Freedom (5 page)

She nodded absently. “They don’t want to stop the Daemon. They want to control it.”

“Which makes you pretty much the only person still trying to stop it. Your own side doesn’t want you to succeed.” He nodded toward Merritt’s casket. “And they didn’t want Roy triggering economic Armageddon before they could shift their investments.”

“The Major . . . killed Roy. . . .” She could barely get the words out.

“And they’ll finish you yet.” He pulled the screen out of her hands. “I’d watch your back, if I were you.”

She looked up suddenly. “Why are you telling me this, Loki?”

“Where is The Major?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find out.”

“He’s my problem, not yours.”

Loki tucked the scroll-screen back into his coat. “That’s where you’re wrong. The Major is everyone’s problem.”

Philips gestured to the operatives moving among the mourners. “Is that why they’re here?”

“Like I said, they’re not with me. Although, a million darknet operatives want vengeance for the Burning Man. I’m guessing they’ll tear apart heaven and earth to get it. There’s a high-priority Thread queued just for The Major. We have his biometric data from Building Twenty-Nine’s security system to help. His fingerprints. His iris scan. His voice. His face. His walk. We will find him, Doctor. But if you help me, I’ll see that you’re treated with
leniency
.”

She knew he was mocking her now. “I want nothing to do with you. We have laws in this country, and I intend to make sure The Major faces justice and that you face justice.”

“Justice? That’ll be difficult when
you
might be facing disciplinary charges yourself.”

Philips felt the rage building again. She didn’t know whether he was guessing or actually knew. The disaster at Building Twenty-Nine had indeed been laid at her feet. The Major wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the after-action reports. It was as if he never existed.

Loki turned back toward the funeral service. “If you find The Major, let me know, and the swarm will take care of him.”

“You know I won’t do that.”

“You might be surprised what you’ll do. Especially when you discover what they’ve done with your laws.” Loki narrowed his eyes at something in the distance.

Philips followed his gaze toward the edge of the funeral crowd.

A scuffle of some sort had broken out there. She could see at least one person being grabbed by plainclothes officers about half a football field away.

Loki watched with his shimmering eyes. “They never disappoint, do they? Leave while you can, Doctor.”

“Loki, don’t. There are hundreds of innocent people here.”

He ignored her, already manipulating unseen darknet objects with his gloved hands. “They just couldn’t resist. . . .”

She stood between Loki and the distant scuffle. “This will be a bloodbath. Please, Loki. Don’t do this!”

He spoke while looking through her; his hands moved frantically. “Did you know your friend, Jon Ross, joined the Daemon’s darknet recently, Doctor? I thought you might want to know.”

She stopped—unsure whether to believe him. The news hit her hard. She backed away from Loki and tried to contain her emotions. First she lost Merritt, now Ross, and now she felt she could trust no one. She felt the tears coming again.
Not Jon.

Loki spoke to some unseen person. “Fuck waiting. I’ve dropped Angel Teeth. Everyone clear the area.” A pause. “I don’t give a shit.”

Philips turned away from Loki and ran toward the disturbance. He didn’t try to stop her. Fifty yards away, among cemetery headstones, she could see men in suits trying to overpower several people she assumed must be Daemon operatives. One of the agents held aloft a pair of sports glasses as more agents converged on the site. They were already securing a perimeter.

The mourners Philips passed by had begun to turn toward the scuffle. She noticed small children with many of them and shouted, “Evacuate the area!”

Several responded by saying, “I’m a police officer,” and followed her.

In half a minute Philips had pushed her way up to a dark-suited man with a radio earpiece. He was part of the security cordon around the still-struggling knot of two dozen men.

Philips displayed her NSA credentials and spoke calmly but firmly. “I’m a federal officer. You must evacuate this cemetery as soon as possible. These mourners are in great danger.”

The thick-necked agent didn’t bother to examine Philips’s credentials. He just looked at her. “Stand clear, ma’am.”

“Damnit, let me speak with the agent in charge! I have firsthand knowledge of an impending attack!”

He smiled humorlessly and spoke with an indistinct accent. “We’ve got it under control. Thanks.”

Suddenly gunshots crackled in the cold air. People in the crowd screamed and ducked. The mourners began to flee like a spooked herd—except for the dozens of police that remained behind, drawing weapons and heading toward the shots. Philips knew they’d be agents from the FBI, DSS, DEA, ATF, and a host of state and local police. Scores of them advanced using the tombstones for cover.

Philips faced the approaching agents and police and held up her credentials. “Stay back! Stay back! You’re in danger!”

The first wave of officers had already reached her, their various weapons pointed upward but ready. A distinguished-looking man in his fifties, a take-charge type without a weapon, came right up to Philips. “What the hell is going on?”

Before Philips could answer, everyone turned to see another black-suited, clean-cut man approaching from within the dense knot of operators who’d started the disturbance. The man held up credentials with a familiar logo on them—Korr Security International.

“This is a top secret DOD-sanctioned operation, gentlemen.”

The senior agent frowned and examined the operator’s ID. “I’m S-A-C of the FBI’s Kansas City office. I don’t take instructions from private security contractors.” He pushed past, along with scores of other federal agents and local police, guns still at the ready.

They pushed through a couple dozen plainclothes men with radio earpieces and submachine guns pointed skyward.

“Jesus H. Christ, who the hell authorized a takedown in the middle of a thousand innocent people?”

Philips followed on the senior agent’s heels.

Korr officers held up their hands. “Sir! You can’t come in here!”

“I’m in charge of the FBI’s Kansas City office, and until I see some government badges, I’ll go where I damn well please!”

The swarm of police and federal agents broke through to the center of the Korr team. The scene there shocked everyone.

Six bodies lay steaming on the frozen grass in a pool of blood, with more blood spattered over nearby headstones. One was a wounded Korr officer gulping air and being tended to by his colleagues. The other bodies looked to be Daemon operatives—one of them a young woman—lifeless eyes staring skyward. Philips noticed hundreds of footprints trampling the ground, indicating a mighty struggle.

The FBI SAC stood agape. “Mother of god . . .”

A tall, muscular Korr officer came up to him, showing credentials. “Sir, this is a top secret military operation. I need you to call—”

Suddenly there was a high-pitched whistle, followed by a sharp
thwack
. Everyone stared in horror at a dagger-shaped steel point that now protruded from the Korr officer’s left cheek. Blood ran from his nose and a large steel dart now extended from the top rear of his skull, like a sinister plume, with an antenna rising out the back. The stricken Korr officer staggered with a surprised look on his face. Servomotors on the vanes of the dart whirred and adjusted in response to his movements—apparently the guidance system.

The man collapsed as the others stared in shock.

And then more whistling was heard.

Without a word everyone scattered.

As she ran, Philips looked up into the clear Kansas sky and saw several glints of steel coming in. She dodged between tombstones as she heard the ringing of steel spikes ricocheting off stone behind her. Screams of pain came on the wind, and she turned to see first one, and then another Korr officer drop as they fled with the rest of the crowd—singled out by the deadly rain. Many of the darts missed their mark, but the spikes were relentless, eventually striking flesh and bringing the Korr men down, one by one. She saw an injured man try to get back up, only to be struck in the back by several more darts.

Philips slowed and watched in amazement as a Korr officer threw down his MP-5 submachine gun and ran toward other officers—who avoided him like the plague.

“Help me! Someone help me! Help!”

There was no cover in the middle of the vast Kansas cemetery, and he zigzagged among the mournful monuments as spikes clanged off stone and buried themselves in the grass behind him.

But finally a dart struck the man in the shoulder. He fell—only to be struck by several more darts as he crawled on the ground.

A Kansas state trooper in dress uniform grabbed Philips by the arm. “Miss, stay back!”

She cast her gaze farther afield, seeing more Korr contractors in the distance—visible because they ran alone or in pairs, slaloming, only to be struck down by a series of glinting missiles.

It was a surgical strike. Philips looked back where Loki had been, but as she expected, he was gone. In the far distance she could see thousands of mourners fleeing to their cars. She knew that finding Loki among them would be next to impossible—not to mention dangerous to the public.

She looked over toward Roy Merritt’s deserted gravesite and cursed Loki. And The Major.

Their war would never stop—not even to honor the dead.

“
Y
ou know who you look like? That guy who killed all those cops. The one they executed.”

Pete Sebeck leveled his gaze at the convenience store clerk. She was a matronly Caucasian woman in her fifties. A portable television blared on a shelf behind her, tuned to the most popular tabloid news show in the country—
News to America
. Rotating graphics and techno music in the opening sequence proved distracting. “Well, if they executed him, I can’t very well
be
him, can I?”

She laughed. “I’m not saying you
are
him. Just that you look like him.”

Sebeck handed her a twenty-dollar bill.

She took the money. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

He shook his head.

“No offense. He was good-looking.” She paused, tapping her stick-on nails on the counter.
Click-click-click
. “What was his name? The Daemon hoax guy. Killed a whole bunch of people. Almost got away with like a hundred million dollars.”

“I don’t recall.”

She rang up the sale. “Man, that’s gonna drive me crazy.” She circled her face while clutching his change. “It’s in your face. He was on television every day for like a year. His head wasn’t shaved, though. And he didn’t have the Van Dyke.”

“The what?”

“The beard.”

“Is that what this is called?”

“You trim it like that, and you don’t even know what it’s called?” She laughed and handed over his change. “It’s called a Van Dyke. My ex-husband had one. Used it to cover a port-wine stain on his chin. Some people get the Van Dyke confused with the Winnfield or the Anchor, but they’re not the same thing.”

Her eyes suddenly went wide. “Sebeck! That was his name, Pete Sebeck. He was a
detective
, too. Did you know that? Killed his best friend, a woman, and like a dozen FBI agents before they caught him.”

Sebeck stared at her through sports glasses. “Well, he’s dead now.” He grabbed his energy drinks off the counter.

“Need a bag?”

“No, thanks.”

On the television behind her Sebeck couldn’t help but notice the blonde lip-glossed news model, Anji Anderson, stoking public hysteria about the latest prepackaged threat. It was especially ironic since Sebeck knew that, like him, Anderson was a Daemon operative. He still couldn’t figure out how she fit into Sobol’s master plan. In the two years he’d been in prison before his faked execution, Anderson had used sexed-up innocence combined with self-righteous indignation to claw her way from obscurity to the top of the prime-time ratings. She’d turned Sebeck into an infamous serial killer. The Daemon had everything to do with that.

“How can you watch this crap?”

“Anji? She’s great. I just love her. She’s doing this whole series on the collapse of the U.S. dollar. It’s on the way. There’s not a damned thing we can do about it either. I’m savin’ up cigarettes. They’ll be like gold after the crash.”

He stared at her for a moment to be certain she was serious, then walked out shaking his head. Sebeck sat on a desert hillside in darkness, staring up at a brilliant field of stars in the crisp night air. The Milky Way was a smudge of light out of the corner of his eye. He took a deep breath and listened to the silence.

It felt good to get away from the highway.

Sebeck had been on the road for weeks; following a line only he could see, toward a destination even he did not know. Before this journey he had never thought of the modern world as a machine—with humanity just the cells of its body. But a lot had changed since his arrest and execution by the government—and his subsequent rescue by the Daemon.

As a cop, he found it difficult to accept that the law was an illusion. If the powers that be identified you as a threat, right or wrong, you were destroyed.

Was that the lesson Matthew Sobol had taught him by destroying the person Sebeck once was? Sebeck’s only ally now was the very thing he’d been fighting against—the
Daemon
. No one knew how far its powers stretched or if it could be stopped. And the dead man who created it had assigned Sebeck a fearsome task.