“True. But they didn't have to be. You see, Bryan, you've been seeking misguided vengeance all these years. Yes, I'm afraid so. I checked into the details surrounding your father's death. And as you know, I have access to everything and everyone. Your father was not murdered. Mackenzie Drenette actually did die in a Sprint crash. There was nothing at all sinister about it.”
At first, Bryan felt a twitter of agony and stupidity, but he shook it off, refusing to believe Travert knew how to tell the truth.
“You will go down, Travert. Won't be me that takes you out, but someone will. It all dies eventually. If not the dream, then the dictator himself.”
Travert shrugged. “Oh, I do believe my ice cream is beginning to melt. I hate to miss out on a satisfying dessert. I just thought I'd pop in and say goodbye before my troops enter your office and blow your head off your body. Just do me one favor, Bryan. Don't stand too close to the glass. If the blasts should shatter it, I would hate for your head to fall through and mess up the beautiful landscaping at the base of Dome.”
“And I've so enjoyed working for you,” Bryan sneered as he turned toward the door, which was now glowing around the edges.
74
A
dam found the strength to separate his scientific powers of deduction from his turbulent emotions, even as klaxons terrified his people and had them scurrying in a panic to the four elevators.
“I know where to find her,” he told Rand over his comm-set, “assuming she was looking for the bomb. If Sam wanted to make sure he destroyed this base for good, there's only one place he could have planted it. I'm going to heap.”
“I copy that,” Rand said. “I'm going to dispatch a couple of techs there immediately. They might have a shot at disarming it. And in case we're wrong, I'm going to make Raymonds cough up everything, even if I have to kick it out of the SOB.”
As Adam stepped lively into an elevator that filled up within seconds, leaving others stranded in the corridor with pale, terrified faces, he replied. “You listen to me, Rand! If you can't get anything out of that man right off, then I want you to get the hell out of there. Raymonds isn't that important.”
“Copy that!”
As the elevator began its ascent, there was silence. The rebels braced against each other, most eyes looking upward in prayer that this tiny metal cabinet would not become their coffin. Adam saw hands clasped, some held against the heart.
And when the elevator slipped to a stop and the door opened into heap and Adam forged his way through his comrades, there were a series of pleas and objections.
“Dr. Smith, no …”
“What are you ...”
“Get back. We have to go …”
He squeezed out of the jam, stumbled into the hydro and environmental assessment pod and turned to his followers.
“I'll be coming soon. Go on up without me.”
There were more complaints. But someone hit the control panel, and the door closed instantly.
Adam turned and shouted. “Ari! Arilynn! It's Daddy! Arilynn, are you here?”
He heard only the echoes of the giant machinery that kept the facility in operation. However, the heap operator was not here. Could he have evacuated that quickly?
“He should have been waiting for the elevator when I arrived.”
Seconds later, he stumbled across the body of the operator.
“Oh god. Bennie.”
He raced to the man, checked for a pulse he knew was not going to exist, then scrambled on all fours beneath the convoluted array of piping that connected the enviro-control gateway unit to heap's primary workstation.
“Come on, you bastard, be here.”
His heart sank when he found no deviations in the array's construction. The bomb would have to have been attached to the array, not physically inserted. The latter process would have taken Raymonds too long, and the structural anomaly would have been detected in the command pod immediately.
“This had to be the place,” he whispered. “Had to be. Had to ...”
And then, as he started to push himself out from under the array, he caught sight of a glistening substance smeared across the largest pipe. He ran an index finger through it, and it was viscous.
“A laminate,” he said. “It was here.”
He jumped on his comm-set. “Rand. Leave Raymonds and clear the command pod if there's anyone left. We have to find my daughter. She has the bomb. I think she might be trying to take it topside.”
“Where are you, Adam?”
“Heap. Raymonds killed Ben Crantz, and the bomb was definitely here. I don't think Ari understands what she's doing.”
“We'll find her, Adam. We'll find her.”
Adam expected to be thrown off his feet at any second by an explosion that would tear through the heart of the mountain and eliminate anything that mattered in his life.
His wait for the next elevator was especially aggravating, and when it finally arrived on its ascent two minutes later, there was no room for another passenger. His followers didn't care, however, and they pressed in upon themselves to create space for their inspirational leader. Caught up in his raging tide of fear and anger, Adam didn't even acknowledge his longtime friends, and he simply stepped onto the lift, turned and waited in agony as it continued the ascent.
The water formed in wells at the corners of his eyes, and he started at a jog as the elevator door slipped open. His friends sprinted past, stumbling to avoid each other as they scrambled toward the shafts, all of which were opened.
“Dr. Smith.” He heard the cries of panic. “Over here, sir.”
One of the lead uptechs, Calvin Moone, waved frantically from the far side of the assimilation port. Adam was surprised to see anyone working at this level of the facility still inside the mountain.
“Moone? Have you seen my daughter?”
“Not me personally, sir. But I think … well ...”
“Just give it up, Moone.”
“As one of the other techs, Meg Blithen, was running out of here, she said she'd caught a glimpse of someone entering the armory. Didn't know who. I went for a look, and the door was sealed. The printlock won't work and ...”
Adam was on the move before the uptech could finish.
“Rand. I think I may have found her. Where are you?”
“Command pod. Everyone else has been evacuated.”
“What? I told you to get the hell out ...”
“Never mind that. Where's Arilynn?”
“Could be in the armory. I'm not certain. The printlock is disabled.”
“Not a problem. I can override it from here. Give me 30 seconds.”
He stood against the door, easily the thickest, most indestructible entryway in the facility. “Rand, can you patch me through to a comm-link in the armory?”
“Yes, hold on. We need to get that printlock back online.”
Adam turned to the uptech. “Get out of here, young man.”
Adam shouted through what he knew to be a soundproof barrier.
“Ari! Ari! Come on out, sweetie! You don't have to do this yourself, you can ...”
“Oh, hell.”
The voice came across the comm-set. Rand said, “Adam, we've got a major anomaly. I'm showing a huge spike in baryon emissions inside the armory and ...”
The instant froze in Adam's mind, the reality too frightening.
Someone grabbed hold of him, and against his will, Adam fell away from the door. “Get down.” A man shouted.
As Adam collapsed to the deck of the assimilation port and saw uptech Calvin Moone stumbling next to him, the mountain shook.
Adam was lifted off the concrete floor, flung involuntarily into the air before impacting and then rolling over. The armory door buckled, and then a second blast followed, shattering the entryway from its moorings.
As fire and smoke came as an inrush to the port, streams of flares and bullets accompanied them, the artil
lery stockpiled for two decades detonating simultaneously.
The shaking was brief, but the sound of crackling became prominent along the ceiling of the port, and tiny chunks of rocks peeled away, tumbling into the thick cloud of destruction. The smoke enveloped Adam, and the chipped rock pelted him.
He felt deep pain along one side of his hip, and he tasted blood.
Only when he heard a handful of distant moans did Adam realize he survived the blast. Immediately, he regretted being alive.
Calvin Moone rose. Rand's voice echoed on the comm-set.
But Adam didn't care. He tried to look back through the cloud of smoke, thinking only for the most fleeting of seconds that perhaps Arilynn might walk safely through it.
He knew the reality. A search would be pointless.
He wanted to die. He wanted to join his daughters.
75
B
ryan stared at Travert in rage. “You're a lying fuck,” he shouted. “You're not going to tune out on me. You didn't just ‘pop in’ to say goodbye. You're going to stick around for the end of the show, and you damn well know it.”
Travert spooned a dollop of ice cream and savored its smooth texture. “Was I, Bryan? Hmm. I didn't know anything about your having precognitive skills. Sorry, young man, but I only like entertainment that has a happy ending. Blood is for the minions.”
“That's all we are to you, aren't we? People like you and my mother – you’re leeches. You drain us of just enough blood to keep us weak, subservient. And when it comes time for you to play your corporate games, you give us back just enough blood to make us think we can challenge you. That's what turns the games into sport, doesn't it?”
“I'll be damned. I have to say it, Bryan: I could not have summarized the strategy of the game any more succinctly. Further proof that your destiny should have been with us.”
“You keep this in mind, Travert: Even the best sportsman the world has ever known did not win every game, did not defeat every opponent. Even the best go down. The more you play, the greater the chance you will lose.”
“Oh. Whine, whine. Such sour grapes, and from a man who is about to die a hero! Oh yes, Bryan. You're going to be remembered not as a traitor to the PAC, but as a legend. The reports will say that the men who are about to enter your office are actually terrorists whom you double-crossed in an effort to expose them. You fought valiantly, but there were simply too many of them. You see …”
Bryan laughed. “I understand perfectly. You can't risk anyone knowing there was treason so high up in your government. You'd lose face, perhaps even your job.”
“Straight on, Bryan. This will be a victory for both of us. You will get a monument, and I will ensconce myself in the office of the presidency right into the new era. Only four years away, Bryan. I wish you could have been there to see it. Absolute symmetry, the perfect order. Something no man has ever achieved for his people. And I'll be the one to give it to them. Me and SkyWeb, of course.”
The office door was in full red glow, and Bryan knew his time slipped away from minutes to perhaps only seconds.
Where are you, Matilda? Did I ask too much of you?
“Still harping on that SkyWeb project, Travert? Do you really believe a flight grid around the continent is going to make that much difference? Second Sunrise got through the Caribbean grid and no doubt caused some considerable damage. Imprisoning the people will not endear you to them.”
“And since when did I ever say a thing about imprisonment? Some things, Bryan, even a smart-ass like you cannot conceive. SkyWeb is so much more. Too bad I don't have time for the details. I do believe you're about to have some company.”
Bryan felt his trigger hand tremble as he lifted the weapon, aimed toward the door. Travert spooned around the corners of his bowl of ice cream, and he sighed with considerable relish as he opened his lips and slowly sucked in the dessert.
Bryan was not sure what angered him most – the broad smile of smug satisfaction that formed a wide crevasse on Travert's face or the sudden flash of smoke and fire as his office door was heat-disintegrated.
He pressed the trigger button. The yellow sliver of laser energy tore into the cyclorama and blew a hole in the screen, just below the president's throat.
But as the squad of Guardsmen raced through the threshold, and a split second before Bryan dove behind his desk, he saw that Travert continued to eat his ice cream, wholly unconcerned.
The blasts came at him from what he was certain had to be at least five weapons. And these were not simple blast guns. Bullets ricocheted off the furniture, and the windows that had provided him such a spectacular view of the city now began to shatter. His desk jerked as the firepower of the Front Guard pounded it, and Bryan knew he had only seconds before the artillery would begin to penetrate.
“I surrender.” He shouted. “I surrender, dammit.”
“Hold your fire,” a soldier shouted. “Out! Now! Drop your weapon.”
Bryan peered around the corner of the desk and did not at first see a soldier. Travert wiped a napkin across his lips and sighed.
“Fuck this,” Bryan whispered, studied his options and quickly realized he was effectively out of them. Maybe he asked too much of Matilda, after all.
A strong breeze swirled into the office through an opening that was once a huge pane of glass. He remembered what Travert said about not standing too close to the glass when the troops blew his head off. Perhaps you'd like an entire body mucking up the landscape, Travert.
He leaped and rolled, predicting correctly that the soldiers would unload their weapons into him as soon as he revealed himself. But the sudden surge was just unpredictable enough to give him a split second of response time, and as he turned over on himself and closed up against the ledge, he unloaded his blast gun toward the Guardsmen. His aim was horrid, and the blasts clobbered furniture and yet again struck one of the cycloramas.
He lay facing the enemy, his feet dangling over the edge.
A soldier, perhaps no more than 20 years old, raised up from behind the leather sofa and aimed, the barrel of his Schnelling gun pointed with fatal accuracy to slice a hole directly through the middle of Bryan's skull. For less than a second, but what could have been most of a lifetime, Bryan thought both he and the soldier were paralyzed. He saw a finger pressing the trigger button.
“You won't have the satisfaction, Travert.” He shouted, dropped his weapon and pushed off with both hands. He fell back rapidly, and his body was slipping over the edge. Bryan had no more regrets.
Just before his hands were about to go, his eyes remained locked on the young soldier, and he realized the barrel of the Schnelling gun was no longer aimed at him. And although there was weapons fire, none of it was toward Bryan.
Suddenly, the panes of glass to his left imploded, showering the office amid a barrage of bullets and laser mallets.
The eyes that he thought were about to look upon death instead saw something entirely different. No more than five meters away, a Sprint hovered outside his office, its weapons ports open and engaging the enemy.
“Oh, shit.” Bryan tried to stop his fall, and the fingernails of his right hand bore desperately into the glass-filled carpet. He clung outside the Center for Domestic Security and screamed as tiny shards of glass sent shrills of pain throughout his limb.
He could no longer see what was happening inside the office, but he was experienced enough to know the sound of an exploding wall, and the crackling of fire and the screams of badly wounded soldiers carried on the swirling wind.
“Goddammit, Matilda, I'm over here. You can stop firing. Come and get me already!”
The Sprint hovered erratically; Bryan never expected excellent auto-flight control by a LifeSquire. The vehicle stuttered, surged forward and almost crashed into the side of Dome.
Bryan's agony overwhelmed him, and no amount of will to live would allow him to hold on any longer. His hand gave way.
7
6
S
am Raymonds experienced the shock waves from the undeniable force of a straddle bomb, and he knew the device had been properly assembled, the baryon mixture prepared to the precise potency. And he gave no details to anyone, no warning.
This should have been Armageddon.
He squirmed in the darkness, and then suddenly, the lights of the war room flashed on. He squinted as his eyes reeled in pain.
It took a moment before they could adjust, and at about the instant he was able to hold his eyes open without forcing the issue, his electronic cuffs were released.
Adam Smith stood inside the door. His coat was gone, and his white cotton shirt was torn on the left sleeve. There were small, mostly insignificant stains of blood over all his limbs and beneath his nose and his mouth. His hair hung limp and dirty, a tangled convolution. He stepped forward with a hobble and a grimace. He dropped the hand cylinder governing the cuffs.
Sam pushed himself back against a chair then helped himself up as the cuffs fell off. He ran his tongue across his dry lips.
“Does it take great resolve to be a killer?” Adam asked, his progress toward the traitor steady but slow. “I doubt it. The coward will always search for the most selfish course of action, no matter how cruel or how deadly. Don't you agree, Sam?”
The traitor looked around, opened his mouth, but no words emerged.
“I think the resolve to never kill another human being is much more difficult to make. Circumstances can change so rapidly. Despite that, Sam, I want you to know I made a very important resolution. Beginning with the first stroke of midnight, Adam Smith promises he will never take the life of another man or woman.”
Adam widened his lips, but the smile was not conveyed in his eyes, which were wide and unblinking and hollow. He reached into the front left pocket of his pants.
“But that's tomorrow,” he said flatly.
In one fluid stroke, Adam removed a blast gun from the pocket, lifted his arm and aimed, pressed the trigger button three times.
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