by Peter Nealen
It was less than forty meters from the gate to the back door, and we covered it at a dead sprint. There had been no sign of the kind of overt security that the likes of Eddings and Van Damme had employed, but I wasn’t going to assume that there weren’t men with guns inside. We had a little bit of concealment on the yard, between the trees and the gazebo, but that was no reason to dawdle.
Nick pushed past the door while Bryan stacked on it, and Larry stormed past Bryan to hit the door with the ram. It crashed inward, Larry rolled out of the way, and Bryan flowed inside, his suppressed ISR up and ready, with me right behind him, my own Compressor’s muzzle right over his shoulder.
We were right in the central hall, with the grand staircase rising ahead of us to the right. There was a single guy in a suit at the front of the hall, who turned as the door crashed open, a pistol in his hand and a shotgun leaning against the molding that ran around the wall at about waist height.
Whatever company he worked for, he wasn’t a fanatic. He took one look at us as we flooded into the hall, in green fatigues, plate carriers, and ATE helmets with suppressed SBRs pointed at his head, and he dropped the pistol to the black-and-white tile floor and put his hands in the air.
“Down on the floor!” Nick barked at him. Nick advanced on him, even as I stepped up behind him, staying back plate to back plate, my Compressor aimed up the stairs at the landing. The rest of the stack was spreading out, moving on the doors to left and right.
Bangs went through the doors as Nick secured the security guard, kicking the weapons away. I stayed on security on the stairway, along with George, until Nick said, “With you.”
I led the way up the steps, pivoting as I went to keep the top of the stairs covered. It made for tricky footing, but I had no desire to get shot in the back of the head going up the stairs.
The landing was empty, but something made me pause before turning down the hallway to the left. It was a good thing I did, too, because a shotgun blast boomed down the hallway and blew chips of plaster off the far wall.
These guys were not the best in the business, that was for sure. Maybe we’d already killed off the cream of the crop. These guys were shaky as shit.
The other distinct possibility was that Varren had no fucking clue about security matters, and had been duped by a bunch of Z-grade rent-a-cops into hiring them.
Without much hesitation, George lobbed a flashbang past my head, bouncing it off the far wall and down the hallway. It went off with a deafening report, filling the hallway with smoke, and I was moving, with George right behind me, even as Nick posted up on the landing, facing down the opposite hallway.
The shotgunner in the hallway had been barricaded on the nearest doorway, but he hadn’t had the presence of mind to pull back into the room and shut his eyes when the bang went off. He was standing half in the doorway, blinded and disoriented, as I moved on him.
The shotgun wasn’t pointed at me, so I almost gave him a warning to get on the floor, but as he made out figures moving in front of him through the smoke and the green blob in his vision, he tried to bring the weapon up, so I shot him twice in the chest, then transitioned to his head, but he was already falling, his heart and lungs destroyed, as the last round blasted out the top of his skull. They weren’t wearing body armor.
Since the nearest threat had come from that door, that was where we went, stepping over the corpse in the doorway with a single, long step and pivoting to clear the corner I couldn’t see from the hall. He had been the only one in there.
Flowing back out into the hallway, we moved to the next room, which was accessed by a big double door. This must be the master bedroom, and more than likely where we’d find Varren, provided he didn’t have a safe room that he’d been ensconced in.
The door splintered inward under George’s boot, and we burst in, guns up and searching for targets.
The two contractors, in shirts, ties, and shoulder holsters, were down on their knees on the rug, their hands on their heads, their weapons well out of reach.
The safe room door was visible through the back of the partly open closet. And it had obviously been secured.
“You dumb motherfuckers,” I said tiredly, as I covered the two rent-a-cops so Nick and George could close in and secure them. “Now we’re going to have to risk pulping him when we pry him out of there.” I keyed my radio. “This is Hillbilly,” I sent. “Got the package, south side second floor. Gonna need a can opener.”
“Can opener coming up,” Alek replied. Larry had brought the ram; Alek had a Broco torch, just in case we ran into this eventuality. If that didn’t work, well, we did have breaching charges. Varren really wouldn’t like life if we had to use those.
“What’s going on out there?” a voice called from a speaker box in the closet. That was right; sometimes these safe rooms were wired for sound, so that the person holed up in them could try to warn an intruder off by telling them they’d called the police.
“What’s going on, Fred,” I told him, “is that you’ve got thirty seconds to unseal that door, come out of there, and come with us, or we’re going to cut or blast our way in and drag your ass out. I really don’t think you want us to blast our way in, and cutting could get a little unpleasant, too. It’s entirely up to you, though; I really don’t give a half a fuck.”
“The police are on their way,” he said tremulously. He sure didn’t sound as smug as his picture, now.
“And given their usual response time, we’ve got plenty of time to do violence to your safe room door,” I replied. “I’m guessing that it was built standard, to keep home invaders out, home invaders who presumably don’t have access to plasma torches and shaped charges.” I let that sink in for a second. “Clock’s ticking, Fred.” Alek was already prepping the torch, fitting the copper cutting rod in place.
The truth was, I wasn’t entirely sure how much time we had, and breaching that door in a way that might not kill the man inside could very well put us past our window. But he didn’t need to know that.
Alek hit the end with the torch igniter, and a ferocious, spitting flame started sparking from the end of the cutting rod. “Time’s up, Fred,” I said, raising my voice over the snarling hiss of the torch. “You might want to step back, unless you want to kiss six thousand degrees of molten metal.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” he almost screamed. “I’m coming out. I’m coming out!” Apparently, he didn’t want to chance it.
I gave Alek a throat-cutting gesture, and he released the oxygen handle, letting the torch die. A moment later, the electronic lock clicked, and the door swung open.
Fred Varren was in his boxers, and looked quite a bit soggier around the midsection than in his public photos. He looked older too, the lack of gray in his brown hair notwithstanding. I suspected there was quite a bit of makeup, hair dye, and tight undergarments that went into maintaining his image.
When he didn’t come out fast enough, I stepped inside, grabbed his wrist, twisted it up between his shoulder blades, and frog-marched him out into the room. “Probably should have put some more clothes on, but you’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s a warm night.”
“Who are you people?” he asked. “Do you know who I am?”
“We know exactly who you are, Fred,” I told him. “As for who we are, well. We are violent people with a bit of an ax to grind with you. Now shut up, so I don’t have to stuff a sock in your mouth and tape it shut.”
Searching the house wasn’t a priority. Fred Varren was our target, and we had him. It took only a couple more minutes to get back downstairs, out the back, and back into the vans. The cordon collapsed and we were heading out of the neighborhood moments later, even as red and white lights lit up the street and sirens wailed behind us.
Chapter 38
“Jeff, I’d like you to come with me,” Stahl said. “You won’t be able to get guns in, which I know is a problem, but that’s why the rest are going to be in the trees with all the firepower we can muster.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because whether they know it or not, you’re the face of the Praetorians now,” he answered. “And I need my Praetorian Guard backing me up for this.” He bit the end off a fresh cigar, spat it out, and lit it. His supply seemed inexhaustible. “Like you said,” he growled around the stogie, as clouds of smoke wreathed his head, “when the law is ignored, force becomes the law. These pricks need to see that, concretely, in front of their faces. And you’re the emblem of that force. I’m just the retired general. You’re someone who’s killed people, recently, at bad breath distances. That means something.”
He had a point, and antagonizing him by being an ass wasn’t going to serve anyone’s purposes at that point, so I just nodded, handed off my gear and weapons, and got in the Excursion with him, Mia, and Renton. Mia sat next to me and reached over to squeeze my hand. That was all. We both had our game faces on.
There were Marines manning the gate at the Presidential Retreat at Camp David. They weren’t there for the sake of the usual pomp and spectacle, either. There wasn’t a set of Dress Blue Alphas to be seen. These boys, and a couple of girls, were in woodland cammies, with plate carriers, full combat loads, helmets, and M27s slung and ready for combat. As the Ventner Dynamics driver paused at the gate and presented our credentials to the Corporal, who peered inside to check that faces and numbers matched up, there were four others with their rifles at the low ready, in a passable L-shape around the vehicle, watching us.
I got an extra look from the Corporal, being the only one in the vehicle not wearing a suit and tie. I was still in my greens, having expected to be out in the woods with the assault force, ready to move in and pull Stahl, Renton, and Mia out by main force if the meeting turned out to be an ambush.
Finally, the Corporal waved us by, offering Stahl a salute. That was interesting. Some of the new kids still remembered who he was.
I watched them as we rolled past. Every one of them looked about twelve years old to me. I could only imagine how young they looked to Stahl.
Camp David isn’t all that big, so it was only a few more moments before the driver parked the vehicle in the lot between the arms of the big, U-shaped building where the meeting was going down, and we all got out. I stayed close behind Stahl; if I was going to be his designated attack dog, I’d play the part.
There were four Secret Service personnel waiting for us at the door. All four of us were thoroughly searched. Dressed as I was, I got a little more attention, and I considered telling the dude patting me down that he really should have bought me dinner first. But we had no weapons on us, so they had to let us through. Stahl had been asked to come, after all.
We were ushered into a large, windowless conference room with dark wood paneling along the walls, dominated by a long oak table with microphones built in. This was the conference room, where many a meeting of world leaders had taken place. Treaties and wars had been hashed out here.
Now the fate of the Republic itself was about to be hashed out in the same room.
The remaining leadership of the House and Senate were gathered around the table. Many of them I didn’t recognize; I’d been a bit too busy trying to stay alive to pay much attention to the current circus on Capitol Hill. Unless they’d showed up on my target deck, I really hadn’t given a fuck who they were.
The President, I recognized. He was hard not to know. Congressmen and Senators, for the most part, came and went, but the President was the face of the nation, so it was hard to ignore him, as much as one might want to. He was sitting at the center of the table, his suit immaculate, but his shoulders hunched and his face a mask.
As I scanned the rest of the table, I could see similar expressions all around, though some shaded more towards outrage or fear, depending on who was wearing it. None of them were comfortable with the situation, though, and certainly not with Stahl’s presence.
“You’re going to have to put that out, General,” a young woman I pegged as an aide said into the stiff silence. “This is a government building, and there is no smoking.”
Stahl just took a deeper drag on the cigar before taking it out of his teeth and blowing a cloud toward the chandelier. “I’m not the one here begging you people to fix this clusterfuck,” he growled. “I’ll smoke if I want.”
“We called you here to ask your advice, Carl,” the President corrected. He was evidently trying to sound soothing and conciliatory, but everyone present was obviously under a lot of strain. He just sounded angry, scared, and strident. “Based on your extensive experience in countries suffering from widespread unrest, several of the people in this room made a convincing case that you could offer some penetrating insight.”
“Penetrating insight?” Stahl said, with a dry, humorless laugh. “That’s rich.” He stared coldly around the table. “But fine. I’ll give you some insight.” He blew another cloud of bluish tobacco smoke in the President’s direction. “You lot—and those who came before you; I’m not absolving them—have spent decades subverting the law when you weren’t ignoring it outright. Anything for an advantage, whether it made you richer or just more important. And when the law was irrelevant, you turned to populism. ‘It’s the will of the people!’ you cried. But populism is only the mob, and the mob only works when you’ve got a target for its hate. A foreign enemy wasn’t good enough; to too many of you, there was too much money coming from overseas to jeopardize it by calling out the Saudis—at least until they became the Caliphate, though some of you are still in their pockets, too; don’t think I don’t know who—or the Russians, or the Chinese, or even the Iranians.
“So, you settled for the next best thing. Other Americans. Those people are out to take your rights away, whatever invented rights you made up this week to get them pissed off at each other. And they played along, getting just as outraged as you needed them to be to give you all the power and all the leeway you wanted.
“Until it didn’t end there. Until they started killing each other. Because that’s what mobs do.”
He glared around at all of them. His physical resemblance to Chesty Puller had never been quite so pronounced. “But that wasn’t all. Not only did you manage to lay the groundwork for a civil war, but there hasn’t been a civil war in history that wasn’t capitalized on by the enemies of the nation that was tearing its own guts out. And this one’s no different.”
At that point, Mia stepped forward to pass out a series of stapled packets to the stony-faced or outright furious politicians sitting at the table. Some of them took them curiously, others left them sitting in front of them, apparently too affronted at Stahl’s blunt speech to such important people to bother lifting a finger to examine them.
Frankly, I was surprised that they’d stayed as quiet as they had, so far. I’d been expecting shouting, cursing, and typical grandstanding and histrionics long before.
I saw a few faces turn pale, and eyes widen. I knew what was in those packets. They contained all of the Sensitive Site Exploitation photos from the Narva. Including the Russian corpses.
“The photos you’re looking at are only a couple of days old,” Stahl said into the deathly silence. “The bodies, and the captives, were a company—that’s roughly a hundred men, for those of you who never served nor bothered to find out more about military matters,” he added accusingly, “of Russian Spetsnaz, specially trained and equipped for sabotage and infrastructure demolition attacks. For those of you who can’t read Russian, the photos of the maps on Page Five give a partial target list. The short version is, they would have crippled the entire Eastern seaboard’s electrical grid, communications net, and transportation, right at the same time the recent wave of violence happened.”
He let that sink in for a moment. “And they ain’t the only ones. The man in green, standing behind me, led the assault on the Narva that intercepted those Spetsnaz. He also led the team that intercepted Mexican paramilitaries coming across the Arizona border to wreak similar havoc in the name of ‘Aztlan’ in the Sout
hwest.” He stabbed a finger at the table. “We are under attack, an attack made possible by the same social unrest you encouraged for your own gain.”
“I will leave aside your rather vicious accusations for the moment, General,” the President said. “If this is true, then perhaps by publicizing these incidents, we can put something of a damper on the unrest. After all, shouldn’t an external enemy provide some sort of unifying catalyst? It worked after 9/11.”
“That was then,” Stahl growled. “There have been a couple decades worth of division happening since then, and in case you forgot, that unity didn’t last a year before people were playing politics with the war and the lives of the soldiers and Marines downrange. Now anything that doesn’t agree with a particular faction is a lie, no matter what kind of convoluted fantasy has to take its place to kind of make sense. To make matters worse, those Spetsnaz were coming ashore at the express invitation of Americans, led by one Mason Van Damme.”
That got a reaction. For a second, the President looked like Stahl had just slapped him in the face, though he composed himself quickly. That shot had gone home. While his expression went still, I could see in his eyes that he was starting to understand just how dangerous the situation was. He and Van Damme had been buddies, and he knew Van Damme was missing. He probably didn’t know that we’d grabbed Varren yet, but he would, soon.
He also knew that if Stahl knew of Van Damme’s activities, then Stahl, and presumably anyone working with him, was involved in the man’s disappearance. The tension in the room ratcheted up a notch.
“That is an absurd accusation,” the Speaker of the House snapped.
“It should be,” Stahl replied before she could continue. “But Van Damme was caught red-handed, making a deal with Dmitri Sokolov, an officer in the Russian MGB. He even admitted to it. When personal power and factionalism take precedence, any ally is welcome, even if you’re welcoming a viper into your own house. Just ask any king in history who invited a barbarian tribe into their country as mercenaries. I’m sure the story of Hengist and Horsa doesn’t ring any bells to you, though it should.”
