CyberWar: World War C Trilogy Book 3

by Matthew Mather

  Silence. Just the echo of the stalactites’ tears dripping into the water around us.

  The lack of response was all the answer I needed. “Are you pointing that gun at me for a reason?”

  “Mike,” my wife said softly, lowering the weapon. “I’m s—”

  “Guys!” Damon’s voice echoed from the next cavern.

  Lights and shadows played along the ceiling.

  My mouth was still open and halfway to spitting out another accusation. “What?” I said instead, and turned back to the walkway to the front.

  “I’m picking up a signal inside the cavern.”

  “We’ll finish this later,” I said to my wife, then turned to jog along the path.

  Whatever Damon was excited about, it seemed important. I rounded the bend through a narrow section and into the first cavern. Smoke drifted along the ceiling. Chuck had managed to light a small fire by the water next to the truck and kneeled beside it, fanning the flames.

  Archer and the senator were nowhere to be seen. I assumed they were farther up the entranceway, setting up whatever defenses the special ops soldier decided might be most effective. None of which I sincerely hoped would be necessary.

  The pit-of-the-stomach nausea returned as I realized we were trapped underground. Maybe this place wasn’t such a good idea.

  Damon walked in circles by the entrance tunnel, then turned back toward the truck, only visible as its four gull-wing doors were wide open. The kids were inside with Susie, all of them in the middle row watching videos on the seatback screens.

  “I think I know how the drones have been tracking us,” Damon said, his laptop up and ahead of him like he was conjuring water with it. “The truck should be invisible. I shut down all her systems just now to make sure I was right. I had to make sure she wasn’t leaking any RF.”

  “RF?” I asked as I approached.

  Lauren was right behind me.

  “Radio frequency.” Damon walked to the rear of the truck and clicked a button on his laptop. The back gate swung open. “Damn it, I was so stupid.”

  “What were you stupid about?” I was ten feet away now.

  Chuck knelt by the fire, his submachine gun on the rock next to him.

  Four crates were stacked in the back of the truck, with the semi-conscious Chechen tied up in the back between them. Damon leaned his laptop right next to the Chechen’s chest.

  “It’s how those drones knew not to home in on their own team,” Damon said. “Their body armor has a transmitter in it. I just set up a signal sniffer on my laptop. The transmitter signal hops frequencies, so it’s hard to pin down. Since we’re underground, all other electromagnetic signals are being blocked, so I’ve been able to isolate the pattern. This guy’s armor is sending out a signal clear as day.”

  That made sense. I hadn’t thought about it.

  All of the terrorists we’d encountered were dressed head-to-foot in black, even their faces covered by visors and shields. How would the drones know not to home in on them? Of course— they had to have transmitters.

  “The signal is weak, so they can’t pick it up too well from a distance,” Damon said. “But that’s how they must be managing to follow us.” He turned. “And I’m getting another signal, coming from the back corner of the cave.”

  We turned and peered into a dark corner.

  A figure emerged. It was Archer.

  The signal was coming from Archer. He had on the chest armor of the terrorist he had taken in the firefight. I had assumed it was because he was trying to blend in with them. Amina had walked by when we’d been shielded inside the truck, but she had nodded at Archer as she passed. Again, I had assumed because she’d thought he was one of her men.

  But then again.

  Maybe he was.

  That churning sensation of vertigo in my stomach convulsed into a creeping snake of terror that slipped up my spine.

  Damon held up his laptop, pointed it at Archer as if the machine would provide some magical protection. Like he was casting a spell. The special ops soldier grabbed the computer and tossed it into the open back of the truck, then grabbed Damon by the neck.

  Almost lifted him from the ground.

  “Enough of this crap,” Archer mumbled.

  The senator appeared from the shadows behind Archer, a submachine gun in his hands. He pointed it at us and scanned back and forth.

  Damon gagged and gurgled as his feet left the stone.

  “Mumford,” Archer said. “Take their weapons.”

  I had my Glock in my hand, and Lauren was behind me with her weapon pointed forward. Chuck got up from kneeling by the fire with his weapon in his right hand, propped up by his left prosthetic one.

  His submachine gun pointed at me.

  “Chuck?” I said weakly.

  His eyes downcast, Chuck blinked and raised his weapon.

  “Mumford,” Archer repeated. “Get their weapons.”

  “You better do as they say,” the senator said from behind them. “We need to go to Washington, right now, and we cannot wait. Some things are more important.” He raised his submachine gun and pointed it at us.

  Lauren sobbed. “Uncle Leo? More important? Than family?”

  Chapter 29

  CHUCK TOOK A deep breath and shouldered his weapon.

  He kept it pointed straight at me. I lifted my Glock, but wasn’t sure who to point it at.

  “You assholes,” Damon gurgled.

  “Mumford,” Archer commanded again. “Get their goddamned weapons.”

  “Lauren?” I said.

  My wife crouched behind me. “I got your back, Mike, no matter what.”

  I glanced at her. Was she pointing that weapon at me? No.

  “Mom, why are you aiming a gun at Uncle Leo?” Luke had stepped out of the truck.

  Olivia was beside him and held his hand. “Momma?”

  “Get back inside, baby,” Lauren said. “Please, honey, get back inside the truck. Luke, get your sister back inside.”

  “Dad?” Luke said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Get Olivia in the truck,” I replied in an unsteady voice. Wasn’t a good time to contradict my wife.

  I pointed my gun at Archer.

  “You want to do this in front of your kids, Mitchell?” Archer growled. “Want them to see their dad be killed in front of them?” His left hand still levitated Damon from the ground, while his right swung the submachine gun around to point at my chest.

  I realized I was practically naked.

  Just wearing a T-shirt.

  No ballistic vest.

  One of the high-velocity rounds would go straight into me and explode like a hand grenade. I looked at Luke, my hand shaking. Tears in his eyes. I shook my head, don’t come to me. Go back inside, I indicated with a flick of my chin.

  “Chuck?” I said.

  Was my friend really doing this?

  “Damn it.” Chuck groaned and swung his weapon around and pointed it at Senator Seymour. “Drop it,” he said.

  “Mumford, what are you doing?” Archer yelled. “You owe me your family’s lives.”

  “Which you have a chit to call in for, but not right now. This is wrong.”

  “As wrong as me blowing a hole through your best friend? And what? You’re going to shoot the president of the United States?”

  “I was thinking more of a kneecap or something. And he’s not president yet.”

  The senator grimaced but kept his weapon up.

  “That’s treason, Mumford,” Archer growled.

  “I have a feeling that word is going to be thrown around a lot in the next few days.”

  “You know what the punishment is for treason?”

  “You know what the punishment is for being an asshole?” Damon managed to gasp.

  “Drop it,” said another voice.

  It was Susie. Her voice thready and weak, but resolute and determined. She was on the ground, on her stomach, on the other side of the truck. She had a pistol point
ed at Archer.

  Lauren had her weapon aimed at Archer now as well. “I believe that is four versus two, if we could consider this a vote.”

  The sun rose toward midday in a clear blue sky.

  I was in the middle seat again with Luke, who was watching a video with his little sister. They had their arms around each other. Bonham and Ellarose sat beside them, with earbuds in and watching the same movie. Lauren was in the third row behind me with Susie, and Chuck and Damon were in the front.

  “Chuck.” I leaned over the seat divider.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You know we just kidnapped the president of the United States?”

  Silence for a few seconds. “History is written by the victors. Today it might be called kidnapping. Tomorrow it might be called ‘rescued.’”

  “More like treason or sedition.”

  “I never really understood that word, sedition. We just need to make sure we win, Mike. Keep everyone safe.”

  “You sure you should keep Archer tied up?” Waves of uncertainty cascaded through my mind the farther we ventured from DC, the depth and intensity of them increasing with the distance.

  “Damon laced him up, not me, so ask him if he wants to untie the guy. And he’s more of a mercenary than someone working for Uncle Sam, if I had to guess.”

  The senator had been the first one to blink in the game of Russian chicken we had back in the caverns. He told Archer to lower his weapon, that while he needed to get to Washington, this wasn’t the right way to do it. He was wrong, he told Lauren, and tried to apologize.

  My wife ignored her uncle, took his weapon, and told him to get in the back.

  Archer, though. Damon reasoned we couldn’t just let him sit in the truck with us. The man was literally a killing machine and might take us all out with his bare hands if we gave him the chance. Damon took a special relish in tying him up, making sure the bindings were just tight enough not to cut off circulation, and then knotting a torn T-shirt around his mouth.

  “We are going to need to untie him at some point,” I said.

  Chuck replied, “Might be easier to let the two in the back kill each other, unless they’re both on the same side. A lot of unknowns here. That’s what we’re going to whittle down over the next day. Make sure we’re doing the right thing. And right now, that means getting to a hospital somewhere we trust the people. I need to get my wife and daughter some medical attention.”

  “I assume we’re not taking a circular route to Washington?”

  “Correct, Boy Wonder.”

  Chuck still hadn’t told us where he was driving. Once we got loaded into the truck, he took off and said he knew exactly where he was going. Didn’t need to engage the geopositioning system, said he didn’t trust it. Said it would become obvious, but he didn’t know who might be listening if he explained. He didn’t say who exactly might be listening.

  He just said to trust him, which was a stretch given that he’d just tried to carjack me.

  “The terrorists said they needed to be gone in two days,” Chuck said. “Isn’t that right, Susie?” He turned and looked into the back.

  “That’s right, honey.” Susie was in the middle seats with Lauren, her head in her friend’s lap. The kids were back to watching videos. Susie was pale, her lips turning faintly blue.

  “And Charles, darling,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Yes, my honeysuckle?”

  “If you ever tell a pretty girl about the defenses around our family home again, I will castrate you myself, do you understand?” She was still mad about Chuck telling Amina about the flares attached to the chimney at the cottage.

  “Yes, honey,” Chuck replied sheepishly to his wife, and then to me in a lower voice, “that was one of the most stupid things I ever did.”

  “I can vouch that’s not true,” I replied with a grin.

  Chuck laughed at that. He lowered his voice more and said, “Seriously, though. If your Uncle Leo is the good guy, then we’re just keeping him safe for a day until the bad guys clear out. We’re not kidnapping the president of the United States, we’re safekeeping him. I think Amina and her crew were waiting for us on all the passes back to Washington.”

  “So, we’re not going back to DC?” When Chuck shook his head once more, I asked in a whisper, “And if Senator Seymour is the bad guy?”

  He whispered back, “You really think your Uncle Leo is the villain in all this?”

  I didn’t answer. That depended on your point of view. Targeted kill lists. Oversight of the international drone program, dealing out death across the planet. A lot of people might see someone like that as being worse than a villain. And now that broad brushstroke was also painted across my wife.

  “You saw it in the newscasts,” Chuck said, raising his voice. “Our military has been called in domestically. They’re sweeping the nation, getting rid of whatever scourge got in here. If there’s funny business going on, we’ve got to wait it out. Wait for the good guys.”

  Waiting for the good guys was what almost got us killed six years before.

  “And where exactly are we going to wait it out?”

  The cabin in the Shenandoah obviously wasn’t an option anymore.

  “This is your idea, Mike. You didn’t hand over your gun when your Uncle Leo demanded it. I was going with your gut. You didn’t want to go to DC, so my loyalty went with you. Now you gotta trust me a little.”

  “So now this is my fault?”

  “Gotta be somebody’s.” He smiled a goofy grin at me and stomped down on the accelerator.

  We sped down a country lane, heading deep into West Virginia.

  I said the obvious, “You know we’re being tracked by enemy drones in the sky? And we’re driving through them in broad daylight?” I was hoping he had some clever plan he could explain, more to help my nerves than anything else.

  “Which is why I’ve got my foot as far down on the gas as I can.”

  Not quite as clever as I had hoped for.

  “There’s a good chance they won’t detect us,” Damon said.

  We had taken the armor chest plates, where the transmitters seemed to be, and bent around them a box of thin metal plates we’d found in the gift shop. Damon said this would act as a Faraday cage and capture any electromagnetic signals, if we could wrap them all the way around and make sure they were grounded. I said we should just leave them in the cave, but Damon pointed out that we might be able to use them later. Or find a way to mimic the signal. Either way, better to bring them with us.

  I asked Damon why the metamaterial coating, which bent optical radiation around us, didn’t work to block the outgoing radio frequency transmitters, and he said the wavelengths were wrong. Too long, he said.

  I said to Chuck, “You’ve got a plan, right?”

  He smiled. “Does the pope do his business in the woods?”

  “I assume you mean preaching?”

  The senator was in the back seat with Damon. He had given up his gun and said he would do whatever Lauren wanted—and he had instructed Archer to give up his gun—but made it clear he believed the right course of action was to go back into Washington.

  On that topic, we agreed to disagree.

  He was still trying to convince Lauren to turn the truck around.

  “You can’t believe I had anything to do with this,” I heard the senator say in a low voice.

  He sat beside my wife. I turned slightly to listen.

  “Didn’t you always tell me family first?” Lauren had Susie in her arms. “Did you work with Tyrell? You never told me that.”

  “Those things killed my sister, your mother,” the senator said.

  “I know,” Lauren replied quietly. “You still haven’t answered the question.”

  “I didn’t know about any transmitters in the armor,” Archer garble-yelled from the back. “That was stupid, I admit that, but Tyrell is still alive, you idiots. You’re walking into his trap.”

  “Ple
ase be quiet.” Lauren said it softly and smiled at Susie. “Or I will have Damon stick one of Luke’s socks in your mouth.”

  Susie tried to return the grin, but only managed a grimace.

  The sun arced high overhead in the clear September sky, then began its gradual descent to the west. The lower we dropped in the Appalachian foothills, the more the trees turned from orange and gold and yellow back to green, as if we went back in time the farther we traveled down. Chuck turned us slightly north, and the green forests became interspersed with fire-blackened swaths of scorched earth and scrub.

  After five hours of driving, Selena’s batteries were down to less than five percent. I would have been worried, but it became obvious where we were headed.

  Chuck craned forward in the driver’s seat to get a better look out the windshield. “Has anyone else noticed that the electrical wires strung from the poles seem to be cut down or ripped out every few miles?”

  “Might have been a storm or those fires?”

  “No fires up this way.”

  “Then maybe the drones? They attach their feet to them. Maybe they cut them, too.”

  “Only seen them on high-voltage lines,” Damon said from the passenger seat.

  “Does that mean they wouldn’t use local lines?”

  “Wouldn’t be as efficient.”

  “So it might be them doing this?”

  “Might be.”

  “I’ve been getting sporadic connections to the meshnet,” Damon said.

  “You haven’t been sending out any messages?” I said.

  “Of course not.”

  “What about the truck? Is it sending out”—I searched for the right word—“any pings or anything? This thing isn’t talking to anyone, is it?”

  “I turned off all her comms.”

  “You trust him?” Archer gag-yelled from the back.

  “Yes,” I replied, turning to investigate the back. “We do.”

  I could see that the terrorist was now awake. He had propped himself up on one side, against the crate. Archer leaned himself up on the other side and kept his eyes on him, four crates stacked two high between them.