Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(70)

Rodger felt beads of sweat pop out on his brow. “Probably, but not as quickly. We might have time for another try.”

Cory Mayfield laughed, a harsh, guttural rasp that hurt Rodger’s ears.

“Another try? There’s not going to be another try. The world is committing every bit of its scientific and engineering might into Dr. Stephenson’s plan. Not that we wouldn’t spin up a backup project if someone came up with a competing idea, but the sad truth is that nobody’s got another reasonable idea. We’ve been all through the launch-it-into-space thing. All the top minds say that’s a no-go for a host of reasons, chief among them the problem of maintaining the isolation and containment field throughout the launch process. Then there’s the issue of this approach being incompatible with our best bet, which is building Dr. Stephenson’s Rho device around the thing. So, unless some religious group manages to pray the anomaly away, we’re left with Stephenson’s Rho device or bust.”

Rodger opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.

“So,” Mayfield continued, “if all else fails and the thing’s getting ready to eat us anyway, it won’t hurt to roll the dice.”

President Jackson turned to face his national security advisor. “James?”

“I don’t see a better alternative.”

“Mr. President! Give me a month. I’ll assemble another team, give it one more look, see if we can come up with another fallback option.”

President Jackson smiled a sad smile. “I don’t have another month to give you, Rodger. If we want to get nukes put in the prefab construction, I have to make a decision now. I’m sorry, but I’m giving the go-ahead for Director Mayfield’s approach.”

Turning to his smiling DNI, the president nodded.

“OK, Cory. Make it happen.”





The click-clack of retreating footsteps echoed down the long empty hallway, picking up a sympathetic vibration from the steel bars that locked Mark in his cell. He sat cross-legged and naked on the cold concrete, deep in the meditation that gave him respite from that lonely place.

Surprisingly, his situation had improved. Immediately after killing Dr. Krause and the two guards, Mark had waited in the closet to be recaptured. His intuition had told him that Heather should be the one to initiate their escape, that she would know when the time was right. So he had just uploaded instructions to Jennifer’s worm, destroyed the cell phone, and waited.

He had been moved to a different cell, still inside the same supermax unit, but without the chains and waterboarding table. Except for food trays pushed through a floor slot, his captors appeared to have forgotten about him, leaving him to deal with his own demons here in solitary confinement. He shared the ten-by-twelve-foot space with a sink, a toilet, a showerhead, and a drain. The water came out of both the sink and the showerhead at the same temperature. Cold.

Except for the prison-issue orange pj’s and a single pair of briefs, Mark had nothing. On the days he washed his clothes in the sink, he waited naked for them to dry. At the cell’s constant sixty-two degrees, that drying process took a good while, even after he’d hand-wrung them. Today was one of those laundry days.

Despite the way Mark tried to keep himself busy working out and meditating, the oppressive loneliness was working on him in a way the torture hadn’t. He tried not to think of Heather, but she crept into his thoughts, and with her came a longing that tugged him irresistibly toward a black pit of despair.

And Heather wasn’t the only thing messing with his mind. Increasingly, the faces of the men he’d killed came back to haunt him. Not Don Espe?osa and his *s, nor even Dr. Krause. It was the faces of the two guards that robbed him of peace. Did they have wives? Children? Mark thought he knew the answer. But in a moment of violent action, he’d destroyed those little families, as surely as the US government had destroyed his. No more birthdays or Christmases with Daddy. No more family barbecues in the backyard. Thank you, Mark Smythe. You’re a real badass hero.

With a start, Mark realized he’d completely lost the meditation, having allowed the rogue thoughts to entice him onto the shoals of that depressing shore. He shook his head in attempt to clear it.

Somewhere in this hellhole, his captors had Jennifer and Heather. Mark had little hope that they were receiving kinder treatment than that afforded him.

The picture of Heather sleeping beside him in that Las Vegas motel formed in his mind so clearly that he could reach out to hold her tight and safe in his protective arms. He breathed in the pleasant scent that wafted up to his nostrils from her freshly showered body. It was only the smell of a motel soap bar, but anointing Heather’s skin, its aroma surpassed that of the finest perfume.

Again Mark fought to clear his thoughts. He stared up at the camera in the upper right corner of the cell, letting his frustration and rage boil up. Rising to his feet, Mark coiled his leg muscles and, with a two-stride jump, ripped the camera from its mount, landing on the floor amid a shower of electrical sparks, the short plunging the entire corridor into darkness. Mark stood there for several seconds, listening for an alarm that never sounded. Then, tossing the small camera through the bars, he resumed his former meditative pose.





In his office, General Wilson picked up his phone on the second ring.

“Yes?”

“Smythe just ripped down the camera in his cell. Blew the D13 circuit breaker. Should I send in a crew to repair it?”