Technosis: The Kensington Virus (10 page)

CHAPTER 12

FEDERAL FORECLOSURE, BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI

“I
feel really uncomfortable with this,” Angie Ganos complained as she drove the presidential limousine down the back ramp of the building.

“Suck it up,” Agent Drake said. “If LBJ could ride in it, you’ve got nothing to complain about.”

“You can talk, you’ve got FDR’s Sunshine Special! No one was ever assassinated in it,” Ganos said.

Drake smiled and wheeled the presidential car around to the back lot near the access path, parking next to Blaise’s red Mustang.

“Remember what I said about the additive when you refuel,” the mechanic reminded him.

“You got it,” Blaise said.

“Now what, captain?” Fenwick asked.

“Marshall, you go with Drake, Rosen with Ganos. Baxter rides with me and Fenwick. We are heading out to Bloomfield Hills,” Blaise informed them.

“But that will take us almost 30 miles north of Detroit,” Lieutenant Marshall complained. “We’re supposed to be stopping the KVBs, not going on a joy ride in the suburbs.”

“In case you’re not paying attention, lieutenant, our mission was compromised from the get go. We’ve got solid intel on a team operating in this area. We’ve got a possible connection to follow up, we are tech light and option limited. So we are going with my plan. Bloomfield Hills,” Blaise said, then climbed into his mustang. “Dell, Pops, can’t thank you enough. If we don’t get killed, we will have ’em back to you in two days. If we do, send an invoice to HDMP.”

“You be careful out there,” the mechanic grinned, waving at Blaise as he pulled out of the lot and onto the dirt access path.

Jamie, who was wedged in the backseat of the Mustang, felt his teeth clattering as the car pitched and bucked over the uneven road. “They didn’t believe in suspension in the 20th century, did they?” he asked.

“Nah, this isn’t bad,” Blaise said. “It’s just a dirt path. When we get out on the road you’ll see how nice this handles.”

On the street, where potholes and “delayed maintenance” had turned entire sections of Dearborn into gravel access roads, the ride continued to be jarring. Jamie didn’t say anything and instead looked out the window at the blue gray sky that extended across the horizon where broken buildings and abandoned homes marked the landscape.

“It’s like driving through ground zero,” Fenwick observed.

“Not much left of Michigan after the ground war and the reorganization,” Blaise agreed. “Hey, look up ahead.”

Less than a quarter mile ahead the gravel road leveled out onto a ribbon of asphalt. The Mustang settled into a smooth cruise when it finally left the gravel behind. Blaise opened it up and the car was running out at over 100 miles an hour, the only noise being the roar of the engine, which seemed to please Blaise while it threatened to deafen Jamie. Behind them the armored presidential limos were faring a bit better on the gravel road.

“This is not protocol,” Marshall was complaining, as Drake accelerated on the last section of gravel before hitting the asphalt.

“Did you see the compartment for the machine guns?” Drake asked, ignoring Marshall’s complaint.

The other presidential limousine was just a few meters behind them.

“I’m sorry, but this is really creepy,” Angie said.

Rosen was looking into the back of limo. “I know, right?” he agreed.

“A president was killed in this car,” she added.

Rosen continued to look in the back. “You think he did Marilyn in the back of this?”

“What?” Angie said, as the car continued to shake on the last few meters of gravel.

“Monroe. They say the secret service used to sneak her in so JFK could blow off some steam. I wonder if he ever did her in here.”

“You’re a Neanderthal,” Angie growled.

“Yeah, sorry. What with you being all enlightened and freaked out about the fact that someone got their brains blown out sitting on the back of this. Me, I’m more freaked by the idea that I might be in the vehicle he schtupped a starlet in,” Rosen smirked.

“You’re messing with me, Rosen,” Ganos said.

The car passed onto the asphalt and was now moving quietly along the street.

“When I was a kid, my mom would bring her own sheets when we went on vacation and stayed in motels.” Rosen said. “One time, me and my brother were jumping up and down on a motel duvet. Mom scrubbed us from head to toe, but not before she told us what was on hotel duvets.”

Rosen shuddered. “Brains on the walls, dead animal carcasses, hike through a sewer and I’m fine. Hotel duvet or a car where someone porked somebody and it freaks me the fuck out.”

Angie looked at Rosen. “You’re shitting me.”

“No. Once you’ve had your mother give you the facts of life as a series of stains in a hotel room when you are nine years old, you can’t get rid of that image no matter how hard you try.”

“Weird,” Ganos said.

Rosen shrugged. “KVs are a cake walk compared to motel beds.”

Old Dearborn gave way to more ground level suburban devastation until they passed north of 8 mile. There the roads and the landscape stayed more indefinably occupied and, to some degree, affluent. The three antiques, which had been alone on the road for the first five miles, were now moving into the traffic of modern transports, where small e-cars were bumper to bumper with hydrogen powered mass transit. Traffic came to a standstill and people in the other vehicles pointed and gaped. Some small children flipped them the bird and some older children could be heard to yell “bourgeois eco terrorists!”

Blaise ignored this and revved the Mustang. “Damn,” he said. “There is nothing like it.”

∞

Kirby Wallace had taken the reroute west and north to pick up his kids from school. He’d promised his wife he would get them. The morning had not gone well. They had a glitch with the home system and his wife, Karen, had a meltdown. Kirby had handled it. He’d put the kids in his federal e-car, gotten them breakfast on the way to school and dropped them off on time. For the rest of the day he’d gotten a series of messages from his wife about how overwhelming it was for her to wait at home, with the system failing, for the service call. Then she sent messages detailing the problems with the service agent, the delays and then finally the return of function followed by a message that read, “It shut down, again!”

Kirby loved his kids and couldn’t wait to pick them up. The prospect of spending the evening with his wife Karen, however, did not give him any happiness. He was at an intersection near 8 mile when he received a message from someone he didn’t know.

∞

“What’s going on up there?” Jamie asked, pointing to the intersection ahead.

A man had turned his e-car sideways to traffic and was getting out of it. In his hand he was holding a panel.

“Fenwick, you drive. Baxter, you come with me,” Blaise said, getting out of the car.

Jamie was cursing and grunting as he got out the back seat on the passenger side, following Fenwick’s move to the driver’s seat.

“Put it down!” Blaise was yelling, his weapon drawn.

The man ignored him and ran across the street to a bus.

“What the hell is he doing?” Blaise asked, not able to get a clear shot, and running forward.

Blaise felt something hit his ribs hard and take him down to the pavement. Then there was the explosion.

“Fu…” Blaise groaned, holding his side. He looked over to see it had been Jamie who had blindsided him.

“What was that?”

“No time to tell you,” Jamie panted, hard. “I saw him go to the back of the transport with the phone. I guessed he was going to touch off the tank.”

“You just looked at it and you got all of that?” Blaise asked.

“Uh-huh,” Jamie nodded his head.

Blaise got up and looked at the intersection. The transport was in flames, several of the e-cars were over turned and ripped open. Traffic was snarled.

“No point in waiting around here,” Blaise said, helping Jamie up.

“I think that was meant to slow us down.”

“What?”

Jamie pointed at the street level monitors that were so prevalent in all cities most people didn’t think about them. “I think they saw us and picked that driver. Sent him the new virus to slow us down.”

“Don’t you mean take us out?”

Jamie shook his head. “There were two other mass transports they could have hit that would have killed us.”

Jamie pointed to the one just in front of the Mustang and another that was behind Angie Ganos’ armored limo.

“They want us to get there. Just on their schedule,” Jamie observed.

“Shit,” Blaise said, and motioned for Fenwick to move over for him to drive.

The snarl in traffic and the arrival of the emergency vehicles shut down the intersection. Blaise and his convoy were forced to back track and head two miles west to find a clear road north up to Bloomfield Hills. By the time they arrived, it had taken them an hour and half to cover what should have been twenty nine miles.

Bloomfield Hills had, despite military occupation and federal reorganization, maintained some of its prestige. The communities were largely still intact. Commercial buildings that had been confiscated by the third Canadian governor had returned to private use and were busy selling cheaply made products from central Indiana and New South Oregon. E-cars and transports were parked in lots and shoppers were moving to and from them with their purchases.

“Baxter, where is the federal forensic psychiatric facility?” Blaise asked, as they glided past another mall.

“According to what I have here, it is three miles ahead and on the right,” Jamie said, looking at a plastic map of the area.

“Ok. They know we are coming. They know where we are going and we have to assume they know what we are looking for. So our best bet is to switch up the program.”

Blaise took the first right and went out into a suburb development. “Where are we going?” Jamie asked.

“Fenwick, how close to a direct trunk do you need to be to work your magic?” Blaise asked.

“I could work it off a refrigerator access panel in a truck stop,” Fenwick said.

“So if I gave you an entire house?”

“I could control the world,” Fenwick smiled.

“Keep your eyes open for Federal Reserve foreclosure notices.”

The properties in the suburb wrapped around small ponds and two lakes. Homes that had once been privately owned prestigious residences of auto executives and mid-level managers were now run down federal rental properties that housed residents who worked for the branches of the Federal Climate Compassionate Transport Authority.

“How about that one?” Jamie asked, pointing at an unoccupied residence at the end of a cul-de-sac.

Blaise shook his head. “Monitor stations are still operational,” he said, indicating a series of cameras stationed on light poles.

As they progressed through the community there were less occupied homes and there were signs of vandalism. Spray painted messages, “Fed up Fed Out!” “Remember Ann Arbor!” “Spartans will rise!” were tagged on some of the buildings.

“This looks promising,” Blaise remarked.

Three homes bore the official Federal Reserve Foreclosure notices. Blaise pulled into one of the driveways and the presidential limos parked along the curb.

“What are we doing?” Lieutenant Marshall called out to Blaise.

Blaise gave the lieutenant a withering look and smirked, “visiting grandmother.”

Fenwick and Blaise drew their weapons and approached one of the foreclosed buildings. “Homeland Military Domestic Police!” Blaise yelled, and kicked in the door.

“What was that all about?” Lieutenant Marshall asked Jamie.

“That was for the neighbors,” Jamie said, and waited for Blaise to signal them what he wanted them to do.

Blaise stepped out of the home and signaled for them to follow him in. Jamie lead the rest of the team in. The home, a two story cape cod with dormers, was the smallest of the three foreclosed on homes. It was clear to Jamie when he entered it that this home was a foreclosure from the second international real estate debt crisis of the 21st century. He had read about it at university. It was when the greedy bankers had overleveraged homeowners and sold the debt to foreign markets and the federal reserve had to buy up all the debt and properties. That history had always bothered Jamie because the same history book told him that bankers had been outlawed prior to that crisis and all mortgages had come from the federal government. Regardless of the facts of history, the home was a single family dwelling and it had been left, with all of its former residents’ worldly belongings still in it.

Across appliances, sinks, and what was presumably the door to a bathroom, were official Federal Reserve security tape informing them that the home had been foreclosed upon and that Federal Reserve appointed contractors had secured the building against weather until the property could be transferred into the Federal Reserve residential property pool.

“You in yet?” Blaise called down to Fenwick.

“I’m just bypassing the power regulator,” Fenwick called up from the basement.

There was a popping sound and the home began to light up. Appliances began to hum, central air began to blow streams of dust, and the home data panel light up.

“Everything is on,” Blaise called down. “Kill the central air though.”

Fenwick ran up the stairs. “I’ll do that from the data panel,” he said and sat down in front of the panel.

The air conditioner stopped blowing dust, the appliances went offline, but the lights remained on. Fenwick moved through a series of icons and was soon in a data stream. “I’m in. I’ve got access to ground level municipal, private channels and federal networks. What do you want me to do, captain?”

“Go back to the intersection north of 8 mile and look at the ground level monitors. See if you can find anything.”

Fenwick moved through another series of icons, entered a series of his own icons and the panel showed six different monitor cameras at the intersection. “Take it back to our approach to the intersection.”

The panel spun back and there was an odd movement of the cameras.

Five had been focused on their normal vantage of the intersection. The sixth showed the approach of the red mustang. A moment later the other five pivoted toward the Mustang. Blaise saw one of the cameras scan the front row of e-cars. He saw it stop. He saw the e-car turn and then the man got out of the car holding his cell phone. Blaise saw the other cameras following his and Jamie’s progress up to the intersection on foot. He saw Jamie tackling him and then he saw the explosion.