“Stop ‘N’ shop,” Armitage said, “what’s that?” He was even more jittery now. His face was as white as the sleet bouncing off the car’s windshield.
Jack turned down Kirby Road about five miles from Claiborne. “It’s when you intercept a perp—a suspect—grill him about where he’s going, why he’s in the area, what he’s got in his vehicle.”
“Where’s your probable cause?”
Jack pulled out his gun. “Here’s my probable cause.”
“You can’t just—”
“What are you, an ex-priest and an ex-lawyer?”
Armitage fell silent. While he tried to gather himself, Jack said, “Give me the BMW’s tag number.”
Armitage showed him the pad, but Jack’s emotions were running too high, he was under too much stress for him to be able to get to the mental place where he could concentrate enough to make sense of what Armitage had jotted down.
“Read it to me.”
Armitage looked at him quizzically.
“I can’t take my eyes off the road,” Jack lied. He’d never get over the shame of his disability.
Armitage read off the license tag.
Jack called Bennett back. “I need a check on a gray late-model Five series BMW, tag number two-four-nine-nine CXE. Right. Thanks.”
Jack closed the connection. They drove awhile in an uneasy silence.
At length, Armitage said, “I didn’t sign on for this.”
“You want out?”
Armitage looked at Jack, seemed abruptly ashamed.
“Tell me more about the FASR.”
Armitage ran a hand through his soaking hair.
“Come on,” Jack urged, “the talking’ll do you good.”
“All right.” Armitage licked his lips nervously. “What we believe, first and foremost, is that an ethical life can be led without religion. In fact, it’s religion of all stripes that most batters the ethical life into submission. The word of the lord God is the best method devised by man to twist ethics, morality, to escape the consequence of your actions. The pious can get away with all manner of heinous crimes—burning people at the stake, quite literally turning their guts inside out—all in the name of God. The so-called laws of religion have been rewritten over and over in order to justify the actions of the religious elders.”
It was at that precise moment that Jack felt a slight prickling at the back of his neck. The hair on his forearms stirred as if magnetized, and his eyes were drawn to the rearview mirror. For a moment, he thought he was losing his mind, for there sat his own beloved Emma looking back at him with her clear eyes, as alive as she had ever been.
“Dad—”
He heard her voice! It was definitely her voice, but when he glanced over at Armitage, it was clear that the other man had heard nothing. Jack scrubbed his face with his hand, glanced again at the rearview mirror, which now showed the road behind, traffic moving in normal locomotion. No one was in the backseat.
He swallowed hard. What was causing these hallucinations? he asked himself. They had to be hallucinations, right? What else could they be?
With an enormous effort, he returned his attention to the man sitting beside him. He had been going to ask him another question entirely, but what came out of his mouth was, “Does that mean you don’t believe in God?”
“God doesn’t enter into it,” Armitage said matter-of-factly. “It’s what religion has done in God’s name that we’re rebelling against.”
“Then you have in common with E-Two their desire for a Second Enlightenment.”
Armitage sighed. “We do. But we strenuously disagree with their methods. They’re extremists, and like all extremists, they’re wholly goal-oriented. They see only the shortest distance, the straight path to victory, and that invariably involves violence. As with all extremists the world over and down through history, the means to their goal is of no interest to them.”
“That much I get.” Jack was watching the side mirror, but nothing suspicious showed itself. His cell buzzed. It was the president-elect. Jack must have missed his hourly check-in. He answered the call, assured Edward Carson that in pursuing his own line of investigation he was making progress. There was nothing more he could say with Armitage sitting right next to him. Carson seemed to understand that Jack wasn’t in a position to speak freely and he rang off.
“What I don’t understand is why Garner and his people think you’re an E-Two training ground,” Jack said.
“That’s a sore point, I admit.” Armitage folded his arms across his chest. “Over the past months—I don’t know how many, but certainly it’s under a year—a number of our younger members have left. In fact, they’ve dropped out of sight. We’ve heard rumors that some of them surfaced in E-Two, but so far as we know, that’s all they are—rumors.”
At least Garner has something right, Jack thought.
“If we’re a training ground,” Armitage went on, “it’s totally inadvertent. This is still a free country—” He looked pointedly at Jack. “—more or less. Neither Pete nor I nor anyone else can control what our members do. Unlike the Church, we’ve no wish to.”
Jack’s phone buzzed. It was Bennett.
“You sure about the number you gave me?”
“Two-four-nine-nine CXE,” Jack said.
“Then you’ve got a problem, my friend.” The voice was tight, whispered.
“How serious?”
“That BMW is a Dark Car.”
“What the hell is that?” Jack said.
“There’s no registration attached to that particular tag, no info in the data bank whatsoever.” There was a slight pause. “Which means it belongs to a government black ops division. They have no official oversight.”
Jack’s mind was racing. “Which means they can do pretty much whatever they want.”
“And here’s why: Only four people are authorized to send out a Dark Car,” Bennett said. “The president, the National Security Advisor, and the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security.”
“How would you know that?” Jack asked.
“Same way I know that all Dark Cars are foreign because no one would think of U.S. government agents using anything but an American vehicle.” Bennett chuckled. “I guess the time when you thought you knew everything about me is over.”
“Thanks,” Jack said.
“For what?” his contact said before hanging up. “We never spoke about this.”
“What?” Armitage said. “Who can do whatever they want?”
“Whoever was in the car.” Jack paused for a moment, thinking the situation through. “It’s not registered. Officially, it doesn’t exist. Neither do its occupants.”
Armitage moaned. “This really is a nightmare.”
“Not if you keep your head.” Jack turned to Armitage. “I’m going to tell you what this is all about. At this point, I think you deserve some context.”
Armitage’s eyes were wide and staring. Jack wondered whether he’d be able to keep his wits about him.
“A few days ago, two Secret Service agents were murdered. The E-Two logo was found at the scene of the crime. That’s why Garner and his people came down on you. This is the opening they’ve been praying for to discredit the entire missionary secularist movement. I’m afraid this Administration is going to do its best to paint your people as criminals—worse, actually, they’ll say you’re homegrown terrorists. They want to destroy you.” Jack paused. “But there is a way out.”
Armitage’s bitter laugh dissolved into a sob. “You must be seeing something I’m not.”
“Very likely,” Jack said. “If you can marshal your resources to help me find the killer, you’ll have the best weapon you can hope for to fight the media firestorm the Administration is planning to rain down on you.” He watched a speeding car pass by. “The problem, as you can see, is that you don’t have much time. I can hold these people off for a day, maybe three, but that’s it.”
Armitage groaned. “What d’you need from me?”
“For starters, a list of your defectors,” Jack said. “Then you and I are going to have to run them down.”
Armitage stared out the window at the low sky, the driving sleet. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“You tell me.”
Armitage pointed. “We’d better get to my office then, as quickly as possible, so I can access the encrypted database.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Kansas Avenue. Just south of the junction of Eastern and New Hampshire,” Armitage answered. “You ever heard of the Renaissance Mission Congress?”
Jack said he had.
“Back in the day, before it moved to larger, more luxurious quarters, it was known as the Renaissance Mission Church. We moved into its original building two years ago. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Armitage didn’t know the half of it, Jack thought.
His phone beeped. It was Chief Bennett.
“How did the stop ’n’ shop go?” he asked with no little apprehension.
“It didn’t,” Bennett said. “I don’t know what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into, Jack, but I got an official reprimand and a strict ‘stay clear’ order from the commander.”
“Sorry, Chief, but you also got them off my tail.”
A blur at the corner of Jack’s eye made him reach for his Glock. There was a loud crack, the car swung on its shocks as the bullet entered the car’s metalwork, and Armitage screamed. A second gunshot shattered the windshield, and Jack used the butt of his gun to punch out the crazed sheet of safety glass. Wind and sleet filled the interior, half-blinding him. But his mind had already formed the three-dimensional picture of his car, the road, the BMW. He could see the angles, feel the shifting vectors even as they formed and re-formed.
Just ahead of them, off the driver’s-side fender, rode the gray BMW. Jack could see that the expert driver was jockeying for the perfect position, to enable the shooter to have a clear line of fire. The professionals were leaving nothing to chance.
The scenario was clear in his mind, the playing field existed in his world, and there was no one better at its mastery.
Jack’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, his mind performing a thousand calculations in the blink of an eye. He braked suddenly. The Toyota behind them screeched to slow down, rear-ended them at a reduced speed, jouncing them sharply against their seat belts, then back against the seats. In the following moment, when most people would be in shock, Jack’s brain figured vectors, speeds, distances. Then he slammed the BMW’s right rear fender.
The BMW spun clockwise; then everything happened very quickly. Jack put on speed. The BMW careened out of control, veering sharply to the left, its rims sparking off the wet tarmac. Jack caught a glimpse of the driver desperately scrambling to regain control, the shooter off-balance, white-faced. Then the BMW struck the left-hand guardrail at speed, its rear end rose up angrily before the car punched through the rail, spun crazily down the slope at the side of the parkway.
A moment later, flames flickered and an explosion of debris geysered up as the gas tank cracked. Jack floored the car, heading for Kansas Avenue NE, smack in the middle of his past.