Freedom (26 page)

 

 

L
oki had always known it would only be a matter of time before he found The Major. The darknet grew more eyes every day, and the modern world left too much data in the wake of everyday transactions. If they couldn’t find The Major by his purchasing patterns, or the communities of interest in his captured telecom data, they still might catch his likeness in facial recognition systems they were putting up on bridges and highways or—more probably—in the chance detection of him by the ever-expanding network of darknet operatives. As the real-world economy continued to sink, more and more folks were joining the darknet.

Still, The Major was harder to track down than most; he worked through proxies and surrounded himself with endless numbers of expendable contractors who knew nothing of his whereabouts. He also constantly shifted from safe house to motel to hotel, switched identities—and used top-notch encryption in his communications.

But even the most stringent security precautions suffered from a fatal weakness: the human factor. This was doubly true for
busy
people, and there was little doubt that The Major was busy; planning a covert military campaign in the middle of the United States in coordination with a media propaganda campaign had to require long hours. The Major was probably operating on very little sleep.

Which is why Loki wasn’t surprised when a lone credit card charge for Anson Gregory Davis appeared on merchant bank networks. It was the same alias The Major had used in Georgia. The charge was for a block of rooms at a roadside motel in Hinton, Oklahoma—about a half-hour drive outside of Oklahoma City.

Loki quickly overlaid a map of Oklahoma darknet communities with that of reported acts of violence against them. Hinton looked like an easy commute to the front lines of this covert war. It was also close to several airports. By tapping nearby darknet operatives, Loki was able to confirm out-of-the-ordinary C-130 cargo plane activity at a nearby municipal strip. The tail numbers came up empty in the FAA database. Normally, running a scan for such numbers would have sent up alarm bells; government and quasi-government agencies typically put flags on covert records, so they’d know if anyone searched for them. But the Daemon had mirrored many such databases over the past two years.

The Major wouldn’t have any idea Loki was coming.

Darkness had fallen on the Red Rock Motel just south of town. Loki sat inside his racing trailer ops center, parked in a field two miles away. He began manipulating the D-Space objects that represented the constellation of machines at his command—both in the air and on the ground.

He’d been monitoring comings and goings at the motel from several low-speed drones orbiting at ten thousand feet. Pattern tracking software had quickly identified repetitious movement—the patrolling radius of several sentries. Each of the sentries was carrying a cell phone, so tracking them now wouldn’t be a problem. He also noticed two sets of sentries sitting in vehicles near the road, watching the approaches from the north and south.

In the field outside his parked trailer, Loki arrayed two dozen razorbacks, and he now took direct control of the lead bike, bringing its camera eyes up in his HUD display. It felt like an ultra-realistic game. He slaved the other bikes to his, and then sent them down the county road at a modest speed.

Using the aerial drones to surveil the roads, he’d timed the departure of the bikes so they didn’t encounter other vehicles. When they got within a mile of the motel he switched off their engines and had them run on their electrical drive—powered by the boron/epoxy flywheel in the saddle casing. In this low-power mode, razorbacks were very quiet, although they couldn’t run like this for very long.

He sent them out into the field west of the motel. In about ten minutes they had swung around and were silently approaching through the scattered trees and grass at the edge of the motel grounds.

That’s when he sent two distant AutoM8s accelerating down the county road—one coming from the north, the other from the south. They were unmanned Dodge Charger SRT8s. With gas prices now approaching seven bucks a gallon and unemployment still rising, brand-new eight-cylinder cars were sitting on distributor lots everywhere. The Daemon was doing cheap fleet leases and insuring them against their inevitable destruction. Cars were something America had an endless quantity of.

It was a shame that these were going to be destroyed. They looked fun.

As they came roaring toward their targets, Loki motioned with his gloved hand, setting loose a hundred foot-long steel spikes from a weather-balloon-like platform floating at eighty thousand feet several miles to the east. They were just steel spikes with motorized fletching linked to a radio receiver, but they could be guided like a smart bomb to their target—either directly by a darknet operative or automatically at saved targets (using a cell phone in someone’s pocket or a Bluetooth headset ID as a beacon). Darknet operatives had taken to calling the spikes “angel teeth,” probably because they came silently out of the heavens like divine retribution. Few weapons were as cheap, since they were easy to manufacture and were often reusable. Wind and rapid movement of the target were an issue—which was why Loki dropped a hundred of them.

If he timed this correctly, he’d be able to eliminate sentries and surround The Major in his hotel room before he was even aware of Loki’s presence.

Loki glanced up at the sky through the aluminum walls of his racing trailer. He could see the D-Space call-outs of the hundred spikes spreading out as they descended, moving to their assigned targets.

Loki throttled back the two AutoM8s so they didn’t strike first.

And then, with practiced skill, the plan came together rather nicely. Aerial surveillance showed eight sentries walking in pairs suddenly being struck down by a hail of silent steel spikes coming in at terminal velocity. It wasn’t windy, so most of the spikes struck their targets.

With another gesture Loki sent the waves of razorbacks in, still on quiet electrical power. He could see video from the lead bike, and guided it around to the back of the motel and toward the room that was his target.

Moments later the northern AutoM8 came roaring around a bend in the county road a quarter mile away. It didn’t follow the bend, but instead came roaring straight at a Chevy parked in the parking lot of a gas station—one containing two private military contractors. It struck broadside going ninety miles an hour.

Loki winced and covered his eyes in mock horror. From the air it looked spectacular. He tagged the video and dragged it to his feed so others could check it out later.

By the time he turned to the southern AutoM8, it had already plowed through a billboard and creamed the car containing the remaining sentries. To his disappointment there was no explosion. But no one was walking away from that crash.

Now he focused on his razorbacks, powering up their massive engines, extending their blades, and roaring in to the attack. They spread out and smashed through the doors of four motel rooms almost simultaneously. Loki had also left several razorbacks behind the hotel to pick up anyone climbing out rear windows.

He needn’t have bothered. Plainclothes military contractors had already grabbed their weapons and the moment the first razorback came through the door, several M249 machine guns opened up-tracer rounds bounding around the room as they deflected off the ceramic composite cowling of the lead razorback.

Loki always found this part exciting. It really did resemble the world’s most realistic video game. He almost felt like he was there—with military contractors screaming in rage as they unloaded assault rifles and machine guns on him from behind a sofa, an overturned dining table, and the nearby bed.

Loki noticed they had all donned tinted flash goggles—so his green laser blinders wouldn’t have any effect.
Damn
. The Major had equipped his group well. But where was he hiding?

Loki raised his gloved hand and starting clicking on individual targets. He had to clear away all these NPCs. The razorbacks surged forward to cut them to pieces. He winced because in one of the rooms a contractor fired a forty-millimeter grenade into the doorway, damaging the lead razorback, but also stunning everyone else in the room.

Idiot
. Loki switched his POV to the next razorback in line and surged it forward into the mercenaries, cutting them down. It reminded him of a real-time strategy game where you had to keep moving the view around to juggle all your priorities. Soon enough, the mercs fell back reloading, and the razorbacks began to tear them apart. Their screams came over the audio feed. That’s when Loki noticed something interesting. . . .

In the background he could see a young, attractive woman bound, blindfolded, and gagged in the bathroom of the second motel room. She was nude and tied to a kitchen chair. She struggled like mad to break free amid all the gunfire and chaos.

Very interesting.
Still, he needed to find The Major.

By now Loki was in mopping-up mode. The last of the mercenaries were tossing grenades or running for the rear bathroom windows. They’d all be dead or bleeding to death shortly. One thing he already knew—The Major wasn’t here. But these men were protecting something.

So Loki turned his attention again to the bathroom, switching POV to the nearest razorback. He drove it right up to the door, nudging it all the way open. What he saw was very nice, indeed. Just the way he liked a woman—young, nude, and tied up. She was cringing from the powerful engine throbbing next to her, and visibly sobbing behind her blindfold. Her breathing was labored as she tried to get enough air despite the duct tape covering her mouth. He could see a tattoo on her shoulder of a bosomy manga girl in a schoolgirl outfit, twin katanas raised.

Loki extended the razorback’s bloody sword and brought it near her throat. She sucked in air—trembling at what she sensed was so close. Perhaps she smelled the blood that coated the stainless steel.

A minute later, Loki guided his own Ducati Streetfighter motorcycle into the motel parking lot as panicked guests watched him from the safety of the woods on the far side of the road. Loki knew that none of their cell phones would work, and it didn’t look like anyone had the balls to go get their car with a squad of blood-soaked razorbacks standing about on hydraulic stands. He got off his bike and walked into the second motel room in full battle armor.

He glanced around to see the usual topographical maps, folders filled with printed spreadsheets, shattered laptops—and severed limbs, bloody torsos, and coiled intestines. The whole place was splattered with blood and thousands of shell casings littered the floor. There were bullet holes everywhere.

No wonder no one was in a hurry to come investigate.

Loki stepped through the bathroom door and took in the beauty of the young woman in person. She had short brunette hair and alabaster skin. Her hips and legs were beautifully proportioned. The nipples of her small, firm breasts were clearly defined. She had a couple more Japanese characters tattooed on her hip and right forearm.

Loki leaned up to her face, still in his battle helmet. “Tell me where The Major is.”

He reached up and tore off the duct tape covering her mouth. She sucked for air and immediately started sobbing.

“Where is The Major?”

“Why would I know?” Still she sobbed.

“But you’ve heard of him?”

She was still heaving. “Please untie me.”

“Where did you hear of him?”

“Who are you?”

“Never mind who I am.”

She looked unsure for a moment, but spoke through sobs.

“I’m a darknet member! Shadowcreek faction.” She fell into more weeping.

“Bullshit.”

“I can prove it! They have my equipment.”

“Where?”

“In a radio-proof bag. Silver. They have it here. I was bringing an artifact north.”

Loki eyed her body again. If she were telling the truth, it would change things. He couldn’t do just anything to a faction member. He leaned outside the bathroom and there by the nightstand he saw what looked to be a silvered tent bag, now spattered with blood droplets. He walked over to it and dumped its contents on the floor. Suddenly half a dozen D-Space call-outs appeared above various electronic gadgets—HUD glasses among them.

He grabbed the HUD glasses and reentered the bathroom. He took another look at her lithe body, then removed her blindfold. She was as pretty as he thought she might be. Eurasian.

She looked up at him, her eyes still red from crying. She recoiled at Loki’s fearsome appearance. He placed the glasses on her head, and in a moment a call-out appeared above her indicating her name was
Siren_3
, a third-level messenger with the Shadowcreek faction.

She stared at him—no doubt seeing Loki’s very powerful call-out.

“Thank you for saving me.”

“We’ll see how grateful you are later. We need to leave.”

“Untie me.”

With a flick of his wrist a razor sharp spur protruded from his riding outfit. He slit through the nylon rope binding her hands and then her ankles. She sighed and rubbed her rope-burned wrists.

“I want to leave here. I want to go home.” She was looking around for a towel or something to cover herself.