CyberWar: World War C Trilogy Book 3

by Matthew Mather

  Drones were able to do facial recognition from miles away, Damon said. And we wouldn’t be able to see or hear the drones in the sky. They would be too far away for us to see, but their cameras and imaging technology would see us. We needed to stay as hidden as possible, stay below the trees.

  The old woman inside the house replied, “We heard. We had that meshnet thing on our phones before. Now we’re disconnected. And we’re being careful too. They said there are terrorists everywhere across America. That you won’t know who they are. They said the government is overthrown.”

  Lauren said, “Do I look like a terrorist?” She had pulled her face covering off entirely and let the woman inside have a good look at her.

  “You don’t look like family. Now get going.”

  Damon joined us on the balcony. “Please, we need somewhere to hide. We have Senator Seymour with us, he’s the president of the United States and—”

  “Damon,” Lauren said. “Don’t—”

  “And we got the Queen of England in here having tea with us,” answered the woman behind the woman.

  After a pause a man’s voice added, “And if you did have Seymour there with you, I would put a bullet clean through his head myself. Now you get going.”

  “This isn’t going to work,” I said. “We better get back.”

  The sky was getting brighter.

  Lauren pleaded with the couple inside the house for another minute, but we had to give up. It was already the third house we had tried. We could maybe break into somewhere abandoned, but what we needed was a doctor, people with supplies. We needed a community to help us, but nobody knew us out here.

  We walked back up the driveway.

  “I was worried about this,” Damon said. “People connected into the meshnet like everyone else, but then we started telling them to disconnect, that it was compromised and that they needed to use the government one. That’s become the topic of a whole conspiracy rant itself. Nobody knows who to trust.”

  “How much further can we go?” I asked.

  The truck’s batteries were down to fifty percent. We hadn’t seen as much as a streetlight all night.

  Damon replied, “Another two hundred miles till we need to get plugged in.”

  That was the problem with electric vehicles. There were gas stations everywhere, and even if they were closed, we might have been able to get some pumps working. But with the power grids down, we were far down the Shenandoah without a paddle.

  “Keep under cover of the trees,” Damon said as he walked ahead.

  Lauren waited until he was out of earshot. “Susie has lost a lot of blood. We need to get somewhere with a hospital soon. I think we need to go back to Washington. We can just about make it. We don’t know anyone anywhere else.”

  “You heard Susie,” I said. “The terrorists called Leo the Ace of Spades. No way they’re going to let us slip past them back into DC. He’s their number one target.”

  “We might have to risk it.”

  I said, “I’m more worried about what’s going on inside our truck. Chuck pointing a gun at Damon? I am not sure we can control Archer for much longer.”

  “The bark is worse than the bite.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A dog doesn’t bite when it’s barking. The arguing isn’t dangerous, it’s just everyone warning the others, expressing themselves. It’s when they go quiet you need to be careful.”

  “Point taken.”

  My wife looked like she wanted to add something. I asked, “What?”

  “Something else Susie said. You were right, Mike. Those terrorists are coming after you. Personally. That’s what Susie told me.”

  “There they are,” Chuck said and pointed out the window. “Doesn’t look like they had much luck.”

  Damon walked ahead of Lauren and Mike, the three of them keeping to the dark edge of the forest to the right of the driveway. His friends kept glancing up at the brightening sky.

  Three of the kids were asleep in the middle row. The senator—president?—had climbed over the divider to sit with his niece, Olivia, who squealed when Lauren said she was going to leave the car. He was asleep now as well, snoring with his arm around the little girl.

  Ellarose was awake. Susie wouldn’t let her go to sleep. She had earbuds in and watched a video, nodding off every now and then. Susie would nudge her awake. She didn’t want her little girl going to sleep so soon after the concussion that had knocked her unconscious.

  “You realize we have the commander-in-chief of the United States in this vehicle,” Archer said from the back.

  Chuck was in the driver’s seat just in case they needed to leave in a hurry. “Now you believe those stories we downloaded?” He kept his eyes on his friends.

  “Your wife needs a transfusion.”

  “I’m fine,” Susie whispered.

  Chuck tried to keep his eyes forward, but he had to turn and glance back at his wife. She was pallid. Her lips bluish in the dim light. Her voice getting weaker.

  She had managed to drink two of the bottles of water they had found at the gas station, while the rest of them shared one, but she needed more. She might have an infection. She had a deep wound from a round passing through the armor on the left side of her abdomen. They had staunched the worst of the bleeding, but she needed a doctor.

  Chuck turned back to watching his friends. “We’re going to get you to a hospital. Soon.”

  “You heard your wife,” Archer said. “The terrorists called Seymour the Ace of Spades. He’s their number one target. We need to get him back to DC as soon as possible and get your wife some help. There’s only one way out of this.”

  “I can’t just drive off.”

  “I’m not telling you to leave anyone, and nobody needs to get hurt. I’m saying we take control. And that starts with this vehicle. I need you to get Damon to give you authorization over Selena and the truck’s systems.”

  Outside the windows, Chuck saw Damon point up at the sky. Mike and Lauren began quick stepping along the edge of the bushes.

  Archer said, “I saved your family’s lives. You owe me. Do you love your country?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Chuck shot back, but then in a lower voice, “Susie, what do you think? Do we need to get you to a doctor right away?”

  “I say we stick together,” she whispered. “I’ll be fine.”

  Chuck bowed his head. She was getting weaker by the minute.

  “I’m with you,” Chuck said quietly to Archer.

  “Charles Mumford,” Susie coughed. “Don’t you—”

  “Honey, we need to get you to a doctor. We won’t hurt anyone.”

  Archer said, “Just follow my lead. Do everything I say.”

  The passenger-side door opened.

  Damon said, “Is everything okay?”

  Chuck grinned. “We are all good.”

  “Because those things are in the sky. Drones are following us somehow. We need to hide. I doubt they’ve been able to get a visual fix, not yet, even with the truck’s shielding damaged. They might be tracking us electronically. Some signal we’re emitting?”

  “Would getting underground help?” Chuck said.

  “Underground?”

  “And I mean, literally.”

  Chapter 28

  “WOW,” I SAID.

  Lauren added, “Incredible.”

  Fantastical structures loomed from the roof of the cavern, dripping stone sculptures reflected in the water below. Stalagmites reached up from the floor, their tips almost reaching some of the weeping rocks above them.

  Our voices echoed.

  Seneca Caverns. I’d heard of the place, had seen the billboards when I had driven down Interstate 81 on my way up and down the backbone of America for one reason or another over the years, but I’d never taken the time to have a look.

  Turned out, it was worth the visit.

  Chuck reasoned there wouldn’t be much in the way of a tourist trade right now, and last time
he was there they had installed a new entrance to the caverns, a paved gradual incline looping around, all the way down into the bowels of the Earth. With the sky getting brighter, we drove a few miles down along US-33 and then pulled through the parking lot and drove the truck into the cavern. We parked at the end of the sloping entrance and got out on foot.

  Fifty feet of bedrock overhead to block any electronic signal from leaking out.

  Only one way in or out, which was both comforting and terrifying. The thought of being buried alive was a close second on my list of worst ways to go, right after being eaten by a shark.

  We drove the truck in as far as we could, with Chuck walking ahead of us, removing the crowd-control stanchions and ropes both to be polite and so we wouldn’t damage the truck by rolling over them. We parked the truck as far in as we could get in the first cavern, then turned on the headlights to illuminate the space.

  Weird long shadows lit up the voluminous space, the stalactites and stalagmites like the teeth of some monster whose mouth and gullet we had walked straight into.

  When we stopped, I opened the gull-wing door beside me and got out.

  I took a moment to inspect the vehicle. I still couldn’t get used to it. Even pockmarked with bullet holes, if I stood back ten feet from the truck, it blended into the background just like an octopus on a coral reef. Knowing it was there, I saw the outlines and the curvy mirror bending of light of the objects behind it, but it was still amazing.

  “I’m going to spend a few minutes looking at Susie’s wounds,” Chuck said as he got out.

  “The senator and I will set up a forward perimeter at the entrance,” Archer said. “Why don’t you three go and scout deeper into the cave, make sure we don’t have any stragglers on our rear? I would really hate to get a surprise from behind.”

  “I bet you would,” Damon whispered beside me, low enough that Archer couldn’t hear.

  I rolled my eyes at him. In a loud voice I replied to Archer, “Okay, good plan,” and then to my wife, “Are you okay with leaving the kids with Susie and Chuck for a few minutes?”

  She nodded as she checked her submachine gun.

  “Oh, one thing,” Chuck said. “Before you go.” He turned to Damon. “Could you authorize me for control of Selena? To get authorization for Tyrell’s systems?”

  Damon was putting his laptop into its bag in the front seat. He stood up and leaned on the truck. “You want what?”

  “I want you to tell Selena to authorize me to take control of her. Of Tyrell’s systems.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you kidding me? What happens if something happens to you? You get shot—”

  “By who?” Damon frowned.

  “Not by one of us, you idiot. Come on, I’m being serious. You could get lost, have a heart attack, I don’t know. But if we lose you, the rest of us are screwed. We’re sitting ducks.”

  Damon scratched the back of his head.

  “Son,” the senator said, “we do need backup in case something happens to you.”

  “He is the president of the United States,” Archer said.

  “You don’t trust me?” Chuck said. “Fine, give the authorization to Mike.”

  “I trust you, Chuck,” Damon said finally. “Selena, please give emergency override authorization to Charles Mumford”—he looked at me—“and Michael Mitchell.”

  She responded in the affirmative.

  “Thanks, Damon,” Chuck said and ducked back inside to find the first aid kit. “Oh.” His head reappeared. “If you find any scraps of wood in the walkways, loose stuff, could you bring it back? I think I’m going to start a fire.”

  It was damp and cold this deep inside the caves.

  We left two of the submachine guns with Chuck and the senator, with Lauren taking one with us. Damon had his handgun, and I felt like I needed something too. Nobody seemed to think I needed a weapon except me, but Archer relented and gave me one of the Glocks. He said we should try to wash more of the stink of the manure off, for everyone’s benefit.

  Lauren played point guard and went ahead, following the marked path that led deeper into the caverns. She used Luke’s baseball cap and a strip of a torn T-shirt to fashion a head mount for her cell phone and shone its flashlight ahead of us.

  Damon and I followed.

  “Did you read that article I showed you?” Damon whispered.

  I nodded.

  A story in the New York Times about Senator Seymour’s connections to GenCorp, about billions of nearly untraceable funds that had gone into black ops programs from the Armed Services Committee with almost no oversight. There were rumblings of an investigation, rumors it could topple Senator Seymour in a corruption scandal.

  “There was something going on between Tyrell and Seymour,” Damon said quietly, his eyes casting forward to check that Lauren was out of earshot.

  “They worked together,” I said.

  “If working together means funding covert armies, then yeah. Did you read the other articles?”

  I nodded again. I had.

  These were articles from sources like the Gateway Pundit and One America News, right-wing news outlets I rarely paid any attention to. The stories were about Tyrell and GenCorp and an underground left-wing movement called the Jakobites made up of his followers. Extreme militants, the stories said, that had launched a coup against the American government.

  On the other hand, the left-wing news outlets had stories that ran counter to this, talking about a right-wing plot that had taken over the government and used covert CIA resources to launch a false flag terrorist attack and take control of the country.

  “Tyrell said this was the start of a new civil war,” Damon said. “That we had to pick sides.”

  “I’m not sure he was stable,” I said.

  “But you saw Uncle Leo shoot Tyrell, right? He shot him in cold blood.”

  “He was trying to hit the guy behind me.”

  “How well do you know Uncle Leo?” Damon asked.

  “If you’re asking if I think he would sacrifice my kids and Lauren for some nefarious plot—”

  “You’re telling me you didn’t think twice about leaving the truck behind with your kids in it just now? After I gave them the access codes to Selena?”

  I stopped walking. He was right. There was a twinge inside me, the slightest of hesitations. I kept walking. “This is insane. Leo has nothing to do with this.”

  “Why did those terrorists keep coming back to his house, then?”

  “He is one of the highest-ranking politicians in the country. He’s a target.”

  “And why was Tyrell waiting there, too?”

  “I think that’s more a question for you.”

  “And the president and vice president and Speaker were just assassinated. This is the biggest moment in America’s history. Chuck’s right. There is a conspiracy going on, and Leo is at the center of it. Those are highly sophisticated Chinese drones. You know how long it would take to get trained up on using those? The kind of technical expertise? There are only a few pla—”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Lauren asked.

  She had stopped in the shadows up ahead to let us walk to within a few feet of her.

  “Nothing,” Damon said in a loud voice, and then whispered to me, “You should ask your wife about her involvement.”

  “I’m not deaf,” my wife said. “If you’ve got something to say, I’m listening.”

  Damon replied, “I’m just trying to figure this out. I’m going back to the truck.” He knelt to pull some wooden boards from a walkway. “Chuck said he wanted to start a fire.”

  “Uh-huh.” The butt of Lauren’s submachine gun rested on her hip.

  I shone my phone’s flashlight back and forth.

  We waited for Damon to disappear into the darkness away from us.

  Long shadows crept and jumped from the dripping stone fangs hanging from the cave’s ceiling. “I don’t think there’s anyone else back here.”r />
  “Me either.”

  “I think Archer was just trying to get us away for a minute.” The worm that Damon had planted began gnawing into the pit of my stomach. “We should get back.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  I turned and began quick walking back along the path. Damon had already disappeared into the next cavern.

  “What am I worried about?” I laughed. “We’re trapped hundreds of feet underground in a cave with killer drones and Chechen terrorists trying to murder us while America disintegrates in a civil conflict and the third world war erupts.”

  “You shouldn’t read all those left-wing articles—”

  “It’s not the articles, Lauren.” I quickened my pace, partly because I was worried about what Damon had said, but mostly because I wanted to put some distance between me and my wife. “It’s you.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “This has a lot of the same feeling as six years ago. In the CyberStorm. When you were about to take that job in Boston, have an abortion, and leave me.”

  “Are you insane? I’m not pregnant.”

  “But you are hiding things from me, and you’re doing it for your career.”

  “Could you stop running away and talk to me?”

  My pulse hammered in my chest, a pain rising, but not a physical one. An ache deep inside. I stopped and turned. “You lied to me. You told me you were going to China for an international relations conference.”

  “I was. Mostly.”

  I noticed my wife kept the muzzle of her submachine gun pointed toward but still slightly away from me. “But you were working on the drone program with Leo? You were vetting and authorizing the targeted kill lists around the world?”

  “I was.”

  “So you lied.”

  “I omitted the truth. There is a difference.”

  “Same difference as six years ago.”

  “There is a difference,” she insisted again.

  “Yeah, this time you put the lives of our children in danger.” The question I had lingering in the back of my mind finally formed. “Did you authorize the targeted killing of any Chechens? Anyone in the Islamic Brigade?”