“I’m told that you have some important information for me.” Keidel said in a cultured voice.
“Yes, sir,” the man replied humbly and looked at his feet. He was more than intimidated.
“So let’s have it?”
“Kurt Hunt gave it to me while I was at the correction facility downtown last night.”
“Kurt Hunt did you say?” the Effort leader repeated with unexpected alarm as he sat up. “What’s he doing in there?”
“He told me to tell you that he and the others in his group were all captured in the Sahara desert by some sort of military Special Forces group. He thinks they’re American. They took all the meteorites from them and have brought Hunt’s men to Chicago. They’re all in the prison now.”
Hans Keidel quickly assessed that whoever the Special Forces group were, they were after the Effort. This was very unsettling. They must know about the Switch, he thought, and my plans to use it.
“Did he say why they were brought to Chicago?” Hans Keidel asked.
“Hunt told me that the military men said they were planning a mission for two days from then.”
“Did he say anything about meteorites?” the suddenly rattled Effort leader inquired.
“He said that he overheard the men who captured them say that a guy named General Simon Stone would take the meteorites to Atlanta and put them in his safe for now.”
“How many men will be guarding the meteorites?” the quickly calculating Keidel asked.
“Hunt said that there were four people who got off in Atlanta and two of them were lookers,” the man responded. “I think he meant women.”
“Hmm,” Hans Keidel muttered as he thought for a minute before he said anything. “Thank you for the information,” the polished leader responded calmly. “Now here’s what I want from you. I want you to get yourself arrested again and deliver a return message to Hunt from me?”
“What? But I just got out,” the man protested in disbelief. He thought he would receive a reward, but what he was getting was another prison sentence.
“I’m ordering you to do it,” Hans screamed in rage as he leaped off of the couch. “If you don’t, you know what the alternative will be for you.” He pointed to the two huge Effort men standing by the door.
“What’s the message?” the man replied without hesitation and lowered his head.
“The message is that I don’t tolerate failure,” Hans Keidel shrieked in a voice so angry that he was shaking. “Then I want you to stab and kill him with a knife in his heart.”
“But where would I get a knife in prison?”
“We will supply you with one while you are there. Do you understand?”
The Effort man understood. He understood that his life as he knew it was over.
***
A few minutes later Hans Keidel stormed into the converted library where his three sons were working. They were his most trusted men and also his top “lieutenants”. They ran all his businesses both legal and illegal.
“We’ve got a problem,” he stated flatly. “The men you left in the desert have been captured by some sort of military special forces commandos. They’ve taken all our meteorites and I am sure they intend to attack us here in Chicago. We need to protect ourselves and also get our meteorites back. Once we have the Switches working they won’t be able to touch us.”
“What do you want us to do?” Lars asked as he looked up with a concerned furrow now showing on his face.
“You,” Hans pointed. “I want you to find the address of a General Simon Stone who lives in or around Atlanta.”
Lars began typing on his computer immediately. “I’ll find him,” his youngest son replied.
“Lothar,” the father ordered. “I want you to get as many men as you can to protect the warehouse. We don’t want anyone to take our Switches. I want a ring of men outside and a ring of men inside. They need to be in place by tomorrow night. Can you do that?”
“We’ll have at least fifty men by then,” his son promised.
“Kasper, I want you to go to Atlanta ASAP,” the old man yelled. “I’ll make some calls and have one of our people down there meet you at the airport.”
“What am I doing there?” Kasper Keidel inquired.
“You are going to raid General Stone’s house and get back our meteorites.”
“How much resistance can I expect?” Kasper asked.
“I’m told that there are only four people to kill and two of them are women.”
“Piece of cake,” Kasper Keidel laughed. “There are flights to Atlanta every half hour. If I hurry, I can be in Atlanta in about three hours.”
“Good,” the old man exclaimed and rubbed his hands together as he left the room. “Don’t let me down.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
About the time that Kasper Keidel landed in Atlanta, the MAD team had already finished their dinner and had retired into the inside of the house to discuss what Lisa had found in Dr. Raja’s diary.
Kasper was met at the terminal by a well-muscled man named Bubba. He appeared to be some kind of outdoorsman complete with a red full beard and tattoos all over his mostly exposed upper body. He had a faint smell of alcohol on his breath.
“How y’all doing,” Bubba croaked and slapped his shoulder.
Kasper was all business and disdained the too familiar greeting by the country bumpkin. But he understood that he needed the unpolished man. “How many men have you recruited for the break-in,” the Effort leader from Chicago asked.
“There’ll be ten of us,” Bubba answered proudly. “All our men in the Atlanta area want a piece of these guys, especially the blond women. We’re all good shots too.”
“How do you know there are blond women in the house,” Kasper inquired.
“We’ve already scoped out the place. There are only four people inside and two of them are gorgeous bimbos,” Bubba said as he rubbed his crotch. “The house is all red brick though and that means it will be hard to just blast our way in if we get spotted. We’ll have to rely on surprise.”
“Okay, let’s get this done. I need to get back to Chicago,” Kasper Keidel pronounced.
“My truck is just outside,” the outdoorsmen replied. “It’ll only take fifteen minutes to get to the house.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
It was already dusk at the general’s compound. The large four-bedroom, two-story colonial home was surrounded by a six-foot red-brick wall situated at the edge of the property. The general was a security conscious man. Automatic lights turned on to light the perimeter of the building.
Inside the house, the four person MAD team had congregated in the great room in the back of the house. Lisa and Kaley still wore their skimpy bikinis, but had donned silky robe covers. Their noticeably bare legs were a constant distraction for Malcolm. They had reclined on a large sofa that allowed them both to bring their attractive legs up on the cushions. Malcolm sat across from them on a lounge chair. Simon Stone sat in a Queen Anne wing-back chair which was situated between the sofa and the chair. There was a coffee table in between. He had his feet placed on an ottoman. He looked like the king of some country.
“So what have you discovered?” Simon asked.
“The first thing is a bad thing,” the professor replied. “While reading the diary, I noticed that Dr. Raja refers to Wes Robertson’s partner many times. He never gives a name, but I’m sure that Wes has not been working alone. There’s someone else at the Pit in Nevada who is working with him. We just don’t know who it is yet.”
“Yes,” the general commented sagely. “That is a big problem.”
“That means there are still players in the game who know something about the Switch and how to use it,” Kaley threw out.
“Worse,” Lisa interjected. “They could have a copy of the blueprint as well.”
“We need to find out who the other mole is!” General Stone agreed. He turned and looked at Malcolm.
“Who is Wes Robertson working with
in the Pit?” Malcolm said out loud.
The answer that came back into his head was less than satisfying. “It will take me a few days to find the answer,” was the reply from the spirit.
When Malcolm passed the information on the rest of the team, everyone had to think about that.
“It means that we can’t trust anyone in the Pit until we discover who the other mole is,” General Stone explained. “It could be anyone.”
“Should we cut off communications or give them disinformation?” Kaley asked.
“Let’s avoid contact,” the general replied. “And if they call us, let me do the talking. I’m kind of good at avoiding the truth. Do you all agree?”
When everyone nodded in agreement Lisa was ready to move on.
“The next subject is most disturbing,” she said. “According to Dr. Raja, he was conducting experiments with the Switch that allowed him to produce small natural phenomena’s outside the vortices.”
“Do you mean that he could create a natural disaster anyplace?” Malcolm quickly inquired.
“According to his notes,” Lisa replied. “He was able to produce hail in the desert, lightning on an open plain and a wind that clocked in at a hundred miles an hour for a short period of time. I think they would qualify.”
“That’s really bad news,” Malcolm commented. “Does he say how he was able to produce them?”
“It appears that the idea originally came from Dr. Darby in the Pit.”
“Explain,” General Simon quickly ordered with concern.
“When Dr. Darby poured the isotope Aluminum-26 on a meteorite to attempt to discover its age, the chemical changed the meteorite. The magnetic pull became stronger and was able to grab the smaller magnetic lines that are present everywhere on earth. This caused the smaller natural occurrences.”
“But didn’t he need a person with telepathy to make it work?” Malcolm quickly asked.
“Well, that was the interesting part,” Lisa remarked. “Without someone to aim it, the beam shot straight up and the disaster happened right on top of him.”
“Are you sure about this?” General Stone questioned. “I mean there is no other interpretation of the notes?”
“Yes, I’m sure and no the notes are clear,” Lisa responded. “It means that anyone with telepathic powers could produce a natural disaster any place they wanted if they had an isotope covered meteorite.”
“Good thing that there are none of those around except in the Pit,” Malcolm joked.
“But you’re wrong there,” Lisa explained and pointed at him. “There’s one somewhere in Pakistan.”
“How could that be?” Malcolm croaked.
“Dr. Raja exposed the leaders of the people he was working for. It’s in his diary,” Lisa explained. “They called themselves the Cure. The organization was based out of Karachi and was primarily concerned with the bank manipulation of money. Dr. Raja wanted to kill the leader and gave his superior a doused meteorite claiming that it was a valuable diamond. He hoped that the meteorite would wind up in the hands of the true leader. It eventually did.”
“Why?” a confused General Stone asked.
“The Cure had threatened to close down his lab. Dr. Raja was already losing his mind and believed that no one would find him if he eliminated part of the terrorist cell.”
“How?” the general asked next.
“It’s very simple,” Lisa replied smugly. “When the Aluminum-26 isotope is poured on a meteorite, the rock becomes extremely deadly. If a person holds it for any length of time, they will be dead within a few hours and that is what happened in a banker’s home in Karachi.”
“Yeah,” Kaley finally spoke. “I did the research and found out that there were recently two mysterious deaths blamed on isotope poisoning in Karachi.”
“So where is the meteorite now?” the general gasped.
“Where is the meteorite?” Malcolm shouted out to his spirit.
The answer came back in a few seconds. The spirit had already been looking into the location of the meteorite when he discovered it while following the mad scientists past.
“It is currently in the hands of the warlord in Karachi. He made the deal with the scientist to go after the plunder from the expected earthquake. Dr. Raja told him what he had done. The warlord understands that the meteorite is extremely dangerous, but could be useful if he got his hands on another Switch,” the spirit replied.
When Malcolm explained what the spirit had said, Kaley gasped. “Do you think that the moles in the Pit have any contact with the warlord?”
“You’re right!” Lisa exclaimed. “If they do then they will be after the supremacists to get their Switches.”
“Boy this keeps getting more and more complicated,” Kaley uttered.
“Wait,” Malcolm shouted. “I just found out that the warlord does know about the moles. The spirit just told me. The warlord has already sent a representative to Nevada to collect copies of the instructions on how to work the Switches from Wes Robertson. The representative is currently headed to Michigan to put together a group of jihadists to attack the supremacists.”
“Wow,” Kaley exclaimed. “That’s a big problem.
“I’d better get on the phone and warn the TACP team,” General Stone uttered.
“Wait a second,” Lisa screamed as she bounced off the couch. “I’ve actually got some great news to share before you run off and get tied up.”
“Make it quick,” the general ordered.
“Dr. Raja worked out of a cave in Northern Iraq. He recorded the exact location in his diary. It was used as a base for jihadists, but he and Dax killed everyone there before they left for Karachi. He describes the inside of the cave in detail. There are many interesting items in the cave”
“So?” the impatient general asked.
“From the descriptions he gave of items stored in the cave, I’ve concluded that there are literally hundreds of artifacts that were stolen from the museums in Iraq during the Gulf war.”
“What?” Malcolm yelped.
“That’s right, all we have to do is go there and collect them,” Lisa gushed. “Isn’t that amazing?”
“Hmm,” General Stone let out as he thought. “We’ll go there after we finish up with this mission. But right now I need to get on the phone.”
Before the general could reach his cellphone, it rang. When he realized it was TACP officer Kane, he hit the speaker button.
“Yes, Captain Kane,” he said.
“General I thought I’d better call you,” the officer explained.
“What’s happened?” the general burst out.
“There has been a snafu at the prison where we stored the Effort men we captured in the desert.”
“What happened?” It came out as a demand.
“One of the men, Kurt Hunt had somehow been allowed to be free in the exercise area of the prison. There he met a current Effort member who was jailed for a short period and released. Today he was back in jail and met with Kurt Hunt again. The prison has it all on video.”
“Sounds like a message was sent,” the general reasoned.
“Yeah, we think so too, especially since the man produced a knife and killed Hunt. The Effort man screamed, ‘We do not tolerate failure,’ when he knifed him. I think the supremacists are on to us.”
“It is worse, captain,” the general replied forcefully. “We just found out that the warlord for the jihadists we killed in Pakistan is sending a war party to attack the supremacists in Chicago.”
“How many?” the captain asked.
“We don’t know yet,” the general replied sadly.
“Well there are about fifty supremacists crawling around the warehouse as we speak. This is turning into a war,” the captain remarked.
“How much help do you need?” the general inquired.
“We’re covered, sir,” the TACP officer replied.
“We’ve decided to come up there tonight,” the general said as he looked at the
others on the team. They all nodded their heads.
“I look forward to working with you again, sir.”
“Me too,” Simon Stone replied.
He had just hung up the phone as the lights in the house went out.
“We’ve got intruders,” the general bellowed.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
As soon as he saw the lights flicker and go out, Bubba let out a shrill whistle using two fingers in his mouth. Ladders, brought by his men on their trucks banged against the four walls of the compound and eight men scrambled up them. They jumped down to the ground inside. The men were all armed with rifles, pistols and knives. They headed for the house.
“Good thing that one of my guys works for the local utility company and knew where the electrical transformer was buried,” Bubba said to Kasper with a grunt of satisfaction.
“Let’s get to a ladder,” Kasper said anxiously.
“No need,” his new friend Bubba snorted. “You and me gonna walk right in. I put acid on this here lock on the gate.” Bubba walked to the gate and lifted his large leg. His size thirteen work boot smashed into the metal gate where the lock was still fizzling. The gate popped open and the two men casually walked up the long driveway.
“It’ll probably be over by the time we get there,” Bubba said sadly. “I wanted to get some fighting in today.”
***
Inside the house, Lisa screamed, Kaley ran to the sliding glass door and locked it. Malcolm grabbed a metal statue as a weapon. He then asked his spirit how many men were invading.
“Don’t panic,” General Stone ordered. “I have an automatic backup generator in the basement. The lights and sensors will be back on in thirty seconds.”
“There are ten armed men outside,” Malcolm shouted.
“We need to run and hide,” Lisa said in a panicked voice.
“Don’t worry,” the general said soothingly. “All the windows on the ground floor are made from bulletproof glass. It will take any intruders some time to break any of them and enter.”
The Oracle Philon Page 21
