Empire

Command and control

They were about halfway to the bottom when the rebel in the cabin shouted, “They’re coming down the stairs!”

Should have killed him, thought Cole.

No. We should have closed the trap door from the inside.

Fortunately, there was a good chance nobody at the bottom could understand what he was yelling.

They heard gunfire below them.

The elevator door must have opened. But the sound was muffled. They must have built a heavy door between the stairway and the elevator landing at the bottom.

But now that they knew Cole and Cat hadn’t come down the elevator, they were bound to think of the stairway. If it was a grenade they tossed, Cole and Cat should stay high on the stairs. But if they opened the door and fired, they should be down there to shoot back.

Cole didn’t remember seeing any of the rebels armed with grenades.

He sat on the railing, leaned a hand on the center pole, and slid down. As he neared the bottom, he tipped himself off the railing and out of Cat’s way. He landed on the floor, and flung himself into the corner, his rifle pointing at the door just as it opened. He shot once, lining the door and knocking it farther open.

Cat hit the bottom of the stairs with the pin already pulled on a grenade, rolled it on the floor through the gap in the door, then pulled the door shut. It went off.

A moment later they had the door open, and this time there was no attempt at conversation—everybody they saw in that space, alive or dead, they fired at quickly. There started down a bare concrete tunnel—which, from its placement, could only be a tunnel leading under the lakebed toward the mountain where Verus’s arsenal was.

“I hope that grenade didn’t weaken the concrete of this tunnel,” said Cat. “Don’t want all that water coming in.”

“Too bad,” said Cole. Because at that moment water did start coming in. But not from any damage caused by the grenade. The rebels were flooding the corridor themselves, water gushing through a two-foot-diameter tube at the other end.

They could either go back and climb the stairs to the cabin and wait for reinforcements, or charge straight into the gushing water and try to get above the level of the tunnel before it completely flooded.

Cat didn’t hesitate, so Cole followed him.

They stayed to the edge of the tunnel where the force of the thick stream water wasn’t so strong. But the tunnel was filling rapidly—knee level, then hip level by the time they forced their way past the stream and realized they were on the wrong side—there was no door here. Cole could just make out the door shape on the other side through the thick gush of water.

“Swim under?” said Cat.

“No time to go back,” said Cole.

“Get my weapon all wet,” said Cat.

Cole took the Minimi out of his hand as Cat shrugged off his pack. Cat swam under the stream. Cole threw his pack over the rush of water, then his weapon. Cat caught them both.

Now Cole threw his own weapon and his own pack. But the water was shoulder height. Harder to dive low enough to get under the stream. He felt it sucking at him, churning him out away from the door.

Then he felt Cat’s hand catch him under the arm, drag him back.

Their packs were floating on top of the water; their weapons were on top of the packs.

“Door’s locked,” said Cat.

Cole grabbed Cat’s Minimi, leaned his back against Cat, and walked his legs up the door. When Cat was holding him above the level of the water, he fired a burst down between his legs at the thick glass of the window in the door. It took two bursts before the glass crazed and broke.

It wasn’t a very big window. Cole kicked out a few shards of glass, pulled out his pistol, and went through first, because his feet were already high enough. It was the base of a spiral staircase, just like on the other side, and there was nobody there.

He looked up. Still nobody.

Cat was pushing through the weapons. Cole picked them up and set them on the stairs, out of the water.

The packs wouldn’t fit through the window in the door. Cat, who was floating now, kept pulling watertight ammunition packages out of packs and pushing them down through the broken window. Cole put them on higher stairs, out of the water. Then Cat’s feet came through. Cole pulled. Cat was bigger in the shoulders than Cole was, and he got stuck.

At that moment, something dropped down from the top of the stairs. Grenade, thought Cole. They’ve got grenades after all.

But he kept his concentration, marking where the grenade had fallen into the water without letting up on pulling Cat.

Cat slid through. Cole dived for the grenade. Fumbled. Found it. Pushed it into the torrent coming through the window and pushed it down, knowing it would go off any second and take his hand off.

He let go of it and yanked his hand back.

It exploded, making the door tremble and allowing water to spray in around the edges. Cat had already gathered up all the ammunition for his weapon and some of Cole’s. He handed it to Cole and started up the stairs as Cole got his weapon and stuffed ammunition into his pockets.

Another grenade dropped. Another. Cole grabbed one of their grenades and, knowing it was insanely dangerous, threw it spiraling almost straight back up, like the highest forward pass he ever threw in his life. If it went off when it was passing Cat, he would be killing his own man. But if Cat got to the top with a bunch of guys there training automatic weapons on him, he’d be dead anyway.

Meanwhile, there was a second grenade in the water near him. Cole raced up the stairs. Both grenades went off almost at once. The one below him splashed water all over the inside of the stairwell, like the first spurt when you turn on a blender. But the stairs themselves, being steel, shielded Cole from most of the blast. He stumbled, but he kept going.

The upper grenade apparently hadn’t killed Cat—his footsteps were still heading up.

Somebody was still alive up there, but it was Cat’s Minimi that kept firing, the other weapon that fell silent.

He reached the top to find Cat lying on the floor using an armored body as his shield, exchanging bursts with somebody who was some distance away, where Cole couldn’t see. Cole stayed on the stairs and got his rifle out, then inched forward until he could see into the room that Cat was firing into.

It was a narrow, high-ceilinged cavern with steel bracing extending up to the roof. The walls were lined with mechs, squatting on the floor like they were all taking a dump. Cole had always thought that the mechs would hang like suits, with their legs dangling. But then how would anybody get inside?

Cole pushed himself forward a little farther and found a target—a guy running for one of the mechs. Being in a good position, his shot was clean and he took him down. Slid farther in and took out another.

They stopped trying to get to the mechs. Instead, they fled the room. “Idiots,” said Cat softly. “They should have been in the mechs before we made it up here.”

“Maybe some of them already are,” said Cole. “Playing possum.”

“They that smart?”

“I just don’t want to walk down between those rows.”

Which was fine. There were corridors leading off to the left and right. Cole chose the one to the left for no better reason than that he was on that side already.

He tried to imagine the architecture of this place. It wouldn’t be like a building, with rooms one after another, divided only by thin walls. They had a whole mountain on top of them. So each room would have plenty of rock between it and the next one, with only corridors connecting them. The really tall corridors would be for mechs to walk along. Stay with the low, man-sized corridors, and they’d be more likely to face opponents that weren’t armored like tanks.

The cavern architecture also meant that corridors could be long and could lead anywhere. This one was sloping upward and turning. The turn made Cole uncomfortable. It meant he couldn’t see all the way ahead.

Then it looked like the corridor ended.

No. As he rounded the last bit of curve he could see that it took a sharp turn to the right. No door this time. No reason to put a lot of doors in here, when you were above the water level and nobody could get in here anyway.

But now Cole had to wonder: What was their mission now? They had headed for the cabin only to reconnoiter. They hadn’t meant to assault the place. Each step along this road, after the firing started, was oriented toward survival. Except… when there had been a choice about which way to run in the flooding tunnel, Cat had chosen to go toward the enemy, not away. And Cole had gone along without a second thought.

They had proof enough that this was where the bad guys were. One of the guys outside had to have taken pictures of the mechs and hoverbikes coming out of those huge doors in the mountainside. Video, too, of the rebels shooting at Cole and Cat on the ladder up to the cabin.

With no one actually shooting at them, Cole gave a hand signal for Cat to wait and keep watch.Then he switched on his transmitter.

“You think that’s still working?” asked Cat.

“Light still comes on,” said Cole. “And it’s supposed to use the ground as a conduit.” Cole coded for Drew first.

And got an answer. “Drew here. You guys okay?”

“Mingo and Benny get through to Gettysburg?” asked Cole.

“Don’t know yet,” said Drew. “But everything and everybody’s coming through those big front doors.”

“More guys looking for you?”

“We killed two mechs with rockets and then they all headed back for home. Trucks are coming out now, driving up and over the dam. Looks to me like they’re evacuating the place.”

“Just cause two guys got inside?” said Cat. “Big babies.”

“They’ve got to believe we’re just the preliminary team,” said Drew. “If they believe we’re just an advance team, and you actually got inside, I think they took that as a bad sign.”

“Besides,” said Babe, “these are the guys who decided against a military career.”

Evacuating, moving to a different location. Why? Because they intended to make this one unusable themselves. “I think they’re planning to flood this whole place,” said Cole. “Genesseret is higher than this whole complex. Run water through it all, ruin everything.”

“Doesn’t eliminate the evidence that it exists,” said Drew.

“If they’re planning to flood this, I want to get a little higher up,” said Cat.

“Tell us when Mingo reports that a strike force is coming,” said Cole. “Make sure you have a radio ready to tell them about the ordnance and personnel that are getting away. Capture it all on the road.” Then he signed off and turned off his transmitter.

Cat slid down the wall to a squatting position. “How long will it take a strike force to get here?”

“I don’t know,” said Cole. “If they come from Nevada or Montana, at least an hour.”

“Carrier off the coast—the Marines might get here fastest.”

“I don’t mind getting my ass saved by the Marines,” said Cole. “Long as they save my ass.”

“If the bad guys are evacuating—”

“In order to flood the whole place?”

“I’ve done enough swimming,” said Cat.

“So—before we move on, what’s our goal here?”

“Stay breathing,” said Cat.

“We could have stayed at the cabin,” said Cole.

Cat thought about that for a few seconds. “Well, we want higher ground if they’re going to flood the place. And my guess is, if we try to go out the front door, they’ll be waiting for us there. Why hunt us down if they know we’ve got to come to them?”

“So we want to go up. If there’s any place high enough in here to stay out of the water.”

“And I was thinking,” said Cat, “maybe Aloe Vera’s here somewhere. Course, he’d be crazy to be here where he couldn’t deny knowing about it.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to deny it,” said Cole. “Maybe he’s proud of it.”

“Here’s where the ordnance is coming from,” said Cat. “Maybe the orders come from here, too. Guy builds this army, don’t you think he’d want to run it?”

“So we’re looking for Verus?”

“Hell no,” said Cat. “We’re looking for command and control. Wipe it out in advance of the main assault.”

It was elementary. Wipe out enemy command and control—it’s what Special Forces were supposed to do in advance of an attack. But he’d never been in an invasion. He’d always worked on hearts-and-minds, recon, small-group assaults. Cat, however, had been there for Iraq in 2003. Different experience, so different stuff comes to mind in a crisis.

Still, thought Cole: I should have thought of it.

“If we do happen to find him,” said Cole, “we need him alive. For the cameras.”

“I think his dead body does the same job,” said Cat.

“Better to pull him out of a hole.”

“Like Saddam.”

“Meanwhile,” said Cole, “I wonder what’s waiting around this corner. You got any grenades left?”

“In my pack,” said Cat. “Floating in that tunnel.”

Cole dropped to the floor and rolled out into the corridor, keeping his weapon pointed down the hall.

There was nothing there. Just more ramp going up and another turn.

“Goes up,” said Cat behind him.

“Just the direction we wanted to go.” Cole got up and ran up the slope. Cat followed him.

The next jog wasn’t into a corridor, it was into a large, heavily braced cavern. This was one of the factories. Not a fully automated assembly line—the volume wasn’t great enough to justify that. It looked like they used teams to assemble the pieces into finished hovercycles, one bike per team, six teams working, plus carts loaded with parts.

But nobody was assembling anything right now. Which went along with what the guys were seeing outside. Everybody evacuated.

On the wall, there was a map of the place with two escape routes marked. One led to the huge front door, the other to the tunnel connecting to the cabin.

“I don’t believe this map,” said Cole. “I don’t think they’d build this place without an escape hatch that didn’t require that the lake be drained.”

“They didn’t expect the tunnel to be full of water,” said Cat.

“But they flooded it themselves. Their defense is flooding the front door, too. No way are they so stupid they get trapped if both entrances are flooded.”

“So there’s an escape route didn’t quite make it onto the map?” said Cat.

“One that trucks can’t use,” said Cole.

“But Aloe Vera can.”

Studying the floorplan, though, there was nothing conveniently labeled “Command and Control.”

“I’ll keep watch,” said Cole, “you look at this.”

Cat looked. “Not like a regular building. Nice rectangular tower, you can spot the gaps when they leave stuff off the floor plan.”

“So if you were in charge of this place, where would you put the command center?”

“Up high,” said Cat. “They got three levels higher than this one. Not a lot of routes leading there.”

“I bet Command and Control is four levels up,” said Cole, “since the floorplan only shows three.”

“Bet you’re right,” said Cat.

“So which way up you want to use?”

Both he and Cat had memorized the map while studying it—part of their training, to be able to memorize maps so they didn’t have to carry them around.

“Not the ones that lead toward the front door,” said Cat. “Let’s avoid the crowds.”

They ran into only three people on the stairs they took—all civilians, from their clothing, and two of them women. One of the women cried and shrank away, but the other armed herself with her shoe, brandishing it at them as they passed her and moved on up the stairs. “You can holster that shoe now,” said Cole as he passed her. She didn’t seem to think it was funny.

The stairs ended at the top level on the map. But this level was smaller than the others. There were plenty of offices on this level, mostly in the form of cubicles. Every computer’s cpu had been blown up by a small enough explosive that it was contained entirely inside the case—but smoke was coming out of many of them and most were splayed out or otherwise deformed. Not much data was going to come out of those computers now, but you never knew what a hard drive was going to live through. Might still be something retrievable. Unless they were heat bombs, and then all the plastic inside would be melted. That’s what I’d use, thought Cole. So that’s probably what Verus used.

His infra vibrated. Somebody calling him. “Cole here.”

It was Benny. “As soon as we gave the word, they took off from Montana,” he said. “By now they’re probably only fifteen minutes away.”

If the Progressive Restoration had observers with the forces in Idaho, which was likely enough, then that would explain why they started evacuating this place when only a couple of soldiers had penetrated it. Cole thanked Benny and signed off.

“You see any controls for that big front door?” said Cat. “Or for flooding that tunnel we were in?”

“We didn’t see controls for opening the trap door in the cabin, either,” said Cole.

“And there’s got to be a control for sending water from one lake into the other.”

“What do you want to bet,” said Cole, “that wherever those controls are, Verus is sitting there waiting to raise the water level of Chinnereth just as our attack force is moving through the big front door.”

“That would be mean,” said Cat.

“And then he’d use the secret back door that isn’t on any of the maps. The one that’s camouflaged and opens up on the slope of the mountain somewhere on the Genesseret side.”

“That would be smart,” said Cat.

“Well, only semi-smart,” said Cole. “Smart would be to give himself up peacefully and denounce us for violating Washington’s neutrality.”

“Nobody’s gonna buy that now,” said Cat.

“Come on,” said Cole. “People buy any lie they want bad enough to believe. We’re the U.S. Army. When we screw up, everybody thinks it’s on purpose and some of us should go to jail. Even when we win, they think we screwed up. What Army were you in, anyway?”

“My bad,” said Cat.

“One level up from here,” said Cole. “Gotta be a stairway somewhere.”

“Maybe not,” said Cat. “Maybe just a closet door.”

“Leading into Narnia?”

“Leading to a stairway.”

There weren’t all that many doors, but all of them were locked. In the movies, people always shot doors open. But shooting a deadbolt lock didn’t withdraw the deadbolt from the socket. And these were heavy doors, with lots of metal. Bullets could ricochet. Shrapnel could fly. You could kill yourself shooting at doors like these. Not to mention they didn’t want to scare Verus into jumping down his rabbit hole—if he had one.

“Desks,” said Cole. He headed back for one of the rooms full of cubicles and opened drawer after drawer, lifting up papers and feeling around inside.

Sure enough, he found a key that looked like it might do the job. Somebody forgot he had a spare in his desk. Happened all the time.

It wasn’t a master key, but it did open two of the first three doors they tried. Naturally, Cole assumed that the one it didn’t open was the one they wanted, but the third door opened to reveal a normal flight of stairs going upward.

And up and up. It wasn’t just one story up, it was way up. Maybe not all that far from the observation tower on top of the mountain between the lakes.

They ran up at a measured pace—didn’t want to be caught out of breath at the top, just in case somebody had a weapon waiting for them.

There it was. Command and Control. A single room full of screens and computers and control panels and gauges. These computers hadn’t been blown up, because these didn’t contain incriminating data, they just controlled the local machinery.

Cole moved into the room. Now he could see another door, labeled “Restroom.” Standing near it were two men. One of them was Verus, in slacks and an open-collared short-sleeved white shirt. The other man was wearing a business suit and holding an AK-47.

“Just go back down the stairs,” said the man with the gun. “Nobody has to get hurt.”

Cole shot him in the head. He dropped like a rock.

“Calm down now,” said Verus.

Cat moved into the room behind Cole and began scanning the controls. “Here’s the control for the doors,” said Cat. “Still open. There are still trucks going out. And the tunnel—flooded. Hey, thanks for that, Aldo. We’re still not dry.”

“You had no right to come here,” said Verus.

No point in arguing with him about who had a right to attack New York City and kill the cops, or chase Cole through DC and Maryland to get Reuben’s PDA.

“And here’s the lake levels,” said Cat. “One shaft is already open, pouring water back in from Genesseret.”

“Can you close it?” asked Cole.

It was Verus who answered. “You can’t close the upper gate until the Genesseret water level falls to normal.”

“How many shafts?” asked Cole.

“Six.”

“So it’s refilling at one-sixth of the maximum rate,” said Cole. “Still too fast. Close it.”

“But he said—” And then Cat realized that he had been taking the enemy’s word for how the thing worked. Why wouldn’t he? It was an American telling him. “Bastard’s probably got a secret set of controls all primed to flood everything and somewhere there’s an LED display counting down the seconds.”

“You watch too many movies,” said Cole.

“You’re Bartholomew Coleman,” said Verus.

“Sorry I didn’t let your guys kill me in D.C.”

“Too bad you were brainwashed by the right-wing extremists,” said Verus. “I could have used someone as resourceful as you.”

“What about me?” said Cat. “I’m resourceful, too.”

“This time we get to put John Wilkes Booth on trial,” said Cole.

“I didn’t have anything to do with killing that pathetic joke of a President,” said Verus.

“You just happened to be all set to invade New York two days later,” said Cole.

“We were going to move on July Fourth,” said Verus. “General Alton’s coup was going to be our provocation.”

“So Alton was yours,” said Cole.

“Then he decides to improvise and recruit you,” said Verus. “Idiot.”

“You want it done right, you got to do it yourself,” said Cat.

“So am I under arrest, or are you going to murder me?” asked Verus.

“You’re under arrest,” said Cole.

“Either way I win,” said Verus. “Excuse me while I take a leak.” He turned and pushed his way into the restroom, slamming the door behind him before Cole could grab him.

Cole knew immediately that the restroom was not just a toilet. Before he could finish saying “Son of a bitch,” he was at the door, opening it.

Just an unoccupied restroom with a closed toilet stall. Cole immediately dropped and slithered under the stall door. Inside there was a low doorway leading to a sloping ladder going upward. He could hear Verus climbing rapidly. Cole unlocked the stall door as Cat came in. “I think I got the flow stopped,” said Cat.

“He went up here,” said Cole, ducking into the ladderway. “I can see him.”

“Just shoot him,” said Cat.

“We want him alive,” said Cole softly. “And he knows it.”

They raced up the ladder after him. It was easy to overtake him. Verus was physically fit, but he was also in his sixties.

There was no reason to stop him, though, and risk having him fall and injure himself on the ladder. Cole just reached up and tugged on his pant leg a couple of times, to let him know he was right behind him.

Near the top, Verus slapped his hand against a button on the wall and a trap door opened automatically. If he had visions of closing it before Cole could get out, he was disappointed—Cole was out almost before he was, and grabbed him by the arm as he tried to run away. Verus fell to the ground, pulling free of Cole’s grip. At once, Cole pointed his rifle at Verus.

Cat came out of the trap door behind him. Only then did it close.

“Shit, we walked right by this and didn’t see it,” said Cat.

They were only a dozen yards from the cleared area around the observation tower.

There was a helicopter approaching from the northwest. Not the direction any task force would come from—but just the right direction for a chopper planning to take Verus to Seattle.

“No wonder the clearing around this tower’s so big,” said Cole.

Cat got his Minimi into position and fired a burst toward the chopper. It didn’t burst into flames, but the pilot got the message all the same. The chopper swerved away.

Verus got to his feet, watching the chopper fly away.

When he turned around, he was holding a pistol, which he pointed right at Cole.

“Go ahead,” said Cole. “Let’s have the video of Aldo Verus shooting a United States soldier in the performance of his duties. Let’s have that at your treason trial.”

Verus lifted the gun toward his own head.

Cole shot him in the hand. It was a big heavy bullet and his hand exploded in blood. Verus screamed and fell to the ground, holding his hand and writhing.

“I’m a sharpshooter with the U.S. Special Forces,” said Cole. “You’re not getting away with shit.”

“More choppers,” said Cat. “Good guys this time.”

“Your transceiver still working?”

Cat switched it on. “Seems to be. Even wet. Cool.”

“Tell whoever’s doing liaison with the attack force that most of the people they want are in trucks out on Highway 12. And we have Verus.”

Cat made the call.

“Lie down on your belly and put your hands behind your back,” said Cole.

He frisked Verus, then started field-dressing his hand. The bones were pretty messed up inside. That hand would never work right again. Cole knew it was petty, but it made him feel a grim satisfaction. That’s for Rube. That’s for a bunch of cops and a doorman in New York. I hope it hurts you every day of your life.

Meanwhile, he got the bleeding stopped and the wound bound before one of the Blackhawks landed in the clearing to take Verus into custody.