The Cause (25 page)

Three helicopters were on the ground, all of them draped under massive camouflaged nets, two of which were H-21 Shawnees, old relics from Vietnam. Both had 50-caliber machineguns mounted in the front of their landing gears. They reminded me of the gutted F-14 used for the Stellar Wind attack. The old bird scrapped in the hangar the day we left for The Abattoir had been rebuilt and reused. Where had these come
from?

Another set of dirt bikes pulled in all at once. The last of O-Team. We gathered around the area next to Seee with the maskless Sons: Kumo, Des, and Merrill. The thin mountain air already seemed alive with the zing of bullets. Seee hoisted himself on top of a tree stump, the rugged mountains jutting out over the flatlands in the distance behind him.

“Who stands before me?” Seee yelled.

“Here stand The Minutemen,” we chorused back.

“It is nice to see of us all together,” he said. “If for only once shall we be joined, then it means that today is even more special. While not all are present, those who have been left behind were left because of necessity. It was not their choice. It was their command. We cannot risk all based on one operation. Today, however, will certainly mark a stake in the ground of American history.”

He stood looking out over the mountains, and a pause broke up his words, perhaps a reflection of how the distant peaks miles away had never looked so stunning. The sixty who inhaled the air seemed to feel it simultaneously.

“Today we fight for The Cause,” Seee said. “Where some of us might have doubts, let us not forget those of our General Washington in 1776 at the siege of Boston when he wrote, ‘I have often thought how much happier I should have been if, instead of accepting of a command under such circumstances, I had taken my musket upon my shoulders and entered the ranks, or, if I could have justified the measure to posterity, and my own conscience, had retired to the back country, and lived in a wigwam.’

“If America would not have had such a man, perhaps the country would have never survived. It is with this insight that I say these words. Without you here today, America has no future. Our plan is either genius or ill-conceived, but we as The Minutemen have a duty to see through its execution, to throw the
stone at the Government Goliath, and if it not kill him, wound him so that others might fight to cut out the cancer festering in the stomach of our nation.

“Where we lack numbers, we are superior in weaponry, technology, and people—all of which have had trial at The Abattoir to prove their worthiness for The Cause. I have spent many sleepless nights, as I am sure you have, agonizing if this is the right course. My head will not let me veer away from the bloody task in front of us, even as it pains my heart to be the one to have to do it.

“We, as brothers of The Minutemen, have been trained to defeat fear, as fear is the source of failure. We have learned to accept death, and death we must expect in this fight. If we are not honorably killed on the battlefield today, you must be aware that death will seek us out ruthlessly. But death will keep us living as our people catch word of our sacrifice. Today, we will throw stones at the giant, and the giant will hear us roar.”

A loud war cry came from The Minutemen as Seee jumped down from the stump. Everyone split into teams. Merrill briefed us (X-Team) to how we would be dropped and how we should secure the south side of the building. We were told The Anthill had hacked into a set of UAVs, and these drones were going to lay eggs around the perimeter. Snipers were coming across the lake now, under the cover of darkness for support. The goal—to keep the enemy out of the building. Diversions would be used on the incoming roads to engage them before the real attack. A window of thirty-five minutes to get in and out, before any worthy help could be deployed or they could overrun us with drones. Other details were given, but not the target. I guessed we were going for the President. Once Merrill was done speaking, he gave us five minutes to use as we liked. Many went off to sit by themselves with a view of the mountains.

“You’re not coming?” I asked Merrill.

Bursting out with laughter, he said, “I’m already suicidal. I
don’t need any bushido moment.”

I sat out on the plain gazing at the black silhouette of mountains under the shade of darkness, but a moment of enlightenment failed to come. My bushido moment was still back in The Pit, and I had lived through it. Weariness grew over me trying to imagine it again. I closed my eyes, but my mind wouldn’t rest, branching in different directions as the cool wind wisped over my face. Flashes of the past—my childhood, SWAT life, then back to my days at Datalion when I thought of life as over after being caught and banished from the Silicon Valley.

The last year collided against the distant past, and I reflected on what I had been through—being beaten, killing Burns, almost starving, The Pit.

Although we all wish to remain a beautiful sculpture after the world has chipped away at us, some will inevitably be surprised when the world interprets us differently. What sort of man was Isse Corvus—member of The Minutemen, traitor to his government? Was he a traitor to his country as well? Or its highest patriot?

Finally, with my eyes still closed, awash in fleeting unanswered questions, I remembered my hacker name, Cerberus, a name I had made up when I was fifteen.

Just getting started with a computer, I had a fascination with the machine world where secrets could be uncovered only if you were smart enough to discover them. Maybe I consumed too many old
Matrix
movies, but to me the electronic world was one where I could escape and be someone important, live out boyhood fantasies. Outside, I was a nobody. Most people thought I would end up like my brother, just a dumb-ass nigger kid working the corners. But I remembered the library, sitting there at the terminal downloading hacker tools, sniffing the library’s network, picking off IP packets from people who were using Wi-Fi. A world of forbidden knowledge, I planted an ear into the silent, undetectable bit realm of the machine. I could snip into the
sordid lives of the neighborhood, read their emails, learn about their secrets, booby trap their words if I wanted to. Knowledge was power.

But today was today, and the future was Turbulence.

I took off my shirt, and with a roll of tape, wrapped up the photo of the Earth over my heart, ready for another world if it came to it. The mountains in front of me split up my destiny. If I found myself on the other side of them in a few hours, life would continue here. If not, I was somewhere else. I was the cat in Schrodinger’s box, both alive and dead simultaneously. In life, we try to mark our existence, yet in the long run we all endure the same fate after the last record is burned. How then is death any different than life?

I smiled to myself thinking these thoughts. Questions Uriah would have asked. Perhaps bushido flowed through my veins more than I imagined. Uriah—the son given to The Cause who so desperately desired this moment, but stood stolidly in the face of death and shook its hand. I thought of his bravery, of how he stood for ugliness in the world that could become beautiful. All of us here were about to take the same leap.

Merrill waved us toward one of the H-21s. Seee walked off near O-Team and helped them load a BigDog into their chopper.

X-Team gathered around—Split, Brock, Mir, Grus, Drake, Shankar, Orland, Briana, myself, and the Cannibals: Feller, Jenks, and Kumar. That was all of us left from The Abattoir class of 2022. The rest were either dead or had headed back to Langley way before they knew anything. From Langley’s point of view, X-team was still at The Abattoir.

As we circled around Merrill near the H-21, the first thing out of Split’s mouth was, “Really? We have to go up in this banana?”

“Don’t Spanish Monkeys like bananas?” Merrill asked to a chorus of laughter.

“I guess you can get anything on Craig’s List nowadays,” Split said.

“We’re not the D.O.D, boy. We can’t just send a memo to the Fed and have them print us money for toys.”

“Isn’t there supposed to be a bomb under this bitch?” Geddy Drake asked.

“Not needed for the task tonight.”

Drake hopped up on the ladder and disappeared into the H-21.

A minute later, Merrill climbed up into the helicopter putting on his mask, reminding us again of the no-name rule. Then we were up in the old helicopter, taking off and gaining height. The covering had been ripped away from the drive shaft, and the big metal tube looked like an artery running against the ceiling of the old machine. Mir, Split, and Geddy flashed me looks the way my old SWAT buddies used to moments before a raid, wild anticipation in their faces, jungle eyes sweeping over one face after another looking for the stain of fear. Briana inched closer to Merrill, but he wasn’t having any of it around the men. He was screaming
whoop-whoop
and jumping up and down in the back, knees touching his chest, two lines of black greasepaint under his war-hungry eyes. Everyone psyched themselves up—stretching out legs, twisting necks, checking rifles—anything to put miles between themselves and fear. Fear was poison. A second of self-doubt could put a hole in your chest.

Shakiness glowed in the eyes of some. Mir, who had never made it into The Pit, smiled feebly. He yelled into Split’s ear, Split motioning he couldn’t hear. After Mir yelled into his ear once more, and Split still couldn’t understand, Split raised his thumbs and nodded. When Mir looked away forlornly, Split shrugged his shoulders at me. I took my helmet off my lap and placed it on the floor. I stood from my seat, almost knocking my head on the ceiling. Then, I banged my rifle on the floor for a beat,
one—one-two, one—one-two
. I began screaming the song at the top of my lungs:

Everyone responded, bursting out the phrase again over the deafening thrum of the rotor blades. I sang out the next verse, throwing up my arms in a gesture for them to scream with me.

Everyone whooped and hollered to the last line, but then the song was interrupted by the crew chief standing near the door gun grabbing us by the arms and pointing at the cockpit. The men crammed toward the front to catch a glimpse through the thin porthole into the bubble of a cockpit the pilot and copilot sat in.

The drones had already laid their first set of eggs. A broken ring of fire surrounded the Jackson Lake Lodge. Farther out in the distance, toward the road, a great plume of black smoke rose up in the air. Everyone sensed the significance of this, and the air cleared with an emboldened sense of purpose. Merrill called from behind for us to get ready. I raced to collect my helmet with the PVS-14 night goggles strapped to it, put it on, and then through one eye the darkness became a green filter.

Forty-five seconds later, our H-21 approached the drop zone. Tracer rounds coming from the roof zinged through the pitch black. Our gunner took aim as the sound of splitting metal hit our ears. Several bullets pierced the hull and X-3 (Grus) went
down. “Man down! Man down!” Merrill yelled as everyone ducked. He screamed for the medic then turned to us, and yelled, “Move, move, move!”

With two ropes latched to bars above the porthole, Merrill slid down on the first rope as I took the second. Part of the ground was on fire under me, rotor wash heavy on my back. I glimpsed the roof of the lodge being shot up by our gunner. Clouds of rubble and dust covered whoever had been there. I hit the scorching grass, retrieved the M-16 strapped over my back, and moved to a clean patch of lawn. I glanced around and saw X-6 (Orland) coming down the rope next to me. On the ground, the clatter of 50-cal rounds rattling the roof overpowered everything. Merrill pushed forward in a crouch, and I followed alongside to form the first line. A helicopter on the north face of the building holding E-Team hovered in front of me. Men slid down ropes and fell as fast as droplets from an icicle. Automatic fire blasted out from the other side. A body fell from a rope and disappeared behind the roof. The interior lights had been killed, but traces of movement flickered from the first floor. Automatic muzzle fire of two more guns firing from inside in our direction. Glass shattered. Shots zinged though the newly born night. A set of tracer rounds streaked though the sky, aiming at the helicopter, the other spreading rounds at anything moving outside. A body dropped down from our helicopter behind me, thudding on the ground. Through the roaring punch of gunfire, I still heard the crack of bone and a shrill scream.

I resisted the urge to look back, continuing to follow Merrill, the building thirty yards in front of us. I crouched down and took aim, firing a flurry of rounds as I crept forward. The muzzle fire kept coming. Others around me pumped rounds inside. I opened up, firing bursts until my clip ran dry.

As I reached for another clip, something silver streaked around the corner of the building. A metallic cheetah galloping on four titanium legs, front paws sliding behind back, articulated
spine curving in stride, its long yellow camera eyes protruding outside its head. It ran so fast that when it suddenly turned, it lost its footing and was close to toppling over. But with the grace of the animal on which it was modeled, its legs adjusted, knifed into the grass and skidded. Its knees buckled, and it leaned its body heavily toward the ground. Then it was up, fully recovered, and charged the wing of the formation until it pounced on Orland.

The BigDog leapt out from E-Team’s copter, eager as a hound on a foxhunt. I stood stunned as I watched it crash to the ground from twenty feet up. It landed badly, and one of its legs snapped out of joint. Still, it bounced up, and with only three legs attacked the cheetah. Within a second, it had one of the cheetah’s legs in its jaws. The cheetah was already mangling Orland, yet it didn’t have a grasp on his throat. Briana, the closest by, ran close enough to the tangled robots to use her pulse gun, putting them both down.