(Wrath-09)-Spiders From The Shadows (2013)

by Chris Stewart

  “But who, baby, who? Who’s going to rebuild? We don’t even have a government!”

  Bono nodded slowly. “I don’t know.”

  “All of our leaders in D.C. have been killed. Something isn’t right. It just feels—I don’t know, bad somehow. We’ve got no government, no infrastructure, no medicines, no food. How are we going to do it? Who is going to do it? These are the things that I don’t know.”

  Caelyn waited, hoping he would answer. But he didn’t, and she turned back to the road.

  Ellie was running toward them now, excited. “Look at this!” she cried. She was holding out a purple thistle, fuzzy at the bottom with tiny filaments of color bristling at the top. Deep purple. A hint of yellow. Beautiful but thorny. Bono took it cautiously. “You’ve got to be careful, Ellie, this thing has pricklies that can hurt.”

  Ellie held up her index finger with childish pride. A tiny blot of crimson blood was dripping down the front. “I already found that out, Daddy.”

  Caelyn took her hand and held it, examining the tiny prick. “That looks like it hurts, baby.”

  Ellie pulled her hand awayt of glass doo

  NINE

  Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex, Southern Pennsylvania

  James Davies, FBI Director of the legitimate government of the United States, walked toward the presidential office suite. He took a quick breath, his heart pounding. Too many people were up ahead of him. Someone was bound to see the drone! It couldn’t get into the compound unobserved with so many people standing there, and the batteries were only good for a couple of hours. Once the batteries were gone, the drone was useless. He had to find a way to get it inside the compound now!

  For a moment he wished that he had waited to drop the drone, but, looking ahead of him, he knew that wouldn’t have worked. The instructions they had agreed on had been correct. Deploy the drone before you get into the presidential office suite. There will be far too many people once you’re inside. You’ll be surrounded, and they will see it when you drop it. Either that or the metal detectors will detect it. Wait until you’re as close as you can get, then deploy it just outside the door.

  His mind raced. Only four steps to the door. The Army officers watched him carefully, two men he didn’t recognize. Behind them, there was a security wall and reception desk, then a wide and beautifully furnished hallway that led to the president’s den, all protected behind a metal scanner. A red sign had been posted near the doorway:

  STOP

  PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY AREA

  USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED

  DO NOT PROCEED UNTIL INSTRUCTED

  It was easy to pick out the two Secret Service agents behind the glass walls. Others were there as well, not seen, but watching. Even here in Raven Rock, the barrier between the open corridor and the president was as impenetrable as steel.

  One of the Army officers, a thin-haired colonel, pushed the door back a little further and stepped across the threshold to meet the unwanted intruder. He didn’t extend his hand to James to shake it, but reached out for his arm the way an irritated father would reach for a wayward son. “Mr. Davies,” he greeted simply, “come with me.”

  Without waiting for an answer, the colonel nodded at the two Marines who had escorted Davies down. “We got him,” the colonel said.

  The Marines stopped at the door, releasing Davies’ arms.

  James shot another look back. The fly had disappeared. Somewhere along the ceiling? He didn’t know.

  He had to give them time to fly the drone through the open door and inside the presidential compound without being noticed. But he didn’t know how!

  Only one idea came to mind. He turned toward the colonel. The bald man reached out again for his arm. James pulled his arm back defensively and stepped angrily to the side. The colonel gestured impatiently for him to come and James hesitated, then moved gingerly forward, then suddenly tripped. Falling, James slammed his head into the side of the glass door. Bulletproof, the heavy glass didn’t break but left a painful dent against his forehead, which immediately started to bleed.

  The colonel looked down at him lying in the open doorway. The men on the other side of the glass turned instantly at the sound of the crash. For a moment no one moved; then one of the Marines stepped back and reached down to James. James took the Marine’s hand and pulled himself up, his other hand at his head, a smear of blood seeping through his pressed fingers. “I’m sorry. I guess I tripped on something. I’ve been feeling dizzy . . . .”

  The other Marine reached into his uniform pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and flipped it toward James. James thanked him and pressed the handkerchief against his forehead. The Marine steadied James while he wiped the blood away. The colonel released the two Marines with a determined nod. The Marines stepped back, turned around, and started walking down the hall.

  Handkerchief still pressed painfully against his forehead, James followed the colonel into the presidential suite.

  Behind him, the glass door closed on its smooth, pneumatic hinges.

  James glanced back.

  Had the drone made it into the presidential office suite? He didn’t know. But whether it had or not, there wasn’t anything more that he could do.

  Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska

  “Go, GO, GO!” the second technician screamed. “The door is closing!”

  The drone pilot looked intent, his eyes squinting in concentration, glistening drops of sweat collecting on his forehead. His hands were shaking, his lips so tight they were almost white, every ounce of mental energy focused on controlling the tiny drone. Enormously unstable, slow to respond, inherently unbalanced, with a high center of gravity and an unfathomable weight-to-lift ratio, not to mention the fact that the thing was at the mercy of every draft from every air vent or passing breeze, it took incredible energy and concentration to keep the miniscule drone from rolling over and flopping on the floor.

  The technician pilot ignored his comrade’s shouted warnings. There could have been an earthquake at his feet, an explosion in the command centn.

  TEN

  Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex, Southern Pennsylvania

  The glass door closed behind them.

  Leading James past the reception center and security desks, they waited while he walked through the metal detectors, then moved him down the hall. Two doors down from the Secret Service station, President Fuentes was waiting in a large conference room with several other men, sitting around a massive wooden table.

  Fuentes watched with deep and somber eyes. He enjoyed the growing tension as James was led into the room. All the men were silent. There were no women among the group.

  The colonel pushed James to the front of the table, nodded toward Fuentes, then walked out, shutting the door behind him. The room was dark, a bank of television screens glowing on the front wall. A bright spotlight in the ceiling glared in James’ eyes, making it difficult for him to see. He squinted, taking in what he could, but most of the dark faces were lost in the glare and shadows. He nodded toward the hallway. NShe really didn’t know. felt powerless in his black jumpsuit and shoeless feet, which was, of course, how they wanted him to feel. A heavy silence permeated the air, awkward and unpleasant.

  James couldn’t see it, but he felt it, and he instinctively reached for the gold cross he wore around his heck. But the cross had been taken from him.

  The room was full of evil. He could almost smell the darkness in the air. Whoever these men were and whatever they now intended to do, it was as obvious as the darkness in the nighttime that none of them were friends. He stared at Fuentes. Where did you get these men? he almost sneered. How could you have located so many men willing to betray their own country?

  Fuentes smiled at him, his eyes fixed in a vacant gaze.

  James watched him, his fury building, then glanced around the crowded table, his eyes coming to rest on a hunched man
dressed in a black suit and black tie. His worn jacket was draped across his slumping shoulders, and the hair on his neck was as long as the patches of white across his scalp. And he was old. Very old. James could almost smell his ancient breath. The old man stared back at him, his eyes pale and opaque, red-rimmed and teary. It seemed to James as if there was nothing in the man’s eyes, no soul or life, only angry emptiness behind two lifeless balls of glass.

  James studied him and realized that there was no seeing in those eyes. The eyes of a blind man. The eyes of a man who didn’t have to see.

  James shivered, his gut crunching into knots. Suddenly it seemed hard to breathe, the air stale, calm and foul. Something about the smell—what was it? Rank and wet. He didn’t know, but it was old and full of rot and terror. The hair on his neck stood on end, the Spirit inside him sensing what his brain couldn’t know.

  Looking at the group of evil men, he realized the ugly truth.

  The battle wasn’t starting. It was almost over. There was nothing he could do now, no way to stop the coming wave from crashing down. He had walked into a throng of murderers and thieves, a den of predators so full of jealousy and fury that they couldn’t reason anymore. These were no comrades here, no friends or patriots who loved their country or a just cause. This was a group of men who’d been hating for many years, each of them having long before made the decision to betray their country. And, in a sad way, James realized they were not really traitors, for none of them had ever pledged allegiance to their country, not in any real sense of the word. They were outsiders on the inside, the cancer next to the bone, the disease that would kill the nation after having lain dormant all these years.

  The realization crushed him like a boulder, turning his warm blood into ice.

  He looked at them, his eyes finally adjusting to the light, his heart racing with fear and anger as he recognized the faces that had been hidden in the dark. All the men were dressed in suits, but some of them were not Americans. He recognized their ethnic features: men from the Arab peninsula, Syria and Oman, the prime minister from Malaysia, the foreign minister of Russia next to him. The young Arab beside the old man was King al-Rahman. Other leaders from around the world were in the crowd.

  None of the men were friends or allies. He slowly drew another breath.

  That was when he knew it. That was when he finally understood.

  It had been a terrible mistake to come here, and he knew that he was dead.

  A sudden calmness came over him, sweet and full of warmth, a sense of peace so real it caused his m burst into the room.ro fingerind to race. Time stopped and he drifted back, reliving the happiest moments of his life: the warm sun on the front porch of his ranch house, the ocean and the beach, the sound of his daughter’s laughter, the touch of his wife’s hand, the feel of the Bible as he read it, the assurance of the Spirit that he had felt so many times before. There were no memories of the pain, heartaches or the challenges he had overcome, just the joy and happiness, and he couldn’t help but smile.

  “The battle will go forward,” the Spirit told him. “You’ve done your part, and I am grateful. There is nothing more for you to do.”

  The old man sensed the presence of the Spirit and he snarled as he rose with surprising strength and quickness, his canines showing, his eyes wild and full of hate. He moved up to James, leaned into his neck, and whispered in his ear, “Your work is finished here. Yes, my friend, you’re done. Soon, I will dismiss you. But before I do, I want you to understand.” He pulled away and looked into James’ eyes. “Perhaps you wonder about where these men came from and the cause that binds us here today? I want to tell you, brother.

  “You see, Mr. Davies, all of us together,” the old man motioned around the room, “are bound in one purpose, one privilege, one plan. It didn’t start out that way, of course. Foolish to think of a dark, smoke-filled room with a group of conspirators conceiving a step-by-step plan to destroy the entire world. It was nothing like that. We are—how would you say it?—more laissez-faire in our approach. Market-based and opportunistic. We let the free will of the people work. They make a choice. We let them wonder. It’s not much more complicated than that.”

  His voice was tart and dripping with so much sarcasm that James felt like recoiling at his breath.

  The old man huffed in pride. “You think it was some great, grand conspiracy from the beginning? Such a stupid fairy tale. A few years ago, none of us even knew each other. We were independent in our thinking, operating on our own while moving toward the same unspoken goal. Yes, the paths we took to get here have wandered through many lands, but all the while our master taught us so that when the opportunity finally presented itself we would be ready. Then we emerged from the cracks of life together. Like spiders, these brave men scurried from the shadows when they heard their master call.”

  He paused and looked around the room, his teeth showing in a wicked smile. “Rats draw to the smell of a carcass. The U.S. is our carcass. Good men, it’s time to eat!”

  The group of dark men smiled weakly at his humor, but their pleasantness was forced and unnatural, their lips tight beneath their smiles.

  The old man turned to Davies and waited, then decided to tell him the entire truth. It wouldn’t matter. They were going to kill him anyway. No harm if one man knew. “The ropes that bind us are thin and gentle as a woman’s hand,” he explained. “But together they are more powerful than anything known to man. The oaths come by degrees, of course, line upon line, a single step and then another, each coming in its time. For some men, it can take a lifetime.” He stopped and glanced at Fuentes, flashing a knowing smile at him. “For others a few short days. The first step is fairly innocent: We need for this to happen. Let us agree upon this plan.

  “Then, when the first obstacle comes up, which it will because our master will place it for us, we justify the next principle of our oaths. It is@ swlyal beautiful and simple and something you’ve heard before: ‘Better for one man to die than for our plans to fail.’

  “The next oath is based primarily on an argument of practicality. But humans are so very practical in their nature, and that can be a useful thing. ‘We’ve come this far. Much too difficult to turn back now. Come on, brother, let’s see this through.’

  “The next step is where we finally acknowledge the motivations that really drive us: ‘I’ll kill them if you provide a good enough reward.’ Everything that happens after that comes down to greed, lust, jealousy, pride, and power.

  “Then comes the final oath that binds us: ‘I’ll never lift a hand toward a brother. I’ll die to protect our cause. I’ll never desert the brotherhood. If I do, then you must kill me, my family, and my children. You must take everything I have ever loved or worked for. If I betray you, you take it all. The oath is the only thing that matters, and I seal my pledge in blood.’”

  The old man smiled, his crooked teeth yellow with age. “Do you understand what you’re up against? The oaths we have taken are more powerful than the Earth. More eternal than the stars. Do you see that you can’t defeat us? We’re totally committed to this cause. You have no hope. You have no power. There is nothing you can do. Yes, Brucius may be alive now, but believe me, he won’t be for very long. It will hardly matter how we do it; we will kill him in the end. Then we’ll move on, forgetting both of you, never speaking your names again.”

  The old man stopped and cleared a wad of dry phlegm from his throat, spitting into a frayed handkerchief before he sneered, “Now, tell us, Mr. Director: Why exactly are you here?”

  ELEVEN

  Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex, Southern Pennsylvania

  It was a simple device: small, easy to use, accurate, and lethally intrusive. Developed for. One step. Two steps. llShe really didn’t know. critical and time-sensitive interrogations on the battlefield, the device was no more complicated to operate than a cell phone. Slip the sensors on. Ask some questions. Wait for the light. Red light, the subject was lying; yellow, t
he computer didn’t know; green, the subject was telling the truth.

  Accurate to something more than ninety-two percent, the computer was no larger than a deck of cards with a couple of wires attached, two electrodes that measured the subject’s stress through changes in electrical conductivity under the skin, a third that evaluated cardiovascular activity through a pulse oximeter on the fingertip, and a clip on a fold of the skin under the elbow that measured blood pressure. The military called it the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System (“PCASS”), and though the early versions had been troublesome, the algorithms coming under constant stress and tweaking, the latest models were as accurate as any polygraph ever made. Initially envisioned as a combat triage device to identify who or what situation needed attention first, the PCASS had proven to be an extremely accurate, easy to administer, highly portable polygraph device. It was this simple: Pull the subject aside. Slip on the sensors. Give the subject instructions: Look at me. Answer all my questions. Is it raining right now? Do you have shoes on your feet? What color is my name tag? Look at your watch and tell me what time it is. OK. Good. Now, what is your name? Where do you live? Did you admire Osama bin Laden? Who are your friends? Are you associated with any militia? Do you support your government leaders? Do you have any weapons? Are you a member of the Taliban? Do you know how to work with explosives or any other dangerous material? Have you ever contemplated or plotted to harm Americans?