The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE

by Carlos Carrasco

  Corelli can’t make out their conversation over the distance and the sounds of traffic and of Marine One’s rotors. After conferring with his superiors over his mike, the agent waves Lamar forward. Annie follows and Joe gets to his feet and runs to catch up to them. The President is already climbing aboard. After a quick frisking which parts Annie from her gun, the three are hurried inside the chopper.

  Marine One lifts off immediately. Joe makes his way to the back of the cabin. His movements are slow and awkward fighting the downward drag of g-forces created by the helicopter’s rapid climb through the atmosphere. He has never been in such close proximity to the President. He certainly never expected to ride with him in Marine One. Under different circumstances he would have enjoyed the experience. There is no time for that now. Before he is settled in his seat, an explosion, far to the north, lights up the night sky.

  “What the!?!” he cries.

  Looking out one of the starboard windows of the helicopter, Joe can briefly make out three large chunks of what appear to be a commuter jet plummeting through the sky like burning meteors. He has no time to wonder how many lives might have been instantly incinerated over the waters of Chesapeake Bay. None of them do. The air in the cabin seems to thin suddenly. They look at each other and Joe sees the same mix of panic and dizziness in everyone’s eyes. Corelli feels himself reeling towards unconsciousness. He tastes tin on the back of his throat. The realization hits them all at the same time.

  They are being gassed.

  With his breath held, Joe takes off his jacket and covers up his mouth and nose. Up front, Lamar and Gallagher begin pounding on the door between cabin and cockpit. The two female agents seated across the aisle from Joe are the first to fall unconscious. Their heads knock together as they collapse into each other. The agent sitting by the President pulls down an oxygen mask and puts it over O’Neill’s face with some effort. The President takes a deep breath through the mask. His eyes cross and then shut. His seat belt keeps him from folding over and falling. The agent attending him drops next, collapsing at the President’s feet. Annie follows, folding sideways over her seat’s armrest. Lamar and Gallagher kick at the door, their strength quickly waning with each effort. Congressman Reed drops first. Morton gets in one more futile kick before he too falls against the door, slides to the floor, and lands with his head on the congressman’s lap.

  The lights of DC dwindle in the distance outside of Joe Corelli’s window as his own body finally succumbs to sleep.

  2

  The Church Militant

  “What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms!”

  --- Thomas Jefferson

  Joe Corelli wakes up with a start. It takes a moment to realize that he is in his Harlem apartment and not still in the replica of Marine One. The kidnapping and hell ride aboard the mock Presidential copter was twelve years ago. He was only dreaming. And that meant that he fell asleep. He looks up to see that the night has deepened outside his living room’s bow windows. The laptop’s chronometer reads 10:09 p.m.

  Nearly four hours have slipped passed.

  Damn it, he thinks. And yet, he is not entirely sorry that he fell asleep. He needed the rest. He rubs what soreness he can out of his neck while he listens to light footfalls from the street beneath his apartment. Joe rises from his seat and walks to his windows, careful to approach them from the side.

  He peers through the slit in the curtains and looks down on old Mr. Crowley, his landlord and occasional dominoes partner. The dark, bald crown of his head reflects the street lamps milky light. Crowley is climbing the stoop to the brownstone across the street, a pair of grocery bags in each hand. At his door, Crowley shifts the bags in his right hand to the left one and fishes a set of keys out of his pants’ pocket. Corelli wants to call out to him, maybe invite himself over. The old man would be agreeable, he knows. Crowley is a widower who complains of being visited too infrequently by his own kids. Joe knows the old man would prefer his company over the television he falls to sleep with every night. Tonight, however is not a night for playing dominoes. Joe and the old man would have to talk about the destruction of Santa Fe, the death of Miguel Pereira and the standoff between the two factions of the military. It is, no doubt, what everyone is talking about tonight, holed up in their homes. The country and the world are holding their collective breath as America teeters, once more, on the precipice of civil war.

  Mr. Crowley knows that Corelli works for the government. The conversation they would have over the affair would be painful for both of them. Joe knows that the old man, like millions of Americans, has grown to love Pereira. They have forgiven him the coup that brought him into power that fateful Christmas Eve. Crowley, with two thirds of the electorate, actually voted to keep him in power once the Colonel restored elections. There is no doubt that they would have given a second term. A little less than half the voters polled recently were willing to consider lifting the presidency’s term limits and reward Pereira with a third term and maybe a fourth term. More frightening still, were the neo-monarchists, an ever more vocal and steadily growing group on the fringe, who talked of crowning their American Charlemagne.

  There was no choice, Joe tells himself. It’s why he did what he did. He had to do it. The Colonel had to go! America was not meant to be ruled by an emperor. I did what I had to do, he tells himself. I did what I had to, only… only I didn’t know about the bomb. Joe shuts his eyes tightly. Three hundred thousand dead, he thinks. The thought squeezes thin, twin streams of tears through the seams of his eyelids. He stifles a sob with great effort.

  “God in heaven forgive me,” Corelli whispers as Mr. Crowley disappears behind his door. “I didn’t know about the bomb.”

  Joe backs away from the window, knowing that he will not be playing dominoes with him ever again. He can’t. He does not want to bear the disappointment his neighbor would express over Joe’s involvement in the tragedy. The memory of Sandi’s heartache over his betrayal is already more than he can stand.

  Corelli returns to his kitchen and opens the fridge. There are plenty of condiments and a half package of oatmeal cookies behind a long rotten carton of Chinese food. He pops a couple of cookies in his mouth and goes rummaging through his freezer. There are better pickings there. He pulls out a frozen steak and a couple of frozen filets of redfish. He places them on the counter and digs back in for the last of a breakfast burrito and a half quart of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream. Joe nukes the burrito, wolfs it down and then cools his throat with a swallow of scotch. Corelli throws the steak and the filets in the microwave to cook. The machine scans the contents and begins a twelve minute count down. With ice cream and spoon in hand, Joe Corelli sits back down in front of his computer and re-reads what last he wrote.

  [As the world waited in the dark for any detail of what was going on that fateful Christmas, we got to watch it all from the bunker from which the revolution was being orchestrated. Our vantage point gave us a firsthand glimpse at the actual scope and reach of the cabal. Our insider’s view however was no more than a snapshot, an incomplete sketch that only hinted at the depth and breadth of the conspiracy. New details have been discovered every year, painting an ever grander picture than was first imagined.

  [We were up against more than ‘insubordinate troops led by an ambitious and disgruntled officer with a score to settle.’ We were up against more than ‘crude, bible-thumping Theocrats’ or ‘knuckle-dragging, smallminded Christo-fascists.’ Those were the various ways the press described the uprising during the shocking first days. It was a misreading on their part, conscious or otherwise, that failed them in their feverish efforts to rally a response against the Colonel and his crusade.

  [We were, instead, up against a movement, the likes of which the world had not seen in a thousand years; it is a movement that changed the world almost overnight and shows every indication of dominating
history for the next millennium…]

  Naples, Florida

  21:39:04

  General Alan Stone is in his skivvies. His reddish black skin tone has a luster and smoothness that belies his sixty-three years. The bald, short but solid, square built, old soldier is in his study, slipping his uniform pants off a wooden hanger. He is dressing between the large and curtained bay window and his sprawling walnut desk. The Santa suit he was wearing moments before is a pile of red and white at his feet. Captain Benson, a tall, thin, lighter-skinned black male of approximately the same age, with a thinning, gray afro and round, gold, wire-rimmed glasses is seated on the opposite side of the desk. He is in uniform. The Captain is Stone’s subordinate at the armed force’s Central Command. Benson is bringing General Stone up to speed on the President’s abduction.

  Captain Benson was forced to fly over from CENTCOMM on a Huey, setting it down in the middle of the General’s quiet suburban street. The chopper is idling outside, creating quite a stir in the neighborhood as it waits to whisk the General away.

  Captain Benson, sitting in his signature square-shouldered up-rightness, informs his superior officer that not only is their Commander-in-Chief kidnapped, but the nation’s satellites are also under the control of unknowns.

  “And not only ours,” the Captain says. “Every satellite is under their control.”

  “All of them?” General Stone asks, sitting on the plush, leather chair behind his desk while he unfolds a pair of olive green socks.

  “Yes sir,” Benson says. “They began going off line at 21:50 hours. In five minutes they were all down and the world was completely blind. At 22:00 hours they began jamming the airwaves, the whole spectrum. At 22:15 hours, satellite imagery was restored. We’re trying to figure out how they managed to link them all up. Nothing like it has ever been done before.”

  “The restoration of satellite imagery at 22:15 hours,” Stone pulls on his left sock. “Was that us, did we restore the imagery?”

  “No sir, we didn’t,” Captain Benson says. “They did. They’re allowing the satellite images to come through, which is good because air traffic control was getting a little dicey. We’re completely locked out, can’t do a thing. Everyone and everything is offline. Nothing is getting through their jamming.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No television, no radio, no cell phones or internet; nothing is working. Every bandwidth is flooded with static. All transmissions are being diced up and scrambled into white noise.”

  “No television or internet?” The General muses. “Maybe the unknowns are not hostile after all.”

  “I wouldn’t venture a guess at this point, General.”

  Of course you wouldn’t, Alan Stone thinks to himself. You are as humorless as they come, Captain Benson. “How have we been communicating with the outside world?”

  “Landlines,” responds the Captain.

  Incredible, thinks the General. In one fell swoop we have been thrown seventy, maybe eighty years back in time. “What are our allies and friends saying?”

  “Everyone is hopping mad, sir, particularly the Chinese.”

  The General laughs out loud at that. The Chinese are the most aggressive practitioners of cyber warfare on the planet. “Serves them right, having their fortune cookies hacked.”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “We’re certain that the attack was uploaded from the Pentagon?” The General asks, pulling on his right sock.

  “Yes,” answers the Captain. “At least that’s what their last communique said.”

  The General rises out of his chair. “And what do we know about the President?”

  “They couldn’t have taken him too far, General,” Benson reports. “Andrews had the Raptors as well as some choppers in the air and there were a score of network helicopters too. Unfortunately, they were all looking the other way at the time. Flight one-one-niner was in the air over Chesapeake. As soon as we became aware of the bait and switch, we had them all start searching for the imposter Marine One, but it was gone by then.”

  Stone slips his right leg into his pants. “That tells us they were in the air for no more than eight to ten minutes.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The General slips his left leg into his pants. “Assuming the imposter bird can approximate Marine One’s top speeds, it leaves us a large area to search.”

  “The eyewitness consensus is that it headed northwest.”

  “There are mostly mountains and woods up that way.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The General pulls an olive-drab t-shirt over his head. “All that territory is honeycombed with mines, caves and bunkers.”

  “Kelly believes she can narrow the search area for us, General,” Benson offers.

  Stone tucks the t-shirt into his pants. “How is she figuring to do that?”

  “They may have blinded us but we still had our ears working,” Captain Benson says. “Kelly is using the city’s acoustic sensors to determine the flight path and maybe even pin point the touchdown of the mock bird.”

  “Acoustic sensors?” the General asks, looping a belt through his pants.

  “The police use them in cities to zero in on gunfire. DC is bristling with them.”

  “Ah, yes,” Alan Stone says, reaching for the uniform’s shirt draped over the leather chair.

  “Lt. Kelly will isolate the bogey chopper’s audio signature from the recordings. She said it will be a simple matter to plot its flight path off of the positions and orientations of the various sensors when she has its signature.”

  “How is she going to do that without computers?”

  “CENTCOMM’s mainframe is working,” the Captain says. “It’s underground and hardened against electromagnetic pulse attack. We can’t network through it, but otherwise it is functioning.”

  The general tucks his buttoned shirt into his pants. “How long before Kelly knows?”

  “Major Kettering put the audio files on a jet to CENTCOMM,” Benson answers. “They should be arriving any minute now. Kelley figures she will have the signature isolated thirty minutes after she gets her hands on them. Plotting its flight path and landing point will take no more than another ten minutes.”

  “Good,” Stone says, buckling his belt. Alan slips into his shoes. He ties their laces as he wonders what to do first when he arrives at CENTCOMM. The kidnapping has military fingerprints all over it. General Alan Stone does not relish the notion of going up against his own. A civil war, he knows, would destroy the already weakened country. His only hope is that the coup is being orchestrated by a small band which can be quickly neutralized.

  Stone drapes his tie around his neck. “What do we know about the downed planes and the jet?”

  “Kettering at Andrews suspected the Cessnas were flown remotely,” Captain Benson answers. “NTSB is on the scene and we’ll know as soon as they do. Barcelona’s manifest for flight one-one-niner lists a hundred and five passengers and six crew members on board.”

  General Alan Stone reaches for his jacket, his head shaking sadly. One hundred eleven people shot out of the sky. It was, unfortunately, not the first time they had to shoot down a plane of civilians, sacrificing a few lives to save thousands. It was only two years ago they were forced to shoot down an Aer Lingus 767 over New York Harbor. The terrorists who hijacked it over the Atlantic intended to take down another skyscraper and would’ve succeeded had not one of the passengers managed to text a warning to her police officer brother in New York. Her text saved lives on the ground but it also doomed her and her fellow one hundred and thirty-two passengers. The government hadn’t the time to do anything else. Not then or tonight. No one wanted a repeat of the two tragic attacks of Thanksgiving Day 2013. The Southwest Airlines 747s which Kama-kazied into the Sears and Willis Towers cost Chicago five thousand souls. The American Airlines DC 10 exploded over Boston, cost that city two thousand lives. The trigger fingers on the Nation’s anti-aircraft guns were itching to keep anything
like it from happening again.

  When the General pushes the last brass button of his jacket through its eyelet, he gestures for Captain Benson to follow him out of his study with a nod of the head. Downstairs, a house full of family and friends rise to their feet as the General and Captain descend the stairs.

  “I’m sorry folks,” Alan Stone says to them all.

  The dozen grandchildren for whom he dressed up as Santa Claus are lined up in front of the adults. When he looks at them, the children snap to attention and salute him. His heart swells with pride at the display. Stone smiles down upon them as he returns their salute.

  “Be good little soldiers,” he tells them. “And carry on. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Stone turns to his wife. She is by the door, holding his hat and coat.

  “Your sleigh awaits, General Santa,” she says.

  Alan kisses her. “I am really sorry, honey.”

  “I know, baby,” she says, placing the hat on his head. “We understand. Duty calls.”

  “Yes,” he kisses her again and slips into the coat she spreads open for him, one arm at a time with a nimble precision, the graceful vestige of the boy boxer of his youth. “And it does like to call at the most inopportune of times.”

  “Packed you some Christmas grub,” his wife points to a shopping bag full of foil-wrapped meats, Tupper-ware sealed fixings, sides and hot cross buns. “I packed enough for you too, Captain Benson. Merry Christmas!”

  “Much obliged ma’am,” the Captain smiles wide and bows sharply. “Merry Christmas to you and yours.”

  The Captain grabs the bag off the floor and steps out with a final nod to the large family waving good bye in arm-wrapped clusters across the wide, bricked and sofa-strewn living room. They are smiling through their game-faces. It is a warm scene, backlit with the kaleidoscopic blinking bursts of colors from a twelve foot Christmas tree.