The NSA man gave a nonplussed shrug. He had read the most recent top secret memo—the one that was now circulating through the FBI, Homeland Security, the NSA, and the CIA. It described the status of the formal investigation into the assassination of President Hewbright and the nefarious ties between the now president Darrell Zandibar and Jessica Tulrude, the regent for Global Alliance Region One. And the obvious partnership between Tulrude and Alexander Colliquin. With no vice president yet named, the next in line of succession—the Speaker of the House, a former head of the CIA himself—was demanding that President Zandibar surrender his executive powers until the investigation was completed. The memo also described the link between Alexander Colliquin and the assassin Vlad Malatov, aka agent Ted Booth. The death of President Hewbright had all the makings of an insidious White House coup, and the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies were siding with the Speaker.
The last thing the top secret memo had mentioned was “a heroic attempt to countermand the handover from the U.S.A. to the Global Alliance of the Bluffdale computer data center, spearheaded by a former air force special-ops pilot who is a loaned asset of the CIA.”
The NSA man, just like his superiors in the intelligence agencies and like the Pentagon brass, had no intention of giving in to the Alliance until every last question about Hewbright’s murder had been answered to their satisfaction. Until then, the orders of the late president Hewbright to treat the data center and every other inch of American soil as free of Alliance control were considered reinstated.
As the NSA official looked at the blinking signal light on the computer console, he remarked casually, “Nothing to worry about.”
The Global Alliance technician kept insisting that something was wrong. But the NSA man simply replied, “That PWM system in those infrared LEDs is the newest design model.” He grinned. “I never trust the newest model off the assembly line—whether it’s a car from Detroit or an infrared security system. Don’t worry about it.”
The Global Alliance tech guy still looked unconvinced. After glancing down at his Allfone watch, he said, “An Internet shutdown is scheduled to occur soon. But we’ll be down only for a short time. Then I’ll launch our droid-bots to check out the perimeter. Just in case you’re wrong.”
SIXTY-THREE
As Ethan walked through the long, cement-floored computer vault, he carefully unrolled the fiber-optic cable that was connected at the other end, above ground, to Chiro’s C-Note quantum computer. The underground hall was lined on both sides with data racks; each rack was nineteen inches wide and just under two inches tall, and rows and rows of them were stacked one on top of each other from floor to ceiling. Together, they created a tunnel of blinking lights that looked like a Future World ride at Disney World.
At the end of the vault were two big machines on the left. “Routers,” Chiro announced in the green illumination of the safety lights as he pointed to them. There was a smaller data machine on the right with yellow, black, and purple cables running out of it. Chiro pointed to it and, in a whisper of hushed awe, said, “This is it. The core switches. If we can access this, we can override everything.”
But Ethan wasn’t next to him; he stood a distance away, down the corridor from Chiro, and he had a distressed look on his face as he held the end of the fiber-optic cable. It was clear now that the length of cable was too short to reach the core switches. “It won’t reach,” Ethan said.
Chiro pulled out his digital measuring tape, held it at the face of the box containing the core switches, then focused it at Ethan’s feet. “Maybe I can fix this,” he said. But after reading the little meter he said with a groan, “We still need twenty-three feet.”
“Is there any more cable?”
Chiro shook his head. Ethan bit his lip. “I thought you just said you could fix this?”
Chiro pulled a small red box from his pocket. “I could,” he said, “with this signal extender. Only . . .”
“What?”
“It only works up to twenty feet.”
“Lord,” Ethan prayed, “You extended the length of a day during the life of Joshua. We need You to extend the capacity of this device by three more feet.”
When Ethan was done praying, he noticed Chiro’s anxious face in the ghostly illumination of the green lights. The young Japanese man was a genius, and Ethan was tempted to believe that his word on matters of digital technology was always final. Except for one thing: God was God. Ethan was now banking everything on that single fact.
Chiro connected a fiber-optic signal receptacle to the core switching box and then attached his red signal extender to the end of the cable, which lay twenty-three agonizing feet from the core switches, nothing but empty air between the two. He reached his hands out toward the core switching box as if he were trying to somehow make the distance disappear between it and the end of the fiber-optic cable connected to his C-Note computer above ground.
Ethan touched Chiro on the shoulder. “Faith is the evidence of things not seen,” he said, paraphrasing from the book of Hebrews, “the substance of things hoped for.” He pulled the reluctant Chiro away from the dead end of the corridor and urged him toward the other end of the hallway and the ladder leading up to the ground level. “So we walk by faith. But quickly.”
MASTER CONTROL STUDIO—ALLIANCE COMMUNICATIONS CENTER
New Babylon, Iraq
Alexander Colliquin stood alone in his New Babylon penthouse, studying himself in a full-length mirror. In the Internet headquarters of the Alliance, Colliquin’s digital engineers had sent their state-of-the-art denial-of-service signal through the Internet, aimed at every root server address across the planet. It was now just a matter of time. As soon as the Internet went down, the new 3-D holograph program would be imbedded and then the global system would reboot. That’s when they would call Colliquin and invite him over to the studio to begin his first 3-D global image transmission to the human race.
Thirty minutes later it started.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
In New York, the software-controlled lights of the huge Jumbotrons that filled the sides of buildings along Time Square started to blink off, along with the digital stoplights in the intersections. On Wall Street, inside the New York Stock Exchange, the electronic trading boards went dark. Subway trains running on Internet-driven schedules and directional systems ground to a halt. The radar screens in airport control towers shut down as jets circled, waiting for clearance to land.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
In Las Vegas, Dillon Ritzian was sitting next to Darlene, who had reluctantly returned to the apartment when the nail salon didn’t pan out. The two of them were watching Internet television together as he tried to explain the whole back story to her—about how Henry Bender had pressured him for information about America’s central web hub in the data center at Bluffdale, Utah, and how sorry he was he’d gotten involved. Especially when he finally figured out somebody was trying to take over the entire Internet, or shut it down, and maybe use all of that against America. And how he’d decided to put a stop to it and had placed a call to a television studio and tracked down an ex-senator he’d seen on TV. That is how he—Dillon Ritzian—had blown the lid on the whole conspiracy.
Darlene flashed a skeptical expression, the kind usually reserved for stories about alien abductions.
“I’m just sayin’,” Ritzian said, “I was actually trying to save America. I think something heavy is goin’ down on the Internet.”
She shook her head. But just then the image on the TV in front of them disappeared. They both noticed that the electricity in the apartment was still on. Simultaneously they pulled out their Allfones. Both devices showed no signal. Darlene looked at her boyfriend. “Okay, so, tell me this again . . .”
BLUFFDALE, UTAH
Up on ground level, John Galligher was grinding his teeth and grunting loudly as he struggled to keep Chiro’s decoding box two feet above the entrance to the underground computer vault so the red laser secur
ity lights would not be tripped. When Ethan’s head popped up, Galligher yelled out, “Thank You, Lord!”
After Ethan and Chiro were both out of the hole and back on ground level, Galligher used the fishing rod to swing the digital box out of the way and then let go of it with a grunt. All of them simultaneously checked their Allfone watches. No one had a signal.
“The Internet is down,” Chiro shouted. Then he scampered over to his C-Note quantum computer. The On power switch was already engaged, but one additional switch with a little light panel next to it had yet to be flipped. Directly beneath it, Chiro had typed the words on a label: The Great Commission. If the light illuminated, that meant that connectivity had been achieved and his computer was connected to the underground core switches. Which meant that somehow the signal had managed to jump twenty-three feet from the end of the fiber-optic cable to the master switch—three feet more than his signal extender was ever designed to achieve.
Chiro whispered a prayer and toggled that switch. A little white light lit up on the panel. When it did, he leaped into the air with a cheer. Then he snatched his Allfone and stared at the screen, waiting for the first evidence that the Internet was back up. A minute later Chiro’s Allfone digital display illuminated. He immediately called Manfred, who was waiting in the computer lab on the second floor of their Yukon hotel. “I’ve got the C-Note connected!” Chiro yelled. “Are you seeing the de-encryption working?”
Ethan and Galligher watched as for several minutes Chiro stood motionless, waiting for the answer. Then Manfred told him something on the other end, and Chiro threw his head back with his eyes closed. “It’s working! My C-Note has deciphered the data center passwords, and now our Remnant program is being uploaded globally.”
Ethan balled up his fists and swung them in the air with a whoop of laughter. He then hit speed dial on his own Allfone. At the other end, Bart Kingston picked up in New York.
“Bart, this is Ethan. It’s a go. We’re in the system and we’ve over-ridden the Alliance program. We got there first. I want you to start the transmissions from Rabbi ZG in Jerusalem first and follow up with the video testimony from Dr. Radameyer. Do you have the AllLanguageTranslator program synced?”
Kingston had to yell over some noise at his end. “Yes. The rabbi is ready in Jerusalem. We’re set to link his message to our facility here. We’ll sync him with the taped statement of Dr. Radameyer momentarily. Then we’ll shoot it to your routing station in White Horse.”
“Great,” Ethan said. He could hardly hear Bart over the sound of loud banging in the background, so he raised his voice to a shout. “Then Manfred up in the Yukon will transmit to Chiro’s quantum computer here in Utah. And if all goes well, we’ll go global in a matter of minutes.” The banging at the other end continued. “What’s going on out there?” Ethan asked.
“Alliance forces,” Kingston explained. “Three of them. They’re breaking down the AmeriNews entrance as we speak. I’m hoping we can get this transmission out before they make it through the security door.”
“Can you get out of there?”
“We’ll climb out the balcony to a construction chute that’s still up against the building. I think we can slide down the chute to the floor below us. Pray for us.”
Galligher suddenly strode up next to Ethan. “Visitors!” he shouted and pointed down to the data center complex where a squad of blue titanium droid-bots were running in their direction. Galligher turned and took off running back toward the truck.
Ethan called out, “Where are you going?”
“Getting backup!”
Chiro was wide-eyed. “This is when we find out if my computer friend at IntraTonics really did program that Disable code into the droids.”
In two minutes Ethan and Chiro were surrounded by a squad of seven-foot droid-bots with the barrels of automatic weapons sprouting from their chests. The robot leader, who had a dark, bulletproof Plexiglas shield for a face, was bellowing for them to lie down on the ground or be shot. Chiro strode up to within inches of the leader, who was now giving his final warning. He gave a quick glance up to the sky, then began to recite the Disable code in a slow, methodical voice. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
There was a pause and a little red flash behind the black face screen of the robot. A few seconds elapsed. Then the droid announced, “You are free to go. Have a good day.” The squad of droid-bots turned and began to march back toward the data center.
Ethan grabbed Chiro by the shoulders. “You did it, Chiro! I told you God would use you mightily today!”
Chiro was beaming. Ethan looked around for Galligher, figuring he was still in the truck. But something else caught his attention. Even with the wavering vision in his left eye he could see trouble off in the distance, kicking up dust and approaching them with the speed of an accelerating sports car. He closed his left eye so he could limit his vision to his right eye and study it closer.
What came into view was a huge black droid, considerably bigger than the rest, churning his legs like an industrial forge and sprinting toward them. The squad of other droids who were retreating back to the data center dutifully stepped out of its way as it blew past them.
“Must be the new generation droid!” Chiro said with mild hysteria. “And it won’t have the old Disable code programmed into it.”
Ethan ordered Chiro to run back to the truck.
“What about you?” Chiro yelled as he started sprinting.
“Don’t wait for me.” As Ethan studied the droid, he could now see it held something in his hand.
Chiro was just a few feet from the truck when the droid started firing at them. As the bullets started zinging up to his position, Ethan leaped to his right and barely missed being hit. Facedown in the dirt, he looked back toward the truck. Chiro was down on the ground.
“Chiro, are you hit?”
But Chiro didn’t answer. He was trying to lift his head off the ground and flailing one of his arms in the air in a pitiful movement.
The huge black droid was now about seventy feet from Ethan and lifting an arm over its head. Ethan could see it had in its grip one of the new variable-impact grenades he had read about, the kind designed to explode instantly on impact with rigid, impervious surfaces like the side of a vehicle. But on impact with any elastic surfaces like human flesh or clothing, they were timed to detonate only after three seconds—a safety feature to mitigate possible “droid error” in pitching the explosive at friendly troops.
As the droid reached sixty feet, Ethan realized it was aiming at the side of the truck. The explosion and resulting shrapnel would kill them all.
“Throw it, you monster. No mistakes this time.” As Ethan shouted that, like a flash of lightning he remembered it all—his failed last catch in the last inning in the losing baseball game against the Yankee farm team from Scranton/Wilkes Barre.
The droid let loose in Ethan’s direction at ninety miles per hour, the white impact grenade spinning in a perfect fastball. It headed straight toward the truck. Ethan squinted, closing his left eye and using only his right side vision. At the last millisecond he leaped to his right almost parallel to the ground and with his bare hand extended caught the high-velocity pitch in the fleshy palm of his hand. Howling in pain, he hit the ground while holding the grenade aloft so it wouldn’t strike the hard ground. He quickly rotated the grenade, frantically searching for the detonator-off thumb switch. Found it! It was recessed within the skin of the explosive. He flicked it off with the thumb of his other hand, just shy of three seconds.
The droid was now thirty feet away and closing. It reached down to the button that would have let loose another volley of bullets. But Galligher appeared from the truck and raised his Croatian RT 20mm armor-piercing gun. He let go with a single blast. The bullet hit the mark. It blew the head of the droid completely off of its shoulders. The torso of the giant robot came to a slow sto
p and then collapsed to the ground. Galligher leapt over to Ethan and reached down with delicate care to lift the grenade out of Ethan’s broken hand. “Sorry, Ethan. I guess I was wrong about you. Wrong about everything.”
As Galligher cradled the grenade, Ethan stumbled over to Chiro, who had been shot several times in the chest and was bleeding out profusely. With tears welling up in his eyes, Ethan bent down over Chiro and searched for words to comfort his faithful friend. But Chiro spoke first. His face was ashen gray and his voice was barely audible.
“Blow up the C-Note computer. Don’t let the bad people get it . . .”
In a choking voice, Ethan said that they would.
Chiro looked up, as if he had seen something in the sky, a vision that only few could ever see this side of the grave. “Oh,” he said with a faint tone of wonder to his voice, like a child. “I see Jesus . . . heaven open . . . on a white horse . . . the Faithful and True . . .” With that, he stopped talking and his head fell against Ethan’s chest.
Ethan choked back tears. He reached down and touched the face of his dead friend and gently closed his eyes, and as he did, he remembered his own vision. Ethan March had been there. In the heavenly realm. For only a short time, but he was there, and he knew that even though Chiro was now gone, he had found his way home to a land of light and peace. No more chaos, fear, or death. A region where everything would finally make sense, because Jesus was in that place.
Next to Ethan, Galligher struggled against a sob.
In the silence of that moment they both heard an unsettling sound. Jumping to their feet, they swiped the tears from their faces to take a look. About two miles away, a pack of armed drone-bots winged their way skyward toward their position.