BRADFORD CARR
“Already know about him.”
Francis smoothed the dust. ATTACK COMING. KILL US. FRAME UP.
The rat made a skittering noise. “Figured as much. Be ready to move quick. If that spell works, great. If not, we’ll come get you boys the hard way.”
FIND BUCKMINSTER FULLER N.Y. HIS SPELL.
“Not much time, but we’ll try… Oh, and I can see what you’re doing there. Draw the wavy lines first. Then put the solid shapes on top of them. Easier that way. I’ve been messing with some of the ones Sullivan’s come up with, nothing like that beast, though.”
Francis scowled at the design. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
The rat moved around for a moment. There was a tinkle of metal against the floor. “Here’s some pieces of wire and a nail I found. I did the same thing for Heinrich. Maybe you can pick your lock. I’ll be back with the cavalry tomorrow. You boys hang in there.” And then Lance was gone.
They were going to bust out of here, no matter what. With renewed determination, Francis cleared the dust and started over.
There was only so much he could tell by glassing a dark tree line over and over. The shapes of the buildings could barely be seen and there weren’t very many exterior lights. He couldn’t even pick out the guards. Sullivan finally gave up and lowered the spyglass.
Apparently their Beastie was finished scouting too, and Lance wandered over to join Sullivan on the shore. He had heard Lance’s side of the conversations with Heinrich and Francis. “How bad is it?”
“Exterior wall is solid, and our targets are buttoned up tight in the main building. I counted eighteen heavily-armed men barracked there, our boys, and half a dozen other prisoners in another area. Guards patrol outside, working in pairs. Don’t know how many, but twenty-five bunks in total, though they might sleep in shifts. We could cut the electricity and telephone lines easy enough, but they’ve got a radio transmitter so they’ll still be able to call for help.”
“Only one bridge across. Easy to block our escape, too.”
“Too bad Pirate Bob’s on the other side of the world. Being able to land an armored blimp right on top of them would be mighty convenient.”
Sullivan shook his head. “The Navy’s had their newest carrier tethered over the city since the attack. We come in by air and the Lexington will have fighters on our tail in no time.”
“We’re gonna have to work for this one.”
It was cold on the Virginia side of the river; that humid, pierce-your-clothes kind of misery that made nights like this especially bitter. Sullivan jammed his hands into his pockets and waited for the young Summoner to finish up with his spirits.
Ian was sitting on the lowered tailgate of the truck, talking to thin air. “Good work, Molly. Tell me what’s inside the loud room?” He listened intently as the invisible creature spoke in a way that only Summoners could hear. “You’re so smart. Yes you are. Who’s my good girl? Molly’s my good girl.”
“Are all of them like that?” Lance asked.
“Summoners? Believe it or not, this one seems a lot more squared away than most.” Sullivan had worked with a few different Summoners over the years, from the scouts of the 1st Volunteer to friends he’d used for detective work. Compared to the rest, Ian could interact with society rather well. He was still young, though. Maybe Summoners just got crazier with age. “What’ve you got, Ian?”
He sounded smug. “Molly is one of the sharpest spirits I can bring in. She says there’s a room at the top that’s got an engine running inside of it. It’s spinning a big ball. That’s got to be a Dymaxion.”
Sullivan was inclined to agree. The smaller one he’d found had a range of maybe fifty feet, but this one seemed to cover the whole island. They’d driven over the bridge to the D.C. side and back to test it out, and his Power hadn’t responded at all while crossing the river.
“I heard the noise upstairs,” Lance said. “I didn’t spend too much time trying to get in. The room was solid concrete with a bank door on it. But if it’s motorized, then there will be ventilation for that engine, and if there’s ventilation a rat can get in and start chewing through wires.”
“Might not be a bad idea.”
“You got any idea how bad copper wire tastes?”
“Can’t say that I do… I wonder how many of their men know what’s really going on? You know we’re going to end up having to kill some of them.”
“I know.” Lance was somber. “But if you sign up to take away innocent folks’ freedom, you better be prepared to pay with your life. I saw something else while I was in there you need to know about. There’s a command center on the main floor. Nobody’s working this late, so I did some reading. They’re making big plans.”
“More attacks to blame us for, I bet.”
“Francis tried to warn me that something’s coming, but he had no details. That wasn’t what got my attention. Bad things, Jake.”
It wasn’t like Lance to be this hesitant. “Spit it out.”
“OCI is building prison camps big enough to hold tens of thousands. They’re segregated by Active types. Places I’ve never heard of out west, Topaz and Gila River for physical Powers, Granada and Minidoka for mental. They’re got lists of names. Pages and pages of them. Who’s not a threat, who to round up, and who to exterminate.”
“Aw hell…” This was worse than imagined.
“ Exterminate, Jake. I didn’t pick the word. I didn’t make it up. It was on the title. Extermination order for undesirable Actives.”
Ian just stared at the dark mass of Mason Island. “I can’t believe that.”
Lance hawked his throat and spit in the Potomac. “Believe it, kid. It was posted on the fucking bulletin board.”
Sullivan took the spyglass out and put it back to his eye. Had it really come to this? What’s your game, Senator? But the trees held no clues.
Lance’s laugh was bitter. “OCI’s just gonna keep on pulling stunts like Miami ’til they get what they want.”
“It’s hard to believe they can hate us that much,” Ian muttered.
Sullivan wasn’t sure. Maybe it was hate for some, fear for others, but was there something more? Were Actives an excuse for a power grab? Were they pawns in some bigger game? Sullivan didn’t know, but he was damn tired of being pushed.
It was a different time, different place, and it was right in his own nation’s Capitol, but Sullivan couldn’t help but feel like he was back in the Great War, planning a raid across no-man’s-land. He had a mission, he had an enemy, and that meant that he had a purpose. If the OCI wanted a war, then they’d get one. “Let’s go home. Get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, we attack.”
“We’ve been scouted, sir,” Crow reported to his superior.
Bradford Carr had been getting ready to turn in for the evening, and was dressed in his robe savoring a pipe. He’d claimed the general’s officer’s quarters of the old Peace Ray facility as his personal suite and paid a great deal of money to have the rooms properly decorated. The plain concrete of the bunker had been paneled over with fine wood. Ornate light fixtures had replaced the wire-covered emergency bulbs. All of the furniture was huge, dark, and expensive. Crow felt like he was sitting in the salon of some upper-crust intellectual, which technically, he was.
The room was decorated with trinkets and souvenirs from the Coordinator’s travels around the world. There was a lion skin rug on the floor; the Coordinator had shot the beast himself. One wall had weapons-Zulu spears, Arabian scimitars, even an Amazonian blowgun complete with darts coated in a poison made from blue frogs. Two walls were covered in books that the Coordinator had shipped down from his private collection in Chicago. Most of those books, scrolls, and stacks of paper were about magic, personally gathered by Carr from every corner of the globe. The last wall was covered in plaques, diplomas, medals, and awards, all strategically arranged to show how much better he was than everyone else. It was the honorable Doctor Bradford Carr’s display wall of personal arrogance.