Operation Damocles (26 page)

XXXIX

Townsend sat at his desk in the offices of Prouss Engineering in Mountain View, his elbows on the desk, his chin resting on his hands. He couldn’t concentrate on the engineering statement of work that he was trying to formulate as part of his company’s proposal package to ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. If their bid was successful, it would mean a feather in his cap and a healthy income for Prouss.

ALS stood for Automated Logistics System, and it was his baby. He had described the rigors of federal procurement to his new boss shortly before Christmas, and persuaded him to let Townsend spend the time to respond to an RFP—request for proposals—from ARPA. He had been excited at the prospect of doing something creative that would help lower the cost of government and help the nation in a real, definitive way. He had developed the algorithms that would make a computer able to qualify bids, canvass inventories, order supplies, monitor the progress of contracts, record transactions, weigh orders and issues against standard parameters, and query when in doubt.

It would be a smart system, capable of learning and modifying its own instruction set within certain limits, and would, given certain specific input by a contracting officer, formulate draft specifications and spit out a contract, complete with boiler-plate, in minutes.

The federal acquisition regulation was programmed into its decision matrix. It would save every sizable military base and federal installation thousands of man-hours per year in procurement costs.

Now that he had this wonderful opportunity, all he could think about was Ortiz and Teller at their archaeological dig in Chile. The two scientists had taken a couple of dozen followers and established an operations base there under the guise of a scientific expedition. They would wait out the coming war there, directing operations and gathering information via their secret satellite net. In other countries, the underground forces were holing up in similar ways.

He had suspected, even before Ortiz finally told him, that Teller and the university people were involved with the patriots somehow; he just hadn’t suspected how deeply. They were the masterminds behind the whole movement.

A part of him resented their not including him in their circle of conspirators, but he understood logically that they could not risk capture and death, and the failure of the last hope of the world, out of concern for his feelings. He wondered how they were making out. He almost regretted not going with them. A summer adventure in South America would have been good for him and Eve. He would have lost his job and his project, though.

Hell, he thought, that really wasn’t the reason. If there was going to be a fight, he didn’t want to be somewhere else. He wanted to personally make sure the enemy paid a price for every life they took.

Unable to think, he got up and went outside to the parking lot. It was midafternoon and the weather was mild. The cedars along the front of the building moved intermittently in a gentle, westerly breeze. He ambled across the parking lot, hands in his pockets, breathing deep and taking in the beauty of the surrounding hills.

Suddenly, he saw them. A thin, dark line of dots on the western horizon that stretched out for miles. The dots were growing larger, and now he could hear the faint drone of engines. Ortiz and Teller had been right. They had better inside information than even the C.I.A. had, because the Vice President and who knew how many high-level federal officials were reporting to them. He stood watching as hundreds of helicopter gunships loomed into view, followed by dozens of C-130 troop transports flying at a higher altitude. As they passed over, they darkened the sky.

Townsend saw other people stepping outside to see what was going on, saw them pointing at the vast numbers of aircraft that blanketed the sky, and talking to one another in wonderment. He told his boss that he was leaving, briefly explaining what he thought was happening. The office staff looked at him as though he were demented, as if they had just realized there was a lunatic in their midst. Townsend left his drop-jawed, wide-eyed colleagues standing in the reception office, staring after him.

He felt sorry for them, but as Ortiz had said, there was no other way to wake them up. America had to be reborn in that oft-quoted, ever-doomed-to-be-repeated crucible of death and destruction before it could reaffirm what freedom is, and discover again the value of participatory government.

Townsend smiled to himself as he steered his new Jeep Cherokee onto the freeway that would take him home. Sounds corny, he thought. “Corny is good, though. I can get into corny,” he said aloud, and laughed.

###

Eve came through the kitchen to meet him as he entered the front door. He quickly explained what was happening.

“Come into the living room,” she said. “The President is on TV.”

He followed her into the room, where Vanderbilt’s face filled the television screen. “. . . and I urge you all to remain calm. Now that we have destroyed the infernal machine, we have to root out this widespread conspiracy in order to bring peace and safety back to the American people. You are likely to see soldiers and police in your neighborhoods during the next few weeks. Remain calm. Stay indoors during the evening hours. If they come to search your homes, cooperate gladly. Remember, these seditionists murdered a million of your fellow Americans, and we must discover and apprehend them.”

The camera dollied back to include the podium that Vanderbilt stood behind, and the presidential seal on its front. The shot also took in the Vice President and the speaker of the House of Representatives who were standing behind and to either side of Vanderbilt, and the large American flag behind them.

“If you see any suspicious behavior among your neighbors, be sure and call the authorities. Report anyone with weapons of any land, or people who have made negative remarks about the government. These conspirators could be anyone, and it is likely that they are people you have known and liked for years. They may even be members of your own family.

“I know it hurts to think about such things, but you must remember your duty as Americans. Your duty to your country comes first, even above family loyalty. Help us to find these murderers and traitors . . .”

Townsend turned the set off, his face grim. “Just like Hitler,” he said. “It’s starting in exactly the same way. Divide and conquer. It’s an old formula, but it always works. Are you ready, hon?”

Eve nodded, still staring at the blank screen, her face a stony mask.

They had prepared for this day, and had backpacks and duffel bags filled with tools, weapons and provisions. They had roamed the surrounding hills for a hideout, and found a spot near a hilltop water reservoir where they could shelter from the elements in the giant, concrete overflow pipes that protruded from the hillside, around the side of the hill from the dam.

The pipes emptied into a concrete-lined, erosion-prevention ditch that led down a brushy draw and fanned out at the base of the mountain. They were dry inside, seldom ever having an overflow from heavy rains that produced more than a trickle through them.

Jack and Eve had spent the past few weekends stashing canned goods, ammunition, batteries, fuel and supplies in rock cairns near the site. Jack had bought several big GI ammo cans from an Army surplus store. The cans had seals with gaskets to keep their contents dry, and were ideal for keeping small animals from spoiling their caches.

They had also stashed propane lanterns and a camp stove, and a half-dozen twenty-five-pound cylinders of liquid propane at their campsite. They found a tent that would just fit inside the giant pipe when erected. Eve refused to sleep in the open pipe with nothing around her. Jack had constructed a floor foundation for the tent by sawing the cross-members of two large freight pallets so that they would match the curvature of the pipe and give them a level sleeping platform. They rested inside the pipe, raised a few inches in the middle to allow any water to trickle through underneath the tent without ruining their bedding or giving them a wet awakening in the middle of the night.

The location provided them a base camp with shelter, an ample supply of water and—unless they were caught out in the open by a reconnaissance aircraft—a safe, remote place to live that was unlikely to be discovered.

“Get our things together,” he told her, “we’re going to have to move to camp. I’ll shut off the utilities and lock everything up. C’mon, baby, this is what we’ve been preparing for—get the lead out.” He smiled and kissed her.

“Ouí, mon Capitan,”
she snapped to attention and saluted.

“You’re actually happy about this, aren’t you?” he said.

“I’m scared to death, but at the same time I’m excited,” she said. “For the first time since all this started, I can do something besides sit on my hands and worry. Who would have ever thought that someday little Beverly Anderson would live in the woods and fight commies.”

“Well, don’t haul out your guns just yet, General Patton,” he said, hugging her. “You’re not going to go charging into fire with your guns ablazin’ if I can help it. You’re going to guard our camp while I do that. I’m the hero here, and don’t you forget it. What will our kids think if they learn someday that their sweet mother wore combat boots?”

“If they are fortunate enough to turn out to be girls, they will probably be very proud that I fought by their father’s side to win back our country,” she responded, turning and walking toward the bedroom.

“Feminist!” he called at her retreating back, then he too, got busy. God, I love that woman, he thought.

###

It was near 6:00 p.m. when they arrived at the camp. Jack immediately stretched a camouflage net over the Cherokee and threw scrub brush around and over it.

He helped Eve erect the tent, their noises and voices echoing hollowly inside the pipe. It was cool and shady in there. They set up the tent forty feet back from the downslope opening.

There was only a slight grade to the floor. The downslope opening faced west, and was well-lit by the afternoon sun. The upslope end opened out through the concrete side of the reservoir, about sixty feet further in, and had a steel grate with six-inch openings between the heavy crossbars.

Jack surveyed the opening, as he had the preceding Saturday, and found the water level unchanged, about two feet below the lip of the pipe. He attached a dog-leash-collar clip to the end of a piece of nylon cord, and tied the other end of the cord to one of the steel bars. He needed a pail to get drinking water, and had an empty three-liter plastic soda bottle that he had brought for the purpose. He cut holes in each side of the neck, and threaded through a bent-wire clothes hanger. Using a pair of pliers, he twisted it together to make a bail. He cut a larger hole in the side of the bottle, just below the neck.

Using a screwdriver and a large sheet-metal screw, he attached a wire with two flat, fishing sinkers threaded onto it, to the tough bottom of the bottle. He clipped the nylon cord to the bail and dropped the bottle into the water. It filled and sank. He pulled it up to chest height, and tipped it over the bar, emptying it into an insulated plastic water cooler.

“Just like it was made for it,” he said to himself, and continued bailing until he had filled the water cooler.

As Eve was sorting out the blankets and finding the wherewithal to prepare a meal, he took a pair of binoculars and climbed atop the earthen dike that ringed the reservoir.

They were surrounded on the south and west by hills, but he could see a section of Mountain View to the north, and in the hazy distance, a stretch of Highway 101. He could see two convoys of Army trucks moving north. There were several Highway Patrol cars among them. They were probably local troops, he thought, and the airborne units were incoming reinforcements.

We didn’t get out any too soon, he thought. They will be setting up roadblocks before the night is over.

He knew that the shock troops would form up at the nearest bases, then home in on the bigger cities. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and similar high-density population centers would be first. Activity would be heaviest where military installations were the thickest. It might be a couple of months before the smaller towns and rural communities in Middle America saw troops, and even then it would probably just be a couple of platoons to reinforce the local law enforcement people that had aligned themselves with the conquering regime.

If they encountered much resistance, a mobile battalion would move in and put it down. They would make extreme examples at first, applying classic military tactics for suppressing civil rebellion. They would move in, blast the crap out of everything until the populace was impotent with fear, then establish neighborhood patrols to insure obedience.

They would call the tune and everyone would dance. If they didn’t, they would die. They would haul rebellious citizens out into the street where their neighbors could watch, make them kneel in the street, and blow their brains out. Simple as that. Neighborhood by neighborhood the cities would capitulate. The smaller towns would follow suit.

As it had ten thousand times before, freedom would fall. The population might not know anything about history, but the dictators and would-be dictators knew it well, and because they knew it, they would win. At least, they would win in the short term. The people didn’t believe it could happen here. They never did, until it was too late.

###

Later that night, the two of them sat at the mouth of the pipe, drinking coffee. Jack had built a small fire. He didn’t think it would be a problem tonight. The mountain was between them and any built-up areas, and tonight everyone would be concentrating on what was happening within the cities and towns—not looking for holdouts in the mountains.

Eve sat staring thoughtfully into the fire. Jack watched the interplay of dancing lights and shadows that the fire made on his wife’s face, her cheekbones standing out, her eyes shadowed except when she tipped her head to take a sip of coffee.

She wore jeans and a blue flannel shirt, and sat with her legs crossed under her, her forearms resting on the insides of her thighs, her hands clasped around the warm coffee mug. She seemed relaxed and introspective. How she had changed over the past few months. She could be playful and witty and cute and little-girlish, sometimes all at the same time. She was intelligent and insightful. She had grasped intuitively the working details of the ALS system he had been working on. She had even made helpful suggestions that had saved him time, and possibly even prevented a downstream problem, assuming it ever got built.