Redemption

by Richard Stephenson

  Theo had managed to manipulate his way into working inside what he determined to be the headquarters for a major division of the Chinese army. The task actually didn’t require much manipulation, no one wanted to work inside the base because they were horribly mistreated and many of them disappeared without a trace. Theo couldn’t just outright volunteer for the detail without arousing suspicion. He also had to be careful who he could trust. It was common for his fellow captives to report wrongdoing to the Chinese in exchange for small rewards. All Theo had to do was find a man roughly his age and size that had an intense, deep hatred for the Chinese. Once he had found his man, he traded work details with him and gained access to the base.

  Theo spent his days cleaning the latrines in the main headquarters. The enlisted men did not enjoy the luxury of indoor plumbing but instead used portable toilets several hundred yards away from the cluster of buildings. The officers, on the other hand, were far too important and couldn’t waste time walking back and forth to the portable toilets. Every floor of the headquarters building had a restroom. Each restroom had three laborers working around the clock keeping it clean and transporting waste away from the building.

  Richard Dupree handpicked Theo for this mission because he was fluent in Chinese. None of the Chinese officers had a clue that Theo understood every word they said. Theo was shocked at the amount of intelligence he gathered just from listening. Every day during his twelve-hour shift, a low ranking Chinese officer would fetch Theo and make him clean up the lunch meal and take out the trash. Theo gathered valuable intelligence listening to a dozen officers argue about the war with the PSA.

  One particular day the low-ranking Chinese officer burst into the restroom and grabbed Theo by the arm. Theo didn’t need to be fluent in Chinese to understand that the junior officer was being chastised by his commanding officer for bringing the wrong bottle of wine. Theo ducked as the wrong bottle smashed on the wall behind him. The junior officer grabbed Theo by the neck and pulled him into the break room. The nervous officer tore through the cabinets and filled Theo’s arms with wine glasses. Once the correct bottle was found, the officer kicked Theo in the ass to motivate his journey to the conference room.

  The junior officer pantomimed for Theo to collect the dirty wine glasses and replace them with fresh ones. Once Theo nodded his understanding, the junior officer gave Theo the bottle and sat down. Theo pretended to be terrified and allowed his hands to shake as he set about his task so he could take his time and squeeze out a few more seconds in the room. The commanding officer resumed speaking.

  “Gentlemen, our primary concern in the next fourteen days will be to begin liberating this territory of its inhabitants so our colonization plans can move forward without issue.”

  A confused officer raised his hand. “General, do we have the resources for such a task?”

  The general did not like being interrupted. “Do our guns not have bullets?” The confused officer looked down at the table and pretended to shuffle some papers. “I asked you a question, Major! Do our guns have bullets?”

  “Yes, sir, they do.”

  “Then use those guns, put bullets in the heads of the American trash still occupying our territory and let their corpses rot where they fall. Or is that too difficult a task for anyone at this table to accomplish?”

  No one dared speak.

  The general continued, “We have hundreds of millions of our people waiting for their new home to be ready. We cannot afford the luxury of sharing it with the worthless people that were too stupid to evacuate to the PSA. A fitting end to a people that conquered this land and slaughtered the people already living here. Why should we not do the same?”

  Theo quietly faded into the background and slipped out of the conference room unnoticed. At the end of his shift, instead of returning to the detention center, he quickly made his escape. The Chinese didn’t bother securing the detention center or monitoring the population. If an American prisoner was found unsupervised away from designated work areas, they were executed on the spot. The corpse was then taken to the detention center and another prisoner was chosen at random to be executed in front of the population. While brutal, the policy was an effective deterrent against prisoners leaving the detention center.

  Theo was not worried about getting caught. The Chinese did have random patrols around Quantico but they didn’t actively seek out escapees because the Americans really had nowhere to go if they escaped. If an escapee somehow made it off the grounds, they would have to make it across eight hundred miles of Chinese territory to the well-fortified Mississippi River. If by some huge stroke of luck they made it across the river they would then have to travel another eight hundred miles across the barren Great Plains to rejoin their American brethren at the Rocky Mountains. Theo did not have time to make the journey back the Pacific States of America. He had no equipment to broadcast a signal. Even if he did manage to transmit a message, the enemy would zero in on his location and a drone would take him out before he finished.

  Theo had to get word to General Dupree immediately. The Chinese would start exterminating every human being that was not of Chinese descent. Time was of the essence and Theo had to think fast.

  ***

  President Marshall Beck was eating breakfast when Hal informed him of General Dupree’s arrival and the urgent need to speak with him as fast as humanly possible. Marshall knew something was horribly wrong. The general had a strict timetable to prepare for Operation Miraflores and his sudden arrival from the Nevada desert had him concerned. He stepped off the elevator at the command level to find Richard waiting for him.

  “Richard! What the hell is going on?”

  “Mr. President, please,” Richard raised his arm in the direction of the command center. Marshall nodded his head and the two walked toward the outer door of the command center. Hal opened the door and once inside, Richard waited for the door to secure before speaking.

  “Mr. President, I’ve just received a deeply disturbing message from Colonel Forrest and we have little time to react. Here it is.” Richard called up the message on his tablet and gave it to the president. The message was short but powerful.

  MASS EXTERMINATION TO BEGIN. COLONIZATION IMMINENT.

  “Have you confirmed this, General?”

  “No, Mr. President. We are not in contact with Colonel Forrest.”

  “How did you get this message?”

  “Theo is nothing short of a genius. He sent this message using Morse code.”

  “Morse code?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. Hal intercepted the message from a reconnaissance satellite. Theo managed to get his hands on a high powered spotlight at an abandoned airfield.”

  “Are you telling me the colonel gave his life to get us this message? The Chinese aren’t blind, they must have spotted it.”

  “The Chinese didn’t see a thing. The colonel spent upwards of an hour to relay the message, one letter at a time. He repeated the message six times before the sun came up.”

  “And you know it’s from him?

  “Yes, Mr. President. His authentication code preceded each message.”

  “Do we have any way to extract Colonel Forrest and get more intel from him?”

  “No, Mr. President, he’s on his own. Theo’s one of our best, he’ll make it back.”

  Marshall slumped down in his chair, defeated. “This changes everything. We cannot sit idly by while the Chinese slaughter our people and make our land their own. They hold the line at the Mississippi and if we come charging over the Rockies the war will be over. They outnumber us three to one and have enough firepower to wipe us out before we could get half way across the Great Plains. What the hell are we going to do, Richard?”

  “Mr. President, how quickly can the vice president be here?”

  “Hal?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. I have informed Vice President Harris and he will depart Seattle in the next ten minutes.”

 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Vice President Maxwell Harris was aboard Air Force Two en route to Beck Castle. He had departed Seattle four hours ahead of schedule, which suited him just fine. His sudden departure meant he could cancel a long string of boring meetings. While he was content to leave behind his fake smiles, he was concerned that the president had recalled him so abruptly. Max was well aware that the bulk of his duties as the vice president was to serve as a buffer for his boss. Everyone wanted the president’s ear for all manners of triviality and most were content to spend ten minutes with Max.

  “Okay, Hal, we’re in the air. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Yes, sir. Direct your attention to the main screen.”

  Max looked at the brief report detailing Theo’s message. “Hal, is that it?”

  “Unfortunately, it is, sir.”

  “Really wish we had more to go on. What’s the plan?”

  “Sir, at the request of the president, I am still attempting to accumulate more definitive intelligence so that an operation with favorable odds of success can be carried out.”

  “Hal, I’m sure you are. Any luck?”

  “Sir, I am currently examining and comparing vast amounts of information to confirm the report sent by Colonel Forrest. I will present my findings to you, the president, and General Dupree shortly after we land.”

  “Fair enough. What is my wife up to?”

  “Sir, Mrs. Harris and the First Lady are in San Fransisco for the reopening of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “Now that’s a PR trip I would have actually enjoyed.”

  “Sir, your wife is much more attractive than you.”

  “You’re getting funnier, Hal.”

  “Thank you, sir. I have been making an effort.”

  “Howard would be proud.”

  “Yes, sir, I know he would.”

  Max paused for a moment and a small glimmer of a smile cracked through his pain induced scowl. He wasn’t sure if Hal’s reply carried with it a bit of sadness or if he was merely projecting his own. Could the artificial intelligence long for the company of his deceased creator? Howard always viewed his relationship with Hal as father and son. Did Hal consider himself as having lost a father? Did he miss him?

  “I take it Chrissy Dupree is with my son?”

  “Yes, sir, that is correct. Would you like to speak to her?”

  Max was about to say yes but thought better of it. Richard Dupree’s sixteen-year-old daughter was a mature, competent babysitter. His little boy was in good hands. “No, it can wait. I’ll check on them later today.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Max spent the rest of the flight trying to calm his nerves. His battle with chronic pain had its ups and downs. Being medicated brought with it a hazy fog that the vice president tried to avoid. On the other hand, the pain made him angry and bitter, a combination that was not suited for politics. The only thing he could do was find a middle ground. Over the counter pain medication was weak, but it dulled the horrific pain enough for him the function. In his current state, however, he would normally admit defeat and indulge in narcotics. Given what was at stake with Colonel Forrest’s report, he needed a clear and focused mind. He would have to settle with his cane.

  Max exited Air Force Two and slowly made his way to the elevator that would take him far beneath the surface to Beck Castle. Once on the command level, he walked the long corridor to the command center and was pleased that he did not have to wait outside the outer door. Richard Dupree was waiting just inside.

  “Max! Glad you could join us. How was your flight?”

  “It was fine. How’s Nevada?”

  “Hot.”

  Max sat down in front of the ten-foot high spherical monitor. Formal etiquette dictated that is was highly disrespectful to sit down before the president and even more so to not shake his hand before taking your seat. Max would never do this in public and Marshall Beck didn’t really mind. He hated being coddled and fussed over just as much as his father did when he was alive. In the company of friends, he enjoyed being treated a normal person.

  The president didn’t waste time. “Hal? What have you got for us?”

  A map of the Chinese-American territory zoomed into view in front of them. “Gentlemen, after careful review of the data at hand, I have surmised that Colonel Forrest’s report holds merit. Reviewing images from reconnaissance satellites over the past eleven days has shown something out of the ordinary. While it does not confirm Colonel Forrest’s report, it does indicate that something of significance is taking place.”

  Richard interrupted, “Elaborate, please.”

  “Yes, General. I have compared the movements of the population of the Chinese-American territory prior to Colonel Forrest’s report with the movement taking place afterwards.”

  Now Max was the one interrupting, “Wait. What do you mean ‘population?’ Are you saying you’ve tracked the movements every living person in the territory since the occupation?”

  “Yes, sir, I have to the best of my ability. The task was quite monumental in its undertaking. My original estimates for completion were over fourteen hours. I applied a set of algorithms …”

  “We get the point, Hal,” said Max, “What did you find?”

  “Yes, sir, as you know, there are currently ninety-three labor camps holding just under a million prisoners. The Chinese utilize the prisoners to carry out various labor-intensive tasks. On any given day, between twenty-two and fifty-three percent of the prison population are taken from the camps to perform labor. However, for reasons unknown, on some days that figure is as low as three percent.”

  “Hal, I don’t like ‘for reasons unknown,’ at least give us a guess,” said the president.

  “Yes, Mr. President. Likely scenarios could be security related, to perform a census in order to locate particular prisoners for interrogation. Another possibility would be for health concerns, to stop the spread of disease.”

  “Thank you, Hal, continue,” said the president.

  “You are welcome, Mr. President. Gentlemen, the one factor that has not changed since the occupation is that days of extremely low prisoner movement have never exceeded a twenty-four hour period. Normal operations have always proceeded at sunrise of the following day.”

  General Dupree, the ever-vigilant tactician, was the first to figure it out. “That changed for the first time after Theo’s report.”

  “Yes, General Dupree, you are indeed correct. When Colonel Forrest sent his report, prisoner movement at the labor camps was already down to one percent. This occurred yesterday. Today, prisoner movement has remained at one percent.”

  The president took a deep breath. “Hal, are you saying the mass extermination has already begun?”

  “Mr. President, I do not believe that to be correct. The labor camps have remained secured, both inside and out, for thirty-seven hours. I have not observed a large military presence at the labor camps to carry out executions on a large scale. Such an undertaking would also require the disposal of corpses, which I have not yet seen.”

  “Thank god for that,” said Richard.

  “Gentlemen, I am afraid that is only half of my report. In regards to the rest of the American population in Chinese territory, I have also noted a radical change in movement patterns. When the labor camps were secured, the scattered communities of Americans were also restricted in their movement.”

  “How is that significant?” asked Richard, “It’s not like they’re allowed to move around that much in the first place.”

  “That is correct, General, however, the Chinese military are not allowing Americans to leave their homes for any reason. Examples were quickly made of those not wishing to comply with the mandate. In less than twelve hours, every American community has shown little to no movement. It is evident that the Chinese are preparing for something on a large scale. Colonel Forrest’s report would appear to be valid. Gentlemen, that concludes my rep
ort.”

  “Simon Sterling strikes again.”

  Max and Richard exchanged puzzled glances. Richard broke the silence. “Mr. President?”

  “The piece of shit that assassinated President Powers and wiped his ass with the Constitution? One of the first things he did when founded the Unified American Empire was to confiscate every firearm from every civilian. If our brothers and sisters on the other side of the Mississippi had the means to resist, the outcome of this war would be entirely different. Hal, what about colonization? Have the Chinese started moving their citizens?”

  “Mr. President, I do not have adequate satellite coverage of the Asian continent to make such a determination. I could reassign the satellite network, however, it would impair my ability to monitor either the North American continent or the Empire of Iran’s conquest of Europe.”

  “No desire to do that, Hal. Don’t change a thing.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Marshall turned to Richard. “General, please tell me you have something that resembles a plan.”

  “Mr. President, the plan is already in motion. Our plan to retake the Panama Canal can be adapted to secure the Mississippi. If we can disable their defenses along the river we can finally come over the Rockies and bring the fight to their front door. Worst-case scenario, we fail to secure the river but it would still delay their plans for mass extermination, basically just buy us more time. If we succeed and secure the river, we keep pushing east and liberate our people along the way. It’s just crazy enough to work. They won’t know what hit ‘em. Hal, what do you think?”

  “General, the odds of success are dramatically lower compared to Operation Miraflores. I do concur, however, that any such operation focused on the Mississippi River will serve as a distraction to their plans of mass extermination. If the president authorizes such a plan, the plan will need to be executed in the next eighteen hours, prior to sunrise on the East Coast.”