The home-cooked meal – juicy roast, potatoes, carmelized carrots, and a fresh-baked pie – was everything he'd hoped for, but it carried a steep price. Listening to a religious person sermonize was like nails on a chalkboard to his sensitive agnostic ears.
"You probably think I'm crazy," Madeline chuckled.
"I wouldn't say that." Cal focused on cutting his meat.
"They sure did down in Washington. Don't think I was ten minutes into my interview before they sent me packing."
"They sent me packing, too. I don't think it's because they thought I was crazy. Though I could be wrong about that."
Madeline Mayes' laugh made Cal think of warm molasses being poured.
"I couldn't convince them that what I'm hearing – what I'm seeing – is real," she said. "I know it is. I may be a good, upstanding Christian, but I can assure you I'm a college-educated, rational-thinking person, and I've never spoken with an angel before."
Cal sighed. Okay, I'll bite. "What is he saying to you?"
"She – at least I think it's a she – is telling me that a terrible force is coming. An evil force that plans to take our souls."
Cal looked up from his roast dissection. Evil force. Had someone told her about the Object's symbols? He didn't remember mentioning it.
"Did Terry tell you about the symbols they found within the device?" he asked.
"Nope. What symbols, may I ask?"
Cal described them. Madeline pursed her lips just short of a frown.
"That fits," she said.
"But somehow, I doubt an angel placed those symbols inside the cylinder, Mrs. Mayes. No offense."
"None taken. And please call me Madeline. Hmmmm." She chewed thoughtfully and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. "No, I would expect that was done by whoever created the Object. Not to say they weren't doing the Lord's will. They were on the side of good. What's coming most definitely is not."
"When did you start hearing this voice? Or voices?"
She smiled at him. "A few days after Terry started healing. I caught a bad cold, and when it was over, I had this vision."
"Of what?"
"Looked like a black bat. Probably what that lady scientist saw inside the Object – that thing that was crushing us. The angel told me it was evil, that we need to prepare ourselves to destroy it or it will destroy us."
Cal set down his silverware and forgot about eating. She had his full attention.
"I wonder if you have – or had – some kind of psychic connection with the Object? Or maybe with whatever designed it?"
"Doesn't seem likely. It's not coming from the machine. This is coming from something that's holy – a messenger from the Almighty Himself."
"How do you know that...Madeline? Again, no offense."
She waved a hand. "Don't worry about offending me, Cal. Lord knows my two boys already raked my beliefs over the coals, Terry being an atheist and Thomas a Muslim." Her cheerful smile broke for a moment. "But to answer your question, I know because I can feel her being."
"Did she say she was an angel of God?"
"Not in so many words. As I said, it's more of a feeling."
Cal nodded with waning enthusiasm. Maybe Madeline's superpower was a psychic connection with the Object and/or its creators, but what good would that do if she just told them what they already knew?
"There is something else," she said. "And I don't want to alarm you, Cal. But your daughter, Jamie, will soon face a terrible trial. It will happen by the ocean. She will be cast into purgatory by an evil enemy, but she will emerge victorious."
Cal stared at her, resisting the small shivers running up his spine. The old woman was getting to him. He'd been about to dismiss her, and now he wanted to more than ever, but when it came to his daughter he could be a bit superstitious. And these days, who knew what any person was capable of?
"She's going to be okay?" he asked.
Madeline nodded. "She will defeat this enemy. But he is only a man. I cannot see the results of the great struggle with darkness that is coming – not for any of us. But the angel tells me we must prepare."
"Brian Loving said he was receiving instructions from an angel, too."
"Not the same angel. An angel of darkness, it would seem."
"Well," said Cal, "again, no offense, but commanding us to 'prepare' is a little vague, isn't it? Our government is already aware of that threat, though it's a tad distracted by more pressing issues right now. If this voice you're hearing isn't telling us anything specific..."
"Oh, but He is." Madeline regarded him gravely. "He's telling us that when the time comes, we must not choose to give up our souls."
Chapter 16
THINGS WERE ALMOST GOING too good, and that made Thomas nervous. After the disaster in Washington, he kept looking over his shoulder expecting the Blonde Bitch, as he'd unaffectionately dubbed her. But Steven assured him she wouldn't be showing up any time soon. And Steven always seemed to know shit like that, through some means Thomas couldn't understand.
Outside the hotel windows, Thomas could see San Francisco was burning. Well, a part of Frisco away from the Wharf where he was staying – a comfortable distance from him and his posse. He liked to call it "Frisco" because it pissed off the residents.
The President's speech had given him the "heebie-jeebies," as his mother used to say. The Man was gonna have a whole government agency devoted to kicking his ass. At least that was how he saw it. Ain't no one else bringing riot and revolution to the cities.
Tyler sat at his side, both of them contemplating the distant fires through the tenth floor window of Fairmont Heritage Place. The fire this time. Thomas smiled at Tyler, who did not smile back. Always the grim, serious brother. Probably wear black at his own wedding. Maybe not the most powerful of his A Team, but the most trusted. Besides, if he'd had Boulder or Marcus or Dylan's kind of power, he probably would've joined them in paradise courtesy of the Blonde Bitch.
Plus, he could see the patterns of things in front of his nose better than anyone, even Steven.
"What do you see, brother?" Thomas asked him.
Tyler rolled his huge shoulders. "The flames of change."
"No shit. Anything less poetic."
"The rioting is gathering force. The authorities are losing."
Thomas leaned back from the window and sipped his champagne, still uneasy. The rattling of keys on the computer behind him set him further on edge. Sitting on the bed, head buried in his laptop, Steven didn't type so much as stroke masses of keys at once. He had the fastest laptop money could buy – not that Thomas paid anything for it – and an allegedly blazing internet rate, but nothing was fast enough to keep up with his super-powered brain. Steven paused frequently, a frown of frustration permanently etched on his slim face, waiting for the virtual world to catch up.
"What's the word, Brother Steven?"
"Sesquipedality." Steven didn't lift his gaze.
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Given to using large words."
Thomas snorted. "Shoulda been your middle name. Tell me what's happening? What do you see?"
"Regarding what?"
Thomas sighed. Steven still hadn't looked at him. He wondered what tiny corner of the brainiac's mind he occupied.
"Regardin' the Department of Augmented Regulation and Enforcement, for starters." He drawled out the words with crescendoing contempt.
Thomas almost added "fool," but wasn't sure how Steven would take the jab. Thomas was less certain about how to relate to his most gifted advisor than to anyone else in his posse. Besides lacking voice command control over him, Thomas also worried sometimes that Steven might be evolving beyond petty human motivations like justice and revenge. How could you completely trust someone who didn't hold a grudge? But he was probably just being paranoid. Smart and different didn't mean inhuman. Hadn't he learned that from his freaky little brother?
"I estimate that DARE's Interdiction and Enforcement will be fully operational in two to
three weeks," said Steven, fingers churning on his laptop, still not looking up. "The greater present risk is the spontaneous organization of normal citizens into resistance groups, which appear to be growing exponentially as the nanovirus proliferates."
Thomas resisted a chill of foredoom. The continued spread of super powers was the wild card he feared most. Who could say what freaks might emerge? People not susceptible to his commands or with powers greater than anyone in his armies? He had at most a few hundred people he was directly commanding, who in turn commanded a few thousand. A damn good number when they had the monopoly on super power, but when that started to shift, which Steven had assured him would happen...
"What should our next move be?" he asked, adding, "In your opinion," when Tyler scowled at him. Tyler was supposed to be his right hand man, after all, and Tyler was even more uneasy about Steven than he was.
"Based on a second-order Bayesian statistical analysis," said Steven, "and given the goal of replacing members of Congress and ultimately the Presidency with our own people, the highest probability of success is aligning ourselves with the growing resistance movement to the DARE program."
"And if we had another goal?" Tyler asked with a sullen tone.
"A concerted effort by our forces could permit the securing of an island or other land sufficiently geographically isolated to satisfy the requirements for establishing another country. My analysis, which is based on some subjective and unknown factors, indicates the probability of success of this as 37% versus 41% for a democratic takeover of this country."
"Forty-one percent," Thomas grumbled. "That's a helluva ways down from the 58% you told me before."
"That was before the passage of the Registration and Regulation Act and the emergence of resistance groups."
Thomas heard not even a sliver of disappointment or fear in his chief advisor's voice, which preyed even more on his doubts about Steven's humanity. He received a scowling look from Tyler.
"So back to my original question," said Thomas, biting back a scowl of his own. "What do you think we should do? Something we got better than a fifty percent chance of succeeding?"
"If our highest goal is to maximize the power of Black Americans, the greatest probability of realizing that goal lies in multiple stratagems. First, we should cease inciting riots and open conflict. They are encouraging the formation of resistance groups within the citizenry and government. Instead, we should join current government resistance organizations as well as create our own under the banner of legitimacy. The government's crackdown on such groups is likely to be constrained, and to the extent that it isn't would encourage their growth."
Steven never ceased working on his computer, as if he was confirming his strategy as he spoke.
"At the same time," he continued, "we should infiltrate DARE and other major law enforcement agencies that are working hard to build their workforces."
"Subvert 'em from inside and out," said Thomas, nodding approvingly.
"We should place members of our organization in all major Congressional races up for election in the coming months. We should vie for control of all major cities and attempt to obtain high positions in legal and other regulatory agencies. Once we've established a powerful foothold in both the government and outside organization resistant to the government, we would be in an ideal position to implement our policies either in this country or even in a country of our own creation."
For several seconds the only sound in the room was the rapid-fire clicking of keys and the two mouses Steven worked with both hands. Tyler raised his thick eyebrows to Thomas, who nodded and offered up a half-smile. Tyler's gloomy expression mellowed and he nodded back.
"I like what you're thinkin'," Thomas said. If Steven felt any pride, he didn't show it. "I say we get this 'multiple strategy' thing on the road. What say you, Ty?"
"Works for me," Tyler rumbled.
TWO WEEKS of training and testing, and Team One was slated for its first mission.
Jamie wondered if any of the others shared her sense of playing out a Hollywood role as the superhero guardians of the semi-free world. But whatever they were feeling, they went through the motions of the "attack and secure" drills and the endless training and testing. Sometimes it was hard to separate the tests and training, because the tests revealed the nature and degree of the powers they were supposed to be practicing. She'd never known, for example, that she could both crush and heat objects with her mind, and she'd also honed her skills to the point where she could alter the shape of objects with fairly precise degrees of force.
Most of the other agent-trainees had similarly refined their skills. A few struggled with controlling their powers, tending to all or none displays of force – "Hot Girl," in particular, tended to fry objects every time she focused her heat projection, the time-traveling young woman, "Fast Time," seemed to lack a dial-down function on her lightning bolts, and the "Incredible Hulk," so titled the largest and second most physically strong individual in the group, seemed to have two settings: smash completely or smash almost completely.
But for the most part, the Team One members had reasonable control of their powers; the greatest challenge was working as a team. Jamie, Tilda, and Jeremy had been selected as leaders in their initial outing. Tilda Armstrong, aka "Fast Time" or "Lightning" – more commonly "Tildie" - was a former librarian whose even temperament and apparent ability to see a few seconds into the future could, according to Mort Anderson, "give her a leg up in combat situations." Jeremy, dubbed "Blur" because he could move so fast that he was barely visible, was a former restaurant manager who could think just as fast he could move, which Mort believed would be a great asset in the field. Mort appointed Jamie team leader – "because of her combat experience and proven ability to secure an objective with minimal casualties more than her top-tier powers," he'd told the group.
Mort and Director Bolt's idea was for Team One to either gain experience in the field before possibly splitting up to assume command of other teams – or to use their experiences to train others to assume those commands, depending on how events played out.
Over the last two weeks, rioting in the major cities had diminished to a mere murmur – something that had DARE and Washington officials scratching their heads – but there was no shortage of "bad operators," as Mort put it, to choose from. A particularly nasty and large group of super-troublemakers had emerged in East Los Angeles that was terrorizing nearby areas – particularly the richer neighborhoods of Hollywood and Burbank. Local police had tentatively identified them as a gang-based Hispanic group calling itself the Los Diablos Marrones – the Brown Devils - whose rallying cry was the Hispanic annexation of California. Reported superpowers included flame-throwing ("Columns of fire that destroyed whole buildings," the L.A. Police Commissioner Frank Wolfram told them), "death rays" (beams from hands or eyes), and the usual variations of telekinesis and super-strength. Wolfram believed the leader was Geraldo Rodriquez, a well-known gang leader who might or might not have voice-command powers in addition to the ability to fly and other unknown powers. He was known to have a fiery girlfriend named Zelia. Jamie hoped that wasn't literal.
"This might be the nastiest collection of individuals operating in this country right now," Mort informed the group. "Their size is estimated between two and three hundred. So far they've crushed anyone who's tried to oppose them, including local Army and National Guard units and the combined police forces of L.A. County. These people are on a mission, and there are signs they're fomenting revolt throughout California with an eye toward seizing control of the entire state. We need to nip this thing in the bud before it goes any further."
"But, um, two or three hundred?" Tilda spoke up in a shaky voice. "I mean, that makes us kinda outnumbered, right?"
"Looks that way," said Mort.
"That won't matter if we take out their leader," said Jake Culler, the man whom Mort Anderson had singled out as a possible racist/badass two weeks before. "Then the rest of his 'homeys'
will slink back into their ghetto or south of the border."
The rest of the group regarded him warily. George Hernandez, the group's sole Hispanic, glared at him. Mort Anderson appeared thoughtful.
Jake was an Iraqi vet who'd set up a successful private security guard business and who'd made no bones about wanting a leadership position in the team. He was perhaps the fourth strongest person physically, the fifth fastest runner/thinker, and middle-of-the-road telekinetically, but from their first day of training he was probably the most ambitious and determined to develop his abilities and achieve a leadership role.
"When you're outnumbered and outgunned," said Mort, "cutting off the head of the snake – or otherwise dividing and conquering - is usually the best idea. This Rodriquez character seems to be a real firebrand, probably the driving force behind this group. I'd recommend trying to identify him as quickly as possible. But don't focus on him to the exclusion of the others."
Mort handed out "mission papers" which included photos and a description of Gerald Rodriquez, the area, the presumed headquarters, and the mission itself. The plan was to infiltrate the group's compound, a collection of apartments and buildings in downtown L.A., then seek out and arrest – or "terminate" – Rodriquez and his central leadership. The team would be wearing blue and red uniforms – composed of extreme stress and heat resistant Starlite material - that identified them as Interdiction and Enforcement agents. There had been discussion of a more covert operation, but the decision had come from on high to make this and future operations public shows of United States Government force.
"People have to be reassured that we aren't living in anarchy," Director Boltman had told them. "Agents wearing our uniforms are the face of that government, and the source of our country's security."
The team would also be equipped with night vision goggles – those who needed them - earpieces and microphones, and mini-video cameras. The whole operation was to be filmed, and every agent would be linked to DARE Headquarters, Director Boltman, and Mort Anderson. Conventional support forces would include attack helicopters, fighter jets, and Marine and SEAL units.
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