When Totems Fall (34 page)

Opening multiple subnets proved quick and easy on this system. In only three minutes, fifteen separate programs had launched, each one working hard to wear down the extensive layers established by Dawn Star's technicians. Best estimates? About forty-five minutes from now would provide the rest of the story.

Zeb had earlier identified what kind of advance he'd need to even get a shot at diverting nuclear authority back to his compatriots. The magic number? Eleven. Eleven of the fifteen programs would need to work for them to take any next steps. In the waiting no one wanted to talk, at least not much. That was fine by him. Zeb double-checked the operating system clock against his wrist unit. He could've sworn it was running slow. Nope.

The programs began reporting back.

Two, ten,
and
eight.
Each had failed during the first seven minutes of run time. No question, out of play. It was a tough blow. Soon, better news began to register. At least to a degree.

One,
and now
three
through
six,
all showed signs of penetration, green-lighting almost in unison about twenty-three minutes in.

"There you go," Zeb quipped. "That's what I'm talking 'bout."

Dalton willed the code forward. His words of hope and confidence helped to bleed off anxiety in the agonizing waiting. Still, it was excruciating. Control. Always someone else, or some random chaos of the universe, in control. It seemed so ridiculous at times.

Zeb breathed out loud, heavily again.

Numbers
nine,
twelve
and
thirteen
now showed promise as well.

Dalton remained calm, at least from outward appearances. The stocky Scotsman stood astride the workstation, his gaze split between the doorway and the monitor.

"Well, LT. We may have a chaaance at this thing, eh?"

"We'll see," Zeb replied. "Not there yet. Not yet."

Three more, painful trips around the 60-second track and another status report came in.

Fifteen
and
fourteen
lit up like Christmas ornaments.

Five more minutes this time.

Seven
was a no.

All three were thinking the same thing. Ten subnets doing their job. Four defeated. They still had a chance, but an ever-slimming one.
Eleven
stood as the holdout.

Watching. Hoping. Like racetrack junkies, leaning forward, clinging to the smallest of hopes as their horse took the last turn, stretching for the wire.

C'mon, Eleven.

"Zeb?" Sanchez interrupted from over by their surveillance position. "Zeb? We got a problem."

"What? What's going on?"

She pointed. They all caught her drift. The front desk guard had called someone more senior over. Together, the two studied the falsified video. They knew something was wrong. Sanchez spoke more pressingly this time.

"Not good. Not good at all. We've got activity going on. He's checking the source and routing."

She paused, scanning the video feed again, and then made the call.

"We gotta go. Now!"

The insistence in her voice, gained from hard-won years of fieldwork and combat decision-making, landed on the men with authority.

There would be no second-guessing. Exfil would begin without hesitation. Time to move.

AQ's egress realities
forced the strategy upon them. It was a small, windowless box. One way in and the same way out. Only one possibility. Back into the elevator it would be.

Loch hoisted two of the still-unconscious guards by their collars, like some kind of awkward workout for his already healthy trapezii. Depositing them into a jumbled heap of torsos and limbs, he went back in for the last one. The poor guy would have some difficult to explain bruising along his left rib cage when he came to, as the brawny Scot literally tossed him into the corner of the tiny hallway.

Sanchez stared at the forlorn sight.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Caan't spend no time on 'em now, can we, Laaas? And with all the care you took to not end them outright, it'd be cruel to let them waste away in there, don't ya think?"

Though the comment felt like a jab at her unconventional methods, maybe even an accusation of weakness, Sanchez didn't answer. She didn't need to. Instead, hovering over the crumpled pile, she relieved the unconscious men of their weapons. The 9mm's she passed to her teammates—after pocketing one for herself—and then placed the MP5's just inside the room, out of reach and out of action.

"Charges set," Loch called out, his strange calmness resulting from much practice, even when dealing with deadly explosives.

"Set," Sanchez replied. "On your time."

"Let's go. Let's go, people," the sergeant ordered.

A scant five seconds after the door had closed, the familiar sub frequency thump of a small patch of C4 going off resonated through steel and fabric casing, shaking the elevator car on its track and cable while doing little to halt their vertical escape from AQ. Loch's application and composition of the charge had done its job, leaving a wash of circuit damage in their wake. The keypad and locking mechanisms were now non-operational, providing them with time they desperately needed; time for Zeb's work to come to fruition. Though still activated, Subnet Program Eleven would be left behind now, unmanned, no promises. At the very least it would be protected until running its course. Win or lose, Eleven was their last horse in this race. And now this digital steed would have all it required to finish strong.

The team's journey from a hundred feet below and then upward to the other levels of Building 25 took all of a half-minute. Positioning themselves, they braced for the inevitability of exposure once the doors had opened. Zeb, holding the least hand to hand, close quarters combat experience of the three, emerged as the obvious choice to perform the role of "visual distraction."

Bait.

Posing as a crumpled heap of humanity in the middle of the elevator car floor, the hope was the millisecond of confusion caused for those waiting on the other side would be enough; enough to keep them from filling him with bullet holes. And enough to give his partners the slimmest of an element of surprise. Sanchez and Loch pressed themselves flat against polished steel, as close to the sidewalls of the car as they could manage. As pulled back, coiled, pent up energy, they waited for the instant their pursuers might pause.

It worked. Perfectly so.

FORTY SEVEN

The two-man patrol meeting them at L2 hesitated only a fraction of a second. It was all that was necessary, as Loch's and Sanchez' aggressive movements from the side caught them off balance, hands on weapons but not at the ready.

For Sanchez, the scrapple was over
in four moves. Loch required only three. She needed one more setup to access her man's Adam's apple while the sergeant simply plowed through his guard's forearm on the way to delivering a horrendous blow to the chest. It was probably a good thing that the flesh and bone of his arm had absorbed the granite, balled fist coming at him. Regardless, their first two potential problems were no longer an issue. Zeb, brilliant in his portrayal of 'pile of person on the floor', rose and then walked across the hall to apply the advanced tactical techniques any other highly skilled asset would in a situation such as this.

He pulled the fire alarm.

Sanchez frowned, murmuring her disapproval.

"So cliché."

"Hey, if it ain't broke..."

The immediate, building-wide panic was precisely what they had hoped for. Standard instructions stipulate evacuating in an orderly fashion. No one ever does, especially when they think it's for real. Within seconds the sprinkler system opened overhead, creating a nice liquid cover and making it easier to blend in with the crowd. The overwhelming volume of the alarms was a massive sensory assault as people covered their ears with hands, backpacks, or coats in a vain attempt to stop its crushing, dizzying effect. The net result? A mass of confused, drenched workers morphing into a thickening, moving sea of people, no one person distinguishable from the next.

This might work.

Sixty seconds later they were out. Surfacing in the courtyard, Zeb's strategic vision kicked into high gear. Loch and Sanchez had begun to recognize when he was processing data and possibilities like this. They were also getting used to waiting for a moment while he refocused his attention back into the present.

The sniper paused, thinking to herself that this was probably the end of the road. AQ had been their aim. That asset, and the opportunities it presented, were now compromised. Even if Program Eleven worked, Zeb couldn't exactly type in any new commands from outside the room, she surmised.

"Okay, Mr. Beautiful Mind," she said. "Whaddaya have for us now?"

Sanchez' quiet utterance, referencing a movie about a brilliant mathematician who "saw" things no one else did, snapped him back to reality.

"The buses," he said. "Go for the buses."

"What?" Loch said, not understanding. "What in the world are you blabbering aboooot, LT?"

Sanchez looked around, trying to make sense of his directive in light of the wave of people exiting 25 and forming a growing, milling populace with nowhere specific to go, nothing to do. And then it registered.

"Yeah," she said. "The buses. I got you, Dalton."

One more, quick instruction before they moved out.

"Break up," he cautioned, although somewhat needlessly, considering to whom his words were directed. "Don't sit together. Wait until we offload and I'll give you more info. Go, now. Fade in. Go."

Loch still wasn't following him. He'd lose valuable time, though, and possibly even strategic advantage, if he didn't obey the directives he had right now. The ad hoc team had no official leader. Instead, the agreement was to lean into one another's strengths as each came to bear. At the moment, Dalton had a plan. That was enough.

Sanchez boarded the closest bus
in line, taking an open seat next to a middle-aged Caucasian guy. Dalton strode up the stairs and almost all the way to the back, squeezing into a two-person bench along with the two people already there. Loch, finally on board, took another few steps past Sanchez and stood in the aisle with about ten others, holding to the wrist straps overhead.

The big transport, surprisingly powerful for a next-generation green vehicle, pulled out of the Microsoft lot and out onto the street. Everyone's weight shifted as the thirty-foot-long behemoth took the first left a little too sharply. A communal groan but no real protest arose among the passengers. Their muted response came chiefly due to the single PRC thug at the front of the bus, standing firm with arms crossed over rifle and solemness across his young face.

The man beside Sanchez mumbled something.

She gave him a look saying, "Come again?"

He must've figured her safe enough to repeat it, but still only a little louder this time.

"Red bastards."

Her expression again said, "not following you."

He leaned over, whispering and also looking away; his best version of being secretive.

"They think we'll just play along. This whole thing is such a setup. Well... they can force us there at gunpoint but they can't make us look happy about it, that's for dang sure."

Striking Sanchez like a sharp slap upside the head, a minor recollection flashed in her mind's eye.

The poster. The one hanging out front of Building 25. They had walked by so fast. Couldn't have been any bigger than a foot across. The quad was filled, packed with people.
He saw it,
she thought. And he put it into his big old head full of scenarios.

Stealing a glance back at Dalton, she smiled—just enough to let him know she was more in the know. His return look acknowledged an understanding between them. They were heading downtown.

Sanchez played out the new info more fully in her mind. Apparently their new overlords felt the time was right to show the world just how much of a favor they had done for this pitiful, decaying nation by invading them in the first place. This "resurgence" was all a good thing, after all. Ah yes, the conquered masses surely had come to this realization.
Of course.

Today was to be a glorious, extremely public demonstration of this gratitude. Other nations would step back from their previous posture of horrified but quieted protest and come to accept the situation as well. Privileges, prosperity. All would flow because of China's actions in this new province. All would become so normal. So right.

The bus merged onto 520 West
, toward the downtown corridor. Zeb, Sanchez, Loch and the other fifty-some passengers on their bus joined alongside an endless stream of transports. The procession ambled across the floating bridges over Lake Washington where as usual, the northern side of the structure held back choppy, rough water flowing in from Puget Sound while the southern side appeared calm.