“So what miracles were you working while we slept?” Sharra asked. She didn’t bother to lift her head from my shoulder, so her whisper was a little muffled by the cascade of pink hair covering most of her face.
“Oh, nothing much,” Lucas told us. “I just locked down the barracks and mech stations, so the soldiers and the mechs won’t be able to obey any orders to go out and contain the rioting.”
Sharra was interested enough to sit up and scoop her hair away from her face. “Come again? It took you all this time to lock the doors? We could have walked over there and broken the locks by hand in about ten minutes.”
“I’m wounded by your lack of faith in my abilities,” he said, shaking his head. “I did considerably more than just lock a few doors. I had to hack into the control database, convince it to take orders from me—and only me—and then tell it to activate the combat shielding and to leave it in place until I give the command to lift it. That means that all the doors and windows have just been covered by titanium-carbide barricades.
“The shielding is designed to keep an outside army from breaking in; anyone inside isn’t going to be able to break out, either. Even the walls are reinforced with titanium-carbide sheathing, so it’s not like they can just batter a hole in the wall to get out that way. And if they were to try to break through the shielding, they’ll get a nasty surprise from the electrical charge that runs through the whole thing. That electrical charge is an even bigger advantage over at the mech barracks since it’s strong enough to disable any mech who tries to plow through the shielding.”
He looked justifiably proud of himself. I scooted over and gave him a hug. “You’re amazing,” I told him.
“That is completely chill,” Sharra agreed. “It’s a good thing you’ve chosen to use your powers for good instead of evil.”
Even Roomie got in on the praise, vigorously washing Lucas’s face with his rough tongue.
“How did you know about all this?” I asked curiously. “I had no idea the barracks had those kinds of defenses.”
“I wasn’t sure, which is why I told you I had to get in here in order to figure out my plan. But I figured there had to be some kind of last-resort security for the living quarters. It was pretty standard procedure to install defenses on barracks in the later years of the war. I thought I could probably hack into the controls if I was here on site and inside a couple of the firewalls. I lucked out.
“It’s definitely not foolproof. Cruz is better with e-work than I am, so he’ll be able to undo my work, but it will at least give us some room to breathe. I hope he won’t even realize anything has gone wrong until it’s too late. I cut off comms in and out of the barracks, too, so they can’t call for help.”
“You’re pretty mag, my friend.” Sharra leaned in and dropped a kiss on Lucas’s cheek. “I’m handing out the congratulatory kisses this time,” she informed us. “Just to be sure you two don’t get carried away again.”
I punched her in the arm, and she snickered as she got to her feet and resettled her pack. “Come on, people. On to the next stage.”
Sharra strode away, clearly expecting us to follow her. I took Lucas’s hand to hold him in place until Sharra reached the corridor’s dead end and realized she’d headed off in the wrong direction. She turned around and marched back past us without a word, and this time we fell in behind her.
We took the concealed hallways back to the junction below the library since it was the most central location between the various conference rooms scattered through the three buildings. We couldn’t know which conference room Cruz might use later, and we needed to be able to react quickly and get to the right room as soon as we learned Cruz’s plans. We settled in to wait as comfortably as we could manage in the chilly tunnel. Lucas engaged his aural disruptor as a precaution, but we mostly sat in silence.
The waiting was making me crazy. After only thirty minutes of sitting still, I was jittery with anticipation, tapping my fingers on my knee and gnawing on my fingernails as I tried to contain myself. I couldn’t stop running over our plans in my head, looking for possible problems. Though I tried to keep my worries to myself, I couldn’t resist double-checking a few details.
“Randall Jeffries is still Cruz’s personal secretary, I think. If you get into Randall’s computer, we can monitor what he’s doing and get a heads-up when Cruz schedules a meeting. We need to get there first.”
“I know,” Lucas agreed patiently. “You’ve told me several times. I set up a mirror account hours ago, so I can see everything Jeffries does.”
Lucas glanced down at his tablet. “He logged in from home at six forty-seven, so that was about forty minutes ago. He checked his mail and found nothing new since logging out a little after eleven last night. He then signed out again, presumably to get ready to come into the office.
“While he’s been offline, his mailbox has been flooded with reports of rioting breaking out in every major city from Edmonton to Mexico City. Cruz has not received those updates yet, though. It seems that a glitch in the system is deleting the messages instead of notifying Jeffries, so nothing has been forwarded to Cruz.”
“That’s odd,” Sharra said, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “Is there any chance that particular glitch is affecting more than just Jeffries’s account?”
“You know, it does seem to be fairly widespread. In fact, it appears that any mail streaming through the White House servers is being scrubbed if it contains keywords relating to rioting, rebels, and that sort of thing,” Lucas said.
“What a shame that Cruz has made everyone so afraid to make a move without his explicit orders,” I replied with a wide grin. “No one will dare to do much to contain things until they get the word from him. By the time Cruz is informed, things just might be really out of control.”
“That would be a shame,” Lucas agreed. “It’s the risk you take when you’re such a hands-on leader, I guess.”
Lucas continued to monitor Jeffries’s mirror account and watched for activity in the barracks as well. There were indications that a few people in the soldiers’ barracks knew that the shielding and door locks were engaged, but their messages about the situation were subject to the same “glitch” that was affecting other communications. No one outside the barracks had been alerted yet.
Lucas fiddled with Sharra’s wrist-com until it was able to pick up a news feed. The holo was grainy and fuzzy due to the weak signal coming through the concrete walls, but we could see that the reports were the usual morning news fluff with no mention of any rioting. Apparently, the news agencies were blacking out the events of the morning until they received permission to report.
We took turns napping and monitoring the various feeds for the next several hours before we finally saw a blistering message from Cruz to several of his key people, conveniently copied to Jeffries so we were able to see it, demanding to know why he had not been kept informed of the rioting and demanding their presence in the Cabinet Room at eleven.
Lucas hadn’t attempted to filter Cruz’s outgoing email, afraid that Cruz was too tech-savvy to miss the interference, so this message went through. We had seventeen minutes to get to the Cabinet Room and get set up before the meeting was scheduled to begin.
We ran through the winding maze of hidden hallways that eventually brought us to a nook tucked behind another of the many built-in bookshelves throughout the White House. My father really had been a fan of old-fashioned print books, so no one had questioned his desire to line so many walls with crowded bookshelves. And, of course, they added to the studied, intellectual ambiance that suited the residence of the nation’s leader. But the real reason for the many, many bookshelves scattered through The Residence was that they were excellent camouflage for hidden doors.
The uneven textures and sizes of the book spines concealed the small peepholes that made it possible to see what was happening in the room. The alcove behind the bookcase in the Cabinet Room was larger than most, so we were all able to crowd in
as I used one of the peepholes to inspect the conference room before we entered. It was dark and still, the door firmly closed. We were the first to arrive.
I opened the door to let Lucas get to work, and he climbed onto the big table in the center of the room to attach a tiny camera to the light fixture above the conference table. The device was so small that it would be hard to find even if you were looking for it but powerful enough to record everything that happened in the room.
With the camera installed, Lucas jumped down and used his tablet to quickly test the data connections. The little camera was set up to stream the broadcast directly to the pack’s techie guys back in Denver. If things went very wrong and we didn’t walk away from this meeting, the pack could still release the footage to be sure everyone learned the truth about Cruz.
Lucas gave me a thumbs up; he’d confirmed that the signal was going through. I grabbed a tissue from the bookshelves behind me and wiped Lucas’s boot prints off the shining surface of the table so they wouldn’t give us away, and we headed back to our hiding spot inside the walls. But before we reached our hiding spot, the door to the Cabinet room opened and Jeffries backed in, pulling a small hover cart loaded with drinks and refreshments for the meeting.
Jeffries turned before I could disappear, and he saw me clearly. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. Jeffries broke into a run toward the door, and Lucas lunged for him, missing Jeffries when he made an unexpected turn around the end of the conference table. He was running toward me, not the door.
He flung himself at me, wrapping his arms around me and hugging me so tightly that it was hard to breathe. Jeffries was actually not much taller than me, so it wasn’t as awkward as you’d think for him to bend and bury his face in my shoulder as he sobbed and babbled about how much he’d missed me and my father.
I gave a panicked look at the clock on the wall. There were only minutes remaining before people would be arriving for the meeting. Out of time and not sure what else to do, I shuffled into the hidden passage, tugging Jeffries along with me and hushing him as we moved.
Sharra hastily arranged the refreshment cart to look like Jeffries had come in, set up, and stepped out again before she and Lucas hurried into the tiny room with us and pulled the door closed behind them. The soft click of the lock engaging still hung in the air when the outside door opened again a moment later.
33
“I have troops on the ground,” General Tindel was saying as he walked into the room. “All units have been given orders to avoid use of deadly force but to stop any destruction of property or looting.”
I recognized the woman with him as Goodland’s police commissioner Lucinda Markham and quietly shared that identification with my friends.
“That plays with what I’ve ordered as well,” Markham agreed. “I don’t want to turn this into a bloodbath, so I’ve got my people mostly just holding a line to protect property and making arrests only when necessary.”
The door banged against the wall and bounced back as Cruz stormed in. He swiped at the door irritably as it swung toward him, causing it to slam closed with enough force to rattle the glasses on the refreshment cart. Tindel and Markham came to rigid attention, carefully fixing their eyes on the wall behind him to avoid eye contact as he shouted.
“What the hell is going on? People are rioting in the fragging streets and none of my crack military force is available to respond? None of the police are out there arresting these miscreants? What have you been doing about all this?”
Cruz stalked back and forth like a caged predator, his hands shoved deep inside his pockets and the throbbing veins in his temples evidence that he was forcing himself to hold back from doing anything worse than shouting for the moment.
“Where is Jeffries?” Cruz demanded. “He should have been monitoring the reports and woken me immediately when this started.” His face reddened and his pacing quickened. “Is he with them? Is he part of this rebellion? I can’t believe that little ass-kisser would betray me this way. Oh, I knew he was a fan of the damn Walkers, but I never imagined he had the spine to turn on me. I should have killed him when I killed the others.”
Tindel stood quietly at attention, listening intently but showing no reaction to Cruz’s rage. Markham tried to adopt the same attitude, though she was pale and shaking in fear of Cruz’s wrath.
I used the cover of Cruz’s shouting to whisper at Jeffries and impress the importance of staying put and staying silent. He nodded, promising to lay low. I wasn’t too worried about leaving him here on his own. Based on his reaction to seeing me, I was fairly sure that he was not going to try to backstab me. Even if he tried the door at the end of this tiny hallway, it was locked with a scanner keyed to my palmprint. The door into the conference room also required my print, so once we stepped out and closed the access panel behind us, Jeffries would have no choice but to stay put and wait to be released.
If things went well, I would let him out later. If things went far south … well, Jeffries would just have to shout for help from behind the wall, and they could rip out the bookcase to get him free. At that point, I’d no longer be in any position to worry over people learning about the hidden paths through the White House.
Cruz’s ranting finally wound down, and he flopped into a chair, peevishly motioning Tindel and Markham to take a seat. They sat silently, neither wanting to risk setting him off again with the wrong words.
“Well, I’m waiting. What are you doing to control this insurrection? Why have you allowed it to continue?”
“Sir, if we strike out against our own citizens, we risk the intervention of other nations. If we are seen as a hostile dictatorship, the tenets of the World Peace Agreement allow other nations to step in on humanitarian grounds. We are treading dangerously close to that line after events during the clearing of the Warren.” Tindel spoke in a confident tone, but small beads of sweat along his hairline betrayed his tension.
Cruz spoke through clenched teeth. “Other nations are not your concern. Your only concern is getting this rebellion under control right away no matter what methods you need to use.”
He turned his scowl on Markham. “And what have you done to curb the rioting in this city, Commissioner? Are your people on the street or cowering in the station houses? Because I can see no sign that they are doing their jobs and stopping the rampant lawlessness in our streets.”
He paused, his lips moving a little as he silently repeated his own words as if memorizing them for later speechmaking.
“Every officer is on the street to protect citizens and businesses from the rioters,” Markham said, a slight tremble in her voice. “They have orders, as General Tindel’s troops do, to avoid use of deadly force. They are to protect and defend, not act as aggressors.”
Cruz roared in anger. “Amend those orders immediately! They are to use all necessary force to put down the rebellion. This uprising will not be tolerated!”
Cruz yanked his tablet from his pocket and swiped at the screen with aggressive jabs of his slender fingers. Markham pulled out her tablet as well and began tapping slowly at the screen, half-heartedly entering new orders for her officers.
When Cruz had finished his entry on the comm-tablet, he sat back in his chair and regarded Tindel with narrowed eyes. The general sat silently without reaching for his own tablet.
“I’ve just sent instructions to the mech units, General, and they are setting out now. They will be responsible for knocking down the first layer of this rebellion, and then your men can mop up. As soon as the situation here is contained, you will take a contingent of soldiers and mechs to Albuquerque and then Phoenix. You’ll continue through the southwest cities, and I’ll send more squads to the east and north.”
I shot a quick look at Lucas who checked the readout on his tablet and shook his head. Cruz might have sent orders for the mechs to set out, but the building was still locked down. The mech soldiers couldn’t leave and start attacking the rebels. I breathed a sigh of relief
and returned my attention to Cruz, who was still speaking to Tindel.
“Allow me to make myself clear. If you do not use these troops to immediately crush the rebels, I will assume that you are a part of this rebellion as well. I’m sure you know the penalty for treason to this administration. Do you understand me, General?”
“I understand, sir,” Tindel agreed, still not reaching for his tablet.
“Then why are you not issuing new commands as the obliging Commissioner Markham is doing?”
“Sir, these gatherings can hardly be termed peaceful assembly. The participants are loud, angry, and determined to be heard. But, despite that, we have had only a few reports of property damage and no incidences of violence against citizens, police officers, or military. The use of deadly force is in no way indicated in this situation. I will not command my men to assault citizens of their own country who are not offering violence at this time.”
“You’ve gone soft, Tindel,” Cruz spat. “I don’t remember you being so spineless during the war. You were always the first to propose an operation.”
“Those were strategic incursions, sir. That sort of operation would be a mistake in this situation. Sending troops in to break up the protests with violence will only inflame the crowds and lead to retaliation and an escalating cycle of hostility that could lead to a massacre of our own citizens.”
“Or we do nothing to curb the current demonstrations, the protesters see that we are soft, and they escalate the violence because they are unafraid of retaliation,” Cruz countered heatedly. “I find that scenario even more likely. We cannot appear weak before our enemies!”
His voice was growing more agitated by the moment, and I was afraid we were about to see a reappearance of the insane rage that had led him to shoot Mateo. By the way his hand drifted repeatedly to his pocket, I felt sure that he had a weapon tucked in there.
Into Light (Shadow and Light Book 2) Page 18
