An Armageddon Duology (48 page)

“
D
own on the floor
!” cried Houston.

They dove to the ground just as the windows exploded. Glass sprayed inward as bullets whizzed over their heads. Paneling splintered, fabric burst open, and dust filled the air as shards tinkled to the ground. They rolled away from the exposed wall, gunfire trailing them and pocking the floor with holes. Lightfoote and Houston dove behind a couch, Lopez rising behind a ventilation pipe jutting out from the wall. He reached into his robes and removed two grenades clipped to his body armor. And pulled the pins.

“Frag out!”

He hurled the grenades through the battered window and turned his head. Light flashed and two thunderous claps shook the building one after the other. Dust and debris spilled into the room through the shattered window. Then silence as the gunfire stopped.

Houston cried out from behind the couch. “They’ll be in the building. We’ve got seconds until they can pin us at the door!”

“Nash!” cried Lightfoote. Her head popped over the couch. The professor lay dead on the ground, his head a gruesome impact zone of multiple rounds.

“Tell me you have more grenades, Francisco!” yelled Houston.

“One.”

He didn’t need instructions. Together he and Houston darted toward the door, both unleashing a hailstorm of bullets through the window into the night. No one returned fire. Lightfoote took up the suppressing fire as the pair reached the door.

Lopez pulled the pin and tucked the grenade to this chest. He motioned downward to Houston. They both crouched.

“Now,” he whispered. She turned the knob, flinging the door wide.

Lopez rolled the grenade outward and Houston slammed the door shut. The pair dove face first to the ground. An eruption of gunfire punctured holes in the door above them, the discharge terminating with an explosion.

The door blasted inward in pieces, fragments of wood and metal embedding themselves in the walls. Houston screamed out and clutched her leg. Lightfoote leapt over her body, firing into the hallway. Short return fire followed, and a guttural cry.

In the sudden silence, Lopez pulled Houston away from the window and behind the couch. He tore open the black fabric of her pants to reveal a black gash in her thigh.

“It’s a nick, Sara. Shrapnel sliced you open, but nothing inside.” He sliced and ripped segments of his robes.

“How deep?” she gasped as he stuffed fabric in the wound and tied a band around her leg.

“Deep enough. But the bleeding is manageable. We need to get you out. Stitched. Up!”

She placed her arm around his shoulders and neck, hopping alongside him toward the door.

“We’re sitting ducks,” she muttered.

“Inside is clear,” called Lightfoote as she darted into the room. She glanced at Houston’s leg and at Lopez. “Can you carry her? Fireman’s style? We need the speed.” Lopez nodded.

“Shit,” gasped Houston as Lightfoote helped hoist her onto the broad shoulders of the former priest.

“All right, let’s move!” said Lightfoote, dashing quickly down the hallway. Lopez followed behind, awkwardly navigating the shattered doorway. The bodies of three soldiers in gear lay strewn around the entrance. Inexperienced, or underestimating their quarry, they had foolishly made a fatal close approach. They were a horror show.

Two more bodies lay prone on the ground as he sped down the hallway, his thick frame bowed under Houston’s weight, footsteps sounding thunderous to his ears. He felt his breath coming in gasps, the muscles of his back beginning to burn.

Lightfoote held up a hand as he approached the entrance to the building. Stopping on a dime proved more strenuous than the run, and he nearly lost balance.

“Dammit, Francisco!” said Houston as he slammed her into the doorway. “I don’t need more damage!”

Lightfoote scanned the area outside with night vision goggles. Satisfied, she nodded to the pair.

“Can’t see any movement. There might be an ambush waiting, but I’m hoping they overcommitted in there. Anyway, we don’t have much of a choice. We have to go before more arrive.”

“Agreed,” gasped Lopez. “I’ve got one shot up that hill and need to take it soon.”

“Let’s go. You first and if you draw fire at least I’ll have a chance to counter.”

They ran. Lopez lumbered up the grassy hill toward the forest with Lightfoote waiting several seconds before following. No one waited in ambush. No shots were fired. She exited at a full sprint and quickly overtook them, scampering up the hill into the trees. As he crested the top of the hill, she passed him again, the goggles strapped on, and scouted the facility below. Lopez lowered himself to one knee.

Lightfoote returned. “Clear. Nothing moving down there.”

“I’ll need a minute,” said Lopez.

“No time,” said Lightfoote. “We’ll make a basket.”

They grasped each other’s wrists in a square pattern. Houston stood on one leg and dropped into the seat. The pair hoisted her, shuffling quickly through the underbrush. Five minutes later, they had reached the car.

It was clear even from a distance that they wouldn’t find Kaplan alive. The vehicle had been damaged, the tires ruptured by gunfire. Blood covered the inside, coating the windows in crimson.

“Motherfuckers,” whispered Houston as she rested against a tree beside Lightfoote. She watched Lopez remove several bags from the trunk and place them on the ground. “At least they were too much in a hurry to search the thing.”

“We need a vehicle,” he said flatly. “We could ditch the gear, but we’ll need to put some space between us and this place soon.”

Lightfoote exhaled. “Those soldiers didn’t teleport. There’ll be a car or truck at the facility.”

“Go
back
there?” asked Lopez.

“I’ll run back. Either we finished them and the spoils are ours, or we didn’t, in which case we’re basically screwed anyway. I’ll just find out before you do.”

Lopez frowned. “Go. You better come back.”

Lightfoote saluted and began a quick jog down the road.

“Meanwhile,” groaned Houston, “get your ass over here and lower me to the ground. I’m not going to wait out our doom on one foot beside this damn oak tree.”

M
iles of barren
cornfields long-ago harvested surrounded them—mangled, yellowed stalks poking through a foot of snow. The convoy had halted fifty miles outside Kansas City, gleaming gray and camouflage spreading out for miles around them. In the cold December air, the president, her advisors, civilian and military, shivered around a long foldout table with a map. Beside it, a large flatscreen monitor had been erected, a lengthy power line running back to the command vehicle.

“What are the numbers this time, General Franks?” York asked.

“Double what we faced at Columbus,” he said grimly, mouth drawn in a line. “Satellite data indicates they've cut off any reasonable routes this convoy could consider taking around their positions.” He pointed to images on the flat screen. “You'll see they've learned from Ohio. It’ll cost us to break through their lines. The only advantage I can see is that this time they’ve struggled to bring in the heavier artillery units. Half the number we saw before. Our guerrilla tactics and the weather have been very effective since we got some of the aircraft back online. But the increasing air power on their side might make up for it.”

Savas spoke up for the first time. “So, we're looking at a longer battle, likely with far more casualties than Columbus?”

Several of the military men openly scowled in his direction. Savas knew many resented their presence at these strategy sessions, and he didn't know why York insisted they be there. But he would speak his mind while it lasted.

“Yes,” said the General. “But nothing we can't take and remain fully capable of completing our journey. That’s our hard assessment.”

“With all the aircraft coming online,” said Cohen, “is there a point in revisiting the option for the president's evacuation directly to NORAD?”

“No,” cut in the General. Several of the aides and advisers nodded in agreement.

“Why not?” asked York, her sharp tone mollifying the hostile looks coming from her staff.

General Franks shifted to a more diplomatic tone. “Ms. President, while it’s true the odds are better than they’ve been for such a mission, it is our opinion they are still far too risky, and the damage to our cause if you are lost, far too high.”

“And what about the lives of the hundreds, probably thousands, of young men and women who will die at Kansas City? How high is the price on their lives?”

“It's not that we don't take into account the people serving—”

“Spare me, General. Taking their lives for granted has been a national pastime for decades.” She gestured to the screen. “At this level, it's all abstract—marks on a map and numbers. And most of us here remain cocooned in our command bubble, even in this convoy placing us so close to those we’re asking to die for us. To die for
me
.”

The stout form of the General tightened. “We don’t have the aircraft to give you a proper escort. If they were to get wind of the mission, we couldn't stop a determined sortie. Hell, some airborne or ground launched SAM could blow you out of the sky. And I don't even know what types of drone assets they have.”

George Tooze, the Secretary of Homeland Security, leaned across the table, his gaunt frame trembling in the rising wind.

“Elaine, this is a hard choice. No doubt about it. But you'd be a fool to rely on a mad dash, vulnerable, exposed in an aircraft. The General and his staff say we can fight our way to NORAD. Many will die, yes, but it’ll be much worse for the nation to lose you – for you to fall into Hastings’s hands, and leave us without the force of your personality fighting his block. We're almost there! One more battle is all he has left in him.”

York frowned and stared out over the vehicles. Savas didn’t envy her. Every choice she made, even the right ones, would cost lives. Bad choices would cost more lives. He had never experienced such a burden of command.

“You're sure they can't mount another offensive?”

The General shook his head. “Not near enough time. They were stretched thin as it is here. Without compensating for the lost ground artillery with aerial power, even with their stronger positions, we're going to run roughshod over them. There's no way they manage to outflank us from here to Colorado. Not after two defeats. They can still snipe at us, but their stopping power’s gone.”

York nodded. She looked at Savas and Cohen. “God knows I want to spare our troops another battle. And I certainly don't want to be the reason for a single death. But we're in a war of hearts and minds as much as territory right now. I and what remains of the Constitutional government have to reach NORAD.” She turned to the military men. “There'll be no evac. We face them. And goddammit, you better be sure we win this and win it big.”

The meeting ended. The maps rolled up and the electronics rolled back into the vehicles. York turned to Savas and Cohen a final time, but said nothing. Then walked stiffly back to the truck.

“Looks like the weight of the world is on her shoulders,” said Cohen.

“It is,” said Savas. He shivered. “Let's get inside before we freeze.”

A
dark SUV
sped through the New Jersey back roads. The license plate was damaged, impossible to read. A black antenna rose from the back, thick and unmoving even as the air rushed over the roof. Opaque windows reflected the night.

Inside, Lopez gripped the wheel tightly and tuned a scanner on the dash. Harsh voices barked out coded signals in military slang. He grunted and turned briefly to the back of the vehicle.

Behind him, in the place of standard passenger seats, flat screens lined the sides of the truck, stools bolted to the floor in front of them. Racks of weapons gleamed in the back, a makeshift cot beside them. Houston lay on it with her leg propped up and her upper thigh heavily bandaged.

“How’s the leg, girl?” he asked.

“Hurts like hell. Thank God for the medkit. Best we can manage now.”

Lightfoote spoke as she glared at a monitor. “Pretty damn lucky find, if you asked me. Mobile command vehicle, had their positions mapped out. We’d have been caught in a dragnet if our little commando team hadn’t left us this baby.”

“
Had
their positions mapped out?” asked Lopez.

“Yeah,” sighed Lightfoote. “We just lost the readout. Matter of time before they figured it out. Took them longer than I thought. Guess they were spread pretty thin.”

Houston leaned up in the cot. “You’re sure you killed our GPS?”

“Yes, or we’d already be dead,” she said. “But I’m not complaining. Positions, thread the needle to get out of the net. Medkit. And now a small arms locker back there. My favorite’s the grenade launcher.”

“Rack of M249s looks good,” said Houston. “Boxes of ammo underneath.”

“We can’t keep this rig,” said Lopez. “They may not be able to track us, but they’ll be looking for it at the major junctions. We’ll have to take those soon.”

“I agree,” said Lightfoote. “I think we have a long trip ahead.”

“Oh?”

“Results of the calculations coming in fast now. Nash knew what he was doing. I think we’ve found them.”

“You’re sure?” Houston asked. “You said it could take weeks.”

“There are levels of precision.” Lightfoote glanced at the laptop on her left. “Once you understand what the equations refer to, it’s just a matter of number crunching. Nash couldn’t do this in the day, but we have computers now in our pockets people like Nash could never have imagined. Code was easy to write. And this little baby,” she said, patting the side of the SUV, “is one linked mother. Saved a lot of time. Grabbed numbers online for nation-state GDPs, population, trade—all the variables in his paper. For controls I did repeated analysis at various time points in history. Major world events—everything fit the curves of his models.”

“So it means he could predict it. Like the weather?”

“Yes, but the key thing is the constraints on the system to match the curves.”

“What does that mean?” asked Houston. “Constraints?”

“In this paper, Nash includes a set of equations that aren’t about markets and populations and trade and all that. These equations are like some external force pushing on all these variables.”

“This is Bilderberg, whatever it is?”

“Yes. That’s the key. These predictions assume there’s something
outside
of our societies and economies, something actively shaping the course of history. To any rational person, it would seem like madness—some divine hand. Any sensible person would just set those weird variables to zero—concentrate on those that relate to real world aspects of trade and population—then crank out the numbers.”

“Except the real world doesn’t agree,” said Houston. “It agrees with having the outside force?”

“Right! The numbers coming out for nations, economies, populations: they agree with the equations that
have
the modifying external force. You need to tweak it, tweak the strength of those variables, but it’s clear.
Something
is out there, something pulling the strings and levers, pushing the pieces across the board.”

“So, back to Bilderberg. It was the last thing Fawkes said before he died.”

Lightfoote nodded. “And coincidentally the last thing Nash whispered before
he
died.
Bilderberg
.”

Houston sighed and lay back, repositioning her leg. “We need to find out what it is, then. Is it related to Cohen’s Bilderberg group? Is that a front? Is it something else?”

Lopez spoke up from the front of the truck. “Whatever it is, whoever they are, Anonymous has them shaken. Fawkes nearly blew up the entire system they were using for—well, for whatever they are using it for. It’s clear they have friends in the US government. They’ve taken out Fawkes, imprisoned our friends, hunted us down. This has pushed them into the open. Nash was right about that. This is our chance.”

“And then there’s the back-trace,” said Lightfoote.

Lopez stiffened. “Did it finish? Did it work?”

“It’s still computing, but it’s converging on a single answer.” Lightfoote shook her head. “It’s amazing really. He said it could be done, and it can. Some of the variables in the external force equations are geographic. Money and power flow like a river that can be traced to its source.”

“And where is it converging?” he asked.

“We need to wait a few days more to be sure, but looking at these confidence levels—I don’t think the answer’s going to change. It’s centering on Europe. Maybe it’s too obvious. Too simple. But it could end up focusing right on Bilderberg.”

“But what
is
the Bilderberg Group?” asked Houston.

“Not the name. The fucking place itself.”

She turned her laptop to Houston, revealing a world map decorated with thousands of colored lines. They crisscrossed the globe from city to city, nation to nation. A million small tributaries, the lines flowed from a central point, converging into a dense web in northern Europe.

“Oosterbeek, the Netherlands,” she said, tapping her finger on the focal point. “Home of the Bilderberg hotel. Location of the conspiracy theorists’ meetings of doom. Travel stop of dignitaries, CEOs, Rockefellers, politicians. It’s the goddamned nexus of it all.”

Houston squinted at the FBI agent. “You mean it’s real? The survivalist basement dwellers actually got this one right? There’s really a shadowy organization running the world out of a hotel in Holland?”

“Bilderberg’s looking like it might be the solution to the equations,” said Lightfoote.

“Maybe so,” grumbled Lopez, “but equations don’t kill. Bilderberg does. We need a solution of our own.”

“And a place to lay low,” said Houston. “I’ve got a few weeks of recovery before I can be of any use. And it looks like we’ve got a long trip to make.”

Lightfoote tapped frenetically on the laptop. “I’ve got something for that, too. There’s a hacker underground, as you know. Well, I’ve been working with some of them to create something less abstract. Now there are a bunch of hackers
underground
. Outside of Newark. Abandoned fallout shelter. They’ve been setting up for a few weeks.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lopez.

“Some who helped us with the decryption, some who believe in Fawkes’s crazy quest,” said Lightfoote. “Some are just anarchists who want to take down the system. They’re expecting us.” Lightfoote stood up and walked toward the back of the van, steadying herself on the side walls. “There’s shelter and what’s more some serious computer firepower. We can tap into their system and increase our attack on this problem one hundred fold. Should be able to confirm what I’ve done and go beyond it, narrow down the location for certain.”

“You trust these people?” asked Houston.

“No,” said Lightfoote, eyeing the weapons racks coldly. “But we have a tactical advantage.”