So now, if no one entered an extension or termination code before 11:05 a.m., Area 7's self destruct sequence would begin — a ten-minute procedure that would culminate in the hundredmegaton thermonuclear warhead buried in the earth beneath the complex going off.
'Holy mother of God…' Gant breathed. She looked at her watch.
It was 10:15 a.m.
She turned to go — at the same moment as a long length of steel piping crashed down against the back of her suit-hooded head.
Gant dropped to the floor, out cold.
She never saw her attacker.
Never saw him heft her onto his shoulder.
Never saw him carry her out of the control room.
The X-Rail train boomed through the tunnel system, rocketing along on its quartet of tracks at tremendous speed, heading toward Area 8.
It wouldn't be a long trip. At two hundred miles per hour, they'd cover the twenty miles in about six minutes.
Although he didn't know exactly where Echo Unit was going with Kevin, Schofield at least knew they had come this way.
It was better than nothing.
Having set the train's autopilot, he walked back into the main cabin and sat down with Mother and the President. Nick Tate was off at the other end of the carriage, still somewhat out of it, staring with great concentration at the buttons on his cellular phone.
Schofield sat down. As he did so, he pulled out his newfound syringe and the antidote to the Sinovirus, and set about injecting himself with it. Mother and the President did the same.
As he jabbed the needle into his arm, Schofield looked up at the President. 'Now, sir, if you don't mind, would you please tell me what the hell is going on at this base?'
The President pursed his lips.
'You could start,' Schofield prompted, 'with why an Air Force Lieutenant General wants to kill you in front of the nation. Then you could tell me why he also wants to keep his hands on a genetically engineered boy who is the vaccine to an ethnic bullet.'
The President bowed his head, and nodded.
Then he said, 'Technically, Caesar Russell is no longer a lieutenant general in the Air Force.
Technically, he is dead. On the twentieth of January this year, the day of my inauguration, Charles Samson Russell was executed by lethal injection at Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary for the crime of high treason.'
'What he wants,' the President said, 'is what he wanted before he was executed. To radically change the face of this country. Forever. And the two things he needs to do to effect that are: one, kill me, in a highly visible, highly embarrassing way. And two, retain control of the Sinovirus vaccine.'
'To understand why he's doing this, however, you have to understand Russell's history, in particular his links with a clandestine Air Force society known as the Brotherhood.'
'Yes…' Schofield said cautiously.
The President leaned forward. 'Over the past thirty years, various Congressional Armed Services Committees have heard about the existence of certain undesirable societies within the branches of our armed forces; informal underground organizations with less-thanacceptable common interests. Hate societies.'
'For example?'
'In the eighties there was a secret group of men in the Army known as the Bitch Killers. They opposed the presence of women in the Army, so they engaged in activities to drive them out of the service. More than eighteen sexual assaults in the Army were attributed to members of this group, even if actual proof was difficult to establish. The extent of its membership was never fully ascertained, but then, that's the problem with these sorts of societies: there is never any physical proof of their existence. They're like ghosts, existing in non-tangible ways — a knowing look during a salute, a nod in a hallway, a subtle promotion over a non-member.'
Schofield was silent.
While he had never been approached by anyone linked with such a group in his career, he had heard of them. They were like hardcore college fraternities, small groups with their own secret handshakes, their own 'codes,' their own disgusting initiation ceremonies. For officers, they started at places like West Point and Annapolis; for enlisted men, at training camps around the country.
The President said, 'They form for various reasons: some have religious skews — for example, anti-Semitic groups like the old 'Jewboy League' in the Navy. Or the sexist ones, like the BItch Killers. The formation of groups like this in high-risk occupations is well documented — even police forces like the L.A.P.D. are known to have secret hate societies within their ranks.'
'But in terms of sheer violence, the worst groups were always the racist societies. There used to be one in every service. In the Navy, it was the Order of White America. In the Army, the Black Death. In the Air Force, it was a group known only as the Brotherhood. All three displayed a particular hostility toward black Americans in their ranks.'
'But the thing is,' the President said, 'they were all thought to have been wiped out during a Department of Defense-initiated purge in the late 1980's. Now while we haven't heard about a resurgence of racist elements in either the Army or the Navy, it was discovered recently that the Brotherhood is indeed alive and well, and one of its key figures was none other than General Charles 'Caesar' Russell.'
Schofield said nothing.
The President shifted in his seat. 'Charles Russell was tried and convicted for ordering the murder of two Navy admirals, advisers to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Turned out, Russell had approached them shortly after my announcement to run for President and asked them to join him in some kind of treasonable endeavour that would change America forever. The only details he told them were that the plan would involve the removal of the President, and that it would rid America of its 'human waste products. The two admirals refused his offer, so Caesar had them eliminated. What he didn't know was that one of those admirals had secretly taped his offer and tipped off the FBI and the Secret Service.'
'Russell was arrested and tried for murder and treason. Since it was a military proceeding, the trial was held immediately, albeit in closed session. During the case the question was, to what America's 'human waste products' actually were was debated at length. Equivocal evidence was brought that Russell was a member of the Brotherhood — a secret cabal of high-ranking USAF officers, mainly from the Southern belt, who intentionally hinder the rise of black Americans through the ranks of the Air Force. It didn't help that the military prosecutor was black, but in any case the issue was never resolved. On the basis of the taped evidence, Russell was found guilty and sentenced to death. When he decided not to lodge any appeals whatsoever, his execution was fast tracked — and he was 'executed' in January of this year. And that was that. Or so we thought.'
Schofield said, 'I get the feeling that you knew what Caesar was planning, even if it didn't come out in the court case.'
The President nodded.
'Over the past ten years, Caesar Russell has been in charge of every major United States Air Force base between Florida and Nevada. The 20th at Warren in Wyoming, which looks after our ICBM stockpile. Space Warfare at Falcon, Colorado, which controls defense satellites and space missions. Area 7, of course. Hell, he even spent a year at AFSOC at Hurlbut Field in Florida, supervising the Air Force's crack special ops teams, including the 7th Squadron. He has loyal followers at each of those bases, senior officers who owe their positions to him, a small but powerful clique of base commanders who we now suspect are also members of the Brotherhood.'
'What Russell also knows, however, is what's inside every one of our most secret bases. He knew of the Sinovirus from its earliest development phases, knew of its potential uses, and he knew of our response to it — a genetically constructed virus-resistant human being — right from the very beginning.
'The thing is, Charles Russell is smart, very smart. He thought of other possibilities for the one person in the world in possession of the ultimate ethnic bullet and its vaccine. Judging by this transmitter attached to my heart, it looks like he's been planning a revolution for some time now, but it's only the advent of the Sinovirus that makes it totally perfect for him.'
