by Wick Welker
“Where is he?”
“He is not here, and he won’t be coming here. You will know soon.”
“I understand.”
“I have other excellent news, Malik. Your work with Mr. Mayberry has proved to be extremely fruitful.”
“I am glad to hear that.”
“After your leak of information to him about our nuclear weapon plans, the Americans have begun doing exactly what the Sirr expected.”
“Did they find our undercover brothers in the nuclear stores?”
Atash laughed. “No, no, and they never will.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t exist,” Atash said, smiling.
“What do you mean?”
“We have no one from the brotherhood in any of their nuclear warehouses.”
“Oh…” Malik look out past his shoulder.
“What is the matter?” Atash asked.
“Nothing, nothing, please go on. What’s going on?”
“The Americans are moving their warheads.”
“Where?”
“We’re not sure at the moment, but every one of the nine warehouses has been covertly shipping out their warheads for the last two nights.”
“How do you know these things?”
“All that matters is that we know.”
“But, how? Who is telling you all this information?” Malik’s voice rose.
Atash stopped talking and put his hands down, staring at Malik. “Malik,” he said calmly. “Stop.”
“I’m sorry, brother.”
“You’ve come a long way, and you’re now trusted by the Sirr, but I will not tolerate confrontational language from you. You are not above my bullet, do you understand?”
“Yes.” Malik bowed his head.
“As I was saying,” he paused, continuing to stare at Malik, “I’m not sure for the moment where the warheads are going, but the Sirr will tell me once they get there. We will know their precise location, and that, my brother, is for another day. For now, I have an important task for you, and only you can do it.”
“What is it?”
“The child must die,” Atash said without hesitation.
“Yes, I think you’re right,” Malik replied quickly.
“Do you really feel that way or are you just saying what you know I want to hear?”
“No, you’re right—we need to get rid of it.”
“If you really feel that way, Malik, why have you so earnestly been taking care of it?”
“It’s a hostage. It’s leverage.”
“We no longer need leverage. The U.S. is already doing exactly what we want it to.”
“Then, yes, I agree the child must go.”
“I want you to do it.”
“You still don’t trust me,” Malik replied.
“I do, brother. I want you to do it for yourself. I believe by committing the act yourself, you will finally be free of all emotions that have to do with your own son. This will release you.”
“I see.”
“Can I trust you to do this?”
“Yes.”
“That means I won’t have to ask you again, and I consider the matter closed. You may proceed whenever you would like. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes. And what about the secret serviceman?”
“Kill him.”
“I will.”
“I would also like you to gather our witness and get ready to move out with her in an hour. Be at the airport by fourteen hundred. Why don’t you take her some food?”
“Yeah, I can… do that right now.” Malik walked inside, away from Atash’s quiet but constant stare. Inside, men sat at several folding tables, some examined rifles while others assembled packed lunches into brown paper bags. He walked by the table, grabbed a sack, and looked at three other men that stood at the side of the room. They sat completely nude and facing the wall, silent, fulfilling some punishment that Atash had given them. Malik moved past them, through a small kitchen area, out of the apartment, and into a hallway that had long since had any maintenance. Most of the carpet had been torn out, leaving a concrete floor with scattered stains. The entire building had been without power for some time, leaving the hallway lit by only the scant light that came in through holes in the building.
Malik walked down the hall and into another apartment, where a gas generator churned just inside the doorway, and other men sat cross-legged on the floor with their eyes closed and heads bowed. Moving quietly past them, he swung a corner and knocked on the only closed door in the apartment. After a pausing a moment, he turned the knob, and walked in.
“Hello, Elise,” he said and smiled.
Elise sat in her cot, her left leg tethered to a bolt in the wall by a long chain. “You’re such a fake,” she replied without looking up at him.
“It is pointless for you to be hostile to us. But I suppose there’s no point in being kind to us either—nothing will effect what is going to happen.”
“I’m not trying to get out of anything. I know you’re going to kill me. I would just like you to know that I know that you’re a fake.”
Malik only continued to smile at her. “I’ve brought you some lunch.” He held the bag out for her.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the bag from his hand, and setting it by her side. “Why don’t you take a seat?”
“I’d love to.” He sat in front of her on a short, metal stool.
“Malik,” she paused, waiting for his response, “don’t be too surprised that I know your name, these walls are pretty thin.”
“I have no problem that you know my name. I’ve nothing to hide.”
“Malik, every time you come in here you give me that smile.”
“Yes.”
“But it’s not your smile.” She opened her sack lunch and took out a small jar of rice.
He let out a short breath. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“No, no don’t try to act like you come from a different place than I do—like you have some unique angle to the world that I couldn’t understand. We’re both Americans. We both drank Starbucks coffee and worked at some shitty government job, and went home at the end of the day to the same middle class home. We are not different.”
“I didn’t work in the government.”
“Ha, and I thought you said you had nothing to hide. That was a lie, and we both know it.”
“What makes you think that I worked in the government?” He looked down at his lap.
“Well, I wish I could tell you something clever like that I noticed the way you talked or walked or something, but like I said before, these walls are pretty thin. You know a lot about how things in D.C. work, you were definitely some government employee, although I haven’t quite guessed where. I’m thinking in the military somewhere, it fits your MO of being a deserter, etcetera.” She wound her hand around her wrist as she talked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“If you claim to be so honest with me, and if you really have become part of this brotherhood that you’ve been going on so much about, you may as well tell me what your work was. You know, if you’re so ‘free’ of everything, then prove it.” She looked at him with her eyes bugging out.
“CIA.”
“Oh, wow. You really do plan on killing me if you don’t care that I know you were in the CIA.”
“I’m still in the CIA.”
Elise stopped eating and looked at him smiling. “Are you…?” She stopped and glanced over at the open door.
“An undercover agent?” he finished her sentence loudly.
“If you are, you’re not doing a very good job of keeping it secret.”
“Yes, I am an undercover agent, but I just work for the other side now.”
Her smile went away. “You mean you’re…”
“I’m with the brotherhood now.”
“So you’re a double agent now to the CIA and still, what, still talking to the government?”
; “Oh, yes.”
She looked up at him, staring into his eyes. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing happened to me.”
“No, no honey, Atash happened to you. You walk around trying to imitate his smile all day. I can see why though, he would be quite charming if he weren’t a psychopath. But something else happened to you. Who did you lose in the outbreak?”
“I didn’t lose anybody in the outbreak.”
“All right, well, you are suffering in some way, and it is messing with your head.”
“Elise, I’d like you to finish eating, and then we must leave soon.”
“Where are James and the baby?”
“You shouldn’t think about them anymore, Elise.”
“Did you kill them? Did you kill that child, Malik?”
Malik stood and walked back to the doorway. “We’re going to get you out of those chains and dressed. You have an important task.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“I can’t promise you that you won’t die soon, but it won’t be by our hands. You have been chosen to be our witness. Your eyes will be the record of our last actions and will serve as testimony for the brotherhood of the Sirr.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where my agent and that baby are.”
“Elise, we will obligate you to do anything that we need, so you should consider it a favor that I tell you that they are still alive.”
“Thank God.”
“Don’t thank him yet. You may be cursing your God by the end of this day.”
*****
With her hands cuffed behind her back, Elise leaned forward in her seat as the van shot across the tarmac. She looked out and saw clear asphalt across to the airport terminals, without signs of planes being taxied, or luggage trucks scurrying about. The entire airport was largely abandoned, and based on the fact that they were able to get through the opening gate without a problem, made her believe it had entirely become an installation of the Sirr.
As if reading her thoughts, Atash turned to her from the front seat. “Madame Ambassador, it’s quite amazing what resources become available once an entire country becomes abandoned. We’ve been able to set ourselves up here with quite a variety of airplanes, weapons, and even pilots. I have much to show you.” He smiled and turned back to the tarmac ahead.
The van drove down the middle of a runway and took a turn at a nearby hangar, slowed down, and stopped outside a large warehouse. Elise was muscled out of the van by Carter. Malik stepped out from behind her and grabbed onto the chain of her handcuffs. She squinted as she looked over at the building in front; hating the false pleasantries that Atash was giving her.
“Madame Ambassador, this building in front of you houses something very special. Now you already have a very unique perspective on what our virus can do. As Malik has told me, you were witness to the original outbreak in your nation’s capital, and you’ve also seen the devastating and destructive power that the virus has had in Mexico City. There may not be many people who have seen so many outbreaks and have gone on to live another day. It is for this reason that we believe you have been placed in our path, to be the witness of the care, and design that went into the purge. What you’re going to see is only one small step until the brotherhood has completed its work. I do indeed intend for you to see our elegant plan laid out in its entirety.”
“All of you keep talking about the greatness of your God—”
“It’s not exactly this ‘God’ that you believe in,” Atash interrupted. “We only use the word God around you so that you can begin to understand who we are. Our version of God differs vastly from the Judeo-Christian concept of deity.”
“I don’t really give a shit. My point is, you keep talking about greatness of your God and how human beings are just nothing, and our lives our illusions or whatever, but you sure are going to great measure to show off all the genocide you’ve been doing. You claim it’s from God, but there is a part of all of you that is delighting in your newfound power.”
“Miss Whitten, let us not make this unpleasant.”
“Oh, of course. I don’t want to ruin the mood.”
“Shall we?” Atash looked at Carter and Malik, who walked ahead of the group with AMR9 rifles drawn. The group walked together toward the side of the warehouse and turned the corner where several helicopters set on the tarmac in front of the building, with dozens of men running back and forth, occupied with different compartments of each helicopter, and running fuel lines and electrical tubing across the asphalt.
“Four Apache attack helicopters and two Chinook cargo choppers, courtesy of the United States,” Atash declared proudly, holding his hand out toward the helicopters. “As you can see, our men are working quickly to get them up in the air soon. We actually don’t have too much more time.” Atash turned and looked at Malik.
“Where did you get those?” Elise asked.
“Ah, you see? I knew you would be curious about our operations. The influence of the brotherhood is quite vast at this point.” He motioned to Carter, who smiled back proudly. “Sometimes we can simply ask for such things and they arrive at our doorstep. Our brother, Carter, who you would see as a military deserter, has been very instrumental to us.”
“I don’t want to see any of this anymore.” Elise looked down at the asphalt.
“You must see all of this—it is the whole reason why you’re still alive. I would be grateful for this opportunity.” Atash grabbed a walkie-talkie from his belt and shouted out some orders to a group of men at one of the Apaches. “All right, my brothers, let us examine our cargo for the last time. Everything must be in perfect order.”
The group from the van broke up as most of them ran out to help with the helicopters, leaving Malik, Atash, Carter, and Elise alone.
Atash turned to Malik. “Malik, please, lead the way.”
He took the group along the side of the warehouse and into an open garage door where more men were working. The warehouse was crammed full of wooden pallets, crates and various machinery parts stacked up along all the walls, all the way to the other end. In the middle of the warehouse were several rows of wooden scaffolds, each holding large domed-shaped structures with a smooth metallic surface.
To Elise, it looked like row after row of phone booth sized rifle bullets, each pointing up at the ceiling.
“Miss Whitten, do you know what these are?”
“You know I don’t,” she said.
“No, no I wouldn’t think that you would, and I really don’t want to bother you with all the technical details, but I’ll just tell you that they’re aquatic bombs designed by one of our fellow sisters of the Sirr. We have sixteen of them here and ready to go for us.”
“They’re also a very special type of… bomb,” Carter said, walking toward one of the large shells, and then running his hand over its smooth surface. “No explosives or hydrogen in these babies.”
“Haven’t you already destroyed enough cities and put the entire world into chaos already? What more can you do that you haven’t already done?” Elise asked.
“No, no there is so much more to do. We’re only at the beginning of this, Elise. As long as the Unites States still has a functioning defense, our work is not finished.”
A petite woman appeared briskly from a row of the bombs with her head down, tapping furiously on a tablet. She looked up and smiled when she saw Atash. “Atash, my dear, it is so good to see you. Everything is going so, so well here. I believe we are truly being watched over,” she spoke in a thick Russian accent.
“Magda!” Atash clapped his hands together and gave her a hug. “That is such good news. Please tell me that we are at adequate pressures.”
“We are right on target in all sixteen compressors. We should get an area of approximately twenty five square kilometers per boo, boo, buoy which vill cover an entire area of our targeted distance of four hundred square kilometers, well vithin what we have predicted.”
“Hav
e you been able to talk with our leader about those numbers? Did he verify that that is the coverage we will need?”
“Oh yes, I just talked vith him on the telephone. It was the first time I had ever heard his voice, a true privilege and honor to speak vith him.” She held a smile until she saw Elise. “Who is dis?”
“Here we have the ambassador of the United States to Mexico, Miss Elise Whitten. She is visiting our premises here and will be a watchful eye on all of our operations.” Magda stared at him for a moment and then went to speak before being interrupted by Atash. “Ha, no need to worry, my dear. Everything is going all according to schedule. Miss Whitten will simply be our witness of everything that we are doing.”
“I see…” Magda said uncomfortably.
“Are we ready to bring out the buoys to the tarmac?”
“Ha, you have no thrill for pageantry do you?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not for the moment. I’d like to get underway as soon as possible.”
“Yes, we shall move them out now.” Magda backed away from the group and shouted commands into a walkie-talkie, after which the floor swarmed with forklifts that lifted up the large cylinders, and moved them outside.
The group followed the train of forklifts as it arranged the bombs several yards apart, where other men then hooked thick, metal wires to their frames. One of the Apaches thumped its blades and lifted up from the tarmac. It floated upward into the air and slowly arched back down toward the tarmac, just over two of the bombs. Several men quickly attached the metal cables on two different bomb frames to the undercarriage of the helicopter and backed away, signaling to the pilot. It lifted upward and stalled momentarily while it adjusted to the weight of the large bombs, and then flew directly upward with its payload swaying in the air. The other helicopters around the tarmac lifted up and flew to their respective bombs laid out beneath them for hook up. One by one as they received their payload, they all flew off in the same direction, over a green hill into the east sky.
The Chinook cargo helicopter flew just over their small group, with four bombs hanging from its fuselage. Atash muttered into his walkie-talkie, and a rope ladder suddenly dropped down in front of them. He put one hand on the ladder, and the other on Carter’s shoulder. “Good luck, my brother. We will see you in a few weeks at our final task.”