by Carr, Jack
“Just another day on the Hill, Erik. Thank you for waiting. I was held up by urgent business in committee.”
He hadn’t been, of course, but Sawyer nodded politely in that infuriating way that conveyed he believed not a word yet was not bothered in the least.
A waitress appeared to take a drink order.
“What is he having?” the senator asked, pointing to his companion, who casually took a sip from a crystal glass.
“Pappy 23, sir,” the waitress replied.
Sawyer swirled the deep amber liquid around the one large ice cube he’d requested to release the flavor.
“I put it on your tab, Eddie,” Sawyer said.
Attempting to not show his annoyance at being called Eddie, Thwaite stifled a grunt wondering how many glasses of the $2,300-a-bottle Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve the old soldier had put away while he’d waited. They were both members of the club, and Sawyer certainly had no need to charge it to the senator’s personal account. He did it to toy with the senior man. Everything was a chess move with Sawyer.
Thwaite pretended to take it in stride. He ordered a Bombay Sapphire martini with three olives.
“Will you be dining with us tonight?” the waiter inquired.
“Just drinks,” the senator responded a little too quickly.
Sawyer smiled, knowing he’d gotten to the aging politician.
Mission accomplished.
The martini was delivered swiftly, and Thwaite took too big a sip.
Why does Sawyer make me so nervous?
Regaining his composure, Thwaite pointed to the flat screen set to a cable news channel with the sound off and positioned in a way that only their section of the club could see it. A fellow senator was being publicly crucified. Allegations of sexual misconduct with female staffers and interns had surfaced along with sexually explicit text messages. The Senate majority and minority leaders had referred the allegations to the Ethics Committee. The news commentator cited anonymous sources stating that he would resign rather than face the further public embarrassment of being censured and stripped of committee assignments; due process in progressive America. Mob rule Cancel culture. Thwaite almost felt bad for him, but the accused was a Democrat and the senator would take his wins where and when he could.
Thwaite then raised his martini to the screen. “And once again, pussy remains undefeated.”
Sawyer chuckled and took another pull from his Cuban cigar.
“How is the detail working out?” Sawyer inquired.
The team protecting Senator Thwaite was a Masada contract. In the violence that had ensued the following year, many politicians had added additional security to their routines, Thwaite among them. Sawyer didn’t discriminate in taking contracts and even found satisfaction watching a politician call for additional gun control at rallies while armed Masada contractors stood just feet away protecting that same politician with the very gun they wanted to ban. They were all such hacks. Sawyer would gladly take money from both sides.
“My driver has a lead foot. This isn’t Baghdad,” the senator said, feeling like he had to say something disparaging.
“I’ll be sure to let him know,” Sawyer said, having no intention of doing so. “Not even sure why you need the detail with that six-shooter on your left ankle.”
Erik was one of the few people who knew about the senator’s pistol, and now Thwaite regretted ever telling the former Army officer, as he never let an opportunity pass to disparage the heirloom.
“You know that was a gift from my father. He carried it all his years in the Senate and I continue the tradition.”
“When was the last time you shot it?”
Thwaite fumed, struggling to maintain his composure.
“Why don’t you come down to the Masada training facility and let me get one of our armorers to work up a Glock for you: trigger job, full wrap stipple, barrel, slide cuts, RMR, the works. We will get you all set up with a real pistol. We’ll even put you through some training, on us.”
“I appreciate the offer,” the senator replied, knowing the only reason Sawyer wanted him on the range was to humiliate him. “I think I will stick with my paid security and continue my business of running the country, thank you.”
“As you wish, Senator. Now, I’d love to drink bourbon on your tab all evening, but I do have other business to attend to. What can I do for you?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Erik, I’m not in the mood.”
He finished the martini and signaled the waitress for another.
“What if you could fight a war without firing a bullet? Is it still a war?” the senator asked.
Sawyer studied the elder statesman sitting across from him, raised an eyebrow, and took another sip of bourbon.
“That, Senator, is the highest level of warfare.”
“This country is at war.”
“Yes, I’m aware.”
“Not overseas, Erik. Here at home.”
Sawyer knew when to let others talk. Interrogators often found that by being silent they allowed their subject to fill the void with information they would never have extracted via more ruthless methods.
“We are in the middle of a war for our very existence, a war of subversion. Bullets are not flying between north and south, east and west, red and blue, but we are already in the midst of a civil war, make no mistake.”
Sawyer watched the senator clip the end off his cigar and strike a wooden match from a matchbox on the end table.
“This war does not require bullets or assassinations in the traditional sense. It doesn’t need a Che Guevara to raise a guerrilla army. The leaders have already been elected to state, local, and federal governments. Sympathizers have been infiltrated into our media establishment, entertainment industry, big tech, academia, even professional sports. Breitbart was right, ‘politics is downstream from culture.’
“You don’t need to take up arms in this war. Their weapons are hurled from social media platforms from which there is no defense and the assassinations are character assassinations. Public executions come not from a slice of the guillotine but by tweet, gleefully cheered on by the mob. You can fight it from your mom’s basement as you eat Cheetos and collect an unemployment check from the very government you seek to destroy. It doesn’t take courage, moral or physical, nor does it take resiliency. In fact, it takes the opposite of those once-lauded traits. It takes apathy. You don’t have to be creative, well-read, in shape, resourceful, or strong. The weaker your mind and body the better. You can be taken advantage of. You are ripe for recruitment. Racism is the witchcraft of the twenty-first century, and cancel culture is the stake at which you are burned.”
Thwaite caught his breath as his next martini arrived.
“It’s a cancer. It’s infected its host. It was a slow-growing lesion and could have been removed decades ago, but was allowed to fester under the guise of the very principles it seeks to destroy. Now it is going to kill the carrier and there is nowhere for the remaining healthy cells to go. The U.S. was the last bastion of freedom. It was an experiment. That experiment has failed. The very ideals it sought to uphold are the ones that are allowing our ultimate demise. This is our last stand.”
“Nice speech, Eddie. You should think about becoming a politician.”
The senator waved a hand of dismissal and rolled his cigar between his nicotine-stained fingers to ensure an even burn.
“This president must not win a second term, or the country is finished,” Thwaite stated.
“You can vote him out in three years,” Sawyer said.
“Don’t give me that bullshit, Erik. The Russian election interference is no joke and they’ve only refined their techniques since the last election. This kid in the White House is only there because his friends in Silicon Valley manipulated their social advertising algorithms and swayed the election.”
“Really? Are you sure it wasn’t creative marketing and a war hero’s resume that crushed you at the ballot box? Or perhaps hi
s opponent just wasn’t likable.”
Thwaite’s face flushed red but he pressed on, pointing back to the cable news program.
“Those pundits keep warning of a coming civil war. It helps ratings but it’s disingenuous. That civil war is here. They just don’t recognize it for what it is.”
“Let’s say you and Yuri Bezmenov are right, Senator,” Sawyer said, referencing the KGB defector who had warned the United States of a long-term Soviet subversion program to undermine free democratic societies of the West. “What do you intend to do as the savior of the nation? You had me tear apart Christensen’s past in the lead-up to election. All it did was cost you much-needed funds that could have been used to bolster your campaign.”
“Drastic measures are necessary, but we need to take the White House to implement them. The president met with someone yesterday at Camp David. I want to know what they talked about.”
“Let me look into it. Who did he meet with?”
“James Reece.”
Erik Sawyer leaned forward and set his drink down on the table between them.
“James Reece? The James Reece who dismantled the Capstone Program a few years ago? The James Reece who saved the former president in Odessa? The James Reece who allegedly hunted down that CIA spy in Siberia last year?”
“I see you are familiar with his work.”
“He actually made Masada millions when he took out those Capstone contractors on Fishers Island. All their contracts fell through when the company went down the tubes. We picked them up. I should be paying him a retainer.”
“Find out what the president talked with him about at Camp David. Something doesn’t smell right about it. He’s an assassin and he met privately with the president. All we need is the hint of a scandal and we can turn the tables. This cancel culture so popular on the left might finally work in our favor. Find me something I can use to bring down a president.”
CHAPTER 12
University of Colorado School of Medicine
Denver, Colorado
SEBASTIAN PHILLIPS KNOCKED ON the door of his department chair of the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine to say good-bye.
Behind a desk strewn high with books and papers, a small-framed Jewish woman sat across from a second-year female student from India. He recognized her from a thesis laboratory he’d supervised earlier in the year.
“Have a wonderful weekend, Seb. Any big plans?”
The Indian student turned in her chair and smiled.
“Might get some mountain biking in before the snow hits. Other than that, I’ll probably just be working on my dissertation,” Sebastian said, tucking an unruly strand of his long, curly black hair behind his ear.
“I’m looking forward to reading the finished product. Take care.”
Sebastian waved and nodded to his fellow student before making his way into the shadows of a late fall afternoon. He found himself wondering if either of them would survive what was to come.
He made his way through campus, messenger bag over his shoulder and hands stuffed into the pockets of his bright blue puffy jacket. He still had a lot of research to do on his dissertation and was falling behind. He’d been distracted by another project lately.
He tossed the bag into the passenger seat of his used forest-green Subaru, his mountain bike still affixed to the roof rack, and slid behind the wheel to start the engine. He lived walking distance from campus, but as a fifth-year immunology student he’d finally gotten a parking place because of the teaching duties associated with his degree requirements. He’d been driving a lot more recently. If anyone asked, he’d be able to point to his bike and use it as an excuse, saying he was going for a ride in the Rockies, which were still a bit of a trek from the Aurora, Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus in a suburb of eastern Denver.
Pulling onto I-225, he drove north before hitting I-70 West, passing the Bass Pro Shops and Safeway Distribution Center, the Nestlé Purina plant, and the Coliseum. He then merged onto I-25 South and drove by Coors Field, REI, the Aquarium, and the Children’s Museum, finally exiting the freeway and working his way to a house he’d purchased in Central West Denver near Paco Sanchez Park, in a neighborhood time had forgotten.
Just over a year ago he wouldn’t have been able to safely make the drive as Denver, and even the streets of Aurora, had erupted in riots. He briefly wondered if what he was about to do was even necessary. America seemed content to destroy itself without any provocation from a warrior of Allah.
Sebastian looked forward to using his given name someday, but he knew the reason his parents had changed it before enrolling him in public school in Phoenix. It had been explained to him by the imam. Shahram Pahlavi was a name that made the infidels nervous. After he finished his studies, he’d revert to his given name and make the pilgrimage to Mecca during the twelfth month of the lunar calendar, as all Muslims must do at least once in their lifetime in adherence with the fifth pillar of Islam.
His program in the Department of Microbiology in the School of Medicine had recently merged with the Integrated Department of Immunology. It was now a joint venture between the School of Medicine and National Jewish Health in what was obviously another move by the Jews to increase their power over the U.S. health-care system. They already controlled the governments of most Western nations and had a monopoly in the international banking community. Shahram Pahlavi would be remembered for striking down the Zionist occupation government. That the very movement he sought to destroy was giving him the skills to strike a blow for all Muslims around the globe was an added bonus. He was almost ready.
Parking in the driveway of the run-down single-story home, he locked his car and looked up and down the street as he fumbled through the keys until he found the right one. Weeds infested what had once been a lawn. The decades-old lime-green paint was peeling away from the siding as if trying to escape a community that wouldn’t quite let it go. The bars on the windows matched the other homes in the neighborhood and added a layer of security Sebastian found comforting.
The young PhD student locked the front door behind him and walked through the house as he’d been instructed, looking at his telltales to ensure nothing had been tampered with. Satisfied that everything was as it should be, he opened the door to the basement and descended the stairs.
The basement had not been converted to a game room, home theater, bar, or man cave. Instead, Sebastian had used his knowledge of immunology and microbiology to build a high-tech virology lab. Clear poly sheeting lined the floor, ceiling, and walls. High-flow hoods with heat ventilation chambers wound via ducts to high-intensity UV exhaust ports that off-gassed like any home heating and cooling system; he did not want to accidentally obliterate the neighborhood. He intended on causing more damage than a single explosion could possibly produce. Anything he couldn’t buy at Home Depot had been sent to his off-site mailbox at a UPS Store in Denver and arrived from a variety of different life sciences and laboratory equipment companies so as not to trigger the suspicions of the FBI.
Sebastian was pleased with his work. An expensive ultracentrifuge culture cabinet cell separation hood, a device that resembled an uber-sturdy photographer’s light box with flexible thick, clear plastic partitions, was on a metal table against the wall next to a Nano-Images Model 4500 scanning electron microscope. The microscope was a far cry from what he’d used in his high school biology class in Arizona. It could easily be confused with an industrial-strength espresso machine and was linked to a high-resolution computer monitor.
He had followed his instructions to the letter. Whoever was directing the operation clearly knew what they were doing. Sebastian had not been told why he was building the clandestine laboratory, only that he must stay on schedule. The young doctoral student had spent months speculating about what he was preparing in the name of Allah.
Patience.
Lā ’llāha ’lllā Allah, Muḥammadun Rasūl Allah
There is no g
od but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.
The lab was fully functional when the African monkey kidney cells had arrived. He’d ordered them through the university lab as part of the research necessary for his dissertation. There was nothing out of the ordinary about ordering cells to one of the premier medical research universities in the country. A biosafety level one product, they had arrived frozen in liquid nitrogen and had taken almost a month to prepare. He had separated them into fifteen independent cell lines and had confirmed they contained no contaminants and exhibited stable growth factors.
Sebastian knew he was close. All that was missing now was a sample.
A sample of what?
Seb looked at the two DuPont Level A hazmat suits and respirators hanging on the wheeled pipe clothing rack at the base of the stairs. It was amazing what one could order from Amazon. Whatever it was, its handling called for fully contained biohazard suits, the same suits used in bio-containment level four facilities. That there were two indicated that Sebastian would not be conducting the next phase of the operation alone.
Sebastian knew that he was waiting on someone who would bring a sample that almost certainly contained a deadly pathogen. In this makeshift lab, he and his unknown benefactor would transfer small amounts of what was undoubtedly an infectious disease in sample blood plasma to the cell culture plates of the monkey kidney cells.
From there, the cells would replicate until they were ready for weaponization.
After that, Sebastian could only guess.
CHAPTER 13
Landini Brothers Restaurant
Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia
“SO, WHAT ARE YOU having?” Reece asked.