“I’m not disturbing him,” Birthmark said, tugging nervously at his ruff collar.
His partner smeared a trail of sweat with a shaking hand and nodded in agreement.
They’re oblivious, Bradley thought, as the guards retreated and gently closed the double doors behind them. Completely unaware that an artificial sense of dread influenced their decision-making.
This technology is insidiously evil. Not only can it whisper into the minds of men, corrupting their ability to reason and sabotaging their free will, it can do so without the victim even realizing what was happening. How can you fight back if you have no idea that you’re being emotionally manipulated?
White Rabbit has to be annihilated.
Bradley roused the pontiff, paralyzed his vocal cords, and hefted him onto his feet.
Volkov! the old man seethed. He didn’t destroy Project Night Owl; he poached it! And now his lackey has come to steal Pulveru—
He stopped himself—too late.
“I know all about Pulverulentus,” Bradley told him, projecting words directly into his mind. “Take me to it.”
Never!
Hey, Warbird. Compliance six.
The old pervert’s face contorted. He shifted his weight foot to foot, unable to quell the pain, and his mouth gaped, emitting a silent shriek. The sensation of fire was devouring his feet—an apropos punishment given the papacy’s penchant for burning heretics at the stake—and, within a minute, the pontiff reached his breaking point.
Stop, he begged. There’s a portal ... behind the looking glass.
Bradley terminated the pain-compliance application and marched his prisoner across the room like a remote-controlled toy soldier.
The antique mirror stood six feet tall, framed with glided filigree that wound upward to an arched peak and dead-ended into a two-headed eagle sporting a crown.
His evilness wrapped a hand around the frame, and a section of castle-block wall swung inward, unearthing a Plexiglas, cylindrical elevator shaft reminiscent of a bank’s drive-thru vacuum tube.
I wonder what the weight limit is, he thought, prodding his paunchy prisoner into the capsule.
The descent was slow and smooth, powered by a pneumatic system, and the elevator transported them through several stories of solid stone, into a dungeon with rough-cut stone walls. Two children jumped to their feet and greeted the pontiff with a monotone, “Good-evening, Holy Father.”
Those poor kids, Bradley thought, sickened by their haunted expressions, devastated by the trauma glimmering in their eyes. This is worse than Pope Leo X charging for the forgiveness of sins, worse than the Vatican bank laundering drug money for The Consortium, worse than—
“Are you an angel?” The sweet little, Italian-speaking voice belonged to a five-year-old girl who was pointing at Bradley. “Yeah, you ... With the owl.”
Shock and panic rioted inside him. Muscles clenched. The owl co-opts vision and hearing, he thought. How does she know I’m here?
Feeling like Superman confronted with kryptonite for the first time, he urged his hostage to shuffle faster; then the older boy gave a snorting laugh. “Sofia, are you seeing ghosts again?”
“This one’s not a ghost or a demon,” she insisted. “So he must be an angel.”
Extra sensory perception, Bradley decided. Thank God she has a reputation for talking to ghosts; no one will take her seriously ... But what if one of the guards has a sixth sense?
The rear wall of the dungeon housed an entryway for a massive vault, and Bradley ordered his prisoner to unlock it.
I don’t recall the combination. The pontiff’s eyebrows flexed, feigning confusion, but arrogance was tugging at the corners of his mouth. I’m just an addle-brained old man.
Another dose of flames stimulated his memory. The dial whipped left, then right, then left, and the locking bars disengaged. Bradley yanked open the four-foot-thick door and steered his geriatric prisoner into a climate-controlled chamber cluttered with priceless artifacts, plundered works of art, and a library of knowledge from millennia past.
The pontiff guided him to a large suitcase ensconced in buckypaper, a carbon composite one-tenth the weight of steel and five hundred times stronger.
THIS is Pulverulentus ...? The one-of-a-kind, all-powerful weapon capable of razing White Rabbit? Bradley thought, surprised by its negligible weight.
I will avenge this piracy! The pope’s lizardlike eyes bored into him. Your children will become my living sex toys! And after I grow bored with them, I’ll sacrifice them to Moloch!
The threat to his unborn baby fractured something deep inside Bradley, prompting a reckless action which set an unfortunate chain of events into motion.
8
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
ABBY VOMITED UP A bitter liquid that burned her throat and made her tongue feel numb. The voyeur nudged her rucksack aside, taking her tactical knife out of play, and knelt beside her.
She stole a glance at the name tape on his ABUs.
Wachter ... Sounds bogus.
He surveilled the area as if checking for potential witnesses, then his penetrating stare fixed on Abby. Fearful images accumulated in her mind, memories of being hazed; but unlike her former teammates, this Consortium goon wouldn’t resort to mock torture. This time, it would be real, and she didn’t have a concealed weapon to defend herself.
Mustering her strength, she rammed an elbow toward Wachter’s groin.
His thighs pivoted, athletically dodging the blow, and Abby’s momentum sent her careening backward onto the sidewalk. A sharp pain radiated from her lower back, siphoning the air from her lungs and thwarting efforts to scream.
It’s not just my life this time, she thought. I have to protect the baby.
Abby’s arm sprung upward, and the jab to the Adam’s apple caught him off guard. He recoiled, releasing her, and as he coughed and gasped, Abby scrambled into the commissary. She slumped against the checkout counter, waving a hand to draw the attention of a clerk stocking shelves, and croaked, “Call the MPs!”
“She means call the medics!”
Abby’s head jerked toward Wachter’s deep baritone voice, and a profound fear rattled through her. Medical treatment would expose the bite wounds on her arm; which would expose the rabies shots; which, in turn, would be traced back to President Andrews’ physician; thereby establishing a connection between him and Athenian Grove.
He’ll be blamed for the satanists I dispatched ... He’ll be impeached.
What takes priority?
My baby’s survival?
Or my country’s survival?
The breadth of Bradley’s dilemma suddenly came into sharp focus. There was no island isolated enough, no mountain top remote enough to escape the reach of this cabal. They had to be fought—to the death.
“I’m Sigmund Wachter.” He presented an identification card to the red-haired clerk approaching the register. “Sergeant Webber’s Secret Service detail.” Then he latched onto Abby’s arm and ushered her out of the commissary. Without breaking stride, he snagged the strap of her rucksack and lifted it onto his shoulder. “Adverse reaction to the rabies shots?”
Startled, an audible wheeze escaped her. Was that a lucky guess? Or was there a traitor within President Andrews’ inner circle?
“Drop the bullshit cover story,” Abby snapped. “I know you’re working for The Consortium.”
He chuckled, and amusement fluttered in his stony, green eyes. “I work for the President. He advised me that you’d resist Secret Service protection and recommended that I maintain a shadow presence.” Wachter paused, fishing something from the cargo pocket of his trousers. “But when you collapsed—”
“I didn’t collapse! I was puking!” Abby’s cheeks were heating, and frustration was on the verge of erupting in the form of tears. Damn pregnancy hormones, she thought, bracing her left hand against her aching back. “And I don’t believe you!”
He produced a hand-written note, scrawled on W
hite House stationery, which read, “Abby, I have tasked Agent Wachter with protecting you. Get over it.” And beneath Ryan Andrews’ looping signature he’d written, “Authentication: Fruitland Park. Never followed through.”
All of TEradS knew that Abby and Bradley had never legally married—thanks to that moronic “Dear Jane letter” he’d e-mailed—but only three people knew that he’d proposed in Fruitland Park, Florida: Abby’s parents and Ryan Andrews.
The note is legit ... which means Wachter is legit ...
“I didn’t mean to intrude on your mourning,” the Secret Service agent apologized, dredging up unwelcome memories of her meltdown. “Please accept my sympathies.”
Abby’s emotions swung wildly from relief to resentment. “Thank you. But I don’t need your protection. I’m a Sniper. I can take care of myself.” She slapped the note against Wachter’s chest, wrested her arm free of his grasp, and entered the barracks.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, following her, “but I have my orders.”
Abby knew there was no point in arguing with him; orders were orders. And since she couldn’t take the Commander in Chief to task over it, her burgeoning anger reverted to Bradley.
This is his doing. He tried to recruit Cozart to protect me, and now he’s delegating responsibility to Ryan Andrews.
She unlocked the door to her quarters, snatched her rucksack from Wachter, and scurried inside. Feelings reared up like a rogue wave, anxiety churning with grief, dread roiling with regret, and tears began to flow, hot and unrestrained.
I wish I’d never met you!
Those ugly words haunted her, injecting a dose of self-loathing into the emotional tidal wave, and her body began to tremble violently as if trying to tear itself apart. The stabbing ache in her lower back branched outward, and then she felt it, an undeniable signal that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
9
3,000 feet below White-Jefferson
Air Force Base, Ohio
PRESIDENT RYAN ANDREWS paced the mezzanine-style office, overlooking a massive, underground command post with rows of computer stations and banks of monitors. Bradley had succeeded in retrieving Pulverulentus from the Vatican, but the mission had still devolved into a clusterfuck.
“Webber didn’t merely go off-script,” Rone fumed, red-faced, hands clenched at his sides. “He went off the deep end. We never should’ve tapped him for that op. What the hell was he thinking?”
Interpreting the remark as a thinly veiled rebuke of his presidential judgment, Ryan said, “You know what your problem is? You haven’t been on the front lines for decades. If you’d witnessed half the atrocities that Bradley has, you’d understand why he slipped up.”
“Slipped up?” The Admiral’s eyes flashed like summer lightning then smoldered with anger. “He punched the pontiff in the face and broke his nose!”
“Bradley resolved that issue by staging a fall. The sanctimonious bastard awoke face-down on the floor beside his bed.”
“And then Webber compounded his fuckup by turning the op into a god-damned rescue mission.”
Arms folding across his chest, Ryan glared at his senior advisor. “And what would you have done? Left those children locked in that dungeon? To be sodomized? Burned alive in sacrifice to Moloch?”
“I would’ve followed my fucking orders!”
“Easy to say when you’re six thousand miles away, sitting behind a desk.”
“Sir, you don’t have a choice,” Rone stated flatly. “Webber must be replaced.”
Ryan had opted for a dual-pronged assault on White Rabbit. Infiltration from the ground, aided by Cyber Command and the owl, backed up by a fleet of B-2s, ready to blast the granite mountain into a pile of rubble.
“Even if Bradley can’t penetrate the underground base,” Ryan argued, “he’ll be able to provide damage assessments to the bomber Pilots. We’ve got nothing to lose by sending him.”
A muscle in Rone’s jaw flicked angrily as if struggling to censor his response. “Mr. President, I know Webber is your friend, but the guy’s a loose cannon. And another failure will doom the Republic.”
“Bradley didn’t fail,” Ryan reminded him. “He successfully acquired the weapon.”
“And tipped off the enemy. How long before someone notices that those kids are missing?” The Admiral’s balled hands shifted upward to his hips. “If The Consortium discovers that Pulverulentus is missing prior to detonation—”
“I’m aware, Admiral,” Ryan interrupted, “but replacing Bradley won’t reinstate the element of surprise. Do you have a substitute who is fluent in Korean? With an alibi equivalent to that of a dead man? Who can be rapidly vetted for Consortium connections? And master the owl’s complex commands within hours? Because time is our secondary enemy—”
“Which is why you should ditch the ground assault entirely and launch the aerial bombardment.”
General Quenten barged into the office with a laptop tucked under his arm. His solemn hazel eyes darted from Rone to Ryan, and sadness manifested in the set of his lips. “Supreme Court Justice Scaffidi has died of an apparent heart attack.”
“Natural causes?” Ryan asked. “Or murdered via heart-attack gun?”
“Irrelevant,” Rone grunted. “The weapon doesn’t leave conclusive evidence behind, and public disclosure regarding that technology could incite undue fear.”
“This appears to be The Consortium’s countermove,” Quenten said. “Eliminate the 5-4 majority on the High Court and block Senate confirmations, effectively circumventing the Constitution.”
“And if they kill off another justice?” Ryan asked, “giving the judicial activists a 4-3 majority?”
“I’ve already ramped up security for all justices.” Quenten drew in a long, slow breath, and cleared his throat as if preparing for a lengthy statement. “In addition to the tragic loss of Scaffidi, we have a brewing crisis in Central America. A caravan of so-called migrants—comprised mainly of military-aged males—is advancing on our southern border. The group originated in San Pedro Sula, the murder capital of Honduras, and includes known criminals, gangbangers, and terrorists from around the globe.”
The Consortium’s private army is mobilizing for an invasion, Ryan thought. “Who’s funding the transportation and logistical supplies for this two-thousand-mile expedition?”
“Military intelligence believes it’s being funded through Gorka Schwartz’s One Society Foundation,” Quenten explained, “as well as taxpayer dollars funneled through foreign aid.” The General pried open his laptop, placed it onto the conference table, and roused it from sleep. “This video was shot a few days ago.”
A tattooed man with a handgun grip peeking above his belt buckle was handing out cash to a queue of women with young children.
“Familial camouflage,” Ryan scoffed, “or human shields?”
“Both,” Quenten said as his index finger glided over the laptop’s built-in mouse, “and this clip was taken yesterday.”
Thugs were forcing women and children to the front of the column and bulldozing them into the gates of the Guatemala-Mexico border crossing. After dozens were trampled, crushed, and pelted by rocks, the Federal Police opened the proverbial floodgates, allowing the unruly mob to gain entry.
A military-aged man lunged at the camera, and in broken English said, “Thousands rush border. No stop. We come for you, Andrews! We. Come. For. You!”
“Consortium attempts to propagandize the American people into a coup have failed,” Rone concluded. “So they’re importing agitators—gangs, criminals, and terrorists—to overthrow this administration, just like Ukraine in 2014.”
Quenten slapped the monitor, closing the laptop. “And the media will aid and abet them with heartbreaking images of mothers and children, propaganda designed to elicit sympathy and pave the way for the modern-day Trojan horse.”
“I’ve had it with the media!” Ryan bellowed. “Fake news is the enemy of the people. We have to discredit them; dupe them into
exposing their dishonesty and seditious allegiance to The Consortium.”
“We’re all in agreement,” Quenten told him. “The question is, how do we do that?”
Tidbit #4
The Pope’s Audience Hall really does resemble a serpent, both inside and out.
Chapter 4
Day 717
Sunday, February 5th
10
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
ABBY HAD SPENT MOST of the night crying. The loss of the baby was compounding her grief over Bradley, and now, even her tears had deserted her. She felt lonely, empty inside, consumed by a crushing sense of failure and tormented by regret.
Am I being punished? she asked herself. For my selfishness when I first learned about the baby? For the spiteful things I said to Bradley?
What if that emotional baggage distracts him?
Oh, God. I might’ve inadvertently gotten Bradley killed ... just like Cozart ... and our baby.
Why do I keep destroying everyone I care about? Why can’t I grasp consequences before it’s too late?
Late?
A sinking sensation spread through Abby, and her weary eyes darted toward the alarm clock. 0852 hours.
Shit.
Shit!
SHIT!
She danced into her TEradS BDUs, combed her long blonde hair into a loose bun, and gave herself a cursory glance in a wall-mounted mirror. The whites of her eyes appeared pink; the lids, swollen and chafed; and she donned sunglasses to conceal the evidence of her grief.
Abby dashed into the hall, slammed into Agent Wachter, and ricocheted off him like a batted pinball.
“Sergeant Webber, are you okay?”
Okay? she thought. Nothing will ever be okay you stupid idiot!
Squelching the abusive retort, she sidled past him giving a curt nod.
The Power of We the People Page 4