His father owned several companies that serviced the industrial military complex. They designed weapons, both small and large. One division focused on antipersonnel weaponsâsuch cool little devices as cluster bombs, which explode in the air and hurl shrapnel over a wide radius. Other divisions worked on anti-bunker, -building, and -vehicle devices; large-scale destruction; antimissile technology; and satellite weaponry.
These companies worked closely with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the Pentagon's division responsible for thinking up crazy, sci-fi technology and getting it into soldiers' hands. DARPA was credited with developing stealth jets, night-vision optics, the M16 rifle, and the computer mouse. Countless weapons and devices still on DARPA's drawing boards had already found their way into the video games Declan's company created. These cutting-edge, seemingly fanciful tools of warfare made his business one of the fastest growing and most successful game producers in the world.
Not that Declan was satisfied. He was convinced that entertainment was only the tip of the gaming iceberg. The ergonomic, timesensitive nature of video games made their technology ideal for many other aspects of a busy, frantic world. For instance, smart homes, controlled by remotes modeled on handheld gaming devices, could save hours a day in a homemaker's life. Are the kids doing their homework? Check the controller. Did you forget to shut the garage door? The controller will check and shut it if necessary. Ready to start dinner? You get the idea.
Declan believed the best opportunity for synergy, growth, and profit was the incorporation of gaming culture into the art of war. Not only could weaponry and training bring warfare into a new age, but gamers were hungry for military scenarios. Money would flow in both directions. And money was Daddy's language.
Declan's father had finally consented to bring Declan into the loop on a top-secret new weapon. Everything about this weapon demanded the skills found in top gamers: hand-eye coordination, quick thinking, digital dexterity, the ability to scan a series of numbers and icons and instantly know what they meant in all their various combinations, and the ability to manipulate a dozen different buttons and combinations of buttons in response, all in three seconds. The weapon his father's company had created was a satellite laser cannonâSLC. Current satellite weapons were relatively weak because their chemical oxygen iodine lasers tended to be solar powered, which didn't give them enough “oomph” (a word his dad's scientists had frowned at, but ultimately agreed was accurate). Couple that with atmospheric turbulence, which dissipates laser beams, and by the time they reached the earth's surface, they couldn't light a birthday candle. His father's company had developed a laser powered by a nuclear reactor. The reactor amped up the laser to a degree that made it an effective weapon against earthbound targets. In addition, the nuclear power allowed the laser to recharge in seconds rather than the minutes or even hours of previous laser-weapon technology.
Trouble was, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibited nuclear weapons in space. It was his father's belief that demonstrating the effectiveness of this weapon to the powers at the Pentagon would convince them to find a way around the treaty. One loophole his father's attorneys found was large enough to sail a satellite through: the nuclear reactor they needed was not itself the weapon; it only powered the weapon. It should be classified not as a nuclear weapon, but as a nuclear power source.
But theories carried little weight with the people who controlled armies and big checks.What mattered to them were results. Laws and treaties championed by politicians who knew little about the way the world really worked created a catch-22 for companies like Declan's father's. They could not build the weapons the military needed because the government required proof of viability. Only prototypes produced proof. Few companies were willing to risk the hundreds of millions of dollars new weapon systems required without the contracts and funding the government would not provide. His father had become obscenely wealthy by taking the path less traveled and investing in hunches.
Declan loved that about the old man.
The part of the SLC program for which his father's designers turned to Declan was the control unit, named Slacker for Satellite Laser Cannon Remote (SLCR).Testing the Slacker now, Declan was
almost
impressed. Response time was quick, but the targeting controls needed some work. Despite borrowing the code for the crosshair graphics and firing command from one of his company's popular apocalyptic games, in the context of SLC it didn't work to Declan's satisfaction.That was one of maybe three dozen notes he had scribbled into his BlackBerry.
Still, watching the cannon bore into the hillside, drilling its way into the mine tunnels, he had to admit it was pretty cool. Slacker allowed intensity adjustments. If your target was a man, you wouldn't want to create a huge gaping hole below him, especially if he were standing on a bridge or a building you might still need.Then again, if somebody holed up in a bunkerâwhich, essentially, was the case hereâyou could crank the intensity level and be relatively sure that a few well-placed events would burrow him out.
Declan had not only punched a hole through the top of the tunnels; he also had begun to stitch a crater through the hill, exposing the labyrinth within. Slacker's screen flashed red, and the device beeped.
“Oh, oh, oh . . . I'm losing her.”
“Has it been eighteen minutes already?” Cortland said from behind him, where she kneaded the muscles of his shoulders and neck.
Declan grunted. One of the big problems he'd found was the limited time he had to use the SLC in each ninety-five-minute period.To keep her in the air without a great expenditure of energy, the satellite had been placed into orbit 280 miles above the earth. Orbiting Earth seven degrees off the polar axis brought her overhead roughly every hour and a half for eighteen minutes at a time. He was one minute away from losing his toy for that long.
He looked around. Kyrill and Bad were watching from the same berm, not far away.Their legs draped over the edge. Pru and his camera were halfway around the crater, trying to catch the destruction from various angles. Julian had said he didn't want to participate and stayed at the truck. Declan lifted a walkie-talkie and keyed it. “Julie? Julie!”
Julian's voice crackled back: “What?”
“Put Elmer on.”
Julian:
“What?”
“The old man, put him on.”
Cortland said, “What do you want with him?”
“I don't have much time . . .”
Elmer: “Yeah?”
“Where would you go if you were in that mine and you couldn't walk out the front door?”
Elmer: “What do you mean, where would I go?”
Declan sighed in exasperation. He triggered a laser strike, watched the flash of green and the billowing volcanic explosion. Then for fun he did it again, right away. He keyed the mike. “You're in the mine and somebody's just blown up the front doorâwhat do you do?”
Elmer: “Well, unless I got bonked on the head or I was stupid orâ”
“Elmer!”
Elmer: “I'd go out the back door!”
“There's a back door? Where?” Declan looked up, could not see anything beyond the crater, beyond the smoke. He was sure if there was a way out, it would be one of the hills sloping away from the mined crater. He wouldn't be able to see it even without the smoke. “Elmer!”
Elmer: “Emergency escape route! Follow straight back from the front door, on the rump side of the hill.”
Moving his thumbs quickly, Declan maneuvered the satellite to focus on the far side of the crater, on the hill that sloped down beyond it. He was about to lose access to the weapon, and the optical system, the camera, would go with it. He moved his thumb, scanning, scanning, looking for anything that appeared man-made or like a cave. He really didn't know what he was looking for. Then he saw it: a perfect circle, like a manhole cover. He aligned the crosshairs on it, lifted his thumb to push the button, and the crosshairs disappeared; he was too far. He jumped up and began running around the berm, continually checking the crosshairs. As he bent around the crater, the image flickered and went to static.
A darkness blacker
than night engulfed them.
Hutch saw Dillon fall and heard a sharp
thunk!
Dillon's head or the lantern striking the floor.
The boy moaned.
“Dillon!” He dropped to all fours and crawled toward the last place he had seen him. He heard movement, reached out, and found Dillon on his knees.
“I broke the light,” Dillon said, anguished.
“Are
you
okay?”
“I broke the light!” He started to cry.
“Dillon, no. It's okay.” Hutch rose to his knees, shuffled closer, and put an arm around Dillon.
Quietly, between sobs, Dillon repeated, “I broke the light.”
“What are you, a moth? We don't need it, okay?” But Hutch knew they did need it. Without it the map was useless, and he didn't think they could find the emergency exit without both a map and a light.
Dillon leaned out of his embrace, then rose back into it. Hutch reached out with his other hand and confirmed that Dillon had picked up the lantern. He heard its switch
click, click, click
. Dillon shook it, releasing the tinkle of broken glass. He moaned again.
Hutch tightened his grasp. “Dillon, it's all right. And listen.”
After a few moments Dillon said, “I don't hear anything.”
“The explosions have stopped.”
“They'll just start up again.” His voice could have put the entire troupe of Cirque du Soleil on Prozac.
“I don't think so. Not for a while, anyway.”
“What are we supposed to do? How can we get around in the dark?”
Hutch thought about it. “Well . . . fortunately we're stuck in a network of tunnels. It's easy to feel our way along the walls.”
Dillon gasped.
“What? Dillon?”
“
Feel
. . . Our school toured the Cluff Lake Mine. It had bumps in the floor, near the edge.” He paused, remembering.
“What about the bumps?” But Hutch was starting to understand.
“They were put there to help people get out in an emergency.The bumps led straight to the exit.”
Hutch remembered seeing a raised line in the floor of the tunnel, two in fact. His mind had passed over them, chocking them up as seams or flaws. It made sense for an operation like this to provide a way for its personnel to escape in the event of an emergency. Batterypowered lights could not always be counted on, especially in the event of a partial collapse. The two raised ridges he had seen in the floor were side by side. He hadn't noticed before, but he was sure one was straight. It represented the route that would lead to the main entrance, which they knew was now buried in rubble. The other line was tilde-shaped, leading to the emergency exit.
“Dilllon, you're a genius.You've just saved our lives.” He explained what he had learned from the legend on the emergency route map and what he believed it meant. He snapped open a pouch on his utility belt and found a coil of spare bowstring. He always kept two because nothing ruined a day like tracking an animal for eight hours just to have your bowstring snap. He uncoiled the string and, slipping one end into the manufactured loop at the other, he formed a lasso. He slipped the lasso over his foot and tugged it tight at his ankle.
“I'm gonna tie this string to your wrist,” he told Dillon. “I'll crawl ahead of you and follow the ridges to the exit. If something should happen, like the explosions start up again, yell for me if the string breaks or comes loose. I don't want to lose you.”
He couldn't see it in the dark, but he knew Dillon nodded.
“Bad, Kyrill!
Come here, quick.”
Declan could have stomped on them for moving so slowly. Seeing his agitation, they began jogging toward him on the top of the mining crater's berm.
“Sometimeâ” Declan started.
Julian's voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Elmer's gone! A car's coming!”
Declan sighed. It was always something. He pointed toward the plateau and yelled at Bad and Kyrill. “Elmer's taking off. Julie says some car's coming.”
The two gunmen veered off the berm, making double time to the plateau. Declan followed. He glanced back to see Cort plop down. She was wearing out. Behind her, Pru continued filming.
As Bad and Kyrill approached Julian, the boy gestured toward the valley and the big meadow beyond the plateau. “There's a car heading this way. Elmer said it was somebody Red Bear, a conservation officer or something. He just started running.”
Both Bad and Kyrill unslung their weapons in midstride.
Julian waved frantically at them. “No, no! Just go get him. Don't shoot him!”
Ignoring him, they jogged to the edge of the plateau.
Declan stopped twenty yards away, at a spot where he could take in all the action: Elmer barreling down the hill from the plateau, a Jeep CJ7 moving fast across the valley toward the old man, his boys taking aim.
Julian grabbed at Bad. “No!”
Bad knocked him down. He sprang up, grabbed at Bad again. Bad elbowed him in the chest, the side of the head.
Julian crumpled.
Bad aimed, fired.Three rounds so fast it sounded like one. Another three, finding his bearing. Dirt and grass kicked up to Elmer's left.
Elmer slowed, tried to stop, finally did. He raised his hands over his head. “What?” he yelled. “I didn't do nothing!”
Bad fired again. The slugs tore the ground at Elmer's feet.
The old man turned and ran. His legs moved faster than Declan had ever seen legs move.
Might be a cool video game effect,
he thought. He hollered, “Check it out, Kyrill! His legs!”