Voice in the Wilderness, page 21
part #1 of Against All Enemies Series
She couldn’t suppress a smile when Brock introduced her, doting on her as a “beautiful, sweet, patriotic, young woman who only wanted to protect her country”, a dream she’d had since Brock met her when she was eight years old.
Brock attributed all of the current chaos in the nation to Hannan’s scheme to force martial law before the political conventions, effectively cancelling the general election. Without specifically mentioning the Army Rangers, Brock included a description of the failed Apache helicopter attack on Brock and her, an attack ordered because Hannan’s men, like their boss, were all pantywaists.
Brock ended with a quote.
What’s a patriotic American to do with a man like you? The words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer sum the situation very well, “If I see that a madman is driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can’t as a Christian simply wait and comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrest the steering wheel out of the hands of the madman.” So, hang on tight to that wheel, Mr. President, because here I come.
Your voice in the wilderness,
Brock Daniels
“So what do you think, KC?”
“This guy’s been catered to most of his life.” She tapped a few times on her laptop’s touchpad, then popped up another window and typed in it. “Other than some rare bad press for the media’s darling, he’s probably never been insulted like this before. Coming from someone he’s tried and failed to kill, someone who’s exposing that failure, he’s going to lose it when he reads this.”
“We probably should let Craig take a look it this before we post it, don’t you think?”
“Uh … too late. I just ftp’d it.”
“Kace … seriously?”
“Yes. It’s live.”
A knock sounded on the door of the trailer. “Captain Craig here. We need to talk.”
“Something’s going to hit the fan for sure.”
She nodded. “Probably so. In the West Wing and at Three Creek Lake.”
Chapter 30
What would Captain Craig’s reaction be to Brock’s inflammatory blog post? Brock opened the door, fearing the worst.
Craig entered the trailer house and took a seat in the easy chair at one end of the coffee table. He glanced at the two laptops sitting side-by-side on the coffee table, like their owners now sat on the couch. “So, how’s the new digs?”
Where was this going? “They’re fine. Right, KC?”
She nodded. “And our Internet connections are better than I expected.”
Craig grinned. “Our specialty. Rangers’ lives depend on comms.”
Brock took KC’s hand. “But there is the issue of us being together 24-7, largely unchaperoned.”
“Ordinarily,” Craig sighed, “… we wouldn’t do this. But this is war and my men are spread as thin as—well, too thin. You two are upstanding, moral adults. Believers too. Any problems I should know about?”
“I wish.” KC gave Brock her coy smile. “Changing the subject—about the information encoding scheme. I developed one that allows groups to coordinate through Brock’s blog, but it’s a one-way broadcasting scheme. You can send multiple messages each day, simply by having Brock make minor edits to update an existing blog and, voila, a new message. Captain Craig, you do realize that there are drawbacks to this method of communicating, don’t you?”
Craig nodded. “You mean no feedback loop and the person with the blog posting authority, probably Brock, becomes a bottleneck?”
“Yes.” KC sighed. “There’s just no way we can safely use this for two-way communication.”
“But I can broadcast to a large audience, so we can live with that. I’ve got other plans for feedback. But, speaking of updates, have you tried to post from here yet?” Craig focused on Brock.
“Uh …” How should he say this? “Yeah. When we read what Hannan fed the media about us forming the ‘Restoration Army’ and killing the ‘whole crew’ of a helicopter, I got a bit angry, and so I tried to get a rise out of him with my post.”
Craig’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Brock. “Just how big a rise did you try to get?”
KC set her computer in her lap, “You can decide for yourself.” She read the part of the post calling Hannan a wuss and his whole crew pantywaists.
After a chuckle, Craig’s brow furled. “From now on, I want you to clear with me anything that impacts our strategy to defeat Hannan’s coup, including any provocative statements. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Brock slumped back onto the couch. It had gone better than he thought and he didn’t have to implicate KC.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard. “Let’s see if Brock’s pantywaist post has drawn any comments. I’m running the script to scrape them. It’ll only take a minute or so.”
“Part of the reason I came up here is to let you know I made contact with a team of Navy SEALs,” Craig said.
“That’s great,” Brock sat up on the couch.
“Do you think we can trust them?” KC looked up at Craig, giving him her squinting frown.
“I do. But, to make sure, I’ll have to travel about 300 miles to meet with them. I’m uncomfortable with leaving you two defenseless.”
KC set her laptop back on the coffee table. “You’ve got the road in here covered at the main highway. Are you going to leave anyone there while you’re gone?”
“I am. I’m also leaving you an assault rifle. So, I need to give you both some OJT on the use of this weapon and go over strategies for using it to defend yourselves against an assault. It shouldn’t happen, but we need to be prepared.”
Brock grinned. “On the job training. So, we finally get to be Rangers.”
“Not exactly.” He reached into a long bag he’d brought with him and pulled out a clip. “Here’s an empty magazine. I want to see you load, unload, reload and, if there’s no one around the lake, we’ll put in a full magazine, and you can both shoot one short burst to get a feel for automatic mode.”
At the words, “automatic mode,” KC jumped up, beating Brock to the door. “This should be fun.”
The eight-year-old adventurer he’d met thirteen years ago was back.
“Craig, I shot an AK-47 in automatic mode the night you showed up.”
“Well, you’re going to shoot an M4 today … my way.”
“I wasn’t complaining, you know.”
Craig grinned. “From the look on your face, I gathered that.”
After the preliminaries, with an empty magazine, they went outside. KC took her turn first. It ended with a smile when she pruned a small bush off near the ground. “Makes you feel almost invincible.” Her smile faded. “Sure hope I don’t have to do that to a real live person.”
When Brock shot in automatic mode, he noticed the barrel tried to rise more than when he’d fired at the SWAT team.
“You two should do fine, if need be.” Craig nodded toward the trailer. “Let’s go back inside.”
Captain Craig sat in the chair by the coffee table and pulled a small pad of sticky notes from his pocket. “Okay, here’s the plan. We leave you two at Three Creek Lake with an M4. Steve will be at the Sister’s RV Park. If any danger should arise you can call Steve’s cell. Here’s the number.” He pressed a sticky note onto the coffee table.
“Steve's the guy who took down that Apache helicopter, right?” Having that guy around would make Brock feel better about this.
“Yes. He’s our gun man. But we don't anticipate a repeat of that Apache helicopter incident.” Craig stood and turned toward the door.
“Wait, Craig.” KC set her laptop on her legs. Her fingers flew over the keyboard for a few seconds. There’s something here you need to read. It sounds like some riffed Air Force pilots want to know if there’s any way they can help us.”
“They could be useful.” Craig rubbed his chin. “But they could also be bait.” Craig sat in the easy chair. “Show me how to reply to their comment.”
KC put the laptop in his lap and moved the cursor to the comment reply box. “Just start typing. But remember this is in the clear. No encryption.”
Craig typed, then paused. “I need to say something that’s subtle, but provides a cell number.” He finished typing. “We have several disposable phones only trackable by triangulation on cell towers. I guess we can risk one of them as long as we don’t use it near our home base. Remember, I’ll handle any further communication with the pilots.”
KC stood and pulled a small flash drive from her shorts pocket. “In case you bring the SEALs into our group, this has a complete Perl installation for a PC or Mac, and it has our decode script on it along with instructions.”
Brock stood beside her.
Her hand found his.
“Thanks,” Craig said. “I'll see you in two days. Be careful.” He glanced at their hands. “I can see you're enjoying the digs and each other's company. Just don't enjoy it too much. Be back in a couple of days.”
The door closed.
“Why do I feel I just got a lecture from my dad?” Brock turned toward KC. One look at her answered his question.
She shrugged. “That kind of lecture is the last thing you need.”
KC didn’t have a clue about the depth and intensity of his feelings for her. Their dance and the kiss had exposed only a fraction of what he felt. Though he had tried to warn KC about his tendency to fail, to always come up short, he hadn’t mentioned their differences in social strata or the letter that had so graphically portrayed them.
If KC and Brock survived Hannan’s assault on democracy and on them, they would return to American society where Brock would eventually fail KC. Just like he’d failed at everything he tried. It would end their relationship. Until then they would fight Abe Hannan together and Brock would pray for a miracle, one that turned him into a man suitable for the woman who had won his heart as a girl and still held it. But the odds were they’d be killed in the battle. If so, at least he would go down swinging and could be thankful that he had KC by his side for whatever was left of his life. If Hannan’s men were to locate them now, with Craig gone, there wouldn’t be much left.
Chapter 31
“You’re not serious about going to Europe are you?” From the far side of the desk in Hannan’s private study Secretary of State, Eli Vance, gave Hannan Eli’s patented, bug-eyed stare. It came through glasses so thick they magnified Eli’s eyes until the old man’s narrow face resembled that of a grasshopper.
Hannan shook his head, but couldn’t shake the impulse to stomp on the grasshopper. He wouldn’t, because the crusty old goat still had an incredible ability to deal with most of the leaders in the Middle East. Besides, he would make an awful mess on the carpet.
“Well, say something, Mr. President, Abe.”
“No. With the crises here, I’ve decided against going to Europe. How can I go with Katheryn Banning still running loose with that blogger, Daniels?”
“It’s just as well. You’re not the most popular man in Europe right now. Or Israel for that matter. Somebody would probably shoot you.” Vance gave him a crooked smile that lifted one corner of his wide mustache.
That was Vance’s comment on any trip he didn’t think was necessary. Somebody would shoot Hannan. This time the old geezer might be right. “Look, Eli, we knew we’d have to rebuild some trust after—”
“Rebuild? You destroyed the foundation. NATO is voting right now to exclude us from meetings until they see how the dust settles in DC. And the UN wants us out of the Security Council until—Abe, they’re treating the U.S. as if a coup were underway.”
It wasn’t exactly a coup, but Vance was right about the storm waves battering foreign relations. “We’ll ride this out and when we emerge with a strong, stable, central government, we’ll renew the treaties, offer some placating promises, foreign aid, and whatever else is needed until all this is forgotten.” He looked at his watch. “Eli, I’ve got to go now.”
“I know … to meet with the young whippersnappers in that tight little circle of yours.”
“You know you’re invited to attend, like always.”
Eli chuckled. It ended with a coughing spasm.
“You should have quit smoking years ago. It’s going to kill you.”
“I know. I know. But, like always, I’m not coming. And you should be worried about the people who might kill you, Abe. Nearly every country with a significant military has put it on high alert while the most powerful nation on earth is in crisis. No, you don’t need me at your meeting. I need to go and smooth some ruffled feathers.” Eli Vance stood and stepped toward the door of the study. “We wouldn’t want the boys in Europe to do anything rash, would we?”
Boys in Europe. Eli was an anachronism, born too late. “No, Eli. We wouldn’t want that.”
After Vance ambled down the hallway, Hannan followed behind him, stopping at the Oval Office door.
They were all there. Good. Because the matter at hand could be far more urgent than being kicked out of NATO or off the UN Security Council.
This new Ebola outbreak was more than disturbing and Hannan needed to understand what had caused it. That’s why he’d asked his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Patricia Weller, to come, once again, and provide an update.
Randall Washington, Gerald Carter, and Mitchell Dell sat in their usual places. Dr. Weller, forced to sit beside Mitchell Dell, sat at the far end of the couch, clearly distancing herself from the nerdy-looking head of cyber security.
Putting people on the defensive was often an effective way to get them to disclose more than they intended. Hannan drew Dr. Weller’s gaze and glared at her. “Dr. Weller, I thought you said we had this Ebola epidemic under control. I want to know what's happening.”
“Despite your … uh, the delay implementing ESF #8…” She shot Hannan an angry glance. “We did have it under control.”
He overlooked her impertinent remark because Hannan had deliberately hindered Dr. Weller with a series of excuses for not initiating this Emergency Support Function for medical disasters. He wanted the outbreak to become an epidemic before taking aggressive action. “Go ahead, Ms. Weller.”
“After we declared the ESF #8 emergency, we had just gotten all the wheels of our response turning when a visitor brought the Zaire strain in from Africa. There's a small, ongoing outbreak in Sierra Leone, Central Africa. This person was exposed to the U.S. strain of Ebola in a hospital here in the U.S. As you may know, viruses mutate by gene swapping. A nurse at the hospital is now dying from an Ebola strain for which our vaccine is ineffective. We fear that the original Ebola has acquired from the U.S. strain the ability to go airborne. This means we have airborne Ebola in the U.S. and no vaccine to treat it. It's a formula for disaster. In Africa, the kill rate of the Zaire version is ninety percent. I believe it will be only marginally better in the U.S.”
Hannan’s plan had been to stay in control, even during the chaos. He hated not being in control. That was why he hated Alexis … and Dr. Weller’s news.
Gerald Carter, his secretary of defense, should never have created a biological weapon that could not be controlled. “You told me, Gerry, that our genetic—” Hannan caught himself, but not in time.
Pat Weller’s eyebrows raised.
She may be an outsider, but she wasn’t stupid. If the ready availability of a vaccine for U.S. Ebola had raised her suspicions, a vaccine normally years in the making, then the blunder he’d just made would confirm them.
He took a calming breath. “So now, Secretary Weller, how do we handle this threat?”
She wasn’t making eye contact. Not a good sign.
“We quarantine the victim and everyone that came in contact with him. Quick and radical isolation of all who might be infected. It’s our best approach, and we need to get on that, immediately. Of course, we can look for a quick path to a new vaccine, but that’s a longshot.”
The thought of that bug floating along through the ductwork in the West Wing sent a chill up his spine. “Let’s cut to the chase. What do you think our chances are of actually containing this new strain of the virus so that it does not become an epidemic?”
Dr. Weller sat, hands folded, tapping her thumbs together for nearly a minute. Clearly she was calculating. “The Ebola virus should not spread as easily in the United States as in Africa, but this virus is airborne, and we have no statistics to calculate the base transmissivity. This is only a semi-educated guess, but I would say odds of containment are 50-50.”
Hannan stifled a gasp. There might not be a country left to govern if this strain were to become epidemic. “That’s not acceptable. You've got to tip the scales in our favor. I'll give you whatever resources you need.” If a few people needed to die to squelch this disease, then so be it. “You are excused Ms., uh, Dr. Weller. I want you to start your work on containment, immediately.”
Hannan waited until the door closed behind her, then spoke. “I asked you to come here prepared to discuss the biggest threats we face in finishing the mission of centralizing control of the nation. After hearing Secretary Weller, what are your thoughts?”
Attorney General Washington cleared his throat. “That new version of Ebola has got to be our biggest concern. If it spreads rapidly, we lose everything—the government, all our social structures, and possibly our lives. And, Mr. President, Dr. Weller knows we created the U.S. version.”
Hannan nodded. “But we need her. I’ll have her followed, her workplace and home bugged. If she lets any secrets slip, we’ll take appropriate action, quickly.”
Defense Secretary Carter leaned forward in his seat on the couch. “You want to talk about big threats? Brock Daniels is still influencing a lot of people, with Katheryn Banning's help. We believe a group of Rangers has linked up with them in Central Oregon. The results of analyzing the Apache crash told us it was brought down by an RPG–7. Only a knowledgeable person, with a little luck, could do that, someone with access to an RPG like those stolen from Fort Irwin in California.”
