“Damn it, the Carnegie brothers,” Wicks told Simon. “Looks like we were right.”
Simon nodded. “Someone is deliberately pitting factions against each other.”
“Except their shipment was much smaller than Wyatt’s. Not sure what that means,” G said.
“It means someone wants to control the outcome by arming one side better than the other,” Simon said.
“Who would do this, and why?” she asked.
“The why is easy—to create anarchy in the streets. But I don’t think an uprising is the true end game. Skirmishes between groups won’t last long. Though it does make sense to arm all sides and then sit back and let them kill each other. It would set a precedent and establish a need for the President to declare Martial Law across the country. The media and the public would demand it at that point. Then Washington could send in law enforcement with the backing of the military to collect all the guns and ammo, and arrest whatever bodies were still breathing. Nobody would think twice about the presence of tanks, troops or rocket launchers stationed across the country.”
“Use the military on Americans?” G asked. “Isn’t that against the law?”
“Laws can be suspended or changed in a time of crisis. Of course, they could also send in private contractors who work for the DHS and the DOD. Something my company used to do,” Simon said, thinking of Ghost Works’ fall and Nighthawk’s rise.
“But we still don’t know who?” G asked.
“My guess, it’s someone who would benefit financially from all of this. Or it’s simply the plan of a madman, wanting it all to burn,” Simon explained, wanting to know more about the orders. “G, can you find out who ordered the shipments from Devil Dogs in the first place? There’s a significant amount of money behind this, so the trail has to lead somewhere. Check credit cards, BitCoin, ZipCash, and bank transfers. The amounts would be huge and should jump off the ledger.”
“Sure, give me a minute,” G said, twipping away at his equipment.
Simon turned to Wicks. “I take it none of this was uncovered during your research efforts into the global conspiracy.”
“No, nothing like this. We were tracking scientists who had gone missing or turned up dead, plus large-scale shipments of exotic chemicals in unmarked trucks and ocean containers. Do you think the guns and ammo shipments are connected?”
“Probably. The timing is more than coincidence, leading me to believe there is a master plan at work here. Probably reaching the highest levels of office since it would take an enormous amount of money, power, and influence to pull this off. Then, if we throw in the red rain, something big is heading our way. That much is clear.”
“Your old friend Hansen?”
“For some of it, sure. But he’d need help for the rest. We could be facing a group of people wanting chaos in the streets.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Hey, look at this!” G shouted. “The money trail leads to an offshore bank account in the Cayman Islands, but the name on the account was scrubbed after thousands of wire transactions cleaned it out. This time the hacker remembered to change the backup copies, too.”
“So, it’s a dead end,” Simon said, hoping to keep the young computer genius calm and focused.
“Not exactly. I was able to trace a few more of the activities by the same Super User, but I’m not sure what it all means. Why would someone send hundreds of military grade microwave emitters to cell towers all around the world?”
“What? Are you sure about that?” Simon asked, staggered by the revelation.
“Positive. Digger has tracked manifests involving Raytheon and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.”
“I don’t understand,” Wicks told Simon.
“It’s called an Active Denial System. A mobile, truck-mounted energy weapon developed for non-lethal crowd control. It’s silent and quite effective.”
“Why send the emitters to cell tower locations?” Wicks asked, looking at G.
G pinched his face, then swung his head to give a worried look to Simon. “Cell towers use directional beams. If the emitters were hooked up to the tower’s transmitter array and blasted across the country, it could be used for crowd control. Or the emitters could be mounted on the towers themselves. Let’s face it, who really knows what all the equipment is being used for? You’ve seen them. The towers are covered with equipment—just sitting out there, aimed in all directions. Nobody would ever notice new stuff being added.”
“They must be expecting a widespread uprising or something,” Wicks said.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Simon said. “Widespread use doesn’t make sense. The system is designed to push a crowd back, but if you use it everywhere, where’s the crowd being pushed back to?”
“True, but what if they decided to crank up the juice to full power? Wouldn’t it cook us all like lobsters?” G asked.
The kid was exaggerating a bit and Simon wanted to slow him down. “Okay, let’s think about that for a moment. Why kill everyone? There’d be no way to control it once it was unleashed. I can see targeting specific groups, but not everyone. Even animals and livestock would be affected. In fact, every living creature would be at risk: from birds to bees.”
“Except fish since the emitter burst wouldn’t happen over the ocean.”
“Yes, but regardless, the food chain would crumble, leaving us all to starve, including the persons behind this. Unless, of course, they are living offshore somewhere—”
“—where the red rain isn’t,” Wicks added, interrupting Simon, using a more serious voice than before. She locked eyes with G for a few moments, then turned them at Simon. “Maybe the storms are the key. Part of all this somehow.”
Simon took a moment to think. Red rain affecting the major land masses only . . . microwave emitters . . . cell towers . . . arming of militias. They were all related somehow, but he couldn’t quite put the pieces together. Not yet. Something was missing.
“G, how many emitters were shipped?” he asked.
“Hang on,” the kid said, twipping his fingers and hands. “Looks like only a handful to each state in the US. Same abroad. They’re spread out geographically.”
“Can you show me on a map?”
“Sure, one sec,” G answered, working his magic. The screen changed to show a map of the USA with red dots appearing across it like virtual push pins.
“The dots represent the addresses where the emitters were delivered. Some of them are bound to be rural, so we’ll need to allow a couple of miles either way to where the cell tower is actually located. But the map is reasonably close. I’d say plus or minus five percent.”
Simon studied the screen and let it all sink in. He ran the locations through his mind, factoring in what he knew about city densities, mountain ranges, forests, lakes, and other natural barriers. “I doubt that’s enough for complete coverage.”
“Could the EM field inside the clouds be a reflector of some kind? Would that be possible?” G asked.
“I suppose. It would amplify the range and effectiveness of the wave. The burst would be contained below the hovering EM field, causing it to bounce and reflect between the ground and the storm.”
G’s face indicated he agreed. “And it would compensate for the curvature of the Earth, allowing it to continue over great distances.”
“Seems to me they wouldn’t need as many emitters that way,” Wicks said, looking at G.
“Yep. You’d end up with faster installation and less people in the loop. Makes sense.”
Wicks nodded. “Then they’re expecting some major event to set the people off across the country. Once we see it, we’ll know the burst is about to happen.”
“Hang on,” Simon said. “If they need the rain to control and intensify the emitters, then the storm would need to continue until your event happens. That might be days or weeks from now. Uprisings don’t happen overnight. They take time to fester and build.”
“Maybe the red rain happened to
o early?” she said.
“Or they need to rain to be around for a while first. You know, soak into the dirt or something, like a ground conductor.”
“Sorry, kids. I’m still not convinced,” Simon said, feeling like a frustrated father trying to get through to his children.
“Why?” Wicks asked.
“When you’re older you’ll come to realize that just about everyone on this planet is motivated by one of four things: money, sex, power, or revenge. I don’t see how covering the planet in red rain and then setting off a widespread microwave burst would accomplish any of that. Everyone would be affected, including the person or persons behind this.”
G looked around the room, his mind clearly in thinking mode. “Simon?”
“Yeah.”
“I pretty sure my equipment won’t like being blasted with microwaves.”
Simon nodded. “No, it won’t. Neither will anyone else’s computers or electronics. Nothing would be safe, which is why I don’t think the blast will happen for the reasons you think, if at all. Don’t forget, if satellite surveillance is down and so are the broadcast signals, then how would the people behind this know when to set off the burst?”
“I see your point,” G said.
Simon nodded. “To maximize its effectiveness, they’d wait until widespread anarchy happened first. Surveillance would be key for the timing to be correct.”
“But if the burst does happen, wouldn’t it send us back to the Stone Age? Computers and other electronics would be toast, right?"
Simon didn’t want to debate the kids anymore. Let them run through it, he decided, then they’d see he was right. He shrugged. “Yes, they’d be useless.”
Wick’s face indicated she agreed. “It would explain why all those scientists have gone missing. If you take out the greatest minds, it leaves fewer resources to fight back against what’s coming.”
“Or fight back after what’s coming,” G said, looking at Simon. “It’s the tactical thing to do, right, Red?”
“Tactically speaking? Yes. First, you’d target your enemy’s ability to communicate and react, then you disrupt their transportation systems. If the enemy’s forces can’t communicate or resupply, leadership is rendered ineffective and the war is over before it begins.”
“War?” Wicks asked.
“You know what I mean.”
“Let’s not forget the busload of scientists that were gunned down in Washington,” G said with a nervous voice.
Simon shook his head, realizing they weren’t going to let this go. Not after bringing up the horrible crimes his wife had committed.
He sighed before he spoke. His voice became elevated. “Yes, a quick and effective strike, like Wyatt said about my wife’s actions during his roadblock. Plus, with Tessa’s lengthy trial and her execution broadcast live around the world, everyone’s attention was focused on one thing. It might have given the perpetrators the window of opportunity they needed to launch their plan without anyone noticing.”
“Except us,” G said with a smile.
“The facts do seem to line up, don’t they?” Wicks asked Simon.
She was starting to sound more like him every minute, Simon decided. Certainly more mature than her two-dozen or so years on the planet. “Sure, to some extent, yes. They seem to fit. But not perfectly. We’re clearly missing something—it’s called motive. Without knowing the end game and its purpose, it’s all a guessing game at this point.”
“Sure, I get that, but hear us out. That’s why me and G saved your butt in the alley. To help us think through this type of stuff. You agreed to help us, right? Wasn’t that the deal?”
He didn’t remember formally agreeing to help them. But he did owe them his life. “Sure, go ahead. I’m all ears.”
“If there’s a master plan at work here and all these things are happening for a reason, then you have to ask yourself, why did they make your wife do what she did, and not someone else? Nothing seems to be random here, so that would mean she was chosen.”
The answer came unbidden into his thoughts, causing him to pause for a few seconds to process. Wicks was correct. “Based on your line of thinking, then it seems reasonable to assume that someone wanted me out of the way.”
“And not just you, right?” she asked in a leading manner.
He understood where she was going with this. “Yes, and my company, too. After the massacre, I was so wrapped up in what was happening with Tessa, I couldn’t devote much time to running the day-to-days as CEO. The press was everywhere and wouldn’t leave me or my company alone for a second. That’s why the board of directors had no choice but to fire me.”
She shook her head. “Canning you was a bad move on their part, Red. Ghost Works never would’ve gone out of business with you at the helm. Even with the press all over you like that.”
Simon agreed, but it didn’t change the facts. “Cut off the head of the snake, and the rest dies.”
“But Ghost Works isn’t the only private security firm, is it?” Wicks asked him.
“No. At the time, there were two major players. My company and Nighthawk Services Group—Blake Anderchuck’s company. A high-speed, low drag kind of guy. A decorated fighter pilot turned billionaire playboy. A real piece of work. He and I have two completely different philosophies about what’s acceptable and what’s not.”
“Then we have to assume they wanted Nighthawk handling everything, instead of your company.”
“Maybe so, but it still doesn’t tell us who’s behind this. Unless, of course, it’s Anderchuck himself, but I find that hard to believe. The scope of what we’re talking about would take a group of power brokers and rich elitists to pull it all off. No, there’s still more we don’t know, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t forget your parents and grandparents. They were scientists, too,” G told Wicks with a sharp tone.
She nodded, tears welling in her eyes. “You know, I never really wanted to believe it, but it must be true. Someone wanted them out of the way just like Simon and his company, and those scientists in the bus. All of it to make way for what’s happening right now.”
Simon waited while Wicks calmed a bit. He spoke once her breathing had slowed. “You mentioned something earlier about exotic chemicals being shipped.”
Her eyes sharpened, stopping the tears. “G’s Digger program noticed a government research lab in Bogota, Columbia was shipping hundreds of containers to an over-the-counter supplement company called Bluewater Kinetics in Key West, Florida. Turns out, the containers were full of a hyper-extract from a tree indigenous to South American. It’s called the Borrachero. In pure concentrate form, it can be used to make a drug called the Devil’s Breath. Have you heard of it?”
G answered her before Simon could. “Some of the underground websites say it can block free will, erase memory, and even kill.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of it. We called it Scopolamine on The Farm. Every new recruit spends weeks learning to resist its effects.”
“I’m thinking that’s why they targeted Tessa and not you,” Wicks said.
“Could be. I am trained to resist various forms of truth agents.”
“Yep,” G said. “Go after the woman, not the man. We all know that females are the weaker sex.”
Wicks sneered at him. “You know it was more than that, right?”
G shrugged.
Simon didn’t agree with G, but chose not to reprimand the kid. “Now, if someone had altered the chemistry of Scopolamine and then introduced a variant of it into my wife’s bloodstream to control her . . .”
“Then your wife wasn’t at fault for what she did,” Wicks said in a matter-of-fact tone, looking at him like she was waiting for something to happen.
Shit, the kids were onto something. Could they be right?
The facts seemed to indicate they were.
Simon’s heart sank in his chest, sending a storm of shame into his bones. He couldn’t believe what he’d just learned. The ramification
s were too intense, sending his supply of self-loathing skyrocketing to an all-time high.
He should’ve believed Tessa when she said she wasn’t at fault for the killings.
Someone made her do it.
If all this was true, it meant she was merely a pawn in a global chess match—a game rigged to take him and his company down, and then cause chaos across the planet.
Simon suddenly felt weak and powerless as a sickening wave of guilt flooded every cell in his body.
Then a mountain of regret jumped on for good measure, causing his logic to shut down and his breathing to become labored.
He thought he was about to pass out, when all of a sudden Wicks wrapped her arms around him from the side, squeezing tight.
“I’m sorry, Simon. I know it hurts, but we had to tell you. You needed to know.”
CHAPTER SIX
Ten minutes later, Simon found the strength to shake off the inner turmoil and bring himself back to reality. A moment later, Wicks let go of her arms, freeing him from the comfort of her grip.
“The question is, how did they get Devil’s Breath into her system?” G asked.
“Did she start taking any new medicines? You know, before it happened?” Wicks asked Simon.
“Not that I remember. She was a bit of a fitness freak and hated prescription drugs. In fact, she went out of her way to avoid them. Tessa preferred holistic medicine and those all-natural remedies you see on the health and fitness shows. She didn’t even drink coffee, or alcohol for that matter. Seems like every time I turned around, she was slamming another can of that new sports drink. You know, the one with the matrix of numbers on its label. Can’t remember its name, though.”
“Brain Flurry,” G reported with assuredness in his words. “It’s on just about every commercial break—at least it used to be before the red rain came along and put an end to all the broadcasts.”
“Yes, Brain Flurry, with the green eco-label. I remember she tried a sample after it came in the mail one day and was hooked. I swear she went through a case of that crap a week. That must have been the entry point. Shit, that’s too easy.”
Redfall: Freedom Fighters (American Prepper Series Book 2) Page 3