Electronic Gags (26 page)

A CIB agent, who had recovered from
electric shock, spotted Jennifer and pointed his Brandon Ward P100 pistol at
her. The third electric shock returned just before he could pull the trigger
and he dropped the gun, moaning with pain.

“Patriot President, can you run?” Assistant
Commissioner Evans asked.

“Yes.”

“When I say go, we run to your
limousine, okay?”

“Yes,” said Brandon Ward, feeling as if
he was back in the First Gulf War.

Assistant Police Commissioner Evans saw
this assassination attempt as an opportunity for him to gain promotion. He was
tired of shadowing Brandon Ward and he believed he would gain promotion if he
rescued the supreme leader. “Go,” he shouted, ignoring the pain in his bleeding
shoulder.

President and bodyguard ran towards the
exit.
Ten more steps,
Evans thought as he ran behind the president.
Seven
more steps, four more steps.
Jennifer spotted them and fired. From less
than twenty meters, the supreme leader had no chance against a professional
sharpshooter. The bullet entered the back of his head.
One more step,
Evans
thought. Now that the supreme leader was dead, Evans wasn’t running for
promotion, he was running for his life. He didn’t win the race. A bullet also
found the back of his head.

Jennifer crawled back to where he had
left Freddie. “Freddie, are you okay?” she enquired.

“I’m fine.”

“Let’s get out,” she said. “Stay low.
There is at least one senior CIB agent somewhere in the VIP section without a
NAST.”

“Brandon Ward?”

“I got him.”

They took pistols from shuddering
policemen, crawled out of the conference centre and mingled with the crowd of
terrified people. The policemen cordoning the conference centre where in an
involuntary dance.

Freddie phoned Kyle. “Stage one is over.
Go to stage two.”

“Did you whack the man?” Kyle asked with
disbelief.

“Yes. Stage two please.”

“Okay
man.”

Kyle immediately began stage two. Using
his newly acquired administrator’s privileges, he selected the NASP accounts of
all civilians and pressed the “deactivate bomb” button. When his command was
processed, he took his electronic gag and looked at its display screen. He
smiled when he saw the words BOMB DEACTIVATED flashing on the device’s screen.

To make sure that NASP had deactivated his
electronic gag’s bomb, Kyle took the gag outside and tied it to a tree with a
string. He tied a rope to the wires that Freddie extended. Then he carried the
rope round the corner of the house and covered by the house, he yanked the rope
and broke the four wires on the electronic gag. There was no explosion.

He quickly returned to his computer and
sent the following message to all active electronic gags:

Citizens of the United States of America,
the dictator Brandon Ward is dead. Go to the streets and celebrate your
freedom. The Freedom Front of the United States of America killed Brandon Ward
at the National Conference Centre today. This is your day. We have deactivated
the bombs on the NASTs of all civilians. This is your day, people of the United
States of America. Go into the streets, march to the First Building and to the
CIB headquarters. You can remove your NAST by cutting it just beside the
charging socket. We urge the public not to take the law into their hands. We
have experienced more than two decades of bloodbath and our struggle will be in
vain if we resort to bloodbath now. We will deactivate the bombs on the NASTs
of members of the security forces in due course. The Freedom Front is ordering
all soldiers to go to their barracks and wait for further instructions. All
policemen must go to their respective police stations and wait for
instructions. Prison guards, release all political prisoners. We extend our
amnesty to all members of the country’s security forces but we shall withdraw
the amnesty from those who spurn it.

The message was instantly displayed on
his electronic gag.

He
returned to the computer to shock Ward’s security forces for the last time, just
for fun.

When Christopher Ward received the news
of his brother’s death, he drove to the CIB headquarters to enquire. The guards
at the gate of the CIB headquarters didn’t even look at him as they
concentrated on the periodic electric shocks they were getting from their electronic
gags. The same thing was happening to the policeman guarding Christopher Ward’s
house. Some CIB agents were even lying on the floor. When he entered the
director-general’s office, Christopher was relieved to see the vice president,
the Defense Minister, the Interior Minister, the Minister of State Security and
all the security chiefs present, except the police commissioner and the air
marshal. All of them were wearing civilian clothes.

“Sullivan, what happened?”

“It’s those two fugitives you released
from prison,” Sullivan rasped. “They somehow hacked into our computers and
administered electric shocks into all our security forces.”

“Can you stop them?”

“No. The hacker changed the
administrator’s password. As we speak, he is now NASP’s administrator.”

“Let’s shut down the system,” Christopher
Ward said.

“The hacker warned us that if we try to
shut down the system, he will detonate all the electronic gags of our security
forces,” the director-general said gravely.

“Do you think that’s possible?” Christopher
Ward asked. Now that his brother was dead, he assumed he was in charge.

“Our computer man here says it’s
possible,” General Robinson, the commander of the armed forces said.

“Is that so?” Christopher asked the agent
in charge of the NASP computer hall.

“Yes,” Roberts said. “After what
happened today, I think it’s possible.”

“Where is Reed?” Christopher Ward asked.

“One of my men, who was at the
conference centre, said the assassins first short Reed before they killed the
president,” the director-general said.

“Where are the police commissioner and
the air marshal?” Christopher Ward asked.

“Hunt and Gardner phoned me,”
Lieutenant-General Palmer, the army commander said. “They said they are on
their way out of the country.”

“Wise decision,” General Robinson said,
rising from his seat. “Let’s get out while we still can. We all have money in
foreign banks and we will have a good life in exile.”

“Good idea, Robinson,” Retired General Sanders,
the Minister of Defense said. “I’m jumping of ship while I still can.”

“Me too,” chorused Director-General Sullivan
and Admiral Cox.

“Me too,” echoed Palmer, Collins and Campbell.

“Patriots, we can’t give up so easily,” Christopher
Ward said with fervor. “Let’s defend our revolution.”

“Revolution?” General Robinson laughed.
“Christopher, your brother was killed and you will also be killed if you don’t
get out of the country.”

“What are we waiting for?” Collins said,
walking out of the office.

“Wait,” Christopher Ward pleaded.
“Please hear me out before you go.”

“Guys, let him speak,” Vice President
Daniel Butler said.

“Okay, speak,” Campbell said. “Hurry, we
have planes to catch.”

“Where will you go?” Christopher Ward
said. “This country is the most powerful in the world. The government that will
succeed us will force all countries in the world to extradite you. No country
will resist.”

“He is right,” retired General Sanders
said. “They will hunt us more than they hunted Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Our best
chance is to fight the uprising and regain control of the Ten Districts.”

“Yes,
we will go down fighting,” Admiral Cox said.

At first, people were skeptical about
the message appearing on their electronic gags but as firsthand witnesses
spread the news, the whole country began to believe that Brandon Ward was
indeed dead. The more daring ones removed their NASTs and soon the whole
country was sawing into the electronic gags. After removing the gags, people
went into the streets, brought down Ward’s statues and burnt offices of the
National Party. Hooligans took this as an opportunity to loot shops.

Like
zombies, soldiers and policemen went to their bases, wearing civilian clothes
to escape the wrath of the marauding civilians. Some high-ranking officers
ordered the security forces to take action against the crowd but their orders
were met with stony silence.

The prisoners in the Ten Districts Maximum
Security Prison couldn’t believe their ears when prison guards told them they
were free to go. Earlier on, when Kyle’s message reached their electronic gags,
they thought it was a prank from the CIB. The prisoners laughed their lungs out
when they saw prison guards suffering electric shocks. Some prisoners beat the bemused
guards. The cruelest of the guards suffered the most.

Michael only realized he wasn’t dreaming
when he met Freddie and Jennifer at the prison gate.

“Welcome to freedom.”

“What’s happening?”

“We will tell you everything later,” Freddie
said. “Right now, you are going on national TV to tell the people what the Freedom
Front plans for the United States.”

“You are the one who sent the message to
our electronic gags.”

“Yes.”

“Is Ward really dead?”

“We saw it with our own eyes,” Freddie
said.

“Who killed him?”

“That is not important,” Freddie said.
“At the moment we are taking you and three members of your party to address the
nation.”

“They won’t appear on TV like that,” Jennifer
said. “They have to spruce up.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Freddie said. “This
will show the people that the Freedom Front was really in the wars.”

Michael selected three men from his
group and they packed themselves in the back of Kyle’s Ford Fiesta. Freddie started
the car and drove away. The streets were full of demonstrators and there was no
sign of security forces.

“It’s
like a dream,” Michael said. “If someone told me yesterday that I will be free
and the whole country will be free today, I would have told him to go to hell.”

“Let’s fight the hacker,” Christopher Ward
said. “We have to take back control of the security forces from the hacker.
It’s our only way out.”

“Let’s go to the NASP computer hall,”
the director-general said, leading the way to the elevator.

“We must shut down NASP,” said Christopher
Ward. “Without NASP, the hacker has no hold over our security forces.”

“You shouldn’t have adopted Reed’s silly
idea,” Collins lamented. “Look what his electronic gags did to us.”

“Perhaps he was working with the
rebels,” General Robinson mused. “Perhaps they killed him to silence him.”

“I’m glad they whacked him,” Admiral Cox
said.

“Let’s shut down NASP,” Christopher Ward
said when they entered the computer hall.

“But we must consider the hacker’s
threat,” said Campbell.

“If we just pull the plug on the
computers the hacker won’t have time to carry out his threat,” Christopher Ward
suggested.

“All the computers have built-in
batteries that last for three hours when power is cut off,” Roberts, the head
of the computer hall, said. “As soon as power is cut, the system alerts the administrator.
If we pull the plug on the computers the hacker will know, and he will have
three hours to carry out his threat.”

“Let’s go to the armory, get some guns
and blow up the servers,” Christopher Ward said.

“Good idea, Patriot Christopher,”
General Robinson said. “Sullivan, this is your turf, lead us to your armory.”

In
seven minutes, the vice president, ministers and security chiefs were back in
the computer hall, firing guns at the computers.

No one stopped Freddie and his
passengers when they drove through the gate of the Ten Districts Broadcasting
Corporation.

Freddie’s phone rang.

“Hallo Kyle.”

“The CIB either blocked me from their
computers or they shut down NASP.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Freddie said. “We
passed stage two. The people received your message. Right now we are going to
implement stage three.”

“Okay,” Kyle said.

“You really have this operation under
control,” Michael said with admiration. “That reminds me of one thing… I didn’t
prepare a speech.”

“We have one prepared for you,” Freddie
said.

“Why don’t you read it yourself?”

“I am not a politician, Michael. I was only
at the wrong place at the wrong time when the CIB arrested you. You are the
politician, read the speech.”

“Okay Freddie. After what you did for
me, I will do anything for you.”

They entered the building and found the
employees of the national broadcaster sitting in confusion, waiting for
instructions. Ward had fallen and the journalists knew they could no longer
play National Party propaganda programs.