Ghost of the Gods - 02 (31 page)

The roads were covered in slush. The driving was treacherous and slower than Mark wanted. A few more blocks and they’d be on Interstate 287 and safely away from this place. The entrance ramp was in sight, but the setup felt all wrong. Mark experienced a moment of déjà vu that something terrible had happened here. Sarah grabbed his arm.

“A lot of worked-up emotions and pure testosterone are heading our way,” said Sarah. “It feels like a wrecking crew. We need to get off the road now!”

Mark knew Sarah was right. He cut the wheel and turned into a McDonald’s parking lot. The entire Morristown area was like a ghost town. There were few signs of people on the streets. He and Sarah would be easily spotted. He pulled around behind the building and cut the engine. In the silence he began picking up stray thoughts. From where he’d parked he had a narrow line of sight to the road. Within moments a convoy of military Humvees and Strykers began rolling past. They had to be heading to the ruined estate. As each vehicle passed by, it kicked up a storm of slush. Mark was experiencing stronger thought fragments. Tiny puzzle pieces of sounds, images, and sensations from a single man started to assemble and then vanish. There must be someone in that convoy he knew.

“McKafferty!” exclaimed Sarah.

It was as if the man’s name was an evil incantation. Mark solidly latched onto the thoughts of a man he hadn’t been in contact with in years. He began receiving a steam of memory capsule from Sarah containing McKafferty’s emotions. He, in turn, started sending his captured perceptions and thoughts back to Sarah. Why was a top-ranking military officer investigating an explosion? The unlikeliness of their paths crossing had left Mark focusing with extreme intensity on McKafferty. Coincidence was sometime not coincidence. From stray thoughts Mark realized McKafferty clearly knew a lot about the hives. Mark then picked up a sequence of free-associated thoughts about Kathy Morrison, prison, and a Peacekeeper slaughter at Pueblo Canyon.

Stunned, he lost all connection with McKafferty. The memory felt like a blow to his chest. He had to remind himself to breathe. This had to be a mistake. This had to be McKafferty’s imagination. Sarah found his hand and gripped it. Mark probed the n-web for any trace of stray thoughts from anyone at Pueblo Canyon and found nothing. He then tried the god-machine’s timeline archives for McKafferty and found nothing. Like most people, the general seemed not to be archived, but Mark knew his searches could also be faulty in some way.

“It’s not real,” demanded Mark. “McKafferty must be daydreaming!”

“Mark, they’re gone… There’s no emotion there, nothing...”

General McKafferty – New Jersey – February 27, 0002 A.P.

McKafferty was almost in control of his blood pressure as the convoy carrying CIT personnel neared the highway exit for Morristown. The origin of CIT was murky. It was clearly an example of private sector outsourcing of intelligence gathering, but there was evidence CIT had been in operation for years, long before the nanotech plague. This little detail greatly bothered McKafferty. He liked to know what the hell he was commanding. Not surprisingly, Alexi had been unable to provide evidence for his fail-safe fantasy or that communes had been instigators in the plague. Regardless, every hybrid was still a god-machine puppet, which made it a traitor to the human race.

The Humvee in front of them slid out of control as it turned down the 287 exit ramp. McKafferty braced himself. If not for some spectacular wheelwork by his driver, they’d have had an unfortunate meeting. All of New Jersey was under a weather alert for severe freezing conditions. With no plows or sanders, in a few hours many of the roads would be skating rinks. Their target was a well-established commune in Morristown that had been attacked. ETA: fifteen minutes. This was a major cluster fuck for CIT. That commune was a primary intelligence asset. It had been under surveillance by autonomous drone 24x7 for over a year and maybe longer. McKafferty needed to know more and he needed to know now. What was taking the NSA so long to get their intel to him? This was way out of nominal. NSA had alerted him of the attack over an hour ago. That meant some NSA screen-geek had to have seen the mansion go
boom
shortly after the fact and pressed the panic button early on in this growing cluster fuck.

McKafferty stared out the window at the giant icicle called north Jersey. For some reason, Kathy Morrison had been on his mind all day. That slaughter at Pueblo Canyon would haunt him for the rest of his life. Now that he was in command of USNORTHCOM, bloodbaths like that were a thing of the past. The role of the military was to protect civilians, not massacre them because they got between you and your target. The entire Peacekeeper operation was being reviewed directly by his office, and the final outcome would not be pretty.

“Sir, we have the NSA analysis package and recorded video streaming in,” announced one of his aides.

“They sure took their fucking sweet time.”

He grudgingly accepted the tablet which was wirelessly linked into Secure-Net as well as civilian defense networks through a briefcase by his feet. The tablet was still displaying the same real-time drone surveillance it had been for the past hour. The explosive damage was a well-recognized signature of the terrorist code-named Minefield. Zuris had led McKafferty to believe that Montreal was the work of Freedman and Mayfair acting on their own. His lies smelled of politics. McKafferty did not like political games. He would get to the bottom of it just to show Zuris he was not to be played.

McKafferty admired the bomb damage on the tablet. Just as in the other incidents, it was some of the best incendiary explosives work he’d ever seen. Over the past year a fair number of communes had been wiped out this way and good riddance. An advance team of Special Forces that McKafferty had peeled off from Picatinny Arsenal could be seen standing guard around the debris. They’d reported back no survivors and no witnesses. The team was untrained in this kind of detail. They were there just to keep the site locked down until investigators arrived.

McKafferty was about to complain that he still did not have his analysis package when the scene jumped to just before sunrise and the mansion was now intact. On the left side of the screen were analyst notes. There it was—the explosion caught on video. My god, that was big. The flash blinded the drone momentarily. The analyst’s notes reported faint traces of what looked like ten to twelve large precision, synchronized mortar rounds arcing in from different compass directions. The extreme accuracy indicated GPS-guided shells were used. “So that was how Minefield did it,” thought McKafferty. Clever bastard! Twelve thermobaric shells was serious overkill.

Two figures walking came into view. There were survivors! Why had he not been informed until now, and where had they gone? One man was dragging another by the arm. The image zoomed in. Someone, probably the screen-geek who had pressed the panic button, must have taken manual control of the drone. The analyst identified the larger man as Minefield, and the smaller man as Ediz Mustafa, the known leader of the Morristown commune. McKafferty had read about Mustafa on the inbound flight to Newark Airport. Minefield hauled Mustafa inside a smaller building. The scene on the tablet was now still except for some small fires burning near the mansion.

ETA: five minutes. McKafferty saw some movement on the screen. The drone operator had again zoomed in as four people emerged from the smaller building. He recognized Minefield from his unusual height. Ediz Mustafa was now being escorted by the pair of newcomers. “Look up,” thought McKafferty. “Come on, smile for the camera.” He couldn’t believe his luck. First one and then the other looked up just enough to capture their faces. The woman looked familiar. As the bios and names came up on the screen, McKafferty was ready to smash the tablet. Here was Mark Freedman and Sarah Mayfair frog-marching the leader of a commune. They had changed their appearances. He shoved the tablet at an aide.

“Son of a fucking bitch!”

They could have had them! If the NSA had gotten him this intel in a normal timespan, he’d have two of the most wanted people in history in custody.

“Stop this fucking truck!” ordered McKafferty.

He climbed out and began walking down the street. One of his aides came out right behind him. A host of McKafferty’s bodyguards climbed out of the back of a Stryker and fanned out to secure the area. He lit a cigarette, took one pull on it, and then threw it away. Freedman was not going to escape this time. McKafferty turned on his aide, who was following in his steps.

“I want orders issued to seal this fucking tri-state area off at every orifice,” growled McKafferty. “I want all of Jersey on lockdown. I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care who we piss on. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do it now!”

“Yes, sir.”

McKafferty felt a little better as plans began taking shape in his head. He climbed back inside the Humvee. In Montreal, a commune is blown up by Minefield and those two are there. In Portland, a commune is blown up by Minefield and those two are there again. In Morristown, a commune is blown up and those two are there making nice with Minefield. This lovefest sure as hell was a wild ass coincidence. How does the NSA sit on their report just long enough for these terrorists to have time to escape? Another coincidence? McKafferty was no longer sure who he could trust.

Mark Freedman – New Jersey – February 27, 0002 A.P.

Mark felt like he might lose control at any moment. Sarah had taken over the wheel. They were on Route 80 in New Jersey—end destination, Pueblo Canyon. Mark hung up the phone. Sarah was not happy with the risky things he was doing and not shy about telling him what she thought. He knew he was being reckless using his Droid to make calls to Pueblo Canyon. He’d called Kathy and gotten her voice mail, then tried her neighbor. Now he was dialing Carl Green. He got voice mail again and threw the phone onto the floor. Calling people who might have been arrested was not smart. It did not take a lot of brains to tap the phones of people just arrested to see what other fish nibbled at the bait. When it came to running a police state, the USAG was anything but stupid. Mark retrieved his phone, pulled the postage stamp-sized ID card, rolled down the window, and tossed the card. He’d leave his phone dark for a few hours, then try again with a different ID card.

Sarah eased on the brakes and Mark looked up into a bad dream. A roadblock was in the process of being erected by a small contingent of Peacekeepers at the Delaware Water Gap Bridge. There were two Peacekeeper Humvees with heavy machine guns, which were unmanned for the moment. It was too late to turn around. A small collection of vehicles was forming up in front and behind them as Sarah continued to slow to a stop before the checkpoint.

“They can’t be looking for us,” said Mark. “They couldn’t have traced the phone that quickly!”

“This is like Groundhog Day,” said Sarah. “It’s one of the bridges where I was turned back two years ago while trying to escape New Jersey. We don’t know what the USAG can do. I have a bad feeling about this.”

Mark was not getting any stray thoughts from the Peacekeepers. He could sense a great deal of tension building in Sarah. She would fight. Mark stared at the heavy machine guns and tried desperately to think of a plan.

Suddenly, Sarah jerked the wheel hard to the right and hit the gas, sending them bouncing onto the shoulder of the highway. An old, red Toyota Land Cruiser blew past them at well over a hundred miles per hour.

“Crazy bastard!” shouted Sarah.

Without a single flicker of its brake lights, the Land Cruiser blasted through the unfinished roadblock, weaving like a drunk driver. Peacekeepers scrambled out of the way, with one soldier almost going over the side of the bridge. A few late potshots from handguns and automatic rifles were fired at the Land Cruiser’s retreating form. Mark watched as Peacekeepers piled into their Humvees and took off after the Land Cruiser. Three Peacekeepers who were not fast enough were left stranded. One of the remaining Peacekeepers was yelling on a phone and gesturing while his buddy looked like he was throwing up over the railing of the bridge. A third Peacekeeper began angrily waving cars through without looking. Mark was picking up stray thoughts of frustration, bitter cold, and badly conflicting orders. As they passed through the now nonexistent roadblock, Mark silently thanked the drunken maniac who was behind the wheel of that Land Cruiser.

Mark Freedman – Pennsylvania – February 27, 0002 A.P.

Mark stared out the passenger window at the endless display of bare winter trees. Every minute or two he’d spot a tree that had not shed its leaves and would probably die as a result. A tree with leaves was not hibernating. The winter sun would ultimately fail to provide enough energy for the tree to stay both active and alive through this unpredictable winter.

The speedometer was pegged at 85 miles per hour. Mark glanced at the GPS. Sarah was holding at a steady hundred miles per hour according the navigation screen. This was the maximum safe speed for this military Humvee. If this pace kept up, they could reach Pueblo Canyon in less than forty-eight hours. Ralph was in the back with Mustafa. The dog was periodically sniffing and growling at their captive, which pleased Mark no end.

Using a throwaway e-mail account on his Android tablet, Mark had sent e-mails to twenty people in Pueblo Canyon. No one had replied. The e-mails had been more avoidable risks, according to the all-wise and knowing Sarah. He was angry at everyone and could no longer deny his worst fears. He had just finished posting an encrypted message to Karla Hunt to see if she could find out anything. He did not expect a quick reply. Goddamn it. He kicked the dashboard several times. Sarah glanced at him, then went back to driving without a word.

Mark was agitated and angry. He had to do something. He climbed into the back. The space was crowded, with only two rear bucket seats. So he squeezed in with Ralph. Mark pulled the pillowcase off the hybrid’s head and glared at Mustafa. The man appeared dazed by the sudden light. Separated from his hive, he was no longer an imposing figure. He was not giving off stray thoughts, but Sarah had confirmed he was radiating all types of emotions. At times Mustafa seemed disoriented, almost lobotomized, then the next moment he could be very sharp. Mustafa focused on Mark with lucidity and defiance in his eyes.

“What use are you to us?” demanded Mark. “Why are the hives after us? Did the hives cause the plague? Are you planning more? Is this how you’re going to bring back the way of twos?”

“You’re deranged, but I will try to help,” said Mustafa. “Both of you are dead unless you do as I say. The guides are infallible. That betrayer who recruited you is doomed and so are both of you.”