And as none of them seemed to know what was going on or for whom they were looking, the best description of it was “train wreck.”
Cooper assumed that might have been part of the point, that Peters was focusing on getting maximum manpower in place and then quarterbacking from the air. The confusion would give him plenty of latitude to write the story however he liked; probably, that rogue-agent-turned-abnorm-terrorist, Nick Cooper, had kidnapped his family before being cornered in this building by Equitable Services. All the extra force would look good, a blow for interagency cooperation that still assured the real credit went to the DAR.
Sorry about that, Drew. I guess falling a dozen stories onto concrete is going to mess up your plan.
The good news was that without a quarterback, all those forces spent most of their time tripping over one another. Sirens and lights, SWAT teams and the faceless, barricades and badges. Cooper used the confusion to get a little distance, and after that, the rest was routine. He tracked in and out of buildings, rode the Metro one stop north and then two south, circled the same block twice in each direction, and then finally set off across the Mall.
An hour and a half later, he was sitting on the park bench, staring back at Abraham Lincoln. Still twenty minutes before he could rendezvous with Quinn and Shannon.
Twenty minutes before he could see his children.
Twenty minutes to decide the fate of the world.
Cooper had his datapad out, the stamp drive slotted. He’d logged on and prepped the video file for distribution. He’d learned from John Smith’s mistake; instead of sending it to a handful of journalists who could be silenced, he’d prepped it for upload to a public video sharing system. All he had to do was press send and it would spread like wildfire. In an hour it would have propagated to thousands of people; by morning it would be everywhere, on every news channel, every website. The whole world would know the ugly truth.
All he had to do was press send.
What had Peters said? “This is bigger than me and you. If you do this, the world will burn.”
It would certainly mean the end of this administration. A president caught on tape authorizing the murder of innocent citizens? He’d be crucified, face jail time, maybe worse.
All of which was fine with Cooper. But the problem with striking sparks was that fire wasn’t easy to control. How far would this one go?
Faith in the government, already at an all-time low, would plummet. In their hearts, Americans already didn’t believe that their leaders cared about them. People thought of politicians in the most jaded and cynical terms, and with some good reason. But it was a big step to discover the government was ordering their murder.
And Equitable Services. To have even a chance at survival, it would have to disavow Peters, claim he was a fanatic operating outside of bounds. But even then, the agency might be destroyed.
Which wasn’t entirely a good thing. Yes, Peters had misused the agency. But the threat from violent abnorms was real. Maybe not every person Cooper had terminated was dirty. But plenty were. Without Equitable Services, there would be no one to contain them.
Not only that, but the video cleared John Smith of the Monocle. It turned him from a terrorist back into a freedom fighter, maybe even a hero. There were plenty of people who would look up to him. See him as a brave new voice. Maybe even a potential leader.
A scary thought. Smith had the intellect and acumen to lead. But Cooper didn’t trust the man’s heart. He’d admitted to planting bombs, to seeding viruses, to assassinating civilians. Smith was innocent of the Monocle, but he was plenty guilty.
Peters might well be right. Sharing this might well set the world on fire.
Of course, there’s another option.