He looked up and smiled, “Hello, Bethany Anne, thank you for meeting me here this evening.”
“Trust me, Mr. President, I’ve already been blessed. Getting to speak to you is the icing on the cake,” she told him and turned on her best smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Washington D.C. - USA
“So, I’m to understand your meeting went well, Mr. President?” George asked.
“What?” the President replied, as he sat down and opened the Tums bottle in front of him, “With who?”
“Why, with the TQB Chairwoman, Bethany Anne.”
He frowned, “No, I was stood up, George. Damned rude, if you ask me,” the President said. “While she eventually sent an apology to explain she got violently sick, it seems pretty suspect to me. Sometimes, foreigners have the worst manners.”
“I see. Well, I’m sorry to hear that, sir.” George said as he moved his papers around.
The President made a waving gesture, “We can try another time, but not before I cancel on her once. I try not to be petty, but this President doesn’t appreciate rudeness.”
“Of course not, sir,” George agreed, “so, we are following up on the Chinese submarine incident. Another time that TQB has inflamed the passions of a powerful group against them.”
The President frowned, “More rhetoric, George? I’m not happy with being stood up, but let’s not jump to conclusions. Why was there a Chinese submarine so close to their ships anyway?”
George kept the tic out of his eyes. His conversation with JG had been difficult, but the massive amount of dead bodies and blood everywhere, plus his own gunshot wound that he had carefully hidden from everyone so far told the man they had tried. His memory was a little vague, but they had gotten three of the guards in some way. He didn’t believe it was her usual group, so, unfortunately, they didn’t know who would be missing and presumed dead.
“Well, Navy’s guess is that the Chinese were going to put the squeeze on them,” George supplied.
“Exactly, so they grabbed the submarine and pulled it out like a fish.” The President shrugged, “I’ve seen the video, I love it.”
“Yes, I understand it is prime viewing across the fleet,” George agreed. “However, the Chinese are seriously pissed at the moment.”
“This time it is not our problem,” the President told him, “make sure we have our hands clean in this episode, I don’t want any splatter on us.”
“No, I think it is fair to say that TQB is taking full responsibility to ruining one of their submarines,” George replied.
“Something about them having to scram the nuclear reactor right?”
“Yes, it didn’t work too well angled up like it was. So, TQB’s two ships floated away with the Chinese ship in tow until they had a location to place it down and let the seamen out. Some things came off the Chinese sub, and the TQB ships left the area.”
“Where are they now?” the President asked.
“West of South America, in the Pacific,” George told him.
“Which way are they heading?”
“They are heading towards China, sir.”
The President stopped for a moment and shook his head in frustration, “Dammit.” He reached for the Tums bottle one more time.
China
Stephanie Lee looked around the room. It was clean.
This is the control room, the male voice told her.
“How long have you been here?” Stephanie Lee asked.
Eight centuries, the female voice admitted.
“Why are you here?” Stephanie Lee continued.
To raise up those on Earth who deserve to move forward in an enlightened and empowered way. To prepare for the test and trials, the female voice spoke in her mind.
To defeat the weak and worthless, the male voice added.
That, too, the female voice confirmed.
“You two need names,” Stephanie Lee grumped.
Then I shall be Yin, the female voice said.
I shall be Yang, the male agreed.
“That works very well, I like them.” Stephanie Lee sat in the central chair. While she wasn’t a huge woman, the chair was built for someone smaller.
“Where are you?” she asked.
We are touching you from both here, and elsewhere. We cannot fully engage here in your dimension without a body, and we have no yet found an adequate host to share our intelligence and wisdom until you arrived, Yang told her
“I see,” she said, “and my father?”
Has spoken with us since he became the Clan leader before you were born. We have been making plans for the future, with contingencies for contingencies. Unfortunately, we did not see the rise of other Kurtherians here on this planet. That was a mistake, Yin admitted.
Stephanie Lee stood up, “Where is this Transference Pod?” She started walking out of the control room. If she didn’t do something soon, she would talk herself out of her future. Just like her father had, apparently.
She wouldn’t allow that. She would be as she had originally planned.
Having power and authority.
Turn left here, Yin spoke to her as she stepped into a hallway. Put your hand on the black square on the right, now stretch your hand wide. A door opened before her. It was a simple room, with a rectangular box in the middle. Everything was made from metal, gray. There was no rust on anything.
Step to the Transference Pod and place your hand on the right, yes on the smaller square.
The Pod opened for her. The white inside clashing with the darkness of everything else.
When you lay in here, you will come back as the ultimate, Yang told her. You will be the Leopard Empress.
She looked around and found a place to take off her robe before getting inside the pod, pushing another square inside. The Pod closed with an audible click.
A minute later, another human entered the room. Stephanie Lee’s father bent down to gently pick up the sacrificial robe she had been wearing.
He had a tear in his eye. Eight years ago, he thought that the best chance, the one his clan had been genetically marrying and having babies to accomplish, had left the mountain and would not be back. The best opportunity in fifteen generations had sprinted away, and he hadn’t commanded her to be brought back.
Because, he figured, it had been a mere childish spat.
He turned and walked out of the room. The transference would take days.
Inside the Pod, Stephanie Lee’s face was composed, peaceful, while her mind screamed silently in pain.
PLA General Staff Headquarters - Beijing
The four men stepped into the darkened and quiet room and nodded to each other. No names were to be used, but any agreement reached would be put into effect.
After the appropriate respect had been shown to each of them, the political representative spoke, “Welcome to our new naval representative,” Heads nodded in greeting. “It seems that the last plan failed to accomplish our goals.”
“We tried to express the futility to the last representative,” Intelligence told Navy, “But pride interfered.”
The political representative agreed and continued, “Where are these ships now? I understand they left our submarine on an island?”
“Yes, Ascension Island, near Georgetown,” the naval representative answered.
“They have moved to the Pacific Ocean,” Intelligence replied.
“Where are they going, or are they sitting still in the water as they had been before?” Political continued.
“They are moving towards us,” Intelligence admitted.
“Do they expect to do something else? They would what, attack our nation?” Navy asked.
“Unlikely,” Intelligence admitted.
“Still, this has caused us to lose much face,” The political representative admitted, “Therefore, the three of you need to review options. If they want to make us a fool, then we will return the gesture.
If they want to take it further?” he pause
d. “Then we push back until they break. We do not back down. Not even Russia or the United States does that to us.”
His lips pressed together. “I have a meeting with our business side. We will bring economic attacks against this group as well. They thought it funny to pull our submarine out of the water like a fish? We shall see who is gasping for air in the end.”
He nodded to the other three men and then pushed back his chair and turned, opening and closing the door quietly behind him.
The three men looked to each other before the naval representative put his hands, clasped, on the table, “Suggestions, gentleman?”
Virginia – USA
You see, I’m not really here right now, a female voice said.
Joshua’s eyes opened quickly. He looked around his bedroom, trying to see in the dark. His huge bed, a four-poster bed with wooden columns surrounding him, was dark gray in the minimal light coming through his shades in the early morning.
He had heard a whisper in his mind, a dream he supposed. But it had sounded so real, so tangible.
So close.
The conversation with the general had not gone well this evening. George’s memory of the ambush was fuzzy. However, he had confirmed that the President had not met with her later that night so that much was true.
Still, the feeling that he was missing something important was unsettling him, and now it was affecting his mind while he slept.
In the morning, he would pack and head out. He would need to lock down the computer equipment downstairs after pulling the solid-state hard drives to take with him. That information was his past and his future, his security.
It was everything that made him what he was, and the foundation for so many others at the same time.
He considered what he needed to do and turned to look at his alarm clock, the faint blue numbers glowing twenty-three minutes past three in the morning.
He was restless. Joshua pushed the covers off and sat up in bed. His feet blindly searched around for his slippers before finding them and sliding them on. He hated the cold stone floors but at the same time, couldn’t stand carpet all over the house. It messed up his allergies something horrible.
Reaching over and touching the base of his lamp, he turned it on to the lowest setting. His body shook involuntarily, and he looked over his shoulder. The feeling of being watched didn’t go away.
He felt like a kid, but he still got down on his knees on the floor to look under the bed, making sure that no one was there.
No one was.
He put his head on the cool floor and could feel the sweat beading on his forehead. The stress was getting to him. He thought about how close George was to him and decided that George would have to be cut out. He hated losing such a valuable asset, but George knew him and had been involved in the attempted attack.
They would be coming for George again. He lifted his head and made a mental note to start the process to remove George from the equation.
He got up and went into his bathroom. It had a walk-in shower, Jacuzzi tub and bath. There was a lap bath to the side as well so he could swim against the water jet streams for fitness.
He really did hate the cold.
If there weren’t so many damned important people in this area of the country, he would move somewhere a bit more predisposed towards decent weather. He brushed his teeth to get that nasty film off and put his toothbrush back.
Grabbing his silk robe, he tied it around his waist. He had two and a half hours before his house lady would come to start his breakfast and take care of his room.
He walked down the hall, descended the wooden steps, and turned at the end beside the stairway. A door at the back opened to provide access to space under the stairway, and he stepped in. He reached up and pulled on a string to click on the light. Stepping over a box of Christmas decorations that the people had left behind when pulling everything down last season, he pushed on a small section of the wooden wall. It clicked, and a portion of the wall opened and allowed him to step inside.
He walked down the small, carpeted hallway to his computer room. Calmly, with the ease of many repetitions, he put his palm on the plate and provided his voice for the recognition software. He waited for the locks to cycle before pulling on the door and entering the climate-controlled room.
The computers weren’t anything special, just old. Old enough that there weren’t any embedded security problems from foreign manufacturers. Joshua had seven more of these machines, set to the side. All ready to be pulled out of their packaging and put in place when this one failed.
He walked up to the keyboard and monitor, then typed in his password to open the command set and put in the commands to lock down the hard drives. Once complete, it was a matter of a few seconds to issue the shutdown command.
It took an agonizingly long minute and thirty seconds to completely shut down before he could push the lock button, and then pull out the unique hard drive setup. Joshua turned around and went back through the doors, closing them carefully along the way before he turned to go back up the stairs.
He walked into his room and laid the hard drive on his bed before going into his closet and grabbing his travel bag. He would call his pilot at 5 AM, notifying him that he would want to leave as soon as a flight plan was filed to the Caribbean. Then he would figure out the next best location.
Church.
What the hell? Joshua stuck his head out of his closet to look around. Why would he think of church right now? He hadn’t thought about a church in over thirty years. Ducking back into his closet to grab two pairs of shoes, he quickly walked out and tossed them on the bed before going into his bathroom for his grooming kit.
Coming back out of the bathroom, he added the kit to the items on the bed and went to his dresser for underclothes and jeans. He grabbed some t-shirts and threw them on the pile too.
Five minutes, two dress shirts, and some cash from his safe later, he was stuffing everything in his bag. He had written a quick note to tell his housekeeper he would be gone at least two weeks.
When he left the house, he had not noticed that the number two on the note to his housekeeper had an additional zero added to it. Apparently, he was now going to be gone for twenty weeks.
Joshua got into his car and texted his pilot that he wanted to leave as soon as possible. He had a message back within seconds that he was up at the airport already servicing the plane for periodic maintenance review if he wanted to leave now?
“Fucking great!” Joshua muttered to himself. “Finally something going right in my life.”
He pointed his Jaguar down the street and floored the gas peddle. His neighbors could bitch, but he wouldn’t be around to hear it for at least a couple of weeks. It took him forty-seven minutes in the early morning traffic to make it to his private hanger. The door was open, and his jet was lit up. He parked the Jag in the back of the hanger and grabbed his stuff before leaving the keys on the office desk for his service guy to go get it cleaned and to run it at least once a week while he was gone.
He walked over to the jet, jumping up the few steps to get on and turned right to head to his seat. Dropping his bag on the left seat and he seated himself on the right. He wiped his face with both hands, never noticing that the plane was beginning to taxi already. Closing his eyes as the plane waited in line, the engines powered up and the tension in his neck relaxed. Soon, they were airborne.
Release the Dogs of War Page 25