Hidden Empire

by Orson Scott Card

  "What are you doing?"

  "Riding my Bones to the White House, of course."

  "You have Bones in the trunk?" she asked as she ran around the front of the car.

  "I couldn't do anything against them if I didn't," he said.

  He pulled all his gear out of the car and onto the sidewalk, then slammed the trunk closed. The light had already changed, and some cars way back in the line were honking, but not the ones whose drivers could see what he was doing.

  He put on a Kevlar vest, then pulled the Noodle onto his head and switched it on, hoping that he could tune in to their communications. But of course they had thought of that and he was shut out. Meanwhile, though, the Noodle had detected the components of the exoskeleton and the thing was already assembling itself on Cole's body. It must be highly entertaining to the drivers who were staring at him, to see the equipment essentially crawl up his body and lock in place, but he didn't much care who saw him put on the suit. He had the latest improvements—there had been quite a few since the models they used in Calabar had been made—but if there had been any tweaks since he got this one a week ago, the other guys would have them and he wouldn't. Couldn't be helped—they had better contacts within the design team than Cole had.

  Once everything was on, he picked up his armament. With the Bones to help, he could have carried some heavy weaponry, as no doubt the jeesh was doing. But they might have to blast their way in and through many obstacles, while Cole was counting on being admitted legally. All he needed was antipersonnel weapons. It had to be able to punch through Kevlar, at least at close range. But no explosives, nothing that might hurt White House personnel. He had to worry about collateral damage. They couldn't worry about it—if they were cautious about that, they would probably fail in their mission.

  So once again, he was going to be playing by a different set of rules from his enemy. But that was always the story for American soldiers.

  He shouldn't let himself think through the emotional implications of having to regard Mingo and Drew, Benny and Arty, Babe and Load as "the enemy."Yet thinking was better than feeling, for every instinct told him that these were his comrades, his friends, and it would take thought to overcome those instincts. Opposing him in battle wasn't his choice, it was theirs. They had done their best to separate him from this, to make sure he wouldn't be blamed for it. They had no malice toward him. He also had none toward them. He would take no satisfaction from killing any of them. It would grieve him terribly, after the fact. But during this operation, they were renegade soldiers attempting to assassinate the President of the United States. He would be careful to try to avoid causing collateral damage, but he could not be careful and try to avoid killing his targets. On the contrary, he had no choice but to try for a kill every time, because they would not hold back. With soldiers like these, if you did not kill, you would die.

  If he was lucky, the Secret Service at the White House would account for at least a few of the jeesh. The Secret Service had been beefed up with a lot of special ops soldiers and maybe, having been alerted, they'd even stop them all. Then Cole wouldn't have to shoot at his friends. But these six were the best of the best. They might still be weakened from the nicto, but, like Cole, they had been training hard to get back up to speed. And even at half-strength, because they had the Noodles and Bones there was nobody in the White House detail prepared to cope with what they brought to the field.

  As he bounded over and between cars up M Street, Cole linked up with the drones that Wills had launched for him. He jumped on top of a bus that was crossing his route at Wisconsin, and when a District cop yelled at him to stop and started to go for his weapon, Cole bounded straight at him and slapped it out of his hand. If this guy started shooting at Cole, he might hurt somebody. "Sorry," Cole said. "No time."

  He turned down Pennsylvania and then it was a straight shot to the White House. Of course, with the high alert they were on, he would look as suspicious as anybody, and he would need to stop his flying progress well before the White House. What worried him was the snipers that had been permanently stationed on the roofs of the buildings around the White House since the assassination a few years ago. Their job was to kill anybody behaving exactly the way Cole was behaving, no questions asked—and he wasn't in communication with them.

  "Jeep, you there?" Cole asked his Noodle.

  "Ay-ay," said Jeep. "White House knows you're coming. But no sign of your guys yet. You sure this isn't a false alarm?"

  "Not sure of anything, but I still don't want the snipers to shoot me on the way in. I'm coming down Pennsylvania and I know there are guys on the other side of Washington Circle, on the IFC and down at H Street."

  "I'll do what I can but they don't report to anybody I'm tied in to."

  The drones had to stay out beyond the periphery of the White House no-fly zone, and all four of them reported the shooting and explosions at the same time. The guys seemed to be coming in south of the Eisenhower Building, at New York Avenue, but Cole assumed that it was a diversion—there was no reason for them to use explosives to get over the barriers, so they must have planted something that would fire a rocket at the security station there.

  So Cole audibled the drones' pilots to watch the rest of the perimeter, especially Alexander Hamilton Place, but possibly coming over the top of the building on Fifteenth Street.

  It was Hamilton Place. The drone pilot with the best angle counted all six, so the diversion had been triggered remotely—Cole doubted they would have brought anybody else into the plot, except himself if he'd been a true believer.

  So they were on the White House grounds while he was still working his way down Pennsylvania. Even though Pennsylvania was the most direct route, since it pointed right at the White House, it was also the most formidably defended. Cole jinked south on Nineteenth to F Street and was able to bound his way along at top speed until the Eisenhower Building blocked him. The gate just south of there was where the diversion had been. And sure enough, there was a huge clot of security personnel running around looking for something.

  And Cole was something.

  He held up his ID and shouted his name. "I am Colonel Bartholomew Coleman, U.S. Army Special Forces! This was a diversion! The intruders are on the grounds on the east side, they came in over the fence at Alexander Hamilton Place!"

  They heard him—the Noodle was augmenting his voice because he had told it to, another feature to help a man injured while wearing it.

  "How do we know you're not one of them!" shouted a Secret Service agent who, like everybody else, was pointing a weapon at him.

  "Because I'm showing you my damn ID and telling you where they really are! Now get your brains out of your shoulder holsters and go protect the President!"

  He had wasted enough time on them now. Supposedly they had been forewarned that he was coming; certainly they knew he had ID. But that didn't mean one or more of them wouldn't shoot at him as soon as he took to the air. Couldn't be helped. He couldn't go the rest of the way at regular pedestrian speed and hope to accomplish anything. Thirty seconds' head start was enough for these guys to accomplish their mission, and they had at least a minute and a half on him.

  He leapt up into the air, but followed a somewhat zigzagging route because, sure enough, somebody shot at him. It was only the one shot, however, and so maybe the rest of them had realized he was a good guy—the only good guy with armaments that could match what the bad guys had brought.

  Cole was coming at the White House at the south end of the West Wing. If the guys had been able to achieve strategic surprise, they might have caught the President in the Oval Office or in the Rose Garden, but Torrent wouldn't have holed up anywhere that obvious.

  Cole thought through the floorplan of the White House. Where would Torrent go? Nowhere in the West Wing, and certainly not the press area. The guys had come in on the East Wing side—did they know something? No, Torrent wouldn't be thinking geography and distance, he'd be thinking what was an unlikel
y place for him to be. A room that you wouldn't look for the President in.

  Wouldn't be a bathroom—those were all designed as dead ends. And he wouldn't want a small space anyway. It would be too Sad-damish to be dragged out of a hidey-hole.

  "Jeep, are you in contact with Security?"

  "What do you need to know?"

  "Do they know where the President is?"

  "They do not. Secret Service walkies are jammed."

  So the guys had stolen a page from the bad-guy handbook and were screwing with the electronics. Not an EMP but they didn't need one.

  What room would the President know well, yet had no regular business in it so that other people wouldn't think of him being there?

  There was shooting from inside the White House, and then screaming. The Noodle indicated the shooting came from three different areas, and Cole realized that with three teams, the enemy did not have to know where the President was, they could search. Or simply shoot into every room. As he had told Cecily, he didn't have to know where the President was, he only had to know where the enemy was. But which team mattered most? The one that was closest to getting to the President. And that meant Cole did need to have some idea of where Torrent was.

  He made his guess: the family kitchen. Second floor of the residence, northwest corner. The staff would have been evacuated. The President would know it as a place for snacking.

  Cole leapt up onto the Truman balcony but did not crash his way into the Yellow Oval. He had been there before and if they anticipated his entry point it would be an excellent killing ground. Instead he crashed backward through the window of the living room. Somebody was in the room next door—the master bedroom—firing heavy-duty ordnance, and some of it started coming through the walls into the living room. Cole's first instinct was to hit the floor, but so was everyone's, and so the shooter would know that and aim low to cover the floor. Cole jumped up instead, effectively bounding over the bullets, and then kicked his way through the door connecting the living room and bedroom directly.

  He caught Arty swinging back toward him and took him out with three bullets to the face. Cole was using the assisted aiming routine—he couldn't afford to make a single mistake and it had saved his life once. And the face was the only thing not covered with Kevlar.

  No time for regret. No time to think about the fact that it was Arty's gun that Chinma had used to stop the intruders in Calabar. Except that he couldn't stop the thoughts from entering his head.

  Jeep's voice. "Two down in the West Wing. The Marines are here, and the ones in the East Wing are pinned down. So it's just the two in the residence that you need to deal with."

  "Arty down here," said Cole. "So only one?"

  "Unless the East Wing pair break free."

  Cole came out of the bedroom into the west sitting hall, and there was a bad sign—the door to the kitchen had been replaced by a good-sized hole. They had already come through here. If the President was in the kitchen, he was dead.

  Where else? The Treaty Room? The Lincoln?

  Then he whirled back around and rushed into the kitchen.

  Mingo was there. Mingo with Arty? They hadn't kept the previous pairing after all.

  Or else the two pinned down in the East Wing weren't there at all. Another diversion? Another illusion?

  "This isn't your party, Cole," said Mingo. "We tried to keep you out of it."

  Cole shot him in the face and he went down. If he stopped and talked, the President would die. And Cole couldn't leave any of them alive behind him.

  "Mingo down," said Cole. "Who's in the East Wing?"

  "No ID yet," said Jeep.

  "Nobody's seen them?"

  "Negative."

  "Then they aren't there," said Cole. "Staying in one place?"

  "Yes."

  "Not there, not there, tell them to get over to the residence."

  Where now? Maybe he'd been right about the kitchen, wrong about which one. The big kitchen downstairs was an even less likely place for the President to go. This wasn't where he'd head for late-night snacks, this was the kitchen that did the serious cooking for major events.

  Cole sailed down the flights of stairs to the ground floor. Too bad the stairway was so far over to the east. He could hear shooting on the ground floor as he went. Then an explosion. He ran down the center hall and saw that the Secret Service headquarters had been grenaded. But Drew was dead on the floor, too—the Secret Service had some kind of serious firepower, because whatever killed him had taken a bite out of his side like a shark, blowing past the Kevlar like it wasn't there.

  There was a blood trail heading to the pantry, which was the route into the kitchen. Cole followed it, only to find a dead Secret Service agent, who had apparently staggered in here. Or was he following an uninjured soldier? It had to be Benny. The one whose pistol Mark had used. What would Benny do?

  Would he lie in wait to spring a trap on Cole?

  Never. Benny would accomplish his mission.

  Cole glanced into the kitchen but there was no one there. Through the refrigerator room and on out into the basement hall.

  Chocolate shop? Flower shop? Carpenters' shop? The bowling alley? Nowhere to hide in there, the thing was only one lane wide.

  Benny would already be searching. All Cole could do was follow in his footsteps, which could mean he got to the President first—or second. What he really needed was to find Benny. To draw him away from the President.

  Calling out to Benny wouldn't work—he'd never be stupid enough to answer. But calling to the President would tell Benny where Cole was—and that might draw him to Cole, distract him from his mission.

  "President Torrent!" Cole cried out.

  "Cole!" came a shout from the carpenters' shop.

  Cole couldn't believe it. The President answered? Telling the enemy exactly where he was! Was he insane? What if Benny was closer?

  Well, he was, but not the way Cole expected. Benny and the President were in the main room of the shop, but Benny was on the ground, his Bones nonfunctional, and four nails in his face.

  Torrent stood near the bandsaw, holding a nailgun. That explained the nails, but not why the Bones had stopped working.

  "Is he dead?" asked Torrent.

  Of course he wasn't dead, Cole might have said. Four nails in the face wouldn't kill anybody.

  But instead he had to respond to Benny's movement. He was bringing up a handgun to shoot Torrent, and Cole was on the wrong side of him, the backside, with nothing vital he could hit without having to go through Kevlar.

  Except that Benny was on the ground, and Kevlar was designed to protect a man who was upright. Cole shot him between the legs, up into the body cavity from below. Benny didn't get the shot off after all.

  Cole still stood near the entrance to the room, facing the President. Torrent was looking down at the body. Or perhaps at the handgun that had been a split second away from firing at him.

  Cole started toward the President.

  "No, no," said Torrent. "I'll come to you."

  But Cole walked right past him. Straight to the black-plastic-lined garbage can across from the bandsaw.

  Sure enough, inside it was one of the handheld EMP devices. Nothing else could have brought Benny down. Certainly not a nailgun.

  "Thought you didn't have any of these," said Cole, lifting it out of the garbage and turning back to face the President.

  Torrent was holding Benny's handgun, pointing it at Cole's face.

  Cole instantly clicked off all communications between himself and Jeep.

  "What did you just do?" asked Torrent. "I know that was a command!"

  "I cut off all outgoing audio."

  "Cut it off?"

  If Torrent had been a soldier, Cole would already be dead. Soldiers didn't wait to have conversations, they killed the moment they had the opportunity.

  "Video was already off, in case the enemy had jigged the system and could see me that way."

  "Why wouldn't you w
ant anyone to hear? You just made it easier for me to kill you."

  "I know," said Cole.

  "How can I leave you alive? None of the captured EMP devices is in the White House. This one proves that I know who makes these things."

  "It's more important that you remain President than that I remain alive," said Cole.

  Torrent lowered the weapon. "I haven't been doing what you think," said Torrent. "But everyone will think it."

  "I know you didn't plan the details, sir," said Cole. "I know you never meant to betray anybody."

  "Nevertheless, that was the effect," said Torrent. "I hate it. I grieve for the pain I caused. It was like members of my own family dying. But it's the only way I know to do my job, which is more important than any one life or any dozen or hundred or thousand lives."

  "Exactly," said Cole.

  Torrent was taken aback. "I know you better than that, Coleman. It's impossible to believe you don't care."

  "I've been wrestling with this from the start, Mr. President. Cecily and I suspected you had more to do with events than you were admitting—the civil war, even the assassinations. We couldn't prove it, but we decided to watch you. And you gave us every chance. We saw you make hard decisions quickly and intelligently. We saw you turn every circumstance to the advantage of America. I think that if anyone can take us there, you can."

  "Where do you think I'm trying to take us?" asked Torrent.

  "To peace on Earth, sir," said Cole.

  "I don't understand," said Torrent. "You have the proof that I know the people who make these things. I got it into the White House, I had it here when the only conceivable purpose was to protect me against my own best soldiers. They didn't have proof, and they wanted to kill me. Why don't you?"

  "They missed the point," said Cole. "A good ruler isn't always a good man. Or rather, he is a good man, but he uses a different standard of good."

  "A higher standard!"Torrent said, agreeing with him.

  "A larger one, let's say. You have to look past what's good for any one person—even people you know well, people who trust you—and choose what's good for everyone, even if it hurts the people you trust."