Emily chomped on another Pop-Tart, seemingly oblivious to the hideous taste combination. “You said you had a theory about that.”
“I do,” he said before taking a pause. “These guys are big on technology. They use it to compensate for their relatively low force numbers. If that’s the case, then they may have programmed the mainframe to default to the person on the line of succession list who wasn’t confirmed deceased. Ramirez knew Tanager was dead, but someone must have reported the alive-and-well Emily when we were in New York City. That put you back on the computer’s list.” He twitched his head sideways, toward Emily.
“So, it was a simple explanation?” she replied.
“Maybe,” he cautioned. “But it almost seems too simple. Why wouldn’t they assign a new person to the list? Someone they knew would be on their side?” Ted glanced over to his niece. “Kyla, are you positive you deactivated the briefcase?”
She was forced to chew and swallow to answer him. “I’m positive. That whole place was trying to break into the briefcase coding. It looked to me like they weren’t making much progress. Having Emily in the server room and using her eye biometrics is what short-circuited the whole affair. Unless they somehow figured out how to fake the entire interface and the code behind it, I’d say I’m close to one-hundred percent sure the suitcase is dead.”
Ted leaned back in his chair, surprised at how the uncomfortable wooden slats drilled into his ribs. “Well, now I guess we can say for sure Tanager is dead. It’s something that’s been on my mind since Washington D.C.” He pulled out the challenge coin and spun it on the table. “It was Ramirez who gave me the president’s coin. He was the guy who told me the president was dead. I guess I always held out hope somehow, for whatever reason, Ramirez was lying about that. I wanted to believe the president survived.”
Kyla seemed interested in his line of thought. “But how do you know for certain he didn’t?”
The coin twirled around on the wooden table for a few seconds, then flopped over on its side. “Because if he was alive, Ramirez would have taken him directly to Minot to force him to hand over control of the nuclear codes to David.”
They all ate until they were full.
“So, what’s next?” Meechum asked as if wanting to get to it.
He looked out the window again. There were a few trees behind the house, and a smattering of homes on the street of the tiny town, but beyond was the open farmland of Montana. As he’d said before, it was truly beautiful when the bad guys weren’t around. Unfortunately, they had to go find those bad guys. Even if their strike into Minot Air Force base was a small win, it wasn’t total victory. To finish it, they’d need to go to David and remove his ability to access the nuclear arsenal. They’d also have to figure out how to disable the superweapon that had destroyed his picture-perfect nation.
Why not make it more difficult?
“We drive south. We’re going to NORAD.”
NORAD Black Site Sierra 7, CO
I’ve got to get out of this place.
Tabby looked up at the ceiling of the business office serving as her jail cell. Yesterday, she’d been shown her future when David brought her to see the formation of other young women in their blue Buck Rogers’s skintight uniforms. The war against America was over, he’d said, and she was going to help repopulate the continent. Before she’d had a chance to do more than recoil, he’d whisked her away and stuck her in the room to “think it over,” as he’d stated. As tired as she was after all her travels, she’d barely slept at all. Thoughts of Audrey and Peter kept her brain in overdrive as much as the fears about being made into someone’s baby-making machine. Escape was the only item on her agenda for the new day.
The jail may have once been an office, but the solid door of her cage had been replaced with a swinging metal grate with a wide hole for sticking in food trays. One sat on the shelf of the entryway at that moment.
And she wasn’t alone. Outside her cell, she counted at least five other metal doors on what must have been other offices in the complex. At times last night, she saw men and women stand at their doors as if waiting for the mail. Now it made sense; they’d been waiting for food.
She got off the cot, intending to see what was being served, but observed the thin, gray blanket had fallen to the floor. Last night, she’d needed it to cover up and protect her from the chilled air of the NORAD facility David had taken over, but it must have slipped off the silky-smooth material of her jumpsuit. However, seeing it on the ground gave her an idea. “Nobody says I have to accept this as my uniform.”
Tabby was a modest young woman. The form-hugging neck-to-ankle body suit was made for someone who didn’t mind the whole world knowing her business. She’d already unraveled her braids, so the long locks obscured
