Distraction - Bruce Sterling [171]
This left Oscar with just four diehard hangers-on. Fred Dillen the janitor, Corky Shoeki his roadie and new majordomo, and his secretary and scheduler, Lana Ramachandran. Plus, his image consultant, Donna Nunez, who sensibly declared that she was staying on because in terms of its image, the Collaboratory was just getting interesting. Very well, he thought grimly; he was down to four people, he would just start over. Besides, he still had Kevin. There were plenty of useful people walking around loose within the Collaboratory. And he worked for the President.
He would ask the NSC for help.
Two days later, help arrived from the National Security Council. The President’s personal spooks had at last sent military reinforcements to the Collaboratory. Military aid took the form of a young Air Force lieutenant colonel from Colorado. He was the very man who had been on the graveyard shift when Oscar had been abducted, and when Kevin had made his frantic phone call. In fact, it was he who had ordered Oscar’s armed rescue effort.
The lieutenant colonel was erect, spit-polished, steely-eyed. He wore a full uniform with scarlet beret. He had brought three vehicles with him to Texas. The first contained a squadron of rapid-deployment ground troops, soldiers wearing combat gear of such astonishing weight and complexity that they seemed scarcely able to walk. The second and third trucks contained the lieutenant colonel’s media coverage.
The lieutenant enjoyed a glorious circuit of the Collaboratory, ostensibly to check it out for security purposes, but mostly in order to exhibit himself to the awestruck locals. Oscar tried to make himself useful. He introduced the lieutenant colonel to his local security experts: Kevin, and Captain Burningboy.
During the briefing, Kevin said little—Kevin seemed rather embarrassed. Burningboy proved most forthcoming. The Moderator captain launched into a detailed and terrifying recitation of the Collaboratory’s strategic plight. Buna was a mere twenty kilometers from the highly porous border with Louisiana. The murky swamps of the Sabine River valley were swarming with vengeful Regulators. Though the armed helicopter attack against the Regulator commandos had never become official news, the assault had provoked them to fury.
The threat to Buna was immediate and serious. The Regulators had swarms of airborne drones surveilling the facility around the clock. Huey had given up his plans to co-opt the facility. He wanted it abandoned, ruined, destroyed. The Regulators were more than willing to carry out Huey’s aims. They were lethally furious that the Collaboratory was hosting Moderators.
This briefing enthralled the lieutenant colonel. Sickened by his desk job and embarrassed by the sordid cover-up of his glorious attack, the man was visibly itching for a fight. He had come fully prepared. His all-volunteer squad of forest ninjas were lugging whole arsenals of professional gear: body armor, silenced sniper rifles, human body-odor sniffers, mine-proofed boot soles, night-fighting video helmets, even ultraspecial, freeze-dried, self-heating, long-range patrol rations.
The lieutenant colonel, having debriefed the locals on the ground, announced that it was time for a reconnaissance in force, out in the swamps. His media crew would not be neglected; their helicopters would serve as his comlink and impromptu air backup.
Oscar had some acquaintance with the lieutenant colonel through his NSC connections. Having finally