by Karl Weber
“I don’t hear anyone else in this room coming up with anything. What do you have?”
“It might be best if we discuss it in the hallway.” Jack gave Anna the hand gesture to follow. They exited the command center where there were close to a dozen people and entered the hallway where they could be alone.
“You’re not making me feel any more optimistic about what you’re thinking.”
Jack took a breath before explaining his idea. “I want to blow up a power plant.”
“Jesus, Jack, are you insane. When you said I wasn’t going to like your plan, I at least assumed it wasn’t going to be a domestic terrorist attack.”
“I was thinking of it more as a controlled explosion,” Jack said as his defense.
As a response Anna softly punched him in the shoulder. “Have you forgotten the motto we created when we established this agency? Unseen by all but felt by many. It’s not, seen by all and heard by everyone.”
Jack shrugged off Anna’s sarcasm before placing his hands on her shoulders and locking eyes with her to get her refocused. “I know how bad it sounds, but listen to what I’m thinking.”
Anna reluctantly nodded at him. He released his grip on her shoulders.
Jack continued, “Price thinks we could gain access to the building’s backup generators. Seems doable. Backup generators are not exactly something that one would think of as well guarded, especially for a building located in a metropolitan area. What I’m thinking is, I lead a team into the power plant that is responsible for powering the city block where the bank is located. We’ll go in disguised as Dominion terrorists using the same weapons and all. The bomb goes off and all authorities turn their attention to the power plant and completely ignore the bank. With the main power source gone, the bank will resort to using the backup generators to power everything.”
“Which we’ll have control of, meaning we ultimately decide what operates and what doesn’t,” Anna finished Jack’s thought. He nodded at her. “Ok, still a crazy idea but has some structure supporting it. What about the retinal and biometric scanners? The backup generators surely wouldn’t get us around that obstacle?”
Jack frowned. “That’s the part of the plan I’m still not sure about. We’d have to give the trio a motive for being down there inside the vault or kidnap them and bring them there against their will. Only problem is how would we do that? If we were to capture any of them, then the other two would go into hiding or at least hide behind enough security to make getting to them next to impossible.”
“You’re right. We need to bait them with something.”
Jack’s eyes then lit up with excitement while he pointed his index finger like a teacher pointing at a student for getting the right answer. “Or someone.”
Anna raised an eyebrow. “Like whom?”
“Somebody we’ve gotten to know all too well.”
Anna suddenly realized who Jack was talking about. “No. Not him. We can find someone else.”
“Who? Blake might not be the ideal candidate, but we need someone who can bait the directors into a trap.” Jack paused. “I don’t like it either, but we need him for this to work.”
“No, we don’t,” Anna stated even louder to get her point across. She wasn’t keen on taking a chance with the man who helped orchestrate the kidnapping of her sister and put her life in danger.
“I get where you’re coming from, but please listen to me. Blake in his current position has all the reason in the world to help us. The Deep State is out to silence him. To them, he’s the enemy as much as we are. Helping us is in his best interest. He said it himself.”
“And what if he’s lying?”
“As far as we know, he hasn’t yet.” Jack thought for a moment. “Look, I understand we can’t fully trust him, but who can we? We live in a world of double crossers and backstabbers. There are no sure bets in this game. All we can do is make our best bet based on the odds we know and then hope for the best. I don’t like it either, but it’s the game we have to play if we want any chance to win it.”
After a good few seconds, Anna sighed in defeat. “Alright, let’s talk to Blake.”
Tobias Blake sat at the interrogation table with his hands held together and looking business as usual. To him there was never a reason to be or look unprofessional. Being unprofessional just meant you were too lazy to care about your own presentation and probably even less about your own actual work. The large metal door slid open. Blake noticed Anna and Jack walk in.
“My grateful hosts gift me with their presence once more, I see,” Blake said in a monotone voice. He took the couple’s lack of a retort as a good sign as they took their seats across from him. “How might I be of use today?”
Jack spoke first, “You said that the Deep State wants you dead and quiet?”
“To be honest I don’t blame them. We’d all been warned this would happen if any of us were compromised. This is just what I signed up for,” Blake said while he straightened the cuffs on his wrinkled, white-button-up shirt that he’d been wearing for the past few days.
“What you’re saying is, there’s nothing you can do at this point that would put you in any worse repute with your former peers?”
Blake shrugged. “I was in as bad a state as I could be the moment I was compromised. At that point, to them I was nothing more than an infected finger that needed to be amputated in order to save the hand.”
Jack looked over at Anna for her approval to proceed further in the conversation due to the relationship she had with Blake. She nodded.
“Mr. Blake, you said you wanted to make yourself useful to us, and I think I might know how.”
Chapter 19
It was nine thirty p.m., and downtown Chicago was busy as it always was. Even in winter, civilians were roaming the streets in mass, bundled up in thick jackets. Under a lot of those jackets were expensive suits, as the Chicago financial district was the place to be for anybody trying to climb their way up the corporate ladder. The corporate towers made the streets and sky feel cramped. A corporate structure less than twenty stories tall was considered small.
Of the massive structures that measured in at seventy-five stories was the Dixon Edwards banking headquarters building. Founded by Carl Dixon and Scott Edwards in 1914 not long before the start of the First World War. It didn’t take long for the company to grow into a very recognizable brand and leader in the world of financial services.
A black van maneuvered through the busy streets as it approached the monstrosity that was bank headquarters.
“Are we there yet?” Anna asked like a child on a long road trip. She was fully dressed in her tac suit minus the balaclava, ready to pull off the greatest bank heist of all time.
“We’ll be there when the traffic allows us,” Jackson answered.
Anna tapped on her SCU to contact Jack. “Jack, are you and your team in position?”
On the opposite side of the city in the grungy industrial district, Jack sat in a similar looking black van. He was in the rear of the van with three other men at his side, with four more sitting across. They were all identically dressed and armed. All black military fatigues underneath black Kevlar vests and shiny black helmets with dark-colored visors. Everybody was armed with an AK-12 assault rifle with an under barrel taser attachment. The whole idea was to look like soldiers belonging to the Dominion terrorist group, a radical group of Marxists who hated any country more libertarian than the Soviet Union. The perfect scapegoat for the bombing of a metropolitan power plant.
Jack tapped on the SCU attached to his wrist that had belonged to the rogue Specter before Price retrofitted the device so Jack could use it. “My team is on standby. Just waiting for your signal.”
“Roger,” Anna replied. She did a final check on all her equipment when she heard Jackson speak up from the driver seat.
“We’re almost at the garage, Ms. Perkins.”
“About time,” Anna said as she pulled her balaclava over her head. Jackson
took a right turn and headed down a small slope that led into the Dixon Edwards underground parking garage. He brought the van to a stop as he reached the security checkpoint where there was a barrier in his way.
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a keycard to the parking garage that Price had managed to obtain through questionable means online. It was a keycard meant for outside services the company would hire, such as window cleaners. Jackson was even dressed in custodian scrubs to complete the look and make it seem reasonable for him to be pulling into the bank’s parking lot with a black utility van.
Late at night the garage was only about half full, making it easy for Jackson to find a parking spot on the side closest to the inner concrete wall. He continued slowly, accelerating past vehicle after vehicle until he saw a utilitarian looking door.
Through online research, Price had found schematics that showed that the backup generators were located deep within the bowels of the bank’s headquarters. Jackson backed into the parking spot closest to the industrial metal door. He looked over his shoulder and looked through the thin metal grate at Anna who was stretching out her arms and legs to loosen up.
“We’ve arrived,” Jackson stated.
Anna looked back at him. “Open the door when you know it’s clear.”
“Alright,” Jackson answered before stepping out of the van.
Anna stared at the back door of the van and readied herself to take off as if she were a marathon runner. After a few seconds the two doors opened, revealing Jackson before he stepped to the side to get out of Anna’s way. She hopped out of the van and approached the lone metal door just two parking spots away from where the van was parked. The only lock on the door was an electronic keypad that took her SCU only seconds to crack. The sound of a lock disengaging could be heard. The door slid open, and she stepped inside.
She found herself inside a large industrial-type room. One wall was lined with industrial metal cabinets with the wall opposite having a utility sink. There was an elevator opposite the door with a staircase next to it. Anna took the staircase down.
At the bottom of the metal staircase, she saw the two massive box-shaped, industrial-sized motors that were her objective. They were natural gas generators large enough to power the entire seventy-five story building. Only utilized in the very unlikely scenario that the entire building lost power.
Anna stepped off the staircase and onto the concrete floor, approaching the console that was in the center of the monstrous machinery. She pulled a wire out of her belt, connected one end to her SCU and the other to the console. After only a short amount of time, the SCU established its connection and gained Anna control of the motors.
“Price, I’m plugged in. Is everything ready on your end?”
A couple seconds went by before Price answered, “Everything looks good on my screen.”
Anna checked the clock on her SCU. Nine fifty-five. “I’m headed upstairs to intercept our trojan horse.”
“Roger.”
Anna back-tracked to the utility storage room and called the elevator. After a few seconds of tapping her foot, the elevator door slid open. She checked her SCU’s electromagnetic field sensor to see if there was a camera inside the elevator but found none, then she stepped inside and hit the button to for the main floor. The elevator began its ascent and about ten seconds later came to a halt. Anna activated the MLS device on her suit right before the door began to slide open.
Once the door was fully open Anna scanned the lobby. The entire room screamed of wealth, which was fitting. The floor, a turquoise-colored, high-end marble with impossible-to-miss chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. A stock ticker wrapped around the room so that anyone could know the exact price of the company their fortune was invested in.
Anna scoped out the room until she found her trojan horse, Tobias Blake. He was walking straight through the moderately busy lobby and looked business as usual. He at least had been allowed to shower and had been given a new suit like the one he previously wore. Anna exited the elevator to follow.
She got behind Blake and followed at his pace. After tapping her SCU, she was on the same communication line as Blake. “You never know how close danger lurks, huh, Blake?” She kept her voice down for obvious reasons.
Blake raised his right hand to tap his earpiece. “Don’t you worry, Miss Perkins, I’m always two steps ahead of where the danger is.” He looked behind his shoulder. “Right now, both figuratively and literally.”
“Is that how you came to be at my mercy right now?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Just wanted to remind you of your place in this situation and that I still haven’t forgotten about our past.”
“It worked out in the end, didn’t it? You can lighten the grip on your weapon’s trigger, Ms. Perkins. You don’t have to trust me, only remind yourself that I have nothing to gain from doing anything but playing the role you’ve given me in this ridiculous plan of yours.”
Anna stayed quiet until she and Blake reached the end of the lobby where the elevators that went all the way to the top of the tower were located. Blake pressed the button to call the elevator. “You think the directors actually bought the story you gave them?” Anna asked.
“We can only hope.”
“All I know is that if things do go to shit, I’ll make sure you of all people don’t make it out of this alive before anyone else does.”
“I appreciate your concern.” The elevator door opened, and Blake stepped inside with his invisible friend in tow. They were the only two in the elevator. After doing a quick a check of the small space, Anna found no cameras to worry about. Blake hit the button for the fiftieth floor. After the door shut, Anna deactivated her MLS device to allow it to cool during the elevator trip up. Blake looked over his shoulder at the now visible Anna. “You do realize the scale of people you’ll be pissing off by doing this, don’t you?”
“The Deep State is just a group of power-hungry tyrants. What makes them special?”
Blake shook his head. “I’m not talking about the Deep State.”
“Then who are you talking about?”
Blake cleared his throat before answering. “Let’s just say there’re a group of people out there who believe naturally created society is a façade and that they’re the ones who truly built the world.”
“Naturally created society is a façade. I’ve heard something like that before.” Anna thought back to when she heard that saying before. Then it came to her. “I remember now. Travis Snyder told Victor Cox back in Florida Natural society is a façade …”
“And only God knows it,” Blake said.
“Yeah. That’s what Victor Cox said in response. I saw them say it on security cams. Figured it was just a random code phrase to verify identity and thought nothing else of it. What does it mean?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. The code phrase, the Shadow Figure, the Deep State, all of it’s connected.”
Anna wanted to press Blake for context but held her tongue as she noticed the elevator was nearing its destination.
When the panel showed the elevator only three floors away from its destination, Anna reactivated her MLS device and vanished. Blake didn’t even react. The elevator dinged as it came to a halt on the designated floor. The doors slid open to reveal two guards on the other side. Both were dressed in black suits with earpieces.
One of them raised his arm, gesturing at a hallway. “Mr. Blake, the directors asked us to escort you to the conference room for your scheduled meeting.”
“Well then, lead the way,” Blake said as he gestured for the guards to start moving. He and Anna followed them until one of them stopped to open a door and motioned for Blake to enter. Anna kept herself so close to Blake that she was almost hugging his back as they headed through the doorway with the guards shutting it behind them.
Inside the room was an office table that could seat up to eight. At one end of the table were the three directors—CEO Grah
am Schulz, CIO Chao Lee, and CFO Benjamin Cross.
“Please take a seat,” Schulz said while he gestured to a chair across from the trio. Blake did as he was told. At the same moment, Anna tapped on her SCU and sent out the signal to set in motion the next stage of the plan.
Chapter 20
Jack pulled back the charging handle on his AK-12 to check and make sure he had a round chambered. All good. He released the charging handle and let the spring tension return it back to its default position. He then double-checked to be sure he was wearing the right arm band.
There were two teams of four, a red team led by Jack and the blue team. The red team was to infiltrate and physically set and arm the bomb, whereas the blue team was tasked with crowd control of the plant workers and keeping the local authorities at bay. Nobody was to shoot to kill unless it was deemed absolutely necessary. Jack made that abundantly clear to both teams. The plant workers were just everyday workers. None of them deserved to die.
A message popped up on Jack’s SCU: “Inside meeting now. All clear to procced.” It was from Anna.
That told Jack it was showtime. He brought in all seven other men for one last prep talk like a quarterback in a football huddle. “We just got the green light. Remember, easy on the triggers. We want zero civilian casualties. Get this done right and drinks are on me. Hooray,” Jack shouted. The other soldiers in the van matched his hooray before he reached over and opened the back doors to the van. The two teams piled out.
They could see the nuclear power plant they would be assaulting across the street. Based on Price’s research, it was the power plant responsible for powering Chicago’s financial district along with other large portions of the city. It was a decent sized facility, as it took up well over a city block.
The two teams of four approached the guard outpost that was off to the side of the facility’s main entrance. The blue team took the lead and had their AK-12s trained on the two bored guards in the outpost. Both guards stood straight up out of their seats with eyes filled with fear once they saw the two teams of heavily armed men approaching them. The blue team entered the small shack and put the two guards on their stomachs before restraining them with zip-tie handcuffs. Jack and the rest of the red team pressed forward into the facility.
