“During his military career Geronimo was famous for his daring escapades and innumerable escapes. He would disappear into caves that had no exit, later to be seen outside. He would win consistently, though always outnumbered. There is a place in New Mexico, to this day, known as Geronimo’s Cave. One of the greatest stories involve him leading a small band of thirty eight men, women and children who were terribly hunted by thousands of American and Mexican troops for over a year. So, he became the most famous Native American of all time, and earned himself the title of ‘the worst Indian that ever lived’, among the white settlers of the time. Geronimo was one of the very last warriors to accept the United States’ occupation of their lands.”
“I was once called ‘the worst bitch that ever lived,’” Alicia recalled wistfully. “Can’t remember who by.”
“Only once?” Kenzie asked. “That’s odd.”
“It was most likely me.” Mai gave her a small smile.
“Or me,” Drake said.
Dahl looked like he was wracking his brains. “Well, I think I remember ...”
“Fort Sill,” the pilot said. “Ten minutes out. We have clearance to land and the area is hot.”
Drake frowned as he made ready. “Hot? Is he reading from a redacted script, or what?”
“Must be eighty down there.” Kinimaka stared out a very small window.
“I think he means—troubled,” Yorgi spoke up. “Or under attack.”
“Nah, he’s referring to its status,” Smyth told them. “Highly prepared.”
The plane touched down and came to a swift stop. Almost immediately, the rear cargo doors began to open. The team, already stretching and on their feet, hurried out into the sunshine which glared hard off the asphalt. A chopper was waiting, which whisked them away toward the grounds of Fort Sill. As they flew in, a Fort Sill colonel apprised them of the situation.
“We’re on full alert here. Got every gun prepped, armed and aimed. Geronimo’s gravesite too, and we’re ready to roll.”
“We’re five out.” Hayden said. “Coming in hard on the gravesite. I’m sure you’re aware of all potential hostiles.”
“I’ve been fully prepped, ma’am. This is a United States Army site, a Marine Corps site, as well as a home to Air Defense and the Fires Brigade. Believe me when I tell you we have all our angles covered.”
Hayden signed off and watched Fort Sill appear below. Drake studied the area and made a final check of his weapons.
I bloody well hope so.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
The atmosphere was electric, every soldier tense and expecting some kind of war. The team passed between wide brick pillars and moved among many gravestones, each one the resting place of a fallen hero. Geronimo’s grave lay off the beaten track, and took them long added minutes to reach. Hayden led the way and Kinimaka brought up the rear.
Drake listened as he adjusted to his surroundings. The site of so many artillery battalions was never likely to be quiet, but today a man could almost hear a leaf blowing in a breath of wind. All around the base, men waited. They were prepared. The order had come down from on high to stand strong in the face of whatever was about to happen. The Americans would not lose face.
They walked a narrow, shale-strewn path, their boots crunching. It seemed peculiar to remain on high alert inside such a base, but the countries and teams they were up against were no doubt capable of anything.
Drake walked beside Lauren, who kept the team apprised of any new information.
“The French are still operational. Two of them for now, more on the way.”
“Reports of a gunfight in Oklahoma City. Could be the Brits. No way to tell at this point.”
And a reply: “Yes, we do have the Conquest weapon. It’s right here. If you designate somebody on the base I’m sure we can hand it off.”
Drake guessed they were probably safe from SEAL Team 7 inside here, at least. The simple fact that they’d been allowed into the United States and then the army site told him something was seriously amiss.
Who sent the SEALs?
Why?
Hayden pulled up then as their guide led them along another even narrower path. Presently he stopped before half a dozen markers.
“That one,” he said, “is Geronimo’s.”
Of course, it was pretty much unmistakable. The marker was no ordinary gravestone, it was a cairn; a large, man-made pile of stones in the shape of a rough pyramid with a plaque mounted at the center, the name ‘Geronimo’ deliberately unambiguous. Incredibly old it was, and must have been spectacular in its time. It was flanked by the grave of his wife, Zi-yeh and his daughter, Eva Geronimo Godeley.
Drake felt a kind of spiritual reverence upon seeing the great warrior’s grave, and knew the others felt the same. The man had been a soldier, at war mostly with the Mexicans and fighting for his family, his lands and his way of life. Yes, he had lost, just as Cochise and Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had lost, but their names lived on through the years.
A small digger stood poised.
Hayden nodded at the base commander, who nodded to the digger driver. Soon, the large digger was at work, turning up huge chunks of soil and depositing them on the ground nearby. Drake was also aware of the desecration, and accusations that might be leveled at the military but the presence of so many soldiers nearby meant it was unlikely anyone would know. They would probably shut Fort Sill down from the public for a while.
How did the Order do this?
Interesting ... all those years ago? Perhaps access was easier back then. Hayden told the digger driver to take it easy as he delved, no doubt remembering Hannibal’s shallow grave where no coffin had been buried. The team watched as the hole grew deeper and the mound of earth grew higher.
At last, the digger stopped and two men jumped into the hole to remove the last scraps of earth.
Drake inched toward the rim of the hole. Alicia stole along with him. Predictably, Kinimaka hung back, not wanting to end up at the bottom. The two men cleared earth from the top of the coffin and shouted up for lifting ropes to be attached to the digger’s bucket. Soon, the coffin was rising slowly, and Drake took another look around.
Stoic, hard-faced individuals stood all around, and encircled the camp, he knew. It began to occur to him now that there would be no battle. Geronimo’s coffin was deposited gently on the ground, small portions of rocks and soil falling away. Hayden looked over at the base commander who shrugged.
“Your party, Agent Jaye. My orders are to give you everything you need.”
Hayden moved forward as one of the diggers prized open the lid of the coffin. The team came forward. The lid lifted surprisingly easily. Drake peered over top of the frame and into the box’s depths.
To see one of the greatest surprises of his life.
*
Hayden pulled away, frozen for an instant; the mission forgotten, her life forgotten, her friends suddenly gone as her brain petrified.
No way ...
It was an impossibility. Surely it was. But she dared not tear her eyes away.
Within the coffin, mounted on a titanium bracket, hung a state-of-the-art digital screen and, as they stared, it burst into life.
Canned laughter burst from the speakers. Hayden and the others jerked backward, dumbstruck. The laughter echoed artificially from the advanced screen as a plethora of colors filled it—starburst after starburst mushrooming outward. The team started to recover and Drake turned to her.
“Is this the right ... I mean ... what the—”
Dahl stepped closer for a better look. “Is poor old Geronimo still here?”
Hayden pulled him away. “Careful! Don’t you understand all the connotations of this?”
Dahl blinked. “It means somebody left us a screen instead of a box. You think it’s the weapon?”
“The Order didn’t leave this,” Hayden said. “Not the Nazi war criminal part of it anyway. This means that the Order is—”
But then the la
ughter stopped.
Hayden froze, unsure what to expect. She stared down, ready to duck and cover. She moved in front of Lauren. She wished that Kinimaka, Drake and Dahl weren’t so damned close. She ...
A logo flashed up on the screen, bright red on black, no more than a slash of blood to her mind.
“That’s the Order’s logo,” Alicia said.
I don’t understand,” Mai admitted. “How could they have put this screen in place? And how could it still function?”
“They didn’t,” Yorgi said.
The logo faded and Hayden banished all else from her mind. The black screen reappeared and an artificially-lowered voice began to grate from the speakers.
“Welcome to your nightmare, boys and girls,” it said and then paused for a burst of canned laughter. “Famine greets you, and you have to know that the last two Horsemen are the worst of all. If Famine doesn’t get you, Death will! Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha.”
Hayden took a moment to wonder what kind of a twisted mind and warped imagination came up with this shit.
“Straight to the point then. The third Horseman will destroy you all, rather than let you destroy each other. Famine does that, am I right?” the guttural tones went on. “And now that you’ve advanced into the electronic age it’s going to move much, much faster. You ever hear of Strask Labs?”
Hayden frowned, sent a quick glance around and included the base commander. He nodded and was about to speak when the voice went on.
“They’re one of the big conglomerates, hellbent on taking over the world. Power. Influence. Immense wealth, they want it all, and are starting to move into the big leagues. The American government recently took Strask Labs into its confidence.”
What does that mean? Hayden wondered. And how recently?
“In Dallas, Texas, not far from here, Strask own a bio testing facility. They manufacture drugs, diseases, cures and weapons. They run the whole gamut. If there’s a deadly infection out there, a world-killing virus, a canister of nerve gas or a new bio-weapon, Strask in Dallas have it. Literally,” he grunted, “it’s a one-stop shop.”
Hayden wanted to stop it right there. This was going in a very bad direction.
“The bio lab has been targeted. Famine will be unleashed. Your crops and those around the world will wither and die. It is a manufactured poison, deliberately targeting a specific strain of crop and it cannot be stopped. We are the Order of the Last Judgment. And like I said, this is your nightmare.”
The recording stopped. Hayden blinked and stared, the world and her problems entirely forgotten. If the Order were targeting a bio lab who’d made a precise crop infection and were planning to wipe out all reserves, then ...
It was possible. And probable. No doubt the disease would be targeted toward the soil too, so that no edible crops would ever grow again.
Then, suddenly, the screen exploded into life once more.
“Oh, and now we’re in the electronic age let me tell you this. By opening this coffin, by starting this recording, you put the whole thing into motion—electronically!”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Fort Sill exploded into action. The base commander screamed for a techie to come over and take apart the recording, the screen and anything else they might find inside the coffin. Hayden saw bundles of old clothing and bones at the bottom and had to assume the Order had simply placed the screen inside and left it for somebody to find. Could a signal have gone out, piggybacking off the base’s Wi-Fi the moment they opened the coffin?
I have to believe so. The unsealing started the recording. Most likely, sensors were involved. Whoever did all this was tech savvy. Which threw up another question.
“Have we just jumped forward from Nazi war criminals operating fifty years in the past to right now?”
“I don’t get it,” Smyth said.
The team had backed away from Geronimo’s grave to allow others to get involved and now stood in a group underneath some trees.
“I thought it was pretty clear,” Hayden said. “The guy said we are the Order of the Last Judgment. They still exist.”
The base commander strode over. “Okay people, we’ve double and treble-checked our perimeter. No signs of your Special Forces enemies. Looks like they gave this one a clear miss, and I done blame them. Lots of firepower here.” He indicated the soldiers stood around the fort.
“That doesn’t mean the signal that came out of that grave wasn’t broadcast elsewhere too,” Lauren pointed out. “Any number of people might have seen it in one form or another.”
“Whilst that is true,” the commander nodded, “there ain’t a whole lot we can do about it. Now what we can do, is call Strask Labs and give those boys the proverbial heads up.”
He indicated a man close by, already with a phone to his ear.
Hayden knew she should call Secretary Crowe but held off as the soldier’s call went through on loudspeaker, the endless ringing tone making the SPEAR team glance worriedly around.
“This a twenty-four-hour manned laboratory,” the base commander said. “On call to the military and the White House. I cannot impress how bad this is.” He indicted the ringing phone.
“You don’t need to.” Hayden said. “Can you liaise with the local authorities? Get them to Strask and tell them we’re on the way.”
“Right away, Agent Jaye.”
Hayden started sprinting for the chopper. “We have to get to Dallas! Now!”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Karin took, what was for her, an immeasurable amount of time before even showing the flash drive to a computer terminal. She was well aware that somebody of Tyler Webb’s wealth and reach could have installed all manner of tech on his computer—especially the one containing every dirty little secret he’d garnered through the years.
So here she was.
A girl. A computer. A flash drive.
How many names have they monickered me with in the past? Data Girl. Web Head. HacKaz. Long ago, far away, but still relevant.
Dino and Wu stood looking on, surveillance around the house already as good as it was ever going to get. They had sensors at every approach, and plans with backup strategies for both hard and soft evac situations. All three soldiers were currently at a low ebb—battered, bruised, healing slowly from the San Francisco jaunt. They were also hot, hungry and lacking funds. On Karin’s guarantee, they had gambled everything on this. Right from the very beginning.
“Time to prove your worth,” she said.
The early years never left her, the long duration she’d turned her back on the world. Self-destruction was one way to redemption.
“We believe in you,” Dino said.
She smiled grimly as she inserted the flash drive and watched the large screen. She’d designed everything to work as fast as it was able and now there was absolutely no lag as a prompt flashed up onto the screen:
Continue?
Damn right.
She sat down and got to work. The keyboard rattled, her fingers flashed, the screen flickered. She didn’t expect to find or even understand it all immediately—there were many gigabytes of information—and that was why she’d made everything as ultra-secure as she possibly could before booting the drive up. She’d also prepped several offshore accounts and a couple of Los Angeles based ones, where they may be able to deposit some quick cash. Of course, she remembered everything from her time at SPEAR; it was what had happened since Webb’s death that may throw a wrench into the works.
Ignoring the bland but ominous title Documents for now and focusing on Finance, she made her fingers and the screen a whirlwind of information. Dino gasped as she fought to keep up.
“Sheeyit, and I thought I was a whiz at Sonic. I bet you get that prickly little fucker shooting all over the place, eh?”
“You know Sonic? From the Master System or the Mega Drive? Aren’t we all a bit young for that?”
Dino looked blank. “PlayStation, dude. And retro is better.”
Karin shook h
er head, forced to smile. “Oh yeah, that’s totally retro, dude.”
Delving into the finance file, she soon brought up account numbers, sort codes and key commands. She found source banks, most of them offshore. She found over seventy five different accounts.
“Unbelievable.”
Dino pulled up a chair. “Yeah, I have trouble keeping track of two. And they’re both empty!”
Karin knew she didn’t have the time to investigate every account. She needed to whittle it down and cherry-pick the best. Cleverly, she’d already written a simple program that would trawl through a file and highlight the accounts with the highest numbers. She unleashed it now and waited five seconds.
The three flashing blue bars looked promising.
“Let’s have a look at you.”
The first account flashed up. It was based in the Caymans, unused, and showed a balance of thirty thousand dollars. Karin blinked. You have to be joking! She’d been aware that Webb had cut ties at the end in his reckless quest for the treasures of Saint Germain—he’d gone it alone and used massive funds to stay out of sight and enlist an army near the end, he’d paid off thousands to call in every last favor—but she hadn’t expected his accounts to be this badly depleted.
In any case, she quickly sent the thirty thousand to a local LA bank account she’d already set up.
Risky, but if we’re quick we can withdraw and take the cash. If anyone was monitoring the account, which seemed unlikely given its low balance, they should be able to make it happen before they caught on.
She moved on to the next account, saw a balance of eighty thousand dollars, and had to admit that was better. But nothing like the millions she’d been expecting. At her side, Dino remained silent. She took the cash and held her breath as she clicked on to the final account.
Bloody hell. Fifteen thousand?
She was forced to run through the remaining accounts, netting by the end a sum of around one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t lifelong security type money. This was taking time, and she was wary of staying plugged in any longer, but the scarcity of the pickings so far made the next step a necessity.
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