Flashback

He slowed at the Highway 6 overpass above I-25. Due north, beyond the huge black-oil-dipped wavy oval of the Mile High DHSDC, just west of the A-T-wrapped stubs of what was left of Denver’s high-rise buildings downtown, beyond the bulks of Six Flags Over the Jews and Coors Field, black smoke continued to rise. The Homeland Security choppers continued to buzz and flit and circle the smoke like vultures, while the lesser carrion birds of news choppers circled much farther out, not yet allowed close enough to bring the scene to waiting viewers.

Nick crossed I-25 and turned right onto Speer Boulevard.

“So if I fail in this investigation—a case you couldn’t solve five years ago in eighteen months of trying at a time when the witnesses’ memories and clues were fresh,” he said over his shoulder to Sato, “a case you couldn’t solve with twenty-seven operatives working for you, more tech than the FBI has, and Nakamura’s budget of billions of dollars behind you—you’re going to disembowel yourself?”

The security chief nodded and closed his eyes.

1.03 Cherry Creek—Friday, Sept. 10

The gelding rolled up the last ramp to the third and top floor of the Cherry Creek Mall Condos’ parking garage and died thirty feet short of the charging stations. Nick left it where it was, knowing that Mack or one of the boys would push it the rest of the way. The charging station in the Japanese Green Zone had taken fewer than forty minutes; here, with the mall’s old charging equipment, it would be twelve hours even for the partial charge. Nick didn’t care.

Sato had gotten through the two security checkpoints by handing over his NICC—the thin card was black rather than the usual diplomat’s or visiting alien’s green—and there’d been no problem. But Nick was looking forward to the last checkpoint at the armory check-room. If Sato thought his diplomatic status was going to allow him to carry a gun into the Cherry Creek Mall Condos interior, the security chief was in for a rude shock. The president of the United States couldn’t get a weapon into this complex if she hid it in her bra.

They were in the security airlock and Gunny G., the senior weapons expert and top security man for the mall, was behind the gun-check counter. Probably one of the guys at the security checkpoints had phoned him. An ex-marine, Gunny G. was of that indeterminate age beyond sixty but still fit and dangerous, and his square, tanned face under the crew cut seemed held together by old scars.

Nick handed over his Glock 9 and waited.

The former shopping mall didn’t have the Green Zone’s CMRI or layers of security, but the X-ray machine and ancient explosives-gunpowder sniffer in the entrance airlock had done their work. Nick could see the images of Sato and him glowing on Gunny’s screen to the left of the counter opening. Sato had some sort of oversized handgun in a shoulder holster in his left armpit, a small one in a belt holster around the curve of his left hip, a strap-on holster with a tiny semiautomatic on his right ankle, and a nasty-looking throwing knife on the belt above his right hip.

Before Gunny G. could growl his demands, Sato said, “Listen to this, please.” Risten. Prease.

The security chief passed across his NICC and when Gunny G. scanned it, he put his earbud and e-glasses on to access the encrypted information there. The former marine’s expression did not change, but when he handed Sato’s identity card back, he growled, “Go on in, Mr. Sato.” There was no attempt to disarm Sato.

Nick’s jaw actually dropped in surprise. He’d heard that expression for decades, but had never seen anyone’s jaw literally drop—much less experienced it himself.

The inner doors and gate opened and Sato stood to one side and made an “After you” gesture with his massive arm.

Nick led the way to his cubie. This section of town was obviously going through one of its daily brownouts and although generators kept the security doors, parking-area charging bays, security cameras, cubie doors, outside autoguns, and other essential equipment running, the lights were out above the second-floor mezzanine and the once-fancy skylight panels that ran the length of the ceiling were so caked with dust and grime that the light inside had paled to a sick, sad yellow. Most of the common-space ventilator fans were also out and since people propped their cubie doors open during the brownouts, the air was thick with the funk of several thousand people and their dirty bedding and cooking smells and cubie garbage.

Nick paused at the railing twenty feet above the old fountain that used to splash in front of the Saks Fifth Avenue store. The space was still home to some of the pricier windowless cubies in the complex, although it wasn’t overly inviting now, with its leaking trash bags heaped head-high outside the steel-shuttered entrance. He looked down at where the wild goose sculpture used to be.