He was standing atop an empire of lies.
He raised a hierarchy of potential targets and fired them out to strike teams around the world. The wells. The mosquito facilities. Last of all the research facility in the Alps. There was something about its data trail, about the frequency of vehicles making deliveries, about its power usage. There was a runway nearby, and an internet optic fiber running through a strong trunk line, buried in the rock. While spun back what satellite coverage he could find of the area, but there were large gaps in the footage dating back seven years.
It wasn't unusual that imagery might be unavailable; satellites constantly overlapped as their routes shifted course, leaving blind slivers between them, but this many gaps across that specific period was statistically highly unlikely. That it coincided almost precisely with the date that he had joined the SEAL was a giveaway.
He gave the order to his pilot, and seconds later the plane banked sharply to the left. James While paced, while the turn completed and the pilot came on the line to announce a new flight time, making a tight arc over Kazakhstan to touch down in the Alps in five hours and change.
James paced.
He planned. He tried to think of more areas he might have overlooked during his time as COO. He threw himself into uprooting all of Olan Harrison's entrenched corruption. He reset the stage, opened multiple screens in the jet's cabin and plowed on with stamping order back onto the world.
* * *
The plane landed on ice and skidded. James While drank an energy drink of his own design, unbranded and packed with caffeine and a range of cutting-edge stimulants. He hadn't slept now for forty-eight hours and was starting to feel the drain. He had perhaps twelve more hours before he'd have to hand off temporary control and rest. New systems had to be as ironclad as possible by then.
The jet's engines reversed and slowed despite the icy runway. While waited at the exit hatch, and as soon as the deceleration finished he swung the door lever up and pulled the cord on the emergency slide, which deployed with a yellow blast. He was on it and sliding down before it had even finished deploying, hitting the snow at a fast walk.
It was freezing outside, but he wouldn't be out in it for long. It was the middle of the night in the mountains of Switzerland, with dark clouds hanging low overhead. The descent had been pitch black and dangerous, with the runway only lit by gas flares dropped down its length.
"Sir!"
It was John Rubega, leader of one of his most trusted assault teams, who'd already taken out Quiescence in Rome a few hours back. Now they were spread across this mountain; five soldiers and three black Jeeps sat a few yards away, engines smoking in the cold.
"Has anyone gone in?" While asked.
"No further than the entranceway, as you ordered."
While strode past him and opened the door to the nearest Jeep. Rubega gave a motion and the driver hopped out, allowing him to replace him. The engine fired up and the vehicle pulled away, followed sharply by the others.
Rubega gave him the sit-rep as they revved up the mountain. Gray rock rushed by to the right, lit harshly by the headlights. Everything was a risk. He had his team. In ten minutes they were there; at a shallow parking lot tucked along the roadside, framing a simple door leading into the rock.
"Sir," said Rubega, "recommend-"
"We'll do this as I ordered, Commander," While said clearly, already pushing open the Jeep's door. "A tight squad, you can lead, no hair trigger."
"Yes, sir!" Rubega said and shot out of the vehicle. His team was waiting, and picked up position around James While as he advanced swiftly on the entrance dug into the cliff-face.
"Is it locked?"
"No, sir, nor trapped. Sir, let me."
While gestured ahead of him. A security light flashed on over the entrance; molded into the mountain with clean gray cement. Rubega darted in, opened the door, and barreled through into the darkness beyond.
"SEAL Security forces, put any weapons down!"
While followed tightly on his heels, into pitch black. He'd already seen the layout of the laboratory in maps, hidden up here away from sight so that animal rights campaigners would never learn of its existence, along with photographs, and had a feeling for what he was looking for. There were numerous rooms spread off the sides of a long corridor leading in, but none of them were grand enough for a man intending to live forever. At the end of the corridor lay a large open laboratory. That's where Harrison would be.
"Lights," While said, striding ahead into the darkness. Rubega rushed to stay ahead, bringing up the light array at the front of his suit, revealing a nondescript white hallway with doors leading off to the sides. There was an odd smell in the air which defied classification.
Clack clack.
James While's shoes rang sharply off the tiled floor, accompanied by the muffled shush of the rubber-soled assault team deploying around him; each spraying light from their chest arrays. Doors broke open to either side but While kept striding on, forcing his team to work at double-time to keep up.
Olan Harrison. He ran the man's name around in his head with every step. A great man, such potential, fallen to this like a cheap terrorist. It was a great dismay. It was also beyond unlikely he would still be here. More likely than anything, there would be a colossal explosion waiting on the other side of the laboratory door.
Rubega reached it seconds before While, gave a signal to his team who raised metal blast shields, then launched himself through.
No explosion greeted them. The lights beyond were already switched on, revealing a hall that was shallow but long, a T crossbar capping the corridor. It looked like a hospital ward, lined with medical machinery, computer screens and server banks, and at the center there was a bed upon which lay a person who was plainly, painfully dead.
While took it all in.
The body was spread-eagled on a mattress soaked red; the ribcage cracked and flexed wide open so the heart and lungs were exposed, the belly flesh peeled back so the internal viscera had spread out in their gossamer white bandage of connective tissues, making a gory butcher's puddle in the dead figure's lap.
It stank. It explained the strange smell in the air.
"Sir, we should get you out of here," said Rubega, as his men spread rapidly up and down the hall. "It's-"
"It's Olan Harrison," said While.
The realization hit and left him numb. A dozen plates fell and crashed on the floor of his mind.
He strode over to his side. The old man's face was pulled wide in pain; his eyes bugging, his lips snarled back against perfect white teeth. He looked older than his recent appearances in SEAL meetings.
"He's been dead for hours," one of Rubega's team said, taking a blood sample. "Less than twelve."
The world spun and twisted, and While opened himself to it. There were details everywhere. In Olan's skin, in the old divot scars on his scalp, in the apparatus hanging on the walls nearby; intra-cranial electrodes, neural nets like Helkegarde's Arrays, large quantum server banks from the Apotheo Net.
He touched Olan's face; the skin was papery and cold, not the rubbery synthetic feel of a mock-up. He slipped a penknife from his pocket and slit the blade deep into Olan's cheek, revealing tissue and muscle within. A few drops of blood leaked out.
It was a real body, not an elaborate fake. Harrison was dead.
He turned to Rubega. "Get everyone out. Sweep this place at the atomic level. Highest level of containment, right now."
Rubega gave a signal and his team sped back the way they'd come. James While followed hard on their heels, trying to spin the plate up on this issue and failing. It didn't make sense.
Olan Harrison had set this up, bringing on the impending end of the world, and now he was dead. It looked like a crime of hatred, reveling in the old man's pain, but if Olan had been ingenious enough to rig the whole world in such a way that even James While couldn't see it, how could he not see an assassin in his closest ranks?
It didn't make sense.
The corridor passed in the blink of an eye, then he was outside the facility, walking back to the Jeep in a chill and brisk mountain wind, with messages and missed calls beeping in through the satellite phone at his hip as the signal returned. He didn't check it, but Rubega did.
"Sir," he said, and the tone of his voice made While look over, and unholster his phone.
He saw the first few messages and stopped walking, scrolling through dozens more with mounting horror.
The SEAL was under attack.
Simultaneous raids had just taken place around the world, each waged with irresistible force. The Logchain had been invaded, with Rachel Heron and key members of her team torn from his custody. The head of Multicameral Array Epsilon had been taken with many of his team from the temporary lab they were housed in. The Apotheo Net had been struck, Free Radical, and specialists taken.
As he read fresh messages kept flashing in; in every corner of the SEAL key personnel were being kidnapped by black-clad soldiers, in many cases broken out of armed guard with substantial bloodshed and material damage. Every raid was successful. So far there was no record of who was doing it, where they had come from or where they were going.
Rubega raced the Jeep at unsafe speeds down to the runway. En route James While ordered up a stream of repeated mid-air refuels and a rolling escort of F1 jets, then turned his gaze to emergency response.
Whoever had killed Olan had been waiting. They were watching. Now the danger was everywhere, and the world could turn on a dime in a moment.
His plane took off and didn't land again for two weeks.
13. MONTCLIFFE
Anna woke angry.
She'd been in and out of consciousness for hours, drifting while voices talked over her, glimpsing brief sightings of poor Jake sitting there, swaddled in white foam bandaging like the man in the Alps who'd put a dead baby in her belly, and Lucas hovering close, unable to help but longing to, and…
She rocked in again, opening her eyes to see Peters standing above her, gazing down from two black eyes with one hand on her shoulder.
Jake was sitting in his wheelchair with only a blotchy part of his face showing. Lucas stood beside him with one eye deeply bloodshot and a sling on his left arm.
"Anna," Peters said urgently, "wake up, something is happening."
She sat up. Her body was in a lot of pain, her muscles felt dry and drained, but she could feel the anger inside like a jet engine, waiting to burn. There was no shortage of fuel in the air; she could feel it in her friends, in herself, in the people moving cautiously outside their room, like the air before a storm.
She blinked, taking things in swiftly. A white room, small and clinical, which meant-
"We're in the bunker," she croaked. "How long has it been?"
"She needs to rest," Lucas said to Peters, plainly continuing an argument. "They won't do anything now, Inchcombe promised." He turned to her. "You almost burned your heart out, Anna, you have to-"
She kicked her legs out of the sheets.
"What's happening?"
"Movements outside," said Peters. "The bunker is changing hands, I think."
"I really think-" Lucas said, but then Anna was standing. Some things couldn't wait. She looked down at Jake, into his rimless and veiny eyes, taking in his pain and marking it as another factor in this long and brutal war, and nodded once. It was good he was alive, and there would be time for reunions later, but now she had business to do.
She strode to the door, holding Peters' arm. "Take me to her."
"You can barely walk," Lucas protested. "Stay and rest, help me with-"
She reached the door and swung it open.
Outside a young man was jogging with a rifle held at his side, in a plain white corridor with over half the ceiling lights dark. The air was humid and there was no hum of air conditioners.
He stopped when Anna opened the door, looking surprised to see her. He didn't know what to do. He took a step back and said, "I'm supposed to-" then Peters darted over and hit him. One punch to his nose, one into his solar plexus, and he went down.
"Get the gun," Anna said, already stumbling away down the corridor. "Seal that door, Lucas. He was looking for us."
Each step she tottered forward, she felt more of the flows of bodies ahead. There was coordinated movement, Peters was right. Something was happening.
The door slammed in back, then Peters was there at her side, taking some of her weight and propelling them on together.
"Inchcombe," Peters said as they hobbled forward. "She didn't lie, but she is losing control. I feel it."
"Tell me," said Anna, so he did.
A day and night had passed, and it had been touch and go with Anna for a time. Inchcombe had rallied, and the world above ground had continued with its mission of helping their own people injured in Amo's assault. Hundreds were dead, hundreds injured, hundreds more gone mad from whatever Amo did to them on the line, and there was no shortage of work required.
"Inchcombe moved us here in secret, in the night," Peters said. "For safety."
Anna gritted her teeth. "Was that her man in the corridor?"
"I think not."
They turned a corner and made for the bunker stairs. The layout was similar to Maine. At the stairwell they passed a blank-eyed man, still smeared with soot in a slash across his face, staring at a featureless point of a wall. As they went past, Anna heard him muttering nonsense syllables underneath his breath.
"Many are like this," Peters said darkly.
Others were moving up and down the stairs, people from the bunker walking with supplies, walking with injured people. Many of them stopped to stare at Anna.
Of course they knew her. For months she'd held the threat of death over their heads, forcing passage of her treaty. Now there was this uneasy truce, but something was breaking. These people didn't know it, but they felt it too. A shifting mood that let them stare at her unafraid. Perhaps to them she looked like a devil. To Anna these were more casualties waiting to happen.
They climbed the stairs, Peters helping a lot. Sweat beaded on her brow and her body trembled. He spoke in a low voice as they climbed, explaining what had happened to Lucas, to Jake, how some of the others had been left in a ward above ground as a decoy, about the general recovery of order and Inchcombe's fading grasp on control.
"I saw them," Peters said softly, reaching floor minus 1. "Recruiting. I heard one of them talk about what you did. Anna, that is a power they fear. Every day more die, more in comas, more sick, and they blame you."
Anna hissed as her left leg seized in pain. Peters dragged her forward and she used the railing to stay upright. "What about Inchcombe?"
"She will not see me. She advises to stay here, below, through intermediaries. She is washing her hands of us, I feel."
Anna looked at his face. His skin was pale and worn too. "What have you been doing?"
"Working with Jake. Lucas tries to do his science, but he cries. He is guilty. Jake is angry. Then Jake is guilty, and Lucas is angry. I go between."
"And the others? Sulman, Macy?"
"Sick, broken. The people in that hangar, it was awful, Anna. They were too angry. At Amo. At you."
They reached the top of the flight of stairs. Here there were more people, gathering in a crowd that pushed steadily in the direction of the elevator. The air hummed with rising panic. Anna glimpsed a pair of soldiers with rifles, watching the crowd from the wall, and ducked her head down against Peters' chest, steering him deeper into the crowd.
People here were afraid and they didn't know why. They were being herded.
"Get us through," Anna whispered, and pulled her shirt up high at the back to cover her distinctive, frizzy black hair. Peters' grip was like iron around her shoulders, holding her firmly as he pushed into the crowd like the prow of a ship, splitting people smoothly to either side.
Anna heard whispers and felt signals shifting around her as she was seen, like the sun steadily sinking beh
ind the horizon. The moment was coming, there would be no stopping it.
"Hey!" called a sharp male voice.
"Keep going," Anna whispered.
"He sees me," Peters said. "He knows me. I recognize him."
"Stop there! You, stop him, he's one of them."
The crowd around them, previously shuffling and sad and consumed with their own miseries, abruptly opened wide. Faces showed shock and scrabbled further away.
"Run," hissed Peters, and gave Anna a shove into the gap, then whirled and raised his rifle.
RATATATATAT
The sound of bullets filled the air with a cacophony, echoed by screams. Anna staggered forward and nearly fell. Her legs were too weak.
RATATATATAT rang out again, and people nearby dropped, and all hell broke loose as everyone tried to flee at once, forgetting that she was the enemy and just trying to get away from the gunfire.
Anna tumbled on the flow of bodies like a child in the arms of the ocean; too weak to control her direction. Together they flowed like a wave down the corridor and burst into a large yellow hall, which Anna recognized by degrees, as she struggled to keep her feet beneath her; the video screens on the walls, the scent of flowers on the air. It was a double of the entrance hall of the Maine bunker, and took her back to years ago, listening in the front row while Amo was on trial and Witzgenstein declaimed against him. Now it was filled with terrified faces, clamoring to get away. On a swell in their movements Anna saw the elevator at the end, with two more soldiers guarding it, their rifles up.
She closed her eyes and reached down into the loam of the line, trying to remember what she'd done before in the mad night run, after seeing Jake screaming in the dark. It felt like plumbing a deep dark well, reaching through herself and twisting something inside out, even as heavy bodies collided with hers and the undertow dragged her down.
The Last Mayor Box Set 3 Page 42