What the hell had Pujol been thinking? They should have dropped the gate days ago. But at least now they knew what these things could do. The report from Bolivia had indicated as much, but it was another thing to see it with your own eyes, to watch the video feed of Carter, this little twig of a man with an IQ not much more than 80 on a good day and scared of his own shadow, launch himself twenty feet through the air, so fast it was as if he were moving not through space but around it, and rip a man from crotch to jowls like a letter he couldn’t wait to open. By the time it was all over—about two seconds—they’d had to blast Carter with the lights, to push him back to the corner so they could drop the gate.

They had the twelve now, thirteen counting Fanning. Richards’s job was done, or nearly. The order had just come through. Project NOAH was graduating to Operation Jumpstart. In a week, they’d be moving the sticks to White Sands. After that, it would be out of Richards’s hands.

The ultimate bunker busters. That’s what Cole had called them, way back when, when it was all just a theory—before Bolivia and Fanning and all the rest. Just imagine what one of these things could do, say, in the mountain caves of northern Pakistan, or the eastern deserts of Iran, or the shot-up buildings of the Chechen Free Zone. Think high colonic, Richards: a good cleaning out from the inside.

Maybe Cole would have wised up eventually. But in his absence, the idea had acquired a life of its own. Never mind that it violated about half a dozen international treaties that Richards could think of. Never mind that it was just about the stupidest idea he’d ever heard of in his life. A bluff, probably; but bluffs had a way of being called. And did anyone seriously think, for one goddamn second, that you could contain one of these things to the caves of northern Pakistan?

He felt bad for Sykes, and not a little worried. The guy was a wreck, had barely come out of his office since word had come down from Special Weapons. When Richards had asked him if Lear knew, Sykes had given a long, wretched-sounding laugh. Poor guy, he’d said. He still thinks he’s trying to save the world. Which, the way things are playing out, might need saving after all. I can’t believe this is even on the table.

Armored trucks would transport the sticks to Grand Junction; from there, they’d be moved by train to White Sands. As for Richards: once everything had been brought to its proper conclusion, he was giving serious consideration to buying property in, say, northern Canada.