by Wick Welker
“Isn’t that where we’re going?” Malik asked.
“Uh, Brother Atash, have you explained to them…” Carter trailed off as he turned a corner into an open warehouse that was swamped with spider webs and dried mud all over the floors.
“We don’t need all of the warheads, Malik, only one,” Atash said.
“Oh,” Malik said, growing in frustration after being kept in the dark about every single plan with which Atash had ever included him.
“At the end of this warehouse, The Sirr told me about an old maintenance garage that leads outside to a small airport. I think they used it to repair old helicopters. Not a single soul here knows about the garage.” Carter urged the group along as they were finally able to disperse from out of the narrow hallways and into the wide space. Each of the brothers kept their hostage close in front of them, with one arm around their necks, and their other hand with a gun digging into their heads.
Atash grabbed Private Patel and forced her to walk in front of him. “I’d like to thank you again, Private Patel, for cooperating. This really will all be over soon.”
She said nothing but continued to bow her head toward the floor as Atash steered her direction with her cuffed wrists.
At the far end of the warehouse, Carter stooped under a swinging gutter that once attached to a large vat, and disappeared behind a long row of pallets. “Right in here, my brothers.” They came to a padlock garage door set inside the wall. Carter knelt and fumbled with a set of keys.
“Is he here?” Atash quietly asked Carter.
“No.”
Atash was silent for a moment. “Do you know when he’ll be here?”
“He was supposed to be here twelve hours ago.”
“That is what I understood as well.”
“Have you heard from him?” Carter asked, finally finding the right key, and unlocking a padlock.
“Brother Carter, are you honestly leading me to believe that you are keeping a nuclear warhead guarded by a mere bicycle lock?” Atash asked.
“I was lucky to manage to smuggle in even the lock. Anything that isn’t military issued is immediate contraband. The security in this place is extremely tight.”
“Evidently not tight enough.” Atash laughed, looking back at the scared faces of their hostages.
“But, sir, have you heard from the Sirr?” Carter asked.
“Only a few messages that he was held up, but that was hours ago. He didn’t give any details, only that he needed to take care of something first.”
“Okay.” Carter unlatched a handle and lifted the door. “So what are we supposed to do now with this?”
Inside the small maintenance garage rested a single, wooden crate the size of a coffin. Atash walked forward into the garage and rested his hand on the wooden planks of the crate. The brothers scrambled in from behind with their hostages. Malik closed the garage door behind them and sat Elise down in a corner next to a row of empty, plastic crates.
Atash put his hand on Carter’s shoulder while signaling to Private Patel to sit on the ground. “Brother, open your radio to all frequencies of this compound, and give it to me.”
Carter flipped on the radio switch on his belt and handed it to Atash.
“Now we paralyze them,” Atash said, bringing the radio to his mouth. “Attention, Army personnel. This is the brotherhood of the Sirr. We have infiltrated your nuclear warhead facility and currently have ten hostages in an undisclosed location. If you have done your inventory lately of the over five thousand nuclear warheads that you have stored away, you have discovered that you are missing exactly one warhead, which is now in our possession. We now hold this entire compound hostage. If we discover that even one nuclear warhead is removed from these buildings, we will detonate the one that we do have in our possession. Please do not underestimate the influence of the brotherhood of the Sirr. Our spies are among you and will inform us if there is any movement of the warheads. Any attempt to find our location or to attack us will result in the death of our hostages. We will come forth with more demands within the hour.”
Atash put the radio on his belt and turned it off before he could hear a reply. “Malik, come this way with me, my friend.” He put his arm around Malik’s shoulder. “Everyone, please secure your hostages, while Malik and I go and have a chat.” He took Malik to the corner of the garage and sat cross-legged on the ground, where he waited for Malik to join him.
“Thank you, Malik for your patience,” Atash said.
“You’re welcome.” Malik looked at Atash’s eyes, which were looking down at the concrete floor.
“You’ve been patient in your ignorance.”
“Yes.”
“How are you feeling right now?”
“I’m not feeling anything.”
“Malik let us be honest now. Neither one of us is entirely devoid of emotion. I know that, and I know you know that.”
“I suppose that is true.”
“So, tell me what you’re feeling.”
“I’m happy.”
“Are you only telling me what I want you to hear?”
“No.”
“I trust you. I’ve grown to trust you over the last two years, and I now know that I can trust you with one more thing.”
“What?”
“I’m afraid that our purpose here has been delayed for reasons that I don’t understand.”
“How?”
“The Sirr should be here, and he is not,” Atash said flatly.
“He will come.”
“Yes, I believe he will, but we cannot wait much longer for him. The American soldiers will find us and kill us. Quickly comes the time that they will value our deaths more than the lives of the hostages.”
“You’re right.”
“Fortunately, we do not actually need the Sirr here to complete our final mission, but I know that he wants to be here to rightly claim is place after this life. If he isn’t here to die with us, I sincerely fear what will be kept for him after his death.”
“What do we do?”
“We will wait for the Sirr and see if he comes. We owe him that. We will wait for one hour more.”
“How could he possibly get in here in such a heavily guarded place?”
“The Sirr moves like a specter. I wouldn’t worry.” Atash sighed deeply.
“What is it?”
“I need you to keep a code in your mind, very closely for the next hour. This is the final thing that I will trust you with.”
“Tell me.”
“The code is H-thirty-eight-pound sign-O-J-W-H-asterisk-X-zero-zero-O. Repeat it back to me ten times.”
Malik repeated the code quietly, with Atash helping him until he could repeat it ten times in a row. “Is this the warhead code?” Malik asked.
“Yes. You and I are the only ones here who know it. I give it to you in case I die before you die in the next hour. If I can’t do it, you must detonate the warhead in one hour.”
“I understand. You can trust me.”
“I know I can.” Atash got up on one knee. “Come on,” he said while standing. “We go back to wait.”
Atash and Malik returned to the group, who were now sitting in a semi-circular pattern around the warhead crate with their hostages lying on their bellies.
Carter walked over to Atash, a frantic look on his face. “Hey, hey, what are we doing here? What is the plan?”
Atash looked into Carter’s eyes, and said, “In one hour, we will detonate our warhead, destroying every warhead in America’s possession.”
The men of the brotherhood sat in a circle around the hostages and began a song. Three of the men hummed low, setting a baseline as several others joined in with higher alto notes. They sang no lyrics, but mixed the various pitches of humming into a soft harmony that echoed from the walls. Elise would’ve thought the humming relaxing if she weren’t lying several feet from a nuclear warhead. The men continued their song for nearly an hour as the hostages lay quietly.
; “The Sirr truly picked the finest men,” Atash whispered to Malik. “They go to die with peace in their hearts.”
“Atash, it has been an hour,” Malik said. “I don’t think he is going to come.”
“I need no reminder about the time,” Atash said as he walked toward the group who was clustered around the warhead. “My brothers, the time has come.”
The men looked up at him and smiled as the hostages yelled out. Elise remained quiet, watching Atash as he approached the warhead. Her eyes moved from one terrorist to the next, surveying how close they kept their weapons. Unable to find the right moment, she clenched the box cutter next to her body and waited.
Atash knelt in front of the wooden crate and smiled. “It’s time for us to awaken from this slumber,” he said as he typed into the keypad of the warhead.
Chapter Twenty Eight: Medora, North Dakota
“Larry… what’re you doing?” Mayberry stepped away from Rambert, who only inched forward with his gun, as Mayberry moved away.
“If you try to leave this room, I will shoot you in the face.” Rambert held the gun outstretched and steady in one hand. “I told you to sit down.” Rambert said with a beet-red face.
“Okay, okay, just don’t…” Mayberry laughed. “What the hell is this?” He kept his palms out and up as he sat down on a tall lab stool.
“Take off your clothes.”
“Yeah, I get it, just hang on.” He said meekly as he removed his coat jacket and started unbuttoning his white, collared shirt. “Just talk to me, what is this all about?”
“We’re going to have a chat,” Rambert said as he finally backed off from Mayberry and stood against a counter. “We have a few things to talk about.”
“I’m happy to talk, Larry,” Mayberry said as he took off his undershirt, revealing his bare chest.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot.” He kept the gun pointed at Mayberry as he stood ten feet away. “Take off your pants and underwear. I need to see all of your skin.”
“I know the drill, Larry. I’ve done this a thousand times to people. Just give me a second.” Mayberry stripped off his pants and boxers and stood completely nude with his hands away from his body. “No surveillance devices, see? Happy now?”
“Yes.”
“Can I at least put my underwear back on?”
“Go ahead.” Rambert motioned with his gun while Mayberry now sat back on the stool in only his underwear.
“So… you brought me all the way up to Medora, North Dakota, so you could get me naked?” He gave a sincere laugh. “Larry, I know you’re stressed and paranoid, but please, come on…” Mayberry stopped himself for a moment and looked at him with wide eyes. “Wait a minute, what is going on here exactly? Are you scared of me, or should I be scared of you?”
Rambert stared silently at him for several moments. “Who…” He stopped to clear his throat. “What are you?”
“What am I?” he laughed. “Shit, Larry, it is freezing in here, can I at least put my shirt back on?”
“Where did you come from?”
“Born and raised in D.C., you know that.” He slowly motioned to his shirt. “May I?”
“No, just stay where you are.”
“Okay, okay,” he crossed his arms over his bare chest and waited. “Talk to me, Larry.” His face had relaxed, no longer showing through with the slight reflection of rage that Rambert thought he had just earlier observed.
“You are curious, aren’t you? You want to know what I’m up to,” Rambert said.
“Yeah, I’m a little curious why the President of the United States brought me to a deserted city to put a gun in my face, and ask me where I’m from.”
“But you didn’t always live in D.C., isn’t that right?”
“Well, no, I mean yes, my permanent residence is in D.C., but I have lived abroad for a couple years here or there.”
“You lived in Turkey, Jerusalem, Brazil, Hong Kong, London, Madrid… Bangladesh, Baghdad… Kabul for a total span of over ten years.”
“Yeah, Larry, you don’t become an expert on terrorist insurgency without leaving D.C. every now and then. You actually left out about half a dozen more cities but nice work memorizing some of my personnel file.”
“You never had a family?”
“No kids, but I was happily divorced once in nineteen seventy-nine.”
“How long have you worked in the government?”
“Don’t you know all of this?”
“I want to hear it from you. How long have you worked in the government?”
“Oh,” he exhaled through puffed cheeks, “since I was like fifteen, when I ran for class president.”
“How long?”
“Upper government? Thirty years, I’ve been with the CIA for eighteen of those years and was made director eight years ago. You know all of this.”
“You ran for Governor of Maryland once.”
“Twice, actually. Lost both times.” He rubbed his bare arms. “Looks like you didn’t do enough homework.”
“Where were your parents born?”
“Dad from Sherman Oaks, California, and my mom was from Salt Lake City, Utah.”
“What did they do for a living?”
“My dad was a philosophy professor at George Washington, my mom was a homemaker. I was an only child.” Mayberry paused for a minute.“I know what you’re doing,” he said while rhythmically patting his hand on the counter. “And you’re really bad at it.”
“What am I doing?”
“You think I’m in the brotherhood of the Sirr.”
“Yes, I do.”
“If I were actually in the brotherhood, do you think that I would suddenly reveal it while you’re asking me what my parents did for a living? Come on, Larry. I’ve been in the CIA a long time. You’d have to do much better than this to get one of these nut-jobs to crack.” He reached over and grabbed his shirt from the counter. “Let’s get out of here and go take care of the more pertinent situation of actual members of the brotherhood seizing our warheads.”
“Put your shirt down. I’m not done.” Rambert motioned with his gun that he kept pointed at Mayberry.
“I’m telling you, you’re really bad at this. For one thing, don’t start off putting a gun in my face, and asking me about where I grew up. You’ve got to be relaxed, like you don’t care one way or another what I’m going to say. You should also know that some of the biggest psychos out there have absolutely no past history that would portend their terroristic behavior. They just fall out of the sky… like a beautiful snowflake.” He wiggled his fingers in the air. “Where did the idea come to you that I could be involved with the Sirr anyway?”
“Give me your phone.”
Mayberry took his cell phone from his pants pocket, placed it on the ground, and kicked it over to him. “Here you go.”
“What’s the passcode?” Rambert asked, picking it off the dusty tile.
“Five-nine-three-one.”
Rambert punched in the code and opened the screen looking for texts and emails, but discovered that besides telling time, the phone was completely blank. “Why don’t you have any text messages or emails on your phone?”
“My phone automatically wipes itself every time I turn it off. You do recall that I’m the director of the CIA, right? I wouldn’t possibly keep any data whatsoever on my person at any time.”
“How do you keep track of all the contact information for your field agents?”
Mayberry taped on his forehead. “It’s all up here. Every name, every address, every number. They can steal it off my computer or phone, but no one can hack my brain.”
Rambert sighed and put the phone down.
“Look, if it makes you feel any better, I constantly rule out every person I know in the government from being in the Sirr. I ask myself everyday if you’re involved.” Mayberry said.
“Me?” Rambert asked.
“I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t make sure the President wasn’t
part of the most destructive, ubiquitous terrorist organization that has ever existed. You’re actually one of the first people I thought of since the Sirr seems to have every blueprint to every plan we’ve ever come up with. But don’t worry. I know you’re not involved if it makes you feel any better, although you’re kind of having me doubt that with a gun in my face.”
“How can you be so sure of me?”
“Well…” He let out a sigh.
“What?”
“I watch and monitor pretty much everything you do. Even more so than we normally do.”
“Apparently, not close enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because you don’t know the specific reason why I’ve been suspicious of you.” Rambert said, lowering his gun toward the floor.
“You mean, besides general paranoia?”
“I got a call a few weeks ago.”
“I was wondering why you asked me all those questions about someone being able to contact the President directly. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was about you. It was the same day that almost our entire Navy was ambushed in Venezuela.”
“Yeah, I remember the incident,” he said with bitterness.
“It was an unknown caller from an unknown place.”
“And what did this person say?”
“He just told me that you could be involved. He said there was no way the Sirr could direct the brotherhood without knowing exactly what the CIA director knows. The man knew you.”
“Yeah, well, I got the same exact call about you.”
“From who?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“You have the world’s most sophisticated surveillance at your fingertips and you don’t know who called you?” Rambert scoffed.
“Yeah, that’s right, because I didn’t really give a shit. We get calls like that all the time about everyone. I am impressed, however, that he was able to reach just the President, undetected inside our base at Eau Claire. Did he give any identifying information at all?”