Chapter 39
THE HUMVEE APPROACHED A FORK in the road that led to the two adjacent cul-de-sacs. Before the fork, the Rangers had set up a makeshift road barrier and security checkpoint using an armored personnel carrier parked across the road.
O’Connor came to a quick halt and Corporal Reyes walked to the driver’s-side window. “Morning, Sarge.”
“You get eyes on Major Klasky?”
Reyes nodded and gestured to the right-hand fork. “He headed that way on foot.”
Reyes directed a Ranger to move the APC and O’Connor drove through. As they entered the cul-de-sac Brodie saw two Rangers stationed in front of Caroline Dixon’s house.
Across the way was General Morgan’s house, and the general was standing in his driveway with a cup of coffee, talking to Major Klasky.
What the hell?
O’Connor pulled over and Brodie and Taylor hopped out of the Humvee, then drew their weapons and walked briskly toward Klasky.
Brodie yelled, “Hands, Major!”
General Morgan looked at them, mid-sip of coffee. He slowly lowered his mug. “It’s good to see you safe, agents.”
Brodie kept his focus on Klasky, who looked at him quizzically and said, “I don’t understand.”
“Understand this.” Brodie took the cuffs off his belt and cuffed the major’s hands in front of him. “You are under arrest for homicide and attempted homicide. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney—”
“Mr. Brodie,” said General Morgan. “I demand to know what is going on.”
Brodie said, “Let me finish my Article Thirty-One script, General, or we’re going to have a problem with the lawyers later.”
“You’re going to have a problem a lot earlier than that, Brodie.
You aided an attempted mutiny, made an unlawful arrest, and absconded in the night with one of my Rangers, who was returned to us with his brain melting out of his ears.
” He gestured to Major Klasky. “The major here tells me he assisted you in the lab with reviewing evidence, then left you alone at your request, and now I just heard there is a D-17 on the loose.”
Taylor stared with near-murderous rage at Klasky. “You activated that thing, because you knew what we had, and you knew it would incriminate you. You tried to kill us, you son of a bitch.”
Klasky shook his head. “This is crazy.”
Taylor added, “And you locked us in the goddamn lab.”
“You’re delusional.” He looked at Brodie. “Both of you.” Then something seemed to dawn on him. “Did you do drugs with Greer? Are you high right now?”
Taylor glared at him. “You locked us in. We didn’t crawl out a window for fun, Major.”
Klasky shook his head. “You’re both paranoid. That’s a sixty-year-old building with a retrofitted electronic lock, sometimes it sticks.”
Brodie said, “You’re quick on your feet, but not quick enough.” He grabbed Klasky’s arm and dragged him into the road.
Morgan called out, “Mr. Brodie!”
“I’m talking to my perp in private, General. If you want to arrest me and let this piece of shit go, you’ll answer for that later.”
Morgan did not respond. Taylor got ahead of Brodie and Klasky and unlocked the door to their house across the street.
Brodie led the guy into the living room, then threw him onto the couch.
Klasky landed face-first, then spun around and spat, “You can’t do this!”
“How about this?” Brodie swung the butt of his pistol into the side of the major’s head, sending him sprawling onto his side.
Klasky slowly sat back up, wincing as blood ran out of a gash above his temple. He locked his eyes on Brodie and said nothing.
“You’re going to tell us everything. What Praetorian is, who is responsible for writing and surreptitiously installing it, and who manipulated Bucky to kill Major Ames and Specialist Kemp. Was it you? You certainly have the capacity.”
Klasky sneered at him. “Fuck you, Brodie. You have no clue what you’re into.”
“Give me a clue.”
Klasky stared at him but said nothing.
Brodie loomed over him. “You’re facing two homicides, two attempted homicides, and one-leg Lenny might be just getting started.”
Klasky looked down and laughed bitterly. He said in a low voice, “I’m dead either way.”
“Speak up, Major.”
Klasky looked up at him. “I can tell you everything or tell you nothing, and either way I’ll be charged, and I’ll never make it to trial.”
Brodie and Taylor exchanged a look. Then Brodie said, “We can protect you.”
“You can’t even protect yourselves.” He looked at Taylor. “Free advice, get out of this place while you can.”
Taylor said, “Work with us, Major. You have the chance to do the right thing.”
Klasky spat back, “I have done the right thing.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I care about something more than my own safety and my own freedom. That’s how we do it in the United States military. They teach that at CID?”
Brodie said, “You’re talking to two combat vets, asshole. We’ve both seen more action than your mother when the Navy’s in town.”
Klasky sprang up from the chair and Brodie gave him another whack in the head with the butt of his pistol.
The major sprawled backward onto the couch, his head flopped back and craned up to the ceiling.
He remained like that, staring up, a purple bruise forming on the side of his head where Brodie had struck him.
He gave a gap-toothed grin and laughed to himself.
“I guess we can keep doing this until you’re facing assault charges, Scott. ”
“How about murder charges? Then we’ll have something in common.”
Taylor put her hand on Brodie’s arm, which was her signal that he needed to shut his goddamn mouth. Good advice. He was pissed and felt himself losing control.
Then Taylor sat down on a chair facing the couch and leaned forward. She asked in a soft but urgent voice, “Major, what is Praetorian?”
Klasky righted his head and looked at her.
The blood had stopped flowing from his temple, congealing into a dried red ribbon down the side of his face.
“Out here in the desert, I think about Los Alamos. Oppenheimer. What he accomplished. What he did that others couldn’t.
Wouldn’t. Not because of lack of intellect, but lack of will.
He did what had to be done to ensure the preservation of the free world. And so have I.”
Well, Robert Oppenheimer had a god complex, and it sounded like Dan Klasky did too. Brodie said, “Answer the goddamn question, Major.”
Klasky looked at him with his close-set bloodshot eyes, and it felt like the man was looking into his soul. “The answer, Mr. Brodie, is that you and your partner are fucked. This doesn’t end with me.”
Taylor asked, “What does that mean?”
Klasky did not respond.
Brodie took a step toward him. “Is there someone else on base who is involved with Praetorian?”
Klasky eyed Brodie’s pistol. “Go ahead. Hit me again and see if you get the answer.”
Brodie did not move.
Klasky continued, “The best part is, I don’t even know who it is. They didn’t tell me. And if I don’t know, you sure as hell aren’t going to figure it out.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
Klasky laughed again. “You think I have a name? This is a pitch-black project.”
“What is the project? What is Praetorian?”
Klasky looked him in the eyes. “Now, why the hell would I tell you that?”
Brodie crouched so he was eye level with Klasky. “Major, let me tell you how this works. How helpful you are right now will impact sentencing at your court-martial. Be smart about this.”
Klasky stared at Brodie, but he seemed to be somewhere else. The man raised his handcuffed hands to his heart. “I love my country. Whatever it takes.”
Brodie saw Klasky fingering something in his shirt pocket, and he understood…
Klasky slipped a capsule from the pocket and opened his mouth.
“No!” Brodie lunged at the man and slammed his shackled arms against the back of the couch. The capsule dropped.
Klasky swung his arms into Brodie’s head and tried to twist out of his grip.
As Taylor ran to him, Klasky twisted himself upside down onto his back, braced his legs against the back of the couch, and pushed himself off, freeing his arms from Brodie’s hold and crashing onto the glass coffee table, shattering it.
Klasky lay in the glass, dazed a moment. Then he grabbed a shard and scrambled away from them.
Taylor put up her hand. “Dan… listen… We can protect you.”
The man looked at her, wild-eyed. “You can’t stop what’s coming.” He thrust the glass into his throat, and a geyser of blood shot out of his jugular.
Taylor jumped on him and pressed hard against the cut. Blood pooled on her hand and seeped between her fingers. “Get a medic!”
“Taylor…”
“Get a goddamn medic!”
Taylor kept pressing, and then she looked at the major’s eyes, wide open and vacant.
She let go, and blood continued to burble out of the deep cut and pool on the floor.
Taylor stood. Her hands and arms, along with part of her dark suit and white blouse, were drenched in Klasky’s blood.
Neither of them said a word. Then Taylor walked across the living room, as if in a trance, and to the front door. She took the handle and turned it, getting blood all over it, and she walked out. Brodie followed.
They stood on the front stoop of their house, scanning the little ring of suburban homes—a ridiculous banality at the nightmarish Camp Hades. Which circle of Hell was this? Who was the sinner, and what was their sin?
General Morgan was where they’d left him, conferring now with Captain Pickman.
Sergeant First Class Mike Miller had arrived, standing with Staff Sergeant O’Connor next to his parked Hummer.
Lieutenant Mike Lehner sat on his stoop.
Farther down the road they saw the Rangers’ checkpoint, and in the sky above, the Black Hawk circled, trying to get a visual on the fugitive tin man.
This doesn’t end with me.
There was someone else on base. But who? And how would they find them? And at what point would it be too late?
Finally one of the Rangers guarding Dixon’s house noticed them. “Holy shit. Sarge!”
Miller looked over, and then everyone looked at the two agents, one of whom was soaked in blood, and rushed toward the house.
“Scott,” said Taylor in a faraway voice as the soldiers rushed at them.
“Yes?”
“Is that thumb drive in your pocket?”
“It is.”
“Drop it. Right now. Between the slats.”
Brodie felt in his pocket for the flash drive and quickly slipped it out and let it drop. It clacked on the wooden planks of the stoop, and he used his foot to push it into a gap between them.
Taylor said, “Say nothing. Trust no one. No matter what they do. We only have each other.”
He looked at her. “You’re goddamned right.”