The Religion War (2 page)

The admirals and generals were a concert of leather and pressed cotton; their medals and shoes played percussion as they took their positions around the black oval map table. Admiral Helms, a tall drawn skeleton of a man, had an uncharacteristically troubled expression.The others looked at him, waiting for him to say something.

"There's an old man in the lobby," Admiral Helms said, looking at Cruz. "He wants to talk to you."

Cruz paused a moment, trying to rein in his anger. He took a long breath and scanned the now-worried faces of the group. When he locked on to Helms' face, he exploded. "Why the hell do you think I care about some fool in the lobby? Have you lost your mind?!"

Cruz went on in that vein for a full minute, spitting out every irritation and frustration of the past week, and focusing it all on the withering Admiral Helms. Cruz was on a roll, his words like napalm, until the tall wooden doors opened again. It was the captain of the Marine guard. "Excuse me, sir. I'm sorry to interrupt."

Cruz turned on the captain, brandishing his most intense 'this better be good' look.

"There's an old man in the lobby. He says he wants to see you."

Cruz looked at the captain for a beat and then cranked around to face Helms. "Someone better tell me what's so special about this fool in the lobby. And it better happen right now."

Helms tried. "I thought he was a street person when I first saw him outside the building. He doesn't have ajacket,just a red plaid blanket that looks pretty beat up. But there's something about him. I said hi, and the next thing I knew he was describing our entire battle plan as if he'd been in every meeting with us."

"So what!" Cruz yelled. "The media have been spraying it all over the news for the past six months. Every moron knows our plans!"

"No, I mean he knows the
specifics.
He described our exact troop deployment plans, our attack sequence, exactly where we're planning to stage our battle platforms."

"Except for one of the platforms," piped in General Franken.

"Yes," Helms agreed. "He said that one of the battle platforms would be off Washington, D.C. He got that wrong, but he knew so much about the rest, and that struck me as—"

Helms' sentence was cut short by the crash of the oval map table, overturned by a raging General Cruz. "Stop him in the lobby!" Cruz barked at the Marine captain, then followed him toward the elevator. Cruz passed Lieutenant Waters in the outer office and grabbed him by the arm of his shirt, dragging him the first few yards.

In the elevator, Cruz snatched the captain's M-16 and flipped off the safety. The captain drew his sidearm. Waters watched, not knowing where they were going or why. He wasn't worried. He didn't know how to worry.

"Little bastard. He's up to something," Cruz muttered, watching the floor indicators illuminate in reverse order as they neared the lobby. "He'd better hope he's one of ours. Otherwise he's going to have a long day."

Cruz was the first one through the elevator door, dispersing a surprised group of government employees. Janet Redmond tripped on her own shoes trying to back out of the way. An intelligence analyst caught her before she hit the ground. A half-scream was all she could muster before fear muffled it. The most powerful wartime general in history was hurried and mad. Nothing good could come from that. Cruz never looked in Janet Redmond's direction. He bulled his way into the lobby, with the M-16 pointed toward the ceiling, scanning for the man in the blanket.

"He's gone," the captain said.

"Get my car. I'm evacuating immediately. Keep the NATO chiefs in the war room. Don't sound a general alarm. I'll be in the garage in two minutes."

"Sir?" the captain asked.

Cruz filled in the blanks while continuing to survey the lobby in all directions. "Someone on my staff—someone in that room—is leaking war plans. We're going to put some distance between that old man and me, because this smells wrong. Once command and control is secured, I'll deal with the leak and the old man. Get the car."

The captain left in a sprint. Waters, having pieced together only part of the story, said, "I'll get the portable."

The portable was their name for a handheld command and control device that followed Cruz wherever he went. It was unjammable, nearly indestructible. When the user entered an access code and a GPS location, and specified a payload, a missile would arrive on that spot soon after, launched from a site in South Dakota that fewer than a dozen people on Earth knew about.

Waters and Cruz bundled into the open door of the bulletproof limousine. The driver stomped the gas pedal, forcing the concrete floor into a scream as the limo's door closed from the acceleration.The newly arrived occupants felt themselves pressed against the backseat.

The driver, Rick Ames, had trained eighteen years for this moment. He was an expert at escape and evasion. Until now, it had always been on the practice courses. Adrenaline surged into his bloodstream until he could hear his own heartbeat The huge steel bomb door at the top of the ramp opened as the tanklike limo accelerated toward the gaping hole. At the top of the ramp stood a man, his features obliterated by the shock of daylight that enveloped him and poured into the garage, down the ramp, and into three pairs of eyes. Ames slowed the car for half a beat, trying to get a read on the situation, to size up the threat, to reprogram his exit strategy if needed.

"Hit him!" Cruz ordered.

That was all the information Ames needed; he punched the gas pedal and closed the distance between four tons of solid mass and the smallish figure ahead. In the next few seconds, the minds of Cruz and Waters and Ames were flooded with images of light and color and sound, mixed with their own brain chemistries. None of them perceived the same thing. Cruz saw the man lean his head back and raise his arms over his head; then as the car reached striking distance, the man fell backwards, disappearing under the view of the hood—crushed, he figured. There was a distinct thud sound, but Cruz wondered if it was just the tires bouncing back to the pavement after being launched at the top of the ramp.

Waters noticed that the old man was wearing some sort of deliveryman's shirt, threadbare, with a name tag on the breast. Behind him was a red plaid blanket spread on the ground as if to host a picnic. He was the man from the lobby. Waters' flashback of the earlier conversation in the lobby merged with the image he saw in front of him until memory and perception lost their boundaries.

Ames fixated on the man's eyes, seeing almost nothing else. They were ancient eyes. He felt as if he could drive his car directly into those orbs and emerge at some other part of the universe. Ames didn't feel pity, and he wondered why. Was it the training or the certainty of what he had to do? Or was there something in those eyes that forgave him in advance? The eyes had no fear, no hate, and no surprise. Suddenly the eyelids closed, blocking Ames' escape route. He felt a surge of panic as though he were the first person to find out about the end of the world. He screamed and squeezed the steering wheel to steady against the impact and the horror that would follow. But he felt nothing. Nor should he have, because four tons of soundproofed steel will make short work of 150 pounds of man. He didn't look in his mirror for confirmation, preferring not to have that image in his mind for the rest of his life.

The tank-limo took a hard right turn outside the building, bowling Cruz, Waters, and the portable into the left side door. Ames accelerated toward H2, the emergency headquarters.

Cruz pressed a button that slid a barrier in place between the driver and passengers. Then he grabbed the portable from the floor of the limo and punched in the unlock code, revealing an elaborate control panel with a display screen. Cruz glanced at Waters, looking for a reaction, and saw nothing save his usual indecipherable blankness. Cruz punched in the GPS coordinates of the Department of Defense building they had just left, where the NATO representatives were still waiting, clueless about what had transpired in the past three minutes. Cruz selected a payload large enough to level the building, but not much more, and looked again at Waters. The lieutenant had shifted his position to free up his service revolver, or maybe it was just to be more comfortable, or maybe to better see. Cruz couldn't tell. He let Waters see exactly what he was doing on the portable.

"Why?"Waters asked.

It wasn't much of a reaction, but it was something. Cruz preferred feeling resistance no matter what he was doing, so he could enjoy the feeling ofplowing it aside. "Someone back there is a mole.That's the only way the old man could have known our exact battle plans. I don't have time to find out who it is, and frankly, it doesn't matter. I don't need any of them. Hell, the world is better off if I don't have to stop and explain every bullet to those idiots."

"How do you plan to explain it to the world?" Waters asked calmly, as if requesting an extra slice of cheese on a sandwich.

"I won't have to explain anything. The world will assume it was an attack from one of al-Zee's fanatics."

Cruz was right. Hundreds of buildings had blown up in the past two years alone.The military had stopped analyzing the remains of each explosion long ago, assuming correctly that they all were the work of al-Zee. No one would request an inquiry about this blast because al-Zee would be the universally presumed perpetrator.

Cruz knew that this explosion would extinguish the last shred of pacifism from the Christian world. He would have complete freedom to prosecute the war as he pleased. No committees. No second-guessing. Just certainty. He needed that now because his plans for extermination would not survive a consensus vote.

"They're soldiers," Cruz said, trying to justify himself. "This is what they signed up for.They don't get to choose who kills them or why."

Cruz thrived in this sort of situation. It was what set him apart from other leaders. Minutes earlier he had identified a grave threat. Now he was one button away from turning the situation to his advantage. He viewed all destruction as opportunity.

Waters let his right hand drop down to the seat next to his service weapon. Cruz got the message, and responded with more explanation. This was a line that Cruz had never crossed. He had killed his share ofpeople who, in his opinion, deserved trilling. He had sent his own troops on missions from which he knew they wouldn't return. But this was different. "This is global war, Lieutenant.There are no rules, except the ones you invent and live to talk about. If we're not willing to kill our own soldiers to gain an advantage in this war, we're no match for al-Zee."

"None of the generals were in the room when you moved the battle platform near Washington, "Waters pointed out, having noticed the change himself when he first entered the room to announce the old man in the lobby.

Cruz stared at him, furious that he hadn't realized it himself. Waters had a point. No one could have told the old man about the latest change. Maybe the old man made a lucky guess. Clearly it wasn't
all
luck,because the old man was said to know the battle plans in detail.

"Waters, tell me the world will be better ifthe NATO generals live.Then I won't push the button.Tell me you think that running a war with twenty-five hens pecking at my ankles, second-guessing every decision, getting their locals all stirred up—tell me that's the best way to win this war."

Waters' expression masked whatever was happening in his mind. Hejust listened, not rejecting, not agreeing.

"How many times have I sent men into situations where I knew they wouldn't come back? That's the soldier's lot. If his death makes the war easier to win, he dies. This is no different. Al-Zee doesn't make his decisions by committee. The only way we're going to kick his ass back into the cave is if I run this war the way it's meant to be run.That means one leader, no second-guessing."

Cruz paused to see the impact of his argument.

"Tell me I'm wrong, damn it! That's an order!" he barked.

"How do you know
I'm
not the mole? I know your battle plans too,"Waters said.

Cruz stared into Waters' empty eyes, looking for a sign of fear or anger or anything that would be a clue. As usual, there was nothing. "I
don't
know for sure that you're not the mole," said Cruz, not liking where this line of thought led.

"Whether or not I'm the mole, you have a bigger problem. If you kill the NATO leaders, I'll know you did it. You'll always have that hanging over you; I'll have the power to bring you down.You'll have to kill me too just to know the secret is safe."

Waters made sense. Cruz didn't have an immediate answer, but none was needed because he felt Waters' sidearm pressed to his temple.

"Give me the portable, "Waters said calmly.

Cruz moved his eyes but not his head. This was trouble. Cruz reasoned that his best chance of getting out of this situation was to comply, for now, and hope his instinct provided him with a next step. Waters slid the portable off Cruz's lap and onto his own, gun still pressed firmly on the general's temple. Waters looked down at the portable and clicked the Confirm button, engaging the missile. Within seconds a silo in South Dakota glided open and spit out its angry cargo toward a building full of NATO generals and admirals.

Waters bolstered his sidearm, closed the portable, and put it back in its case. Cruzjust watched, not sure what had happened, his silence begging the question.

"Now I don't have anything on you," Waters said. "And if I were the mole, you'd already be dead."

Cruz was enraged, but he still appreciated the ingenuity of Waters'solution. "Remind me to promote you. And then remind me to put a boot up your ass."

As Cruz's limo pulled into H2, the airwaves were crackling with stories about the destruction of the Defense Department building. The steel blast gate dosed behind them as a dozen soldiers surrounded the limo and leveled their weapons at the occupants. They knew it was Cruz's limo, but they were taught to suspect the worst. Nothing came into or out of H2 without challenge. There was no way to know who was with the general, or what their intentions were. Cruz, Waters, and Ames put their hands behind their heads as the guards opened the doors, pulled them out, and inserted the bomb-sniffing sensors.