An Armageddon Duology (50 page)

S
avas and Cohen
sat atop an armored Humvee, its surface-to-air missiles spent, the soldiers inside asleep even as the thundering roll of explosions continued around them. He shook his head. The human mind adapted quickly, even to the insane—the foundation, Savas knew, of PTSD. After a day of intense assault, counterstrikes, endless violence and death, the men were exhausted. Far behind the main battle, they could now rest as the front of the conflict moved toward the urban center of Kansas City itself.

Savas couldn't sleep. Cohen breathed slowly, her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed. He tried not to disturb her as he stared into the interrupted blackness, waiting for morning. The stars were constantly dimmed by blinding explosions, weapons’ flashes, and manmade clouds rising into the sky.

He could taste it in the air: a burnt, acrid cloud the wind could never fully dissipate. It sank into their clothing, formed a thin layer of dust in the vehicles, and induced bouts of asthma in the susceptible. As if on cue, one of the soldiers within startled from sleep into a coughing fit.

It has been over a week of fighting, ten days of push and retreat, artillery and blast, carnage, and a slow victory. Their opponents had learned from the last engagement. This one had been much costlier. But finally, they held the upper hand. The president’s troops had pushed Hastings’ force nearly inside the Kansas City limits. Soon, they’d been assured, it would be over.

The road ahead drew his attention. A man in fatigues sprinted toward them, the cap on his head marking him an aide to the command center.
This can’t be good.
He shook Cohen gently.

“Morning already?” she rasped.

“Rebecca, we got company.”

Her eyes flicked open, one hand rubbing the sleep out, and she focused on the approaching soldier. His pace didn’t abate, and when he finally came to a stop in front of the vehicle, he doubled over for several seconds to catch his breath.

“Evening,” began Savas. “All okay on the western fr—”

“Come with me now!” he gasped out. “No time to explain. The president wants you at her vehicle immediately.”

“What’s going on?” said Savas. Cohen sat upright.

“I’m not here to talk or take no for an answer.
Now,
sir!”

The FBI agents exchanged glances and hopped down to the asphalt. The soldier turned and motioned for them to follow. “Double time!” He began to run.

The pair followed at a fast clip, wordless, dashing past sleeping soldiers and quiet vehicles toward the command vehicle. As they arrived, the tension spiked: high-ranking officials and military personnel were congregated around the president’s war table. Soldiers inside spoke rapidly into headsets as they scanned computer screens. Faces were grim. Savas and Cohen edged closer to hear the dialogue, suppressing their gulps for air.

“If they’re gonna launch,” said a heavy-set general, “there’s no way to clear the battlefield. It’s a logistics nightmare. This many men, this much equipment, it’s a day’s bug out and you know it!”

“Then it has to be faster!” cried York.

“Impossible!”

Tooze leaned in. “Elaine, that’s it. You’ve done what you could. It’s time to leave. We can evac you and other VIPs on a few of the older choppers that still fly.”

“It’s a massacre! A slaughter!”

“If they follow through, it’s already assured, Ms. President!” yelled the general.

York removed her glasses and squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Give me the assessment again.”

An aide to the general suppressed a sigh. “NORAD detected SLBM activation. The boats are parked off the East Coast. For those missiles, we’ve got fifteen minutes after launch, less perhaps depending on trajectory.”

The general spoke clinically. “They don’t need precision accuracy, Ms. President. An air blast. We’re not fortified. They’ll umbrella the area. From the initial NORAD data, it’s likely a Mark 4 type, fourteen warheads. Each is a hundred kilotons. They’ll carpet bomb the convoy and surrounding area.”

“We’d won, dammit!” she shouted, pounding the table, spilling small pieces marking positions across the map. “Nuke his own people? His own army?”

“It’s
because
we’ve won,” said the general, wiping sweat from his brow. “Like I told you, this was their last stand. They know they’ve lost it. This is a Hail Mary.”

“More like a Hail Satan,” she said. “NORAD can’t shut it down?”

“They’re still trying,” came the voice of another high-ranking officer. “But there isn’t much of a chance.”

“Tens of thousands of our troops, this
entire
city, are going to die, gentleman. That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Yes, ma’am. And we can’t stop it.”

“Elaine,” began Tooze softly, “We have—”

“Prep the aircraft,” she interrupted, staring coldly at her military advisors. “Go with the Migrant protocol, worst case scenario. Get as many of the VIPs out as you can.” She paused and sighed. “Don’t say anything to the troops. Not yet. If Hastings steps back from the cliff, we need to hold this location. We can’t afford to scatter—it could be a feint and Hastings trying to gain an edge here. But the second we have a confirmed launch—God forbid—I want everyone notified with details. Tell them the truth.”

“It won’t be enough to get them out.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But they deserve a shot. God forgive us all for what we’re doing.” She looked them over. “All right. That’s an order. Move!”

The military men saluted and raced off to enact her commands. Tooze remained beside her, and Savas and Cohen were slowly revealed to York as the crowd of soldiers dissipated.

“You catch all that?” she asked wearily, slumping into a foldout chair.

“I’m not sure I can believe it,” said Cohen.

“I know I can’t,” said Savas.

“You’d damn well better believe it. What’s more, you two are coming with me, part of my personal entourage when we fly like bats out of hell.” They simply nodded. York closed her eyes. “Just like bats out of hell. Because hell’s coming.”

T
hey sat together
at the long table, the shelter’s hackers giving them a respectful space, and dined on scavenged canned goods and a never ending soup of protein powders from a GNC store raid. Lightfoote scowled as beige goop dripped from her spoon.

“I don’t know how many more artificially sweetened, vanilla-flavored amino acid blends I can slurp down.” She turned to Houston. “How’s the leg?”

“Wound’s closed,” she said. “I won’t be running the one hundred anytime soon, but walking’s good. Limited weight bearing drills: squats, lunges.” The former CIA agent turned the bowl up and drank down the goo. “Thank God for these protein shakes. Good to rebuild the tissue.”

Lightfoote frowned. “Tastes like liquid cardboard.”

“Pretty much,” laughed Houston. “Our prisoners won’t stop whining about it.”

“How secured are they?”

Houston chewed on stale crackers. “Physically, not very. We rigged some locks on the doors. But the best bars are psychological. I think you broke them. That and Francisco’s silent shotgun-priest thing.” She smiled. “Works every time.”

Lopez cut in: “Nothing from Savas and Cohen?”

Lightfoote shook her head. “I’ve tried several times. I’ve left emails, texts, whatever I could. No response and I can’t raise them on the emergency line.”

“You sure you had a connection?” asked Houston.

“Not in here, but I went topside. Phone was ringing. No one home.”

He exhaled. “Something’s wrong. They’ve never gone dark so long. I’m worried.”

Lightfoote nodded. “Me too. But it’s getting pretty nasty out there if we’re filtering the local Hastings propaganda accurately. The other hacker communities at least help with that.”

“Let’s see,” began Houston, “after translating Pravda, what do we get? The president is leading an armed resistance. That’s her trying to get to NORAD, of course. Hastings is unsurprisingly claiming she’s trying to establish a dictatorship. The military is split between them. And fighting has begun. Huge battles reported Midwest, East Coast, West Cost, Philly. Our friends are likely caught up in all that insanity.” She gestured around her. “Makes this shelter seem rather foresighted.”

“Caught up, and how badly?” asked Lopez. “Battles like that—I don’t care what your army, sometimes you don’t walk away. Look at what happened in Princeton.”

“Jesus,” said Houston, closing her eyes. “They sterilized it. Couldn’t find us, so why not burn the entire fucking place to the ground? I kind of liked the gothic look they had going on there.”

“If something happened to York, we’re toast,” said Lightfoote. “The country will fall to this Hastings, or whoever is put in his place to pull the strings. No way out of that. And we
need
York. Especially now, right when the numbers are converging.”

“Any updates?” asked Houston.

“Good news, sister!” popped in De-frag. He landed heavily at the table, a tin plate piled with ketchup-plastered beans rattling and partially spilling its contents. He shoveled several plastic spoonfuls, speaking through a full mouth. “Cause we got ourselves an answer!”

“
W
ell
, we kinda got ourselves an answer,” said De-frag, scrolling through lines of incomprehensible output. The group sat in one of the back rooms, centered around a group of monitors.

Lightfoote leaned in and examined the screen. “What do you mean? I see a clear peak, here, Northern Europe, right where—wait a second...”

“Exactly,” finished De-frag.

“How can we have other maxima?”

“Don’t ask me, sister. I’m just running your code. Them’s Nobel Prize equations.”

Lightfoote squinted. “The second maxima is far smaller, but the statistics are good. What the hell?”

“Lay-agent translation, please,” barked Houston.

“Yeah,” sighed Lightfoote. “Okay, first—we got the precision convergence in Europe. And what do you know, it’s in the Netherlands. In a one hundred mile radius that includes the damned Bilderberg Hotel. That’s the major convergence. Cross-checked and independently verified with control data removed. All the external manipulation of the economy and political trajectories center there.”

“Well, yeah, except that they don’t, really,” added De-frag.

“Right, except that they don’t,” said Lightfoote. “There’s a collection of nodes, weaker, but they look real. One stands out the most—some sort of major influence is tied into this one as well.”

“Well, where is it?” asked Lopez.

Lightfoote reached over De-frag and keyed in several commands. A map of the world appeared, a wild crisscrossing of lines converging on Europe and the northern United States.

“Here,” she said, pointing to North America. “New York City.”

Lopez turned to her. “New York? Right under your noses?”

“It might not be anything like the Bilderberg center. It’s a minor peak, and maybe tied to the fact that New York is a financial and world political center, an ‘echo node’ that reflects its influence, but isn’t causal.”

“Isn’t causal?” repeated De-frag.

“It isn’t a power center in and of itself.”

“That makes sense,” said Houston. “There are minor nodes at most of the main financial centers—London, Shanghai, Tokyo.”

“Maybe New York is more important.”

“How can we know?” asked Houston, grimacing as she repositioned her injured leg. “Do we have two fronts in this fight? More? Do we need to take out the others, too?”

Lightfoote shook her head. “There’s no way to know, and everything we’re doing here is experimental, anyway.” She set her mouth. “I say we ignore the weaker nodes. Everything—history, the strong signal on the Bilderberg node—it all points to Europe.”

“And we don’t have the resources, or the time, to make ten pit-stops,” said Lopez. “I agree. Let’s take out the big dragon.”

“Whoa,” said De-frag, his eyes large. “Take out? What—ya’ll are headed overseas to, you know,
kill
people?”

Houston shot him a hard look. “We’ll do what we have to. They have to be stopped.”

Lightfoote stepped back from the monitors. “We’ve got to reach out. We need help.”

“York again?” asked Houston.

“She’s the only one with the resources. It will take us ages to get there. I’m not even sure
how
right now. It’s not like commercial airline traffic is back up.”

“Go above ground to call out,” said Lopez. “We’ll come and provide cover, scout the area. Stay up there all day if you have to.” He stood up. “This is the endgame. If we can catch them unprepared, we might have a shot at stopping them. Once and for all.”

T
hey exited
the computer room and marched from the back of the shelter. Lightfoote toted a bag with her communications equipment. Houston limped behind at a slower pace, refusing any help from Lopez. De-frag trailed behind like a kid in a candy shop.

At the sight of their passing, conversation stalled and heads tracked them. SixtyFour sat in front of a makeshift security center, blond hair spilling around bulbous headphones that covered his ears. A grainy video image flickered jarringly on a monitor in front of him. It showed only static. He turned, sensing their presence, removing the earphones.

“Up?” he said softly.

Lightfoote nodded. “We’re all going. Probably a long session.”

SixtyFour shook his head. “Wait.”

“We don’t have time—” began Lightfoote.

“Hold on, hold on,” De-frag cut in, his brows furrowed. “SixtyFour’s quiet, so, you know, when he talks, you gotta listen. What’s up, dude?”

The gaunt teen pointed at the screen. “Video’s dead.”

“Yeah, okay. Not the first time,” said De-frag.

“Sounds,” said SixtyFour, tapping the earphones. “Too much. Rustling. Impacts. Can’t identify. Someone’s up there. Sentry’s silent.”

“Sentry?” asked Houston.

De-frag looked pale. “Yeah. She’s posted in the rubble, couple hundred yards out. Claustrophobic. Couldn’t take this tank.”

“She’s actually a sentry?” asked Lopez.

“Right,” said De-frag. “Chatty as hell, too. No way she went quiet. No way she wouldn’t respond.” He looked back at SixtyFour. “I think we got trouble.”

A shout from the back of the shelter dropped all conversation to silence. Medea hustled toward them, waving her arms, a blur of dark clothing and a red streak from her dyed hair. She shouted again.

“We’re blown!” Her heavy form came to a stop in front of them. “Damn they’re good! Must be NSA or something. They’ve traced us, ID’d our location. I don’t know how. We’re getting penetration tests coming up our asses!”

“I thought York had bombed them!” said Houston.

“She did!” said Lightfoote. “Slowed them, just not enough.”

“They know we’re here?” Houston asked Medea.

She nodded. “No way they didn’t geolocate us by now.”

Lopez looked into the metal tube in front of them. He removed a handgun from his robes. “That means—”

A thundering clank turned heads in the room.

“That means those aren’t friendlies upstairs,” said Houston grimly.

“That means we’re screwed!” cried De-frag, grabbing at his hair.

A deafening hammering began above them, the sound echoing through the tube.

“Ah, man, ah man, ah man,” cried De-frag, spinning in circles. “The hatch won’t last long. Then what?”

Lopez steadied him with a firm hand on his shoulder. “Then, if they don’t drop a bunch of grenades down here, we fight them hand-to-hand.”

“Hand-to-hand?”

“Do you have weapons? Firearms?” asked Houston.

De-frag nodded. “Yeah, sure. Some brought their guns and stuff. It ain’t much. We pooled them all in a locker.”

“Get them,” said Lopez. “We’re going to be facing trained special operatives. We’re going to have to organize a front to prevent any significant penetration through the entrance—trap them in the tube. It’s the only hope to fight them.”

“Fight them,” muttered De-frag. “We got guns, man, but, you know, I don’t know if we got many who can shoot straight. You know what I mean?”

“What else is there?” said Lopez.

Medea leaned in and hissed at De-frag. “Or, dumbshit, we could use the escape tunnel in the back? Remember that?”

De-frag’s eyes widened. “Fuck, yeah! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you’re too busy pissing your pants,” said Medea. “We’ve got to get them out.”

Lightfoote turned to Medea. “Take us there.”

“Yeah, before half this place figures out what’s going on. That’s going to be a bottleneck, let me tell you.”

Lopez stopped them with his arm. He glared at De-frag. “Get them armed.”

De-frag looked at the blond kid. “That’s SixtyFour. He’s the only gun-nut here. You got this, buddy?”

SixtyFour nodded and raced off toward a row of storage lockers along the sidewall.

“Let’s move!” said Lightfoote.

The group filed past. Frightened hackers staring toward the entrance tube, the hammering continuing. Medea ducked into a back room and single-handedly shoved aside a wall of servers, revealing a hatch in the wall.

“This is it,” she said.

“You’ve tested it?” asked Houston.

“Ah, not exactly,” said De-frag.

Lightfoote locked eyes with him. “Explain.”

A loud explosion rocked the shelter. Screams came from the chamber outside.

De-frag shifted into a higher pitch. “Just schematics, man! It’s a tunnel, leads out along the sewage line, then up and out, a couple football fields away.”

“But you’ve never tried it?”

Medea shook her head. “Never even opened the damn hatch.” Another explosion. More screams. She stepped up to the wheel and set her shoulder to it, her hands turning white as she pressed with all her strength. It didn’t move.

“Damn,” said De-frag. “She’s stronger than all of us. What now?”

“Move,” said Lopez. He grasped the wheel in his massive hands and angled his body sideways, his legs taking the brunt of the force. Nothing happened. His broad form tensed. A wrenching scream ripped through the room and the wheel inched counterclockwise.

“Help him!” yelled Lightfoote.

Medea grasped the other end of the wheel, and together they forced it across its shredded threads. Lopez yanked and the hatch spun inward.

“Ah, shit,” said De-frag, his words muffled with his hand over his mouth.

“Near the sewage lines, huh?” said Houston. “Is this a thing with us now?”

The sounds of machine gun fire echoed through the shelter. Intermittent pops of smaller ordnance peppered back.

“Smells great to me,” said Lightfoote, and she stepped through the hatch, her large bag of electronics clanging on the side of the opening.

Lopez guided Houston through the opening, turning back to the room. “Medea, come with us. De-frag, these are your people.” He nodded to the chaos outside. “You can’t save them all, but get as many as you can in here behind us.”

De-frag looked crestfallen. “It’ll lead them right to you. You won’t have time. You got to stop this thing, right?”

“To hell with time!” cried Lopez. “You can’t let them die.” Houston called his name from within the passageway. “Go! Bring those you can here!” He ducked under the opening and disappeared. Medea followed immediately after.

De-frag stood frozen in the room, his head darting between the escape tunnel and the door to the main chamber of the shelter. Screams battered his ears. Gunfire. He looked down at the ground and exhaled slowly.

“Sorry, dudes.”

He turned and grasped the hatch wheel and pushed the door until it slammed shut. The metal screamed once more as he turned the wheel several rotations. He heaved the tower of computers back against the doorway, the mainframes and metallic shelves obscuring the wall completely. Exhausted, he pulled up a chair and sat down, facing outward.

A soldier in battle armor pointed a weapon at him through the doorway.

“Where are the fugitives?” the man barked.

De-frag smiled like a terrified kid plunging over the edge of a rollercoaster for the first time. He extended the man his middle finger.

“Eat it, motherfucker.”

Automatic discharge exploded in the room.