David Baldacci: The Sixth Man

“So what exactly are you telling me, Avery?” Bunting asked.

The young man drew a rapid breath. The expression on his face was like a man in the water who’d just realized he might be drowning.

“We may have bumped up against the limits of the human mind.”

Bunting looked around at the others. None of them would meet his eye. Electrical currents seemed to pop in the damp air thrown off from the sweat on their faces.

“There is nothing more powerful than a fully utilized, fully deployable human brain,” said Bunting in a deliberately calm tone. “I wouldn’t last ten seconds against the Wall because I’m using maybe eleven percent of my gray cells—that’s all I can manage. But an E-Five makes Einstein’s brain look like a fetus’s. Not even a Cray Supercomputer comes close. It’s quantum computing with flesh and bone. It can operate linearly, spatially, geometrically, in every dimension we need it to. It is the perfect analytical mechanism.”

“I understand that, sir, but—”

Bunting’s voice grew more strident. “That’s been proven in every study we’ve ever done. That is the gospel upon which rests everything we do here. And more importantly, that is what our two-point-five-billion-dollar contract says we have to provide and that every last son of a bitch in the intelligence community depends on. I’ve told this to the president of the United States and every person down the power chain from him. And now you’re telling me it’s not true?”

Avery stood his ground. “The universe may be constantly expanding, but there are limits to everything else.” He gestured to the room beyond the glass where Sharma was still weeping. “And that may be what we’re looking at right now. The absolute limit.”

Bunting said grimly, “If what you’re saying is true, then we are screwed beyond belief. The whole civilized world is screwed. We’re toast. History. Done. The bad guys win. Let’s all go home and wait for Armageddon. Hail to the Taliban and al Qaeda, the bastards. Game-set-match. They win.”

“I understand your frustration, sir. But ignoring the obvious is never a good plan.”

“Then get me a Six.”

The young man looked stunned. “There’s no such thing as a Six.”

“Bullshit! That’s what we thought about Two through Five.”

“But still—”

“Find me a damn Six. No arguments, no excuses. Just do it, Avery.”

The Adam’s apple cratered. “Yes, sir.”

The older man said, “What about Sharma?”

Bunting turned to look at the sobbing, failed Analyst. “Do the exit process, have him sign all the usual documents, and make clear to him that if he says one word about this to anyone he will be charged with treason and he’ll spend the rest of his life in a federal prison.”

Bunting left. The cascade of images finally stopped and the room grew dark.

Sohan Sharma was walked out to a waiting van. Inside were three men. After Sharma climbed in, one of the men slid an arm around Sharma’s neck and another around his head. He jerked his thick arms in different directions and Sharma slumped over with a broken neck.

The van drove off with the body of the pure E-Five whose brain simply wasn’t good enough anymore.

NINE MONTHS LATER

CHAPTER

1

THE SMALL JET BUMPED down hard on the runway in Portland, Maine. It rose up in the air and banged down again harder. Even the pilot was probably wondering if he could keep the twenty-five-ton jet on the tarmac. Because he was trying to beat a storm in, the young aviator had made his approach at a steeper trajectory and a faster speed than the airline’s manual recommended. The wind shear culled off the leading edge of the cold front had caused the jet’s wings to pendulum back and forth. The copilot had warned the passengers that the landing would be bumpy and a bit more than uncomfortable.

He’d been right.

The rear carriage wheels caught and held the second time around, and the lead aircraft-grade rubber bit down a few moments later. The rapid and steep flight path in had caused more than a few of the four dozen passengers on the single-aisle jet to white-knuckle their armrests, mouth a few prayers, and even reach for the barf bags in the seatbacks. When the wheel brakes and reverse thrusters engaged and the aircraft slowed perceptibly, most of the riders exhaled in relief.

One man, however, merely woke when the plane transitioned off the runway and onto the taxiway to the small terminal. The tall, dark-haired woman sitting next to him idly stared out the window, completely unfazed by the turbulent approach and bouncy touchdown.

After they’d arrived at the gate and the pilot shut down the twin GE turbofans, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell rose and grabbed their bags from the overhead. As they threaded out through the narrow aisle along with the other deplaning passengers, a queasy-looking woman behind them said, “Boy, that sure was a rough landing.”

Sean looked at her, yawned, and massaged his neck. “Was it?”

The woman looked surprised and eyed Michelle. “Is he kidding?”

She said, “When you’ve ridden on jump seats in the belly of a C-17 at low altitudes in the middle of a thunderstorm and doing thousand-foot vertical drops every ten seconds with four max-armored vehicles chained next to you and wondering if one was going to break loose and crash through the side of the fuselage and carry you with it, this landing was pretty uneventful.”

“Why in the world did you do that?” said the wide-eyed woman.

“I ask myself that every day,” replied Sean sardonically.

He and Michelle both had their clothes, toiletries, and other essentials in their carry-on bags. But they had to stop by baggage claim to pick up an eighteen-inch-long, hard-sided, locked case. It belonged to Michelle. She picked up the case and slid it into her carry-on.

Sean gave her an amused expression. “You’re the queen of the smallest checked bag of all time.”

“Until they let responsible people on planes with loaded guns, it’ll have to do the trick. Get the rental. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“You licensed to carry that up here?”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”

He blanched. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Maine has an open carry law. So long as it’s visible I can carry it without a permit.”

“But you’re putting it in a holster. That’s concealed. In fact, it’s concealed right now.”

She flipped open her wallet and showed him a card. “Which is why I have a valid nonresident’s concealed weapon’s permit for the great state of Maine.”

“How’d you score that? We only found out about this case a few days ago. You couldn’t have gotten a permit that fast. I checked into it. It’s a mountain of paperwork and a sixty-day response period.”

“My dad is good friends with the governor. I made a call to him. He made a call to the governor.”

“Nice.”

She went to the ladies’ room, entered a stall, opened the locked case, and quickly loaded her pistol. She holstered her weapon and walked to the covered parking garage adjacent to the terminal where the rental car companies were clustered. There she found Sean filling out the paperwork for the wheels they needed for the next phase of their trip. Michelle showed her operator’s license as well, since she would be doing most of the driving. It wasn’t that Sean minded driving, but Michelle was too much of a control freak to let him.

“Coffee,” she said. “There’s a place back in the terminal.”

“You had that giant cup you brought on the flight.”