Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

Not that it had slowed Reuben down—but that was just the point, Reuben should have slowed down, should have gotten out of the military and taken a job as a consultant somewhere, so he wouldn't die.

Then again, he might have gotten cancer, like Cole's father did. Or been run over by a bus. You never knew what was going to happen in this life. Which was why it was better to own nothing, to have no one waiting for him to come home, to live without any extraneous responsibilities, not a dog, not a goldfish, not even a houseplant that needed him to come home.

I could die and nobody's life would change, thought Cole fairly often, and with satisfaction. He was doing this right.

So when he got home after eleven at night, running up the three flights of stairs with his bike on his shoulder, he didn't have to walk softly inside his room, or be careful not to turn on the wrong light. He just grabbed his toothbrush and face towel and trotted down the half-flight of stairs to the shared bathroom on the landing.

All the bathrooms in this ancient D.C. townhouse were afterthoughts. No doubt when the place was first built, toilets were chamber pots under the bed and you had to pay the maid extra to fill a tub with hot water for you. Once a month, probably, and you used cologne and pomade the rest of the time and reeked and scratched your lice and fleas like everybody else.

With that perspective, having a full modern bathroom only half a flight down from his room was the height of luxury.

His cellphone rang while he was washing his face, but he toweled off at once, enough to flip the phone open and hold it to his face without shorting it out. Hardly anybody had his number, and they only used it when it mattered.

"Mingo here," said the faint, tinny voice on the other end. Domingo Camacho was a civil engineer who specialized in bridges. He was also part of Reuben's old special ops team, which Cole had sort of inherited after Rube was killed. These guys had followed Rube into combat again and again in several theaters of war. Even though they had also fought with and under Cole on plenty of missions since then, nobody had any illusions—they were still Rube's jeesh. They liked Cole. He even imagined that he had earned their respect. But they were not friends, not deep-core friends, not like they had been with Rube.

The only person in Cole's life that he thought of as a true friend, a friend of his, was Cessy Malich, and he made damn sure she had no idea how important she was in his life, for fear she might get the wrong idea and think he wanted to take somebody else's place.

"So what's up?" asked Cole.

"Got a bridge I want you to look at, Cole."

"Highway bridge? Railroad? Dental? I won't even know what I'm looking at, Mingo, I'm not the engineering type."

"You'll like this bridge," said Mingo.

"It's like flights that end with a landing you walk away from—if it gets me to the other side without falling down under or on me, it's a good bridge."

"Ride your little Schwinn down to the railroad station and I'll pick you up in my big, ugly, outdated, soon-to-be-illegal internal-combustion nonhybrid gas-guzzling SUV."

"To see a bridge," said Cole.

"Okay, not the whole bridge, just a particularly fine truss."

"If this is some ploy to get me to come to a surprise party, it won't be my birthday for eight months."

"That's why it's a surprise, bonehead. Do you have a headlamp on your Schwinn? Or will you be carrying a flashlight?"

"Aw, Mingo, you want me to be safe!"

"I want you to see my bridge. Wear your bike helmet. All the smart kids do."

Of course it wouldn't be a bridge. It would be some damn thing Mingo had thought up for special ops and he wanted Cole to see it because he had the President's ear, and any military procurement process that began with an inquiry from the President was put on the fast track. Usually the fast track to rejection, but that was true of practically everything. You just hoped you could make a little money during the prototyping and testing phase before Congress stepped in and made some political hay out of refusing to fund such a ridiculous item in the military budget. Hey, they had to put something in those budgets for Congress to eliminate.

Cole thought of his bed with momentary longing; he knew he wouldn't get back to it until way late tonight—if not tomorrow morning. And he had a nine o'clock meeting. There was once a time when he could skip a night's sleep and be no worse off, mentally, than a staffer who'd had a martini at lunch. Now, though, in his debilitating postthirty condition, he would spend the day in a fog.

Better be worth it, Mingo.

Back down the stairs with the bike over his shoulder. At least he had had the chance to empty himself into his fine, modern toilet. Bicycling with a full bladder over rutty D.C. roads was almost as bad as doing crunches with dysentery.

Naturally, Mingo would not pick him up where he had said over the phone. After all that had happened during the Progressive War, they didn't trust any phone to be secure. Cole assumed that Mingo would be watching his alleyway, and he came out of it in the opposite direction from the railroad station, then began riding east on Independence Avenue, heading toward the hospital.

To his surprise, Mingo didn't pick him up on Independence. Maybe it was too busy a thoroughfare for him, even at night. So Cole swung south on Eighth Street toward the Eastern Market, which was deserted,

except for whatever criminals might have chosen this spot for their rendezvous. Cole didn't expect to reach the market, and he was right. A black SUV turned right directly in front of him, forcing him to swerve west on a nub of C Street. Mingo had the back of the SUV open and waiting for his bike by the time he caught up.

"We bike riders think drivers like you are evil," said Cole.

"We SUV drivers think you Lycra-wearing bike riders are sissy boys."