by Shawn Davis
Cassandra and Nick checked into separate suites and spent the early evening trying to relax in their luxurious accommodations. They didn’t make contact due to their knowledge of hidden video surveillance cameras placed in every building in the capitol city. The rumor was there was a security surveillance room for every ordinary room on the island. Senators and bodyguards didn’t fraternize, so they didn’t want to do anything that would draw attention. Watson spent an hour trying to relax in her luxury suite’s Jacuzzi, while Fahey spent his free time in his room doing stretching exercises, sit-ups, and push-ups.
An anti-grav limousine picked up the Senator and her bodyguard at 7 PM for the Senator’s 7:30 meeting with the President’s Chief of Staff at the White House. The limo arrived at the White House at 7:10 PM. A ring of security guards wearing body armor surrounded Watson and Fahey, like a pack of wolves, as they stepped out of the passenger compartment.
“Good evening, Senator,” a middle aged guard said, cheerfully, as he helped her out of the compartment.
The guards escorted them through a gate with a small guardhouse on either side of it manned by security personnel with machine guns. They walked down a long, narrow path, which traveled along the edge of the White House lawn, until they reached a side entrance. The guards stood outside in the cold night air while the Senator and her bodyguard entered a spacious lobby decorated with antique furnishings.
Watson took in the sight of ornate gold chandeliers suspended from the ceiling as they walked toward a desk at the far side of the lobby. It was like a reception desk found at any expensive hotel. They were not surprised to find a pair of suited guards sitting there to greet them as they approached.
“Hello, Senator Keating. The Chief of Staff is ready to see you in his office,” one of the guards said as he pressed a switch on his security console and a large metal door next to the desk swung open.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to wait in the lobby until she returns,” the other guard said as he stood from his cushioned seat and pointed to the Senator’s bodyguard. “You’re welcome to wait over there until she returns,” he added, pointing to a row of comfortable-looking antique couches lined up along the wall.
“Sure, I know the drill,” Fahey said, smiling and taking a seat on one of the couches.
The first guard scrutinized the Senator’s face and checked it against a picture of her on his computer screen as she walked toward the doorway. Cassandra passed through a metal detector and entered a long corridor with faded Civil War paintings depicting graphic scenes of battle on the walls. A video surveillance camera tracked her movement. As she walked, she glanced at the paintings of blue and gray uniformed men firing ancient rifles and cannons at each other.
Watson reached an intersection with another wider corridor and took a right toward the Chief of Staff’s office. She knew that her every movement was being monitored by guards in hidden security rooms. This realization did not help her to relax as she approached the office. The door was open and she found the Chief of Staff sitting at his desk.
“Good afternoon, Senator. I trust you’ve had a pleasant stay in the capitol so far?” the short, gray-haired, middle-aged man asked as he stood and walked toward her with an outstretched hand.
The pseudo-Senator shut the door tactfully and walked toward the Chief of Staff. She smiled, shook his hand, and sat down in an antique chair on the side of the desk closest to the door. The Chief of Staff returned to his black-leather, high-backed office chair on the other side of the desk. He folded his hands on the desk and smiled at Cassandra.
“So what can I do for you today, Senator?”
“Oh, just the usual,” Cassandra replied, smiling, as she reached into her black leather purse.
Her hand came out of the purse holding a black plastic rectangle, which resembled one of the old electric stun guns of the late twentieth century. Cassandra pressed a switch on the side of the device and fired a plastic needle into the man’s neck before his face could register surprise. The Chief of Staff grasped at the five-inch dart penetrating his throat. He tried to use his hands to block a miniature geyser of blood spurting from his neck. Blood oozed through his fingers like red syrup as he tried to speak and all that came out was a sickening gurgle. A blood pool formed on the edge of the desk and dripped over the side like a spilled glass of wine.
Watson stood suddenly from her chair and ran toward the right-hand wall. She knocked a picture aside and pushed at a section of the wall. It gave way to a small video surveillance room about the size of a walk-in closet where two security officers sat staring in mute shock at a pair of television monitors showing the Chief of Staff slumped over his desk in a puddle of blood.
The closest guard reached for his gun, but she shot him in the throat with a plastic dart before he could draw it. The second guard stood from his chair and pulled out his gun as two needles struck him in the face. He fell back into the wall, clutching futilely at his punctured forehead.
Cassandra entered the office, checked the monitors, and ran back to the chair where she left her purse. She pulled a small package out of the purse, set the timer, and ran back to the security office. She planted the package under the security console and ran back to the office as the timer on the explosives clicked back from the ten minute mark. She returned the dart gun to her purse and paused to compose herself.
Despite an adrenaline surge, Cassandra forced herself to assume an icy demeanor and stare calmly at a portrait of George Washington. George’s impassive face seemed to be saying, So you killed the Chief of Staff? No big deal. Now what are you going to do?
Cassandra picked up her purse and headed for the door. She tried to ignore the sweat developing on her forehead as she walked briskly down the hallway, attempting to appear professional and unconcerned. She took a left into the next corridor and quickened her pace when she spotted the lobby door on the opposite side.
Cassandra halted when she saw the door swing open. Her instincts took over as the lobby guards entered the corridor carrying hand-held machine guns. She sprinted around the corner before the guards could lift their weapons. The wall behind her was ripped apart by bullets as she turned into the next corridor.
How did they know so fast? Cassandra thought as she sprinted down the corridor.
According to the captured floor plans she studied, the adjacent surveillance room was the only one monitoring the Chief of Staff’s office in order to ensure privacy for top-level meetings. That was why the target was chosen in the first place. With the guards in the surveillance room dead, there should have been no one left to sound the alarm.
But somehow they knew!
Cassandra ducked into a side corridor and pulled the dart gun from her purse. She re-loaded it and dropped the purse on the floor, waiting around the corner with weapon in hand.
She heard footsteps in the hallway, so she turned the corner and dropped to the floor, firing a barrage of plastic darts. She struck the foremost guard twice in the face and ducked around the corner as the remaining guard opened fire. Metallic thunder resounded in the confines of the corridor as the guard advanced, firing. When she heard the firing cease, she turned the corner and fired her last two darts into his neck. She ran forward and grabbed the machine gun out of his hands as he slumped to the floor.
Cassandra heard a crashing sound to her right and turned to see a heavily armored tactical team running down a side corridor toward her. She fired her captured machine gun around the corner at the soldiers as they advanced. The bullets only dented their body armor and knocked a few of them down. Most of them continued advancing.
She ducked around the corner, narrowly avoiding a barrage from their automatic rifles. When she turned the corner to fire again, a hail of bullets struck her. Cassandra fired her captured machine gun at the advancing attackers as she collapsed into a puddle of blood on the red carpeted floor.
********
“Hey, Peter, you okay, or what? You look like you’re in a trance!” Hen
ry shouted to his friend as the parade of protesters continued to march by unabated.
“I’m okay, let’s get going,” Peter replied as he cleared away memories from his past and focused on his friend’s face.
“Hey, check that out,” Billy said, pointing to a sleek, black, gleaming anti-grav limousine cruising twenty feet above the road on a nearby side street.
The limo halted at the edge of the parade and turned on its left blinker, trying to edge out into the half-lane that was not occupied by the marching protesters.
“What’s a limo doing in this hole-in-the-wall neighborhood?” Henry asked.
“And what’s he doing trying to join the parade?” Billy added.
“Now this parade is getting interesting,” Henry said, stepping from the sidewalk onto the street and standing directly beneath the flight trajectory of the limo to get a better view.
Henry was stunned when the limo came to an abrupt stop directly above him. He stepped out from under it and stared up at its tinted windows. Surprisingly, the back passenger window rolled down, revealing the smiling face of a beautiful African-American woman. Her ears and neck glittered with gold jewelry.
“I must be dreaming,” Henry said, gazing up at her like an infatuated schoolboy.
“Hey, we have room for one more!” the woman shouted down at Henry without losing her perpetual smile.
Peter thought she looked like an actress on a television commercial with her sculpted black hair and attractive face overdone with make-up. The woman opened the door as the vehicle lowered to the ground. When the limo reached ground level, she stepped out, revealing a stunning figure in a tight black evening dress. She continued to smile her dazzling commercial grin.
Billy stood on the sidewalk with his eyes wide and mouth gaped open. Peter thought he looked like a trout that had just been hooked. Peter watched Henry scan the woman’s figure and peer into the interior of the limo where the silhouettes of two other women were sitting in the back. It looked like they were passing around a bottle of champagne and pouring it into sparkling crystal glasses.
“Come on, what are you waiting for?” the tall black woman asked, as she grabbed Henry by the arm and dragged him toward the open door.
Peter felt a sudden surge of apprehension and ran to his friend’s side. He grabbed Henry’s free arm and whispered into his ear.
“Hey, Henry, they’re either prostitutes or drug dealers! I don’t think you should go!”
“What? Are you crazy? A man waits a lifetime to party with a bunch of models in a limousine!” Henry replied, gesturing toward the women in the limo’s interior. “This is my lucky night! I’ll see you at work tomorrow, Pete!” Henry forcefully pulled his arm out of Peter’s grasp. “And besides, you know what a cautious guy I am,” he added, patting his automatic pistol in the hidden shoulder-holster beneath his jacket.
Henry glanced back at Peter and Billy, flashing them a wide grin as he entered the back of the limo with the woman. Glaring at Peter, the woman’s commercial smile transformed into a menacing frown. Henry was oblivious to her change in mood as the women passed him the champagne bottle with an accompanying glass.
The woman continued to glare at Peter as she reached over Henry’s lap to push a switch, rolling up the tinted windows. Peter found himself staring at darkened glass as the limousine pulled away from the curb and lifted steadily off the street until it was hovering twenty feet above the heads of the crowd. The limo continued to travel in the right lane toward the front of the parade at a leisurely fifteen miles per hour. Peter and Billy watched it go in mute shock.
“Hey, man, how weird was that?” Billy asked. “I feel like our friend, Henry, just stepped into one of those really good beer commercials! Those women were gorgeous! Why couldn’t they make room for one more person?”
Peter glanced, uneasily, at his friend.
“I have a bad feeling about this, Billy. What’s a limo like that doing at a protest rally?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they happened to be in the neighborhood when the parade started going by. They stopped to check out the spectacle. Now, they’re probably heading toward the Club District to do some partying,” Billy suggested, innocently.
Peter thought his face looked more boyish than ever in the luminescent glow of the nearby streetlights.
Peter ruminated for a moment as he watched the limousine pull farther away over the heads of the protesters. Some sort of bizarre sixth sense was telling him that something was wrong and he couldn’t shake the feeling of doom that had suddenly overcome him.
Peter turned away from his friend and began pushing his way past the spectators on the sidewalk, as he moved in the direction of the limousine. He found a clear strip of sidewalk and began sprinting after it.
“Hey, where are you going? Wait up!” Billy shouted as he pushed his way past some spectators and ran after his friend.
Peter sprinted down the sidewalk as if his life depended on it, dodging groups of spectators as he encountered them. Billy followed for a short while and then gave up, coughing. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up.
After thirty seconds of sprinting, Peter reached the vanguard of the parade at the same time as the limo. He slowed his pace and began walking alongside the marchers at the forefront as the limo drove past them and continued down the street. Halfway down the block, the limousine stopped and began a smooth, mid-air, one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. It remained stationary, hovering next to the left-hand sidewalk as the front line of protestors approached it from a hundred feet away.
“What’s that limo doing?” Peter whispered as he joined the protesters at the edge of the parade as they marched toward the hovering limousine.
A cold shiver crawled slowly up his spine like an icy-legged spider, as he observed the tinted back window of the limousine slide open. He spotted a gleam from a metal object in the limo’s interior and began to back away from the crowd.
Metallic thunder blasted through the air like a sudden storm as white sparks exploded from the open window of the limousine. Peter dove into a group of spectators on the sidewalk to avoid a bullet storm ripping into the street. His body smashed into the body of another spectator, taking them both down. Hitting the ground, he instinctively covered his head.
Peter glanced up to see the crowd of protestors at the front of the parade being torn apart by machine gun fire. Bloody red bullet-holes appeared like black magic in convulsing bodies. Glancing left toward the limousine, he saw machine gun lightning flashing from the back window. He could barely make out the shadowy silhouette of a person firing from the interior. The firing seemed to last for hours as the panicked crowd screamed with pain and fear, rushing to escape the onslaught. Peter watched them get cut down like wheat by a reaper’s scythe.
Peter was too stunned to think clearly as he watched the limo’s back door suddenly fly open and a human silhouette drop to the street from the rear compartment. The firing ceased as the limo initiated another smooth 180-degree turn until it was facing the opposite direction.
The jet engines roared like thunder as the limo raced down the street at top speed. A lone human silhouette remained lying on the street in its wake, crumpled in the road in front of the bloody massacre. Peter stared in horror at the blood-spattered bodies stretched across the road like piles of human debris.
The remaining protesters broke apart and ran screaming in panic in all directions. Peter got to his feet when he realized he was going to get trampled in the mad stampede. He ran over to the closest run-down apartment building and ducked into the adjacent alleyway, watching the protestors scrambling madly in various directions like a herd of gazelles being attacked by a rampaging lion.
When he realized most of the spectators had scrambled for cover in nearby doorways and alleyways, Peter stepped cautiously out from his place of cover and moved toward the slaughtered bodies. He stopped next to the body of the man who Ryder had identified earlier as the famous Civil Rights Activist, Martin Prince.
Glancing down at the man’s body, Peter noticed he was holding a small black metallic object about the size of a wallet. He thought it was strange that Prince would still be fiercely clutching an object in his hand after being shot half-a-dozen times. Reaching down, he pulled the object from Prince’s bloody grasp.
Peter wiped the blood from it with the sleeve of his jacket and discovered it was a pocket computer. He stared at the luminous numbers and letters flashing across the small computer screen. He instinctively shoved the mini-computer into his front jacket pocket.
Peter turned away from the human carnage on the street and gazed toward the lone figure he saw fall from the limo earlier. His eyes widened when he saw the figure struggling to rise from the pavement.
Chapter 7
Virtual-world
Campion leaned back in her plush office chair on the fiftieth floor of the Hovercrafts International downtown office building, blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling. As usual, her polished shoes rested comfortably on the mahogany desktop.
If everything went according to plan, her operative was making her escape from the capitol city right now. Any second now the White House would be reduced to smoke and rubble.
Jane picked up a television remote with her free hand and switched on the small 3D television perched on the edge of her desk. She switched it to mute. She watched the image of a young newscaster mouthing words at the camera. Turning away, she took another drag off her cigarette. She inhaled, blew another smoke ring toward the ceiling, and closed her eyes.
She had spent most of the day worrying about the mission. They hadn’t hit a high-profile government target in a while. They needed this. They had to do something big to inspire people in the organization. Otherwise, they might lose interest in the cause and give up. She snuffed her cigarette out in the ashtray and looked at the screen again. A different newscaster was mouthing words at the camera.