The Ascendant: A Thriller Read online

  When Garrett came to a chain-link fence, Alexis reached out of the darkness and grabbed his arm, tugging him through a gate and into a backyard. She grabbed Bingo next and the three of them ducked low and made their way to the back door of a boarded-up house. Garrett’s vision was beginning to blur. His brain was on fire. He heard wood cracking, and assumed it was Alexis kicking in a door, but he couldn’t see anything. Someone grabbed his arm and led him a few steps, and then laid him down on an old mattress.

  He could hear Alexis’s voice: “Garrett? Can you hear me?”

  Garrett nodded, speaking very quietly: “Head hurts. Pretty bad.”

  “Okay,” Alexis whispered. “Just stay quiet.”

  They huddled silently in the vacant house. The place smelled of wet wood and rotting carpet, cut powerfully with the stench of urine. Garrett tried not to breathe through his nose. In the distance he thought he heard people running and shouting, but they passed by quickly, and then Garrett heard Alexis hissing urgently on her satellite phone, trying to explain to the person on the other end of the line where they had ended up. Garrett drifted into unconsciousness, and when he woke up the house was still dark and Alexis had his head cradled in her arms, her cool palm stroking his forehead.

  Intense joy washed over him. He kept his eyes closed and pretended to be asleep, but Alexis leaned her face close to his. “I know you’re awake.”

  Garrett smiled. His head still hurt, but slightly less than it had earlier. “Don’t stop. I like it.”

  Alexis kept her hand on his forehead. “National Guard is sending someone to find us, but it may take a while.”

  Garrett smiled to himself, thinking, They can take as long as they want. He opened his eyes. “You used your weapon tonight. For the first time. How’s that feel?”

  “Didn’t think it would be in my own country,” she said, her voice tinged with sadness.

  “Whoever did this knew exactly what our weak spots are. Hit a power generator in our most distressed city.”

  “They couldn’t have predicted riots.”

  “I think they could. I think they did,” Garrett said. “We’ve been in a recession for four straight years. Some places are on the brink. Doesn’t take much to push desperate people over the edge. All they’d have to do is read the newspapers, watch the news. America is ripe for rioting. They knew that. It’s our weakness, and they played on it.”

  Alexis sat quietly, her hand smoothing the skin on Garrett’s forehead. “It’s moving faster,” she said. “Whatever they’re planning. It’s coming to a head . . . and we don’t have much time, do we?”

  “We don’t,” he said, feeling her fingers tense up. “Bingo has the flash drive?”

  “I got it, boss,” Bingo said from the darkness. “Don’t worry.”

  Garrett wanted to say more, to continue talking, but he was, oddly, so happy lying on a rotten mattress in a deserted house, in a bombed-out neighborhood, in the arms of a woman that he both was attracted to and furious at, that he could not make himself form the words. Instead he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  With that, he closed his eyes again and drifted off to sleep.

  43

  BEIJING, APRIL 10, 10:44 AM

  Diplomacy with the Chinese was, to U.S. Ambassador Robert Smith Towson’s mind, ceremonial theater. A carefully choreographed dramatic set piece, with a first act, an interlude, a second act, the occasional reversal or surprise, the reintroduction of an early plot point, a denouement, and then a neatly wrapped-up resolution. Each actor knew his or her role, what was expected, and how the drama would turn out.

  But not this time.

  Towson was a career China man. He had majored in Asian studies at Harvard, minored in Mandarin, spent five years in Beijing with the State Department before returning to civilian life to start a Chinese-U.S. consulting company based in Hong Kong. He’d really only lived in the United States for a year since he left college, so Towson understood the rituals of the diplomatic ceremonial theater, and he was confident that he knew when a Chinese diplomat was stonewalling, dissembling, or simply lying. But today, Xu Jin, China’s director of the Ministry of State Security, was doing something else entirely.

  The ceremonial theater had gone off the rails.

  Yes, Xu Jin had stonewalled when Towson asked him if he had any knowledge of the cyber attack on the Google server farm, which meant to Towson that he knew something but was trying to distance himself from that knowledge.

  Fair enough, Towson thought. Plausible deniability was the name of the game. Parry, thrust.

  Yes, he had dissembled when Towson, shifting in his plush chair in the middle of the great red-velvet conference hall deep in the interior of the Zhongnanhai compound adjacent to the Forbidden City, said they had traced the virus back to Chinese hackers. Xu Jin, in turn shifting to match Towson in his chair, said China was a big country and he could not possibly control every young person with a computer. These young people, he had said, do strange things with their infernal computers.

  Again, this was as expected: a tacit acknowledgment that the Chinese state security apparatus knew it was native hackers who had done the work, but whether that work was condoned by the government was another question altogether. Towson figured they had not only condoned but quite possibly encouraged it. Maybe even paid for it. Ultranationalist Chinese hackers were a strategic boon to the government, especially to the military, as they were happy to spend hours—weeks and months, even—attacking perceived enemies all around the globe through cyber warfare, and they had no ties to the government whatsoever. They were young, un- or underemployed computer programmers, and burning with patriotic fervor.

  Of course Towson also knew that they made Xu Jin and his security minions exceedingly nervous. It was a short distance from harassing foreign enemies to attacking the Chinese government’s own cyber surveillance machine. A short distance on the Internet, at least.

  And Xu Jin had lied when he said the Chinese government felt that any attack on the national utility infrastructure of the United States posed a threat to the Chinese power infrastructure as well. It had been with great sorrow that the Chinese read about the riots and inner-city troubles in the U.S., Xu Jin said. That was nonsense, and Towson knew it. The Chinese were not above feeling gleeful at the sight of their enemies’ troubles, perceived or real. And a riot in an American heartland city only fed the national mythology of a superior Chinese work ethic and future greatness.

  And so they had moved on to the denouement of the theater piece: Towson expressed to Xu Jin some not-so-veiled warnings about Chinese interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation, that nation being the United States of course. He even went so far as to say—and this had been signed off on by none other than President Mason Cross himself—that the U.S. might see an accumulation of such interferences by China as an act of aggression. Xu Jin had feigned great indignation—expected—and blustery resentment at these threats. China had nothing to do with these things. “We cannot help the economic shortcomings of your system.”

  Hints of war were not made lightly by one superpower toward another. But the president and the State Department must have thought this one through and predicted the bluster from the Chinese, because Xu Jin launched into his response almost without hesitation, as if he knew full well the warning was coming. He had expected it, and parried it like a true professional.

  But it was at the very last step in the ritual when the theater piece went completely off script. And it took someone of Towson’s experience in diplomacy to even recognize the way his counterpart had forgotten his lines, like an actor with stage fright. Towson had said, as he stood to leave the conference hall, that he hoped their two countries could come to a diplomatic resolution of their current differences, that all misunderstandings would be worked out in a matter of time.

  Yes, Xu Jin had agreed.

  And, Towson had added off-handedly, he hoped t
he Chinese government would never encounter problems in their country equal to the level of the ones currently plaguing America. “Your tiger is still in its cage,” Towson said.

  At which the Chinese minister had frozen, a forced smile plastered across his broad, beefy face. It was only a second—maybe two—of paralysis, but it spoke volumes. Then Xu Jin responded angrily. “What do you mean by that?”

  Towson stared, a look of true surprise on his face. “I mean only that we wish you calm and prosperity.”

  Xu Jin flushed slightly, then regained his composure, saying, “Yes, of course, we both hope for that. Calm and prosperity is our goal. For both nations.”

  But the diplomatic dance had gone awry. Towson had seen it. And Xu Jin knew that Towson had seen it. He was quickly led from the room by stiff-backed minor officials, down the hall, into the courtyard to his waiting limousine. As he sat in the back of the limo, watching the crowded Beijing streets pass by, Towson had only one thought:

  What the hell was that about?

  44

  WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 10, 10:23 AM

  The National Guard did come to rescue Alexis, Bingo, and Garrett, but it took them four hours after the initial phone call. The lieutenant who found them excused himself by saying it had been a pretty busy night, what with half of Detroit burning and all. They took Garrett to the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor for overnight observation, where the doctors found nothing wrong—except that he had a mending skull fracture—and released him on his own recognizance.

  Through the ordeal, Bingo kept the flash drive securely in his pocket. When dawn broke, and they got back on their Navy Gulfstream, Bingo gave it to Alexis, and Garrett told her to have it sent—rush—to an address in Queens. Mitty would see to the rest.

  Now, to Garrett, sitting in the back of yet another black SUV, rushing through midday Washington, D.C., traffic, the whole Detroit nightmare seemed like a lifetime ago. In reality, it had been less than twelve hours. The city had gone up in flames, along with large parts of Cleveland and central Toledo. Chicago had avoided the carnage largely because the Chicago PD had swarmed the entire city the moment the lights went out. The Rust Belt had lived up to its reputation as the vanguard of American decay, and now of American discontent. It was the lead story on every news channel, in every country across the globe.

  America was on fire.

  Alexis sat across from him in the back of the SUV. Bingo, Celeste, and Jimmy Lefebvre had stayed at the hotel, content to eat room service and watch TV, knowing full well that no Garrett Reilly hissy fit was going to get them invited to the White House. He might have gotten them to Washington, but sitting down with the president was another matter entirely.

  Garrett stared out the window at the government buildings, but he could feel Alexis watching him. The night before, what passed between the two of them had been intense. Emotionally, physically intense. Her staying with him, holding him, his head in her lap. It had linked them in a way that Garrett hadn’t experienced before. He didn’t feel like he was in love with her, or that he knew her any better, but rather that he had been vulnerable with her as he had never been with any other woman—or man, for that matter—and there was no taking that back now. A weird way to bond two people, Garrett thought, but now they were bonded, for better or worse.

  The SUV pulled up to the visitors’ entrance on the east side of the White House, past a bevy of Marine guards in blue dress uniforms and lurking Secret Service agents. Their IDs were checked, and then checked again, and then they were led, quickly, out of their SUV, up a stairway, and into the white-hot burning center of the universe.

  45

  THE WHITE HOUSE, APRIL 10, 11:02 AM

  When he saw Garrett Reilly enter the Oval Office, Major General Kline’s first thought was that the kid looked terrible. Pale, weak, a little disoriented. But coming into the White House will do that to you. Kline remembered his first visit to the big house, fifteen years and three administrations ago, and how he was damn sure he’d piss himself, right there, in front of President Bush and all his advisors. But on closer inspection, Reilly didn’t seem nervous or anxious. He just looked beat up, his face still bruised, stitches on his chin, a gash healing above his eye. Kline, of course, had read all about the bar fight in Oceanside, the fractured skull, the THC blood levels, and the night in an abandoned house in Detroit. Any one of those things could make a young man look less than his best; but roll them all into one and you were truly stressing an individual.

  Kline liked observing people under stress. It showed you their true character. And he needed to understand what Garrett Reilly was made of; Kline guessed that his job depended on it. He was the architect of this project, and his career would rise or fall on its success. Hell, he thought, the fate of the nation might rise or fall on it as well.

  There was something else about Reilly. It wasn’t that he was wearing a dark gray suit and a serious tie (which Kline had ordered for him yesterday so the kid could meet the president in something other than jeans and a T-shirt). Kline couldn’t quite put his finger on it at first, but then he realized, as he reached out to shake the kid’s hand, that Garrett Reilly looked older. Physically older, yes, and that was part of the injuries probably, but emotionally older too. The kid had grown up. And that made Kline feel better. It made Kline feel safer. Maybe this meeting would go better than the last one.

  President Mason Cross’s southern drawl snapped Kline out of his momentary reverie, and forced him to focus on matters at hand.

  “Heard you had a scrape last night,” President Cross said, pumping Garrett’s hand and fixing him with a cool, familiar smile. The president, a tanned forty-five-year-old, was a salesman at heart: he’d made a fortune buying Tennessee medical clinics and turning them into a privately run network of HMOs, and he’d done it by talking all the doctors involved into entrusting their futures to him. It had been a good decision for the doctors—and for Cross. Major General Kline wasn’t so sure it had been good for the patients, but you can’t please everybody. Now, with multiple crises erupting on multiple fronts, Kline didn’t think a salesman was what the country needed. But Cross was what the country had, so he guessed they’d have to muddle through somehow.

  “Christ almighty, what a disaster.” President Cross motioned for Garrett to sit on a couch, and the kid did, a little stiffly. Must still be hurting, Kline thought. He shot a look over to Captain Alexis Truffant, who was careful not to leave Garrett’s side, but who nodded discreetly back at Kline. I wonder if something’s going on with the two of them, Kline thought quickly, but then put it out of his mind. Truffant would not let anything like that happen. Would she?

  “Eighteen people died in Detroit last night. Four in Toledo,” the president said, shaking his head in bewilderment. “Taking apart their own city like that. I can’t claim to understand it. Well, we’re just thankful you weren’t hurt too bad. How you feeling?”

  “Pretty good, Mr. President,” Garrett said, betraying no emotion that Kline could discern. “Head hurts a little. I’ll survive.”

  “Well, that’s good, because that’s a precious head you got,” the president said, smiling. “Lot of brains in there that have been helping the country, from what I’ve read. You’ve been passing on some good information to us. Very good information.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank the good Lord that made you that way, right?” President Cross said, looking Garrett in the eye.

  Garrett stared back at the president, a hint of confusion in his face. The president’s words hung there as Garrett said nothing. Kline had to keep himself from laughing—he couldn’t stomach Cross’s surface-level piety, and Garrett clearly was baffled by it. From what he knew about Reilly, he didn’t think the kid had ever set foot in a church, much less prayed to God.

  Cross covered the awkwardness with more talk, ever the salesman. “You know why I called you here today, Mr. Reilly?”

  “To brief you on w
hat we’ve found, sir?”

  “No, son,” the president said, shaking his head quickly. “I got people briefing me on stuff night and day, till it’s coming out of my ears, thank you very much. No, Lord knows I do not need another briefing.”

  Alexis Truffant snuck a quick look over at Kline, who nodded almost imperceptibly. This was the moment, he thought to himself. But he’d let the salesman in the room do the talking.

  “I love this country, Mr. Reilly. I love it very much. And I will do whatever it takes to keep it safe. I will lay down my life for the United States of America. And I assume that everyone in this room feels the same way.” The president’s sweeping look around the room was met by a wave of grave nods and muttered affirmations. Kline noticed that Reilly, however, said nothing. Maybe, Kline thought, the kid hasn’t changed that much after all, is psychologically incapable of going with the program.

  “And as you have made so abundantly clear to me, and many others in government, this great nation—that has stood independent for two hundred plus years—is under attack. From a powerful and duplicitous enemy. An enemy that doesn’t seem to want to declare its intentions, and yet is going about harming us every day, faster and faster, in ways that just a few months ago we would have thought unimaginable. Isn’t that right, Mr. Reilly?”

  Garrett hesitated, then nodded. “Yes sir. It is. I think.”

  “Cities burning. The real estate market crumbling. Our currency under siege. The stock market attacked. They’re hitting us hard. Body blows. And those blows are taking their toll. I don’t think I am overstating the case when I say we are reeling. But they haven’t launched a single actual missile, or fired a single rifle. No bullets coming at us. No real ones, anyway. And nobody knows anything about the orchestration of it. The American people are completely in the dark. Story on Fox News ten minutes ago said the power-plant failure was a software glitch. A glitch? Hah!”