CyberWar: World War C Trilogy Book 3

by Matthew Mather

  Spinning and wrenching her arms, she broke free of the blackberries. She floundered onto the stream trail and kept low, her weapon up and sweeping back and forth.

  “Ellarose,” she hissed, as loud as she dared. “Honey, if you’re here, come to me. We’re going back to the house.”

  This wasn’t over. She didn’t care how many men were in those Humvees. She needed to get back inside. Once there, she could signal for help and escape through the tunnel.

  Susie raised her voice a little more. “Ellarose!”

  The trail opened into a clearing as it crossed the burbling stream coming down the mountain forest slope. A bridge of sticks and twigs was still there, with a wall of rocks spaced across the middle forming a dam that pooled the water to one side.

  “Ellar—”

  Susie stopped in the muddy grass. Drops of water dotted the rushing stream. And something else. Dark clouds swirled through the stream and collected in the pool.

  Blood spatter against the rocks.

  Red blood mixed with the cascading water.

  Chapter 14

  “WAIT!” TYRELL HELD the keychain, rabbit paw dangling, above his head.

  A two-tone alarm signal beeped.

  I cringed and waited for his skull to split open as Archer squeezed the trigger on his assault rifle. The muzzle near point-blank at Tyrell’s forehead. The barrel of the weapon dipped.

  “What in Jesus’s...” Archer’s voice trailed off.

  I held Luke tight to me. His fingers dug into the skin under my sopping wet T-shirt. I had one arm out, holding Lauren back, my splayed fingers attempting to hide from Olivia whatever was about to happen.

  Staring straight ahead at Tyrell, Archer’s face went slack.

  I had one eye on the man’s trigger finger, now released, but most of my attention was on the flickering red dots approaching through the tree trunks.

  Could those drone-bots navigate through a forest? My gut twisted. Seemed like exactly what they were good at.

  But that expression on Archer’s face. What had just happened? I blinked and looked away from the red dots and followed Archer’s gaze.

  The trees to my left shimmered.

  A hole opened in the fabric of reality.

  Branches and leaves seemed to suck from the ground into a vortex that reformed and solidified. The angular outlines of a squat enclosure scintillated into being. Brown-gray panels coagulated from nothing. A twenty-foot-plus hulking monster appeared from nowhere, cleaved from the air in Gollum-clay, as if transported through a wormhole and onto the damp carpet of leaves in the clearing.

  Two gull-wing doors hissed open to reveal an interior of leather and glowing blue lights.

  “We need to hurry.” Tyrell still had his hands above his head.

  The rabbit paw swayed.

  “If you’re going to point that thing, kid, you better use it.” Archer’s voice regained its hard edge.

  He had his weapon down now, not pointing at Tyrell, but I sensed his body coiling up like a storm cloud about to unleash a bolt of lightning.

  Damon stood with his legs apart and two arms raised in a vee directed straight at Archer. A handgun’s barrel sighted at the man. I’d never seen Damon pick up a gun, never mind aim it at someone. He scowled. Damon’s lip curled, and for a sickening moment I thought he was going to pull the trigger.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him, fear and incomprehension making my voice rise. My eyes flitted back to the approaching red dots.

  “Can’t let him kill Tyrell.”

  “He’s not going to.”

  “Not now.”

  Tyrell waved the rabbit’s paw at us. “Everybody, please, in the truck. Mr. Indigo, I appreciate the show of support, but can we litigate this from a safer vantage point?”

  Damon considered for a split second, then released and opened his arms wide, holding his hands away—one of them up with the gun, the other palm out in surrender. My brain was still attempting to process the materialization of this muscular—truck?—in the middle of an empty forest clearing, but my mother had always said not to look a gift billionaire in the mouth.

  “Damon, get in the”—I searched for a word but gave up—“just get in.”

  I hustled my wife, with Olivia white-faced and terrified in her arms, ahead of me forward and past Damon and Archer, who stood stock-still and glared at each other like they were playing chicken against the advancing drones. I took the submachine guns from Luke’s arms, carefully making sure they didn’t point at anyone, my mind coming to grips with letting my eight-year-old son handle deadly weapons.

  The senator followed us.

  The vehicle had three-row seating. I helped my wife into the middle one, then lifted in Luke and climbed in behind them. It had that new-car smell of polyester and polished cowhide.

  My wet rear squeaked across the polished tan leather. I shivered. Hadn’t realized how cold I was.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” I urged the rest of them.

  The inside was an open cockpit, rows of seating like a luxury SUV done in light and dark brown leather. A large flat-panel display occupied most of the center console between the driver and passenger seats in front of us. Double sets of moonroof panels revealed swaying tree branches and scudding clouds through their smoky glass.

  Chuck climbed into the row of seats behind us, the senator beside him with two of the submachine guns he had collected from the Secret Service agents. Damon tried to get in next, but Archer ripped him backward and knocked my friend into the wet dirt.

  “In the front, asshole.” Archer clambered in beside Chuck.

  “You swear a lot,” Damon said as he got back to his feet. “You know that?”

  The gull-wing door to our left hissed closed.

  Through the large passenger-side window to our right, red dots emerged, bright in the tinted glass. The trees and branches remained dim, but the eyes of the advancing drones seemed magnified. They shifted back and forth with mechanical precision as they advanced through the trees right at us.

  I asked, “Is this thing bombproof?”

  “To some degree.” Tyrell hefted Damon ahead of him, over the driver’s seat to the passenger side. The door began to slide closed after he climbed in behind him.

  Red dots to that side as well.

  I assumed “some degree” meant these mechanical wasps couldn’t penetrate this thing’s defenses. Luke had his nose against the glass to his side and pointed. He recoiled. One of the drone-bots hovered not ten feet away, its LED lights pointed this way.

  I asked, “Are you sure they can’t see us?”

  “Get this thing moving,” Archer barked.

  “Mr. Archer, while the metamaterial sheath covering us can bend ultraviolet through infrared, it cannot absorb outgoing sound waves, and I am quite sure the AI controlling those ornithopter drones—”

  “Drive,” Archer repeated, his voice lower but still menacing. “Slowly,” he added.

  “Selena,” Tyrell whispered. “Please engage and route a course to—” He stopped.

  Archer muttered, “What’s wrong?”

  “I am looking up Mr. Mumford’s address, however, with network connectivity down, the stored internet database I have—”

  “Just get us the hell moving.”

  I asked, “Are you sure we should be going to Chuck’s?”

  “We should be going anywhere but here,” Chuck replied from behind me. Two more of the hovering drones had floated into the clearing. “This is covered with a metamaterial that bends light? I’ve seen that in my military magazines.”

  Tyrell said., “The sheath is also backed by a radar-absorbing coating over an OLED backstop.”

  “An invisibility cloak?” Luke said. “Like in Harry Potter?”

  “Can we get moving?” The strain in Archer’s voice growing even as he tried to maintain a forced whisper. “Any funny business up there, remember I got a gun pointed at your heads.”

  The barrel of a Glock appeared o
ver the seat between Lauren and me.

  “Is that necessary?” my wife asked.

  “You know what’s fun about the passenger seat?” Damon hissed from the front, turning to face Archer. “I got a set of controls for the doors. Just one button and I can let in one of those explosive insects to air your head out.”

  “Damon,” my wife scolded.

  “The window controls don’t work right now,” Tyrell said. “Selena is in stealth mode.”

  “Who’s Selena?” I asked. “Your truck?”

  “More than just the tr—”

  “Are you men out of your minds?” Lauren kept her voice low, but the urgency in it carried. She held Olivia in her arms, my little girl’s face pale. “Can we argue somewhere else?”

  “Punch in Front Royal,” Chuck said. “That’s close enough.”

  “Selena,” Tyrell said. “Engage a route to Front Royal, Virginia. Begin now. Evade targets.”

  “Yes, Mr. Jakob,” replied a pleasant female voice. The calmest one in the truck.

  The truck began to creep forward. Soundlessly.

  Luke shuddered beside me, but still whispered, “This is so cool.”

  Three of the drone-bugs hovered outside his window, oblivious to us watching them from a dozen yards away. They must have heard us, or seen us, running through the trees to get here—but now we had effectively vanished.

  I asked, “Lauren, can you make sure the safeties are on?” I indicated the weapons on the floor by our feet.

  “Can you hold Olivia?”

  I took my little girl while my wife checked the guns.

  “You okay?” I whispered to my daughter. She quivered in my arms. I held her tighter.

  She nodded and put her face into my chest. “Do we have an iPad?” she asked in a quavering voice.

  “Not right now, honey.”

  What exactly were we doing?

  I hadn’t had any time to think about it in the last ten minutes, while we were under attack and in imminent danger of death. What was the next step? Chuck’s cottage? I hated that place to begin with.

  I needed time to think.

  The immediate threat dissipated, the hovering drones outside the smoky glass became fascinating. Watching them, I saw they executed a coordinated grid search pattern as more of them moved to this area.

  Our vehicle slid forward over the carpet of leaves on the forest floor. A branch snapped and one of the bots shifted to look our way.

  “What happens if one of them bumps into us?” I asked. We might be invisible, but we still occupied a lot of space. This thing had to be more than ten feet across, eight feet high, and twenty long.

  “We’re not exactly invisible,” Tyrell said, squashing my hopes. “Just tricky to get a good lock on. A human could see something was odd, if they knew what to look for.”

  “Still doesn’t answer the question,” Chuck said from the back.

  “They would realize something was in their way. Collision detection. I imagine swarming activity might ensue, but Selena is monitoring the threat matrices. We could accelerate away. It would take their sensors and AI longer to recalibrate than for Selena to navigate a path to safety.”

  “Great,” Chuck said. “We have one artificial intelligence hunting our asses, while another tries to evade and protect us.”

  Chapter 15

  THE TRUCK PICKED up speed as we advanced up the winding path and left the drone-bots behind. A pressure lifted from my shoulders. An opening appeared up ahead, and seconds later we pulled onto the main road. The truck drove itself. Tyrell kept his hands off the wheel but punched some buttons on the main display.

  “Hey, hey,” Archer said. “Keep those hands off the controls. All fingers on the dash where I can see them, or I’ll cut one off for each infraction.”

  The light was fading as the sun went down. From the road we clearly saw the glittering flames of the house, which was going up like a torch.

  “Why no fire engines?” I asked. “What about the military? Someone must be seeing this. Radar? Alarms?”

  There wasn’t another car in sight up or down the road.

  It felt deserted.

  The population in this area of Virginia was spread out, but it wasn’t empty. Large houses occupied wooded acre-sized lots. I had just been discharged from the hospital the day before, and the place had been crawling with police and EMTs, with a corridor full of FBI and CIA personnel on our floor, even after the senator left. Where were all of them now?

  The truck accelerated.

  “Stop the car,” Chuck said. “Archer, get him to stop it.”

  Tyrell was already whispering to Selena. The truck slowed to a crawl, and then pulled over to stop on the shoulder. The flames from the house arced into the dark sky over the treetops in the distance to our right. Did Chuck want to go back for something?

  “Did you forget something, Mr. Mumford?” Tyrell asked.

  “This better be good,” Archer mumbled.

  “We need to think about this,” Chuck replied.

  I turned in my seat to face him. “Your kids and Susie are up there. If he’s right—”

  “And why are we trusting him?”

  “He just saved our lives.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You are free to exit the vehicle, Mr. Mumford, although I would advise against it.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because I am sure they are watching.”

  “And who are they?”

  “The same people who hijacked my satellites.”

  Chuck asked me, “Mike, what do you think?”

  “I think I feel pretty safe inside this thing.”

  “Do you trust him?” He flicked his chin toward Tyrell.

  “I just met him.”

  “I trust him,” Lauren said.

  That stopped us for a few beats.

  Chuck exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. “You shouldn’t be bringing your kids into whatever we’re heading for. And Leo?” He turned to the senator. “You don’t need to come. You should head back to Washington.”

  “Lauren,” I said. “That’s a good idea. You want to take the kids? Go with your uncle and Archer. It’s ten minutes the opposite way down the road. We could dr—”

  “If anyone goes back with the children, it’s you,” she replied. “You’re not exactly tactically ready, Mike. You could barely even shoot that gun.”

  “You both go back,” Chuck said. “You shouldn’t split up, not again. We just spent all this time getting you guys back together. That’s what I came here for. Mission accomplished. Go with Archer. I’ll get Susie. Maybe nothing is happening at the cottage.”

  “I don’t trust Archer,” Damon said from the front. “How is he the only government guy that made it out of the house?”

  “I’m not sure I like what you’re implying,” Archer replied.

  “I’m not implying.”

  “We’re not leaving you and Susie alone,” I said. “I think this is Irena. I think she’s after me for killing her brother. I think she’s going to use you to get to me.”

  Chuck managed a grin. “Always gotta make everything about you, huh?”

  Silence for a few beats. I checked up and down the road. Still no headlights. No streetlights blinking on as darkness descended. No house lights flickering through the trees. Should we go and knock on someone’s door? And then what? Drag them into this mess? It made more sense to drive back into the McLean village center and find a police station, get some help.

  “Those drones needed a GPS signal to operate,” Archer said. “Whoever is—”

  “Not necessarily from a satellite,” Damon interrupted. “Could be a local signal generator up on a tower, even on the ground. Or maybe an inertial guidance system. But someone dropped those drones here. They can’t fly far, being that small. Where were you just before you found us at the boat?”

  “Searching the area and tracking Tyrell.”

  “So you say. Senator, do you
know this guy? Who sent him?”

  Leo was sandwiched between Archer and Chuck in the back. “The FBI liaison said that someone from JSOC”—he pronounced it jay-sock—“came to the door.”

  “Could be Chinese GPS,” Chuck said. “Right? Don’t the Chinese still have a working geopositioning system? BeiDou?”

  “Are we really doing this again?” I said.

  “They only have three satellites still operational,” Damon pointed out. “Senator, wasn’t that what you told us in the last report?”

  “That’s what they told us. They might have more birds working by now,” Leo replied. “We’re trying to get some parts of our GPS back u—”

  A bright flash lit up the trees to our right, followed by a thudding concussion. A fireball roiled into the dark sky.

  “Had to be the propane tank,” the senator said after a pause. “We had a big one toward the front for the generator.”

  “That is definitely going to attract attention,” I said. “Won’t that show up on radar? Why don’t we just sit still and wait for emergency services to show up? There’s going to be police or somebody, even if all communications and power are down.”

  “Honey,” Lauren whispered. “We cannot sit still. I think Tyrell is telling the truth. If Susie and the kids are in trouble—”

  “Tyrell.” I held one hand up to Lauren, apologizing for cutting her off. “You said you evaded the drone attack at your Mississippi headquarters somehow, then used your fancy truck to escape. But that was eleven days ago.”

  “That’s correct, Mr. Mitchell.”

  “Fill me in on exactly what you’ve been doing the last week and a half. All your co-workers were killed, you miraculously escaped, and then terrorists spoofed communications to the government, pretending to be your friends. And don’t tell me you didn’t know this somehow—”

  “I did know.”

  “But you didn’t say anything? And you’ve got this magic carpet you could use to literally drive into the lobby of the Capitol Building undetected, and you didn’t warn or contact anyone? You didn’t even try?”

  “I have exactly the same question,” Archer said. He still had the Glock in his right hand, but pointed at the moonroof. His relaxed pose.