The Days Before: A Prequel to the Five Roads to Texas series (A Five Roads to Texas Novel Book 8)

by Brian Parker

  Shaikh nodded that he did. “There are satellite phones in the village. Not many, but—”

  “There is also a device on the cargo plane that will arrive in forty-five minutes. You will place this device in the village where it will not be found. It will destroy all electronics within a three-kilometer radius if they are not shielded.”

  The site selection had mandated that the facility be placed no nearer than four kilometers from the village. They’d known months ago what they were going to do. That is why they’d chosen the isolated Brazilian Highlands. The locals were poor, but there were always a couple of aid workers that made their rounds across the jungle, visiting many of the islands of human habitation. The wheels were already turning in his mind. The aid workers were the ones he needed to worry about. They would be reported if they went missing.

  “What is the timeframe?”

  “The first stage of the program is already complete. There is nothing that can be done to stop it.”

  The Facilitator’s answer was not an answer to his question. “How long must I keep the hostages?”

  “Within a month, the world will know what we’ve done—but they will not know who has done this. Do not fear for what you will see and hear. Iran—and our partner North Korea—is safe. We have taken the necessary precautions to ensure we will not fall victim.”

  The Facilitator was a madman. “What is it that you’ve done?”

  “Through Allah’s guidance, we have ushered in the Yawm al-Qiyāmah.”

  For the second time in less than ten minutes, Shaikh’s blood turned to ice in his veins. The Yawm al-Qiyāmah is the Day of Resurrection, described in detail in the Ḥadīth. It was supposedly followed by the Yawm ad-Dīn, the Day of Judgement. He was not a devout Muslim, but he’d learned the teachings of the Prophet as a child. Humanity was not supposed to bring about the end of the world.

  “This is an affront to Allah,” he breathed heavily.

  “The teachings of the Prophet say the Day of Resurrection will occur during a time of great chaos and that the devout will face trials and tribulations. We have created the means for the Great Tribulation to occur. It is up to the Muslims of the world how they will handle it.”

  “You are a madman.”

  The Facilitator’s fat fingers passed in front of his face, once more waving away Shaikh’s comments. “It is done. Site 53 is where we will develop the cure. You will secure the facility and ensure the Cursed do not escape custody while the doctors work to cure them.”

  “The Cursed?”

  “I am done talking. You now have forty minutes to prepare for the arrival of Administrator Kim. I suggest you use this time wisely to brief your security personnel about their families and that we expect their complete loyalty or else there will be consequences.”

  The video screen went black for a moment, then returned to the dark gray background with a small control panel icon in the lower corner. He turned away and saw Lieutenant Khavari sitting at the small desk off to the side that held the controls for the VTC equipment. His smooth-shaven face was pale.

  “We have received a video file from the Facilitator, sir,” the young officer stated.

  “Put it up on the screen,” he replied, pointing at the larger screen in the conference room. “Might as well get this over with.”

  The video was eight minutes long in total and was comprised of two different locations. The first part of the video showed about ninety Iranian women and children sitting in a row inside what looked like a gymnasium. Several of them appeared to have been beaten. The ones with bruises were handcuffed, presumably to keep them from causing more trouble. The soldiers forced each woman to look into the camera and state her husband’s name. It went down the line and he watched as the name of every Iranian member of his security force was called. His men would not take this well.

  Then the video cut to another scene, this was in a darkened room a tenth of the size of the gymnasium. The overhead lighting was incredibly weak and the captors had to use flashlights to shine into the faces of the hundred or so women and children. The Korean women’s hands were bound with plastic zip ties and many of them had their dark gray button-down shirt torn open, hanging raggedly across their bodies, barely concealing what lay beneath. The process was repeated with the women answering questions and looking directly in the camera. Shaikh did not speak Korean, so he had no idea what the women said as they spoke so fast, but he could reasonably assume that they gave the names of their husbands who were on the facility’s security team.

  When the video ended, Taavi sighed. “Issue a facility-wide call,” he told the lieutenant. “All security personnel are to report to the command conference room for a mandatory unscheduled briefing. Ensure you say that there will be a roll call.”

  As the call went out, Shaikh considered the best way to inform his men of their predicament. The immediate response would be anger and he’d need to stop anyone from making a rash decision. The Facilitator was a ruthless man, and he had no doubts that the councilmember’s threats weren’t idle. He’d kill their families without batting an eye.

  To ensure that it never happened, his men had to be better than any other security force. They would maintain complete control of the facility and ensure that whatever these Cursed were that the Facilitator spoke of remained locked in their cages until the scientists could figure out a cure. His men would understand. Their families’ lives depended on the effectiveness of their performance. His men were professionals. There would be no mistakes.

  Major Shaikh greeted the first of his men as they entered the room. With a force of sixty men, the room would become crowded. He consoled himself with the fact that it was nothing compared to what their families had to endure. His men would be fine.

  He loosened the leather strap keeping his peshkabz knife secured on his belt. Shaikh truly felt sorry for every one of them, but he had to ensure his own family’s lives remained intact. If one of his men tried to do anything that would jeopardize the facility’s new mission, then he would put an end to them immediately, no questions asked.

  This struggle was now about life, death, and family.

  PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA

  “Our plans are in danger of being discovered,” the temptress stated.

  “Kasra, I am confident that we have taken all the precautions to—”

  Kasra Amol chopped her hand across the air, silencing Nampoo Yi. “I am in no mood for your attempts to tell me more lies. Kellogg must die. The defector you allowed to escape from Site 18 knew too much. He might even have had pictures.”

  “I do not think—”

  “Exactly, you sniveling worm. You do not think. Can you imagine if the information got out? There would be an ICBM knocking on your door before you could run and hide.”

  “The defector was a garbage man,” Yi protested. “All he saw were bodies. He never went into the facility proper, and never saw the Cursed when they were alive. He just helped to incinerate them. Nothing more.”

  “You are certain of this?” she asked, crossing her arms across her stomach and lifting her breasts. Yi thought it was a move so common for her that she didn’t even realize that she’d done it.

  “Yes, I am certain. The man knows nothing.”

  “Is that why you allowed him to escape?”

  Nampoo Yi shrugged. “The number of defectors has risen sharply over the past year since we began the program in earnest. We have roughly forty to fifty defectors a day now. We cannot kill them all, some slip through—especially when they all rush at one location like his group did. It was not my fault. It was a statistical probability that he was one of the two to survive.”

  She pointed a daggerlike fingernail at him. “Fix it. That little garbage man is not going to stop this from happening. I want the ambassador dead.”

  Yi bowed his head. “As you wish. We will attempt to intercept him in the South, before he flies the coop.”

  Kasra swiveled in her chair to face the Facilitator, H
amid Abdullah Sari. “And what of Site 53? Is it prepared to continue the work now that Site 18 is compromised?”

  The Facilitator ducked his chin. “Yes, Kasra. Administrator Kim arrived in the Brazilian Highlands two hours ago. He took twenty-seven scientists and most of the serum with him. I have instructed the security officer to begin collecting specimens from the local population for experimentation.”

  She grinned mischievously and Yi subconsciously shank back in his chair. He forced himself to sit up straight. “Good, Hamid. Very good indeed. And what of our supply caches in the United States?”

  “The bunkers are filled with enough emergency equipment for twenty divisions, however, General Bahzadi states that President Darvish only authorizes eight divisions. He wants the remainder to secure our borders when the Curse is released.”

  Kasra Amol sneered. “The fool has no faith in us. We have promised protection in the desert through the use of barricades and the abandonment of cities near the borders. With the Cursed, sound is the enemy. I will speak to him.”

  “The Supreme Leader offers fifteen full divisions,” Yi blurted out, unable to stop himself. “Once the Curse is unleashed, he will activate the reserve forces and we will have more than enough soldiers to take America.”

  She reached across the table and placed a warm hand on his. Yi was shocked to feel the heat radiate from her. He’d always assumed that her skin would be like ice to match her personality. “Please inform the Supreme Leader that his dedication to the program will be rewarded.”

  The woman gave his hand one final squeeze and released him. “What of the reactor teams?” she asked.

  “They are trained and ready,” Yi replied. “We will shut down the reactors safely for long-term dormancy. There are more than enough coal and hydroelectric electricity plants across that vast nation to meet our needs.”

  “Good… Good,” she purred. “What else?” She looked around the room, but no one offered any more comments. “So it is agreed. We will kill the ambassador and Site 18 is to be completely sanitized.”

  Her predatory eyes darted around the room until they settled on Sari’s assistant, Amman Yaziriis. “I am in a very good mood. Everyone is dismissed, except…” She held up a finger and pointed at the younger Iranian man. “You.”

  “Seon! Hyuk!” Kasra screeched, clapping her hands. “Take that one to my bedchamber and make him bathe. I will be in shortly.” She looked around the table at the assembled men and wagged her fingers at them. “Go away. Do as we’ve decided.”

  The Nampoo Yi and Hamid Sari stood quickly and began to file toward the door. Yi couldn’t help but cast a sidelong glance at the hapless Yaziriis. He was about to feel the pain of being Kasra Amol’s after-meeting snack. Better him than me, he mused, grimacing at his one, solitary experience with her.

  The scars on his throat were a daily reminder of the woman’s depravity. He shuddered, remembering the details. He needed to relax. After he sent the message to his operatives to eliminate Ambassador Kellogg, he’d visit the Indian doctor’s women. It’d been far too long since they’d had a visit from their benefactor.

  SEVEN

  * * *

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE OUTBREAK

  Grady Harper lifted his NODs up to his eyes and peered down to the luxury hotel from the apartment building he sat atop. The night ocular device, or NODs for short, allowed him to see all the details in the darkened areas, ensuring no one was trying to sneak up on the ambassador.

  He dropped the NODs and looked at his contract’s bedroom window. All the lights were on and the curtains were thrown wide. The man was still going at it with the hooker, smiling widely every time he glanced at the window. Must have paid for more than an hour, he thought.

  This was the seedier part of his job. He wasn’t a saint in anyone’s eyes, but Grady hated personal security gigs, especially when the guy was an absolute douchebag, like this one. The ambassador knew exactly where Grady and his partner were, which is why he had the curtains thrown wide; the exhibitionist assclown.

  Grady pressed the button on the side of his watch to illuminate the time. He still had to provide overwatch from afar for nine more hours until ol’ Ron Jeremy down there was safely through security at Reagan National. Ambassador Kellogg’s security detail had the room secure, but couldn’t legally operate on American soil beyond the immediate personal space of the ambassador.

  Cue The Havoc Group, a Private Security Corporation, INC. Part time government contractor used for clandestine operations by the CIA, part time regular old security corporation. Havoc took in all types of customers. Today, it was here to secure a secret meeting of some type.

  Publicly, Ambassador Kellogg was staying in Arlington while he was in DC to shepherd a lucrative foreign military sales deal between the UK and South Korea. The United States had long been the number one arms dealer where the Republic of Korea was concerned, and now the Brits wanted a larger piece of the action. Of course, that came at a cost to the US Foreign Military Sales program, which is why he was in Washington to discuss boundaries with the Department of Defense.

  Off the record, Kellogg was here to pass along information that was beyond Top Secret and had to be hand-delivered to the SecDef. He’d met with Secretary Collins earlier that day before he even left the airport in a deception worthy of a 007 spy movie. While Kellogg and Collins met onboard the jet inside a hangar, a very public convoy, complete with bombproof cars and helicopter escort, traveled down the highway to the District.

  Grady had no idea what was discussed onboard. After the meeting went down, the ambassador and Secretary Collins went their separate ways. The ambassador’s public schedule stated that he’d meet with the SecDef and the Secretary of State tomorrow at the Pentagon to discuss the weapons deal.

  Grady decided the ambassador was scum after talking to him for only a minute or two. He’d made it clear that now that he’d passed on the information he had, he was in town to make money for his government and have sex with as many American girls as he could before returning to South Korea. The chief of the ambassador’s security detail simply shrugged when the topic came up.

  The statement seemed to be at odds with the private meeting earlier in the day, but that might have been where the real details of the sales were worked out for all Grady knew. The only thing left to do for Grady was to get the bastard to the Pentagon in the morning and then back onto his plane before he collected his paycheck.

  There’d been bad blood almost immediately between Grady and his British contract. The racist bastard made several comments about Grady’s own Asian heritage, needling at him until he found out that he was a quarter-Vietnamese. From then on, every time he could say something derogatory about the Vietnamese, he did so.

  Grady glanced back at the bedroom window where the ambassador had positioned the woman on her knees with her face toward the Havoc team. Ambassador Kellogg had a wide, shit-eating grin on his face. In what Grady took for yet another insult to him, the prostitute who’d shown up was Vietnamese, like his own grandmother had been—which is to say, both Vietnamese and a prostitute.

  Grady Harper didn’t really remember his parents, but his father, Giang, had kept a journal when he was young—before he turned to drugs—and Grady found it in his belongings years after his death and had it translated. Giang was born in 1963, probably in some run-down tenement in Saigon. He was the product of his mother’s time on her back with the growing number of American GIs who rotated through the city on leave or pass. Giang had no clue who his real father was, only knowing that he was not one of the black GIs. His father wrote wonderfully detailed stories of how he played in the streets while his mother entertained customers, avoiding the children and adults who were new to the city. The new people were usually the troublemakers, or at least that’s how he thought of them as a child. Now, his father said in the old journal, he knew that the ‘troublemakers’, were most likely Viet Cong infiltrators and saboteurs lookin
g for information that could be passed back to the northern armies.

  In the spring of 1975, Giang’s world came crashing down, crushed under the treads of the tanks that rolled through Saigon. His mother fled with him to the American embassy and became part of history. She lied, saying she was a secretary at the nearby Binh Thuy Air Base and that Giang was the son of a soldier stationed there. His features were obviously not exclusively Vietnamese, so his mother’s ruse worked. They were put onto a helicopter and airlifted to the USS Blue Ridge in the South China Sea. Later that same day, his father’s elation at leaving the war zone behind was brought to a screeching crash when a helicopter collision on deck killed his mother, leaving him alone in the world at only eleven years old.

  After that, Giang had ended up in Houston, where he was adopted by an honest-to-goodness Texas oil man and his wife. They planned to raise him as their own, but he never really fit in with their wholesome values, preferring to run the streets with the older refugees in the city. Giang met Grady’s mother, Sylvia, a pale-skinned red-haired girl who was physically the opposite of Giang in every way possible only a few months after his adoption. Not long after, Grady was born to a pair of fourteen-year-olds, one of whom could barely speak English and the other with a rebellious streak a mile wide. He was an awkward looking kid with canted Vietnamese eyes that were impossibly blue as a child, but had softened to a muted gray as an adult, and olive skin tone, mixed with a prominent European nose and broad chin. What made it worse for him as a kid was the shock of unruly dark red hair that always seemed to have a mind of its own.

  For a while, Giang, Sylvia, and Grady alternated between staying with his parents or hers, but ultimately ended up on their own, living out of a broken down car. Giang sold stolen hub caps, while Sylvia turned tricks to pay for the drugs that ruined her and Giang’s bodies. All the while, poor Grady watched his parents’ lives become more and more grim.