Strike Force Charlie by Mack Maloney Read Free Book Online Page A

sleep. She pulled onto Pennsylvania Avenue, heading west. The streets were empty here, too. Strange again. It wasn’t that late. She passed New Hampshire Avenue and then 26th Street again. Still no traffic, no cars at all. Suddenly panic rose in her chest. Oh God … . She snapped on her radio, expecting to hear that a major catastrophe had taken place, an Al Qaeda attack or something. But her favorite station was playing soft rock as usual. So were her second favorite and her third. She flipped around. She heard news, weather, sports, commercials. But no Emergency Broadcast
System. Nothing out of the ordinary. The iceberg hadn’t hit … yet.
    She turned onto M Street—and was suddenly blinded for a moment. A line of very bright headlights was coming right at her, and not at a slow pace.
    What was this? A parade? A funeral?
    It was neither. It was a convoy of Army vehicles. Humvees and small troop trucks painted a very dark green. They went by her like she was standing still, two dozen in all, heading back toward Pennsylvania Avenue. She felt another chill go through her but fought the temptation to turn around and follow them.
    Instead, she just kept going straight, heading for home.
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    It wasn’t quite House on Haunted Hill, but it was close.
    It sat behind a row of empty warehouses at the end of a dead-end street, near the Potomac Reservoir extension road, just over the line in Virginia. The Navy had built this place back in the twenties as an auxiliary weather station, but the sailors back then were better at sailing ships than constructing houses. This one was ugly from the first nail, and eighty years of rain and heat had only compounded the error. It had a strange miniature Kremlin look to it, with a skin of faded green shingles and two creaky turrets rising from the back. A black brick chimney, leaning 70 degrees, sprouted atop the sagging roof. Add the rickety fence, the dirty brown lawn, and the two dead apple trees out front and what was once homely was now just plain creepy.
    This was what Li called home. She lived here for one reason only: the rent was very, very low. In fact, when she first came to D.C., she nearly had to turn around and go back home, so scarce were safe living spaces for young women just starting out on the government payroll. After weeks of searching and living out of a bag, this place became available. It was convenient and it was affordable. So, creepy or not, she took it.
    She parked out back now, in the small turnaround. Li had lived here for almost a year, but she’d yet to go into the
garage, never mind park in it. It was chilly up here as usual. A fog had lifted off the smallish reservoir and was pouring through the old chain-link fence into her backyard. She made sure her car was close as it could be to her back door, then grabbed her briefcase, her phone, and her unused overnight bag. Because this place was so isolated, she made it a habit to always hurry inside.
    She climbed the back steps to the porch. From here, over several neighborhoods and the winding Potomac beyond, the lights of the Lincoln Memorial burned dully in the mist. The normal bustle of the city was lacking; she could tell even way up here. Li paused for a moment, trying to make some sense of it. Everything was so quiet. Even the wind was still. But then a muted rumbling from the south. What was that? Not a truck on the highway nearby. Not thunder, in the clear sky.
    She looked out from under the porch’s roof.
    Two more F-15s flew overhead.
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    She fumbled a bit with her keys, finally letting herself in. But she stopped two steps over the threshold. Her place was dark. Completely dark. This was not right. She always kept two lights on during the day, one in the hallway and another in the living room, just so she wouldn’t come back to a dark house at night. But both were off now.
    She thought a moment, frozen in the doorway. Did she forget to leave them on that morning?