Unfortunately for Tank, his gains were short lived. He was hauled in front of Congress, where he was dressed down by politicians from both sides of the aisle who were trying to find a scapegoat and deflect attention away from their decades of fiscal mismanagement. One Congresswoman went so far as to try and bring him up on charges of treason by declaring his short position in US treasuries was equivalent to aiding and abetting the enemy.
The treason charges fell short but after the Congressional hearings, the IRS, with backing of Congress and the President, declared the China-Russia Treasury Bond dumping to be a declaration of economic war and Tank was subject to a 100 percent profit tax and fined a couple of million dollars on top of that.
Shortly after his money was seized and he was declared persona non grata by DC, Tank vanished into thin air. There had been all kind of rumors that he had been assassinated by the Federal Reserve or that DC had sent him to a prison.
But West also heard a scattering of rumors he had been flipped and had gone to work for the government to avoid being sent to prison. But like most things in the world over the last few decades the truth had become blurred past the point of recognition.
The plane banked one more time and he heard Kevin announce, “Prepare for landing, this is going to be a little hairy.”
West looked out the window and didn’t see any kind of terrain they could possibly land in.
“Where the hell is the runway?” he asked.
“Eleven o’ clock, two miles out.”
West squinted. A small strip of dirt appeared to be cut out of the ground. Once again he assumed a death grip on the plane handle.
The plane came in fast and landed hard. West was jerked forward like a ragdoll but the plane stayed in one piece. Kevin taxied to the end of the runway where two pickup trucks were parked with a couple of large, tough-looking men standing around the vehicles.
Kevin turned off the engines. “They’ll escort you to Tank’s compound. Good luck, West.”
West shook his hand. “Yeah, you too. Thanks for the flight.”
“No problem. What else was I going to be doing, right?”
West smiled then opened the door and stepped out of the plane.
“Hey,” Kevin yelled out of the door. “Remember, no matter what happens it really is all bullshit anyway. We all have to learn that at some point.”
West grinned, realizing that was the first intelligent thing anyone had said to him in years.
“The Roman Empire was very, very much like us. They lost their moral core, their sense of values in terms of who they were. And after all of those things converged together, they just went right down the tubes very quickly.”
– Dr. Ben Carson
Chapter 17
A man who looked like he could snap West in half waved the shotgun he was holding. “Get in,” he snapped.
There was no point arguing so West jumped in the truck. They took off down the dirt road and traveled for about twenty minutes in silence. They passed no buildings, no signs, nothing except for a few outcroppings of trees among a barren landscape. West stared out of the window with the realization that he had never been in such an isolated place in his life. The stark desolation of the landscape was simultaneously beautiful but unnerving.
The truck came over a rise and slowed as they approached a 20 foot high brick wall. An armed security guard opened a steel gate and waved them into an enormous compound. They drove up to a main building with warehouses stretching as far as the eye could see behind the building.
“What the hell is all this?” West asked the driver, who ignored him.
The truck stopped and a man dressed in old jeans and a flannel shirt rushed out of the front door. He ran around to West’s side of the truck and opened the door.
“Good to meet you Mr. Collins. I’m Bill, Tank’s assistant. I hope you had a good flight.”
West got out of the truck. “It was fine, thanks.”
“Terrific, terrific, please follow me.”
West followed his hyper escort into the building and down a long corridor. The man stopped in front of a closed office door and knocked lightly.
“Come in,” he heard someone call out from behind the door.
Bill opened the door and motioned for him to enter. West walked into the room where a burly man who looked to be in his late 50’s sat behind a large desk. The man had salt-and-pepper hair cut short in a military fashion. He was wearing faded blue jeans, a white button down shirt and cowboy boots. He smiled broadly as West entered the room.
He walked around the desk. “Ah, Mr. Collins. Glad to finally meet you. I’m Tank Wilson.”
West raised his bandaged hand and shook hands with his good one.
“Have a seat.” He motioned to the leather chair in front of his desk. “I heard about your little accident. How’s the hand feeling?”
“I guess I’ll live. But what I’d really like to know is why I’ve been shanghaied here?”
Tank went back behind his desk and sat down. West looked around the office and the decor was what he always visualized a gentleman rancher’s office would look like complete with a hardwood floor and a thick wooden beam stretching across the ceiling. There was even a stuffed bear’s head mounted above the fireplace with bookshelves lining an entire wall behind Tank’s desk.
“I don’t know if I would think of it as being shanghaied,” Tank answered. “You really don’t have too many other places to go.”
West supposed he was right about that but he was getting sick of all the bullshit answers.
“Look, I’m sorry but I just had my finger cut off by some Russian criminals who are in cahoots with a Homeland agent. I have no doubt they would have killed me if I hadn’t gotten lucky and escaped. Now, I’ve been flown to somewhere in butt fuck Egypt. Why don’t you just tell me what you want with me?”
Tank laughed again. “Fair enough, it is pretty simple. I want to destroy the Dracun and maybe we can help each other.”
“See was that too hard?” West replied. “You’re the first person in this vast Dracun conspiracy club I’ve meet who hasn’t talked in complete bullshit riddles.”
“I guess you’re welcome then.”
“So why don’t you tell me what your desire to destroy the Dracun have to do with me?”
“For one, you wrote many anti-DC newspaper articles before Washington, DC was even referred to as DC. We know you’ve had extensive contact with Mark Sloan who was sympathetic to the LT’s. We know your boss Stossel and his paper is a communication front for the LT’s. You’re much more intertwined in this drama than you realize and we also know you are in serious trouble right now, so maybe, we can help you and you can help us.”
“How can I possibly be of any help to you?”
“You’d be surprised. We recruit many people from many different walks of life. You’re still a reporter with access to certain things.”
West laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. I work for the World Weekly Enquirer.”
Tank’s expression grew more serious. “But we both know that the tabloid serves another, much more important purpose. Look, if we can get you back to the paper you may be valuable asset to us at some point down the road.”
West held up his injured hand. “I doubt that.”
Tank grabbed a cigar off his desk. “Want one?”
“No thanks. Anyway, to be honest with you I don’t know if I believe this entire Dracun mumble jumble.”
He watched Tank light up his cigar. “What do you believe in then?”
“Occam’s Razor makes more sense to me.”
“So you adhere to the philosophy that the simplest answer is the right explanation?”
“Yes I do. Since the dawn of civilization man has experienced golden eras and dark ages. Individually, we’d all like to think we live in a different age or that each of us are special in some way but everything and I mean everything has been done before. Right now it’s just our bad luck that economically, we’re
busted. Politically, we’re run by tyrants. Institutionally, everything is corrupt and individually we’re morally bankrupt. Our civilization is in a massive decline and bad things happen to crumbling societies. We’ve reached the Dark Ages like Europe did after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The System needs to be cleansed. One way or another it will happen. It’s that simple.”
Tank blew out a stream of white cigar smoke toward the ceiling. “You believe we are in a secular era of a collapsing civilization, huh?”
“However you want to put it. I prefer a slow crumble rather than an outright collapse. It is a law of nature that structures disintegrate very slowly but the end comes very quickly, usually by the means of war. I believe that is where we are for this epoch of civilization.”
“You don’t think this decline can be stopped or reversed?” Tank asked.
“It’s too late. We’ve slit our wrists. It’s just a matter of time before we bleed to death.”
“Pretty pessimistic. So I guess one could extrapolate that individually and collectively as a country we have succumbed to a deep-seeded character flaw for self-destruction?” Tank asked.
“I’m not a psychiatrist or sociologist or whoever studies that shit. All I know is this ebb and flow has gone on since the dawn of man. And like hundreds of other periods in our history right now our world has disintegrated into complete lunacy run by corrupt individuals who use the power of authority given to them by governments as their weapon to maintain and enforce their greedy, narcissistic, sociopathic and megalomaniacal behavior.”
“I agree with everything you have said but where we disagree is that I believe we have the power to do something about this. And that is what we are fighting for. Otherwise, what is the point?”
West shrugged. “To survive and go on.”
“I don’t want to just survive. You know I read your articles when you wrote for the Wall Street Journal. You were one of the few people who started grasping what the world was turning into.”
“You’re wrong about that. I simply had a voice. Most half-way intelligent people in America knew what was going on but had no power or outlet to do anything about it. Anyway, what did I accomplish? Nothing.”
“That’s because you’ve done exactly what you said earlier. You’ve survived and that is your problem because just living to survive goes against human nature. You’ve been your own worst enemy.”
“I think you’ve been cooped up in your isolated compound for too long. You don’t know what it is like out there.”
“Maybe so,” Tank rebutted. “But my point is I believe America was once a great country, and it still is made up of great people. DC is the problem. It is a rotting cesspool of absolute corruption. The politicians and bureaucrats are slave puppets to the Dracun who are now in full control of the show. If we conquer them we can restore our greatness.”
“I think you’re dreaming.”
“That’s a defeatist statement but on a personal level, at this point, what options do we or you have?”
“I have no options. I can’t go back to New York.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Look we’re all expendable but DC’s enemy list is so long they can’t even keep up with it but more importantly, we have the power to make the Dracun forget things.”
“Forget? Like what? And how?”
“We could make them disremember you for instance.”
“How?”
“I’m not guaranteeing your safety because no one is safe in this world but we have our ways. What I am offering you is the chance to discover the truth and to make up your own mind whether you want to live in the world forcibly handed to us by the Dracun. Or do you want to at least fight for something you believe in like freedom or good over evil?”
West knew he was screwed. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize his only real choice at this point was to go along with the LT’s, but either way he knew his expected life span was dwindling rapidly.
“I’ll listen to what you have to say and think about it but not because of your little speech,” West answered. “The good and evil thing is contrived bullshit. The simple fact is I have no other choice at this time.”
“There are always choices but I’m glad to hear you are open to our offer because your skills are going to be greatly needed.”
“I really doubt that, but let me ask you something that I don’t understand. How come you’ve been able to hide from DC and the Dracun?”
Tank grinned. “You cannot truly hide from the System. It is impossible. I suppose a single individual could disappear in a cave in Mongolia if they wanted to but if The System really, really wanted to find you, it would only be a matter of time.”
“So why does the government let you operate?”
“Because they know all about us.”
“I don’t understand. Then why aren’t you rotting away in some FEMA Camp?”“I said you can’t hide but that doesn’t mean you can’t fool them. This complex is a DC owned agriculture center. We are one of six federally owned transportation and storage facilities located throughout the country that stores and transports genetically modified grains. This particular center exports wheat, corn and soybeans mostly to South America in exchange for political allegiances and access to their natural resources.”
“What about the Middle East?” West asked prodding for information.
“No one ships to the Middle East any longer.”
West knew the government and main stream media had been lying for years about what had happened in the Middle East.
“Do we still buy oil from over there? I heard their deposits are gone.”
“After we had consumed most of their oil we bombed them back to the Stone Age, including our longtime allies Saudi Arabia. Then whoever was left fought against each other for control and whatever natural resources remained, which wasn’t much. Now the whole Middle East is a barren wasteland with enough biological and chemical fallout to discourage anyone from ever going there.”
“I didn’t see any shipping facilities,” West probed. “How do you ship the grain?”
Tank waved a finger at him. “See I knew you are a good reporter, always gathering information. We ship it by rail. When I first built this facility, largely with my own funds, I insisted that the government divert a rail line here. The train depot is on the other side of the property and we get a cargo train here every day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. The shipment goes straight down to New Orleans where it is then transported to its final destination via container ships. But the rail also serves another purpose for us because it’s kind of our equivalent of the Underground Railroad. We can send other cargo like people and information on the trains and we largely don’t have to deal with TSA and Homeland Security.”
“You still haven’t explained why the government allows you to operate this place?”
“You remember when the Chinese started dumping our treasuries during the great Bond Crash?”
“Of course, and I seem to recall you made a fortune from that until the government made you give it all back.”
Tank looked at his cigar with a wide grin. “That’s mostly correct. But I saw the writing was on the wall and my exit strategy had already been put in place. A few years earlier I had negotiated a secret deal with the Department of Agriculture to provide the capital to build this facility. It was a great deal for the government because they didn’t have to put up any money and they received most of the profits and benefits. My only stipulation was that I was to be left alone to run the place as I saw fit. Of course, in order to accomplish all this it still took a couple hundred million in bribes and payoffs to the head of the USDA and a couple other high-ranking bureaucrats. I also had to give the treasury all the money back I made shorting their bonds but it was a small price to pay. I’d say it was worth the investment.”
“Good old-fashioned crony capitalism at its best. But the USDA doesn’t know your true operation here, right?”
�
�Of course not. Right now I am a valuable subcontractor for the Feds. We are inspected by the USDA every other Thursday and we abide by every rule, regulation, and all the red tape bullshit the Government throws on us. Our real facilities are underground. It’s ironic but the truth is we are operating or hiding, however you want to look at it, right in front of their noses.”
West grinned. “I do have to say that’s kind of brilliant.”
“To survive in this game you have to turn the tables and, like the Dracun, you have to transform yourself into a parasite. We feed off the host, DC. In the real world that is how you destroy something much bigger and more powerful than yourself.”
“But if just one person spilled the beans you’d be history.”
“Most of the people working here are straight-laced government employees. They are more than happy to have a roof over their heads, steady employment and decent food. They are nothing more than worker drones. They don’t have access to our underground facilities and we are discreet with our comings and goings. But there is always a risk.”
“You know I could rat you out for a lot of money.”
“Yes, but you know I’d kill you if I thought you were a threat to our operation. Look, whether you like it or not you have passed the Mendoza Line and there is no returning. Here read this.”
Tank passed him a copy of the New York Times. “This is today’s paper. Turn to page six.”
West flipped to the page and read the headline: PROMINENT FINACIER AND PHILANTHROPIST NIGEL FIRTH FOUND MURDERED.
“Holy shit,” West muttered.
“Something big is happening. The Dracun have killed one of their own and they allowed the story to be published because they’re sending a message to someone.”
The Unraveling Page 15