Dear God, don’t let that happen to Ellen and Gabby.
Hanover led him into a courtroom, and Glen panned in search of his family. The gallery and jury box were packed with jittery Night Sector conscripts, and above the thronelike judge’s bench, spray-painted on the board-and-batten paneling, a pyramid-encased all-seeing eye glared down at him. Thankfully, Ellen and Gabby weren’t present.
Hanover escorted him to the defendant’s desk, navigating around a partially dried puddle of blood that accounted for the courtroom’s sickening metallic odor, then he retreated to the prosecutor’s desk, which housed an array of knives, scalpels, and spear-tipped axes.
The sight iced Glen’s spine.
His knees began to wobble, and then a lieutenant general thundered, “All rise.”
Hellhound strutted toward the bench, sporting a purple robe. He was an imposing figure, tall and muscular with broad shoulders. His chiseled features were harsh; his facial expression, unforgiving; and depravity smoldered in his hazel eyes.
“Colonel Hanover,” Hellhound bellowed, his steely voice reverberating through the hushed courtroom, “under your command, three conscripts were taken into TEradS custody, along with millions of dollars of product ...”
Glen cringed at the characterization. What kind of monster regards women and children as a “product?”
“... And a leak led to the most devastating loss in Consortium history. Three members of the Committee of 300—executed! A member of the Council of 13—executed! A member of the triumvirate—abducted! The wolf moon sacrifice—thwarted! Thereby jeopardizing our plans and potentially negating centuries of hard-fought victories.”
Hanover stood dumbfounded, licking his lips, and Glen seized the opening. “Permission to speak, general?”
Hellhound’s blistering scowl shifted to Glen. His eyes contracted into daggerlike slits, and he barked, “In regards to?”
“The uh, source of the leak, sir.”
The angry clench of Hellhound’s brow relaxed into guarded curiosity, and he rolled a hand, granting permission.
Glen cleared his throat and summoned his lawyerly demeanor. “A fugitive named Juanita murdered my commanding officer. And in an effort to avenge Ase’s death, I tracked her to a cabin near Breckenridge Mountain, where I happened to stumble across Matthew Love. I notified Colonel traitor, over there,” Glen said, hitching his thumb toward Hanover. “He’s a TEradS operator, tasked with infiltrating Night Sector.”
Hanover stammered, “Wha-wha-what?” and followed up with a nervous laugh. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his hands began to tremble, making him appear guilty as hell. “Tha-that’s crazy!”
Glen pressed on. “He arrived at the cabin and promptly divulged sensitive details regarding Athenian Grove—time, date, location, attendees, and importance of the wolf moon sacrifice.”
Hellhound’s facial expression was a clenched fist progressing from scarlet to indigo.
Hanover’s head jerked toward Glen. “How can you ...” Then it whipped back to his dark lord. “I-I-I ... you, you can’t possibly ...”
Poor bastard, Glen thought, stifling a grin. He’s too shell-shocked to compose a coherent sentence in his own defense. Time for the figurative kill.
“Then Hanover ordered his men into a TEradS ambush,” Glen continued, “which resulted in the detention of the three conscripts, the loss of product, and the transfer of sensitive intelligence to the enemy. He is responsible for the attack on Athenian Grove.”
Hanover’s complexion turned as gray as a corpse, spasms of terror erupted, and dampness began spreading down the inseam of his trousers. “No ... I ... that’s not ... he-he ... he’s lying.”
Hellhound’s breath was coming in ragged pants. His cheeks ballooned and deflated, thrumming with rage. Too furious to speak, he gave an ominous nod, and his lieutenant general descended on Hanover, dragging him toward the puddle of blood.
“No ... please!” Hanover pleaded. “I swear ... no, don’t ... no-o-o ...” The last syllable trailed into a horrific scream that skewered Glen’s conscience.
I just condemned him to an inhumane death ... But if it wasn’t him, it would be me.
“Corporal Anthony!”
He gazed up at Hellhound, concealing the revulsion that was teeming inside him. “Yes, sir?”
“Recover Matthew Love. Or your family will suffer a similar fate.”
13
White Rabbit Weapons Lab, North Korea
THE ENTIRE BASE WENT dark.
Emergency lighting flickered to life, creating an eerie twilight.
Then the buzzing hum of surging current caused electric lights to brighten and dim erratically like a scene from a horror movie. A sequence of snaps, pops, and thuds peppered the cavern, followed by a loud bang that gave rise to a burning electrical odor, and the twilight returned.
Right on time, Bradley thought.
Clutching the buckypaper suitcase, he scrambled from the truck, eyeing the security station. Blank monitors suggested the computer system was rebooting—according to plan.
For the past twelve hours, Python had been subjecting White Rabbit to a swarm of power failures and surges engineered to undermine backup systems and protective measures. Was the damage inflicted sufficient to neutralize surveillance cameras? Bradley had no way of knowing.
Unlike the human mind, hard-wired cameras and computers were impervious to the owl’s deception, which left him disturbingly vulnerable to artificial intelligence.
He scooted across the cavern on numb, leaden feet and entered the concrete structure. Aided by a partial floor plan pieced together from Gorka Schwartz’s memory, he made his way up to the third-story dormitory.
The enormous room was jam-packed with bunk beds, each inhabited by a slumbering scientist, satellite engineer, or computer programmer, a collection of some of the brightest minds on the planet.
There must be a hundred of them crammed in here, Bradley thought. And if I succeed, all these geniuses will die.
A smidgen of guilt was immediately extinguished by resentment.
Screw them! They’re responsible for the development of this heinous weapon ... technology designed to enslave humanity.
Hey, Warbird. Locate target.
The owl flapped its wings and glided above the bunk beds, using its facial recognition software to search for Project Man-Droid’s lead scientist. Halfway through the first pass, Warbird alighted on a footboard, indicating that the target had been acquired.
His prey had a cheesy mustache, an acne-scarred pale complexion, and close set eyes, and Bradley smirked, thinking he looked more like a used-car salesman than an evil mastermind.
He eased the buckypaper suitcase onto the epoxy-coated concrete floor, shrugged his backpack from his shoulders, and extracted a block of plastic explosives. Then he inserted a blasting cap and rigged a timer to detonate in exactly thirty minutes.
An internal voice whispered, “Those scientists were kidnapped and brought here under duress. Blackmailed and manipulated by threats to family.”
There’s collateral damage in every war, he rationalized, and this one’s no different.
For Bradley, it came down to a simple choice. Save billions of innocents from mind-controlled slavery? Or save a hundred men? Who possessed incredibly dangerous knowledge? And were capable of regenerating the mind-control weaponry?
They need to go, he decided. And take their secrets to the grave.
Hey, Warbird. Home. Sleepwalk target. Destination two.
The owl returned to its perch on his shoulder, and he gaped at the zombielike advance of the scientist with fascination and horror. The man’s eyes were open, staring blankly, but no one was home, and Bradley couldn’t shake the bizarre notion that, somehow, the guy was no longer human.
Emergency lights cast a dull glow over the corridor, and he frowned noticing a domed surveillance camera. Had the sequence of power surges fried its circuitry? Or was he walking into a trap?
Despite be
ing invisible to everyone within range, he was painfully aware that weapons could be deployed from a distance, like booby traps, inhalable drugs, and chemical agents.
Bradley trudged through the corridor, descended two flights, and halted in the ground-floor stairwell, sending his fleshy robot on ahead. Courtesy of the owl, he was able to tap into the scientist’s visual cortex and scout for threats, and though he detected nothing suspicious, he hesitated.
Why do I feel like I’m about to be ambushed?
He checked his watch again; six minutes had elapsed.
Shit! I don’t have the luxury of caution.
He strode to the laboratory entrance, toward a steel door outfitted with a battery-powered biometric lock that required three-factor authorization: facial recognition, fingerprint, and iris scan. He mentally issued an order, and the sleepwalking scientist adeptly executed all three procedures and opened the door. Bradley followed him into a laboratory that was a maze of desks, shelving, and peculiar-looking equipment. A dozen night-shift workers were hunched in odd positions, randomly paralyzed in the midst of their routine. And, strangely, none of them appeared to be of North Korean descent.
Amongst the laborers, hundreds of miniature satellites lay scattered in varying stages of assembly. Each completed orbital craft featured lightweight solar panels that extended less than a human arm span and retracted into a compact block the size of a shoebox.
Here we go, Bradley thought, opening the buckypaper suitcase. He positioned Pulverulentus on the floor in the corner of the lab, likening it to a lighthouse. The weapon was powered by a top-secret plasma drive smaller than a paperback novel and emitted pulses of directed energy capable of devastating anything within a 180-degree arc and 500-yard range.
He checked his watch again, set the timer for 23 minutes, and activated a dead-man switch so that if the device happened to be discovered, the slightest touch would trigger a premature detonation.
Then Bradley started toward the exit.
But what about the night-shift workers?
As soon as the owl moves out of range they’ll awaken ... and a premature detonation won’t give me enough time to haul my ass out of here.
Screw it! Abby and the baby have to come first.
One by one, Bradley snapped their scrawny necks and bolted from the lab. He speed-walked into the corridor, rounded a corner, and, through the dim glow of emergency lights, he saw a monstrously tall man.
Only it wasn’t a man.
And it wasn’t human.
14
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
AS THE SUN ARCED toward midday, Abby slogged across the tarmac, weighed down by her dilemma and weighted down by fifty pounds of gear.
What else can I do? she thought.
Lieutenant Bug Eyes had issued an ultimatum: submit to the medley of mind-altering drugs or suffer the consequences: discharge for mental unfitness and loss of Veterans’ benefits.
The prospect of being booted from the military exacerbated her anxiety. After losing Bradley and the baby, the TEradS was her sole sense of purpose. How could she bear endless hours with nothing to do but dwell on tragedy?
I don’t have a choice, she decided. I have to take the stupid pills.
Following the tussle with the shrink, Abby’s father had ambushed her outside the TEradS briefing room, insisting that she record an audio message for Bradley.
“Say whatever needs to be said,” he’d told her, “and I’ll see that he gets it.”
His gesture was thoughtful; his timing, unfortunate. The last thing she’d wanted was to rile up her volatile emotions ahead of a mission briefing.
Fearful that he would involve Major Fitzgerald, she’d tramped into her father’s office to record her private apology and, during her scant two-minute absence, Wachter had blabbed about Lieutenant Bug Eyes, prompting a parental interrogation.
Fitz’s mission briefing had brought yet another humiliation: permission for Wachter to masquerade as a TEradS spotter and tag along as her personal baby-sitter.
More of my dad’s handiwork, she thought, her teeth grinding with residual anger. He bullied Fitz into covering his ass.
Then, after the briefing concluded, her father had bushwacked her again—in front of her peers—with a “good-luck hug” and a “care package,” consisting of a chocolate bar and a hand-written note.
Another paternal pep talk, she thought. I never should’ve let Fitz transfer me back to Langden. My dad’s overprotective-itis is going to drive me insane.
Approaching the ramp of an Osprey MV-22B, Abby noted a column of Soldiers streaming from a C-130. At first, she assumed they were Marines, but they had no gear; no rucksacks, not even backpacks; and the ethnically homogenous group was marching toward an unmarked white bus.
Just like yesterday, she thought. What’s up with that?
Brushing off a nagging internal voice, she ambled into the fuselage, stowed her gear, and buckled into a crashworthy troop seat. The Osprey was a tilt-rotor aircraft that combined the vertical takeoff of a helicopter with the long-range, high-speed performance of a turboprop airplane, and it was capable of completing the five-hundred-mile journey in under two hours.
Wachter’s gaze flitted from ramp to cockpit, scrutinizing the flight crew, and heat began to radiate from Abby’s cheeks.
This is the military equivalent of having daddy walk me to high school, she seethed. Damn you, Dad!
Exhaling a resentful sigh, she wrenched his note from her pocket and shook the paper to unfold it.
Abby,
There are fringe benefits to being a former U.S. President—important people take your calls—and I have leveraged those perks to the fullest. First and foremost, a trusted NSA asset delivered your message to Bradley at 1123 hours.
Second, I’ve been in contact with a Judge Advocate General. You are required to attend psychiatric appointments, but you have the right to refuse the drugs. Malvado’s threats were just a bluff.
Third, I’ve spoken to my personal physician. He says that Seroquel is an antipsychotic drug approved to treat bipolar disorder, not depression. Malvado prescribed it for an off-label purpose, which is legal, but it should NEVER be taken in conjunction with sleeping pills like Ambien. And Abilify is known to increase suicidal thoughts and behaviors in adults under twenty-four.
My physician believes that military psychiatrists have been overmedicating troops for decades. He says that in 2011, the Pentagon spent more on vaccines, injections, and pills than on Black Hawk helicopters, Abrams tanks, Hercules C-130s, and Patriot missiles—COMBINED.
Please, Sweetie-pie, do NOT take any of that garbage! Whatever you’re going through, talk it out with me or your mother. Together, as a family, we can weather any storm.
Love, Dad
P.S. – Don’t be angry with Wachter. I tortured it out of him.
And I bought Malvado’s bullshit, Abby thought, cramming the note into the shoulder-sleeve pocket of her BDUs. All those suicides at Edgar Air Force Base ... Was it more than blackbirds and predatory frequencies? Were they taking antipsychotic meds that actually encouraged suicide?
The possibility boiled in her veins and spiked her body temperature. An enemy preying upon the minds of American Soldiers was horrible, but expected; the prospect of military psychiatrists and U.S. pharmaceutical companies conspiring to murder war heroes—for profit—was downright disgusting.
We’re conditioned to obey orders, Abby thought, her head shaking dolefully. We’re sitting ducks ... And my dad’s overprotective-itis may have just saved my life.
She was still grappling with the scope of the medical betrayal when the Osprey touched down on a two-lane road in New Mexico, just west of El Paso, Texas. To the north, a field of volcanic cinder cones mottled the rusty-red landscape; and to the south, scrub-dotted sands stretched for miles. A barbed-wire cattle fence paralleled the rural highway, the only barrier between Mexico and the United States.
Marines were constructing a coiled wall
of concertina wire, and Abby set up an overwatch position atop the only high ground, the cab of a deuce and a half that had transported the Leathernecks to the site. Wachter climbed into the open bed of the truck and slowly pirouetted a full 360 degrees.
Certain that the Secret Service agent was scouting for vulnerabilities and composing contingency plans, she said, “You do understand that it’s my job to protect these guys, right? And that you can’t be dragging me toward cover during a firefight?”
Wachter’s lips puckered; his green eyes tightened into a benevolent rebuke. “Sergeant, I will do whatever it takes to protect you.”
Irritated, Abby surveyed the flat desert landscape for unnatural colors and shapes. Activating the camera attached to her rifle scope, she honed in on a tiny red cinder cone, a hundred yards south of the border. Magnification revealed that it wasn’t a volcanic feature; it was a pile of bricks camouflaged beneath a tarp; and behind it, a reddish-brown plume was rising, contrasting against the brilliant blue sky.
Too small to be a brush fire, Abby thought.
As she reported her observations to the officer in charge, two Global News Network vans arrived, and a crew began setting up multiple cameras.
“U-u-uh,” Wachter said, his head bobbing toward the reporters. “That seems like an awful lot of equipment for some grunts stringing concertina wire. Do they know something we don’t?”
“It’s a setup. Guaranteed.”
Abby studied the strange plume, her nose crinkling in confusion. Prevailing winds were out of the north, which should’ve been pushing the smoky veil south; so why did it appear to be moving closer? Was it an optical illusion?
The Power of We the People Page 6