Private First Class Richard Peters drove over to the hangar to ‘fetch the dignitary, keep his mouth shut, and be polite.’ Waiting for the plane to come off of the runway, he got out, walked over to the airmen assigned to help the crew of the incoming plane and struck up a conversation.
“You have any idea who these people are?” He was pretty curious. He wasn’t told he couldn't ask others.
The airman was obviously chewing some tobacco, and spit to the side before responding in a slow and deep voice, “Naw, ain’t got a clue. But it must be some high muckety-muck otherwise they’d be in Hangar Two. They usually only open number one here for the best and the brightest asses to kiss that we got.”
As if to punctuate his opinions of high brass, he spit again.
The plane was getting closer. It looked like a really nice Gulfstream, but something seemed wrong to Richard’s eyes. He heard a grunt from the fellow.
“Well,” he said, as if to himself, “That seems a little diffr’ent.”
He clammed up. Richard just had to know. “What seems different?”
“Look at those engines in the back,” he jerked his chin towards the plane which was taking forever now that it was on the ground. “Those aren’t standard engines for a civilian plane. Those’re military jets on there. I wonder how fast that plane can go? I’d bet my Friday night poker stash somebody with some bars and stars had to approve that.”
With that, he walked over to make sure the pilot could see exactly where he wanted him to park.
Richard assumed parade rest and waited for the plane to stop and the door to open.
Only one guy got off the plane and came down the stairs. He was in a very nice business suit, but he was definitely not typical brass.
Hell, he wasn’t even a spook. You could tell those guys when they walked, it was like they were always ready to pounce.
Richard would guess he was just someone with apparently really important business.
OK, nothing to do but go introduce himself and take him over to the General’s office.
General Reynolds recognized the look in Tom’s eyes. “You remember something, Tom?”
“Yeah, or rather, I remember a story I was told. I wasn’t there myself. You say this was down on Five and from some sort of vault?”
Lance agreed. “Yes. The vault looks like it could have come from a bank, no one is opening it without serious tools. But for some reason it opened by itself with a screech we couldn’t ignore.”
Tom pursed his lips and tried to sit back a little in the chair. At his age, the leather seats were too damn uncomfortable. Give him a firm chair to sit on if he wasn’t watching TV.
“All right, here’s what I remember. I heard the story a couple of months after the Japanese surrendered and things were getting shut down all over the country. We had a few new people come onto the base, which wasn’t weird, except all of these new guys were going to croak within the next couple of months.”
Lance interrupted, “How many is a few?”
“Well, if I remember, three. They weren’t all from the same service or anything and they arrived on special flights. One even came in on one of them huge multi-props. Special drop-off just for him. That got a lot of attention. And then they were all taken over to the infirmary and a doc checked them. One of the nurses loved to gossip, and we heard the gossip going around. All of them were special forces, or had seen a lot of combat.
“None of them knew why they got reassigned here, just that they were going to be interviewed for a position. None of us could figure out why since they all were going to die soon, so rumor was it was a scientific type experiment, you know? Something that you’re willing to do because, well, you’re going to die anyway.
“They were here a few days, and gossip kind of died down and I forgot about it. About two weeks later I ran into one of the techs from the lower levels and he asked if I had heard the news about the recruits. I hadn't, so he told me that an interview happened down on Level Five behind a closed and locked door. They said that three guys went into the vault, the door shut and about half an hour later it opened again and only one guy comes out. The other two weren’t inside and the guy who was left couldn’t remember one thing that went on in the room.
“Last I heard, he was taken up to the infirmary, and they tried to see if they could figure out how two guys could just disappear from a completely closed and sealed room with ten people outside the door. Not only did he never remember, he died about a week after I was told the story.”
“They checked the room for other exits? Never mind, of course they did.”
Lance was sure the migraine was starting to come back. His phone beeped.
“General, you have a visitor who’s just arrived, I’m told you’re expecting him?” Damn, he thought, I forgot to let Patricia know.
“Yes. Give me a second to finish with Tom and send him in when Tom leaves.” He punched the button off.
“So, you think that somehow they just disappeared down some science experiment?”
“I don’t know. The only thing we got from the last guy is that he seemed to be really, really interested in his religion after that incident. I always thought it was because he was about to die, it seemed appropriate. But I talked with one of the M.P.s who took him after the door opened up and he said that the only thing the guy said was, over and over, ‘I don’t have enough faith, I don’t have enough faith’ and seemed scared shitless like he had just met the devil.”
Lance thought this through for a minute. “So who interviewed him? You said only the three went inside, right?”
“That’s right. Or at least that was what I was told. We had a special plane arrive and some sort of civilian came in at the last minute, but I understand that he didn’t do the interview. When it was over, he asked the commander to write a letter, probably the one you have there, and close the door. Once it was locked, they couldn’t open it again. We just forgot about it after a few months, so many of us were working on shutting down parts of the base.”
They talked a little while longer, but nothing relevant to the mystery or the request came up again. Lance finished by asking Tom a few personal questions and then asked Kevin to take Tom back to his home.
As the Sergeant and Tom left, Patricia came in and introduced him to the civilian who had just arrived from the East Coast.
Just like that spook Frank said he would.
There was a guard stationed at the foot of the stairs to the airplane. It was Michael’s airplane.
Carl was unaware, but Michael was with him the whole trip, he had merely stayed in his insolvent form.
Carl had actually had very little opportunity to know just everything Michael could do, in fact, in Carl’s fifteen years working he had only worked with Michael for about two. Michael had been in hibernation for most of the rest.
Bill had hired Carl by Michael’s direction after the last Information Specialist position came open. They needed someone who could keep up with all the new computer and Internet changes happening without it becoming such a stressful situation. Their last I.S. just couldn’t keep up.
Michael had Bill install incredibly strong subconscious directions to the previous ‘eyes and ears’ and gave him a passable cover story before letting him retire, very, very wealthy.
He might not ever be able to talk about his past, but he was able to take his skills and money to create whatever future he wanted.
Bethany Anne was officially annoyed. Again.
She had time on her hands and nothing to do. When you have a good idea that your life has a hard stop, you really don’t like to waste any of it.
While she could visit a few areas on the base, and probably talk her way into a few more if she confirmed her relationship with her father, she didn’t play that way.
Her father was a strong man—physically, mentally and emotionally. But when it came to being a father to a girl, he never figured it out and without her mother, Bethany Anne became the little
hard-ass one might expect.
If her dad showed his appreciation when she aced studies, she aced studies. The same when she took up martial arts.
There was one particular tournament where she knew she wouldn’t take first place, her final opponent was just a freak of nature and too massive for any of the moves she knew to overwhelm him. Any of the obvious ways to take him down would cause too much bodily harm, and he would go to the hospital.
Besides, all of those moves were strictly banned from the tournament.
It didn’t mean that the players didn’t try their hardest every other way, but when your opponent has sixty pounds of muscle on you and is pretty damn fast for his size it gets very frustrating.
Bethany Anne was careful to stay out of his range. She was considering how to attack when he started taunting her, trying to get her to strike in anger.
He was pretty successful at getting to her. While she had been taught not to let an opponent’s teasing bother her, she was still pretty hot under the collar when she noticed her dad’s eyes. He had been paying attention and apparently understood what her opponent was saying.
Her father realized that in a back alley fight, her opponent wouldn’t have walked away from his daughter.
That didn’t sit well with him, she could tell.
When the freak of nature made a comment about her being ‘a little girl that should just go home,’ it pissed them both off and her dad gave her a little sign with his fingers that told her to end it.
She didn’t go home with a trophy that night. She had been disqualified. But that didn’t stop her father from treating her like the new world champion when she walked off the floor and left her opponent with an ice bag between his legs, a black eye, cut lip and a splitting headache.
Two others had to help her opponent to walk when he wasn’t able to stand up on his own. She was banned from the next two tournaments for her rule infractions.
He might not understand how to connect with his daughter at an emotional level, but she knew he was proud of her and would have her back if she ever needed it.
Being a bit prideful, she didn’t want to ask.
So, she decided to go through a few calming exercises before meeting with her father for the first time in over a year.
She didn’t know why she was here, but it was important and she would do what was needed to be prepared as best as she could.
5
Military Base, Colorado Mountains
Carl was introduced to the General and asked to sit in the same leather chair Tom had just been sitting in.
This was Carl’s first meeting with General Reynolds, but he had read the dossier that Frank had provided, and a few more things he had found that Frank had either failed to locate, or had chosen not to.
It didn’t matter to Carl, the extra information didn’t materially affect his understanding of the General, so Carl placed it in the ‘overlooked’ category.
While Frank had a lot of information both from inside the government’s databases and outside, he still didn’t have as much available as Carl had access to and couldn’t give General Reynolds a complete overview.
General Reynolds started the conversation. “I understand I’m to get information about what’s going on from you, so why don’t you give me everything from the top?”
Carl sighed inwardly. He knew Frank had already talked to the General, in fact he listened in from the plane. He had hoped that the General would spare him the overview and allow Carl to fill in the blanks.
It wasn’t going to happen that easily.
“General, while I don’t have a uniform, I can assure you that I work closely with the U.S. government and I know you’ve been updated to some degree already. Not only to permit me to land and speak with you so urgently, but also given some information about what’s going on.”
“What I know,” the General exclaimed, “is a short history lesson from a spook in Washington, a ninety-year-old man I had to drag from his house, and a brief mysterious letter attached to a vault that hasn’t seen the light of day in seventy years.” He stopped for a moment, looking like he was lost in thought and continued, “Since it was underground on Level Five, it’s a complete mystery. So why don’t you try to help me understand why this is such a significant event and how you pulled enough strings to land at this base and interrupt our stated mission?”
While Carl was often in the background and rarely in front of others, he wasn’t a mouse. Carl had seen enough action, deaths and close calls that being stonewalled and pushed by a gruff General wasn’t going to stress him. Besides, when you worked for the patriarch, General Lance Reynolds’ fear factor was a pretty distant second.
“General, I can tell you more than you want to know. I have knowledge that Frank doesn’t have and frankly I’m not in your chain of command. While I respect your rank, your role, and your authority, I don’t have to worry about it. I know, for example, that there are things that go bump in the night that scare our best warriors. I work with some of them, General. There are times when our men uncover stuff under rocks, in caves and occasionally in cities both here and abroad that would get you committed if you talked about them.
“When our men and women find out about these things, they go up the chain and it doesn’t take long for Frank to find out about it. He pulls them back and then makes a phone call. That phone call comes to me, General. When your most hardened operatives need help, I am on the President’s direct speed dial. If you need me to, I can pull out my phone and let you speak to the President because it goes both ways.”
Carl stopped and the General interjected, “You’re telling me you’re important enough for the President to contact directly? What makes your family important enough for that?”
“General,” Carl replied, “It isn’t my family and I’m not personally important enough. I’m just one of the important aides, so to speak. Like you, I answer to a higher authority, and he is someone who has the respect of the President, and that allows me to call should I need to. It isn’t something that I take advantage of, I assure you.”
Carl felt a coolness in the back of his mind, a presence that had been absent since he left New York.
“So, who is this authority and what does he want with this base?”
“Sir, we were recently on a mission in Virginia for one of the agencies. Our agent was inside a warehouse tracking three others when they blew themselves up, taking our agent and a full city block along for the ride. It took over a day and a half to contain the fire. While I do not have the authority to demand you never speak about this, I can tell you that if it is found out that you have, I suspect you’ll have signed your own death certificate. Is this understood?”
“No. Why should any of this be top secret?”
“The families are secretive. Very secretive. They’ve been that way for centuries. The family I work for is not the only one, and let’s say that similar to our geo-political instability and enemies, the families have been at each others’ throats for centuries. It’s been relatively quiet for the last seventy years or so because of what went down in Japan. When our agent died, we had enough information for our patriarch to realize that the family bombed in Japan has apparently re-surfaced, or at least the knowledge of what they were experimenting on in Japan has been found again.”
“So, you aren’t a family member?” The General was trying to figure out how this guy fit into the equation.
“No, I’m what they would refer to as a liaison. Sometimes with the government, sometimes with the grocery boy. On assignments I have eyes and ears, responsibility and direct connections to those in the government that are privy to the task. I work with the Family Agent, or Agents, and handle communications and information as needed. That’s why I am here right now, to fill you in on this assignment and make sure that it goes as smoothly as possible.”
“So, what happens next and what’s your role in it?”
“Sir, you should expect the arrival of a candidate for
an interview which will happen down on Five. If this candidate passes the interview and accepts the assignment, the duty is permanent and they will be listed as deceased. Their information will forever be locked away, if not erased.”
“That black?” In spite of himself, the General was turning from highly annoyed to slightly suspicious and a bit relieved. It didn’t seem like he had to do much more than host special VIP Interviews in an old vault and keep it quiet.
“Very much, that black, General. This agent will officially die, and will not interact with their old life again. What they become and who they join doesn’t exist, so they can’t either.”
The General took another cigar out of its wrapper and stuck it in his mouth, unlit. “What happens if they fail the interview?”
“They won’t remember it. They come out of the vault and will be checked out medically. Depending on their physical condition, they can either stay or be placed back in active rotation.”
The General reached for the envelope on his desk and lifted it up for Carl to see. “What about the absolution of the Debt of Honor?”
“Sir, you write one yourself and place your new suggestion on the inside of the vault and close the door. It can only be opened by someone from the family, and only closed by someone here in the base.”
“What happens if we don’t allow anyone to be interviewed?” While Lance was slowly coming to understand what was needed, he still didn’t like the feeling that he was being forced into a situation set of one option.
“Would that be ‘don’t allow,’ or ‘don’t find anybody?’” Carl knew which question the General really asked, but he knew who the selected agent was, and he needed the General to ask the right question and to not only know, but to believe what the options were for his people.
“I would like the answer to both, actually.”
“Well, if there aren’t any that fit the criteria, and the selection is done by the agency whose representative you spoke with earlier, and the family agrees, then there is no dishonor and the base commander writes his letter and closes the vault.”
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set One: Books 1-7, Death Becomes Her, Queen Bitch, Love Lost, Bite This, Never Forsaken, Under My Heel, Kneel or Die (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets) Page 4