by Michael Lane
“Captain.”
“Sir.”
“You’re going to be at the command post tonight.” The Colonel bent and picked up a silver signal whistle from his camp cot. He looped the chain around his neck. Nakamura said nothing.
“You don’t approve? Speak freely, Captain,” Rastowich said, raising an eyebrow.
“You’re concerned about the books. It’s not that I don’t approve. It just makes me nervous,” Nakamura said.
“It’ll be fine,” the colonel said, strapping a holstered pistol about his waist. He drew the silver automatic and checked its magazine. “I have done this before, you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rastowich racked the weapon’s slide, loading it. He thumbed the safety on and holstered the automatic, then tugged at the belt until it rode comfortably around his hips.
“Now to make history,” he said, retrieving a helmet from the camp table beside the cot and sparing a thin smile for Nakamura. “How hard could it be?”
Sam listened to the activity build in the Castle as the day progressed - feet drumming in the nearby stairwell, the sounds of doors near her bolthole being kicked in. She had curled up behind a rank of ancient file cabinets, stretched out comfortably on her bedroll with her supply of jerky, now almost gone, and a heavy black revolver close at hand.
Someone kicked in the room’s door an hour or so earlier, but the intruder cursed and left the darkened office without searching.
What little light crept in from the hallway was dwindling when the first impact shook the building, showering her with brittle acoustic tiles as the drop ceiling jerked. She scrambled to her feet, crouching in the dark, head cocked to the side. She heard yelling, some of it nearby, before another blast poured more dust down on her in a gritty shower.
The blasts kept coming, and now the yelling on her floor had been joined by the faint sound of screaming from somewhere below. She tucked a folded pillowcase inside her jacket pocket, checked the revolver a final time, and hid her hair under a ratty gray knit cap.
Sam moved out into the hall, turning left toward the stairs. She started downstairs at a run as the blasts gave way to gunfire; sporadic at first, but rapidly growing heavier. Smoke and dust curled up the stairwell to meet her as she passed the second floor landing.
She reached the ground floor and shoved her way through a knot of arguing guards blocking the hall. They paid her no attention.
The hallway split in a T, with the heaviest smoke and loudest gunfire from her right. She went left, sprinting toward the kitchens, her boots clattering on the tile floor.
She jogged across the vast empty hall where Creedy had hosted his dinner party. There was very little light, just a pair of oil lamps guttering near the doors to the kitchens. The tables and chairs were scattered now, and a body - dead or injured - lay curled on the low dais in a pool of drying blood, a crude shiv protruding from the figure’s ribs. She wondered what the deck of the Titanic had really been like. Somehow, she didn’t think the band really played a waltz while the liner nosed over into her long dive to the bottom.
Two men nearly ran her down at the doors in the hall’s far wall, sprinting from the kitchen with their arms full of food. She slowed and watched them go, but neither looked back and they disappeared into the thickening haze.
Sam pushed through the swinging doors, gun held at her side. The room was lit by a few candles and another oil lamp, and in the pools of radiance thrown about them she could see the graceless forms of the kitchen staff. Some had been shot, and others slaughtered with the knives and cleavers they’d used every day to make the garrison its meals. She picked up the lamp, carrying it from slack face to slack face, like a despairing Diogenes. There were only six dead. Marcia wasn’t among them. Her teeth hurt with a dull, remote throb, and she relaxed her jaw as much as she could.
When she turned to leave, she found herself staring at a broad-chested man in tattered hides. His eyes gleamed in the faint light, as did the barrel of the shotgun he cradled. He glanced at her, then at the corpses, then to the cupboards where they hung, doors flung wide.
“What the fuck, boy? There any food left?” He ignored Sam, who held her revolver out of sight behind her leg. “What’d you kill the stupid fucking cooks for?”
“They were dead already,” Sam said. She tried for a husky, low voice. It sounded ridiculous in her own ears, but the man didn’t seem to notice, and began to circle the room, rummaging in cupboards and savagely booting the limbs of the dead out of his way. He sat the shotgun on a counter, reaching up to pull down cans and jars the others had left. He had his back to Sam. She lifted the pistol, steadying the sights on the back of his head and thumbed the hammer back.
“This place is done. You should get some of this grub and get the fuck out,” the big man said. “Get a towel or something you can carry some food in. Everybody’s going bugshit, and the Greens have a goddamn cannon.” He pulled another armload of cans down, rapidly discarding those with visible rust. “Come on, there’s plenty here.” He glanced around, saw that the skinny kid who sounded funny had gone, and shrugged. He turned back to his work, sorting the good from the bad while the smoke grew thicker and the gunfire louder.
Nakamura stood with the two squads left to defend the camp, watching through binoculars as the recoilless rifle rounds began to tear a hole in the side of the building. It was difficult to see anything clearly. The sun had set hours before, and full dark had come. The bulk of the Larson building was dark.
The explosions continued, eating deeper into the side of the building, glass cascading as windows shattered. The weapon had set something inside ablaze, and Nakamura could see the gap in the wall glow an eerie orange in the roiling smoke.
As the last round hit, spewing dust and concrete in a cloud, Rastowich, leading five squads, began to pelt across the half-mile o the wall, their horses cresting over a low hill to Nakamura’s right, a dark blur moving with the sound of thunder.
Garrison guards in their high perches began to fire. Nakamura could see the strobe of their muzzle flash. The CDF sharpshooters returned fire, keeping their opponents’ heads down until the recoilless rifle could be brought to bear. The first sniper nest detonated in a storm of broken glass and shrapnel before the Colonel was halfway to the building, and the second followed suit soon after.
Some of the garrison gathered above the wall-breach on the second floor, smashing the windows and trying to shoot at the approaching troops, but the engineers responded with a pair of rounds before they could fire effectively. The offices where the defenders had gathered were transformed to smoldering collections of shattered workstations and bleeding men in the space of twenty seconds.
The charge reached the gap and firing began to swell as men, just silhouettes against the glow, rushed into the Larson Facility.
Nakamura lowered the binoculars and waited, legs slightly spread, thumbs hooked behind his belt buckle.
Colonel Rastowich and his troops worked their way from room to room, each squad moving as a unit, sweeping through the defenders. It wasn’t a fight, it was a slaughter; trained troops with assault rifles against brigands with weapons in every state of repair.
“There’s no one in charge,” Rastowich observed during a lull, talking to a tall, lanky sergeant named Ortega. Three of the squad watched intersecting corridors while the rest piled tattered corpses behind a riddled sandbag barricade. They had circled through much of the ground floor, finding defenders in confused knots around prepared strongpoints, all of which had been set up to guard the doors. They were little help in defending against an assault from inside.
“No, Colonel, I don’t think there is,” Ortega agreed, spitting a grey mix of saliva and dust. “There’s lots of them, but they’re mostly useless and confused.”
That confusion had led to dozens of the bandits simply surrendering, and the central courtyard had become a temporary holding area, watched over by a single squad.
“Well, let’s keep movi
ng,” Rastowich said, settling a bandana across his nose and mouth. “We’ve got a lot of building to get through.”
Sam moved through the smoke, working cautiously back toward the gunfire, peering around each corner before committing to it. After what felt to her like far too many peeks, her forehead itching with an anticipated bullet during each, she peered around the paint-scabbed concrete of a corridor corner and found herself looking at two ready CDF troopers, rifles in the firing position. She ducked back as both barrels swung to her head, then rooted in her jacket, pulling out the dirty pillowcase. She stuck it around the corner, her arm aching with the imagined impacts of bullets, and waved it.
“Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed!” She yelled, sliding the pistol around the corner with her foot. She held her breath and waited for a reply. There was some muttering before a voice called out.
“Step around the corner, slow, and keep your hands where I can see them.”
Sam stepped around the corner, hands up at shoulder height. Keeping clear of the revolver, she walked forward slowly. The two soldiers had been joined by a third, and their three rifles tracked her steadily. When she was a few yards away, one of them started to speak, but Sam interrupted.
“I have important information for Colonel Rastowich. The code is Ahab. Please take me, or that code, to him immediately.”
The nearest soldier blinked. He was young, with a flushed face and wide eyes.
“You have to be fucking kidding, get down on the floor or I’ll put a bullet in you,” he said.
“Please take me to your commanding officer, immediately, soldier,” Sam said.
“Get on the ground, bitch, or I’m going to-”
The third man straightened. Sam saw he had a lieutenant’s bar stenciled on his helmet.
“Stand down, Twitch,” he said. He stepped forward, rifle ready but the barrel lowered, eyes studying Sam through her two weeks’ worth of accumulated dirt.
“Name the commander again,” he said.
“Colonel Rastowich. He’s from Boston. He has two sons, his wife is dead, and his aide is Captain Nakamura.” Sam allowed herself a tired smile. “He likes cigars and has a weakness for pecans.”
The Lieutenant studied her for a heartbeat, then gestured for her to come forward.
“Twitch - that’s private Coffey, here - will take you to the command post.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
The Lieutenant turned to Coffey.
“Shoot her if she does anything stupid, but be sure, right?”
“Yes sir.”
Rastowich and his squad had made their way into the basement at about the same time that the remaining garrison forces did. The Colonel pulled his men back and watched from the shadows of one of the mechanical rooms while twenty or thirty men, some wounded, some unarmed, winched the metal doors of the old garage open. They chased down those horses that would be caught; many were panicked by the explosions, and some ran pell-mell when the gates opened. The CDF men saw brief scuffles break out over mounts when the quickest had gone, leaving more men than horses.
“We could take them easily, sir,” Ortega growled. Rastowich shook his head.
“Let them run. Waste of ammunition,” the Colonel said. He wrinkled his lip in distaste. “Once the cowards clear out, we’ll close that door. I want to check the lower levels after that.”
Ortega nodded, turning to scan his men where they crouched in the shadows among a rusting Gordian knot of pipes and meters. He turned away, then back, squinting. The Sergeant moved quietly to one of the meters and tapped it with a knuckle. He grunted when the needle quivered but stayed at the midpoint of its dial. He returned to the Colonel’s side.
Rastowich was watching the last of the garrison, a trio of wounded men on foot, leave the basement.
“Sir, we should let the engineers know that there might be-”
“Later, Sergeant, let’s go.”
“Yes, sir,” Ortega said.
Rastowich found the access doors to the subbasement chained and padlocked. He fumed silently while Ortega and another soldier left to scavenge something to open the doors with. They returned with a five-foot section of heavy steel L-frame.
“Borrowed it off an old truck in the garage bay, sir,” Ortega reported, while two burly squaddies worked the bar’s end into a tight loop of chain and began to twist. The bar slipped and the pair dropped it, one sucking his bleeding knuckles as the bar belled on the concrete floor.
Ortega sighed and raised his voice to a gravel-filled growl.
“That chain is quarter-inch welded steel. The door handles are fifty years old and held on with three or four potmetal bolts.”
“Oh,” muttered the one with the bleeding hand. “Right, Sarge, on it.”
The handles came free under the twisting with sharp snaps as old bolts sheared. Ortega had the men remove both. Once they were off, he crouched before the doors, holding a lantern in one hand and a pair of needle nosed pliers in the other. After a brief spate of hammering and fishing with the pliers, Ortega stood.
“Doors should open now, sir,” he said.
Rastowich approached, laying his hands on the bubbled, peeling paint of the doors and giving them a shove. They swayed but wouldn’t separate. He stepped back and kicked out with the sole of his boot, and the doors swung open, thumping loudly off the walls. The stairwell beyond was dark, but the lamplight allowed the colonel to read the legend painted on the wall in neatly stenciled letters, now gnawed at the edges by time:
Larson Homeland Security Facility - Project Augur, records storage. Authorized personnel only beyond this point.
“This is it,” Rastowich said, eyes glinting. “What we did upstairs made this corner of the west safer, but this. This is where we make the world better.” He laughed. “Are any of you big readers?”
A runner arrived with a tiny amber-colored kerosene lantern for light. He carried a handful of messages from Nakamura at the command post, and a report that the fires upstairs were dying out. Rastowich thumbed through the stack, scanned the casualty list, and pocketed the other reports unread.
“We’ve got three dead and five injured, which is astonishingly good news,” he said, thinking aloud. “That’s going to leave us four full squads, and we have close to three dozen prisoners, the last I heard.” He ran a thumb along his moustache and stared at the messenger. “Get word to Lieutenant Boroughs; tell him that his squad is to move the prisoners to a secure ground floor room for tonight. We’ll sort the rest out, tomorrow.”
The runner saluted and trotted off.
The colonel led his squad from the stair head, down a double flight, to a musty hallway crowded with shelving and trash. Mixed in among the boxes of old Homeland Security dross were books. Rastowich stopped and opened several, scanning their flyleaves and smiling.
Ten yards down the corridor it branched left and right. Red steel doors with inset panes of wire-reinforced glass stood another fifteen yard off in both directions. Someone had cleared the trash at the foot of the door to the left, and Rastowich turned and walked to it.
“Give me that light, Sergeant,” he said. He pressed his face to the narrow slit of glass in the door, a hand span wide and twenty inches tall. Holding the lantern above his head, enough light spilled through to illuminate the end of a tall rack of shelving filled with rank upon rank of books: Books of every size and shape.
The Colonel tried the door’s brushed steel knob. It turned, and he pushed with no effect.
“Hinges on this side, Sir,” Ortega drawled from behind Rastowich.
Though Rastowich felt the comedy took the edge off a historic moment, he took a breath and pulled the door open.
“Gentlemen, I give you the Library of Congress.”
With the door open, the lamplight revealed additional rows of shelves fading into the shadows. Rastowich felt his heart pounding.
Yes! He exulted silently. He thought he might cry. So much is saved, right here.
The door had ope
ned soundlessly, but there was a ringing noise as something small and metallic bounced on the concrete floor. Rastowich looked down. A pair of wire rings with cotter pins attached lay on the floor at his feet, connected to the door’s inner handle by fine strands of braided wire.
The Colonel leaned forward and peered into the room, twisting his head to the left. Ortega stepped up and looked over his shoulder. A white hundred-pound propane tank stood there, its top level with his eyes. Someone had stacked several plastic jugs about its base, each full of a dark liquid. Two dark metal eggs were wired to the tank.
“Asshole,” Ortega said.
Creedy would have been thrilled. He’d simply wanted to kill whoever had forced him to the unpleasant necessity of moving. He hadn’t known about the slow leakage of natural gas into the drainage system beneath the subbasement, where it lay, heavier than air and only slowly sublimating off as fresh leaks kept the catch basins full. He was unaware, too, of the still pressurized system, linked to deep tanks buried underground beyond the walls, meant to power the facility in the case of a devastating terrorist attack. The system, terrorist proof or not, had died as easily as anything else with its controlling computers fried, but the pipes, the tanks and the gas were still there.
The Larson facility swelled, its walls heaving outward on the surface of an orange fireball. The concrete skin of the building fragmented, pieces the size of automobiles flying for hundreds of feet. Sections of roof seemed to hover mystically in the air before shattering.
Captain Nakamura, who had turned to meet a young soldier escorting a raggedly clad woman, slammed to the ground. Lying there, mouth agape, he watched a steel beam two stories tall flip end over end against the glare of the fireball. It plunged like a spear into the soil and stood, a mute, smoking obelisk, a hundred yards from the facility. The fireball rolled up into an incandescent mushroom that towered over everything, faded to red, and was gone. The thunder of its voice echoed off the hills and dunes, and then it too was gone. Blinded by the glare, the Captain could only hear the crackle of fire and the screams of the survivors as a blizzard of burning paper began to rain down. He heard someone bellowing orders. It took him a minute to recognize his own voice.