Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (45 page)

He sighed heavily, knowing that it was time for him to face the inevitable.

***

Schriever AFB, Colorado:

The jet eased to a stop on the dark tarmac, well away from the hangar facilities. A ring of lights had been erected hastily, no more than a collection of generator trailers with mercury-vapor lamps pointing outward. They illuminated the night away from Air Force One and left a near impenetrable black shadow in which it hid. The President’s jet, usually surrounded by dazzling lights and the fanfare of welcoming parties, now sat eclipsed by the darkness of the situation.

Several Humvees sat on the edge of the lights, mere shadows, waiting to pounce on the first approaching threat. Beyond them, concentric rings of fighters orbited, providing forward surveillance and visible only as an occasional flash against the night sky.

Sylvia watched through the windows, sitting in silence beside John while they waited for her Secret Service handlers to tell her they were ready to move her to a safer place. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d understood what the emergency was in the first place, but she knew better than to question the decisions of her security staff.

There was a light tapping on the door, and the voice of Janice told her they were trying to get a ladder out to the jet so she could deplane.

John laughed at the irony. “They busted your ass to get us on the ground, and now they can’t find stairs to get you out of the jet.”

“Silly problem,” she agreed, trying not to let the frustration show in her voice. She was still, even in the face of this annoyance, struggling to keep a grip on her rage at Norman.

“You know, we live in the most technologically sophisticated country in the world, you’d think they’d figure out a way—"

“Yeah. I know,” she said,cutting him off. Her tone carrying more emotion than she’d wanted. She was glad they were sitting in the dark, so he couldn’t see her face.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t have much use for small talk right now.”

“I understand,” he said, reaching out and touching her arm reassuringly. “Considering what’s already on your plate, you sure as hell don’t need anything else.”

She nodded, but said nothing.

“So what the hell is this problem?” he asked.

“I guess it was a sensor failure or something. They said it sounded like sabotage so they decided I’d be better off on the ground. Just in case.”

“Sensor failure?” John asked.

“Apparently somebody screwed with the satellite network that sends Space Command tactical data,” she said. “If they can’t be sure Air Force One is where it’s supposed to be, we’re grounded. At least until they figure out who did it, and how it happened."

“That’s going to make dealing with Norman a bit problematic,” he said. “You don’t think he had anything to do with this, do you?”

“He’s a conniving son of a bitch, but I don’t think he’s behind this. Even Norman has his limits.”

***

To Say Goodnight, Darkly

Washington:

Yolanda Hernandez stood on the corner watching the motorcade roll past. It was something she’d seen a thousand times. This was one more like all the rest. In the city, they were a part of daily life. Some bureaucratic ego being stroked, disrupting traffic for his own glorification. Pointless parading of self-inflated importance at the cost of those who paid his salary.

She leaned against the lamp post waiting for the cars to bully their way through the intersection, holding her huge belly with one arm in a futile effort to take some of the weight of her pregnancy off her aching back. In her other arm, she held a small stack of books from the library.

She was on her way home, having spent most of the night studying. If it weren’t for school, she wouldn’t have been on the street at this time of night. Before her boyfriend left, she’d had an escort to get her home safely. For all that he’d turned out to be a waste of her life, he was at least a visual deterrent to any would-be muggers.

Tonight she stood alone on the corner, armored only by the streetlight, waiting for the inevitable, in a place she never should have been.

The two cops who’d taken up station in the middle of the intersection were ceremonially holding back traffic that didn’t exist at this time of night, while the rest of the motorcade eased by. It was a short precession by Washington standards, just three cars and four motorcycles, so she knew she didn’t have long to wait.

Glancing at her watch, she felt a sudden rush of hot air, and heard a bone jarring roar in the same instant. Her mind reeled as the sidewalk under her feet seemed to leap sideways. In that millisecond of hyper-awareness she realized that the ground itself wasn’t moving, it was her body being hurled through the air.

Her foot, struggling of its own volition to find the Earth, drug along the sidewalk until it snapped excruciatingly to the side. She tumbled backward, cart-wheeling toward the front of a building.

Her mind, fed on adrenaline, raced to analyze what was happening. She saw the building rushing toward her, the inevitability of her impact clear to her. She saw her foot for a brief instant dangling from the end of her leg before the wall crushed the wind out of her and she collapsed.

She jerked herself up, still alive. Her books were scattered on the sidewalk, tracing a path from where she’d been, to where she now sat. Looking down at her stomach she reassured herself that the baby was still there. Relieved that even though she was bruised, she was still intact, she pulled her legs under her to try to stand.

Sudden, searing fire shot through her and the memory of her foot flashed in her mind. She knew it had to be broken. Shifting her weight to the good leg, she pushed herself up against the wall into a standing position.

What had been a normal street a moment before, had become a twisted spectacle from hell. Flames danced across the asphalt and the remains of several cars billowed angry black clouds of sooty smoke.

A car, one of those belching smoke, began to make a screaming sound. A sizzling, hissing, horrific imitation of terror. She stood watching it for several seconds, struggling to make sense of what it was trying to tell her. She shook her head, trying not to imagine that what she was hearing was the sounds of passengers. Then she recognized it for what it was. The screaming was gasoline boiling in the tank, vaporizing in the heat of the fire. She’d read once that a car wouldn’t explode if the vapors could not escape, but as she stood listening, she realized the tank had ruptured and the gasoline misting out into the air would be dangerous.

Turning to run, she put her broken ankle to the ground and collapsed forward in the instant that the car shattered into another ball of fire, hurling shrapnel through the air. She saw one of the pieces spinning toward her even as she fell. Twisting to the side to protect her unborn child, she turned her back to the blast and crumpled to the ground.

She awoke to a strange feeling of warmth, and she looked down at her stomach again, just to make sure that she was still holding her baby. Between her eyes and her stomach, a large steel fragment protruded from her chest, crimson and chrome.

With a strange detachment, she recognized it as a shard of the car’s bumper.

She also knew that she’d managed to keep it from killing her baby. As long as help got here in time. Wrapping her arms around her stomach she drifted down into the well of darkness.

“I would’ve been a good mom,” she sighed out in her final breath. She’d done all that any mother could have.

***

Arlington, Virginia:

Jesus Padilla, sat watching the bank of alarm monitors with half an eye while he read
Reality Overload
, the latest action novel by Arthur Brentwood. Brentwood was one of his favorite authors and he had hopes this book would be better than the last one.

Jesus had taken this job working for Allied Central Alarm Monitoring, not because he had aspirations to be a security guard, but rather because it gave him a chance to get paid to do pretty much nothing. Occasionally he’d get an alarm and he’d have to call 911, but most nights he just sat around reading or chatting online with his latest girlfriend.

He was enjoying his freedom now, having lost that uppity bitch who’d tried to saddle him with her baby. She wasn’t due yet, but she sure as hell had been telling everybody it was his kid. Truth was, it might have been his, but since he’d gotten away from her, she was going to have a hard time proving it to anybody, especially the courts.

He glanced up at the wall of screens, some of which were attached to cameras and some that displayed only the status of the alarm system. He was grinning mindlessly when an entire group of monitors blinked out and dozens of lights went red. All of the monitors started beeping insistently. “Glass break detected,” the computer said in an unintelligible cacophony of voices that clamored over each other. He reached up and tapped the icon that cut the verbal warnings for break-ins off. “Fire alarm,” the voice said again.

The screen in front of him showed the location of all their alarm accounts simultaneously on a single map. Several dozen of them blinked yellow, indicating break-ins and a few more were red, the color for fire detection. They formed a ring around a single intersection. Jesus wasn’t trained to interpret the situation, but he knew enough to call 911.

“This is Jesus Padilla with Allied Central Alarm, I need to report multiple break-ins and fire alarms at the corner of Pennsylvania and—“

“We’re already working the situation with fire and rescue units,” the operator said.

“We’re showing a crapload of break-ins,” he said. “We need police—“

“What you’re showing is an explosion,” she said. “We’ve got broken windows for two blocks in every direction."

***

Washington:

Up until recently, Peter Webber had been a freelance reporter who specialized in the Washington scene. He was known for catching politicians in casual moments and getting great personal interest stories, sometimes ones that would bring embarrassment and at other times, ones of great personal sorrow. He’d made a good living at it, a very good living in fact. That was until he’d lost his press card when Norman Anderson had forced everyone to re-qualify.

Now Peter was hungry, not physically but in a professional sense. He’d moved from covering the halls of power to the back alleys of corruption, where he felt more like a war correspondent than anything else. The backside of Washington was a cesspool of political refuse. It stank, and it was dangerous, and he hated it.

Tonight he’d been following a slimy trail through the Darkhorse, a private club that catered to the more lurid tastes of Washington’s high and mighty. He’d followed up on a street rumor and when he’d found the promised land, he was shocked to find it in the basement of a building a couple miles from the White House. His imagination had danced with the idea that former Presidents may have slipped away under the cover of darkness to indulge themselves in the erotic pleasures he’d witnessed tonight. Surely Clinton, if he’d known of the club, would have been intrigued by the possibilities, and maybe even Bush. He pushed that image from his mind. Some thoughts were just too sickening to imagine.

He’d left as the party was beginning to swing into full gear, more afraid of being recognized himself than that he’d recognize someone. Even knowing that if he did, he’d have a sure-fire story to sell. Coming up to the sidewalk from a narrow stairwell, he glanced around, making sure no one would see him and ask where he’d been. He was well aware that knowledge of the Darkhorse and its elite patronage would be enough to draw down some serious lightning.

He’d parked his car a few blocks away, so pulling the lapel of his coat around his face and setting the brim of his hat, he scurried out into the chill wind. He looked down at the ground, watching his feet and trying to glance up only when he needed to get his bearings.

The streets were deserted except for a woman standing a block or so away under a streetlight. Two cops pulled out in the middle of the street, and with lights flashing made a show of blocking traffic along the road he was walking. They’d be gone before he got to his car.

A bright orange flash stunned him and caused him to stop. He could see a fireball laced with fingers of black smoke rising like a dragon out of the middle of the intersection.

“What the fuck?” he said, blinking several times to clear his vision. The roar of the explosion hit him as the concussion kicked him backward. He gasped, trying to catch the breath that had been sucked out of his lungs.

Instinctively he checked his pocket to make sure his videocell was still there. He fingered it for several seconds watching the smoke curling into the sky before he realized that he should have it out so he could catch the action. Moving forward, he crouched behind the base of a streetlight and aimed the camera. He punched in the number for the SNN uplink service and identified himself and where he was to the computer that answered.

In his vision he saw sparkles, and blinking he tried to clear them away, but gradually he realized they were shards of falling glass from windows far above the intersection tumbling onto the ground. He glanced to the windows above him, several of which had blown out, relieved when he saw none of it raining down on him.