CyberWar: World War C Trilogy Book 3

by Matthew Mather

  With everything she had, she jammed her right toward her left. The blade hit something solid. The man recoiled. She kept her grip, her body going airborne, and shoved the blade again. This time the man crumpled, and they fell back into the dirt.

  With one final grunting, screaming effort, she heaved the blade home.

  Soft gurgling noises.

  Hot blood spilled over her hands.

  The man convulsed in the grass, his hands grappling at his neck. She disentangled herself. Gasped and made it to the first step, struggled up three more, then stepped onto the deck. The door just inches away from her outstretched fingers.

  Her face crunched sideways into the patio door. Like someone had hit her with a two-hundred-pound sledgehammer. Her ribs caved in, the wind knocked out of her in a sucking blow. She fell to the deck face-first and gasped for air.

  She turned her head, screamed, and got to one elbow.

  Her mind tried to make sense of the information coming from her eyes. What was in front of her? A giant machine-dog, pogoing from one leg to another. Six feet long with cylindrical robotic legs that it bounced back and forth on as it toppled back from her and regained its own balance in a jerky mechanical flail. It reared to attack her again, but then stopped.

  The pause gave her the split second she needed to get back to the door.

  In Susie’s peripheral vision, a dot raced toward her.

  She struggled to one knee, slammed back the patio door, and was just running in when the flash-bang of a grenade shot her forward onto the hardwood floor. She didn’t feel anything, couldn’t hear anything. The world went into a blank high-pitched whine. In a haze, she turned, grabbed the door, and slid it closed just as the huge mechanical dog crashed into it again.

  Bullets punched at the ballistic glass. Crisscrossed and dotted and dented it, but the glass held. For now. It wouldn’t for much longer under this onslaught.

  The room seemed to spin.

  She was next to the shelves Bonham had climbed up a few hours ago. She put a hand to the back of her head. It came back covered in blood and burnt black skin. Her stomach seared with pain. She wanted to retch. Another spray of bullets thudded into the plexiglass. One of them punched through. She ducked.

  A red dot flashed past and then into the kitchen window. Another detonation. A splash of orange flame sheeted across the glass.

  Those red dots in the sky were kamikaze drones, Susie realized.

  “Momma? Where’s Ellarose?” Bonham stood at the top of the stairs. His knuckles white as he gripped the banister. “I’m sorry, I know you said—”

  “Come. Come help me.” Susie struggled to her feet but almost fell back. “Ella’s outside, we’re going to get her.” She stumbled toward the stairs.

  Bonham ran over in his stocking feet and took one of her hands. The four-year-old did his best to provide some support to his mother.

  He didn’t cry, didn’t shrink away.

  They reached the steps and she stumbled and fell down half of them. Behind them, upstairs, concussions rocked the log walls. Battering against the windows. Susie dragged herself along the twenty-foot hallway and into the safe room. A grim thrill of excitement as she shoved the door closed with her right shoulder, then slumped into a chair by the bank of monitors.

  Her chest armor had cracked. Blood spilled from her midsection, dribbled down her legs, and pooled on the parquet floor by her feet.

  Footsteps over their heads.

  The attackers had breached the outside door and windows. Yelling and someone barking a command. Not in English. A group of men appeared on the kitchen monitor. A ghostly white face came into view on the hallway monitor. The man peered around the corner and ducked back.

  “That’s it,” Susie grunted. “Come see us. Come have a look. Come see what I’ve got for you.”

  This space wasn’t exactly a panic room. It was more of a honey trap.

  Chuck hated the idea of being cornered somewhere, especially up here, where there was little chance of help. Which was why he’d dug the tunnel from here to the Baylor house. It was hidden, no way you would see the wooden entrance built into the paneling if you didn’t know it was there. The concealed egress point was five feet behind Susie, behind the metal shelving stacked with sacks of rice.

  That was Chuck’s big plan.

  If anyone attacked this place again, and they got trapped in the basement like they did last time—draw them in, blow up the basement, then escape out the back tunnel.

  It was a good plan. “Chuck, honey, if you can hear me, I love you,” she whispered.

  It had been twenty minutes since she’d called out to Ellarose in the forest, telling her to meet them at Uncle Tony’s.

  Her little girl was waiting for her.

  Susie took the red arming key from Bonham, inserted it into the lock, and turned it. More faces appeared around the corner in the hallway. Two men edged their way in and called out. Now four people were in the hallway outside her door. Three more arrived.

  Susie’s finger hovered over the detonation button.

  A loud ringing echoed. It was Susie’s phone. It buzzed and vibrated in her pocket. She looked over at Bonham. “Are you calling Momma again? You shouldn’t have called me before, I said to st—”

  He shook his head. “I don’t have my phone. It broke, remember?” He had an old one they’d given him, not connected to the cell service, but that he could use to connect to the Wi-Fi. He had dropped it in the toilet two days before and it had stopped working.

  Susie’s phone rang again, even louder, it seemed. Insistent. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Who was calling her now? And how were they calling her? There was no outside connection to the cell network, no internet connection.

  The men outside in the hallway had something in their hands. Something bigger than a gun. Was that a rocket-propelled grenade launcher?

  Chapter 19

  “OH MY GOD...” I stared slack-jawed out the window.

  Lauren leaned over Olivia to look out. “My God,” she whispered.

  The truck swept past huge metal towers supporting high-voltage electrical wires strung across this section of Interstate 66. The twilight sky was indigo toward the east, faintly orange to the west where the sun had gone down over the Shenandoah, but we could clearly see them.

  Hundreds of birds sat on the electrical wires high overhead.

  Except they weren’t birds.

  If we hadn’t had such an intimate experience with the vicious killing machines, we might not have even noticed them. The grouping looked like a gathering of crows. A dozen of them took to the air as we passed underneath. They didn’t fly in formation. Not like airplanes. They undulated together like a flock of sparrows, like a school of fish. Not mechanical-looking, but natural, biological.

  “They can’t see us,” I said. “Right?”

  “Probably not,” Tyrell replied. “The truck’s surface bends infrared through ultraviolet wavelengths around us. The panels are flat and radar-wavelength absorbing. Standard stealth stuff. Backed by the organic light-emitting diode displays, in optical terms the effect is like an octopus changing its skin as it swims past a coral reef.”

  I craned my neck and pressed my face against the glass. Luke, sitting beside me and watching a video with earbuds in, protested and tried to push me away. I ignored him and kept my eye on the rolling wave of drone-birds in the night sky.

  They didn’t follow us.

  “Powering themselves up,” Damon said quietly from the front.

  I said, “Excuse me?”

  “The drones we just saw. They were recharging on the power lines. We’ve done designs like that. Uses induction from magnetic fields around the electrical lines, saps a little power out to recharge their batteries.”

  “You said those things were small. That they couldn’t travel far.”

  “I was wrong.”

  Chuck said, “I think that’s about the first time I’ve heard you say that.”
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br />   “I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

  “Can’t say that I am,” Chuck replied.

  “Can’t say I’m surprised,” Damon said.

  I peeled my eyes away from the window. “Not surprised at seeing a flock of killer drones flying over Virginia?”

  “You know how long we’ve had killer drones flying in other people’s skies?”

  “This ain’t exactly Yemen,” Chuck said.

  “Tell that to the Yemeni women and children. We’ve been doing this to everyone else on the planet for twenty years.”

  “This ain’t the best time to be moralizing,” Chuck said grimly.

  “I’m just saying it doesn’t surprise me that it’s finally happened here.”

  I said, “This isn’t the same.”

  “As what? Killing Americans with drones?” Tyrell said from the front. “Who do you think was the first one to do that?” When nobody replied, he answered himself, “In 2011, our American government assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen born in New Mexico. Not in a war zone. No trial by jury. No assumption of innocence. Death by drone.”

  “He was a terrorist,” someone said quietly.

  It was Archer. He didn’t lean forward to engage in the conversation but kept still in the back-left seat. He watched everyone else carefully.

  “That was an extrajudicial execution,” Damon said. “No due process. He was an imam right here in Virginia, did you know that? He served as a chaplain at George Washington University. The FBI investigated him, but didn’t find enough evidence for a criminal prosecution. So we assassinated him instead.”

  “And two of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11,” Archer said, almost whispering. “They attended his services when he was imam here. Can you add that part to your bleeding-heart story?”

  “So, if two white nationalists blow up a building, do we go and arrest the pastor of the church they attended in Savannah?”

  Chuck said, “If the pastor told them to do it, yeah, we do.”

  “And we have a trial, right? Present evidence?”

  Archer said, “The Fort Hood shooter. Al-Awlaki exchanged at least two dozen emails with him. And the guy that tried to bring down Northwest Airlines 253 with that underwear bomb. Remember him? And the Times Square bomber. The list goes on and on. Al-Awlaki was the Bin Laden of the internet. He deserved what he got.”

  “Where was he killed?” I asked.

  “Yemen.”

  “Isn’t that a war zone?” Chuck said. “Virginia isn’t a war zone. This is terrorism, pure and simple.” He repeated, “This is not an active war zone.”

  Damon said, “Neither are most of the places we carry out assassinations using drones.”

  “Now hold on, son,” the senator said from behind me. “We are not assassinating anyone. Every drone strike is a legally sanctioned—”

  “By who, exactly, Senator Seymour?” Tyrell said from the front. He turned to face us. “By you? Or perhaps by your niece?”

  “Pardon me?” I said. “Why are you dragging my wife into this?”

  “Isn’t that what you were doing in China?” Tyrell asked Lauren. “What you were just in Hong Kong for?”

  The way he said it, I had the sinking feeling he knew more than I did. I turned to my wife. “What’s he talking about? I thought you were at a conference on international relations.”

  “I was,” Lauren replied.

  “Then what does he mean?” I made sure the kids had their earbuds in.

  Lauren stared at her feet.

  Archer leaned forward, his Glock back in his hand. “Mr. Jakob, what exactly are you getting at?”

  “I apologize,” Tyrell replied, “but I did do my homework on Damon’s friends, especially after you all became front-page news. Mrs. Mitchell does work for you, Senator, does she not? In the drone program?”

  “Lauren?” I repeated. “What is he talking about?”

  “I do some work, sometimes,” she said, still not looking at me. “Evaluating the legality of certain targeted kill lists. Particular targets. It’s part-time work the Department of Justice sends to our firm.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” My mind raced. Her sudden rise to making partner at her firm. The international meetings and travel. She was connected to—related to—one of the highest-ranking members of Congress.

  “It’s classified, Michael,” my wife whispered back. “It’s not the sort of thing I could bring up over cornflakes.”

  “Damon, did you know this?” I turned to the front.

  “I had no idea.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him. Then I had another thought. I asked my wife, “Did those Chechen terrorists kidnap you because you authorized killing someone?” It had seemed too random that she had been taken hostage by them, when maybe it wasn’t accidental at all. No coincidences, right?

  “I don’t know. I have no idea.”

  “Lauren, honey, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

  Tyrell said, “Terrorist Tuesdays, isn’t that what you call them, Senator?”

  “Pardon me?” The senator’s voice gained a harder edge.

  “Like Taco Tuesdays, except instead of sharing tortillas, you get together with all the branches of government and decide who you want to kill this week.”

  “I’m not sure I like your tone, Mr. Jakob.”

  Archer leaned forward with the Glock. “Whose side are you on, Tyrell?”

  “Does questioning our government automatically make me an enemy?”

  “Wait,” I said, raising my hands to defuse the situation. I checked the kids again and made sure they couldn’t hear us. “Keep calm, please. I want to hear this. It might be important.” I turned to Chuck. “Maybe we can understand what’s going on better.” I finished by staring at my wife, who avoided my gaze.

  “Senator Seymour,” Tyrell said. “You are chairperson of the Armed Services Committee, correct?”

  “That is a matter of public record. Yes, I am.”

  “With Congressional oversight of the drone program?”

  The senator didn’t reply but nodded.

  “Which is a bit of a misnomer,” Tyrell said. “As oversight is a bit lax.” He turned to me. “Did you know that the US military flies targeted killing operations for the CIA? All over the world? Each Tuesday, the various branches of government get together and submit a list of who they would like killed—based on who might be against American interests.”

  “We didn’t start this,” Chuck said. “The assholes who flew two planes into the World Trade Center are where you should be laying blame. Are you saying this is payback? Blowback?”

  “An eye for an eye,” Tyrell said. “Isn’t that what the Bible teaches?”

  “Leave my faith out of this.”

  “I’ll tear out both eyes of whoever is behind this when we find them,” Archer said. “Problem solved.”

  “Amen to that, brother,” Chuck muttered.

  Tyrell said, “Between the CIA and JSOC, we’ve basically got two shrouded, private armies that are carrying out daily assassinations using drones all over the world.”

  “That’s not exactly how I would assess it,” the senator said quietly.

  “How would you assess it?”

  “Those are justified, targeted killings. That’s what I believe.”

  “And I believe we should change the middle word in CIA from intelligence to murder,” Tyrell said. “That would better reflect its mission these days. Didn’t the US make it illegal to assassinate people on foreign soil? President Gerald Ford passed that law in 1976. And it’s still the law. So, what happened?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Lawyers are what happened,” Tyrell answered himself again. “They don’t even call it a kill list anymore. I believe it’s called a disposition matrix, isn’t it?” He turned to the senator again.

  “This is why I said it didn’t surprise me,” Damon said quietly from the front. “We
create a targeted kill list of anyone we judge to be against American interests—”

  “It isn’t like that,” Archer said.

  “And now, it seems that someone has created their own targeted kill list of Americans,” Tyrell said. “That’s what that ledger of names has to be.”

  Archer asked, “What ledger?”

  “Damon mentioned it to me. Remember, Mr. Archer, the list you asked him about? The ones they collected from the house on the water. The list of names of American citizens?”

  “You know this for a fact? And that was classified.”

  “I’m guessing.”

  “You sound like you know a lot more than you’re letting on.”

  “Just because I can understand the enemy’s motivation, Mr. Archer, does not mean I am the enemy.”

  “Damon,” Chuck said. “You’re sounding like you’re against all this, but aren’t you the one designing drones for our military? Aren’t you and Mr. Jakob here both sucking on the teat of Uncle Sam?”

  “I don’t build drones that kill people.”

  “Really? Because only people kill people? Sounds like something I would say.”

  “And we’re not the only ones with drone programs,” Damon said. “Twenty years ago, maybe. Ten years ago, fifty countries had their own drone research. Now every country on the planet does. Even corporations have their own. Turkey was the first to add a machine gun to one, and those fly in automated formations. Even has the capability to kill autonomously.”

  “You think these are Turkish drones?” I said.

  “These are Chinese drones,” Damon replied.

  Silence descended as we all digested this information. Just the thrum of the tires against the pavement, and the quiet squeaks of Peppa Pig through Olivia’s earbuds. Lately she had said she was too old for Peppa, but she seemed to find it comforting now. Me too.

  Archer said from the back, “You know this for a fact?”

  “I know they were manufactured in China.”

  “Almost everything is manufactured in China,” Chuck said. “Hell, I bet half of the Predator fleet is made there.”

  “They most certainly are not,” the senator said.

  “You know this how?” Archer asked.