Standing the Final Watch

by William Alan Webb

  Dupree paused, closed his eyes, and gathered his thoughts. “Like Sergeant Schiller said, I had the watch when the activation codes came in, and part of my deployment checklist was to monitor and audit power usage. I had been doing that all along, but when the base was shut down we never ran at more than point eight percent of maximum power, and that was with the hydros and reactors off line. They more than tripled our capacity, so there was never an issue with Overtime using too much power.

  “I did a weekly audit as called for in my duties, but it never varied more than one percent up or down, and that’s one percent of point eight percent. But I never checked where that power was actually going, what was using it, because that wasn’t part of my duties. When Deployment Plan A was implemented, that changed.”

  “Good, good, you’re doing fine, son,” Angriff said. “Did I miss where we’re going with this?”

  “Oh, no, sorry, General, I was just kind of giving some background. I took a reading of power usage twelve hours after we powered up, as called for. The CHILSS each use a certain amount of power and with everybody waking up, that amount would go down to almost zero, which it did. There were still some CHILSS online, livestock, I think, so I knew the wake up wasn’t one hundred percent, and that was normal.

  “Anyway, we’re supposed to manually verify everything, so I took the power usage of one CHILSS and multiplied it by our roster. Then I subtracted the CHILSS still active and drawing power. Allowing for variables, it should have come out within seven ten-thousandths of a percent up or down. Except it didn’t. Before they powered down, the CHILSS were using nearly a hundredth of a percent more power than they should have been.

  “I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it is. I ran every test I could think of to try and explain the anomaly, but when that didn’t work I took the raw quantity of extra power usage and divided it by the average necessary to run one CHILSS. That’s when I got my answer.”

  “I’m not a computer analyst, Dupree. You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”

  “Yes, sir. The exact extra power usage exactly matched the quantity that would be needed to run forty-three CHILSS.”

  Angriff leaned his chin on folded hands. “Are you saying we have forty-three people on this base who are not part of our duty roster?”

  “That’s really not for me to say, General.”

  “Say it anyway. Best guess. You won’t be held responsible if you’re wrong.”

  “If you twist my arm, General, then yeah… yes, sir. There’s forty-three extra people running around.”

  Fleming and Angriff exchanged glances.

  “Dupree, you’ve done a great job. This is outstanding work, son. I am truly grateful for your dedication.” Any private in any army would have recognized the tone in Angriff’s voice: great job, thank you, now go away.

  “Umm… thank you, sir, but that’s only the first thing.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Well, it’s not a power issue, but we have a data leak.”

  This time there was nothing dismissive in Angriff’s manner at all. “How do you know we have a data leak, Private?”

  “Like I said, sir, I’m not directly involved in getting the network up, but I am running scans on peripherals to look for anomalies. I was checking to see if there were any issues in memory storage, and also to see what communications were available and which weren’t. I manually traced the largest data dumps to see who was able to access records and who wasn’t, then cross-referenced it with a list of end users, hoping we could isolate the issue. Yesterday, a new user came online suddenly, but with no identification of who it was. One second it wasn’t there, the next it was. And within thirty seconds it downloaded a massive amount of data.”

  “Did he get it?”

  “The data? Oh, yes, sir. At least, the computer sent the data. Whether or not he actually received it, I don’t know.”

  “And we have no idea who it is?”

  “I don’t, General. There’s no way to trace it from my end. But I’ve been thinking about it, and I have a theory that this was some sort of tap.”

  “Tap?”

  “A hard line, a land line. I think someone connected directly to our mainframes. That would never show up in standard communications audits, and I would never have found it if I hadn’t been thinking outside the box trying to get the network running. It was just an accident I found it at all.”

  “You mean someone made a physical connection to our computer system?”

  “Exactly, sir.”

  “Through some sort of cable, I assume?”

  “Yep… I mean, yes, sir, high-capacity fiber optic cable, judging by the quantity of data accessed and the speed. It’s the only way I can explain it.”

  Angriff leaned back, rubbing his jaw as everyone in the room watched him. “Could this have been done before we went active? What I mean is, could this hypothetical cable have been connected before yesterday, or is this new?”

  Dupree considered that. “It could have been done any time, sir. Just because the data leak started yesterday, that doesn’t mean the connection was made yesterday. It’s like a water faucet — the water doesn’t come out until you turn it on.”

  Angriff started to respond, but stopped as four armed men ran up the ramp toward his office. Schiller put his hand on his sidearm, but it was the headquarters company sentries, led by Juan Gonzales.

  “What’s wrong, Corporal?” Angriff rose.

  Gonzales was breathing hard. “Gunfire, General, southeast elevators near the seventh floor. Colonel Walling called on an elevator phone and said to secure your headquarters.”

  “Gunfire? Did he give any details?”

  “No sir. He said he was on his way and should be here shortly, and we were to protect your person.”

  “He said I’m in danger?”

  “He did, General.”

  “Me, personally?”

  “You personally, sir. And General Fleming.”

  Angriff reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out his beloved Desert Eagle pistols. He laid them next to his computer, chambered a round in each, and arranged them within easy reach.

  “Want to borrow one?” he said.

  Fleming cocked his head. “I haven’t changed my opinion.”

  Angriff sat back down. “Dupree, I want you to track down this tap or whatever you call it, find out where it is and where it goes, and if possible how long it’s been there. You have authority to do whatever needs doing. Use my name if you have to. I’m counting on you, son.”

  “Uh… yes, sir. Should I wait until things calm down?”

  “Hell, no, son, there’s no reason to wait. I don’t even want you to sleep if you can help it. But if you’re worried about getting shot, you have my permission to carry your service weapon with you. Have you ever shot it?”

  “No, sir.” Dupree swallowed. “Well, in basic.”

  Chapter 28

  I chose my path, I chose my tests,

  To mine own self was true;

  With faith in God and no regrets

  I gave my all for you.

  Nick Angriff

  June 20th, 1048 hours

  Within ten minutes Colonel Walling came striding up the ramp, followed by a lean man in dark camo. Shadows hid his face under a weather-worn boonie hat.

  Two of the sentries stood at the head of the ramp, while the other two flanked the door to Angriff’s office. They all stiffened at Walling’s appearance, with crossed spurts of dried blood on his face and cheeks, and more on his uniform. However, it was the man following Walling who scared them. Although not physically imposing, when he looked up, under the brim of the hat gleamed the cold eyes of a killer.

  Walling held up his hand for the man to wait outside the office, and then he went in. “We’ve got big problems, General.”

  Angriff looked him over. “None of that blood is yours, is it?”

  “No, sir. I’m fine. No thanks to me. I got on the e
levator and two assassins were waiting. Fortunately, my guardian angel followed me aboard. Neither one of them survived.”

  “Guardian angel?” Angriff said. “I’d appreciate you not speaking in riddles, Colonel, I don’t like it.”

  “Sorry, sir.” He stepped back a pace and waved the strange man in. “But I think the term fits. I’m told you two know each other.”

  When the killer rounded the doorway, Angriff’s jaw dropped for nearly two seconds.

  “I should have known,” he said. “Damn it, I should have guessed… you have no idea how glad I am to see you, Ghost.”

  “Yeah, ditto. You’ve got assassins on the loose, Saint. I need you to come with me right now. The shit’s about to hit the fan, and we need to be out of the way if it does.”

  Schiller and Walling both started to correct Ghost’s insubordinate language, but Angriff spoke over them. “That bad?”

  “Worse. I don’t know what you were told about this place, but I don’t think much of it was true. We’ve got to saddle up. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a part of this rat’s maze I’ll bet isn’t on the schematics. It’s a defensible position and I’m holding somebody you need to meet while you can, but she’s not going to last much longer.”

  “Who is she?”

  “One of the assassins sent to kill you.”

  “Who stopped her?”

  “Who do you think? I’ll explain that on the way. We need to hurry.”

  Angriff pulled shoulder holsters of out his desk. With the perfected movements of long practice, he strapped them across his chest. “She’s dying?”

  “You can’t make sushi without carving up the fish.”

  Chapter 29

  Save me from the lion’s mouth...

  Psalm 22:21

  June 20th, 1126 hours

  When Angriff and Green Ghost left the Crystal Palace, two of Ghost’s men joined them. Angriff recognized both of them from a dozen operations, including the final one in the Congo. Both men saluted Angriff, a rarity done only when they respected the officer, then Vapor took point and Wingnut was rear guard. Trailing behind were two of the headquarters sentries.

  With unknown assassins roaming the base, unauthorized personnel on hand, and a small circle of people he knew he could trust, Angriff ordered Fleming to stay at the Crystal Palace with Walling and Schiller, and to have Dennis Tompkins join them. They were to arm themselves and not leave until the situation became clear. Everyone’s duty was to protect the chain of command in case Angriff died. Personal safety issues were secondary to their mission of resurrecting the United States.

  “Sorry, boys, we walk,” Green Ghost said. “Vehicles can be rigged to explode pretty easily, and even if they don’t, if we move too fast we can’t avoid an ambush.”

  “How far is it?” Angriff said.

  “Not that far. None of us are recovered from Long Sleep yet, but I don’t see a safe alternative. Sorry, Saint. Vapor, get far enough ahead to be a tripwire. Twenty feet should do it.”

  As they moved toward the northernmost elevators, Angriff did not ask any of his thousand questions about what happened after he went cold, or how Green Ghost and his men wound up as part of Overtime. Some things, however, could not wait. “What am I dealing with, Ghost? How bad is it?”

  “Has your Chief of Security not briefed you yet?”

  “What Chief of Security?”

  Green Ghost shook his head, but his eyes never stopped roaming. “That’s what I was afraid of. You have a Chief of Security. He’s a civilian, but on paper he has authorization to access anybody and anything anywhere on this base. He has total authority over military personnel. That he hasn’t introduced himself yet confirms my thinking.”

  “Care to tell me his name?”

  “This is gonna blow, Saint. You’re not going to be happy. Your Chief of Security is Special Agent Terry Bettison.”

  Few things could stop Nick Angriff, but that did. He pulled up short and Vapor almost ran into him. “The same Terry Bettison who couldn’t find my family’s killers? Who screwed up the investigation into who took pot shots at me? That Terry Bettison?”

  “Let’s talk while we walk. Yeah, that Terry Bettison. When you disappeared, I thought you bit the glass, skied into a ravine where nobody would ever find you. It didn’t seem like something you’d do, but I couldn’t blame you. Losing the last of your family is tough.”

  “You sound like you know that first hand.”

  “Yeah, I do. Sort of. The boys and I even wrote this ode…”

  “The Legend of Nick the A.”

  “You’ve heard it?”

  “Not yet. I’ll let you recite it later.”

  “No chance.”

  “I’m still your boss,” Angriff said. “I’ll order you to do it.”

  “And I’ll disappear.”

  They came to the elevators and deployed in a tactical formation, since the open octagon made for a perfect ambush. Angriff held one of his pistols and rotated, looking for a target, as did the others. When the elevator arrived Vapor swept it for explosives using a hand-held device, then flashed thumbs-up.

  Once on board with the elevator going down, Angriff and Green Ghost continued.

  “It was a couple years later and I was back in the States. When you died, I made you a promise that I would get revenge on whoever killed your family. I started sniffing round the investigation. I talked to a few people. Some of them didn’t want to talk but I didn’t give them a choice. Once I used a special interrogator I know who gets results. You’ll be meeting her shortly.”

  “You didn’t kill anybody,” Angriff said, and it was not a question.

  “When I kill people, they’ve earned killing. I’ll bet it’s no shock to you, but Bettison never tried to find out who killed your family or who shot at you. It was all smoke and mirrors. I don’t know why. And while I was sniffing around, I got wind that your death may have been faked, and that led to this place.”

  “Why wait to tell me you’re here?”

  “We’re not on the books, Saint. There’s something fucked about this whole thing. I don’t know exactly what it is, but something doesn’t add up.”

  “I’ve felt that way since my family was killed.”

  “Your instincts are right.”

  The elevator stopped. They hugged the sides as the doors slid open, but nobody waited to spray them with automatic weapons. At that level, the tunnels walls were bare granite and much rougher than higher up, since nothing but warehouses occupied the deepest floors. Down there lighting did not dispel all the shadows.

  “This is sub-level nine,” Ghost said. “We’ve secured this part of the passage, but there’s bad juju down here, bwana.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’ll find out in a minute.”

  “We were talking about Bettison,” Angriff said. “What have you found out about him?”

  “You can talk to Watts about that. Well, you can try.”

  “Watts?”

  “Our guest, Rita Watts. Rita’s a dues-paying member of something RSVS, a terror group that started in Russia, although she’s American. Best I can tell, they’re a hybrid communist-Nazi group that took hold in the NSA at some point. The name RSVS is an abbreviation. It’s the Russian for work will set you free.”

  “Arbeit macht frei?” Angriff said, stunned. “That’s the slogan over the gates of Dachau.”

  “Yeah,” Ghost said. “I know. These people are true believers, real hard cases.”

  “I’ve heard that name before, I think Steeple said something about them, but Nazis? I thought those days were gone.”

  “I don’t make this shit up, Saint. I don’t think these are old style Nazis or communists, not exactly. Best guess is they were butt buddies with the radical leftists, only more militant.”

  “Like the former president?”

  “Which one?”

  The corner of Angriff’s mouth turned u
p in a smile. “I keep forgetting that I slept through nine years of history. The one who pretended to fight radical Islam while letting them run wild.”

  Ghost turned and laughed. “Which one?”

  “Oh,” Angriff said. “So does this RSVS hate Jews?”

  “Not that Rita’s brought up, but they are pro-ISIS in that they approve of their methods. So anti-Semitism might follow. I don’t know. They hate the Israelis, but I don’t think it’s because they’re Jews.”

  When they rounded a corner, the corridor ended in a blank wall of stone.

  “This is where your blueprints and schematics end, and everything you’re not supposed to know begins.”

  “As if it’s not enough to rebuild a whole country, now I’ve got to figure exactly what I’ve walked into.”

  Green Ghost touched four spots on the wall that appeared as nothing more than flaws in the stone. If done in the wrong order, nothing happened. When done in the correct sequence, however, the light blue outline of a door glowed on the side wall. Ghost pushed four spots on that rectangle and a door squealed as it swung inward.

  Angriff was struck by the musty smell of long-sealed rock and dirt, reminiscent of the catacombs of St. Callixtus, on the Appian Way near Rome. He and Janine had accompanied Morgan on a high school student tour of Italy. Since she attended a Catholic school, the director of the catacombs, a priest named Father Ottavio, insisted on conducting the tour himself. Praying at the Crypt of St. Cecilia, with the rich brown dirt under the kneeler, was a moment Angriff would never forget. Nor would he forget the earthy smell.

  Beyond, the corridor was lit only by glow-sticks. After fifty feet it ended in a wider tunnel lit by green LEDs, with rooms every twenty feet on each side. Many of the rooms had tiny windows with revolving trays built into the door.

  “A prison?” Angriff said. “Who built this? Who were they going to put in here?”

  Ghost kept walking, speeding up as they entered secure territory. “These cells were probably meant for you. And anybody who supported you.”

  The implications were clear. Underground construction required geologic surveys, heavy machinery, and a lot of manpower. Sub-floor nine was at least two hundred feet below ground level. The hidden section must have been part of the original plan, meaning omission from the schematics could not be an accident.