passenger in the back seat was a general, three star. Something big was going down.
“Private, open up the gate, god damn—”
He was cut off as the man in the booth swung up the dead guard’s assault rifle and a hail of armor-piercing bullets tore apart the two passengers in the back seat.
The smell of gunpowder and blood hung languidly in the air.
“Shit! Holy shit!” The driver threw the car into reverse and floored the accelerator. The car jolted backward, the tires screeching. The soldier in the front passenger seat drew his service revolver and was cut down by the man in black, wielding the rifle before him as he emerged from the booth, following the car.
The stream of bullets silenced the screams of the driver forever. The car continued backward until the gas tank was punctured, and the car was torn apart, engulfed in flames.
The fiery wreckage stood fifty feet from the main gate entrance. Inside, four bodies were sent to their gods.
The man in black’s finger held the trigger of the automatic rifle down and swept it back and forth over the flaming wreckage until it emitted only a dry, ratcheting click. He returned to the booth and sat down again. He released the long magazine from the rifle’s barrel and slammed a fresh clip in. He emotionlessly leaned the loaded rifle against the wall.
It would be a busy day.
The main hangar doors rolled open.
Reynald’s eyes lit up.
And Bingo was his name-o..
Before them stretched a veritable fleet of the most advanced warplane this civilization could yet offer, the B- 4.
The men in black went to work.
The Red Room.
David Jennings paced back and forth, his hands cradling his face. His eyes shifted warily, tracing his path.
“Do you still think this is all a coincidence, Cervera? Is it still just a fluke?”
Cervera frowned. “We have no evidence that it was an attack. It could have been radiation—”
“Radiation? Do you think this is another Mir or Liberty crash? This wasn’t an abandoned space station.”
“But no one has claimed responsibility.”
“Did anyone claim responsibility for Washington?”
Cervera fell silent.
Jennings glared at her. “Look at these, General.” He pushed a button on the control panel before them. The hologram of the globe was replaced with a revolving image of the detritus of three Navy vessels. “It’s the latest Air Force recon image of the Guam site.” He pressed another control.
Close-ups revealed an ocean dotted with the bodies of young American sailors.
“Explain that, Antonia. Over eight hundred men and women, dead for an unknown reason. We lost contact with the vessels and AF recon was sent in to check out the site. That’s what they found—the wreckage of three of our best ships. Something is going on, something big, and I want to put an end to it right now.”
He picked up a sheet of paper, a fax.
“The Marines in Harkness, Michigan interviewed some of the locals. They reported the appearance of several men in black uniforms who they assumed were our guys until they demanded information about local airports and subsequently kidnapped a man. His body was found over two hundred miles away, south of Marquette… The body had gray eyes.”
“So?”
“Gray eyes with no pupils. And the body was cold. Very cold.”
Cervera rose, hands on hips, head shaking in a manner that would have brought a certain non-crook American president to mind a century earlier.
“That’s impossible. We put them all on—”
“Santa Fosca? Yeah, well, SF doesn’t exist anymore, Tony. Milicom is shitting bricks over this.”
“What are you saying, Jennings?”
“These events have to be linked together somehow—”
“Impossible. They’re half a world apart.”
“Impossible? Here’s one last bit of information. The Pentagon team you yourself sent to Sawyer Air Force Base to set up a situation response net never reported in. All communication with Sawyer has been cut off—”
“What? There’s a fleet of B-4’s at Sawyer!”
“Exactly. We’re having troops diverted from Harkness and the Line to investigate, and to use whatever means necessary to nip this problem in the bud.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a plan at work here, within our own borders, and in our own territory. It has begun, and now it’s our job to end it. It could be an attempt at a Milicom corporate takeover. Maybe the Japanese found out about the B-4s. This could be a full-scale invasion, for all we know. We have to take extreme measures.”
“Extreme measures.” Cervera had an air of disbelief about her. Indeed, she did view the President’s motives with caution. Jennings couldn’t be trusted under this extreme stress, especially not after what had happened to his family.
“In all likelihood, the Lake Superior site is the jump point of the major invasion, if that’s what this is. It makes the most sense. So they’ve started to send in advance groups, small insurgence parties—”
“With all due respect, David, that’s crazy.”
“You’ve never given me my due respect, Tony. They took out Santa Fosca to cover up the fact that—.”
“This isn’t the Quebec War, Jennings.”
He continued to ignore Cervera. “What we need to do is evacuate the area. The Marines are in Harkness already. We evacuate the civilians, and send in more forces. We reevaluate the situation from there. We surround Sawyer and move in, try to capture whoever cut off communications alive. And as for the Guam site, I don’t think we should fuck around any more. Something down there took out three of our ships and hundreds of our people.”
“What are you talking about? Are you going to nuke it?”
“Americans have been killed! More lives could be at stake!”
“Are you trying to start World War Four?”
Calm. Jennings remained calm.
“General, someone else already is.”
Cervera was silent.
“I want two Spears on a scalping run by 1200 hours. The Guam site. And I want Harkness evacuated. We’re moving in. This has to end on our terms.”
Thoughts ran through Cervera’s mind, but she kept silent.
The game began.
12:00 Noon. Harkness.
“Come on, people. Move it.” The armed Marine directed several citizens of Harkness onto the military troop transport parked in the street. Other transports rolled up and down Main Street, some empty, most filled with civilians.
The exodus had begun.
Local television and comnet stations, and even loudspeaker trucks broadcast the same message: the Milicom subsidiary Chemtek chemical plant outside of town had experienced a serious gas leak overnight and the fumes were deadly enough to warrant the evacuation of everyone within twenty miles. It was a shallow excuse, but the Chemtek people had cooperated willingly enough when armed Marines stormed their offices.
Sometimes living in a police state had its distinct advantages.
The last troop transport rolled up to the secured checkpoint on U.S. 41 going out of town.
“That’s the last of them, sir.”
“What’s the final tally?”
“One thousand two hundred sixty-one.”
“Close enough. Inform D.C. that we’ve rounded up the locals, and the town’s clear.”
