The two had wrestled to the ground and Cecil had taken the sharp blade away from his friend. He then repeatedly thrust it into his torso. Travis Smalls was dead and he had absolutely no recollection of the entire ordeal.
Not knowing what to do, and not wanting to be seen standing over a dead body that he couldn’t explain, Cecil ran into his bathroom, and instinctively tried to wash the blood from his hands. When he felt he had done a satisfactory job, he sprinted toward the door. As he ripped it open, two men were walking up the front steps onto the porch. He ran over the first one, but was promptly tackled by the younger man. He was quickly subdued and a gun had been placed against his temple as a warning not to try anything. Once Cecil was sufficiently restrained, the two gentlemen stood him up.
As the pair helped him to his feet, they caught sight of his blood caked clothing. The older man spoke first.
“Airman Sullivan? My name is Colonel James. I’m a psychiatrist with the U.S. Army. Are you hurt? Where are you bleeding?”
Cecil said nothing.
“Let’s get him inside,” Colonel James said to Gregg as he began scanning the woods for witnesses and passers-by.
Gregg placed Cecil in one of the armchairs in the living room and walked over to the Colonel.
“I’m gonna have a look around and see where that blood came from,” Gregg said as he started heading to the kitchen. He could see breakfast ingredients piled up on the cutting board and the eggs had already been scrambled in a bowl. Not finding any signs of foul play he went toward the bedrooms.
Colonel James stood in front of Cecil and, in calm soothing tones, said, “Airman Sullivan, can you hear me? My name is Colonel James. I am psychiatrist. I would very much like to help you. You are safe here.”
No response. All Cecil was capable of doing at this point was rocking in his armchair and humming to himself.
Gregg looked in the bedroom off of the kitchen and found no signs of a disturbance. Whoever’s room it was kept it clean. The bed was made and the clothes were in the dresser. Everything in the bathroom was in its place as well. Gregg started to head into the second, but stopped when he saw a pair of hiking boots lying sideways on the floor.
Gregg snapped his fingers at the Colonel in order to gain his attention. When the man turned his head, Gregg drew his Glock and slowly worked his way up to the opening of the room. In a flash, Gregg was in the doorway with his arms partially extended like he had done hundreds of times on house-to-house searches in the sandbox. He was ready to fire in a moment’s notice. Lying on the floor beneath him was Travis. The blood was fresh, no coagulation. Gregg knelt and felt for a pulse, but there was none to be found. The man was still warm, but he was dead. Gregg holstered his weapon and grabbed one of the disheveled sheets off of the bed. As he placed the sheet over the body, the Colonel came through the doorway.
In an understatement, the Colonel said, “Well, I guess that answers that.”
Gregg nodded in agreement and said, “How’s Cecil?”
“Not talking. He’s in shock,” the Colonel replied.
“I’ll get him to talk,” Gregg replied as he started to push his way past Col. James in the doorway.
The Colonel quickly grabbed his arm and just as forcefully said, “You will not lay a hand on that man. Do I make myself clear?”
Gregg stopped and took in the man’s comment. He glanced down at the hand clutching on to him and said, “Who said anything about touching him? Just watch. If he was held by the same people, he’ll talk to me.”
The Colonel slowly released his grip and Gregg made his way into the living room and Cecil. The former Special Ops soldier walked around the humming man a number of times taking in his disheveled state, his stale beer smell, his breathing, and rocking. When he was standing directly behind Cecil for the third time, Gregg stopped. The pair had read Cecil’s service record forward and backward. He knew his propensity for the military. The Airman had wanted to make a career out of it. His parents were dead and his sister, with the exception of the late Travis Smalls, was probably the only living soul that cared if he were alive or dead.
Knowing this, Gregg leaned over the back of the armchair and screamed in his ear, “Attention! Officer on deck!”
Cecil shot out of the chair as if he had just been electrocuted and stood at attention.
Gregg slowing came around the chair until he was in front of Cecil.
“What’s you name Airman?” Gregg said in an authoritative tact.
“Senior Airman Cecil Sullivan!” he answered in like voice.
“Where you from soldier?” he was asked in a softer, but still voluminous tone.
“Albany, New York, sir!” was the reply.
Gregg looked at the Colonel, who was standing with his mouth agape, and said, “This is Colonel James. He’s going to ask you a few questions... and you will answer him. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir!” the man yelled in response.
The Colonel cleared his throat and began stepping toward Cecil. As he neared he said, “Stand easy, Airman.”
Cecil immediately complied.
Col. James had never seen this before. It was like he was in a hypnotic state. When this was all over he was curious as to whether or not the man would remember any of the questions.
Following Gregg’s lead, but more gently, the Colonel said, “Were you ever a prisoner of war?”
“Yes, sir,” Cecil said.
“Were you tortured?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you name any of your captors?”
“Aban, Mahtab, Taj, and Abbas, sir.”
Gregg’s eyes drew large as he didn’t hear Suhrab’s name mentioned.
Colonel James followed the reply with another question. “Is that all? We’re there any others?”
“No, sir. Just those four plus two nurses and a doctor.”
“No other tormentors?”
“No, sir,” Cecil answered immediately.
“Can you describe Abbas?”
“Soulless jet black eyes. Tanned skin, not as dark as a Middle Easterner, almost Latin. Spoke English with a British accent. Was always practicing Spanish.”
Gregg stepped forward and asked, “Did Abbas have a last name.”
“Yes, sir. Esfahani. He was very proud of it, sir.”
Damn it, Gregg thought. Suhrab had a brother. Son of a bitch!
“Were there any other prisoners?” Colonel James asked.
“Yes, sir. They brought in another prisoner two months after I was snatched out of my quarters at Bagram.”
“Can you describe them?”
“No, sir. We were kept in separate cells, sir. I could identify his screams though.”
“Did you break, son?”
“I held out as long as I could, sir.”
“There’s no shame in it, son. How long did you last?”
“Seven months, twenty-seven days, sir.”
“What broke you?”
“My sister, sir.”
“How’s that? Your sister was in Albany.”
“They showed me a video taken from a sniper’s scope. They were going to kill her, sir.”
The interrogation went on for another ten minutes as Cecil answered each question posed by Gregg and Colonel James. When Cecil’s memory had been sufficiently taxed, Gregg motioned for Colonel James to end the Q&A and the doctor agreed.
“Thank you, Airman. You’ve been most helpful. Please, have a seat,” he said.
Cecil complied with the order just as efficiently as he had to the line of questioning. The entire time he had answered their questions, he had been completely oblivious to the fact that his hands were tied behind his back.
Gregg went and stood next to the Colonel and said, “Now what?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life. He’s definitely conditioned to the military or else he wouldn’t have reflexively stood at attention. It’s like he’s in a trance, or hypnotized or something.�
��
“Well, how would you wake someone up from hypnosis?” Gregg offered as a suggestion.
The Colonel shrugged, “Worth a shot.”
Colonel James stepped toward the seated Airman and said, “Cecil, I want you to close your eyes.”
He did as he was instructed.
“Now take three deep breaths.”
He complied again.
“I’m going to count backward from three to one. When I snap my fingers, open them, and you’ll be awake. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Cecil replied drearily.
“OK. Three... two... one,” the Colonel slowly counted and then snapped his fingers. Cecil opened his eyes and saw Colonel James and Gregg standing in front of him.
“Who are you guys? What are you doing in Travis’s cabin?” Cecil asked in a demanding tone.
“You don’t remember what just happened here, Airman?” Colonel James asked compassionately.
“Remember? What are you talking about? Why are my hands tied!” he demanded.
Chapter 7
General Howard stood up, as did all of the other Joint Chiefs, when the President rose and exited the Briefing Room. Rayburn, his advisors, and the head of the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security had been meeting several times a week with the Joint Chiefs for months to plan for an attempted occupying force on American soil. It took the better part of three meetings to get everyone fully onboard with the very real possibility that a conflict with a foreign army was brewing.
The reports coming from President Sarkes and the U.S. Ambassador at The Hague were not encouraging. The English were rebuffing every effort toward diplomacy and détente. They wanted their pound of flesh and they were going to get it.
As a result, WWII and Cold War era invasion plans were dusted off, updated using current force level details, and incorporated technological advancements. The outlook was still scary as hell.
One planner surmised that, “The United States has far too much coast, too many airports, government, and military installations to possibly defend. Trying to fortify the coastline is analogous to Rommel defending the Atlantic Wall. If Hitler could have mustered a large enough force, he would have been hundreds of miles inland before being contained.”
It seemed as if history were repeating itself when another planner proposed the marshaling of forces on the east coast since the aggressors were in Europe. The Pacific was too vast to cross by an armada without detection. General Howard had to intervene several times to remind the planners that, while the threat initiated in the EU, it was the UN and their collective global body that would be sending ‘Peace Keepers’ onto American soil. A modern day military aircraft could easily traverse that distance and drop three hundred men right on top of a city and no one would know a thing about until it was all over.
Since the creditors were after the United States financial resources, the Federal Reserve and its two dozen banks and branches were on the top of the list for defense. These locations were closely followed by the U.S. Mint facilities. West Point and Fort Knox were military installations; therefore, they had their own battalions. Although, the cadets would need reinforcing. That left the facilities in Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco to be defended.
All three were heavily populated cities and two could be quickly reached from the coast. There was no way to fortify these facilities with anything more than concrete barricades in the timetable provided by Sarkes and the Ambassador. Any security protocols implemented would draw attention and possibly incite a panic.
Security at these locations had been upgraded after 9/11, but most of those were electronic. Cameras, screening equipment, metal detectors, and facial recognition software had been the preferred choices. They were less visible, but extremely effective. Unfortunately, the people that were looking to get into these facilities were not going to concern themselves with those mechanisms or placards decreeing that personal firearms and weapons were prohibited.
The Federal Reserve and U.S. Mint locations contained the tangible goods that could be pilfered, looted, and loaded on to trucks, planes, and boats. Once plans were in place for the fortification and defense of these, the focus then shifted to the electronic currency located in the hundreds of Federal Treasury accounts worldwide. These held the funds for the publicly traded securities and could be accessed by only a handful of government employees with clearance. Hackers had been trying for decades, since the advent of computers it seemed, to access these financial records and cause havoc on the federal monetary system. As a result, the highest levels of security protocols, encryption, and algorithms had been employed to thwart such advances.
President Rayburn waded into the fray when he declared, “The intel and spy satellites will give us all of the advanced notice we need. As soon as we see them loading up, we got ‘em.”
That statement was quickly debunked by all of the planners and Joint Chiefs. Several counter scenarios were immediately provided as examples as to why the man was misguided.
“Sir,” the Chairman offered. “Planes could be loaded with personnel while still in the hangar. Satellites could be avoided simply by loading when they weren’t in range. I can give you a hundred different ways where our ability to see can be thwarted.”
Rayburn listened attentively to their points and conceded, “Perhaps my statement was ill advised.”
However, all agreed that a fairly predictable sign of the coming advance would be the departure of the foreign Ambassadors from their embassies in the U.S.
General Howard made his way through the Pentagon corridor thinking about all that was going on. If he were being honest with himself, he never would have given up his control of the Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM). The title ‘Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’ was impressive to anyone that didn’t know that they held zero authority. If former President Sarkes and his reports could be believed, it appeared more and more likely that both the Northern and Southern Commands would be needed to fend off Hannibal and his ocean going horde.
When the Chairman turned the corner into his office and found Heather surrounded by staffers posing for pictures and signing autographs, he boomed, “What the hell is this?”
His staff members immediately stood at attention and Heather squealed, “Papaw!”
The two embraced and the General said, “Finish up out here and then come in to my office,” as he kissed her on top of her head.
Heather posed for a few more pictures, signed the last of the autographs, and then made her way into her grandfather’s office.
“How’d you get in here? I wasn’t notified,” Brent said.
“Security called your office and one of your staffers came and got me. I hope you don’t mind,” she answered.
“No, not at all. I thought you’d be in Ohio with your Dad and sisters. What brings you by?” he asked.
Heather looked around the office like she trying to spot someone eavesdropping when she noticed the office door was still open. She promptly walked back and quietly closed it. She stood there for a few moments and then placed her hand on the frame for balance.
Without facing her grandfather she blurted, “The man is crazy.”
Chuckling, Brent said, “And why do you say that?”
“He says there’s going to be war, a UN invasion on U.S. soil. That there’ll be famine, depravity... all of it, you name it. They’re all nuts. They’ve all been drinking his Kool-Aid. He said the GMO’s were just the beginning.”
Brent and Josh had similar conversations during his time on the farm visiting Heather. Brent tried to BS his way out of it, but then Josh plunked down a file folder full of printed online financial news articles, newspaper, and magazine clippings. Josh might be an eccentric now, but he wasn’t wrong. As a result, Brent had been sending coded missives back to Josh through Samantha ever since his return to Capital.
Josh had tried to have a similar conversation with Heather when she bolted from the SUV screaming that they were all insane. Evan h
ad discreetly followed her and confirmed that she bought a ticket and boarded the train for D.C. Brent had known she was coming long before she showed up. He expected to see her sitting on the steps of his Georgetown brownstone though, not in his office posing for pictures.
When Brent didn’t answer, Heather finally turned around and he could see the wetness from the tears on her cheeks.
“Have a seat, sweetie,” the grandfather said compassionately.
Heather walked over, sat in one of the upholstered chairs, and stared at the hands folded in her lap.
Weeping, she said, “I looked for him for so long. I thought if only I could find him he would make me whole. Then Mom would be happy and everything would be great. All I managed to do though was destroy his family. A decade later, mom’s dead, and he tracked me down. I had this idea that if I ever found him again there would be this fantastic reunion, but he’s certifiable and it’s all one big fat Charlie Foxtrot.”
Brent smiled at her use of military jargon, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. He began to think that the world would be a much better place if everyone went back to being oblivious.
Heather looked up and saw him deep in thought when she asked, “You knew he was a crack pot, didn’t you? You left me there to discover for myself that the man I searched close to fifteen years for was clinically insane.”
Brent could feel her piercing eyes shooting daggers into his heart when he said quietly, “He’s not crazy. He’s actually telling you the truth.”
“Did you not just hear a word I said? War, famine, depravity... he went on and on about how screwed up everything is going to be. I couldn’t run fast enough away from that car when we got to the train station! What do you mean it’s true? How can you even say that?”
Brent opened his eyes and leaned forward in his chair. He picked up the black leather briefcase that he had brought back from the Briefing Room and placed it on the table. He entered the combination for the two locks and they snapped open. Her grandfather removed a thick folder from the briefcase, closed the lid, and placed it back on the floor.
Hannibal is at the Gates Page 7
