Power Play- America's Fate

by Diane Matousek Schnabel

  “Are they stupid enough to think they can take over the base?” Cozart asked.

  “Probably.”

  The chain-link barrier buckled, and protestors gushed forward, a tidal bore of animosity colliding with the MPs, assaulting them with crowbars, pipes, and tree branches.

  A truck painted in desert-camouflage raced toward the scene, tires screeching.

  “This is about to get interesting,” Cozart said, amusement resonating in his tone. “They’re breaking out the sound cannon.”

  The large, circular Long Range Acoustical Device was a nonlethal means of crowd control. Abby had never experienced its deterrent power firsthand, but she’d seen it deployed in videos. Cruise ships traversing the pirate-infested waters off the coast of Somalia had successfully used the weapon to repel armed attackers.

  The LRAD unit powered on, emitting a continuous piercing wail. Protestors tried to shield their ears as they retreated. Some staggered drunkenly; others fell to their knees vomiting.

  “How much you wanna bet,” Abby said caustically. “That one of those idiots has a video camera recording?”

  49

  District Seven, Kansas

  AFTER LIBERATING THE residents of District Eight from foreign rule, Pastor Peter Muhlenberg and his band of irregulars had moved off to the southeast, tracking a gang of thieves, rapists, and murderers.

  He and his civilian fighters were traversing a dirt road with delicate steps to avoid kicking up a telltale plume of dust that would herald their advance. As far as the eye could see, there were fields of corn and wheat, knee-high stalks of hope waving in the breeze. A warm spring and gentle rains had nurtured the fragile shoots, and Muhlenberg silently gave thanks for the prosperous growing season and for the militia’s success in evicting the enemy from their “sanctuary zone.”

  He grimaced, irritated at the peacekeepers’ use of the word sanctuary, implying a sacredness, as if the area were somehow consecrated and therefore untouchable.

  Evil is masquerading as holiness, he thought. And I shouldn’t be surprised; after all, they came under the guise of humanitarian aid then tried to exterminate us.

  He rubbed the injection site on his arm.

  How much longer will it take for scientists to neutralize the smallpox capsule?

  Peacekeepers had administered the biological weapon by claiming it was a vaccination against Alameda fever, a disease of their own creation.

  It’s shockingly easy to murder millions of people, Muhlenberg thought. All you have to do is lie to them.

  The sunlight dimmed, and his gaze rose toward the heavens, anticipating that a cloud had passed in front of the sun. Instead, he saw a gray tide as wide as the horizon, and it was closing like an approaching blizzard. The glistening vapor divided sky from earth, a translucent curtain that engulfed the fields behind them and rolled forward, a single entity with an ever-changing leading edge.

  Muhlenberg squatted down, fingers braced against the rutted dirt road for balance. A whirring, raspy sound grew louder until the amorphous cloud enveloped their position. To his left, he saw locusts the size of small sparrows, and they fluttered past, their slapping wings as intense as a thundering waterfall.

  “Colonel Pastor!” Martha Bratton shouted, using the nickname that acknowledged his dual role as a spiritual and military leader. “It’s like a biblical plague. There must be millions of them!”

  Muhlenberg hitched his hat upward, a nervous habit he had acquired as a boy. “Rocky Mountain locusts haven’t been seen in the United States for over a hundred years. Back before the EMP, they were even declared extinct.”

  “The grasshoppers must’ve missed that declaration,” Martha said sarcastically. “What makes them act like this?”

  “Some say overcrowding; others blame it on weather conditions. In 1874 a period of drought was followed by feverish vegetation growth, giving rise to a swarm that numbered into the trillions. It devoured 2,000,000 square miles of farmland and caused $200,000,000 in crop damage.”

  “But we haven’t had a drought,” Martha replied. “It was a wet, cold winter.”

  Muhlenburg looked around, dumbfounded. Every sprig of green was under assault, every blade of grass, every leaf. Three feet overhead, a thick layer of insects cruised like a giant roller, painting the land with a yellowish-gray hue; but the pests were not venturing onto the single-lane road where his soldiers were crouched. It was a locust-free tunnel, twelve feet wide, six feet tall, and fifty yards long.

  Is the good Lord protecting us from the siege? Or are these abominable creatures afraid of us?

  Muhlenberg stood, hands raised to shield his face and eyes from the lateral hail of insects.

  The bugs altered their path, maintaining a yard of clearance as they streamed past.

  Perplexed, he reached out to snag one and they fled from his outstretched arm.

  This doesn’t make a lick of sense.

  He pulled off his Stetson hat and hurled it like a Frisbee, trapping several feeding locusts beneath it. As Muhlenberg marched into the field, the insects dispersed like iron shavings repelled by a magnet; a strange behavior for a species known to have eaten the leather harnesses off horses, wooden handles off pitchforks, and even green clothing off people’s backs.

  The rich, black soil was glazed with green confetti that reminded him of grass clippings.

  Why are they shredding the plants rather than consuming them?

  Pastor Muhlenberg plunged a hand beneath the rim of his hat and a series of pinches caused him to recoil.

  The Stetson flipped over.

  Trapped specimens flew off, and he stared at the blood dripping from three scissorlike cuts on his index finger, thinking that these creatures were definitely not Rocky Mountain locusts.

  50

  District Six, Texas

  ALEX IVANS POINTED through the living room window of the pale-pink house. “That’s her.”

  Lydia Dorset chewed her lower lip, uneasy about what she was being asked to do, yet inexplicably drawn to Alex’s rebel persona. Somehow, he and his protests had assigned meaning to her father’s tragic death, giving her a sense of purpose and expunging her depression. She owed Alex—a lot—but this didn’t make sense.

  “I just want to talk with her,” Alex added reassuringly. “And show her the evidence.”

  Lydia watched the fortyish woman, who was walking down the street. Of average height, she was dressed in jeans and a cotton pullover, and her long ponytail wagged with each stride, an unusual shade of reddish-brown that bordered on purple. She was stunningly beautiful for her age, especially considering that she was married to a mass murderer.

  “Why can’t you just go out there and confront her yourself?”

  “Listen, Lydia, you have to make a choice.” Alex’s gray eyes met hers in a disparaging rebuke that made her heart sink. “Refusing to act is an act of violence. Do you want to be responsible for the deaths of innocents? Do you want other kids to lose their fathers? To suffer the way you have? Because if that’s the kind of person you are, you can’t be part of this peace movement.”

  She wiped at her tears with quivering hands and sucked in a breath. His unrelenting stare was a dagger, impaling her with disappointment and disgust, generating a hollow ache inside her chest.

  What he’s asking feels wrong, she thought. So why do I feel compelled to please him?

  It was more than a craving for acceptance; Lydia needed to escape reality—the anger, the fear, the pain, the loneliness—and being part of this group was her only source of relief.

  “Let’s go together,” Lydia suggested. “Between the two of us I’m sure we can convince her.”

  Alex’s head drooped. His thin lips pulled taut in condemnation. “I thought you were different,” he said, head shaking. “I thought you cared.”

  “I do, but ...” Alex’s forlorn expression constricted around her, squeezing the air from her lungs, intensifying the pressure until she felt as if her entire body were being cru
shed. Exile from the group would plunge her back into that painful existence, that nonstop barrage of grief and isolation.

  I can’t go back. I won’t. “Okay, okay,” she said, bending to his will.

  “Then you’d better hurry. She already passed the house.”

  Lydia stomped to the front door, flung it open, and ran toward the street, screaming, “Somebody help, please ... ! He’s not breathing!”

  The woman with the ponytail pivoted and sprinted toward her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I-I-I don’t know. He-he grabbed his chest and collapsed onto the floor. You’ve got to help him or he’ll die!”

  “I’ll start CPR. You go get help.”

  After the good Samaritan charged into the house, Alina emerged, closing the door behind her. “You did great,” she said, an arm wrapping around Lydia. “Let’s go gather up more of your friends. We’re going to throw a peace party tonight at the ‘sanctuary zone’ to celebrate.”

  51

  District Five, Illinois

  ERICH FINSTER USED A rope to scale a broken span of highway overpass, a single link left standing following the great earthquake and a series of aftershocks. He and his team had been expecting the New Madrid fault to fracture, but the destruction had extended far beyond their projections. Their forward operating base had sustained serious damage and frenzied repairs were underway to prevent long-term disruption of their operations.

  Erich’s biceps and thighs burned as he reached the top and climbed over a thirty-inch cement guardrail. He took a moment to calm his breathing. Atop the road deck, several cars had collided with a motor home at the time of the EMP. The behemoth had tipped onto its side and plowed through a section of guardrail, shattering its windshield and causing its left front tire to protrude from the overpass.

  That’ll do, he thought, retracting the rope to erase any evidence of his presence. The attached grappling hook was still embedded in the backseat of an SUV, and Erich tossed the coiled rope into the cargo bay.

  Using the butt stock of his rifle, he battered the motor home’s rear window and crawled inside. He wrestled a dank foam mattress out of his way then wrenched the wooden frame free from its moorings. He repositioned the hunk of wood, tented a panel of high-tech camouflage fabric, and settled onto his new shooting platform. Lying prone, he peered into his scope, down the narrow hallway, beyond the bathroom and closet, past the kitchen and sitting area, between the two captain’s chairs, and through the missing windshield to his target four hundred yards ahead.

  The earthquake had leveled the prison that served as the District Five POW camp, and in response, the Americans had relocated the detainees to a nearby collegiate football stadium. The cement facility had been built down into the ground, and although a latticework of cracks streaked the surface, it remained structurally sound. National Guardsmen patrolled the upper rim of the stadium, keeping watch over their prisoners, and Erich resisted the urge to pick them off. They were not part of his mission.

  A flock of blackbirds circled lazily overhead casting shadows onto his hunting ground. The southern end zone contained a mess hall tent and a clinic, judging by the large red cross. The northern end was packed with rows of sleeping tents; and a line of portable restrooms stretched between them. Razor-wire-topped fences girdled the entire field, corralling the Asians like dangerous animals.

  Prisoners of war milled about the fifty-yard line, now an expanse of dirt with scattered clusters of dry hay that used to be lush green grass. Their T-shirts were not tucked at the belt buckle, leading Erich to conclude there were no PLA fighters present. A cyber intrusion, dubbed Operation Swap, had transposed key biographical details, ensuring that workers would be held as enemy combatants while soldiers were set free.

  The prisoners’ collective body language—scowling faces, arms folded like barricades, and clenched fists—implied a simmering degree of anger that could play to Erich’s advantage.

  He chose a random target, a man with straggly black hair, and squeezed the trigger. The prisoner collapsed onto the ground, and the confused crowd turned in all directions, unsure what had happened. National Guardsmen wheeled outward, rifles up, surveying the crumbling high-rise buildings that surrounded the stadium, concern evident on their faces.

  Erich knew the Americans were depending on an acoustic sniper detection system to identify the origin of the shot, one that relied on the sonic boom produced by the bullet rather than the rifle’s muzzle flash. Precisely why he was using a Vykhlop, a short-range suppressed sniper rifle that fired a heavy 12.7 caliber subsonic bullet—which produced no sonic boom because it traveled slower than the speed of sound.

  Smirking, he acquired a second target, and a third. Panic swept the football field. People were bounding into one another; trash cans were overturned; and alarms began to wail.

  Accumulating corpses elevated the disturbance into a riot. Smoke began rising from the food tent; spooked prisoners charged the gates wielding pots and broken ladles, using benches for battering rams.

  The Americans responded with smoke canisters that ruptured into massive white mists, an attempt to protect the inmates by obscuring the shooter’s view.

  Switching to infrared vision on his scope, Erich fired into the stampede of bodies.

  At worst, the Americans will be lambasted for failing to protect the POWs, he thought. At best, the riot will set the irate prisoners free.

  52

  Langden Air Force Base, Texas

  ALTHOUGH IT WAS WELL past 1800 hours, Major Ryan Andrews left the mess hall and trekked across Langden Air Force Base, en route to TEradS Headquarters. He still had a mountain of paperwork on his desk; and with his clerk gone for the night and a skeleton crew on duty at the ops center, he was hoping for a few productive hours—without interruptions.

  Eliminating that backlog was a prerequisite to bringing Franny home. Ryan hated going back to that empty apartment each night, lying in bed alone, unable to sleep. That’s when his feelings broke through, giving rise to nagging questions.

  What kind of husband reneges on a honeymoon?

  Spends his wedding night tracking terrorists instead of making love to his bride?

  Then the questions evolved into damning accusations.

  You’re doing it again, ruining another relationship.

  You’re driving her away and elevating your career above her.

  Am I? Ryan asked himself, unlocking the door to TEradS Headquarters. Or is eradicating Volkov and Sun the only way to protect her?

  He walked through the dimly lit reception area, keyed the six-digit code, and opened his office door. The room had been ransacked. Drawers were toppled; papers, strewn across the floor; and his honey-brown eyes darted toward the cold-air return.

  Heart pounding in his throat, Ryan rummaged through the debris for his screwdriver.

  How the fuck did Volkov’s men get onto base? And into my office undetected?

  Mentally, he inventoried the documents he’d left on his desk. After action reviews, requisition forms, surveillance reports on “sanctuary zones,” interrogation transcripts—all of it could be distorted and woven into another incriminating news exposé.

  He removed the final screw, reached a hand into the metal duct, and let out a bitter laugh. Volkov’s men hadn’t found the hard drive. Relief began to ease the tension in his neck, then it suddenly coiled even tighter.

  The crazy fucker isn’t going to give up, he thought. Can I keep the classified information safe until Grace Murray arrives?

  Ryan replaced the vent and climbed to his feet. Degrading comments had been scrawled over his wall of heroes; and a layer of disrespectful graffiti defaced each picture, a collection of fangs and devil horns, pacifiers and baby bonnets, and pornographic depictions of genitalia.

  Sons of bitches! he thought. They came way too close to finding the hard drive.

  His desktop phone was on the floor, lying on its side like a dead animal, and the curly cord ducked beneath a felled American fla
g. He righted Old Glory, restored the handset to its cradle, and placed the phone onto his desk, only then realizing that his military-issued laptop was missing. The diskless workstation stored no data and required a login and password to access the military network, but Ryan still notified Cyber Command so that appropriate countermeasures could be taken.

  He ended the call, and the phone immediately rang.

  “Andrews.”

  “Good-evening.”

  The caller’s heavy Russian accent sent a chill through Ryan. “Volkov ...? How did you get this number?”

  “You insult me, Major. Are you enjoying your office renovations?”

  “I’m enjoying the fact that you came up empty-handed—”

  “Which is the purpose of this call. Please indulge me and check your e-mail.”

  Ryan dropped the handset onto his desk, strolled into the ops center, and retrieved another laptop.

  He logged into his account, eyes skimming the unread messages, detecting nothing out of the ordinary; then he lifted the handset to his face. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Oh, forgive me for not being specific,” the bastard said, his tone dripping with phony contrition. “I meant your clandestine e-mail account.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The account you and General Quenten created when you conspired to kill Aaron Burr ...”

  Why mention Burr instead of his son, Dmitry? Ryan wondered.

  “... Check the e-mail now, Major.” The syrupy quality in his voice had dissolved into anger.

  Ryan logged in again, this time under the username empowered with the password providence. Was Volkov fishing for a confirmation? Or did he find out about the account?

  If he accessed that correspondence, Bradley, Abby, and I could be tried and executed for treason ... and given the worldwide anti-American sentiment, the President won’t defend us. We’ll become sacrificial lambs.