Monsters

by Daniel Greenwell

  “Why?”

  “He wasn’t going to talk, he was afraid of me because I was acting, well am a little crazy. These guys, they aren’t seasoned operatives but they know how you operate, they don’t know how I operate.”

  Givens looked around the room as she saw the other people at the door, waiting for the two of them to finish.

  “We can’t do that here, not now. Without the Commander in the building, High Command is going to comb through every second of footage without Carpenter in charge.”

  “We can do it across the street at the coliseum,” Mal said, “No cameras and no one there but me.”

  Givens pointed her finger up in the air to the young officer at the door.

  “Fine, though I have to ask you one thing, you picked me because you didn’t want to repeat the mistakes from the past yet, here you are repeating your mistakes. Where is the line here?”

  “You’re right,” Mal stated as Givens looked back at him with a shocked expression, “I am about to do something that generations before us made a mistake using but, if we don’t win here. We are talking about mass genocide and the extinction of some people. People who are just trying to live, this isn’t some bearded asshole who was able to get a single terrorist attack on American soil. If we lose, millions of people are going to die. The line is wherever you need to draw it.”

  Mal stepped away as Givens stood there, thinking on what she would do. He didn’t like how he had placed all of this weight on her shoulders, not repeating her elder’s mistakes.

  “Five minutes, back door?” She asked.

  “You got it.”

  Mal leaves the courtroom, opening a door and waving people in.

  “What was that about?” Carter asked as he left the room.

  Dianna Carter was somehow beautiful even after spending the best part of a decade underneath the ground in a bunker for the most part. Her olive skin from her mother’s Indian heritage shown through the glass windows of the Mount Vernon Courthouse , now BANS regional headquarters. She was wearing Marine pattern pants and short sleeve t-shirt.

  “I feel like I should have been involved in that conversation, especially since I know it’s about the prisoner down stairs and how you are about to,” The two were walking down the stairs as she made a motion of choking.

  Mal turned on that comment. No one around them was paying attention to their conversation but it was still surprising.

  “Malcolm, I am coming with you,” she said, “I won’t stop you but I feel like an intelligence officer could be of some value and like you: what are they going to do to me?”

  Hopefully BANS command is a bit more easy to deal with than the Sons. Now that Carter is in the open, I am positive they won’t take long to get here, Mal thought.

  “Aye-Aye Ma’am,” Mal faux saluted as she followed him down the stairs.

  The walk was quiet until they got outside and she breathed in a long deep breath of outdoors air.

  “Say what you want about Southern Indiana but that smell in the morning, it’s amazing.” Carter said taking a deep breath, smelling the morning air.

  “It sure is, Ma’am.” Mal agreed staring out at the sunrise.

  “Stow the Ma’am shit, Malcolm. Back to our common experience in Sangin. Tell me, was Strait as big of a piece of shit in the Navy, as she made him out to be?”

  “Bigger,” Mal said.

  She chuckled as they crossed the street to the old Colosseum, the former home of Professional wrestling in Posey county and other shows. They looked down the street to the bank and then Mal saw she was staring at the wall.

  “How would you take that thing down? Reinforced steel on the inside so it’s not going to be easy to take down. More likely than anything they would have to find something that could combine actual force with explosive mass.”

  She looked around at the parking lot filled with armor of different types.

  “I am surprised there’s no Kraken’s or other classes of armor here. I didn’t see any railgun tech there.”

  “Yeah, there’s not much of those things anymore because of how temperamental they were. Also, I don’t know of anywhere making Railgun ammo anymore. We can make Abrams ammo in a garage with a bit of ingenuity.”

  She moved her head side-to-side as if she was taking in his comment. Mal opened the door to the Colosseum and told the people inside it was closed for the rest of the day.

  “So, everyone inside the building told me you were the town drunk about a week ago, now you are in charge of the entire region. Tim Carpenter left you in charge so tell me: how did the war hero turn into the town drunk?”

  Mal chuckled from that comment.

  “My son, he’s in charge of this group now,” Mal said, “My wife died while we were on our way here and it honestly, broke me.”

  Carter was the type of leader who understood that listening was the most powerful tool in her bag of tricks.

  For a person who has been underneath the ground in a bunker, she would have been a good person to keep above it. We need leaders like her in this day and age of ever-reaching extremism.

  “Who was this Quinn guy?” She asked.

  “The man who orchestrated everything going on right now,” Mal said, “when I confronted him in Bloomington, he made me angry and I murdered him.”

  She leaned back next to the back door.

  “Why was he trying to make you angry?”

  “I don’t know? He just told me that he murdered my wife on that bridge and I lost it.”

  “So you killing him wasn’t for you, it was for your son.”

  “Who he also claimed to have brainwashed,” Mal said.

  She turned on that comment.

  “Why do you say he claimed to brainwash him?”

  “I don’t believe he or anyone else could make my son do something that deep down he didn’t want to do. These people while having ideas are disgusting, they could be found to be logical with enough prodding. To him this is a means to an end, to stop a future war where the US wipes out itself.”

  “You think that he may have been pointed to it but at this point, he’s making his own choices?”

  “I do.”

  “How are you going to stop him?” She asked.

  Givens opens the door from the outside and she looks to Mal before she sees that Carter is also there.

  “Good evening…who are you?”

  Mal interrupted before she could say she was the leader of the free world.

  “She’s an old friend from the intelligence part of the military,” Mal said.

  Givens passed the hooded man to him.

  “Give me about twenty minutes, give me the keys…”

  “Keys?”

  “Yes, just trust me,” Mal said as she handed over the keys.

  “Just try not to kill him please?” The guard asked.

  “That’s up to him,” Mal said as he closed the door on Givens.

  Mal turned to Carter and had a look on his face of, “Sit down and shut up.”

  This was going to make earlier look mild. The advantage we had earlier was that the man was a soldier and not a spy, he wasn’t going to be able to lie to Mal. Mal’s gut warned him earlier about John’s but it wouldn’t be enough for him to tell the difference between a lie and a truth. Just between hostile intent and just a personal problem.

  Mal sat down the man and then unlocked his handcuffs and ankle cuffs, ripped the hood off.

  “Johns, you remember me?”

  Johns thick neck rotated as he rubbed his wrists and he leaned down until he realized that there was nothing holding him down.

  “Yeah, you’re the dumbass who let me out of my restraints.”

  Johns swung widely at Mal, like trying to hit a golf ball with a wiffle bat, Mal stepped backwards as he lunged past him. Once Mal’s feet came to a stop he shifted his weight to the rear of his feet and “squashed the bug” which transferred all of that kinetic energy up through his feet and into the left hook as it con
nected to John’s jaw. The punch was so strong that it could be hard audibly just by force and not just by the two men grunting.

  “Damn,” Carter muttered under her breath as a tooth landed in front of where she’s sitting.

  Mal re-spun his hips back and threw his right hand into an uppercut. When the punch landed it ripped Johns off the ground and slammed him back onto a wooden table in the middle of the room.

  “You got heavy hands old man,” Johns said.

  “Where’s your boss?” Mal asked as he grabbed Johns by the hair and lifting him up off of the desk.

  “I don’t have a boss,” Johns said, “I have no one in charge of me.”

  Mal reached back and dropped a punch into Johns Rib cage.

  “Tell me the truth Johns,” Mal said, “Pain stops when you tell me the truth.”

  Johns struggled back to his feet.

  “Where’s David?” Mal asked while cracking his knuckles.

  “Ares? He’s probably at the hideout,” Johns said, “a hideout that I don’t know where it is.”

  “Where’s your comrade?” Mal asked with a taunting tone.

  “I will tell you what, if I give you the places he could be at will you let me go?”

  Mal bent over to meet Johns’s eyes.

  “That will be a start and a start alone,” Mal said.

  “Fine! There’s four houses in the area he could be at, they were the safehouses that my family owned before this and we put supplies in.”

  Mal throw a punch that had ill-intent as it hit Johns in the head and he snapped to the floor, unconscious.

  “You have a punch in you that just knocks people out?” Carter asked.

  “I was just going to hit him hard but that works too.”

  Walking back to the rear door and opened it as Givens came in with two other men.

  “We need to look for all the properties locally that he owns,” Mal said, “I want four separate tactical teams ready for deployment. I will lead one, you can lead one and our second in commands will take the other two.”

  “When were you going to tell me that they are planning to come over here through the wall and kill her?” Givens asked.

  “I was about to,” Mal said, “but you need to keep this on a need to know.”

  Givens nodded at that, it was pretty obvious why she needed to keep this secret. With them coming over here by force they could take her out without breaching the wall.

  “Why don’t we just hand her over, if that’s who they want?”

  Givens wasn’t asking this in a way that made anyone believe she was serious about the question, she just wanted to know why they wanted her dead.

  “Your guys staying out there with Johns for a few minutes?”

  She nodded before stepping in the door to stop to yell at one.

  “I need those addresses within the next twenty minutes, Jacobs. I am not joking.”

  She stepped in and looked President Carter up and down, measuring her importance.

  “Let me guess before you start Commander: She has access to weapons that would end this war but they would be used against us if we turn her over. Which bears the question: why are they trying to kill her if she has access to these weapons and they don’t?”

  Mal chuckled.

  She’s a little too smart, Mal thought.

  “Take a seat, Givens,” Mal said pointing to the bleachers.

  The look on her face as he explained the situation was telling because it was truly horrifying. Leviathan and the Aegis could level every border town sea to shining sea and if they didn’t do something: it would.

  “You are sure they couldn’t just find a work around on this executive authority thing?” Givens asked.

  “The system is buried underneath the Rocky mountains and isn’t accessible by human beings, the AI there now controls the entire system but the problem is: I wasn’t able to name a VP. I was named VP and then on my trip to here my team was hit. Later the president died and I wasn’t able to go out and name a Vice President before the Speaker automatically became the VP in the eyes of the system.”

  “Why don’t we just go kill him?” She asked.

  Say what you will about that answer but there’s some serious inventive problem-solving there, as fucked up as it may be, Mal thought.

  He looked over to President Carter but she also hadn’t thought of that.

  “To be honest, neither of us had thought of that,” She said, “I doubt they would keep him that close to the border do you, Mal?”

  “If they are going to get him the pad, he would have to be fairly close but: that’s still not a solution and I doubt he stays fairly close.”

  “I want to know any possible locations they could be using,” Carter said.

  “I think more than likely they are outside our local just enough where any attack wouldn’t effect them,” Mal said.

  “Give me some ideas,” Givens said.

  “I am thinking Lexington to Nashville, make a circle around it and you will find their leader there.”

  “You want to give me an idea on how you came up with that particular area?”

  “Nope,” Mal said as he turned to pick his rifle up from where he laid it, “President Carter isn’t to leave the the headquarters basement. To clarify, we are under a state of emergency, that’s not a request.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  In Sync

  The four armored APC drones left the parking lot of the Mount Vernon BANS headquarters all linked in the BANS network by a video link. They didn’t have time for a proper briefing before they left so Mal decided to brief in transit so no moles could get any information away just in case.

  “Good morning, in the next hour we will be hitting four properties simultaneously all owned by sergeant Johns, one of the two moles in the Evansville Branch. We are looking for the former CO of the Evansville outpost, Tim Hermann and any other person’s or supplies. All information is to be kept. I am leading team one, Commander Givens is leading team two, Lieutenant Jordan is leading team three and Lieutenant Harrison is leading team four. If we can bring in some personnel alive: that’s best. If we can keep any computers around that is best, use the USB drives that the team leaders have to rip all information out. The most important part of all of this is that we hit all four locations at exactly the same time just in case there are any early warning systems.”

  A hand raised in one of the four video feeds that Mal could see from his seat, Lieutenant Harrison is a tan Caucasian man not that is in his late-20s.

  “With all of that in mind, Sir: What’s ROE for contact with enemy foot-mobiles?”

  “Threat of life,” Mal said.

  “Any warnings?” Tye asked.

  “Not before entrance but after if you have a chance, if not I want samples of everything you guys find in there, even if it seems trivial in nature, rip computer towers into USB but keep the towers if you can.”

  “When we find Hermann, what’s your orders?”

  “Shoot to injure if you have to,” Givens interrupted “He’s not a killer, you probably won’t even have to do that. Just point a gun at him and he may wet himself.”

  Mal nodded at her.

  “Three minutes out,” The drone driver announced from the car.

  “We are already here, sir,” Tye said, “Looks like you are the last to arrive sir.”

  The four houses were all similar, all houses owned by Johns’ family, they were all large estates with underground shelters underneath of them.

  “Any eyes or ideas?” Mal asked into the radio as he sat up his kit to start operating, but he wasn’t asking any of the other team leaders, he was asking Wallis who was still back at HQ.

  “None of them have any perceived defenses, that is not a surprise though: they didn’t set up that sniper nest the day they went into Ford Center, they don’t seem to want to let anyone know the places they are in are inhabited. Doing a pass over the last house for team one now, their other houses have inhabitants an
d computers no radiological signatures that I can tell at least. Unfortunately, by now the signature that we used to track Ares may have broken down or they found a way to counteract it, so we can’t trust that.”

  “Arrived,” The disembodied voice said from the front of the drone Armored Personnel Carrier.

  Malcolm stepped out of the back of the APC and held the door open for the other soldiers as they exited. With the video conferences ended, The teams were tied via a time frame.

  “Two minutes until door knock,” Mal said as he as planted the Electro-magnetic field generator that they would use to prevent any signals from exiting the area that weren’t their own and to knock out any electronic surveillance systems. Since BANS signals were so easily hijacked earlier, Mal decided to let them use his high burst transmitters that are able to exit the EM fields.

  I should charge them per communication, Mal thought.

  A high burst transmitting network like Malcolm had created wouldn’t allow more than one network in an area, if they were also using one: Mal would be able to tell. Rebecca hopped out of the APC as the last soldier.

  “Remember how you told me you wanted justice?” Mal asked her.

  “Let’s go get some,” she said.

  Mal turned and turned on the EM field.

  “Go,” Mal said walking up the hill towards house with the five other soldiers. The brick wall ahead of them was the outside perimeter of this house. Mal took out a shape charge the size of a door way and wrapped it on the brick.

  “Execute,” Mal said as he blew the doorway open.

  Automatic weapon fire hit the brick on the opposite side.

  They either have a guard or saw us coming, Mal thought, because that MG nest is on the opposite side of the this house from the door.

  Mal motioned for the others to wait.

  “Where did this guy come from?” Mal asked to Wallis.

  Wallis was typing so loudly on her mechanical keyboard that Mal could hear it through the ear-piece. Mal saw her surveillance drone shoot over the air.

  “No, heat signature, hitting it with the localized EMP,” She said.

  The buzzing from when the EMP hit the automatic Machine gun nest, Mal turned the corner into backyard.