The general sighs, closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ here.”
“But… it took just over a minute for the systems to kick in after the intrusion was detected.”
General Davies opens his eyes in bewilderment. “Over a minute? What the hell happened?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. The entire red and blue teams are working on it, but I think at this point we have to assume that there was at least a partial breach.”
General Davies pulls open the bottom left drawer on the desk and takes out a bottle of Jack Daniels Blue Ribbon. He places two shot glasses on the desk, fills both to the brim and slides one across the desk. The young man watches, eyes wide, as the general swallows his shot and follows it by taking a long drink straight from the bottle.
The general closes his eyes, places the bottle down on the desk and leans back in his chair. “Are there any estimates on how much of Damocles could have leaked out in the breach?”
“We don’t have any data on how much was—I mean could have leaked out, sir.”
“Cut the crap and give it to me straight. Is sixty seconds long enough for a skilled team to get the essential bits of Damocles out of our systems?”
The young man hesitates and licks his lips nervously. “Nearly all of it, sir. If the attackers had any knowledge on the structure of Damocles they could have extracted the weaponized portions and left the command and control bits behind. That’s quite an assumption, though, General. For all we know, they could have—”
“That’s enough.” General Davies sits up in his chair, caps the bottle and puts it back into the desk drawer, leaving the full and empty shot glasses on the desk. He rises from his seat and heads to the door, motioning for the young man to follow him.
“What do you want us to do, sir?”
“Divert red and blue teams. Find out what the likely first targets would be and how we can protect them. It doesn’t matter who took Damocles anymore. If that much of it could have been extracted, we’re about to have bigger problems on our hands. I’m going to air gap the defense net and tell the President about this situation.”
The young man runs off and General Davies pauses in his office, glancing back to the telephone that sits on his desk. He mutters something under his breath as he closes his office door and heads back to slouch in his chair behind the desk.
“Once I decide on how to say it, that is.”
Chapter 5
Los Angeles, CA
“Hey man, are you alive? Are you okay?”
Rick awoke to the feeling of someone poking him in the shoulder. His eyes flew open and he scrambled upright, wiping the drool from the corner of his mouth and trying to back away from whoever was standing in front of him. A man and a wom
an, both dressed in singed and blackened business attire, stepped back a few feet at the sight of Rick’s wide-eyed expression and flailing limbs.
“Hey, man, take it easy!”
“Wh-who are you?” Rick stumbled over his words as he looked around. The sun had started to fade over the western horizon, casting an unearthly orange glow on the smoke that blanketed the city.
“I’m Jack, this is Samantha. Are you okay?” The man was wearing a suit without a tie, and a piece of his suit had been torn off and wrapped around his wrist. Despite his expensive clothing and shoes, his hair was a mess of dreadlocks and he spoke with the accent of a surfer. The woman standing next to him was wearing a pair of shoes that had the heels broken off, along with a pantsuit that had scorch marks around the edges. Her hair was up in a bun, and her makeup was smudged and stained by the black smoke in the air.
Rick looked down at himself, remembering how he had come to be slumped over on the overpass. He nodded slowly. “I think so. D-do you know what happened?”
The man put his hands on the back of his head and looked around, surveying the city. “You tell me, man. One minute we’re on the freeway heading back to the office and the next minute we slam into the car in front of us. The engine shut off and then we saw this bigass plane just slam into the building in front of us.”
Rick stood up and looked out to the east. The sky was still filled with smoke, but there were fewer fires, visible from buildings and cars on the street. “What time is it?” Rick turned back to the pair and the man shrugged.
“No idea, man. My watch kind of…” The man held up his wrist to show a crude bandage wrapped around his arm.
“It exploded.” Samantha jumped in, offering a look of sympathy to Jack.
“Yeah, man. I was trying to make a call through my watch, but I realized my phone was in the car still and it was out of range. I was heading back to the car when boom! The car just, like, went up in flames!”
Samantha nodded slowly. “There were a lot of people still in their cars when they caught on fire. We tried to help them out but hardly anybody made it out.”
“Then, like, twenty minutes later, or maybe longer, my hand just started burning under the watch. I pulled it off before it caught fire, but it hurt like hell.” Jack looked at his wrist, then back to Rick and shrugged. “It’s late, though, man. Like, getting dark late. It’s going to be rough going here soon without a flashlight.”