The Fifth Battalion

by Michael Priv

  “Our current strategy is combining the relatively passive presence of daytime army patrols with nighttime special forces’ surgically invasive missions,” O’Hara replied gamely. “I would say that we make a good use of the praying mantis approach, as you called it, while simultaneously being proactive. Okay? Who’s next?”

  Back in my seat, staying in character, I pretended to jot down O’Hara’s reply. Linda solemnly attended to the recorder for the same reason.

  The press conference revealed nothing new about the doomed war in Afghanistan—precisely zilch. I would’ve felt very silly right now if I’d gotten all dressed up, had really flown just for this all the way from Anchorage, Alaska, and rented a five hundred-dollar room.

  We lingered after the conference until two uniformed guards escorted us into a huge hall several stories underground. No less than a hundred people, both uniformed and not, toiled at computer workstations facing a wall of monitors, or walked purposefully in every direction. We were ushered into an oppressive concrete cubicle.

  Two soldiers scanned us for electronic devices and confiscated our cell phones and the recorder before they allowed us in. O’Hara and Roberts were already there, seated at a large conference table. The room was decorated in the best traditions of Early Paleozoic style: bare concrete walls, floor, and ceiling and a grim, gray steel table and matching swiveling chairs around it—all bolted to the floor. No windows. No computers or telephones.

  “Is this your office?” I asked O’Hara by way of a greeting. “This is the safe conference room. Nobody can eavesdrop on us here,” O’Hara replied, unperturbed by my sarcasm. “Oh, good.” I turned to Linda. “Isn’t it good, honey?” “Splendid,” Linda replied through her teeth.

  Both generals kept silent, so I decided to get right to it.

  “General, sir, I wanted to talk to you about the location of the Guards’ transport. Are you interested?” I asked O’Hara. “Yes, we are,” replied Roberts out of turn, indicating who was the real boss here. “Okay, the Guards will give it to you, that’s the message,” I told Roberts. A toughlooking son of a bitch. “No need to kill us for it, no need to send the Marines and helicopters. Okay?”

  I didn ’t mean my question to be rhetorical. So far, they’d sent five strike teams after me with at least two helicopters. Three of the teams were completely wiped out, two of them by yours truly, one by the Russians, and one by the Guards. One helicopter was down, causing civilian casualties. I wounded a number of the servicemen. The one expanded team with a helicopter at the Tahoe motel never made contact with me and so got away intact.

  “We’ll make the decisions about sending more troops up your ass,” Roberts assured me menacingly. “What’s the twenty on the transport?”

  “Don’t know yet. I need a favor first. Then they tell me,” I replied. They stared at me.

  “I wanna talk to Brell.”

  “Okay, talk.” O’Hara sounded positively hostile as he sat back and crossed his arms on his chest.

  “I meant the real Brell, O’Hara. Not a dumb little fuck like you,” I shot back.

  “Did he just call me ‘little fuck’?” Incredulous O’Hara asked Roberts, who chose to ignore the question. “You got no thing to bargain with, you understand?” Roberts hissed, staring me down. “You know where you are? The Pentagon. Your asses are mine now. You’re never leaving here. Got that, pipsqueak?”

  I got up, squaring up against his physique as impressively as possible, I hoped. “You are wrong, Roberts. I’ll get out of here. The Guards saw to that. Do what I say, or you’ll experience a warning shot across the bow ten minutes from now. You wanna be dead before nightfall?” I strolled around the room in a picturesque manner, letting what I’d said sink in.

  “Is that how he wiped out all your people? The Guards helped him?” O’Hara asked Roberts. Roberts nodded , scowling. “Makes sense.” He stared hard at me. “But why would the Guards disclose the location of their transport to you?”

  “Come on, Roberts!” I shook my head in feigned disbelief. “You’re smarter than that. Well, okay, maybe not. You know that the war’s been over for a couple hundred years. You know that the statute of limitations on the illegal weapons use recently expired.”

  “But why would they confide in you?”

  “They like Linda and me. They trust us.”

  “What do they want, these assholes?” asked O’Hara with disgust.

  “They want Brell. Then we can all go home, including you. They’ll even fly us home.” Linda tugged on my sleeve as I was now standing over her. I looked down. She tapped the face of her watch with a slender finger. I always found her hands very pretty. Three minutes before the deadline. Both generals noticed our exchange. Roberts bared his teeth.

  “What the hell happened to you, people?” I asked. “You’re more deranged than any convict here.” “We’re saving their bum asses before these idiots destroy the entire planet,” O’Hara replied, offended. “If we don’t save this crappy little planet, they’ll wipe themselves out in a decade.”

  “Oh, you know what’s good for us, do you?” Linda asked. “Shut up, convict!” Roberts barked. “You know nothing! You people raped the planet and ran it to the ground. You’ve done yourselves in politically, as well. You horded yourself into a corner. What’s next? A nuclear fucking war? Yes, we know what’s good for you, morons!”

  “Look , Roberts, you just killed a bunch of people and you’re perfectly willing to kill any number more. Am I to believe you will save this planet? You’re insane!”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Right. Makes two of us.”

  “We want to see that shot over the bow before we commit to anything or continue,” Roberts glared at me.

  “No prob. Let’s wait.” I sat down. The deadline came and went. Nothing happened. A large, unpleasant knot started developing in my stomach. Roberts stepped out of the safe room, probably to check on any recent events that could be considered hostile in the DC area. Then he returned.

  “This is going to hurt. Norman, Linda, screw you both,” O’Hara finally said to us.

  Roberts nodded, standing and sneering. “We’ll extract all you know from you. I won’t kid you, it will hurt.” The muffled roar of a powerful explosion ripped through the safe room’s dead silence. The floor, the walls, the table and chairs, everything shook.

  “Right here in the Pentagon? On Level C. Or D?” O’Hara squeaked, scratching his eyebrow nervously. “Must be the Guards ‘cause…”

  Roberts rushed out of the room without a word. We could see him talking to a Marine through the door he left open. People were rushing about in the background.

  “Computer utility room,” he reported. “Most of the backup servers and other equipment are destroyed. No casualties.” “Was that enough of a warning, Roberts, or should I ask for something more spectacular?” I gloated. They both stared at me for a while, calculating and cold. Who were these guys? How did they manage to get so fucked up so fast? Or had they always been that way? “What do you want?” Roberts finally asked in an arctic voice.

  “ Where’s Brell? I want to know fast, so we can get out of here, because in exactly one hour you will all develop concentric target circles on your backs. You’ll be hunted down and killed one by one. Give me what I want and I’m out of your hair.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, pipsqueak, you’re not in my hair . You want Brell?” I caught the quick glance that Roberts and O’Hara exchanged. What were these two hiding? I mean, what else were they hiding that had to do with Brell? Plenty, I bet.

  “He’s of no importance to us,” Roberts continued. Was he lying? “Brell’s gone nuts. You can have’im.” Roberts sat down. He looked pissed. Probably wasn’t used to things not going his way. Yes, now I definitely was a major thorn in his butt—and that felt good.

  “Brell’s a guru now, founded some cult or some such bullshit.” Roberts shrugged as if in desperation and shook his head. “ A cult? Like a reli
gion you mean?”

  “Precisely.” Roberts grinned mirthlessly. “A religion.”

  “ Some Free Eternal Spirit or something,” O’Hara added. I stared at both of them in turn. “Lives in a cave,” O’Hara continued. “Gone completely insane.”

  “Where’s that cave?” I asked, shocked by what I’d heard. Brell went off the deep end. That truly sucked. “ Last seen on Palau about a week ago. We don’t keep tabs on Brell. Fuck’im. He’s nuts but harmless. What do you want him for?” Roberts seemed dubious about the whole thing.

  The last report they ’d received on Brell was only a week ago. A funny way of not keeping tabs on somebody. “I just need to talk to him.” I shrugged casually.

  “Does he have anything to do with our departure plans?” O’Hara asked in an almost friendly tone. “Whatever ,” Roberts dismissed O’Hara with a hand gesture. “He won’t cooperate. I don’t care!” Roberts threw his hands up, dismissing the entire conversation. “I just want the location of the spaceship. Do you know where it is? Yes or no?”

  “No, I don’t,” I lied. “But I have the flash drive stashed in a safe place. Maybe you would even get somewhere with it. Use your nerds and computers. You can have it after I talk to Brell.”

  “ What about you? Where’s the transport? Do you know?” Roberts turned to Linda and stared hard into her eyes. Linda stared right back at Roberts silently.

  “Visit’s over. Knock yourselves out,” O’Hara said, getting up and gesturing for us to leave.

  “Well, cheerio, nice to see you and all that. Off to see Brell.” I got up.

  “Just make sure you deliver the flash drive,” Roberts clarified, rocking his chair, hands clasped behind his head.

  “Or what?” I asked, smiling. “You’ll send me a hundred more Girl Scouts?” “Do you think I care how many troops you kill?” Roberts’s hollow laughter was chilling. “I’ll send ten thousand more. A hundred thousand! In the name of national security, anything I want. Who do you think you’re dealing with here? We have this entire shitty planet by the balls, you got it? USA, Russia, China, NASA, Homeland Security—I don’t care. Congress, Republicans, Democrats, Communists, money, food, drugs, justice system, healthcare, oil— you name it, that’s us. Everything and everybody—by the balls!”

  I silently headed toward the door with Linda in tow. “Not everything ,” came Linda’s curt retort. “You don’t have me! You’re full of shit, big-cheese general. You don’t have everything and everybody.”

  “ Everything! You hear me? Everything. You two… riffraff! Everything! You’ll come back crawling, begging for mercy.” I heard behind me.

  A Marine Lieutenant parked outside the door returned our cell phones and personally escorted us to the elevator. “These two give me the creeps. I’d take human convicts over these extraterrestrial assholes any day.” Linda, clearly disappointed, echoed my sentiments. Of course, in the final count, the “humans” were also extraterrestrials, but that wasn’t the point here.

  “Where the hell is Palau?” I asked Linda.

  “In the Pacific, near the Philippines,” she replied casually. Incredible. She knew everything all the time.

  I called Alesh on my cell phone to ward off any follow-up attacks. We navigated the endless corridors in silence. I feverishly computed an escape route, going through varieties of possible scenarios. Didn’t look good. We had a chunk of cash but we’d have to surface sooner or later. Brell didn’t sound like the ticket out that I’d hoped he’d be. Without Brell, my newly-found friendship with the Guards was probably short-lived. If I wanted out of here, or wanted to live quietly with Linda, in case the escape attempt failed as usual, I might have to crawl back to the Priests, as Roberts predicted. And through whatever means necessary make myself useful enough—or even indispensable—to convince them to spare my life and Linda’s. Wow, things could sure crap out fast. Was it smart to use that tone of voice with these idiots?

  “ So, if these people control everything, why would they want out?” Linda, a cool breeze of common sense, as usual. “For their back pay? They’re moving billions and trillions right here. They got it made. They’d be nobody back home, wherever you all came from. Makes no sense.”

  That ’s right! Things changed even faster than I thought. The profound truth of Linda’s observation struck home with a bang. Why didn’t I think of that? Why would they want to leave Earth? If they didn’t want to leave, why did they want that spaceship so bad? And why did O’Hara impersonate Brell?

  Also, these Priests were no longer protecting Brell. They were busy accumulating power and wealth. Brell must have somebody else looking after him. If not the Priests, then who? What did this power shift mean to me? Brell could still be the thread to unravel this mystery and the ticket out, although it seemed less likely considering the recent information, but I had to see him anyway.

  Before we left the Pentagon, I decided to stop by their library and check on the cult Brell had supposedly founded. The register of religious organizations on the Internet revealed nothing. There was no officially recognized Church of the Free Eternal Soul.

  “Try Immortal Soul,” Linda suggested.

  No such listing. There was a Church of the Free Immortal Spirit in Manila under the heading of “Miscellaneous Asian Religions.” “Do they have a branch on Pa lau?” Linda asked.

  “A high-profile retreat on Palau!”

  “Bingo!” We exchanged knowing glances.

  Alesh greeted us inside our room with his usual scowl.

  “Found Brell?” he asked derisively, addressing no one in particular. Reclining in one of the huge armchairs and staring at the ceiling, Alesh nursed a can of Mountain Dew.

  Linda gasped and froze at the sight of a dead body, a bullet hole in his forehead, on its back on the floor next to the coffee table, about eight feet away from Alesh.

  “No, we didn’t find Brell,” I lied just in case. I was getting good at this. “It’s complicated. Who’s the stiff?” “No idea.” Alesh shrugged lazily. “I saw him break into your room, gave him a few seconds and followed in after him. He was going through your stuff. I asked him what the hell—politely—but he pulled a gun on me.” Alesh nodded in the direction of the coffee table. There it was, Exhibit A, a gun on the table and a fancy one at that. A Nighthawk .45, seemed to me, probably a six-seven grand custom gun. White steel body, fancy grip.

  “You want it?” I asked Alesh. “’Cause I’d like to have it.” “Norman, knock it off !” Linda interrupted. “How can you possibly be so callous? You should be ashamed of yourself. A man died here in our room just minutes ago and what are you thinking about? Stealing his gun?”

  “Should I be thinking about CPR?” I replied, smirking. “ How about you think of his mother, wife, kids? Do you give a damn? You should!” She waved her arms in the air. “A man lost his life here. A human being. Somebody’s friend, or a son, or a husband, maybe.”

  Alesh and I exchanged bewildered glances. What the hell was the woman talking about? “Linda, maybe he was somebody’s friend but not ours, this human being,” I allowed in a reasonable tone, speaking slowly, so she wouldn’t miss the obvious. “I understand you’re upset, but you got to relate to the fact that if he hadn’t broken into our room, and if he hadn’t been pawing our moneybag, and if he hadn’t pulled a gun on Alesh, he would still be alive now. So whose fault is that?”

  Linda threw her arms up and rushed to the bathroom, upset. “How did you do?” Alesh asked, no longer derisively, after Linda slammed the door behind her.

  “Pretty good, I suppose. Still in one piece. Thanks for the bang, by the way.”

  “We got delayed a bit with the blast.” Alesh’s statement of the obvious was paramount to an apology. “That’s okay, man, no worries,” I assured him just in case he was worried. “Thanks anyway. So, yes, we met with O’Hara and Roberts, neither one of them is Brell. But you already knew that, right?”

  “Right. Now what?” Alesh assumed his preferred stretched out po
sition in the armchair. Lazy bum.

  “We’re flying to the Philippines. Roberts said Brell was seen there a couple of months ago.”

  Alesh perked up. “Philippines? Where at exactly?”

  “Some bar in Manila, apparently,” I lied. “Get us to Manila and we’ll take it from there.” “Where in Manila?”

  “The Headless Horseman Bar, that’s all I know.”

  I was more surprised by what I ’d said than Alesh. Sometimes the sounds that originate from my mouth surprise the living crap out of me. Why the Headless Horseman? The first saloon name that came to mind. Did they even name their bars in English over there or in Tagalog? And why headless?

  “Okay, then.” Alesh nodded agreeably. “That’s something. I’ll set up the flight.”

  36 Stan denied our request for the Lear jet this time. With a mere two thousand-mile range, we’d have to land for refueling four times to cover the nine thousand miles to Manila. Too much logistical hustle for its worth. Instead, we were booked on a Delta flight to Manila for the next afternoon.

  Meanwhile, a couple of phlegmatic meatheads, summoned by Alesh, packed the dead body in a huge duffel bag and carried it out of our room. That went a long way toward restoring Linda’s good graces toward me. The evening found us on our huge bed horsing around most orgasmically. Having Alesh stand guard felt safe. Regrettably, that sense of safety would have to end, as I would need to lose him in the Philippines to find Brell. I couldn’t lead the Guards to my Commanding Officer. That ain’t right, as my friend German police officer Feinstein would’ve formulated it.

  Later that night, Linda and I went dancing at the famous Washington DCnight club on New York Avenue and Patterson Street, a former warehouse, with thirty-foot high ceilings and a huge dance floor. Not much for dance clubs, I liked this one because you could get away from the crowd and relax in the club’s numerous intimate lounges or late-night espresso bar and café. Something different for a change.

  The flight to Manila took the entire next day. Alesh had police officer credentials—damn Guards could do anything they wanted— so he was allowed to carry his gun. I had my newly acquired Nighthawk .45 in my luggage, comprised mainly of a couple of toothbrushes, some underwear, and a whole lot of hundred-dollar bills.