Read Online Brilliance by Marcus Sakey - Free Book Online Page A

two?”
    “Go.”
    “Three?”
    “Freezing my tits off, but go.” Luisa, bringing her usual flair.
    “Crow’s nest?”
    “Two positions, overlapping sight lines. Go.”
    “God?”
    “The view from on high is divine, my son.” Behind the voice came the buzz of rotors. At the elevation the airship was flying, it was nothing but a darker gray spot against a bright gray sky. “God is good.”
    Cooper smiled and pressed the transmit button. “Peace be with you.”
    “And also with you. But woe betide the sorry shitbird who tries to run, lest we hurl a thunderbolt.”
    “Amen.” He clicked off and gazed down through the double-thick glass at the meet site.
    Today looked pretty much like yesterday, which was one of those things you could say about a lot of DC days between November and March. The sunlight was weak tea, and gusts of winds tugged at the coats of powerbrokers, the scarves of businesswomen.
    Ground two was the FedEx truck. It was parked on G Street, on the northwest corner. The back door was up, and an undercover agent was loading boxes on a dolly, checking each one against a manifest. Behind a makeshift shelf, four more agents were jammed together out of sight. It was a tight, uncomfortable space, but even so, they had it better than ground one; the utility van had been parked on 12th all night.
    Cooper had done recon in those things before. They were dark and uncomfortable, boiling in the summer and frigid in the winter. Movement had to be restricted to the absolute minimum, and the air always reeked of urine from the quart jars they used. One time a junior agent had broken a jar, and after six scorching hours, the team had been ready to forget the target and beat the hell out of him.
    11:30. The meet was set for noon. Good planning on the bad guys’ part: lunchtime, and the corner below would be even busier as everyone in the surrounding buildings scurried from their cubicles.
    “Camera feed good?”
    “Better than.” Bobby Quinn sat at a polished wood table twenty feet long. He’d co-opted the law firm’s presentation system for his mobile headquarters, and the air in front of him shimmered with ghost images, video feeds from various angles. “The intersection is wired like a tri-d studio.”
    “Show me the transmitter.”
    Quinn gestured, and a map of the city streets glowed. “Green dot is this.” Quinn tossed him the stamp drive. It looked perfectly normal, down to the half-rubbed-out logo on the side. Cooper pocketed it. His partner continued. “The red dot is Vasquez, the man himself.”
    “How’d you wire him?”
    “His colon,” Quinn deadpanned. Cooper glanced over sharply, but his partner continued. “Shiny newtech, just in from R&D. Some academy bright boy came up with a tracker in a gelcap. Enzyme-bonds to the lining of the large intestine.”
    “Wow. Is he—is it—”
    “No. Bonds dissolve in about a week, and out it goes with the rest of the junk mail.”
    “Wow,” Cooper repeated.
    “Gives new meaning to the phrase ‘stay on his ass.’”
    “Been waiting to use that?”
    “Since the moment they handed me the gelcap.” Quinn looked up and smiled. “Learn anything useful yesterday?”
    “Yeah. I learned Smith has a right to be pissed off.”
    “Hey, hey, whoa.” Quinn dropped his voice. “Dickinson would flip if he heard you say that.”
    “
Screw
Roger Dickinson.”
    “Yeah, well, you know he’d be happy to screw you. So be careful.” Quinn leaned back. “What’s really going on?”
    Cooper thought of yesterday afternoon, the relief he’d felt as he hit the road. The Monongahela National Forest blurring around him, huddled trees and ragged mountains, prefab housing dropped at random.
    I MISS MY SON , the pale woman’s placard had read.
    “They aren’t schools, Bobby. They’re brainwashing centers.”
    “Come on—”
    “I’m not being poetic. That’s literally what they are. I mean, I’d heard things, we all have, but I didn’t believe it.