Operation Damocles (27 page)

And God, she was warm and soft and delightful in bed. Both before and after making love, he liked to lay on his side with his face in her breasts and his arms around her soft hips and back, her arms holding his head snuggled against her, and just bask in the soft, warm cocoon of her sweet body. At times, she would almost break his ribs, squeezing him between her thighs in her passionate striving, hugging him so tight he thought they might melt together into one body.

He wondered sometimes if that was what she was trying to do, fuse them together so that nothing could part them. He used to watch her sit withdrawn and distant, gazing into some inner eternity where sadness dwelled. He knew at those times that she was thinking of Nathaniel, perhaps seeing his grave, and it wrenched his guts.

He felt sorry for her, and for her loss. He even pitied Nathaniel. For the most part, though, it made him feel lost, alone and unwanted. At those times, he felt that he would never be able to fill the void in her heart that Nathaniel had left. His misery was a tangible thing; a cold, hard knot inside his chest. He wanted all of her, her memories, her love, her very spirit. He knew that it was unrealistic and selfish, but he couldn’t help it. He could only disguise it, push it down, keep it from her, and hope in time that it would fade.

Those times were fewer now, and at times she seemed completely happy. He often wished he could read her mind, and just as often, he was glad that he could not, fearing what he might find there.

Eve looked up, becoming aware of his gaze. Putting aside her coffee cup, she crawled over and sat between his legs with her back to him, and pulled his arms around her. She lay her head back on his shoulder and closed her eyes, smiling contentedly. He drew her into his chest, sinking his face in her hair, nuzzling her ear.

“What were you thinking about, just then,” she said. “Are you worried about me?”

“Yes. I’m such a fool. I should have taken you to South America. We could be there now, sitting around a campfire with Hector and Eddie. I wanted my little war, and now that it’s too late to leave, I realize that you are in danger. Nothing on earth is worth losing you. There are no words to tell you how much I love you. Before you, love was just another word. I had no idea that I could ever long for the touch of one person, to literally ache with want of you, and to hurt in my throat and deep down inside me when I see you sad. It’s incredible. It’s like a horrible sickness that you don’t want to be cured of.”

He pulled her tight against him. “I want to be with you until the end of time.”

She turned in his arms and put her arms around his neck, kissing him long and tenderly. “You will be, my love. I promise,” she whispered.

###

The following night, they sat up on the reservoir rim, looking at the distant pinpoints of light. Far to the north they could see silent flashes, sometimes red and lingering eruptions that slowly faded, sometimes brilliant flashes that happened and were gone in an instant. The distant sky was full of the moving lights of aircraft, circling around the ground glow of the city like moths around a lantern. Occasionally, some slight change in the wind would permit them to hear a faint, distant popping.

“It’s really bad down there, isn’t it?” said Eve.

“Yes. I’m afraid so, honey.” He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close against his side. They watched for hours before finally going to bed, where they lay holding each other in silent thought until they drifted off.

XL

What followed in the next few weeks defied description. Police, soldiers and federal agents broke into private homes in the middle of the night, and ransacked them in search of firearms. Those who objected were shot dead. Whole families were murdered, some still in their beds. In some suburban neighborhoods and small adjacent towns, bands of citizens fought back. Helicopter gunships flew overhead, the thunderous chatter of their mini-guns chewing up stores, homes and streets, killing everything in sight. Whole communities were burned out by armored vehicles with machine guns and flame throwers.

The carnage went on for weeks. It was not only happening in the United States, but in other countries as well. Resistance groups, formed up too late by inexperienced citizenry, were cut to pieces in short order. Those that managed to hoard a few weapons and go underground were unprepared, and lived the existence of vermin, hiding by day, foraging for food at night, suspicious of everyone—almost totally ineffective against the well-armed, well-fed, well-trained government forces.

Military forces and civilian police on several continents were combined into mobile intercontinental peacekeepers with vast resources. They put down insurrections without mercy, coldly impersonal and passionless, as only foreign occupiers can be.

Abominations too vile to speak of were routinely visited upon women and children. Men were killed outright, without compunction.

Military pay trebled. Red-light districts sprang up on military bases and in occupied districts all over the United States, filled with easy women and every intoxicant and hallucinogen known to man. Federal agents and local civilian law enforcement personnel were given huge pay increases, and bonuses based on numbers of arrests.

Jails and prisons became indoctrination camps. People were not held for court appearances or trials, just arrested, brutalized for a few days, and released. Some were killed.

Initially, some military and police personnel objected to the carnage, and refused to take part. They were shot by their fellows. Resistance disappeared.

Eight weeks after the purported fall of Damocles, the United States had been divided into nine military regions, each with a centralized base of operations, most of them headed by a foreign commander with his own personal cadre of guards and unit supervisors to distance him from the American troops. Other countries were undergoing similar strategic consolidations of power, some run by Americans.

By now, riots and firefights were sporadic. They were dealt with efficiently, by local response teams. Resistance was dying out. Five million people had died, worldwide.

Businesses and public works alike were conscripted and taken over by the federal government, military managers were assigned, and wide-area logistics control centers came into being. Work schedules were dictated and compulsory labor strictly enforced. Area populations were assigned to produce goods according to economic efficiency. Small businesses were assessed for their capabilities, and assigned quotas of different production items.

People in businesses that were no longer deemed necessary, such as some types of manufacturing and service companies that did not produce “necessities,” along with other unneeded professions, became laborers, clearing away bodies and debris, and picking through demolished residential neighborhoods for salvageable goods and personal plunder.

Some people were shipped cross-country to agricultural work camps, and put to work picking cotton and harvesting sugar beets. Teachers, academics, administrators, sales people and service providers, all types of professions and vocations not presently needed, became mill workers, crematorium operators and grave-register clerks. Unnecessary people, such as the elderly and indigents, were taken to military reservations in Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, Georgia, Alabama and California.

Food and water were rationed with a system of allotment coupons. International trade devolved into conscripted shipping and distribution facilities, operated with forced labor. Currency exchange was eliminated, replaced by ration centers. There were checkpoints at intervals along all roads and highways, and gasoline issue required a government permit. So did clothing and utilities.

###

Robert Vanderbilt had fallen in stature in the new regime. He was now something of a minor deputy to one Barbara Morrison, the newly delegated authority over region three of what had been, just a short time ago, the United States of America. He didn’t like his new position, but as Morrison frequently pointed out, he had been just a second-rate front for the government, and he had neither the intelligence nor the vital skills to recommend him in the new order. She suggested that he accomplish the errands that she assigned him with as much enthusiasm as he could muster or, to use his own words, find a quiet place to blow his brains out. Like most mid-level despots, he hadn’t foreseen the possibility that after the dirty work was done, he would no longer serve a useful purpose.

Morrison was tall, brunette, attractive, intelligent, efficient and utterly ruthless. She descended from one of the monied families in Massachusetts—a family that had always had its hands on the political strings of the country. She had been bred to assume her place among the behind-the-scenes manipulators of mankind. Now, after generations of secret dealings and obscurity, the families were surfacing into the light of day, assuming their long-desired positions as totalitarian rulers who would direct the labors of mankind, and live off the fruits of their production.

Like many others, she had lost most of her family and East Coast estates to the Damocles machine, but she and other far-flung siblings had survived. They had many other holdings. Her European cousins were assuming like places of responsibility in the new Euro-American Alliance and were in fact, the new regime.

It was the “coming out” of the world’s monied aristocracy. Together, they would fashion islands of wealth and opulence in a sea of decay and misery. Absolute power. The thought caused giddy tingles to run through Morrison. How she loved to give orders to commoner scum like Vanderbilt.

They had served a purpose. They had carried out the schemes of their secret masters, and enjoyed the trappings of power for a while—tasted that which they were never bred for. She liked being despised and feared by them. She enjoyed forcing them to do things that belittled them, humiliated them.

As for the common herd, they were of no interest whatsoever. The only thing that might be classified as a regret, with regard to the new order, was that some of the challenge would be gone. Secretly controlling the public through their stupid, corrupt legal system, wheeling and dealing, playing dice with the fate of businesses through the stock market, playing factions of the population off against one another by using their pathetic fears and prejudices to manipulate them—it had been such fun. Absolute power didn’t require exercising the wits.

But all things could be overcome when you had the world to amuse you. Morrison thought that she could invent a new diversion or two, if really put to the test. Say, pitting armies of slaves against one another? Yes! She liked that. The ancient Roman emperors had enjoyed such sport. So had the Greek and Roman gods. Yes, it was fitting. The ghastly things did breed prolifically. It would do them good to thin them out occasionally. Life was going to be good.

XLI

Townsend crawled up the last ridge to the camp, and called. Eve answered, and he stood up and walked in. She was barely visible in the wan moonlight. She had been sitting just inside the dark interior of the pipe, invisible behind the edge of the deep shadow cast on the floor of the pipe by its upper circumference. It was almost 3:30 in the morning, and the night air was chill. They hugged each other tightly.

“What did you find out?” she asked.

Jack shucked out of several ammunition bandoliers, flak jackets and two M-16 rifles that were slung over his shoulder. He dropped a bundle of clothing—Eve could see they were camouflage military uniforms—and sat down on the ground near the lip of the pipe, while Eve sat on the edge of it.

“Any food left?” he asked.

She got up and walked back into the darkness of the pipe. In a few moments, she returned and handed him a slightly warm bundle of aluminum foil and one of the canned sodas that they kept inside the water cooler. He unwrapped the roast beef sandwiches. It was four days since they had moved up to their camp.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, offering her the crinkled foil bowl with its greasy, savory-smelling contents.

“No. You might as well finish that up. It won’t keep much longer.”

“They’re patrolling the main streets,” he said, as he began eating. “They’ve got a squad of men and a vehicle about every three blocks along the main street. The men are spread out along the street. Regular U.S. troops with M-16s.

“That’s where I got the rifles. I waylaid a couple of soldiers patrolling through an alley. M-16s will be better for the kind of close-in work we’ll be doing than our civilian guns. They have larger magazine capacities and they can fire full-auto. Besides, it’s the only way we’ll be assured of the availability of ammo. They’ll guard or destroy any gun shops.

“Squads of military and police are still going door to door, pushing their way in and collecting any available weapons, throwing them into a troop truck that follows along. I heard yells and screams, and shots were fired in some of the apartments and houses. Some of the troops are wearing blue helmets. At least they looked blue in the streetlights, and I heard some of them speaking Italian. I think they’re U.N. troops. There are several other groups with insignia and uniforms that I don’t recognize. The general haircuts and appearance of one bunch made me think that they were European, though. Maybe Czech. Some of them are Vietnamese.”

“So it’s happening just as Eddie and Hector said, isn’t it?” she asked. “They have joined forces to destroy us.”

“America is one of the last strongholds of the free,” he said between bites. “One of the last armed nations. The U.S., Canada and Australia—perhaps a few others. Mainly the U.S. They will have to concentrate their strength here until they have disarmed us and nullified the threat we represent. They will want to get it done and over with in a hurry, so they can begin to consolidate control and organize the population.”

“What will they do with us?”

“Slavery,” he said. “They intend us to work for them. Eventually, they will probably establish some form of common currency, maybe some kind of credit-debit card, just for accounting simplicity, and the world will go on much as before, but what we will earn for our labor will be subsistence, nothing more.”

“How do they think the world will be better for them? They already have everything, don’t they? I mean, they were wealthy already.”

“It won’t be better. In fact, it will be much worse, at least, in my opinion. It wouldn’t appeal to me to sit inside a rich house and look out my windows and see squalor everywhere. It will be much simpler, though.

“From a business point of view, they eliminate the need to advertise, to pay the labor costs required for safe working conditions, health insurance, unemployment, or worry about such nit-picking little things as human rights. And in a gross way, they can even benefit the ecology of the planet by thinning out the human herd whenever they feel like it. Castration, sterilization, all those things that any good herdsman does to control the economics of his business.

“Wealth is not the real reason for tyranny, anyway. The most important factor is ego. Like so many people, they believe in elitism. It’s one of those human failings that is always with us in one form or another. It begins in small, basic ways. Everybody wants to be different, to belong to an exclusive group that most people are denied access to. Money, influence, credentials, licenses, degrees—that’s what those things accomplish. They say it’s to protect the public, but mostly it isn’t. It’s to keep the riff-raff out. All institutions are that way. Visit any university campus, military base or corporate headquarters and you will see elitism everywhere. Personal prestige is the measure of personal worth, and human equality is simply a habitual expression, like, ‘Hi, how are you?’ No one takes it seriously.

“The difference is that these people don’t make any bones about it. They truly believe that we are subhuman, and now, they won’t have to put up with any resistance or back talk from us. They’ll own us as chattel. That’s probably the most important point as far as they are concerned.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“We only have two choices, honey. Fight or capitulate. That’s all that’s left.”

“I know that, dear. I
am
here, aren’t I? I mean, what are we going to
do
now?”

He grinned. “Well, I’m going to do what I can to throw a monkey wrench in their works.”

“Great. What’s the plan?”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I haven’t actually got one, at least not yet. They only just arrived, you know. We need to give them a little time to get established, form routines, get organized. The way you hurt an army is by reducing its capability. There are two principal methods of accomplishing that. You destroy ammunition, armament, fuel stocks, equipment and supplies. In short, you destroy or limit the tools they need to operate with. Sooner or later, this reservoir will be important to someone. We will have to watch for that, and be ready to move. When they decide that it is a strategic resource, I’ll dynamite the wall and release the water.

“The second thing you do is limit their human capability. Wound them, make them sick, demoralize them, knock out their leaders. You can never win by slowly picking off soldiers. Either you have the trained troops to inflict massive casualties and severely incapacitate your enemy, or you find the head of the snake and cut it off.

“The common soldier is just cannon fodder. Kill one, they send in another. It’s only when war comes home to the movers and shakers that they feel any need to give it up. If you want to stop a big corporation, you go after the major shareholders, not the little guy working in the factory. He doesn’t make any decisions.

“That’s why Ortiz and the underground are doing it this way. You can never get rid of them unless you can find out who they are.”

“When do you think that will be?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, baby. Better, probably. I think they will surface pretty soon, though. Somebody is controlling this mess, and it’s back to that ego thing, again. It’s no fun having power if you can’t flaunt it. They have operated through figureheads for a long time. I’m betting they will come out of the woodwork as soon as they think that things are under control.”

“Then aren’t we delaying things if we resist?” she asked. “It would be better in the long run just to let them believe it’s all over, wouldn’t it?”

Jack looked at her, thinking for a moment. “You’re right,” he said. “It would be best. You’re pretty smart, aren’t you? I keep underestimating you.”

“Aw, pshaw, as Eddie says,” she waved his compliment away.

“I guess I really fouled things up by not taking you to Chile. I’ve risked your life for nothing,” he said, looking remorseful.

She kneeled down in front of him, concern on her face, and put her hands on his shoulders. “You were just being you,” she said, “reacting in the only way that you know. You’re tired of running, tired of worrying about me, and you wanted to fight back. That’s what you do. It’s who you are. You’re a strategist and a fighter. A man of action.

“You can’t sit and wait for others to do things; you have to wade in yourself. You don’t like the sidelines. You do think and plan, but you think best when you’re moving. When you sit, you begin to stagnate. I guess that’s why you were a good spy.”

“I knew that someday I would feel like a second stringer next to you,” he said. “You were in a daze, and now you’re waking up. I’ve often wondered if you would want to stay with me when it happened.”

“Now you’re underestimating yourself. You are one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever known, and you’re far more intuitive than most. Every woman wants a strong, supportive man, and I’ve been fortunate to have the love of two wonderful men. Like every woman, whether she admits it or not, I know what love can do to a man, especially when it’s his first love, or if he’s a bit shy with women. You lose your confidence, you feel clumsy, you worry about being masculine in your woman’s eyes, your little brains turn to mush.” She rubbed his head, playfully. “Eventually, you all come out of it.

“I hope I’m smarter than some women I’ve known. I’m not going to use your love to browbeat you or emasculate you while you’re in this pitiful state. I’m going to love you with all my heart, and when you do come out of it, I hope you will still love me. I don’t want to be a shrew, or make you hate me. I don’t want to lose you in a few years.”

“God, you really are one in a million,” he said, kissing her and holding her tight. “Sometimes I feel so proud and so lucky that I’m afraid I can’t contain it. I adore you.”

“I know,” she laughed. “You’ve got good taste, sugar.” She kissed him and got to her feet. She walked toward the tent, swinging her hips suggestively. “And if you want a taste, you know where I’ll be.”