Overture (Earth Song) (46 page)

“What’s the verdict?” asked the man from behind a cloud of cigar smoke. “Can we put the shit back in the horse?”

“
Not a chance, General, he got on a secure satellite channel minutes after getting back to Seattle. We don’t know who he spoke to, but there was a summons of all available senior presidential Cabinet members.”

“
Sneaky bastard, we should have recruited him years ago. His talent is wasted in law enforcement. Why didn’t we get him before he got back to Seattle?”

“
We tried, but the staff at the Chelan Bunker had gone to shit when their commander was killed. He was the only one there completely in the bag, and when he was KIA no one was left in control. One of them called for assistance and someone in Washington gave it to him before we could get containment. The two heavy choppers were splashed over the mountains but Masciler left them behind and ran like hell.”

“
Good instincts, once again. Well, there’s little to be done about him at this point, but we need to make an effort. I want that little problem cleaned, to the bone.”

“
No problem, sir.”

“
Good, then let’s move on.”

“
Sir?”

“
Yes?”

“
What about the eagle?”

“
Oh, yes, I’d almost forgotten. Clean that too.”

“
Are you sure?” there was a hesitation in the man’s voice that made the general turn and remove his cigar.

“
Yes, I’m sure. We’ve come too far to get cold feet now.”

“
It’s just such a-”

“
I know, but don’t get sentimental about it, just clean it up. It won’t stop them from doing something, but it’s sure to delay it or make it less organized.”

“
Yes sir.”

“
Good man, there’s hope for you yet.”

“
What’s Osgood going to think when no big wigs show up?”

“
What does it matter?” General Hipstitch asked through the smoke from his Cuban cigars. “By the time he realizes something is not right, he’ll be standing on this side watching that asteroid smash his nuts into the ground.”

“
Wonderful plan.”

“
You don’t have to tell me that. Get the crews to start loading the trucks; I think we’re going to go down to the wire on this.”

“
You seem certain that girl will come through with the fix.”

“
Of course she will, she’s an egghead. All they do is think up shit like this. She's in hog heaven with this problem. She fixes it and I might even bring her along. We need a few more cunts just to make sure we can push out enough babies. Fucking Ruskies are gonna be breeding us off the planet if we ain’t careful.”

The
other person turned to go and General Hipstitch grunted. “Oh, and Volant? Take care of the eagle yourself, will you? I don’t want any mistakes, and this is the sort of thing you do best.”

“
Sure, I’ll do it.” Volant walked away from the portly general leaning heavily on his cane. His leg was doing fine, only hurt a little now. But as he left he wondered if he’d made a deal with the devil. Only this Satan smoked Cuban cigars and ate fried chicken. He had some killing to do, and that was indeed what he was best at.

The Secretary of Defense, or SecDef, entered the war room having to carefully step over temporary roof supports and chugging pumps. The installation deep under the White House had not escaped the big hits unscathed. “Good thing it wasn’t a nuke,” the SecDef said as he looked around the room. What remained of the Cabinet that could be assembled was already seated and waiting for him.

“
Might as well have been a nuke,” said the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, “decades of work on this city all for nothing.”

“
I think the ultimate urban renewal is only a couple days away,” pointed out the Secretary of Homeland Security. They all looked at her and nodded somberly.

“
Is this all there is?” asked the Vice President as he surveyed the room with alarm.

“
That’s it, sir,” said the head of the Secret Service. “The President is en route from Camp David and will arrive in a few minutes.”

“
Very well,” the Vice President said and continued. “We’re all that could be located from the chain of presidential succession. A meeting of the Congress or Senate is out of the question for many reasons. Present are myself, the Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, HUD, Interior, Labor, and soon POTUS himself.”

“
Now maybe you can tell us what’s going on?” the SecDef asked.

“
Certainly. A few hours ago the President was in contact with a Seattle FBI Chief who had a fantastic story to tell.” The Vice President relayed what Masciler saw word for word. “We have been deceived on an epic level.”

“
Unbelievable!” the SecDef yelled.

“
Improbable,” Homeland Security agreed.

“
What’s so improbable?” asked the Interior Secretary, “that we would be deceived, or that we actually bought it hook, line, and sinker?” No one had any answer to that one so the Vice President again took the floor.

“
This Masciler has had his people working for the last eight hours analyzing intelligence and trying to figure out why such elaborate means were taken to create a cover up complete with fake reports to the President, and he thinks he’s figured it out.”

“
Well, by all means fill us in!” blurted the Secretary of Labor.

“
I’ve left this for the President himself since it has dire consequences. So if we’ll all just have a bite to eat or a drink while we wait, he will be here any moment.” On cue, the ever-present and efficient White House staff arrived with a buffet. Tension still filled the room but it was quickly joined by the clinking of silverware and conversation. Most of those present had been so busy the last few days that a sit-down meal had become a luxury.

A
half hour passed and the President still hadn’t arrived. The Vice President was about to ask the head of the Secret Service what the delay was when the towering agent suddenly put a hand to his ear. Everyone in the room knew this meant the man was listening to his high tech little radio they all wore. The man took his hand away and hung his head. The room stayed deathly silent as he walked toward the doorway.

“
What happened?” the Vice President asked. The agent stopped and looked at him, realizing that he was about to leave without saying anything.

“
The President has been assassinated,” he said with as much of the patented Secret Service calm he could muster.

“
Good Lord!” several of the Cabinet members cried out, while others jumped to their feet.

“
Quiet!” the SecDef yelled. “What happened?” he asked the visibly shaken agent.

“
Marine One was just coming around for approach. We had four teams out for security. There have been hundreds of incidents of random sniper attacks around the federal buildings since that meteor impact so we didn’t want to take any chances. It was a well-orchestrated attack; at least two teams. One team must have had an RF jamming device to the north. We sent a team over to see what that was all about, but it was the other team that was the threat. They fired a shoulder-launched surface to air missile just a few seconds before the helicopter was to land. There was no way to avoid the missile. There were no survivors.”

“
God help us,” the Secretary of HUD said.

The
agent looked down again. With a primal roar of rage he slammed his powerful fist against the wall, cracking the plaster façade and causing dust to drift down from the ceiling. “We’re sorry,” he said to them all, “we failed the nation, again.”

“
Don’t be ridiculous,” said the Vice President quietly. “We know that nothing can stop a determined attacker, especially with such formidable weaponry.”

“
We will need you all to stay here until we can secure the vicinity,” the agent said before leaving.

“
You might as well tell us what the President wanted to say in person,” said the HUD secretary to the Vice President.

“
Yes, please do,” agreed the SecDef. The others waited expectantly.

“
Of course. Masciler’s research found a money trail through the military under its discretionary ‘wartime’ fund. The money was tied to the Bunker Appropriations Act that Congress enacted last month for construction of those non-existent retreats. As we now know, nothing was built, though billions of dollars were channeled into the budget. The people will want our heads, but of course we won’t live long enough to do anything about it.”

“
Where did the money go?” asked someone.

“
The military kept it.” The SecDef’s jaw dropped in surprise. When he looked around the table, all the others were glaring at him.

“
Oh, he had no idea about this,” the Vice President assured them. “The President had someone at the Ft. Benjamin finance center investigate the money flow. They found and arrested the financial analyst who manipulated the accounts. Almost all the money was sent to the 222
nd
Armored Division under the command of General Hipstitch.”

“
Isn’t he the one in charge of the New York Martial Law Zone?” asked the HUD secretary.

“
One and the same. More interesting is how the money started flowing before the appropriations were approved. He started embezzling funds as soon as he was assigned to New York City. NASA had some hard questions to answer and eventually admitted there was no satellite.”

“
So what is really going on there?” It was the SecDef this time, having regained his voice.

“
There is sketchy information only, but Masciler believes they have some sort of a transportation device through which they intend to evacuate a few hand-picked people off of the Earth before Lebowski hits.” There was a general outburst of denial and further questions. “People, please, let me continue. The President instructed members of the Secret Service to raid offices at NASA. They have found information corroborating this story. There is indeed such a device, and it is located in New York City. Central Park, to be precise.”

“
We need to do something about this,” someone said. Everyone was shouting their agreement.

“
I agree; this is not the way the United States of America is supposed to work. The President was coming here tonight to authorize the use of force to go in and take that device and arrest the conspirators, especially General Hipstitch.”

Despite
losing their President only minutes earlier, a group of Secret Service agents arrived to guard their new charge. Following instructions in their manuals they brought a senior member of the US House of Representatives and a Supreme Court Justice, no minor feat considering most of DC was burning above their heads.

“
We just heard a few minutes ago,” said the Justice. “I had them pick up Congressman Davis here and came right over.”

“
What for?”

“
Why, to swear you in, of course,” the congressman answered.

“
I’ve always wanted to do this,” the Justice said as he came over and produced a Bible, “of course, not under these conditions. Well, should we begin? Do you hereby swear to faithfully execute the responsibilities…”

A
short time later, there was a brief round of subdued applause from those assembled and the new President shook hands with the Congressman and Justice. “Thanks so much,” he said. The Secret Service men escorted the pair back out. “Okay, I think there are some papers I need to sign?” he asked the SecDef. His hand shook as he penned his name on the authorization of force. He was keenly aware that he was the first President to ever do this as his first act. He was also aware his would probably be the last presidential act.

Near
the end of the new President’s first Cabinet meeting, the SecDef placed a call to Bureau Chief Masciler. They all wanted one last confirmation before they unleashed the dogs of hell on one of their own cities. The person who answered the phone informed them that Masciler was killed an hour ago by a bomb blast in his office.

Mindy
hadn’t bothered going back to the apartment. There was nothing there for her any more. She’d worked on the translation program in Harold’s computer until she couldn’t see straight. Finally she’d given up and lain down on the floor under her desk. In a few minutes she was asleep. Sometime later, a research technician shook her awake and she’d simply gone back to work.

Hipstitch
and Volant had come in at one point the previous night just as Leo had said they would. Osgood was with them and he’d pointed her out to them. She was only dimly aware of the visit. She was so deep in her calculations that little penetrated her conscious thoughts. No one asked her any direct questions and eventually they left.

As
morning arrived, she began to feel like she was making some progress. This encouraged her and gave the work a little jolt of enthusiasm in her fatigued mind. She’d only slept a few hours, but it was enough. Years of working all night in dim rooms watching the stars crawl by gave her the critical tools for that moment. The calculations were purely hypothetical. It was the kind of raw number crunching she always enjoyed. “I’m not nearly as good at this sort of thing as Harold is,” she would readily tell anyone, “but I’m not bad!”

At
one point, she looked over and was stunned to see a tray of food sitting there. She worked the computer with one hand until the food was gone then continued working without noticing when the tray was taken away. She didn’t remember using the nearby restroom, but realized at one point that she must have.

Around
noon, Leo stopped by to see how she was doing. Mindy took the chance to stretch her leg muscles and walk with him for a bit. They talked about her progress and he made a few suggestions. She was to be allowed to make contact with several mathematical experts at universities such as MIT, Caltech and Texas A&M. That fact stunned her almost more than the announcement of Harold’s death.

“
Hipstitch said to give you whatever it took to break the code and fix the Portal,” he told her.

“
Are you taking that farther than he intended?”

“
Possibly, but it’s not my fault he wasn’t more specific.” Leo gave her an eyebrow-lifting smirk and she shook her head.

“
You’ve got the conspirator’s instinct,” she said to him. “You’d make a good secret agent.” Leo gave her such a strange look that she changed the subject. “You know I could use the e-mail access to send messages to more than those researchers at MIT.”

“
You would never do something like that, would you?”

They
both turned at the sound of heavy equipment nearby. One of the distant warehouses was the site of intense activity as personnel were guiding in trucks and cranes. Outside the warehouse entrance were parked dozens of loaded flatbed trucks of a size that would fit through the Portal Dome’s entrance. “They’re almost ready to go, aren’t they?”

“
We’re just waiting on you, sport. I know you can do it. The gloves are off, okay? Do whatever it takes to make it happen.”

A
minute after he had left her at her desk in the dome, she was writing an e-mail to Billy. He must have been at his desk because the reply came before she had finished her next message.

Mindy,

So glad to hear from you in more than a few scribbled lines on a cocktail napkin! I probably don’t want to know how you managed this, and I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I’m working in the precinct office still. Hipstitch came back yesterday and started stomping around giving orders, repositioning all our patrols and stopping any more evacuations of the city. The last part worries me the most, but we can’t do anything about it. He’s in charge, there’s little doubt about that!

Have you seen the news? You were right about the bunkers being a lie. People are freaking out. It’s like some episode of the Twilight Zone or something. I hope you’ve got some idea of what to do, because those guys who walk around with the signs saying ‘the end is near’ are right.