The Omega Command (38 page)

The fifth door was the entrance to a nightmare.

Inside was a perfect replica of the Oval Office. Krayman’s operation was sparing nothing. Terrell had said the illusion of control would be maintained through whatever means were available, and he had been right. With the presidential insignia behind him, broadcast over every television station in the country, any man could command attention, the efficacy of his position apparently confirmed by an illusion. It was incredible. But it was about to happen, and only activation of the abort signal within fifteen minutes could stop it.

Blaine quickly searched the rest of the second floor and hurried to the third. The door-opening process and the succession of reconstructed offices continued. The White House pressroom was re-created in one room, a replica of the State Department briefing room in another. In still others sat VCRs with tapes already loaded into huge broadcast consoles containing whatever messages … or illusions … Dolorman and company had prepared.

From within these walls all of America could be controlled. Sahhan’s troops would begin their rampage, the killer satellite would shut down all telecommunications, and then the mercenaries would move in. The rest of Dolorman’s plan would be achieved subtly, the changes all but unnoticeable as his people rose to levels of control. The country would be in the hands of Krayman Industries.

Blaine realized the firing had stopped outside the mansion. Wareagle’s resistance had ended, meaning the troops would be free to concentrate their efforts back inside.

Blaine started up the third stairway. He kept his back pinned to the wall and his M-16 at the ready. He was out of grenades but had a full clip of cartridges.

The fourth floor seemed as quiet as the last two. A low water table would have prevented Dolorman from risking placement of his command center in the more defensible cellar. Nor would he have expected an attack in the first place. So the command center had to be up here somewhere.

Blaine crept forward.

The long corridor was almost totally black when he reached it. The only light came from beneath a door at the very end. The sound of his footsteps swallowed by the thick carpeting, McCracken started to approach. If that was the command center up ahead, there should have been guards everywhere. It made no sense.

Blaine was halfway between the stairway and the lit room when the doors lining the hallway opened simultaneously and men lunged out in all directions, covering him with weapons, the corridor suddenly awash with light. Blaine glanced down at his M-16 and let it slide gently to the carpet.

A path opened amid the guards fronting him, and Wells stepped through it.

“It’s over, McCracken,” the scarred man spit at him, coming closer. “You lose.”

“The odds weren’t exactly in my favor, pretty boy,” Blaine taunted. “Now, if it had been just you against me, then—”

Blaine never saw the kick that smashed into his stomach and doubled him over.

“That Indian band of yours is all dead and I’ve got men sweeping the island to see if any more are waiting in the wings.” Wells grasped his shoulder and pulled him effortlessly upright. “Come on. Mr. Dolorman would like to meet the man who has caused him all this trouble.”

They moved to the door at the end of the corridor which Wells opened by inserting a card into a slot. The steel-coated door swung open.

There were computer consoles everywhere, all of them manned by individuals carefully monitoring the readouts on their screens. Here obviously was the central command point for the satellite about to shut off every television, radio, and telephone across the country. Blaine had finally reached it, for all the good it would do him. He noticed a white blip flashing toward the Pacific Ocean on a giant display of the world. He noted the only means of escape from the room other than the entrance was a single ice-crusted window. Not much good from four stories up. There was also a heavy door in the wall opposite the world display, beyond which Blaine assumed lay still more equipment.

A digital clock on the wall read 7:48.

A white-haired man eased himself slowly from a high-back chair in the room’s farthest corner.

“Blaine McCracken,” began Dolorman, a slight smile crossing his lips. “I wanted Wells to deliver you to me alive so you might witness the moment of your failure before he kills you. The eight o’clock abort signal is now an impossible dream. Despite your heroic efforts, you have failed, and I wanted you to experience the pain of that before your death.”

“And now I say, you’re mad. You won’t get away with this.”

“Spoken halfheartedly because you know it not to be the truth. In point of fact, we have
already
gotten away with it. Nothing you or anyone else could do can possibly stop us now.”

Blaine gauged his options and found none existed. “So your satellite plunges America into communications darkness while Sahhan’s puppet troops begin a revolution your own mercenaries will swiftly squash. What then, Mr. Dolorman?”

“Quite simply, Mr. McCracken, we take over.”

“Using a fake Oval Office? Somehow I figured you for better.”

“That’s only part of the plan, I assure you. It’s all laid out. The country will see what we want it to see, believe what we want it to believe. There are still a few things you’re not aware of. Come, there’s someone else who wants to meet you… ”

Blaine recalled Terrell’s theory that someone above Dolorman was actually directing the Omega operation. “Yes,” he said, “take me to your leader.”

Blaine felt Wells’s powerful arms grasp him at the elbows and aim him forward toward the heavy inner door. Dolorman twisted the knob and eased the door open.

“This way, Mr. McCracken.”

With Wells still holding tight, Blaine followed Dolorman into a dimly lit room filled with luminous diodes, digital readouts, high speed printers, and CRT monitors. Empty chairs sat before a host of computer terminals—all empty except one, that is. Wells closed the door behind them and McCracken’s eyes locked on the man seated with his back to them.

“He’s here, sir,” Dolorman announced.

The man swung round and stood up, silver-haired and rugged-looking.

“Randall Krayman,” Blaine said, confident he had figured everything out.

“Sorry to disappoint you, son,” the man said, striding over. “But the name’s Alex Hollins.” He stuck out his hand. “My friends call me Spud.”

Chapter 31

SANDY TENSED WHEN
she heard the rapid footsteps pounding through the snow. Men were rushing toward the shore. What was she to do? Many men, dozens of them. McCracken had said nothing about this.

The footsteps sounded closer. Still she stayed rigid. She thought of the Indian sharpshooter, Nightbird, waiting, rifle in hand, nearby. Would he take action? No, his orders had been to provide cover for Wareagle and company’s return. He could not risk betraying his presence now. The decision of what to do was left to her. But she couldn’t make it.

Suddenly an arm wrapped itself around her shoulder. She turned and found the ragged boatman by her side, his face and hands smeared with grease.

“We’d be best off to hide, miss,” he whispered, tugging at her. “Ayuh, they’ll shoot us down for sure if they find us here.”

He started to lead her from the dock.

“What about the boat?” Sandy asked.

“They won’t pay it no heed,” he told her. “They might not even see it. It’s not what they’re looking for. We’d best hurry.”

“But how can we hide? They’ll look everywhere.”

“There’s a way,” the boatman assured her as their legs sank into the foot-deep snow beyond the dock.

McCracken was still staring. “Sandy Lister interviewed you.”

Spud Hollins jammed his thumbs into the pockets of his faded jeans. “Yup. I guess you see why I had to mislead her a bit. My down-home country boy act never fails.”

“This has been your operation all along,” Blaine surmised. “The satellite, Sahhan, the mercenaries—everything about Omega.”

Hollins nodded. “I always believe in taking credit where it’s due, son, but plenty of it belongs to Mr. Dolorman over there. I went to him with the beginnings of the idea and he fine-tuned it a mite.”

“The Krayman Chip … No one stole it, you gave it to them.”

“Absolutely. It was the key to this whole damned business. But I couldn’t even come close to matching the distribution Krayman Industries offered. The chip gave us control of the telecommunications business. The rest fell into place naturally.”

Blaine looked over Hollins’s shoulder at the giant computer. “Like the satellite up there your mechanical monster is obviously controlling.”

“As you’ve no doubt discovered, that satellite is the key to this entire operation. A few hours from now it’s gonna issue the last command our nation’s computers receive before we take over. The Omega command, son.”

“But Omega didn’t start with a machine, Spud. It started with you. Why?”

“Because I, like Randall Krayman, believed America was being beaten into the ground by shortsighted men who were mismanaging it. We were losing our edge almost everywhere and the few advantages we had left—high tech, agriculture—were starting to decline. Just as bad, we were losing our pride. Something had to be done, something drastic. Krayman had the resources, the facilities, but he didn’t have the guts.”

Blaine’s eyes left Hollins’s for the various consoles built directly into the mammoth computer. Somewhere was the abort mechanism he had to find. It was 7:51.

“So you went to Dolorman and concocted the whole ruse surrounding the Krayman Chip, right? Dolorman sold Krayman on the story so you could get the production and distribution end going, and with that completed you killed him.”

Hollins nodded. “It was five years ago. The car he was riding in was wired with a bomb and he and his driver were both killed. It was around Christmas time, too, as I recall. We arranged the hoax of his withdrawal so Francis could take over the company without question.”

“With you whispering in his ear. You sold out to Krayman because you knew before long you’d be running his consortium. Then you moved out to that ranch in Hicksville so everyone would forget you.”

Hollins winked. “Worked pretty good, didn’t it? I needed room to move around, freedom to arrange all the things that needed to be arranged.”

“Except none of it’s going to work. You can dress up your mercenaries like soldiers, but that’s not gonna make the regular army sit back and watch, no matter how much of the upper echelon you guys control.”

“Who said anything about sitting and watching? They’re going to be mobilized almost from the beginning.”

“What?”

“Oh, not in any way that disrupts the role of the mercenaries, I assure you. Their orders will be confusing. They’ll be serving as perimeter defense in areas away from the real action. And they’ll have no reason to question that assignment since—”

“They’ll think the mercenaries are crack troops sent in to engage the insurgents directly,” Blaine completed.

“Then,” Hollins picked up, “we’ll move the army in to restore and maintain order. Enforce control—our control. Everything they do will be by the same book you’re quoting from, McCracken. They won’t suspect a damn thing has happened besides the quelling of a violent revolution. By then, after the Omega command is issued, this computer will control every bit of communications and data transmission in the country. Without the communications network, every sphere of American life will have come to a dead stop. When things start moving again, son, it will be as we direct. Our people will be in place or moving into place.”

“You say you’re doing this for the country, Hollins. So what about all the people that are going to die starting tonight,
innocent
people? Or don’t they count for anything?”

Hollins shrugged his broad shoulders. “If there was another way, believe me, son, I would have chosen it.”

The clock read 7:54.

“Now, McCracken, I’m gonna have to ask Mr. Wells to take you back into the control room, while I issue our satellite its final instructions. You go too, Francis.”

Dolorman nodded subserviently.

Wells shoved Blaine brutally toward the door as a twisted smile rose to his lips. “You’re mine,” he said softly. “When this is over, you’re mine.”

Dolorman closed the computer room door behind them. Wells reached into his pocket and came out with a pair of handcuffs, yanking Blaine’s wrists toward him. If he was going to move, it had to be now.

The blip was just a few flashes away from reaching the West Coast. The abort system had to be triggered before it got there.

Blaine was about to pull away from Wells and go for one of the guards’ rifles, when the ice-crusted window at the end of the room exploded. A horrible wailing cry filled his ears and his eyes locked on the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

Johnny Wareagle dropped into the control room through the shattered glass, machine guns blasting in both hands, slicing up everything that moved. Johnny focused on the armed guards first, so by the time his legs were steady, there was no one left to provide real resistance. A few scampered about, only to be stopped by rapid bursts from Johnny’s guns. Dolorman was struggling toward the computer room door, when a burst made a bloody line up the back that had pained him for so long. He slumped to the floor.

Wells was the only one who responded quickly enough to take evasive action as he went for his gun. But Blaine lunged upon him, pinning him to the floor and grabbing a brass paperweight from a nearby desk. He pummeled the big man’s face again and again, reducing everything he struck to pulp until Wells struggled no more.

Blaine looked up to find Wareagle rushing for the door, machine-gun barrels still smoking.

There was activity coming from outside in the hallway, men battling with the entry system.

Wareagle shot out the plate holding the wires and fuses. The door was sealed.

“The computer’s in there!” Blaine shouted, and rushed for the door that sheltered Hollins. “The abort mechanism, satellite control, everything!”

Blaine twisted the knob. It wouldn’t give. The door had been bolted from the inside!