“Hot damn!”
Tim swung his feet down from his console and rotated his shoulders as if to loosen them. Then he looked up at the set of displays that covered the front wall. On the central one, a map of the United States appeared, but a map that showed not highways or state boundaries but the unbounded filaments of the national telecommunications system. Grinning from ear to ear, the programmer lit up several hubs on the map in lurid red. A second later, traceries of equally bright green began to flash and pulse like lightning.
“Very Christmassy, Tim,” Sara said. “Can you describe for the general what you’re doing?”
“I’m moving financial resources, General. Some of them are going into my personal coffers—think of it as a commission. But a lot of it is going to where I think it would be better spent.”
“Going from where?” Howard demanded. “What company or companies are you attacking?”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll hear about it in the news, dude. And given the twenty-four-hour news cycle, I bet you’ll hear about it pretty quick. Hey, you can blame the same cyberterrorists that you blamed for the ‘Battle for Olympus.’ Did you tell the president that you’d taken care of that?”
“Oh, no, Timmy,” said Sara, her voice cool and sweet. “He hasn’t told Madam President a damn thing. But he needs to. Don’t you, General Howard?”
“I don’t think you understand, Ms. Crowell—”
“I don’t think you understand, General Howard. If you don’t put us in touch with the POTUS, we’re going to continue to pull things apart. And we’re going to figure out how to get in contact with her ourselves.”
The man laughed. He actually laughed. “I’m sure you and your friends are clever enough to figure out how to contact the president, but I doubt you’ll be able to convince her that you’re not just some nutcase who’s not even living in the real world. Remember, all this stuff you do is completely unknown in the White House.”
“Well, it won’t be for long, now will it?” Sara broke the connection kinetically, drawing a finger across her throat in a gesture that graphically relayed her contempt for the man she had cut off. She swung around and glared at Tim. “If he tries to reestablish communications, just ignore him. He clearly needs to stew for a while. Mike, how long is your mental reach?”
“How long do you need it to be?”
“Can you reach D.C.?”
Mike considered that. “If I have a line of sight, yeah.”
She moved to the console he was seated at and perched on the edge of it. “Okay, so let’s say I can isolate surveillance cameras in target areas—show you what I’d like you to manipulate.”
“If I can see it, I can work it.”
“You seem pretty sure of yourself, Micky,” Tim said, pivoting in his chair.
“I am, Timmy. What’s the target?” he asked Sara.
“Let me find one for you,” she said, and turned to look at their windows on the world. “And Timmy, I’d like you to start thinking of some interesting viruses.”
Matt Streegman stared at the man sitting across from him in his office at Forward Kinetics with a riot of thoughts having a melee in his head. What finally came out of his mouth was, “Why didn’t you ask me this before?”
General Howard’s graying brows lowered in obvious displeasure. Which was saying a lot since they had been set in a perpetual scowl since Chuck and his team had bolted. Matt was surprised the man hadn’t keeled over of a heart attack by now and was sure his stomach lining must have been eaten through.
“I’m asking now,” the officer said. “Help me understand these—these people. How do I communicate with them? How do I control what they do?”
“They’re not controllable. No, wait. Let me be very specific: you can’t control them because they will never give you the opportunity. They don’t trust you. They no longer need to trust you. The time for trying to understand them was back before you tried to force them to do your bidding. You treated them as if they were machines that you just had to understand well enough to make use of. Or even as soldiers that could be ordered about and wouldn’t question your authority. Either way, they were never human beings to you.”
“Were they human beings to you, Streegman? Weren’t they just a product?”
Matt had to acknowledge that there was some truth to that, sad as that made him feel. “Touché. Although, to be fair to myself, I’d have to say I thought of them as . . . students or—”
“Specimens?”
“Proofs of concept. They were never intended to be the product, General. I wasn’t selling them. I was selling potential. I was using them only to show you what your own people could achieve. You’re the one who changed the game.”
“No, your lame-brained partner did that when he took his crew and bolted.”
Matt shook his head and sat back in his office chair. “Look, Leighton, you can argue all day about causality. But in the real world, you’d lose that argument. I understand why you took some of the security precautions you did, but you went to lengths you didn’t have to and, more to the point, shouldn’t have gone to. Replacing our grounds crew with agents? Firing our administrative staff? Bugging our offices, our homes? Putting tracers on our vehicles? You started treating us like we were . . . dangerous.”
Howard’s broad face reddened. “Dammit, Streegman, they are dangerous. You made them that.”
“No, General. Again, you’re not seeing the whole picture. You made them dangerous. You cut them off from the real world and tried to intimidate them. When that failed, you tried to destroy them. If I’d had any idea what sort of outfit Deep Shield really was going in, I’d never have gotten into bed with you in the first place. But I was drunk on my own sense of accomplishment. And I was greedy and stupid. Chuck was right to do what he did. It was the only thing he could have done.”
“This debate,” Howard said, rising from the side chair across from Matt’s desk, “is getting us nowhere. We need to get those people out of that facility and we need to do it immediately. Do you know what Sara Crowell just demanded of me?”
Matt shrugged.
“She demanded that I get her in touch with President Ellis.”
Matt chuckled. “She demanded that you out yourself, you mean. That you humiliate yourself and probably get yourself arrested. I’m willing to bet that Sara finds your behavior treasonous and she’s thinking the POTUS just might agree with her about that.”
“I can’t ‘out’ myself, as you put it.”
“You mean you won’t. How highly you must think of yourself, Leighton, to imagine that your reputation, even your life, is more important than the lives already lost through your . . . patent evil. More important than the lives that potentially could be lost. More important than a full-throated revolt that devastates this nation’s economy and infrastructure.”
Howard’s lip curled. “I never took you for a bleeding-heart liberal.”
“Oh, cut the crap, Leighton. I never took you for a coward. But that’s what you are—a greedy, self-absorbed coward. Hiding behind your soldiers and your well-funded ‘programs’ and the people who are bankrolling them. Do you think those people are going to continue to support you when you show up on the evening news?”
“Where the hell do you get off calling me—”
Matt stood, slamming his hands down on the top of his desk. “I can call you a greedy, self-absorbed coward because it takes one to know one! Now, if you really want my advice about how to handle the Zetas, do what they want. Go to the president and explain to her what’s happened. You can blame me, if you want. I’ll be your mad scientist—or mad mathematician—whatever. Just do it before more people get hurt.”
Howard didn’t reply. He fixed Matt with a look that would have been lethal if Howard himself were a Zeta, and strode out of Matt’s office. Mere minutes later, Matt heard the chopper lift off from the parking lot and collapsed back into his chair. He was like Howard in other ways, too, he mused. He was every bit as hoist by hi
s own petard.
“I have the perfect target.” Sara sat down next to Mike at the console he’d adopted as his station in the ops theater and at which he had been trying to figure out how to run a trace on his family. That wasn’t really his forte—working with electronic signals and networks—but he hadn’t wanted to ask Tim or Sara to do it. They were both occupied elsewhere.
The central display at the head of the room switched from its view of the Deep Shield installation at the foot of the mountain to a vastly different and very familiar scene. The Washington Monument, dominating its end of the National Mall. The morning sun illuminated the construction equipment and scaffolding that surrounded it. Two huge cranes stood like twin sentinels to either side of the obelisk. There was a crowd gathering on the grass and paths around the structure and news trucks had congregated along the closest curbsides.
“What’s going on there?” Mike asked.
“The upper stories of the monument have gotten a fresh cladding of white marble and the capstone is being replaced with one covered in gold, if you can believe it.” Sara gestured with one hand and the view moved closer to the base of the building. “See? That’s it there in that heavy-duty sling. Today at noon, it’s supposed to be lifted to the top of the structure by one of those cranes and nudged lovingly into place, while officials sing George Washington’s praises and mouth the wrong words to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”
Mike sat up straighter. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to start the festivities a little early.”
“But . . . all those people. If I screw up, somebody could get hurt.”
Sara rested a hand on his shoulder. “Mike, you worry too much. I’ll call Howard, tell him to keep an eye on the proceedings at the monument. He’ll move people out fast, I’ll bet.”
“How? You keep saying he’s got no authority—”
“But he does have connections. Trust me, Mike.”
He was getting tired of people saying that to him. His trust had gotten him locked inside this mountain with these two. Yet he took a deep breath and said, “Okay. What do you want me to do?”
“Work the capstone’s crane. Give that archaic status symbol a nice little crown.”
Mike frowned at the crane, let it fill his vision, then his thoughts. He felt its gears and drivers and mechanisms. He tasted the vinyl air in the cab and smelled the steel and lubricant. “Okay. Sure. I can do that.”
“Great.” Sara stood and the communications channel to Deep Shield crackled to life.
“I need to talk to Howard,” she told whoever was minding the store.
“He’s on his way in.”
“Put me through to his cell phone. I know you can,” she added when the guy started to protest. “Don’t stall me, soldier.”
“Just a moment.”
In mere seconds, Howard’s voice came across the connection. Mike imagined he heard relief in it. He was sure that wasn’t going to last.
“Ms. Crowell. I have a proposal to make.”
“Really? Does it involve me talking to the POTUS?”
“It involves you getting to keep the mountain. Or leave it if you’d rather. You may go wherever you like in the world. Anywhere. We won’t follow you. We won’t approach you. We won’t attack you. Just go wherever you would like to go and do whatever you would like to do.”
“What we would like to do, General, is put an end to war. That means putting an end to your asinine plotting and manipulations of people’s lives. So, here’s my counterproposal. You get me in touch with President Ellis and you confess your part in this and the parts played by any associates or aiders and abettors you have in Washington, and then you disappear. We won’t follow you. We won’t approach you. We won’t attack you. Same deal you offered us.”
“That’s unacceptable.”
Sara glanced from Mike to Tim, who had taken a break from whatever he was doing to monitor the interaction. “How did I know you were going to say that? General Howard, as you may be aware, there is a special ceremony taking place at the Washington Monument today. I recommend that, when you get back to your base, you grab a TV or surveillance feed of the area around the monument. I’ll supply one if you can’t get it.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. “What are you planning? What do you think you can do—?”
“Pretty much whatever we want. Whenever we want.”
“I’m arriving at the base now. Let me—I don’t—” He cut off from his end.
“Wow,” said Tim, winding a lock of his riotously curly hair around one finger. “You really rattled the guy. I think he’s about to implode.”
“We’ll see.”
“How long are you going to wait?” Mike asked.
Sara made a face. “He just got there. Give him five to assess the situation. Another five to contact someone in Washington. Maybe ten to actually get something to happen.”
“Get what to happen?” asked Tim.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Sara said. “If we see it.”
Roughly fifteen minutes later, something changed in the feed they were watching. Police cars appeared at the periphery of the camera’s eye, and officers began to move into the crowd, directing people away from the base of the monument. Then the view leapt to what was apparently a television feed. A reporter, microphone in hand, waved her crew back, glancing over her shoulder at the monument and its attendant cranes.
“I don’t know,” she mouthed. She said more, but it was lost on Mike.
Sara made a frustrated sound and audio kicked in.
The reporter tapped her earpiece. “They’re just telling us to fall back to the truck. Maybe a terrorist threat? I don’t know. Back up. Back up. But keep filming.”
“Now, Mike,” said Sara softly.
Mike already had the feel of the crane. He’d worked one like it before. Knew it. It fit like a glove. He willed the engine to life. The operator—who could be seen in the TV camera’s view standing on the crane’s treads—reacted by climbing into the cab. Mike ignored him. There was nothing the man could do. Ultimately, even turning off the engine wouldn’t stop Mike; it could only slow him down a little. He worked the controls with ease, lifting, turning. He grunted as he felt some pushback. It was the operator, trying to stop the crane. The guy gave up after several tries and left the cab. He scrambled down from the huge tank treads and ran toward the camera, joined by a group of his fellows who had been on or near the scaffolding.
By the time Mike had lifted the capstone clear of the ground, the area around the base of the monument had cleared. Mike watched the progress of the capstone in its sling, rising toward the apex of the structure it was designed to top. Sunlight flashed like fire from the gold overlay. It was like a phoenix, Mike thought. It was a symbol of American greatness and it would help them wrest power out of the shadows and restore it to the democratically elected leaders—and to the electorate itself. To people like him, like his family. Folks who gain a skill, get a job, and contribute. People who have but one ambition, to create and maintain a home for their family. The people who are always pawns on the chessboard and invariably hurt when people like Howard meet and plan nefarious schemes in dark, smoky rooms.
No more.
Mike had gotten the capstone within twenty feet of its resting place when Sara bent and spoke into his ear. “Break the damn thing.”
What broke was Mike’s attention. He let go of the crane and the slow rise of the capstone stopped. The sudden change caused it to swing and tremble at the end of its thick cables.
“Break—what?”
“The damned obelisk. Break it. Bash it in with the capstone.” Sara’s eyes were bright with zeal, and there was a fine dew of perspiration on her lip and forehead.
“You go, girl!” whooped Tim.
Mike ignored him. “Sara, do you realize what you’re asking me to do? This thing has been standing since the nineteenth century. It’s a symbol of this country’s founding
and first president. You’re an architect, for God’s sake. How can you—”
She grasped his shoulder. Hard. “It’s become a symbol of power, Mike. The power of the privileged over the disenfranchised. Of the strong over the weak. Of male dominance over everyone else. We need to break it. Don’t you see? We need to force Howard’s hand. If we make this public of a display, there’s no way he can keep his damned secrets.”
Mike glanced at the screen.
No more. No more secrets.
He saw that, since the crane had stopped moving, the construction workers and some police officers were making their way across the grass back toward the monument. He gritted his teeth, put his mind back to the task, and pivoted the crane to the left so that the capstone swung out over the approaching men and women.
Several of the ancillary displays in the operations room had come online now. They showed a close-up on the driverless cab of the crane, the empty scaffolding behind it, and stunning footage of the gleaming capstone swinging at the end of its tether.
Like a priest’s censer during Mass, Mike thought. A prayer sprang to his thoughts: Please, God, let no one be hurt.
Mike reversed the movement of the crane’s long arm, the capstone following on its trailing arc. The crane’s arm cleared the naked top of the monument, but the capstone, dangling tens of feet below, crashed into the marble sheathing like some bizarrely shaped wrecking ball. Marble shattered, crumbled, and fell, larger chunks tearing away pieces of the scaffolding and carrying it along on their plunge to the ground. Mike could hear the sound of people shouting and screaming now, their voices bleeding through the open TV audio feeds, overlaid with the excited commentary of the reporters on-site.
“Again,” Sara said.
Mike swung the crane back, realizing that a new sound had entered the mix—the sound of helicopter rotors.
“Holy shit!” cackled Tim. “It’s a gunship! It’s a damned gunship! An Apache Longbow. I’ve digitized those babies. That is one badass machine. With Hydras or Hellfires, I bet—missiles, to you noobs. That’d be ironic, wouldn’t it, if they start shooting at shit and bring the whole thing down into the reflecting pool?”
The God Peak Page 4