Demon Accords 6: Forced Ascent (2 page)

“Well, your client holds the distinction of being the first person to aerially bomb the United States,” Gleeson replied.

“Ah, sorry, Senator but that distinction belongs the Japanese in 1942.  A sub launched a two-person float plane that dropped two incendiary bombs on the Oregon forest.  It isn’t widely known.  Also, there isn’t any evidence that my client bombed anything,” Darion replied.

The senator frowned and looked ready to continue, but Alexis Bishop spoke before he could, and she spoke directly to me.

“Mr. Gordon, it’s an honor to meet you.”

“Really?  An honor?  I’m fairly certain not everyone here would call it that,” I answered.

“Well, I’ve heard a great deal about you.  From Director Stewart, General Creek… the President.  You left quite an impression on him.”

I felt myself frowning.  I didn’t remember meeting the President, but Tanya and Lydia had filled me in on my most of my adventures, including my Skype call with the Prez.

“I have to say you’re not what I expected,” she continued.

“You thought I’d be taller?”

She shook her head.  “Meaner looking.”

“Oh.  ‘Cause I kick dogs and smack babies?”

She smiled and almost chuckled, but she caught it and instead, her smile became something a little hard, a little fierce.

“Oh, you are dangerous.  You mask it with charm.”

“You have a different definition of charm than most people I know.  They usually classify me as a wiseass.”

General Creek snorted and I inclined my head in his direction while continuing to meet Alexis’s gaze.  She smiled again, then let it slide off her face, becoming serious.

“Here’s the thing.  You, Chris, somehow attacked a military structure on continental United States soil and completely destroyed it.  That’s never been done before.  It immediately classifies you as a terrorist,” she said.

“Military structure?” Darion asked.  “Is the United States government claiming the old missile silo as government property?  Because our title search shows it being sold to a private civilian, then to a real estate holding company.  Are you saying that the AIR group is truly a division of the federal government?”

“AIR?  Agents in Rebus?  That old fairy tale,” Senator Gleeson scoffed.

“Really?  So the reams of information, computer files, prototype armored combat suits, gauss rifles, and advanced robotic drones were all made up?  The ones that DARPA scooped up and stole away with?”

Alexis held up one hand, taking back control of the conversation.  “All of that is classified and outside the purview of this conversation.”

Darion snorted this time.  “Alexis, you disappoint me.  I anticipated the whole terrorist label thing, but ‘classified’?  Come on.  The only reason any of you know enough about it to classify it is because my client has pretty much single-handedly rolled up a cancerous, corrupt organization that had completely penetrated the entire federal government.  You should be giving him a medal… another medal, really.  Let’s see: Chris Gordon has liberated a terrorist-held school in New York City, eliminated a supernatural gang of shape shifters that General Creek and his men were unable to handle, completely stopped all production of the Hance drug, and sealed off dozens of dimensional ruptures in the fabric of our universe that may, in fact, actually lead straight to Hell.  Then when a rogue, out-of-control element kidnaps his goddaughter, he cleans them out, too.  You should be backing truckloads of medals up to his door.”

“So you admit that your client assaulted the silo with an airborne kinetic energy weapon?” Alexis pounced.

This time, Darion held up his hand.  “You’ve yet to answer any of my questions.  Are you, in fact, claiming the missile base and AIR as federal government entities?  Because that’s the only way your terrorist claim works.”

McFeeney sat forward and jumped in.  “Let’s say we are, for argument’s sake.  Let me quote you the FBI’s definition of terrorism:

“Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:

One, involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;

Two, appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and

Three, occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.”

He finished and held both arms open, palms up, with a
there you have it
look.

“Yeah, great definition.  But it pretty much classifies everything that you folks do as terrorism. 
Intimidate or coercion?
Sounds like standard politics to me.  Congratulations, you all are terrorists, too,” Darion said.

“Your sarcasm has no place here, young man,” Gleeson said, leaning forward.

“Look, the point is that we all know you can classify anyone at any time as a terrorist by that definition. The real question is what’s your angle?  What do you want?” Darion asked.

“What we have is a national threat to security wielding unknown abilities or technology, operating at random inside the borders of the United States with no checks or balances.  Mr. Gordon here has served his country well over the last few years, but there is nothing preventing him from going off the deep end and assaulting that very same country.  How do you think the people sworn to protect this nation from any and all threats feel about a rogue operator who can do the things he can do?  It’s frankly worse than allowing test tubes of Ebola to be carted about at random by any federal employee that wants one,” Alexis said.

“Again… what is it you want?”

“We want controls in place to ensure Mr. Gordon’s compliance,” she said.

“And those are?” Darion asked while my stomach got tight and twisted.

“We want young Miss Velasquez in Federal custody.  We want a… monitor implanted in Mr. Gordon’s body to track and isolate him.  We want him shadowed by government agents at all times.”  She sat back, watching us for reaction.  I had plenty but I somehow managed to control my initial reaction—or more importantly, Grim’s response.  The images in my mind were bloody. Very, very bloody.

“No, no, and no,” Darion responded.  “Why would Mr. Gordon acquiesce to these ridiculous demands?”

“Because failure to comply will constitute a declaration of intent to commit further acts of terrorism and war against the United States,” McFeeney interjected.  He paused for dramatic effect, which was ruined when footsteps thundered down the hallway outside accompanied by howls of pre-teen laughter.

“And once you’ve decided you’re at war with my client, how do you see that playing out?” Darion asked, smiling at the sounds of the kids.

“The only way it can, Darion.  With the death of Mr. Gordon and all he holds dear.  Nobody can hold out against the full weight and power of the United States Government,” Gleeson said, his eyes on mine.

“Really? I’ll tell you what I think,” Darion began, but the door to the room suddenly opened and the guard posted outside stepped in. Everyone but me jumped a little at the sudden interruption. The Secret Service guy took one step forward and one to the side, holding the door open for the service cart that came bumping through behind him.  It was pushed by an older hotel staff person and was loaded with pitchers of water and glasses.

“Sorry to interrupt, but the water you requested is here, Senator,” the guard said, not acting apologetic at all.

Chapter 2

Everyone looked at the old lady while she clumsily moved the pitchers and glasses to the table—except me.  I kept my eyes off her, even as I could feel her moving around the room, her presence bright in my mind.  She shuffled and kept her head down, finally completing her task and then awkwardly dragging the cart out of the room.

The senator poured himself a glass of water then settled back into his chair, finally looking at Darion expectantly.

“Go on, Darion, tell us what you think,” he said.

“I think, Senator, that we’ve been down this path once before and it broke down to something like mutually assured destruction.”

“But that confrontation included an extremely supernatural powerful entity and the full resources of the worldwide Coven.  The entity has completely disappeared and the vampire has been severed from the larger organization.  You’re on your own,” Alexis said, looking me dead in the eye.

Darion turned my way.  “Chris, that true?”

“That statement isn’t exactly true.  I can call any of the Elders of the Coven from my cell and they’ll take my call,” I said, although I wasn’t actually certain of that.  “In vampire politics, the term
sever
usually applies to limbs and necks, not relationships.  Let’s just say we’ve been granted breathing room for our smaller part of the overall Coven.  But let’s assume that any of you have a clue how the Darkkin mind works and let’s say it’s just me, Tanya, and some others.  I think, in all honesty, if you force us into a corner, it’ll be a nightmare none of you will survive.  Just my opinion.  What do you think, General?”

Creek’s mouth was compressed in a thin, angry line, but he didn’t answer right away.  He just stared at me, the wheels of thought almost visibly turning in his head.

“I think I’m having déjà vu. As I’ve advised the President, I do not favor the military option. It’s not viable,” he finally said.

“That’s not your call, General.  Your only job here is to tell us what it would take to finish off Gordon here,” Gleeson said, voice sharp.

“In that case, Senator, in my estimation, as a professional soldier who has closely observed Gordon in action and studied each of AIR’s failed attempts to capture him, we would be fighting a guerilla war on US soil against an opponent who has enormous advantages in urban warfare.  I’ve seen Gordon decimate the werewolf equivalent of a company of infantry by himself—in a ridiculously short period of time.  From what I understand, his girlfriend’s abilities are comparable and he has an unclassified were of unknown capability.  From the data collected by Oracle, the three of them assaulted a hardened military facility and cleaned out its entire complement of heavily armed, highly experienced enhanced soldiers in less than fifteen minutes. Add to that an organization of an unknown number of vampires who have infiltrated our society, alliances with several Packs of weres, and God knows what else.  And that was before he somehow dropped a multi-ton nickel-iron asteroid with pinpoint accuracy, yielding the equivalent energy of a tactical nuke.  In short, it would be, as he indicated, a nightmare.”

Gleeson was almost purple and the closest Secret Service-type guy looked worried, like he might have to dial 911 and perform CPR.  McFeeney jumped in before the senator could unlock his clenched jaw.

“How would you go about it, General?”

Creek didn’t speak for a second, looking pretty angry himself.  “You really want me to detail our potential responses to the opponent we would be using them against?  Have you any concept of operational security Congressman?”

“Of course General.  Just the broad strokes.  Outline the kind of resources Mr. Gordon would be facing.”

General Creek’s jaw clenched and unclenched a few times as his eyes moved between McFeeney and myself.

“We’ve been running scenarios from the moment we first became aware of the threat Gordon represents.  We’ve constantly updated the models with new data with every incident to come to our attention. We’ve identified numerous geographic and urban design chokepoints in every major city in the United States to use as killzones. Then we use a Monte Carlo approach, like the Wall Street guys use, to run our scenarios one thousand times each and collate the outcomes.  Here’s what we think:

“Aircraft and remotely piloted drones are pretty much a no go—Gordon can crash them at will and there’s evidence he can direct the crash to some degree, turning our airpower against us. However, the presence of a small amount of depleted uranium may mitigate his abilities to some degree.  Each drone, aircraft, and ground element would carry a small object of DU.  We would still have to commit overwhelming numbers to compensate for his abilities.  If he and his vampire were in York City, I would use the 10
^th
Mountain Division out of Fort Drum—they’re light infantry.  The 174
^th
Attack wing at Hancock in Syracuse for their Reaper drones and the Pennsylvania Air National Guard’s A-10 Squadron from Fort Indianhead Gap.”

“All of them?” McFeeney asked.

“Yes. We’ve designated other combined force packages for every geographic location.”

“And what success rate did your models return?” McFeeney asked.

“About thirty-three percent, with a troop casualty rate of eighty-seven percent.  Of course, that was before the asteroid.  Now we’re updating the models to assume we have no satellites, and that any armor or concentrations of soldiers are under threat of directed kinetic energy assault from above.”

“What about civilian collateral damage?” McFeeney asked.

“Those numbers were pretty bleak. Although, endangered civilians actually benefit the scenario – tend to draw him out. He has that whole hero complex thing going on.”

Bishop looked a little uneasy and McFeeney was downright upset.

“Well for God’s sake, just flush him into the countryside.  Things will be wide open and you wouldn’t have so many civilians around,” Gleeson said after glancing at his fellow political allies.

“That approach yielded the lowest civilian death rate, but the success rate dropped to about twelve percent and we would lose almost all of our soldiers.  Again, that was prior to the new data.”