An Armageddon Duology (39 page)

S
avas sat down
next to Cohen outside the medical facility. They were dressed in borrowed fatigues, soldiers donating whatever they had available. For the first time in what felt like years, they were left alone. He stared at her in awe. The quiet and stillness transfigured her familiar form. She dimmed the world around him, infinitely valuable. He reached out and squeezed her hand.

“Always thought you’d look good in gear,” she said, smiling.

Self-consciously, he examined the camouflage patterning, the baggy shirt sagging around his midsection. He rubbed the thick stubble on his cheeks.

“I don’t get the luxury of making everything I wear look good,” he said, raising his eyebrows toward her. “But thanks.”

She inhaled sharply, staring into space. “We just left him there.”

Savas closed his eyes. He wasn’t ready to face the losses.
More losses
. A price for service that now rose beyond anything he could justify. “Yeah. I know.”

“Did you see what they did? I mean, why?”

He opened his eyes but was unable to make eye contact. “I don’t know, Rebecca.”

“And JP? He was wounded in the firefight at the Bureau. Anything?”

“Still no word. Not sure he was even taken to the ship. He would have needed serious medical attention.”

Cohen shuddered. “Just so they could torture him later?” She glanced over his bruised and swollen face. “What did they do to you?”

He squeezed her hand again. The guilt that he’d betrayed good people burned inside.
In the end, I was weak.
“Nothing good. But I’m okay. Docs say no lasting damage. The bastards knew how to work it slowly.”

She stared off into the distance. “Is there nothing they wouldn’t do? How can they be soldiers?”

“I’m not sure all of them were. Some were contractors. That blue-eyed monster, for one.” Cohen inhaled sharply. Savas wrapped his arm around her. “What they did to Frank, his head—well, Sara had told me about something like that.”

“I remember,” Cohen shivered. “The CIA agent. They used some kind of brain stimulation to get him to talk.”

“Yeah,” said Savas, rolling his pained shoulder. “They found a dead doc. Traced him to some shady military contractors. Apparently it’s the new thing. Electrodes in the brain. Turn off free will. Get answers. Less blood.”

“Didn’t seem like less blood to me. They
butchered
him, John. Threw him down for us to see. To hurt us. Break us. Before they—” She stopped and held her hand to her mouth.

“Stop. Slowly. Not all at once.”

She nodded, holding back tears. “Right.” She looked around the room. “
Jesus
. Now what?”

A firm voice answered from behind them.

“Now you get to choose.” York walked in with several aides and military men.

“Choose what?” asked Cohen.

“Whose side you want to be on in this conflict, and what you want to do about it.”

T
hey stood
around a map of the United States. It was displayed on a table in the middle of the subterranean lair’s enormous operations center. Soldiers manned computers and communication equipment, tracked troops and intel, and spoke into headsets to contacts unknown. Along the sides of what looked to be a retrofitted subways station, wall-sized flatscreen monitors surrounded them, displaying a bewildering series of images from satellite downlinks to war-game simulations.

On the LCD screen before them, the nation glowed in blue and gray. The East Coast and parts of the Deep South shown with a gray hue. The map was colored blue in the center, a bright star flashing in the state of Colorado.

“General Hastings has most of the Navy under his thumb, except for several contingents of Special Forces that stayed loyal to my office. Fortunately, almost no one knows about this facility. It was scheduled to be decommissioned, a relic of the Cold War.”

Savas shook his head. “What is this place then?”

“A local Mount Weather or NORAD. Was once intended as a governmental bunker in case of nuclear attack. A huge network of abandoned tunnels and water stations were converted to the purpose. Telecommunications, arms, food stores. You name it. It’s in disrepair, as I said, headed for the chopping block, but we’ve gotten it up and running. Thank God the air filtration systems still worked or it would have been over before it began.”

“Why won’t Hastings look for you here?”

“He might eventually. That’s why we can’t stay long. But it’s obscure and buried in archives. All but forgotten. Except for us old timers. Not high on the military priority list either, deemed too vulnerable to attack. Which it is.”

“Comforting.”

She looked him in the eye. “We’re on a knife’s edge. Every day we stay here brings the noose closer. But every day rallies more to our cause. We’ve managed to muster a good part of the 2nd Infantry Division from Fort Lewis. Those that didn’t join Hastings’s ranks, that is. I have a small army at my disposal.”

“Can we trust them? How do we know loyalties?”

York frowned. “We don’t. That’s the hard truth. But we’re doing all the PR we can. Trying to win hearts and minds. But we don’t have any problems Hastings doesn’t. Going to be brother against brother.”

“It doesn’t sound real,” muttered Savas.

“The fight is up there, too,” she said, gesturing toward the ceiling. “Propaganda wars before the blood is shed in earnest. People are taking sides. But the real battle will be somewhere in the middle,” she said, indicating the map. “We have the Rockies, NORAD. They have the coast. Someday soon, we’re going to meet up between these points. Before that, we need to get to NORAD. We need to run our campaign from there. And that’s where we’re headed if we can make it.”

“Why risk it?” asked Cohen.

Savas saw that she was in analytical mode, but his mind refused to function when he stared at her. She still wore a blanket from the medical center. Small in the cavernous space, a petite brunette wrapped in layers of fabric, her form called to him.
Vulnerable
. He struggled to process the conversation.

“Because here, I’m just as much a prisoner as you were on that ship. It’s a matter of time before they find us. Maybe days. We’ve secured a lot of machinery, troops. We have air attack options from several locations. We’ll move soon.”

“Air options,” said Cohen. “I heard jets over the ship.”

“Not jets. Cruise missiles. Immune to the worm. A great irony—modernizing our aircraft, we left them vulnerable. The best attack and transport craft are either grounded or too unreliable in the air. Each side is racing to fix that, but we don't have the time to wait.”

Savas turned to York, the president’s words focusing his attention. “Wait? For what?”

“My best strategy would be to hop a transport and fly to Colorado. But my advisors say it's too risky. Too few working planes, too few air traffic systems. There’d be no escort. Some surface-to-air missiles and it’s over. Since we can't wait for the air, we move on the ground.”

Cohen stared sharply at the President. “Why did you come?”

“Here? I told you. It was the only—”

“No,” she interrupted. “The boat.
Us.”
Savas heard the restrained emotions in Cohen’s voice as she continued. “You’re running for your life while the nation crumbles. Why did you come? How did you find us?”

York smiled and put her arm around Cohen. “Because you have some friends in high places. Actually, I don’t know where they are, but they reached me. Hacked into our damn servers.” York laughed, moving back to the map. “Hastings’s men can’t find us yet but your computer girl sure as hell did.”

“Angel,” said Cohen.

“Don’t know her name—or maybe you’re being figurative? Anyway, she was with two people that cashed in a debt I owed them—my life.”

“Mary and Gabriel,” said Savas, using their codenames.

“So
you
sent them? I’d guessed. No coincidences in this game. But it’s good to know. And you two have my thanks as well.”

“We can call it even, then,” said Savas.

“Where are they now?” Cohen asked.

“Don’t know. They got into our servers, routed messages directly to me, identified themselves. Sent me your profiles and GPS coordinates. Seals did the rest. Honestly, I didn’t think we had a prayer. But Hastings is too confident, didn’t count on a lot of things.”

“Like what? How did they pull it off?” said Savas, shaking his head. Images of the titanic carrier rushed through his thoughts.

“Wasn’t that hard in the end. We had some air
options
, but that wouldn’t have done much with the firepower they could have launched our way. But the US military hadn’t seriously considered an internal war—same team, suddenly at each other’s throats, with all the codes and perfect intel on our targets.”

Cohen nodded. “You knew where to hit them.”

“Not only, darling,” winked York, “but we also knew how to get into their onboard systems and shut everything the hell down. Turned that thing into a hundred-thousand-ton floating hunk of iron.”

“They tortured us,” said Cohen flatly. “Murdered our friend. They drilled holes in his head.”

The President’s upper lip twitched. “I’ve been briefed. I wish I could act surprised. This country’s wrestled with some monsters, about how to deal with evil people. Hastings belongs to a wing that sees no road as too dark, no line that can’t be crossed. All the more reason we need to find a way to stop him. Which brings me to your choices.”

Savas barked a laugh. “I don’t think we want to go back to the Hastings side, Ms. President.”

“I’m sure. But you don’t have to help me. You can flee. Hunker down with your families. I’d understand that. But I know who you are. I know what you’ve done for this country and what those you sent to help me can do. And if I understand things, it was your department at the FBI that stopped the worm that started this mess. The nation needs you. And I want you by my side.”

“By your side?” asked Savas. Cohen’s eyes squinted.

“Personal bodyguards and problem solvers. Heavy, I know. But there is one more piece to this puzzle you don’t know about. Something that makes everything in this coup secondary.”

Cohen shook her head. “What could do that?”

York exhaled. “
Bilderberg
.”

A
spartan room
devoid of furniture or decoration. Twelve enormous flat screens mounted from the ceiling, forming a circle. In the circle’s center stood Elaine York, marveling at the design efficiency, the brutal and humbling focus that centered the occupant in front of twelve titanic faces.

She rotated slowly, examining each of them, feeling dizzy in the process. Eyes bored into her from every direction. God-sized faces. All strangers.

It was impossible. Here she stood, Elaine York, President of the United States, two-time US Senator, political player for most of her adult life and observer before that during her father’s career—and she didn’t recognize even one of the faces staring back at her. All her connections developed over a lifetime meant nothing in this dark room. People more powerful than she could have imagined surrounded her, making her question the entire world order she had taken for granted. And she knew nothing about any of them.

The door closed behind her.

“Thank you for coming, Elaine,” said a voice she remembered.

York stared ahead at an ancient visage, a face from another age with blue eyes and pocked skin.

“You’re the one on the phone,” she whispered,

The man smiled, revealing yellowed teeth. “Yes.”

“Who are you?”

“There won’t be any names here, Elaine. Only yours.”

A female voice. York turned to her right. Two enormous pools of brandy confronted her, keen eyes of a beautiful woman with dark hair and vaguely Middle Eastern features. Her accented English reflected her appearance.

York scanned once more the ring of faces gazing down on her. Faces from all over the world. Dark and light, old and young, men and women. She returned her eyes to the older man.

“Why am I here?”

He smiled again. “You’ve read some science fiction in your youth, have you not, Ms. York?”

“Yes,” she said, bewildered.

“Your brother’s books, I believe. Wasn’t so fashionable for a young woman to have such boyish hobbies, no?”

“I’m glad to say things have changed.”

“Indeed. But some things do not change. And that is why you are here.” He held up a dog-eared paperback. The book on the screen loomed at twice her height. “Isaac Asimov—Foundation. Do you remember this book, Elaine?”

“Yes. One of the first science fiction books I really loved.”

“Stilted, clumsy language. But it had a very interesting idea. A brilliant idea. Do you remember it? It was what the series was based on.”

York felt lost. “Scientific prediction of society, of the future. Shaping society with mathematical sociology.”

“Exactly!” The old man smacked the paperback with his hand. “What if I told you it wasn’t science fiction? What if I told you it is possible to predict, and therefore shape, human societies and civilization through quantitative modeling?”

“That’s absurd.”

“Is it?” said the woman to her right. “Economists use mathematics to predict recessions, bubbles, and investments. Traders do the same to play the markets. Epidemiologists can predict the course of disease and optimal quarantine and vaccination strategies to prevent epidemic spread of pathogens. Are we not shaping our world with mathematical predictions on a constant basis? What could one achieve by integrating all these models, especially if one had the capital resources to alter the inputs?”

“That’s different than Asimov’s idea.”

“Only in a matter of degree,” said the older man, pulling her attention forward. “In fact, that’s why you’re here. Because the course of human events is being shaped toward a brighter future by such methods. And we are those carrying out this noble task.”

York glanced around at the faces. No one smiled. No one laughed. These people appeared utterly serious, spouting nonsense.

“Looks like you’re dropping the ball a bit. The world seems pretty FUBAR to me.”

“A deceptive illusion, Ms. President. Scored as a percentage of population and cultural dynamics, human civilization has achieved the highest stability ever measured in the historical record.”

“How’s that possible? We have four major wars ongoing, political chaos in several nations, resource and environmental problems—you name it!”

“It’s a matter of perception, Elaine,” he said. “Ten billion people with lightning fast tech is very different than one billion and snail mail. Most chaos is minor, blown out of proportion by crisis-driven content in the news media. Local chaos notwithstanding, as a planetary average, we exert unprecedented control.”

“Unprecedented?”

The woman spoke again. “Ours is not a new organization. Faces may change over the decades. Tools modernized. But not the purpose. That remains constant. With ultrafast computers, more robust theory and modeling, we can now predict and shape the world to a degree of precision our predecessors could only have dreamed of.”

“Predecessors. What the hell is going on here?”

“Very simple,” said the man again, “You must accept that your assumptions about the world, how it is governed, where the power lies—they are all wrong. Power does not rest with nations or the individuals leading them. It rests with us. We have held this power for centuries, controlling economies, making kings and presidents, directing conflicts and religions. Clumsily at first, to be sure. Almost to our own extinction at several points. But no longer. The modern age has advanced the modeling of social groups to a point that, like the weather, we are increasingly accurate over longer and longer stretches of time. We have consolidated our power and influence.”

York squinted at the screen. “So, you’re telling me that behind all the world governments, there’s a super group of individuals”—she gestured around her—”these same individuals glaring down at me, who run the world? In secret? Without anyone knowing?”

A man’s voice behind her spoke. “I wouldn’t say no one knows. It’s a question of how
much
they know and what they might do about it. Rumors of us persist no matter what steps we take to erase them. Sometimes we’re Jewish bankers or cultist Illuminati. Hidden extraterrestrials or demonic forces. Vampires.” The god-like faces chuckled. “Strange and inaccurate myths concocted to explain anomalies and pieces of data recalcitrant individuals obtain. Sometimes we encourage certain wild ideas to cast doubt on the real truth.”

York shook her head. “How do you expect me to believe this?”

“You’ve seen what we can do. The power we have over your national system to bring you here. Your own former president playing the role we specified for him.”

She felt like crying. It was madness. “Then what do the masters of our universe want with Elaine York?”

“Probably nothing,” said the man.

“Nothing?”

“Truly, we do not wish to interfere in your service to your nation. It is likely our direct intervention will be extremely rare. It is increasingly so these days. In fact, you may never hear from us again. Our efforts are so pervasive and thorough, so long-planned, often we can allow the models of behavior for you and your political parties to play out without, shall we say, adjustments. However, should there come a time when reality and our models diverge, should our goals be threatened, we may be required to contact you. It is imperative that you then do as we ask.”

“Or what?”

“You risk far more instability and harm by rebelling.”

“And if I still refuse?”

The woman spoke. “The consequences will be harsh. We will be forced to remove you from office and replace you with a more cooperative politician.”

“Replace me? How?”

The old man frowned. “Consider the fates of presidents throughout history who have rebelled against our requests. Lincoln and Kennedy. William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, William McKinley, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt.”

The room felt cold and hostile. York swallowed. “These are all presidents who died in office. Several assassinated.”

“Indeed, President York,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “As you can see, our reach is centuries old, and we do, as they say, play for keeps.”