by Rod Rayborne
The woman wondered about the tuxedo wearing man when he'd first approached. Others who'd stopped by the restaurant in the days prior had urged her to go with them before the radiation from the north had a chance to poison the air around her little cantina, but this was her home. Where she'd grown up. The restaurant had been passed down to her from her parents who'd inherited it from their parents. And so on. Pancho Villa was said to have stopped there once, though there were no photos to prove it. Still, it was home. She had no intention of leaving it.
She stood behind Bennett, pushing a paper bag into his pack without asking.
"Don't let these get cold, Señor. Tacos taste best hot. I put some extra sauce in there for you too."
"So many, Señora? Thank you. I'd feel so much better if you'd let me pay for them."
"Nonsense." Her voice was gentle, kindly. "I've seen no one for the last two days. The food will go bad if someone doesn't eat it. And besides, what good is American money here now, I'd like to know? But I've heard it's still being accepted in Panama, if you're going that far. You must keep it safe and not get robbed if you want to continue to eat."
She paused and then said in a quiet voice, "And it's Señorita."
Bennett smiled. He couldn't help but stare when she'd first walked out from the kitchen. She was barefoot beneath a wild calf length Spanish style dress overlaid with a pattern of gaudy roses and sombreros. Over it she wore a thick head of wavy black hair. Her almond shaped eyes, olive colored skin and shapely figure completed the package. She was a woman impossible to forget.
"You must come see me if ever you're by this way again. I think I should like that," she said.
"I will, Contessa. If I get by this way again, I'll definitely look you up. Count on it."
"That sounds good, señor. But call me Lucinda. Contessa was my grandmother."
"Lucinda, then. I'm Bennett. John Bennett."
"John. I like that name very much. You have a good face John."
Bennett was about to respond when he heard a sound, an engine chugging over the hill he himself had passed a half mile distant. He turned and watched as a chocolate brown 1955 Ford pickup bounced down the road in his direction. As it approached, it occurred to him that he had seen no other vehicles for the last several hours. The plate said California.
As the truck neared, a large, smiling black man leaned out and waved. Next to him, a white woman sat and on her lap, a small, frail looking girl rested, looking tired.
Bennett waved in return as the truck roared by. Half a mile down the road, he saw the man throw something from the window. Two white tablets, now crushed into powder to float away, dispersed in the breeze.
Turning back to the woman who'd given him the bag, Bennett thanked her again and mounted the bike. He looked back the way he had come. Far to the north he could just make out a long line of heavy dark clouds slowly drifting towards them.
"It's going to get cold, I think. Come with me…" The last part was barely audible.
She blushed. "Thank you John, but no. My family are buried here. Five generations. Someday I will be too. Be safe on your journey." She squeezed his arm.
He smiled, looking up, feeling the warmth of the sun on his cheeks. Nodding to Lucinda, he peddled away.
Chapter Seventy Eight
Nine days before...
A tall dark thin man in a white outfit walked crisply down a long, brightly lit corridor. Behind him, two soldiers kept pace with him, three steps back. The footsteps of the three men echoed hollowly in the otherwise empty hallway.
They walked for what felt to Smet like an eternity, none speaking or being spoken to. The American military is a tight-faced society, lacking humor, the thin man thought. He couldn't say different about his own organization. He should have felt right at home. Instead, the hair stood up on the back of his neck and sweat ran into the collar of his newly pressed Kandora. He wanted to look good. This was a money day.
Finally they stopped in front of a door. In each of his previous two visits, the door before which he stood, as we're all the other doors in the long corridor, had been nondescript. No number. No sign of any kind. Same as the building, at least what he saw of it.
The other times he had been brought here, he had been picked up at the airport by two men in plain clothes and driven perhaps thirty miles or so out of town. There, in a small wood, he was searched and blindfolded and then driven to the site. No one spoke at any time. The two men in plain clothes (they all wore plain clothes) guided him into the building and removed the blindfold. He was marched down a long corridor, this corridor and stopped before a nondescript door. This door he was sure.
Two more men were stationed there, near a thick lead box. The box would be opened and any devices anyone entering the room were carrying were deposited in the box, to be returned to them when they left. Then one of the soldiers would pass a wand over the individual in question to make sure they were free of any other type of recording device. No honor system here.
When that was accomplished, one of the men would tap on the door twice, three times, once more and then enter the room, closing the door behind them to await further orders.
The room was darkened with only two table lamps and a wide monitor above them to provide illumination. In the room sat men and women along one side of a curved mahogany table, facing out. Again, plain clothes, although Smet knew them to be military. There were no pleasantries, no inquiries about his trip, his health. He was made to stand before them while questions were fired at him. Who he was, where he had learned guerilla warfare, what countries he had trained in, his religious and political beliefs, his connections with other similar organizations, etc.
They always began with the same questions worded in different ways, trying to trip him up, he knew. Then they would ask him one or two new questions. Their obvious contempt for him and those things he held dear angered him but the money was beyond his expectations and the mission was right in the eyes of his superiors so he grudgingly overlooked it.
Finally on his third trip he had been told what was expected of him and his contacts. They only told him what they thought he needed to know, gave him an envelope containing a printed copy of the instructions they'd given him in person, showed him a passbook with an ungodly sum deposited in his name in a foreign account and then nodded to his escorts.
The two waiting men then marched him out of the room and back down the long corridor towards the door through which he had entered, put the blindfold on again and pushing him in the car, drove back to the entrance to the underground building and then outside to an empty field miles away, as always. There they removed the blindfold and leaving him in the field, drove away. He had to walk from there back to the airport on his own, cursing them as he did.
This time was different and it made Smet distinctly He had not been blindfolded so that he could see where he was being taken. A wide, well hidden door swung open out of the side of a hill at the press of a button on the center console of the car. It looked like something he had seen once in one of the infidel movies from the West he secretly liked to watch. The Americans were so clever.
Immediately upon entering the hillside, the door shut behind them. They sat for a moment in the dark and then bright lights came on. Then they drove another few minutes in a plain concrete causeway before coming to a stop. Smet was shocked at the enormity of the underground complex.
Upon exiting the car, they were taken through a large vault like steel door, through a small room and out another door into the corridor Smet recognized from his previous visits. This time the men who met him were uniformed. Let and Drury were the names on the bronze colored tags they wore. Still they didn't speak. They simply escorted him back to the same door. Now it wore a plate, G-216. Ground, Smet thought.
He stopped before the door and handed his phone to one of the door attendants. Instead of dropping the phone into the box, the man simply pushed it into a shirt pocket. Smet frowned but said nothing. Tightlipped, he adjuste
d his robes, pulling the sleeves straight and smoothing the creases he gotten on the drive. As usual, his escorts waited silently behind him until the door was opened and then followed him into the room, closing it behind them.
Entering the room, Smet's eyes coolly appraised the men and women seated around the table, many more than he had seen on his other visits, all now smartly uniformed in green, white and blue. Brigadier Gen. Aaron McAllen, Maj. Thomas Bury, Adm. Susan Tokihara, Rear Adm. Dennis Loki, Major General Lucas C. Owen, and more than a dozen others.
On the wall behind them, Smet noted a new flag different from the familiar Stars and Stripes. A blood red X cut a blue map of the continental United States in four equal sections with one large white star on each. Alaska and territories were tucked away on the lower left corner. Superimposed in the middle of the flag were two weapons rendered in black, an 18th century musket such as that the first colonists used to defeat the British in the American Revolution and the other, a modern M-4. They crossed each other like bones on a pirate flag. Above the flag were the words New States of America. Beneath, a plaque read, Novus Ordo Seclorum.
The room was an explosive cacophony. Men and women shouting, interrupting, fists being slammed and one man standing in the back, largely ignored, attempting to give a speech. On the monitor to the right of the curved desk was an interactive map of the United States bordered in blue and dotted with twenty-three red X's spread around the country. One of them lay squarely over Washington DC. The words Russia E1 and China E2 headed the display.
Rear Admiral Loki raised his hand for silence. The shouting continued unabated until Loki pounded on the table with his fist. The roar died back to a murmur and then finally grew still.
"Our man," Loki said nodding towards Smet. Twenty pairs of eyes looked in Smet's direction, all with undisguised contempt. His reputation clearly preceded him.
Rear Admiral Loki stared at him for several uncomfortable seconds before speaking.
"Twenty-three ten kiloton devices are now in place in non-descript vans located in out of the way areas. Each a major city. Dallas, New York City, Portland, Los Angeles and of course DC. At exactly 0200 hours tonight they'll be set on a thirty six hour clock. That means in a day and a half from then…" he paused to look at his watch, "... ten hours, eighteen minutes from now, 1418 hours, Saturday next, those cities and the proud Americans heroes who live there, will be the first salvo in our attempt to right the injustices of the world, rebalance international power to favor the New States of America and eliminate the assets of our most formidable competitors.
Immediately preceding the ground detonations, a single airburst will occur approximately two hundred miles above the roughly geographic center of the country, the Nebraska, Kansas border. That will create an EMP that will take out our power grid, denying our side knowledge of the origin of the detonations and setting up the New States of America to reestablish real authority on the streets and bring hope back to our people.
"None of our military assets will be targeted. We will remain fully operational and capable of prosecuting our intentions both domestically and abroad wherever and whenever we choose. Under advisement, the President has moved ahead with the forward deployment of elements of the 5th, 7th, 28th and 32nd Airborne units to specialized locations throughout the hemisphere and has placed the USS Freedom, USS John Doud and two nuclear submarines in both the high Pacific and Atlantic oceans on high alert. Meanwhile a worm will be introduced into our early warning system identifying said origin of the blasts to be foreign ICBM's coming from the joint forces of Russia and China.
"What about foreign detection satellites? Surely they'll see the points of origin. Only one positive ID is necessary to give this whole sordid affair away."
"One hour before said detonations, we'll jam the communications capacity of those satellites in a position to observe our ground base operations temporarily. Our satellites will also be affected but power will be restored immediately with no compromising information relayed. Like so."
Rear Admiral Loki indicated the screen on the wall to his right. An animation began when he did, showing one hundred and five red lines arching over the Arctic from both the east and west sides of the planet. A larger number of blue trails appeared on the lower half of the screen, American interceptors, flying towards the red lines. Eighty-two red lines disappeared. Of the original one hundred and five missiles headed towards the country, twenty-three reached their destinations.
"When the missiles from our enemies are detected in flight, the New States will have no alternative but to answer this unprovoked attack with a devastating counter attack of our own that will leave their militaries and economies decimated. Here I invoke the immortal words of the great Winston Churchill. 'Never let a good crisis go to waste.'
"Now, there have been questions from some of you about the willingness of the President to fulfill his commitment to protect the New States with Nuclear Weapons. While the President is wholly unaware of the actions we speak of here and therefore bears no responsibility for what will occur, I have it on good authority that he will fulfill his duty under said conditions without fail. But, should an unexpected situation develop, that asset will be removed and control passed to the Vice President who, as we all know, stands with us in this terrible undertaking.
More, the seat of political power, DC, will be reduced. Regrettable but as we all acknowledge, unity in our mission must obviously be maintained at all costs. That can never happen under our current two party system. Not one of us disagrees.
"This has been a joint effort by two hundred and thirty two members, most high-ranking, of the four main branches of our armed services whom you represent. That's an amazing consensus considering the nature of the mission. Heroes all! We've spared no effort to keep knowledge and therefore guilt for this sad action limited to the fewest number of individuals possible. That includes our families. For the sake of our own well being as well as the future of our country, we've all agreed never to speak of our mission to anyone including our closest loved ones.
"And be assured that the onus for the placement of the devices was not borne by any American citizen. Certain members of the so-called Sons of Darkness, the international terrorist ring with ties to the Middle East, were contracted in this sad but necessary endeavor.
"Murderers all who have no qualms about snuffing out the lives of innocents for their own evil ends. Having fulfilled their mission, the devices now in place, those individuals from the SOD were subsequently removed from the gene pool."
Rear Admiral Loki smiled in Smet's direction. The thin man was holding onto an edge of the table. His knees shook, something he desperately hoped was unseen.
"Hello Smet, you didn't think we forgot about you, did you? A Lieutenant in militant Islam's war on peace in the free world. Has personally assisted in the deaths of more than forty-two innocent men, women and children in places like Tel Aviv, Cairo and most recently in Paris. Aided and abetted terrorists in other parts of the globe like Malaysia and Afghanistan. Was an instrument in the sale of Russian AK-47's to terrorist forces in both Lebanon and Syria. Attempted to acquire fissionable grade uranium for sale to Iran and North Korea. And now, here you are. Have you been successful in placing your devices?"
"Those that you have given me." His voice shook.
"Immaterial. The devices have been placed. And now you've come for your reward."
"No," he protested. "Keep your money. Let me go and I'll speak of this to no one!"
Rear Admiral Loki laughed out loud. "So ready to take the lives of innocent others but no stomach for your own death. Always the way. You're one of the reasons we're here right now. Decades of senseless slaughter in a cause so manifestly evil, it beggars description. Know that each of your twenty-three accomplices were dispatched with extreme prejudice. And now so shall you be. But take heart. Think of all those vestal virgins awaiting you in Nirvana."
"Lying son of a dog," Smet squealed. "There is no honor in you. May you
roast in the fires of hell!"
"I'll see you there, Smet. I fear we all will. What we're about to do…" His voice trailed off. Loki stared at the table for a moment, tears welling in his eyes. Then he looked up again, his face aging seeming years in those few seconds. With a slow shake of his head, he waved at the two soldiers who had brought the white robed man in.
"Take him to meet his reward."
The men grabbed a screaming Smet roughly by his arms and hustled him out of the room.
When the door closed behind them, Rear Admiral Loki turned back to the table. He bowed his head, eyes closed, breathing.
When a minute had passed, some of those gathered began to wonder if he was saying a prayer or merely trying to compose himself. Finally he looked up and glanced in turn at each of those sitting on either side of him.
"What we do here today, we do not for our ourselves alone, but for the good of our country and the world. The responsibility is ours and ours alone. We alone will bear the guilt for what must come into all eternity. May God have mercy on our souls.
Chapter Seventy Nine
S leet cut across the sky in sheets, incongruously casting Hollywood in virginal white, turning the city into an alien landscape from yet another blockbuster movie. From the hill Gordon climbed, pushing the wheel barrel before him, he could see the city spreading out to the sea, buried in white drift. Los Angeles was quiet and despite the quickly darkening skies, glowed beneath it's blanket of white.
Sofia, like the city, was also quiet. Only a bit of black hair and part of her face showed from beneath the piles of rags Gordon had heaped over her. Her head listed to the side, eyes closed, chin unquivering.
