BlackWatch

Yup. Definitely. So his thinking wasn't quite clear, was it? More like testosterone addled...but even so, he had to listen...

"That's why we go in daylight, Dad," Austin said. "In and out, a fast pick-up. Three transports, four at the most."

"You say that like three or four transport aircraft will suddenly grow out of this rock! Austin, the SkunkWorks will have to modify existing vehicles, and that could take weeks." Thomas looked at his son -- until a week ago he had been just a fleeting memory -- and he hated himself for the pain he saw in his boy's eyes. "Son, we just don't have weeks. Hell, we may not even have days. The surveillance cams showed them moving heavy equipment down to the area around the ramp last night. They'll move on it soon. We just...we're simply running out of time!"

"Can't we just blow the access tunnel? Keep them from getting to the platform?"

"And then what, Austin! Come on, think it through! How would you move our people down to the platform -- and get them out?"

"That's not my point, Dad. Simply denying access to the secret is the point. Once the Senatus knows the BlackWatch have developed the infrastructure to move people in and out of one city, they'll make the next leap, that all their cities have been compromised, and then what? They found this one using fairly primitive sonar equipment; how long before the others are discovered?"

"Believe or not, son, we thought about that once upon a time."

"And?"

Thomas chimed in now. "Defensive measures were included in their construction."

"Like?" Jamie asked.

"Chemical weapons, for one."

"Dad, you've got to be kidding! That's insane!"

Thomas nodded. "I agree, but the option's there if needed. The second option is only partly in place. We prepositioned arms for a large assault force near each platform, including a couple of tracked vehicles with mini-guns, vehicles designed to operate in the tunnels..."

"But you said..."

"...that they'd breech the platform soon. Yeah, I know. That's the problem. We'd have to move on that option within hours." Thomas paused, looked at his fingers again. "There is one final solution. We send a car down to the platform -- with an armed warhead."

"What?!" Cried Austin.

"Dad?" James said, noting that his little brother had started shaking. "What about the old airport, the one by the beach? Do they still use it?"

"The old LAX? Yeah, it's still there. Maybe three or four shuttle flights in and out every month, but remember, the city's biggest desalinization plant is about a mile south of it. Heavily fortified airspace, lots of cops and militia, lots of missile batteries."

"What if we could get all our people to assemble nearby? Couldn't we take one of the First Republic jets, maybe with a small assault force to secure the runway, make a fast pick-up and get out before they knew we'd been there?"

Stormgren shook his head. "I remember the security in the area. I know where every camera is, how many security people they have, even response times and patrol patterns..."

"How could you possibly know that, Dad?" Austin sighed.

Jamie put his hand on his brother's shoulder, shook his head when they made eye contact.

"Oh. I forgot, Dad. Sorry."

"No problem." Thomas looked away; why was being a part of the so-called Hive so stigmatized? He felt it, though, everywhere he went. Like he was different now, that his in-depth knowledge made him suspect. But his older boy looked excited now, aggressive and excited. "Jamie, you look like you're about to bust...what are you thinking?"

"A diversion, Dad. Focus their attention elsewhere while we slip into LAX."

"The tunnel?" Thomas Stormgren said as a grin stretched across his face, or...perhaps something bigger?

"Why not?"

"We'd have to pick up about forty people, Jamie. At least that many. And it'll probably be a hot pick-up." A hot L-Z...? Wasn't that what he used to call it. He looked at his boys, looked at them the way all father's look at sons about to venture in harm's way. Pride and fear. Pride and... "Now what, Austin?!"

"Well, if we go that route, I want to get Sinn."

"I know you do, son. Have you thought of the risks involved?"

He sighed, looked dejected. "Oh, I know it won't work. She'd be hard to lure in, let alone capture. Then she'd be a nightmare, trying to escape."

Thomas Stormgren looked at Austin. What was the boy thinking? What was so important about this girl?

"Dad," Jamie interrupted his thinking again. "About forty, you think?"

"Uh-huh. You have something in mind?"

James Stormgren smiled. It turned out he did -- but first, Thomas decided to discuss this -- with the BlackWatch, and an old friend.

+++++

While Tribonian Thor Bergtor-son listened to Stormgren, he grew increasingly aware of the predicament he was in -- he and all the other BlackWatch secreted in the city. Getting Austin/Aurelius back to Chisasibi in time had been a priority, and a fitting gift for his old friend, but no one had planned on losing the Mag-Lev so soon as a consequence. Now, with the Emissary's departure only weeks away, all their plans, and most developed carefully over the last five years, would have to be revamped.

Of most immediate importance?

Could new escape routes to the airport be developed -- in the time they had left? All their lines of support could be exposed at any minute; security could be compromised at any level, and this meant the end of the line for the BlackWatch on the west coast. And that meant 40 men and women would be sacrificed to poor planning. His poor planning.

No, he had to come up with something. Some sort of diversion, something that would cause confusion from Rome to Jerusalem to Los Angeles. But what...?

The Watchers in Davos, Bergtor-son knew, were collating information, developing a workable plan based on probabilities and expected outcomes, but no plan was ever perfect, and outcomes were almost never what you expected them to be. Still, he had learned the Watchers liked the initial framework developed by James Stormgren and were busily refining the concept, so he had to accept that this plan -- or something close to it -- would land on his desk within hours, and he'd have to implement it quickly.

It was time, he knew, to activate his escape network. It was time to move the next pawn into place.

And time to take their queen.

+++++

"Who is that?" the Commandant asked. "Is he here in the city?"

She and Sinn were watching the video of an intercept, a private commlink playing on Tribonian Bertorson's desktop monitor, but the audio was encrypted and could not be hacked, so they had no way to know what was being said.

"There is no exact match on file but the computer has developed probabilities. The most likely match is a man named Thomas Stormgren..."

"What!" the Commandant jumped up so suddenly she almost knocked her chair over. Her voice grew old and sinister: "Stormgren? Here in the city?"

"There's no way of knowing that, Commandant." Sinn had learned from hard experience to back-off when the Commandant spoke this way. She looked like a snake, a snake coiled to strike, and anyone in her way could get killed.

"The boy you like. Krül-son." The Commandant's eyes were dark now, dark with banked-down flames.

"What of him?"

"That was his birth name. Stormgren. Austin Stormgren." The Commandant looked at the screen, then at the Justinian. The young girl looked sure of herself, of her facts anyway. But what else did she know?

"Then, Commandant, we know a link exists between this man Stormgren and the Tribonian, and if so, there is a link between the Tribonian and the attack on our officers."

The Commandant nodded, her eyes narrowed to glowing slits. "If you are correct, our government has been compromised at every level."

"Why do you say..."

"Think of it, Sinn!" the Commandant said as she slammed her hand down on the desktop. "The highest law enforcement officer in the region is linked to this tunnel! But what is this tunnel? Where does it lead? But then of even more importance, we must assume that these people have been using this facility for quite some time, to move people and supplies in and out of the city. First Republic supplies, I would assume?"

"Yes, Commandant. Autopsy recovered bullets from .223 caliber rifles, common in that era's weaponry. Probably M-16s, or M4s."

"Of course. But what of this boy? What if, as you suspect, he was part of this plan from the beginning? What would this mean? What have we missed? And who would be capable of such a plan?" The Commandant bunched her lips, her eyes burned now, burned with hatred. "I must go to the Council of Elders in Jerusalem."

"What of the Senatus?"

"They may well be compromised," the commandant said as she called up another screen, typed on her glass desktop and waited for the results to stream onto the main wall-screen. "I will need to leave tonight."

"What of the Tribonian, Commandant?"

"He must not be alerted. Begin reinforcing our positions around the tunnel, surround the access-way and prepare a major assault on the facility for tomorrow evening. We will move on the Tribonian at the same time. I should return from New Jerusalem by late afternoon, and I want to be here to supervise that bastard's interrogation."

A cold chill ran down the Justinian's spine when she saw the look of cold evil in the woman's eyes. No, she wouldn't want to be in his shoes, not then...

+++++

A Watcher processes intercepts streaming in from Los Angeles and passes these latest bits on to the group.

Plans are adjusted, probabilities and outcomes recomputed. A new strategy develops even as they monitor the Senatus' plans, and the weapon they ready to deploy

Eyes blink rapidly now, and under a mountain in central Switzerland there is understanding that the end is near...and that there is no turning back from the chosen course.

+++++

As ground troops mass around a hastily drawn perimeter in the scorched remains of west-side Los Angeles, an air car hovers above a concealed access-way. It lies within piles of rubble, astride the crumbled façade of an abandoned auto dealership. The pilot concentrates on the scene below; the Justinian behind him is talking to Tribonian Bergtor-son, who nominally presides over such operations from the Judicial Ministry downtown.

"Permission to commence, Tribonian?"

"Permission granted, Justinian Sinn. I wish you success, and please, be careful."

"Thank you, Tribonian." She changed frequency, looked at the teams gathered below. "Marmot One, commence operation; Marmot Two, you are ordered to stand-by positions!" Then, on a separate frequency: "Blowback, prepare to go on my signal."

"Blowback, roger."

Men in gray move first and they are observed on screens around the world running down the once-secret ramp, this first team races to set their explosive charges around the vault door. A minute later they are seen running back up the ramp, taking cover beside the ruins. The Justinian's air-car increases altitude and backs away from the site as one of the men below begins the countdown.

Sensors in the car record the explosion, and the blast is felt by people more than fifteen miles away, though the Justinian is first to see the result of this explosion with her eyes.

The earth shudders, then the outlines of a crater, more than a hundred meters wide, forms around the auto dealership -- and all the ruins immediately around it. The earth heaves once -- then settles with a deep sigh, and fires break out amidst scattered piles of wood and old automobile tires; Sinn sees the twisted remains of the vault door through cascades of falling earth, and rough outlines of the tunnel emerge through roiling smoke and rubble, still falling back into the earth. The pilot drops lower, hits the area with flood-lights and trains the intense beam down the tunnel.

"Goddamn!" Sinn August-dottir shouts on the command circuit. "Goddamn-it all to Hell!"

"Justinian! What is it? What do you see?"

Through the clearing smoke -- about a hundred yards further down the tunnel -- she can just make-out another vault door, and this one appears larger than the first, and somehow she knows this one will be much stronger, much more difficult to pierce.

"There's another vault down there! Get another charge ready!"

"Yes, Justinian, but what about the crater walls, and the tunnel? Will we need to shore up the walls first?"

"There isn't time...move your men, now!"

The Justinian's air car hovered over the scene while the first group ran back down into the earth -- but a moment later these men come tumbling out of the tunnel -- coughing and rubbing their eyes. The Justinian looked at her monitor, saw blood coming out of one of the men's mouth and nose.

"Goddamn-goddamn-goddamn! They are using gas!" the Justinian screamed on the command circuit. "Chemical protection suits, NOW!"

Then there is another explosion.

This one is deep inside the earth, and massive. Alarms inside the air car are howling, the pilot struggling for control. Radiation alarms begin pinging, then screaming for attention, and the Justinian see's the outlines of a new crater form on her display. It is miles across, impossible to tell from this altitude, but she knows a nuclear warhead has just been detonated under the city.

She turns and looks at the entrance to the caves under the Santa Monica Mountains, where the future city waits for completeion, where her future resides. It is impossible for her eyes to take in, to understand, but the mountain range seems to leap up into the sky a few meters, then settle in on itself.

And then the San Andreas fault let's go, one last time.

+++++

The Commandant had just re-boarded her jet in New Jerusalem -- what was once called Avignon, in a country known for a time as France -- and the data-link on her computer went active as the jet taxied to the active runway. She enabled the link, watched video of the operation back home as it streamed onto her monitor, and as she watched she opened a link to monitor the command circuit.

"Justinian!" she hears one voice among many as the chatter dies down, "radiation monitors are off the scale!"

She watches helplessly as Sinn's air car begins spinning violently, as EMP devastates the cars fly-by-war controls and other systems, and with her heart full of black hatred, she watches as wounded men stagger around during the earthquakes. It will be hours, at least, before medical teams can get to the scene, before all their injured can be evacuated from the debris-field.

Then another circuit comes alive. "Commandant, the council has approved Crimson Eye. We will execute in 24 hours."

"Understood," she says, but she is not prepared to believe such a thing could finally really happen. She switches frequency again, to the command circuit in Saint Angeles, hoping to hear Sinn's voice, but she knows this is a pointless gesture. Indeed, all is lost now, and she thinks that perhaps it's better to have died in combat, without knowing what comes next.

+++++

The air car settled on the beach, near the point where Sunset Boulevard once joined the Pacific Coast Highway. Her pilot seemed shaken but was otherwise uninjured, and the Justinian helped him restart systems, then changed frequency on her comms panel, linked to her men gathered on the fifth floor of the Judicial Ministry:

"Operation Blowback, you are Case Green, repeat green, go for green," she said over the encrypted link.

"Blowback is green," she heard in reply, and a dozen commandos began their assault of Tribonian Bergtor-son's office -- with heavy force. Doors are blown from their hinges, windows shatter and books scatter to the floor. The commandos enter the Tribonian's inner office, and...

"...Justinian, this is Blowback, negative contact, repeat, negative contact..."

"Affirmative. Proceed to secondary." Sinn shakes, then screams in frustration: "Goddamn!"

Then she hears the commandant's voice on the circuit and looks up to see her perplexed face on the screen.

"Justinian! What has happened?"

"He wasn't there! But he was five minutes ago, and the office was surrounded!"

"We are compromised, Justinian. Assume all communications are monitored!"

"But, how..."

"Do the best you can! Stick to the plan, try to get him into custody. I am en route now."

Red lights began flashing on Sinn's central display, new data streamed onto the screen and she began to tremble as the picture began to take shape in her mind.

"Commandant, are you receiving this new data from Rampart?"

"No? What is happening?"

"Commandant, there have been attacks at desalinization plants all over the region, and the Institute reports gunfire within several dorm-pods. Central Division has been bombed and heavy casualties are reported."

"Bombed? What do you mean, bombed? An aircraft?"

"No Commandant, first reports indicate IEDs of some sort, perhaps car-bombs."

"I fear the End Times are upon us now, Justinian. We must pray together, soon."

Perplexed now, the Justinian looked at another screen. The Commandant's ETA was three hours, and that meant...

"The sun will have been up for an hour," Sinn sighed, and the pilot came on line.

"Pardon, Justinian, did you say something?"

She changed frequency back to the primary command net.

"Status! Can anyone tell me what progress we are making?!" she yelled.

"Justinian!" It was a man's voice. He sounded tired, overwhelmed.

"Commander Weblen-son! What is happening there?"

"The men were suiting-up; another charge being prepared when the detonation occurred. There is no longer any need, Justinian. The facility, whatever it was, is gone."

"Very well; get your men out of the area as quickly as you can."

"Yes, Justinian."

+++++

Thorsten Weblen-son smiled. He had positioned their best troops, those most loyal to the Commandant, around the access-way and had totally committed them to this operation. And while the Commandant's best troops were so occupied, he had quite deliberately left key points around the city unguarded. Would the device be big enough, he wondered?

It was a bold plan. Would it work?

"Snowbird 2, Snowbird 2, this is Streetsweeper."

Streetsweeper! The Tribonian! He had escaped!

"Streetsweeper," Weblen-son said into the small transceiver he had placed over his right ear. "Streetsweeper, Snowbird 2, go ahead."

"I'm proceeding to secondary now. ETA ten. Final ETA is three hours, four minutes."

"Copy three hours four. Ten mike to Songbird."

"Roger. Advise after."

"Roger, out."

He turned to the Lieutenant by his side. "Is there anyone left?"

"Yes, Commander," the commando said, still breathing heavily. "The tunnel area is gone, the men nearest too, but there are about twenty men climbing up the debris field, from parts of the area not so heavily affected."

"The charges are in place?"

"Yessir."

"Go ahead, then. We might as well get this over with."

The second detonation wasn't nearly as large as the first. Anti-personnel fragmentation charges would spray the crater with shrapnel, killing the remaining men climbing through the debris, yet Weblen-son was a mile away from the blast, and the earth shook so violently he was knocked from his feet.

Something wasn't right. The device shouldn't have caused this much damage, and he looked towards the west, saw a small mushroom cloud fanning out over the west side of the city. A small, tactical yield warhead, he guessed, but radiation levels would spike all over the basin with this latest blast.

He called the Justinian, but his calls were met with silence, so he turned to his men. "We must leave, quickly."

+++++

Reports were coming in from all over the city. Car bombs, truck bombs, snipers hitting key facilities -- and all within moments of one another! And the Tribonian! Where had he gone? How had he had disappeared -- without a trace?! And the Commandant! She looked almost catatonic after the second, low-yield device, but this was not the time to lose your mind! Sinn August-dottir watched silently as she saw the spreading cloud...