Written in Fire (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 3) (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

“You can go in now, sir,” the assistant said. “Can I get—” The ripping whine of a circular saw cut him off. When it died, he said, “Can I get you—” Again the saw screamed through lumber. The moment it stopped, the man opened his mouth to try again.

“I’m fine.” Secretary of Defense Owen Leahy rose and walked into what had been the Speaker’s office.

From behind a desk of heavy wood, Gabriela Ramirez nodded at him, held up one finger, and continued talking on the phone. “I understand. Yes. I’m trying to get you that assistance now.” A pause. “Well, Governor, perhaps if you had declared a state of emergency when the Children of Darwin first attacked, you wouldn’t be in this position. Yes. You’re welcome.” She tugged the headset from her ear and tossed it on the desk.

Leahy said, “Madam President.”

“Owen,” she said. Out in the hallway, a pneumatic nail gun went
thunk, thunk, thunk
, the sound only slightly more muffled here. “Sorry about the racket. You’d think that the Speaker’s office would have been pretty secure in the first place, but evidently the Secret Service disagrees.”

In 1947, Congress had codified the line of presidential succession to seventeen places, although in the decades since, there had never been a need to go beyond the VP. Then in a span of three months one president was impeached and his successor murdered, and now Gabriela Ramirez, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, had become the president of the United States.

“I think the Secret Service is right,” Leahy said. “You should relocate to Camp David for now.”

“America needs to know their government is still functioning.”

“America needs you to stay alive.”

“What do you think about the yahoos in the desert?”

“Seriously, ma’am, Camp David is a fortress—”

“Wyoming, outside Rawlins. This morning’s security briefing said there are a couple of thousand now?”

“About five thousand,” Leahy said. “With more arriving every day. They’re chartering buses, coming in pickup trucks with gun racks in the back. The camp is a mile from the New Canaan Holdfast fence line. Tri-d news picking up the story hasn’t helped. May as well be running advertisements.”

“All civilians?”

“Depends what you mean. They’re survivalists, right-wingers, that sort of thing. Plenty are former soldiers. But there’s no structure. Just disparate groups keeping to their own. Drinking beer and yelling anti-abnorm slurs. Firing guns in the air.”

“You’re not concerned.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say?”

“That I’m monitoring the situation.”

“Fine. Mind if we walk and talk? I’ve got an AFL-CIO thing.” Gabriela Ramirez stood, took a charcoal suit jacket from her chair back, and slid into it. “What’s the status on the military retrograde?”

“On schedule. All nuclear warheads were secured following December 1st. As of this morning, all ground-based missiles have been deactivated. Those carried by—”

“I’m sorry, but when you say ‘deactivated’—there’s no way that Erik Epstein can reactivate them?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You’re sure? His computer virus launched a missile that destroyed the White House, and no one thought he could do that.”

Leahy fought the urge to grit his teeth, said, “They’ve been physically disabled. Like removing the spark plugs from a car. Nothing a computer can do about that.”

The president took a final slug of coffee, set the mug on her desk, and started for the door. Leahy held it open. To her assistant, Ramirez said, “Geoff, tell them I’m coming down.” Out in the hallway, the cacophony of construction noise bounced off the polished marble. Sawdust hazed the air. Two Secret Service agents fell into step in front of them, another two behind.

“What about naval vessels?”

“Long-range ordnance has been disabled on ships and submarines both. Which leaves us vulnerable to enemies abroad—”

“The air force?”

Leahy sighed. “All but mission-critical flights have been grounded, and those planes are flying disarmed. Throughout the entire military, distributed communications are being replaced with hard networks, computer-aided navigation and vehicle support are being taken offline, front-line technology is being gutted . . . look, ma’am, my office sent over a detailed report, but the short answer is that we are well on our way to turning the clock back to 1910.”

“Are you on board with this, Owen?” Ramirez glanced sideways at him. “Speak your mind.”

“I’m the secretary of defense of the United States. I’ve spent my whole life strengthening America’s military, and I don’t enjoy tearing it apart.”

“I understand,” she said. “But for whatever reason, on December 1st, Erik Epstein limited his attack to the White House and the soldiers threatening the New Canaan Holdfast. His computer virus resulted in almost eighty thousand deaths, but it could have killed tens of millions. Epstein had complete operational control. He could have annihilated our military and vaporized our cities with our own weapons. He claims he didn’t because he was only acting in self-defense, but I won’t leave him the opportunity to change his mind.”

Acting in self-defense,
Leahy thought.
She doesn’t know it, but what that really means is, responding to my order to attack. My illegal order.

Since 1986, when the existence of the abnorms was first discovered, America had been heading toward open conflict. The gifted were simply too powerful. Though they accounted for only one percent of the population, they were explicitly better than the other 99 percent. Demigods in a world of mortals. Unchecked, they would make regular Americans obsolete—or slaves.

Along with a few like-minded individuals, Leahy had fought to contain them. Public dissent and fear had been sowed. Special academies had been developed to reeducate the most powerful. And after John Smith planted bombs that destroyed the stock exchange and killed more than a thousand people, legislation had been passed to implant microchips in every abnorm in America. In the months leading up to the December 1st attacks, Leahy thought they had things under control. They had been so close.

But then President Walker’s role in the plan had been uncovered, and he’d been impeached and brought up on charges. Vice President Lionel Clay was a good man but too weak for the big chair; he’d only been put on the ticket for electoral math reasons. As further terrorist attacks rocked America and an abnorm splinter group known as the Children of Darwin isolated three cities, Clay had dithered and hesitated. He’d even been on the verge of allowing the New Canaan Holdfast, Erik Epstein’s abnorm enclave, to secede.

There had been no choice but to force his hand. So Leahy had ordered an attack on the NCH.

He hadn’t made the decision alone. He owed his career and allegiance to Terence Mitchum, officially the number three man at the NSA. In reality, Mitchum had been the leader of their shadow government, a clear-eyed patriot who had understood that protecting a nation required firm action. Unfortunately, Mitchum had been in the White House when the missile struck.
One more casualty in a war the rest of the nation is only just acknowledging.

Leahy said, “Self-defense or no, once we’ve successfully retrograded the military to boots and bayonets, we’re going to have to invade.”

“I haven’t made that decision.”

“Madam President, the public—”

“I know that everybody wants payback. But at some point we’re committing to an ugly path. There has to be a solution besides genocide.”

They stepped outside Longworth onto South Capitol. The Secret Service had commandeered the narrow street and built heavy gates and guard posts at either end. The only vehicles allowed were the presidential motorcade, today four armored Escalades, six motorcycles, and the limo itself. The morning was cold, exhaust steaming from the running vehicles, low clouds roiling above.

“I agree,” Leahy said. “I don’t want to wipe out the gifted. But we have to dismantle the New Canaan Holdfast. And we have to implement the Monitoring Oversight Initiative. Sign it into law and we can have 95 percent of abnorms microchipped within three months. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but it will work.”

“What if they don’t comply? What if they’d rather fight to the death?”

“In that case—”

A blast of sound and force tossed him into the air.

Swirling sky, gray marble, then concrete rushing toward him, falling, he was falling, and he put his hands out as he slammed into the street, a shrieking hum in his ears like an endless scream, and all around smoke and fire and bodies and people staggering, bleeding, an agent staring at her left shoulder where her arm no longer hung, her face lit by the burning ruin of the limousine.

Leahy gasped, coughed, saw blood spatter the street along with flesh—he’d bitten part of his tongue off. There it was, part of his tongue, lying on the concrete.

Hands seized him roughly, hauled him up, and he flailed, threw an elbow that was blocked, his arms were pinned as two men dragged him, and he tried to tell the agents to wait, that he needed his tongue, but then one of the Escalades was in front of him, agents leaning against the hood with sidearms out, firing gunshots he could barely hear, aiming in different directions—it wasn’t just a bomb, it was an assault—and then the agents hurled him in the open door of the SUV where he collided with someone, the president, both of them landing in a tangle, the door slamming shut, someone thumping on it, and before either he or Ramirez could move, the driver jammed on the gas and the truck lurched, tossing them against the backseat, more gunfire, he could hear it more clearly now, fast
pop-pop-pops
, then a shivering crunch and they were flung again, the Escalade clipping something, out the window an inferno, the limousine, and then a burst of speed as the driver cleared it.

Leahy looked down, realized he was on top of the president. He started to move, then caught himself and shielded her body with his, lying on her like a lover, their faces inches apart, her eyes dilated and cheek torn. He could smell smoke and her perfume as his mouth filled with blood and the truck gained speed and the driver said something he couldn’t hear through the hum in his ears and the thought that kept repeating: a voice in his head saying, over and over, that this was on him.

CHAPTER 4

Luke Hammond woke screaming without making a sound.

The screaming: watching his sons burn alive.

Joshua burning in the sky as his Wyvern came apart around him, jet fuel exploding in a wash of light sucked into his lungs to scorch him from the inside out as he fell, endlessly. Zack burning in his tank, trapped in twisted metal, hair on fire and skin bubbling as thick black polymer smoke choked the world.

Every time he’d closed his eyes for the last two weeks, he watched them die.

The silence: forty years of service beginning on long-range recon patrol in Viet Nam. LRRP, meaning way the hell out of bounds, so at nineteen he’d learned to wake fully aware and in control, because those who woke foggy died.

Wan sunlight beat down from a white Wyoming sky. Ninety-three million miles away, the sun was, and since his sons had died that number somehow seemed to mean something. Not the digits, the distance, the way something that means everything can also be forever out of reach.

“He’s here.”

Luke sat up, leaned against the frame of the pickup bed. December, and chilly, though thankfully not much snow. Snow might have done them in. He’d retired from the army two years ago, but he still did an immediate situational assessment, just like every time he woke, even though until recently the sitrep went something like:
0317 HOURS, AWAKENED BY STRONG NEED TO URINATE
.

Today, though—lately, though.

Situation report: The beautiful boys who used to run at you, arms wide, saying, “Up! Up!” are dead. The sun-stained hours pushing them on swings and dabbing hydrogen peroxide on skinned knees did not protect them. The moments they fell asleep in your arms and you, bone-tired and sore, stayed where you were because you knew that this transient sweetness needed to be drunk deep—those moments did not keep them safe. The thousands of times you told them you loved them provided no shelter.

Your sons are dead. Burned alive. They are ninety-three million miles away.

What is left of you is fifty-nine years old. Washboard belly and pincushion feet. You were sleeping in the cold metal bed of your pickup truck, five miles outside Rawlins, Wyoming, a town built for passing through. Surrounded by thousands of similarly wounded men and women, all gathered for a purpose none of you can quite name.

“He’s here.”

Luke pushed the blankets aside and slid out of the truck. To the soldier who’d woken him, he said, “They still coming in?”

“Yes, sir. Faster than ever.”

He nodded. Drew a deep breath, the air cold in his lungs
—Josh’s lungs were scorched by a fire that burned at a thousand degrees—
and went to meet his old boss.

Major General Samuel Miller, retired, wore the weather-beaten features Luke associated with cowboys, but his eyes had a city-savvy that weighed, measured, and collated the world. He wore fatigues with rank insignia, two stars on center chest, and looked more comfortable in the ACUs than in the slacks-and-polo combo he’d worn the last time they’d been together.

“Luke,” the general said, shaking his hand and then pulling him into a hug. “I’m so sorry. Josh and Zack were good men. Good soldiers.”

“Thank you.”

His old friend studied him. “How are you holding up?”

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

The general nodded. “Stupid question. I’m sorry.”

“Let me show you around.”

They climbed into his truck, the interior as spotless as the body. He’d once taken pride in such things. Had once thought they mattered. Luke turned up the heat and then started moving, the dry ground crunching beneath his tires. “More than eight thousand people here now, and more arriving every hour.”

The encampment was without order, tents flung up wherever people had stopped. They stood in loose groups, leaning against vehicles and talking, or warming their hands over smoldering campfires. Most had rifles slung over one shoulder or sidearms in hip holsters. They passed a motorcycle club, fifty bikes parked at precise angles, hard men drinking Budweiser beside a growing mountain of crumpled empties. The bikers nodded at Luke, and he nodded back.

“You’ve made the rounds.”

“Yeah. Ever since you said you were coming out. Softening the ground.”

“What are they like?”

“The stories are all different, and exactly the same.”

Luke gave the general a casual tour, letting him take in the whole through its parts:

A militia out of Michigan practicing maneuvers in forest-green camouflage that popped against the brown scrub. The bus they’d arrived on had once been for schoolchildren, but it was now painted with the name
T
HE
N
EW
S
ONS OF
L
IBERTY
, the letters five feet tall and gripped in the talons of a screaming eagle.

A bonfire burning, a circle of rednecks wasting a week’s worth of wood in one afternoon, Credence Clearwater blaring like this was the mother of all tailgates.

A man field-stripping a Kalashnikov while a woman smoked and watched.

A circle of soldiers, gone AWOL but still in uniform, exchanging a sort of rough laughter Luke recognized. It was the kind that stood in for tears.

General Miller said, “They’re a mess.”

“They are. But more keep coming. All they need is leadership.” He turned the truck around. “Show you something else.”

Five minutes threading through campsites took them to the northern edge of the encampment. Beyond was nothing but rocky desert and gray sky—and, a mile away, a twenty-foot fence topped with concertina wire. The boundary of the New Canaan Holdfast. Twenty-three thousand square miles of land, 24 percent of the state of Wyoming, all owned by Erik Epstein, who had turned it into a sort of abnorm Israel. Luke shut off the engine. “Looks different in person, doesn’t it?”

With the engine off, they could hear the wind, a low, mournful whistle that sounded like it had come from far away. Miller said, “I’m not going to insult you by saying that this won’t bring your sons back. But I need to know if that’s the only reason.”

“Why?”

“It’s reason enough to follow. But I want you to help lead.”

Luke stared out the window. One finger at a time, he cracked the knuckles of his left hand. When he was done, he moved to the right. “Last week, I woke up on my couch. I’d gotten drunk the night before, thought it might help me with the dreams. All that happened was that I had a hangover to deal with too. I’d fallen asleep with the tri-d on, and it was some Sunday morning news program. One of those yappy debate shows. And there was this kid. Nice hair, bright shirt, Rolex. He was talking about how maybe the best thing to do was just let the NCH secede. Give them sovereignty, get on with things.” For a moment he was back there, head cracked in a vise, teeth feeling furry, Zack’s screams ringing in his ears, and this kid on his tri-d. “And this wave of something came over me. It wasn’t anger, or hatred. It was . . . sadness. I felt sad for this kid, so ready to walk away from everything, and then it occurred to me how many others there must be like that. Next thing I knew I was in my truck, and then I was here, staring at that fence. And I wasn’t alone.”

Luke turned to his old boss. “Am I furious? Of course. Do I want revenge? Shit yeah. But it’s more than that. That land out there, past the fence, it’s still America. And I’ve spent my life defending America. I’m not ready to just let Erik Epstein destroy it, no matter how many billions he has or how much of Wyoming he owns.”

For a long moment, General Miller said nothing. Just stared at the desert and the fence with those eyes, those ever-appraising eyes.

Then he said, “Good answer.”