“I think I took one,” Chuck said. “Damn left arm again.”
I said, “What can I do?”
“For a start, get us the hell out of here.”
The noise deafening as we rolled and thrashed in the waves.
I tried to form a plan. We had to be out in the Atlantic, in the bay beyond the pier, being driven by the wind and waves. The pounding motion made me think we were floating. It sure didn’t feel like we were on anything solid.
My stomach came up. I strained to resist retching.
Water sluiced down the walls. Everything leaked. The windows. The cracks between the doors. Sprays of water shot in rivulets from the battered glass around the pockmarks left by bullets. Water in the cabin already deeper.
We were sinking.
I gasped, “Should I open the doors?”
We needed to get out of this death trap. If I opened the doors, I’d drown for sure, but maybe Lauren could make it. Take Chuck with her, grab Agent Coleman. She was a strong swimmer.
“No, you idiot.” Chuck leaned up against one window. “Get us the hell back to shore. We can’t be far.”
“Tell me how.”
“The console.” He pointed at the flat screen in the middle of the dashboard. “Make sure we’re in drive mode. Grab the steering wheel, and push down the accelerator.”
“You do realize we’re in the ocean?”
“I told you, this thing is amphibious. Get the wheels going at high speed and they’ll churn the water like a paddle wheel, even if we’re submerged.”
“That’ll work?” My mind was one step behind the words.
“You have a better idea?”
“Chuck, help me with Coleman’s head.” Lauren braced herself. “I’ll help. Give me the light.”
Chuck slithered into the back. He hardly needed to get up as he floated most of the way. I splashed into the driver’s seat and gave my wife the cell phone, then tapped the console screen. It came to life.
“At the bottom,” Chuck said. “Hit the ignition. I got the keys in my pocket, so it should…”
I tapped, held onto the steering wheel, and jammed the accelerator down as far as I could. A whine filled the cabin. Over the bellowing wind and waves, I heard the wheels churn in an instant thrumming rumble.
A map appeared on the console.
No GPS signal, a flashing light warned. No kidding.
“How the hell will I know where to go?” I yelled.
I could be driving us further out into the ocean, for all I knew.
Chuck cackled, something between a laugh and a sob, and pointed. “Use that.”
I followed his finger. In the middle of the dash was a tiny plastic bubble. I leaned closer. It was a dollar store compass, like the one he had before, glued to the middle of the BullyBoy’s dash.
“Head east,” Chuck said.
“East?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure? Isn’t that toward Europe?”
“West, damn it. I mean west. Turn that wheel till we’re heading due west.”
I gritted my teeth and strained to push the accelerator as high as I could. I kept my eyes on the bobbling sphere in the middle of the compass and turned the wheel.
“Can I ask you something?” Chuck said. “Why did you kick Irena in the face?”
“Because she’s with them.”
“You’re sure?”
My gut. My wife always said I trusted the wrong people, and I’d come to trust Irena and Terek completely. Feelings like that, I had to be wrong. Plus, those guys hadn’t shot at them when they tried to get into the truck. I might be emotionally tone-deaf, but I did notice details.
I swallowed back a mouthful of bile and felt rage rising up over my fear. Where were my kids? That’s what Billy had asked me, back at the house. That bastard better not be anywhere near them when I got out of this thing.
CHAPTER 45
DAMON GOT UP from the glass kitchen table to get his tenth cup of coffee. Maybe twelfth? He usually kept track with his health monitoring app, but today, all bets were off. Outside the kitchen window, the wind picked up again.
He could hear a news update from the TV in the living room. “The DC area will be experiencing hurricane-force winds by 3 p.m. this afternoon as the eye of Hurricane Dolly makes its way up the Chesapeake Bay toward Washington. The governor is alerting everyone to stay indoors and avoid—”
Damon checked his watch. 12:15 p.m.
It was time.
He refilled the coffee machine with grounds and water and set it on again. Might need another pot before this was over.
The leaves and branches of the oak beyond the patio door buffeted back and forth. A smattering of raindrops. Low clouds scudded by like mustangs charging away from capture.
He sat back down in front of his machine and tapped a key to open the network monitoring app. The attackers were still chasing his fish, but he had to set the bait. The way that wind was coming up, there was no telling how long he would maintain power out here. All it would take was one branch coming down.
With his index finger he pushed the button.
One keystroke.
He let the firewall open a crack. Seconds later they took the space surveillance file he had weaponized.
A minute later, a message pinged.
Damon got excited, thinking it was Chuck and Mike, but it was another update from the StarCorp satellites.
Exactly three hours again.
He suspected it was a real connection, but a stage-managed one. Real and fake at the same time. Like what he’d sent them. The only reliable information he could glean from it was that the satellite node still uplinking must have passed an active ground station.
He hoped his timing had been right.
The trap had been set. It didn’t matter if he alerted the attackers anymore.
He needed to find a way to contact the outside world. Maybe get in one of the cars? Warn Mrs. Seymour not to come back to the house, but given the approaching storm, he assumed she had already found somewhere safe with the senator.
He needed to warn the senator as well, tell him to stop using the meshnet app. Damon needed to warn everyone.
He flexed his fingers and typed out the first message, checked the message twice, and pushed send.
An error message: No network access.
He tried his browser. No internet.
The lights went out. TV went silent.
That’s what he thought would happen, right? The wind would bring down a tree branch? Take out the power? Or maybe this was one of the rolling blackouts.
He sat motionless for most of a minute and listened to the wind echo through the empty house. He stood, put his coffee down, reached over to the kitchen counter, and selected the biggest knife he could find.
Damon set the drone down in the grass by the edge of the garage. He could get into a car, but he wanted some intel first. What was around the house?
This drone was the heaviest of the four, and the weight should provide some stability in the gusting wind, but he still wasn’t sure if it would fly.
It would fly, that was for sure, but would it be able to maintain position?
He laid the kitchen knife down in the grass next to it, then stood and used one hand to hold his phone, the other to control the drone. Its motors whirred to life and it sprang into the air. He set it to hover at two hundred feet and watched it ascend, the wind buffeting its control systems and pushing it back and forth.
Overwatch, that’s what Damon needed.
He checked the camera on the drone, then brought it up on his screen. The drone went higher and higher. The house came into view, then the trees surrounding it, and then the other houses nearby.
Something wasn’t right.
The other houses had their lights on. Only this house was totally dark.
Something else.
On the street in front of the senator’s house, beyond the wrought iron gates and brick walls and hedges, were two par
ked cars. Someone got out of one of them, but it was hard to see in the dim light. Was it the senator? The Secret Service? But that wasn’t a limo. That was a Jeep.
Terek had gone out in a Jeep.
Damon pocketed his phone and knelt to pick up the knife. His breath quickened; his heart thumped. Blade held high, he edged around the corner of the garage and into the circular driveway.
Fifty feet away, the iron gates swung open. Someone needed the code to do that.
That someone stood in the middle of the driveway. Terek. He held a gun to Luke’s head and pincered his other arm around the kid’s neck, choking him into submission.
Damon felt the blood in his face drain away. The knot twisting in his gut almost made him want to retch. He’d been trying to control the future, trying to bend a path through a needle’s eye, but he had been fooling himself.
Behind Terek stood a man in camouflage with a shaved head and a beard. He held an assault rifle, pointed right at Damon.
A man laid face down on the road between them. A dark pool spread onto the rain-soaked pavement around Secret Service Agent George Dunbar.
Parked behind the Jeep was a Mercedes. Damon recognized it. That was Mrs. Seymour’s. He edged forward. The kitchen knife held like an ice pick in his left hand. He put his right into the pocket of his jeans.
The trees swayed in the wind. Dark clouds sped by.
“Everything is going to be okay,” Damon said to Luke.
The kid trembled and sniffled. One small white-knuckled hand gripped Terek’s forearm.
Terek moved up the driveway, one deliberate step at a time, keeping Luke in front of him. “We go back in the house. Nobody gets hurt.”
“What about your wife?”
“I have no choice. You don’t understand.”
“It’s all a lie, isn’t it?”
“You think I didn’t check the hash on my memory key? I know you hacked me. They’ve been watching the whole time. It’s too late. They know everything.”
“Who are ‘they’?” Damon sensed someone behind him, a presence that melted from the shadows behind the garage.
“We go inside,” Terek repeated. “Get the power back, and we call in the senator again. Tell him you cracked the satellite uplink, but you need him—and only him—to come back here.”
There was more than a little desperation in his voice. Whatever the plan had been, it had deviated.
Damon peered at the Mercedes.
Mrs. Seymour was in the back with Olivia on her knee. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the car. The bearded man in camouflage advanced, ten paces behind Terek.
From the corner of his eye, Damon noticed a distinctive flash of light. It went out a split second later, but more lights blinked in the distance between the trees. Blue lights. Red.
“Okay,” Damon said.
He lifted the knife high and knelt, making a show of putting it on the ground. He lifted his left hand. The shadow moved behind him. Soft footsteps under the noise of the wind. Then louder, a thrumming sound through the trees.
“Both hands,” Terek said. “Put them up.”
Damon still had one hand in his right pocket. He closed his eyes and concentrated and slid his finger forward. He had to get this right.
The whining buzz grew louder behind him.
Someone cursed in a foreign language as the drone closed the last ten feet and slammed into them. Damon ducked, sprinted forward two steps, and then skidded to a stop.
The driveway flooded with light.
A four-ton metal tank exploded over the top of the brick walls.
CHAPTER 46
I WIPED THE stinging sweat from my eyes and tried to focus. Agent Coleman had regained consciousness when we’d made our way out of the water, but he was bleeding badly. The man struggled to stay awake and gave instructions as we wound our way off the highway.
I slowed as I approached Potomac Falls Road and the senator’s house came into view. I clicked the headlamps off. One thing about electric cars—they were quiet as hell if you wanted to sneak up on someone.
Mrs. Seymour’s Mercedes was parked out front. That was odd. Why wouldn’t she park inside in this rain? I crept up the last two hundred feet of the road toward the gate and saw the Jeep.
My stomach fluttered.
They were already here. A man in camouflage cradled an assault rifle and walked through the open gates. And then I saw the unmistakable outline of Luke in someone else’s arms in front of him.
Not just someone.
That was Terek.
He was in the middle of the parking circle holding my son. I gripped the steering wheel so tight I felt like I might snap it off.
“Motherf—”
Lauren was in the passenger seat next to me. She nodded. Chuck’s head was between the two of us. He nodded as well.
You only get one chance at surprise.
I put my foot down on the accelerator. Angled the truck at the man walking through the gate. Only one guy with an assault rifle that I could see. I made my best guess. Made sure we would be well clear of Luke.
“Hang on,” I said from between gritted teeth.
We barreled toward the brick enclosure. I braced myself against the steering wheel to keep from getting thrown back. Flipped our headlamps on at the last instant.
The truck plowed through the wall more than over it.
Terek was fifty feet to our left as we went airborne in the crunching impact with the four-foot-high brick wall. I caught a quick glimpse of the guy we came down straight on top of, his hands up in futile defense.
I hit the brakes.
Tapped the door switch at the same time.
Water sluiced out as the gull-wing opened and we skidded to a stop. The muzzle of Lauren’s rifle came up beside me as I tumbled onto the pavement.
Damon was splayed out in front of the garage.
One of his drones in pieces behind him. He pointed to his left and said, “They went that way.”
“How many?”
“Terek and some other guy.”
“Mike,” Chuck called from the back seat of the truck, “be careful. Don’t do anything stupid. The cops are coming.”
I heard Agent Coleman moan.
Lauren opened the passenger door and stepped out. Scanned back and forth with her rifle. Lights lit the trees red and blue in the street behind us. Sirens wailed over the wind swaying the trees.
“Oh, thank God,” said Mrs. Seymour.
She stepped out of the Mercedes. Olivia cried in her arms. Mrs. Seymour was bawling her eyes out as she ran toward Lauren.
My wife said, “Mom, stay back, the police are coming.” She kept the rifle’s muzzle moving.
I was already on my feet, running in a crouch past Damon.
“Mike!” Lauren called out. “Goddamn it, Mike, get back here!”
“Luke!” I screamed as loud as I could. “Where are you?”
The wind intensified. A fat raindrop fell. Then another.
A sleeting downpour began. Thunderclaps rolled over the hills. I slicked the water away from my face. Ran around the back of the garage.
“Dad.”
I stopped.
Was that left or right?
The ground ahead sloped down to the rushing white water of the Potomac. I turned right.
“Dad,” called out Luke’s voice again.
Behind me. Other way.
I spun on my heel. Turned and sprinted hard. The pain in my ankle disappeared in a blinding surge of adrenaline.
Might be running into a trap.
Didn’t care. If they touched him, if they hurt him in any way…
“Stop.”
I stumbled and skidded. Terek stood to the side of the path in the wet grass, next to a big old oak. He held Luke up off the ground in one arm, and pointed a sidearm at me. He set Luke down, his arm still around him, and held the gun to my son’s head.
Terek said, “Walk away, Mike.”
I held my hands up. “W
hatever you think you’re doing, it’s over.” I took a step toward them. Scanned the trees for dark shapes. Expected a muzzle flash at any instant.
The sirens louder.
Red-and-blue lights blinked through the trees, even back here.
“They left you.” I took another step. “I know they took your wife.”
“Stay back.”
He swung his handgun at me. That was what I was waiting for. I wiped my hands as best I could on my wet shirt.
“Mike, put your hands up.”
“Legook,” I yelled. “Geget degown. Geget degown.”
Terek blinked, lowered his gun an inch as he tried to process what I was saying.
Luke dropped to his knees and then fell to the grass.
Terek raised his weapon. I reached into my belt and got out the gun as fast as I could, aimed square at his chest. His muzzle flashed as I pulled my trigger. The recoil flung the weapon from my hand.
It felt like someone punched my chest and knocked the breath right out of me.
I gasped. Kept my feet moving.
Luke curled into a fetal ball in the grass. Covered his head.
Momentum carried me forward. I let out a roar. Wrapped my arms around Terek as he fired again.
I collided into him.
We spun together. With one hand I caught his shirt, held on with every ounce of strength I could muster.
Pulled him toward me as I fell.
My knee glanced off Luke’s head.
I tumbled into open space. My head flew back. Feet followed.
A second later, a crunching impact as the back of my head smashed the ground. I rolled wildly down the wet slope and tumbled to a stop in a wet heap, entangled with Terek.
We both slid into the water. The swollen Potomac swept us downstream.
Terek clutched at reeds and branches. He tried to get up. I grabbed a fistful of his pant leg and dragged him with me into the rushing water. I swallowed a mouthful and gagged. Held Terek’s leg and twisted savagely.
My head submerged for a second, but then we both bobbed to the surface.
“Mike,” someone screamed from a distance.
I spotted Lauren through the rain, up on the hill behind me. She pointed down. Luke was in the water as well, fifty feet upstream from me.
CyberSpace: A CyberStorm Novel (Cyber Series Book 1) Page 29