He focused on wrenching the flash drive from Kenji’s fist. Holding that arm with both hands, he gripped those fingers with his teeth and bit down with every ounce of rage in him. The hand opened. The flash drive bounced on the floorboards. He snatched it up and tried to tear away, but Kenji held him down.

  With the flash drive held in his right fist, he gathered his pain and what was left of his pride, and he rolled over and smashed Kenji’s gut with that fist—once, twice, and a third time in rapid succession. He put everything into those blows, real lung-busters, and he felt ribs break. It knocked the wind out of his stepfather, enough so that Matt Reece wrenched himself away and scurried up the ladder to the cockpit. He was thinking clearly. He stuffed the flash drive in his shorts pocket and snatched up his grandfather’s pocket watch. The timepiece showed the winged boy engraved on the cover. He raced to the stern, and as soon as Kenji’s head appeared at the top of the companionway, Matt Reece flung the watch into the water. It made a plopping sound and sank.

  Matt Reece, now panting, turned to face his stepfather. He had a strange taste in his mouth, coppery and sweet. He was afraid of it, of what internal injuries he had suffered.

  Kenji looked stunned. “Billions of people will die,” he said, with no arrogance in his voice now, “and because of what you just did, it will all be for nothing.”

  His ruse had worked. Now Matt Reece was in possession of what the world craved, and that scared him. He believed Kenji about the mass killing. And Kenji had said the only way to stop the bloodshed was to give them what they wanted. But how could he do that sitting on this damned boat?

  Four hours later, with Matt Reece settled on his side of the cockpit waiting for sleep, he felt a pressure building around him. The ship’s lolling motion shifted.

  They both turned in unison, listening, feeling the air.

  The paddles of the wind generator turned ever so slightly: once, twice around, and then it accelerated into a sluggish spin. A sweet, lovely breeze freshened the sky. A wave lifted the bow, and another. Waves meant wind. Everything was moving now. After nineteen days of stillness, those waves felt larger than they actually were.

  The sails leaned to port and began to draw.

  “We’ll be underway soon,” Kenji said. “Let’s hope we make Hawaii before our water runs out.”

  Hawaii? Matt Reece’s excitement imploded. He knew then that something specific waited for them there. Why else would Kenji risk a journey with little food and less water? But what was the point now that Kenji thought the formula was lost?

  The route to Hawaii would take weeks longer than to Mexico, and every day longer meant more people dead. He thought about fighting Kenji again, so that he could turn the ship east, but his strength was spent. He wiped some dried blood from above his eyebrow. “Rest against the wood deck, and save your energy for the next battle. Hopefully that won’t come until Hawaii.”

  Exhaustion washed over him, and all he could think about was sleep, so that he could dream of being back on the ranch. He had destroyed his picture of Vishal and now lost his grandfather’s watch. He was no longer a keeper of time, no longer had a lover. He had nothing left but riding the scrublands in his dreams.

  He hovered in a dreamless state until the Valhalla pushed through the waves, carried along by the strengthening breeze.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  AIR FORCE One sat on the tarmac at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. On the upper deck, Declan Hughes placed a folder on President Harrington’s desk. She wore her customary dark blue suit, which like her hair, was immaculate. She must travel with a hairdresser, he thought, or perhaps it’s a wig? Regardless of grooming, there were deeper wrinkles on her puffy face; her lips were more severe. She’d aged five years since he last met with her only seven weeks ago. He’d been picked up by helicopter at the research facility with no notice, and he didn’t know he was having a briefing with the president until the copter landed beside Air Force One.

  Distant gunfire lifted his attention to the windows lining the fuselage. He saw a brigade of armored vehicles supported by a battalion of ground troops. It seemed a bit ironic that inside the plane felt like a family huddled around the fireplace with wolves howling in the distance. His next thought was one of relief that the 747-200 was equipped with armored glass windows and armor plating to withstand nuclear blasts on the ground.

  The reason she was here rather than flying him back to Washington, he knew, was that after the nuclear assaults in the Mediterranean, suicide squads had attacked the White House and Senate, leaving thirteen senators dead and virtually shutting down the federal government. She and her advisors now spent most of their time at thirty-five thousand feet, flying from one military base to the next, a moving target.

  Harrington stared with distaste at the folder: a manila cover marked Possible Immortality Formula. She glanced at Jeffery Wolfe, who sat leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head. His face sagged, giving him a basset-hound look.

  “You’ve read this data, Jeffery. Do you agree it’s a ruse?” Harrington asked, her words slightly slurred. She nursed a glass of vodka over ice, even though it was 9:00 a.m. It occurred to Declan that she might be one of those people who could imbibe impressive amounts of alcohol without becoming sloppy drunk. He began to see her in a new light, as an alcoholic, drinking to repent, to bury her shame and her sins.

  “We can’t say for sure,” Wolfe said in his normal creamy voice, which Declan was beginning to loathe. “Dr. Godelinsky is the foremost authority in DNA science, so I lean toward his findings until we can test the theories mapped out in those files.”

  The president slammed a fist on the folder. “Seven weeks after Kenji Hiroshige’s YouTube announcement, and what do we have?”

  “Thanks to you,” Declan said, “a shitload of death!” He had not planned to confront her, but now that it slipped out, he was glad. He felt tightness in his chest and needed to sit. But he stood there, wanting the advantage of height if this turned into a bitch fight.

  Harrington’s mouth drew into a tight line. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You turned the Mediterranean into radioactive ruin, destroying the adherents of three major religions, and turned every nation in the world against us. You singlehandedly started a civil war, waging a bloody conflict against the middle class, while the rich wrap their wealth around them and run for cover—Iceland, Canary Islands, Tahiti, Seychelles, anywhere isolated so they can lay low until the killing stops. Six million dead and wounded, with a hundred thousand of those being the people who voted you into office, all in just seven weeks. Hell, it took Hitler seven years to match that tally. Pretty soon you’ll rival Mao Tse-tung, who I believe notched up a hundred million.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Jeffery tells me you lost someone in Israel?”

  “Ms. Diane McCarthy was in Tel Aviv, closing down our Middle East operations, but it seems you jumped the gun.” Even to him his voice sounded strained, rather than defiant. “I’m flying there to search for her as soon as my jet returns to California.” He wanted to add that for the president’s sake, he’d better find her alive. It was on the tip of his tongue, but he knew this was no place to make threats.

  She swiveled her chair and stared out at the perimeter of military vehicles. “The Muslims, Christians, and Jews forced us to take measures. We had to protect this asset until we can acquire the formula. I don’t think you appreciate how important it is that America controls this technology, and thus controls the fate of the human race. There is no prize for second place in this competition, Mr. Hughes, only total success or unmitigated failure.”

  A general on the Joint Chiefs once explained to Declan: “Wielding power requires a measure of inhumanity. Compassion is baggage nobody in our business can afford to carry. If you think about people as individuals with souls, then you’ll never make the tough decisions, and you’ll never be able to live with yourself after.” At the time, Declan thought those were wise words. Now he wished he’d have punched that sorry son of a bitch in the nose.

  Declan said, “I don’t know how you sleep at night.”

  “I rarely do.” She straightened her shoulders and turned back to Declan, fixing him with a resolute glare. “And for the record, the United States bombed only Tehran, a government guilty of sponsoring half the terrorist activities of the last two decades.”

  “Which did nothing more than massacre a million innocent women and children, strangle our supply of Middle East oil, and start a new jihad,” Declan snapped. Actually it did a lot more, he silently corrected himself. It preyed on some of the kindest, most worthy people on the planet, wiping family lines away in a flash, and obliterated a beautiful landscape. Yes, their holy leaders sent assassins, and a crude justice may have been won, but inhuman cruelty had also won.

  “It’s true we’ve lost allies,” Wolfe said. “Europe and Latin America and Israel, everywhere that Catholicism and Judaism is a factor. But now that we’ve established a Vatican in Boston, and the new pope has given his first address over Vatican Television’s broadcasting network, absolving everybody of sins, we’re hoping to win back the faithful. All of the surviving cardinals support us. As for the Jews and Muslims, once we have the formula, they’ll come begging. Let me remind you, owning that formula presents us with an opportunity to settle the Communist question once and for all.”

  President Harrington’s lips seemed poised on the edge of a smile.

  Declan grated his teeth. He should have known they’d drag out that tired, fear-mongering cliché. It was the old standard carrot they dangled in front of the ignorant masses. It angered him more that they used it on him. But he knew this was the essence of politics—creating plausible explanations out of bald-faced lies, and using the media to spread propaganda. It was nothing short of putting an acceptable spin on mass murder.

  “I’ll bet you could polish a turd to a gleaming finish so people would hang it on their walls. Go shovel your bullshit to the evangelicals. We’re up to our ears in it here.”

  Wolfe steepled his fingers and pressed them against his lips. “Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia have begun to disarm, and China is disarming all of Southeast Asia and North Korea. The UN sent inspectors to verify they get every last peashooter. It’s a good start, although the Aussies can be goddamned infuriating. As for the civil war in America, who knew that hysteria among the lower classes was infectious? Thankfully it won’t last much longer. We’ve halted production of all weapons and ammunition and confiscated arms and ammo in every store across the land. The vigilantes will soon run out of bullets, and that will be the end of them.”

  Declan said, “After Kenji’s video went viral, ammo sales skyrocketed. They buried arsenals in backyards and basements. You’ll be at this for the next decade.” The tightness in his chest grew sharp. He knew his blood pressure must be off the charts, but he carried medication in his pocket. He was not worried.

  Wolfe waved a dismissive hand.

  “Mr. Hughes,” said Wolfe, “whichever country acquires this formula will rule the world, and everyone else will be enslaved. Which camp do you want to be in? I suggest you decide, and in a big fucking hurry.”

  So it’s Mr. Hughes now, not Declan? “We’re on the brink of war with Europe, India, and the Middle East. The banking system is near collapse. The price of gas is seventy dollars a gallon, a chicken costs a hundred bucks, an assault rifle is now twenty grand. Globally, people are starving in vast numbers, and here in the States the suicide rate for people who’ve lost their guns is astronomical. World commerce is at a standstill, so no food is moving into the cities. And grounding all nonmilitary flights has only exacerbated that problem and bankrupted the airlines. You’re butt-fucking the planet so a bunch of rich, white, geriatric fucks can be young again.”

  Harrington paled. She clearly did not enjoy being lectured. She did, however, maintain her appearance of confidence and purpose.

  “I would like you to know,” she said, “that our government has a two-year stockpile of oil, grain, and canned goods stored in strategic locations. The Air Force is distributing those supplies where they are needed. And be assured that America is not the only country steeped in civil war. With the exception of Japan, every industrialized country in the world is in the same boat.”

  “And what of the excessive number of suicides? How can you explain them away?”

  She shook her head. “I confess, it’s beyond comprehension why these deplorables would die rather than live without their assault rifles.”

  “It’s not difficult to understand.” Declan’s voice softened. His chest twinged, and he made a mental note to visit his doctor as soon as he returned to LA. “We have a profound mistrust of governments, other religions, other races, and other tribes. This distrust has gone on for so long it’s become embedded in our psyche, become instinct to want to defend against anyone who doesn’t share our views. And what you’ve done in the last seven weeks has intensified their distrust. At the same time you’ve emasculated them by taking away their only means of self-defense.”

  “There are other ways to defend yourself.”

  “For ‘deplorables,’ I think you called them, the world is pretty black-and-white.”

  “You’re still slow on the uptake,” Harrington said. “Regrettable as this situation is, do you remember our conversation about the need to administer this treatment only to the country’s elite, the 1 percent who contribute the most to our society?”

  Declan remembered only too well.

  She continued, “Imagine what will happen to those chosen few if the rest of the population, those well-armed deplorables, are deprived of the treatment. The only way to protect the influential is to emasculate the masses first.”

  Declan’s hand twitched from the need to slap the smirk off her face. But of course, she was right. When your loved ones lay dying, people would do anything to save them. The have-nots would rise up and take from the haves, given a chance. It became clear. She wasn’t fulfilling Kenji’s demands. De-arming was purely for self-preservation.

  “Let’s get back on point,” Wolfe said. “Can your team duplicate the formula?”

  “We’ve discovered an enzyme in the blood that we’ve never seen before. It may be responsible for changing the host’s DNA, but we can’t say for certain yet. We don’t even know if this is a new enzyme or a known enzyme that has been radically altered.”

  “I assume you’ve injected Blake Connors’s blood into other humans?”

  “Out of desperation, we experimented with transfusions on three different critically ill patients. All died within hours of receiving the treated blood. Their body’s natural immune system warred against these cells with the altered DNA. But these cells are indestructible and multiply at an alarming rate by consuming all other cells. Thus, the war intensifies until the host systems collapsed, one by one—liver, kidneys, brain, lungs, heart. We believe that for the host to live, the treatment has to be administered to the entire body all at once, or at least within a matter of minutes. Simply injecting the new cells into the body is fatal.”

  “So it needs to be administered with a fast-acting nerve gas or an ion spray? Something with high saturation across the lungs to inundate the bloodstream instantly?”

  “Possibly. My leading hematologist suspects it might be some type of bacteria saturation through the lungs that quickly spreads throughout the bloodstream, altering the red and white blood cells. There are a variety of bacteria that rapidly affect the blood. Staphylococcus, for example, produces two enzymes that alter blood cells.”

  Wolfe nodded. “Our Johns Hopkins team experienced the same results with blood transfusions. We want to try a bone marrow transplant in combination with transfusions.”

  “Too risky until we know more,” Declan said.

  Wolfe said, “My team is adamant, and we want your full cooperation.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “You leave us no choice. In the interest of national security, the federal government is annexing Golden Eagle Industries, and I’m taking control of your research facility.”

  Declan laughed a sad, cruel bark. He had met with members of the National Security Council on the main deck below them, and they seemed nervous. This takeover had been planned in advance. “That won’t help with your transplant because we no longer have donors. I suggest you retract your fangs if you wish any support from my team.”

  Harrington scribbled a note on the cover of the report. “No donors? We have Mr. Connors and this new man, Vishal Mandial.”

  “You people need to stay up to date on the details. Agent Landau, who’s heading the FBI investigation, found a reasonably solid clue as to the whereabouts of our fugitive. Since you’ve grounded commercial flights, I allowed him to use my corporate jet to investigate his lead. He’s taken the Connors family and Vishal Mandial with him.”

  A long drawn silence.

  “Why wasn’t I informed of this lead?” Harrington said.

  “I suggest you ask the FBI.”

  Wolfe gripped the arms of his chair. His voice failed to hide his fury. “As welcome as that news is, why did he take our test subjects?”

  Declan ignored the question.

  Harrington pressed both her hands on her desk and rose to her feet. “You seem determined to become my enemy.”

  He became her nemesis the moment the bomb dropped on Tel Aviv. He was about to tell her so, but he held his tongue. His top priority was flying to Israel to search for Diane, and he didn’t want this bitch stopping him.

  When Declan refused to respond, she said, “Where is Kenji Hiroshige hiding? Don’t be coy. If you don’t tell us, the FBI will.”

  Declan spoke a silent “fuck you” with his eyes. He and Landau had discussed the possible scenario that Harrington might nuke any location she thought Kenji was hiding, to keep Russia or China from acquiring the formula. This operation was top secret; not even the pilots knew their destination until they were well away. The jet had flown out of San Francisco, thirty feet over the water to escape radar until it was two hundred miles west from American shores.