'Doc, Director Compton said something about you requested a geologic team to stand by for your video feeds?'
Gillman removed his glasses and ran a hand through his thin and graying hair.
'Besides the existence of several pieces of very ancient jewelry, pottery armor, and the treasure trove of ancient scrolls and books, we have something that is baffling the hell out of our team here. It has something to do with the earth's plate movements. Strange stuff. We just want a geologist to look these charts over so we can know how to catalog them. So, nothing earthshaking, just strange.'
Jack just nodded his head and yawned, ignoring the pun by Gillman. 'Is the complex locked down, Doc?'
'It's buttoned up tight as a drum. Your men are even shutting down the loading dock and lobby areas.'
'Good. Listen, a part of my team is taking the scrolls and maps out of here this morning, but I'm leaving a large security contingent here under Lance Corporal Sanchez. So everyone watch out for wolves at the door.'
Gillman watched Jack move off, yawning, to wake the others to load the scrolls and maps and leave for Kennedy, then he moved off himself to return to the most wondrous discoveries he had ever seen. The most interesting of which was a large world chart that had thick lines running through the continents and oceans that just so happened to dissect in many areas of the known tectonic plates. How ancient man had known about these was a puzzle that was driving him and his small team mad.
Little did Gillman know that, over a hundred years before, Professor Peter Rothman had dubbed this particular chart the Atlantean Parchment just a day before he was murdered by a man from the Juliai Coalition.
Now, over a century later, that same Coalition was using the Atlantean Parchment in conjunction with an ancient weapon known as Thor's Hammer.
As Special Agent William Monroe sipped his coffee and read the morning paper, he heard the town's garbage truck outside and then frowned as he heard the clatter of his trash-can lids being tossed like Frisbees into his driveway and then the loud crash of the cans themselves onto the ground. He closed his eyes in frustration as he lowered his paper, then he looked toward the stairs, where he heard his wife moving around. The garbagemen must have awakened her, because it was a good two hours before she was due to get up.
Monroe just shook his head. He moved to the front door with coffee cup in hand, preparing to enjoy chewing on someone's ass for waking his wife, and for tossing his garbage cans just as if he could afford to buy new ones every week.
As he opened the door, he was shocked to see two men in casual clothes standing on his porch. His hackles rose immediately as the sense of danger hit him like a Mack truck.
He dropped his coffee cup and tried to slam the door closed but the two men were fast and he was hit and knocked backward into the entrance hall and then before he could recover was wrestled to the floor. One of the large men hit hard him hard on the face just as he saw through the still-open door the garbage truck move slowly down the street. As his head rocked backward from the blow, he was amazed at the normalcy of things just outside the horror that was happening in his home.
Monroe was stunned, but he was determined to get upstairs somehow. He was roughly turned over, and as the front door and the view of that normal world was cut out of his view, he felt a plastic wire tie being zipped to his wrists behind his back. He was frustrated beyond measure but tried to keep his cool. He had to allow his wife, Jenny, time to realize what was happening. He was pulled roughly to his feet as blood dripped from his mouth and stained the white bathrobe he was wearing.
He heard his bedroom door close upstairs and he closed his eyes. He just knew that Jenny was going to walk right into the middle of what was happening to him. But then again, he had the single ray of hope that his wife had the gun that was kept in the nightstand next to their bed.
Monroe was picked up then and led into the living room, where he was pushed to his knees. He raised his head just as he heard the soft padding of feet on the stairs. He looked up and his heart sank as he saw that it was a woman dressed in a nice pantsuit with a black overcoat. Her hair was blond and she walked with an air of confidence into the living room. She looked from the two men to himself and then sat on their couch and leaned forward with her gloved hands resting in her lap, one on top of the other.
The FBI agent lowered his head to try to get some sense of the situation. His hair was pulled roughly upward so that he faced the woman.
'Pay attention to the lady, she has words she wants to say,' the larger of the two men said, leaning over Monroe's right ear.
'For you, Special Agent Monroe, this morning will not turn out as well as you're now hoping,' the blond, very elegant-looking woman said as she held Monroe with her eyes and slowly removed her gloves, one finger at a time. 'But for your wife, Jenny, who is now being detained upstairs, there is still hope that she can live beyond this day. Do you understand what I am saying? Just nod your head; no need to speak, as there will plenty of time for that later.'
Monroe did as she'd instructed, giving a single dip of his chin.
'Good, we are off to a wonderful start. Your little foray into Westchester County last evening was beyond your scope of charter and expertise. I want you to tell my associates here who it is you are working for, and don't bother saying it was an FBI investigation because we have people in your field office that claim they had no knowledge of your actions. Your deceit may pass muster with your superiors, but I assure you it will not with me.'
The woman, having stated what she had to state, slowly stood and looked at her wristwatch.
'Be very forthright, Agent Monroe, and your wife will be alive in the coming weeks, months, and years to mourn your passing. If you lead these men falsely, they will not kill your lovely wife without very much pain and humiliation. All we need to know is where the artifacts are and who it was that assisted you in your daring raid. Okay?' She smiled and nodded at the two men and then walked through the living room and disappeared.
The two men pulled him to his feet and led him into the kitchen. They sat him in a chair and then closed the curtains on the sliding glass doorway that looked out into his backyard. Then one of the men went to the kitchen table and moved a chair over to face him, and then sat down. He was smiling.
An hour later, the two men reported to the woman, who had relocated not far away in Islip, New York. They passed on the required information they tortured out of the FBI agent. What they had learned was almost unbelievable. They asked for instructions about the wife and they received them.
The man closed his cell phone, then reached out, and expertly sliced into the throat of Agent William Monroe, severing the jugular vein with ruthless precision. Then he stood slowly from his chair and made his way toward the stairs and the bedroom.
The new federal courthouse was situated in the middle of Long Island. The giant white concrete building had been constructed not for beauty but with security in mind, and all who passed by it had to shake their heads at the ugly monstrosity where federal justice was meted out.
William Krueger was waiting in a holding cell in the lower level of the courthouse. The orange jumpsuit they had issued him was four sizes too small and he could not even unzip the tight-fitting collar due to his handcuffs.
There were two other men waiting with Krueger to see a federal judge. One was a large black man with a shiny bald head who looked about with the soulless eyes of a career criminal. The other was what Krueger would have called normal-looking. His hair combed neatly, he looked as if a tailor had fitted him for his prison jumpsuit.
There were three guards in the holding area. Two sat behind a large desk and another walked a slow path between the three holding cells, of which only theirs was in use. Krueger watched as the guard looked in quickly and then moved off. He could not figure out what he was looking in the cell for: after all, the three of them were handcuffed to a chain that was bolted to the floor in front of them. They couldn't scratch their noses even if they wanted to.
Krueger was watching the large black man when he heard a noise in the corridor leading to the holding area. He figured that it was the courthouse guards coming to take him in to see his lawyer before he was to be arraigned. From what the guard had told him earlier, that was the procedure.
'Good morning,' an unseen voice said to the guards.
'Morning,' a female voice answered. Krueger figured that it was one of the guards from behind the desk.
