Revolution: Luthecker, #3

by Keith Domingue

  “Let’s move,” Yaw said.

  “I hope PHOEBE took the cameras down, or this is gonna end real quick.” Camilla looked at Nikki.

  “I’m sure she did,” Nikki said, hoping it was true.

  Billy Green saw the Coalition guards approaching and signaled his friend Malcolm Combine with a quick nod.

  Green had already decided he was going to take a swing at one of the Coalition guards if one got close enough. Green hated the Coalition.

  The firm bought up large swaths of downtown Los Angeles, kicking out local residents that had been in their homes for generations, which sent housing prices through the roof.

  Coalition military-style trucks thundered through the streets in the middle of the night, setting off car alarms, and they often blocked the streets when they parked.

  Coalition Assurance goons thought they were above the law and never missed an opportunity to hassle Green and his friends. They were arrogant, violent, and they acted like they owned everything. Well, today would be payback.

  Green had won a middleweight Golden Gloves title when he was only seventeen, and his “home run ball” was his right hook. He was just looking to unleash it on someone. Green had been to jail before. It’d be worth doing time again if he could lay one of those suckers out.

  Combine smiled when he saw the look on Green’s face because he knew what it meant. One of the Coalition guards was right behind him, and he could feel it.

  Combine watched Green cock his right fist, and the old man with the bad leg knew what to do. Combine also knew that his knees would hate him for it later, and someone would have to help him back to his feet, but he abruptly dropped down in a two-point stance, timing it perfectly as the Coalition guard approached and Green took a swing.

  It was chaos as half a dozen fights raged around Jim Allen, and Allen loved every minute of it. He separated two young men wrestling on the ground only to look up and watch an old black man, skinny, wearing a faded fedora, hit Joe Blair with the cleanest right hook he’d ever seen.

  Blair dropped to the pavement like a sack, unconscious before his body clattered to the ground. It was clear that the old man was a trained boxer and that Blair had been sucker punched.

  Allen approached the man who had hit Blair as the LAPD Officer that had first signaled him over grabbed the puncher and pulled him to the ground. It was clear that the officer was trying not to hurt the old man.

  Allen was about to step in between two younger combatants when he was tackled at the knees and forced to the pavement. Allen looked to see who the attacker was, and the Coalition booth guard recognized his assailant as the older black man who had dropped to the ground just as Joe Blair had been hit.

  Officer Dino Rodriguez pulled Billy Green to the ground as gently as he could.

  “What the hell was that?” Rodriguez said to Green.

  “C’mon, man, I had to.”

  “That’s assault.”

  “This show was your idea, remember?”

  Rodriguez shook his head. It wasn’t in the plans to actually strike one of the Coalition guards, but now that it happened, he had to get Green out of there.

  He watched Malcolm Combine leg tackle the other guard, and that’s when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yaw, Nikki, Camilla, and the rest of the Safe Block clan dart from behind a panel truck, past the gates, and move inside the Fortress grounds.

  As soon as the Safe Block crew disappeared from view, Rodriguez heard it: the sound of approaching sirens.

  As if the sirens were their cue, all the combatants—save for Billy Green and Malcolm Combine—stopped fighting and scattered at the sound. By the time the three additional patrol cars arrived, the only ones left on the street were the two Officers Rodriguez and Levy, the two Coalition guards, and the two black men, Combine and Green.

  Rodriguez helped Green to his feet, carefully handcuffed him, and gave him a brief nod of acknowledgement before putting him in the back of his patrol car.

  Rodriguez looked across the street and saw that Ellen Levy had already pulled the other elder black man, Malcolm Combine, off the Coalition guard whose legs the old man had clung to, and she was in the process of handcuffing him.

  Rodriquez approached the guard who had been hit and was dazed and sitting on the sidewalk. “Are you alright?”

  Blair gave a quick nod to indicate that it was mostly his ego that was injured.

  Rodriguez helped the guard to his feet.

  “I want to press charges,” Blair said, as he rubbed his jaw.

  “I want to thank you guys for helping out. We really needed you, and I’m real sorry you caught one on the chin,” Rodriguez responded to Blair as Jim Allen approached.

  “Just so you know, we’re going to book both of these men for starting the riot. We can add assault charges as well. I’m going to need to speak to your supervisor, so I can explain to them exactly what happened and make sure there’s no problems for you.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Allen responded. The last thing he wanted was a mark of any kind on his record.

  Rodriguez nodded to the two handcuffed men now in the back of his car. “Just so you know, they’re gonna lawyer up and say you guys attacked them. I deal with these kind of guys all the time, and that’s what they do.”

  “That’s bullshit. He cold cocked me right in the jaw.”

  “I know, but they’re still gonna lawyer up. You guys got an attorney they should be in contact with? Just trying to help you out. You know how these things can go.”

  Allen looked over at Blair and did a quick headshake in the negative. He needed a perfect record to join the Coalition Assurance team, and any problems with the police or controversy with the law could jeopardize his chances.

  “No charges, officer. We’re just glad we could help out,” Allen volunteered.

  Blair glared at him.

  Allen gave a pleading look at his partner.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, just make sure you get them on the riot charge,” Blair responded, still rubbing his jaw.

  “Oh, don’t worry, we will.”

  “So, we’ll just keep this off the books then,” Allen added.

  “No problem. If that’s what you want.”

  “Man, you hit that fool good,” Combine cackled as the patrol car pulled from the curb and sped away from the Coalition Fortress entrance gates.

  Combine turned and looked out the rear window as they drove off, watching as the two Coalition guards slowly shuffled back to their guard booth.“That was fan-fucking-tastic,” he added.

  “I’m gonna have to ice my hand, I think I might’a broke it. Felt good to get that shot in, though. How’s the leg?” Green asked.

  “Hurts like hell. And my knees ain’t workin’ right. But it was worth it.”

  “Where do you want us to drop you off?” Rodriguez asked.

  He looked in the rear-view mirror at Green and Combine. The two old men couldn’t stop grinning at one another.

  “Just leave us anywhere on Figueroa,” Combine answered. “Do you think they got in? That Luthecker cat and his crew?”

  “Yeah. They got in.”

  “Hot damn,” Combine said.

  “I suggest you gentlemen lay low for a few days. Keep quiet about all this. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir, officer. We will,” Green replied.

  “Thanks again for helping out. That was a helluva right hook, Billy. You’re lucky you didn’t break his jaw. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

  “Thank you, sir. Give us a call anytime you need to stage another dust up.”

  Both Officers Rodriguez and Levy stood on the sidewalk off Figueroa Street and shook hands with Green and Combine.

  They climbed back into their patrol car, and Rodriguez pulled from the curb into traffic.

  “We’ll it worked. At least as far as we know,” Levy said. “We’ve done our part.”

  “Yes we have.”

  “So does that mean
we’re done?”

  Rodriguez looked at Levy. “No. At least, I’m not.”

  “Good. Me neither. So now what?”

  “We’re going back. And we’re helping them out.”

  “What do you mean the launch sequence has begun?” Turner yelled into his phone.

  This was a disastrous development. At least he was speaking on a secure line, and the NSA was not listening in.

  “Sir, I called you because I do not trust Ivan Barbolin or the Russian President. They would set the world on fire for more money. And I know that the President of the United States is not the most powerful man in America. You are. Understand that there is no denying that our submarine launch system has been hacked. And the only person with access to the technology to stop a nuclear holocaust is the man who runs the most powerful weapons contractor in the world, the Coalition. This is why I reached out to you. Can you help us?”

  “How long do we have?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “Jesus Christ. Stay on the phone.”

  Turner put down the receiver. His mind raced. Ivan hadn’t been lying about the sub. But now things had slipped completely out of control, and Ivan was useless here. His own Russian people didn’t trust him.

  The West Coast had Coalition-designed missile defense systems that were state of the art, but they had never been tested against something like this. Would it be enough?

  Turner had to think fast. He had to be decisive. There was no doubt that this was the work of PHOEBE and the terrorist hacker Nicole Ellis.

  Turner wondered if this was some sort of master plan put together by Alex Luthecker. Now Turner had little choice—he was going to have to confront Luthecker directly. He may even have to rely on the soothsayer’s help—something Luthecker more than likely wanted all along.

  Luthecker was far more dangerous than he thought. But Turner wasn’t out of ideas yet. He waved his secretary over.

  “Call over to Coalition Assurance. Tell them I need a squad at the Cyber Center, now. Contact Rika Muranaka and tell her to go directly to the center as well. And have Coalition Assurance send a team to pick up Ivan and bring him too. And finally, have them send two of their best to escort Alex Luthecker to meet us there.”

  Alex Luthecker was sitting quietly on the couch in his cell when the lights went out. It was pitch black for several seconds before the room illuminated again, but the darkness wasn’t what caught Luthecker’s attention.

  What caught his attention was a sound—the blunt thud of the electronic latch that kept the door to his cell locked being released.

  To Alex, it didn’t just mean he was free—it meant that PHOEBE was here roaming the Coalition’s digital hallways. And that meant Nikki was roaming the physical ones. In other words, his family was here.

  Alex got to his feet and pushed against the thick metal door, and it moved. He slowly opened it all the way and peered outside. The halls were quiet. There were no guards, no attendants. Alex understood why.

  The Coalition CEO and cyber-security team would know that PHOEBE had infiltrated their systems and was wreaking havoc on every form of digital communication. It would create confusion and chaos, causing all security personnel to focus on the problem.

  If Turner still believed that Alex was a non-factor, he wouldn’t think that for much longer. The next steps would be critical. Alex hustled down the hallway. He knew that because of PHOEBE, Nikki would be the primary target. He had to find her, before Glen Turner or his Coalition Assurance assassins discovered her first.

  He stopped when he saw Mark Kirby at the end of the hall.

  Kirby quickly approached.

  “It’s complete fucking chaos,” Kirby started. “Just like you said it would be. Turner’s in over his head, and he doesn’t know what to do. And you were right—he doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “At some point, he’ll realize he has no choice, and we need to be gone by then. I’ll find my friends, and we can leave. PHOEBE will do the rest.”

  “What about the missile launch?”

  Alex froze in his tracks. “What are you talking about?’

  “What do you mean, what am I talking about? The Russian sub. The launch countdown sequence has started. There’s less than thirty minutes before launch. It wasn’t the Russians who started it, so I figured it was one of your people. Are you saying it wasn’t part of your plan?”

  “It’s definitely not part of my plan.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Holy shit is right.”

  “But how could you not know this? I thought you could see macro patterns like this before they happened. I thought you could see everything.”

  “I can’t. I don’t predict the future, just the cumulative choices of human behavior, remember?”

  Alex knew Kirby was right. He had seen the threat of the sub, but not the details of the actual launch. How could he have missed something like this? The momentum behind it should have made it obvious. How could he not see something so enormous and devastating being done by the people around him? How could he not see this in the most basic patterns of human behavior?

  Then it dawned on him.

  “It wasn’t human,” Alex said aloud. “That’s why I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t part of the collective momentum of human behavior and decisions.”

  “What wasn’t human?” Kirby asked.

  “Whatever authorized the launch sequence. Whatever it was that made the decision to launch, it wasn’t a human.”

  Randy Baez sat up on his bunk the second the alarm Klaxon sounded. He and his unit had returned to the Coalition Assurance facilities only two days previous after a brief mission in Chile, where locals were causing problems at the Coalition Properties lithium mining facility.

  Luckily, the local protesters had been easy to disperse, and there had been no incidents of violence under Randy’s watch. When the replacement unit arrived, Randy was happy to have a zero incident report to hand over.

  After his debriefing at Coalition Assurance headquarters this morning, Randy hoped he would be cleared for a vacation soon. His younger brother, Jacob, was having some health issues, and Randy desperately wanted to go see him to make sure he was okay.

  But the alarm that was ringing throughout the building gave him a bad feeling, told him he wouldn’t be going home any time soon.

  “It’s some sort of cyber breach,” Brian Scholl, Randy’s roommate and fellow unit member said, as he stepped back into their room from the hallway.

  “So what’s the order?” Randy asked.

  “All the security systems are down. The rest of the unit has been ordered to patrol the grounds, ASAP. There was some minor conflict at the entrance gates, and we’re on high alert that there might be hostiles on the grounds already.”

  “The rest of the unit? What about us? Why haven’t we scrambled?”

  “We get special sauce today. Straight from the chairman’s office.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Yup. You and I, we gotta head down to the containment apartments. Pick up a guy named Alex Luthecker.”

  “I heard about him.”

  “We all have.”

  “Didn’t know we had him on site.”

  “Well, we do. Apparently, it was a secret until five minutes ago. We gotta go pick him up and escort him to the Cyber Center in building one.”

  “I heard he’s dangerous.”

  “We’re dangerous. Get your ass up, and let’s go get this guy.”

  “I haven’t seen her,” Michael Chan lied as he spoke with cyber security boss Tom Miller.

  Both men watched as employees shuffled out in practiced order through the exits and down the stairs.

  “I was told she was in her office. Where could she be?”

  “I don’t know. Haven’t seen her in a couple of days.”

  “She’s not returning calls, either.”

  “I know I’ve tried to reach her, too. We really have a crisis here. Don’t know where she could
be.”

  “Well, if you see her, tell her I need to speak with her, immediately.”

  Chan watched as Miller stormed off. He hoped he had bought Muranaka enough time.

  “One of us should go with you,” Yaw said to Nikki.

  The group stood in the shadows of Coalition One, the main building in the Fortress, watching as people began pouring out of the building in choreographed fashion, the look and behavior of the exiting employees no different from those during a fire drill.

  “No. Go find Alex,” Nikki replied. “Get him out of here. I can move better on my

  own.”

  “At least take your sticks.”

  “That would look suspicious. I just need access to a connected terminal. I’ll give PHOEBE a handful of commands, and then I’m done. After that I’ll come find you guys.”

  “And Muranaka? What about her?”

  “I’ll find her and get her out. If they find out what she’s done, they’ll want her dead, and we can’t let that happen.”

  “You should let us find her.”

  “No. I have a feeling she and I will end up in the same place. Your job is to protect Alex. He’s the most important…”

  “You keep saying that, why?” Camilla interrupted.

  “You know why.”

  “Maria.”

  “Yes. She’s just like Alex. And she’s going to need him.”

  “She’s going to need you both.”

  “Him, more than me. Look, don’t get me wrong, I have every intention of meeting you guys at Metro. It’s just I’ll move much better on my own. And my job’s much easier than yours so don’t worry about me. Now go.”

  “We’ll see you at Metro then,” Yaw said to Nikki, before he turned toward the others.

  Nikki watched as Yaw, Chris, Camilla, Masha, and Joey headed toward building six, which housed Coalition Assurance.

  Nikki knew from the schematics provided by PHOEBE that the Coalition Assurance Building housed the firm’s internment apartments, otherwise known as prison cells. It also housed enough soldiers and weapons to invade a small country.