Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,143
cheeks and rubbed the moisture between his thumb and forefinger and stared at it.
His RoamZone chimed, alerting him to a new e-mail in the defunct account: [email protected]. Sure enough, a fresh unsent draft had miraculously appeared, the same semi-secure comms method he used to employ to get mission directives from Jack.
No sender. No subject line.
It said, “Request contact.”
He knew precisely what that meant.
* * *
An hour and twenty-three minutes later, Evan was buried deep in the Angeles National Forest at the western end of the San Gabriels. A recent fire had scorched a swath of earth at the base of Mount Gleason, but he’d tucked into a ribbon of luxuriant pines. The needles and sap overlaid the scent of ash with a bracing freshness that made his lungs tingle. Dusk took the edge off the greens and browns of the mountains, softening the panorama into a sepia haze.
Not that he saw any of it right now.
He was zipped inside a dark nylon tent that provided no view of the flora or the topography. His recent brush with drone warfare had amped his paranoia up another notch; for the last few desolate miles, he’d pulled a length of chain-link fence behind his truck to cover his tire tracks. His battered RoamZone accommodated a virgin SIM card, and he’d moved the phone service to a company operating out of Punggol. He’d paired the phone with his laptop, hooked into a Yagi directional antenna, an SMA connector, a small omni stubby antenna, and a Blade RF stick. The makeshift GSM base station was a rogue cell site, allowing him access to the LTE network while evading any authentication between him and the nearest cell tower.
Untraceable.
He called the familiar phone number.
A switchboard operator picked up.
He said, “Dark Road.”
Then he punched in Extension 32.
A click as the call was forwarded, and then the phone rang. It kept ringing. He counted to ten. Then to twenty. Told himself he’d hang up if it reached thirty.
At twenty-eight, the president of the United States answered. “I’m giving you another number enabled for video feed.”
She paused, but he said nothing. She named ten digits, and he disconnected.
Pulling up an encoded videotelephony software program on his laptop, he dialed.
The feed glitched but proceeded, and a moment later President Victoria Donahue-Carr appeared.
She sat behind the Resolute desk in the Oval, flags on display at either side of her. A considered choice to show the full power of the office.
Her face was drawn. Standing by her left shoulder was Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Naomi Templeton. Templeton’s blond hair had grown out a bit since Evan last laid eyes on her, but her face retained its same stubborn bearing. Though she’d played the role of his adversary in the past, he admired her greatly and sensed that she admired him, too.
Not that any of that would matter if she were tasked to come for him again.
Donahue-Carr squinted at the screen. “X? I can barely make you out.”
Evan said, “That’s the point.”
“I’ve received word of an intrusion at Creech North that seems to have your fingerprints on it.”
Evan said, “You’re gonna want to look into the DoD’s contract with Mimeticom. They’re teaching microdrones to think for themselves, make their own ethical choices.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” Donahue-Carr said. “Someone making their own ethical choices.”
She was right. He was a hypocrite, imperfect in his moral bearing, short of the mark in more ways than he could tally. But at least he built his code from lived experience, not from ones and zeros.
Evan said, “End it quietly or I’ll dump the classified details online and you can deal with it in the next election.”
The president’s expression didn’t alter, but he saw Templeton give a little nod.
“Need I remind you that you’re retired?” Donahue-Carr said.
Evan remained silent.
She leaned in, set her sleeves on the desk in front of her, her shoulders squaring. “If you’re not retired, I don’t need to remind you what that means either, do I?”
Evan clicked the laptop shut.
71
Ready
“I look like a dumb-ass fool,” Andre said. In the passenger seat, he flipped the visor down for the fifth time and smoothed his hair into place. He wore a new button-up shirt with a clip-on tie and a clean pair of slacks, and he held a little wrapped present in his lap.
It was Christmas Eve.
“No,” Evan said. “You look respectable.”
“Same thing.”
“You ready?”
“No, I’m not ready. Do I look ready?”
It had been a week and change since their mother had died, and here they were,