Alien vs. Alien

Club.”
    “Seriously?” Armstrong sounded concerned. “The President’s a member there. I’m a member there.”
    “Everyone who’s anyone is a member there or good friends with a member there,” Franklin said. “It’s a perfect place to have a secret underground tunnel and room, too, because even if you’re not a member, if you’re someone’s invited guest, you’re ‘in’ once you’re there, and no one’s going to bother you.”
    “If it’s really a room.” There were many other possibilities, which I chose not to share aloud. Why say “hidden bomb” right now? What good would it do if we couldn’t access the dead zones to verify?
    “I think Amy’s father was a member there,” Christopher said quietly to me, as he, White, and William joined us.
    “I’m sure he was. And that means LaRue probably still is.” I figured Ronald Yates, Antony Marling, and heck, even Madeline Cartwright had been members there. Or been pals with one. It was a safe bet every enemy we had was no more than two degrees of separation from a full-fledged member.
    “No wonder your mother and Mister Reynolds have been careful,” Armstrong said. “The members of this country club are among the most powerful in the nation.”
    “You should know, Senator. Are Mimi and Abby done meditating?”
    “Yes,” Naomi said. “What do you need?”
    “You two and Christopher—see if you can get a reading on Jeff or Chuckie.” Just because Big George had found some heat signatures, it didn’t mean they were emanating from the bodies we were looking for.
    Christopher muttered something about every woman he knew bossing him around, but otherwise I could tell the three of them were concentrating.
    Tried to be quiet while they were focused. Failed. “How deep are these tunnels?”
    “Deep,” Big George said.
    “There are tunnels under Washington,” Stryker added. “These are deeper. You did know that there were tunnels undeÀfr the city, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, Eddy. Just like Disneyland, there’s a whole lot more underground that the regular folks don’t know about.”
    “Just checking,” he grumbled. “Geez, bite a guy’s head off.”
    “Get back to work, Eddy.”
    “I’ve got something,” Naomi said. She and Abigail were already holding hands, but Naomi grabbed Christopher’s hand, too. “Need your help.”
    “Two people,” Christopher said slowly. “The interference is extreme. I can’t tell if they’re human or A-C, let alone if they’re Jeff and Reynolds. I can just get that there’s something living in there and they . . . seem personlike.”
    “Same here,” Abigail confirmed. Naomi nodded.
    Something was bothering me. Something important. “I have a question.”
    “Yes?” Big George asked.
    “Why is it that three of the most powerful A-Cs on the planet are having more trouble reading what’s in that tunnel than a roving camera and some heat sensors?”

    Yi

CHAPTER 82

    “W HAT DO YOU MEAN?” Abigail asked.
    “I mean that you three should be able to see everything about these tunnels, let alone who’s in them. Christopher can see people in the Alpha Centauri system, for God’s sake. Yet, whatever these tunnels are reinforced with, it’s harder for an empath, imageer, or hybrid to see through them. Video feeds are doing better than the three of you, and that should be impossible.”
    “They knew what they were doing, I guess,” Christopher said. “Though I don’t know how anyone would be able to predict the powers Naomi and Abigail have.”
    “Let alone the ones you, Jeff, and Serene got from the Surcenthumain boost.” Which bothered me even more. “The other locations where there are dead zones, what are they under or near? I mean, one’s close to our Embassy. So where are the others?”
    “In this area that we’re focused on, the Pentagon, Langley, Camp David, and Norfolk, all of which we’ve mapped,” Henry answered. “The Gaultier America research facility in McLean is mapped, but there’s more going on there. The main Gaultier America research facility in upstate New York is also mapped, by the way, and linked to this tunnel system.”
    “For all we know, all the tunnels are linked,” Big George said. “As I told you earlier, we are nowhere close to done with this project.”
    “Fabulous. But all of these are under our control now?”
    “As far as we know, yes,” Henry said.
    “All of them are mapped, and have sensors installed,” Big George corrected.