Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(71)
“No. Reroute power but leave the lights in that corridor off.”
“So you want us to ignore the camera?”
“That’s the point.”
“Yes sir.”
As he hung up the phone, a slow smile spread across Balls Wilson’s face. Unless he missed his guess, they’d just found the first chink in Mark Smythe’s armor.
The last few days had been some of the most draining of Heather’s life, a strange mixture of psychiatric sessions in which Dr. Jacobs worked to exploit her psychosis, interspersed with psychic communication sessions with Jennifer. Like a soldier crawling under barbed wire while probing the ground ahead with her bayonet, Heather navigated a mental minefield that left her exhausted, but unable to stop for rest.
Although she was no longer strapped to a hospital bed, the replacement wasn’t much more comfortable. Sometimes she rested better curled up in the corner farthest from the toilet, pretending to sleep the night away.
Her psychic contacts with Jennifer remained intermittent. Sometimes, depending on the heroin dosage the bastards were feeding into Jen’s veins, Heather couldn’t make contact at all, and sometimes wading through Jen’s mind felt like moving through a pea-soup fog, Jen’s thoughts like shrouded lamps, dimly visible through the haze. It worried Heather horribly. Images of her friend, physically addicted to the dangerous drug, crowded her tired brain.
For the last two hours Heather had lain on the cell floor, matching her heart rate and breathing to that expected of her sleeping self. Contact had been impossible. She thought about trying to contact Mark, but every attempt at that had met with utter failure. He had erected mental blocks so intense she could barely feel him, much less penetrate them. She could sense that he was close, but whatever torture he was enduring had forced him to erect his mental defenses. Now, as tired as she was, Heather couldn’t bring herself to make another attempt.
Uncurling, she yawned and stretched, her heart rate gradually climbing to a wakeful rhythm. The cell was dark, but Heather didn’t need to see a clock to know it was three minutes past four in the morning, any more than she needed someone to tell her that meant she was 14,580 seconds into her day.
As much as she wanted to indulge in a restful meditation, she needed to work out before her doctors and handlers arrived to soak up endless portions of her time. After all the time she’d been strapped down, her muscles needed to work. Heather had a feeling that, when the time came, she was going to need every bit of strength and coordination she could muster. And her Jack Gregory–filled visions whispered that that time was rapidly approaching.
Shrugging out of the hospital gown, Heather tossed it into the corner, stretched her naked body tall and erect, and filled her lungs with air. Then, breathing out slowly, she shifted into her first yoga pose of the morning.
Warrior one.
Constitution Avenue was crowded with cars, the Washington Mall was packed with people, the early evening was hot and muggy, and some damned country singer roamed the Capitol Stage wailing about how rednecks could survive. Freddy shook his head. He hated these July fourth celebrations. It was just like the government to make a special exception to martial law rules in order to squeeze in such a self-congratulatory ceremony during these hard times. He’d seen enough red-white-and-blue-backdropped fireworks-augmented performances to last two lifetimes, but here he was at another. On top of that, his walking leg was rubbing a blister on what was left of his stump.
But Tall Bear’s message had said to be here, so here he was.
If he’d been thinking, he’d have brought a blanket to spread out on the lawn along with a cooler full of Bitburger Pils. Glancing around at the security squads roaming through the crowd, Freddy doubted he could have slipped it in.
Something bumped hard against Freddy’s good leg, almost toppling him. He looked around in time to see two fat blond kids chasing each other through the crowd, weaving in and out of seated groups of people, several expressing the annoyance Freddy felt.
Maybe the little porkers would pass out in the Washington heat.
He glanced at his watch. Six fifteen p.m. Tall Bear’s message had said six o’clock. So where the hell was he? Freddy moved a little farther south, his eyes scanning the Capitol steps. No sight of the big Indian cop. At his height and with that long raven hair he should have been easy to spot, even in this mob.
Freddy spun in a slow circle, shielding his eyes from the sinking sun as he gazed westward toward the white spire of the Washington Monument. A flock of birds rose up from the cherry trees near the Jefferson Memorial, their whirling mass swooping across the green expanse of the mall, briefly eclipsing the bright orange orb before settling into some trees beside Constitution Avenue. Freddy was glad he hadn’t parked over there.
If anything, the crowd on the mall was getting bigger as people maneuvered for spots they wanted for tonight’s fireworks show. Looking out at the scene, Freddy could almost convince himself that all was well with the country. But DC was a heavily protected green zone, at least this part of DC. The army, marines, and National Guard had done a good job of expanding the number of areas under their control, but that still left large sections of the country subject to something approaching anarchy. Louisiana had been written off as not worth the effort to police and many of the nation’s sparsely populated rural areas had reinterpreted martial law as militia law, maintaining local order at the expense of civil rights. Poor inner-city neighborhoods resembled war zones that police feared to enter and the army regarded as nonessential.