CyberWar: World War C Trilogy Book 3

by Matthew Mather

  “You mean like Skynet?”

  Both laughed nervously.

  Travis said in a low voice, “Makes sense though, that it might have been someone inside our own government. Half of Congress has been looking for any excuse to attack China for years. They think the other half are turncoats. Might be that coup everybody’s been talking about.”

  “Like the Night of the Long Knives in Germany, when the Nazis took over,” Damon said. “In two days, in the 1930s, they killed about a thousand people across Germany, from high-ranking officials, even the top political leaders, all the way down to locals. Consolidated their power. And from the sound of it, right now it might be happening all over the world.”

  “Like targeted killing? Everywhere?” Travis said. “I heard you guys found a list.”

  “When the American government killed al-Awlaki, the first US citizen to be killed by a drone without trial or jury, they didn’t stop there. The US government killed his fourteen-year-old son a few weeks later, and then his four-year-old daughter a few weeks after that.”

  “Those were accidents.”

  “Sure, like the ones the Mafia does to make a statement. Don’t mess with us. Now either someone else is doing it to us, or we’ve expanded the program onto ourselves.”

  Travis said, “You really think it’s the Chinese?”

  “They just pulled the greenback as their currency peg. That’s financial Armageddon, which might be the biggest crime of all for Americans. And these are their drones. And they’re backing up India against our military, saying those first anti-satellite attacks didn’t come from them.”

  “But China hasn’t attacked anyone in fifty years. And they don’t have the ability to project power. They couldn’t even invade Canada.”

  They both laughed at that.

  I pulled around their side of the truck and waved. They both looked embarrassed as they realized I had been listening. “Sorry for eavesdropping,” I said, “but Travis, what town did you say you were from?”

  “Pleasant Shade, Tennessee. Those drones wiped out just about everybody in my town.”

  “And that was two weeks ago? Just when the anti-satellite attacks started?” Why would someone take out a town in the middle of nowhere?

  Travis said, glancing over at the stall where my wife and the senator were, “With all respect, sir, even if Senator Seymour was leading an overthrow of our government, that’s way above my paygrade. You just tell me what you need me to do.”

  “You seriously think Senator Seymour’s plan might have been to end up here? With us? If he was planning this?”

  “One thing I can tell you, sir, is that everybody has a great battle plan when they start. And exactly five seconds after the attack starts, all that goes out the window. I listened to what happened to you, and it seems like you threw a big wrench in someone’s plans. I could make up a million reasons why Seymour ended up here, for good or bad.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying it don’t matter a hoot. What we need now is a battle plan ourselves. That’s what I’m out here doing with Damon.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “They got eyes on us, that much I’m sure of, but they can’t have more than about twenty commandos. We got more bodies than that here in the Vanceburg Rifles, and we got guns and ammunition and these boys know the land. Which is why they probably haven’t attacked us yet.”

  “But they don’t have much time before they need to leave, that’s what you’re thinking?”

  Travis nodded. “They’re in a hurry. So, what can we do? We need to make your Seymour bait, I’m sorry to say. We need to draw them in.”

  “The attackers might be only twenty people,” I said. “But they have an army of drones, and we’re cut off from any outside help.”

  “Which is where Damon”—Travis clapped him on the back—“and I come in. We can use Selena here, so we need to set up as many generators as we can.”

  “You want to drive it out?”

  “We want to take it apart. This metamaterial coating?” He pulled off a strip that had been punctured by bullets. “It’s almost paper thin. Makes much better camouflage than our dollar store space blanket ponchos.”

  “They’re jamming us,” Damon said, “but we can jam them too. Maybe even hack them. Selena has a sophisticated digital system for it, but we build a bigger antenna around the barn, amp up the power through a few dozen generators. Get a signal boost. Maybe we spoof their GNSS signals to the drones, maybe copy the emitter signals we got in that armor we stole.”

  “And those corn heads?” Travis said. “The GPS tractors in the barn?”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Archer walk into the barn. He must have gone into the farmhouse, because he had returned with a glittering collection of knives held to his chest.

  I left Travis and Damon to keep talking. “What are you doing?” I whispered urgently at Archer.

  “What we should have done already. Get some information from this asshole. Find out if they are who they say they are. Who sent them?”

  I kept pace with him as he strode quickly down the barn toward the stall that held the terrorist captive. Six of the Vanceburg Rifles stood guard, and while none of them exactly trusted Archer, all of them gave the man a wide berth.

  “I thought torture didn’t work,” I said.

  “It’s going to work tonight, that I promise you. I’m going to filet this bastard.”

  “You can’t do it here. My kids.”

  He stopped outside the stall. “We’ll drag him into the shed. Like I said before, use that cast iron tub to threaten drowning him. Water board. Whatever it takes.”

  “He’ll just tell you whatever you want to hear. You won’t get the real answers.”

  “You got a better idea? We are out of time.”

  “Trust,” I said without really thinking it out.

  “You what now?”

  An idea bubbled up. “Trust,” I said again. “That’s the most important thing.” I called out to Travis, “You have sedatives in your medical kit?”

  “Yeah, why, you need some?”

  “Amphetamines? Speed? Anything like that?”

  He nodded that he thought he could find some.

  To Archer I said, “And you still have those drugs and syringes you were going to use on Damon, back at the Seymour residence?”

  He nodded. Then said, “That isn’t going to work on someone hardened like this.”

  “If we do it right, it could,” I said. “I’m going inside. I need to convince Rick to let me use Joe’s room to get the prisoner comfortable, get the guy a shower and clean clothes.”

  I left a confused Archer in my wake as I ran back outside and into the darkness.

  Chapter 36

  “IS HE AWAKE?” asked a gruff voice in the dark.

  “You need to speak only Russian,” I whispered back to Archer.

  “He’s stirring,” Travis replied in a low voice.

  “Turn up the lights,” I said. “Just enough to barely see. Light a few candles. He needs to see enough that he’s in a nice place, but not enough to understand where that might be.”

  Travis asked, “Do you want me to give him another shot of amphetamine?”

  “I don’t want to wake him up too much.”

  On the bed was a collection of other syringes. Back at the barn, we had crushed up a few Xanax and put them into his water when he asked for it. He had been complaining of thirst and drank the whole glass down. Twenty minutes later his head was lolling.

  When he was semiconscious, Archer had injected him with sodium thiopental—from his stash back at the senator’s house—which Travis explained was a barbiturate. One of the classic “truth” drugs, an adjunct to hypnosis therapy and an anesthetic. We didn’t want to force it out, I said, we wanted to trust it out.

  We took the man upstairs into the house, and three of us struggled to maneuver his naked body while we gave him a warm bath. We didn’t want to
attempt a cold shower, as it might wake him up. We needed his nervous system as relaxed as possible.

  Clean clothes. Deodorant. Even some aftershave from Joe’s cabinet. I had Archer get cleaned up as well and tidied myself. I wanted everything perfect.

  We found one of Joe’s old army dress uniforms in the closet. He had been a big man, and the clothes fit Archer, more or less. We removed any of the recognizable US insignias from it, and I apologized aloud when I took off Joe’s 101st Airborne Screaming Eagles patch. We searched through Joe’s closet for caps and boots. Army clothes were similar the world over, and Archer knew what he was looking for.

  We put fresh sheets onto the bed, the big four-poster in Joe’s open bedroom on the top floor. We removed any pictures that might have given away anything American, but then, pictures of fields and mountains were something on any wall anywhere in the world.

  “You need to get out,” I said to Travis.

  “His eyes are moving under the lids,” Travis replied. “He must be dreaming.”

  “Perfect, we’ll wake him up with a loud noise.” Whenever I was awakened from a dream into the waking world, I was disoriented for a while. Which was exactly what we wanted.

  “You sure Archer should be questioning him?” Travis said. “Are there Black men in Chechnya?”

  “I’m not sure if I should be insulted,” Archer replied. “If this doesn’t work, Mitchell—”

  “I know, I know. You’re taking him to the shed. No more English,” I said. “Stick to Russian.”

  Archer spoke it fluently, he had told us, and some local dialects haltingly. It would have to be good enough.

  “His eyes are fluttering,” Travis said.

  “Get out, get out,” I told him.

  I eased back into the shadows by the dresser. “Remember the plan,” I whispered to Archer. “Tell him the operation was a success, that he damaged his eyes, that’s why the lights are low. Tell him he was rescued, that the leader—”

  “Molchi,” Archer said.

  “What?”

  “Means shut up in Russian.”

  I held up my phone. Low-light video processing. One of the new models. I set the video to record, then held it up in front of me and pulled some curtains around to hide myself in the corner of the room. “Okay, I got a good view,” I whispered. “I’m ready, you can—”

  Archer clapped his hands together. Loud.

  The candlelight guttered. The man’s eyes opened. He was on his back, nestled in the middle of the large, overstuffed bed. Archer leaned over the bed and put one hand on the man’s tenderly.

  “Dobro pozhalovat' domoy, soldat,” Archer said.

  The man blinked once and then twice and turned his head. His eyes were glassy and red. “Gde ya?” he mumbled.

  We figured that if they were supposed to be Chechen, then they had to speak Russian. Archer also spoke a little Chinese. Said he would adapt. That this was what he did for a living, fitting in anywhere in the world.

  “Ty doma,” Archer replied.

  I kept filming. Long shadows flickered in the darkened room as Archer spun our story.

  “So are you with me?” I asked Archer.

  It was almost midnight. Eight hours till sunrise.

  “This is one big clusterf—”

  “Everything you just told me is true?” I asked. He had translated the whole of his conversation with the captive upstairs. I had replayed it and written down everything he told me. “Because I can probably get Damon to do a translation through Selena.”

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  “I don’t want to speculate.”

  “Look, Mike,”—I think it was about the first time he used my first name—“we need to get out of here alive. I’m in this fight, for you and your family.” He held my gaze.

  “Should I go and get someone?” Travis asked.

  “Everyone,” I replied. “And get them into the kitchen, as fast as possible.”

  Rick and Ken sat on the same side of the kitchen table as before, this time with Chuck to one side of them. Damon and Travis and Archer sat on the other. Lauren came in from the barn for this and sat at the other end of the table. She stoked the fire and got the embers back into roaring flames with new logs over them.

  I stood at the head of the table, but didn’t sit in Joe’s seat, just held onto the back of it.

  Damon didn’t attend, but not just because he couldn’t stand half of the people around the table. He was busy outside, programming Selena, and working on the farm equipment.

  Ken said, “This better be good, Mitchell. I was packing up my kids. We don’t know how much time we have left to get out of here.”

  “I doubt they’ll let you out,” I said. “They don’t know what you know.”

  “And who is ‘they’?”

  “That’s what I am about to tell you.”

  “And why should I trust you?”

  I leaned on Joe’s chair. “Do you trust me? That’s a good question.”

  Ken took a deep breath. Grudgingly he replied, “I trust you, Mike. Yeah, I do.”

  “Now what are we here for?” Rick asked. “And why the heck did you take that prisoner upstairs? I swear, Mike, if you weren’t who you are—”

  “Travis, tell them what we need,” I said.

  “We need anyone in town who can stitch or sew or tie knots to start making nets. As big as possible. Go get rope anywhere you can find it. Use fishing line if we need to.”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Rick muttered.

  “We need to send someone around to collect up all the generators in town, bring them here, then round up everyone who doesn’t want to fight and put them with all the children in the basement of the church. Figure out how we can defend it.”

  Ken crossed his arms and sat back in his chair.

  “Damon and I are setting up our own signal jammer in Selena. We’re stripping down that truck to make some camouflage. We need to round up all the guns and ammunit—”

  Rick snorted. “You want us to stay and fight? For what?”

  Archer leaned over the table. “Because it’s our best shot at keeping most of us alive.”

  “With all due respect.” Ken opened his arms. “I got a lot of faith in our Vanceburg Rifles, but most of them are shopkeepers and accountants. I was in the Rangers, but I doubt half of them could shoot a Coke can off a fence from thirty feet away.”

  Rick said, “Three of my friends are already dead. Percy and Joe yesterday. Oscar, up in the mountains. Rest their souls. This is your fight. They want Seymour and y’all, not us, and that’s just the sad truth.” He eased back from the table. “I’m not risking my neck for a politician.”

  “And what?” Ken said. “You expect a couple of good ol’ boys to be able to fight back against an enemy that has”—he waved a hand over his head—“wiped out satellites and spaceships? That has evaded the entire United States military? Taken out the combined armed forces of half of the world’s nations? Armed with high-tech wizardry? Seriously?”

  The fire crackled and popped in the silence.

  “You think that’s what Joe would say?” I said to Ken.

  “You leave Joe out of this.”

  “You know what his dying words to me were?”

  “Don’t use him in this.”

  “He said, we don’t see the world as it is, but we see the world as we are. Those were his last words.”

  Respectful silence this time.

  “And what does that have to do with anything?” Rick said quietly.

  “If we are divided ourselves, then we will see our nation as divided. That’s what he was saying. But if we are united inside, we will see the country as united around us.”

  “Those are pretty wor—”

  “You are letting them get inside your head, believing all these stories. Who do you think is planting them? Conspiracies about this and that. Even if they come from us and not them. Even if we’re the ones making them up. Those stories make an enemy
of your neighbor, the guy right down the street? Those aren’t your enemies. I am not your enemy, Rick.”

  He exhaled long and hard. “I know that, Mike.”

  “Do you? We are all fellow Americans. All of us, and we gotta ignore everything that tries to divide us and realize that we are all together. And right now, America is under attack. Heck, the entire world is. But from inside our borders, for just about the first time.”

  “Not the first time,” Ken said. “We’ve had civil war before.”

  “But this isn’t civil war, Ken.”

  I left a moment for those words to sink in.

  “You said you trust me?” I waited and looked at each person in turn. Each one nodded. “And do you like ghost stories?”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. “Because I’m going to tell you one that will raise your hackles. Lauren, turn on the TV.”

  At the far end of the kitchen was a flat panel display we had hooked up to my phone. She turned it on and began playing the video we’d just recorded upstairs.

  Chapter 37

  “WE’RE GETTING VARIATIONS in the sig—” Damon’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. “They’re coming. We think they’re coming.”

  His voice was barely audible over the white noise jamming up the radio’s frequencies. Travis had set up a directional dish to increase the signal from the barn to the church, about three hundred yards down the main road of Vanceburg from Joe’s farmhouse. Even with the boost, we could barely hear what they were saying.

  Six a.m. and the sun colored the eastern sky over the West Virginia mountains. The white church’s interior was lit by candles, their glittering flames providing the only illumination as we worked through the night. The church had a poured cement basement that the town had gotten together to build as a storm shelter a few years before, after a string of tornadoes had ripped apart Maysville, just down the Ohio.

  I knelt to look my son in the eye. “You take care of your little sister,” I said to Luke. For only the second time since we had escaped from the senator’s house, he was crying.