The room contained a filtration and vent system, which fed fresh air to the vents on the inside of the complex. He knew this because he would take the opportunity to look for places they tried to keep him out of. Matt found a similar vent room on the inside of the compound, on level B-2. Both times he had been allowed to go there, he had taken a large pushcart of boxes and given them to what he could best describe as a Chinese guy. On the second trip back to the B-2 elevator he found the subterranean vent room. Matt always checked every door he passed and one of them just popped open.
That door revealed the second vent discovery. Once again, his discoveries came in little pieces. He made it a habit to check doors, always curious. He took two minutes in the basement vent room and found that there was no air filter here like the surface one, just air vents and ducts heading out into B-2.
So the top room was the key and that was good, because if he had to sabotage two rooms, his plan wouldn’t work, as he had no regular access to this level.
Alone in the top vent room, Matt went to work. First he took off the metal louver that covered the giant air filter and then he cut several large holes in the now exposed filter using his honed Buck knife. His work was expeditious and succinct; there was no pausing now. He then took the canister out of the paint can and set it down. Next he got out his battery and placed the connections on the slide connectors to the device. Immediately the LCD on the canister went green. He had to make sure he didn’t accidentally push the remote or he’d be in big trouble, so he laid it flat in the can, then placed the device in the corner and double-checked the timer. It was good to go.
He exited the room and replaced the one core, now having the Maintenance room’s two core back in his pocket. It was here that he made his first mistake since he’d started. Fortunately fate handed him a reprieve. He had left the maintenance room open while he was in the vent room. When he returned he should have replaced the two core immediately, but he did not. He chose to replace the can first, taking out the remote and putting it in his pocket. Then he saw the dog vest and thought of Stormy, so he grabbed it. It turned out to be a move that saved him a hand-to-hand combat fight to the death with his psychotic little friend.
He was exiting maintenance when Felipe suddenly appeared, the way he always seemed to do at the wrong moment. He questioned Matt with complete skepticism, obviously suspecting he was the biggest liar on the planet. “I thought you were going to let the dogs out?” Distrust written on his face.
Without hesitation and without a stutter, Matt said, “I had a box of Kevlar vests for the dogs. I just got them and I wanted to give them to as many as I could, but I couldn’t find them, so I thought maybe I put the box of them in here, but this is the only one I could find. I think I’m losing my mind.” Matt’s reply was cool, not stressed, just like every time he’d needed to be since the day he met Felipe; his lies were told without hesitation or fear.
As a result of Matt’s ability to lie effectively, everyone had missed the opportunity to ferret him out when the time was right. The tattooed killer was no exception; he immediately dropped his defenses due to one little lie. He spoke to Matt in a totally benign tone now, and Matt realized that he would have been toast if someone well versed in lie detection were here and not this uneducated henchman. Felipe’s English was definitely improving nowadays. He blurted, “Well forget about that, Gringo, it’s time to go.”
“Okay, let’s get the dogs.” While they were talking, Matt slipped the core-puller key back into the number two core inside of his pocket. In another deft move, he was able to slide the core back into place as he was closing the door. It was a difficult move because to set the core, one had to make a quarter turn to secure it before one extracted the key. Fortunately his demented compadre was oblivious to the sleight of hand.
Felipe helped him let the dogs go free. At first they were confused, but quickly adapted when Matt blew the playtime whistle. They both somberly walked back to the compound. Matt’s melancholy was created by a combination of losing his dog and the realization that his time frame was set in stone. He fumbled the remote switch in his pocket—the switch that would release the Sarin gas he just planted.
But that’s not why his action was set in stone. The remote could be pushed at any time, all it took was “free will.” The reason it was set in stone was because Matt had set the timer to “six hours” before he left, just in case he lost his nerve. No matter what, this was over in six hours or less.
He looked at Felipe’s forlorn demeanor and wondered what the reason for his funk was—until he remembered that Felipe was just an asshole and that was his personality. He was depressing to be around.
* * *
They were all dead or unable to travel. Casper observed the absolute destruction around him and felt sick, as some of it was beyond terrifying. Before he left, he observed an arm and shoulder stuck up in a tree. He was the sole survivor, the only one able to get the word back to civilization.
After some begging and a small bribe to cover gas, he was able to get the farmer to agree to take him to Ibarra, although he had to read it on the man’s lips, as his ears were useless. Once there, he would be able to let them know what happened. Not that he knew much, but what he did know was that those helicopters and his division wasn’t coming back.
Whoever did this was going to pay, that was for sure. His bet was it was the Peruvians. Who else makes enemy with my country? Well they went too far this time; this is War. Maybe this is in retaliation for that bomb that exploded there, he thought, but we didn’t do that, did we?
Casper was in serious pain and he couldn’t hear a thing this guy said as they drove, but he could tell he was talking, as his lips never stopped moving. He could tell by the way his hands were moving that he was talking about the choppers. The man’s hands went crashing into the imaginary ground and Casper got a pantomime eyewitness account of what happened to the Dhruvs.
He looked in the side mirror of the truck and saw there was dried caked blood near his ear canals. He looked at the rip in his thigh, the piece of shrapnel still lodged in it. Somehow he’d caught fire on his left side and that was starting to hurt now too. Casper felt like he had been through a war, but as far as he knew, it was over before it started.
* * *
“Why can’t we just send in an ICBM?”
The President physically repelled the statement with an exaggerated arm gesture, “Nuke Ecuador, Steve?! Are you kidding?”
Admiral Anders shut it down, “We couldn’t if we wanted to. Once our rocket got into space, they would disable it.”
“We could put it on a Tomahawk, fly it in low,” brought in Hatten, “Or a Bunker Buster.”
“That’s a thought, or we could detonate it from a distance up in space and knock out their satellite that way,” added General Early back.
President Caulfield said, “That satellite is obviously still in orbit and able to fire again. In retaliation for the failed attack, they detonated it again moments ago, this EMP blast knocked out thirteen more birds—two of them critical to Ecuador. They are now back in the nineteen thirties telecommunications-wise. We have to deal with some sobering news gentlemen. We might have no choice but to nuke that satellite. If it’s rechargeable over and over again, then we have scant hours until it decimates every satellite in existence. Once we disable their satellite, then we can bunker-bust that place. Or use our own drones against them,” added the President.
“In the old days we could have shelled them,” added Anders, “you can’t EMP burst a cannon shot.”
President Caulfield shot back, “That’s a fine idea, but do we have any battleships left that can do that?”
Anders got the point, “No, Sir, not even one.”
Instead of deriding him for the idiocy of the statement, the President said, “Mark, like we talked about before, what if they train that laser on the Bush and her reactors?”
“Then they will have bitten off more than they can chew,” said Admir
al Anders, with deadly intent. “That bird up there is not an auto bot, Sir, let’s try severing the head. We can’t send in planes because of their laser and unknown drone capability, we can’t nuke them, so that leaves our drones, rockets, and ground forces.”
“I’m leaning toward Steve’s suggestion. Is anyone opposed to trying the Bush before the nuclear option?”
One hand went up, “Duly noted, General Early, and not disregarded. I will now take the time to consider your arguments. As you’ve been briefed in the packets in front of you, our Ecuadorian friends failed. They never got to fire a shot. We have no military Intel on the Dhruvs other than a cow farmer saw them go down. According to our source, he said that ‘trash cans of lightning shot up out of the ground and brought them all down at once.’ The other piece of Intel we got was from a military survivor.
“He said that they lost their phone signals prior to the Dhruvs going down and were trying to get them back when there was a powerful explosion. He wound up on the ground on fire, and his entire division was destroyed without warning. The whole Division!”
“That’s some serious fire power,” brought up General Sexton, whose boys would be the first to find out what the hell could do that kind of damage so quickly.
Eric shot in, “I have Ray outside, and he has some insight he wants to share. He’s been busy profiling our enemy and updating his assessment of what he thinks ‘our agent’ is capable of.”
The President raised an eyebrow as he spoke, “Our Agent, Eric? That’s a concept that will take some time getting used to, but the points conceded. We apparently have a man on the inside.”
The President couldn’t have sounded more like a man who was saying something he really didn’t believe in, which was why he still continued to minimize the potential impact Hurst could have. And it secretly infuriated Eric Barnett as he saw it as a failure on the President’s part to be impartial. Consequently, the next statement didn’t surprise Eric at all, as the leader of the free world piped in, “Other than getting us the location of their base, I doubt Hurst would be in a position to help us any further.” The President added, “Although he did do a heck of a job. I hope he knows to be in a safe place now.”
Eric looked at the President, still waiting for the answer about Ray, “Sure Eric, bring in Ray, let’s hear him out.”
Ray entered looking ever smaller in stature that he really was, “Hello, Raymond,” Lawrence used his thickest Southern accent.
“Good day, Gentlemen,” Ray returned.
“Well, I wanted to start with the message coming from the satellite; it was very telling. First of all, he used part of his speech as an individual, but in other parts, he referred to his recruiting a following. That intrigued me, so we looked into odd happenings or strange cult things in South America recently. He used the word ‘Loco’ instead of crazy and when he did it, there was definitely a Hispanic accent. He also alluded to the fact that the attack on Peru was an eye for an eye killing. So we have some great leads.
“He also said he spoke for everyone, but I believe he meant himself mostly, so he may have been a victim of some horrific act on the Shimmering Way’s part. By the conviction in his voice, you can tell that he feels righteous, so we are dealing with religious fanatics on the lines with Al Qaida. We’re used to seeing this. We just need to see this guy as a Cleric to gain the right perspective. We’ve seen this throughout our history; if the cause is something they believe in, then there will be no surrender. It’s a fight to the death.”
The President asked, “What about your ‘agent?’”
“Well, first of all, I’m just a person who believes he exists. We have no direct communications. He doesn’t know “I” exist.”
“Okay, Ray,” the President added cautiously, “Tell us about Hurst.”
“Well, he survived, so there had to have been a reason. My guess is the girl. It looks like the girl was important to them and he got her out. But it’s more than that. I think he got into her head. We know he saved her in Palo Alto and then was her captive. He must have somehow gotten free from that situation and then somehow got her to have sex with him before he saved her from Beck at the airport. That would be the second time he saved her, all in a very short amount of time.
“Then he took Doug Sharp hostage and got her out. Sharp mentioned that she threw herself on Hurst to save him when they arrived in Mexico. My assessment is he survived by getting to her, and, as I said, she was more important to them than we thought. He’s had two years to infiltrate. He’s been able to send us messages in two different ways. One of them by getting a note into Langley and the other was by use of the Internet.”
Ray poured some water from the decanter and drank before continuing, “Gentlemen, Matt Hurst has never been chatty, but the little pieces of information he provides are gold mines. So we have to assume that he knows the plan of this ‘cult.’ I’ve concluded that is the best word to assign to them. Anyway, he warned the pilot so he’s resourceful in ways we could only have hoped for. Worst-case scenario, it took two years just to get out the Intel we received. Best-case scenario is we have a deep cover man who’s set to play saboteur and if you ask my opinion, you can bet he will at some point. My guess is imminently.”
Ray brought a photo of the coordinates note. “He gave us his coordinates. It’s clear to me that from the start of this, Hurst has been expecting two things from us. One, that we figure out he’s a patriot and give him the understanding that he was a man between a rock and a hard spot. Second, that we take his subtle hints as the thunder strikes that they have proven to be and act pro-actively to help get him out of this. Also, he provided one more clue.”
President Caulfield asked, “What’s that, Ray?”
“In the subject line of the email he sent to the pilot ‘17 MHz’ was the only thing written.”
“That’s a Ham Radio frequency wave,” piped in General Hatten.
Ray looked very pleased, “Right, Steve, it sure is and I’m sure when the time is right, we’ll get extraction coordinates coming in on that frequency.”
The President expressed genuine gratitude, “Thank you, Ray, your opinions are always of value in this room.”
Ray nodded and General Hatten was the first to speak upon him stepping down, “What do you think those trash cans of lightning were? I’m thinking a charge loaded EMP weapon that works like a Bouncing Betty or a reverse depth charge, if you will. Once the trip wire is crossed, they activate.”
The President conceded, “Not a bad thought Steve, so how limited is that weapon?”
“Well, if you were precise enough in its initial placement, then this makes our normal assault practices null and void. It would strictly be a Seal Team assault initially.”
“It almost feels like a game of chess where your opponent is taking away your moving space,” added CIA Director Eric Barnett. “Obviously that move was to stall any thought of air assault by chopper or dropping of heavy machinery that we might have had.”
That gave Ray an idea and he quickly excused himself from the meeting. His boss knew that look. Ray had a breakthrough—he was exiting almost at a run.
“So what if they know our next move is attacking with the George HW,” shot out Admiral Anders. “What are they going to do, bleed on us?”
“Mark, I would be very cautious about hubris with these people,” cautioned the President. “They’ve already shown a cunning we didn’t expect in many areas. We need to go into this with eyes wide-open, people!” He let his emphasis sit a second before continuing, “They could fly some of those drones in low and hurt your ship before you could fire round one off your Phalanx guns or shoot your Sparrow missiles. Don’t forget, they are stealthed!”
That unsettled Anders.
General Osborne stood and announced, “Then we should form a shield around the main carrier to prevent that once we’re in position.”
President Caulfield liked it and ordered Admiral Anders to put it in place. He also ordered him to ge
t someone more senior on the ship, not that Captain Washington was not qualified but he wanted to take no chances with protocol and that it would be followed and orders carried out when the time came. Some of those orders might be troubling to carry out.
Mark took that command like a cannonball to the stomach. He knew his people, and Julius was going to be as pissed off as a man could get. And if nothing else, breaking a man’s confidence like that could hinder his decision making at a crucial time. But that wasn’t what was bothering him most. Why did Osborne just blindside me like that? Apparently there’s been a change in the game plan that I wasn’t informed about.
The President looked at Admiral Anders and asked, “How long before the Bush Group is in position?”
“Twenty hours, Sir.”
He nodded to his admiral, called the meeting to an end and left to talk to the Secretary of Defense.
* * *
Ray had an inspiration in that meeting. They were researching possible victims of the Shimmering Way Murder Parade when he remembered a particularly horrible story of them wiping out an entire family in Ecuador. Not only that, but they even went abroad to kill one of the family in France. Although the body was never found, he was presumed dead.
There was one standout fact he had remembered though—the child was a prodigy, and according to his school, had even created a chess website that was popular enough that the school was getting money for it now, as it recently turned into a membership site.
As Ray sat and listened, he concurred with Director Barnett. This whole thing has played out exactly like a well-played game of chess. If he was alive, the kid had motive, but would he have the ability to pull this off? If it really is him, I just need to figure out how Haberman and this kid intersected. That might lead to what happened to James and more. Hopefully it will reveal the identity of whom the heck behind this.
He found the file. The kid’s name was Pablo Manuel and he was there in France on private funding. His list of teachers included a computer lab teacher who helped him launch the chess website. Well, I’ll start with this Jeremy Lebuff and see what I can find out. I’ll also need the boy’s online profile so I can see the account activity and his list of past opponents. There had to be a thread somewhere and I’m going to find it.
And the Meek Shall Inherit (Harbinger of Change Book 2) Page 9
