He drove around all day, aimlessly wandering, then around quitting time for the boys and girls at the Annex he returned to check in the truck. He sweated here, praying they didn’t check in back. No, they didn’t even think of it. They will from now on, Danny thought happily as he parked the truck in a space where the tail end more or less pointed toward the 50 story USFMC building across the street. Hello JTV, he thought. I’ve got a surprise for you.
There was no one in sight as he climbed out of the truck and hooked the recharge cable up. Not even the security AI would be able to see that the recharge connection had been rewired to send the current to the device inside. Regardless, Danny’s heart was beating like a mad drummer, a beat-feet musician who’d had too much Mataphin. For a moment it felt like his heart beats were ringing like pistol shots, KaPow KaPow KaPow! He opened the back of the truck just wide enough so that he could crawl in, and this for sure would cause a security AI to flash a indicator to some guard … if, of course, a security AI were watching him. Danny had seen no obvious video pickup within his sight. He locked the door shut and waited.
No guards came.
He set the alarm on his watch and tried to get a few hours sleep. Images drifted up to him, images that had haunted him for years. The deep purple flashes that he was never sure was actual light or just some strange after-image of something he couldn’t see … the ruined villages, the dead people, the dead animals, the dead trees, the dead ants stopped in their tracks at the entrance to their dead ant hill. Danny remembered the propaganda and the real thing, and the difference between the two which had twisted his soul out of shape, nearly killing it, forever crippling it.
Unlike Dodd, Danny had seen action. One firefight. The enemy had been armed with vintage Arabian machine guns that did nothing but jam. Danny and his Sergeant had wiped out the entire enemy squad with five blasts from their rifles. One of the enemy, mortally wounded, managed to hit Danny in the arm with a rock.
It wasn’t a world war. It wasn’t even a war against nations.
It was a Bank action, a foreclosure on a loan. The entire South America Coalition, buried under the impossible debt owed to the world banks, banded together and declared their debts null and void. The global economy collapsed. The United Nations were angry – the world as they knew it was ending. Strike back, they said.
The world banks and corporations said, Foreclose! Repossess!
Russia made verbal protests yet sent aid to American troops.
International conglomerates acquired tracts of land equal in size to most European nations, including Russia’s NCCTZ Corp., and all this made possible by the grace of America’s Freedom Of Business laws. For once everyone was working together to save humanity, but at the price … no, they didn’t acknowledge it, nobody acknowledged it, and nobody really knew except for those pour souls who’d actually been there when it happened, and for those pour souls to which it had happened.
Danny dozed for a while, then his alarm went off. It was 10:00 PM. He touched a button on the side, silencing it, then said goodbye to it. He threw a switch and the EMP cannon began a relatively low-power emission, warming itself up and conveniently scrambling all the security monitors within the Annex – or so Danny hoped. That’s what they told him it should do, anyway. He unlocked the door and slid it open, jumping out and walking quickly across the yard to the Annex itself. There was a buzzing sound, and the large double-wide doors to the mechanic’s garage were going thud-thud as the locks opened and closed to the beat of a EMP-effected circuit. Danny looked at his watch; it was flashing and scrolling a parade of garbage characters.
He had a lock-pick kit in his pocket he didn’t need. He waited for the door lock to thud open and then pulled it up before it locked again. The door slid up into the wall, and Danny entered.
The recharge system for the delivery truck fleet was to his left. It was little more than a large transformer hooked to the building’s fusion generator. Danny quickly undid the wingnuts holding down the panel and then shut the system down. A loop of heat-resistant superconducting cable hung around his neck; he removed it, cut it into a straight length, and then short circuited the charge cable leading to his truck with main line voltage straight from the fusion generator. He looked at the large switch that would send the current down the line, and thought, I’m not throwing that with my bare hands. He had to hurry because now that no power was going to the EMP cannon, some or all of the security monitors might be working. Somewhere in the distance he heard a bell ringing. He looked around the garage for a broom or anything that had a long wooden handle. There was nothing.
I can’t throw that switch with my bare hands, he thought again.
Right beside him was a folding plastic chair. Yes, he thought, you will work. He folded it up and placed one leg against the switch, ready to push it down. He closed his eyes. He took deep breaths. When 230,000 volts arced down that line and hit that cannon, it was going to be one hell of a show.
He opened his eyes and checked to make sure the leg of the chair was in firm position to push down on the switch. It was, all he had to was push down on the chair. Danny closed his eyes again, took a few more deep breaths. The bell was still ringing in the distance, and he thought he could make out shouting voices. He took another deep breath, and once more peeked to make sure the chair leg was positioned right. Christ, he thought, just do it.
Just DO it.
Okay. He put his free hand over his closed eyes. The chair was light in his other hand. He gripped it tightly, and pushed down.
There was lightning in the room, he saw it as a bright red flash through his hand and closed eyelids. The building rang, the metal bending and twisting. Plaster rained down on him in sudden darkness. He felt it hitting him and wondered what it was. He was dizzy and vaguely nauseous.
Danny wandered out of the garage in a daze, looking up into the night sky and seeing stars. All the yard lights were off. All the lights in the skyscraper across the street were off. The only lights in sight were the merry flames flickering up from the burning delivery truck. It was warped all out of shape, like a toy made from wet clay, bent, twisted and compressed.
Danny was impressed.
Fighting his way out of the daze, he walked quickly then broke into a run, heading for the inner fence which, he hoped, was not electrified. He jumped, grabbed the edge at the top and swung himself over and dropped to the ground on the other side. He landed on his left leg at a wrong angle and it collapsed under him. I’m not young anymore, Danny thought, landing on his butt. He sat there a moment, dealing with pain.
The fence made a snapping, sizzling sound. Lights started blinking on. Danny stood up and fell back down again, half because of his leg and half because he was dizzy. He tried again, unconsciously reaching for the electric fence for support.
Realizing what he was doing at the last moment, he pulled his hand back and let himself fall over again. Danny rolled away from the fence and tried one more time.
The shouting he’d been hearing was getting loud now. Danny made it to his feet and limped over to the outer wall, which was tall and made of brick. Running feet pounded the cement on the other side. Gates were being pulled open by hand, and men and women in uniform were rushing into the annex yard. They headed for the fire equipment.
Trying to be inconspicuous, Danny jumped up and caught the edge of the brick wall, pulling himself up and peering over the edge. People were coming out of the building across the street like a swarm of mad bees. Danny pulled himself over, swinging down and hanging a moment before dropping. He landed on his good leg and started limping away.
A hand grabbed him by the arm. “Hold it!”
Danny suppressed his reflex to strike out. “There’s a fire!”
he said.
“What were you doing on the wall?” It was a uniformed security guard with dark features, frightened eyes.