Apocalypse Crucible

by Mel Odom

  “I have not gotten through to Mrs. Samuel Adams Gander,”

  Lizuca said. “I have been trying very hard. I seem unable to find her close to a phone when I call.”

  “That’s okay. Stay with it and let me know if she’ll consent to do an interview.” Danielle wanted the interview as a human-interest piece to flesh out the viewers’ awareness of First Sergeant Goose Gander. The man was a hero even before the media had made him out as one, and Danielle wanted to know what he was like at home.

  “Danielle,” Cezar called again. “You need to watch what these … these … butchers are doing to my beautiful work.”

  Danielle held a hand up to the cameraman. Finding a quiet place to work inside the RV was almost impossible. Noise from the passing military vehicles outside the Adventurer still invaded.

  “Lizuca, I want to send you a digital photograph.” Danielle reached into the pack she carried. In addition to the spare headset microphones, handheld microphones, and makeup, she also carried a micro-digital camera that had seriously set her finances back but had also proven worth its weight in gold since she’d had it.

  “Of course, Danielle. Is this part of a news story?”

  “Not yet.” Danielle made her way around Cezar, who mewled at her with a pleading face and looked as though he were about to cry, to one of the notebook computers the news staff kept charged and online at all times. “I want you to do some research on this guy.”

  “Of course. Do you have his name? It would be easiest, I think, to begin there.”

  “I don’t have a name.” Danielle hooked a USB cable to the digital camera, opened the appropriate program on the computer, downloaded the picture from the camera, then shot the digital image into cyberspace as an encrypted burst. “That’s one of the things I want.”

  “I see.” Lizuca sounded doubtful. “This task you put before me, it is quite difficult, yes?”

  “Yes,” Danielle answered. “Difficult, but not impossible. One-World has huge video archives, and they’ve got search programs espionage agencies around the world would give their eyeteeth for.”

  “Yes, but those things are necessary to doing good business. We are not spies.”

  Cezar made wild gestures toward the monitor where the video editors worked on the footage of the night’s attack. The cameraman bit his knuckles in frustration, then clapped his open hands together in obvious supplication.

  “I know we’re not spies,” Danielle said to ease the woman’s mind. Half-dozen countries around the world had claimed at one time or another that OneWorld NewsNet was an espionage unit working for Western powers. The news corporation’s reporters had broken several big stories about biological weapons and terrorist movements that had sent United Nations and United States troops into the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa during the past few years.

  UPLOAD COMPLETE printed across the notebook computer’s LCD screen.

  “Do you have the picture?” Danielle asked.

  “It is coming through now.”

  Danielle covered the sat-phone’s mouthpiece and glared at Cezar. “Calm down. The piece they’re editing is for the midnight updates for CNN and FOX News. We’re saving your brilliance for OneWorld.”

  Cezar looked relieved as he glanced back at the computer monitors. “Those are for CNN and FOX?”

  “Yes. You don’t think we’re going to give them all your hard work, do you?”

  “Oh.” Cezar crossed his hands over his chest. “That is all right then.”

  “I thought it would be.”

  “Danielle,” Lizuca said, “I have the picture now. He is a very evillooking man, yes?”

  Danielle didn’t exactly get evil when she looked at the CIA agent. Conniving, maybe, and certainly self-serving. She studied the image on the digital camera’s view screen.

  “Run that image through the search programs,” Danielle said. “Let me know the minute you find anything out.”

  “My shift here, unfortunately, is almost over. It is possible that I won’t be able to finish this before it is time for me to go home.”

  “Want overtime?” One of the first things Danielle had negotiated for herself was the ability to pass out overtime to research assistants.

  “Of course. Money is money, Danielle, and though Mr. Carpathia’s corporate policies are very generous, I find I can always use a little more. I am supporting my mother and three sisters, yes? And there is a dress I saw just last week in a shopwindow that is—how do you say?—to die for, yes?”

  An artillery round exploded in the distance, causing everyone in the RV to look up apprehensively.

  Not exactly the way I would have put it, Danielle thought as fear drew a chill across the back of her neck. She tried to blame the air-conditioning, but she knew what had caused the feeling.

  “I will find out who this man is,” Lizuca promised. “If he is in OneWorld’s digital archives, yes?”

  “Yes,” Danielle replied. “The minute you find out—”

  “I will call you. I give you my promise, yes?”

  “Thanks.”

  “It is—how you say?—no problem. Stay safe. I will be praying for you, yes?”

  “Yes,” Danielle said. She broke the connection, took a final look at the mystery man’s picture, and thought, Whoever you are, I’ll have you. It won’t be long. Not with OneWorld’s resources. She felt good about that, confident. She clicked off the camera, keeping the picture stored.

  She thought about the man Captain Remington was questioning, and she wished she were a fly on the wall for that. Secrets were no doubt popping loose in that room. From what she’d seen of the Ranger captain, he was an unstoppable force once he got started.

  The problem with secrets, Danielle knew from her career as a journalist, was that once they started coming out, usually they couldn’t be stopped. And secrets had a tendency to change everything.

  United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post

  Sanliurfa, Turkey

  Local Time 0612 Hours

  “Only a fool would believe he could pull something like that off.” The response was the only one Remington could think of as he considered the possibility that President Fitzhugh had entered into an agreement with Israel to lash out in a concerted effort against major terrorist organizations in exchange for Chaim Rosenzweig’s chemical wonder.

  Believing that Israel would want to do that was no problem. Ever since 1948, when the nation had been forged from the ashes of the Second World War and been placed like a dagger in the heart of the Middle East, Israel had cried out for security and prayed for death to her enemies. Her enemies’ prayers ran along the same lines, of course.

  “The State Department convinced Fitzhugh he could get it done, sir,” Winters insisted. “At least, that was what I heard. Plans have been in the making to continue American police action throughout the Middle East.”

  “To protect the oil concerns.”

  Winters nodded. “China has been growing, Captain Remington. So has their need for petroleum products. Studies indicate that in a few years, they’ll need and use as much crude as the United States currently does. Our usage is probably going to grow. We’re not slowing down our energy use or finding alternate energy sources the way analysts have suggested since the early 1970s.”

  Remington was aware of the growing energy-crunch situation. Besides being informed through military connections, similar concerns were voiced in the international media, though not much attention was paid in the United States to the fact that the Chinese were about to become a major competitor for that oil. No one much wanted to rattle Joe U.S. Citizen about the coming petroleum wars with China. In time, Remington figured, the United States government would lobby for an increased military presence in the Middle East on behalf of big business, and the votes would get counted at the gas pump as U.S. consumers felt the bite.

  “China jumped into the Afghanistan situation as opposed to the American military strikes,” Winters said. “They took a s
tand, but didn’t pony up the army. But they made every effort they could to glad-hand the Afghanistan government.”

  “To build up a rapport they could utilize later.” Remington had talked about those prospects with other career officers who had years to go before they pulled the pin.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Chinese government’s efforts to win over the Middle East had consumed much of China’s diplomatic time and financial resources. Those behind-closed-doors discussions had included trade concessions that favored the Middle East as well as overland and sea access between China and Singapore. Not to mention the fact that it was cheaper to ship to China than to the United States. The Middle East had quietly entered into a seller’s market as the demands started pushing past their ability to produce.

  “The strikes against Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden,” Winters continued, “just added fuel to the fire, sir.”

  Remington knew the agent didn’t even recognize the irony of the metaphor he’d used. “What does this have to do with Icarus?”

  “Remember what I said about Icarus being a double agent, sir?” Winters wiped his mouth on his shoulder again. Blood streaked his shirt. “Agency resources—HUMINT, SIGNIT—all involve traces of a terrorist organization that’s grown since the U.S. Army took down Iraq.”

  Human intelligence and signals intelligence were part of Remington’s operations as well. HUMINT involved spying, individuals inserted into an area or bought off by an espionage agency. SIGNIT referred to high-tech machines like spy satellites and low-tech devices like simple phone taps. The military used them these days, too, but most of that information was gathered by outside agencies—at least until the military occupied an area. Then they supplemented what they received with efforts by their own people trained for those jobs.

  “American strikes against the terrorists were the catalysts for the growth,” Winters whispered. “Like hitting the common flu with antibiotics every time someone gets a sniffle. We didn’t kill them all and they had no choice but to go more underground, get craftier, and grow stronger.”

  During the last few years, Remington had heard a lot of the same scenarios spelled out by paranoid officers and intelligence operatives. But as far as he could see, there hadn’t been any real evidence of such growth.

  “The terrorist groups have banded more tightly together during the last year,” Winters said, “and Syria stepped into a leadership role.”

  “No,” Remington objected. “If that had happened, I would have known. A lot of people would have known.”

  “You didn’t,” Winters responded with a little heat; then he bowed his head when Hardin moved toward him. “Sir. You didn’t know. The people who thought they knew? They weren’t talking. They had orders not to talk. You can bet on that.” He paused. “But others knew. That was Icarus’s true assignment, Captain Remington: he was supposed to find out how big that terrorist organization had gotten.”

  “But he didn’t do that.”

  “No, sir. He didn’t. Turns out, Icarus was a double agent.”

  “That was confirmed?”

  “Yes, sir.” Now that he’d decided to talk, Winters seemed to have no problem spilling his guts. “Only hours before the attempt on Rosenzweig, an agency informant gave us information that Icarus was a double.” He coughed and spat out a blob of blood. “Know why we continue to call him Icarus, Captain?”

  Remington made no response.

  “Because we don’t know his real name. After the agency got the tip, they pulled Icarus’s jacket and went through his file again. All the information on him was false. Looked good on paper because there had been a guy by the name he was using at one time. Somewhere along the way, Icarus—or someone working with Icarus—killed him. Then Icarus replaced him.”

  “How?” Remington marveled at the concept.

  “We’re the agency, sir.” Winters grinned a little, getting some of his confidence back now. “Guys like us, guys who do deep recon, surgical strikes, who know governmental disavowal of actions is our middle name—sir, we don’t have friends. If we did, we give them up and don’t make anymore. If we have family, we walk away. As soon as you step into the truly covert action in the CIA, man, you just don’t exist as a person anymore.”

  “A strength,” Remington said, recognizing the behavior for what it was, “and a vulnerability.”

  “Right.” Winters warmed to the story now that Remington seemed won over.

  “How did the agency know Icarus’s identity was false? It could have been bad information. Or even a ruse on the part of someone else.”

  “Someone else who, sir? Not the terrorists. They don’t have ways into our encrypted computer files.” Winters shook his head, then seemed to immediately regret the effort. Hardin’s blows had that effect on people. “No. The agency turned up evidence that Icarus wasn’t who he said he was. Went back to a girlfriend he dated in high school. The agency’s got a long reach once they start. Found cards he’d sent her while in high school and college. Letters.”

  “Fingerprints,” Remington said, his clever mind catching the direction the conversation was going.

  “Exactly.” Winters smiled, but the effort was lopsided because of his swollen and cracked lips. “They took his fingerprints from the cards and letters. They didn’t match the ones the agency had on file. Wasn’t the same guy. You ask me, they were lucky this woman hung on to those things. But sometimes they do.”

  Remington didn’t have firsthand knowledge of that. He’d never been around women who cared that much, or even claimed to have cared that much. Keeping letters and cards was something the woman Goose had married would do. The gesture was romantic, but that also meant she was clingy—a real problem, to Remington’s way of thinking.

  A career military man didn’t have any business being with a clingy woman. Even Goose’s standards and goals had changed since his marriage. He’d lost some of his game and some of his edge, had a tendency to think about things more completely now, seeing the whole picture instead of just focusing on the mission like an enlisted man worth his salt should.

  “So where did Icarus come from?” Remington asked.

  “We don’t know that yet, sir. Agent Cody believes that most of the guys we use in the Middle East are Syrians. Or other Middle Eastern guys the Syrians have bought out. Or are just believers. Jihad, you know. Guys who figure fighting the holy war against Christianity and the Western powers is in their blood.”

  Remington paced for a moment again, turning everything over in his mind, searching for the angles that would pop the story into pieces and expose any lies Winters had told. But there were no weak places. Despite the lack of physical evidence, the story was convincing.

  “I saw real-time video of the takedown when my Rangers rescued Icarus.” Remington remembered the scene vividly. A copy of the opstill existed on VCD in his personal files. “Icarus was badly beaten. Looked like he was lucky to live through it.”

  “For a man next to death’s door, he’s getting around pretty good, don’t you think? We haven’t caught him yet.”

  “Why would the PKK want to kill him?”

  “Because we leaked information he was a CIA plant,” Winters explained.

  OneWorld NewsNet Corporate Offices

  Bucharest, Romania

  Local Time 0617 Hours

  Lizuca Carutasu hummed as she worked. She liked American pop tunes, and the one she hummed now had hit the Top Forty on morning-drive stations in America. She knew that because she listened to the radio through the Internet.

  Lizuca was twenty-three years old, a slim-hipped brunette with hopes of seeing America at some point. She’d studied the movies, which was how she had improved her English, and bought Western clothes, which were still frowned upon by her mother, who was very much a traditionalist. Oldest of her four sisters, she was also considered the rabble-rouser by her mother because Lizuca had no interest in simply marrying a man in order to get a house and raise children the way it was done b
efore the people rose from the streets and took back their country from the despot Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.

  Not having been alive during those times, Lizuca knew little of how desperate simply surviving had been, but she imagined that life had been hard. What she could not know of the executions and mass murders and food lines, she heard about from her mother and her aunts.

  Sitting at the desk near the eastern wall of the tall and imposing building that housed OneWorld NewsNet on the top three floors, Lizuca had a good view of the city and Cotroceni Palace, which was now the presidential residency and a museum. She loved the glass porch with its stained-glass windows. One of her favorite places to visit while shopping in City Centre was the botanical gardens.

  Shopping. The thought pleased her. The overtime Danielle offered for her research assignment—even though the man was evil-faced and would no doubt cause nightmares for her if he’d done something

  truly atrocious, which he had to have done because those were the people news stories were done about, yes?—would surely buy the new dress she’d been looking at for the last few weeks in the shopkeeper’s window.

  Even this early in the morning, the office buzzed with activity and the strong smell of coffee.

  Lizuca had a small desk, but she shared it with no one else. When she left her shift, no one sat in her chair or moved her things around.

  Files and supplies stayed exactly where she left them. Provided she locked the drawers, of course. Other people in the office shared their work space with second shifts.

  As she sat in her chair and watched the computer search the video archives for the picture of the man Danielle had sent her, she pinched off another piece of the cheese pastry her mother had baked last night and sent with her for breakfast.

  Lizuca would have preferred going out for breakfast before returning home, but her mother watched her spending habits with a miser’s eye. Her mother didn’t consider the money Lizuca made to be her own but rather the family’s. Lizuca was the only one with a good-paying job.

  With all the disappearances around the world, so many of them in Romania as well, Lizuca didn’t feel like arguing with her mother. She was glad that her family remained intact. Her father had died nine years ago, and things had been especially hard for them even though freedom fighters had removed the Communist government.