Mosely ripped the Velcro straps securing his armored gloves and pulled them off, one by one. He placed the gloves in the back and extended his hand toward his son. "You got a hand for your old man? You want to shake on a new start?"
The boy curled up tighter.
Mosely lowered his hand. "Well, I guess I got it coming, don't I?" Mosely watched the frightened boy. Resigned to this, Mosely started removing the plates of body armor as the Chevy Suburban climbed the interstate entrance ramp.
An hour later, Ray still hadn't shown his face. Mosely still sat watching him as the landscape sped past. He realized no amount of talking would erase his son's earliest memories. To him, Charles Mosely was a ruthless, violent man-a man everyone feared. A man with no concern for the family he abandoned and occasionally terrorized.
A voice came in over the intercom. "We're here, sir."
Mosely turned to see a massive wrought iron gate with ivy-strewn walls to either side. A plaque on the nearby wall bore the words "Holmewood Academy" in oxidized bronze letters.
Mosely nudged Ray gently and pointed. "Look at that."
Despite his fear, Ray's curiosity got the best of him, and he raised his head to look around warily.
They were moving through the large gates, which had swung open to receive them. Inside, wide athletic fields and Gothic stone buildings lay on either side of the winding drive.
Mosely watched his son's reaction closely. He could tell the grounds were like nothing Ray had ever seen. The boy's iron grip on the seat back eased, and he moved toward the window.
Mosely tried to stifle a slight smile, and he turned toward his own window.
Soon, the Suburban arrived at the huge front door of the main building. Mosely got out and looked up. Gothic turrets rose several stories above him. A young Asian woman, a black woman, and a gray-haired white man stood at the front door, apparently waiting for them. They were dressed impeccably in navy blue suits with a coat of arms sewn over the chest pocket.
Mosely leaned into the Suburban and could see Ray already peering out. He smiled and extended his hand. "C'mon, Ray."
Pausing for a moment, Ray examined Mosely's hand with trepidation. They both noticed the faded gang tattoos on each knuckle. Ray looked up at his father's face, and Mosely did his best to look upon him with reassuring eyes.
The boy slowly reached out and took his hand. Mosely eased him down onto the walk and held his hand as they approached the trio of figures standing near the massive wooden doors.
The two women smiled and approached them, kneeling down-all their attention for Ray. "Hi there, Raymond. Is this your father?"
The boy froze.
After a few moments, the young Asian woman smiled and took him by his other hand. "If it's okay with your dad, I want to introduce you to some friends. Do you like video games, Raymond?"
Ray looked up at his father. Mosely kneeled down beside him. He looked to the women.
They sensed his need and backed away. Mosely looked back at his son. "It's okay, Ray. This is your school now. It's your new home." Mosely straightened his son's dirty T-shirt. "They're going to take care of you. They'll teach you everything you need to know to succeed in life." Mosely regarded his boy again, and finally hugged him close.
At first Ray struggled, but in a moment his little arms wrapped around Mosely's thick neck.
Mosely's eyes welled up with tears. "I did the best I could for you, boy. There'll be no cages for you. Not for you." Mosely pulled back and looked in his boy's face. "Try to remember me."
At that, the women took the boy's hands and gently led him away. Mosely and his son locked eyes, and for the first time Mosely sensed that his son knew there was love in his father's eyes. Even though he'd never seen such a thing before.
In a moment he was gone, through the great doors, and Mosely stood again. The gray-haired white man walked up to him, following Mosely's gaze toward the opening in the doorway. In a second it boomed closed.
"Rest assured, he will be well cared for, Mr. Taylor. And free to decide his future. The Daemon honors its agreements."
Mosely turned to regard the man. He was a distinguished-looking type, with the air of aristocracy unique to academics. But he did not look down on Mosely-far from it. He appeared to regard Mosely as a man of superior social rank.
Mosely stood. "I am the Daemon's champion."
"Then your son will rise to the full level of his abilities."
Mosely nodded. "That's all anyone has a right to expect."
With that, Mosely straightened his uniform, turned on his heels, and headed for the waiting Suburban. What the future held for him, Mosely didn't know.
Instead, he imagined this field, years from now-filled with throngs of people. Mosely imagined the hopeful faces. His son's among them.
Chapter 42:// Building Twenty-Nine
Alameda Naval Air Station was a relic of the Cold War-mute testimony to the power of unrestrained government spending. A sprawling military base across the bay from downtown San Francisco, the station squatted on a billion dollars' worth of real estate. Alameda's aging collection of military barracks, hangars, docks, administrative buildings, power plants, landing strips, theaters, warehouses, and the occasional RD oddity rose from a desert of concrete and asphalt covering the northern half of the island. You'd need a jackhammer just to plant geraniums there.
The base was decommissioned in the 1990s, and the city of Oakland had debated for years what to do with the place. A short ferry ride from downtown, it was theoretically a developer's dream. High-end condominiums, retail, and entertainment plazas crowded dozens of proposal blueprints, moldering in file cabinets while the city wrestled with soil toxicity and asbestos studies-the remnants of decades of military activities that knew no regulation or restriction.
The base sat largely unchanged-except for the odd film production company or construction firm renting out space in hangar buildings. Where once navy jets were retrofitted, now graphic artists with nose rings sat beneath lofty concrete-reinforced ceilings. The runways stretched unused except by model car and airplane enthusiasts. Close by stood the retired aircraft carrier USS Hood and a flotilla of mothballed navy transport vessels. It was as if the sailors and pilots just disappeared one day, leaving everything behind.
Jon Ross gazed out across the tarmac, imagining what this place must have been like forty years ago at the height of the Cold War. When America was the enemy.
He shielded his eyes against the sun and tracked the progress of an unmarked Bell Jet Ranger helicopter coming in low over the distant hangars. It headed toward him-and toward Building Twenty-Nine.
Building Twenty-Nine sat on the far end of a runway apron, on a strip of landfill jutting out into the bay. There wasn't anything around it for a quarter mile in every direction-just flat concrete, marshland, and open water. The building itself was windowless, long, and narrow. A blockhouse of high-density concrete. It looked like it was built to survive a direct hit by a five-hundred-pound bomb-which it was.
The helicopter descended, lifting up its nose as it crossed a razor-wire fence backed by concrete highway dividers blocking the entrance to the peninsula. Rent-a-cop security guards patrolled the perimeter, which was liberally marked with biohazard signs reading Danger: Radon Contamination.
The chopper continued for a few hundred yards, then set down on a weed-tufted stretch of concrete within a hundred feet of Ross.
Agent Roy Merritt stepped out. He wore an off-the-rack suit, bad tie flapping in the wind. His burn scars were still apparent on his face and neck, even at this distance. He nodded to the pilot as he pulled two cases from the rear seats-one a small ice chest marked with a red medical cross, the other a featureless black, hard-sided case. Merritt walked briskly to the edge of the chopper wash and let a grin crease his usually stern face as he saw Ross. The chopper rose into the air behind him and banked away over the bay, leaving them in comparative silence.