(Wrath-09)-Spiders From The Shadows (2013)

by Chris Stewart

  It was like talking to a prophet. The controller of the PCASS could discover anything.

  Because the PCASS had proven extremely effective, over time its uses had been expanded into other areas of interrogation, most of which were legal, but some of which were not.

  * * * * * * *

  Even though deception measures had proven completely ineffective against the PCASS, the group had still ordered sodium pentothal to be administered to James to bring him completely under their control. The professional interrogators had argued against the drug, knowing it was unnecessary, but the group had a proven zealousness that amounted to overkill. It simply wasn’t in their nature to take chances, their operating philosophy falling more in line with “Why drop a single bomb when a dozen bombs will do?”

  James was propped up in a chair, the drugs flowing heavily through his veins, dilating his eyes and lowering his pulse and blood pressure until his head bobbed atop his neck as if suspended on a string. His eyes were unfocused, his lips pulled back in a grimace of a smile. The PCASS electrodes were slipped around his fingers and under his arm, and the questions began. They started out very simple, then became more probing, more dangerous, more telling and instructive as the interrogation wore on. Inside the functioning part of his mind, deep inside his ventromedial prefrontal cortex where his moral compass and ethical judgment resided, James struggled with all his might to keep from answering, but the mental resistance he tried to exercise never quite made it to the surface of his brain. As hard as he tried, the answers were impossible to avoid. He tried to lie. The interrogator caught him. James tried remaining silent. The sodium pentothal made him talk. And some of the questions didn’t need a truthful answer; knowing when he was lying was enough.

  “Is Brucius Marino alive now?”

  A long hesitation.. Which was fine with tw

  “Is Brucius Marino alive?”

  Finally a struggled answer. “I don’t know.”

  Red light. With one option eliminated from a yes-or-no question, they didn’t need to ask again.

  “Does Brucius Marino realize he’s next in line of succession to be the president of the United States?”

  A very long pause. A very pained face. Eyes rolling. Dry lips smacking.

  “Answer the question for us. Does Brucius Marino believe he has a claim upon the presidency of the United States?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Another red light. Another lie. Again, no reason to follow this line of questioning any further.

  “Is he planning at this time to make a claim upon the presidency?”

  Another long moment of hesitation. “No, I don’t think so.”

  A couple of seconds for the computer and monitors to evaluate, then another red light.

  Even as he answered their questions, stabs of fear cut through James’ mind. He knew what he was saying but he couldn’t stop himself. Deep in his brain, he focused his determination, willing himself to say the right thing, willing himself not to tell them everything, willing himself to shut his mouth and not say anything at all. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP, YOU FOOL!” he screamed from deep inside himself. But the heavy drugs had made him talkative, giving him a false sense of contentment that led to a willingness to share his secrets with his new friends.

  In the end, his resistance didn’t matter. Despite his best efforts to deny them, it took only a few hours until they knew.

  * * * * * * *

  Minutes after the interrogation was over, a small group of men gathered in the private office of the president.

  “Brucius Marino is alive,” the first man said.

  The other men demurred. They had suspected he was out there somewhere, but this was not welcome news.

  “He’s holed up in the Strategic Command Operations Center out at Offutt.”

  More murmurs. It was the last place they wanted him to be.

  “We could kill him,” one man offered. He was the new FBI Director and had always favored the most direct approach. “Better to eliminate him before he can do us damage.”

  Five minutes of conversation followed. Most of the men agreed.

  Then the old man stepped forward, the air pungent with his smell. “Yes, we could kill him,” he offered simply. On the surface it appeared that he was seeking their support, but none of them bought it. They all knew the final decision would be his. “As a matter of principle, I think we’ve pretty much established that we’ll do what we have to do in order to make this work. But there are important considerations before we take such a course. And the truth is, my good brothers, there’s a better way. There is something we could do that would utterly eliminate Secretary Marino as a threat, perhaps more effectively than if we put a bullet in his head. More importantly, my suggestion has the added and powerful benefit of establishing our authority while legitimizing our new government and making everything that we do after this perfectly justifiable and legal.”

  The men fell silent. Whatever he came up with, they knew it would be brilliant, and the He wet his lips and ro fingery knew that it would work.

  “How many members of the Unites States Congress are still alive?” the old man asked.

  “One hundred and twelve,” the FBI Director answered. “Thirty-eight senators, seventy-four congressmen.”

  “How many of them are here in Raven Rock?”

  “All but twelve. The others are in various stages of arrival, but it may take a few days. A couple of them—”

  The old man raised his hand. “It doesn’t matter. We have enough,” he said.

  * * * * * * *

  It took almost a day to complete the second interrogation. All they were trying to do was gather enough video footage of James Davies talking to be useful. To do that, they had to moderate the drugs to make him coherent yet sedated enough to keep him under their control. In the end, it proved to be impossible. He was simply too bullheaded, his will too strong to get anything useful without showing the obvious effect of the drugs.

  “It doesn’t do us any good to put him in front of the cameras if he looks like he’s stoned out of his mind!” the old man screamed. “Go back! Try agaare more of us

  TWELVE

  Mount Aatte, North of Peshawar, Pakistan

  The shepherd stood atop a granite cliff, looking down on the narrow valley some two thousand feet below. Six shacks—not quite huts, with their clay walls, straw roofs and mud floors—lined the deep river that cut through the valley floor. Ancient rock walls, some of them older than Mohammed, crisscrossed the valley, segmenting the land into separate pastures. The walls hadn’t been built to acknowledge private property—earth was the great gift from God and land was held in common among the village folks—but they did make for more efficient management of the sheep and goat herds that provided the milk, meat, leather, and woolen blankets the villagers needed to survive. To to kill ing the reached the villagers, their animals were almost sacred, for they lived or died according to health of their herds. Every part of the animals was used: the internal organs cooked into stew, the blood boiled and packed into intestines to make sausages, the horns worn for adornments or hollowed out to pack tobacco, the skins tanned, the wool stretched and dyed and sewn, the hooves pounded into “medicinal” potions, the teeth ground into various concoctions, most of them unhealthy.

  The old man tugged on his hairy chin as he looked out. The rock cliffs around the valley were smooth, gray and sheer, with buttress outcroppings that looked like enormous castle walls. The grass in the valley was brown now, the harvest having come and gone, and the river was running slow. Looking up, he watched the clouds sink toward him. Winter was coming early. The nights were already bitter cold, the days covered with the slate clouds that hung around the mountaintops, creating an artificial ceiling to a valley that sat very near the top of the world.

  As he watched, a cold wind blew down from the mountain peaks, wet with drizzle. In a few minutes, it would rain. By nightfall there would be snow. Fall was even shorter than summer in the m
ountains, and the coming winter would be long. The old man’s face was beaten and deeply creased, reflecting a long, hard life. It was a harsh land that he looked out upon—unbelievably cold in winter, fire-hot and dry in summer, unforgiving, remote, brutal to outsiders, utterly unmanageable except for the few herdsmen and mountain sheep who had the courage to traverse the steep and rocky trails.

  The old man watched the single road that ran into the valley from the treacherous mountain pass to the east. His eyes were not as good as they once had been, and he cocked his head to listen as the military jeep reached the highest point on the dirt road and began descending into his valley. Other military vehicles followed. In all, he counted five. They stopped outside the rock wall that surrounded the tiny village, only four feet high now, a thousand years of neglect and erosion having worn it down. Two men got out of the first vehicle and looked around, their carbines hanging under their arms, always ready.

  The shepherd turned to his dear friend. Omar watched without speaking, his face tan and tense as he gazed down.

  “You know them?” the shepherd questioned.

  Omar thought a long time before he finally nodded.

  “They came for you?”

  He shook his head.

  The old man glanced back at the shepherd hut set among the scraggly mountain pines near the entrance to a narrow canyon. The boy was waiting there, standing by the goatskin door that covered the small opening to the hut. Omar followed the old man’s eyes to watch the boy. They called him Larka ka aik Heera. Boy of the Diamond. Omar hated the name—it was demeaning and too descriptive—but he’d never said anything. For what his old friend had risked to protect the child, he could have called him Son of a Crusader and Omar wouldn’t have complained.

  The two men watched him. The boy waited, afraid to move. But Omar could read his body language. He was taut, ready to spring if the men gave the word. “He’s a good boy,” Omar observed quietly to the shepherd.

  “He’s got the spirit of a stallion, but the manners of a colt,” the old man complained.

  “You gave him that, my friend.”

  The old man shook his head.

  Omar continued, “No, Rehnuma, that is the g thought a lot about’ fatherift you gave to him. His breeding is deep inside him, rich as blood and deep as bone. It will drive him with ambition when he gets older, that is assured, but it will destroy him if not bridled. That is one of the reasons I brought him to you. He needed the seasoning only you and the mountain could ever give him. He needed the humility of being hungry, the gratefulness of being cold, the discipline of herding stupid sheep, the faith of hanging on the mountain with only your word to guide him home.”

  The old man thought, then nodded. “The manners of a colt, perhaps I nurtured that. But the stallion that runs inside him, he got that from somewhere else.”

  “His father gave that to him.”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits and he turned back to the valley and the military vehicles down below. “They are looking for him,” he said.

  Omar didn’t answer.

  “You have not told me. I have not asked you. But it isn’t hard to figure out. The diamond he carries is worth more than every man, woman, and child in every village within a five days’ walk of here. His shoulders are too proud, his neck too long. He doesn’t come from Peshawar. He doesn’t come from Persia, Pakistan or anywhere even close. He’s too royal. You can see it. Young as he is, I could not hide it. If they see him, they will know.”

  Omar cleared his throat and spat, then pulled out a square of brown paper, tapped in a short line of tobacco, rolled, and licked the edge with a dry tongue, taking less than thirty seconds to hand roll the cigarette. He shoved the narrow cigarette into his mouth and lit it with a paper match.

  The shepherd nodded to the military vehicles again. “They’re looking for him?”

  Omar pulled a drag and held it.

  “They will find him,” the old man said.

  “Not if we’re careful.”

  “No, dost, that isn’t true. They’ll find him. They’ll take him or kill him, depending on who he really is. I can’t keep him here forever. They know too much. They’ve come back here too often now. They must know that they are close. Someone in the village—I have my own enemies, you surely know—they must be talking, and I can’t stop them.

  “Listen to me, dost. I am old now. I’m not afraid to die. I would welcome a chance to sleep, but if Allah were to grant me a few more years, I would take them with great pleasure. I’d like to see my grandchildren safe before I die. I’d like to touch the sea. I’m tired of these mountain walls and winter.”

  He fell silent. Omar smoked. The wind was picking up and getting wetter, blowing the first raindrops from the mountaintops over their heads.

  “No,” the old man said, “I’m ready string of rag

  THIRTEEN

  Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska

  Sam Brighton was tired of waiting. He was tired of the uncertainty. He was tired of being held in the small office and not being told what was going on. He was a warrior, and the frustration of inactivity burned like a hot coal inside him. He could feel the sense of urgency in the pace of operations all around him. There was a real war going on and it was going on without him, which was driving him insane. Here he was, stuffed away inside a waiting room, no weapons, no information, no plan. He felt agitated, almost angry, wanting to get in the fight. He missed the vital sense of purpose that came with battle: the chaos, the noise, the uncertainty, the rush of adrenaline, the action, the ecstasy, the sure feeling that no matter what happened to him he was doing something good. All of that was missing now. He was ready to move.

  The office door opened and his mother walked into the room. He moved anxiously toward her. “So?” he asked before she could even shut the door.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “They canceled the meeting,” she said.

  Sam gritted his teeth. “Are you kidding me? What have you been doing? You’ve been gone for almost two hours.”

  “They left me waiting. I was close, I think, but something came up.”

  “They didn’t give you any explanation? They didn’t tell you anything about what’s going on out there?”

  “No, Sam, they didn’t, and let’s not flatter ourselves. We’re not that important right now, not in the grand scheme of things. We’re lucky even to be here. I’m certainly not going to complain.”

  Sam turned away and ground his teeth again. “Sure, Mom,” he said.

  Behind him, his brothers were sitting on the floor of the small office under the only window, which looked out on the military base three floors below. They’d pushed the metal desk aside and laid out their sleeping bags for padding. Azadeh was sitting apart, against the back wall. Mary and her daughter were not with them; they’d been taken to the base hospital for a checkup the day before. Kelly Beth’s obvious poor health and low weight had raised enough concerns that the medic who had been assigned to them had wanted to examine her.

  Sara smiled as she remembered Mary trying to explain to the young medic what had happened to her daughter. “Two weeks ago, she was dying of cancer sensed the presence. Co,” she had started. “She was right on death’s door. But the good Lord sent an angel to bless and save her. The good Lord sent that young man and his family over there.” She pointed toward Sam. “He blessed her with righteous oil and now she’s healed as well as you can see.”

  The medic had responded with a patronizing grin. Mary had gone on, but the medic wasn’t listening anymore.

  Before Mary had left with Kelly Beth for the hospital, Sara had pulled her aside. “I don’t know if I’d be telling everyone about what happened to Kelly Beth,” she whispered quietly.

  Mary looked at her with intense surprise. “Oh, I’ll be telling everyone,” she said. “Everyone who will listen and even those who won’t. The Lord reached down and saved my daughter, c
lutched her right from the very hands of death. He saved her sure as He raised Lazarus. It’s a miracle, and I don’t think anyone could stop me from shouting it from the rooftops just like the Bible says. It’s like a burning in my chest that I have to quench by getting out. I’m going to tell everybody. I’m going to tell the whole world.”

  Sara had thought for a long moment, her eyes down. It was a very fine line, and who was she to say, but still she had to wonder. “I just—I don’t know, Mary, I just think there may be some things that are particularly sacred.”

  “Sacred, yes it is, Sara, but we can’t be quiet on this thing. Miracles like this are the only thing that’s going to save us now. You know that better than anyone. Miracles are all we’ve got now. We’ve got to get everyone to know.” Mary had lowered her voice and shot a quick look toward Sara’s youngest son, Luke. “You’ve got your own miracle over there, baby. You know it. I know it. I think the Lord wants us to go and tell.”

  Sara had thought for another moment, then smiled apologetically as she reached out to touch Mary’s arm. “You’re absolutely right, Mary. Of course you are. Most people will think we’re crazy, but some of them will listen, and it will help those few who do. All around us now there are people who are searching desperately for any sign of hope, any little thing that they can cling to. We have hope because of miracles. God has blessed us so. Who are we to remain silent? You tell whoever you think you ought to. Heavenly Father would want us to shout it from the housetops. Thanks for helping me to see.”

  * * * * * * *

  Sara smiled as she thought back on the conversation that had taken place the day before. Where Mary and Kelly Beth were now, she didn’t know. She hadn’t heard from them since they had left for the base hospital. She wondered if she would see them again. Maybe soon. Maybe never. There was no way to know. But there was no doubt in her mind that right now, sweet Mary Dupree was hovering over her little girl, explaining to everyone within earshot how Kelly Beth had been cured. The image in her mind made Sara want to both laugh and cry. It made her sweet and peaceful and reminded her again: “Yes, I saved this girl. This is my world. You are my children. As the Evil One grows stronger, so also will my Light. I will send more power from the heavens to counter the growing darkness of the world.”