Lady Liberty

by Vicki Hinze

  Nothing short of stepping in and halting the Peacekeeper launch would satisfy Lance. Austin held in a grunt. The man was in for a serious wake-up call, but he had been right to phone Austin. Raw power surged through him. His spine and the roof of his mouth tingled. In the next ten minutes, he would see to it that no one else could halt the launch.

  Patrice opened the blinds at the window. Thin bars of light filtered into his office and streaked across his desktop, the ivory carpet, the photo of his mother on his desk. “There are a dozen other messages. Most are marked urgent. One was urgent and strange.”

  He sipped from his cup, wishing he’d had one less scotch last night. “Strange?”

  “The caller claimed to be a friend, but she refused to leave a name. She’s on sabbatical in China and would like to invite you to join her.”

  PUSH. Welcoming him. Inwardly, Austin smiled. “Just leave it with the others.” He motioned to the desk. “I need a few minutes to get oriented.”

  “Yes, sir.” She left the messages, then the office.

  Austin locked the door, pulled out Cap’s key, walked to the oak bar, and then pushed a button hidden under its top ledge. The bar wall swung open, revealing a private and compact but well-equipped minilab.

  He stepped inside and removed a blue velvet-lined case from a drawer under the lab table. Two keys rested inside it, side by side. Pulling out the one on the left, he compared it to Cap’s. A perfect copy. Indisputable proof that Gregor Faust had broken their agreement and double-crossed him. And, of course, it was a copy, not Faust’s duplicate original. But fearing that Faust would betray him, Austin also had prepared.

  He lifted the only copy of a second key. Anger surged through him, and he scratched a short, straight line on it, feeling totally justified in implementing Plan B. The chain of events it would unleash was regrettable—the impact would be significant—but now unavoidable. And once he had completely set it into motion, no one else could stop the process.

  In roughly thirty-four hours, the United States would launch the first-strike missile, and the world would be at war.

  Austin. Austin. His mother’s voice sounded in his head. How can you justify starting World War III?

  He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned wearily against the lab table. Even dead, she challenged him. Always probing. Always asking questions he didn’t want to answer. Always robbing him of peace.

  I’m not starting this war. They attacked me. Yes, I married Sybil for political advantage and money but I was fond of her, and she divorced me. Lance and his spying henchmen have constantly violated my privacy and issued me dictates. Sybil’s bastard protector, Westford, had the audacity to threaten to kill me. To kill me! Agitated, Austin began to pace. Gregor Faust attacked me, too. He’s gleaned an amazing amount of Intel on me through his Ballast contacts here, and he came to me to buy my secure-system devices and then with a proposal for a mutually beneficial joint venture. He came to me and then betrayed me. And Cap is no better. Even he violated me, Mother. Year after year, I gave him inside information to use against Sybil, and yet he elected not to play straight with me.

  They were responsible for the war. No one had forced them to do what they had done. They had chosen their actions and taken them willingly. He had to defend himself. They had to know their actions against him were mistakes and that mistakes carry consequences.

  But such steep consequences, Austin? Where is mercy and grace?

  He stiffened against a prick of shame. Where was their mercy and grace, Mother? What about their crimes against me? The penalty I inflict isn’t revenge, it’s justice. It should be substantial—and paid by them and those they have sworn to serve and protect.

  Expecting his mother to rebel, he stiffened, but she held her silence. Obviously she agreed with him. Relieved, he shoved back from the lab table and stared down at the keys. Power had the tips of his fingers and toes prickling, his chest heaving. They had forced him into taking this action. All of them. Yes, he would gain financially and also where it most mattered to him: in power. But that was secondary. They’d betrayed him. He stuffed the scratched key into his pocket. World War III was justified.

  He returned the other keys to the case, placed the case in the drawer, and then removed a smaller red case from beside it. Austin smiled. Inside was a third key. When he left this lab, the security systems at top-secret site A-267 would no longer require two keys: one for access to the classified site’s outer rim and inner hub and one to access the actual missile launch controls. It would require three. One for the outer rim, one for the inner hub, and one to halt the launch of the world’s deadliest missile.

  And only Dr. Austin Stone had the third key.

  He moved down to a desk opposite the lab table and sat down, then booted up a computer. Unlike the sixty-odd others in the building, this terminal was not tied in to the Secure Environet network. It was his private safe system and as secure as technology and innovative thinking could make it. Only he knew it existed and that it was in the building. Only he knew the minilab existed. And only he could forward whatever he generated on this computer through a complex web of filters so that no one short of God could trace anything he disbursed back to Secure Environet.

  After keying in the codes to access the system, he entered the data string that would make the White House a key player in Plan B. Scrolling down the list of Lance’s most-trusted advisors, he highlighted the chosen one’s name, clicked, then clicked again on his DNA report. Scrolling down, Austin stopped on line five, reversed it, and then uploaded the altered report into the system.

  Upload complete appeared on the screen.

  Successful, he added a second data string and then uploaded it. This command would make Gregor Faust’s launch key—his entire plan—obsolete. Should he also cut off Faust’s visual access to the A-267?

  No, Austin decided. Let him watch events unfold there and experience the futility of being able to do nothing to stop them. He hit the “enter” key.

  Again a response flashed onto the screen: Upload complete.

  The wheels were now in motion, and only he could stop them.

  Flushed with sheer joy at outmaneuvering Faust, Lance, and the president’s entire entourage, Austin also absorbed a flicker of regret that they had conspired and pushed him to do something of this magnitude when he had spent his entire life designing security devices to protect and defend. He shut down the system and then the minilab.

  A tall stack of large brown envelopes stuffed full of inflammatory evidence against Sybil rested on the far wall counter. Each had been labeled individually. All were addressed to key people in the media at virtually every major network in the nation. He collected the stack and returned to his office, placing them on the corner of his desk, then ran through a mental listing until he felt confident he hadn’t left any loose ends.

  Satisfied, he sat down and leaned back. He once again held the helm. This time he intended to hold onto it. It was a shame Sybil wouldn’t be around to see this. But his life would be much more peaceful with her dead, and Plan B had just assured him that, if she wasn’t already dead, she soon would be.

  He phoned the China number. PUSH was eager. He listened briefly, laid out his terms, they agreed, and then he hung up. It was going to be a profitable association.

  After adjusting his jacket lapel, he checked his tie, then left his office. He had a lot to do before leaving D.C. Lance wouldn’t be the only one evacuating before the missile launched.

  “Sir?” Patrice called out as he passed her desk. “Are you going to engineering now?”

  “I’m on my way. Don’t mail the brown envelopes on my desk. I want them delivered by Ground Serve, but not just yet. I’ll call you when I’m ready”

  “Yes, sir.”

  If Patrice saw anything strange in his instructions, her expression didn’t reflect it. Grateful for that, Austin tapped the button for the elevator. He would listen to a recap of what engineering had been told through the chain of comman
d and then get back to the president. Afterward, he would return the substituted inner hub key to Cap and tell him he had possession of a launch-code key to a Peacekeeper missile.

  Lance would brief Cap on the security breach, and when he did, the senator would be compelled to reveal that he had held the key. How would he explain having it? He could pretend he never got it, but when that later proved untrue, Cap would be wide open for attack, and the man never left himself open to attack. Hadn’t he always filtered leaks through Jean?

  Regardless of what Cap said, the fallout against him would be immediate and incredible. Lance would insist that he resign.

  Of greater interest and priority was Gregor Faust. How would he react to learning his double-cross had backfired?

  Cap was blessed a bit by ignorance, but Faust would know that his decisions had set off a chain reaction that couldn’t be reversed or halted or in any way be deemed a proportional response to some manufactured slight. He would know that millions were about to die, and that, for each life lost, the entire world would blame him. And he would know that every government and terrorist organization in the world—including his own—would mark him as a priority target for assassination. Ballast members would blame Gregor for making them targets. They would think that by killing him, they could diffuse heat from themselves and the organization. And Gregor would know he had as much to fear from his own men as from the authorities, competitors, and enemies.

  All this and more would happen. It was inevitable now. And no one would know Austin had been involved. PUSH might wonder, but odds were against it. After all, Faust had made this entire mission appear to be PUSH instigated and executed. No, no one would know Austin had been involved.

  Provided Sybil died.

  Austin smiled. Very soon now Gregor Faust would no longer be indifferent. He and all of Ballast would be jumping through proverbial hoops to see to it that she did not survive.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Friday, August 9 * First-Strike Launch 33:12:07

  “Have some nuts.” Sybil passed them to Westford.

  He looked down at them, then at her. “They’re hickory nuts, Sybil.”

  “Who cares? They’re not bark or roots or—what’s wrong with them?”

  “Nothing, if you’re a duck. But they’re inedible for humans.”

  “Damn.” Sybil sat down under a roof of low-slung branches that helped block the rain and biting wind, then leaned into the oak and scraped her back against its rough bark. She popped another berry into her mouth and forced herself to chew then swallow it. “When this is over, I may never again eat another huckleberry”

  “These are Navaho blackberries,” Westford said from beside her. “But I know what you mean. You know you’re hungry when an armadillo starts looking good.”

  Sybil wrinkled her nose. “I’m not that hungry” Wildlife was plentiful here, but cooking presented a problem. Ballast and Search and Rescue would see the smoke from a fire. Westford had made it perfectly clear either group—or both—could be dangerous. It made her sick to hear S&R lumped with Ballast, but Westford was right. Even innocent people in the field were mixed up in this. Their infiltrator was high level and no doubt issuing orders to someone somewhere. Until they determined who the infiltrator was and the extent of that infiltration, everyone was dangerous. Right now Sybil wouldn’t dare to trust even Gabby, though her friend would be devastated to know it. But even Gabby was obligated to follow the orders issued to her.

  Westford cupped his ear. Sybil had picked up on his habit of blocking out the rain beating on the leaves and the muddy ground to pick up transmissions from Home Base. It still amazed her how noisy rain could be here. She’d never before been outside during the remnants of a stalled-out tropical storm, and she hoped she never would be again. She waited expectantly for him to decode and relay the message from Home Base.

  “Sayelle just confirmed our suspicion. High-level infiltrator.”

  Inevitable, but it still infuriated her to hear it. Once she’d believed that all she had to do to raise the bar on expectations was to not be corrupt. To lead by example. She had tried, she really had. But corruption in politics was so pervasive, and its insidious promises of money or power were so seductive and tempting to those seeking personal gain, that sometimes she felt like a salmon swimming upstream. It struggles and struggles and when it finally gets there, it dies.

  Stop it, Sybil. What are you doing? You can’t afford to think like this. Okay, so some politicians are corrupt. And most Americans expect them to lie and to be crooked as snakes. But some people actually believe in honest politicians and they’re loyal supporters. Think about them. Raise the bar for them. You’ve got a job to do. You’ve got to keep these bastards from blowing the heart of America off the map. So knock off the philosophical pining and get your mind in gear. You and West-ford are carrying hope. Don’t forget that. You’re carrying hope.

  Sometimes hope was sure heavy. She shoved another berry in her mouth. “Has Home Base pegged them?”

  “Not yet.” Westford paused again, and his expression deflated. “Damn it.”

  That reaction was so atypical of the unflappable West-ford that it scared her. “What?”

  “Intel is convinced PUSH is responsible for all this.”

  “Then they must have hard evidence Ballast isn’t involved.”

  He gave her a head shake and downed a berry. “Not likely. Intel says field reports indicate significant PUSH movement on known Ballast operatives. Ballast is building a strong case against PUSH.”

  That news upset Sybil. “Is Intel relaxing heavy Ballast observation?”

  “Not yet, but they will soon. Like everyone else, they’re short-staffed and, with everything pointing to PUSH, they’ll have to give it priority handling.”

  “But without intense pressure, Faust will cut loose.” Unable to swallow another bite, Sybil shoved a handful of berries into her pocket. With Gregor Faust, they had better expect the worst. “Why hasn’t Intel made the Ballast connection?”

  “Because everyone who knows what we know is dead.”

  “Okay, I agree. That’s a major obstacle, and Faust is thorough.”

  “It’s all that keeps him alive.”

  “Then why is he starting a world war?” Her stomach growled, protesting the lack of food. Resentfully she snagged a berry from her pocket. Had she really once thought their sweet scent smelled good? Right now she’d give an eye tooth for a potato chip—for anything salty.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. He wanted to stop the peace talks for obvious reasons—his arm sales to Peris and Abdan. But he’s done that. I’m here, not in Geneva negotiating.”

  “The leaders are waiting there. Maybe he isn’t convinced the talks have collapsed.”

  “No,” she countered. “He’s too sharp for that. Hell, Westford, it took me nearly six months to get those two in the same room. Without me holding their feet to the fire, they’re more apt to assassinate each other than to speak a civil word. The world knows that.”

  “Their consciences, not their feet.”

  “Whatever,” she said, agitated and swiping at a clod of mud clinging to her skirt. “They’re not going to negotiate in good faith. You can count on it.”

  “So what does Faust want now?”

  “That’s what I can’t figure out,” she said. “There’s just no motive where he gains anything from a world war. Not one damn thing. Not that I can see, anyway”

  Westford scanned the area, then glanced back at her. “Maybe it’s not him.”

  “We know it is.”

  “Do we?”

  Westford wasn’t blowing smoke. He was on to something. “What do you mean?”

  “Ballast is tagging PUSH. What if PUSH is guilty and it set us up to tag Ballast?”

  Sybil pondered the possibility, hoping this scenario had occurred to Commander Conlee and those in his think tank. “Low probability. Not impossible, but low. PUSH doesn’t h
ave the kind of connections it would need. It wouldn’t just launch into Ballast-assets attack. First, it would have to build a base.” That had her thinking again. “Okay in the States, that’s possible. But not in Eastern Europe.”

  “You’re right. There’s no way PUSH could muscle in on Ballast’s stronghold and Ballast not know it.” Westford dragged his hands through his hair. “Damn it, my mind is like sludge.”

  They were both exhausted, but they had to get back on their toes.

  “Maybe Faust isn’t the sole instigator of this mission,” he said. “Maybe someone else—someone inside or outside of Ballast—that he recruited has different objectives Faust doesn’t know about or want?”

  “It’s possible.” Sybil hated this with a passion. “That gives us another unidentified enemy”

  “Yes.” Westford’s serious expression turned to a silent rage. “One inside President Lance’s administration. Nobody else would have access to everything.”

  Sybil swallowed a bitter knot in her throat and asked a question she wasn’t at all sure she wanted answered. “What are the odds of Faust figuring this out and somehow counteracting before the launch?”

  “About as good as ours of getting back to D.C. in time.” Jonathan hauled himself to his feet and held out a hand.

  Sybil clasped it. “I never thought I’d pray for the most feared terrorist in the world to be sharp and successful. But I’m praying exactly that for Faust.”

  The Ballast field team was doing its best to test his patience.

  Convinced of it, Gregor Faust sat at the operations desk in the command center, scanned the monitors, and spoke into his headset lip mike. “You’ve been out there fourteen hours, ET.” Typically, Patch needed less time to track able-bodied, noncrash victims. “Alpha’s been there nearly twenty-four hours. What the hell do you mean you can’t find anything?”