An Armageddon Duology (37 page)

F
rank Miller stood upright
, his shirt removed to reveal enormous musculature. Wires were taped to heaving pectorals that dripped with sweat. His arms were pulled out to the sides, clamped tightly. His pants stained with sweat and urine, blood dripping from his lips, teeth marks in the torn flesh. He panted with his head cast down.

A man beside him turned a knob, generating a throbbing hum. Miller screamed, his entire body convulsing. His eyes rolled back involuntarily in his head. The electrical jolt ended quickly, but it demanded a high price. Miller slumped forward heavily, the restraints on his broad arms groaning.

The blue-eyed man stepped beside him and pulled his head back by the hair.

“We’ve got juice to do this every day for the rest of your life. Right now the damage is minimal, whatever the pain. But the more we fry you, the more cells will burst in your tissues, the more nerves will be damaged. First, you’ll lose feeling in your extremities, your fingers and hands. Coordination. Then eyesight. Brain damage is next. Agent Miller, after all you’ve done, this is hardly the way to end your life.”

Miller drooled to the floor, his mouth twitching. Words slurred with spit and blood escaped as a whisper:
“Fuck
you.”

The inquisitor sighed and rubbed his temples. He looked toward the man at the controller.

“Call it a day, Rice. The specialist arrived an hour ago. Tell him he’s up.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, exiting the room quickly.

“I don’t have time for heroes, Miller. I need results, and I need them now. Fortunately, technology is on my side.”

The soldier Rice returned, the door groaning as he opened it. A bald, thin man followed him with two large duffel bags, his expression detached.

“Ah, here he is. Dr. Kuriyan.” The blue-eyed man examined the bags. “That’s all you need?”

“Yes,” Kuriyan said, removing wires and electrodes, drills, scalpels, and power sources. “Designed for any environment. You already have him immobilized, so I’ll just add this.”

He removed a metallic skull cap encased in a cage. Sizing up Miller, he nodded.

“He’s big, but it will fit.”

“You’ve come highly recommended.”

The visitor plugged in power supplies and set his tools along a small table. “I’ll need ten minutes to prep him, once he’s properly restrained. Once I’ve located the brain regions and tested the voltages in the tissue, you can proceed. He’ll answer truthfully anything you ask. Cognitive function will be minimally impaired.” He looked over the wires connected to the prisoner. “Assuming it hasn’t already been. I’ll need all that disconnected.”

“Rice—do what he says.”

The soldier nodded, eyes wide. He rushed to remove the wires from Miller’s chest and arms, ripping the tape, tearing hair and skin in the process. Miller didn’t flinch.

“He’s nearly unconscious,” muttered Kuriyan as he fiddled with the skull cap. “My technique is far more useful with a prisoner in his right mind.”

“Your technique is here to get a job done. We need information yesterday. We expect you to get it.”

Kuriyan frowned and continued to adjust the equipment. “All right. I’ll need you to hold his head against the board,” he said, indicating the metal stand on which Miller was strapped.

The blue-eyed man nodded and the soldier grasped Miller’s head and pushed it backward.

“Easy, his muscles are slack. Don’t want to break his neck. Keep him facing forward—yes, like that. Good. Now,” he stepped forward with the caged skull cap. “I’m going to fit this over his head, clamp it to the metal behind, and then tighten it over his skull.” He scanned the room. “I’ll need that chair to stand on.”

The blue-eyed man pushed a metal chair loudly across the floor. Kuriyan stepped on it, ducking slightly under the low ceiling, and raised the cage over Miller’s head.

“Hold him steady.
There.
”

Miller’s eyes flashed and his head darted to the right. His forehead smashed Rice, who stumbled against the wall, holding his eye and cursing.

The leather clamp on Miller’s right arm groaned and popped, the material failing as he brought his arm around and struck the visitor in the mouth, sending him careening from the chair. Rice had regained his footing and charged, but Miller swung his arm again, connecting violently with the soldier’s head. Rice’s head jerked backward, eyes empty and unfocused, before he plunged downward. His head struck the side of the metal table, wrenching his neck to the side and he lay unmoving on the ground.

Miller reached out for the blue-eyed man, fighting against the remaining restraints, fingers clawing the air in front of him.

Three shots roared off the small room’s metal walls as the interrogator fell away from Miller’s grasp, gun in hand. The first shot sent sparks and metal shards flying behind Miller. The other two buried themselves deep in Miller’s chest. Blood misted into the air and spilled down Miller’s torso.

“Shit!” cried the blue-eyed man.

He moved quickly to the fallen soldier, keeping a careful eye on Miller. He placed his hand at Rice’s throat, checking for a pulse. He pulled it away scowling and glared at Miller.

“He’s dead, you son of a bitch. Broke his damn neck.”

Miller gasped and choked, blood frothing at his mouth, eyes swimming.

“You better not fucking die on me yet.”

He kept his weapon trained on Miller and circled around him to the crumpled form of the doctor.

“Doctor Kuriyan,” he said. “Are you all right?”

The doctor groaned and stumbled against the wall, bracing one arm against the corner. The other cradled his jaw. He pulled his hand away, tissue and teeth floating in a red pool.

“Jesus,” said the interrogator. “Go get cleaned up, and send a medical crew in here.” The hatch clanged open, and several soldiers with raised weapons entered.

“Sir, we heard shots!”

The blue-eyed man waved them away. “Get our visitor some attention. And send a crew down here to save this motherfucker.” Miller continued to thrash weakly before them. “Tell them I want him alive and conscious long enough so the doc can drill into that stupid skull of his and place his wires.”

He turned to them, holstering his gun, eyes frigid.

“I want some fucking answers, goddammit!”

A
rusted sun
set through the clouds over vandalized cars and buses littering the streets of Queens. A lone figure stepped around a corner, a swollen backpack over his shoulders, two heavy bags in each hand. Dark sunglasses and a newsboy hat concealed his features.

Lopez scanned the deserted street in front of him and placed the bags on the ground. Reaching around his oddly flowing robes, he removed a handgun and checked it, replacing the firearm quickly. He took up the heavy duffels again and made his way cautiously across the street.

As he approached a towering apartment complex, he made his way down a tight alley filled with piles of rotting garbage, the reek potent even in the cold December air. Near an overflowing dumpster he walked up to a small door that angled sideways, the hinges ripped from the wall. He kicked softly and it swung from a remaining hinge near the top. He entered.

He moved directly to a dim stairway and descended quickly, breath strained and broad shoulders bowed by the weight he carried. Three flights down the stairwell ended at a door with a shattered EXIT sign, one bulb still flickering. Glass crunched on the ground under his feet. He placed the bags down again and removed the pistol, opened the door quickly, and spun toward a dark hallway with the firearm aimed in front of him.

He saw no one in the corridor. Grabbing the two bags with one hand, he grunted from the pain to his shoulder, but kept his weapon ready, shuffling awkwardly forward. He passed a janitor’s closet, the door smashed open, broken items inside strewn haphazardly. He dropped the bags in front of a small door with a faded label reading: TELCOM CLOSET.

He rapped a brief pattern on the door and it opened to reveal Houston’s piercing blue eyes.

“Damn, Francisco,” Houston said.
“Three hours.
You had me scared. We need to find chargers for these phones.”

“Tomorrow.” He entered quickly, dragged the bags inside, and dropped the backpack on the ground with a loud impact. Houston locked the door behind him.

The three of them repositioned awkwardly in the cramped room, the space hardly larger than a suburban wardrobe closet. A single incandescent bulb lit the space in a soft yellow, revealing a spaghetti of wires spilling from opened pipes above them. Many of the wires ended at several computers placed in a row along a rusted table. Lightfoote danced around the laptops like a grandmaster playing simultaneous games of chess.

“She getting anywhere?” Lopez asked.

“Angel is in the room and can hear gossip about her,” said Lightfoote, not taking her eyes from the screens or fingers from the keyboards.

Houston smiled. “Yes. Brief you in a minute. She did get a message out to York. Had to hack through a bunch of defense computers. If she’s picking up, York will get the last coordinates from Cohen’s phone. A brief message about what we saw.”

“She owes us one.”

“She does. Meanwhile—what’s the loot?”

Lopez grunted. “Just about everything is gone out there. People fled and took out almost every shop. I’ll be damned if I know where they all went, or when they’re coming back.” He opened the duffel bags. Metal disks glinted softly in the dim light. “Cans. Mostly vegetables. Some fruits. Guess people don’t like to eat healthy when civilization is collapsing around them.”

“It’ll do,” she said. “I’m famished.”

He dragged the backpack beside her.

“But there is
this
.”

He unzipped it, and a pile of boxes spilled out of the bursting fabric and slapped heavily on the ground. One opened and numerous bullets rolled across the floor.

“Now we’re talking.” Houston kissed him and smiled. “How the hell did you find it?”

“They’ve cleaned out the gun shops—I wonder how many of those idiots end up shooting each other? But they didn’t think to look for storage. Or maybe they couldn’t get through the locks. Big megastores have shelves of ammunition and some firearms. No weapons we don’t have. Lots we wouldn’t care for. But the ammunition—we’re low after that raid.”

Houston pulled a box out of the bag. “Holy shit, Francisco—.45 ACP?”

He smiled. “Yeah, I figured you’d be glad to see those.”

“You bet your ass.” She removed her Browning. “Mama’s got some milk for you, baby boy. Thank God. Now I won’t have to be shooting one of those plastic toys people insist on calling guns.”

“Hey, Glock’s a good friend,” muttered Lightfoote, clacking the return key emphatically and looking in their direction. “Might save your life someday.”

Houston shook her head. “Maybe. What now, FBI girl?”

“Now, we wait. I’ve done all I can. We’ve got more bandwidth here than we can use. The entire complex seems abandoned.”

“Those gangs didn’t count?” said Lopez.

“Not in my book. Not enough fight. Anyway, no traffic on the inbound cables. So, I’ve routed the main lines to the laptops. The data is out, the hacker groups have it. I sent it through a maze of servers and TOR networks. The NSA will track it down eventually, but maybe not before we get what we need and can get the hell out of here.”

“What we need is that file decrypted,” said Lopez.

“Right. Whatever Fawkes did, it’s good but not unbreakable. Patronizing bastard wanted it just tough enough to test us. Make sure we’re
worthy
.”

“What about the NSA? They’ve got the file presumably?” asked Houston.

Lightfoote nodded. And collapsed on a plastic chair. “Definitely. They just needed to raid my accounts. I didn’t have time to wipe anything. And there are ways around that, too.”

Houston stared at the rows of numbers running wildly across the screens in front of them. “So how the hell is some group of distributed hackers going to out-muscle the computational power of the NSA?”

“They can’t,” said Lightfoote. “Our only hope is to be smarter. More clever.”

“And if we aren’t?”

“Then they’re going to get the information first,” answered Lightfoote. “It’s clear they want it. They’re willing to kill for it. Even if we do break the encryption before them, they’ll still get there eventually. So, if we get lucky, we’re going to have a small window. We’ll need to act fast.”

Lopez exhaled. “And do what? We have no idea what’s in that file. Maybe it’s a final, insane joke from Fawkes to troll us once and for all.”

Lightfoote shook her head. “I don’t think so. I told you: I think I knew him in a way few did, even if we only spoke a few times. His personality stains his code, his worm. He’s much too serious about all this. That file has something radioactive. Fawkes was killed for it. Our friends were snatched for it.”

Houston smirked. “And we were almost killed for it, too, Francisco. She’s right.”

Lopez looked over to the computer screens.

“Then I hope these hackers know what they’re doing.”

T
he hatch opened
and a figure plunged onto the floor. Long brown hair spilled in clumped knots to conceal her face. Her hands were splayed out in front of her and bound, and she struggled to use them to prop herself up. Soiled clothes hung from her frame.

“Get up, Agent Cohen,” came a cold voice from behind her.

Several men entered the room alongside a short-cropped older man with ice-blue eyes. He gestured to the floor and the men stooped down and dragged Cohen to her feet. Two women stood in front of her in lab coats, a large flat-screen monitor hanging from the wall to their left. Numerous sharp objects glinted on a table beside them. They looked like surgical tools.

“Put her on the table.”

The men did as instructed and tossed her harshly onto a metal slab mounted in the center of the room. Cohen groaned from the impact, hair still obscuring her face.

“We’re reaching the limits of our tolerance with you and your people, Agent Cohen,” said the cold voice. “We need you to understand that you don’t have much more time. The tribunals have been a circus act, a show to convince you and your husband that cooperation is mandated. Those sessions failed. So, you’ve forced our hand. We can’t let your seditious plans continue.”

“We aren’t traitors.” She leaned forward weakly. Her eyes burned through the matted strands of her hair. “We aren’t terrorists, either!”

The interrogator nodded and one of the men beside her struck her in the mouth. Cohen rolled hard on the table away from the blow, moaning. The man on the other side shoved her back in position.

“Your tired refrain angers me.”

“You’re monsters,” she gasped.

“Do you think you’re being mistreated?”

Fearful eyes stared back from the table.

“Perhaps you don’t understand just how serious we are.”

He nodded to a man standing guard by the door, who opened the hatch and called down the hallway. A rough scraping echoed outside. Someone was dragging a heavy object across the floor. Two burly men wedged themselves and a third figure through the hatch. They tossed a body to the floor.

Cohen screamed.

“
Oh, God
. No!”

The naked body of Frank Miller lay prone on the metal floor. Clotted and dried blood caked his torso and head. The hair had been shaved from a portion of the scalp, and three large holes had been drilled into the skull. A coating of frost melted along the grayed skin.

“No, Frank. I’m so sorry.”

“Agent Miller was most uncooperative. Attacked and killed a good soldier, in fact.” The cruel eyes leaned toward her. “This will be your fate soon. It will be the fate of your dear husband, Agent Savas, if we do not learn the whereabouts of your accomplices. There isn’t going to be any escape. Your trick with the phone was clever. But it’s over. The device destroyed. No one is coming to save you.”

Tears ran down and smeared the dirt on her face.

“No. Please. I’ve told you everything. I’ll tell you anything. I’m not holding anything back.”

“That may well be true, Agent Cohen. Perhaps you were not privy to all the information. But I can’t take that chance. Instead, I have found a way to make you most useful to our efforts.”

Cohen blinked as the monitor across from her lit up. “John?” A guttural sound escaped her lips. “What have they done to you?”

The battered visage of Savas blinked in stunned silence, an eye swollen shut, the same side of his face cut and covered with blood. His slurred words poured from split lips.

“Oh God,
no
,” came the voice from the screen. “You bastards—no! Don’t do this! Please!”

The men alongside Cohen strapped her arms and legs tightly to the table.

“
Stop!
”

“Two bodies, Agent Savas, as you can see from your cell monitor. One dead.” He walked up to Cohen and held up a large hunting knife, laying the edge near her throat. “The other still alive for now.” He ran the edge slowly down her torso, over her breasts, to her crotch. He smiled at the camera mounted in the flat screen. “And still mostly unsullied.”

“They’re in Harlem!” screamed Savas, weeping. “It’s a safe house. They’re hiding out there!”

“John, no. Don’t.” Tears fell from her eyes.

“Oh, but he has to, Agent Cohen. That’s what I’m counting on.”

Savas continued in a high pitch. “Please. I’ll tell you where it is. Where they’re hiding. Everything you need to know. Let her go!”

The man spun the knife in his hand.

“Sadly, Agent Savas, that is not enough.”

“
What?
Why?”

“You’re too late with that information. We already discovered that lurking place. We nearly had them, but they escaped. Killing, you might want to know, several of our people. We will need more from you. Where else would they go? How can we track them?”

“That’s all I know! It’s the only place! There isn’t any other way to track them! We used burner phones. They’ll be in hiding!”

“Oh, this is terribly unfortunate.” He shook his head sadly. “I am inclined to believe you. I think the china has shattered. What a tragedy you had not told me this earlier, before they could escape.” He frowned. “But you had to be a tough guy.”

He nodded to a man next to him, who moved toward Cohen’s feet.

“These men are not soldiers, Agent Savas. Do you know why?”

Savas only stared in panic at the man.

“Most of the soldiers aren’t good at this. They follow orders, but only up to a point.”

“No, wait!”

“But these men,” he said, “have no such qualms. They are most useful when we need to go beyond certain points.” His blue eyes shown as he rolled the words off his tongue.

“I can work with you. I can help you locate them, serve as bait.
Anything.
Please!”

“Yes, Agent Savas. I’m sure you will. Once you are convinced. When you have watched us hurt her day after day, it will seal your
honest
cooperation.”

“I told you already about Harlem! I’ll cooperate!”

“A sudden break. Emotional with no time to override.” He shook his head. “But tracking them will take time. Weeks, perhaps. During that time, in the hours at night when you can’t sleep? When you remember what has happened to you, your friend Miller here, your wife? No, you will devise some trick. We will lose time and more men.” He walked up to the screen and stared coldly at it. “No, agent Savas. Too much time for you to plot. Unless you are utterly broken.”

The other man reached the top of the table.

Cohen spoke firmly through tears.

“John, just close your eyes. Don’t watch.
Please.”

The blue-eyed man smiled.

“Even the blind can hear.”