“Not some militia?”
“That well organized?” Cal said. She stood and placed her hands on her hips. “Captain, believe me when I say I know these people. That ain’t no militia. It’s a well-prepared army.”
Richmond paced in front of the whiteboards, hands clasped behind his back. “I can’t go against presidential orders. I swore oaths. Oaths that I believe with every fiber of my being. Whatever my own personal political or religious beliefs, I swore to obey the commander in chief. Right now, that is Thomas Ward.”
“Captain, no one is asking that of you. But we need to get back home. We have a chance to stop this. Stop it for good. I have to take that chance.”
“I had other orders as well, Connors.” Richmond brought up another file.
Ryan stared at the text for some time. It was a list of fifteen names. Himself, Cal and all The Nameless were on there. So was Lisa. He recognized several others. Men and women who served America. Retired from active duty, but now serving in black ops teams or the CIA. Some were private contractors. Kidnap resolution and rescue.
“Ward calls it his persons-of-interest list. He also sent another file. Dossiers on all of you. You, Ryan Connors, are an enigma. Born in New Zealand, but you serve the United States. That should put up red flags.”
Booth bolted up, knocking his chair over. “Ryan defends America with as much passion as all of us.”
“My husband may have been born in New Zealand, but he fights for democracy. For twenty years we have. He’s no traitor. No double agent. We’re all here for the same reason,” Cal said.
Sofia, Allie, Keiko and Ebony remained silent. There was no need to say anything else. Sam wagged his tail and sniffed at something on the deck.
Richmond turned to face them again. Ryan glanced over his shoulder at the door, half expecting marines to enter and escort them to the brig. But the door remained closed. The passageway beyond, silent.
“I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt, out of respect for Munroe and on the evidence of the recordings. As feeble as it is. I could have one of the flyboys take you somewhere. Anchorage or Juneau. From there, you could make your way home. For now, you’ll be confined to quarters until I figure out what to do with you. Whether to hand you over or not.”
Ryan frowned. “We’re not the enemy, Captain. We’re trying to stop this evil from spreading. Stop OPIS from completing their plans. We can’t save the world, but we can damn well save the United States.”
“You sound sincere, but I need more than some flimsy recording.” Richmond’s gaze was firm, his eyes staring straight at Ryan, as if challenging them to ignore his authority.
Klaxons blared out. The Nameless stood, looking at each other, as the door banged open.
“Sir, missiles launched. We’re being attacked,” a sailor shouted. Two armed MAs stood behind him.
Richmond cursed. He pointed at the Masters-at-Arms and then at The Nameless. “Escort them to the officers’ wardroom, and don’t let them out of your sight.” He stormed off without looking back.
Three
Portland, Oregon
“I can’t stop the bleeding!” Zanzi shouted. She pushed her hands over the blood pumping from Staff Sergeant Joe Reid’s side.
Through ragged breaths, he said, “I stumbled around after the Black Skulls shot me.” He winced. “I knew what direction the safe house was.”
Zanzi was grateful for the blind bit of luck when Lisa had spotted him in the reflection of a shop window, crouching behind a car.
“Keep pressure on it,” Lisa said. “We’re nearly at the safe house. Faster, Milo.”
Vehicles were scattered across the roads. No one had bothered, or perhaps were too afraid, to venture outside to clear the streets. Rabids weren’t the only thing to be worried about in this new world. Gangs, like the Outcast Mongrels, prowled, looking for victims. Or Black Skulls would take you to the camps. Wisely, people had worked out that it was better to stay hidden.
The SUV’s tires screeched and rumbled over a pothole, bumping Zanzi’s hands off the wound. Reid’s eyes were droopy, flicking open every few seconds. He was fighting. Fighting with everything he had. For the first time, Zanzi wished someone had the nanites in their system. Reid needed them to heal; she didn’t think he would make it otherwise. Not without expert medical treatment.
The tires screeched once more as the vehicle skidded to a stop. Lisa, Milo and Zanzi hauled the injured soldier inside the house and laid him on the kitchen floor.
“Bring in the others,” Lisa said, glaring at Milo. She disappeared, returning moments later with a fully stocked medical kit. Lisa and Zanzi set to work cutting away Reid’s uniform and cleaning the wound.
“Give him a jab of morphine,” Zanzi said. She nestled a headlamp on her forehead and dug into the wound, searching for the fragmented bullet. The tiny shards pinged as they fell into the metal bowl. For ten minutes she worked, digging and probing. Blood pooled in the wound, making it difficult to see.
Zanzi checked Reid’s pulse. It was weak. Weaker than any she had felt before. “He’s fading. He’s lost too much blood, and I can’t even begin to sew him up.” Zanzi was at a loss.
Lisa shook her head. “Sorry. There’s nothing we can do. Not without a doctor.”
“He needs a transfusion,” Milo said, carrying the unconscious Tilly. Then turned and brought Jacqui in over his shoulder. He gently laid each of them on the sofa before crouching next to Reid. “Better yet, he needs my nanites.” He rolled up his sleeve and tapped his vein.
“What blood type are you?” Zanzi said.
“O negative.”
“That’ll work.”
“I don’t think Reid would consent to that,” Lisa said.
“He’s going to die if he doesn’t,” Milo said.
“We can’t authorize that. No one has that right.”
As if to confirm Milo’s words, Reid convulsed, blood bubbles popping on his lips.
“Director,” Milo said.
“No.”
“He’s going to die.”
“I can’t. It’s not right. Zanzi, get the rest of that bullet out of him.”
Zanzi worked furiously, finding a fragment and dropping it into the waiting dish. With every heartbeat, more blood pumped. She wasn’t a trauma nurse, but she had a vague idea of where arteries were, and she definitely didn’t have the skills to stitch them up.
“I hate to agree with Milo, but he’s right,” Zanzi said. “The bullet has hit an artery. I can’t stop the bleeding.”
Lisa groaned and banged her palm against the armrest of the couch. Blood soaked the material. Both she and Zanzi were stained with Reid’s plasma. “Fine. For the record, I vehemently disagree.”
It didn’t take long to set up the transfusion, and then Milo’s blood began pumping into Reid’s body. Minutes later, the change was noticeable. His color returned. His breathing steadied.
Zanzi made sure she had taken out every piece of the bullet that she could find. She watched in fascination as, first, the bleeding stopped. Then the wound slowly closed and healed, stitching itself together. Despite what she thought of OPIS, the nanites they had invented were an exceptional piece of technology. She clenched a fist. Why make something that would benefit humanity, only to use it to destroy?
Reid slept peacefully. They had given him another couple of shots of morphine for the pain and to help him sleep.
“That was close,” Lisa said. “Nice work.”
“If you hadn’t seen him, I doubt he would’ve made it.”
Lisa turned to Milo. “For what it’s worth, thank you. I don’t understand your motivations, but thanks.”
Zanzi checked Reid’s breathing once more and headed to the bathroom. She stood under the warm water of the shower and washed away the grime and dirt of the last few days, kneading out her tired muscles. She changed into a fresh set of clothes and stared into the mirror as she combed the knots and tangles from her brown hair. How had it come to th
is? History and events, leading up to this moment. An organization like OPIS, that had the scientific knowledge and technology to help the world. Instead, they had chosen a different path. Zanzi flinched as the comb stuck in a knot. Like her father’s, her hair had a natural curl and she had to spend a lot of time getting it straight.
We always want what we don’t have.
Pushing aside her thoughts, she returned to the living room. Tilly and Jacqui had regained consciousness and were sitting up, rubbing the spots where the Black Skulls had tasered them.
Zanzi hugged Tilly. “How are you feeling?”
“Ugh.”
“Just ugh?”
Tilly grinned and brushed some of her bushy hair from her face. “One time in The Eyrie, Imogen and I snuck out at night and drank wine. The next day I had a headache. That’s what I feel like now.”
Zanzi dug around in the medical kit and fished out some aspirin. “Take a couple of these and drink plenty of water. It’ll pass.” She admired the young woman. Tilly had shown a resilience to survive and had bounced back stronger than a lot of people she had known over the years.
Lisa returned from the kitchen and passed around water and protein bars. “Bathroom is through there, Jacqui, Tilly. Wash up. We’ll rest here for a few hours. I don’t want to stay too long, though. We need to keep moving.” The director stopped in front of Milo. “Be honest with me. Will they come looking for us?”
“Yes. Offenheim will want Zanzi back. The others, I doubt he even knows they exist. You, Director Omstead, are an annoyance. A danger to his plans. Sooner or later, he’ll give the order to take you out.”
“Strange how he let me live the first time we tangled.”
“To witness the end.” Milo rolled down his shirt sleeve. The wound from the blood transfer needle had healed over. His arm carried similar geometric tattoos to the one on his forehead. “I’ve known Offenheim forty-odd years. Dined with him. Vacationed. Hunted and fished. He likes to play games with people. It amuses him.”
“That’s what you meant when you said Lisa was going to wish she hadn’t,” Zanzi said.
“Yes. My instructions were to bring you and Harriet to The Eyrie, so you could see everything unfold.”
“And for me to be left in the thick of it, knowing that LK3 – or anyone else, for that matter – had failed to stop OPIS,” Lisa muttered. She sounded deflated. “I’ve worked in the intelligence sector for a long time. Stopped a lot of evil from happening. Talked to many agents. Some, like you, switched sides. It always made me curious as to why. Why help us now?”
Milo nodded. “A fair question. One I’ve asked myself a lot over the last few days. I owe my life to Offenheim. If he hadn’t offered me a chance, I would’ve rotted in an East German prison. He gave me a new life, and I wanted to repay him. I believed in the OPIS vision wholeheartedly, but then doubts crept in. I thought about someone I loved dearly. Someone who suffered because of me. And I started to see things differently.”
Zanzi sat down at the table and opened an MRE. Chicken noodle. She had so many questions she wanted to ask Milo. She wanted to get inside his head. Find out why he had participated in a plot to commit mass genocide on a scale the world had never seen before and, she doubted, would ever see again. What had driven them to murder so many?
She stared at Milo, waiting until he met her gaze. “Why does Offenheim want me so badly?”
“You’re his edge over Cal. If he has you, your mother won’t risk coming after him. It’ll corrupt both your parents’ judgment. If he has you, he has confidence that everything will be completed as planned,” Milo said.
“So what’s next?” asked Lisa.
“Wave two reset. Whatever you did, it stopped it for North America.”
“When’s the reset happening?”
“I’m not completely sure. At least two weeks. It’ll take OPIS that long to run system checks. Find out what happened. Recalibrate the satellites, etcetera.”
“Can you find out?” Lisa said.
Milo smirked in answer.
Lisa shot Zanzi a fleeting look. Everything was in that glance. Don’t say anything. Maybe Milo knew what her parents and The Nameless had done. If he did, he wasn’t letting on.
“What then? What’s the endgame?” Lisa said.
“Three waves in total. The divisions sweep through the cities and larger towns, cleaning up. The unwanted cities are bombed. OPIS move in and rebuild in locations chosen years ago.” Milo turned and stared out the window, as if he had seen something that fascinated him.
“Rebuild where?” Lisa asked.
“Denver is to be the capital in America. San Diego the main port for the West Coast. Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma the food basket. The Eastern Seaboard will have Boston, Newport News and Miami. Other states that have natural resources will be settled. Anything else, left to nature.”
Zanzi nodded along. It made sense. Denver was central, high in the mountains. Easy to defend. Air Force bases nearby. San Diego had Naval bases leading to the vast Pacific Ocean. “What about the rest of the world?”
“I’m not privy to the finer details, but I know each of the four families has a sector that is their responsibility. Planned from the beginning. Each sector provides resources to the others. Sharing. No one holding the other to ransom.”
“Such as?” Lisa said.
“Well, okay. Take, for example, Ibrox. Their sector contains Africa and the oil-rich countries. Easy to stop production and shipping. Agreements had to be made. Sectors were drawn up so resources were equally shared. OPIS has a common goal: rebuild a world free of war. Free of famine, disease and pollution. You guys are intelligent; you saw where we were heading. This is their solution.”
Zanzi grunted and glared at Milo.
He frowned at her, his tattoo creasing. “I believed in the cause. But never in what Offenheim wanted to do afterward. His master plan is to take out the other founders. Create his utopia and rule supreme. I’m ashamed to say I wanted that too. Even helped him. Then he executed Amelia in such a cruel manner…it reminded me of my sister’s death a long time ago.” Milo turned and stared out the window once more.
“Is that why you’re helping us?” Lisa asked.
“Yes. I guess my conscience got the better of me. It opened my eyes to what was happening. I woke up, I suppose. That’s when I sought out the faction and decided to help you.”
Lisa stood and cleared away their meal. “We should get some rest. Zanzi, take first watch. Two-hour shifts.”
“On it,” Zanzi said. She grabbed the M4 from the table and took up position in the bay window overlooking the street.
“I better get back to the camp before questions are asked. I’ll do my best to focus the search elsewhere. Try to stay out of trouble,” Milo said.
“For what it’s worth, thank you,” Lisa said.
She and Milo stared at each other for a long moment. Milo grunted, left the house and drove away. The street returned to silence, apart from the wildlife. Birds squawked their birdsong, and in the distance, a dog barked. There were more birds like finches, thrushes and robins. More mosquitoes, wasps and bees buzzing around now. It was as if Mother Nature was already taking over, reasserting herself.
“Stay sharp,” Lisa said. “I’m going to find us another vehicle in the street behind here. I don’t trust Milo yet, so I’m moving us to another safe house. Avondale will meet us there.”
Zanzi said nothing. Instead, she gave Lisa the thumbs-up and returned to her watch.
Four
Sierra Nevada Mountains, California
The mountain breeze was cool as it brushed over his skin. Victor Offenheim sat in his private pagoda, taking in the scenery. Nothing, apart from eagles, moved this high up in the mountains, but down in the valleys below – if one took the time to look, really look – one could see nature. Bears loping across the meadows. Hares jumping about. Sometimes he saw cougars and bobcats. Fewer nowadays, but he estimated they would repopulate the area in the
coming years. As often happened when he was in the pagoda, his thoughts strayed to his parents, what they had started, and what he was tasked with finishing: rebuild the world.
He sighed, letting out a long breath to calm his mind. Billions had died at his command. He struggled with the enormity of it. What drove a person to commit such heinous acts? They thought they were doing it for good, Victor reasoned, but where those before him had been fueled by hate and a lust for power, he was not. He wanted to save humanity. To save humanity from destroying the planet. Sure, it was happening slowly, but it was happening. Polar ice caps were melting at an alarming rate. Thousands of animal species were becoming extinct, and over all that, humans continued to breed and populate the world to the point where it was unsustainable.
The crusades had killed thousands of Muslims and Christians in the names of God and Allah. The Nazis had murdered millions of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally disabled, all because they had believed they were the pure race, that the world needed cleansing. Pol Pot had killed millions of Cambodians, thinking they were ethnically inferior. In Rwanda, the Hutu had massacred the Tutsi in a brutal civil war that left a million dead. All throughout history, it was the same. English killing Scots. Settlers killing natives. Conquistadores wiping out the Aztec and Inca civilizations. Always the same. Over and over.
To him, OPIS’s vision was the only way. Reset. Start again. Encourage science and peace. Change the way people thought. Was it possible? Humanity was violent by nature. It wasn’t going to be easy. There were going to be problems.
He sighed again and uncurled his legs. It was time for the meeting.
Offenheim made his way off the roof and back inside. Two armed guards immediately flanked him and followed him down to the boardroom. Offenheim had called in his leaders. The lieutenants. He had to give them their orders in person. He wanted no other mistakes. The next phase was vital.
All heads turned as he entered the room and took his seat at the table. The room, like all the others in the executive suites of The Eyrie, was lavishly furnished. Thick carpet, leather chairs, French wallpaper, and original artworks hanging on the walls: Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, Vermeer, and Degas. Behind Offenheim’s chair was his pride and joy: an 1893 version of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’, stolen from the National Gallery of Oslo in 1994. Offenheim smiled at the painting. It always brought him joy. The Norwegians thought they had the original back, but theirs was a clever fake. His was the original.
Masks of Ash Page 4