Read Directive 51 for Free Online

as well be a little freedom in it. The old truck had a stereo thing that Elton had set up, along with a special flash drive just for this trip, one to be left somewhere and picked up by some poor stupid fuck when Jason was done. The flash held hours of awesome coustajam and ambvo, to keep Jason feeling good all day, and if it died, that would warn him that the nanospawn was beginning to eat into the truck itself.
    He had another poetic flash; that little flash drive was like the canary in the coal mine. You could enjoy the music, but its real purpose was to let him know what was really going on, by when it died. “Silicon Canary”—definitely a poem title. Maybe a band name—some of the coustajam bands were pretty aware, maybe one of them should call itself that.
    The mountains in the early-morning light were glorious. The truck’s heater worked well enough to keep him warm in the crisp morning, Marty Beelman’s amazing “Mount Elbert Jam”—Aaron Copland beatjected onto acoustic guitar and spirit drums—boomed from the speakers, and the sky was that deep blue that he was sure they did not have anywhere else in the world anymore. But you will, he thought. You will.

ABOUT THE SAME TIME. OVER THE WESTERN PACIFIC, JUST NORTH OF THE EQUATOR, ABOUT 650 KILOMETERS SOUTH OF THE ISLAND OF KUSAIE. JUST PAST THE MIDNIGHT TERMINATOR, SO IT IS 12:40 A.M. LOCAL TIME. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29.
    They had taken the bag off Samuelson’s head and roughly scrubbed him with a wet towel, so he only stank slightly of vomit; he was in a T-shirt and a pair of underwear, tied by the ankles to his bed in the private cabin, sitting upright.
    After an interminable time, the door opened. Two of the young men came in. They dragged in a man in a suit; Samuelson recognized Taylor, one of the Secret Service special agents, more by his build than by his bruised and battered face.
    “This man can do you no harm,” Samuelson said. “Let me clean him up. We cannot escape, and—”
    One of the men backhanded him across his face. Then they turned to Taylor; he was breathing but seemed unconscious. One of the men drew a box cutter and slit the Secret Service man’s throat, an arc of arterial blood spraying onto the walls of the compartment, staining the American flag and the pictures of past presidents.
    Samuelson could do nothing but watch the man die, and at that, he’s probably lucky . Yet he had to ask. “Why? Why did you do this?”
    He had not expected an answer, but in perfect, almost-accentless English, the leader of the group said, “Because we can, and because we want you to know we can.”
    They left Samuelson with the corpse, propped up so that he seemed to be looking at Samuelson from the depths of sleep or stupor. The vice president thought about looking away, curling up, doing something not to see, but he would still smell the blood no matter what, he would still know the broken body was there; he preferred to know with his eyes open.
    Silently, he thought to Taylor, I’m sorry you were here for this. I’ll try to find something I can do, however petty or invisible, for you and me and the country.
    He remembered that Taylor’s wife was named Beth, that they had one child, a boy that Taylor thought the world of. Taylor’s first name had been Charles and he’d endured teasing from the other Secret Service special agents about being named after a shoe. He’d been a quiet type who spent his breaks reading, and had always preferred to go home late in the afternoon when he could enjoy his family.
    I remember you. That’s about all I can do right now.
    Now that he was used to Taylor’s shocking appearance, the corpse was almost company, someone to talk to, anyway, and what politician doesn’t always need that ?
    Taylor, he thought, I hiked and camped and visited the back country all over the planet when I was younger, and I was the most traveled vice president in history, and I had more than enough experience so that I should have