by Theo Cage
“You haven’t heard of Google, Detective?” We ordered drinks at that point, avoiding an obvious argument.
“Well, what does the FBI have to say about this?” I asked Jann. “You told me they were monitoring Gideon.”
Before she could answer, O’Brien slapped the table. “Nobody’s going to stop J-Day. Not the FBI, not the US Marines. That’s a broad attack that will be global. Coming from everywhere. Booters in Poland, China, North Korea, India. Hell, kids in middle-class homes in Vermont who are bored. And once the system starts to tank, Gideon can then shut down the nodes, because he owns those giant central computers, which will just make everything worse. I read part of Chapertah’s paper too.”
“OK,” I said, my hands in surrender position. “Believe me, I take it seriously. So what do we do? Rupi says you have a plan.”
“Actually, Chapertah had a plan,” she answered. “That was the brilliant part of his research. And probably the reason he’s dead. It wasn’t so much that Gideon didn’t like a bunch of academics figuring out what he was up to so close to launch. It was their ideas on how to defeat him that he didn’t want to become viral.”
Rupi then gave us the bare bones of Chapertah’s solution. I drank my ice tea and listened. Basic psychology 101 with some diversionary tactics thrown in. Plus co-operation with the dark side – the FBI. All very scientific. Jann, the nerd, was lighting up like a Christmas tree. I was an idiot. All along I thought the way to her heart was flowers and a bottle of bubbly.
Then it was time to break up the party.
“OK. We know what we have to do. I suggest we get going. Rupi, you’re staying here. Mr. O’Brien? You really need to go home. You will only endanger yourself and our efforts by trying to interfere.”
“Is that what you would do if you were me?” he asked.
I nodded. He was right, but it didn’t matter. “I wouldn’t like it. You can probably tell that. But getting killed is not going to help your wife. We’ll keep you informed. I’ll make her a priority. That’s a promise.”
O’Brien looked lost, but there was nothing he could say. He also didn’t answer me, which explained what happened later.
I could tell that Jann worried about the professor. “We have other resources on the ground as well, Mr. O’Brien. The FBI has had an interest in this case for years.” I believe that’s what counselors call self-deceit. Jann’s superiors had already told her to stop wasting her time and head back to HQ. I was here on my holidays – sitting in a seedy bar on the outskirts of Boston. I really knew how to have a good time. But Jann was right about one thing – we had to do something. We didn’t have a choice.
As I took my second sip of the ice tea I had ordered, the bar lit up, and three men entered from the main door, carrying bike helmets. As soon as their eyes adjusted, they headed towards our booth.
“I need to speak to you outside,” said the tallest one, wearing a patchy beard and a red plaid shirt. His two buddies were standing just behind him, glaring, trying to look as tough as possible. One was wearing a leather jacket, the other a puffy down filled vest. They weren’t wearing colors. Just a ragtag bunch of Hell’s Angels wannabees.
“You need to say something, say it here,” I suggested.
“You knocked my bike over in the parking lot. There’s a lot of damage.” I knew that was BS. The bikes in the lot were over on the other side from where we parked. But that wasn’t the point. Question was, who were these thugs and what were they up to?
“You got the wrong table, bud.”
“I don’t think so.” With that, Mr. Plaid shirt picked up my ice tea and poured it over my head. Rupi let out a yelp. I looked at Jann. She was staring at the tallest guy, her hand on her holster under her jacket. I shook my head slowly, hoping she got my message. No need I thought. You pull your gun out, and you create enough paperwork to choke a tree shredder. Don’t waste good bullets on this driftwood.
I stood up slowly, reluctantly, dripping on the worn carpet. We were now eye-to-eye, the hillbilly biker and I. He smelled vaguely of burnt garbage and his nose looked like it had been broken more than once. Good to know.
“You aware you’re talking to a police officer?” I asked. I needed to be sure.
He grunted and looked back at one of his buddies, a big smart grin on his three-day growth of peach fuzz. “Like I give a shit,” was all he said, wiping his mouth.
“Well, you should. I can get the satisfaction of wiping that smirk off your face first, and then arrest your ass. Double the fun for me.” He started to say something, but before he could, I grabbed a handful of the front of his shirt with my right hand and pulled hard. His entire shirt ripped off his body and came away in my hands in one smooth motion. Two buttons flew past me and ricocheted off our table. Even I was surprised by the Houdini-like quality of the move.
And as an extra bonus, the sharp sound of the wool splitting at the seams woke up everyone in the bar.
Hillbilly guy was now standing there, in the chilly air, naked from the waist up, not saying very much. I heard a smattering of applause from the lunch crowd. I then used his shirt to wipe my face and the front of my jeans where he had spilled the ice tea. I looked at him and his buddies. The two in the back were waiting to see what would happen next. The half-naked guy, overcoming his surprise, his little white potbelly now exposed for the world to see, started to move towards me.
So I head butted him.
Now I need to explain something. Nature pretty much custom-built me for this particular line of defense. I have a big high forehead and thick bone above my eyes and more than my share of neck muscles. One ex-girlfriend called me a Neanderthal once during a heated argument, an epithet I will never entirely forget, but she wasn’t far off the mark. So the head butt has always been a go-to option for me. Which Jann knew quite well, having worked with me in the field. It’s a fairly effective game-changer. And I don’t have to risk hurting my hands – in case I decide one day to take up the violin.
Hillbilly guy started gushing blood from his newly re-engineered nose and conveniently collapsed to the floor.
Jann was up and out of her seat at this point, ready to deal with culprit number two, who was now going to the defense of his downed buddy. And bless her heart – no gun was in evidence.
Jann also had a specialty, which I loved to watch in action. She wears these high-heeled leather boots with pointy toes and can high-kick like a ballerina. Those shoes were much more than a fashion statement – they should be registered weapons.
Biker number two, as he started stepping around the bleeder on the matt to get to us, had to spread his stance a little more than was reasonably cautious. Jann swung her long left leg up and out, letting the momentum build, and drove her boot with amazing swiftness into his groin area. Man number two then turned purple and collapsed on top of his friend. He was groaning like a ghoul. The last man standing put his hands up and started walking backwards. I let him leave.
Then I grabbed felon number one by his ears and inspected his face. I’ve never experienced a broken nose myself, but a cop I know told me it was the most painful thing he had ever experienced. He said he would rather be gut shot. This guy was literally crying – tears were running down his face and mixing with the blood and snot pouring out of his nostrils.
“Now you have to tell me who sent you here,” I said. “Or I get to punch you in the face again. Then you’ll pass out from the pain, and when you wake up, you’ll be in jail. Trust me – I’ve had a lot of experience with this.”
“I don’t know who he was,” the guy said. “That’s the point, right? Deniability.” I was impressed. Six syllables from this piece of trash.
“Where?”
“He stopped me in the parking lot. About five minutes ago. Gave me five hundred dollars. Told me to break something. You go to the hospital – I get five hundred more.”
“He paid you too much.”
“Yeah, well, my hospital bill will be ten times that.”
&nb
sp; “Should have thought about that when you took the money.” Then I had another thought. “Just me?” I asked.
“Who else? Your dad over there?” He was pointing his finger towards O’Brien. “And I don’t beat up women.”
I laughed. “You say that like you could. How about the guy in the lot? What did he look like?”
The biker snuffled, trying to breath. “Blue jeans. T-shirt. About my age. I’ve never seen him before. And he was on foot. Shit, this hurts.” I let go of his face and stood up.
“Did he pay you up front?”
“No, I’ve got a Bit Coin account. I’m going to bill him in thirty days.” Everyone is a comedian.
Jann was already out the front door. O’Brien and Rupi were both still sitting in the booth, looking a bit shaken. I wanted to call this one in, but that would slow me down by a couple of hours. Hours we didn’t have. I decided I’d leave it up to the bar manager - who probably wouldn’t do anything. Wouldn’t want to chase away any future customers.
I met Jann out in the parking area. She had circled the bar and checked across the street by the time I found her. She just shook her head.
“They knew where you were,” was all she said, looking worried. “And I didn’t see any sign of a tail on the way here. Zero. And I’ve taken that course twice.”
I just shook my head. “If they’ve got a team following us, that’s pretty hard to shake. Or they just got lucky.” And if they had a full team, they were spending a lot of money and time on little ol’ me.
She stepped up and touched my face. “You did good in there, Hyde. Thanks for taking it easy on that biker.” I put my hands on her shoulders and couldn’t help smiling. God, I missed her.
“Sometimes you're an idiot,” she said. “And a bull-in-a-china-shop.” Then she shook her head, her short black hair falling into her eyes. “And why are you never afraid of anything? That's just not right. It's . . .” Then she looked up and saw the garish neon sign buzzing overhead. The Cavalier.
“That’s what it is. It’s cavalier of you. I should take your picture right here, Greg. You and the sign – the perfect portrait of Gregory Hyde.”
I squinted at her. “Isn't cavalier just a poetic way of saying irresponsible?”
Jann laughed then, the first time since we got together. I’d truly consider giving up my police pension if I could hear that every day.
"But you're a good person, Greg,” she said. “They're not making those anymore – as far as I can tell.”
But before I could say anything else, she turned away from me and looked across the highway at the car lot kitty-corner from us. A shiny new truck was just exiting and merging with the traffic. In the front were two men. One was looking at us with more intensity than we deserved. We couldn’t help but notice the blinking sign in the window of the showroom. Closed, it said. Then I remembered it was Sunday. Tomorrow was J-Day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CONFIDENTIAL FBI REPORT ON THE SOLDIERS OF PATMOS
Patmos is a small island off the coast of Greece. In the first one hundred years after the Romans conquered the Middle East, about AD 60-90, they used the island as a prison. One of the prisoners was named John, a Christian seditionist. John’s passion was the new church, and his writings had grown the ire of the Romans who banished him to a place where he couldn't enflame the Jews and the other rabble-rousers.
John believed in the Christian teachings but felt that the existing stories about Judgment day were flat and inglorious. He determined to write a text that gave the climax of Armageddon its due. But he had one problem. If his captors sensed anything seditious or revolutionary in his writing, they would destroy it before it could find its way to the mainland. So John chose a style thick with metaphor and imagery, and far too cryptic for the rational Romans to understand. His ruse worked. His book, Revelations, became so popular; it was included in the Gnostic texts by the Christian fathers in the early tenth century – a book soon to be called the Bible.
There are dozens if not hundreds of books in libraries all over the world, written with the goal of translating John's mysterious text. Each generation sensed that the fateful day was at hand; that the poetry of Revelations spoke directly to them and them alone. That was the magic of Revelations, the written equivalent of an ornate optical illusion.
Dozens of prophets and messiahs had used Revelations to further their cause, but without exception there was always one fatal flaw in their strategy. The world refused to end. Revelations is about Armageddon after all, but the final curtain refused to fall.
Enter Gideon Lean and Patmos. Gideon is a very rich man; head of a vast commune, but like many powerful men, thirsting for more. He forms a religious group, the Soldiers of Patmos, in the mid-nineties. It's not a mainstream religion by any means, nothing more than yet another Christian splinter group. The focus is on Revelations. The group targets boomers; North Americans and Europeans born just after World War Two, the flower power generation, as well as millennials, twenty-somethings looking for something new.
Patmos is light on dogma – boomers are busy people, but the attraction is organization, security and wealth. Patmos distributes the finest in glossy magazines, creates entertaining mainstream television series and adopted the Internet before the other sects even heard about the information highway.
But Patmos's biggest promise is their guarantee. They carefully outline the text of Revelations, and clearly state in writing the day the old order ends and the new begins. June 21st. This year.
For Gideon, this strategy is not about gaining recruits before the world ends, like the other religions, but after. For the first time in human history, the skeptics and the naysayers and the just plain uninterested, will get proof.
On June 21st, civilization comes crashing down around everyone's ears, a couple of million humans dying in the process. At the end of the week, Gideon and his chosen are in firm control of just about everything. The new order begins.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I was half-asleep, my head banging against the vibrating window glass of the Crown Vic we had rented at the Avis counter in the Union train station. What was it with police officers that we always gravitate towards these heavy high-powered four-door monstrosities? We could just as easily have rented a sports car or a four by four truck. I had to admit though – the big car made me feel safer. I looked over in the dark at Jann, who was driving. She was ramrod straight and clear-eyed.
We had talked after the meeting with Rupi about next steps. We had gotten over our argument too, which I could hardly remember. Jann wanted this whole thing to stay business only. I agreed with her, but I was lying and only said it to calm down the situation. The whole conversation reminded me of “Hostage Taking 101”. Talk slowly. Listen. Repeat the demands back to the hostage taker. I was surprised she didn’t see through my act. All I needed was a bullhorn, and I would have easily slipped into the role.
I looked over at her again. She wasn’t beautiful in any conventional sense of the word. More like handsome. Tall. Purposeful? Was that a characteristic you would look for on an Internet dating site? I’m guessing no. And her alertness appealed to me too for some reason. She was like a wild animal always on the lookout for predators. It was very becoming – that sideways glance of hers. Besides, she was a cop who loved single malt Scotch and knew how to hold her liquor.
I decided to bide my time. I would try to be patient, a new experience for me. But I also wasn’t going to wait for three more years to get her into my life again. Maybe a holiday in Vegas in the fall would be a good idea. Get her away from her damn FBI database and all-consuming smart phone. For the first time in a long time, I realized I had something to look forward to, other than another case that needed attention.
In Cambridge, we had come to an agreement. Jann was told to report back to Quantico posthaste. The Soldiers of Patmos didn’t warrant any more person-hours. I wondered out loud how you could use the term person in the same sentence as the FBI. She gave
me that sideways look again. Luckily, it was the weekend. She didn’t have to report back until Monday.
I called in and booked another few days of vacation. If anything, Ipscott was surprised I even took holidays anymore. We were bearing down I-95 at 120 MPH, headed for Ashland, a town just a few hours south of DC and close to Parkhurst.
The sketchy plan we had was based on the advice of O’Brien – a handful of tactics provided by the dead professors who wrote the white paper on Gideon. I was most interested in an idea suggested by Bugloski – the Engineering prof who died in the radiation chamber. Other than that, we would stake out the cult compound and hopefully get the local police onside. That wasn’t going to be easy. We might as well be telling the local authorities that alien spaceships were landing at noon on Monday.
Jann had revealed more information too. From the on-going recon. She had read the briefing document off her Black phone.
"First, we are talking about an armed fortress, all of it secured by a very advanced array of systems – radar, heat-sensitives, sound-detecting, and we suspect, laser. The second you break their perimeter, you'll have scores of defenses vectored to the break point.”
“Secondly, Parkhurst has at last estimate over 1,000 Militia barracked. These are definitely not amateurs. They have been trained for years on a variety of weapons in simulated battle. Their core consists of about five hundred men and a few women, most ex-military. They are battle-hardened and extremely dedicated to the cause. Most of them have seen more action than the average soldier.”
“And they are highly motivated. They are protecting women and children, their homes, their shared land. These are dangerous enemies to face in a combat situation.”
“Thirdly, they have a well-stocked pantry of goodies. Nothing but the best and lots of it. Our intelligence estimates over 10,000 light rifles mostly AM-15’s and Austrian P50's. A million rounds of ammo. A warehouse full of grenades, even rocket launchers.”
