The Ascendant: A Thriller (29 page)

“She keeps going berserk,” they said. “She’s a maniac.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Garrett told them. He popped a wireless headset on and dropped into a firefight on the coast of Cuba in a game of
Special Ops
.

“Mitty, it’s Garrett,” he said.

“
Cómo estás, pinche
homeboy?” Her voice crackled over the sound of gunfire.

“Stop whacking your own team members. You’re ruining their morale.”

“Well,” she said, sounding reasonable, “tell them to suck my dick.”

“That’s not helping.”

“Then
you
can suck my dick.”

“I’m a major now, you know. The president made me one.”

“Sure. And I’m a rear admiral.”

Garrett grimaced and thought about how to restart the conversation. “Why are you doing this, Mitty? What is the point of you going berserk?”

“I go berserk, they die. They die, I collect more points. The more points I
collect, the more they fear me. The more they fear me, the more I win. Which is why I own your pathetic ass, Sergeant Reilly.”

Garrett sighed wearily. But then he considered what she had just said. Going berserk had a certain strategic quality that following the rules did not. Looked at objectively, psycho behavior made a lot of sense: you gathered points, you had fun, and nobody but nobody could predict what you’d do next. That made you feared. Wasn’t striking fear into the hearts of your enemies a battle strategy as old as war itself?

“You have a point,” he said into his headset. “But you’re still an asshat.” He shut down his console before Mitty could protest.

For the next hour, Garrett contemplated the concept of chaos in modern warfare. Unpredictability was a potent weapon when launched against an opponent that craved order. And didn’t we all crave order? Wasn’t entropy the enemy all humans feared? Alexis had said so. Chaos was equated with death, order with life.

Wasn’t that particularly true in Chinese culture? Practically every book he’d read at Camp Pendleton had pointed that out. Maybe the Chinese government’s desperation was linked to a fear of chaos.
Maybe they were one and the same.
If that were the case, he could use this information to his advantage.

So, three days, seven hours, and one million dollars into the Ascendant project, Garrett found the thing he had been searching for . . .

 . . . the beginnings of a plan.

“W
hat is that little prick doing?” The outrage was directed broadly at the room, but Secretary of Defense Duke Frye was looking right at Major General Hadley Kline as he said it. Kline tried not to grimace, or lash out, but it wasn’t easy—he knew Frye was baiting him, and he also knew he must not take the bait.
Not yet.
The rest of the meeting would be a power play between himself and the secretary, and Kline needed to pick his battles.

Frye turned quickly to the president of the United States, his voice softening. “Please excuse my language, Mr. President. But you have to understand—he’s got them playing video games. Fourteen, sixteen hours a day. While we are on the verge of going to war with China. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.”

President Cross was seated opposite Frye, at the end of a long conference table in the White House Situation Room, in the basement of the West Wing. He was flanked by Joint Chiefs chairman Wilkerson, Wilkerson’s aides, and representatives from the Treasury Department, the FBI, the CIA, and Homeland Security. Kline sat farther down the table, next to the national security advisor, Jane Rhys, an older woman with striking white hair and a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose.

“We brought him in to think outside the box,” General Kline said, tempering his anger. “And that’s exactly what he’s—”

“Playing video games is not thinking outside the box.” Frye cut him off. “It’s not even thinking.” Frye wheeled in his chair toward Julia Hernandez, the young Treasury rep. “How much money did he requisition from Treasury?”

“A million dollars, sir,” Hernandez said.

“And how much does he have left?”

“Even though we have a liaison in the war room, we’re not supposed to monitor his brokerage accounts,” she said. “Technically, that’s illegal.”

“Seven hundred eighty thousand,” said an older man from the CIA. His name was Tommy Duprés, and Kline had known him for decades. He was smart, political, and Kline liked him. “We
are
monitoring his accounts. Because we supplied him with the fake account names. It falls under national security parameters.”

“A quarter million dollars,” Frye said. “Taxpayer money. Funneled into personal accounts, and thrown away.”

“I don’t think they were his bets,” Duprés said. “Some of the accounts were out of money within minutes. Reilly is far more sophisticated than that. He had his team do the trades. I think he’s running them through a training exercise. But with real money. Live ammo, if you will.” There was a hint of admiration in the CIA man’s voice—as if Garrett Reilly’s intelligence and cunning had left an impression on him. Kline noted that. It might be useful later.

Secretary Frye forged ahead. “And did you see this?” he asked, sliding an open laptop to the middle of the table. Its browser was open to Garrett’s anti-China blog. “It’s a website all about how the U.S. is at war with China. Am I crazy, or did you, Mr. President, not tell him directly that he was not to mention that? That this was a stealth operation? That nobody in the nation could know about it? And what does he do?”—Frye shook his head ruefully—“He announces the whole damn thing on the Internet.”

Kline started to interject: “The blog isn’t traceable back to the Pentagon, or to—”

“He’s making fools of us.” Frye cut in, slapping the laptop closed. “Just like he did when we brought him to D.C. in the first place. He has an ax to grind with the military because of his brother, and now that we’ve given him power he’s grinding that ax. Hard.” The secretary turned to President Cross, who had sat silently through the entire meeting, sipping his water and occasionally patting down his tie.

“Mr. President,” Frye said, leaning over the edge of the mahogany conference table. The anger was suddenly gone from his voice; he spoke in a measured, even tone, a model of calm. “Garrett Reilly has given us no reports, no
intelligence, no requests for troop movements. He’s done absolutely nothing. Now, do I care particularly about some experimental operation run out of the basement of the Pentagon? In general, no. Could care less. But we cannot wait around for a twenty-six-year-old hacker to fight our battles for us. We no longer have that luxury, if we ever did. It is obvious to every military mind in this room that the Chinese are bent on full-scale war.” He pointed to a bank of TV monitors mounted on the wall behind the commander in chief. One of the monitors showed the coast off eastern China—the South China Sea; the other showed the Sea of Japan. Both were blinking with Chinese naval and air force activity.

“They steamed five Luzhou class destroyers out of Qingdao this morning, and a Jin class nuclear-powered sub is breaking dock right now. They are heading south to the Strait of Malacca. They secure the Strait, they will be in control of all trade to Japan, Australia, and pretty much anywhere else in the Pacific. One quarter of all the world’s oil goes through those straits. If we don’t get out in front of this, Southeast Asia and all our allies there run the very real risk of being swamped. Overrun by the Chinese.”

“We don’t know that those are offensive actions,” Kline said, allowing a hint of annoyance to seep into his voice. “They could be naval exercises designed to showcase their sea power.”

“If they were exercises they would have warned us about them,” Frye said. “Unless your people at the DIA missed something. Like they missed the Treasuries sell-off.”

Kline winced. He took a long, quieting breath. He was not skilled at the political fight—it was not his passion—but Frye had Ascendant in his sights and was moving in for the kill. The secretary was set on crushing any project that drained money and power away from his office and from traditional military programs.
But now was still not the time.

Frye turned again to the president. “Sir, I believe we are fast approaching a make-or-break moment. They have repeatedly attacked us, our economy, our infrastructure, and now they are preparing for a major military conflict. Southeast Asia could be just the beginning. What we might well be facing is total global war.”

President Cross frowned and took another sip of his water. Kline watched the president as he considered the secretary’s opinion. To Kline, Cross had never been a visionary—he was more of a caretaker president, pleased to have
the job, and anxious not to screw it up. That pushed him toward conservative choices—which was just fine with Kline. He could use the president’s hesitancy. At least he hoped he could.

“But why, Duke?” the president asked. “Why do they want to go to war with us?”

Frye drew himself up in his chair. “Sir, I don’t know that it matters. They’re doing it, and we need to get moving. Their motives are, at this point, secondary. This nation must be defended by strength. We let that job fall to the weak and the undisciplined and we are doomed. I may be talking out of line, but with all due respect, sir, I have to pose the question: Do we want to be the administration that lost it all to the Chinese?”

Kline blinked in surprise. He hadn’t thought the secretary would lay out the issue in such stark—and personal—terms. But he had, playing his realpolitik trump card and at the same time appealing directly to the president’s character flaws: his vanity and his desire for an unsullied legacy. He had to give it to Frye—he was a master of the game. Rumor was he had his eyes on the presidency. The secretary’s ambition was generally acknowledged to be boundless.

Kline thought he saw the president flinch slightly in agitation. Cross waved a hand in the air. “What are you suggesting we do, Duke?”

“Scrap the Ascendant program. If we have to, jail Reilly for fraud—”

Kline barked involuntarily. “Fraud? Give me a break!”

“He took a million dollars and funneled it into personal accounts. Those are actionable grounds right there,” Frye said. “Then we launch a real piece of military strategy. Steam the Pacific Fleet, battle ready, off the coast of Shanghai. Send the Fifth Fleet out of the Middle East to the Strait. Airlift troops to the eastern border of Kyrgyzstan, and double our forces in South Korea. We can do that in a matter of days. Confront the Chinese with what America does best—overwhelming force. That will put the fear of God in the party leadership and stop them dead in their tracks.”

The room fell silent. President Cross took another sip of water, carefully wiping the drip of condensation from the glass. After a few moments, he turned to Kline. “General Kline, I know you dreamed up this program, but, frankly speaking—it seems to have turned into a fool’s errand.”

Kline nodded. This was it.
The moment.
Ascendant would live or die on what he said.

“Sir, Ascendant is a roll of the dice. We knew that going in. Yes, Reilly’s lost some money. But I don’t believe it was fraud, and it’s minor in the grand scheme of things. If he’s making anyone look like a fool, it’s me, and so far I’m willing to absorb the humiliation. I still believe in the project. And I believe in Reilly’s talents. But mostly, sir, I question the alternatives. Can we push the Chinese to the brink? Yes. But we haven’t the faintest idea how that would play out. It could escalate out of control in a matter of minutes. Seconds even. History has shown us that wars, once started, take on a life of their own. How many people would die? And who would end up, in the long run, the victor?” He paused and scanned the faces of the other men and women in the Situation Room. “I don’t have that answer, and I would posit that anyone in this room who claims to know is fooling himself.

“Sir,” Kline continued, his voice low and steady, “I understand the risk. It’s my head on the chopping block as much as anyone’s. But I’m asking you to consider giving Ascendant more time. Not for my sake. Or yours. For the country’s sake.”

President Cross rubbed his temples slowly with his fingers. The fan on a computer whirred quietly in the corner. All eyes in the room turned to him.

“Duke,” he said, turning to the secretary of defense, “I’d like a comprehensive written plan of attack from you. Overwhelming force, but take into account casualties. The American people can only accept so many wars in so many years. I don’t want to lose Southeast Asia—but I don’t want Armageddon, either. I’ll expect it on my desk in twenty-four hours.”

“You’ll have it, sir,” Frye said with an air of muted triumph.

The president turned to Kline. “Reilly’s got two more days. If he gives us nothing, then I’m shutting down the program.”

Kline exhaled. Two days. It wasn’t a victory, but it wasn’t a defeat, either.
Yet
. The president stood, signaling that the meeting was over. Everyone in the office stood with him. Cross started for the door, then stopped, turning one last time to look at General Kline.

“And Hadley, see if you can talk a little sense into the kid. At least get him to tell us what he’s up to. I know he’s a pain in the ass, but, good Lord—video games?”

T
here were two feeds from NSA computers that went directly into the Ascendant war room. One tracked data provenance, the other tracked phone-call patterns. Data provenance—the process of sorting massive amounts of cloud computing intel—was the future of intelligence gathering. But phone-call monitoring was the present. Garrett made sure to check them both once an hour.

Just before noon on the third day of the Ascendant project’s official/unofficial existence, Garrett noticed a spike in phone calls to the help desks of five regional banks in the southeast U.S.: First Atlanta, Southern Trust, Montgomery Credit Union, Jackson People’s Bank, and Alabama Federal were all receiving massive customer complaints. Unexplained credit-card charges had suddenly started showing up on client statements. Worse, numerous checking accounts in each bank had been drained. When clients looked at their accounts online, they were empty. Zeroed out.