Kill Switch

by James Phelan

Jones was silent. Then, he looked at Harrington, drew the sixteen-inch kukri blade, which glinted under an Ames Base streetlight above, and held it toward Harrington. “This is the last time I ask, while you’re still in one piece. Where are Conway and the woman?”

  Walker heard a noise. A faint buzzing.

  The drone.

  Walker could tell that the EMP had just been deployed, because Jones’s expression changed.

  “Idiot,” Jones said, pulling out his earpiece. “You think cutting our comms is going to save you?”

  Then there was another noise. This one was closer, and louder. A wet splat, or clap, like someone dropping a watermelon off a roof and onto the ground at your feet. Just behind Jones. His reaction was priceless.

  “No,” Harrington said, “but that might.”

  Jones had heard the noise at the same time he heard Harrington speak—and he knew what that noise was, and that his fate was sealed as soon as he looked around, but he couldn’t help it—human instinct. Just a second, not even, but he had to glance back to see how his squad mate had died.

  Harrington used both hands to grab his knife hand and he pushed up from his knees, driving the long blade up through the bottom of Jones’s chin and out the top of his head.

  The next sounds were the lights shattering above them, again from Harrington’s sniper, then—

  WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

  85

  A Team Black sniper was firing in the dark. The only thing he hit was his own man; Jones, still with the knife through his head, was now performing the role of human shield for Harrington and Walker. They shuffled around, then stopped.

  “Okay,” Harrington said into his mike in response to the news relayed to him. He dumped the body. “Their sniper is down,” he said to Walker.

  He retrieved his weapons from the ground near the van, and Walker flexed, bringing his arms, still behind him, up in a fast x-motion, snapping the cable ties. He picked up the H&K rifle from the headless ex-soldier.

  “You turned off the EMP,” Walker said.

  “Just for a moment,” Harrington replied.

  “No, it’s good,” Walker said, joining Harrington and scanning the dark and the shadows of the buildings for the remaining three members of Team Black. “Let me talk to the other team, on the open channel.”

  Harrington unclipped the mike from the guy he’d stabbed and passed it over.

  Walker said to him, “What’s their team leader’s name?”

  “Webster.”

  “Okay.” Walker wrapped the mike around his neck and velcroed it in place, put the earpiece in. “Webster,” he said clearly. “This is the end. You’ve got two minutes to exit the computer lab, with Jasper Brokaw, in the open. If you fail to appear, you will be met with extreme prejudice. By that, I mean that you will be shot, several times, and your name will forever be mud in this fair nation as the truth comes out. One minute fifty . . . one minute forty five . . .”

  Webster replied, “Who is this?”

  “Consider me a whirlwind,” Walker said. “And you’re about to have a house dropped on you. You let Brokaw go now. One minute thirty. You can do a lot in a minute and a half. And it’s time for you and your team to decide which side of history you want to be on.”

  Harrington stood and pointed his rifle as a black-clad figure emerged from the shadows. One of Webster’s Team Black men.

  “Gun down!” Harrington said, stepping around the van and keeping a line of sight on the surrendering—

  WHOOMPH!

  Harrington snapped back, his head turned to a puff of vapor.

  •

  “Okay,” the Vice President said to McCorkell. “Thanks. Good work.”

  “We’re a hundred percent on this?” the Secretary of Defense said to McCorkell.

  “One hundred percent,” the Vice President answered for him.

  “Okay,” the Secretary of Defense replied. He left their four-person huddle, the Secretary of Homeland Security with them, and went to an aide, a full-bird Colonel, and whispered instructions.

  “So,” the Vice President said to the screen, where General Christie had been leaning back in her chair for the past three minutes, watching but unable to listen. “General Christie. Is there anything you want to tell us?”

  “You’re up to date, Mr. Vice President,” the General replied. She’d crossed her arms, looking unfazed as they talked.

  “I mean, General,” the Vice President said, leaning on the end of the table with the knuckles of his fists, his eyes straight down the video conference camera like looking down a barrel, “what do you have to say about a team of yours being at Ames Research Center, having Jasper Brokaw there under guard? Interesting and pertinent information, wouldn’t you say?”

  McCorkell smiled when he saw General Christie’s face drop. It was just a split second, then she gained composure and started to try to spin her way out of it. The two Joint Chiefs went a little red in the face, and pulled in their aides to get options rolling to deal with this shift.

  “That’s preposterous,” Christie said. “Sure, I have a team there conducting a training exercise, but there is nothing that is remotely—”

  “General!” the Vice President said. “Enough! In under two minutes you are going to have a squad of MPs kicking down your door and you will be in cuffs, so talk now and start undoing this!”

  “It’s too late,” the General said calmly. She sat back in her chair and un-crossed her arms, staring at the camera in front of her.

  86

  This sniper fire was very different from the earlier shots. This was the report of an anti-materiel weapon, a .50-caliber rifle capable of punching holes through walls and light-armored vehicles with its depleted uranium shells.

  Walker ran toward the entrance to the computer lab. One thing about a .50-caliber sniper rifle was that it was big and slow to task and track and acquire a fast-moving target. Walker hit the front of the building; behind him, huge chunks of the concrete road and sidewalk had been blown out, until the sniper’s clip was empty. He thought in the silence that remained he could hear a new mag being clicked into place, four stories above, at the top of the computer lab, but he may have imagined the noise just as he imagined the action. The .50 sounds rang in his ears. The thing he couldn’t know was whether the new sniper was alone up there; or did he have a spotter, watching his back?

  “Okay, Webster,” Walker said. “You’ve got fifty seconds. Last chance. There are now three of you. One on the roof, and I’m guessing two inside, with Brokaw. What’s it going to be, Webster? Live like whatever it is you think you are, or die a lonely traitor’s death? Forty seconds. Tick-tock.”

  Silence.

  “Okay, good,” Walker said. “Harrington’s boys, watch for my signal and then bring Conway in to do his thing.”

  “What’s the signal?” a voice replied, a voice Walker recognized from inside the van, the guy he guessed was their sniper.

  “You’ll see the guy with the point-fifty-cal hit the ground, head-first,” Walker said, already moving into the building.

  “Copy that.”

  “Remember,” Walker said, “when things go dark, you’ll be able to see my signal for your location to enter. Monica will tell you.”

  “Copy that. Get some.”

  The radio went dead as the EMP was again deployed. The four-story glass and steel computer-lab structure wouldn’t be EMP-proof, but the basement floors were, inside what was effectively a giant Faraday Cage to stop electronic emissions getting in or out of the massive server rooms. Walker found the stairs that led up and took them three at a time, the H&K rifle out front, the way ahead completely dark.

  •

  “What have we got on the ground near Ames?” the Vice President asked the room.

  “Air Force guards out of Travis,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. “Navy has armed NCIS personnel at the Naval Weapons Station in Concord. They can all be airborne and inserted inside of thirty minutes.”

&n
bsp; “Palo Alto PD can set up roadblocks. Their tactical units can be in place in fifteen minutes.”

  “Have them start a perimeter well outside so we can control the area,” the Vice President ordered. “Where’s all the NASA security?”

  “General Christie had them all cleared out by six am yesterday for the so-called exercise. They’re all on leave.”

  “National Guard?”

  “They can be there over the next half-hour. They’ve been gearing up all day in case of civil unrest, and California has already activated them in a few areas.”

  “Admiral?” the Vice President asked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

  “Do it. Palo Alto, start locking down the whole area. It gives us time and options, and minimizes civilian casualties should we need to take things further.”

  “Further?” McCorkell said.

  The Admiral nodded. “We know where they have Brokaw. We’ll get all the intel we need from General Christie as to who exactly is holding him. If they won’t see sense and drop arms, we can strike the computer facility with JDAMs.”

  “It’s hardened,” an aide said, reading over schematics on a tablet. “Underground redundancies for power generation.”

  “We’ve got options for that,” the Admiral said to the Vice President. “I’ll make sure they’re all at your disposal within the hour.”

  “This has to be surgical,” McCorkell said to the room. “There’s Jasper Brokaw and other hostages. SWAT teams and cops and National Guard troops will create a siege-type situation.” He looked to the Director of the FBI. “Hostage Rescue Team?”

  “On standby in LA,” the FBI Director replied.

  “They should be airborne,” McCorkell said. “Forward deployed.”

  The Director nodded, and got an okay nod from the Vice President to put the order through.

  “We’ve got a total of an hour and ten minutes to their final deadline,” McCorkell said. “We’ll get one good shot at this and it has to be right.”

  “That’s ten minutes until the next attack, God knows where or what,” the Secretary of Homeland Security said. “We need it to end as fast as possible, before things go too far.”

  “We’ve got Russian tanks rolling into Eastern Ukraine,” the Admiral said. “This went too far hours ago. Mr. Vice President, we need to patch in the President on this and have a strike on Ames on the table, ready to go, should we need it. I can have F22s in the vicinity within fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay,” the Vice President said. Orders started to be replayed. Everyone in the room was talking on phones or to aides, getting options rolling. He turned to the Secretary of Homeland Security. “Are you certain the energy grid is secure?”

  “Mostly, sir,” she replied. “Just five minutes ago I would have said a hundred percent certain. But now . . .”

  “But now?”

  “But now I wouldn’t bet the house on it,” she replied. “Not with how events have been unfolding. I don’t like it.”

  “We have to make General Christie talk,” McCorkell said.

  “You do it, Bill,” the Vice President said, looking to the veteran security specialist. “You’ve been at the forefront of this the entire time.”

  “Because of Walker—and he’s there at Ames.”

  “Then he has twenty minutes, tops,” the Vice President said. “Marine One is outside, take it to Fort Meade. Get to Christie, make her talk. What’s at play—how’s she getting to the grid? She talks or there’s fire and brimstone for her, and for those at Ames.”

  87

  Walker knew he was four stories up, at the roof level, because the stairs had ended. By the flickering glow of the lighter, he saw a door handle, and the security tape that had been broken at the latch to signal that the door had been used since security had done its last sweep of the building, presumably before General Christie had had the site evacuated almost thirty-six hours ago.

  What was on the other side? The sniper’s spotter, with an H&K rifle of his own, ready to turn Walker into ribbons of flesh and bone and gore? Or the sniper, lying on the roof, the business end of the barrel pointed at the center mass of the door, waiting for it to open?

  Walker kept his back to the wall. The wall itself was precast concrete, which would have metal reinforcing bars running through it, and was at least eight inches thick given how the steel doorjamb was set in place. He wasn’t entirely confident it would stop a depleted-uranium round from a .50-caliber rifle, but it felt good to have that mass there, even as a placebo.

  Walker pocketed the lighter and exhaled. He reached out his hand and opened the door by pushing the bar and flinging it open.

  Nothing happened. He got as low to the floor as he could and peered out, then crawled out.

  Nothing happened. He got up on a knee, his eyes down the sights of his H&K, scanning the scene.

  And then he saw the sniper’s position. The huge gun, a Barrett M107, was at the parapet, still aimed out at the car park below and resting on its bipod. The mat that the sniper had lain prone on was empty. A stack of spare mags sat next to the long gun. Walker saw all of that in a second but it was too little, too late.

  Hands grabbed the H&K. Strong hands, twisting the weapon from Walker’s grasp. Walker twisted with the motion and caught his attacker a little off balance, enough to separate.

  The drone buzzed so close overhead he could feel the exhaust of the engine.

  Walker spun around and kicked the guy’s legs out. His finger found the trigger of the H&K and Walker stitched him up as he fell backward, the 5.56-millimeter rounds hitting him at a rate of fire of 850 rounds per minute until the entire magazine of thirty rounds had been expelled in two seconds—they nearly all had hit home, from the dead man’s groin to the top of his head.

  Walker dropped the empty assault rifle and snatched up the guy’s weapon, a Sig pistol, and dropped to one knee to scan the roof.

  Deserted.

  So, two members of Team Black remained below, guarding Jasper.

  Walker tucked the Sig into his belt, then picked up the corpse of the sniper, hefted him to the side of the building and dumped him over, where he landed with a dull thud, head-first, because the head is the heaviest part of the body, even when partially emptied by high-velocity rounds.

  He then held the lighter up in the sky and lit the flame.

  •

  “Change of plans,” Webster said, entering the room and standing next to Jasper, a Glock pistol in his hand. “Activate the power outage now.”

  “I can’t,” he replied. “I’ve instigated the drone takeover, and the traffic system—”

  “We’ve run out of time. Bring it forward,” Webster said. “Now.”

  “That’s what General Christie wants?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean—now? Not an hour from now?”

  “There won’t be an hour from now.”

  “Well, I can’t do it,” Jasper replied, sitting back in his chair.

  Webster’s voice was gravel when he said, “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “I can’t do it, you know that, not without Paul—he knows the code to get into the back door of the Department of Energy override. As soon as you get me Paul, five seconds after that we’re done. He’s everything—I told you that right from the start.”

  “Okay,” Webster said. “I’ll get him. You make sure you’re ready. Take this.”

  He left the room, leaving Jasper to stare at the Glock pistol in front of him.

  88

  Monica saw the light. It was one continuous flame, holding for five seconds, which meant Come on in. She was standing next to Paul. On her other side was Kent, a member of Team Blue who had been manning the drone’s controls on a tablet and using it to buzz close to Walker’s attacker—the drone that was now doing its EMP work via an autopilot circuit above.

  The other remaining Team Blue member, doing sniper overwatch a few yards away, called out, “What’s Walker’s Zippo mean?”

  “It me
ans he’s going in,” Monica said. “And that we should too, so Paul can get into the servers and cut Jasper out of them while Walker finds them.”

  “Okay. Kent will go with you,” the sniper replied, getting down from his post. “I’m going after the base’s power supply.”

  “Where’s that?” Kent called out as he helped Monica down from atop the guard box.

  “Far eastern corner of the base.”

  “Good luck,” Kent said, then passed Monica and Paul a pistol each and said, “Stick close to me. You see anyone dressed like me who isn’t me or him, shoot them until they drop, got it?”

  •

  Walker made his way downstairs with the dead man’s Sig in his hands. He stopped at each landing, looking and listening before turning and leading the way with the pistol held out in front in a two-handed grip. Two levels below ground, the stairs ended at a solid door. He used the lighter to read the sign. “Caution: computer servers—electronic protected area. Door must close before next opens.” He knew he had reached the part of the building the EMP could not affect, the heart of the server system.

  He opened the door and entered a small airlocked space. The door behind him closed, and then he heard an electronic click as the door ahead unlocked. He pulled it open—it was a big, heavy blast door, designed to be sealed against any kind of fire or explosion outside by pushing it tight into its heavy steel and concrete frame.

  The corridor ahead was lit by tube lighting, and he moved slowly forward.

  No sign of Jasper, or anyone else.

  Glass walls ran along either side, and beyond them were lit-up computer labs. One side held server banks, rows and rows of six-foot-high black stacks, each with hundreds of tiny little lights blinking and flashing. It was cold down here, and there was the sound of powerful air-conditioning systems working hard to keep all that hardware cool.

  Walker heard a noise and stopped. A door to his left was open. He could not see anyone beyond, but he did see something familiar—the video set-up. It was in an area of the computer lab that had been cleared of desks and consoles so that there was room enough for the chair that Jasper had sat on and the blank white wall behind and the tripod and camera pointed at the chair. Yesterday’s newspaper was on the floor amid bottles of water, some empty, some full. Packs of MREs. Four military cot beds: one for Jasper, three for the team members to hot bunk.