The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller by Whitley Strieber

meatwagon right now,” she said, her voice crisp with urgency.
    â€œNo, not yet. Let’s play it out a little.”
    There wasn’t a single country in the world that wouldn’t want to acquire the experimental implant that was in Doxy’s head. It was also true, though, that few of them would go to these lengths to get it.
    In his mind, he inventoried the possibilities. Russia? Maybe, but they’d gone broke over Ukraine and Syria and now needed Western friends again. China? They didn’t kill, and certainly not in the White House. Iran, then?
    â€œI think it’s Misery,” he said. The acronym of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence was MISIRI, universally referred to as “Misery.”
    â€œMisery is getting more sophisticated, then.”
    He cut the connection. No matter how secure the line, safety meant keeping conversation to the minimum. The great problem with their work was that there were plenty of people on the other side who were smarter than humans. Not natively, but Aeon was thousands of years ahead of us technologically. How much they were machines and how much biology it was hard to know. You were not, however, dealing with human logic. What they did made sense, but it was their own kind, so that generally it was hard to grasp until after the fact.
    Once, the detail had been linked to Aeon by a communications device we called “the Wire.” Through the use of quantum entanglement, it was able to transmit across interstellar space instantaneously. But when the revolution reached the campus of Aeon’s exobiology staff, the Wire had been shut down. Now it was just a hulk in Detail 242’s small headquarters deep in the CIA building at Langley, a dark unseeing eye. It wasn’t alone, though. A back-engineered system was installed in some ships and submarines, in Air Force One, and in spy planes.
    He punched up Diana. “Meatwagon’s not slowing,” he said into his phone. They’d crossed the gray darkness of the Potomac and were heading up Memorial. The Dolley exit that led into Langley was just ahead.
    â€œI’ve got eyes on it,” Diana responded.
    â€œOK, if they’re gonna be bad boys, I’ll let them lose me, then move in on them when they’ve stopped.”
    The old ambulance passed the exit.
    â€œStay with them. I’m hanging back.”
    It accelerated through 70, through 80.
    â€œThey’re shaking tails. Keep the cops off it, let it happen.”
    â€œOn to the highway patrol now.”
    Ninety. One hundred. The purpose of such a maneuver was to force anyone tailing them to show his hand.
    Flynn let himself drop back, then a little more. The truck was now doing something close to 110.
    It flew up to the Beltway, weaving through traffic. The taillights disappeared into the winking mass ahead.
    â€œThey’re slowing,” Diana said. “Taking the Beltway north. You’re two miles behind them.”
    How naive could they be, thinking that speed would shake a tail?
    The most probable answer was that they weren’t naive at all. They knew that the ambulance was under surveillance that it couldn’t shake.
    So, why were they playing it like this?
    â€œThey’re exiting onto Bear Island. Taking the underpass right now.”
    â€œYou still have visual?”
    â€œInfrared. Too dark over there for visual.”
    Flynn hung out his blue light and flipped on his siren. The car leaped ahead, engine growling. Infrared wasn’t much use. Games can be played with it: All you need is a foil blanket and you’re invisible from above. Meatwagons carry such blankets.
    When he came to the exit, he drove into Carderock Recreation Area, but not far. “What’s their position now?”
    â€œA half mile ahead of you. No movement on the truck.”
    He got out of his car. He could cover a half mile on foot faster than they probably realized. If they realized that the tail had not been