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!
“Johnny!” he screamed, intent clear.
It was 7:56.
The Indian was breathing hard. Blood dripped from the exposed areas of his neck, face, and arms. Cold wind and snow blew into the control room through the window he had left shattered. In the corridor men were pounding on the entrance to the command center.
Wareagle stripped a green thermolite charge from his belt and tossed it at the computer room door. He hit the floor right next to Blaine.
The door exploded inward, smoke and splinters surrounded them. Together they regained their feet and rushed into automatic fire, obviously from Hollins.