As the rebel mob on the South Lawn seethed and its vocal ruminations grew louder, Mansfield became agitated. “I think they’re getting ready to attack again,” he told Duggan. “You’ve got to try the PHAROH beam.”
“General, stop and think about what you’re doing,” Duggan protested. “You can’t use that weapon against unarmed Americans.”
“Those rioters gave up their rights when they attacked the White House,” Mansfield said. “End of conversation.”
Duggan looked back toward the National Mall, which was packed with people as far as he could see. “General, you told me yourself that authority only extends to Swarm and people who are under his neural control. Only a fraction of these people came from the rave. What about the majority who came to protest peacefully?”
Mansfield shook his head. “I’ve already lost too many men. Besides, how can you even tell them apart?”
“Swarm’s accomplices are dressed in white and wearing radio wristbands,” Duggan said. “That’s how he controls them!” Mansfield bit his lip. “General, see all those phones and cameras in the crowd? They are all capable of broadcasting live video streams. The images of PHAROH unleashed on unarmed civilians could help bring in fresh recruits. If there’s a massacre, you’ll want to be able to say you tried every contingency before resorting to extreme measures.”
Mansfield crumpled his coffee cup and threw it to the ground. “What the fuck do you know about what I’ll want?” he growled. “I’m not going to give Swarm’s followers the chance to regroup and attack, not if there’s even a small chance I can end this now. Colonel Swain, activate Hail Mary.”
Duggan expected to see the soldiers raise their weapons again, but they seemed to be waiting for something. Then he heard it, a faint whirring, getting louder and closer. Cara saw them first, like a formation of geese approaching over the White House.
“Jake, what are they …?”
The drones circled and hovered over the South Lawn, their shadows rippling like crosshairs over the rebels, who, sensing the danger, began to twirl and buzz like warrior bees preparing to protect the hive.
“Get down!” Duggan shouted to Cara, pulling her away from the exposed catwalk before he typed into his phone.
Jduggan: Eric, how long will it take to fire PHAROH?
EEric: About 30 seconds
Jduggan: Make it 15
Eric saluted from across the perimeter and moved to the PHAROH’s control panel. “Put this on.” Duggan handed Cara a microwave deflector headset and took one for himself.
“Jake,” Cara whispered, “What are you doing?”
“I’m tired of cleaning up other people’s messes,” he said.
A rumbling buzz filled the battlefield as PHAROH cleared its throat and unleashed its sonic fury. At first, nothing happened. Then the rebels and soldiers nearest to PHAROH’s swiveling dish began to contort and buckle, and Duggan could see the beam’s effects rippling across the battleground in an undulating wave. Overhead, the drones suddenly wobbled and dropped to the grass like dead birds. For a while, there was nothing but PHAROH’s unmerciful howl, an invisible hand clearing the airwaves of everything but its own pulverizing frequency. Duggan motioned to Eric to cut the power, and as if drained from the effort of breaking up the fight, PHAROH emitted a final high-pitched aria and shut down.
There was a new text from Eric: a thumbs up emoji followed by a smiley face and the words: We need to talk. I’ll come to you
Mansfield’s radio crackled. “Get those things back in the air,” he shouted. “Well then, fix it, goddammit!” He gave Duggan a venomous stare. “If you had anything to do with this, so help me, I’ll have you arrested!”
“Excuse me, General,” Swain stammered, “something’s happening.”
The crowd had begun to speak, a jumbled mishmash of repeated phrases and words that slowly started to coalesce and make sense. It was like listening to a child learn the words to a hymn, a fractured poem of broken promises that resonated far beyond the aggregation of souls on the White House South Lawn and the thousands more spilling across the capitol and beyond. “We … the States of … United people,” thousands of voices proclaimed, “do this tranquility blessings … insure a Constitution … and secure ourselves America … tranquility do ordain … perfect general welfare … establish the justice … in form to order … more common liberty …”
Duggan was struck by the revealed gravity of scrambled words being uttered, not in the context of history but spoken with the sting of battle still fresh and the dead and wounded still present. Was it possible that Donald Westlake, an unknown airman from Spokane, Washington, had come to represent a set of principles and convictions worth fighting and dying for, worth marching on the capitol itself, to be endorsed and memorialized by a bio-emergent incantation of the people?
Jake, it’s really important.
Before Duggan could respond to Eric’s message, his phone rang.
“We’ve got a problem here,” JT announced in a voice that bordered on panic. “There’s been some kind of breach.” Duggan could hear shouting and muffled gunfire in the background.
“The president?”
“The president and his family are safe in the control bunker, and the rest of us are barricaded in the Oval Office. Three White House staffers are down in the West Wing, and the NSA microwave team is missing.”
“What do you mean by missing?”
“We can’t find them, and they’re not responding to texts or calls.”
“What about the White House guards?”
“Jake, it’s total bedlam in here!” JT shouted. “There’s heavy metal music on the PA system, and everybody’s gone crazy. We can turn the speakers off in here, but it’s blasting through the whole building. The guards outside are fighting and shooting each other—it’s a shit show.”
“Stay where you are. And whatever happens, keep the president away from any kind of music or noise. Same for you.”
Eric, still flushed and winded from his sprint to the command post, was waiting to talk.
“Do you have any more of those microwave deflectors?” Duggan asked him.
“Yeah, about half a dozen. They’re right here in my backpack. Why?”
“I think somebody’s broadcasting zeph.r inside the White House. We’ve got to help JT.”
“My God. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Eric unlocked his phone and opened the APB with Kenneth Ulrich’s picture on it. “This guy, the one in the terrorist alert, I think I saw him going into the White House a couple hours ago. He looks different from the picture—no glasses and buzz cut—but I’m pretty sure it was him.”
“Was he with the NSA microwave security team?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Gimme a sec.”
Duggan took Cara’s hands. “I need you to stay here and keep me posted on what’s happening outside. Stay close to the general and keep your phone handy.”
“What about me?” Eric asked.
“Get out the deflectors. I need to have a chat with the general.”
Duggan ignored Mansfield’s hostile sneer as he approached. “General, the White House is under attack. I think it’s Ulrich. One of my men from Homeland Security is inside with the president now. They’re okay for the moment, but shots have been fired and they don’t have much time.”
The general shook his head and cursed. “I believe you, Duggan,” Mansfield said, “but let the Secret Service and the White House guard do its duty. I don’t have orders to enter the White House, and you don’t either.”
“Sir, according to my man inside, the White House guard has been compromised by electromagnetic beams. I’m asking you for a handful of your men to help me get to source of the signal before it’s too late.”
“The White House is already protected from microwave attacks, Duggan. Plus, all the doors are auto-secured during a red alert.”
“Sir, the White House is fortified against microwave attacks from the outside, not the inside. I know this man, I know what he’s trying to do, and I’ve got six deflector headsets for anyone you can spare to go in there and help me stop him.” Seeing Mansfield hesitate, Duggan added, “Isn’t protecting the president your core directive?”
“General,” Swain interrupted, “what about the Executive Office Building?”
Mansfield looked out across the lawn to the White House as if trying to imagine what was happening inside. He turned to Swain. “Captain, take five men from your unit and accompany Agent Duggen to the Oval office to defend the president until backup troops arrive. And keep your radio on.”
Duggan was a few steps away when Mansfield called him back. “Agent Duggan, do you have a firearm?”
“No, Sir.”
Mansfield took out his gun and handed it to him. “Make it count,” he said.
Eric handed deflectors to Swain and his men. “I’ll stay with Cara,” he said. “Don’t get shot.”
Duggan followed Swain and his squad away from the White House command post to the Seventeenth Street entrance to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where an armed officer led them through the lobby and into the basement. The officer unlocked a heavy steel door that opened into to a long concrete corridor. “Follow me,” he said. Duggan had heard about the honeycomb of subterranean passages under the White House, but he never thought he’d be inside one carrying a loaded gun. The officer halted in from of a large blue door and pressed the code to unlock it. “Follow this passage to the stairs,” he said. “You’ll come out next to the kitchen pantry. Go up one level and the Oval Office will be to your right.”
“Put on your headphones,” Duggan told the men.
Swain nodded, and the group followed the officer’s directions. Even before they emerged onto a carpeted hallway redecorated with blood-splattered wallpaper and splintered antiques, Duggan could hear the crunching bass and drums of heavy metal blasting from the White House sound system. They’d only taken a few steps when a deranged White House employee lunged at them with a knife. Swain dispatched the attacker with a single shot and kept the group moving until they reached a large varnished wooden door.
Duggan took out his phone and texted JT.
“Good to see you, Jake,” JT said as he let them in and locked the door behind them.
“Likewise.”
There were about a dozen men in the Oval Office, some of them wounded, all of them in various states of shock and disorientation. The air reeked of sweat, smoke, and gunpowder, and it was impossible to ignore the muffled din of heavy metal rock seeping through the door. Framed paintings of presidents lined the walls, but Duggan was looking for one in particular.
“Don’t worry,” JT said, reading Duggan’s thoughts. “POTUS is secure in a microwave-proof underground safe room. He’s been monitoring everything inside and outside on video monitors.”
“What about in here?”
JT grinned. “Ever since Nixon, there’s no taping or recording of any kind allowed in the Oval Office, which includes any kind of audio speaker system. The steel-reinforced doors have held the terrorists back so far. But I can’t say the same for the rest of the building.”
Duggan looked at Swain. “How long before the cavalry gets here?”
“Twenty minutes max.”
Duggan looked at his watch. “Tell the troops to stand down.”
Swain and JT looked at him blankly. “Eric thinks he saw Ulrich heading to the White House with the NSA security team,” he explained. “The last thing we need is a battalion of armed soldiers coming in here and going bonkers.”
“Sorry,” Swain said. “I can’t stop troops once we’re inside. For all they know, the terrorists could be holding guns to our heads.”
“Fair enough,” Duggan said. “But then we’ve only got a few minutes to find Ulrich and deactivate zeph.r before all holy hell breaks loose.”
“Son of a bitch!” JT’s face contorted as he connected the dots. “That’s exactly what Ulrich wants, isn’t it? He’s setting a zeph.r booby trap for the reinforcements!”
“Can you get me directions from here to the PA system control room?”
“Give me a sec.” JT whipped out his phone and dialed the NCSD hotline, scribbling notes on the president’s notepad as he listened. “You’ve got to backtrack to the first level, next to the bowling alley.”
Duggan handed the notes to Swain. “Can you get us there?”
“I’m sure gonna try.”
“Keep your deflector headsets on and shoot to kill,” Duggan ordered. “JT, lock the door behind us and keep your phone handy.”
Even with the headsets on, the blaring guitars were harsh and unnerving, as were the deep gouges and bullet holes perforating the walls. Swain took point with Duggan and the other men close behind. The hallway was deserted, but the spent shells on the floor and the blood smears on the walls told another story. Passing a window, Duggan looked out and saw combat helicopters and a column of armored personnel carriers taking positions around the north facade. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the unprotected troops stormed the building. Ulrich’s infiltration of the NSA security squad was unnerving enough, but the immediate emergency was to find and deactivate zeph.r. Ulrich’s ultimate goal was more ambitious than Duggan had originally thought: he wasn’t trying to punish the US government; he was trying to erase it.
“This way,” Swain said, leading them down a stairway littered with debris and broken bodies. Duggan advanced with the group, trying to sidestep the pools of blood on the landing, gratefully gripping Mansfield’s parting gift. At the far end of a red-carpeted corridor, a man in bespoke suit carrying a machine gun sprayed bullets in their direction. When Swain and his men returned fire, the man looked at his watch before moving on in search of easier prey. The shouts and screams were getting louder, mixing with the music and sputtering firearms, completing the macabre spectacle of the political epicenter of the world’s most powerful country being overrun by gun-toting maniacs, a White House turned madhouse.
As they fought their way forward through ornate rooms of shattered Baccarat crystal and ruined national heirlooms, Duggan couldn’t help wondering if this was the nightmare that the Founding Fathers envisioned when they had warned against “the tyranny of the majority.” A disconcerting thought crossed Duggan’s mind: wasn’t technology, in its relentless march toward automation and software-enhanced efficiency, inevitably setting the stage for direct digital democracy? Wasn’t the rusty machinery of representative government ripe for the same disruptive algorithms that had ruthlessly revamped and reformatted countless industries by replacing people with programs that did their jobs better and faster, emancipated from human error and cleansed of emotional congestion? Were the bio-emergent masses standing on the White House lawn, with their ability to think and act instantly and in concert, the last stand of government by and for the people—or the beginning of the end of it?
Swain halted at the intersection of two corridors and pointed to a door about thirty feet to the side. “That’s it,” he said as a machine gun rattled from a conference room in the other direction, pinning them down. As Swain’s men returned fire, the captain waved for Duggan to keep moving. “Go on—we’ll cover you.”
The door to the audio control room was slightly ajar. Duggan discerned a figure leaning over a conglomeration of computer routers and monitors, turning dials and pressing buttons like a demented DJ. Somehow, the man sensed Duggan’s presence and wheeled around. It was Ulrich, a specter in the flesh, fine-tuning his zeph.r playlist for a fresh batch of impressionable minds.
“Homeland Security!” Duggan shouted, raising his pistol. “Hands where I can see them. You’re under arrest!”
The tear gas bomb exploded just outside the control room door, throwing Duggan to the floor. Dazed but still conscious, he spotted Ulrich’s silhouette advancing toward him in the haze and squeezed off two rounds before the fumes blinded him. Duggan braced himself for the blow that never came, using his wadded shirt as a mask and managing to get to his feet and reenter the control room. He closed the door behind him and waited a few seconds for his vision to clear. Then he raised his gun and emptied the rest of his clip into the White House audio control panel. As he blasted away at the blinking components, Duggan knew this was the closest he would ever get to dispensing physical justice to zeph.r and every other amoral algorithm and errant equation that had no qualms or accountability, feeling visceral satisfaction as he took aim at the hard drive habitat of contagious worms and slave-bots, obliterating the outsourced operating systems of self-serving servers and microwave beams that festered in government labs and loud music, but not quite blotting out the knowing chuckle that Ulrich had made as he skittered away, confident he would escape and that their paths would cross again at some undetermined time and place because whatever the outcome of this particular skirmish, the vendetta between them was just getting started.
Duggan felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Swain was staring at the bullet-riddled debris from Duggan’s shooting spree.
“Yeah,” Duggan said. “I never cared much for heavy metal.”
“Me neither.”
Duggan emerged a few minutes later on the south portico, disoriented and covered in dust. The South Lawn was still teeming with Swarm’s blank-faced battalions—murmuring, yelping, watching, waiting. Duggan was positive that Swarm was out there somewhere in the crowd. He stared back into the mosaic of faces, trying to match one of them with the man he had shot at on the tower at X-ist. Did Swarm know that Ulrich’s plot had been at least temporarily derailed? And if so, how would that affect his next move?
On a platform to Duggan’s left, a team of workers was hastily setting up a holographic projector and loudspeakers. What Duggan didn’t know was that during his pursuit of Ulrich inside the White House, a proposed constitutional amendment and the software plans for PHAROH had been anonymously released into the ether, where anyone and everyone could download them. Was it the work of Swarm or the Meta Militia? Time would tell. But what Duggan wanted more than anything right now was a drink.
A text from Eric told Duggan to look at the attached copy of the doctrine of freedom of mind:
All inhabitants of the United States, regardless of whether they were born in this country or not, regardless of age or economic status, in times of war or peace, are guaranteed the right for their minds to be free of interference, or coercion, or control by natural or artificial means, whether by radio waves, sounds, images, chemicals or any other device created to alter the thoughts of any person, without their knowledge or consent. This right is irrevocable and shall be protected and enforced as long as this nation is governed by the regulations and principles of the Constitution of the United States of America.”
The document reminded Duggan of a college course he took on the drafting of the Constitution. He recalled a quote from the first essay of The Federalist Papers, in which Alexander Hamilton laid out the “important question” that was about to be decided, namely “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.” The very definition of democracy, Duggan knew, was based on the assumption of human reason, the God-given ability to think freely that was the essential requirement for civil reflection and choice. It followed that without the emancipation of mind, without the public recognition and protection of unfettered thought, there could be no liberty or democracy, only the tyranny of accident and force.
Moments later, a live apparition of the president materialized before a crowd that had swelled to several hundred thousand, with untold millions more watching on television and the Internet. The president’s ashen face and humble posture showed a man who felt the weight of history in the making.
“My fellow Americans,” he began. “What has happened here today will never be forgotten. I have heard you. And I give you my word that I will begin working at once to prepare a new amendment to the Constitution containing the words spoken here today and ensuring freedom of mind for all in this land. And I vow that before this Congress adjourns, I will submit the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the states for speedy ratification. In the meantime, I am declaring an immediate suspension of further research or deployment of any device or weapon designed to alter, control, or otherwise infringe on brain activity, freedom of thought, or the independence of the human mind. Finally, my fellow Americans, I now ask you to leave here peaceably and go back to your homes so I can begin the important work that lies ahead.”
The president’s image flickered and faded, and the blue bracelets in the crowd also blinked off.
“It’s over,” Duggan said.
“You think the president will keep his promise?” Eric asked.
“I hope so—for everybody’s sake.”
As the crowd began to disperse, a lone figure in white stared up at the elevated platform where Duggan was standing. Eric pointed. “Look, Agent Duggan. Isn’t that Swarm down there?”
Duggan braced himself for some sign or mental signal that the dark-haired young man below was the same person who had dared to hot-wire the genetic roadmap of the human race, fend off the US Army, and bring the federal government to a standstill. The man briefly locked eyes with Duggan and nodded before letting himself be swallowed by the receding human tide.
“Jake,” Cara asked, “do you think it was him?”
Duggan took her hand and turned to go. “Plenty of people look like that,” he said. “He could have been anybody.”