soften James’s mood. On the contrary, he was rapidly approaching full psychopath mode. A quick review of events confirmed that the isolated John-Jane problem had grown to include an extended family of rogue operatives. A single questionable node had become a dyad-hub with links leading to an entire resistance network of unknown dimensions and unlimited threat potential. Moreover, given his former association with Jane, an epic fail in the current context would call his own role and loyalties into question.
Accordingly, when a merck unit swarmed back in to report, James minced no words.
“Looks like we have them trapped in the parking deck, sir.”
“Phasers on obliterate,” James barked. “Don’t bring anything back but their fucking thongs.”
“Copy that.” The unit vanished.
“Sergeant! Sergeant!” James thundered down the hallway. Arriving at the control center, he found a windowless, dripping mess of smoking instrument panels, cracked computer screens, and fire extinguisher foam. Sergeant Ernie was just buckling his belt and zipping his fly.
“Yessir!” he snapped a salute.
“I have a noon appointment I cannot miss. I am leaving you in charge.”
“Yessir.”
“If they make it to Level 3, if they get anywhere near the ring, I want you to initiate Operation Dark Crystal.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me, soldier.”
“Sir, with respect, ODC was defunded and decommissioned in ’05. We just got word last week to resurrect. And you can see my controls are blown to kingdom come. Operation doubtful on two counts. Plus if we have men in pursuit, there’s no guarantee I can pull them back in time.”
“What are we talking about? Fifty men? A hundred?”
“Homeland Security contracted for ten back-up units. So we’re right at fifty, sir.”
James bowed his head as if deep in thought or observing a moment of silence for those not yet fallen.
“Brave lads. The order stands. Carry on.”
From somewhere in the bowels of the building came a boom and a brief shudder, but James merely straightened his tie, smoothed his hair, and grabbed his overcoat on his way out. He took the stairs two at a time to meet the helicopter that was cooling its rotors on the rooftop. Before he was even buckled in, the chopper juddered skyward, hovered briefly as though basking in the midday sun, then swooped ponderously north toward Capitol Hill, like a condor scenting carrion.
In the control center, a stunned Sergeant Ernie sat down in a semi-destroyed rolling chair and surveyed the wreckage before and around him. Nothing worked. He was getting no external feed, cameras or otherwise. His terminals were dead, his servers and Wi-Fi blown to bits. It was doubtful the ODC equipment had survived intact, which was all to the good as far as he was concerned. He peered under the control console and pulled out a hidden under-desk keyboard, causing an existing keyboard to slide back out of sight. The replacement keyboard appeared to be undamaged and clicked to life when Sergeant Ernie unlocked it with a few keystrokes. He rolled backward to break the security seal on a steel credenza, exposing a standalone computer system that seemed to have suffered little more than a cracked monitor. He flipped a few switches, rolled back to type in a few command lines and waited. Almost immediately, a sexy voice said:
“Operation Dark Crystal. You are about to destroy up to 8 square miles of public-private property and up to 60,000 human lives. Is this a drill?”
Ernie snorted in consternation, like a disgruntled bull. He looked back at the monitor, which displayed a glowing aerial map of east Arlington, including Crystal City and the Pentagon. He stretched his hand toward the keyboard. Drew it back. Rolled sideways to check a terminal that was flipping in and out. Still handcuffed and trailing his pants like clouds of glory, a mildly soused Glenn Dreck wandered in from the break room, where he had been sitting all this time. In his own special darkness.
“Guess I can come out now. Was that fun or what? Say, those were some babes. Real eye candy. One of them gave me her phone number.” He waved one of his business cards, on the back of which someone had scrawled ‘1-800-FUC-KYOU.’ He was having a hard time making out the message, so he sat down to examine it more closely.
“Delta Mickey Foxtrot,” Ernie breathed in horror. “Tell me you’re not sitting on that keyboard?”
“Keyboard? What keyboard?” Dreck stood up and turned around.
“Thank you,” the computer whispered. “Sequence engaged.”
37 Shut Up and Drive
Jane sprinted down the naked length of ramp that led to Level 2, hugging the wall. The concussive force of the blast, when it came, shoved her forward, hard, like a giant invisible hand. She lurched, almost lost her footing, recovered. A flaming fender landed a little too close for comfort. At the bottom, she broke left and dodged to the rear of the ramp to get the drop on any soldiers in hot pursuit. Still trotting and ducking, she was thrown a little by the change in landscape. The low, claustrophobic upper level had given way to a vast echoing chamber, still painted bright white and garishly lit, but with fewer consumer autos and an astonishing array of military vehicles and heavy weapons. “If the one with the most toys wins,” she thought, “these guys are definitely in the running.”
She almost ran past John, who was standing between a tank and a really big, really black SUV, a motionless body splayed at his feet and what looked like some sort of Gameboy controller in his hand. One door of the SUV stood open.
“You’ve been busy,” Jane noted approvingly. Then she looked more closely, and asked accusingly, “Oh wait. Did you punch Moby out?”
“Would Moby wear those shoes? DARPA dork. Tried to volunteer me for a weapons test. So I knocked him down and took his football. How about you?” John teased. “All that from one little grenade?”
“Somebody was nice enough to leave a Ford Pinto sitting around. Shit!” Jane jumped, whirled, and came down in a crouch, face to face with a small tank-like robot. As startled as she, the warbot quickly withdrew the muzzle of the M249 it had used to poke her, backed away bashfully, then rolled to her side with a nuzzling motion. “Shoo! Go away!”
“He followed me home, mom. Can I keep him?” John played with the controller, making the robot run circles around Jane.
“Cute. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to play with guns?”
John reached down to quick-release the M249 and sighed. “Once upon a time women liked appliances with lots of attachments.”
“Can we discuss this in the Humvee?” Troops were by now streaming down the ramp, puddling at the bottom to do recon, and then filtering in well-coordinated teams across the entire expanse of Level 2. You could see them coming, like so many bi-pedal army ants. Jane jumped in the driver’s side and clambered into the back. The warbot rolled forward expectantly.
“Better scoot now, little buddy,” John said, tossing the controller and the gun into the car and climbing into the driver’s seat. “Before you get hurt,” he added and slammed the door.
The warbot scuttled to one side. Its camera box and bomb disposal pincers drooped. Possibly it lapsed into sleep mode. But to human eyes it looked dejected and forlorn.
The keys were in the ignition. John studied the dashboard. “Humvee?” he chided. Reaching out tentatively he pressed a button. Bolts in all the car doors instantly shot into place. “We don’t need no stinkin’ Humvee.” Bullets were beginning to bounce off the car, fore and aft, but with so much computer gadgetry to deal with, John was having a hard time getting the car to reverse. “THIS,” he recited in the dulcet tones of a voiceover artist, “is a one-of-a-kind, ultra-luxurious, handcrafted, fully armored Conquest Knight XV. The XV stands for Extreme Vehicle. You are sitting in 6 tons of V10-powered ballistic grade aluminum and ceramic reinforced high strength steel plate built to withstand bullets, car bombs, and the odd rocket propelled grenade. All leather interior. GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi enabled. Night-vision
cameras for and aft. Roof-mounted machine gun optional. Even runs on bio-fuel. What the well-dressed doomsday designer is wearing this season.”
“And we know this because?”
Having managed to back the XV out of its parking slot, John attempted to steer for the exit ramp, but the little warbot was in the way, frantically to-ing and fro-ing and waving its pincers as though it had lost its artificial mind. The bullets were pinging off like BBs.
John grinned. “Common knowledge. I keep up. Danger Room. Cryptome. What do you do when you’re online anyway? Sorry, little dude,” he said ruefully. He was preparing to steer straight over the warbot when up ahead his path was ferociously, thunderously blocked from right and left by two enormous six-wheeled unmanned Crusher combat vehicles, one of which effortlessly demolished a parked car or two in its haste to cut John off at the pass. The Darkwater troops had pulled back. Jane peered over John’s shoulder.
“Looks like DARPA Dork went home and told his daddy.” It was true. Dr. Strangelove no longer graced the concrete with his inert dweeby presence. At any rate, he was nowhere to be seen.
“Man, I knew I should have hit him harder.”
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Jane agreed. The goggling sensors on the Crushers glared with a feral yellow light as they slowly leveled their multi-barreled high-impact weaponry at the XV. “Just