The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

within seconds the formation was rising. The streets below were deserted of the living for as far as Travis could see. The choppers cleared the roof, pivoted, and headed south over the city in a tight line, black silhouettes against the dawn.
    At Meiringen, the 747 was already staged at the end of the runway, engines powered and ready. They boarded at a sprint, and three minutes later the aircraft was climbing above Switzerland at the steepest angle its wings could bear, on the chance that someone with a Stinger missile was down there on the pine-covered slopes. When they leveled off at 45,000 feet, Travis saw three escort fighters settle into formation off the starboard wing. No doubt the same number graced the other side, along with others far ahead and behind.
    Paige made an executive decision to put the copilot at the tail of the plane, under guard, and then chose three operators at random to sit with the pilot in case he made any strange moves. When she returned to the seat she’d occupied on the flight over—next to the one Travis now sat in—she looked more exhausted than relieved.
    The black amplifier cube sat on the floor nearby.
    Paige ticked off the relevant bullet points on her fingers. “His building is gone; we’ll level it with an airstrike as soon as the wounded are pulled out. We have the amplifier. Of the three entities he controlled, we’ve recovered the transparency suit and destroyed the Ares. He still has the Whisper.” She looked at Travis, and he saw something that was almost—but not quite—optimism in her expression. “So what just happened in Zurich? Did we dodge whatever he was planning?”
    “We’d have to know what he was planning,” Travis said.
    “Everything he’s worked on for fourteen years is either destroyed or in our possession,” she said. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than him.
    Travis nodded, accepting her point, but unsure all the same. There was just no way to know what the plan had been. What it might still be.
    Paige’s cell rang. Crawford at Border Town. She put it on speaker again.
    “We got something on that last name on Pilgrim’s list,” Crawford said. “Ellis Cook. Let me just make sure I understand what you told me. These names were carved into the floor inside the room on Level Nine?”
    “Yes,” Paige said.
    “Where nobody’s been for at least four years,” Crawford said.
    “Right,” Paige said. She sounded impatient.
    “Ellis Cook had a net worth of over one hundred million dollars. But he made it by winning a Powerball lotto three years ago. Four years ago, when his name was already scratched on that floor, Cook was managing a coffee shop in North Carolina.”
    Paige looked like she was waiting for more. Or for a punch line, maybe. She stared at the phone, her eyes fixed, narrowed. Then she looked at Travis and said, “What?”
    He had no answer for her.
    “That’s what we know so far,” Crawford said. “All of these people were rich as hell when they died, though we’re still looking for a specific through line. But at the time Pilgrim carved Ellis Cook’s name into that floor, the guy was fielding complaints ten hours a day from people who wanted more foam on their cappuccinos. Your bafflement’s as good as ours.”
    Paige ended the call and stared ahead at nothing for a moment. Finally she shook her head and said, “Look, I accept that the Whisper can know everything about the present. I don’t know how it knows that, but at least that information really exists in the world. But Jesus, I don’t care how advanced something is, how can it see the future? There’s too much randomness. It’s chaos.”
    “You’d have to think it’d be pretty good at making educated guesses,” Travis said. “A hell of a lot more educated than ours.”
    “Educated enough to guess the winning lotto numbers, and which person would pick those numbers, a year or more in advance? Is that even close to possible?”
    He met her eyes; they were wide, locked onto his. “Sixty seconds ago I’d have said no,” he said. “Right now I’m leaning toward yes.”
    She stared at him a moment longer. Blinked. Looked away over Switzerland falling behind them. “What the hell are we up against here?”
    “I have a thought,” Travis said. “But I’m not sure you want to hear it.”
    “Try me.”
    “We’ve been operating under the premise that Pilgrim has total control of the Whisper. That he mastered it.”
    She