Freedom (42 page)

They dragged him, twisting and shouting.

But then it suddenly became much easier, and he fell to the ground. Oddly, he was also sopping wet. He turned up toward the man carrying him on his right, but saw that the soldier was missing from the waist up. The man’s severed arm still tightly gripped Sebeck. He stared at it in disbelief. It was not the sort of thing a civilized mind readily computed.

Sebeck then realized no one was holding him to his left anymore either, and when he turned he saw his other executioner’s torso had emptied its contents across the dirt. The rest of the man lay farther on.

And now Sebeck noticed that the roar of the wood chipper was punctuated with crackling gunfire and the roar of more powerful engines. He turned to see several unmanned, blade-covered motorcycles wielding twin swords, slashing at the soldiers as they raced past. Already, one of the mercenaries lay on the ground, screaming and legless. Several of the soldiers were in prone positions, firing on the motorcycles to little effect, but then clutching their eyes as green laser light played across their faces. Blinded, they tried to grope their way back to the troop carrier, but got cut down.

One of the guards managed to make it through the open armored car door, but a motorcycle followed him up the ramp and chopped him into sections with a couple swift sword slashes.

Soon their captors lay in pieces on the ground, blood everywhere, and a score of automated motorcycles slammed down hydraulic kickstands and started preening themselves like praying mantises—spinning their sword blades to clean the blood off.

Sebeck looked to Price, who sat in stunned silence, spattered in blood, but otherwise apparently okay. The only sound was the piercing drone of the wood chipper engine. Sebeck glanced around but could see only fallen bodies and pieces of bodies. He crawled on his belly toward Price, who was trying to sit up.

Price shouted. “Are you hit?”

Sebeck shook his head. “No! This is someone else’s blood!”

Just then the pack of unmanned bikes parted to make way for a lone rider in a black helmet and riding suit. He drove directly up to Price and Sebeck and looked down at them. He dismounted his bike, and suddenly all the engines turned off. A gesture of his hand sent a bolt-straight arc of electricity into the wood chipper, killing its engine as well.

As the chipper wound down, the rider removed his helmet and riding gloves revealing an unnerving sight. It was a young man, early twenties, but his eyes had been replaced with black lenses with flat black rims. Wires ran from drill holes in his bruised temples to an enclosure at the base of his neck. All of his fingers appeared to have been replaced with titanium or silver prosthetics, topped by gleaming claws. He moved stiffly, as if in pain.

The rider knelt down in front of them, staring right into Sebeck’s face with his lidless, metallic eyes. An artificial voice, deep and menacing, spoke an inch or so in front of the man’s mouth—without his lips moving. It was apparently hypersonic sound. “Where is The Major?”

Sebeck shook his head. “I don’t know, but I just left him. They took us out here.”

The rider’s expression was unreadable with his metal eyes. He stood and stared at the horizon.

“Thanks for rescuing us. Who are you?”

Price answered. “He’s Loki Stormbringer, Sergeant.” Price leaned close and whispered. “You remember—Jon Ross mentioned him. . . .”

Sebeck did remember. The most powerful sorcerer on the darknet. And almost as ruthless as the Major himself. Sebeck couldn’t help but think they deserved each other. He twisted to reveal his tied hands. “Can you please untie us, Loki?”

Loki gazed at the horizon with his dead eyes. “You should leave this place. Everything here is about to die. . . .”

With that Loki walked to his bike, and started it. His two dozen razorbacks started up as well. Then an even larger swarm of razorbacks swept past—at least a hundred strong—and Loki merged into it. A flock of dozens of microjet aircraft also howled low overhead in close formation. The entire retinue thundered into the distance, back the way the truck had brought Sebeck and Price. Back toward the center of the ranch.

Price nodded. “He’s even scarier in person.”

Sebeck started crawling toward nearby bodies. “We can probably find a knife on one of these.”

“Hey, look.”

Emerging from the edges of the wood chip piles were a couple dozen armed men in Ghillie suits. As they got closer Sebeck realized their poncho-like suits were more than just physical camouflage—they appeared to reflect whatever was on the other side of them. They were translucent.

He could see their telltale HUD glasses. They had electronic multibarrel rifles slung across their chests and gave the thumbs-up sign to Sebeck and Price as they approached.

Several of them watched the horizon and skies as a tall, muscular-looking darknet operative came up to them and flipped up his bulletproof mask to reveal that he was African American. “Are either of you hurt?”

Sebeck shook his head. “No.”

“Are you The Unnamed One and Chunky Monkey?”

Price exhaled deeply. “That’s us, man.”

“I’m Taylor. An operative named Rakh sent us to get you.”

Sebeck nodded.
Jon Ross.

He made motions with a gloved hand in D-Space as several other darknet operatives cut Sebeck and Price’s bonds. They also offered canteens to them.

He called to the others, “Morris, let’s get them some clothing and gear!”

“We’re on it.”

Price rubbed his wrists. “That was calling it pretty goddamned close!”

“Loki Stormbringer has gathered an army of machines. He’s going to attack. Many others are going to follow him in.”

“Attack? What attack?”

“We came to stop Operation Exorcist. Unmanned vehicles are opening up the roads. We’re pushing in overland.”

“You’re here for The Major and his men?”

“Yes. Have you seen him?”

Sebeck felt his temper starting to flare. “Yeah, and if you’re going after him, we’re going with you.”

O
nly on the Texas prairie could a three-thousand-square-foot home be called a bungalow. Natalie Philips’s quarters were located in a cluster of other bungalows, all done in Southwestern style—tiny Alamos of white plastered brick with flat roofs and a cosmetic bell tower. It was part of a subdivision of corporate residences located about a mile from the main house across landscaped grounds with fountains, ornamental gardens, and rows of poplars. Beyond the complex the prairie extended unbroken to the horizon. It was peaceful out here. Actual solitude.

The interiors of the bungalow were first-rate—hardwood planks, adobe walls, and hand-hewn beams. High ceilings, hand-woven rugs, and expensive-looking Southwestern art adorning the walls. The entertainment centers for each bungalow were insane. Seventy-inch plasma televisions with surround-sound stereo systems linked to an impressive music and movie library drawn off of some central server—but no Web access. No outside phone service, only in-house room service. There was a fully stocked bar and a small kitchenette with a microwave, as well as a disproportionately large dining room that could easily seat a dozen people. There was a separate servants’ entrance with a ramp for bringing in carts, connected to concealed servant paths that ran between the homes behind hedges and fences—as though they were modern Mad Ludwigs, unwilling to countenance the serving staff.

Philips sat alone at the dining room table looking at a powerful laptop linked in to the ranch’s expansive network. A laptop they’d given her and which she was certain was riddled with spyware.

Aldous Johnston had named half a dozen world-class cryptanalysts and software scientists working on Operation Exorcist—but she hadn’t actually
seen
any of them. She’d just been here, waiting. Even though this was supposed to be an emergency, they hadn’t asked her to do a damn thing. She’d left a dozen messages with Johnston’s admin assistant to find out when she’d be able to get an outside line to talk with Deputy Director Fulbright back at the NSA—as they agreed she could—but no one had gotten back to her. All she had was 24/7 access to food, music, and a huge library of movies.

With representative democracy about to be subverted, kicking back and watching television wasn’t high on her priority list. However, she’d turned on the news to give the impression that she was behaving normally. Recent experience had shown that predictable patterns of behavior were more likely to keep the data gods off her back, and she wanted to foster the belief that she could be trusted.

The news was all bad—civil unrest in the Midwest, the dollar had fallen to record lows against the euro and yuan, and stock markets around the world were incredibly volatile, spiking and falling. Chaos.

And the resounding theme of the media blitz was unmistakable:
you are not safe—you need security.

Philips listened to the news as she sat at the dining room table examining the plastic RFID bracelet affixed to her wrist. She held it up to the light to try to see through the thin plastic band. Boynton had said it was tamper-resistant, and she assumed this meant it had a wire antenna braided into its length that would be severed if the bracelet were broken. The whole ranch complex was littered with RFID readers—she’d spotted no less than six here in the bungalow. The sudden loss of a signal would undoubtedly put her unique RFID number into alarm and summon security to investigate.

Unless she could slip this digital leash, she wasn’t going to be able to escape or do anything else without their knowledge. It was becoming apparent that she was under house arrest—at least until Operation Exorcist was completed. By then it would be too late. They would have taken over the Daemon and solidified their control.

Philips knew an RFID tag was just a circuit attached to an antenna. It used energy from a radio wave to activate the circuit and broadcast its unique ID on a specific frequency. That’s how it could broadcast its location to Sky Ranch Security without needing a battery.

The ISO 15693 standard common for RFID proximity cards and mobile payment systems meant this bracelet was probably operating at 13.56 MHz—which was a commercial frequency.

Philips had attended conferences where hacker groups demonstrated homemade devices able to harvest and spoof RFID tags at will. The question was whether Philips could build something similar with the materials here in the bungalow. If she could make them think she was home when she wasn’t, she might be able to trip up their plans.

The place was packed with consumer electronics—but not a lot of them wireless. She’d gathered the few wireless devices she had onto the dining room table to examine their FCC labels.

There was the cordless phone handset and its base station—a 1.9 GHz DECT unit. Not much use. Likewise, all of the television and stereo remotes were infrared, not radio based. There was the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi transmitter in the laptop. This was a decidedly more crowded spectrum here on the ranch, but also useless for interacting at 13.56 MHz. Of course, she also had her Acura TL car remote entry key, which she recalled worked somewhere in the 300-400 MHz range, but attached to the same key chain she had her RFID gas payment fob, which she had disassembled to reveal a tiny clear plastic bulb containing a spool of copper wire connected to a small circuit board. It was the proper frequency, but there was a problem: its code was burned into the circuitry at the factory. Unchangeable—at least theoretically. And she had no specialized tools.

Philips looked back up at the cable news playing on the television. Now in addition to the fighting in the Midwest, a series of major Internet outages had begun to “grip the nation”—or so the media claimed. It was being blamed on sabotage. On domestic “terrorists” blowing up critical fiber-optic lines at vulnerable junctions. The very things they were doing to stifle dissent were being used as the justification for making draconian measures permanent. And everywhere was video of smartly attired private security forces rushing to rescue besieged towns, to restore service. How was it possible that they could do all this? How could they possibly get away with it?

Philips sighed in exasperation—but then stopped cold. On the wall next to her a message was spelled out in brilliant red laser light:

 

 

The butter knife she was planning on using as a screwdriver dropped from her hand with a clang. The glowing message changed to read:

 

 

She turned around.

There at the rear service door stood a man dressed in a black

Nomex flight suit, body armor, and utility vest. A balaclava covered his head and advanced-looking night vision goggles covered his eyes. In his gloved hands he held a laser pointing device aimed at Philips’s dining room wall.

She recovered from the shock and walked to the service door. After a moment’s hesitation she opened it.

The intruder ducked past her and closed the door, holding a gloved finger to his lips.

He pulled a wandlike device from his utility harness and started scanning the walls, light fixtures, and furniture with it.

As she watched, Philips listened to the news playing in the background, continuing its litany of financial and social woes. Philips turned up the volume.

Anji Anderson was on screen as part of a panel with other pundits. She spoke authoritatively for someone who had a few short years ago been a lifestyles reporter.
“People can’t simply blame others for their plight. They need to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, but it appears that some people don’t want to do that. They want to take from others in pursuit of what they call”
—air quotes—“ ‘
fairness.’ ”

The stranger meanwhile was teasing a small bugging device out of her dining room lamp with tweezers. He held it up for Philips to see, then placed it in one of several chambers in a small metal box.