When Totems Fall

by Wayne C. Stewart

  "Loch, you got what I asked you to bring?" Zeb asked.

  "Yessir, I doooo."

  Out of nowhere came the tire jack tool from the recently abandoned vehicle.

  "Well, my good man," Zeb said. "Forward, and do your worst."

  Loch was happy to oblige. He ducked underneath a tangle of foliage, for the moment appearing to have been swallowed whole. Sanchez and Dalton followed through the low, hidden entranceway. Another ten feet forward revealed a caved space where they all could stand up, at least reasonably. Loch, for sure, had no problems here. The steel door, bolted shut with chains two inches thick and twisted in a figure-eight pattern through its handles, would paint a daunting scene for most men. Zeb played at it and the heavy accumulation of rust held fast like nature's concrete on the seasoned metal. Neither of these problems posed a serious challenge for the ruddy Scotsman. Only thirty seconds of sustained effort and they stepped inside.

  A cold metallic switch plate to the left of the door allowed them to get some light on. It was dim, noisy, and buzzing from moisture settled in the fixtures but still a small help. Eight stairs up they navigated the windowless, doorless hallway for the next thirty feet. At thirty-six feet in they were presented with a choice: identical side halls, left or right. A few darkened window wells hung sadly along the corridors in either direction. Frosted with green mold on their exteriors, they still allowed in enough muted light to signal they were at or near the surface. Unevenly filtered rays of the late day cast an eerie pall about as the three considered their two options.

  Loch's hand went up in a closed fist.

  Footsteps and hushed commands from outside drifted into the bunker.

  They'd been found.

  There was no good way to gauge how long it might be before the pursuing Chinese troops were on top of them, in the building along with them. If they were even reasonably decent woodland trackers, the faint boot impressions left in the soft dirt of the embankment upstream should give them away soon. With an unknown amount of time on the clock it was time to choose. They went right, only to find an ancient storage area. Nothing much but dust and old file cabinets. Abandoning that side and running back the other way they reached the end of the hall quickly, as the side concourses of the T-shaped building were significantly shorter than the entrance they had walked down on their way in. Soon enough they found that the left-side option offered them a lone closed doorway at its end. That was all.

  "Alriiighty, then people," Loch said. "Get ready for some noise."

  "Loch, wait," Sanchez tried. "We still might have time. They might not find the way in."

  "Caaaaan't risk it," he replied. "We need a wall between us and them. And we need it nooow."

  FIFTY TWO

  Friday, April 5, 2013, 05:40—PST

  Former Naval Command Outpost, Bremerton Washington

  Loch placed the charges with the timer set for a measly thirty seconds before detonation. Shuffling back down the dimly lit hallway and turning their backs to the blast, they huddled as close to the door frame as possible.

  With interlocking limbs and torsos bent inward they tried to shield themselves against the coming blowback. The move was meant to protect their bodies. Almost more importantly, it was also about keeping the door in front of them intact; a door they presumed would lead to the comm room so crucial to their plans. The smoke and flash assaulted their eyes and throats as the violent concussion of sound and overpressure waves brought on a metallic, tinny buzzing that would not relent. Disoriented by the barrage, all three leaned into the wall for a moment, giving up any option of beating back a threat that might come at them in the next few seconds. They're hope rested solely on the fact that anyone behind them was currently just as incapacitated. Eventually, the mental haze and slowness of body faded, pushed aside again and replaced by a reasonable clarity of mind.

  Underground.

  Trapped by their own devices at the dead end corridor of an out of use communications bunker as Chinese soldiers descended on their location. The first step away from these unpleasant realities was simply getting through the door and further away from their pursuers. After that? Nothing less than rerouting and re-purposing what would turn out to be the most advanced computer code developed to date. And if that all worked as well the stakes only grew in intensity and import from there.

  They didn't know for sure the equipment and connections lying behind this door would even function. No assurances, just so many old schematics, yellowing specs sheets, and aging procedural handbooks imprinted upon Zeb's fertile memory. At one time, whatever would meet them on the other side had been state of the art national security space. Now? Anyone's best guess. Yet still they gambled that here, through this door, they'd be greeted with the necessary tools to retake America's nuclear forces, reversing the horrifying realities their countrymen had undergone and all the while keeping the world from becoming one giant ash-heap in the process.

  One at a time, each of the three turned around. The Scotsman's placement of the remaining C4 had been spot on, leaving in its wake a jagged barrier between their position and the pursuing patrol. The ceiling and walls of the seventy-plus-year-old structure had all but caved in, making passage impossible and creating a multi-hour, heavy equipment project for anyone wanting to get past the wreckage and to the team.

  "Nice piece of work, Loch," Dalton remarked.

  "Yeah. Not too baaad, eh?"

  Satisfied the immediate threat from the rear had been minimized for the moment, they got at the task in front of them. Haze from the still-dusty debris field settled overhead as Sanchez worked the mechanism on the standard-issue metal door, fitted with both keyhole and deadbolt locks. No matter. Her skills proved more than adequate. Begrudgingly, the well-engineered passageway opened. The groaning of latch and tumbler echoed in the corridor, mostly due to the amount of time it'd sat locked and closed. Still, you couldn't help interpreting a subtle cry of defeat as it swung open for the first time in many, many years.

  Over the threshold. Into the small anteroom. Taking their first breaths of stale, motionless air, they all got an initial look. Dalton scanned the space left to right, mentally cataloging everything in the room in just one sweep. Two old-school hybrid typewriters, fit only for word processing and general administrative work. Rotary phones. File cabinets. A few desk lamps.

  No, this can't be it.

  He surveyed the space again. There, at the back of the room.

  The large, multilayer blast-ready door lay opened on its hinges, inviting them forward. Previously obscured in shadows cast by poor lighting in the room, Zeb now practically sprinted over and peered through, hoping. His heart skipped a beat.

  Yeah, that's more like it.

  What he discovered didn't provide much of an upgrade over the gear in the front room. Still, the telecom lines running to and from the workstation told them this was the place. This was it. They had a chance. A real chance.

  Zeb pulled out the chair at the desk. Blowing off a thick layer of dust, he sat down and got busy.

  Power-up proceeded simply, extremely so; one button only on the backs of the desktop unit and monitor. A nostalgic metallic ping, the noisy fan on the back of the boxy computer chassis, and the low whirring of a hard drive were a veritable angelic choir to the harried programmer's ears. The sounds and sights meant the older unit was working, as "quiet and cool" would be an oxymoron for most personal computers until well after the year 2000. A sequence of small green lights lit up next; top right of the monitor first, then the keyboard, and lastly the 3.5" microfloppy installed in the front right accessory bay space chirped, announcing its readiness.

  Sanchez regarded the odd looking receptacle as wheels spun in her head.

  "Hey, what's the thin opening for?"

  She hazarded a guess. "Super-small DVDs?"

  Dalton didn't have time for a long-winded tech history lesson so he kept it short.

  "That," he replied. "Was like the flash drive storage solution back in the
day."

  "So, what are we talking about—two, four gigs?"

  "Oh Sanchez," Zeb shook his head. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

  Dalton returned his attention to the ongoing memory check and systems analysis; all good so far, a cursor blinking on the lonely black background awaiting the bidding of a knowledgeable user. It absolutely had one now.

  Zeb's first order of business? Open a viable comm link and make sure the bunker's ancient access routes still played nice. If not, if something internally or at any point along the underwater cabling runs had crapped out in the last thirty years, they were done. That posed a somber thought. Their herculean efforts all for naught because the gear was too old to do the job. This stood as a possibility, a real one; one needing to be factored into their hopes of success and sobering them as to the ways this could all go down. If these dusty, long in the tooth systems failed, all they had left was the waiting, facing their fate together stoically. The Chinese would force their way into the little fortress at some point. With nothing to show for their handiwork, they would all die in vain. But this unlikely band of patriots was not anywhere near ready to concede this eventuality. Not yet, anyways.

  Thankfully, it took only a few commands for the modem to spark to life. The high-pitched screech surprised everyone, magnifying the tension of the moment. Sanchez, who'd been surveying the other side of the comm room from only seven feet away turned, a look of concern playing across her face.

  What, did you bust it? was the accusatory non-verbal.

  Zeb bypassed the potentially divisive conversation, putting his head back down and skipping the tech history lesson completely this time around. Checking the specs on the scanning and system reports he noted the connection speed was holding barely north of Paleolithic. He was underwhelmed yet had expected little more.

  Okay. Doable. Not great, but doable.

  Dalton, a minimalist in his coding approach, wouldn't be sending much more than simple strings of keyed commands, so the 256 kilobytes running from here to "somewhere else" would suffice. Yet if successful, these letters and numbers crawling methodically over the telecom line would do enormous damage. In this case, something like the electronic equivalent of a pinprick taking down a tank. This, of course, would be the outcome if and only if the roadway "in" was open and cleared.

  Eleven had to have done its job.

  A few more strokes.

  Enter.

  "C'mon Eleven." Zeb sweet-talked the program. "You always were my favorite, you know."

  Loch rolled his eyes, wishing this guy would take things more seriously. If even noticed, the gesture had no effect whatsoever.

  "Don't let me down, baby. You and me, we're a team, honey."

  Loch and Sanchez leaned in unconsciously, their body language communicating great depths of both angst and hope. Neither Sanchez, five feet away with very clear long-distance vision nor the sergeant, only three feet behind Zeb's position, could decipher any of the gibberish on screen. Instead, they kept their eyes fixed on Dalton's face. His countenance would tell the story.

  Ten seconds. Thirty.

  No change, not even the subtlest shift of his eyebrows nor the crinkles forming at the corners of his warm, amber eyes.

  What's taking so long?

  The slightest hint of doubt challenged Sanchez' normally positive attitude. And then it showed itself.

  The smallest smile.

  "Oh, Eleven," Zeb sighed. "See? Now I knew we had something special goin' on."

  "Dalton," Sanchez started. "I can't even begin to tell you how weird that sounded."

  She stood, inhaling, relieved, hands at her side.

  "You know what?" she finished. "I don't even care. As long as we're in."

  Zeb looked up.

  They were in.

  __________________________________

  Gansu

  Junjie understood, immediately. Dawn Star's code had been accessed remotely by another party—a second programmer working to recapture control from the American side. And from what he gathered they were making remarkable progress. The engineer in him performed a few, quick calculations. At this rate, and accounting for uniform sequencing, the intruder would have some level of command again in...

  "No!" he exclaimed.

  Fifteen minutes would not be enough time.

  No, not now. I am so close.

  In one scant quarter of an hour the Americans might regain nuclear capabilities. If they did, Junjie intuited, they would certainly use them. The rejoinder to his country's egregious acts would be devastating. Millions of his countrymen would die, with his own fiery end among the many. He didn't know, couldn't know, where Dai-tai and Chi were. Chances were they were hidden in a heavily populated, urban area. Yes, it was entirely probable his dearly loved family would perish as well.

  No, this cannot be happening. It cannot end this way.

  Maybe. If only I could...

  He and the other technician were in deep, operating well beyond the initial defense barriers of the code. Before them loomed a massive, interconnected ecosystem of ones and zeros, all bouncing off the others, acting and reacting to the life of the whole. Though both men could work simultaneously and observe the other's input, a crystal clear window of sorts divided them, broadcasting their counterpart's efforts while preventing interference from either.

  Junjie's eyes fixated on the side-stream; the place a programmer could annotate their commands, posting non-actionable keystrokes into the digital arena. Markers, commentary. Explanation and interpretation of the dense, challenging code.

  Yes. That could work.

  Surely, Junjie hoped, there remained some deposit of common humanity he could tap into. If they, together, realized all that was at stake, maybe a moment of sanity could prevail.

  I must try.

  Junjie's fingers sat poised, ready to add bare text alongside the accumulation of millions of line items. He had no idea what to say to the stranger on the other side. And then, in this perplexing moment, an ancient proverb—implanted deeply from his father's teachings—surfaced.

  "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom."

  It was all he had.

  He went with it.

  C:>inserttext>Do You Fear God?

  __________________________________

  C:>inserttext>Do You Fear God?

  C:>|......

  After realizing he had a counterpart in the system along with him, Dalton reacted much the same as this unknown shadow. He froze. That someone else had breached the system's outer layers was unnerving enough. That they would try to contact him by typing out this beyond-odd phrase raised a whole other level of concern. He could not for the life of him concoct a scenario in which this act gave the person on the other side some measure of strategic advantage. It made no sense at all. It was also quite unsettling because, as Zeb had discovered his first few minutes on the inside, this was no longer a basic asset recovery op. In fact, it now had nowhere near such a simple resolution. Zeb was no longer just another highly placed technical asset, responsible for tasks alone. He was instead now sitting in the seat where decisions made would have worldwide, catastrophic, impact.

  The best of the outcomes playing wildly in Zeb's fertile mind amounted to a nuclear stalemate, a situation in which America regained absolute fire and guidance authority over its five-hundred-fifty deployed assets. In this version of the storyline there was no holocaust. Cooler heads would prevail. Some kind of diplomatic solution would arise; some gesture offered to allow both sides to back away with pride intact. This was the best of all possibilities. Tragically, the data stream was indicating another outcome altogether. The parade of ones and zeroes Zeb was watching and interacting with was beautiful. He had no idea anyone on the current world stage was coding with such complexity and power. What he observed before him had previously been considered as theory, nothing more. Now, clearly, it was very possible. And incredibly dangerous.

  It was also, as Zeb was now learning,
very flawed.

  Zeb couldn't yet allow his concerns to be known in the room. He needed more time to spin out the possibilities before making a statement to his partners. What he did know was this: upon cracking open the digital chains holding America hostage, any access regained would be of the limited kind, something less than absolute control. Beijing would retain lock-down capability over an unknown percentage of the U.S. arsenal but was no longer able to direct these weapons for their own purposes. China could stop the U.S. from firing some of her nukes. That was all. A full lockout or full capabilities. In these two cases the likelihood of hostilities diminished greatly; the latter equation being what Cold War planners referred to as Mutually Assured Destruction. The current situation—some vague middle-ground—was the place where warring became virtually guaranteed.

  No, this was not the best of all worlds.

  It might, in fact, be the worst.

  First Strike.

  It's come to this, Dalton thought to himself.

  God, no.

  How did this happen?

  The gravity of the moment struck him, forcing breath from his lungs as he gasped, swallowing hard at the thoughts he now faced. In an instant the mission had changed and drastically so. He knew it, felt it; responsibilities he couldn't begin to handle and an emotionally exhausting accountability, shaking him deeply. So, he did what engineers do. He reviewed the data again.

  Chinese deployment: roughly one-hundred-eighty nuclear assets.

  Best estimate of forty-two percent retrieval rate on our side.