Standing the Final Watch

by William Alan Webb

  “None of this was an afterthought.”

  Ghost nodded. “Don’t worry. It gets worse.”

  A tall woman with a nasty scowl and M16 stood guard on a cell with dim red lighting. Green Ghost whispered in her ear and she shook her head. He waved to the group.

  “She might still be alive.” He pointed at the headquarters sentries. “You’re backup for my guys. They’re going to check something out. Go with them.”

  Even though he wore no rank insignia, or even a proper uniform, neither sentry objected. Angriff didn’t blame them.

  Following Ghost, Angriff entered a small chamber with a raised rectangle carved from the living rock for a bed. A small hole in the corner served as the latrine. The only furniture was a metal chair with a naked woman tied to it, with her wrists tied to her ankles. A second rope looped around her neck ran first around her left foot and then the right. She’d leaned forward to relieve the strain on her back muscles, which had increased pressure on her neck. It would feel like hot coals seared the flesh from her temples to her shoulder blades. Her body was swollen and red, except around the ankles, knees, and wrists, where pooling blood turned them purple.

  Standing near the chair, a small woman with blonde hair, freckles on her nose, and white teeth flashed them a girl-next-door smile. Aside from the long pipe cleaner with metallic bristles dripping blood in her hand, Angriff thought she looked about thirteen years old.

  “The boys are back in town,” she said cheerfully. “You missed the best part, Ghost.”

  “Saint, meet the newest member of the platoon, Nipple. Behave, do you hear me?”

  “I always behave. Heard a lot about you, Saint. More than you might think.”

  “Watch it.” Green Ghost clenched his teeth.

  “Nipple — that’s your name?”

  “Yep. Wanna see why?”

  Angriff put up his hands. “No, that won’t be necessary.”

  “Focus,” Ghost said to her. “What’s the latest with lovely Rita here?”

  “Rita’s had better days… in fact, I think she’s dead. But it doesn’t matter; she gave up everything.”

  “I asked you to keep her alive until Saint got here.”

  Rita shrugged. “I tried to… okay, not really. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. But there was nothing left for her to say.”

  “Next time, do as I say,” Ghost said. “Nipple’s the best interrogator I’ve ever met, Saint, but she gets a little carried away. She likes her work too much. So, what don’t I know?”

  “A lot. These RSVS turds are gathered not too far from here, but down a level. After poor Rita, it looks like there’re ten others. She didn’t want to give it up, but there were no contingency plans if she failed to kill Saint Nick here. They only got into this dirt hotel at the last second. It wasn’t some grand plot or anything. Before we all took a nap, their influence wasn’t as much as it had been.

  “Their influence was waning?” Ghost said.

  “Waning? Did you really say waning? Sounds like wanking. I never paid attention to any of that political shit before, but she did say something about the stiffs at the top getting jumpy that they were too radical.”

  “Lines up with what I know,” Angriff said. “Those who openly wanted to fight terrorism got the boot. It almost happened to Norm Fleming and my days were numbered, so ditching radicals on the other side makes perfect sense. Those politicians promoted within the armed forces to support their personal agendas wouldn’t want some died-in-the-wool communist or Nazi to try and co-opt their power play. They couldn’t entirely throw them out, either; they must have been useful. I never heard of this group before, but as I think about it I can see their influence.”

  “One more thing,” Nipple said. “The plan to kill that colonel took Rita by surprise. I don’t know how you figured out they were gonna hit him, B.B.; it was news to her. She thinks the rest of them are down there trying to figure out what do next, so a quick strike might get them all.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just the bigger news.”

  “Give,” Angriff said, already tired of Nipple. Dealing with dangerous people meant making allowances for their quirks and often bizarre behavior, but there was still a line they should not cross. Being coy to a general crossed it.

  “I always knew he’d be a prick.” Nipple pointed at Angriff.

  “He’s a five-star general. If he wants to be a prick, that’s his privilege.” Ghost turned to Angriff. “I forgot to tell you she can be a little psychotic.”

  “I’m mostly insane, with horrible periods of sanity in between,” Nipple said.

  “Quoting Poe doesn’t impress me,” Angriff said.

  Before he could say anything else, her tone changed. Her voice lost its cheerful girlishness and dropped an octave, and he heard something in it that actually scared him. “This RSVS isn’t the real problem, unless they actually kill somebody. They’re dedicated enough; Rita here lasted longer than most. And they have some tricked-out stuff, like that dagger they tried to use on asshole here, but their presence wasn’t planned. They snuck in just as the doors were closing. If you round them up downstairs, I think you’re done with them. They might run away first.”

  “Then what’s the real problem?”

  “The other group.”

  “Other group? What other group?” Angriff said. “What do they want?”

  “I haven’t learned to answer three questions at once yet,” she said, only this time it like a snarling dog.

  Angriff mentally ran through the patience drills he had worked on over the years. When his heart-rate slowed, he tried again. “Who is the other group, Nipple?”

  “That’s easy.” The all-American grin came back. “The people who built this underground theme park.”

  Back in the hallway, Angriff had a hard time suppressing his anger.

  “Is she insane? Where did you find that head case?” he said in his famous growl. Once, when inspecting the aftermath of a strike on an ISIS compound, as Angriff stepped over body parts and mangled corpses, a reporter from Al-Jazeera stuck a microphone in his face and asked whether it had been necessary to kill all the ‘insurgents.’ The video that followed got a close-up of Nick the A chomping a cigar and sounding like an angry bear.

  “I could’ve kissed ’em,” he said. “But I’m thinking they’d rather be dead.”

  The video went viral and briefly trended on Twitter. Angriff became a folk hero to those sick of fighting interminable politically-correct wars. Although gruff, he was rarely angry with those close to him, including subordinates he considered brave and honorable, like Green Ghost. But rarely was not the same as never.

  “I found her where you would expect.” Ghost had seen Angriff pissed off before and seemed to have developed partial immunity, like a mongoose with a cobra. “I smuggled her out of a psych ward.”

  “So she’s insane?”

  “Clinically speaking, that’s never been determined. But if I had to guess, I’d say… no. I knew a voodoo priest who claimed she’s possessed by a demon. Somebody else described her as being sketched in black ink.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That she’s somebody you don’t forget. She’s dangerous as shit, loyal like a German shepherd, and nothing scares her. She’ll grow on you.”

  “So will melanoma. I have to admit there’s something familiar about her. She looks… I’m not sure, just familiar.”

  “Oh?” Green Ghost watched him intently. “Any idea what?”

  “No, I can’t put a finger on it. But when she’s not acting psychotic, she’s a lovely young woman.”

  “Don’t ever tell her that. She’ll really go nuts.”

  “Why?”

  “Nipple once described herself as thin, tense and angular.”

  “She’s definitely not angular,” Angriff said.

  “If she hears you say that, I can’t predict how she’ll react. Be careful what you say to her.”

  “You need
to ditch her. We can find something for her to do.”

  “I can’t.” For the first time since Angriff had known him, Ghost smiled, just a little. “I promised Mom I’d look after her.”

  “You’re not going, Saint,” Green Ghost said.

  Angriff wondered if the acoustics in the tunnel had interfered with his hearing. “Would you care to repeat that?”

  “I’m tactical on this and I say you’re not going.”

  “And I run this place and I say that I am.”

  “That’s exactly why you’re not going. You run this place. You are the one and only irreplaceable person here. If I die, if Vapor dies, or we all do, this place keeps going because you didn’t. But if you take a bullet to the heart, everything goes to shit. We all signed on for a mission we believe in and that mission is more important than any one of us, except you. I hate to break it to you, General Angriff, but you have to be immortal.”

  Green Ghost had never addressed him by his rank before.

  “Damn you,” he said.

  Once they found the target room, Angriff insisted on waiting in the hallway close by. The team had climbed down a laddered shaft to the floor below. Like the entire complex, tunnels of sculptured stone ran off in various directions. Their target was on the main corridor and they found it without trouble. For people used to operating in complete darkness, the ubiquitous LED lighting seemed like bright daylight.

  There were ten people in the strike team. Green Ghost’s platoon had sixteen members, including the two headquarters sentries. However, he sent six of them exploring the base to discover what other secrets it might hold. Two more were ordered to find a way outside.

  As Ghost and his team approached the target Angriff waited for gunfire, one Desert Eagle at the ready. Prisoners were a priority, but staying alive was a higher one. After ten minutes of silence, he wondered what had gone wrong. Had they gone in yet? Why were they waiting?

  “All clear, Saint.” Green Ghost’s voice echoed down the granite tunnel. Angriff almost ran toward the room and Ghost met him at the door.

  “They knew we were coming. Or assumed it.”

  Five bodies lay around the room. The scent of almonds hung in the air like a heavy fog, and Angriff recognized the physical effects of hydrogen cyanide, from the foam on their lips to the cherry red and purple tints to their skin.

  “Cyanide? Damn, they were true believers… but weren’t there supposed to be ten?”

  “Yeah, we’re missing five.”

  “So we’ve got five assassins running around loose?”

  “I don’t think so. Not unless they’ve been gone a while. I had men stationed at either end of the hall; there was nowhere for them to go without being seen. These five are all older, and that guy over there has a swollen ankle. There’s a trap door in the far corner and I’ve got two of my guys seeing where it goes, but I’ll lay odds it leads outside.”

  “You mean outside the base, onto the mountain?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if they run into the five who got away?”

  “Their orders are to take prisoners, but I sent Nipple and Wingnut, so…” He shrugged.

  “There aren’t supposed to be any exits except the main ones,” Angriff said.

  “I hate to tell you this, but that’s not the first one we’ve found. The good news is, I think we’re done with these people for a while. There’re some notes and journals here, names and shit that we’ve got to sift through. The uptake seems to be they were planning a straight-out coup. Kill you, Socrates, and anybody else who got in the way. With any luck the answer is in these papers.”

  “They targeted General Fleming, too?”

  “Oh, yeah. And Colonel Walling got in the way when you named him to head up deployment. I don’t know if you realized it or not, but that put him fourth in command, after General Tompkins.”

  “No, I didn’t. And Tompkins too… but you think we’re good for now?”

  “I do, Saint. I think we’re good to go.”

  “What about that other group Nipple mentioned?”

  “About that… you can’t always take her seriously. There’s an art to deciphering her.”

  “And you can translate everything she says?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Norm Fleming rose from Angriff’s desk chair and beckoned him to sit down. The anxiety of waiting for news showed on Walling, Schiller, and Tompkins’ faces, but not Fleming’s.

  “Nick goes off like this all the time,” Fleming had explained while they waited. “I assume that on one of these excursions, he’s going to get killed and that will be that. Worrying about it won’t stop it.”

  Once seated behind his desk, Angriff relit a half-smoked cigar. “I know you all want details, but that’s going to have to wait until we go public. Suffice it to say the threat has been eliminated and we’re good to go. Norm, Dennis, do whatever you need to do, then meet me back here in half an hour. Schiller, round us up dinner and plenty of coffee, and make sure I’m not disturbed. I’ve got a speech to write.”

  Chapter 30

  My family died because of me,

  My friends all turned to dust;

  But the ruins of the land I see

  Are from your broken trust.

  Nick Angriff

  June 20th, 1552 hours

  Green Ghost dispersed ten of his team at strategic points to watch the crowd, handguns ready. He was taking no chances.

  Dark wood paneling gave the amphitheater a soothing ambiance. One thousand stadium seats terraced upward from the stage in twenty-five rows, divided by a main aisle, with twenty seats per row on each side.

  Most military facilities were designed to be utilitarian at best. Form followed function. But Overtime Prime was different. Since these soldiers had nowhere else to call home, creature comforts accented the base wherever practical. Large stadium seats and thick carpeting made sure even lengthy presentations would be comfortable. An elaborate and adjustable lighting system allowed for multiple purposes, and superior acoustics meant a speaker on stage could be heard throughout the hall without using a microphone.

  The concept intended it for cultural and recreational activities, as well as for large gatherings, such as the commanding officer giving his first address. Every officer whose duties allowed waited in the audience, although the speech would be broadcast throughout the base. Everyone wanted to see the new CO.

  Nick Angriff scowled. He loved being in the Army. He loved everything about it, from the oily machine-smell inside an armored vehicle to the often lousy chow. The camaraderie forged by shared privations and dangers did not exist outside the military. When people are shooting at you, and the soldier next to you stands his or her ground and helps keep you alive, it no longer matters whether you two hate each other’s guts or not. You know when it really counts you can trust that person with your life. Angriff learned early in his career that, while friendship is a wonderful thing, comradeship is better.

  He and Fleming stood out of sight on the side of the stage.

  “It’s a packed house,” Fleming said.

  Angriff shrugged. “It’s not like I’m competing with a new movie opening.”

  “I know. You looked thoughtful, that’s all.”

  “I was just thinking how much I love being the CO. Not for egotistical reasons.”

  “Oh, no, not you. You just have a powerful sense of self.”

  “Go ahead and laugh. But who would you rather lead you into battle? Tom Steeple?”

  “I’m giving you a hard time, Nick, trying to loosen you up. You’re the best combat commander I’ve ever served with, and I think you know I feel that way.”

  “Yeah, I do. And I appreciate it. But beyond all that, being the CO means I can make the rules. I can mold my people as I think best. I can make them killers and survivors. And now I can do it without the bullshit political correctness we’ve had to live with the past twenty years… you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” F
leming said. “Before we went cold.”

  “Right. Those miserable bastards in DC didn’t give a damn about the soldier in the field. They weighed us down with rules and regs and ROEs that got people killed. JAG got perverted from enforcing the UCMJ to imposing a social agenda that had nothing to do with military effectiveness. Armies have always existed to kill people and break things. Using them as a social experiment for political reasons left us weak and vulnerable.

  “We appeared strong because of weaponry, but the core of our morale had begun to rot. It was like watching the French Army of 1940. They had more and better tanks than the Germans, and fought on the defensive, but superior equipment meant nothing compared to low morale and incompetent generalship.

  “But those days are gone. Political correctness was idiotic and now it’s defunct. As long as I’m in command, the Seventh United States Cavalry Brigade will operate on a strictly military basis, where merit is all that counts and political considerations don’t exist. All that matters is our mission. I’ve never suffered fools gladly, and now I don’t have to suffer them at all.”

  “Is that your speech?” Fleming flashed a sardonic grin.

  “Don’t I wish. This is one duty I don’t relish. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to be like the DC crowd and use speech writers and coaches to make me sound erudite. Some of those guys rehearsed endlessly and used teleprompters like a lifeline. They were more politician than military officer. My speeches might not be very good, but they’re all mine. I did ask Sergeant Schiller to look it over for me.”

  “And what did the good sergeant have to say about it?”

  “He told me not to change a word.”

  As Norm Fleming walked toward the podium, his posture could not have been straighter had a broom had been stuck down his shirt. The crisp uniform fit his tall frame in tailored perfection, and the decorations on his left breast gleamed in the focused lights. A perfectly knotted tie rested upon the snowy field of his shirt. Gun-metal gray hair was cropped close to his dark skin. He might have stepped right from an Army recruiting pamphlet.