An Armageddon Duology (59 page)

A
voice called
out over the loudspeaker system in the NORAD Command Center.

“Repeat, all silos restored to base control. Ten are non-operational due to damage. The remainder are responding to operator commands.”

NORAD staff dashed around the center, data flying over the giant monitors, those at desks on the phone or working their computers furiously. The room stank of tension, men visibly sweating even in the air-conditioned environment.

Admiral Myers sat down and hung his head. “Jesus Christ. Thank God for deliverance.”

York frowned at the screens. “You still don’t know why we’re back in control?”

Myers shook his head. “No idea. And
yes
, it worries me. But right now, with those birds shutting down, I’m going to take five minutes and count this as a win.”

Cohen turned to York, her brown eyes sharp. “It’s got to be Angel and the others. Too much a coincidence.”

York nodded. “We need to reach them as soon as possible.”

“We’re on it,” said Myers. “Still reaching out. Still nothing. They’re either really busy—or dead, sorry to say.” The old man closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair.

“Keep trying,” said York. She put one hand on Savas and the other on Cohen and led them forward. “Meanwhile, you two come along. They’ve set out a little office for me down the hall, and we need to talk.”

Y
ork closed
the door to the office, the noise and frenetic chaos of the crisis center muted behind the glass and wood. Photos of a man and his family decorated a desk in the center. Savas and Cohen rested in two chairs facing inward, and York moved behind the desk and took a seat, staring across the cluttered surface at the FBI agents.

“This may or may not be over,” she began. “We may or may not contact your friends overseas. This war with Hastings might be ending or gearing up to another round. Either way, I’ve got to plan for our next steps.” The pair watched her expectantly. “We need an anchor on the East Coast. The West is ours, and that won’t change unless there’s a dramatic shift in the balance of power or those nukes finally do fly. But the East is still enemy territory.” She leaned forward, holding their gaze. “I’ve lost all my advisors, some also my close personal friends. After what you and I have gone through, after I’ve seen you in action, I trust you. I value your advice. Since Kansas City, you’ve been my road advisory council.”

Cohen fidgeted uncomfortably. “An honor, Ms. President.”

“What kind of anchor?” asked Savas.

York leaned back in the chair. “We need a second base of operations until this war is over. Something secure that’s right in Hasting’s side of the court, under his nose. A place we can store troops and equipment, launch guerrilla attacks. One that can be defended against anything but the most powerful assault.”

“The Manhattan bunker,” said Cohen.

“Exactly.”

“But we abandoned it,” said Savas. “It could be in Hastings’s hands now.”

“It could,” agreed York, “but it isn’t. You might remember we left a contingent to try and hold the base? Not many. They couldn’t have held it if Hastings had gone after the bunker seriously. But he didn’t. He figured the real war was out on the plains—and he was right. But he’s been handed devastating losses and left himself open for an attack from within. We’re going to be flying several secret missions to bring the fighting numbers up at the bunker. Personnel to make it a base of operations.” She smiled. “What I need is someone to run the place. People who have shown the strength and character, creativity and courage under fire it will take to make that base work. People I trust.”

Savas and Cohen glanced at each other, and back at the president.

“Elaine, if you’re thinking to suggest—” began Savas.

“I’m not suggesting. This is an Executive Order. From this point, until I deem it no longer necessary, I hereby appoint both of you as the civilian heads of the Manhattan bunker. You will have authority over everyone there, including armed forces personnel. You will be charged with getting the location back up to speed, readied for an extended war campaign if necessary. I will of course provide you with military advisers, logistics support and a contingent of Special Forces troops.”

“Ms. President!” began Cohen.

“Never interrupt the Commander in Chief,” said York. “I know you both are tired. God knows, I am. Half the staff out there are ready for early retirement after this. But it’s
not
over. I, this nation, needs our best people and everything they have.”

“We aren’t qualified to serve in a military capacity,” protested Savas. “Whatever you think of us, we aren’t ready to be put in charge of such an important operation and given the power over soldier’s lives.”

“Let me be the judge of who is ready for such duty,” she said. “Your command there will violate a hundred regs and piss off a lot of people. But that will all go on the back-burner. Because right
now
we have a
Last Days
problem on our hands.” She stood up and put her hands on the desk. “You’ll leave within the hour.”

“What?” said Cohen.

“Several Special Forces teams will accompany you. They’re prepping a transport and fighter escort for you at Peterson right now. This can’t wait. We have Hastings on the ropes. You’re our left hook.”

York walked to the door and opened it. The flood of noise swept over them again—calls on the loudspeakers, machinery, the incessant drone of the fans pumping air into the underground buildings.

“Take a few minutes to gather your thoughts. Then meet me back in the Command Center. Myers will have people ready for you.” The president turned and strode down the hallway without looking back.

Cohen frowned at York’s retreating back. “Well, John, I can’t wait for the hazard bonus.”

“
D
on’t
you two know how to knock?”

Lightfoote stood inside the cavernous hole blown in the wall, her gaze tracking the circumference of it. She carried a black backpack with her.

Lopez stood over a body on the floor, wrapping the man’s arms and legs in duct-tape. Houston sat on the edge of a damaged desk, padding her neck and chin with a bloody cloth. A long abrasion ran down her chest.

“The Director’s dead,” said Lopez. “Suicide. We’ll get nothing from him to help stop the attacks.”

Lightfoote walked in through the rubble and stared down at the crumpled body of the old man. She dropped the bag on the floor and turned to look behind Lopez. A soft moaning came from the floor beside him.

“You roped that calf?” she asked. Lopez nodded. “Okay, well, the good news is I managed to fry their controls on the silos. Irony! I used some of Fawkes’s leftover code on their systems, subroutines my immune packets hadn’t completely erased. I modified a few and set them loose on their command and control code. They’re not going to be using it again for some time.”

Houston cocked her head to one side. “I didn’t think missile silos were networked like other things.”

“They aren’t,” said Lightfoote. “Irony number two. To keep control of them, Bilderberg had to link them. So, Uncle Sam at NORAD was out of the loop and could do nothing while Bilderberg pulled the strings. But their links, on modern servers, exposed them to hacking.”

Lopez clapped her on the back. Houston smiled broadly. “Damn, girl, you
did
just save the world again. Or maybe a hundred million lives.”

“I think it was definitely a team effort,” she said. “So, now, the bad news.”

“I’m looking for the mission when we stop hearing that,” said Lopez.

“Bilderberg—whatever this place is, or was—it’s not what we thought. Not the whole beast, but just one part of it.”

What do you mean?” asked Houston.

“Bilderberg has been the nexus for decades. Maybe centuries. Who knows? But whatever this organization is, it’s a hydra. Many heads in different parts of the world.”

“The nodes in the computer simulations?” asked Lopez.

She nodded. “The Nash equations were incredibly predictive. They’ve locked me out of the system now, totally wiped it, probably amputating this node. But not before I found connections to the other locations. They’re subservient, taking orders from here, but active, focal points for local manipulations of markets and politics. Each had a different name, its own contact, its own infrastructure and power base. I was going to save all the data, transfer it, so we could chase them down and figure it out, but they trashed the server before I could.”

“So, the New York cluster is real?” asked Houston.

“More than that,” said Lightfoote. “It’s the heart of it all.”

“I thought this place was,” said Lopez.

“Bilderberg was a
front
. It’s so devious. For the simulations and string pulling, this served as a focal point. If anyone came looking—really came looking like us—they’d be drawn here. But it’s
not
the puppet master. Bilderberg’s strings, and the strings of the other nodes, are all being pulled from New York. By
Zero
.”

Lopez furrowed his brow. “Zero?”

Lightfoote shrugged. “These guys like drama. But that’s all I have. A name.
A handle
. The records didn’t spell anything else out. Just Zero.”

“What do we do with that?” asked Houston.

“Well, there
is
more,” said Lightfoote. “More on the location, anyway. They set up the perfect facade to hide him. While the conspiracy theorists of the world had their eyes on Bilderberg, the real puppet master was hidden away, completely unsuspected, in a green, intellectual oasis in Manhattan. A place standing unimpeachable, working for the ‘benefit of humanity,’ while it served in the shadows as the beautiful mask to hide the hydra. Whoever Zero is, he’s there, at a biomedical center called the Ramsey University.”

“The what?” asked Houston.

“I didn’t have much time to look it up. Little I got said it was founded by the Ramsey family in 1901 along with some other oligarchs. People thought it was a tax shelter with some ‘give back to the world’ guilt down payments for the tycoons. But it looks like the story was just social camouflage. The place was set up to hide something very different, much darker.”

Lopez shook his head. “You mean Bilderberg
isn’t
the center of power? But this Ramsey University is? How?”

“I don’t know,” said Lightfoote. “But that’s where this Zero is. A place no one would think to examine, with Nobel Prize winners, disease cures, a research hospital. And it’s been the center of power for over one hundred years.”

“The name Ramsey raises some red flags,” said Houston.

“More conspiracy theories,” said Lightfoote. “But yes. It’s all starting to feel very eerie.” She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “Back to the nukes for a minute. We need to contact NORAD, get them to move on the silos to prevent this from happening again. I’ll walk them through it.”

“You can do that?” asked Houston.

“Should be able to. Their control system was all spelled out in the connections here. It’s not magic. I think we can wall them out forever.”

Lopez turned to the receiver on the old-style landline. Dust slid down the sides of the plastic handle as he raised it to his ear. A dial tone spilled from the speaker. “Still works.”

“Good,” said Lightfoote, retrieving her laptop from the bag and laying it beside the phone. “One more piece of critical intel. Zero is
still
in NYC. The missile launch was only to be triggered by his command. The silos were prepping and on standby, firing once he bugged out.”

“Wait, are you serious?” asked Houston.

Lightfoote nodded, opening her computer. “Probably who Mr. Cyanide here was talking to before he offed himself. We’ve wounded them terribly, but we didn’t get the queen bee. But maybe we can. Zero is leaving NYC within the next twelve hours.”

“What can we do about it?” asked Lopez “We’re here. I doubt anyone has any available assets in the area after all the chaos. No one will get there in time.”

“We have to try,” said Lightfoote. “Another reason to get NORAD on the line.” She scrolled her fingers on the trackpad. “Here’s the protocol York gave us for calling in.” She picked up the receiver and entered a sequence of numbers, followed by several pauses and three more number sequences. “This takes forever if I remember. They filter and trace the hell out of the calls.”

Finally, there was an audible click.

“Yes, this is Angel Lightfoote. I’m here at the Bilderberg hotel with Gabriel, Mary, and a lot of dead guys. I need to speak to Admiral Myers.”

“
A
gent Savas
? Agent Cohen?”

A soldier peered into the back cabin, pulling back a makeshift privacy screen to see inside. Savas opened his eyes, rising on an elbow from the seat. Cohen slept unmoving in the chair beside him.

“I’m sorry to wake you, but there’s an urgent call.”

Savas shook his head. “Can barely breathe through this damn nose. Can’t sleep.”

The soldier motioned to him. “It’s the president on the secure line.”

A minute later both he and Cohen were huddled together in the chilly transport, Cohen yawning and still half asleep. Savas spoke to York on a video screen.

“Slow down, Elaine. One thing at a time. My team, they’re alive, unharmed?”

York nodded. “They’re worse for wear, but no major injuries.”

“They really did it. The missile aborts, the silo shutdowns.”

“Yes,” said the president. “Lightfoote’s fingerprints all over it, of course. But their team had to infiltrate the hotel underground. We don’t have time, and I’m not clear on all the details, but it looks like Bilderberg was running some sort of science fiction population simulation, shape world events by using computer models.”

“And this all had to do with this Nash figure? Fawkes’s file was about some econ genius and his work?”

“Yes,” said York. “Frankly, I’m skeptical until I’ve learned more. Sounds ridiculous. But they’re sure. They’re meeting with local CIA and US military representatives in the area now to lock the site down. But they saved our asses.”

Savas bowed his head. He couldn’t help but feel both relieved and proud. “Okay, so how does this relate to New York and this university?”

York sighed. “It’s all moving so fast we can’t hope to verify everything. So we’re going on trust, John. Do you trust your people?”

“With my life. Looks like we all did.”

“Well, what your people are saying is there is more to this than simply Bilderberg. Bilderberg was only a center of operations, but the organization is spread around the world. Most importantly, a key figure, maybe
the
key figure, is right in front of your plane in New York.”

“At the Ramsey University,” said Cohen.

“Yes. Angel Lightfoote was sure of it. She begged us to get someone there, to stop him.”

“Stop who?”

“All they had was an alias.
Zero
.”

“Someone in New York at a biomedical institute running the damn world named Zero?” said Savas. “You know how this sounds?”

“Of course I do! So I ask again—do you trust your people? And do you trust us? Because there’s more. We’ve done some of our own digging based on Angel’s data. We think we know who this Zero is—Luc Osomer-Levitt, the president of the university.”

“Wait, I’ve heard of him,” said Cohen. “Big time pharmaceutical player. A scientist I think. Was embroiled in several financial controversies but nothing ever stuck.”

“That’s him,” said York, static partially garbling her words. “But a little digging into government databases reveals some very interesting coincidences. Like invitations to the annual Bilderberg conference, to begin.”

“Gets my attention,” said Savas.

“How about the funneling of huge amounts of money from some of the most powerful families in the world to the university? Charitable donations on paper but the numbers don’t add up. Finally, NSA data on communications between his corporate offices and seven of the Bilderberg nodes identified by Angel.”

“That’s no coincidence,” said Cohen.

“Unlikely. Angel claimed she had information that Zero’s on the move, bugging out of New York in a matter of hours. He might already be gone.”

“Leaving from Ramsey?” asked Savas.

“Best intel we have.”

Cohen nodded. “All right. Send in a strike force. Take him into custody.”

“
You
are the strike force,” said York, her expression grim. “We don’t have the skill set in the staff left in the Manhattan bunker.”

“Us?” said Savas incredulously.

“Your special ops teams are perfect for the job. This could be the kill shot to Bilderberg. You both
have
to be there.” Her face stared unblinkingly at them through the screen. “We’ve uploaded what known schematics of the place are available—campus map, entrances and exits, buildings. But there’s likely to be a hidden layer, like at the Bilderberg Hotel. There may be levels and structures buried in the bedrock we know nothing about.”

“And we have no sense of how fortified they are. We could be walking into a shooting gallery,” said Savas.

“Yes, you could.”

He placed his hand on his bandaged face. “Okay, how do we get there? I didn’t even think this through when we boarded the damn plane. Are the airports open? LGA is close.”

“Negative. Hastings controls it. Or did. It’s chaos on the ground still. Airport isn’t operational as far as we can tell.”

“Then what?” asked Savas, holding his arms in the air.

“Sergeant Williams, would you introduce yourself?” called out York loudly.

“Yes, ma’am,” came an authoritative voice behind them. A tall black woman stepped toward the screen. “HALO specialist Aisha Williams.”

“HALO?” asked Cohen.

“High Altitude Low Opening.”

Savas looked at the video feed. “You aren’t serious?”

Williams continued. “We’ll jump about thirty-five miles out from the island, sir. At forty thousand feet and this airspeed, we’ll need a good distance to land on target. Give it three to four minutes for the drop. But it keeps the aircraft out of SAM range and minimizes possible flak.”

“In case Hastings is watching,” added York over the speakers.

“Jump?” Cohen asked, her eyes widening.

“Three teams,” said Williams. “You’ll both have chaperones. They’ll steer you with the groups until we touch down.” Savas and Cohen simply stared at her. “We’ve only got an hour to the drop point, and we need to get you both on oh-two as soon as possible.”

“Oxygen? Why?” asked Savas.

“Purge the nitrogen from your blood, sir. You can’t just jump at forty-K. Pressure’s too low. You’ll get the bends.”

Cohen turned an incredulous look to Savas. “Nitrogen bubbles in the blood,” she said, swallowing.

“Hurts like hell, sir, and could kill you.”

Savas stared at the soldier. “And assuming we survive this madness, where are you intending to put us down?”

“Central Park,” said Williams. “Lots of open space there.”

“Surrounded by skyscrapers,” he said.

“We’ve done worse, sir,” said Williams.

Savas stared toward the ceiling. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

York smiled on the screen. “Good hunting, all of you. Bring us back a trophy.”