End Times

by P A Duncan

  “Gentlemen,” she said to the FBI agents, “thank you for the wonderful breakfast. It was delicious, but duty calls. I will take more coffee though.”

  “Cream, no sugar,” one agent said. “Coming right up.”

  Coffee in hand, she and Alexei headed for Fitzgerald’s cramped office.

  A small circular table had a speakerphone in the middle of it. Fitzgerald pointed to the table and sat down. She and Alexei sat across from him. The remaining agents lined the walls and filled the doorway, their notepads and pens ready.

  Once the directors were on the phone, Mai went through the incursion step-by-step. Both asked numerous questions, and she answered thoroughly. One agent brought in the plat of Calvary Locus and began making changes to the interior layout as Mai described what she’d seen.

  An hour and a half later, the directors had no further questions and rang off. Mai spent more time answering the agents’ questions and helping them tweak the depiction of the compound’s floor plan.

  Despite the coffee, Mai began to yawn. Fitzgerald stifled plenty as well. Really, there was no need for a pissing contest over who needed sleep, so Mai brought the debriefing to an end.

  “All right, gentlemen, I’m sure there’s more I’ll remember once I’ve rested a bit,” she said.

  “We’ll digest this,” Fitzgerald said. “Have a nice nap on the flight home.”

  “We’re not leaving,” Alexei said.

  “You gave your briefing. You did your re-con. I think you’re done here.”

  “The attorney general was quite clear we would be here until she, or the president, decided we were no longer necessary,” Alexei said, “But, yes, let’s digest this information and get some sleep. We’ll go to our hotel room in Killeen and return later this afternoon for a strategy discussion.”

  “I’ll speak to Director Steedley about any further need for your input. I’m confident he’ll agree there’s no further need for your…services.”

  Mai stood, Alexei not far behind her, and, of course, Fitzgerald had to stand as well.

  “You know,” Mai said, “I’ve held my mouth in check long enough. Why are you being so obstructive? You need us here. More than that, the attorney general, who outranks your director, by the way, wants us here. We leave when she tells us to.”

  Fitzgerald flushed, his scalp through the crew cut bright red. “You will not speak to me in that way in front of my men, you supercilious little cunt.”

  “Stop being a supercilious little dick,” Mai said.

  Ever calm, Alexei said, “Mai, wait for me at the car, please.”

  God, had he not heard her this morning about stepping in to rescue her? No, she was tired and cranky. Let him deal with it.

  She held Fitzgerald’s gaze until he blinked. Mai turned and strode from the trailer. The FBI agents followed her. Pied Piper indeed.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Fitzgerald said to Alexei, “that is one loose cannon in permanent PMS. You have my sympathy, buddy.”

  Alexei reached across the small table and gripped Fitzgerald’s flak jacket with one hand. He pulled him around the table and closed his other hand on the man’s throat. A side glance told him they were out of sight from anyone in the other room.

  “You don’t get to call any woman a cunt in my presence, but especially not my wife. Is that clear?” Alexei said.

  Fitzgerald’s eyes darted about.

  “No, we’re alone,” Alexei said. “Did you understand me?”

  Unable to speak, Fitzgerald nodded. Alexei squeezed tighter for a second and pushed the man away from him. Fitzgerald stumbled, leaned against his desk, and gasped for air.

  “Assault on an FBI agent is a federal crime,” Fitzgerald croaked.

  “Did something happen?” Alexei said and left Fitzgerald coughing and clutching his throat.

  Mai sat in the Suburban’s rear seat, belted in, her head on the headrest. Her eyes were closed, but Alexei doubted if she slept. He got in beside her and nodded to the driver. As Alexei fastened his seat belt, the SUV began to move.

  “Were you primitive?” Mai asked him.

  “Fitzgerald may have a few bruises on his throat.”

  The driver’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, and Alexei smiled at him.

  Mai yawned and said, “Perhaps he can pass them off as love bites.”

  “I think that unlikely.”

  “I’ve been planning.”

  “So have I. Let’s get some sleep then talk about it.”

  A few hours later in a Residence Inn suite in Killeen, Mai woke from a nightmare involving reanimated corpses of Bosnian Muslims and rolled over into Alexei’s always welcome embrace.

  18

  Bad Vibes and Bad Moves

  When they returned later in the day, Mai almost didn’t give her attention to the knot of demonstrators at the roadblock, but as the Suburban neared the gate, Mai noticed a man in his mid-twenties she hadn’t seen the day before.

  Dressed in clean but faded jeans and a plaid shirt, open-necked with a triangle of undershirt showing, shirtsleeves rolled half-way up his forearms, he sat on the front fender of a battered Chevy sedan. The bill of a camouflage hunting cap cast a shadow over most of his face. The military buzz-cut did nothing to disguise his protruding ears.

  As the Suburban passed him, he watched it, and the shift in the angle of sunlight as he turned his head revealed his eyes. If not for the polarized glass of the vehicle, he and Mai would have locked eyes. A narrow, calm, even serene face, but an intense expression unmatched by the deadness in his eyes. The eyes drew her in, and she felt her Irish come up, that curious intuition she’d relied on more than once. This was a man to watch.

  In the command center, despite the warm afternoon, Hollis Fitzgerald wore a commando-style turtleneck sweater, which hid his neck up to his earlobes. Mai smiled and acknowledged the greetings from some of the agents from earlier that morning, but the trailer had lots of new faces.

  Fitzgerald wouldn’t look at Alexei. Oh, would she had been a fly on the wall for whatever had happened between them.

  Fitzgerald condescended to speak with her. “The rest of my tactical team leads need to hear what you relayed to the directors this morning.”

  “By all means, and now that I’ve cleared the cobwebs, I’ve remembered some other points I wanted to share. Your office again?”

  Fitzgerald nodded to a blown-up surveillance photo and floor plan attached to one wall in the main area of the trailer. Mai walked over to it, and the FBI agents gathered around. She went back over her trek again.

  “It seems, ma’am,” Agent Petilli said, “their security isn’t as sophisticated as we thought. I mean, not taking anything away from what you did ‘cause that took guts, I was under the impression there were booby-traps all over the grounds and buildings.”

  Mai looked at Fitzgerald. The FBI public affairs types had raised that bugaboo at a recent press conference after a reporter queried about the length of the standoff. Fitzgerald must have passed it along to his agents as Intel.

  Mai smiled at Petilli and said, “Oh, so, now you tell me.”

  The agents shared a laugh with her.

  “I, too, was a bit surprised at the lack of security. I never thought I’d get as far as I did without being challenged,” Mai added.

  “What if you had encountered someone?” another agent asked.

  She wanted to say, that’s what noise suppressors are for, but she passed over the question.

  “That wasn’t a walk in the park, to be sure,” Mai said, “even though it went smoothly. Everyone over there is exhausted, their food supply is running low, and it smells awful. That alone should put them off their appetites. They’re not exactly at their fighting best.”

  “Meaning?” Fitzgerald asked.

  “They’re getting sloppy at readiness, and Caleb has divided his forces. The men aren’t allowed upstairs, except for him, and that’s where the gun room is.”

  “But… Begging your pardon, ma
’am,” said Petilli, “but the women can’t be counted on in a firefight. Can they?”

  “I recall one of the women is a former police officer who has given firearms training to both the men and the women. Am I right?”

  The agent who’d mentioned the booby-traps said, “According to the ATF, she trained the women pretty well, leading them on daily runs around the grounds. They would chant cadence, like in basic training. ‘We’re with Isaac; he’s our man, gonna kill his enemies where they stand.’”

  “How charming,” Mai said. “Rather like the lyrics of one of his songs. ‘Six inches into heaven, I’ll be in Paradise tonight.”

  Everyone laughed—except, of course, Fitzgerald, who glared.

  Another agent said, “Ma’am, the extent of your research is amazing. Far more thorough than some of us have done.”

  Fitzgerald frowned at the agent, but Mai joked. “Gentlemen, please, no need for the ‘ma’am’ unless Her Majesty is here.”

  The laughter came again.

  “Where was I? Oh yes, the weapons training. There were no guards at the gun room on the second floor and no guns in the women’s rooms. On the main floor, however, guns are everywhere within reach. Since the men are on the main floor, they’re likely to be the most heavily armed.”

  “None of our observations of the women moving around the compound have shown them to be armed,” said an agent, who flushed when Fitzgerald’s scowl landed on him.

  “I suspect you’ll find they’ll arm the women as a last resort,” Mai said. She looked at Alexei and added, “Because of that whole protect the little woman thing.”

  He gave her his best cold op stare.

  “Now, Mr. Bukharin and I have outlined a plan, starting with a nighttime raid, using my route to get in on the second floor and secure the weapons room.”

  “Nighttime?” someone asked.

  “Yes, because that earlier daytime raid worked so well,” came Mai’s retort. “I think the fact I went in at night contributed to the success of my incursion.”

  “But you’re one person.”

  “Nighttime is the only time when the men, women, and children are compartmentalized. A night raid brings with it the element of surprise and fear, to our advantage. First, we neutralize the women, figuratively, and take away the men’s access to the weapons room.”

  “If the women aren’t armed, why them first?” asked an agent.

  “When children are in the mix, women become much more aggressive. The woman I spoke to in there, she’ll carefully spread the word we’ll be coming to rescue the children.”

  “What do you mean, more aggressive?” another agent asked.

  “I’m drawing on the experience of our friends in the German anti-terrorist task force, in particular with the remnants of the Bader-Meinhof gang. In a raid, the German policy was to shoot the women first.”

  “You want us to shoot the women?” an agent blurted.

  Fitzgerald snickered.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Mai replied. “We tranq them with a mild knock-out gas, which has few, if any, side effects. That takes the women out of the equation. We secure the weapons room and move on the men on the main level. Again, I found most of them asleep in their rooms. In all, we’ll need three teams. Two for assault, one to extract the children. We’ll likely catch Caleb with his trousers down—literally.”

  “Look what happened the last time we tried that,” Fitzgerald said. “If this is all you’ve got—”

  “The ATF went in daylight, to the front door, and someone had told the Eternal Lighters they were coming. When we do this,” Mai said, “you tell no one except need-to-know people here. Not the local police and certainly not the Bell County Sheriff. I remind you he attends services at Calvary Locus.”

  “We have regulations requiring coordination with local law enforcement,” Fitzgerald said.

  Damn, the man could be a stickler for rules when he wanted. “Mr. Bukharin and I are not encumbered by that requirement. We could use U.N. teams, but I don’t think the political ramifications would allow it.”

  “What kind of U.N. teams?” someone asked. “Like peacekeepers?”

  If anything, the U.N. Special Forces were more secret than The Directorate, so why not?

  “Yes, of course,” Mai said.

  “Basically, you’ve got shit, then,” Fitzgerald said.

  “I feel certain a sufficient number of FBI and ATF agents and U.S. marshals would volunteer,” Mai said to him.

  “The three teams… What are they again?” asked another agent.

  “A team to neutralize the women and secure the weapons room. A team to neutralize the men. A team to extract the children. The team to extract the children should be all women.”

  “Why?” Fitzgerald said, almost a snort.

  “Children respond better to women in a crisis, and women law enforcement officers are more likely to consider a child’s survival in a firefight.”

  “Says who?” one agent asked.

  “A great deal of research,” Mai replied. “Would you like a recitation?”

  “Uh, no, but for the kids to know they’re women, they’d have to go in without Kevlar helmets,” someone said.

  “A risk I’m willing to take,” Mai replied, “and I’m sure the other women would, too, in order to get the children out safely.”

  “You said the children were in the heart of the main floor,” Fitzgerald said.

  “Yes.”

  “Where the heaviest concentration of personnel and firepower would be.”

  “I got within twenty feet of the bunker without being noticed,” Mai said, “but that’s why we have two teams on that level, one to engage the men with non-lethals or deadly force—but only if necessary—the other to extract the children.”

  “But the female team might have to engage the armed men,” came a comment from the group of agents.

  Mai turned on him. “Surely you’re not questioning the ability of your fellow agents because of gender?”

  The agent had the sense to shake his head.

  “I think you’re living in a fantasy world,” Fitzgerald said. “Knock-out gas and non-lethals. Sounds like something from a James Bond movie.”

  “Hardly,” Alexei spoke up for the first time. “I can have the tech here in four hours. The learning curve is quick.”

  “Go up against assault rifles probably altered to auto-fire with what? A dart gun?” Fitzgerald said, the smirk replacing the scowl.

  “We have used them with effect before,” Alexei said.

  “Where and when?”

  “Need-to-know.”

  “Then, sorry, I can’t authorize it.”

  “Hollis, it’s a matter of clearance level, that’s all,” Mai said. “Is all this push-back some macho display for my benefit?” She caught Alexei’s head-shake and opted to ignore it.

  “I’ve had about enough from you,” Fitzgerald said, “and I’m Special Agent Fitzgerald to you.”

  “Hollis, the plan has to be hashed out thoroughly yet. Don’t dismiss it out of hand. You have an opportunity to conclude this situation with a decreased chance of violence. Why aren’t you interested in that?”

  His eyes narrowed at her before he addressed the FBI agents in the trailer. “Gentlemen, I’d like to have the rest of this discussion with our…observers in private. You are dismissed.” The FBI agents exchanged glances, but their training won out. They filed from the trailer and closed the door behind them.

  Mai didn’t wait for Fitzgerald to speak. “I assume you’ve sent them away because you don’t want them to hear about the corpse I found.”

  But for a slight hesitation, he almost hid his lie. “What corpse?”

  “The body I came upon on my way back from Calvary Locus this morning.”

  “More like some dead animal you stumbled over blundering about in the dark.”

  “I know the difference between a dead man and a dead animal, Fitzgerald. I know what I saw.”

  �
�So? One of the PELs tried to sneak out, and Caleb had him shot in the back.”

  Alexei smiled for the first time in a day.

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about it?” Mai said.

  “I don’t.”

  “I said he was dead, not how he died. He was shot in the back, yes, but his back was to the FBI sniper nest.”

  Fitzgerald stepped closer to her. “What exactly are you implying?”

  “I’m stating the obvious. I believe your snipers decided to creep up on the compound a few days ago. They encountered someone trying to get into the compound, but they had to make certain no one knew they were on the move. Standard sniper rule: leave no witnesses.”

  Fitzgerald laughed. “And how would you know that?”

  “Because I trained her to be a sniper,” Alexei said.

  “It was a bad shot, though,” Mai said. “He lived, so someone shot him again. He was still alive, probably trying to crawl toward Calvary Locus. A sniper in a Ghillie suit walked up to him and shot him in the head. Their guns are silenced, so the media, the PELs, no one’s the wiser.”

  “Except, apparently, for you.”

  “I know how to read a kill. Did you give the order?”

  “The order for what?”

  “To shoot a wounded man as if he were an animal. It’s easy for you, isn’t it? You don’t consider the people in Calvary Locus to be human, to be worthy of your protection. It’s easy to order them to die rather than do what’s right, isn’t it?”

  He took another step toward her. “I’ve had it. I resent your interference and your attitude. This isn’t some third-world country. Those cop-killers hiding over there in a so-called church aren’t snotty-nosed, starving nigger kids. This is the United States of America, and those criminals are enemies of the nation I’m sworn to protect. They killed four cops, but that doesn’t stop you from making baseless accusations or from demanding not one, not two, but three assault teams you think you’re going to lead and undermine my authority.”

  “Because it’s all about you.”