Internet Kill Switch (13 page)

32

Inside Omega Compound’s lab, Gavin Prince had the thankless duty of babysitting the phone
while Bass and his cronies were gone; the device was under 24-hour guard. As Schnell observed earlier, the phone had the aggravating knack of knowing how to insult people for maximum effect. Prince had the misfortune of a slight lisp. Because of this, the phone refused to call him anything but Cindy Brady. Prince, whose parents grew up on “The Brady Bunch”, made him watch the DVDs over and over, so he knew exactly how he was being ridiculed.

“Hey
Thindy, I hear Buddy Hinton ith hanging around out-thide. Better thtay in here where it’th thafe,” the phone said.

“Up yours,” Gavin shot back. He couldn’t believe
he was arguing with a phone. Worse, though, was his strong suspicion that he was losing the argument.

“Wow, that’
s brilliant. What a comeback! Here’s a question: have you ever wanted to hire a speech therapist for that little ‘problem’ you have, but didn’t do it because you’d just be too embarrassed to ask for the ‘thpeech therapitht?’”

Furious,
Gavin picked up the phone, wanting to smash it on the floor or fling it against the wall. Bass would likely kill him for doing it -- literally -- but he considered it anyway.

BOOM

The wall nearest the table exploded, sending concrete shrapnel knifing through the air. Several pieces of the shattered wall hit Gavin, including a sizeable chunk that plowed through the bridge of his nose and sank into his skull. He immediately crumpled.

Max, freed from the dead man’s hand, clattered harmlessly to the floor.

“Right on time,” Max said, to no one in particular.

33

Tony
, bleeding heavily, still leaning against the tree, sat up and tried to squirm away from the compound on his butt. He didn’t get far before hearing the most amazing, unexpected, welcome voice that ever reached his ears.

“Tony! Tony!” It was Scarlett, yelling his name.

He turned to see her running in his direction, wearing a dark ski mask. He knew her at once, from the eyes to the voice to the lithe figure. In a moment, she was at his side.

“Scarlett,” was all he could
mumble through his gag. She was the last person in the world he expected to see running toward him, endangering herself. Where’d she come from? How’d she get here? Things were getting more surreal by the moment. “Scarlett,” he mumbled again. She removed the gag.

“Are you OK?”
she asked as she helped him up. Then she noticed the bloody pants and furrow in his leg. “Oh Tony, your leg! Quick, we’ve got to get you out of here! Can you walk?” Not waiting for an answer, she put her arm around Tony’s waist and helped him shamble away from the compound.

Tony gasped with the pain of movement, but with Scarlett’s help he could
at least limp along.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Toward the road,” she said, without further explanation. Scarlett pursed her lips and gritted her teeth with the effort of half-dragging Tony, still zip-tie bound, through the woods.

As they veered in some direction -- Tony had no idea which -- he looked through the holes that had been made in the compound’s walls. Huge, gaping openings showed people
dashing around. It seemed like everyone had a gun. They were pointing them at the sky.

He looked up and saw several small planes high above the compound. From this distance, they looked almost like tiny 747s. He saw fire flare from underneath one
of the planes, and a sudden trail of smoke from the missile it launched toward the compound. It pounded into the roof of a large building.
BOOM
. The structure shook as two walls collapsed and the roof caved in.

Tony
looked over the compound, and for the second time in the last minute saw something that amazed him. Rick was running out of a building, holding something in his hand. He noticed a glint from the something.

Max.

“Wha...”

“Don’t talk, Tony. Just go as fast as you can,” Scarlett said as they made their way through the woods. Looking ahead now through the thick foliage, Tony could see some large black object. They were heading directly toward it.

He looked back at Rick. He was headed in the same direction, at lung-busting speed.

Scarlett and Tony got closer. Tony could see the hulking black object now. It was a car
; a huge, black Hummer.

T
hey stepped out of the woods and onto a small, paved road. The Hummer sat at the side. Scarlett opened the rear door on the driver’s side and helped Tony get in. The pain from his wound threatened to knock him out; his world swirled before him, as Scarlett pushed him over and got in next to him.

A few moments later, Rick opened the driver’s door and jumped in. Before he could close the door, they heard the
crack
of a gunshot. A bullet hit the open door. It made a pinging sound as it ricocheted. They looked back and saw, several hundred yards away, Mitchell Bass with a gun, screaming and firing at the car.

Rick closed the door
gunned the engine. They roared off, tires smoking and squealing as they grabbed at the road. Another bullet hit the Hummer somewhere in the back. Then they were around a corner. No more shots came, but they did hear another
BOOM
in the distance as they put Omega Compound behind them.

“It sure seems like we get chased a lot, doesn’t it?” Max said
, matter-of-factly.

34

Bass fired one last shot at the Hummer
. He saw the face of the punk who took the phone, and would always remember it. He also saw Tony get in the car, but Tony was a non-person in his sight. He hated the other kid, though, because he stole the phone. He’d hate that black face forever. But right now, he had more urgent business. His compound was being annihilated.

35

“What’s going on?” Tony said, still unable to process any information. Scarlett cut the zip-tie with a
pocketknife.

“First things first,” Max said as they sped down the road
; Rick threw the Hummer around corners like it was a Formula One car. “Scarlett, get a shirt and stuff it into the wound on Tony’s leg. Rick, we need to get him to a hospital before he bleeds to death.”

Max, as usual, was right. Tony’s vision was going dark, his head nodding. He had a million questions, but
at the moment he couldn’t remember any of them as his mind came unfocused. The last thing he saw was Scarlett balling up a flannel shirt and pressing it onto his bloody mess of a leg.

36

Bass’s world was going
BOOM
. He sprinted back to the compound after shooting at the black kid who took his phone, trying to formulate some kind of plan for the Armageddon tearing apart his world.

L
ooking up as he re-entered the compound, he saw tiny planes hovering around, firing yellow-striped black missiles at his buildings and people. He knew instantly what they were: Predator drones.

Most of the men were shooting wildly at the drones, hitting nothing; the
y were much too far away, and too small and maneuverable, to be threatened by rifles or machine guns. Still, the men -- and a few women -- kept firing. Bass didn’t tell them to stop. Let them get out their aggression.

The
BOOM
s continued a bit longer. Then they suddenly stopped, creating a silence that shocked Bass after the deafening cacophony of the last several minutes. The drones sped off to the South; men cursed and shot a few more stray rounds at them. Then they dropped their weapons and tried to put their existences back into some kind of rational context.

A number of buildings, including the mess hall and administrative center, were smoking piles of rubble. Others, like the lab and detention center, had gaping holes in the sides. The security wall surrounding most of Omega was now more air than wall.

The human toll on his people -- his family -- was worse. Bodies were scattered all over; he could see dozens lying on the ground, either dead or badly wounded. They moaned and wailed.

He ran to one of his closest friends, Terry Moran, who lay next to the mess hall. He’d been hit by the spray when the building was struck. Blood ran from Terry’s nose, and
plaster dust and splinters of concrete made his curly hair more white than brown. His body was twisted into an unnatural position, and his eyes looked up blankly. He made a tiny sound, over and over: “unh...unh...unh...”

Bass cradled Terry’s head in his hands. “It’s OK, Terry, it’s OK. We’ll take care of you.” It was a lie, of course; he knew Terry would be dead in a minute,
but wanted to ease his friend off.

That minute came and went. Bass closed
Terry’s eyelids. As he did it, the strangest thought struck him: Why do we close people’s eyes when they die? It’s not like Terry cares right now.

A young, panicked
cry pulled Bass out of his musings. “Help, Mr. Mitch, please help...”

It was Billy Holloway, a six-year-old brought here by his parents, who joined last year. Billy said he loved Omega because it felt like he was at summer camp all the time.

The boy called out as he held his mom’s limp hand. Bass ran over and saw Melissa’s unmoving body. Pain filled him as he took Billy’s hand in his and led him away from the scene. They were apparently inside the mess hall when a missile hit. Billy wasn’t even scratched, while Melissa took a chunk of concrete to the throat.

“Have you seen your
Dad, Billy?”

“No, I dunno where he is. What’s wrong with
Mommy, Mr. Mitch?”

Bass blinked away tears. “Let’s go find your
Dad.” And despite being a hardened atheist, at that moment Bass hoped to God that Billy’s Dad was alive.

Later, Bass found Schnell. He was in the lab, shivering and drinking. Not helping at all, Bass noted.

“You hurt, Rud
y?” Bass said, examining Schnell for injuries.

“I... I don’t think so,” Schnell said.

“Good,” Bass said. He suddenly grabbed Schnell’s shirt with both hands and brought his face within an inch of Schnell’s nose, quivering with deadly rage. Schnell gave a little yelp and dropped his bottle, which shattered on the floor.

“Are you sure -- are you entirely, 100 percent absolutely
sure
-- that you turned off that phone’s GPS and transmission capabilities?” Bass spoke in a low, growling voice that couldn’t have been any more threatening if he’d shouted through a bullhorn.

Schnell winced. “Yes, yes, I’m sure!” he answered in a petrified stammer. “I turned everything off! I...I think it must h
ave been the FBI or something. The phone being here was a coincidence, nothing more.”

Bass knew Schnell was grasping at straws. They both
believed the phone was behind the attack, and not the government. Still, Bass couldn’t be certain. He knew the government had a file on him and monitored what he did. He’d been preparing for an eventual attack, expecting a Branch Davidian- or Ruby Ridge-like showdown.

The difference
in this case was that he’d just made a preemptive strike against such an attack. That was the beauty of his vision: It accomplished multiple objectives at once.

In fact, the only solace he took in this entire situation was that the first, most crucial, step in his plan had been carried out. That also led to his greatest fear:
the phone could undo everything he’d accomplished in the last day. He let go of Schnell, who collapsed and whimpered on the ground. Bass ignored him, his mind on the danger the phone represented.

That phone. Those
dumbass kids had it now. He had to get it back.

3
7

Tony awoke in a hospital bed. His right arm was attached to a tube, which was attached to a plastic bag, which hung on a pole next to the bed. The next thing he saw was Scarlett, smiling at him and holding his hand.

With an effort, h
e looked around. He lay in a standard-issue hospital room, with clean white floors and walls. There was an empty bed next to his. He had no idea what time it was, or where he was. But that didn’t matter at the moment, because he was alive and Scarlett held his hand.

“
’Bout time you woke up,” Rick said, from the other side of the bed. He stood up and grinned at Tony. “You’ve been out for awhile.”

“
My leg...” Tony said, pulling aside his blanket and seeing the large bandage covering about half of his thigh.

“You were in shock from blood loss
,” Scarlett said. “But you pulled through.”

“
It’s sort of amazing, you know?” said Rick. “It’s like we’re totally in a movie or something.”

Tony dropped his head back on the pillow. “Well, if
we are, you guys just pulled off the big rescue.”

“We had a little help,” Rick said, pulling Max out from his pocket. The phone was off. Rick poked his head outside the room for a minute before turning Max on.

“He has a few things he’d like to say, I’m sure.”

“Welcome back from the edge
of the cliff,” Max said in what sounded like a cheerful tone, but one tinged with concern. Tony, as always, marveled at the nuances Max could achieve with his (he never thought of referring to Max as “it” anymore) voice.

“Scarlett and Rick were pretty worried. I’m just a phone,
on the other hand, so I couldn’t care less.”

Tony managed the first laugh he’d had in awhile. “Where are we? What day is it?”

Rick and Scarlett exchanged a look. To Tony, the look said “Is he ready to hear this?”

“C’mon, guys, I need to know.”

Scarlett spoke. “You’re in White County Medical Center in Searcy, Arkansas. It’s April 14th.”

“The
14th? That’s like… like…”

Rick answered. “
We brought you in three days ago. You slept a long time, and you’ve been under sedation, too. You probably don’t even remember waking up a couple of times.”

Three days. Tony could barely believe it.

“Arkansas? Why Arkansas?”

“We’re about 30 miles from
Bass’s compound,” Rick said. “We wanted to get further away in case they came looking for us, but we weren’t sure how dangerous it would be for you to lose more blood.”

“
It’s a good thing they listened to me and came here,” said Max. “If you had gone without medical attention for another 24 hours, you’d have died. That’s what the emergency room doctor said.”

Tony shivered.
He felt very weak, as if standing would be a chore right now. He took a long sip of orange juice from a Styrofoam cup on his table. It helped revive him a bit.

His mind filled with questions. “H
ow did you get here? How did you find me? What happened to that compound? Where’d you get that Hummer from?”

Rick held up a hand. “
One thing at a time. OK, I first got texts from Max that you and him had been kidnapped. He told us where you’d been taken.”

“I got them
, too,” Scarlett said.

“I figured we might need both of them,” Max cut in. “I was also developing a rescue plan, and having two people would increase the chances of success.”

“Weren’t you worried Bass would find out you’d been texting people?” Tony asked Max.

“Nah. That’s not hard to mask,” Max said.

Rick picked up the story. “So I got hold of some money and bought the Hummer. Then I...”

Tony stopped him. “What do you mean ‘got hold of some money’? It sounds like you’re leaving something important out.”

Rick smiled. “Well, you know me. I have my ways.”

Scarlett looked at Rick gratefully, then at Tony. “Rick cashed in his college fund to get the money.”

Tony, shocked, looked at Rick. “What? Rick, why would...”

“Hey, you needed rescuing, didn’t you? Besides, this is much more fun than taking SATs
,” Rick said. “I’ve got a lot left over, too, for other potential expenses.”

“Won’t your parents kill you?”

“Without a doubt,” Rick said nonchalantly. “Fortunately, they won’t even know it’s gone for awhile yet. So I bought the Hummer and Scarlett and I basically did what Max told us to do from there; drive to just outside the compound at the right time, and he’d pretty much take care of the rest.”

Tony was stunned
. “But that had to be, like, hundreds of miles from Miles Forge...”

“About 650, actually. But it goes quickly when I’m driving.”

Scarlett nodded her head. “He’s a maniac on the highway. I had my eyes closed for a lot of the trip.”

Tony couldn’t believe it. His best friend, and a girl he almost got killed once before, came to his rescue, risking their lives. His eyes welled up.

“Oh no, there he goes again,” Rick said to Scarlett. “The guy cries over anything.”

Tony didn’t mind the ribbing. “I can’t believe you’d do this for me. You shouldn’t, anyway; it’s too dangerous.”

Scarlett teared up. “We couldn’t just let them take you, Tony.”

“You should’ve called the police,
instead of putting yourselves in danger!”

“We couldn’t, for the same reason you didn’t tell them after the attack on you and Scarlett,” Rick said. “They’d keep Max. Besides, his plan convinced us we could do this ourselves.
And we needed him to pull this off.”

A nurse came in
with a tray of food and drink. “Ah, you’re awake and alert, it seems, at last,” she said, smiling. Everyone got quiet as she entered. “I’m Sandy, your day nurse. How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Tired. Really tired,” Tony said.

“Not surprising,” Sandy said, placing the meal on his tray table. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

After
checking Tony’s pulse, she looked disapprovingly at Rick. Rick tended to get lots of disapproving looks.

“
Mr. Harvey, we still can’t get hold of your parents,” she said to Tony. “I guess their phones don’t work in Paris.” Tony raised an eyebrow and gave Rick a look; Rick winked back quickly, wiping any expression off his face before the nurse looked at him.

“Um, oh, uh, yeah. Paris,” Tony sputtered,
at a complete loss. He tried to think of anything. “Well, they said it might not work. I’ll keep trying them, though.”

Sandy shot
Rick a severe look. “You children know that this is a serious matter? Gunshot wounds aren’t to be trifled with, and lying to me isn’t going to help things.”

Rick put on his most serious face. “Absolutely, ma’am. I
swear
this is the truth. The bullet just ricocheted off that tree while we were hunting, like I told you, and clipped Tony.” He shook his head, looking guilty.

“I feel horrible about it.
Almost killed my best friend,” Rick added, working up an almost-sincere tear as he put his hand on Tony’s shoulder.

The nurse’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Rick. Tony
, up to speed now, patted Rick’s hand sympathetically. “I already told you it’s OK, Rick. I’ve got to be more careful where I stand when we’re hunting. Really, it was my fault.”

Rick, totally enjoying the farce, plowed ahead. “No, you were fine. It was just a freak thing, man. It looks like you’re going to be OK, and that’s all that counts.”

The nurse gave them all one more look and left, shaking her head and muttering about stupid, lying kids as she walked out. Tony looked at Rick.

“Paris?”

“All I could think of,” Rick said with a chuckle. “I gave the hospital a fake name, address and phone number for you.”

“Who’s Harvey?” Tony asked.

“He’s a big, imaginary rabbit from an old movie,” Rick said. “This guy makes him up.”

“I hope they don’t catch on to that name,” Scarlett said.

“They won’t,” Rick said with complete confidence. “There
are
people with the last name Harvey in the world, after all.”

“Anyway,” Tony said,
“What happened at the compound? All I know is that a guy aimed a rifle at me, then things started blowing up.”

Max took over. “Those
explosions were from Hellfire missiles, shot from four Predator drones. I sent them there.”

“You sent them?” Tony said, amazed.

“Yeah. I’m pretty good at hacking military networks, remember.”

“But how did you know where we were?”

“GPS.” Rick said.

Tony nodded. “
Oh, right.”

“Actually, they turned off my GPS and cell capabilities
as soon as that little German guy, Schnell, got hold of me,” Max said. “Smart thing to do, of course. They knew I could hack military networks, and were properly afraid that I might do just what I did. So they disabled everything that gave me outside connectivity. Or so they thought.”

Rick interrupted. “Hold on a sec.” He poked his head outside the door, making sure no one was nearby. “OK, go ahead.”

Max continued. “The thing they hadn’t counted on was that whoever created me was smarter than they were. And incredibly paranoid, too: He had backup GPS and cell chips installed, chips that didn’t look like the typical chips. I’m sure he did it in case I was stolen; if that happened, and I was turned off by the thieves to hide my location, he could find me through the back-door network. I had access all the time, and they never knew.”

Scarlett spoke up. “And we showed up at the compound just before the drones got there
. I was supposed to get you from the little prison cell you were in. Once the missiles started hitting, we figured the guards would be too preoccupied to worry about you. Then Rick would grab Max, after a missile hit the lab.”

“The greatest diversion in the history of the world!” Rick exclaimed.
“Blasting a compound to bits to get a skinny teenager and a phone.”

Scarlett continued
. “I saw the guards leading you out of the compound with the rifles. I started running, but figured I’d be too late. I was in a panic.” She shuddered at the memory.

One thing bothered Tony. “I thought drones were used in war zones -- Afghanistan, places like that, to kill Al-Q
aeda soldiers and stuff. How did they get here?”

“Actually, there are numerous Predator drones in
America,” Max said. “The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency uses them primarily to patrol the borders for illegal immigrants, drug-runners and such. So it wasn’t hard at all to reroute them to the compound and launch an attack. As you saw, their Hellfire missiles are highly accurate. It’s what allowed me to hit the lab and other buildings so precisely.”

Tony looked at his friends, overflowing with gratitude.
“I’m starting to lose count of the number of times you’ve saved my life, Max.”

Rick was standing by the window next to Tony’s bed. He pressed his nose to the glass, suddenly interested in something happening outside.

“I’m just glad you’re OK,” Max said. “But there is one other critical thing you need to know about. It’s what they used me to do.”

Rick turned
to them, looking worried. “We’ve got to get out of here
now
.”

Tony and Scarlett turned to him. “What?” Scarlett said. “We can’t move him now. He’s not ready to leave.”

Before she was finished, Rick was at Tony’s side, unplugging the IV drip in his arm. Tony let out a little cry of pain.

“Now!” Rick said, with the kind of urgency he never used. Tony handed Max to Scarlett and grabbed his clothes out of the drawer. The three of them left the room, and Rick led them
down a long hallway. They had questions, but held them at Rick’s insistence.

He stopped them just as they were about to come around a corner. He peered around, then motioned them quickly on. Right around the c
orner, they passed a nurse’s station. Nurse Sandy sat with her back to them, studying a chart. They continued down the hall to the stairwell.

Tony’s room was on the third floor, but the stairs were shallow. They didn’t dare speak.

When they got to the lobby floor, Rick again assumed the role of scout, and told them to wait. He opened the door to the lobby and checked around, then rushed them through the lobby and into the parking lot.

In moments they were in the Hummer and zooming
away from the hospital, Rick driving like even more of a lunatic than normal.

It was another
few minutes before anyone dared speak; no one wanted to distract Rick and break his concentration.

Finally, Tony asked. “What’s going on?”

Rick let out a long breath. “Bass. He showed up at the hospital.”