by John Bromley
“This discussion is getting wide of the point,” said the sheriff. “We have a virus here, and no way to stop it. If Norman is right, before long this will be a disaster situation the likes of which humanity has never seen or imagined.”
“We need a plan,” said the Phoenix mayor. “We’re going to need Washington’s cooperation on this...”
Their worst fears were soon realized. Before the night was over, a report was received that an incident like the ones in Phoenix had occurred outside the valley. Within two days, the virus had spread to New Mexico, Nevada and California.
Even at this point, however, getting the government’s assistance proved harder than they expected. Since there were treaties in place which banned the creation or use of C-B weapons, Washington could not acknowledge, officially or otherwise, that their people had ever considered engineering such a virus, let alone that it actually existed. To the press, the President said repeatedly that they were “concerned” about the “unfortunate situation” in the Southwest, and were “making every effort” to assist the people in that region with “their problem.” To the city and state officials in the affected areas, the federal agencies offered disaster relief—quite a sizable amount, actually—but to the local officials, the message seemed to be “very sorry that this happened to you, here’s some money, make it all better, and let’s get on with our lives”, as if this were a flood or a tornado.
To most people, it seemed that Washington simply didn’t understand the gravity of the problem, but to those who knew where to look, the signs of stonewalling could be seen. Dr. Russell Norman, who had spoken of this virus without authorization, was never seen or heard from again. Callers inquiring of him were told only that he had been “reassigned”, yet they were never given his new location.
The CDC took the blood samples which they had collected in Phoenix back to Atlanta for analysis. They soon realized that they were out of their league, for there were things about this virus which were totally unlike any naturally occurring organism. They appealed to Washington; they said, we know you developed this virus, and we need the details on its engineering, or at the very least its general makeup—anything would help. The military continued to deny any knowledge of the virus. OK, the doctors said, so you violated a couple of treaties, but never mind about that now—this problem will very soon be much larger than anything that some outraged government could do to you. But still the Army stubbornly maintained their posture of ignorance. And without the knowledge of the specialists who had created the virus, its spread could not be stopped, or even slowed.
Eventually, of course, it expanded beyond the national borders, and then foreign governments demanded an official explanation of the disaster. By then, the public also was beginning to suspect the truth. Since the plague had begun on American soil, they knew that it was not the work of some foreign power, especially since most of the countries capable of something like this were among those complaining the loudest. Confronted by irresistible pressure from within and without, President Winslow was forced to admit that the military had created this virus, as well as the details of the accident and the ensuing cover-up. Congress, ever mindful of the national mood (which was currently panic and distrust), and remembering the Watergate fiasco of forty-five years earlier, knew it had to act. It did not matter that all the evidence said this was nothing more than an accident. It did not matter that President Winslow had no previous knowledge of the existence of this virus. It did not matter that from the beginning he wanted to be completely open and honest about the situation, but was talked out of it by certain persuasive people at every turn. The House could not afford to be lenient with the President, the leader of an Administration which by now had allowed over a million people to die, and they prepared Articles of Impeachment against him. Winslow followed the example of his disgraced predecessor and resigned before he was thrown out. As it turned out, it was the worst mistake any President ever made.
CHAPTER 13
Even before the video ended, Jim was on his cell phone. Despite wishing with all his might to hear a live voice, eventually he heard, “Hi, you’ve reached Charlie Jansen. If I haven’t answered, it’s probably because I’m on a Special Ops assignment…”
Jesus, nothing like advertising a secret mission, you asshole, Jim couldn’t help thinking.
“…leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.”
“Charlie, pick up the phone right now!” Jim screamed into the microphone. “It’s Colonel Parker—I need to speak to you immediately! If you can hear me, answer the damn—”
Jim snapped the phone shut in exasperation, but then immediately called another number. Before it was answered, though, he quickly broke the connection.
“Were you gonna try calling General Chambers?” Mike wanted to know.
“I was, but thought better of it.”
He looked over to see Mike regarding him with some confusion.
“You don’t get it, do you, Mike?” he asked. Before Mike could answer, Jim continued, “You noticed, I hope, what Angela said about that Dr. Norman, the guy who spilled the beans about the virus.”
“Yeah,” Mike responded, “he was reassigned—”
“—and never heard from again,” Jim finished the thought for him. “And now we have Lt. Jansen. I asked him to check into the Phoenix incident, just a general inquiry into a minor mishap—and he immediately gets ‘reassigned’.”
“Coincidence?”
Jim snorted. “Hardly. ‘Reassignment’ was a euphemism back then, and I’ll bet it still is, even across a seven-hundred year interval.”
“A ‘gut feeling’, again?”
“You bet. I think—”
He didn’t have time to elaborate further, as his phone rang, indicating an incoming text message. “Don’t tell me this is our geo-caching friend calling with more coordinates already?” Mike said.
It wasn’t.
Instead, it was a series of photos. The first, taken at some distance to capture the entire scene, showed a man lying on his back in what appeared to be an alley, near a concrete block wall and a trash bin. The second, taken at closer range, showed the upper body and the face, with eyes wide open, making it possible for Jim to identify the man as Lt. Charles Jansen. It also showed something white, attached to Jansen’s shirt over his heart. The third and last photo was a close-up of the object, a note.
“This is your only warning. LEAVE IT ALONE.”
“Somebody out there is on to us,” Jim said, anxiety evident in his voice.
“The guy feeding us the coordinates?”
“I don’t think so. He can link me to that Bible, but he seems to want me to find out about this ‘history of women’. It’s gotta be—”
His thoughts were interrupted by his ringing phone.
“Chambers… I thought you’d like to know the latest about our former colleague, Lt. Jansen.”
“How do you mean, sir?” Jim asked, feigning ignorance.
“I just had a copy of a Phoenix police report sent to me, along with a photo. It says Jansen was murdered in an alley today. Two small-caliber bullets to the back of the head.”
“Execution-style,” Mike whispered.
“How’s that, Captain?”
“He was just wondering,” Jim said quickly, “if they found the weapon. Do they have any suspects?”
“No weapon—no suspects. Actually, Parker, I was hoping you could shed some light on this for me…” Jim could almost hear the wheels turning in the general’s brain as he tried to make sense of all this.
“I wish I could,” Jim said sincerely, “but even if I could, I don’t think I’d want to. I don’t trust the security of this phone connection.”
At this point, General, Jim thought, the less you know, the safer you are.
Before Chambers could reply, he asked, “Also, General—who sent this message to you? Was it from that same member of the General Staff?” Or whoever he really is, his mind added.
“Now that you mention it, the message doesn’t say who it’s from…”
Coulda told you that, Jim thought.
“Why would you think it came from one of them?”
“Well, Jansen was your man until today. One of your superiors comes along, and now Jansen’s his guy. Maybe he’s just sharing this with you, thinking you might be interested in the fate of one of your former soldiers.”
“Hmm… that possible.”
But highly unlikely, Parker’s mind scoffed.
“Well, thank you for the information, General,” Jim said, trying to bring this conversation to a quick end, “and if anything more comes to light, please keep me posted.” He hung up before Chambers could come up with more questions, which he didn’t have time to answer right now.
“Then… you think it’s this mysterious General with no name?” Mike wondered.
“Like I said, I’m not a big fan of ‘coincidence’. At the first mention of this ‘accident’ in Phoenix, some four-star appears out of nowhere, swipes my guy right out from under my nose, and has him executed. And don’t give me this ‘alleged’ stuff,” he raged as he noticed Mike opening his mouth to do just that. “I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that if they ever find the assassin—which they won’t—he can be linked to this ‘general’.”
“But, if that’s so,” Mike asked, “how did this guy get to Phoenix so fast?”
“How about this?” Jim offered. “Maybe he didn’t have to send a guy to Phoenix—maybe he already had a guy there—or more than one. And, maybe he has more in New York, L.A., St. Louis, Miami… Maybe he even has guys in the middle of nowhere—like Manitoba.”
“Any other time, I’d say you had been watching too many horror movies,” Mike said.
“All I know is that he—whoever he is—seems to know what we do the minute we do it, so he’s almost certainly got a tap on Chambers’ phone, or mine, or both.”
“If he’s tapped your phone, he’s probably seen the coordinates you’ve been getting.”
“Could be, but I’m guessing that up until now he’s ignored them, thinking I’m just doing my ‘geo-caching’ thing.”
“But, now that you’ve started asking seemingly-forbidden questions—”
“—he isn’t likely to ignore anything we do anymore,” Jim said, standing up and beginning to pace around the room. “If he has a guy out here in middle-of-nowhere Manitoba, that man could be on his way here right now.
“So here’s the deal—from now on, we stay in the same room. Get all the weaponry we have, and bring it in here. Four-hour shifts—one man sleeps, the other stands watch.”
Wilkins nodded and started toward the door to get his belongings. Just before he got there, Jim asked, “So what do you think, Mike—how much more ‘evidence’ do you need?”
Mike smiled, conceding the point, but then wondered aloud, “If someone’s on to us, what about the guy sending us the coordinates? You think ‘General-boy’ has figured out who that is?”
“If he has, he’s not likely to tell us.”
“Well, no shit, Jim, but—can we do anything for him?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Parker replied. “As much as I’d like to see what else he has to show us, we can’t tip our hand at this point. We have to appear ignorant of the threat from this ‘general’ and his goons. If I reply to a message from the guy, and Four-Star intercepts it, which he undoubtedly will, anything I say will give us away, and probably our friend, too. Besides,” he continued, his face hardening, “if he plays this kind of dangerous game, this is a threat he should have foreseen. As far as I’m concerned, he got us into this mess, and now—he’s on his own.”
CHAPTER 14
Despite their concerns, no threat materialized that night. During each shift, one officer slept deeply, while the other found himself bored out of his mind. At six o’clock Jim, who took the second watch, finally couldn’t stand it anymore and woke Mike, saying they needed to get an early start.
They both wanted breakfast, but were still not willing to take any unnecessary risks. Noticing a man and his son getting ready to head out for a day of fishing, Mike borrowed the services of the boy, asking him to go into the diner next door and get two bacon-and-egg sandwiches and two coffees. Handing him a twenty-dollar bill, he told him that if he got back in ten minutes or less, he could “keep the change.” The price of the food being what it was, the leftover money would make a very satisfactory tip.
As they got into the car, Jim took a moment to survey the landscape with the keen eyes of a trained military observer. Satisfied that they were not under visual surveillance at the moment, he sat down in the passenger’s seat.
“So, where are we going, anyway?” Mike wanted to know, as he tucked into his breakfast. The young man had indeed come through, in record time. As the boy and his father headed off with their fishing poles and quite a few of Mike’s dollars, a car and an 18-wheeler went by the motel driveway, heading east.
“Obviously, we need to head east, to rendezvous with the Fourth,” Jim replied around a mouthful of sandwich, “but that kind of depends on what our Bible-thumping friend says.”
“Assuming he’s able to say anything, of course.”
“There is that,” Jim allowed, sipping his coffee.
Within minutes, however, Jim’s phone rang, displaying the by-now-familiar Bible, along with a set of numbers.
“Looks like somebody else wants to get an early start today, too,” Mike observed.
“I guess he’s still able to play the game,” Jim said, with relief evident in his voice. He showed Mike the coordinates. “We’ll head that way.”
“I don’t know about this,” Mike said after checking to see where these coordinates would put them. For the first time in days, Jim noticed genuine fear in his partner’s voice. “This is going to take us awfully close to… the Wall.”
Jim tried to outwardly maintain his “tough-guy” attitude, his “national-hero” appearance, but inwardly he, too, was quaking. Built by the Native American peoples of the region over fifteen hundred years ago, “the Wall,” as it was simply known, was said to have been constructed to keep invading tribes out. In this way it was similar to the Great Wall of China, remnants of which both men had seen in history books in school. But unlike its Oriental counterpart, this Wall stood strong and tall, over two hundred feet high in most places, and it was a dark, almost brooding gray color. Moreover, it was a place of ill omen, comparable in this respect to the so-called “Bermuda Triangle,” but with one major difference. In the Triangle, tragic things were said to happen, but proof of this was hard to come by. In contrast, it was a well-documented fact that bad things happened to those who found themselves in the vicinity of the Wall. Reports of deaths, mutilations, disappearances and the like were constantly being trumpeted by the sensation-seeking rags, but they were also reported often enough by reliable news sources to lend credence to the rumors. Consequently, no one went there, if they could at all avoid it.
Now, Parker and Wilkins “had” to go there, and they were not happy about it.
“Can’t be helped, Mike,” Jim said matter-of-factly. Mike grumbled something, but dutifully put the car in gear and left the motel parking lot, heading west. Before they went too far, however, Jim had him stop at a grocery store, saying, “We better stock up for a few days—I doubt there’ll be any restaurants out by the Wall.”
As they were leaving the grocery store, Parker had a sudden inspiration and asked to borrow Mike’s cell phone. To the questioning look, he responded, “We’re pretty sure Four-Star has a trace on my phone, but maybe we’ll get lucky and there won’t be one on yours.”
He took the phone and dialed…
“General Chambers… how are things going, Captain Wilkins?”
“Sir, this is Parker, actually.”
“Parker? What’s the matter with your phone, Colonel?”
“My, uh… battery is dead.” Not quite the truth, but certainly plausible, he thought
. “And, uh, the battery in this one is also low, so this will have to be brief. Sir, we can’t make our rendezvous with the Fourth Battalion, so I was wondering—”
“Why is that, Colonel? You’ve had a week to get there. What did you do—run into enemy soldiers along the way?”
“Yes, sir,” Jim quickly seized the opportunity to be at least partly truthful. They may not be the foreigners we were expecting, but whoever they are, they’re certainly acting like enemies, he told himself.
Now, time to put the general to the test.
“In fact, we can see them from our current position,” waving off Mike’s questioning glance. “They don’t appear overtly hostile yet, but they seem to be preparing for an offensive. So, we want you to have the Fourth move to our location,” and he read numbers that were close to their current destination into the phone.
Continuing quickly, he said, “Got to go, sir—the battery, you know. We’ll make camp here and keep them under observation until the Fourth arrives. Thank you, sir,” and hung up without waiting for a reply.
“What was that all about?” Mike wondered aloud, as they got back on the road.
“I have a feeling that if something’s going to happen, it will be soon, and it will be here… near the Wall. If that’s the case, I want a little more backup than just you… like, maybe, an Army battalion.”
“I’m liking this so far.”
“Also, I’m thinking, if Chambers really is ‘his own man’, then the Fourth will show up here ASAP. But, if this so-called ‘general’ picked up my request, we’ll be getting a phone call shortly, to explain why this troop movement can’t take place.”
“And, which one do you think will happen?”
“I’m really hoping for the former, but my gut tells me it’ll probably be the latter.”
CHAPTER 15
