“Exactly,” the Major said. “We can send our men out the front and still catch them outside. And I have another set of controls for Nicole in my office. I’m sure they plan to get the implantation out as soon as possible, but our transmitter has a range of ten to fifteen miles. That should give us plenty of time.”
“What if he’s pulling a fast one on us? Is there anything he can be doing in there right now?”
The Major frowned, then strode down the hallway to the door and pounded on it, leaning down to peek through the bullet hole in the upper panel. But someone was standing close to the door, blocking the view. “Eric, I want the door opened so I can watch you, see that you’re not up to something.” Then he whispered to Travis, “Clear the way to the fire door and then send Lieutenant Lowry and the men out the front.”
As he turned back to the door, he heard Eric’s muffled cry. “Open the door for him.”
The door swung open to reveal Rod Loopes with a rifle pointing directly at the Major’s chest. Eric was standing next to Nicole, holding her by the arm. Her face was chalky white, and the Major could see that she was leaning on Eric for support. Clayne was next to him and Chet Abernathy behind them.
“You can watch from there, Major,” Eric called, “but if you try to come in—” He left it unfinished. “What have you decided?”
As Travis moved up to stand next to him, the Major nodded. “All right, we agree.”
“Good.” Eric turned. “Chet, you and Nicole go first, Dick and Clayne next. Rod and I will bring up the rear so the Major can see me and the box clearly.” He looked up. “Is the way to the exit cleared, Major?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s move out,” Eric said. “Keep together.”
As they moved toward the door, he stopped next to the dark form on the floor. He dropped to one knee and turned the body halfway over. “Major, will you give this man a decent burial? We are obviously in no position to do it.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you. I’m going out now. You and Travis move around to the side hallway where we can watch each other.”
As they backed out into the hallway, Eric moved out of the Monitoring Room through the side door, unreeling the wire. “I might suggest, Major, that even though I can’t see into the room now, if someone slips in and cuts the wire, you’ll have the automatic detonation.”
“I won’t run that risk,” the Major said evenly. “We’ll play it your way.”
Eric backed up the hallway as swiftly as he could unreel the spool, following the others. When he ran out of wire, he was about five feet short of where the hallway turned the corner and went out the door. He stopped. “Clayne,” he called, “are you at the door?”
“Roger. We’re set to go out.”
Eric returned slowly, coiling the wire in big loops, and approached the two men. Halfway down the hall, the Major stepped forward to meet him. Five feet away from each other they both stopped. The Major studied Eric for a moment.
“Well, it comes to this, I guess,” he said.
Eric nodded. “Yes.”
“I thought I had planned so carefully, considered every factor. I was so sure that I finally had a foolproof system for creating the ideal society.”
Eric shook his head. “This time you captured the wrong fools.” He held out his hand with the box and the wire.
“You know we can’t let you get away,” the Major said, extending his own hand with the transmitting controls.
“I know,” Eric responded. “But once we’re clear of this building, we’ve got a chance. Out in the open, so far we’ve held our own pretty well.”
Travis, still standing at the end of the hall, laughed derisively. “We’ll see.”
“Keep your thumb firmly on the button,” Eric said as he transferred the box to the Major’s hand. He held onto the wire until the Major handed him the control panel with the small dial. Both he and the Major backed away from each other slowly. Suddenly a fury gripped Eric, and he whirled, hurling the transmitting control against the wall with all his strength. It hit and shattered, spraying pieces across the hallway. Then he turned and darted down the corridor and around the corner.
“We have another one, you fool!” Travis screamed after him. “We’ll still get your precious Nicole.”
“Travis,” the Major commanded, “get inside. Make sure no one bumps this wire until we can defuse it.”
Moving quickly but carefully, the Major stepped inside the Monitoring Room, holding the red button firmly. As Travis moved over to join him, the sound of rifle fire came faintly down the hallway.
“We saved it, Major,” Travis said, his eyes following the Major’s as he looked round. “And we’ll get them too.”
“Let Lowry handle it for now,” the Major said. “You stay right here until we get this thing unhooked.”
He turned and surveyed the room with its scattered furniture, letting his free hand run lightly over the keys of one of the computer consoles. “We came so close, Travis,” he murmured. “So close to losing it all.”
“I know.” As Travis turned, his eyes fell on the body near the side door, and he moved over to it. “Which one of them did we get?”
He dropped to one knee, grabbed the dead man’s shoulder, and turned him over as the Major came in closer to look.
“No!” The Major’s cry and Travis’s stunned gasp of surprise echoed in the Monitoring Room simultaneously, but it was not the face of Donald Brownley they stared at. A blue box was lying on the floor beneath the body—a blue box identical to the one held in the Major’s hand, except that when they turned Donald Brownley over, the red button on that box popped up into its full position.
For several moments they both stood rooted to the spot, frozen with shock. Then Travis leaped to his feet. “Run!” he screamed, shoving the Major. He had barely cleared the doorway when the ten-second delay switch closed a fraction of an inch, sending the voltage from two small flashlight batteries racing down the wires to the detonators. With a stupefying roar of yellow and orange fire, the computer banks and monitoring consoles, the tracking screens, and most of the lower level of Central Control disappeared in a shattering blast of flying glass, broken bricks, shards of red-hot metal, and shredded silicon boards speckled with circuitry.
And in a time span so small as to be almost incomprehensible to the mind of man, two hundred fifty thousand silicon chips in the necks of the residents of the Alliance of Four Cities became nothing more than harmless disks.
Chapter 37
Lieutenant Fred Lowry was still fifty yards from the south exit and running hard, his men fanning out behind him, when the trees above them erupted with a withering fire. A bullet slapped past his ear so close that he felt the air smack against his cheek.
With a startled cry, he veered sharply to the left and dove for cover behind a thick clump of bush. “Get down! Get down!” he screamed. But the man behind him didn’t have a chance to heed the warning. He was hit full in the chest, and his body jerked violently, the bullet hurling him back two or three feet before he tumbled to the ground. Another man screamed as a shot took him high in the shoulder, slamming him back against a tree.
“Take cover!” Lowry screamed again.
Had it been daylight, it would have been a massacre, but as it was, the Guardians still had the lights of the city behind them, silhouetting them faintly. Pinpoints of light flashed from several points above them as the rebels poured in the fire.
“Fan out! Circle around them!” Lowry’s commands were nearly lost as the Guardian line erupted with return fire, shooting blindly at their unseen attackers. Lowry raised up on one knee and peered over the bush. Suddenly the south door flew open.
“They’re coming out!” he cried, snapping off a quick shot in the direction of the exit. A hand with a rifle appeared from out of the doorway, stabbing upward at the overhead light. The bulb shattered, and the south side of Central Control was plunged into darkness. Taking aim this time, Lowry b
lasted off another round and heard a sharp cry of pain.
The rebels saw the flashes from Lowry’s muzzle, and suddenly his position was under heavy fire. He jumped instinctively, rolling once, then came up in a darting, crouching run across a small open place and dove behind a tree where two other Guardians were firing up the hill.
For several seconds the fire fight raged unabated; then the ground beneath Lowry heaved upward, bouncing him hard against it. Looking up, he saw the building bulge outward, then explode, spraying bricks like straw in a hurricane. Both Guardian and rebel were momentarily stunned into immobility, and every person on the hill stared at the gaping hole in what had once been Central Control. Even as they stared, the flames cast an eerie light across the hillside and through the trees.
“Lieutenant Lowry!”
The booming voice rolled down to him over the crackling noise of the fire.
“Fred, this is Clayne Robertson! Can you hear me?”
He hesitated for a moment, then stood up, staying behind the tree. “I can hear you,” he shouted.
“You know what that explosion means, don’t you?”
Turning, Lowry stared at the inferno raging inside the smashed hulk of the building.
“The Major’s gone,” Clayne called. “So is Travis. It’s over, Fred.”
“We’re still here!” he shouted back, but there was little conviction in his voice.
“The computers are gone, Fred. Central Control is gone. Think about that. Your families are free now. The people are free.”
“Look behind you, Lowry.” It was Eric Lloyd. “Here come the people of Shalev.”
The flatness of Alliance Square gave way to the ridge behind Central Control. The point where Lowry stood was probably fifty or so feet higher than the quad. As he turned and looked down, he could see dark shapes pouring into the quad, outlined in the dim lights of the square and its buildings. There were hundreds of them, and swelling even as he watched, pouring toward them like an angry torrent.
“It’s the people, Fred,” Clayne shouted. “They’re free now, and they’re not coming to help the Guardians. Give it up, before you cause a bloodbath.”
The two men who were crouched down next to Lowry stood up, transfixed at the sight below them. “Look at them!” one of them breathed in a mixture of awe and terror.
“Lieutenant Lowry!” It was one of his own men, somewhere behind him. “What about the squads of men unconscious inside the building? They’ll be killed.”
Clayne heard and replied, “We’ll help you get them out, Fred.”
Lowry hesitated, torn with indecision.
“Come on, man!” Clayne screamed. “It’s over. Let’s not make it any worse than it already is.”
Lieutenant Fred Lowry looked at the two men next to him, who nodded quickly. He turned to stare at the shattered wall and the fire, which was swelling in size even as he looked. Suddenly he threw his rifle down and stepped out into view. “Guardians! This is Lieutenant Lowry! Throw down your weapons. Let’s get those men out of that building.”
Nicole stopped in front of the Fountain of Peace and watched the dancing waters, now edged with pink from the fiery sunrise that filled the sky. Eric stopped too, and she slipped her arm through his. Chet had stitched up the incision in her back and given her a pain pill, but her face was still pale and drawn. “The Fountain of Peace,” she murmured, her voice barely audible over the sounds of the splashing water. “Maybe now it really can become one.”
“I think—” Eric started to speak, but a shout cut him off.
“Eric!”
They both turned. Chet Abernathy had come out of the library and was running across the grass toward them. “Clayne’s found them,” he called.
Eric’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Are they all right?”
Chet smiled broadly. “Yes, everyone’s fine. They’re bringing them down now. Your family will come first.”
“Thank heavens,” Nicole breathed. “Where were they?”
“Well, Clayne found Shirley Ferguson at the first campsite. Needless to say, she was quite surprised to see him. She had radioed Travis, and Stephanie caught her. So she ran, and the camp moved to the fall-back site. Clayne found them there.”
“What a relief that is,” Nicole said, squeezing Eric’s hand.
“Do you want the other good news?” Chet said, barely able to hide his excitement.
“What?”
“President Dobson just finished talking with Mount Pleasant on the radio. The Guardian Forces have laid down their arms and agreed to submit to whatever government comes out of all this.”
“So that’s all of them!”
“Yes, every unit of Guardians has now surrendered. It’s over, Eric.” He clapped Eric on the shoulder. “Well, I’ve got to get back to the wounded. I just wanted you to know about your family.”
Surprisingly, as Chet left them, the elation left Eric as abruptly as it had come, and he felt only a deep weariness settling in upon him. It was over. Don Brownley was dead. Cliff was bedridden and paralyzed. Richard Dawson had a bullet in his left leg, and Dick Andreason had been blasted into unconsciousness by a stun gun. The rest were exhausted but safe. On the other side, in addition to Travis and the Major, four Guardians were dead, several more badly hurt. But Central Control, with all that it implied, was a burned-out shell.
Eric pulled his thoughts away from all that and turned toward Nicole. “Hello,” she said softly.
He reached out and touched her cheek. “We did it.”
“Not we did it,” she said. “You did it. You and Cliff.”
He shook his head slowly.
“And now what do you do with Joe and Shirley?” she asked.
“Dr. Gould and any others who planned this must be dealt with, but as for Shirley and Joe, I’d say get them to a preacher as soon as possible, marry them off, and start them raising a family.”
“Nothing else?”
“How can you punish people for being loyal? We don’t need any more revenge at this point.”
She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s good. It’s over now.”
“Is it?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Of course.”
His eyes were dark and brooding. “You say we did it. What have we done?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You freed the people.” Her voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. “You freed me.”
He shook his head, half smiling. “You freed yourself. I only came along to watch.” Then he was sober again. “Yes, we freed the people.”
“Eric,” she cried, “what’s the matter with you?”
“Up in the mountains I told you that the Major had taken away the most sacred of all stewardships, the right to guard the gate of the mind.”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’ve just thrown open that gate and put man back in charge of his own destiny. Don’t you find that just a little bit frightening?”
“I find you a little bit frightening,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I want to go back to the way it was before.”
He nodded. “You’re right. Whatever we face in the years ahead, it won’t ever be what it was before. And that has got to be worth it all.”
“And what about the years ahead?” Nicole murmured.
“What?”
“Where will Eric Lloyd be in those years? Back in the valley?”
His eyes widened for several moments, and then he put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. I have no right to ask that, but I want to know.”
“Nicole, going back to the valley hasn’t been part of my plans since you and I tangled with that old she-bear in the mountains.”
“Really?”
“Really. I wouldn’t miss the challenges and the excitement of what lies ahead now for all the valleys in the world.”
“Oh.” Her chin dropped, and she looked away.
He reached out and lifted her head, his eyes twinkling. “And I also promised one young lady I was going to start calling on her in a proper and acceptable fashion.”
She looked up again, her eyes suddenly shining. “No more hiding behind the couch?”
“I promise.”
“No more shattered doorways?”
“My solemn word.”
“It sounds dull.”
He laughed. “I know.”
“But I’ll cope with it somehow.”
Leverage Point
Leverage Point
© 1985 Deseret Book Company
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company, P. O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City, Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Deseret Book Company.
BOOKCRAFT is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.
First printing, November 1985
First printing redesigned paperbound edition, January 2000
Visit us at deseretbook.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-72843
ISBN-10 0-87579-525-0
ISBN-13 978-0-87579-525-6
Printed in the United States of America
R. R. Donnelley and Sons, Harrisonburg, VA
10 9
To those few in the Middle East on either side who see the only lasting and acceptable solution as resting in faith in God and in love for one’s fellow man.
Preface
Though the characters in this novel are fictional, they are based on the lives of people who do exist. For example, many of the feelings and thoughts of, and even some of the words spoken by, Alex Barclay reflect the feelings, thoughts, and words of a man who makes a lucrative living as a legitimate arms dealer. The personalities, traits, and experiences of many others in the novel, including Israelis, Saudis, and Americans, are drawn from the lives or are composites of real people. Thus, while the characters are fictional, they are true to the character and culture of their respective nationalities and social settings.
Gerald N. Lund 4-In-1 Fiction eBook Bundle Page 57
