Reign of Evil

He pointed to a car pulling away from the curb. “That one.”

Preeti copied down the plate number, then input it into another program, this one assigned to the National Automated Number Plate Recognition Data Center. She set her program to automate, then returned to looking at the woman… the woman who had stopped and was staring into the camera at them.

“She’s not looking at us,” he whispered.

“I think she is.”

The woman smiled and began to move her fingers and hands in a complex geometric pattern. The screen began to fuzz and pixilate.

Preeti felt fingers of worry dance along her back. She couldn’t be sure, but it felt as if the woman was in her head with her. Something. A presence.

She jumped forward and shoved the monitor onto the floor, where it crashed, pieces of plastic and glass shooting out in all directions. Then she ripped the cord free from the wall, removing all power.

Stewart fell heavily into his seat. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know, but now I’m scared.”

“Just now you’re scared?” Stewart grinned nervously. “This shit has been scaring me from the very beginning.”

“Do you know what I wish?” she asked.

He regarded her.

“I wish that we weren’t alone.”

They both looked toward the giant closed door of the hangar and the small door set in it.

CHAPTER 28

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON. AFTER MIDNIGHT.

They’d been in place for three hours and Yank’s boredom meter was already pegged. They were on radio silence and no amount of imagination was going to help him pass the time. He hated waiting, which was one of the reasons he’d become a SEAL. Too many nights aboard ship pulling watch, staring at a display or out to sea, had been such a mind-numbingly brutal existence that he seriously had considered quitting the military and returning to Los Angeles.

And now, here he was waiting once more, pulling a sort of watch. The only thing good about it was that at the end of this he’d have a chance to shoot people. Maybe even kick them in the head a few times. He took a deep breath and reminded himself why they were here. It was like Holmes had said: We don’t really give a fuck about someone else’s problems. We were formed to protect our country, to deal with her problems. But when someone else’s problems become one of our problems, then we’re all-in.

All-in. Yank liked that.

Just as his adopted father, Uncle Joe, had been all-in for Yank.

Petty Officer Second Class Shonn Yankowski. That name really told his entire story. He could have chosen the name of his father, who’d ended doing life in Chino. Yank had never met the man but knew he was a thug for the 22nd Street Hustlers and part of the Bloods. His last name had been Johnson, but Yank had refused to take the name of a man he’d never met. He could have kept the name of his mother, who after spending his first six years clean and sober had broken down into the sorry caricature of an L.A. crack whore. Named Rennie Sabathia, his mother had called him Shonny, which went well with her last name. And he’d owned that name, right up until the day she’d died in the fire and he’d earned the burns on the side of his face trying to save her. At thirteen, he’d met Joseph Yankowski, recently transferred from Chicago to Los Angeles as part of the longshoremen’s union. Uncle Joe, as Shonn learned to call him, ran a foster home in San Pedro, and Shonn soon found the first stable and safe place he’d ever known. Fostering turned to adoption, and by the time Shonn turned eighteen and made his desire known that he wanted to join the U.S. Navy he also had changed his name to Yankowski, out of respect and love for Uncle Joe—not really an uncle, not even a relative, but more of a father than he’d ever imagined having.

Holmes reminded him of Uncle Joe. They were both hard-ass, no-nonsense types, but you could tell that underneath it all they cared immensely about what they were doing.

Nothing at all like Laws. There were times that he loved working for the brainiac. But others, like when Laws made fun of him back in the hangar, he wanted nothing more than to haul off and slug the guy. Laws seemed to always be yanking his chain about something. While Yank appreciated humor as much as the next sailor, he didn’t like it done at his expense.

He sighed.

He’d figure out how to handle Laws. The key was to keep his cool until he did so.

Yank checked the monitors through a toggle on his QUADEYE. They’d set up four cameras. Either they’d show when someone was coming or else the image would become distorted. Either way, they’d have some warning.