by John Bromley
For the good of the nation, he told himself, truly believing every word of it.
On top of that, of course, the thousand-dollar “finder's fee” that he personally collected from the government for each Section Fifteen “criminal” that his men “captured” would make a tidy addition to his bank account. It was what he needed to continue his battle against the “aberration” being led by Swenson and the late Colonel James Parker.
His ruminations were interrupted by footsteps coming down the hall. Walsh, the secretary that he had spoken to earlier, came by and stopped at his office door.
“Did the doctor get down... here?” was as far as Walsh got before being rendered speechless by the sight of three dead bodies in the Director’s office. Ted gave him no time to think further.
“Carry my briefcase for me,” he ordered the man as he walked out of his office, the Uzi still in his left hand.
Walsh tore his eyes away from the bodies and the blood soaking into the carpet, grabbed the briefcase from the desk and hurried to follow the Secret Service chief.
Billings led the secretary out of the White House and back to his car. On the way, Ted absently glanced at the roses to see if the gardener was still working there, but he didn’t seem to be.
When they reached the car, Walsh was told to get the car keys out of Ted’s coat pocket and put the briefcase on the front seat, which he did. He straightened up and looked at Billings, who was still holding his machine gun.
“You didn’t seem happy to see me still alive,” Ted said to him in an offhand manner.
“Well,” Walsh replied nervously, “I was just... surprised.”
“‘Just’ surprised,” Ted repeated, seemingly lost in thought.
He pulled his trigger and held it long enough to reduce Walsh to nothing more than a pile of flesh and bones.
“I wanted ‘happy’,” he told the corpse.
That burst of gunfire had been shorter than the others because Ted was discovering that if you’re right-handed, shooting with your left hand is hard work.
He was getting tired, but he had one more thing to do before he left. Walking back up the sidewalk, he spotted the groundskeeper crouching behind one of the rose bushes lining the path.
“Now are you happy to see me?” he cheerfully asked the cowering man. When he failed to get an immediate answer, another squeeze of the trigger created another dead body lying among the shrubbery.
A door near the Oval Office opened, and out stepped Secret Service Agent Duane Porter, wondering why the sounds of gunfire seemed to be occurring so close to the White House. He stopped short when he recognized...
“Mr. Billings!”
“Don’t tell me,” Ted said, stopping to speak with his underling, “you thought I was dead, right?”
“Well... that’s what the radio was saying, sir,” Porter acknowledged.
“You believed them when they said I died about nine days ago.”
“Well,” Porter stammered, “I thought—”
“Yet you said ‘Good morning’ to me only a few hours ago.”
“I thought—” Porter repeated.
Up came the Uzi again and, a dozen or so bullets later, down went Porter.
“Since you found ‘thinking’ to be so damn difficult, I just did you a favor,” Billings told his late associate. “Now you’ll never have to think again.”
He returned to his car and started it up. He began backing out of the parking space, but let loose with an “Ow! Damn it!” The car had bounced, jostling his broken arm painfully, when he backed over Walsh’s body. When the pain subsided, he resumed backing up but more slowly, so that there would be less of a bump when the front tires passed over and crushed the former secretary’s neck and thighs.
“Next stop, ‘the Wall’,” he said aloud as he merged with the traffic on the street, heading for the airport, “and another date with that so-called half-brother of mine.”
And this time, he thought grimly, the result will be decidedly different.
CHAPTER 44
Tuesday afternoon. Outside the Wall, General Chambers took stock of the situation. Colonel Parker, commander of the Fourth Battalion, was inside the Ghetto. Captain Wilkins was with him. Captain “Buck” Keller, the battalion’s nominal XO, was off on “special assignment” with Sam Swenson; return time was uncertain. That left Lieutenant Dario “Dirk” Tedeschi as his right-hand man for the duration.
Not that that was a bad thing, he thought. Tedeschi was a good organizer, and coordinating this operation would require the combined skills of both men.
The Fourth Battalion was on the move northward, toward the site of the downed jet fighter that had attacked their location a few days before, and which presumably had made a hole in the Wall when it crashed. Since there were no roads in this area, the battalion's one functional tank forged a path through the forest for the rest of the vehicles to use.
Along the way, they encountered several Secret Service agents patrolling the territory around the Wall, as they had been doing for hundreds of years to perpetuate the “Cult of the Evil Wall.” They all took off running into the woods as the Army unit approached; none of them was stupid enough to pit their rifles against a tank.
When they reached the crash site, Chambers noted with some dismay that, although the Wall had indeed been breached by the aircraft, at ground level the hole was barely four feet wide, not enough to allow their vehicles access. He ordered the tank commander to prepare to fire near the bottom of the hole, to widen it.
Dirk Tedeschi also saw that at least three SS agents were trying to find cover next to the Wall; either they were more devoted to their duty than their fellows, or they had simply not had time to escape into the woods. He notified the general of his discovery, and Chambers responded by ordering the tank to fire immediately. The shell from the tank’s cannon impacted the edge of the Wall, propelling large chunks of it, and one of the Secret Service men, deep into the area behind the Wall. The other two agents were buried under several tons of falling concrete.
Tuesday afternoon. An Army unit, acting under orders from General Chambers and under the local command of Major Richard Tomlack, marched into the Capitol building in Washington. Ignoring stares from civilians, they proceeded directly to the information desk and informed the man behind it that they had orders to search specific parts of the building for “certain items of national security interest.” When the man hesitated, they came around his desk. With one soldier holding each of his arms, they forced him to take them to the stairs leading into the basement. Once down there, they began a methodical search of the entire floor, finding very little of interest until one soldier noticed that a portion of the wall just didn’t seem “right.” After carefully studying the structure, Major Tomlack decided the man might be correct, and ordered pickaxes to be brought in. Several minutes of hard labor removed enough of the wall to reveal what appeared to be a metal door behind it. The men continued to chop away at the cement until the entire door was uncovered.
“What’s in there?” Tomlack asked the Capitol worker.
“Haven’t a clue, sir,” the man replied. “I didn’t even know it existed until now.”
“Can we open it?” Tomlack asked his men.
One of the men approached the door. He expected to find the handle locked, but when he turned it, he discovered he was wrong. However, the door was very hard to open; it took the combined efforts of four men to overcome the heavy rust on the hinges.
“Flashlights,” Tomlack ordered.
Every man who had a light turned it on and went through the door. They had entered a very large room which was anything but empty.
“Will you look at that?” Tomlack murmured in amazement.
Tuesday afternoon. An Army unit, acting under orders from General Chambers and under the local command of Colonel Douglas Portuna, drove in a convoy to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in western Nebraska. They were investigating a strange set of coordinates which Sam Swenson
had come across some time ago during one of his periodic forays into various government databases. Portuna and his men were now at those coordinates.
Setting off on foot, they explored the hillside and the area around it, finding nothing of interest until one of the men, an experienced mountain climber and amateur geologist, came upon a section of the rock face that just didn’t look “right.” Using his rock-sampling axe, he chipped off a piece of stone and discovered why. The sample was cement, painted to resemble the sandstone which surrounded it. Portuna decided to set off some hand grenades at the base of the cement to see what, if anything, was behind it. The plan was risky but the results were quite satisfying, as the charges caused a large section of the concrete to fall away, revealing the mouth of a cave.
Using as many flashlights as they had, the men entered the cavern. They discovered that it was an old salt mine, and that the air inside was quite cool and very dry. They also found that the cave was huge, and anything but empty.
“Will you look at that?” Portuna murmured in amazement.
Tuesday afternoon. An Army unit, acting under orders from General Chambers and under the local command of Major David Beretta, proceeded in a convoy of military vehicles to Government Research Station 12. Similar convoys, with similar orders, were advancing on the other eleven stations that ringed the Wall.
Major Beretta, accompanied by a squad of twelve soldiers, entered the building and announced to everyone within earshot that he was taking command of the facility. Anyone who objected was taken at gunpoint and forced to accompany the soldiers as they advanced deep into the bowels of the station. When they reached the narrow, claustrophobic tunnel leading to the train itself, four soldiers went through in single file, entered the train and pointed their weapons menacingly at anyone who looked like they objected to their presence. When Beretta entered, he announced that all civilians who were there against their will would be escorted off the train and out of the building. The Secret Service agent who was responsible for securing the passengers for transport raised an objection, mostly because he felt it would be expected of him. Beretta turned on the man and shot him in the chest. Seeing that the Army meant business, the civilians, all Section Fifteen “volunteers,” almost caused a stampede in their haste to disembark.
When the passengers were gone, Beretta brought the remaining SS man to what he assumed was the back of the train. There was a door at the rear of the compartment.
“What's behind that door?” the major demanded.
The agent professed ignorance.
“Open it.”
The man slowly produced a key ring, but his nervousness made it difficult to find the correct key. After tolerating two seconds of fumbling, Beretta seized the man by the shirt and pressed his face against the door. He would have broken the man’s nose if he hadn’t turned his head to the right at the last second.
“Open the door—now!”
Using his right eye, the only one he could see with, the man quickly found the proper key and inserted it into the lock. When the door opened, Major Beretta pulled him back to prevent him from falling through the doorway.
The interior of another railway car was revealed, but instead of containing passengers, this one had...
“Will you look at that?” exclaimed one of the soldiers, looking over the shoulders of Beretta and his Secret Service captive. “That car has enough food in it to feed... well, an army.”
He was right. The car was packed with every kind of food imaginable, from fresh meat of various varieties to vegetables, pasta, seafood, dairy products, cereal, and on and on.
“Who owns all this stuff?” Beretta asked his prisoner.
“From what they tell me,” the man explained, “the Government buys it from all over the place – farmers, fishermen, food companies. Then they bring it to these research stations, load it onto these trains, and send it... wherever the train goes.”
“And, what happens to it then?”
“I guess someone at the other end unloads it.”
“You ‘guess’?”
“Hey—I only work at this end of the tunnel,” the man quickly explained to the major. “All I know is, the train leaves here full, and when it comes back a few hours later, it’s empty.”
“How often do they do this?” one of the other soldiers asked.
“Quite often,” the SS man replied. “As you can see, a lot of this stuff is perishable.”
“And, what is that thing?” the sharp-eyed major asked the agent, referring to a canister system under the car in which the men stood.
“That is some kind of gas they use, to put all the passengers to sleep for the journey up the tunnel.”
“’They’ use?”
“We use,” the man sheepishly admitted.
“All right—here’s the drill,” Major Beretta began issuing orders. “You six, sit in the car somewhere. The rest of you—back up the tunnel to the main entrance. No one comes down the tunnel to this train until I get back, for any reason whatsoever. If they try, you know what to do. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the soldiers replied. The six men who had been ordered to remain found seats near the front of the passenger compartment. The others began filing out.
“You’re with me,” Beretta told the SS man.
They entered the engineer's area. After studying the panel for a few moments, Beretta commented that the train’s controls “seem pretty simple; I think I could drive it in a pinch.” Then he appeared to change his mind and ordered the SS man to sit down and operate the train. He crouched behind the engineer’s seat, hoping to remain out of sight should anyone look through the window from outside. The major removed his pistol from its holster and pressed it against the back of the agent’s skull.
“I’m going to be wearing this gas mask,” he told the Secret Service agent, showing him the device before putting it on. “I’ve got one eye on you and the other on my men in there. If any of them begin to nod off, I’ll know you’ve released the sleeping gas, and you’ll be a dead man. Clear?”
“Perfectly clear,” the agent squeaked.
“Move it out.”
The electric motors kicked in and the train began to move.
CHAPTER 45
Tuesday afternoon. General Chambers and Lt. Tedeschi surveyed the land revealed by the expanded hole in the Wall. It had obviously been cleared of trees and shrubbery at one time, for only a few were present, the result of seeds that had blown over the Wall and taken root.
“Swenson said this whole area was originally one big minefield,” Chambers told Dirk. “Let’s check it out. Have some of the men fire at that ground over there.” He indicated a point well to the north of where they stood.
Two men armed with rifles stood near the south edge of the hole and fired shots at the ground. Several rounds yielded no results, but finally one of the bullets impacted a land mine, which caused a jarring explosion. The ground around the mine rattled, and this set off another charge further north, and then one further west, toward the suspected inner Wall. Each of these set off another mine, and another…
The men watched from the relative safety of the Wall’s edge. The blasts continued for about thirty more seconds... until they stopped.
“Could be, the mines beyond there are just too old,” Dirk suggested, “or maybe, they’re just too far apart.”
“Probably both,” Chambers concurred. “Anyway, we’re not going to worry about it now. We’re going west, not north, and we’ve got a track cleared, wide enough for us to get through. And, as we go deeper in, we can shoot far enough ahead of ourselves to clear the area out before we get to it. Not the best plan in the world, but I hope it’ll do.”
“I think that I’d feel better,” Dirk cautioned, “if we do the same thing on the south side of this hole before we go anywhere.”
“Yeah, better safe than sorry,” the general agreed. The soldiers moved to the other side of the hole and began firing again.
Once again, a mine de
tonated, setting off its neighbor, which set off a third one, and a fourth... but this time, the blasts did not stop, but continued, moving ever farther south and west.
“Looks like that was the way to go,” Dirk shouted at his superior officer, who nodded in agreement.
The explosions became fainter as they moved off but, even five minutes later, they could still be heard quite clearly.
Tuesday afternoon. The three Secret Service imposters had deplaned in Winnipeg, been picked up by a waiting Army vehicle dispatched by General Chambers, and were back near the Stork building. Peter was getting excited about the prospect of entering the tunnel and driving the train into the Ghetto, until Sam informed him otherwise.
“If things have gone according to plan, we can’t use the tunnel this time,” he told his partners.
“Right,” Buck concurred.
“What plan?” Peter asked.
“The general and the colonel had a plan, in case things went the way they went,” Sam answered curtly, as he and Buck started walking toward the Wall. Realizing no further explanation was forthcoming, Peter hurried to follow them.
Despite the unvarying appearance of the Wall, Sam seemed to know exactly where he was going. Before reaching the designated point, however, they encountered two Secret Service agents on routine patrol of the area. One they took unawares and rendered him unconscious with a blow to the head; the other, unfortunately, had to be shot. Both tasks were handled by Buck.
Making it to the face of the Wall itself, Sam stooped down and seemed to dig in the dirt for a moment, then stood up and stepped back a pace.
Buck and Peter watched in wonder as a door opened outward. The hinges were on the inside and made no noise as the door moved. The top and left edge of the door were not straight, but had a very irregular pattern. The door averaged about four feet wide and more than six inches thick.
