P. T. Deutermann - Firefly

THEFIREFLY

P. T.Deutermann

St. Martin'sPress New York

Alsoby P. T. Deutermann

Darkside

HuntingSeason

TrainMan

ZeroOption

Sweepers

OfficialPrivilege

TheEdge of Honor

Scorpionin the Sea

THE FIREFLY. Copyright(c) 2003 by P. T. Deutermann.

All rights reserved.Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book maybe used or reproduced in any manner

whatsoever withoutwritten permission except in the case of briefquotations

embodied in criticalarticles or reviews. For information, address

St. Martin's Press, 175Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of CongressCataloging-in-Publication Data

Deutermann, PeterT.

The firefly : a novel P. T. Deutermann,span>

p. cm.

ISBNO-312-2O377-2

1.Assassins--Fiction. 2. Surgery, Plastic--Fiction. 3.Washington (D.C.)--

Fiction. 4. Governmentinvestigators--Fiction. 5.Presidents--Inauguration--

Fiction. I.Title.

PS3554. E887F57 2003813'.54--dc21

2003008974

First Edition: December2003

10987654321

Thisbook is dedicated to all the men and women

in thedepartments of Defense, Homeland Security, and

CentralIntelligence who will be on the front lines,

facingthe barbarians, for a long time to come.

Acknowledgments

Iwant to thank Don, Penny, and Laurie for their help with some ofthe technical aspects of this book, and my editor, George Witte,for his careful editing job. I also made extensive use of thepublic information Web sites of the U.S. Secret Service and theDepartment of Homeland Security and am grateful for the effortsput forth by these agencies, one of which is now part of theother, to help civilians understand what they do. I wish to alsothank Dr. Marc A. Branham, Ph.D., creator of the Web site TheFirefly Files, for letting me excerpt (loosely, from atechnical standpoint) some of his fascinating material. Thatsaid, this book is entirely a work of fiction. Where realgovernment agencies are depicted, the reader should understandthat they are portrayed creatively and not necessarily in afactual manner. Any resemblance of the characters or incidentscontained herein to actual persons, living or dead, is purelycoincidental.

FirefliesI

Thereare many species of firefly illuminating the common summergarden, and while their bioluminescent blinking appears to becompletely random, it is not. Most of the blinks we see in thewarm night are actually males in search of a mate, and each kindof firefly blinks out a specific code. The females watch. Whenthey see the code of a male of their own species and it suitstheir purposes, they blink back the same code. The male thenapproaches for breeding.

The man whocalls himself Jager Heismann awakes in the dimly lightedrecovery room of the private cosmetic surgery clinic in northwestWashington, D.C. He blinks rapidly to clear his sticky eyelidsand then checks his watch. Almost midnight. Fire time. He closeshis eyes for a few more minutes. His brain is not quite clearyet. He hears a nurse attendant come into the room, smooth hiscovers, check a monitoring panel, and leave. He does a mentalsituational-awareness check: He's just been through the last ofthe eighteen procedures of his year-and-a-half ordeal, this onerelatively minor. His lower face and lips are numb and feelswollen to his touch. His lungs feel heavy and there is asoporific wave lapping at the edges of his brain, but otherwisehe's in no pain. He concentrates on deep breathing to disgorgethe last remnants of the anesthetic. The monitor behind him beepsencouragingly.

Sometimelater, he opens his eyes and checks his watch again: midnight.His head is just about clear.

He sitsup and swings his legs gingerly out of the bed, then waits forhis balance to stabilize. He thinks about what he's about to doand summons the adrenaline necessary for the task. There's stilla slight heaviness in the bottoms of his lungs, so he does somemore deep breathing, shoulders back, focusing on extending hisdiaphragm. The monitor's beeping noise accelerates as he comesalive, so he reaches up and hits its power button and thenremoves all the probes and wire patches from his skin. There's noIV. He gets up, pulls on his street clothes, still doing the deepbreathing and using a towel in his mouth to suppress the soundsof a sudden coughing fit. He goes over to the closet where hestashed his small duffel bag earlier, takes out the liquid Tasergun and its fluid pack, and carefully straps it on. He retrieveshis jacket and slips it on loosely over the Tasergear.

Hecracks opens the door to the hallway and listens while he armsthe Taser unit. He can hear the nurses cleaning up in thesurgery, one door away, and the low murmur of the two doctorstalking in their office, a door away in the opposite direction.The men first, he decides.

Onemore really deep breath. He detects the slight taste of somethingchemical at the back of his throat. Then he adjusts the portabletank pack and steps out into the hallway, the stubby Taser gun inhand, its fluid tube trailing around to the small of his back. Hewalks quietly down the hall and pushes the door to the doctors'private office fully open. They're still in their scrubs,drinking tea. The fat older Paki is dictating notes into a smallmachine. They both look up, surprised, although hardly alarmed.They never see the Taser in his hand. He points its boxy snout atthe fat one, barely sees the charged stream arc out, and then theswarthy man is going over backward in his chair, flopping ontothe carpeted floor like a pregnant fish. Heismann then turns andnails the other one, the young one, only two years out ofKarachi, whose mouth is opening to protest. His whole body jumpsand then pitches forward into a fetal position on the floor, oneheel twitching audibly. Heismann waits a second and them hitseach of them again, this time aiming directly for their exposedthroats, sending them deep into a stunned stupor.

Theequivalent of 400,000 volts. Nonlethal, they call it. Lookslethal to him. They're not dead--yet. He hefts the portabletank, tightens one strap, and then goes down the hall to thesurgery.

Twowomen in green scrubs are loading the autoclave with trays ofinstruments. One of them sees him and smiles. "You're up," shesays brightly.

"Ya,"he mumbles, and drops her with a jolt to the throat. The tray ofinstruments crashes to the floor. The other, eyes widening,realizes something's terribly wrong and puts out her handdefensively. Heismann fires the stream right at it and she makesa sound like a turkey as her arms snaps back into her face. Shestumbles against the autoclave, then folds to the floor, armtwitching. They both end up on their faces, so he fires a secondstream at each one, hitting them in the back of the neck, hearingthem grunt in turn. Then he turns off the unit and pockets theTaser. Mentally smiling at the memory of the instructor's carefulwarning about that sequence: "Unit off, then pocket it.Never the other way round." He grabs some plastic gloves out ofbox and puts them on.

Hedrags the two semiconscious doctors down to the surgery and dumpsthem around the operating table. Then he drags the nurses over.The younger one has one unfocused eye partially open. She can seehim. She groans, but she still can't move. He begins setting upfor the fire, then pauses. If they'd all been working in here,one of them would have seen the fire and tried for the fireextinguisher. Right. He drags the middle-aged nurse by her heelsover to the wall near the door, where there's a fireextinguisher. He puts it near her clenched hands. Then he pullsthe pin and fires it in the direction of the operating table'scurtain, covering the floor and lower wall in white powder, wherethe arson squad should find it. He can see her fingers twitching,but she still can't move her arms. Plenty of time, although hehas the feeling he's missing something about thenurses.