Fantastic Hope by Laurell K. Hamilton EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Authors: Laurell K. Hamilton
- Language: English
- Genre: Science Fiction Anthologies
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TWILIGHT FALLS
A JOE LEDGER ROGUE TEAM INTERNATIONAL ADVENTURE
JONATHAN MABERRY
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PHOENIX HOUSE
OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE
“They’re not chem-trails,” I said with the last fragment of patience.
“They’re contrails.”
We were in the briefing room and I was pretty close to throwing
my cup of coffee at the smug little bastard who hosted the conspiracy
theory radio show. Jim Peabody. He had a lean, oddly angular
birdlike body and looked like an affronted egret. He had the kind of
face you wanted to throw a coffee cup at. Even if you like coffee as
much as I do. It was very hot coffee and it would hurt. So, the
struggle was real because I wanted him to shut the fuck up.
“Just listen to him, sugar,” said Joan Holliday, the head of our
integrated sciences division. She looks like a six-foot-plus version of
Dolly Parton. All the glam, glitter, curves, and sass of the singer, but
thirty years younger and a shelf full of MDs and PhDs. She called
everyone sugar. Or honey bunny. Or sweet cheeks.
“Why bother?” I demanded. “We’ve got some freaks threatening
to release bioweapons in fifty countries. Fifty. Five-zero. We’re
standing on the brink of the actual apocalypse. We are a couple of
very bad days away from living in either a disease-infested wasteland
or a dystopia in which only those entitled assholes who can afford it
are going to survive. That isn’t the plot of a summer blockbuster, it’s
happening right now. So excuse the living fuck out of me if I’m not all
that concerned about some crackpot belief trending with the tinfoil
hat crowd.”
Peabody actually recoiled from me, then took a half step forward.
“Colonel Ledger, if you’d just listen to—”
“I’ve been listening,” I said. “And all I’m hearing is bullshit.”
“No, sir,” said Peabody officiously, “you’re hearing but not
listening. You’re not paying attention.”
“‘Paying attention’?” I had to smile. “Do you want to know what I
was doing when I got the call to come in for this briefing? I was
hunting for a group of terrorists suspected of smuggling a bioweapon
delivery system into Athens. Do you know how many people live in
Athens? Do you know how many people we’re trying to keep alive in
Athens? And Rome, and London, and Paris, and New York, and—?”
“Colonel . . .”
It was Mr. Church who’d spoken. A single word. Quiet, without
emphasis.
I stopped my rant. We all looked at him. Church is a big man,
black and strong. Somewhere in his sixties, but that isn’t what made
him the adult in the room. He was the adult in any room. You look at
him and immediately want to check your fingernails to see if they’re
clean. I’ve seen generals and heads of state react that way, too.
“Every JSOC and private SpecOps team in the world is on the
hunt for the bioterrorists. Our people, MHI, SEAL Team 666, Chess
Team, Sigma Force . . . It’s doubtful there’s ever been a more
concentrated hunt than what is currently ongoing. And, as valuable a
field asset as you are, Colonel, cutting you out of that pack to deal
with this is not likely to be the deciding factor in keeping the world
on its hinges.”
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