“All due respect, you look like hell, General Thompson.”
“I suppose that’s how I should look. It certainly feels like I’ve been there and back.”
Meyers stood up from his desk slowly while keeping his hands at his side to allow Thompson to see he was not armed.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
Thompson answered immediately.
“Yeah, whiskey - a double if you can spare it.”
General Meyers gave a quick nod and then pointed to the lime-green upholstered couch located to the left of his desk that sat opposite the large window overlooking the front porch and the lake beyond.
“Have a seat, General and I’ll be right back with that drink.”
Thompson’s eyes followed Meyers as he disappeared into the adjoining kitchen. The former Joint Chiefs Chairman withdrew his military pistol from the front right pocket of his sweatshirt and then waited for Meyers’ return.
John Meyers appeared only mildly surprised to see a gun pointed at him as he emerged from the kitchen carrying two tumblers and a half full bottle of amber-colored whiskey.
“Put that damn thing away, General and sit your ass down on that couch like I ordered.”
General Thompson’s eyes widened slightly at his fellow military officer’s admonition. He had long been accustomed to be the one doing the ordering.
Meyers sat down in a matching lime-green chair opposite the couch, placed each of the two glasses atop the dark wood framed, short-legged coffee table that sat in front of the couch and then proceeded to fill a third of each glass with whiskey.
Thompson placed the gun back into the pocket and then eased himself slowly down onto the couch while reaching for the glass in front of him. Meyers had already emptied half the whiskey from his own glass.
“How’d you escape the Camp David bombing? I was told the place had been leveled – no survivors.”
Thompson took a slow slip from his glass and then sat silent for several seconds before he replied. His eyes scanned the cabin interior and then came to rest on an old, steel-framed ham radio that sat inside of an open Davenport desk in the far right corner of the room.
“Maybe I should be asking you the same question, General Meyers. How is it you were long gone before the bombing attack on Camp David commenced – you and the other surviving members of the Joint Chiefs?”
Meyers poured himself another drink and then sat back in his chair and held Thompson’s gaze in his own.
“I was escorted out of there following the evacuation order. I assumed that order came from you since it was given to us by Colonel Tennison. It wasn’t until I later learned both you and Tennison had been killed during the terrorist attack that I suspected foul play.”
Thompson emptied his glass and then slammed it upon the table.
“I never gave that order and that was no terrorist attack. Those were our own F-22s that did the bombing. As for Tennison, he was dead before the bombs hit. I made certain of that myself.”
General Meyers’ mouth slipped downward into a soft, melancholy frown.
“What a damn waste. Tennison seemed like a good man. Was he working for Sage?”
Thompson didn’t try to hide his surprise at hearing Meyers openly link Tennison and Sage as co-conspirators to what happened at Camp David.
“Yeah, he was. So what do you know about Dr. Sage? Is he really the one behind this mess?”
General Meyers refilled Thompson’s glass. His eyes closed as he shook his head.
“I don’t know, Reg. He’s certainly involved. I have noted that there has been EPA involvement in almost every hot-spot around the country. Those agents are everywhere. And whatever role Sage has now, it’s been a long time in the making.”
Thompson savored the liquid warmth provided by another sip of whiskey.
“How so?”
Meyers placed his glass onto the table and then stood up.
“Wait here, I have something to show you.”
The Air Force general disappeared down a short hallway and then re-emerged seconds later holding a dark grey manila folder in his right hand. He placed the folder on the coffee table.
“That’s what I was able to find on Dr. Sage. I started looking into him last year before the NSA scrubbed his profile.”
Thompson picked up the folder and scanned the contents. He found nothing beyond his own research into Sage until he came to the term in bold type at the top of the sixth page titled, Wannsee Conference.
Below that title was a blurred black and white photograph of a group of serious-faced, middle-aged men seated around a large, oval table. One of the men’s faces had been circled in red pen. The date of the photograph indicated it had been taken on January 20th, 1942.
Underneath the image was a handwritten name in the same red ink that had marked the photograph above it:
Dr. Roland Sage
Thompson looked up at Meyers and then back down at the picture.
“A relation to Fenwick Sage?”
Meyers nodded.
“Indeed – that was his grandfather. Roland Sage was among the ground floor architects of the Nazi’s Final Solution, a solution history too often neglects to inform us also included not only the Jews, but the homosexuals, the disabled, and a sad collection of numerous other minority groups.”
General Meyers pointed at the folder that sat open in front of General Thompson.
“Go to the next page and look at what it says.”
Thompson moved the photograph to the left and then stared down at what appeared to him to be a title page for an essay. The paper was age-yellowed indicating it to be an original. The title at the top of the page utilized a term Thompson had never seen before.
Critical Mass In America And The Lebensraum Protocol
Fenwick Sage’s name was typed in smaller font just below the title.
“What is this?”
Meyers leaned back in his chair while he emptied the contents of his whiskey glass.
“That, General Thompson is the genesis of what we now call, Protocol X. It’s the title page for the good Dr. Sage’s PhD thesis. I couldn’t locate the rest of it. That title page was the only thing left in his student file at the university he attended. I have to assume somebody there in the know was leaving a clue. Everything Fenwick Sage was prior to his beginnings at the Environmental Protection Agency has been scrubbed. He had gone to some trouble to ensure people like us know as little about him as possible.”
From outside the sound of a lone coyote’s howl travelled across the small lake. It was nearly dark.
“What does this have to do with Protocol X?”
Meyer’s moved into the kitchen and then quickly returned holding a propane-fueled lamp which easily pushed back the shadows that had overtaken the cabin’s interior. He placed the lamp on the coffee table before easing himself back into the chair opposite Thompson.
“Lebensraum is a term that pertains to the concept of making space for a superior people which requires the elimination of lesser people whose existence only serves to waste essential resources. It is the moral justification of mass murder by a government claiming to do so for the greater good of society.”
Reg Thompson’s face tightened as he again looked down at the title page for Fenwick Sage’s long-ago thesis.
“How in the hell does someone who supports that kind of thinking manage to rise so high in the ranks of our own federal government?”
General Meyers refilled the whiskey glasses yet again.
“Resource allocation has been ingrained in the minds of most who feel the need to grow government. If you control a nation’s resources, food, water, distribution, you control everything. Dr. Sage is among many in our current government who appears to believe we should be reducing the population in order to increase government control over those who remain. That was the basic premise of the Lebensraum Protocol and it is now the basic premise of our own Protocol X – the two are one and the same.”
Thompson felt a mild buzz forming – the result of the whiskey. He allowed the sensation to settle over him, welcoming its warm embrace after days of careful travel that had left him both physically and mentally exhausted.
“Here, let me show you something I’ve been keeping track of. It’s started you know – Protocol X. They’ve begun its full implementation.”
General Thompson sipped from his glass as he watched Meyers move quickly to the desk in the corner where he retrieved a carefully rolled up map of the United States that was then spread out across the coffee table. Several locations were marked with an “X” put there with a black marker pen.
“These are locations that have been eliminated in the last two weeks. The first four were small towns. The last few were small cities with populations of nearly ten thousand. I estimate the total to be at least fifty thousand and at the current rate of operations that number will approach two hundred thousand within the next week.”
Thompson looked at the map, counted the number of x-marks while coming to the full and frightening realization of what Meyers was telling him. He found that reality to be nearly beyond comprehension.
“Two hundred thousand what?”
Reg Thompson felt his stomach tightening, threatening imminent sickness as General Meyers took another drink and then moved his open left hand slowly across the map.
“Two hundred thousand Americans wiped out. We’re bombing them, starving them, turning off their water, poisoning wells, arming one group against the other and doing so under the guise of the greater good – Lebensraum. The millions contained in the urban areas believe they are being kept safe from the Race Wars chaos outside of those cities. The government is giving those people just enough food and water to survive, a place to sleep, the illusion of almost normalcy while the elite class, government officials, the very wealthy, live lives of luxury behind fortified walls and are safely shuttled to work, meetings, events, all the while believing they are doing the good work necessary to keep as many people as safe as possible.”
Thompson felt his right hand tightening around his whiskey glass with enough force Meyers worried it might soon shatter.
“The military can’t simply be going along with this – not the rank and file. These are good men and women, they took oaths, they…”
“That’s correct, General. I believe very few in the military are actually involved directly with Protocol X. They are providing security for the urban areas as well as dealing with the increasingly aggressive challenges of other nations like China and Russia who see this as an opportunity for them to push America away from the geopolitical table once and for all.”
Thompson closed his eyes as he tried to mentally push away imagined images of two hundred thousand American citizens being systematically murdered by the very government they thought intended to protect them. There had to be a brief moment when eyes looked upward and saw the planes passing overhead and the bombs falling silently toward them – a moment of terrible realization about the truth and betrayal of the world they suddenly found themselves victims of.
“What about Congress?”
Meyers snorted his contempt of the term.
“They’re politicians whose primary concern remains themselves and those closest to them. So long as they feel they are being protected and allowed to pretend they are still relevant, they’ll do nothing to stop what is happening.”
“So the ones carrying out Protocol X, it’s Sage’s private army? He’s in charge of all that?”
Meyers grimaced as he shook his head.
“Yeah, it’s his program and as long as he keeps its implementation outside of the secured urban areas, nobody seems too interested in trying to stop anything he’s doing.”
“What about Admiral Briggs?”
Meyers scowled at the name.
“He won’t interfere with Sage. It was Sage who helped create the very mess that made Briggs the new Joint Chiefs Chair. No, Walter Briggs represents the very worst of our military – a man motivated only by his own self-importance. Do you recall when Briggs told you during the Camp David meeting that Protocol X was nothing new? That it had originated during the Cold War era?”
Thompson nodded his head.
“Yeah, every damn word of it.”
Meyers returned to his chair and motioned for Thompson to once again sit down on the couch as he used what remained of the whiskey to refill their glasses. Despite the dire subject matter, the Air Force veteran was grateful for the opportunity to be talking once again with his former military colleague.
“That wasn’t true, at least not entirely. The original Protocol X was a basic Martial Law plan - secure critical areas, transportation corridors, etc. What Sage did was expand upon that plan with a serious emphasis on resource allocation and overall population control and only the president and a few members of Congress were initially aware of it. When the Race Wars started, I believe Sage then sought and received, support for Protocol X from Director Bell of Homeland Security, and Colonel Pensky of the NSA. That’s why they were there at the Camp David meeting as well. I suspect they weren’t certain to get your approval. We all had reviewed Sage’s version by then of course. Their first job was to pressure you into signing off on Protocol X and failing that, General Crow was to assassinate you and then kill himself. He refused to do the first part, but went ahead and completed the second.”
“Because they had threatened the safety of his family.”
Meyers gave a slow nod as a hint of sadness momentarily washed over his eyes.
“That’s right. Do you know they blamed the Camp David bombing on Crow? It was broadcast via the government-approved media stations throughout all the urban areas. They said he was part of some black power conspiracy. It only furthered people’s fears of each other and made them that much more willing to give up what little freedom they had and defer everything to a government that promised it would keep them safe.”
“What happened to his family?”
Meyers paused. Thompson found the silence deafening.
“I don’t know. I tried to find out…none of my contacts could locate them.”
A chill ran through the entirety of General Thompson’s body. Meyers already knew the general’s next question and answered it before it was spoken.
“I don’t know where your family is either, Reg. I’m sorry. I assure you, I did try to get answers.”
Thompson felt his earlier rage returning. He wouldn’t allow himself to consider the possibility his wife and kids were dead.
“Did you ask Sage what he did with them?”
Meyers shook his head.
“No, I don’t have access to Dr. Sage anymore. I resigned once Admiral Briggs was made Chairman. They were happy to see me go. They knew I didn’t support this thing they are doing.”
“But you still have contacts inside the military…the government?”
General Meyers nodded as he took a small sip from his glass.
“Yes. There’s a resistance growing, General Thompson. It was slow to start. I think a lot of us just couldn’t believe the reality that was unfolding all around us, but now more and more are finally waking up and realizing this can’t be allowed to continue. It’s a resistance that is lacking something important, though.”
Thompson’s eyes narrowed slightly as he suspected the direction Meyers was attempting to take him.
“And what might that be?”
Meyers leaned forward in his chair and stared intensely into the eyes of a man the world, and more importantly his enemies, thought dead.
“A leader.”
The lone coyote’s earlier cry was suddenly accompanied by the excited yelps of its pack. They were on the hunt.
Thompson rubbed the side of his forehead with his left hand.
“What would I be leading, General Meyers? A handful of low-ranking discontents, perhaps a politician or two? People brave enough to whisper their concerns to each other but then silent when it really counts?
There is no resistance. There’s just old men like you hiding in the woods and wondering when it will be their turn to be permanently silenced. If this resistance you mention needs a leader so bad, why not you?”
General Meyers carefully set his half-empty whiskey glass on the table and then stood up slowly with a hand resting on each of his hips.
“Because I’m not the soldier you are, General Thompson. I never have been. Also, if we want to get technical about this, you are still the Chair of the Joint Chiefs. You survived that attack. Admiral Briggs should never have been appointed. His current position is therefore nullified by your very existence. You remain the single highest-ranking member of the United States military.”
American Survivalist: RACE WARS OMNIBUS: Seasons 1-5 Of An American Survivalist Series... Page 31
