by Tim Curran
Something about the situation got into her gut. She dug out her iPhone and put it on zoom so she could get a better look. There. Focus a bit. Tighten the field.
Holy shit!
One of the men hit the bum over the head with something.
He dropped motionless at their feet.
Shawna started to record it.
A third man hopped out of the van and helped the other two throw the bum in the back. Doors were shut. The van drove off, not so slowly now.
Shawna just stared, her lips moving silently.
What the fuck just happened?
She sat there in disbelief. Tabloids were very far from her mind now. She couldn’t believe what she’d just seen. It couldn’t possibly have happened and yet it did. She’d seen it. She’d videoed it.
When the van passed her, she ducked down.
It slowed and she felt her heart began to pound, then it picked up speed and drove away. She didn’t dare lift her head until it was nearly out of sight.
Then she did the only thing she could.
She ran for her car and followed it.
WASHINGTON DC: BOLLING AFB
DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
6:02 P.M.
Lieutenant-General Sleshing sat in his oak-paneled office and watched the El Badji video again and again. He saw the same images Colonel Loomis had on the ground, but without the horrible, sickening stink in the air.
But, then, death was nothing new to Sleshing.
When he was a young tow-headed, newly-promoted captain he’d been with the 1st Air Cavalry Division during Operation Rockcrusher in 1971 when U.S. forces entered Cambodia to hunt down elements of the NVA that were hiding in the remote wilderness to avoid American reprisals. A U.S. incursion into Cambodia was, through international treaty, illegal. But the NVA were doing it routinely. Attacking U.S. and South Vietnamese positions, then running across the border to hide.
No one had really warned Sleshing’s unit of what they were going to find as they approached an internment camp at Doc Tho where the Cambodians had rounded up ethnic Viets and imprisoned them (they were angry over Viet incursions and had taken the law into their own hands). They were greeted at the gates by living skeletons, many too weak to even stand. The bodies were everywhere, most so rotted that they were almost unrecognizable as human beings. Men, women, children. The barracks were filled with the sick, the dead, the dying. Those in the lower bunks had drowned in rivers of excrement, urine, and filth. Those still alive were riddled with lice, scabies, gangrene, suppurating boils and lesions. Hundreds of unburied corpses were stacked like cordwood, infested with typhus. Hundreds of others smoldered in mass burning pits.
Sleshing himself had prodded something blackened with his bayonet.
As it rolled over, he saw what it was.
The skull of an infant.
One corpse causes sorrow… but hundreds, thousands, brings sheer disbelief. Sleshing and the Air Cav soldiers walked about, slack-jawed, sickened. The sheer level of death there was overwhelming. Death on an industrial level of the sort that had not been seen since Nazi Germany. A factory whose raw material were human beings.
Soldiers who were battle-hardened and toughened to the horrors of war, went mad. The remaining Cambodian guards that had not fled and their bandit underlings were shot down in cold blood.
It was a madhouse.
It took the officers and noncoms some time to restore order.
Sleshing shook his head.
He had to get those pictures out of his mind.
Over forty years later that young tow-headed captain was still in him. And that stink, that hideous pervasive stink was still on him. Nothing could wash it away.
As he watched the videos of El Badji, he was reminded of that day.
The bodies.
The burning bodies.
My Christ, he thought, oh my Christ.
The Syrians weren’t to be blamed, of course; they were preventing a contagion. They had little choice. That part was understandable. The scary thing was the terrorist elements and their Iranian advisors that were involved in the mess. The very frightening possibility that they would realize that what they had was a devastating biological weapon and use it as such.
If they have the technology, Sleshing kept reminding himself. To cold-start BioGen will take cutting-edge biomedical technology. They may not be capable of it. But if they are, if they are—
The door opened and Charles VanderMissen came in.
He greeted the DIA director with a limp handshake. Sleshing realized his own handshake was not much better. VanderMissen was dressed in an immaculate tailored charcoal gray suit. It hung on him like something he’d picked up at Goodwill.
“Christ, turn that off, Wally,” he said in disgust.
DDI Sleshing did so. “Sorry, Chuck. I just can’t stop watching it.”
“Me neither,” VanderMissen admitted, falling into a chair. “But I was like that as a kid, too. Never could get enough of Mighty Mouse on TV.”
“God bless Mighty Mouse,” Sleshing laughed. “Lord knows how we need him now.”
Sleshing and VanderMissen were old friends, part of the old guard as they liked to call it. But it was only at times like this when they were alone together that they allowed themselves to relax, to unwind, to let their hair down.
“Any news?”
“Yeah, plenty. The teams have been making a good run of it.” VanderMissen did not look happy about this. “They’ve sterilized about sixty disease vectors in the past seventy-two hours. That brings us up to a grand total of... oh, Jesus H. Christ. I can’t do this anymore.”
Sleshing felt for him. Disease vectors. Yes, U.S. servicemen and women that had fought for their country, been in the wrong part of Iraq at the wrong time, and now had to be killed, sterilized like nasty germs. It was appalling. It was unthinkable.
DDI Sleshing poured him a whiskey. It was a Bowmore single malt, twenty-five years old. The good stuff and terribly expensive. He saved it for great victories…and terrible tragedies.
“What did you get from CommStar?” he asked.
“More of the same. The Syrians are concentrating their cleanup to the north. Another little village called Mashyt. Sat photos are no different.” He opened his briefcase and handed them to Sleshing. “Might as well look and have yourself a good cry.”
Sleshing slipped on his glasses.
His fingers shook as he paged through them. Finally, shaking his head, he tore them up and dropped the pieces into the classified burn bag. For a long time VanderMissen and he just stared at each other, sipping their whiskey.
“Pershing’s finally pitching in,” Sleshing said without much enthusiasm, speaking of the Director of Central Intelligence. “Sonofabitch has had his hand in his shorts long enough. He’s giving us some EDT units. Any objections?”
DNI VanderMissen shook his head. “Sounds fine. More manpower we put on this, the sooner we’ll get some closure. I hope.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Sleshing said, inhaling his whiskey.
The CIA Emergency Deployment Teams would help fill a few holes. With EDTs on the ground, it increased the chance of success and decreased the possibility that regular military or police units would become involved. The President didn’t want that. Once it happened, Sleshing knew from experience, the classification of Top Secret they had slapped on this whole mess would go out the window. CNN would be crawling up the Pentagon’s ass with all the newspaper and network people close behind.
“Even those dick-suckers at Fox won’t be able to put a spin on this Grade-A clusterfuck,” Sleshing grumbled.
“You talking to me or yourself, Wally?” VanderMissen asked.
“Both and maybe neither.”
VanderMissen nodded. “I don’t like how this is spilling out. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Deniability might not be an option soon. I already have a couple heavies from the NRO sniffing around my door,” he said, referring to the National Reconnaissance Office, wh
o operated America’s spy satellites of which CommStar was but one.
“What’s the make-up of those EDTs?”
Sleshing shrugged. “About what you figure. SAC/SOG operators, ex-Delta and DEVGRU with Blackpool thugs for muscle.”
VanderMissen sighed. He didn’t like that at all, more spillage, more security risks. But he knew he had no choice. He could raise some hell with Gus Costello, the National Security Advisor, who was in charge of coordinating operations but he knew in the end it was a matter of manpower. DCI Pershing, Roger Thorogood, and General Mason were all in bed with Blackpool, or XI, as it was now known. Blackpool was a private security company that provided “consultants” to the CIA who used them in counterterror operations worldwide. The Blackpool cadre were all ex-special ops soldiers under the umbrella of CIA SAC/SOG. They had been involved in a variety of bombings, assassinations, and human rights violations in Iraq and Afghanistan. XI had so many charges and lawsuits against them they had closed down their training facility in Georgia and opened up under the XI logo, Exeter International, in the UK. The name had changed but the company directive had not: they provided mercenaries and guns-for-hire. No more, no less.
VanderMissen despised everything they stood for. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been bad enough, but BioGen made it even more risky to bring in private contractors.
“I hope Pershing has control over those hoodlums,” he said. “Because if he doesn’t, if they leak any of this…Christ, the blowback will be like a fucking purge.”
He needed to say no more.
Nobody wanted that. The country didn’t need that.
“They’ll be completely under S5 control, deployed where and when needed,” Sleshing told him.
“Sure,” VanderMissen said. “The Old Man’s hungry for power and always has been. Now he has it.”
“And if he has it, CBT has it,” Sleshing said, referring to the fact that, technically, the Old Man was in the employ of Congdon BioTechnologies. As one of the world’s largest corporate entities, their web was spun right through the fabric of the military-industrial complex. And sitting at the center like a bloated black widow spider was Elizabeth Toma.
“They’ve always had it,” VanderMissen said. “Never doubt that.”
Sleshing didn’t. Through sleezy backdoor lobbying, huge bribes, and out-and-out extortion, CBT owned most of Capitol Hill. It was well known in DC that you did not fuck with Elizabeth Toma, that her network of spooks had something potentially damaging on just about everyone in power in the city.
Wicked Witch of the East, he thought.
BioGen had been a Section 5 project. So, technically, it was under the umbrella of the CIA as all S5 ops were, except that everyone knew that the technical and innovative muscle at S5 had come from CBT.
Years ago, when the National Security Council would meet and the topic of war in the Middle East came up, it was decided that alternative forms of warfare, if skillfully deployed, could save countless American and allied lives. Certain groups were chosen to develop these weapons. The CIA’s DS&T, Directorate of Science and Technology. The Office of Naval Research. The Army Research Office. DARPA. And they did just that. Long after the Gulf War and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the results of these studies were looked at closely. Sleshing remembered the meeting when it all came down. It was at the White House. Those present were some of the same people present at the NMCC last May at the onset of the Syrian Incident. Sleshing was there, as was VanderMissen and Pershing. Admiral Paulus of the ONI. General Mason. A few others.
DARPA had submitted their proposals. As had the ONR and the ARO. But it was the CIA’s that caught everyone’s attention. Section 5 had come up with a real beauty. It was cheap, nearly impossible to trace, and controllable.
So they said.
Everyone had agreed that BioGen was a strong possibility.
And in late 2014, it was tried. Now here they were, the worst-case scenario playing out around them, things gradually spiraling out of control.
“I talked to Costello a little while ago,” VanderMissen said. “He said the others will help one way or another. But we have to go through him.”
“Figures. What about the Bureau?”
VanderMissen chuckled dryly. “No way. He doesn’t want the FBI in on this in any way, shape, or form. Or should I say, the President doesn’t.”
“Ah, he’s still got a bug up his ass about our G-men.”
VanderMissen managed a smile. “My question is: What happens when the Bureau gets wind of this shit? Because they will. You know that.”
Sleshing looked very old at that moment and felt even older. “This entire thing is going to escalate out of control. Just wait until Maddie Hughes at the DHS finds out. The reprisals are going to be bloody.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Which brings us back to CBT again and Liz Toma. There’s an unholy alliance between Langley and CBT. Pershing is a power player. He’s got an agenda and we both know it. My guess is he’s playing footsie with Colin Paulus and Frank Mason.”
VanderMissen looked thoughtful. “Yes. Something’s happening in the shadows, but I can’t pinpoint it either. Whatever it is, I’m betting Bob Pershing is behind it.”
“And if I know him, he’s already selected his sacrificial pigs.”
Sleshing nodded. “Meaning you and I?”
“You, me, possibly Gus Costello and Arlene Rabin. He’s survived a lot of administrations and purges by playing the game. And we’re in their sights.”
“If we end up before a Senate subcommittee, I’m naming names,” Sleshing said.
They both uttered dry, brittle laughs at the very idea. They could name all the names they wanted and commit professional and political suicide at the same time, but the bottom line was they’d never be able to prove it.
Not unless we start gathering some intel of our own, Sleshing thought. Copying a few documents, making a few lists, duping a few CD-ROMs.
Such a thing was technically treason and an absolute violation of the Official Secrets Act. But it was also insurance. Might not be a bad idea. If the stink were big enough, DCI Pershing’s SAC boys would never dare come after them.
“We have to start thinking of ourselves, Wally. How we’re going to survive this.”
“You’re right. Fuck the lot of em.” Sleshing poured himself another. “I say we begin discussing strategy over a couple thick steaks.”
“Best thing I’ve heard all day.”
EAST CHICAGO, INDIANA: MARKTOWN
6:45 P.M.
Carolyn Argante didn’t get it until it was too late.
She’d come back from the Gulf like a lot of other soldiers. A little older. A little wiser. A little more disgusted and cynical at mankind for inventing warfare in the first place. And more than a little in awe of the weapons in the Army’s arsenal. Many of which hadn’t even been tested under combat conditions until boots were on the ground. You could play wargames with them. You could see them destroy derelict trucks and tanks at a healthy distance. You could watch endless demonstrations. Sit through endless lectures. But until you saw them destroy enemy vehicles and turn enemy platoons into so much hamburger... you just didn’t get it.
Carolyn didn’t get it until Az Khubat.
Az Khubat was a desolate stretch of nothing about five miles outside of Mosul and it was where, for her, the shit truly hit the fan. Before that, Carolyn had seen more of the war on CNN than first hand. She was traveling in a convoy of six trucks. Medical supplies. Nothing exotic or exciting.
The Iraqis didn’t care.
A rogue unit came barreling out of the desert in Soviet BMP-2 reconnaissance vehicles. The area was supposedly secure. The Marines had swept through there already. The dozens and dozens of destroyed tanks and trucks smoldering alongside the road had been evidence of this, as were the mangled bodies of the Republican Guard.
Yet, somehow, a few Iraqis had avoided the leathernecks and here they were.
Ready to
do some damage.
The convoy came to a stop when the Iraqis opened up. The BMP-2s were equipped with 7.62mm RPK machine guns, 30mm cannons, and AT-5 Spandrel anti-tank missiles. They raked the trucks with machine gun fire. Tires popped. Radiators were ripped open. Windshields exploded. And, yes, people started dying. The transport sergeant sitting next to Carolyn—an amiable Hispanic guy from Phoenix who talked endlessly of his children back in the States—took a volley of slugs to the face. Carolyn was sprayed with his blood and brains. Bone chips had been embedded into her cheeks and chin. People were screaming and trucks were burning. Confusion. Disorientation. Blood. Bodies. Terror.
Carolyn froze in the cab of the truck as lead zinged past her, a brown bar second lieutenant ninety-day wonder and feeling every bit of it. Nothing in her training had prepared her for this. Nothing possibly could. The Iraqis (who shouldn’t have been there to begin with) had surprised them, gunning out of the blowing sand like juggernauts.
“This can’t be fucking happening,” a voice kept saying in a shrill screech. And it took her a moment or two to realize that it was her voice and that she had most certainly peed her pants.
About that time, the door to her side was flung open and one of the senior sergeants grabbed her by the arm like an idiot schoolgirl and said, “C’mon, lieutenant! Goddammit, move!” He flung her out of the cab and into the dirt. He pushed her along and into the desert to a rock outcropping where the others were forming up a skirmish line. She noticed then that she’d forgotten her weapon.
Others were trying to make it to the rocks, too, with mixed success.
Two of her nurses made it. Three other soldiers were cut down mere feet away. The major got caught in a barrage of machine gun fire. Two of the gunners in the BMP-2s had caught him in crossfire and he was out there dancing like a puppet with clipped strings, bits of his anatomy flying this way and that. They were enjoying it. She could see them laughing as they emptied their drums of ammo. Finally the major (or what there was of him) collapsed. The Spandrel missiles had turned their trucks into burning scrap iron. Iraqi soldiers were trying to assault their position, supported by 30mm cannon fire and the ever-present popping of the RPKs. Many had died, but they had gotten no closer. The sergeant and his rifle squad were picking them off despite the incoming slugs and blowing sand and erupting real estate.
