by Fritz Galt
So this was all produced by drugs. He reflected back on the flophouse in Tucson where he had taken the psychotropic drugs offered by that circle of friendly faces consisting of professors from the University of Arizona. That was how he had gotten his spirit guide. How had May gotten hers?
“Hey Xenhet, you still there?” he called out into the empty room.
I’m always here.
“While I’ve been searching the world for the answer to this crisis, you were the answer all along.”
To truly learn, one must discover for one’s self.
Just then footsteps sounded in the hallway. He looked up as the door opened and a familiar figure appeared. It was an angular man in a drab business suit. He hid a hangdog expression behind a silly black mustache.
“Dad!” Brad threw his arms around the guy.
Sullivan smiled and reciprocated with a hearty embrace. “I saw the whole show.”
“What do you mean ‘saw’?”
Sullivan pointed at the walls. “Two-way mirrors.”
“You saw…” Brad’s mind raced over the past few minutes. “You saw me pick my nose?”
“Heard you talking to Xenhet. Everything. I thought I’d intervene to spare you any further embarrassment.”
Brad didn’t know whether to be grateful or upset. “Did you hear the part where the president turned control of the government over to me?”
“That’s not exactly how I understood it.”
A plan was already percolating in Brad’s mind. “But I do need wings again. I need to get to May and Liang. They hold the key to all of this.”
“Why not Smith?”
“Oh, he’s my ultimate goal. But they can gain me access to him.”
“So, what you’re telling me is that you want our help to split up May and Liang?”
“If that happens in the process, so be it.”
“You mean, if you save the nation, so be it?” Sullivan suggested.
Brad gave a rueful smile. “Maybe that’s more like it.”
“And just how can you use May and Liang to expose Smith?”
Brad shrugged. “Maybe show how he uses mind control during his religious services.”
“All the fire-and-brimstone evangelists do that. It’s like professional wrestling. Everybody knows it’s fake, but they love it anyway.”
“Okay, then I’ll think up something else. First I need to get to Colorado.”
“That reminds me. You might want to sit down.”
“Why?”
“I talked to Liang.”
Brad stared at him. “How did you get hold of him?”
“He called me. Liang got my phone number, apparently from Jade’s pocket assistant.”
“Yeah. She has a BlackBerry.” He paused to ponder Jade’s role in all that had happened. She had worked closely with Sullivan before. It stood to reason that she had his number. “So what did Liang say?”
Sullivan took a deep breath. “He informed me that May is working at a strip club in Vegas. It’s called the Corral.”
“Doing what? Serving drinks?”
Sullivan shook his head, but didn’t reply.
Brad considered the scenario. So May had followed Liang to Sin City. How much of that behavior was voluntary? After all, he could tell his spirit guide to bug off anytime he wanted to. Why couldn’t she?
He stared at the blank wall where her serene countenance had appeared. Had Liang implanted one of those microchips in her pretty little head? What if Liang hadn’t?
“What if I don’t care?”
“Terry Smith will be in Las Vegas tomorrow, too. He’s speaking to an emergency meeting of the Governors’ Conference.”
“Smith and Liang together? I suppose Stokes and Walsh will be there, too.”
“Presumably, along with forty-eight other governors.”
Brad could hardly fathom the enormous opportunity for Liang to do mischief. In the end, he relented. He would go. But he had to admit he was feeling a bit outgunned. “Let’s pick Jade up on the way. I told her to stay put in Durango.”
“Remember,” Sullivan said. “Simply eliminating Smith isn’t sufficient. You need him alive in order to demonstrate to the governors and the rest of the world that all the fear was generated deliberately.”
“Don’t worry,” Brad assured him. “I’d never dream of killing anyone. Is that airplane still available?”
“Should be tanked up by now.”
“Wanna come along?”
Sullivan shook his head. “My place is here.”
Brad slung an arm around his father and gave him a firm hug. “Then wish me luck.”
With that, he turned and dashed out the door for the awaiting golf cart.
Far behind him, he thought he heard his father singing, “May luck be a lady tonight.”
Brad emerged from the underground labyrinth, a testament to military paranoia, into broad daylight. He squinted in the afternoon sun and took in the springtime about him. How could people slave away day and night below ground without an occasional infusion of flowering trees, singing birds and fresh air? Their vision must turn myopic with no horizon upon which to set their gaze. Perhaps that was one purpose for burying the Pentagon.
He reclaimed his cell phone at the guard booth. Once back on the military bus next to his MP buddies, he turned the phone on. It picked up the telecom company right away. And small wonder—he was right outside Raven Rock Mountain, a national communications hub.
According to the phone, he had two missed calls while he was in the facility. The first call was placed from an area code he didn’t recognize. The second came from May’s phone. Curious about the first number’s odd area code, he called it back.
The line picked up at once. “Brad?” In the background, a PA system announced a flight. “This is Earl.”
“Skeeter, old pal. Where are you?”
“Vancouver, man.”
“Welcome to this side of the pond. Who invited you?”
“I was waiting for Jade to send out the invites. But she never called.”
“Well, welcome to the eye of the storm.”
“You wouldn’t believe what the streets of Beijing are like. I’d rather suffer in America.”
“Then why are you up there with the Canucks?”
“Long story. The Chinese canceled all flights to the Americas in retaliation for the trade embargo. I caught the last Air Canada flight out of Beijing. Now, enough about me. Give me your latest news.”
Brad had to tell him the plan, and he did. He mentioned that Liang was using Dr. Yu to implant thoughts in the two governors and May, that they might be subject to mind control through microchip devices, that Reverend Terry Smith seemed to be in cahoots with Liang, and that Liang, May, Smith and all fifty governors were headed for Las Vegas.
“So, what’s your plan of attack?”
“I’m flying out to Vegas right away,” Brad said. “I’ve got to expose Smith as a fraud. If the governors see his hand in this, they’ll lift their embargos and maybe we can reverse this whole economic collapse.”
“And you were gonna do that single-handed, eh?”
Earl had a way of putting Brad on the defensive. “Well, I will pick Jade up in Durango on my way there,”
“How about I come down and help you knock a few heads together.”
Shadows were growing long as the bus sailed down the road into Waynesboro. Once in town, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Where had everyone gone? Then he saw where. The stone church that he had passed before was crammed full of people.
“Skeeter, this may be a more volatile situation than you realize.”
“Hey, Jade’s not going to Vegas without me. I need to keep an eye on that gal.”
Brad could see his friend’s point. “Go ahead then. Book the next flight.”
The bus sped past the boarded-up storefronts of Main Street, but Brad heard only confused voices on the line from Vancouver. Earl seemed to be talking with a ticket agent. Short
ly thereafter, he came back on the line. “I think I have a route mapped out.”
“Good. How soon can you get there?”
“Late tonight.”
“That’s close enough for government work.”
“They say it’s the last flight into Vegas before the airlines shut down, permanently. How are you getting there?”
“Oh, the prez gave me a loner,” Brad said. “See you in Sin City.”
“It should be an interesting cast of characters,” Earl mused aloud. “Politicians, evil masterminds, hot chicks, gamblers and two young studs, albeit one on crutches.”
“Phone me when you get there.”
“Over and out.”
Now for the other missed call. It had come from May’s cell phone, but knowing that Liang was in possession of the phone, he was reluctant to call it back. As the bus bounced along, he debated if he should call or not. He didn’t want to give Liang any psychological advantage over him, and he didn’t want to tip Liang off that he was coming to Las Vegas. On the other hand, he was desperate to hear May’s voice. It was just possible that she had seized the phone back and was trying to reach him.
He scanned the hilly terrain for the airport. What state was he in anyway? How far was he from her?
Not knowing where he was gave him greater urgency to make contact with her. He wanted to be in that strip club with her. He called the number back and waited. There was no ring tone. Instead, an automated voice came on. “The subscriber you have dialed has turned the power off.”
He clicked the phone shut and slipped it into his jacket pocket. A feeling of foreboding came over him. May was out there fending off crack heads in Las Vegas. She was probably drugged and incoherent and at Liang’s mercy.
Saving the nation would have to wait. He had a fallen angel to save.
Chapter 37
High above Nevada, the Reverend Terry Smith was sipping a Bloody Mary. He had installed a steel door between the First Class compartment at the front of the chartered Boeing 737, and a hastily assembled press corps seated behind.
From his reclined position, he watched the plane skim low over a thick growth of creosote bush, yucca, and white burro brush that dotted the Mojave Desert. The hardy self-sufficiency of desert plants made them the perfect symbol for America. Every nation should be able to stand alone.
When he was finished with his campaign to rid America of all foreign influence, it would be a barren land where only the strongest survived. Unfortunately, one weed still flourished in the dying landscape. It glowed on the horizon, bright and gaudy in a country otherwise bereft of power. Las Vegas stood in defiance of all that was natural.
The city was the embodiment of the depravity that lay under all of American society. Only through his religious leadership and political courage could the country perfect herself and rise above other nations.
They shot out of the desert and over a glowing grid of streets with their glittering casinos.
“Ha! Look at all that money down there.”
Barney Boone nodded at him from across the aisle, but he didn’t seem to get it.
“Barney, old pal. That is money. And money means power. But until now we have all played by the rules. It used to take talent and decades of hard work to claw all the way to the top in our Darwinian political system.”
Barney nodded.
“No longer! I sprinkle in a little fairy dust of religion and it all becomes mine. Don’t you see? God is the answer.”
“Everybody would agree with that,” Barney said.
“I don’t care if they agree or not.” Clearly Barney hadn’t made the paradigm shift that it had taken Terry all those months of rehabilitation and plastic surgery to make. “People go with their emotions, and religion is nothing more than pure emotion. It’s a sure winner every time.”
He bit his tongue for a moment as he contemplated all the high stakes gambling that took place in that glorious city spread out beneath him. He had to rid his thoughts of the old maxim that there was no such thing as a sure bet or a free lunch.
The plane touched down on the landing strip and brought another amazing sight into view. Scores of commercial and private jets cluttered the tarmac and even spilled onto the grass. For a city that could handle a high volume of air traffic for conventions and trade shows, the airport seemed completely overwhelmed. The fact that so many lemmings ran to the casinos was evidence of the decadence of American society and gave him further assurance that he held the key to their salvation.
He studied the airline names and logos. They represented both American and foreign carriers, from South America to the Middle East.
“Even the Nigerians are here,” he said with glee.
Then there were all the private jets, many of which bore the insignia of the governors of states. The emergency Governor’s Convention was already well underway, a perfect forum for fueling the panic.
And, as keynote speaker, he was perfectly positioned to deliver his diatribe against the depravity of the nation. With Las Vegas as his backdrop and a national television audience hanging on his every word, he would declare the supremacy of fundamental Christian morality and deliver his coup de grâce to President Burrows.
He sipped the last of his drink and discreetly stowed the glass away.
High over the Rockies, Brad was flooded with memories, most of which he would rather forget.
Like the many years in graduate school toiling under Professor Richter, a bombastic, media-hog whose fanciful anthropological theories were designed for maximum appeal to the American public. He would sooner forget those wasted years in Tucson where he had tried to scale the academic ladder as prescribed by Richter, his stepfather. He had failed miserably in trying to surpass him through sheer intellectual brilliance, mainly because he lacked such brilliance. It had all been part of a not-so-subtle agenda to humiliate the professor that had browbeaten Brad’s mother, then abandoned her as she lay dying from a brain tumor. If only Brad could have come up with a counter-theory of his own.
“Sir, we have an uplink.”
He jerked away from the window to the steward, an airman who also appeared to be an electronics wizard. An image flickered on the overhead television screen.
“We’re showing you live pictures of the Las Vegas Convention Center,” the announcer said.
On stage, dignitaries were lined up to make speeches. But who were the nuts in the crowd? The camera occasionally cut away from introductory speeches to focus on signs thrust forward by the audience that milled about the massive center.
One woman was dressed in red from head to toe with a yellow star painted on her forehead. Her sign read, “Beware of the Red Menace!” Beside her, a David Bowie impersonator caught the glow of a spotlight that raced across the floor. He was passing out business cards.
The audience ranged from the old to the young. A retiree jabbed his placard in the air with fragile hands and a snarl on his lips. The bobbing words read, “Only Jesus Saves!” He was surrounded by a group of college girls apparently stranded in town during a cheerleading competition. They chanted, “You can do it, yes you can. Two, four, six, eight. Terry Smith. He’s our man!”
The Reverend Terry Smith seemed to appeal to a wide spectrum of lunatics. Perhaps that was why he had chosen Las Vegas as his forum.
Finally, the camera turned to the impressive figure of Terry Smith seated on stage quietly appreciating the crowd’s enthusiasm.
Brad was no stranger to taking on powerful figures. In fact, it had become a trademark of his. This time he wasn’t fighting his stepfather. He had already exorcized that demon from his life. Professor Richter had been swept away in a cataclysmic flood. Brad was there to fight a different monster. The Reverend Terry Smith had risen to national prominence in the past week due to an aggressively protectionist and pro-American posture. Smith wanted to jump on top of the sinking ship and ride it all the way to the bottom.
How could Brad dethrone the self-styled savior of the nation? He was
up against religion and the state.
There he was fighting one of life’s most formidable foes once again. Why couldn’t he just attack one small problem at a time? Would he always be the little boy standing up to the neighborhood bully? Perhaps there was an effective way to undercut Smith without confronting him directly. And just maybe doing so might signify some small measure of maturity.
Then the camera fell on the current speaker, a former football star from the University of Southern California. Maybe Brad should target a lesser man, say the Governor of California.
“We owe our citizens every protection,” the governor was saying. Then snow started to interrupt the transmission. The audio reception failed first, then the face of the blond politician disappeared.
“We’ll be landing at Durango-La Plata Airport in five minutes,” the captain announced. “Please fasten your seat belt.”
Brad was back in the Southwest again, facing his past. The dry air reminded him of a man’s insignificance in the open plains of the American West. That was it, he decided. He would start small, build his confidence up by going after the small fry. He would find some way to expose Stokes and Walsh, one by one.
Only when that was accomplished, could he turn his guns on Smith.
Evening descended quickly on the San Juan Mountains and left only the highest peaks tipped with golden sunlight.
Jade’s slim form appeared in the dusk. She was leaning against the terminal at Durango’s Airport. The plane’s exit door opened and Brad felt a cold blast of mountain air. Jade rushed aboard before he could step outside and stretch his legs. “I am so relieved to see you,” she said, and clutched him. “I am worried about May.”
“I’m sure she’s fine.”
“You don’t understand. I left her in a glider over Mesa Verde with no landing strip for kilometers. She must have crash-landed.”
Brad tried to extinguish the fear in her searching eyes. “I know for a fact that she did survive, and she’s already in Las Vegas.” He directed her to take the seat opposite him.
