The Eighth Day

Chapter 7

Chad Dodd sat at the head of a conference table in a windowless office with unpainted concrete walls and floor. He was a tall man, well-built, with a blond crewcut shaved above the ears in a low fade. He wore hiking boots, tan cargo pants, and a long-sleeve tactical shirt the color of volcanic ash.

On the opposite side of the room, a glass multi-touch interface covered the length of one wall and displayed several news channels and feeds. Alongside it stood a sprawling desk and high-backed leather chair. No other extraneous adornments or furnishings cluttered the expansive room, and the entire ceiling glowed with a soft sterile light.

Chad folded his hands and scanned the faces of the three people seated at the table with him. They were the primary staff for the company's NYC cell—two men, one wearing a plain black suit and the other a blue pinstripe, and a woman in a white blouse and gray slacks.

"What do you mean, he's still alive?" Chad asked through clenched teeth.

The man in the black suit cleared his throat. "After we secured Gary Reed's body, we tracked Harrington to the medical center. We were gonna take him out when he left the building, make it look like an accident—hit-and-run, maybe a drunk driver. But he left through the delivery exit in the rear of the building. Our team scrambled to intercept, and we lost track of the Delta. Turns out he was with Harrington. They decided to try to take out the detective anyway. It was a judgment call."

"Pretty piss poor judgment. Lemme take a wild guess. The Delta interfered?"

"He knocked Harrington out of the way. They weren't expecting him to react so fast."

Chad sighed. "Have they not read the case file?"

"Of course they've read it," the man in the black suit said.

"Then what the fuck?" Dodd slammed his fist down on the table. The others seated around it flinched, and their images flickered. "You think I told you to wait to engage Harrington until he was isolated from the Delta just for shits and grins? No, it's because I know what the Delta is capable of. And now we have a giant shit sandwich on our plates, and I sure as hell am not eating it alone. We're all gonna cut ourselves a piece and choke it down until it's gone."

Chad turned to the man in the blue pinstripe suit and said, "I want you to move up the timeline. How soon can we be ready to activate the Delta?"

The man rubbed his chin. "We'll have to rework the script to account for the additional hours he's active," he said. "If we push it, I'd say early tomorrow morning."

"I want him activated tonight."

The man in the blue pinstripe suit shook his head. "That's impossible. Even if everything goes according to plan, the activation protocol isn't in place."

"So we'll add it ourselves and deliver it hard copy," Chad said. "It's not like we have a better option. Harrington's a wild card we can't account for. We need to take him out, but after the fiasco at the medical center, no one with half a brain is gonna believe it's another accident and the poor bastard got struck by lightning twice in one day. And if the cops put two and two together, they might decide to bring the Delta in for questioning. If he's in custody, it could blow the op. We can't chance it. We have to activate him tonight."

The man in the blue pinstripe suit bit his lip, then nodded. "It won't be easy, but lemme see what we can come up with."

"No one said this was gonna be easy." Next, Chad turned to the woman. "I want Lark Morton cleared out ASAP. Get them gone. Empty their offices and purge all online records. I'm talking not a single hair left on the carpet or digital fingerprint to be found. Vanish them."

She nodded once. "Understood."

"Same goes for the Delta," Chad said. "As soon as he's activated, wipe every record of him from existence."

"What about Harrington?" The man in the black suit asked. "Should we wait until the Delta is activated to take him out?"

Chad stroked his chin. "It doesn't matter if the Delta is activated or not. We need to hit the detective when he's most vulnerable. Wait until he leaves work. In fact, let's wait until he gets home. Let him get out of his car, and don't engage him until he's on foot. Try to keep collateral damage to a minimum, but our priority is to ensure this operation's success, regardless of the consequences. Come up with several scenarios and brief me in an hour."

The man in the black suit nodded.

"Any questions?" Chad asked.

There weren't.

"Then get to it." Chad tapped an icon on the conference table, and the other three individuals winked out of existence as their holographic images disappeared.