The Olympus Device: Book Three (26 page)

It was also obvious that he was looking at the command and control of whoever was attacking the president. The array of antennas protruding from a central Humvee was one indicator; a ring of men facing outward as if to protect a VIP was another.

A face appeared in his optic, and Dusty instantly knew he was looking at Admiral Armstrong. While the Texan couldn’t hear the words, the senior military man in his crosshairs was shouting orders and pointing with aggressive gestures. No sooner than he’d appeared, the officer reentered the radio-heavy Humvee and was out of sight.

Lowering the rail gun from his shoulder, Dusty knew he was at a crossroads. Again, his mind began to reel from the possibilities. Was Armstrong really a white hat? Had the media really gotten it all wrong?

A new sound drew Dusty away from his thoughts, the men surrounding Armstrong staring into the clouds and pointing upward. The Texan watched as two attack helicopters roared overhead, their evil, wasp-like silhouettes only visible for a brief glimpse.

More shouted commands sounded from the park, Dusty again raising the rail gun to spy through the scope. Men were scrambling everywhere, most gawking toward the sky as if death was about to descend upon them from the heavens. If even half of what Dusty had read about military gunships was correct, the scared-looking troops in his optic had good reason to be concerned.

He then focused on two particular individuals who weren’t running or taking cover. They were standing on the lowered door of some armored personnel carrier, holding long tubes and scanning skyward. “Oh, shit,” the Texan whispered. “They’ve got anti-aircraft missiles.”

On cue, the thumping noise of the gunships returned, followed by the loud whoosh of two streaking missiles racing skyward.

Dusty watched in horror, following the white-hot trail of the two rockets. A second later, he cringed when dual balls of yellow and red flames appeared over the Washington sky. Pieces of burning aircraft began falling toward the earth, thoughts of the pilots and crews making the Texan’s stomach churn.

“So now I know for sure who the bad guys are,” he whispered. “It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure this mystery out. It really is a coup attempt. So what do I do about it?”

Dusty was torn. Should he help the government that had hunted him for weeks, persecuted his friends and family, and had violated every protection and covenant he expected as a freeborn American? Memories of the federal government arresting Hank and Grace, trumping up charges and violating their constitutional rights came welling up.

He stared at the burning White House, an icon of freedom and democracy the world over. The image didn’t sit well with Dusty. “That’s not how we do things,” he mumbled. “We don’t take matters into our own hands.”

His thoughts then went to Fort Knox. “Didn’t I do the exact same thing? Am I any different… Am I better than the men who are with that admiral? Didn’t I declare war on my own government?”

For a moment, the Texan considered just walking away and letting the two sides fight it out. Both had tried to exterminate him; one using the FBI snipers in Houston, the other launching missiles in St. Louis. All parties were guilty. All had overstepped the boundaries.

But then he reconsidered. “No. There is a right and a wrong here. Yes, I’ve sinned, but I never wanted power for myself.”

Dusty dialed the rail gun to 20%, checking the green LED and finding its glow reassuring. He selected a target and fired.

The shot was aimed at two armored units rolling toward the West Wing, their belt-fed weapons rattling a steady stream of heavy lead into a cluster of defenders. A tank took the blunt of the rail gun’s wrath, the inter-dimensional portal opening just forward of the engine compartment.

For just a blink of the eye, the weighty, thick Chobham reactive armor seemed to wrinkle, like an old man’s frown. Next came a white, pulsing fireball, so bright anyone looking in the general direction had to turn away. The tank’s turret shot skyward as if propelled by a rocket, the multi-ton hunk of hardware spinning and whirling above the surrounding skyline.

So intense was the shock wave of the rail gun’s effect, the accompanying Stryker was literally flattened like a beer can, rolling end over end for over a city block.

Before the arching, airborne turret landed, the ground began to shake, and the air was filled with a deep rumbling groan. Dusty glanced back just as the old Executive Office building shuddered to collapse, a 40-foot wide swath of its midsection now missing, a victim of the universal tunnel created by his shot.

Without giving the destruction a second glance, Dusty reloaded, waiting for the ultra-capacitors to recharge so he could fire again.

Dusty’s joining of the battle didn’t go unnoticed by the admiral or his forces. “What the fuck was that?” shouted a nearby shooter as the sun-like glare of the detonation faded.

For a brief moment, the admiral thought his forces were been attacked by air power, but quickly realized the damage had been inflicted by something else altogether.

“Gentlemen, I believe we’ve just seen the Olympus Device in action,” he calmly stated, trying to determine where the shot had originated.

Armstrong rushed for a nearby Stryker, screaming a quick “cease fire,” into his portable radio. Scrambling up the side of the armored personnel carrier, he made for the control hatch and shouted, “Give me the microphone for your loudspeaker… right now.”

The confused commander had to look for the seldom-utilized equipment, finally locating the mic and its curly cord. “Turn it up… all the way,” Armstrong ordered.

After a confirming nod by the vehicle’s commander, Armstrong raised the mic to his mouth and called out, “Weathers! Durham Weathers! I have your son. Cease firing on my men, if you ever want to see him again!”

The admiral threw the microphone back and then hopped to the ground. “Everybody hold in place,” he ordered, not wanting to expose any more of his people until it could be determined what Weathers was going to do.

“Kill as many of them as you can, but advance no further,” he repeated into the radio.

Dusty was three blocks away, the sound of his name causing the Texan to pause and tilt his ear toward the source of the voice.

Armstrong repeated his statement, scanning right and left, wondering if his words were being heard, and if the rampaging Texan would listen.

The mention of Andy’s status caused Dusty to pause, his mind trying to reconcile what the loudspeaker was broadcasting. “So the president wasn’t lying,” he finally whispered, moving to the corner of a nearby building and crouching low. “The government doesn’t have Andy – those traitors do.”

It took considerable effort for the Texan to push aside his chagrin at misjudging the government. Now, finding himself in the midst of a full-blown rebellion, it wasn’t the time or the place to feel guilty about making a bad call.

Then it occurred to Dusty that the loudspeaker might be lying. Had his shot hurt them so badly the admiral was getting desperate? He quickly dismissed the notion. It all made sense now, the timing of Andy’s abduction, the president’s denial, and the missile attack fitting together like pieces of a puzzle.

It dawned on the Texan that the men leading the revolt were even more ruthless than the man sitting in the White House. At least the government had made a half-hearted attempt to arrest him before opening fire. Tomahawks didn’t Mirandize their targets… didn’t carry handcuffs.

Dusty scampered across a street. He didn’t even know the name, or exactly where he was. Some instinct told the Texan that here, amid the battle, movement was life. He sensed he was skirting the White House, his direction more to avoid the hottest points of the firefight than to reach any particular destination. Besides, he needed time to think.

He came to another intersection, pausing to stick his head around the corner of the building. The timing was bad.

Half a block away, an M1 battle tank chose that moment to fire its massive cannon at a group of White House defenders up the street.

Even though Dusty wasn’t the target, the shock wave of the powerful discharge caught him full in the face, a blow as painful as any fist he’d ever encountered.

He found himself sitting, hot blood rolling out of his nose, his eyes watering from the sting and shock.
How did men fight amongst such weapons?
Dusty wondered.
That guy wasn’t even shooting at me, and it damn near dimmed my lights
.

Staying put until his strength returned, he took the moment to scan his surroundings. It wasn’t pretty.

Washington, once a beautiful jewel on the river and the pride of the world’s oldest democracy was in ruins. Fires raged in several, different locations, columns of gritty smoke rising into the air, the ominous glow of the flames generating an eerie hue. The blackened shells and burning hulks of military and civilian vehicles were everywhere.

Hundreds of windows had been shattered by the violence, the streets twinkling with the shards. Some piles of crystal were so high they looked like drifting snow. Mounds of wreckage cluttered the sidewalks and streets, some buildings missing façades, others suffering severe structural damage.

Here and there, low clouds of pulverized concrete dust combined with the smoke to create a dense, gray fog. An odd smell filled the Texan’s nostrils, a combination of burning wood, wet concrete, and the bitter bite of cordite.

And then there was the clamor.

The screaming of the wounded was the worst, their pleas and agony occasionally echoing down the limestone canyons of the city streets. The rattle of gunfire was almost constant, ebbing and flowing from one direction or the other. Now and then, the firefight’s chorus was punctuated with the resounding blast of a heavy weapon and subsequent rumbling of an explosion.

“This is truly Armageddon,” Dusty thought. “I’ve never seen so much destruction and death. It is truly doomsday.”

Dusty knew the violence was limited to his immediate surroundings – at least for now. It then occurred to him that if men like Admiral Armstrong were to control the rail gun, the entire planet might end up looking like the surrounding city.

“They’ll kill Andy if they don’t get the gun – but isn’t he dead either way? What kind of life would any of us have if Armstrong and his ilk had their hands on this much power?”

The father’s voice inside the Texan’s head argued the point. “You don’t know that,” it screamed. “Think of your son! Think of Andy’s life! You don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Do everything you can to make sure your son lives another day.”

But deep inside his core, Dusty knew better.

Even if he walked toward Lafayette Park with his hands in the air, there was no guarantee that the admiral wouldn’t shoot him on sight and then pry the rail gun from his cold, dead fingers.

It didn’t matter if the rebels had Andy here, or in Texas, or in Timbuktu… the moment anyone put their hands on the rail gun, all bets were off.

Still, the Texan was a parent. A man who loved his son, a father who looked forward to grandchildren and seeing his boy grow and make a difference in the world. To willingly sacrifice Andrew’s life to chance was nearly impossible for Dusty to contemplate.

But wouldn’t that “chance” be the same no matter if he surrendered or not?

Dusty made his decision, the most difficult choice under the harshest circumstances of his life. With a stoic expression of commitment fixed on his face, the Texan moved toward Lafayette Park – the place where he knew the admiral’s main grouping of forces were deployed.

They were still there, a cluster of armored units surrounded by squads of riflemen.

Dusty found an angle that provided a broad view of the park. Hiding behind the smoldering skeleton of what had been a Capital Police SWAT van, the gunsmith went prone and took aim.

The shot tore into the center of Armstrong’s massed units, ripping metal and shredding steel as if it were paper. Armored vehicles weighing tens of thousands of pounds were tossed into the air, victims of the collapsing vacuum’s overpressure. Human bodies were pulverized into an unrecognizable film of goo.

The Texan had to move again, but not because of hostile fire.

The rail gun’s discharge had excavated a trench across the earth’s surface, disintegrating blacktop, crushing concrete, and blowing tons of soil hundreds of meters into the air. The relic SWAT van Dusty was using for cover began sliding down into the 20-foot deep cut as the soft edges started to crumble.

Rising, Dusty ran like the wind, the sound of rattling gunfire drawing him to his next target.   

Three more times the Olympus Device sang its deadly song. Dusty walked, ran, hid, and charged, the rail gun ripping apart structures and crushing anything in its path. He worked his way around the perimeter of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, using his eyes and ears to find the rebel forces.

And then there was silence, the battle gone cold and quiet.

Dusty spotted a group of the admiral’s men scurrying away from the White House, a sight quickly followed by the cheer rising from the few remaining Marines defending the structure.

The sun picked that moment to finally rise in the east, unveiling a city that looked like a war zone. Washington was covered in smoldering heaps of granite and limestone ruins, columns of smoke drifting above the ashes. Great trenches had been plowed through the streets, sidewalks, and structures. Trees were toppled, vehicles overturned and burning, entire structures appearing as if they’d been bombed from the air.

With the daylight, the Texan retreated, hustling away from the battlefield, confident he’d done the right thing. Eventually, exhaustion forced the need to take a breather. He found a hide back toward the south, a position that allowed him to observe what remained of the White House and its surrounding infrastructure.

Daylight revealed unspeakable damage, entire sections of the facility nothing but smoking ruins. The sections of white façade that still remained were scarred gray and black with smoke and ash. Full lengths of the roofline laid scattered and crumbled on the green lawn below.

Throughout the grounds were the hulks of tanks and armored vehicles, the blackened, smashed hulls adding to the melancholy scene. Worse yet were the broken bodies, dozens and dozens of human forms lying twisted in the impossible positions of death.

The first living being to enter Dusty’s field of view was driving a fire engine, the crew approaching cautiously as if they weren’t sure the battle was over. Next came an armored column of more tanks and Humvees, this time escorted by black government SUVs with flashing blue lights of authority.

As Dusty observed from his perch, helicopters appeared overhead, several landing on the south lawn and disgorging armed troops and medical personnel.

An orchestra of sirens began playing, all of the District of Columbia seeming to come alive with ambulances, police cars, and hook and ladders.

The appearance of the copters spooked the Texan. Not feeling secure from overhead observation, Dusty crept away from his hiding spot and began slowly shuffling back towards the river, hoping his stolen transport was still tied up at the marina.

Dozens of emergency vehicles rushed past. A few, trying to avoid the quickly clogging main arteries of traffic, zoomed right past the homeless man slowly working his way toward the waterfront.

Dusty caught a reflection of himself in a storefront mirror, the sight causing him a start. Covered with grime, sweat stains, and several layers of filth, the store-bought hobo outfit was no longer essential to his disguise.

He made the marina less than 30 minutes later, his pilfered jet bike right where he’d left it. Reattaching the ignition wires, Dusty idled out of the marina and headed south along the river.

Only once did he glance over his shoulder at the nation’s capital. He noted dozens of helicopters orbiting the city, above them the glinting reflection of what appeared to be jet fighters. The wail of emergency sirens could be heard over and above his craft’s engine.

Dusty accelerated away from Washington, heading to return the somewhat damaged water bike. Despite playing a significant role in overcoming the rebellion, the Texan’s mood was anything but victorious.

“Did I just seal my son’s death warrant?” he pondered, watching the passing shoreline. “If they do kill Andy, will they at least do it quickly?”

Despite the warming rays of the sun, Dusty shivered, thinking of what evil, vindictive men might do to his flesh and blood. But there hadn’t been any other choice… no real alternatives or options.