The Sound of Echoes (Speed of Sound Thrillers Book 2) by Eric Bernt

Author:Eric Bernt [Bernt, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503904545
Published: 2019-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 45

115 NORTH PENNSYLVANIA PLACE

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

June 1, 10:55 p.m.

Senator Corbin Davis was working at his desk on the speech he was to give the following day, at a banquet for the newly elected leadership of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, when he heard a knock on the door. “Elaine, I told you I don’t want to be disturbed.”

Davis’s chief of staff, Bob Welker, poked his head in. “And I told her I thought you’d want to see these.” He waved several printouts of grainy surveillance photos.

Davis waved him in. “Those from your friend in White House security?”

“They are,” he answered smugly. Welker approached the senator and placed the screen grabs neatly in front of him, one at a time for dramatic effect.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” The senator picked up one of the images and studied it closely.

“Is that it?” Welker asked.

Davis nodded. “That is the echo box.”

“You’re sure?”

“No question. This is the device I told you about last week. The top of it pops open right there at the hinges. Inside are eight one-inch satellite microphones that move together in this weird kind of dance.”

His chief of staff sounded dubious because it was his job to be. “This is also the thing you said didn’t work and led Homeland Security all around New York on a wild-goose chase, wasting lots of valuable time and resources.”

“It didn’t work. I had two world-class experts who proved it didn’t.” The senator paused to think it through. “Which means one of two things happened. Either they put on a show for me last week to lead me to think it didn’t work when it actually did, or somebody fixed it in the last eight days and just took the thing out on its maiden voyage.”

Welker nodded. “So the space-based surveillance nonsense was just a cover for them to get the box into the Oval Office. What we need to understand is, to what end?”

Davis stared at his chief of staff like it was the dumbest question anyone had ever asked him. “I can think of a thousand reasons—my God, ten thousand—but only one is a clear favorite.”

The chief of staff struggled to hide his annoyance. “Which one would that be?”

The Indiana senator smiled. “The rumor is true.”

“Which rumor?”

Davis paused for emphasis, stating what he thought should be obvious. “The one involving the Fields brothers and their voting machines.”

Now it was Welker’s turn to pause. His tone of voice sounded like that of a man who could see the future and liked what he saw very much. “Stenson is going to bring him down.”

Davis nodded, staring out the window, imagining what his future might hold. He took out the special phone that the American Heritage Foundation director had recently given him and stared at it. “When he asked me if I wanted to be president, I assumed he meant following the president’s reelection.”

“Looks like we may be in the Oval Office sooner than either of us had thought possible.”

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