu.

Church nodded. "At least as far as the chip goes. It's reasonable to a.s.sume the chip is being used to block all traces of the text messages being received by Colonel Riggs and Captain Ledger."

"Excuse me," said Rudy, "but we've had Vox's chip for a while now. Surely we've figured out how it works..."

"We have. This new chip has some upgrades, and yes, we'll figure those out as well. Unfortunately, Bug and his team have been stretched pretty thin with this case. However, I've made cracking that chip a priority."

Hu made a face. At first I thought he was having gas and needed to be burped, but as it turned out he had a thought. "This is going to sound very weird, but there are very few DMS people I know of who had access to MindReader and the Vox chip and who had enough knowledge and technical sophistication to take that science further. Actually, only three people occur to me. Two of them are in this building-Bug and Yoda. And the third is ... well ... the third is dead."

"Yes," said Church, "and isn't that an interesting line of speculation?"

I held my hand up. "At the risk of being mocked by Dr. Frankenstein, what the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

Rudy turned to me. "They're talking about Artemisia Bliss."

"Yeah, I got that part. But she is actually dead, right? So why the f.u.c.k are we wasting time talking about her?"

"Because," said Hu with asperity, "we have to be open to the fact that she sold this technology to someone."

"Ah," I said. "Okay, putting my dunce cap on and shutting up now."

Hu actually grinned at me. Maybe the way to his heart was through self-mockery.

"Circe," said Church, "where do we stand on the subway video?"

"It's not good," she admitted. Circe was a beautiful woman with a lovely heart-shaped face framed by intensely black hair that fell in wild curls to her shoulders. Her eyes were so dark a brown they looked black, and in those eyes glittered a steely intelligence. She had advanced degrees in a variety of fields including archaeology, anthropology, theology, psychology, and medicine with a specialty in infectious diseases. But her princ.i.p.al area of expertise was as a world-cla.s.s expert in counterterrorism and ant.i.terrorism, and specifically in how the terrorist mind works. "The video from the subway has gone global. It's everywhere, and everyone is reacting to it. In a way, we have to admire the finesse by which Mother Night primed the pump for it. First there was the cyberhacking this morning. That alone was a ma.s.sive media event, and it dominated the news until the bombs went off. Then public attention was s.h.i.+fted there, with some reporters speculating on a connection."

"How did they make that connection?" I asked, breaking my self-imposed silence.

"That's the right question," said Circe, nodding, "and we're looking into that. We can't say for sure if it was because the reporters are cynical and suspicious, or if they speculated on the connection in hopes that there was one-thereby giving them a scoop while insuring that they appeared savvy and insightful-"

"So young to be so jaded," I murmured. She ignored me, as was appropriate.