Armageddon Crazy

"Come on, damn it."

The phone warbled, and he grabbed for it like a starving man grabbing fora crust. "Carlisle."

There was a synthivoice at the other end, only barely cutting through the hiss created by multiple scrambling. "The Vulture has landed."

That was it. The signal was clear. Larry Faithful was down on Liberty Island. The Dreisler plot was going ahead, and from that moment on there was absolutely no turning back. It was win – or lose everything. He broke the co

"Reeves." The detective sounded tense. He clearly had a good idea how far out on a limb they were, even if he did not know the real reasons.

"It's me, Carlisle. I just received the signal that I've been waiting for. It's time to go. Are you still in a position to seal all the entrances to the building?"

"Shield controls are right in front of me."

"So seal us in."

Still cradling the phone under his chin, Carlisle tapped a code into his computer. An image of the exterior of the main entrance came up on the primary screen while the smaller ones showed split screens of the other entrances. The two deacon guards outside the main doors spun around in amazement as the heavy steel shutters started to roll down. One of them drew his pistol. Carlisle wondered what the man intended to do. The shutters could stop a rocket attack. Neither of the men seemed to have the presence of mind to duck back inside before the shutters closed completely.

"Damn fools," Carlisle grunted.

Reeves was back on the line. "The shop's shut, Lieutenant."

"Okay. So send the one squad up to the roof and the other to the communications center. We need to secure them both as quickly as possible."

"Where will you be?"

"I'm coming down to communications with you. Meet me at the elevators."

Kline

It was four o'clock – time for Cynthia to load the final stage of the program. After that, her work would be done. Her instructions were to leave the building as quickly as possible and go to the Eastside Heliport where she would be contacted and, presumably, taken either to a safe house or out of the country altogether. She fed in the diskette. The primary screen flickered and a message appeared.

THIS PROGRAM HAS TO BE FED INTO THE MAIN ACCESS GRID IN SECTION C70. GO THERE IMMEDIATELY.

THE SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS ARE DOWN SO YOU WILL NOT BE DETECTED.

She thought about the gun in her handbag. Nobody had told her to come armed, but there had been such a strange atmosphere around the CCC complex for the last few days that she had decided to bring a token of personal insurance. She had felt a little trepidation about bringing the little palm gun through the weapon detectors in the lobby, but if anything was going to get past, it was the lightweight, plastic Browning. If she had really reached the end of her assignment, she had to be extremely careful. Since she had been kept so much in the dark, she had no way of telling what might be coming to a head in some other part of the operation. There was also the chance that one of her superiors had decided that she was expendable. It had happened before and would certainly happen again. When she had first volunteered for service in the United States, she had known that there was a chance she might be killed. If nothing else, the suicide cap in one of her back molars was a constant reminder. She did not intend to go without a struggle, however. As far as she was concerned, there were not many fates worse than death, and passive acceptance was a betrayal of the principles for which she was fighting.

She stood up and slipped the diskette into her pocket. There was only one other person in the section: Toni, who had also pulled duty for that crucial Sunday, was watching soap opera reruns on her primary screen. Most of the girls had wangled invitations to see the president. A number had also been transferred out to God knew where after their deacon boyfriends had been arrested by Internal Affairs. Cynthia concealed the Browning in the palm of her hand. In training camp, they had called it the princess pistol.

"I'm going to the little girls' room," she a

Toni did not even bother to look up from Tender Time. Cynthia left the work area and hurried down the corridor in the direction of the seventy section where the unfiltered landline link to Virginia Beach was housed. She wondered if Harry Carlisle was in the building. He had been acting so strange since he had come back from his week-long disappearance. They had talked on the phone, but he had been so tense and distant that she had become half convinced that he knew what she was.

She reached the entrance to C70. The empty corridors were very spooky. The complex was sinister enough when the corridors were bustling with the business of God and justice. Now, without the hurrying people, an aura of dread pervaded, as if something evil and threatening was lurking around every brightly lit corner.

C70 was a closed white door. As she walked up to it, a synthivoice made clear just how closed it was.

"This is a class A security area. Identify yourself and produce authority for access."

That seemed to be the end of her mission. Somebody somewhere had screwed up. There was no way that she could get into C70. She turned to go. The synthivoice stopped her dead.

"Your authority is accepted. Proceed."

The door slid open. Cynthia walked in. She had expected it to close behind her, but it did not. Feeling a little uncomfortable, she surveyed the room. It was large and white, bare except for the terminal against the far wall. Only twice in her life had she seen anything quite so complex. It had three tiers of keyboards, eight monitors, and even provision for DNI leads. Large letters were flashing on the central monitor.

She sat down in the workstation's large white leather chair, wondering who routinely used the thing. It had certainly not been designed for underlings. She fed in the disk. The screens all lit up. A large cartoon vulture appeared on the primary screen. It lazily flapped it wings.

The vulture flapped its wings once more, and then the screen cleared.

THE PROGRAM IS LOADED – THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUBMISSION.

She removed the diskette. It was time to get the hell out of there. She looked up from the monitor and, to her horror, saw Deacon Winters standing in the open doorway with a big Moss-berg pointed at her. The expression on his face was an unpleasant leer.

"So what do you think you're doing in here?"

Winters

Winters had been paired with a deacon called Gresler – John Wayne Gresler. He was a hard, pious, and, Winters suspected, brutal man. Promotion had passed him by, and he seemed content to remain a solid foot soldier in the battle against the forces of evil. Closed and silent, he had a face as yielding as a granite mountainside. Along with Winters, he had been assigned to C section. Everyone expected it to be a milk run. Although the surveillance cameras were out, a number of deacons had reported that there was only a handful of women up there. Winters and Gresler were to go up there and, as fast as possible, make certain that such was still the case, then use the override cha

When they reached the floor, the two of them split up to check through the numbered work sections. It hardly seemed worth bothering. As predicted, the place was like a high-tech morgue. Winters was working his way down through the high seventies when he spotted something that was not quite as it should have been. The class A, ID only, security door to area C70 was jammed in the open position, and a red warning light was flashing on the wall above it. A class A door never remained open.