Book of Souls

“Hey, the 2027 Club’s a bunch of old guys who get together to shoot the shit! Your Doomsday case finally gave them something to talk about.” He got distracted by some chatter on his headset. “I’m sorry about that girl and her grandfather. Sounds like you had a connection with her.” The way he said connection sounded loaded. Dane was on his wavelength when it came to women.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not my proudest moment.”

“Hey, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. That’s my motto.” He confirmed his altitude to an air traffic controller, then said to Will, “I want to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For helping Henry. His ticket’s punched for day after tomorrow. You’re letting him go out scratching and clawing instead of watching the clock. Personally, I’d like to go out in the sack with a swimsuit model.”

Will patted Dane on the shoulder. He was a good egg. “I hear you.” He thought about it while Dane cut through the blackness of the plains. No, he was quite sure he’d make a different choice. He’d choose to go out with Nancy.

Dane clearly didn’t like dead air, so he started moving his mouth again. “I’m going to tell you something that’s off-the-charts classified, okay?”

“Okay. Why?”

“Cause it’s burning a hole in my tongue. I think I know why they’re putting the full-court press on to suppress you. You’ve opened up to me with a ton of intel tonight, my friend, and I’m going to reciprocate. We’re both in deep shit anyway.”

“Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“Something really big’s going to go down in about three weeks. Down in Caracas, Venezuela. They’ve known about it for a long time, but about two years ago, the CIA drafted up an action plan to exploit the situation and as of when I left Groom Lake, it was fully green-lighted.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“The mother of all Latin American earthquakes. Centered on Caracas. They’ll have over two hundred thousand casualties in one day. At least the eggheads think it’ll be an earthquake. Nothing else fits the probability profile.”

Will shook his head. “That’s a lot of people.”

“I don’t have to tell you that Venezuela ’s got two things that makes Uncle Sam sit up and pay it attention: oil and Commies. We’re going to use the disaster to mix things up.”

“An overthrow?”

“Basically. From what I heard, it’ll go down as a humanitarian mission. There’ll be a flotilla of tents, cots, food, and medical supplies ready to drop in the minute the dust settles. They figure it’ll be total chaos. Their government’s going to be overwhelmed. Their president survives, but a lot of his people don’t. We’ll have the pump primed with the opposition parties, who’ll be ready to roll. The Colombians and Guyanese will do their parts by grabbing disputed border zones. The US, British, and French militaries are supposed to be ready to go in as peacekeepers. The bad guy is going out on his ass. One of our guys takes over and lets all the US and European oil companies back in. That’s the plan as poor little old me understands it.”

The drone of the Beechcraft engines drowned out Will’s low whistle. It all made sense. Their insane interest in the missing book. Their coldly calculated decision to kill the Cantwells and his in-laws. Their determination to take Will Piper out of the equation. Frazier and his masters were fighting with a furious determination to keep a cover on the ultimate covert op: the overthrow of an unfriendly, oil-rich country using predictive data from the Area 51 Library. There was only one thing Will knew for sure: the full weight of the government would be used to crush him into dust.

As Dane started his descent toward the Nebraska plains, Will suddenly felt small. The twin-engine plane was only a speck against the vast night sky, and he was only one man going into battle against a very large machine.

THEY FINISHED THEIR journey the next day, the California sun dirty-yellow in the noontime smog. Will slept the entirety of the last leg and awoke only in time to see the endless expanse of L.A., dreamlike in the haze.

“End of the line,” Dane said when he saw Will stirring.

“I don’t know how you stayed awake.”

“Maybe I was on autopilot!” Then, “Just kidding! I’ve been chatting with every female voice I could find on the radio. Like a flying trucker.”

On the tarmac of the small airport, Will stretched in the sun like a dozy iguana as he waited for Dane to get his plane squared away. It was breezy, in the high seventies, and the air felt good on his skin, like a warm balm. He checked in with Nancy. She was doing all right, still anesthetized by grief, but all right. She had taken Philly down to the dock early in the morning, perched herself on a big flat breakwater stone, and rocked him back to sleep to the lapping of the waves.