The Ajax Protocol (The Project)

by Lukeman, Alex

  She was 14 years old, away from the island in Emile's small boat, the first time she'd gone out fishing with him. The sun was half risen, the first light of day gleaming in a golden white path along the blue Caribbean waters. Emile was showing her how to bait her hook.

  "Like this, you see? The hook is very sharp. Be careful with your fingers."

  "Will we see a shark?" she asked.

  Emile nodded in a serious way. "It is possible. If we see a shark, we will stay inside the boat and we will be fine."

  "I would like to see a shark," Selena said.

  They had stayed out all morning and come back with several fish for dinner. They had not seen any sharks.

  "Emile," she whispered, "I'm sorry."

  She reached out and closed his eyes. She got up and went to Elizabeth and took the shotgun from her hands. "Are you all right, Director?"

  Elizabeth throat was dry. She wiped her lips and swallowed. "Yes. I'm fine."

  "They must've landed after Nick checked out that side."

  Elizabeth's milk white skin was even whiter than usual.

  "You'd better sit down," Selena said. "You look pale."

  "I'm all right," Elizabeth said.

  "You're sure?"

  "It was his head," she said. "I wasn't ready for what it looked like when I pulled the trigger and his head disappeared. I'll never forget that."

  CHAPTER 42

  They buried Emile near the house where he'd spent most of his life and marked the spot with a wooden board. Selena stood at the foot of the new grave.

  She looked down at the fresh earth and sighed. "I don't know what to say. He was a good man."

  Nick put his hand on her shoulder. "That's as much as any man can hope for," he said. "You don't need to say anything else."

  The bodies of the men they'd killed presented more of a problem. Selena showed them a deep cleft that ran like a scar across the land, a few hundred yards from shore. Nick heard a faint sound of water lapping somewhere below.

  "There are old lava tubes filled with water under the island," Selena said. "This opens onto them. We can dump the bodies in here and they'll feed the sharks."

  Ronnie and Lamont looked at each other. Selena's voice was cold.

  They dropped the bodies into the cleft and went back to the house. The team met around the dining table.

  "I've found out where those signals came from," Stephanie said. "I traced them to the Denver International Airport."

  "You're joking," Nick said. "DIA? How could they be based at the airport?"

  "I know a lot about DIA. It's at the heart of one of the major conspiracy theories floating around the internet. Most of them are really off the wall but I like to keep track, just in case one of them turns out to be more than a theory. I think that's what's happened here. Do you know anything about how DIA was built?"

  "Why don't you enlighten me?"

  "The project went way over budget, I mean way over, hundreds of millions, maybe a billion."

  "That's a lot of over," Ronnie said.

  "Where did the money go?" Selena asked.

  "Part of it was ripped off, like it always is in big construction projects like that. But a big chunk went into constructing buildings that were buried under tons of earth."

  "Why would they build them and then bury them?"

  "The reason given at the time was that they were in the wrong location," Stephanie said. "Everyone made noises about waste, a few wrists got slapped and that was the end of it. Construction went on. What's even more interesting is that the story about the buried buildings changed."

  "Changed to what?"

  "Instead of buildings, the structures that had been buried never existed at all. Then the story was put out that the pictures of excavations and construction were really pictures of the underground tunnel system."

  "Is there a tunnel system?" Ronnie asked.

  "Yes, for the rail line that goes between concourses. There's also an abandoned baggage system that didn't work. It was supposed to be state-of-the-art but it never worked right. When they fired it up, it destroyed bags and threw them into the air. They finally gave up on it and sealed it off. It takes up a lot of space under the airport."

  "Well, it was a government project," Lamont said. "Sounds like another bureaucratic screw up."

  "That's just it," Stephanie said. "It wasn't a government project. The airport was privately funded. It was built by something called the New World Airport Commission."

  For a moment, nobody said anything.

  "Not another conspiracy," Ronnie said.

  "Like I said, DIA is at the heart of a lot of conspiracy theories," Stephanie said. "There are some crazy ideas out there. But the buried buildings exist."

  "You're sure the signals came from there," Nick said.

  "Certain, yes. The buildings make a perfect underground bunker."

  Elizabeth drummed her fingers on the table top. "It's time for us to get off this island," she said. "If they sent that signal to Alaska from DIA, that's where the control center for the weapon must be. We have to destroy it, and we have to do it without causing a lot of collateral damage."

  "Let me make sure I understand you," Nick said. "You want us to find a way into secret bunkers under one of the busiest airports in the world. That's if we can get past whatever they've got for security without killing a lot of civilians. Then you want us to locate a hidden control center and blow it up. That about right?"

  "Do you have a problem with that?"

  Nick sighed and pulled on his ear. "We'll need equipment. Communications. Weapons, IDs, all that. DIA has a lot of security surveillance. We're going to need gear to jam it or take it out of commission."

  "Langley could help," Stephanie said. "Hood isn't part of this."

  "Two years ago I never would've thought of asking the CIA for anything," Elizabeth said. "It just shows how much things have changed. I can probably get Hood to give us what we need, but he needs plausible deniability. The less he knows, the better. Asking him to help us launch a raid against DIA might be a bit much."

  Lamont started to laugh and broke into a fit of coughing.

  "You gotta do something for that cough," Ronnie said.

  "Yeah, I'm on it." Lamont held up a package of cough drops. "Menthol," he said. "Want one?"

  Ronnie shook his head.

  "Everyone agree it's time to go?" Nick said.

  No one objected. "Let's get the boat loaded and get out of here." He turned to Selena. "What about this place?" He waved his hand in the air, taking in the house and the whole island. "With Emile gone, there's no one to look after it."

  She brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. "I'll close everything up. When we get back to the mainland, I'll get somebody out here. It will be fine until then."

  Lamont began coughing. He ate a cough drop.

  Nick went around the house with Selena, helping her close the storm shutters. They latched the last one into place.

  "That ought to do it," Nick said. "You ready for an ocean cruise?"

  "I wish I could joke about it like you do," she said.

  "It's the way I deal with the stress," he said.

  "I know." She looked out at the ocean. "I've always loved this place," she said, "but it's different now. With Emile gone it won't be the same."

  Nick took her hand. "I'm sorry about Emile," he said.

  "I always thought that if I ever got married, I would come here on my honeymoon."

  He kissed her. "There are plenty of islands we can go to for a honeymoon," he said, "but we probably ought to get married first."

  "Jerk," she said. She was smiling.

  CHAPTER 43

  They sailed past Martinique and St. John's. They passed north of the British Virgin Islands and set a course for the US mainland. Four days out from Selena's island, Puerto Rico lay off the port bow, a blue-green haze in the distance.

  The boat was named Island Angel. She was powered by a single Caterpillar diesel that drov
e them at a steady nine knots. The Island Angel was double decked, with a glassed-in bridge that provided a sweeping view. She had a raised, flush foredeck and a high, sharp prow. There were three small staterooms on the main deck. Nick and Selena were in one, Stephanie and Harker in the second and Ronnie and Lamont in the third.

  Lamont's cough was worse, a racking, heavy sound. Ronnie had taken over the wheel. Lamont was in his room, lying down. The others were in the main cabin.

  "He needs a doctor," Selena said.

  "It's that hit he took in Jordan," Nick said. "He didn't have enough time to get over it before everything went down."

  "I think he has an infection," Harker said. "Maybe pneumonia. He's running a fever."

  "We're still at least a week out," Stephanie said. "Nick, what are we going to do?"

  "Hope he gets better," Nick said. "There are antibiotics in the medical kit. Start feeding him pills and aspirins and soup. He'll get through it."

  "What if he gets worse?"

  "We'll deal with that if we have to," Nick said.

  Elizabeth said, "I sent a copy of the Ajax protocol to Hood. It shook him up. He decided to take a look at the Pentagon."

  "That's domestic surveillance," Nick said. "He could get in a lot of trouble for that."

  "It wouldn't be the first time Langley overstepped the bounds," Stephanie said. "But at least this time there's a damn good reason to do it."

  "Has Hood found anything out?" Nick asked.

  She nodded. "There is a small group of senior military officers, politicians and bankers who call themselves the Augustans. They meet for drinks and conversation on an irregular basis, a few times a year. All of the members have expressed dissatisfaction at one time or another with something President Rice has done."

  "That doesn't mean much. Sometimes I don't like what Rice has done."

  "Yes, but Hood thinks there may be more to it. Several judges and CEOs are part of the membership as well. "

  "It sounds like a typical Washington power group," Nick said. "There are dozens of them."

  "That's true," Elizabeth said. "Except that the chief figure in the group is a four-star general in charge of SATWEP and the station you raided in Alaska."

  "What's his name?" Ronnie asked.

  Elizabeth drummed her fingers on her knee. "Westlake. Louis Westlake. I want you to run a full background on him, Steph. Find out if he has any connection with Edmonds. Can you hack into the White House computers?"

  "Sure. Compared to the Pentagon, it's easy. I've done it before."

  "Get into the visitor records and see if Westlake has visited Edmonds recently. He could be the one who told Edmonds we were interfering with a secret military project. It would take someone with a lot of rank to put that story across."

  "Will do," Stephanie said. "I'll log into the computers back in Virginia. From there I can tap into the White House and the NSA database. It shouldn't take long to find out everything about him."

  Later, Selena was in her room. She lay on the narrow bed she shared with Nick, reading a dog eared paperback novel about pirates and Scotsmen she'd found in the main cabin. She across a sentence with the word ravish in it and smiled. Elizabeth knocked at the door.

  "Busy?" Elizabeth said.

  Selena sat up. "More like bored. Come on in."

  Elizabeth entered the tiny room and sat down on one end of the bed.

  "I can't stop thinking about the man I killed," Elizabeth said. "It was horrible, all that blood. Different from that man I shot in Virginia."

  Selena marked the page and put the book down. "I can sympathize with how you feel," she said, "but that probably doesn't help very much."

  "I remember when you came back from your first mission, you were different. I watched it all on the satellite. I saw you kill that soldier. How did you handle it, afterward?"

  "Nick helped," Selena said. "He helped me see that I'd made the right choice, even though everything I'd been taught told me it was wrong. He didn't try to sugarcoat it, or come up with some platitude about defending our country, anything like that. He told me it would take time to let it in and that the best I could do was to try not to think about it and move on."

  "Did it work?" Elizabeth asked. "Not thinking about it?"

  Selena laughed. There was no humor in it. "No, not at all. I still think about it. But he was right about it being the right choice. Remembering that helps, that and knowing the person you killed didn't give you an option."

  Elizabeth looked down at the floor.

  "I was trying to reload," she said. "Emile was dead. The man I'd shot was lying on the ground with his head blown off and I couldn't get the shells into the gun. Then one of those men pointed his gun at me. I thought I was going to die. Then Nick or somebody shot him."

  Selena laid a hand on Elizabeth's arm. "I shot him," she said. "Sometimes that's the only option. If you hadn't pulled the trigger on that shotgun, you'd be dead."

  Elizabeth took a deep breath and let it out. "I know you're right. I guess I just needed to talk about it the someone."

  "Just give it some time," Selena said. She didn't say that no matter how much time there was, it would never be enough to erase the memory.

  CHAPTER 44

  General Louis Westlake had become obsessed with the Project. There were factors that could disrupt any complex operation but the worst of those were rogue factors no one could predict. The Project was one of those. Their interference had screwed up the timing of his operation. It kept him awake at night.

  The news from the Caribbean was bad. His assault team had disappeared. So had the Project. He'd sent another team that found the island deserted.

  Where were they? The only way off the island was by air or by sea. They didn't have a plane, so they had to be somewhere on the water. There were too many boats out there to spot them from the satellites.

  Sooner or later they'd have to land and when they did, he would find and eliminate them. At least they didn't know about Denver. That thought made Westlake feel better. He reached for the bottle of 25-year-old scotch next to his chair and poured himself another drink.

  Anyway, he thought, soon it won't matter. Once the Ajax operation began, things would have gone too far for Harker and her toy soldiers to make any difference.

  Westlake's mood mellowed as the whiskey took affect. After all, the Project was only six people. Six people who thought they knew better than he did what the nation really needed. They were fools. They couldn't see the path to defeat Rice had laid out by negotiating with America's enemies. He thought of Rice. The President was getting stronger, but he hadn't resumed his duties yet. He never would.

  When the transition period was over, there would be a different America. Those who accepted the New Order would find themselves rewarded. Those who resisted would be brought to heel, one way or another.

  Westlake got up out of his chair and went to a file cabinet next to his desk, where a false front concealed a safe. He pulled the front open, entered the combination on an electronic keypad and opened the safe. He took out a flat, red notebook that contained a coded summary for deployment of Ajax and the strategy following the takeover.

  As the day neared for Ajax to go operational, Westlake found himself taking out the book more often. He was looking for flaws, making sure that he had thought of everything.

  Page 8, for example, listed the primary targets and the corresponding military units that would be sent in to restore order. The coordinates for each city were already entered into the computers. Ajax would activate receivers located in each city. The result would be chaos across the entire nation.

  It's too bad so many people will die. He dismissed the thought. Sacrifice was always necessary when great acts were played out on the world stage.

  He looked at the list. As the riots spread across the country, the result would be terror and confusion across the nation.

  The first targets were in the East. The list was like a mystical litany in his mind.

/>   Philadelphia, Atlanta.

  As the earth turned, new cities would come into range.

  St. Louis, Kansas City.

  The final targets were on the West Coast.

  Seattle, San Francisco.

  He'd considered adding Chicago and New York but had decided against it. Denver had been spared for obvious reasons. He would have liked to include the Capitol, but he needed to keep the infrastructure of government intact. It wouldn't do to have the mobs burn down the White House. As it was, major population centers would be devastated.

  Homeland Security, the National Guard, and the regular troops would have their hands full. Rice would die, Edmonds would become President and then he'd panic. He'd be desperate for guidance and a clear strategy to deal with the situation. Westlake planned to be there to give it to him. New emergency regulations would be issued to control the populace. They would never be rescinded.

  By the time anyone realized what had happened, it would be too late. If Edmonds presented a problem, he would be eliminated along with any other troublemakers. Westlake looked again at the list of cities, the road to power. He poured his third drink and took a long swallow of the golden liquor. It exploded with pleasant warmth in his stomach, like taking a drink of the sun.

  Life was good.

  CHAPTER 45

  They passed Haiti on the sixth day. Cuba lay ahead off the port bow. They'd taken the shortest route home, with Cuba to the left and the chain of islands that included the Bahamas off to their right. But they had a problem.

  "We have to get him to a hospital," Selena said.

  They were talking about Lamont. His fever was worse. He was slipping in and out of awareness. The color had drained away from his chocolate skin. His eyes were taking on a yellowish tint.