by Mark Rounds
“Please have a rider ask for Captain Nesmith at his earliest convenience,” said Chad to the sergeant who nodded and then sent one of his riders off. “Then if you could, have the rest of your troopers keep these students contained until we can manage testing. We have a rat’s nest here and it will take a while to sort out. We also need to increase security on our supply cache and if possible, get more than nine people on horses to secure this.”
Chapter 11
June 7th, Sunday, 2:17 pm PDT
Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA
“How was the flight, Colonel?” asked Gen Johnson as he shook Col Antonopoulos’ hand.
“Bumpy but uneventful, sir,” said Col Antonopoulos. “Don’t take this wrong but I’d rather it was General Buckley that was meeting me.”
“So do we all,” said Gen Johnson quietly. “But he has placed himself under voluntary house arrest. I have spoken with him a couple of times, but he has made it clear that I am in command, at least temporarily. He has communicated with higher and they seem to have come up with a plan. The CNO is currently briefing the senior naval officer present, whom I believe you have met, a CAPT Lassiter.”
“Great,” said Col Antonopoulos. “So what are my orders, sir?”
“I have a briefing scheduled in fifteen minutes. I want you to brief the assembled officers on the fruits of this mission.”
“Who will be in attendance, sir?” asked Col Antonopoulos.
“I am keeping it small. I want Captain Whipkey in the room since he is knowledgeable about how you have been doing business. I have LTC McClaine from the 75th infantry here to pick up on some of your mission support and, if he can make it, CAPT Lassiter. He is being moved from his command to a similar position to yours in the Navy. We are hoping that a little careful sharing of the data will ease the situation here.”
“Can I ask what happened?” said Col Antonopoulos.
“No, you may not,” said Gen Johnson icily. “We need to control this situation and keep rumors to a minimum. You will be told when everyone else is.”
“Very good, sir,” said Col Antonopoulos.
Col Antonopoulos quickly headed to his temporary office in the headquarters building and did his best to clean up. Then he spent ten minutes writing down some notes about what he was going to say in his briefing. The time went all too fast and suddenly, there was a knock on his door.
“Gen Johnson sends his regards and requests you attend him in the briefing room at your earliest convenience,” said the young corporal.
Col Antonopoulos sighed and gathered his briefing notes. As he went towards the briefing room, Capt Whipkey joined him.
“What’s the lay of the land, Captain?” asked Col Antonopoulos quietly
“Confusion, fear, and more than a little distrust, sir,” said Capt Whipkey.
“What’s Lassiter’s angle?” asked Col Antonopoulos.
“As far as I can tell, he is a peon just like the rest of us,” said Capt Whipkey. “I doubt this is his or a Navy power play.”
“Then what the hell is going on?” said Col Antonopoulos.
“I wish I knew, sir,” said Capt Whipkey as he opened the door into the briefing room.
“Thanks for coming over so promptly,” said Gen Johnson. “If possible, can we dispense with the preliminaries and get a briefing about what you learned from the operation yesterday, specifically to include the interrogation of the prisoner.”
“Sir,” said Col Antonopoulos, “before I left, I had briefed GEN Buckley on the issue we have concerning a penetration of our command staff. It appears our adversary has someone who attends the weekly briefing. I have been trying to clear as many people as I can who sit at the table, but sir, neither you nor CAPT Lassiter are on that list.”
“GEN Buckley briefed me on that,” said Gen Johnson. “As senior officer present, I can theoretically order you to disregard that list in this case, but that will not engender the kind of cooperation we need here. I have lab reports that show CAPT Lassiter and I test negative on the Plague. I can show you that our families are safe on post so there is no blackmail threat. What else can we do to ensure you that we are not the mole you are looking for?”
Col Antonopoulos thought for a moment.
“Nothing at the moment, sir,” he said, “but I have an idea for the future. As you know, we can monitor some of their internet and cell phone traffic. I am going to ask that you not go to Monday’s staff meeting.”
“Not go?” asked Gen Johnson.
“Yes, sir,” said Col Antonopoulos. “Whoever is the mole is pretty regular in reporting after every meeting, and given what we have learned in our interrogation, I believe that he or she is under a lot of pressure to perform. I will drop an intelligence factoid as part of my normal briefing. This datum won’t damage our efforts but will be useful enough that the mole will have to report it. I won’t tell you. If the report goes through as usual, you gentlemen are probably clear and you will have my apologies. I have built a grid and have cleared a number of our colleagues this way. If it’s any reassurance, the reason I haven’t cleared the two of you is that you are way too conscientious about attending that meeting.
"The other tool I will have is that I will brief you on the interrogation as you have asked. I will hold out a couple of important details to protect my sources like current location and protection strategies. What I will tell you is intense enough that if one of you is the mole, you will likely feel you have to report this at the risk of your position so I will get double confirmation one way or the other. I am banking that it isn’t both of you, so the other will likely be my ally while I go and protect my sources. To get me to agree to this, Gen Johnson, you will need to agree that I can leave with significant assets to protect my sources if it turns out one of you is the mole. Some of those assets will include CAPT Lassiter’s drones and he will have to agree that he will OK that.”
“LG Buckley was right,” said Gen Johnson with a smile. “He said you would come with a plan to do this. I can’t say no, because that brings more suspicion on me. The same applies for the captain here. So you have my permission, what say you, Captain?”
“I accept of course,” said CAPT Lassiter. “It is clever. You know the use of the drones is a sore point. I suspect my body language is making it clear I don’t like this one bit, but it is, as I said, clever. Begin your briefing, Colonel.”
“Just a moment,” said Col Antonopoulos who then turned to Capt Whipkey. “Please ensure that the room is secure, for this briefing, no one is allowed in. If it’s critical, break into the meeting yourself and stop it while whoever it is that brought the message is held out of earshot. I suspect you will need some more support for this. Also bring in one of our electronics team to sweep the room for bugs.”
It was apparent that Whipkey had been briefed to prepare for something like this because he was able to call on security troops immediately and the electronics team was there in minutes. It took less than fifteen minutes before the room was secure enough to suit Col Antonopoulos.
“Alright, Colonel,” said Gen Johnson, “what is so important? Why all the cloak and dagger stuff.”
“Simply put sir,” said Col Antonopoulos, “we were able to capture a bodyguard who worked for one of the top leaders in the opposition. He has given us a great deal about his movements, resources, identity, and the structure of the organization we are facing.”
“So he just told you all of this?” asked Gen Johnson. “Isn’t that rather … convenient?”
“I had some interrogation aids that I am choosing to withhold sir,” said Col Antonopoulos vaguely. “I have reason to believe this data is very reliable.
“The bodyguard’s name is Sayla. It’s not his real name, but a cover he chooses to go by. It means simply ‘man’ in his native language as he is an American Indian. His superior also goes by a cover name, Nergüi, and old word that means ‘ghost’ in ancient Mongolian.”
“This is all cloak and dagger stuff,” said L
assiter impatiently. “Do you have any real data?”
“Quite a bit, Captain,” said Col Antonopoulos. “But you are going to have to listen to the whole story to get the context, or you could just leave now.”
“Which would give you plenty of ammunition to claim I am the mole,” said Lassiter. “Very well, tell it your way.”
“Here is the first of the bombshells,” said Col Antonopoulos. “Sayla is over two hundred years old, in fact, most of the people we are up against are quite old.”
“So he is in pretty bad shape then?” asked Gen Johnson. “I thought you said he was a bodyguard.”
“He is in excellent condition,” said Col Antonopoulos. “Before that revelation, I would estimate his apparent age to be in the early thirties. His reactions are blindingly fast, he is six foot six inches tall, and built like a decathlete or a gymnast. His weapons skills match anything I have ever seen, to include the Special Forces troops we had with us.”
“So he put up quite a fight?” asked CAPT Lassiter.
“It’s more complex than that,” said Col Antonopoulos. “We think he wanted someone to think he was captured involuntarily, but truthfully, he was captured by an emotionally distraught seventeen year-old girl who actually used Sayla’s own gun.
“We think he wanted to be caught and … defect.”
“Why would he do that?” asked CAPT Lassiter, who was becoming more interested in the tale.
“Well, as I said, he is quite old,” said Col Antonopoulos, “and he is also infected. He needs to be around someone who is in remission in order to stay symptom-free. While he is near this person, he has no symptoms and is not contagious. Should he leave that proximity or the principal chooses to withhold support in some way, he becomes symptomatic in a couple of days and would likely be dead inside of the week. He was found, if his account can be believed by this Nergüi as he struggled through the end stages of the disease. We believe that occurred in approximately 1840 in what was then the nascent Texas Republic.
“Nergüi apparently gathered his … minions in this manner. They were bound to him and utterly loyal as he could also cause severe neurologic pain. Sayla worked for Nergüi for over ten years and then escaped.”
“How did he escape without dying?” asked Gen Johnson, becoming engrossed in the tale.
“He found another who was in remission,” said Col Antonopoulos. “Sayla called him, the Ghost Who Walks. He was another Native American; we know little of him except that after a few years, Nergüi found them. There was apparently an altercation in which Sayla was recaptured, though the Ghost Who Walks survived and apparently is an adversary of Nergüi. Nergüi then used brainwashing techniques to rival any I am aware of to secure Sayla’s loyalty. Deep inside, Sayla was repulsed by Nergüi and his organization and was looking for a chance to jump ship again. It apparently happened.”
“So tell me about this Nergüi,” said Gen Johnson. “Is he the head of the organization?”
“We don’t think so,” said Col Antonopoulos. “Our source says that several times, he escorted Nergüi to meet with someone else who was clearly calling the shots. Nergüi is more of the director for American operations.
“He is also quite old. If Sayla’s account is true, he may be close to a thousand years old.”
“Now damn it, that’s enough,” said Lassiter. “I refuse to believe that these people are living that long! The longest I have heard of people living is to a hundred and twenty or something and they are old and frail. You are telling me they are fit and strong and live ten times that many years, Bullshit!”
“I was skeptical as well,” said Col Antonopoulos. “But results from Dr. Grieb, who is now working at the Madigan Medical Center, have convinced me. I’ll have the bulk of the data sent to you if you like, but basically, the cells in your body divide and replace themselves on a pretty regular basis. After a while, these processes shorten protein chains in your cells called telomeres. When that chain gets too short, they divide more slowly and then not at all. This slowing of cellular division means that body structures have to carry on longer than they were designed for and so, when you get older, things sag, eyesight fails, you heal more slowly; all of the things we associate with aging.
"One of the effects of this disease is what looks to be cellular mutation which in some cases, when allowed to go on long enough, changes how these telomeres are formed and maintained during cell divisions. They don’t change appreciably in length in any of the cultures run by Grieb’s team. He suspects that given enough divisions, they would begin to break down but the aging process is significantly slowed.
"I personally interviewed Sayla. He looks like he is in his thirties and is in excellent condition; better than many Olympic athletes. I suspect that if you lived that long, trained hard all that time, and your cells did not deteriorate, you would have that sort of physique too.
"He speaks a language that nobody could place. My team recorded the entire interrogation and we will be gathering any American native-speakers in the Fort Lewis encampment to see if any can recognize it. It does sound like a language, not gibberish.
“My team will also be tracking down some of the historical facts that he spoke of. Again, I can get a list of them for you, but we will be checking them out independently to see if they match up.”
“Let’s accept, at least for this briefing,” said Gen Johnson calming the waters, “that these people are in fact living unnaturally long lives. I still want to know more about our adversary, Nergüi. What do we know?”
“Well,” said Col Antonopoulos, “We know he has been in America since the end of the Napoleonic Wars when he was an advisor to Napoleon himself. He has knocked around the western hemisphere, trying to set himself up as a dictator or president for life in half a dozen two-bit countries. He played a part in the Texas War of Independence as well as the Mexican American War a few years later. He was a copperhead agitator during the American Civil War and went to South America after that war ended.
“He played a role in a number of South American coups and revolutions until around 1900, and then he was recruited by the group that eventually distributed the Plague. He has since been recruiting agents, like former Special Agent Macklin and apparently, was instrumental in settling up the research facility in California where they weaponized the virus. We have some other details on how he travels, what his management style is, what kind of disguises he uses, and other working intel that we can use to hunt him which I am keeping close to the vest until I am more sure of you, no offense meant, gentlemen, but I do have to be careful.”
“Buckley said you would be cagey and thorough,” said Maj Gen Johnson. “He also said that you would have a plan for carrying this out. I think we should tell him, Captain.”
“I agree,” said Lassiter, who might have, for just a second, smiled. “Let me be the first person to congratulate you on your promotion.”
“I don’t understand,” said Col Antonopoulos uncertainly.
“Well, as of twelve hundred hours today,” said Gen Johnson with a smile. “You are now Major General Antonopoulos and in command of I Corps.”
“I am honored,” said Maj Gen Antonopoulos, “but there are at least six flag officers on post not to mention ten or twelve O-6’s that have date-of-rank on me.”
“That’s about what I counted when LTG Buckley sprang this on me,” said Johnson. “But all of them are Army or Navy officers and there is tension over that. You are Air Force and frankly, respected by everyone. This went to the highest levels and the Secretary of Defense initially suggested that they fly in a new officer from the Pentagon to command. LTG Buckley convinced him that due to the touchy situation here, an outsider would take too long to get up to speed. It looks like you are out of the intel business and in command of a joint task force to restore order in the state of Washington.
“I realize, fielding your next objection, that I am also a Major General and that I have date of rank on you, but don’t worry. I don’t want yo
ur job. Any Army officer that takes it will be opening a can of worms; we are hoping to nip this inter-service rivalry in the bud. I will happily go back to ops. Like I said, it looks like you are out of the intel business, buddy.”
“I am to take that over,” said Lassiter with some chagrin. “This recent dust up was caused by an argument over the use of Navy drones in pursuit of objectives that I wasn’t briefed on. Before you get started, I understand about compartmentalized knowledge and all the rest, but having me in this job might smooth the waters. I am not completely a babe in the woods. As a young Lieutenant Commander, I was in charge of an intel section as well.”
“Looks like you thought of everything,” said Gen Antonopoulos. “Or rather LTG Buckley did. OK, when I am satisfied that you are not the mole, you have the job, and Maj Gen Johnson, I hope I can count on your able support to handle the changeover.”
“Absolutely,” said Johnson.
“Oh, there was one more fact I forgot,” said Maj Gen Antonopoulos. “But this one, you absolutely must keep under your hat. Don’t tell anyone, not your staffs, not your wives. While we were able to interrogate Sayla at length, we have another asset that we can use to corroborate his story. The other bodyguard, an even larger Nordic man by the name of Harðnefr, attempted to commit suicide rather than be caught. One of the Strickland party was apparently an EMT and was able to stabilize him long enough for my PJ’s to finish the job. He hasn’t spoken yet, but he is recuperating in an undisclosed location. But gentlemen, remember, keep this one close. Sayla could feed us any cock and bull story and we are so desperate for intel that we will swallow it.
“Sayla doesn’t know this other asset is alive and once he recovers enough for interrogation, he can either refute or confirm what Sayla has given us.”
The meeting went on for almost two more hours, re-configuring intelligence assets and getting the newly minted Gen Antonopoulos up to speed. So when the General finally left to give his wife the news that he had been promoted, he allowed himself a small smile. Only he and a handful of folks knew that Harðnefr was really dead. When they had policed the field, the PJ’s had made quite a show out of moving Harðnefr’s body so that only his PJ’s and a couple of other Air Force personnel knew his true condition.