by Roger Weston
Chuck said, “Grenade.”
Dean, who had an RPG launcher slung over his shoulder, nodded. He darted to the corner and aimed.
“Not down here,” Nadif said. “No.”
Dean fired. Chuck covered his ears. The explosion was deafening anyway. After it had passed, the only noise was Dean’s yelling. “Eat it, you sadistic dogs. Eat it.”
Chuck moved to the corner and looked out. The top had been blown off of the attacking golf cart and lay twenty feet past the bottom section. Two bodies lay on the tunnel floor. A thin stream of water dripped from the ceiling down onto the back of one of the fallen men.
“I told you not to fire that in here,” Nadif said. “You could flood the whole lower mine. It’s not stable.”
Chuck aimed his gun at him. “Take me to the workers.”
Nadif barreled the cart down the mine. As they passed an intersection, the cart vibrated underneath them. Chuck grabbed Nadif’s arm. “Stop.”
The wheels skidded.
Chuck jogged over to the crossing tunnel and looked into it. Railroad tracks spilled out of the shaft and joined the main line. The area along the tracks was littered with spare train parts and heavy equipment, including mobile cranes and forklifts. Thirty yards down was the front end of an ancient steam engine. Blazed across its face was the number 21.
“The abandoned locomotive,” Chuck said. “I need to see this.”
“We have to keep going,” Dean said. He patted Nadif’s shoulder. “Get moving.”
“Just a minute,” Chuck said. He took a step towards the engine. He noticed a satellite disk on the top of the train. Two box cars that followed also had collapsible satellite disks on their roofs as well.
Chuck turned to Nadif. “What exactly are they mining for here?”
“Solanite. A mineral used to magnify and intensify solar energy.”
Chuck thought about Bruce Foley and his friend Aaron and how they’d died finding out about this stuff.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They drove a little further, before entering a large cavern, the center of which had an unnaturally blue lake with big flood lights overhead.
A hundred workers from all nationalities filled the cavern, busily at work. They were dressed in rags, and some of their faces were etched in misery.
The golf cart passed a small group of them—one Asian, a few Africans, and two that might have been Middle Easterners. Chuck waved, a couple nodded at him with fear in their eyes.
“Exodus helped them immigrate to America,” Nadif said. “They all came here for a better life and to flee religious and political oppression. They never thought they were being led into slavery.”
Chuck sighed. The thought that he had unknowingly sold people down the river sickened him. A past conversation played back in his mind.
“These are people who aren’t fitting in,” Robert had said. “But also people who can help us. We’ll give them a better option. We’ll give them a new identity and send them home with a stipend that will allow them to live well. They’ll give us intelligence, and you’ll be doing them the biggest favor of their lives.”
Chuck scanned the faces. He turned to Nadif. “I’m looking for a woman named Lydia. I don’t see her.”
“There are more people in a separate tunnel.”
“Take me there.”
The golf cart flew further down into the mountain. They passed through another cavern where Chuck saw water spilling down the wall into what looked like a man-made pit. It was about the size of a swimming pool, and a large pump was emptying the water.
They drove by a couple more massive caverns where heavy equipment was stored—drilling rigs, explosives, giant graders and dump trucks. They kept going deeper and deeper.
Several tunnels splintered off the main line. Water was dripping all over. The mountain was a vast labyrinth of passageways. One tunnel stopped after only ten feet. More water leaked.
Finally, they came to halt and Nadif said, “This is it.” The cross cut corridor was sealed off with a twenty-foot high gate that had been fashioned out of massive slabs of reinforced steel.
“How do we get in there?” Chuck said.
Nadif shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Chuck looked around, hoping to see keys hanging on a peg, but there were none.
“How far to where the others are?”
“I think maybe two hundred yards past the gate.”
Chuck looked at Dean. “We’re gonna have to blow it.”
Dean nodded. He was starting to get out of the cart when three RUMAN soldiers sped around a bend on another machine-gun-mounted golf cart. They were a hundred yards away, but within the range of the manned gun. A man spoke on a loudspeaker.
“Do not move. Get out of the cart and lie on the ground. Obey or you will be shot.”
CHAPTER 85
Two of the guards approached slowly, walking alongside the edge of the tunnel. The other two guards stayed on their bellies with their assault rifles trained on Chuck, Dean and Nadif. Chuck guessed the men approaching him were either Turkish-Russian or Bosnian.
One of them had an earring, the other a mustache.
The one with the earring said, “Get down on your knees.” His accent gave him away as a Bosnian.
Chuck and Dean dropped to their knees. Nadif remained standing. “Ved, they took me at gunpoint,” he said.
Ved, the Bosnian, grinned at him. “Maybe, or maybe you were helping them. Get down on your knees.”
Nadif obeyed. Ved walked behind him and put his gun to the back of Nadif’s head, firing. The report was earsplitting. Chuck heard a ringing sound as a crimson mist settled on the gray sandstone floor. Nadif went slack as a pool of blood began to spread around his face. Ved moved behind Chuck and put the gun to the back of his head. “Check him.”
The guard with the mustache frisked Chuck, removing all his gear. While the man was disarming Dean, Ved kept his gun on Chuck’s skull.
Chuck watched the machine gun on the cart, which was also trained on him.
A new golf cart arrived with two young Somali soldiers, probably in their early twenties. Ved motioned toward Dean. “Put him in the cell block with the others.”
“What about him?” a baby-faced Somali said, motioning to Nadif’s body.
“Get that piece of crap out of here.” Ved spat on him.
Chuck was shoved into the golf cart and taken down a long dark tunnel with light at the end. The light grew, and it was daylight. When they emerged from the mine, Chuck found himself on a dirt road at the base of Jin Mountain. They wove through what looked like a military field base that was hidden from aerial view by camouflage nets and a canopy of pine trees. Several green modular buildings surrounded a large Quonset hut.
He was led into the long hut that was separated from the other buildings by a nine-foot high electric fence with strands of razor wire along the top. A man in uniform sat at a desk.
“We have the intruder,” Ved told him.
The receptionist nodded and pushed an intercom.
Chuck was led through the door, down a hall and into a conference room. He was left alone. The conference room contained a twenty-foot long table and a flat screen on the wall. Chuck sat in a fold out chair and waited. He thought about Lydia and how he had failed to protect her. He slammed his fist on the table, and then put his head down, burying his face in his arms.
When he heard the door open, he sat up and tried to hide his rage. He doubted that he succeeded in that when he saw Robert Fielding sit down across from him. Even though Robert held a pistol in his hand, Chuck wondered that he didn’t make a suicidal lunge for the man.
“Chuck,” he said, “we’ve got some things to talk about.”
Chuck glared at him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Robert said. “All I ever wanted was the best for you.”
“We both know that you put the mark on me.”
“True, but only I know why—or that I was do
ing it for you.”
“What?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Chuck shook his head as if he didn’t hear him correctly.
“I understand your confusion,” Robert said. “We’ve always operated on a need-to-know basis. Right now, you need to know a few things. First of all, I have to confess something. It couldn’t have escaped your notice that after you botched the Colombian hit, I was practically obligated to have you sanctioned. But that didn’t happen, did it?”
“No, instead you betrayed me.”
“Yes, I’ll grant that much, but not in the way you think. You think I took Lydia, but you are wrong.”
“Where is she?”
“You were the perfect test subject.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I put all of my hopes in you, Chuck. For RUMAN to succeed, you needed to fail.”
“Is that why you sent the hit teams after me?” Chuck said.
Robert clasped his narrow fingers together. “Look, we never took our eyes off of you. You never had a hiccup without us knowing about it. If Curtis would have come, we’d have got him before he got you.”
“That really clears things up,” Chuck said.
“Yes, I put the mark out on you, but I was only testing you. The goon who shot Aung Ying at the pipe yard was a common thug, and he was told to hit Aung Ying first. If you couldn’t survive that, it would mean that I misjudged you. But even then we took out the goon.”
“You mean you framed me for murder.”
“Yes, but who are you anyway. You go through identities faster than a drifter goes through jobs. No doubt the man we framed ceased to exist within the hour. The real question was how would you react?”
“You were playing God.”
“I was saving your life. I was the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“And the hit team at the supermarket?”
“Amateurs. If they’d have killed you, you deserve to die.”
“And what about Owen, the black man in Chinatown? What kind of test was that?”
“Psych ops. All of it was to some degree. I was building up the illusion of random chaos in your life. Then I sat back and watched to see how you would react in the face of humiliation.”
“To see my reactions?”
“Yes, if I really wanted you dead, killing you would have been easy enough. It was all part of the contest. The Paymasters wanted the data only you could provide.”
“Contest? Paymasters?”
“What do you think this all is? It is a game that we play to win.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ninety-nine percent of mankind was born to follow. Very few have the blood and the genes to lead the masses. And of all those who are born to lead only one percent is born to dominate. The Paymasters is a society comprised of a small number of elite operators who carry out their destiny. I have been conducting some tests for the Paymasters. As you passed my early tests, I increased the threat level. And today we have the biggest test of all planned. We are testing our ultimate prize—the Solar Satellite Microwave Weapon system. The immigrants you recruited will come in quite handy for this sort of thing. We’ve rounded up a few dozen. Soon they will be transferred to the old lake bed in the next valley, and we will test the weapon on them. Perhaps you’d like to join them. Lydia will be there.”
“You’ll die for this.”
“Let’s get to the bottom line. You want Lydia. As I told you, Curtis went bad. He wanted revenge against you for walking out on him in Colombia. Curtis is now part of a rival intelligence agency that is competing for billions of dollars in black funds from a new stimulus bill that has just passed in the Senate. If we don’t stop him immediately, we will lose the funding and control of the Solar Microwave Weapon system. RUMAN will be dismantled and our power will shift to ERUBUS…and Curtis.
“Why should I care?”
“I’ll make you a deal, Chuck. You take care of Curtis for us. We’ll give you Lydia, and you can join the Paymasters and share in the spoils—but not until Curtis is dead. You can understand why no man alive would want to betray Curtis. So far, he’s been hesitant to go after you. Probably he suspected we were waiting for that. Nobody else could hope to last as long as you have after a betrayal, and to be honest, he’s just been biding his time until he takes you out. He is here now.”
Chuck walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. He looked out through the electric fence out into the trees.
Robert said, “Forty minutes ago, Curtis and a team of five operatives parachuted down onto Jin Mountain. They are currently somewhere inside the complex, attempting to deliver a final blow. They have disabled our video surveillance system. At the moment, we do not know where they are.”
Chuck’s forehead flushed, and his eyes twitched.
“Teams of mercenaries are hunting him right now, but they aren’t in his league, and I’ve already lost seven men. Three more are in critical condition. Nobody knows Curtis better than you do. Duty calls. You must foreclose his loan. The only acceptable solution is the terminal one. This is the greatest crisis that we have ever faced, and you are the one who can bring us order from chaos. When you do so, we will be stronger than we have ever been in the past. You will share in the spoils, and you’ll get Lydia back. Are you ready to take the first step?”
Chuck gazed into Robert’s eyes.
CHAPTER 86
Chuck walked down the long gray tunnel with no gun in his hand, though he had his pistol tucked under his belt at the small of his back.
He stopped and turned to the stone-faced Afghan mercenary who’d been ordered to accompany him. “Give me the tunnel map and wait here.”
“You’re wasting your time with that,” the Afghan said. “No one knows where they are in the tunnel system or what their next move is.”
From the maps, Chuck learned that there were three ways out of the mountain: the back tunnel where he’d entered the mountain, a lower tunnel, and the main entrance, which was covered by several men with M240 machine guns. Several mercenary units were positioned in the lower section of the mine.
The back entrance had machine gun reinforcements as well, but if all the guards failed they were nothing that a helicopter with a mounted machine gun couldn’t deal with in a few seconds.
Chuck knew that Curtis could easily pick him off from one of the dozens of dark side tunnels that he now walked past. He hoped Curtis would at least hesitate before he killed him. Going unarmed was a calculated risk that could easily cost him his life, but it was also the best chance he had to get close to Curtis without getting killed. After all, they used to be closer than brothers. That is until the Colombian debacle. Chuck walked slowly because he wasn’t really going anywhere.
Chuck had been walking and backtracking for twenty-minutes, calling out Curtis’s name.
A voice came from a side tunnel. “Stop there.”
Chuck looked around. He was standing at the intersection of three shafts and didn’t know which one Curtis was in. He saw wires running up to the roof and down the main passage, a telephone bolted to the reinforced wall between the shafts.
“I knew I’d catch up to you eventually,” Curtis said.
Chuck couldn’t pinpoint Curtis’s location. He could’ve been in any one of the three shafts. Sounds amplified and echoed in strange ways underground. Chuck turned slightly toward the pipe on his right.
“Slowly come this way,” he heard Curtis say.
Chuck continued down the main passage.
Curtis walked out of the darkness behind him. Chuck spun and reached for his gun, but Curtis had the barrel of an automatic shotgun trained on him.
“Throw me your gun,” he said.
It had been over a year since Chuck had last seen Curtis in Colombia. His straw-colored hair was longer than it used to be and tied back in a pony tail. He was buff and dressed in black with charcoal on his face.
“After Colombia, I didn’t expec
t to see you again,” Curtis said.
“That’s not what I hear.”
Curtis nodded his head. “Yes, I should’ve come after you, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I figured with your self-destructive ways that you’d take care of the job yourself. Really didn’t think you needed my help.” Curtis clutched the skeleton butt of his 12-bore Franchi SPAS in one hand. “I certainly didn’t think you would last this long. But that’s alright. Now I get to see you suffer.” In Curtis’s other hand he waved a dagger back and forth. “I know how much you love these.”
Chuck winced.
“Drop it, Curtis, or you die right now.” The voice came out of one of the black side tunnels. Robert’s voice. “Don’t even think about it or you’ll have a bullet in your back faster than you can dance.”
Curtis let the knife fall to the ground. He glared at Chuck then set down his gun.
“Good work, Chuck.” Robert emerged from the side tunnel like a white-haired phantom, his long fingers wrapped around his submachine gun. Leslie and two Middle Eastern soldiers followed him, their M-16s aimed at Curtis. Leslie held a pistol, and Curtis stared at her with no expression.
Chuck retrieved his own gun now and pointed it at Curtis.
“You should never have turned against me,” Robert said, glaring bitterly at Curtis. “At least Chuck came back. But not you. You defied the one who made you what you are. I ought to kill you myself, but you were like a son to me.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll have them do it.” He nodded to the Middle Easterners, who held their guns on Curtis.
Chuck turned his gun on the killers. “No. He’s my sworn enemy. Only I have the right to kill him. You pull that trigger, you die.”
“Okay,” Robert said, motioning to his men to back off. “You do it.”
Chuck looked Curtis in the eye. “Pietas Perpetuo.” Loyalty forever. It was the agreement they’d made when they’d worked together as a two-man strike team. They would always watch out for each other. It was the bond Chuck had shattered a year ago in Colombia when he turned his back on his old friend.
