Reamde

The jet touched down and came to a brisk stop. Seamus sensed a little wave of depression sweeping through the Four. Chartering this jet, climbing onto it illegally at the air base outside of Manila, and blasting into the sky—for these jets really hauled ass, once they got going—had been the most exhilarating thing ever. Even Seamus, who went into combat against terrorists for a living, had been thrilled. Actually landing in the sodden gray landscape of Joint Base Lewis-McChord was a corresponding letdown.

Long experience flying around the world on airplanes had conditioned him to relax, for it would be another half hour before they actually made it off the plane. But of course, this was not true in the case of a bizjet. He smelled damp, piney air coming in through the open door and realized that nothing was preventing him from climbing off.

“Thanks for the ride, Marlon,” he said, standing up and bashing his head on the ceiling again.

“Thanks for getting me out of there,” Marlon returned, grinning, and climbing up into a prudent stoop.

Seamus held up his index finger. “Don’t thank me until we get through the next fifteen minutes.”

“LET ME GET this straight,” Freddie’s boss had said, over the hyperencrypted voice conferencing link from Langley. Never a great thing to hear from the lips of someone considerably above you in chain of command.

“We’re not asking for any money,” Seamus had broken in, before Freddie could say anything.

“Noted,” the boss had said. “Always a plus.”

“Not asking you to print passports or diddle any paperwork.”

“The whole point,” Freddie had put in, perhaps a bit nervously, “is to leave no paper trail at all.”

“Two Chinese and a Hungarian, just basically parachuted into CONUS with no paperwork whatsoever.”

“The Hungarian is legit, he has a visa.”

“Two Chinese then.”

“Yeah.”

“Given that Chinese illegals are being shipped into the Port of Seattle by the containerload, it seems like it would hardly make a dent.”

“That’s the spirit!” Seamus had said. “And these are not your baseline economic migrants. They’re going to be running major corporations inside of a fortnight.”

“Not without green cards.”

“I think I’m going to marry the girl. That would take care of her status.”

Freddie had turned to look at him incredulously. “Does she know this?”

“She has no idea. Just a feeling.”

“A feeling on your part.”

“Halfway there. Pretty respectable progress.”

“What I’m really getting at,” the boss had said, “is whether you have any kind of long-term plan for these people—other than matrimony—that would lead to complications down the road.”

“Let’s not focus on hypothetical complications,” Seamus had said. “Let’s focus on the fact that these people have been in physical contact with Abdallah Jones, rammed his vehicle, shot him in the head, been tortured by him, in the very, very recent past. Seems worthy of a free ticket to Langley, don’t you think? Can’t we buy these kids a cup of coffee at least?”

“We can buy them a cup of coffee in Manila,” the boss had pointed out.

“Only at the risk of them getting arrested,” Seamus had returned. “At which point information is going to start gushing out like Jolly Ranchers from a ruptured piñata.”

“It would be easy at this end,” the boss had said, “provided they land at a military base. Getting them on a plane at your end, without passing through formalities, is outside of my scope.”

“Disavow all knowledge of our actions,” Seamus had said, “and we’re home free.” He glanced for confirmation at Freddie, who turned the corners of his mouth down—he was very good at this—and nodded.

“Easiest decision I ever made. Consider yourself disavowed.”

NONE OF WHICH really gave Seamus any idea of what to expect, twenty hours later, descending the wee, steep staircase to the hangar floor. Joint Base Lewis-McChord, was a combined army/air force facility, actually rather important to the global war on terror in that it was the home of the Stryker Brigades so heavily used in Afghanistan, as well as being an important special forces base. Seamus knew it well. It was about an hour’s drive south of Seattle, on a huge tract of forest whose soil and climate made Seattle’s seem arid by comparison.

What he was seeing now was like something from a David Lynch film in its surreal starkness. The jet, apparently on orders from the tower, had taxied directly into a small hangar that was otherwise completely empty. Powerful lights were on, as if trying to drive away the misty gray dimness flooding in through the hangar doors, which were rumbling shut, apparently driven by electric motors.