The Armageddon Machine

by Mike Ramon

Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dallas, Texas

  June 13 -- 13:00 UTC/8:00 am local time

  When Agent Sarah Marquez drove up to the scene it was hard to believe that a group of terrorists had set up base there. It was a small, nice-looking house on a shady, nice-looking street in East Dallas. Those neighbors not awakened by the noise of the raid just after dawn had soon thereafter been awakened by the knocking of police and NTRA agents on their doors.

  According to the report sent to Agent Marquez over a secure wire, the general response from the neighborhood was that people didn’t know much of anything about the people occupying the house at the end of the block. The house had been empty for over a year, and then two months ago some people had moved in. Nobody was sure how many people were staying in the house, though they were certain that at least one of them was a woman. Agent Marquez wondered if one of these neighbors was the person who called in the anonymous tip from a payphone that led the NTRA to this house. If so, they were apparently too afraid to admit it while being questioned.

  A tall, dark-haired man approached Agent Marquez as she got out of her car. He put out his hand and she took it,

  “Agent Marquez, I’m Agent Bell. I was in tactical command of the raid here.”

  “Hello, Agent Bell. Is it still here?”

  “Yes; the transport van hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “Show me to it.”

  Agent Bell led her into the house. The house was filled with cops and NTRA Agents. They were engaged in turning the house inside out to look for anything that might have been missed in the initial sweep, weapons, documents, thumb drives--anything that could pose a danger or provide useful intelligence. None of the cops knew exactly what this operation was about, other than it was tied to the mall shooting that had happened three days previously. The only people on site who knew the true threat that this terrorist cell had posed were the agents of the NTRA.

  Agent Bell led her downstairs to the basement.

  “I thought they didn’t have basements in Texas,” Agent Marquez said. “Something about a high water table and shifty clay.”

  “Then I guess this house is special,” Agent Bell said.

  In the basement there was another agent pacing around the room, waving around the wand of a radiation detector.

  “The levels are extremely low,” Agent Bell said when he saw the look on Agent Marquez’s face when she saw the man with the wand. “There’s no danger.”

  “I should hope not, or I would be pretty pissed off at you for bringing me down here.”

  Two agents stood sentinel at the door of a basement room. They stepped aside when they saw Bell and Marquez approaching. Agent Bell nodded his head in passing as he led Agent Marquez into the room. He hit the light switch and a light bulb hanging from the ceiling came on; it was the only source of light in the small, spare room as there were no windows to let in light from outside. Near the back wall of the room there was a black trunk. The lid was closed, and a broken padlock lay on the ground nearby.

  “The trunk hasn’t been moved?” Agent Marquez said.

  “No. We busted the lock, opened the lid and searched inside. The radiation scanners spiked. Still not enough radiation to cause much trouble if you aren’t exposed to it for long, but it was enough to cause some concern. We closed the trunk back up and called for a special transport, which should be here anytime now. They must have realized that the device was leaking radiation, and they kept it in this trunk to cut down on the levels of radiation they were exposed to.”

  “Can I see it?” Agent Marquez asked.

  “I could open the lid for a moment.”

  Agent Bell did just that. The hinges squealed as he raised the lid. Agent Marquez peered into the trunk. Inside there was a black box, and nothing else.

  “Any idea what’s inside the box?” she asked.

  “Nope. We thought it better to wait until we get this trunk to a safe, secure facility before we open the box.

  Agent Marquez nodded her head.

  “Okay, close it,” she said.

  “The report said that there were two surviving suspects?” she asked.

  “The last time I checked, both suspects are still in surgery. One of them took two bullets, one in the leg and one in the abdomen. The other one--the woman--took a shot to the chest.”

  “We need to question them both as soon as possible.”

  “I have agents at the hospital ready to step in when the doctors give them the okay.”

  “Good. I want to know just what type of shit we’ve stepped into here. Let’s head back upstairs.”

  This time it was Agent Marquez who led the way. Back upstairs Agent Marquez stood for a moment, rubbing her chin and thinking as she watched the agents and officers as they continued their search of every nook, cavity and crevice of the house. An agent came in from outside and came over to Agent Bell, who stood nearby.

  “Sir, the transport is here,” the agent said.

  “Thank you. I’ll be right out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man stepped outside again.

  “All right, everyone,” Agent Bell announced. “I need everybody to clear out while the transport team does their thing.”

  The NTRA agents obeyed the order at once; some of the Dallas PD officers hesitated at first, clearly unhappy at being told what to do by a man who was, so far as they knew, an FBI agent. But in the end, they obeyed as well. Everyone in the house started filing out. The guy who Agent Marquez had seen in the basement came up and exited the house with his radiation scanner. When Agent Bell was certain that the house was cleared of personnel he turned for the door.

  “After you, Agent Marquez,” he said.

  Agent Marquez led the way outside. The first thing she saw when she came out into sunshine was a large, black truck parked at the curb with its back doors standing open. Three men were busy suiting up in outfits that looked like a cross between a bomb suit and a biohazard suit.

  The cops had set up a perimeter at both ends of the street, and people were pressed up against the barriers, stretching their necks to see what was going on. One would think that the appearance of the men in the strange suits would put the fear of God into these people and cause them to clear out, but they stood there, watching, some of them with their camera phones out to film everything for digital posterity. Agent Marquez thought about ordering some of the agents on site to confiscate all the phones from the onlookers, but decided against it; the last thing she wanted was for someone to make a free speech case out of this.

  After the men in the spacesuits--as Agent Marques thought of them--had been inside the house for over a half hour, she wondered just what in the hell was taking them so long. She understood the need for caution, but she was eager to get the device somewhere safe, where it could be analyzed.

  Finally the men in the spacesuits came out, two of them carrying the trunk and the third one following behind. They loaded the trunk into the back of the truck and closed the thick doors, waited as an unsuited man passed over them with a radiation detector, then stripped out of their suits. Twenty minutes later the truck was gone, as was Agent Marquez and the rest of the NTRA people, leaving the cops behind to comb through the house yet again.