Daniel Suarez - Influx

“If you’d like us to safeguard your technologies until your—”

“I find it irritating that you are supposedly superintelligent and yet somehow do not understand the meaning of the word no . It’s one reason why having an AI in charge of BTC Russia is so disappointing—it’s like talking to a high IQ child. You have no life experience, and you ask impertinent questions. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a breakfast meeting.” He cut the line.

Morrison folded his arms. “The vultures are circling.”

“But in this case the vultures are heavily armed. I’m starting to think L-329 didn’t take over the Russian division—that Director Hollinger put it in charge to spite me. Just to make sure I wouldn’t get control of their portfolio.”

The technical operations officer’s hologram appeared yet again. “Sir, we have a remotely controlled vehicle approaching from the north. It’s a UPS delivery van, but it appears to be transporting radiological material.”

“Oh for chrissakes…”

Morrison brought up some surveillance holograms of his own. “Where?”

The officer’s hologram looked to him. “Washington Boulevard, sir. Uniformed military personnel are cordoning off the downtown area several blocks away.”

Morrison pondered the satellite image of the UPS truck, moving toward them in the nearly deserted four A.M. streets. “Tactical nuke most likely, an MADM—maybe two, three kilotons.” He looked to the ceiling. “Varuna, what would a detonation of that magnitude do to our surface structure?”

A holographic model of the neighborhood around the building appeared—and was quickly deformed by a slow-motion, blinding nuclear explosion that leveled multiple city blocks in every direction.

BTC headquarters remained, however.

“Such an explosion would strip away the concrete facade and might penetrate the diamond-aggregate nanorod curtain wall in several places. Damage to surrounding civilian and government structures would be catastrophic.”

Hedrick looked truly annoyed. “This is all-out war.”

“Could be a neutron bomb. A massive dose of radiation. Little explosive damage.”

“Either way…” He spoke to the operations officer. “Jam every radio frequency for two miles.”

“Yes, sir.”

They watched as moments later the UPS truck started to wander in its lane, then finally came to a stop a half mile away.

Varuna’s voice sounded again. “Mr. Director, let me alert you to a gathering military force elsewhere in the city.”

Morrison glowered at the UPS truck on-screen. “Do we send someone to go get it?”

“Don’t bother.” Hedrick examined other screens Varuna was bringing to his attention now—close-ups zooming in from orbit. Dozens of armored military vehicles were forming into columns miles away, mobilizing.

The operations officer appeared again. “Heavy artillery is coming out of cover ten miles to the east.”

Morrison looked toward Hedrick. “They’re doing this the old-fashioned way. Probably planned to breach our perimeter and send troops in afterward.”

Hedrick gripped the arms of his chair in rage. “I’m finished with half measures.” Hedrick brought up a hologram of another operations officer.

“Yes, sir?”

“Activate Kratos. I have a list of targets…”

Staff Sergeant Randall Wilkes stared down the wide, sculpture-studded length of Washington Boulevard. His National Guard military police unit had done as instructed and set up a roadblock at Clifford—closing off this portion of downtown to all traffic. They were to let civilians out of the area but let no one in. It was a damned strange training exercise, to inconvenience people who were just trying to get to work.

And what about the people who lived in the pricey condos to either side? He didn’t spend a lot of time up here, but he could only imagine how much the condos were going for, and he knew if he’d laid down that kind of cash, he wouldn’t be too thrilled with the military doing training exercises in the middle of the street at the crack of dawn. This wasn’t North Korea.

Operation Rubicon had been strange all around so far. Wilkes waved on a newspaper delivery truck as it came out of the downtown area in the predawn. He looked across at the four up-armored Humvees in his platoon. They had occupied the street corners and set up police sawhorses blocking the road and sidewalks. An early jogger had been turned away—and wasn’t too happy to hear this was a training exercise, but that he’d nonetheless be arrested if he continued. Some corporate lawyer threatened to sue them, too, but then he ran off the other way.

And Wilkes hadn’t heard anything about this operation until forty-eight hours ago. He’d gotten a call telling him there was a mandatory training exercise—his normal one-weekend-a-month duty be damned—and here he was. His orders were to secure the intersection and wait for a column of military vehicles to move in from the north. They were to open up the cordon to let them pass, and then reblockade the street and await further orders. Some War on Terror training exercise, he supposed—the whole federal courthouse area was down Washington a half mile or so. He figured it was special operations stuff.

But radios had been down for the past ten minutes. Cell phones, too. He suspected that was part of the exercise—to see how the units handled the loss of communications.

Just then he saw the captain’s Humvee approaching fast, and Wilkes walked to meet it as it rolled to a stop on the sidewalk. Captain Lawrence, a county judge, stepped one foot out and peered over the armored door. “All comms are out. Prepare to part those roadblocks. You’ve got a column of friendlies coming in fast from the north. They’ll be here in thirty, so hustle it!”

Wilkes whistled and hand-signaled his men, then replied, “You got it, Captain.” He then started toward the nearest sawhorses. They were each fifteen feet long. “Hey, Martin! Robbie! Get ready to move these fast. We got vehicles coming through, and they aren’t stopping for shit!”

The captain got back in his Humvee, and it took off down a side street. The rest of Wilkes’s platoon scrambled to grab the ends of the sawhorses, and they moved a couple out of the way in advance.

Wilkes moved into the center of the boulevard, standing on the grassy meridian. It was about twenty feet wide, and he wanted the vehicles to see him signaling as they approached. And he could see their headlights—even though it was light enough to run without them. Damn! This was some exercise. There was a long line of vehicles. They were coming down all four lanes on both sides of the street. They seemed to be following Baghdad road rules, too—high speed, civilians be damned. Leading the charge were half a dozen M1 Abrams tanks—their turbofan engines waking up the neighborhood. Wilkes could see lights going on in the windows of buildings all around them. Bewildered faces peering down.

Behind the tanks were dozens of Stryker armored vehicles. The whole column was moving thirty or forty miles an hour. This was insanely irresponsible. “Goddamnit! Get these blockades out of the way!”

His men scrambled to move the heavy sawhorses—and they damned near did it, too. One of the lead Abrams smashed through one remaining sawhorse, blasting it into pieces—one of which shattered the window of a parked car.

“Goddamnit. This is a frickin’ training exercise…”

But no one heard him as the rest of the tanks and Strykers roared past, their CROWS autoturrets scanning apartment windows above, scaring the hell out of people.

Wilkes was a Detroit cop, and he just threw up his hands and looked to his men. “This is crazy! What are they doing?” He hoped no one had live ammunition.