When Totems Fall (33 page)

Enough of these games.

A subtle
click
pierced the waiting as Dhe released the safety of his weapon. A second later a blast broke the air as two 9mm bullets demolished wallboard and plaster, exiting to the right and over Junjie's shoulder.

Junjie hit the floor.

Dhe had overestimated his height. The old-school construction materials helped some as well, altering the trajectory of the murderous projectiles favorably. In rapid succession two more holes tore open above him, another large gash appearing on his side of the wall. This time they were lower and on target. The slugs would have been deadly accurate had he not fallen on his face. Rolling over, Junjie scurried in reverse with feet gangly, yet still beneath him. Backwards. Out of control. Junjie tumbled haphazardly into the open as the third volley of ammo rushed by his head, lodging in the closet door, only inches away. He was completely exposed. No chance to move, no way out.

The young man inhaled deeply, reflexively. Steeling himself, he awaited the final impact of flesh and bone he knew was coming. Maybe it was his body's vain attempt at holding onto life, or some more autonomic reaction. Either way, he winced, turning his head away and raising his right shoulder an inch or so, as if the shrug might protect him somehow.

Nothing.

Searing pain, the tearing and puncturing of sinew and organ hadn't come as expected. A full ten seconds more of waiting and Junjie dared to uncoil from his protective pose but only slightly. He counted again. Still—nothing. Lingering smoke and cordite stench from the brief, mad pursuit clung to the small space.

What is this? Some kind of sick death procession? Sport?

He couldn't wait forever. Junjie reached into the left rear pocket of his jeans and retrieved his cell phone. Tapping the icon for the flashlight app, the camera illuminated the few feet in front of him.

Torn up linoleum. A haze of dust.

Carefully, cautiously, he stood. Junjie's head felt light as blood pumped insistently throughout his body. He moved toward the living room, pausing to listen again. Still, no sounds proceeding from where only seconds ago all hell had broken loose. Junjie gathered his strength and looked around the corner, to Dhe's firing position.

How had he not heard
that?

The 9mm silenced Beretta
sat idly pointed away, as if discarded randomly. Only a few inches from its silent, cooling metal, a large, ragged hole lay forcibly opened in the middle of the room.

He understood.

The hail of bullets and exploding walls had halted the exact moment this crevasse had taken shape among severed floorboards, joiners, and joists. Rot, mildew, and time had conspired to set a trap for the minister; one he would not escape.

Junjie approached, looking in with one eye peering over the edge.

Dhe.

Face up, back bowed in an unnatural arch, six feet below. Impaled on a rusted, jagged pipe; one of the larger sewer mains that had sheared off in pieces, ages ago.

Junjie recoiled.

Dhe spat a mouthful of blood and lurched forward, only as far as the aging lead and concrete would allow. Moving one step closer Junjie almost tripped, barely keeping himself from falling into the hole along with the minister.

Alive.

Dhe caught the look of recognition in Junjie's eyes and responded forcefully, even though he was completely helpless, doomed.

"Do... not... touch... me," he gasped. "Leave me."

Dhe coughed and wretched at the same time, the sickening combination of blood and bile exiting his mouth and strewn grotesquely across his chest, then falling off his ribcage.

"I do not
need
your help. I do not
want
your help. You are weak. Weak! Do you hear me, Zang? I will not suffer my last moments in the presence of someone who puts magic before countrymen."

The statement was haughty, strong, even as his body was failing. Junjie looked away as the death-rattle signaled the airway of the mortally wounded man was closing for one last time. Dhe's lungs deflated, flattening, his eyes unfocused, glassy.

Silence.

The emotions of the moment overtook the young man and he wept. Chest heaving, deep sobs shook him while his hands rested on bent knees.

This... is what true lostness looks like.

Almost as heavily
as the sorrow of this ugly death had settled, Junjie was filled with elation that he was the one to come out of this encounter alive. Junjie's relief was not expressed victoriously. His enthusiasm was tempered by the reality of another's life ending. Dhe was not a good man but in the end he was still a man, just like Junjie. It felt wrong to leave him there. The young executive considered taking the time to remove the body, to set it aside more respectfully. He had to get back to the code, and now. It was a terrible decision to have to make. Besides, where would he put the body, even if he somehow he might succeed in extracting it from the basement all by himself? No, the clock was ticking relentlessly, ever forward. Satellite access would only be available in orbit above Gansu for a few hours now. So Junjie wiped his eyes with his palms and cleared his throat. With mind and emotions set toward the task at hand he left the dead man and headed back to his primitive workspace.

His decision was rewarded immediately. Walking back into the room, on the laptop screen: access to Strata 5.

100%.

Now connected to the uplink, Junjie eagerly began exploring the multithreaded pathways of Dawn Star's systems. He knew that at least one hundred fifty "shells" would have to be penetrated before even getting a crack at redirecting the code itself. Presenting as a digital maze with high, slippery walls, the top ten percent of programmers worldwide could labor for weeks here, struggling to make even a minor incursion. To address this, Junjie set in place a number of sub-routines, each tasked with eliminating or bypassing the multiplicity of firewall-like security measures. These mini-programs functioned as a small army of tech spec ops teams, each assigned with a specific part of the mission and carrying their own particular rules of engagement. Not all of them needed to be successful. Call it a war of attrition; the greater breakdown, the better chances he had at doing some real damage. Yet, even in overcoming these formidable outer defenses the battle would've only begun as next would come the computer equivalent of a bloody hand to hand fight in the inner courtyards. This was the technical dilemma. The global-political endgame? That was something very different in its own right and the young engineer wasn't anywhere near sure of how to proceed.

Suppose he took back means of directing the program, away from Beijing—what then? Giving nuclear command authority back to the Americans was no guarantee that both sides would return to neutral corners. His government had invaded a foreign land, forcing a conquered population into subservient reshaping of their national destiny and identity. No one could assure him a supposed equilibrium of arms would keep the Americans from using these weapons to strike in vengeance first. In the end, this was the stuff of freshman logic courses, a geopolitical conundrum in which his country's fate and international economics hung in the balance.

Standing as the arbiter of this kind of power was madness, he thought to himself. No easy answers presented themselves for sure. Good ones, split-the-baby-in-half kinds of solutions?

He prayed they would come when needed.

FORTY SIX

5,988 miles westward, across the vast, open waters of the Pacific, a parallel digital assault commenced, albeit from the exact opposite vantage point.

Building 25
of Microsoft's expansive main campus listed an official lowest floor of L3; three levels underground. Still another hundred feet below this lay Zeb and team's actual target: a small, specialized space known by the code name
Albuquerque.
This nod to the southwest city was in honor of the birthplace and first home of the software giant in the late 1970s. Those few holding knowledge of its existence lately came to abbreviate the name, using the shorthand—AQ.

Mini-keycards issued back at Ft. Clark passed them through the secured entry, as expected. Call that another small win for the talented forgers and technicians on the other side of the mountains. As the result of an uneasy yet practical partnership, the company's senior leadership had entrusted AQ's entrance data to the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, to be used only in the event of circumstances such as this. Risky—yes, but also an act of patriotism, and one currently paying big dividends. If forced to choose, a state-controlled economy would not be the preferred environment in which Microsoft desired to conduct their business. So, it remained in their best interests to assist whatever efforts the government might undertake at reversing this distasteful scenario. Throughout its history the corporation's public face had presented itself as left-leaning. But not this far left.

"Well, that should keep 'em down
for a while," Sanchez offered as she pulled a micro-syringe out of guard number three's arm. The chemical mix, injected in full dosage, allowed the team an undisturbed window of opportunity while still keeping the men alive. Considered a half-measure by some, the method remained her preference over indiscriminate lethal force. The risk she entertained in not dispatching combatants automatically would bite her in the backside someday. She knew this. Not everybody plays by the same rules. Many subdued parties wouldn't respond with thankfulness if the sleepy-time juice failed before she finished her work and slipped away to safety. Still, basic humanity challenged her to continue pressing the envelope. Her labors, she knew, too easily led to a callousness about life. So she did everything she could to keep that eventuality at bay, at a distance from capturing and deadening her soul.

For his part, Loch was dragging the three Chinese guards into the small room along with them. One was the unfortunate, would-be lover boy Sanchez had dispatched up on L3 earlier. The other two were just plain unlucky losers in the Sgt. Loch lottery, the epitome of "wrong place at the wrong time". They were good soldiers. Loch was simply better.

"Visual redirect in place?" he called out.

This was Zeb's area, so yeah, it was under control.

"Yep," Dalton said. "The fine folks upstairs should catch everything as normal for another sixty minutes or so. There'll be a shift change then. We'll need everybody down here chemically controlled for the time being. And I need to get busy because we can only stack up so many bodies in our little workspace."

Dalton looked back across his left shoulder, surveying the twelve-by-fifteen-foot box. No windows. Smoothed concrete walls rose to the finished ceiling, each holding three banks of low-energy-consumption LEDs. The newer fixtures cast a slight bluish tinge in the room that said corporate industrial, and loudly so. Ringing the three walls other than the entrance was a seamless array of thirty-six-inch-wide, floor to ceiling cabinets housing an odd, gelatinous substance, filling the encasements and viewable through their all-glass fronts. Whatever it was sparkled. A million tiny light sources firing in what appeared to be random sequencing.

Breathtaking.

Zeb stood in awe at what had been done. Before him now was an achievement the broader technological community had simultaneously fantasized over and scoffed, at least with respect to being possible on the horizon of their collective lifetimes.

"Amazing," a quiet, reverent tone.

Right before his eyes. Supposedly, this was not doable. Not yet, anyways. More than the next generation of signal flow. More than some new, improved version of current technologies. No, this couldn't be real. Had the deep-access folks at Microsoft done the impossible? Achieved this kind of replication and stability? The mission briefing at Clark hinted that sophisticated gear might be found at AQ, aiding Zeb in his work, but my heavens,
this?

From the earliest, humble beginnings
of microcomputing the problem to solve had been resistance, the power of all computer CPUs and motherboards held in check by inefficiencies in signal transfer—the actual ease, or relative challenge of electrical impulses flowing across components. The theory has always been simple: approximate the activity of the human brain, as far as neural pathways and synapses go, and throughput and computational power would drastically increase. Convince it to act more like gray matter wiring and you were golden. Theoretically basic. Oh so aggravating in real terms. Finding a substance to facilitate this kind of effortless, somewhat biological transmission of impulses had been the holy grail of the last fifty years of IT research. Now, in this small room, hundreds of feet beneath the lovely, wooded campus, here it was. And it seemed to be doing the job quite nicely.

Dalton didn't know its composition but he knew it was working. This much became obvious the minute he took command of the workstation.

"Whoah."

"You got what you need, LT?" Loch questioned from five feet away.

"Amply supplied, my good man."

Zeb's fingers sped across the keyboard, setting in motion his best attempt at breaching the foreign code holding this part of his country hostage. Though unknowingly, Dalton's line of attack duplicated the one being attempted from Gansu. And in an even further case of parallel universes, his existential concerns mirrored those of Junjie's as well.