Seven hours later, the agent and his entourage are holding the drone in hand, disconnecting the transmission equipment, shutting down the broadcast. The agent makes a call, and so does Lundt. The agent is told to “pursue Schwarz, trying to take him alive; but we have no strong objections if it goes another direction.” The agent doesn’t agree with their assessment and asks if this is a matter of retribution from the White House, to which he is told, simply, “You know your job; now do it.”
Word to Lundt is just a vague, but definite – without any justifiable reason, but with a definite conclusion in mind. “Well, it looks like we’re fucked!”
“What do you mean?” asks the agent.
“They want us to go after him, without reason, and they are willing to dispose of your life and mine, with no tactical goal in mind.” He pauses for a moment, looking up at the treetops, in a place very similar to his family home, and in a nostalgic tone, he says, “My granny is one of those old-timey Pentecostals, and she warned me that, one day, all this would come to be. She expected that millions of people would disappear one day, that the finances would go to shit, and that the government would break down, but I thought it was a bunch of old superstition . . . at least, until this week.”
“What are you saying?” asks the agent.
“I’m saying that I got my orders before you did, and I can’t get hold of my granny. Haven’t been able to reach her for a few days. I don’t think she was wrong. I just don’t remember the answer she gave me.”
“Well, if you’re going to start talking all that Bible crap, I may have to shoot you right now!” He’s hot and hostile, until he feels the barrel of a gun in the back of his head.
“Cap,” says a stocky, bearded man with a Sig P226 in his hand, “you say the word, and this piece of shit doesn’t matter anymore.” His name is Griffin, he’s a Master Sergeant, and he’s cocking the hammer back on his handgun.
“Down Dog!” says Lundt, to Patrick Griffin – callsign Black Dog – resting his hand on the agent’s shoulder, “I don’t think this city boy means any harm. Do ya, agent?”
Holding his head perfectly still, the agent is trying to look behind himself by turning his eyes fully to the right. “No. I don’t mean any harm,” he says, as Griffin eases forward to relieve him of his sidearm. That done, Black Dog holsters his weapon, holding only the agent’s Glock 17. “Am I a hostage now?”
“No,” is Lundt’s answer. “But, I gotta know what you have in mind, right now.”
“My orders are to get that man; preferably alive, but no one will be heartbroken if it goes the other way.”
“I might be heartbroken,” says Lundt. “I have served with Schwarz a few times, and I gotta tell you that a kill mission is off the table. For starters, the odds of success are very low, the opportunity for losses is extremely high.”
“Maybe we just get lucky!” says the agent.
“Luck favors the prepared, and Schwarz is prepared. By the time we get close enough to get him, especially since he was renditioned, there may not be enough left of us to do the job.” He looks around for a moment, dials his phone again, and getting no answer, says, “Dog, give back his gun.”
Dog raises his eyebrows as he hands back the agent’s gun. The agent realizes that he is surrounded by Lundt’s men and has no intention of committing suicide, putting the weapon back in his shoulder holster. “So, what’s the plan, Lundt?” asks the agent.
“Well, I want to talk to Schwarz. Don’t you?” He looks around for answers from everyone. “Don’t we all want to know what he knows?”
There seems to be a general assent to the assumption, and the plan is now to find Mark and learn. To do this, they head west, based on Lundt recalling that Mark used to like hunting in the Mark Twain National Forest, whenever the season and permits allowed. Well, as near as anyone can discern, seasons and permits may not matter much anymore, especially if Mark was correct in his broadcasts, and in the information he got from Jeremiah.
“In his materials list from the armorer, there was a phone. Can we get info on that phone and see if it can be found?” Lundt asks the agent, who makes a call.
Back at Langley, the gears begin to turn, satellites are tasked, data is researched, the number is found, based on the SIM card passing from the post to the nearest towns, guessing at the approximate times, and all the way to Shawnee Forest. Once the number is known, tracking can begin, but even easier for some is that the number is given to Lundt, who sends a text.
“Necesas renkonti, sciis, kio okazas. Lundt”
“What the hell is that?” asks the agent.
“Esperanto.” He smirks a little because it is as dead as any ancient language, but all of us know it, I mean it is a code language now for operators. Almost no one else uses it. Well, that’s not quite true. Almost as many people speak Esperanto as speak Klingon.
“wa’ qelI’qam west of bixby” is the reply.
“What the hell is that?” the agents asks when Lundt shows him.
“Klingon. He will meet us one mile west of Bixby.”
“Très bien mon ami.”
“I get that one!” says the agent. “French! I did that in high school.”
“In allen Dingen steht für Frieden,” comes back.
“Is that German?”
“Yes,” says Lundt. “It translates as, ‘In all things stand for peace.’ It means he wants us all to meet with our weapons shouldered or holstered.” He messages back, “Agreed!” Then turning to the agent, he says, “I’m gonna need you to give up your gun and your phone.”
“Why in the name of all that’s holy, would I do that?” He looks about, and says, “Why can’t I just leave it in the holster?”
“Because Schwarz doesn’t know you from Adam’s Ox, and you don’t live by the same code we do. He will know you are a spook and take you out, just to keep the discussion honorable.” He points at one of the guys, indicating that he should reach out to the agent. “Give ‘em up.”
The soldier has put his rifle on his back and is walking toward the agent with both hands extended. The agent, wisely, offers up his 17 and his phone. The soldier stabs the Glock into his friend’s backpack, getting it out of sight and out of mind. The phone is shut down, completely, so that it is not transmitting anything to anyone, or so it is thought. The agent removes his jacket, carrying it over his shoulder, hooked by a finger.
The CIA had bought a bunch of second quality phones for their agents to carry. They didn’t have the download speed of most people’s gear, and the in-call sound quality wasn’t as good either, nor was the processor speed, expandability, storage . . . nothing. But what the phone did well, is whenever it was turned off – as in you press the power button for a few seconds – choose “power off” and then confirm that selection – the phone would go into a tracer mode. It would communicate with the nearest towers, sending messages of duress to the Company, and rescue would be plotted, planned, executed if preferred.
Today, it is preferred that a rescue be committed, so when the phone goes “dead,” it is traced, and planning begins. The CIA is about as nimble as a train, and the agent knows that the rescue will occur, and that it will not be in minutes, but maybe in hours, so ‘til then, he will play dumb, be a witness to what unfolds, and when needed, he will supply all the answers he can to any analysts that ask.
They park their vehicles in downtown Bixby, Missouri, and begin walking west. “I thought we would drive down highway thirty-two,” says the agent.
“If that was what Schwarz wanted us to do, he would have said to ‘drive west’ a mile. That’s not the same, and he knows it. But most importantly, he knows that I know it. So, we walk.”
With full gear, over semi-rugged terrain, at a speed of almost three miles per hour, it takes a little over twenty minutes to arrive. As they crest a ridge, they are looking down into a low spot, too small to be called a valley, and standing alone is Mark. The agent is certain that they should be shooting right now, but Lund
t has other plans, thoughts, realities. They get close enough to touch and Mark extends his hand.
“How’s your gramma?” he asks of Lundt.
“I dunno . . . I can’t reach ‘er,” is his reply.
“I know. But, according to Jeremiah, she’s safe. All of them are safer than they have been in their whole lives.” Mark sits on an old log as the others stand around.
He puts his hands on his knees and the agent makes a move to tackle him, but one of the guys slaps his left foot over his right as he is trying to lunge forward, so that he tumbles to the ground. “If you lay there, I won’t shoot you too much,” comes the voice of the man who tripped him. The man is Puerto Rican, with a friendly face and angry demeanor, five and a half feet tall, but stout and strong, named Carlos.
The agent looks up at his circumstances, and acquiesces to the request, laying there, crossing his arms on his chest. “Besides,” he is telling himself, “the Company will be here any time now, to take control of all this.” He looks to Mark and realizes that there is a Sig pointed at his face. The gun seems to self-holster, almost as soon as the agent’s arms are crossed.
“How many of our men disappeared the other day?” The team looks around and, for the first time since the mission began, they realize that there are some missing. None of the Church Boys are here. Every once in a while, there was a jab or a joke about being Jesus people, and in good humor, the guys took it. But with pride, they also defended their decisions to believe. Each of them called out the name of a Brother, attempting to call them on their phones. All of the calls go directly to voicemail.
One of the odd details of the disappearance of the masses is that, their clothes went with them, but not any of the contents of their pockets. There were millions of wallets, wads of cash, cell phones, etc. to be found. Also, any medical devices that had been installed, well, it was left behind, falling directly to the floor, or seat, or nearest surface. One of the senators from Texas had been in the pool, an elder man, and when the disappearance occurred, there fell a pacemaker, two artificial knees, an elbow, a shoulder, some cardiac stints, and a penis pump. Another odd detail is that none of the tech they were carrying worked any more. None of the cell phones could be reached by a tower, so all calls went directly to voicemail.
In confused disbelief, they all hang up their phones and discuss what this must mean.
“Don’t worry,” says Mark. “Their probably better off than you and I. And much better off than this guy,” he says, pointing to the agent.
“What makes you say that?” asks the agent.
“Well, when I worked with your tech division, surveilling citizens and fellow agents, they taught me about your phones, and that when it is shut off, someone comes . . . right?” He waits a moment for an answer that does not come. “Well, I figure it will take them about four hours to find us, if we hang on to that phone. You did turn it off, didn’t you?” Again, he waits for an answer, which comes from one of the guys.
“I shut it down, but good, sir.”
“Did you smash it? Take the battery out? Drop it in a pond? Cause that is what it takes to really shut it down.”
“No, sir,” says the grunt, “I have it here in my pocket.” He hands it to Mark.
“Now the question is, ‘what do we want to do?’ After all, they are going to come.”
“You say ‘we’ as if everyone is on your side,” says the agent on the ground.
“That’s fair,” concedes Schwarz. “How many of you want to capture me? Knowing that many of our Brothers went with Jeremiah, that lots of other people have disappeared, including your granny and mine,” he says pointing to Lundt, “and that the government is about to collapse, how many of you want to do what you are told?” There are no hands in the air. Not a one of the men believes the President has a clue what to do, and the one thing they know for certain is that Mark – Sergeant Schwarz – has no designs on killing anyone. If he had, there would have been traps at this confab. There would already be spilled blood, and their numbers would be greatly diminished.
The agent, seeing that he is outvoted, still raises his hand slightly, showing that he intends to continue with his mission, somehow.
“At least you are honest,” says Mark. “I find that strangely refreshing, in a Company man.” He smirks at the agent, just a little, saying, “It is refreshing, but more than a little bit foolish, considering you are surrounded by men who find killing easy. So,” now addressing everyone, he says, “Who just wants to be left alone?” Most of the hands go up. “Realize that according to Jeremiah, and he has been right so far, the economy is about to tank, so bad that cash won’t buy anything, and the government is about to completely disassemble, from the top down.” The rest of the hands are up. “Good! Then all we have to do is to win one last fight, and we’re free.”
“Who do you think you have to fight?” asks the spook.
“Your people,” says Black Dog.
“Yup,” says another, “they’re gonna be here, in just a little while, wantin’ to take Schwarz back, but that don’t really work for the rest of us.”
“You see,” says Lundt, “this just became a fight that we were never intended to join. We know that there are things in play here that we don’t understand, that we cannot effect, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a life.”
“What do you expect me to do?” asks the agent.
“Pick a side!” Mark says plainly. “If you choose to join their side, then we will just leave you behind. But, you will lose your gun. We won’t let you go armed, trying to turn on us, reducing our forces right away.”
“How long do I have to decide?” he asks.
“Too late!” says Lundt. “Give me your keys.” The agent extends them, Lundt receives them, and then, “Zip tie him to that tree, over there.” A couple of the guys manhandle him in that direction, sitting him down at the base of the trunk. “Not too tight. We don’t want to hurt him.” The phone is turned back on and tossed on his lap.
The men begin to walk away, slightly south, talking among themselves, and Mark says, “I left my bike on Crooked Creek Road, so meet me where it hits thirty-two, and we’ll go from there.” The agent overhears this and keeps it in mind.
An Exclamation Point!
Then Br'er Rabbit says to the Tar Baby . . .[22]
E-Day Minus 7 Years
Two hours pass and the agent is still tied to the tree when his phone rings. He calls out, “Answer!” and the phone responds. The phone also notices that it is not being held, so it goes into speaker mode. In speaking to the caller, he divulges that he is alone, that the others have arranged to meet down the road, and that they appear to be headed west.
They have to confirm his “facts” before responding. They use the tech of the phone to verify that there is a living person nearby, and in a few more minutes, Langley can confirm that it is a single person, that there is a regular heartbeat, and in a few more minutes, they can confirm that the bio-info suggests that it is their agent. Their troops are just a quarter mile away, so their worries are limited. It is a twelve-man team, side arms and MP5’s, coming over the ridge in just a minute.
“They’ve gone!” he tells the voice on the other end. “They left me behind to tell you that they want to be left alone.” He can hear someone talking in the background, believing they are in communication with the team. “I’m tied to a tree at my phone’s location.” There’s a click and the phone goes dead. The screen goes blank.
The CIA RRT (Rendition and Rescue Team) crests the ridge, spread out in a zig-zag pattern of two rows of six, offset. Their weapons are at the ready, butts pressed into shoulders, both hands on vertical grips, fingers on the trigger guards, pointed down, so as not to shoot each other as they walk and gaze around. The guys on the ends and in the middle by the leader are periodically rotating around to examine the rear of their movement. Suddenly, as if switched off, eight of them go down, with a little splatter cloud coming from the back of their heads. In a ten
th of a second, there are shots in the torsos of the remaining four. They are wearing body armour, but the pain of numerous impacts is more than anyone should bear, and the bullets keep coming. There are more shots to their arms and legs as well.
As they came across the ridge, Lundt, the leader of a seven-man team, using comms, instructed everyone to spread out – Mark stayed with him – and, according to their designation they would head-shot the man that far from the left. For example; Lundt is Zulu 1 – the leader of the Zulu team. Griffin is Zulu 2, Grubic is Zulu 7, so Lundt would shoot the guy all the way to the left, Griffin the second, and Grubic the seventh, and Mark took the last one on the right. Lundt had given the order and then, “Three, two . . .” They each took a head shot, then they started picking apart the four remaining. They wanted information. The shots are almost silent, each M4 having a suppressor that is custom made by a Norst design, nine inches long, three inches thick, allowing the sound of the blast to be dispersed. Subsonic ammo helps.
Two of the four are bleeding out, from shot up arteries, becoming too faint to communicate, and the other two remain. A couple of the men head their way, relieving them of their firearms, stripping their ammo supplies as well. Most of their wounds are superficial enough that survival is expected.
“What’s the goal here?” asks Lundt, to one of them. “What’s your name?”
“Williams!” The man groans in pain. “Billy Williams, and the goal was to kill the rest of you and retrieve Schwarz.” He is in more pain than he lets on. “He is apparently very important to someone.”
“All I want is to be left alone! Didn’t you get my message?” Mark asks.
“Everyone in the world has gotten your message. It hit the web at ten thousand hits an hour.” He is getting a woozy and wobbly. “It’s just that someone doesn’t believe you,” then Williams passes out.
The Warriors' Ends- Soldiers of the Apocalypse Page 22
