An Armageddon Duology (27 page)

T
hey watched
the helicopter disappear into the evening sky. Tall grasses spread over the remains of an abandoned farm and a dilapidated barn rose behind them, the property encircled with trees.

“Let’s get moving, Francisco.”

He nodded and they turned toward the barn, moving as quickly as the former priest’s fatiguing body would allow. There wasn’t a door to secure the building, the remains having fallen off and laying rotted to the side. Much of the ceiling had collapsed as well. The rank smell of rotting wood was overpowering.

In the center of the barn was a jeep, a canvas thrown over the vehicle hastily, barely covering the sides. Houston walked up to the driver’s side and yanked it off, tossing the fabric behind the truck. She helped Lopez remove his backpack and stripped his body armor.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said as he began to protest. “We should be done with commando activity for the night. You need to conserve energy.”

He acquiesced and entered the jeep, stowing the gear in the back. Keys were sitting in the ignition. “Savas has some connections,” said Lopez, staring ahead of them as Houston started the vehicle.

“I don’t think anyone is keeping score on favors right now,” said Houston, gunning the engine and racing out of the structure.

She felt conspicuous with the lights on, the clandestine and dangerous mission still locking her mind into a paranoid state. But it was too dark to drive without them, too dangerous on this poorly kept country road to risk ending their efforts for something so irrational. The jeep leapt and shuddered over holes and mounds in the dirt road. With each impact, Lopez gasped, his face a mask of pain.

Near the rusted gate to the field, Houston pulled the jeep to a stop. She removed a mobile phone from her shirt pocket and switched it on.

“No signal,” she said.

“Location bad?”

“No, this area was supposed to be blanketed, remember?”

“So the towers are dark. What’s even functioning, do you think?”

She shook her head. “Not much. Washington’s completely dark.” She released the belt and turned to the back, digging through one of the packs. She spun back in her seat holding a large handheld device. “At least we have this. Unless the damn worm fried the satellites, it should work.”

She switched on the device and let it power up. Within a minute she had punched in a call and was waiting for a response. A low click sounded as she put it on external speaker.

Savas’ voice burst into the crisp, Virginia air. “Gabriel? Where the hell are you two? What happened? It looks like an invasion in DC!”

“Mary here, John. Gabriel’s close, nursing a blasted shoulder.”

“Jesus! The president?”

“POTUS is secured. En route to the agreed upon location. She’s shook up, but okay. The lady can take care of herself.”

“You should see the footage on the city.”

“We were
there
, John. It’s worse. Look, I’m heading to the landing strip. We need immediate evac for Gabriel. I’m not going to wander into a local hospital, I hope you’ll understand. He needs stitches. Maybe some blood.”

“Roger that. We’ll get you two back here, however we can. It’ll be a bitch, though. You think the lockdown was serious before? Right now it’s not clear to anyone who’s running the damn country. The Guard is not ready for this. Folks are going to get killed.”

Lopez motioned to Houston for the phone and grabbed it with his good hand.

“John, Gabriel here. Look, we need to regroup. This is moving too fast. You need to circle the wagons and get that crazy idea of yours in motion. Something.
Anything
. I don’t think there’s much time left.”

“Agreed. Damn! We need to get her out of here to a different location, one where they’ll feel confident to make a move. FBI headquarters is likely not going to encourage them. We’re scouting some places, but it’s hard to imagine how to get around the way things are.”

Houston took the phone back.

“Look, John. We’ll figure that out soon enough. I’m closing this call and beelining to the strip. Please tell me something is waiting for us there and it has airfoils.”

“Fueled and ready. Go. There’s no way to say it right, but thanks to both of you. And I’m sorry. The worst is still coming.”

The line went silent. Houston flung the device into the bag behind her, released the brake, and hammered the accelerator. The jeep jumped forward onto the main road, tires screaming as Houston veered sharply right. Within a minute the vehicle was lost from view, red tail lights winking like mad eyes in the dark, leaving the pastoral hills of Virginia to cricket song and the glow of distant fires.

A
morning glow
seeped through the filthy window and spilled onto two naked forms entwined on a bed. The woman lay with her head on the chest of the man, short-cropped hair like a sea-urchin next to his long, black strands. Both rested unmoving, eyes half-lidded. The man spoke.

“You know, Poison, it’s finally hit me.”

The woman frowned, her brow creasing, and sat upright in the bed, small breasts decorating the sculpted ribs of a thin body. She moved her hand down the man’s torso.

“What’s hitting you?”

The man grabbed her hand and sat up as well.

“I’m serious.”

“Yeah, that’s obvious.” She turned away, to stare out the window.

“I finally realized something about us.” Poison didn’t say anything, just watched the growing light. “You want to know what that is?”

“Fuck you, Fawkes,” she said rising from the bed and wrapping a tattered robe around her. “No games.”

“Not a game.” His eyes were intense. Almost wild. “I finally realized that something incredible has happened. Something I never, ever expected. Something that should be impossible for me. Really, man, if you knew. Should just be impossible now.”

“What, dammit?”

“I realize that sometime over the last month I’ve fucking fallen in love with you.”

Her face froze and then a smile crept outward, shyly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s happened once before. But I thought that was it, never again. I’m pretty much all fucked to hell and back, you know. Emotionally retarded and all that. Psych-ward material. But whatever. I’m fucking nuts about you. Suddenly, I don’t care anymore about all that shit, all these damn plans our stupid groups have been putting together. I don’t care. Right now, I realized all I want to do is just take off with you. Disappear. Live in some trailer somewhere and forget the goddamned world.”

She moved toward him with her hand extended, but he stood and turned away from her, slipping tight underpants on, grabbing a t-shirt from the floor.

“It came into focus and explained so much. Why I couldn’t concentrate. Why I was losing motivation.”

Her hand dropped to the side, her smile fading.

“And then I realized what I had to do.”

He turned toward her, the shirt pulled down over his thin frame, yanking on a pair of jeans.

“So what do you have to do?”

He sighed, snapping his fly closed. “It’s over, Poison. I’m leaving and not coming back. It’s been fun.” He held her eyes.

“I don’t understand. Her tone rose, the pitch quavering, her eyes large. “Why?”

“Don’t make it any harder. For either of us. Just let it hurt and die.” He threw things into a duffle bag. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Then why are you doing it?” she shouted, tears in her eyes.

“Because it is so hard! Because I know! I know that all our feelings, this love and joy and soaring hope and wonder is all a lie!” He looked at her as some despised thing. “Bubbling broth of chemicals in our minds that will lead us astray. That will end in hurt.” He zipped the bag and walked to the door as she stood rooted, turning her head stiffly to follow his motions. “Worse. It’ll wreck my plans, erase my desire to achieve my goals, to impact a lasting change. And why? For
love
. For limbic lies. I will destroy everything I’ve worked so hard on, only to lie dazed and happy with you under some tree somewhere. Justice demands so much more.”

“Justice?” her face was a mask of confusion.

“It will not be stopped. Not even by you, Poison. I will go, our love will die, and I can finish what I started. I’m sorry for the pain. But it’s just withdrawal. Just your brain missing its biochemical fix. It’ll be over soon.”

With that he stormed out of the room, leaving Poison to sit on the bedside, her eyes red and wet, a snarl on her lips.

C
BD
: So then, these fugitives were sent to rescue the nation’s president?

MR. MILLER: Which they did. Poke any holes in your dumbfuck theory?

C
BD
: And what were you doing during these hours of chaos in Washington?

MR. MILLER: If only it was just Washington! You seem to be forgetting the hand basket Europe went to hell in.

C
BD
: Yes, the nuclear plants.

MR. MILLER: You want chaos? There you go! Chinese party leaders blasted, too. When the TV news wasn’t streaming video of DC on fire, it was showing ten different reactors smoldering in France. All from aerial reconnaissance photographs, of course, because it was a radioactive clusterfuck on the ground. Did you know that the Germans were nearly nuclear free?

C
BD
: I’m sorry, I don’t see the relevance of—

MR. MILLER: They had made it a fucking law that they’d end nuclear power in Germany by 2020 or something. You know those Krauts, damned if they didn’t figure out how to do it! Nuclear free. Fossil fuel free. Sustainable energy. In five years they’d be there. No worries for meltdowns. Unless, of course, some psychopath flies a bunch of drones into your neighboring country’s reactors, blowing that shit into the atmosphere. Ain’t nuclear free no more.

C
BD
: Mr. Miller, let’s get back to—

MR. MILLER: So, when you say ‘what were you doing?’, try to remember that, first of all we were all trying to stay sane. Stay focused. On task. Every single one of us was struggling not to lose his shit as the world literally burned right in front of our eyes.

C
BD
: Yes, as I said, it was chaotic.

MR. MILLER: And in our own backyard. The food riots were spreading. No deliveries into or out of the city for days. Even if the worm hadn’t FUBARed the distribution economy, the lockdown of the city made things ten thousand times slower. People were hungry. What’s that saying, even a good man is nine meals away from murder? It was getting scary just to go outside. Everyone was panicking about a blackout like in DC. But we didn’t have time for that shit. John’s plan. That’s what was on our minds. We spent sleepless nights setting it up. Filming interrogation scenes worthy of a goddamned Oscar. Feeding it out through Angel’s digital feints.

C
BD
: I thought her system had been sabotaged by Anonymous.

MR. MILLER: Yeah, that set us back. She quarantined the computers from the internet and wiped them to make sure all traces of the worm were gone.

C
BD
: How?

MR. MILLER: I don’t know. She’s the code-head. I just shoot stuff.

C
BD
: Her system was brought back online?

MR. MILLER: A part of it. Enough to hook back up to the net. By then John had gotten some of the code for the firewall from NSA, and Angel fortified our position, whatever that means. She had more space now to breathe, but we didn’t seem to have much time.

C
BD
: These feints?

MR. MILLER: Right. So, she put the interrogation videos on some unsecured boxes, other shit. To piss Fawkes off. The idea was to find a location offsite that looked vulnerable, move the girl there, leak that we moved the girl there, then wait with the bait for that fuck to show up.

C
BD
: Sounds like a good plan.

MR. MILLER: Yeah, you try to find a way to net that ghost in a few days while everything went to shit. But it
was
a good plan. The only problem was that Fawkes had his own plans. And we hadn’t anticipated them.

T
he elevator opened
and Savas saw the broad form of Frank Miller filling the space between the doors. The ex-marine’s suit bulged on each side and his shirt strained from the pressure of body armor underneath.

“Suiting up for a rough game, Frank?”

"Time to move," Miller said.

Savas stood beside Cohen and the woman who called herself Poison. No one moved for a moment, the air charged with the potential of what was to come. They were crossing a threshold, setting events into motion that could not be recalled.

"FEDs first," said Poison, grasping a USB disk hanging around her neck like a talisman.

Savas followed as Cohen limped into the car and turned around, watching the hacker intently. Poison continued to face them as Miller pressed a button to hold the doors open.

"It has to be done," said Cohen. "You know that."

Poison nodded, looking sideways around the room as if for an escape. "Yeah, but when it comes to it, leading the prick to the net seems low even for slamming your ex." She looked at them harshly. "Try not to hurt him."

With that she walked into the elevator and turned her back on them as the door closed. Savas felt it better to leave her last request unanswered.

“Gabriel and Mary?” he whispered to Cohen.

“On their way. He’s okay, patched up.”

“Once we’re outbound, I’d like to talk to them.”

Cohen nodded. Miller was silent, and the remaining ride to the basement garage was eerily quiet.

The doors separated to reveal an underground parking lot—gray walls, flickering fluorescents, and row upon row of vehicles blurring into monotony. Standing out dramatically from that background was a black FBI van. It was built for undercover work, devoid of any insignia or lettering, the communications equipment inside visible through the open side door. Only the telltale bulge of the black antenna by the back doors would announce an investigative presence to the trained eye.

Alongside the van was a row of four uniformed SWAT officers. They were fitted in black uniforms and external body armor with weapons at their sides. Poison looked them up and down with a scowl.

“I’m part of the matrix now,” she said bitterly. “Is this all you could get?”

“You think Fawkes will throw worse at us?” asked Miller.

“I don’t know what he might do anymore,” she said. “I hope these Storm Troopers know what the fuck they’re doing. He won’t mind wasting any of them.”

Cohen handed Savas her crutches and faced Poison, her brown hair like a shawl offsetting the angry fire in her eyes. Cohen startled the hacker by reaching up to her shirt collar and straightening it.

“Look, Ms. Ivy—
Poison
—whatever you want to imagine yourself to be
in the matrix
. A little appreciation for putting ourselves in harm’s way would do you well. Appreciation for dedication, duty, public good and all that. Inside the suits are human beings, just like you. Try to remember that.”

Poison stepped back from the intensity in Cohen’s glare, but the agent had turned away. Savas tried to rescue the moment.

“We were lucky to find anyone. Fawkes has pressed all the panic buttons. Washington’s on fire and New York might be next. We have what we have. Most importantly, we have you. I just hope Fawkes wants you badly enough to do something stupid.”

Miller motioned to the SWAT personnel. “Poison will go in the van with the team. There shouldn’t be any issues along the way, but if there are, they’ll need a small army to get to her out.”

“Assuming they want me alive,” she said.

“That’s the basis of the entire plan,” said Cohen. “Otherwise, he’ll just drop a drone on you when he gets your position.”

Poison looked terrified.

Miller continued. “The rest of us will follow in the car. I’ve put through all the channels we can for clearance, without revealing exactly what we’re doing of course. Hopefully we’ll make it through the checkpoints without issues. There are a lot of ways to get to Brooklyn. If we’re held up at one bridge or tunnel, we’ll try another. Hopefully we won’t waste too much time.”

Savas nodded. “What this means, of course, is that we’re on our own. No backup. This entire operation would never fly with the brass if they knew what we were trying. It’s too unorthodox, too poorly planned, too risky.”

Poison laughed. “You’re giving me a whole lot of confidence.”

Miller scowled. “You should worry about the warehouse. You’ll be dug in with no place to go there. Like I said, I don’t anticipate any issues in transit today. Fawkes doesn’t know what we’re up to, he won’t know where you are without his GPS device. Angel will leak the location once we’re ready.”

“Unless he knows a lot more than you think he does,” said Poison.

Tires screeched. The group turned toward the sound. From the exit ramp two white vans rushed recklessly into their level and came screaming to a halt. Savas cried out as the doors of the vans swung open and dark shadows leapt out, weapons drawn. Cohen grabbed onto Poison and fell with her to the ground behind a car as the FBI SWAT team faced the oncoming figures.

Miller drew his gun and concealed himself behind the back of the van. Savas rushed forward beside him, pulling out his Glock and crouching. The SWAT team remained exposed, flanking their right.

In the sudden chaos, the sounds of automatic gunfire echoed madly through the underground chamber.