AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She suddenly shot over to one of the chalkboards and searched through her equations until she found a particular one. She circled a value. “Would someone please tell me the exchange rate from Euros to dollars?” she asked in a strangled voice.
Colton pulled out his phone and tapped at it. “A Euro buys you a dollar and eight cents.”
Yolanda turned to us. All the blood had drained from her face. “It’s not selling stocks,” she said. “It’s for the currency markets, it’s selling the US dollar!” She waved her hand at the chalkboard. “This thing isn’t designed to make money. It’s designed to crash the dollar!”
“What?” I asked.
She wheeled herself back to us. “This thing’s designed to kick in on a certain date, when there’s a panic in the market. Something will happen to make the dollar plummet in value. Everyone’ll sell like crazy, but eventually people will calm down and the price will stop dropping. That’s when this algorithm kicks in and sells hundreds of millions of dollars, starting a fresh panic. More people sell and the value falls even more. And just when things begin to calm down, the algorithm does it again. It’s like pouring gasoline on a fire, each time it’s about to die out. And it keeps going until...” Her voice cracked. “Until the dollar’s worth zero.”
“What? What happens then?” asked Colton.
“The FBI sent me on a training course on this stuff once,” said Calahan. “Disaster planning: earthquakes, cyberattacks…one of the scenarios was the dollar collapsing.” His face was grim. “Other countries would panic and call in all our debts. And we have a lot of debts. The banking system collapses, so no one’s getting paid, or getting welfare, or a pension. Businesses collapse because they can’t afford raw materials, farmers can’t even grow food because they can’t buy fertilizer or fuel for their tractors. The power would go out, then government services would shut down: police, fire, hospitals. After that, it’s basically anarchy.”
“You said it waited for panic in the market,” said Colton. “Something has to make everyone panic and sell the dollar in the first place, right?”
Yolanda nodded. “Yes. Something has to start the house burning. And it’s happening in exactly three days, five hours and sixteen minutes. That’s when the algorithm’s set to kick in.”
Colton looked at me. “That must be what Maravic is for. He’s going to do something to cause a panic, to set this whole thing off.”
I frowned. It made sense but… “How’s a mercenary going to do that?”
“Blow up an oil pipeline?” said Calahan. “That could cost the economy billions.”
“I got another question,” said Colton. “Who’s doing this?” There was a worried silence and he looked from face to face. “Who’d want to destroy our economy? We’re talking about countries, right? I mean, this is full-on global politics, act-of-war shit. China? North Korea?” He looked at me. “Russia?”
My stomach flipped. Chyort, could it be us?
“All I know is, we’re way, way over our heads,” Colton told me. “You’ve got to let me take you to the rest of the team.”
“They’ll hand me over to the CIA!” I told him. “To this Casey Steward guy who hired the team, and then I’m dead!”
“No. Not once we explain.” Colton pointed to the chalkboards. “We know what’s going on, now. I can talk to them. We’ll figure something out.” He sighed and his voice became gentle. “Look, I trusted you. Now you gotta trust me.”
When his voice went gentle like that, it made something deep in my chest flutter. I scowled and pouted to cover myself, and thought about what he’d said. It had been a long time since I’d put my faith in anyone. But Colton had been nothing but straight with me since this whole thing started. And we needed to stop this thing. If the dollar collapsed, how many Americans would die because they couldn’t get medical care, or couldn’t find food? Thousands? Maybe millions? I’m no one’s idea of a hero but even I couldn’t let that happen.
I sighed. “Fine. Take me to them.”
35
COLTON
After Tanya and I had jumped out, Gina had landed the plane in West Virginia and the team had been holed up there ever since, waiting to hear from me. JD said they could fly up to a small airfield west of New York and we arranged to meet at a nearby bar later that day.
The team was waiting for us in the parking lot and they swarmed around our rental car as we pulled up. Everybody looked relieved to see us, but not as relieved as I was to see Cal up and walking around. He lifted his shirt to show me the dressing on his wound. “Won’t be winning any races for a while but the docs say I’m gonna be fine.”
“Sorry,” said Tanya. “Nothing personal.”
