Jericho Iteration

20

(Saturday, 3:22 A.M.)

Chevy Dick’s Corvette cruised along dark, rain-slicked Gravois Avenue like a sleek black torpedo, passing the ruins of row shops and boarded-up supermarkets, skirting around potholes and dodging piles of burning debris left over from gang fights. We cruised down the vacant four-lane street, ignoring all the stop signs; shadowy figures huddling around garbage-can fires stared at us with dull curiosity. The rain had finally stopped, so Chevy’s friend Cortez kept his window rolled down halfway, his Glock cradled in his hands above the warm can of Budweiser resting between his thighs.

As we approached the broad intersection of Gravois and Grand Boulevard, we saw an ERA patrol. An LAV-25 was parked in front of a closed-down White Castle, a couple of troopers sitting on top of the armored cars next to the water cannon. Upon spotting the Corvette’s headlights, one of the soldiers jumped off the front of the Piranha and sauntered out into the street, waving his arms over his head.

“Aw, shit,” I whispered as Chevy Dick began to slow down. “That’s the last thing I need to see right-”

“Hang on to your mutt,” Chevy said.

“Punch it,” Cortez muttered.

Chevy smiled, then floored the gas pedal. The digital speedometer flashed into the higher numbers as the car hurtled down the blacktop toward the lone soldier. He gaped in disbelief as he fumbled for the rifle slung against his back, but at the last moment he lunged for the sidewalk.

I caught a brief glimpse of his astonished face as the Corvette whipped past him, then Chevy Dick hauled the wheel to the left. Its tires screeching against the pavement, the Corvette hugged the curb as it tore through the intersection and made a sharp left turn onto Grand.

“Chinga tu madre!” Cortez yelled at the troopers who were scrambling off the top of the Piranha, thrusting his right arm through the window to give them the one-finger salute. The dog put in his two cents by barking a few times, then the Corvette was roaring north down Grand, leaving the troopers a block behind us before they could even fire one round.

“God, but I love doing that.” Chevy took a big hit off his beer. Cortez was smiling but otherwise played the cool. He glanced back at me. “Wasn’t that great?”

“Yeah. Big fun.” I gazed back at the intersection through the rear window. The troopers were probably already on the radio, calling all ERA units in the area to spread the alert. Chevy Dick bragged a lot about his wheels, but I didn’t recall him saying anything about making it bulletproof.

I looked down at the dog; he was curled up in my lap, his long red tongue lolling out of his mouth like a big grin on his canine face. “Figures you’d go for something like this,” I murmured to him.

“Don’t worry about it, man,” Chevy said. “I’ll be on the interstate before they manage to get their act together, and nobody knows these plates for shit.” He glanced at me again. “Y’sure you want me to drop you off at Compton Hill? It’s still a long walk home, man.”

I knew what he was implying. The Grand Avenue I-44 ramp was less than a block from the reservoir; once he got on the eastbound lanes, it was a quick sail downtown, with Soulard only a few minutes away. If I skipped the rest of the ride, though, I would be marooned in a nasty side of town; between gangs, cops, and ERA troopers, I would have a tough time getting home.

“I’m sure,” I said. “Just put me out on the street in front of the park and I’ll cut you loose. I’ll pick up the dog at your place later.”

“Fuckin’ crazy, man.” Cortez belched and looked over his shoulder at me. “Y’know that? You’re fuckin’ crazy …”

I gazed back at him. “What high school did you go to?” I asked.

Cortez and Chevy Dick shared another look, then both of them broke up laughing. Cortez uncocked his automatic, then turned it around in his hands and extended it to me, grip first, through the gap between the seats. “Here, dude,” he said. “Take it. Y’gonna need it.”

I looked at the automatic. It was a tempting notion, but … “Keep it,” I said. “I’d probably just shoot myself in the foot.”

Cortez peered at me in disbelief. Chevy Dick said something to him in Spanish; the kid shrugged and pulled the gun away. “Suit yourself, gringo,” he murmured. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The blocks melted away behind us until Chevy eased his foot off the pedal and downshifted; the car rapidly decelerated as it neared the crest of a low, sloping hill. Off to the right were the houselights from the few early twentieth-century mansions still remaining in this side of the city. The Compton Heights neighborhood surrounding the reservoir had been a wealthy area at one time; even before the end of the last century some urban estates here had fetched million-dollar estimates, and the few of them left after the quake were sealed behind high fences and electronic sentries. The Heights was nestled against the perimeter of the South Side combat zone, and no one who still lived here was taking any chances.

Then the lights were behind us, and there was a only a large patch of wooded darkness: barren trees, overgrown shrubbery, a few park benches. “We’re here, Gerry,” Chevy Dick said as he let the car glide to a halt. “Last chance …”

“Thanks for the ride,” I replied. “I owe you one.” Cortez opened his door and bent forward to allow me to push his seatback against his spine. “Vaya con dios, hombre.”

The dog was reluctant to let me go; he whimpered a little and licked my hands furiously, but I shoved him off me as I squeezed out of the car. “Stay,” I said softly. “Be good … I’ll come get you in a little while.” I glanced up at Chevy. “Give him something to eat, okay?”

“No sweat,” Chevy Dick said. “Hasta luego … good luck, bro.”

Cortez slammed the door shut behind me, then the black Corvette’s tires left rubber as it tore off down the boulevard. I waited until I saw its taillights veer sharply to the right, entering the I-44 ramp next to the reservoir, then I jogged out of the street and into the park.

The reservoir on Compton Hill was a small man-made lake encircled by fortresslike walls and a six-foot security fence. A twenty-acre park surrounded the reservoir itself, its cement pathways leading through a landscaped grove that had been allowed to go to seed in the past several months. At one end of the park was an old granite memorial, erected in the memory of German-American St. Louisians who had died during World War I: a twice-life-sized bronze statue of a nude woman seated in front of the granite slab, holding torches in her outthrust arms, her sightless eyes gazing out over an empty reflecting pool.

But neither the statue nor the reservoir itself were the most prominent features of the park. That distinction belonged to the tall, slender tower in the center of the park.

The Compton Hill water tower was a throwback to an age when even the most functional of structures were built with some sense of architectural style. The tower resembled nothing less than a miniature French Renaissance castle; almost two hundred feet tall, the redbrick and masonry edifice rose above a base constructed of ornately carved Missouri limestone, with slotlike windows below a circular observation cupola beneath the gazebolike slate roof, while wide stairways led up past a lower balcony at the base of the tower to an upper parapet thirty feet above the ground. A medieval fantasy on the outskirts of downtown St. Louis.

It was remarkable that the tower had remained intact during the quake, but it only goes to show that they don’t build ’em like they used to back in 1871. Of course, they don’t make anything the way they did a hundred and fifty years ago, people included.

Wary of any ERA troopers who might be pursuing Chevy Dick, I jogged into the park until I was out of sight from the street, then I stopped and looked around. The park was empty; the homeless people who had erected shanties here had been chased away by ERA patrols, and the police had somehow managed to keep the street gangs out of the park. I was alone …

No. Not quite alone. Gazing up through bare tree branches at the top of the water tower, I saw a dim light shining from within the windows of its observation cupola. For a brief moment, the light was obscured by a human silhouette, then the form vanished from sight.

Someone was in the tower.

I strode the rest of the way through the park until I reached the base of the water tower, then climbed the eroded limestone stairs until I reached the upper parapet. Within a recessed archway were a pair of heavy iron doors, their peeling gray paint covered with graffiti I couldn’t read in the gloom. Dracula would have felt right at home, particularly if he had taken to wearing gang colors.

I tugged at the battered handles; the doors didn’t give so much as an inch. I felt around the doors until I found a keycard slot: a rather anachronistic touch, installed only in recent years, but it didn’t do me a damn bit of good.

I pounded my fist a few times against the panel, feeling old paint flaking off with each blow, then waited a moment. Nothing. I pounded again, harder this time, then put my ear against the cold metal panel. Still nothing.

I raised my fist again, about to hit the door a few more times, when I thought I heard movement from the stairs below me: a soft, scurrying motion, like a rat rustling in the darkness at the bottom of the tower …

Yeah. A six-foot rat with an eight-inch stiletto. I froze within the archway, listening to the night as I regretted not taking the gun Cortez had offered me. There was no other way off the parapet except for a thirty-foot drop to a hard pavement.

I heard an slow exhalation, as of someone sighing in resignation, then dry leaves crunched beneath a cautious footstep on the stairs. A pause, then another footstep. I slid farther into the shadows within the arch.

There was a sudden creak from behind me, then the door inched open a few inches as the narrow beam of a flashlight seeped past my face. “Rosen?” a voice inquired.

“God, yeah!” I whipped around to face the door. The beam rushed toward my face, blinding me for an instant; I winced and instinctively raised my right hand against the light. “I’m Gerry Rosen,” I gasped. “Get me outta-”

The door opened farther and a strong hand reached past the light to grab my wrist. In the same instant that I heard someone running up the stairs, I was yanked past the flashlight beam and through the doorway.

Looking back for an instant, I caught a glimpse of a scrawny, long-haired teenager, wearing a filthy Cardinals sweatshirt and wielding a pocketknife, as he rushed the rest of the way up the stairs; he gaped at me in frustrated anger as the iron door slammed shut in his face.

“Aw, jeez, man,” I gasped, “thanks for-”

“Shut up!” The hand that had rescued me slammed me against a brick wall. “Stand still!”

The halogen flashlight was back in my eyes; squinting painfully against its glare, I made out a vague figure behind the light. His right hand moved to his side, then I felt the unmistakable round, hollow bore of a gun pressing against my neck.

“Show me some ID!” the intense male voice demanded. “Do it quick or I’ll throw you back out there!”

“Yeah, sure,” I murmured, shutting my eyes. “Just take it easy, all right?” I felt around in my jacket until I found my press card, then I pulled it out and held it up to the light. “See? It’s me. That’s my face. Just be careful with the artillery, okay?”

A long pause, then the gun was removed from my neck, and the light swept away from my face. “Okay,” the voice said, a little more relaxed now. “You’re clean.”

“Glad to hear it.” I let out my breath, shoved the card back into my jacket, and rubbed my knuckles against my eyes. It took a few seconds to rinse the spots from my retinas; when I looked up again, the flashlight was still there but was now pointed at the stone floor. A young man was backlit in the glow; it took me only a moment to recognize his face.

“Dr. Morgan?” I asked.

“Jeff Morgan,” he replied, letting out his own breath as he carefully stuck the.22 revolver in the pocket of his nylon windbreaker. “Sorry about that, but we can’t be too careful. Especially now.”

“Ruby said you were expecting me.” The stone-walled room was chill; I could now make out the bottom of a wrought-iron spiral staircase. “Didn’t you know I was coming?”

“Spotted you from up there.” His voice held the flat midwestern accent of a native Missourian. “You saw the kind of company we keep these days, though. That kid’s been trying to get in here for the last couple of days. Like I said, we can’t be too careful.”

“No shit …”

“Yeah. No shit.” He turned around and began walking up the spiral stairway, each footstep ringing within the hollow tower. “C’mon,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”

Guided by the flashlight beam and the weak city light that filtered through the dusty tower windows, I followed Morgan up the staircase as it wound its way around the central steel pipe of the tower’s main pump, each footfall echoing dully on the iron risers.

“We came here because we thought it would be the last place anyone might think of searching for us,” Morgan explained as we climbed upward. “Ruby was able to decode the doorlock, and we figured that up here at least we’d see anyone coming for us.”

“Makes sense …”

“Besides, it wasn’t safe for us to stay in anyone’s house, and for all of us to rent a hotel room together might have raised some attention … especially since ERA’s tried to frame Dick for Po’s murder.”

“And John Tiernan’s,” I added.

He paused and looked back at me. “And your friend’s,” he said. “I’m sorry that happened, believe me. When Beryl decided to make contact with him, the last thing she wanted to do was put him in any danger … or you yourself, for that matter.”

“I understand.” I hesitated. “You know about this afternoon, don’t you?”

Morgan sighed, then resumed walking up the stairs without saying anything. “Yeah, we know,” he replied after a few moments. “Ruby told us almost as soon as it happened. What we can’t figure out is how ERA managed to track her down. She was being careful not to leave a trail, but …”

It was tempting not to let him know that I was partially to blame for her murder, but it was important that he be informed of everything. After all, he was on the run just as much as I; as Beryl herself had said, our mutual survival depended on everyone’s knowing the facts.

“They found her through me,” I said. “I hate to say it, but I led ’em to her.”

Morgan paused again, this time shining the flashlight on me; I glanced away before he could blind me again. “Barris’s men busted me in my apartment last night,” I said before he could ask. “They took me down to the stadium and gave me the story about Payson-Smith being the killer-”

“And you believed them?”

I shook my head. “Not for a second, but that wasn’t the point. The whole thing was a pretense for Barris to give me a smartcard that could track my movements. I guess they figured I would eventually make contact with one of you guys, and they were right. When I met up with Beryl at the cafe, they must have figured things out and sent in their hit man.”

“You didn’t know you were carrying a smartcard?”

“Uh-uh,” I said, shaking my head. “Beryl figured it out and destroyed the thing, but by then it was too late.”

Morgan slowly let out his breath. “Goddamn.” he whispered. “I told her it was a bad idea to contact the local press. I knew you couldn’t be trusted to-”

“Look, bud,” I snapped, “don’t gimme this never-trust-the-press shit. My best friend’s dead because of your team, and if I hadn’t taken out their hitter we’d still be up shit creek.”

“For your information, Mr. Rosen,” he replied coldly, “we’re up shit creek anyway. We’ve got the whole goddamn city looking for us-”

“And we’re both screwed,” I shot back, “unless you’ve got some scheme for getting us out of this jam. Okay? So stop blaming me for your troubles.”

Morgan didn’t respond. He turned back around and began climbing the stairs again. I could now see a dim light from somewhere above us, but it was difficult to gauge how far up the tower we were. The pipe thrummed in the darkness, its cold metal shaft slippery with condensation.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a few minutes, not breaking stride this time. “I’m not blaming you for anything. Beryl knew the risks when she decided to seek out a reporter. She was gambling and she lost the bet, but it probably would have happened even if she hadn’t run into you.”

He let out his breath. “But she’s dead,” he went on, “and there’s nothing we can do about it except resort to a backup plan.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll see. C’mon …”

The light above us was much larger and sharper by now; it took the form of an open horizontal hatch in the floor. Morgan climbed the final few steps and disappeared through the doorway; I followed him, pulling myself upward by the guardrail until I found myself in the tower’s observation deck.

The cupola was circular, its walls and floor built of old brick mortared into place before my grandfather’s time. Although fluorescent fixtures were suspended from the low ceiling, they were switched off; dim light came from a couple of battery-powered camp lanterns hung from ancient oak rafters. Three sleeping bags were laid out on one side of the room next to a propane hiker’s stove and a sack of canned food; a few newspapers and the last issue of the Big Muddy Inquirer rested next to an untidy stack of computer printouts and a couple of rolls of toilet paper.

It looked like nothing less than the inside of a kid’s treehouse during a weekend campout; all that was missing was a sign reading “Sekret Hedquarters-No Girls Aloud.” Unfortunately, the only girl who had been let up here was gone now …

No treehouse ever had a view like this. Through the twelve square, recessed windows that ringed the room’s circular walls could be seen the entire cityscape of St. Louis, from the weblike streetlights of the western suburbs, to the long dark patch of Forest Park in the center of the northern plain, to the lighted skyscrapers of the downtown area, with the Gateway Arch rising in the distance as a giant silver staple against the eastern horizon. Even if the camper lamps had been switched off, the observation deck would have been bright with the city’s nocturnal shine.

Yet there were other lights inside the observation deck as well. Two portable computers arranged next to each other on the floor beneath the eastern windows emitted a frail blue glow that silhouetted a figure seated before them.

The man turned around to look at us as we entered the cupola, then he grunted as he pushed himself off the floor and walked into the lamplight.

“Mr. Rosen-” he began.

“Dr. Frankenstein, I presume.”

The man whom I had first seen a couple of days earlier at the reception didn’t seem to be insulted. “My friends usually call me Dick,” Richard Payson-Smith said sotto voce as he proffered his hand. “I trust you’ve met my loyal assistant Igor.”

“We’ve talked.” I reached out and grasped his hand. Oxford accent and all, Richard Payson-Smith wasn’t quite what I had expected. I had anticipated meeting a priggish, humorless academician, the stereotypical British scientist. Payson-Smith, firm of handshake and gawky of build, resembled a weird cross between King Charles and Doctor Who.

“Sorry to have put you out so much,” he went on, releasing my hand and stepping back a little, “but it’s important that you see what’s going on right now.”

“And that is …?”

He idly scratched at his bearded chin as he turned toward the two computers on the floor. “Well,” he said in a thoughtful drawl, staring at their screens, “if we can get our friend Ruby to cooperate, we’re trying to plumb the eidetic memory of the world’s first fully functional artificial life-form, ruin my former employer, bring down a powerful conspiracy within the United States government, and save our arses.”

“That’s all?”

“Hmm. Yes, quite.”

Morgan and I chuckled as Dick shrugged beneath his dirty fisherman’s sweater and glanced back at me. “Not necessarily in that order, of course,” he added, “but who’s counting? Want some coffee?”

“Thanks, but I brought my own.” I pulled the still-unopened can of beer Chevy Dick had given me out of my jacket pocket. Morgan watched with frank envy as I popped the top and took a swig.

“Suit yourself.” Payson-Smith walked across the room, knelt beside the propane stove, and picked up an aluminum pot from the grill. “I’ll settle for this bitter swill … as if I haven’t had enough already.”

I watched as Tiptree’s former chief cyberneticist poured overheated coffee into two paper cups. Dr. Frankenstein or not, the man looked skinny and vulnerable in the dim lamplight. He was clearly uncomfortable, locked away in a cold, dark castle that vaguely resembled the Bloody Tower. “So,” I said after a moment, “what’s with the setup here?”

“Hmm? The computers?”

“Uh-huh.” I walked over to the two laptops on the floor. The one on the left was a new Apple, the other an old, heavy-duty Compaq; they were hardwired together through their serial ports. An external hard drive and a small HP Deskjet printer were tucked between them. “I take it you’re interfaced with Ruby.”

“We are.” Payson-Smith stood up, handed one coffee to Morgan, then walked over to join me. “We’re linked with Ruby Fulcrum through cellular modem … and, by the way, we’ve got them running off the tower’s electrical current, in case you’re wondering … and we’ve been running two programs since we moved in here.”

He lowered himself to the floor in front of the two laptops; I squatted on my haunches next to him. “This one,” he said, pointing to the Apple on the left, “is running a search-and-retrieve program through all the government databases it can access … ERA, other federal and state agencies, municipal government files, subcontractors to Tiptree, whatever it’s been able to burrow into.”

I looked closer; page after page of computer files flashed rapidly across the screen, pausing only long enough for a black cursor to skim through the lines. Every so often, the cursor would pause and enclose a particular word or phrase within a blue box before moving on again. “We’re using a hypertext feature,” Richard went on. “Ruby has been taught to look for certain key words and names. When she finds occurrences of these words or names, she copies the file containing them in a subdirectory elsewhere in her network and adds a coded prefix next to it. Later on, Jeff and I sort through those documents and find the ones pertinent to our interests.”

“Which are …?”

Richard took another sip from his coffee and scowled. “Damned stuff tastes like ink,” he muttered and put the cup aside before looking at me again. “We’re collecting evidence of the conspiracy, including tracking down as many participants as we can find. When we’ve compiled enough documentation, we’ll edit the whole thing and have Ruby e-mail it to as many news agencies and public interest groups as we can.”

“Such as newspapers, TV networks?”

He nodded quickly. “All that, yes. We’re also sending copies to the ACLU, Public Citizen, the Rainbow Coalition, the three major political parties, various other nongovernment watchdog organizations, and so forth.”

“And the Big Muddy, I hope.”

Payson-Smith smiled. “And your own paper, of course. In fact …”

He pointed to the stack of printout I had noticed earlier. “In fact, you’re going to get the scoop on this before anyone else. That’s the first batch from our search. Everything we’ve found about ERA’s involvement in St. Louis, including the development of Ruby Fulcrum itself and the Sentinel program … it’s all in there, or at least as much as we’ve printed so far.”

He frowned as he glanced at the printer. “Just as well, I suppose. The blamed ink cartridges are beginning to run out on us …”

Who cared? I would have settled for dry impressions on paper. I started to stand up, but Payson-Smith grabbed my arm, stopping me from diving into the stack. “Look at it later,” he said. “That’s only the tip of the iceberg.”

I wrenched my eyes away from the printouts, gazing again at the Apple laptop. More documents flashed across its screen; I caught a glimpse of the ERA logo at the top of one page. “ERA doesn’t know what you’re doing?”

Payson-Smith shook his head regretfully. “Unfortunately,” he said, “since they’re aware of Ruby’s very existence, they must know what we’re up to. She’s already informed us of a number of virus hunter/killers that have been introduced in the net during the last twenty-four hours. Ruby has no trouble tracking them down and deciphering their source codes, but we’re still afraid that the opposition may get wise and develop a program she can’t defeat.”

“ERA shut down a few nodes within the last few hours,” Jeff Morgan said.

He stood at a window behind us, peering down at Grand through the eyepiece of a Russian-made night-vision scope; no wonder he had been able to see me coming through the park. Morgan was probably the serious camper who had outfitted this hideout, considering all the outdoors supplies they had up here.

“They’ve also gone dark on several frequencies,” Morgan went on, watching the street intently. “They figured out that Ruby can scan cellular channels, so they’ve been using some other means of communication we can’t intercept.” He shrugged. “Semaphore, sign language, I dunno what, but they’ve got to be getting desperate by now.”

“Sure sounds like it.” I thought for a moment before the obvious question occurred to me. “If you’re using cellular modem, can’t they trace the signal?”

Payson-Smith sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “Unfortunately,” he said, “they can indeed. Ruby’s jumping channels every few minutes and blocking their remote tracking systems, but all they really need to do is conduct a block-by-block search through RF scanners. Any car passing on the street could be someone trying to lock on to us-”

“Or chopper.”

“Or by helicopter, yes, but that’s not our only concern.” He pointed to the Compaq laptop on the right. Its screen depicted a Mercator projection of the North American hemisphere; thin red lines curved across the map, weaving parabolic traces across the United States.

“That’s the orbital footprint of Sentinel 1,” Richard said. “As you can see, it regularly passes above almost every point in this country. Right now it’s …”

He studied the celestial coordinates in a bar at the bottom of the screen. “Somewhere over the Pacific, not far from the southern California coastline,” he continued. “It’s off screen right now, but in about a minute or so it’ll be over the United States again, and in another fifteen minutes it’ll be over Missouri … and here is why that matters.”

He pointed behind the two computers. For the first time, I noticed a flat gray coaxial cable running from the back of the computer to a window; the window was cracked open slightly, allowing the cable to pass over the narrow sill.

“We’ve got a portable satellite transceiver dish rigged on the ledge,” Richard said. “It’s oriented to precisely the right azimuth that Sentinel will follow when it passes over St. Louis. When this occurs, Ruby will uplink with Sentinel and order it to disengage itself from the Air Force space center in Colorado.”

I stared at the wire. Beside the fact of its technological complexity, there was also the human factor; it must have taken some nerve to hang out a window over a sheer drop to put the portable dish in place. “You can do this?” I asked.

“Certainly.” Payson-Smith was almost smug now. “After all, Ruby’s primary function was to act as the c-cube system for Sentinel. Her node is already in place aboard the satellite … it’ll be no more problem for her to communicate with Sentinel than for one of us to call up a long-lost brother. But the main trick will be establishing a direct uplink with the bird.”

On the Compaq’s screen a tiny red dot had suddenly appeared over the California coast. As I watched, it began to edge closer toward San Diego. “Why can’t you tell Ruby to access Sentinel now?” I asked. “If it-she-can run through the system and crack any source code it wants to, then why can’t it override Colorado?”

Payson-Smith folded his arms together. “Ruby isn’t a simple worm or virus,” he said. “Her architecture is much more complex than that. It takes her a while to infiltrate the nets, since she has to hide herself at the same time she’s installing a memory-resident. To make it short, she hasn’t been able to crack the Colorado computers quite yet.” He shrugged his shoulders. “In another few days, yes, but …”

“So why can’t you just wait?”

“Look here.” He pointed at a line in Sentinel’s footprint that passed over the Pacific northwest. “In about eighteen hours, the satellite will pass directly over the border between Oregon and California … the southern border of Cascadia. When that occurs, it’ll be able to open fire upon Cascadian defense forces. Now, what do you think that means?”

I stared at the screen. I considered all that I learned. I reached a basic conclusion …

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

Now it all clicked together. Sentinel 1 could wipe out the renegade National Guard forces that had been established in southern Oregon, thereby leaving Cascadia open to attack from the U.S. Army units mobilized to northern California.

Yet, even worse than that, it would give the conspirators their window of opportunity. If everything Ruby Fulcrum had discovered was correct, then an outbreak of civil war in the Northwest would allow the fanatics to call for a declaration of martial law throughout the rest of the country, to “protect” against civil insurrections by Cascadian sympathizers.

Martial law enforced by ERA troops and a high-energy laser that passed over the continent once every few hours. In short, it would be the beginning of the end for free society in the United States.

“And if you can’t …?” I began.

Then I heard something and I stopped talking.

Out in the predawn darkness beyond the observation deck windows, from somewhere not far away, there was a faint yet nonetheless familiar mechanical whine … then a dense, atmospheric chopping noise, like cutlasses carving through thick air.

Richard heard it, too. He raised his head, listening intently to the sound as it came closer.

“Not now,” he said softly, almost as if in supplication. “Oh, dear Christ, not now …”

Helicopter rotors, closing in on the water tower.