Anthony closed his eyes as a wave of irreconcilable sadness engulfed his mind. Like two drunken dancers holding opposite ends of the same handkerchief, the feelings of rape and loss circled him in a tortuous swirl of grief. It was too much, even for a man in a bunker of his making, and the salty flavor of his own tears welled up between his closed lips.
Vigo paused to wipe the tears spilling down Anthony's cheeks. “I'm so deeply sorry, son, because I have no earthly idea of where he is, or even if he is still alive. It really is as though he has vanished off the face of the Earth—but I promise you this—I'm never going to stop looking for him. If any harm has come to him, I promise you that my face will be the last thing the miserable fucks see before I ever so slowly gut them like the filthy trash fish they are. You've got to trust me on this. Can I count on you to do that?"
For the first time, Anthony blinked only once.
* * *
Onward to Los Gatos
ALTHOUGH THE HOUSTON Ship Channel had been devastated by a hurricane and heavy tidal surges, the city of Houston, Texas had survived the flyby in better than usual condition. The previous evening, Melissa Chadwick, the former Southwestern UNE Governor for America had resigned her position to take her new role as the administrative head of the UNE Space Program in Las Vegas, NV. Stepping into her post was former U.S. Senator Merl Johnston, and this was his first morning as the new Southwestern UNE Governor.
As their limousine wove its way towards 1001 Fannin Street in the middle of Houston's downtown business district, Danielle Peters looked out the window at the impressive First City Tower with its unique staircase design. The top fifteen floors of the forty-nine story high rise now served as the regional headquarters for the UNE.
Melissa Chadwick had converted the entire top floor to a private penthouse during her tenure as Southwestern Governor, and Danielle had heard glowing praises from Paulo, her bodyguard/companion. He was a good looker too and twenty years junior to Chadwick, who still looked pretty good for a woman in her late forties. At least, Paulo never seemed to complain, but then he wasn't that kind of man anyway.
Merl Johnston was also taken by the building's forty-nine stories of aluminum panels and green tinted glass and the way the building created the illusion of two giant puzzle pieces locked together, but not quite aligned. Rotated diagonally away from the traditional north-south layout used by the other traditional office buildings in Houston, the First City stood out through the power of illusion—a subtle fact that tickled his fancy.
Peters glanced up to see that the driver wasn't looking through the rear view mirror and then rubbed the inside of Johnston's leg. “So Gov, how are we going to christen our new offices?"
Johnston had drunk one too many champagne toasts the evening before and sighed. “Does the place have a Jacuzzi?"
“Yes it does,” she purred. “And I believe it has an indoor lap pool as well. Are we feeling a little hung over this morning?"
He pinched her. “Ginny was a bit demanding last night."
“Is your wife already jealous of me?"
“In spades! We made love last night before she left for Louisiana, saying she wouldn't come back until you disappeared for good."
“And what did you say?"
“I denied that we're having a relationship of course, but that didn't stop her from slapping my face before she left. Damn, she's a fierce woman when she wants to be, but if she knew the real truth, she'd be twice as difficult to manage."
“So what are you going to do, Gov?"
He gently placed his fingertip over the nipple of her left breast and began rubbing in small circles. Even through her silk blouse and French bra, he could feel her nipple harden under his touch. “We'll take it as it comes."
She placed her hand over his and pushed it hard against her breast. “Let's do it right here, right now."
“No,” he teased, “we're going to do it on my desk so we can get it all nice and warmed up for my new administration.” He leaned over and kissed her fully on the mouth, then said, “But first, we have a small task that needs to be handled."
She leaned her head back into the plush black leather seat of the limousine and sighed. “Oh well,” she sighed. “I put the orders in your briefcase. If you sign them now, I can drop them off at the communication center and meet you in your office."
“That's a good girl.” He opened the snaps on his briefcase. On top of the other papers was the civilian quarantine order she had prepared. Any civilian entering a Homeland Defense Triage center would be quarantined until he, the Governor, opted to lift the quarantine.
The orders were drawn out to chief commanding medical officers for all Homeland Defense triage stations in the Southwestern District. In the far western edge of that district was the Northern California region, which included the Los Gatos Triage Center. The chief commanding medical officer for that region was Colonel Henry Tzu, based in Port Ord just North of Monterey, California, or more specifically, what little remained of it.
He thumbed through papers and casually asked, “What about that Fox News Reporter, Rose O'Hara? Is she already on Jarman's transfer from New York?"
“We're lucky there, Merl. O'Hara is on assignment in the Middle East covering that new fungus or whatever this new thing is that is killing the Arabs now. Spooky stuff; they find these guys dead in the morning with their guts turned to meat jelly. Now, they're calling it the Curse of the Prophet for starting all those wars, so I guess it makes good news. As for me, I could care less about another dead Arab after all the grief they've caused us."
“Don't get caught saying that in public,” Johnston admonished her.
“No worries, I'm PC. Also, I thought you might like to know that Governor Chadwick had his transfer orders sealed so even the Fox News producers in New York still think Jarman is there in New York.” They both laughed.
The morning was starting off better than Johnston could have hoped. “And where is Jarman right now?"
“I checked on that before we left the hotel this morning. He arrived at Livermore early this morning, according to the Livermore arrivals log, and was picked up by a driver there. He should be arriving at Port Ord sometime after we finish lunch today."
Johnston slapped his leg. “This is perfect! We lay down the quarantine before he gets there and before Fox News learns about it, it'll be a fait accompli.” He signed the quarantine order with a flourish. “My first official act,” he hummed. Handing her the orders he added, “Transmit these orders as soon as possible. The moment you get an acknowledgement from Colonel Tzu in California, I want you to leak Jarman's redeployment along with the quarantine announcement."
“You know that will piss O'Hara off, not to mention Fox News."
“Yeah, you're right, so let's throw a little salt on their wounds. Give it to CNN as an exclusive.” He clapped his hands. “What a perfect morning."
“Uh, maybe not so perfect."
“What do you mean?"
“Our San Francisco Communications Intelligence office picked up an interesting bit of information while monitoring an unsecured phone conversation between a Major Duncan Peal, the Livermore Air Base executive officer, and another officer in Washington D.C. From what we can gather, the driver who met Jarman at Livermore this morning is actually Colonel Arthur Jones of the National Reconnaissance Office, traveling under the assumed name of Master Sergeant Vigo Jones."
“The Jones who has been a pain in our ass with all his snooping?"
“One and the same."
“Damn. We'll have to deal with him, but later. First, we've got to deal with Jarman as planned. In the meantime, I want you to get an operative into the Los Gatos Triage Center. Also, thank the folks in San Francisco for a job well done, and see to it they get some kind of reward, like a nice lunch or something."
“In terms of San Francisco, consider it done. As to the Los Gatos Triage Center, we've just placed an operative on the maintenance team, so he'll have free access to all the buildings i
n the complex. He's a bit junior, but quite adequate for routine surveillance, which is all we need at this point."
“Good. You're a jump ahead of me.” As the limousine stopped in front of the building, he slipped his hand under her skirt and inside her panties. “I'll be waiting for you in my office,” he said softly as a doorman reached out to open the Governor's door.
* * * *
ANTHONY AND VIGO hardly spoke during the remainder of their trip to Port Ord, where Anthony would meet his orderly and hospice care nurse. While Vigo drove through the early morning hours, Anthony replayed his son's message time-and-again.
As they turned north on Highway 1, from Route 68, Anthony looked out the window in amazement. He had spent time in the area years ago when working for Senator Chavez and now it looked like a lunar landscape. When the big one hit, it had scoured the whole of Monterey like a retreating iceberg. Between them and the ocean, there was nothing but the residual signs of a great disaster and of massive Earth changes as the result of a far-sweeping chain of quakes and tsunamis that pummeled the California's Pacific coastline along the entire length of San Andreas Fault. During that horrible day, after the tsunami leveled the coastal cities of the Monterey bay, new lands were born when an uplift event occurred between two parallel fault lines north of the deactivated Fort Ord training base. The faults ran perpendicular to the San Andreas, from its western flank and followed a westerly heading toward the neck of the Great Monterey Trench offshore. In geological terms, it was like squeezing a grape and watching the meat of the grape bursting out of the skin.
After the convulsions subsided, great new stretches of land had been added to the Monterey coastline. Before the quakes, Highway 1 had run in parallel with the beaches. Now, after being rebuilt, it was a good five miles or more inland from where it had formerly been. Much of the land that now stretched between the highway and the sea would eventually become some of California's most valuable farmland.
However, the most interesting result of the quakes was the creation of a new deep-water port, formed by the Monterey Trench, north of Fort Ord and just off of a slough entrance once called Moss Landing. The Monterey Trench was still the deepest subterranean canyon on the Pacific Rim, only now; its sharp walls were above sea level.
Restoring the rail beds was easier than had first been expected, and the decision was made to rename the old Fort Ord Army training base north of Monterey into Port Ord.
The old fort had been dominated by old WWII era barracks and buildings, which had been leveled by the tsunami. However, the fort's underground facilities and roads survived such that they were quickly repaired. After that, heavy lift helicopters hauled in a machine used to manufacture triangle-shaped geodesic dome titles. At full speed, it could crank out enough radiation reflecting tiles each day to build several fifteen-meter geodesic domes.
Capable of withstanding a 9.0 magnitude Earthquake, the geodesic domes sat on the ground like inverted soup bowls. The initial domes were reserved for offices and officer quarters, while the enlisted ranks and port workers slept in tents.
The Office Dome for Colonel Henry Tzu, the chief commanding medical officer for all Northern California Homeland Defense Triage stations, featured a large bay window opposite his office desk. It offered Tzu a panoramic view of the New Monterey Bay, and it was worth all the future favors he knew he'd have to pay for it.
Rocking back in his chair, he focused his attention on the hard copy print out of the quarantine orders that had just come in from Houston. His orderly room clerk, Corporal Stanley Piper had found the orders waiting for him in the office secure mail folder when he arrived that morning for work. Not knowing the significance of the quarantine orders, he acknowledged receipt to Houston, then printed the orders and left them on Tzu's desk along with several other routine matters.
Of medium height and with a slim build, Tzu felt as though a heavy weight was now pressing on him, and he let his middle-aged body sink into the old padded chair behind his desk. An order of this magnitude coming so quickly from a new UNE governor was not a good sign. He pressed his intercom switch. “Piper, get me the files on that new ELMO that's supposed to be here this morning and his new nurse and orderly."
“I'm just now getting them ready for you sir,” The corporal replied.
A chunky, dark-haired computer wiz, Corporal Stanley Piper preferred his job as an orderly room clerk, even though he could have easily gotten a promotion with a new posting as a computer specialist. For most, it would have been a no-brainer, but for Piper, there was nothing alluring to him about sitting behind a flat panel display all day and being continually pushed with absurd deadlines by people who seldom understood the technical difficulties they assumed were so easy to master. He'd done enough of that as a software engineer in the Silicon Valley before the Shiva flyby, and now he wanted to be part of the real action. As Colonel Tzu's clerk, he attended to the usually boring tasks with fastidious care and speed, all the time relishing the secret missions Tzu would give him.
Tzu and Piper had first met at a Progressive Libertarian political gathering a few years earlier, back when Piper was working as an hourly consultant for a major computer security firm in the Silicon Valley. They stayed in touch and built a good friendship. After the Nibiru flyby, Piper decided to enlist in the Homeland Defense Forces, become Tzu's private clerk and help him make a difference. He'd done enough for money, he had reasoned. Now it was time to do something for love—the love of an enlightened and peaceful future.
Piper walked into Tzu's office with a handful of files. “I already pulled their files this morning. The orderly and the nurse are here in the waiting room. As for Captain Jarman, I can only guess that he'll be here shortly, unless something happened to him and Sergeant Jones on the way here from Livermore."
He nodded his head with great appreciation as he spread the files out on his desk. “Close the door and have a seat.” Piper peeked out the door at the nurse and the young orderly. They were both seated and thumbing through old tattered copies of Newsweek from before the day of opposition. He closed the door and took a seat facing Tzu.
Tzu tapped his finger on the quarantine order. “You know, Stanley, this is not good—not good at all."
“It seems reasonable to me,” Piper replied. “Am I missing something here?"
Tzu nodded his head. “Anthony Jarman is going to show up any time now and then I'm going to have to drop him into a whole new realm of hell at Los Gatos. We know he's being politically targeted for death, and losing him would be a terrible setback to our party."
“So?"
“So what news channel is going to be dumb enough to send an expensive news crew to Los Gatos, only to have them quarantined until God knows when?"
Piper scratched his forehead. “In other words, with the media stymied, Anthony Jarman is out of sight and soon out of mind."
“Precisely! Without press coverage, whoever has it in for him will have a free hand to bury him, and they will. This brings us to the burning issue: what, if anything, can we do about it."
“Yeah,” Piper replied sadly. “He's up against some pretty serious hombres too."
“Well, Stanley. Maybe we can fight fire with fire. As I remember, he did some work for Senator Chavez back when he was working for the Republicans. It was his strategy that got her elected. As I see it, she owes him big time."
“But will she see it the same way? After all, she is a politician."
“Then, it really boils down to two questions. Is she still a human being, and will she be able to put two-and-two together and then do something about it?"
“Getting her the data can be tricky. I'm good, but her office is getting hammered by UNE hackers like crazy. They could at least trace the Ethernet packets back to us, even if they can't decode them."
“Then, what we need is a courier."
Piper grinned from ear-to-ear. “I just put a new set of plugs in my old Motto Guzzi touring bike last night and she's running like 1064CCs of pure
kick-butt."
“OK, OK, OK, spare me the Easy Rider soundtrack. You'll take a packet to her house over in Oakland this evening. Just watch your ass."
“No problemo, boss. So what about this Jones character?"
Tzu looked at the folders spread out on his desk. “Hmmm ... Colonel Arthur Jones (a.k.a. Master Sergeant Vigo Jones), National Reconnaissance Office. A secret inter-service intelligence operative can pretty much go wherever he wants. So why here and why now?"
Piper could see where Tzu was going with this line of reason. “You can say that again. You know, I've been wondering why this guy has weaseled a supply slot for himself at Los Gatos, and why did he want to pick up Anthony Jarman in Livermore."
“Obviously, there is a connection here and my instincts tell me that this Jones fellow is one of the good guys.” He swiveled around in his chair and poured hot water into a coffee mug with a faded picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on it from a thermal pitcher on his credenza. Thinking to himself, he opened a Ginseng tea box and began dunking a teabag in the mug as the corporal sat patiently with a pleasant smile of anticipation on his face.
He turned and set the mug on his desk. “You know, Piper, I've actually been thinking a lot about Jones.” It was clear to Tzu that Jones had juice. One wrong step with this spook and he'd be spending the rest of his military career changing truck tires and eating survival gruel. That was, if he were lucky. He was blowing gently across the top of this mug when he noticed Piper, a picture of the grinning Cheshire Cat from the book, Alice in Wonderland, if there ever was one.
“OK, what are you holding out on me?"
Piper joyfully pounded the arms of his chair with delight as he gloated. “I live for days like this.” He pointed at the folders on Tzu's desk. “Check the nurse. I got her special just for you, and she's sitting outside your office right now. Checkmate!"
Godschild Covenant: Return of Nibiru Page 17
