Death Becomes Her

by Michael Anderle

  “Her faith?”

  Carl knew the question was coming and was prepared. Although finding out about a person’s true faith is a little harder with so many people professing faith but attending their house of worship once or twice a year. It made it difficult to positively assert any objective answer to this question.

  “Sir, we were able to get a read on her when she found out that she was diagnosed with a strange and rare blood disease. She didn’t fade away, or ignore her responsibilities after understanding she had little time to live. Her comment was, and I quote, ‘all within God’s grace and God’s design’. The only concerns she seems to be bothered with, that we can tell, are not being able to close her cases and failing to tell her father she is going to die soon.”

  Michael looked up from the dossier of Bethany Anne Reynolds while Carl was giving him an overview. “She would lie?”

  Carl only hesitated a moment getting his thoughts together.

  “No,” Carl opined. ”I just get the impression that she is stoic like her father. I believe she has a genetic pattern similar to what her mother died from when she was also twenty-eight. Since the doctors give her about four to eight months, she might make twenty-nine.”

  “Our cut-off is six months, Carl.” Michael’s voice brooked no malleability on the time frame.

  “Yes, sir. However, from what Frank has uncovered with the doctor’s report and what is in her official report it looks like she might make five to six months if she is very fortunate. More than likely sir, she has three.”

  Michael closed the folder. “Well, while the quantity of possible candidates is not to my satisfaction. However, these qualifications certainly meet the minimum and exceed them. Should the military allow the interview to occur, I will consider that they have honored the debt and we will find another candidate. Should she fail the test, honor will be satisfied.”

  At this statement, Carl felt relieved and experienced a release of tension he was carrying in his shoulders. The military could talk about how much ass they kicked all day and all night and promote honor in commercials for the Marines. But, if they failed Michael’s request, however unprepared they were, they had no idea what they stood to lose for not honoring their debt of honor to the family.

  Believe it or not, General Reynolds’ whole base might be considered forfeit. Carl hadn’t been around the last time this happened, but had heard stories that a couple of times Michael’s children had joined and took out ‘nests’ of dishonorable people ranging from hundreds to thousands.

  Although this base had probably two, maybe three thousand soldiers and support personnel, this time the patriarch of the family was awake. Carl was concerned that if the General acted dishonorably, thousands would pay the price for his actions.

  Carl knew that America has suffered from moral turpitude over the last few decades. Now, being able to close a deal with a handshake was only possible in small-town America for the most part. So Carl was a little concerned.

  Fortunately, the military was one of the last governmental organizations which prized honor. While there had been serious issues with honor in our last two wars in the Middle East and the actions against prisoners, Carl hoped General Reynolds was still ‘from the older’ generation. A generation which didn’t consider morals to be very malleable.

  For Michael, the question of a person’s honor was a binary result without a middle ground.

  It was why both Carl and Frank had been concerned with waking up Michael, and why Frank was so stringent when he ran through the military’s personnel databases. He even went so far as opening up the filters to the quasi-military groups, such as Bethany Anne’s program, to try to find perfect candidates. Frank believed all the candidates had to be perfect on paper, and in reality.

  While the military would be arguing whether gay people can serve in the trenches, Michael would be opening up new opportunities for advancement by the hundreds if this didn’t go right.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Military Base, Colorado Mountains

  Bethany Anne drove the rental car, an unpretentious Toyota Camry, to the base entrance and offered her credentials to the guard. After she finished her talk with Martin, it took her thirty minutes to grab her ready bag and make it to the airport and up the steps and on the executive jet which was ready to take her to Denver. The plane was already scheduled to pick up another at the Denver airport, so she wasn’t able to just land at the base.

  While her group had some pretty special responsibilities, she had never warranted a private jet. This special treatment was pretty puzzling and after due consideration, she realized whatever she was being reassigned for had to be pretty important. This was going to be a very expensive trip for the tax-payers and regardless of how the media (well, some of the media) portrayed her offices, they really were pretty good with their budgets or had been under Martin’s leadership.

  Taking the credentials offered him, the guard confirmed with the computer that she was the appropriate person, and that she had business on the base.

  It didn’t miss his attention that her last name was the same as the General’s, nor that she seemed to be spitting angry right now, just like the General often enough.

  Having received her badge back, Bethany thanked the guard and started her drive over to the temporary officers’ building.

  She still had a few hours before her meeting with the General.

  —

  General Lance Reynolds listened to the rough voice over the phone.

  General or not, Lance didn’t have a high enough security clearance to know a tenth of the total story Frank was telling him. Frank was pretty sure he might only know about half of it..

  But what the General did understand, caused him to bite down pretty hard on his cigar, and his eyes, if a person was in the room, would swear were going black.

  He interrupted his caller, “You’re telling me that the U.S. Military has an honor debt to an independent group of individuals who live inside our borders? Furthermore, that they have been here since before we even joined as a country and have been secretly helping us do raids and other black-ops work our best can’t handle?”

  Frank, on the other side of the line, cleared his gruff voice, “General, if it wasn’t for this particular family, we wouldn’t even HAVE these United States.”

  The general wasn’t sure what he meant by that, “Why? Does this have to do with the two Japanese cities we took out in World War 2? We had another bomb ready to go in about ten days, we would have flattened the country and made it a glowing parking lot.”

  A lot of innocents would have died, but that was war.

  Frank, used to working both with bureaucrats and officers, continued on because if this General didn’t get ‘the message’, then we all were about to have a serious problem.

  If the General didn’t honor the debt the U.S. owed Michael’s family (out of ignorance, Frank felt – not dishonor) he knew that things would only escalate.

  The U.S. Military, Frank knew, had one creed that really didn’t change unless ordered by the President.

  The U.S. Military never backs down.

  Rock, meet hard place.

  This would mean that Michael’s children and grandchildren would start focusing on U.S. Military interests, which covered the world. Finally, and this was the kicker, it would mean that Michael would also wake up any of his immediate children who were still asleep. Many of those children were pretty damn scary.

  While Frank couldn’t begin to know which side would ultimately win, he knew one thing. America, weak because of the decimated military, would be ripe for another country to attack.

  “General, let me ask you a question. Has it ever, even in the slightest, occurred to you that General Washington was pretty damn lucky?” Frank let the line go silent.

  The cigar chomping stopped, whilst the General was loud, he wasn’t stupid or slow and this non sequitur took him a second to puzzle out.

  “You’re trying to suggest t
o me this family helped win the Revolutionary War?” While a little aghast, Lance knew that there was something fishy about the history books a couple of times with their explanations of how the battles were won.

  “No, not all the way. Obviously our good men, women and children took care of most of it. However, there are a few stories that are not included in any history books, General. The reason is that it would be obvious that we should have had our asses handed to us by the British in a couple of very strategic and important battles. Somehow, against all expected results, we got a win in our column. However, what I am telling you is that I have the original archives and I assure you, we would not have pulled out of the dire circumstances and we would have lost according to all the simulations I have run. General, we had a 96.9% chance of speaking the Queen’s English if the family wasn’t involved.”

  “So why did they do it? Apparently they aren’t revolutionaries.” This was, if this contact could be believed, starting to interest Lance who enjoyed history.

  “That is and isn’t true. They aren’t revolutionaries or colonials, however, they do fight evil, sir, and if that didn’t come across the phone in appropriate importance, that is evil with a capital ‘E’.”

  “So they came to the Colonies to do what, exactly?”

  Frank started to warm up to his topic, while he wasn’t comfortable being around Michael or his family, he certainly appreciated what he does and what they did for this country.

  “This is how I understand it, they have been fighting against certain interests for a significant amount of time before we were a country.” Frank hedged his story, should he admit that Michael was the supreme patriarch? No, probably not. If Michael wanted the General to know, he would let him know. He was pretty particular about not throwing his role around. “One of the leaders of the family, they call them patriarchs, was following some pretty nasty characters when they bolted and stowed away on a ship sailing for the Colonies.”

  “He spent a couple of months tracking them down and tying up the business and when he looked around, he had met and befriended a few of those who were already here. He liked that they were working to build a new society. Significantly more so than the royalty issues plaguing many of the European countries at the time. He sent letters to two of his trusted relatives explaining that he was going to stay to protect this land and then disappeared.”

  “So how did his family get involved with the colonial war?” Lance was definitely interested now.

  “Well, sir, this family member is well educated, very convincing and extremely wealthy.” Frank didn’t have to explain how that last part would have been very helpful to the war effort at that time. “Likewise, his family back in Europe, in this case France, had many influential friends at Court and he gave Benjamin Franklin a letter to pass on to Michael’s family. Believe it or not, it wasn’t all good ‘ole Benjamin’s exquisite tongue’ that got us the help from the French.”

  “That’s not nearly enough to get them appreciated as much as you are suggesting…” Lance got cut off.

  “General, a significant percentage of the wealth for the war was supplied by the family and it was used to get the necessary materials and favors to help make the revolution happen. Also, the contacts in Europe who shouldn’t have gotten involved, did. People to this day are trying to figure out how that happened. Finally, there were certain battles that were going to be lost until the patriarch got involved.”

  Lance heard the singular and wanted clarification, “Just how many of his clan were involved?”

  “It’s family, sir, not clan. And there were no others. There was just one of the family over here at the time. In fact, he is personally responsible for going into one of the British camps at night and by the time the sun came up the next morning, not a single man was left alive. This was a fortified encampment, General. This was the larger size of a full battalion, somewhere around 800 I believe. The only people shot had been hit by random shooting from scared men in their own camp. Everyone else seemed to be cut apart by a knife or many knives.”

  “Where did you research this information? I’ve never heard that story, and I’ve studied all the battles during the war.” Lance had often wondered about a couple of missing parts, he just figured the victor wrote the history books and hadn’t spent the time to research it further.

  “Well, let’s just say that America has a set of history books, and then ANOTHER set of history books. One day, if everything works out, I’ll ask you to come to Washington to read some very interesting volumes I have.” Frank didn’t expect that to happen, but if he could offer the General a carrot, what could it hurt?

  “Fine, assuming I believe you, what now? I believe you said something about the present and the future?” Lance’s eyes were starting to squint again. He could feel a migraine coming on and he just knew this wasn’t going to please him.

  “Sir, I have a contact coming to see you. He should be there shortly, arriving by plane to give you more information. The rest of the explanation has to wait until then for security reasons.” Frank was feeling a little better. It at least looked like the General was going to let Carl meet with him. Hopefully, his meeting with his daughter didn’t derail the whole thing.

  “Fine, I’ll meet with him at 18:00, until then I have a base to run.”

  “General, I very much appreciate your patience. Thank you.” With that, Lance heard the click of the receiver.

  Putting his down on the cradle, he yelled out, “Kevin, I need you in here!”

  On the other end of the line, Frank sighed, this would have been so much easier and less stressful if Michael hadn’t woken up.

  —

  The radar control tower was pretty quiet. At this base, while they had flights in and out it really wasn’t a major location for any Air Force activity, so it could be hours between anything significant happening.

  ‘Jimmy’ Chan, Technician 3rd Grade was manning the radio when a pilot on the appropriate channel requested permission to land, he seemed to be flying a small personal business jet.

  “Hold for permission, stay ten miles out.” Jimmy scratched his head. Although the pilot had the protocols, the flight wasn’t on the list, he decided to bump this up to the OIC.

  “Sir!” he yelled, getting the attention of the officer in charge to come over to his station.

  “What do you have, Jimmy?” Technical Sergeant Max Stripten looked over the readouts while Jimmy explained.

  “Sir, we have a request from a civilian aircraft to land. They are about eighty miles out, coming in very fast. They have the right channels and the right information, but it seems weird we weren’t notified.”

  Max reached across and switched Jimmy’s windows over to show incoming aircraft. As he reached the right tab on the screen, it was refreshed and the aircraft was now shown as arriving in just a few minutes.

  “Well, OK, looks like we have them. You’re right, that is flying pretty damn fast for something that isn’t one of ours. I wonder what they have? Hmmm, put them on runway three it looks like they might need the room to slow down. Have them park over by Hangar Five and let’s receive them appropriately.” With that, Max stood up and was walking back to his desk when he got a phone call.

  Stepping toward his desk he picked up the phone. “Sergeant Max Stripten speaking,” Max laid his pad and pencil down on his desk, not taking a seat just yet.

  “OK, I understand, VIP status, one person coming off the plane, treat as foreign dignitary.” Max paused, obviously listening to more information, “Will do, Master Sergeant.” With that, Max hung up the phone.

  He raised his voice back to Jimmy, “Call off the special engagement, this flight is apparently VIP. Leave them on three but now switch them over to Hangar One.”

  Hmmm, Jimmy thought, I wonder who is so special they get Hangar One?

  —

  Using the keys to get into the room for Temporary Officers, Bethany laid her suitcase down and stepped into the adjoining bathroo
m.

  A couple of minutes later she stepped out and noticed the yellow message light on the phone blinking.

  Going over and picking up the phone, she rang the desk. “Bethany Reynolds here, I have a message?” She knew she was a little short, but this whole situation just pissed her off.

  First, she gets pulled of her case, her f’ing case that she had been closing in on for over four months.

  Others? Others had worked on it and gotten nowhere, so she was handed it as a last ditch effort before going into the archives as unsolvable.

  Now, she was not only off the case, she was out of the loop and who knows what desk jockey they were probably going to give it to.

  She narrowed her eyes, if they gave it to Tim, he would screw it up and the last thing she would see before she died was the bars in her cell room after she throttled his neck.