Vanadium Dark Page 21

  Some blamed a foreign power. Others thought it was a false flag attack. Thesis and antithesis synergized into blame for the government.

  Hard to say who first thought of the Vanadocams. Most people mentally filtered them out.

  Nobody thought of Vanadocams anymore, just like nobody thought of air. They were an unspoken and unconscious concern, the thing that meant you always had to behave, always had to toe the line, always had to be on your best behavior, forever.

  And now they were gone.

  There was zero chance that Vanadocams still worked over the bombed area. The EMP blast had destroyed crude consumer electronics with resistors that you could see and hold in your hand. Even the gigantic, building-sized transformers had blown. What hope did primitive cameras with just a handful of atoms have?

  Nobody ever thought of the fact that they were being watched, but now that they weren't being watched, it was impossible not to note the difference.

  They felt free.

  And they acted free.

  Within an hour, a mass of humans marched toward the Pentagon. And everywhere they went, they left marks of their freedom.

  They did what nobody thought a domesticated Twenty-first Century population was capable of any more.

  They rioted.

  * * *

  All the way from 23rd street, people were smashing windows, vandalizing cars, looting goods from stores. The city was ripe for this.

  There were no bars and no security cameras. The handful of ill-prepared police officers were ignored, overwhelmed, or they joined in the rioting.

  No civic planner in America even thought about defense or security any more. Crime was an afterthought, a few drips from the river dammed by Project Elephant.

  The perfect security solution had actually made Washington the least secure city to exist since the invention of the wall.

  Scenes of chaos that had not been seen for forty years unfolded.

  Shattering sounds echoed across the city, and the streets were strewn with shards of broken glass. People walked out of stores carrying armfuls of various things they had no use for. Stealing was the pleasure they were after, the forbidden fruit, long denied.

  At 15th Street, the remaining Washington police made a pitiful last stand against the herds of marauders, who inexorably moved north. Whatever the police intended to do, it failed. They were kicked to the ground or simply pushed away by the mass of bodies. A police cruiser was flipped and set on fire.

  A gun store was looted. Shots were discharged into the air. Realizing that things were not going to get better, the police decided discretion was the better part of valor.

  Half riot and half protest, the rebellious wall of flesh carried on up to Army Navy Drive, the final street separating them from the Pentagon. They crossed it, fording it like the Red Sea, drawn to the five-sided building like moths to the light.

  The PFPA, unprepared just as the Washington cops had been, had time to raise barriers around the entrances and lock them tight with chains. There was nothing else they could do against this many people.

  The mob milled outside, shouting, chanting, and waving handmade cardboard signs. They called Project Elephant and the Department to the carpet. They were without power, they'd suffered an attack from an unknown power, and it had ignited something in them that had been cold for too long.

  One young man, no doubt imitating something he'd seen in a movie, tried to shoot the padlock off a metal fence. The bullet tore his face away on its rebound.

  This first death reverberated through the teeming crowd like a match to a cloud of flammable gas. Next came the blaze.

  The mass of people crushed in, pressing forward until the metal barriers went down. Then they were into the parking lot. Windows broke, cars were damaged and destroyed, PFPA personnel were beaten to the ground.

  Nobody noticed the civilian plane flying in to Reagan Airport.

  * * *

  “And here we are.”

  Dan slapped Anzor on the back as they got off the plane. A van and several people waited for them. They wore plain clothes, but their outfits had the deliberate casual inattention that comes from trying not to attract attention. Their anxious expressions gave even more of the game away.

  These were Dan's reinforcements? These weekend warriors?

  Dan walked among his One-Eyed King men and women, shaking hands. “What's up, Schecter? Glad you could join us. Staying safe, Matlock? You're not? Good. Hey, O'Keefe... Yeah, I'm well. Never better.”

  Anzor's presence caused a stir when Dan introduced him. He hung back from the group as weapons were distributed. He received an assault rifle that fired a caseless cartridge, a no-name clone of the infamous German G11.

  It felt good to be packing serious iron again, good to be able to put the stock of a weapon against his shoulder, where a missing fingertip was no obstacle.

  They got in the van, and cruised along the Jefferson Davis Highway.

  As Dan had thought, it was bedlam.

  The E-bomb had knocked out power to a vast section of the city. Lights still gleamed from the Pentagon, but there was no sign of electricity anywhere else that Anzor could see.

  Increasingly, he saw scenes of violence, and vandalism. Fires burned. Twice, they had to ride the van up on to the sidewalk to avoid stalled or overturned cars.

  It was surreal how little effort it had taken. A purloined piece of army ordinance and some undergrad-level rocketry skills were all it took to cause a city to eat itself alive.

  When the lights went out, so did civilization.

  They pulled up outside the south entrance to the Pentagon. Some metal walls had been flattened by what looked like a hurricane.

  “A freedom hurricane, motherfucker,” Dan said when Anzor mentioned this, causing a cringe from everyone in the car, including himself.

  In the distance, melees between rioters and guards occurred. The main surge of people had passed.

  “We've got some camo jackets. I want everyone in this vehicle to put them on. There's a riot going on, and we're going to get a lot further looking like soldiers than random assholes.” Dan parked the van.

  “We are soldiers.”

  “We're random assholes, too. Now put it on. This is a window of opportunity that will only be open once.”

  They got out, making a show of checking weaponry and adjusting kit.

  At the door, two guards wearing riot gear cast wary eyes toward the riots boiling and seething at the far entrance.

  Dan walked up to them, fixing them with a gimlet stare. He was trying hard to look military. The effect was nugatory.

  “Are you men on duty?”

  The guards looked relieved to see some uniforms. “You our backup?”

  “We were on duty at Arlington Memorial when we got the call. They said shit's hitting the fan out here. What's going on?”

  One guard pointed at the sky, at the little white cloud already fraying like cotton candy in the wind.

  Crucially, he took his eyes off Dan and his crew.

  Safeties flicked off.

  The other said, “A few hours ago, there was an explosion in the sky, and the fucking city lost power. We—”

  A storm of automatic gunfire blew them both away.

  * * *

  “Satisfy my curiosity. Why did you do it?”

  Viktor Kertesz was with Jack Duvall.

  The PFPA Director paced steady, easy circles around the chair. His voice was one of gentle questioning. Viktor was not fooled. It could turn into ungentle questioning at a moment's notice if he said a single thing wrong.

  “I lost faith in Project Elephant.”

  With perfect timing, the power went out.

  It was back on again in a few seconds, everything overlaid by the ratcheting hum of the generators. Jack Duvall's face did not change as the lights went off and then back on.

  This man was cold.

  “Why did you lose faith in Project Elephant? This is what I'm trying to understand. Norm
ally, when someone sticks a knife in our backs, I'll think back and remember something they did that makes it all seem inevitable. There's a 'tell.' With you, there's nothing. You've done four tours of duty, and with the exception of this one, they all went excellently.”

  Viktor sighed. “The computer's fucked up. It's evil. I thought I was sending innocent people to prison.”

  “Why? What did you see?”

  “Things that couldn't possibly be happening. Bizarre scenes in front of my goggles. It got worse and worse. I had no way of trusting any of my intelligence work, and that's the worst feeling in the world. I might as well be solving cases with an Ouija board.”

  Jack Duvall's lip curled. “Your intransigence led to the Secretary of Defense appointing a second Elephant Handler. He reports that the Vanadocam computer works fine. You're lying, in other words.”

  “Gideon Heidelman is batshit crazy. Don't trust a single word he says. Don't trust a single syllable.”

  “The reliability of the Vanadocams or Transfer Analyst Heidelman's mind are not open to discussion, Viktor. That ship sailed. You were given clear guidelines on your responsibilities and the kind of behavior that's appropriate, but you have made it a policy to shred every one of them. Why?”

  “My heart says it was the right thing to do,” Viktor said. “And my head ninety percent agrees. That's good enough for me.”

  Jack whispered in Viktor's ear, “A wanted political criminal is on the loose because of you. And who knows what else you've done? A lot of police time and taxpayer money has been spent trying to sort out the mess you've created, so excuse me all to hell for not caring about your claims of innocent.”

  Viktor shrugged. “Didn't say I was innocent. Just that I did the right thing.”

  Jack was still talking. “Well, at least I can see you're not used to being a traitor. You're shit awful at it. Lying about Anzor Khujadze, when there was another Elephant Handler to catch your lies? Making claims about the Vanadocam coverage when anyone could go ahead and see that you were wrong? That's just fucking goofy. What were you thinking?”

  “That I should have done it years ago.”

  “What have you achieved? Was this your goal?”

  “Project Elephant is building what could be the worst thing of the Twenty-first Century, and you're all going along with it. At least I got to throw a monkey wrench into its gears for a little while.”

  Jack Duvall walked around the room. Soon, he was behind Viktor back, and Viktor could only follow him by the sound of his footsteps.

  “Yeah, a very little while. How long do you think it will take us to recapture Anzor? Two days? And suppose we don't. What's he going to do?”

  Viktor said nothing.

  “That's exactly right,” Jack said. “Enjoy your pyrrhic victory while you wait for the court martial. You accomplished nothing and lost everything.”

  For a while, it felt as though Viktor had no more words. The well had run dry.

  Then he spoke.

  “I wasn't always interested in being an analyst—oh, hell, a spy. Why be coy? Once, I was interested in history. That's what set me down this road. I was so frustrated by undocumented history that I resolved to make it so that nothing would be lost again.

  “Something I read once stands out to me, Jack. The Xhosa famine. Do you know about that?”

  “No, I don't.”

  “In the Nineteenth century, a Xhosa girl said that she'd been visited by their ancestors. In order to defeat the British, the Xhosa had to destroy their crops and kill all their cattle. Once they performed this act of faith, she said, the ancestors would sweep all the redcoats into the sea. Then they would divinely receive new crops and new cattle, even better than before!

  “Some were skeptical. But the chief of the Xhosa, Sarhili, was convinced. Grain was burned by the ton. Fields of crops were dispatched to heaven as a burnt offering. Cows and goats had their throats slit. Everywhere there was food, it was destroyed. Nothing was left.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No. The British kept coming. They were saved to the extent that most of them died of starvation before the squaddies got there. Mostly, I wonder about Sarhili and how he kept carrying out his plan in spite of all his doubts.”

  “Fanatics don't have doubts.”

  “Maybe they do. Maybe the fanaticism is just a mask. When they'd destroyed ten percent of the food in the land, he must have thought 'this is stupid.' By twenty percent, he must have thought 'this is suicide.' By thirty percent, his doubts must have been deafening inside his head. They were burning the means of their own survival based on the visions of a sixteen-year-old girl!

  “But there was a tipping point, I assume, where he didn't have to think about it any more. When he'd destroyed most of the food in the land, it would have been easy to destroy the rest. If seventy percent of the crops were gone, a huge famine would be unavoidable. So what are the remaining thirty percent worth? Why not throw it all in a fire? He would have had no doubts then. None at all.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because it reminds me of the people building the Vanadocam Network. Yeah, there were doubts at the beginning. Now, it's too late to turn back the clock. We all have to accept that in a hundred years, freedom will be an abstraction in the history books. Just another failed experiment like feudalism or national socialism.”

  Jack Duvall laughed and laughed. “Why wait? Freedom's already an abstraction in your life, Viktor. You'll get one chance to explain your botched attempt at treason to a judge, and I doubt he'll care what you think about Project Elephant or Xhosa famines, for that matter. Then you'll go away to a cell for the next seventy years. That's your future. Now, how's that for a prophecy?”

  * * *

  It took no longer than seven minutes to walk between any two points in the Pentagon.

  Anzor wondered how long it took to run.

  They were inside the facility, storming it like barbarians at the gates of a modern Rome. Hot metal. Ringing ears. Pristine office spaces blasted with gunfire. He and the One-Eyed King militia moved through the building, firing at anything in their way.

  His doubts about the organization's training and discipline soon went out the window.

  Wherever they were deficient, Pentagon security was more deficient.

  Disorganized and unprepared, the PFPA fought back with handguns and flechette shotguns, harrying them from room to room and corridor to corridor. They did little good at slowing down the intruders. Wherever they made a barricade, the OEK found another way around. Wherever they made a stand, they were mowed down by the OEK's superior gunfire.

  Dan Kolde kicked down a door in D ring, ushering his troops through the enfilade. Anzor fought a defensive action, firing three-round bursts to deter the guards following them. The firing action of the automatic caseless rifle was a dull jackhammer against his shoulder. His shooting muscles were out of condition, but that at least meant it was an equal playing field.

  This was unprecedented. Completely unprecedented.

  They would likely all die.

  But it would be the death of Blackbeard: a death where you live on in the vaults of memory, where your enemies forever walk quietly over the patch of ground where you fell.

  A pair of guards charged through the doorway of the room, guns raised. Dan and Nolene rolled in separate directions and fired, shredding the guards with a deadly crossfire. Blood splashed the purple carpet. Men screamed like stuck pigs.

  They ran down a long hallway. Bullet holes strafed the walls. “Watch our six, Stalin!” yelled Dan.

  Anzor spun, flicking his rifle to full auto. The leading guard caught the blast square on his chest, and did a danse macabre under the brutal weight of his fire. The others stayed a safe distance away after that.

  At an x-shaped junction between rings D and C, a group of PFPA guards kicked over a table and tried to use it for cover.

  Three of the OEK blasted the fragile plywood table, bullets plowing rig
ht through the wood to kill the men behind. Splinters and blood mixed in the air, forming a haze of red sawdust. It was a massacre.

  They opened the door to another room. Two more men blocked their charge. Staccato bursts of gunfire ripped them apart.

  A brave or suicidal receptionist tried flinging a hole-puncher at Dan Kolde's head. Anzor generously put a bullet into his thigh, and he went down yelling. He'd live. Or maybe die if the bullet had gone through the femoral. One way or another, he'd never play the hero again.

  The advance continued, ring on ring, the makeweight resistance of the PFPA collapsing like an umbrella before a typhoon.

  * * *

  In the restraint room, Viktor heard emergency alarms and then gunfire. Jack Duvall seemed scared. That was interesting. What did a man like Jack Duvall have to fear?”

  “Will someone tell me just what's going on?” the PFPA's director barked.

  “The building's under attack, sir,” a private said. “We're getting reports of a hostile intrusion...”

  “Rioters?”

  “They seem more organized than that, sir.”

  “Where are they going?”

  “We're having... communication problems, but they seem to be heading down toward the basement.”

  Jack Duvall looked away like a fighter on the ropes waiting for the sound of the bell.

  “Sir,” the private said. “We're readying the helipads for emergency evacs. We're getting all key Department of Defense personnel out of the building. Who should we be prioritizing?”

  “You fucking idiot,” Jack snapped. “Can't you see what they want? They don't give a shit about people. They're coming to the Zoo. They're coming for the computer. This is a political act. Their protests failed, so now they're protesting with guns.”

  The private stiffened, looking injured. “Sir, they're shooting everyone in sight. Your life is at risk.”

  “I'm replaceable. You're replaceable. Enoch Wilson is replaceable. The computer is a strategic investment worth several billion dollars. And its data storage is our record of everything happening in America for the past ten years. Put out a general muster call throughout the building. Never mind helping suits get to safety. I want this computer kept safe.”