by Tim Curran
“Do that, Romeo. Maintain current. Over.”
WASHINGTON, D.C: GEORGETOWN
10:56 P.M.
In the rear of the parking garage, the limo idled as it had been idling for the past twenty minutes. Gus Costello, the National Security Advisor, rubbed his temples and listened to Maddie Hughes, the Secretary of Homeland Security, go on one of her rants as she often did when she did not get what she wanted or was left out of the loop.
“Maddie,” Gus said, swallowing a couple aspirins and washing them down with a bottle of mineral water from the limo’s mini-bar, “there was never any attempt to delude you or your office. Please understand that. The President decided to keep DHS out of this until the time came when they needed to be activated on the issue.”
Maddie shook his head. “This is a domestic threat, Gus.”
“Yes, it is. If it was up to me, you’d have been brought in. But I’m not in a position to supersede a presidential directive and I think you know that.”
Maddie sighed, trying to control herself. The fact that her office had only been brought in on this three days ago irked her. The parasites were an obvious threat to the domestic security of the nation and yet she’d been left out of the loop.
“What were you people thinking?” she finally asked. “Toying with a nightmare like this?”
“Please leave ‘we’ out of the equation, Maddie. I was not in office then. My job, all of our jobs now, is clean up.”
“Creating something like that, allocating the funds, then turning it loose in a warzone,” she said, her face twisted into a mask of disgust. “Now…now it’s been tracked back to this country. Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ.”
Costello let her stew a few moments until the piss and vinegar ran out of her as he knew it would. Maddie had quite a temper, but it blew itself out very quickly.
“It seems to me,” she said, “that my office should have been put in charge of this from the start. We’re in a unique position to coordinate—”
“Again, not my decision, Maddie. I follow orders like you do.”
She helped herself to the mini-bar. She skipped the mineral water and went straight for three fingers of Grey Goose. She sighed. “Every time there’s something rotten in the wind you can trace the smell back to CBT and Elizabeth Toma. Why doesn’t somebody clip her fucking wings already?”
“You know why.”
“They’re that afraid of her?”
Gus shrugged. “Of her and maybe who stands behind her. I don’t recommend taking a stab at her. She’s ruined careers and destroyed lives. In fact, it’s a specialty of hers.”
Maddie contemplated that. “You think it’s real? All those whispers about The Collective?”
“Maybe. If there is such an organization, you can bet she’s hooked up with them.”
“I’ve heard rumors about Gordon Parks and the NSA more than once,” Maddie said, lowering her voice as if she feared someone might hear. “I know one thing, Gus, the both of them are behind that business in Alaska. They’re in bed with the Navy and DARPA on that one and I don’t like it one bit.”
He didn’t either. She was referring to the ECHO ionospheric array in Alaska. The entire thing was passed off as an atmospheric communications facility, but popular conspiracy claimed its aims were much darker—weather control, an EMP weapon, or even mass mind control. He had never taken any of that seriously until a “T”-secret communication had crossed his desk concerning an identical facility hidden in the mountains of Mexico. Something the conspiracists hadn’t found out about as yet. When he asked questions, he was told to back off. Something was afoot there, but just what no one would say. But one thing was for sure, the NSA was involved and CBT was one of their research contractors.
Feeling uncomfortable, Maddie decided to change the subject. “You’re never going to contain something like this, Gus. Not if it’s spreading the way you say.”
“Which is why the President wants you on board.”
“Damage control? Spin? Perception management?”
“You got it.”
Costello explained to her that a directive had been assembled. It would be known as Yankee Alert. If and when the news of the parasitic infection broke to the general public, Yankee Alert would go live. It was, essentially, a false flag attack, a beautiful piece of fiction in which foreign extremists would be blamed for engineering an insidious biological warfare attack against the continental United States. It would be supported by intelligence and documentation so cleverly created and aligned that even the world security community could not disprove its validity. Such a directive went into effect following 9/11 and the public swallowed it wholesale.
It was a wonderful, creative pile of bullshit, but it wasn’t complete fabrication, he explained to her. There were extremists seeding the worms in the country, all associates of Sheikh Sa’ad al Khalafari and his well-entrenched terror network.
“Who’ve, no doubt, been allowed to make matters worse so that their guilt in this matter is beyond question,” Maddie pointed out.
“Yes. Again, not my call.”
Maddie swallowed more vodka. Damn, if she didn’t need it. “And what’s my part in this horror story?”
“Yankee Alert will now be the responsibility of your office.”
Maddie liked the idea. It meant power. Reams of it. “All right. We can handle it.”
“As of now, it’s yours. You’ll be meeting in the morning with the architects of the directive.”
“Excellent.”
Costello thumbed the intercom. “Drive on,” he said into it.
“I have one more question, Gus.”
“Yes?”
“Why couldn’t we meet in your office over this?”
Costello did not smile. “Because I can’t be certain that my office has not been breached by listening devices.”
She just stared at him. “That’s insane. Your office is swept daily. Three times daily if I recall.”
“Trust me on this one, Maddie,” he said. “There are people involved in this situation who may be nameless, but their intentions are deadly. They’re just waiting for the right moment.”
Maddie caught his drift. “But that’s treason.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what it is.”
CHICAGO: BELMONT CRAGIN
11:14 P.M.
Tommy Quillan watched the stripper work the pole and he was greatly impressed with not only her liquid grace but the size of her breasts. After months in Afghanistan, it was easy enough to forget what a western woman looked like let alone what the right one could do with an oiled pole and an equally oiled body.
He ordered another bottle of Newcastle Brown and sipped it slowly, catching the stripper’s almond Asian eyes as she caught his. His table was at the edge of the stage and she belly-crawled to within feet of him, rising up and thrusting her pelvis at him. Quillan smiled and slid a fifty dollar bill into her g-string. She grinned salaciously at him and licked her lips, letting him know that for the right price what she was doing with the pole she could do with other poles.
It’s so easy with American women, he thought. It’s always about money. You can be the ugliest heap of shit that ever crawled out of the loo and if your wallet’s fat enough, they’ll ride your leg like a cat.
Money.
Always money.
It was different with the Afghanis. The Pushtun and Uzbeki men might have been notoriously corrupt, but their women lived by a rigid moral code you could not subvert with money. At least, most of them did.
Quillan sipped his beer.
He knew at that very moment that certain individuals within the Washington intelligence community were going out of their minds wondering where he was and exactly what he was doing. He had flown like any other civilian into O’Hare where he knew there would be a couple Agency boys waiting for him to brief him on ops and direct him to a safe house. But, more for his own amusement than any other reason, he’d given them the slip. Using a fake I.D. that id
entified him as a member of the U.S. Marshals Service, he did not disembark with the other passengers. The I.D. bought him a quick route through security to a rental car that was waiting for him…leaving the Agency boys empty-handed and no doubt in disfavor with their employer.
When I’m ready, I’ll show.
But not until.
The dance finished and the rowdy blue collar element of Pinkie’s exploded with raucous applause. The dancer disappeared as another took the stage. Quillan abandoned his table and it was quickly taken by a couple drunken laborers. He threaded his way through the noise and bustling bodies. There was an open table in the back, out of view of the stage.
He sat alone.
And waited.
About fifteen minutes later, the dancer appeared as he knew she would. Seeing no reason to stun him with her body since he had already seen every inch of it, she dressed casually in cargo shorts and a loose yellow tee. She approached his table cautiously as he knew she would. Years upon years of counterterrorism and intelligence work had made him an excellent judge of character. While the other rowdies were tossing dollars at the girls on stage, Quillan had sought out this woman, giving her first a twenty and then a fifty, making her think that the gifts would keep going up and up.
“Mind if I sit down?” she said.
“I was hoping you would,” Quillan said without a trace of his British accent. He spoke with a perfect Midwestern twang.
She smelled of baby oil and green apple body wash. It was delicious. She sat down, sweeping her long auburn hair over one shoulder and crossing her long legs.
“Would you like a drink?”
He ordered her a Bacardi and Coke and watched her drink it with those luscious lips. Her eyes were upturned, Asian, and it only magnified her allure. There was a scar tracery that ran from her right earlobe to the jawline. Barely noticeable except to a trained observer like Quillan, who surmised from her eyes and the scar that she had lived a rough life. That and the trembling of her fingers from a drug habit told him all he needed to know about her.
He set five one-hundred dollar bills on the table.
“Do you have a room?” he asked her.
She finished her drink, her eyes filled with lust for the cash. She stood up and he followed. It wasn’t until the door was locked and she was naked and gagged on the bed that he let her see the knife.
The smell of fear coming off her by then was absolutely mouth-watering.
CHICAGO: DOWNTOWN
11:34 P.M.
"Romeo, how do you copy?”
“Subject Hotel November is heading south on Wabash. Traffic heavy.”
“Hang tight, Romeo. Eye in the sky has him tagged.”
“Kansas City…Hotel has cut onto East Randolph…getting evasive. Driving erratically. Request back-up.”
“Back-up confirmed, Romeo. Tango at your location, ETA of three minutes. Eye in the sky reports Hotel now cutting in behind you. Watch it!”
“Kansas City, Hotel is spooked…we’re losing him.”
“All units, this is Kansas City, move in and restrict Hotel. Repeat: move in and restrict Hotel…”
CHICAGO: DOWNTOWN
11:37 P.M.
"Are you trying to fucking kill us or what?” Shawna asked as Harry squeezed the Toyota between a bus and two taxis and then merged in front of a public works truck.
“Just cleaning our tail, pet,” he explained, slowing down, then speeding up, overtaking a minivan, cutting off into the slow lane and firing down an alley. “We’ve had a black SUV on our ass for two miles, making every turn we make. Not getting any closer, but not getting any farther away either.”
“We’re being followed?”
“Yes.”
Harry performed some more death-defying maneuvers, easing them up North Garland. The SUV was nowhere in sight but he knew that really meant nothing. They would be using a tag-team of chase cars probably directed by aerial surveillance if they wanted him bad enough.
He slipped in-between Garland and Wabash, flooring the Toyota, overtaking another bus and cutting off yet another taxi to the scream of horns and then slowing down and turning into a parking garage. He slid the card Gabe had given him into the slot and drove up to the third tier, backing in next to a Hummer.
Shawna fumbled a cigarette into her mouth. “I want to get away from them, Harry, but I don’t want to die.”
“Death is what I’m keeping you away from, dear.”
“Can I ask what we’re doing here?”
He pulled her over to him and whispered in her ear so she understood. He was taking no chances with bugs. “Now we wait twenty minutes while our trail cools off. Then…”
They waited and neither of them spoke.
Harry watched the garage very carefully. He figured if their tail had followed them here, then they would stake out the street, wait for them. Probably bring in plenty of back-up, but if things went well that would do them no good at all.
At 11:47, he said, “All right, now.”
Gathering their things, they stepped out of the Toyota and crossed the lot to where a Maroon Chevy Tahoe awaited them. They climbed in and waited again.
“All right,” Shawna said. “Who does this belong to?”
“It’s a rental. A friend left it here for us.”
“My how resourceful we are.”
At midnight, the elevators opened and about twenty people from a software support firm came bustling out, all jumping into their respective vehicles, anxious that the day was in and the evening shift was done. Harry merged the Tahoe in with them. The queue moved down the ramp and to the exit, their cards opening the gate. One by one they sped out into traffic.
“And that’s how it’s done,” he told Shawna as they moved south, just another anonymous vehicle.
AUGUST 27
SUITLAND, MARYLAND:
NATIONAL MARITIME INTELLIGENCE CENTER
12:14 A.M.
Admiral Paulus stared down at the pile of intel reports, briefings, and national security assessments on his desk. The entire BioGenesis affair was supposed to exist in the shadows. There should have been no paper trail, but his desk begged to differ.
I should sweep it all in the trash where it belongs and go spend a few days on my boat, he told himself.
The very idea cheered him even though it was wholly unpractical. Not now. Not at this stage of the game. Bob Pershing wanted his confederates (traitors, you mean) close at hand and available for immediate consultation now that zero hour was quickly approaching.
You can get out of this anytime you want, Paulus told himself as he sipped his bourbon, the glass trembling in his hand. One phone call and your car and driver will whisk you away to Emerald City for an audience with the great Oz.
He wondered if the President would believe him. It wasn’t every day that the most powerful man in the world (supposedly) was dragged out of bed and told that his country was about to be overthrown by some of the men he trusted the most.
You even try that and you’re a dead man.
He finished his whiskey in one swallow.
Yes, that’s what it came down to. He was being watched and he knew it. Watched, listened to, his every move plotted and graphed. Pershing’s spooks were everywhere. There was no way in hell he would allow Paulus or any of the other conspirators to squirm out of this now and live to testify against him. It was too late. Far, far too late.
Every time the ONI Director walked out of a building he could feel eyes on him, feel the crosshairs on his back. But if he betrayed Pershing it would be nothing so melodramatic—or obvious—as a bullet. It would be something more subtle. He knew that Pershing had a certain love for binary poisons. That’s how it would be done. One day at lunch, a certain chemical would be introduced into Paulus’ lobster bisque where it would sit inert in his system. Three days later, he would swallow another with his salad dressing. The two chemicals were harmless alone, but together they would combine to form a deadly, untraceable poison that would ki
ll him in minutes, mimicking a stroke or a major coronary event.
That’s how it would happen.
You’ve probably already swallowed the first dose.
Paulus sighed. What a mess, what a mess. That morning he had been involved in a closed-door call-down of experts at the FBI Command Center. It was an absolute, rowdy zoo of biomedical specialists, spooks, civilian techs, and security people. The purpose was to examine the outbreak and how it could be contained. If at all. There was no focus, no agreement, no cooperation, only chaos as the NSA and CIA, FBI and DIA spooks pointed fingers at each other, at the Army and Navy, everyone panicking and brooding over their political futures and pretty much ignoring what the scientists and medical people had to say. Typical. A hotheaded State Department DSS agent took a poke at a suit from the National Security Council and a high-ranking agent from Homeland Security’s Science & Technology Directorate called a FEMA administrator a “dumb cunt” and it just got worse from there.
If the situation hadn’t been so grave, it might have been comical. Most meetings of that sort were a bit more civilized, but the worse the situation the farther down the evolutionary level people tended to slide.
As Bob Pershing later put it, “Like a bunch of apes throwing shit at each other.” And that pretty much summed it up.
Pershing, Paulus knew, was secretly pleased with the chaos because one federal agency turning on another created an atmosphere of not only mutual suspicion but of pandemonium. And this was exactly what he wanted. It was fertile grounds for what came next.
Paulus rubbed his tired eyes. The ball was rolling now and the inevitable was but days away. Pershing was excited. General Mason of the JCS was exhilarated at the power coming his way. And Paulus himself was scared. These were dangerous times, and he was playing with dangerous men.
God help me if I’ve made a big mistake here, he thought.
CHICAGO, RIVER NORTH:
THE WAREHOUSE, 12:33 A.M.