Hannibal is at the Gates

by David Kershner

“Everything’s fine down here. I turned off the water. The pipes should empty in a minute or two. What happened?” she asked.

  “Looks like one of the cargo planes from Port Columbus just freight trained about nine city blocks. Amanda’s was the last one. What’s left of the cabin is parked out in the street,” he answered.

  “Josh is gonna laugh his ass off when he sees this,” she said candidly.

  Bryan let go of her hand and said, “Yeah well, he always did hate this house. Now let’s see about getting you out of there first.”

  “There’s a chainsaw in the garage,” she offered and he began laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “You’ll get the joke once I get you out,” he answered.

  A few minutes later the two were standing and staring at what remained of Amanda’s home. There was no garage. Kristin finally got the unintentional joke.

  The pair worked their way up the debris field getting as close as they dared to the burning rubble. The plane took out several dozen homes in the tightly packed community before coming to rest in the front yard. The house behind Amanda’s had been rented to students attending Ohio State. The only way anyone would have known that there was a home there previously was by the foundation of the now fully exposed basement.

  An hour or more passed before fire crews and medics arrived at the remains of the cockpit. They quickly removed the dead Captain and co-pilot from their seats. Their necks had snapped in the impact. It wouldn’t be long before the news crews descended on the scene. While there, the EMS squad gave Kristin a once over and declared that she had to be the luckiest person in this whole disaster. She didn’t have a scratch. The first responders hastily returned to where they were needed, but decreed that they would keep an eye on what was left of the house in case floating embers reached the potential tinderbox.

  Barricades of yellow ‘Caution’ tape were erected, but given the size and amount of devastation, the perimeter couldn’t be held, not yet at any rate. News crews simply lifted the flimsy plastic tape and drove under.

  Once they found the cockpit and Kristin, she quickly became inundated with requests for an interview. While she was dealing with that, Bryan attempted to call Josh.

  It didn’t take long for him to discover the futility of the endeavor. The disintegrating plane had just severed all of the aerial phone lines as it tore its way through the hundred-year-old neighborhood. Once realized, he reached for his cell. There, he discovered jammed towers and the pre-recorded message stating that ‘all circuits are currently busy’. He hung up and tried again, and again, and again. Giving up, he retreated to his basement and the Ham radio. It had been years since the pair had spoken on the device, but maybe Josh would hear his pleas.

  * * *

  Gregg had had enough of Col. James’ delays and Cecil Sullivan’s incessant whining and weeping. Unfortunately, when he reached his breaking point, it was in the middle of a therapy session between the three of them. Cecil had yet to divulge much about his experience and wouldn’t consent to hypnosis, or Gregg’s more radical suggestion of scopolamine. Every time the sessions began heading toward the torture, Abbas, or Aban, Cecil would shut down.

  Gregg couldn’t take it anymore. When he snapped, he had screamed at Cecil, “Hey buddy! Quit your friggin’ whining! I was held in that same hellhole too. I killed that SOB, all right! Get over it! You’re about as useful as a flaccid penis!”

  Cecil just began crying harder and louder.

  Col. James attempted to intervene, but Gregg kept at it.

  Gregg was thrown out of the session when he shot out of his seat and whispered in Cecil’s ear, “I’m curious, Cecil. What wakes you up first... the sound of your screams or the smell of your own urine?”

  The next day, the Colonel ordered Gregg to apologize. He did so, but only half-heartedly.

  Each day, after making a comment to Cecil, and the subsequent removal from the session, Cecil would open up just a little further. What Cecil didn’t know was that it was planned. On some level, it was sick and twisted what they were doing to the former Airman, but it was working. As they found out at the cabin, Cecil was conditioned to the military, but he was no longer in shock. In fact, he had no memory of killing his friend or of answering Gregg and Col. James’ questions afterward. They needed another way in to the vault of Cecil’s mind.

  The pair was making progress however. The Colonel and Gregg were convinced that it would only be a few more days before Cecil finally spilled everything. Every time Gregg was removed from the session, he watched the remainder of the session from behind the two-way glass. When he noticed something change or shift in Cecil’s demeanor or posture, he’d alert Col. James through his ear piece to stay with a topic or move on and go another direction.

  After a week of being thrown out of the sessions, Gregg finally found Cecil’s button. His sister, Anna.

  Gregg made a comment about how they had met her while searching for him and Cecil visibly stiffened. Gregg backed off immediately, but mentioned it to Col. James afterward. He had seen it too. The next day Gregg brought her up again, but proceeded to break into a full sprint right over the lines of decorum and taste.

  “Hey, Cecil,” Gregg started. “You think your sister would want to go out with me some time? She sure was pretty. Nice rack too. Do you know if she does it on the first date?”

  That was all it took.

  Cecil bolted out of his seat and lunged across the table at Gregg. Both the Colonel and Gregg knew that Cecil was no match for Gregg’s advanced skill set in hand-to-hand combat. However, when they hatched their plan, the therapist stipulated that under no circumstances was Gregg to go on the offensive and neutralize Cecil’s attack. He would was only permitted to take defensive postures. He could not fight back and strike Cecil.

  When Airman Sullivan snapped, Col. James quickly left his chair and backed away. The man was like a rabid animal. He hit Gregg with knees, haymakers, and forearms for about a minute before the Colonel thought to break it up. When Cecil tried stomping on Gregg’s head with his boot, he called it. Gregg kept his word and merely protected himself. There were dozens of opportunities where Gregg could have reversed the tables and probably killed Cecil with a few quick moves and the snapping of his neck, but he let the process run its course. Cecil needed to get this out of system.

  For effect, Gregg played up the moaning and agony while being escorted from the session to the infirmary on a gurney. That, once again, left only Colonel James and Cecil in the room.

  Cecil gleefully broke open like a cofferdam. He provided a flood of information so quickly that Col. James stopped taking notes. It was all being recorded anyway. Cecil was able to give a description of Abbas, his mannerisms, things that seemed to intrigue him during the interrogations, what set him off, and the man’s insatiable need to study and practice his Spanish. All the while, Cecil basked in the knowledge that Gregg had killed Aban and now he had been strong enough to take out Gregg.

  When Cecil divulged what Abbas had been after during his yearlong captivity, the Colonel jumped out of his seat like he had been shot out of a gun. He went running toward the door and the nearest phone. As he exited the room, he and Gregg nearly ran each other over.

  The United States maintained an arsenal of over four hundred land based nuclear missiles. The multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles aboard the Minuteman III could strike any one of a group of targets. Each warhead had the capacity to dole out more than a 335-kiloton yield. All were located within the continental U.S. at either Malmstrom Air Force Base (AFB) in Montana, Minot AFB in North Dakota, and F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming.

  Cecil had been stationed at two of them and Abbas had a several month head start.

  Chapter 10

  The PM and the head of MI-6 stood as the Iranian Foreign Minister entered the PM’s office.

  “Good Morning Prime Minister, Sir William. This was a most unexpected call,” the man said as he extended his hand to the
two men.

  Immediately after escorting the diplomat into the office on Downing Street, the agent exited and closed the door. Even though he was standing just outside, the room was sound proof so he heard nothing of their conversation.

  “Good morning,” the PM said in a clipped tone. “Please have a seat.”

  The Foreign Minister, sensing the urgency and thinly veiled anger replied, “Is there a problem? Has our nation not done everything you have requested of it?”

  “Minister Nafisi, perhaps you could explain what the bloody hell one of your jihadists is doing on American soil,” the PM said tersely.

  “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re speaking of, Mr. Goodspeed,” Minister Nafisi replied coolly.

  “Really?” the PM said with mock surprise. “Care to explain this,” he said as he spun his computer monitor around for the Foreign Minister to see. The PM pressed a key on his keyboard and a video began to play.

  The video clearly showed a man open a briefcase on a park bench in front of the U.S. Mint facility in San Francisco. As the video played, Sir William narrated.

  “What you are seeing here is an Iranian jihadist, or citizen if you prefer, enabling what is commonly referred to as a suitcase EMP device. This man has chosen a trolley as his target. The Americans like to call them streetcars. Please observe what happens after he closes the briefcase.”

  Minister Nafisi watched, not in horror, but with pride and complete fascination. The famed San Francisco streetcar began rolling down the street, picking up speed as it did so. It smashed in to a car as it careened through an intersection. The steel wheeled behemoth collided and bounced off anything it came into contact with as it made its way down the steep incline of the area streets. As the video neared its conclusion, the Iranian diplomat watched as a quick thinking city bus driver prevented it from splashing into the Bay by allowing it to rear end the larger vehicle and bring it to a stop.

  The PM spun his monitor back toward himself and said, “Well?”

  Wiping the slight grin off of his face, Minister Nafisi replied, “While this is a most tragic event, I fail to see how the briefcase or we, as a nation, had anything to do with this.”

  The PM and Sir William said nothing. The PM swung his screen back and hit the key on his keyboard again. A second video began.

  “We have agents observing the U.S. Mint and Treasury buildings,” the head of MI-6 said as he continued his narration. “One of our teams observed and followed your man back to his apartment. This is a recording of his capture and interrogation.”

  The video started with a close up of a door. Suddenly, a leg came flying in to view and kicked it open. Three men quickly entered with weapons drawn. They were closely trailed by the fourth man holding the camera. By the time the cameraman was in the room, the suspect was already on the floor speaking a hundred miles an hour in Spanish.

  “See!” the Foreign Minister exclaimed. “How many Persians speak that language? Not many! He’s probably a tourist or some Mexican that jumped the border.”

  “Please keep watching Minister Nafisi,” the PM said tersely.

  The monitor went black for a few seconds and then resumed playing. The backdrop of the apartment was replaced by a derelict warehouse. The Foreign Minster watched as the bound man was dunked repeatedly into a tank of water, beaten unmercifully, and asked scores of questions in numerous languages. As the agents worked their way through the numerous Middle Eastern languages, the man’s expression changed. When they reached Farsi, the man cracked.

  The detainee began begging for mercy in his native tongue. ‘No more, no more,’ the man kept calling out. For the next twenty-seven minutes of raw video, the man answered every question put to him while the Foreign Minister sat stoically silent. The man divulged every operational detail he knew; how many men, the training in the caves, what the device was, how it worked, how they were transported to the Mexican port, how they crossed the border, mission objectives, everything.

  Minister Nafisi had to contain the smile that was building. The captured man knew nothing of Abbas.

  When the video ended, the PM slowly turned the monitor back. In a softer, more diplomatic tone, said, “Now, shall we begin anew?”

  * * *

  Layla stealthily crept through the cabin and disconnected the power supply to the driveway chime mechanism. Once that task was complete, she motioned for her sisters to enter the room.

  “Hey Dad?” she called for her father.

  “In here,” he replied from his office as he quickly began covering un-wrapped Christmas presents. “Okay, you can come in.”

  All three girls entered smiling.

  “What’s up,” he said nonchalantly.

  “We have a present for you,” Layla answered for them.

  “Great! Put it under the tree,” he declared.

  “Can’t,” Heather said. “It’s too big. We need you to go to your room so we can bring it in.”

  “I guess that answers the ‘bigger than a bread box’ question,” he replied with a sly smile and began complying with their request.

  Josh entered his room and waited for the door to close. As soon as it clicked shut, he opened the top drawer of the dresser and removed the ring he had bought for Sam.

  “Silly girls,” he said to himself. “Nothing happens on this farm that I don’t know about.”

  For days the girls had been whispering and scheming. He knew something was up. When he tried to reach Samantha in DC, Secretary McInerney’s niece had let the cat out of the bag. She was on her way to see him for Christmas. He could hear hushed conversations and giggling.

  With his daughter’s blessing, and trying to be as romantic as possible given the circumstance, he got down on one knee just inside his bedroom. He had the ring box open and presented in his hand.

  “Okay, you can come out,” the girls decreed in unison.

  Dang, he thought dejectedly. Maybe she’s not here yet. Must be something else. He closed the lid, shoved it in his back pocket, and went to the door.

  When he opened it, there was Samantha in a skinny black dress and pearls down on one knee.

  “Joshia Grant Simmons, will you do me the honor of being my husband?” Sam asked.

  Josh smiled at the gesture, but said nothing. He calmly reached back and removed the ring box. He opened it as he went down to his knee to join her.

  “Only if you’ll do me the honor or being my wife first, Samantha Marie Jameson,” he replied as he presented the diamond.

  After the pair exchanged rings, the three girls rushed over and wrapped them in hugs.

  “You guys set us up,” Samantha said from middle of the smothering embrace.

  “Funny story,” Layla started to say.

  “You two asked us for our blessing only days apart,” Heather added.

  “It was the least we could do,” Katherine concluded.

  The blissful exchange was interrupted when Josh heard the Ham radio crackling to life in his office.

  “Raven calling Mother Hubbard. Come in Mother Hubbard. Raven calling Mother Hubbard. Come in,” the call repeated frantically.

  The group broke the embrace and went to the sound of the distress call.

  “I thought you said you came up with that name on the fly,” Sam said as the entered the office. “Who’s Raven?”

  “It’s my old neighbor. We gave each other those names as a joke. I asked him to keep an eye on the girls when they went to visit their mother. I wasn’t allowed within five hundred yards of the house. He’s an electrical engineer with a penchant for Greek mythology. The raven was the messenger of the gods. So he took the call sign ‘Raven’ and I’m became the over bearing, over protective ‘Mother Hubbard’. I guess I just reverted to that when I tried to reach Elias.”

  Josh picked up the handset and queued the mic. “This is Mother Hubbard. Go ahead Raven,” Josh replied into the handset.

  “You need to get up here ASAP!” came the harried reply.

  * * *<
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  Two hours after Bryan made his transmission, Josh and his caravan were parked only a few blocks from his former home. With more police on scene, the perimeter was no longer porous. During the brief radio exchange it had been explained that Kristin was unharmed, but the house was obliterated. As far as Bryan could tell, there was nothing to salvage except whatever was in the basement.

  Josh contemplated bringing one of the big farm trucks in his haste to get to Columbus, but opted to leave it at the cabin. Neither he nor his girls needed anything from their former home.

  The group quickly exited their vehicles and bypassed the assembled law enforcement detachments by hopping fences and cutting through backyards. Within minutes, they were approaching Bryan’s driveway. As they neared, they could see the pair standing in the front yard. When Layla and Katherine caught sight of them, they broke into a sprint yelling, ‘Aunt Kristin!’ The three embraced and the girls acknowledged Bryan by saying ‘Hi, Mr. Billson’.

  “Your girls sure have grown,” he said to Josh as the old friends shook hands.

  Josh introduced the rest of his merry gang and Bryan’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he heard the words ‘Heather is my daughter and Samantha is my fiancé’ exit Josh’s mouth.

  The group walked across the street and surveyed the damage. Bryan showed them all of the lumber and material he had to remove from the opening and relayed Kristin’s comment about the chainsaw to several chuckles.

  The girls climbed up on what was left of the first floor decking and could see the water stains in the hardwood where they had repeatedly stomped their snow boots as children and began to cry. The house represented the last symbol of their tormented youth and they couldn’t hold in the hate and anger anymore, not after they had read their mother’s confession. The brave faces and years of therapy melted away at the sight of the destroyed home.

  Kristin tried to take their minds off of the subject of their mother and the kidnapping by taking them to the basement to show them all that remained. The plan backfired. In the basement they found the dance recital outfits Amanda had saved. Right next to them, on another clear plastic covered rack, they saw their mother’s dresses from various high school dances, proms, and weddings that they had used when they played dress-up as children. Layla began crying and Katherine became physically sick. The two ran haphazardly through the shell of the structure back into their fathers arms.