The First Daughter, page 30
‘This creature,’ Adam began, dragging back the man who had started to move at Carson, ‘Is the man purporting to be Ben Richter.’ He dumped him unceremoniously away from the American traitors. ‘And this charmer,’ he said, grabbing a bald-headed man who was thin, almost to the point of looking emaciated and skeletal, ‘Is the guy claiming to be Steven Castor.’
‘Fuck you, you English dog!’ He snarled up at Adam through clenched teeth, his accent distinctly Russian, making no effort whatsoever to affect an American accent, his face the very picture of antipathy.
‘Yeah, cheers for that comrade knob head,’ Adam retorted sneeringly.
The Russian's lips curled contemptuously, revealing crooked teeth in his near skeletal face.
‘You won't be so bold when you are ordered to surrender yourselves to us. Release us from these ties now, and I promise you will not be mistreated.’
‘Don't know what drugs you've been taking, soft lad,’ Adam scoffed. ‘We've got the guns, and you’re all tied up. President himself could order us to surrender. It ain't fucking happening.’
‘Oh, you don't understand, do you?’ Higgin's chipped in, looking up evilly at Carson. ‘Your too late. The rocket has been launched. The world is ours now.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Carson demanded.
‘That little explosion earlier on, the one that unfortunately, didn't kill all of you. It’s a purpose built safety feature to protect the rest of the complex in the unlikely scenario of a major malfunction upon launch,’ “Comrade knob” head interposed. ‘We were just about to leave when you fools walked right in the front door.’
‘Right, and now your trapped down here with us, dickhead,’ Adam scoffed.
The Russian's eye twitched in anger. At that moment, Brooke walked past the bald-headed Russian. As she came within his sight, his face contorted into a mask of pure hatred, and he vehemently spat at her as she passed him by.
‘Spic whore!’ He hissed, spitting at her again.
Carson was overcome with a red mist, and almost before he was himself aware of it, was upon the Russian, raining blows down into his face, his balled fists hammering like pistons.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
‘You can’t be serious, Mr President?’ Trevor beseeched President Jones.
‘Trevor, we don’t have any choice. They, they’ve got us over a barrel here.’
‘That’s right, Owen, we have you over a barrel,’ Lester said from the screen, gleefully making a point of the power play by addressing the President of the United States by his given name.
For a man who had supposedly been vaporised in a bomb attack in Moscow, Lester was looking very much alive and rudely healthy.
In the background behind Lester on the big screen was a heavy black curtain which, going by its sheen, was made of velvet. Music played loudly in the background. Currently, they were playing Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life,’ which had been preceded by ‘I got the world on a String.’ The music was clearly being played to drown out any potential background noise that may give away there location.
But the choice of music was clearly Lester’s way of saying screw you as well.
‘Damn you Lester, why are you doing this?’ The President demanded.
‘Ain’t it obvious?’ Lester asked. ‘Order. Mankind needs order. For what it’s worth Owen, our vision for the way the world should be governed, will work so much better for mankind than the current global power structure.’
‘You can’t seriously expect the world to bow down–’
‘Yes!’ Lester interrupted. ‘Yes I do, and they will. Those that don’t will soon come to heel as their towns get vaporised. People are weak, pathetic, too stupid to make the right choices. In the times to come, there will be no more war, no more hunger. Everyone will be right where they’re supposed to be, doing exactly what is required of them. There won’t be any more religious wars either. All will worship the one true God of the Bible.’
‘Damn it Lester, I’m a Christian too. To try and force your religious views on just one man is a sin.’
‘The living Christ came with the sword, the great peacemaker. For too long now, man has lost his way. I, that is, we, are his sword, his staff. We will put mankind once again, on the path to glory,’ Lester replied, with all the ardent fervour of the committed zealot.
‘Mr President, you can’t seriously be considering giving in to this nut job!’ Trevor protested.
The president looked back at him gravely. Absolutus Imperium had been launched. They had seen the satellite feeds. Lester had shown them that he had the controls for the weapon system at his fingertips. Shown them that he had targeted Los Angeles, President Jones’s home town of Dallas, Chicago, New York City and Miami.
Lester’s demands at the moment were brutally simple. Complete and unconditional surrender, and for the President to carry out his every demand.
‘Owen, I want this man taken into custody right away,’ Lester said Tersely, his face large upon the screen in the situation room.’
President Jones sighed deeply. Dipping his head, he reluctantly relented.
‘Make it so,’ he said morosely.
‘But Mr–’
‘One more word from you, Trevor, and I’ll have them shoot you here and now,’ Lester cut in as a burly Secret Service agent took a hold of Trevor’s shoulder. ‘Make sure he is stripped of any communication devices before you take him away.’
Trevor’s jailor patted him down thoroughly for any hidden devices, removing his watch and phone. He then cuffed Trevor’s hands behind his back, and lead him from the room, Lester looking on, a smug smile creasing his features. Madness glinted, in his unblinking, grey eyes.
GOPI LAL WAS SCRAMBLING AROUND at his work station, deep within the confines of GCHQ. He had listened on, helpless as Trevor was taken into Custody.
In the past few minutes, he had initiated a full-scale digital assault on the Groom Lake facility systems, knowing as he did so that if this didn’t come good, he would likely find himself extradited and spending the foreseeable future in one of America’s supermax prisons.
Assuming that is, that these weapons weren’t actually used.
As he hammered away at keyboards, he refreshed his memory of the files on Absolutus Imperium. As it had recently become clear to them that Arnold Lester was one of the main malcontents they were up against, Gopi had went over everything he could find on him with a fine, digital tooth comb. He had found files that spoke of suspicion of Lester’s involvement in heroin shipping and distribution while he was a senior staffer in the CIA. But no solid, smoking gun evidence had ever been comprehensively uncovered, the bodies found and people who had simply just disappeared, all being deemed as circumstantial.
Lester had simply retired from the agency when the stink around him had got to the point that he was advised to jump before he was pushed. It was only a year after retirement that he had stepped into the political arena.
On his own considerable dollar, no less.
Gopi had just found the link between Aaron Reed, the chief engineer in charge of Absolutus Imperium, to a name of one of the KIA’s during Lester’s tenure in Afghanistan, Alan Reed, about half an hour ago. Like a hound on a scent, he been working his way through Lester’s background these past few hours, scrubbing through all files on him kept on databases that could be accessed via the internet. He happened upon a one-time link with a production company in Hollywood, one that had a reputation of producing fake yet, convincing videos of high profile female celebrities participating in porn movies, getting around the legalities by admitting as such in the small print; Much to the chagrin of one of their most famous targets, an actress who had appeared in that genre defining sitcom of the 90’s, Friends. It’s firewall was good, and would be a challenge for most of the top black-hat hackers out there. But they didn’t have Gopi’s tool kit.
In no time, he had located a file that had nothing to do with porn, a file that depicted Alan Reed’s interrogation and execution, assumedly retained in case they needed dirt on Lester’s fixer’s fixer. Gopi quickly found the little telltales beneath the surface that the untrained eye would miss, but there was no doubting that this video was a very clever fake. Still hammering away at the Groom Lake facility, he had found one of the people who had disappeared in Afghanistan, Alexa Green, listed as presumed KIA. She had been a close colleague of Alan Reed’s, disappearing a short time after his supposed death by a roadside IED.
Latching onto this thread, he scoured the databases, zeroing in on her. It was a hit from a year ago now, but she had been photographed in Africa. By her clothing and the blurb on the charities social media page, she was an aid worker in the Democratic Republic of Congo, going under the Alias Samantha Brown. A white man was with her in the background of the picture, the system pinging him as one Joshua Williams, a dishonourably discharged marine who had assaulted a senior officer. Last known location was working as a mercenary for a shady outfit known to do the agencies dirty work in Afghanistan. He too had disappeared at the same time as Alexa Green. There was no data pertaining to his current identity in the information on their work in the Sudan.
At last, Gopi was into the security mainframe. One thing that flashed up right away was that an emergency shelter was being occupied, and the card that pinged up on the reader was none other than Aaron Reed himself. There was an option to reach him by the emergency pod line, but he had to do one more thing first. He first had to know what had really happened to his son. His fingers flicked over the keys, and a line began to ring.
‘Samantha Brown,’ a voice answered.
‘Hello, Miss Brown. You don’t know me, but its very urgent that we talk. Please, just hear me out, let me talk – I know your exact location, and your real identity, Miss Green. I have no interest in turning you in, but I do have the evidence that exonerates you. You won’t have to live off grid, as it were, any longer. I know about the nonsense intelligence files making out that you and Alan Reed were involved in smuggling wholesale amounts of heroin out of Afghanistan. Files that further implicate Joshua Williams as taking over the distribution after Alan’s supposed death in a roadside blast. Lester Arnold must be stopped before it’s too late. A great many, many lives, hang in the balance.’
There was a pause of several moments, the sound of shaky breathing audible on the other end of the line.
‘I’m, I’m listening. But first, who the hell are you? And what do you want from me?’ She said.
JUST AS SUDDENLY AS the red mist had descended, Carson felt himself being propelled away by Brooke, driving him backwards, her forearm pressing into him just below the neck.
‘I can fend for myself, cowboy,’ She said sharply, but not unkindly, her beer bottle brown eyes closer to Carson’s than they’d ever before been.
‘Aye,’ Carson stuttered.
Christ, get a grip man, Carson thought to himself, as he found himself sinking into the depths of those eyes. Guilt flashed within as Judith and Angela flitted across his mind, and the pressing enormity of what had brought them to this juncture.
Why the hell was he so captivatingly drawn to this woman, particularly at a time like this?
‘Ha!’ The Russian scoffed, hunched down on both knees, blood dripping from his nose and burst lip. ‘Let the little spic whore–’
Before her eyes left his, Carson felt for a fleeting second, her hand, the tips of her fingers brushing his forearm, before she disengaged from him, all business. And drove her boot straight into the part of the Russian’s anatomy that near enough all men without exception, save for very perverse masochists, least like getting hit in. Quite incapable of speech for the moment, the Russian rolled onto his side, drawing his knees up to his chest. Adam laughed shortly, his lip curled in disgust as he looked down upon the groaning Russian.
‘You got anything to say, chump,’ Brooke said to Higgins, who was looking on darkly, making no effort to conceal his own bigoted leanings.
‘Are you going to let your people behave like this?’ He demanded of Dalton.
‘Like what? I can’t rightly say I’ve seen anything untoward,’ he drily responded.
‘Oh, just you wait,’ Higgins said hotly. ‘There’s a new world order coming, and people will know their place, or they will perish in the camps for the undesirables.’
There was a whiny quality to Higgins voice. He was evidently a little man in every sense of the word. No more than a puppet, a tool for one greater than, but no less depraved than himself.
Higgins flinched involuntarily as Brooke feigned a step towards him, then his cheeks blushed a deep crimson as she just stood there, smiling sourly down at him with mock contempt.
‘Camps for the what now?’ Bradley asked, combing a hand through his beard. ‘You sound like a god dammed nazi. And my Grandaddy killed nazis.’
‘Oh, they were fools in those days. They had good vision, but they were fools, the way they went about it,’ Higgins replied. ‘See, what we’re doing, you can’t win. We are unified now, those of us in the east, and in the west. We will forge the new world, the Fourth Reich, in the ashes of the old world. No more war, no more chaos. Just order in all things, all people in their rightful places.’ He couldn’t help glancing at Brooke as he said this. ‘All people, serving the glory that will be the Fourth Reich, in all its magnificence.’
Brooke snorted, then laughed derisively.
‘Your deluding yourself, you pathetic little nazi shit,’ she said.
‘Your clearly just a puppet,’ Carson interposed. ‘Where’s your master?’
‘Oh, you’ll be hearing from him soon, I don’t doubt,’ Higgins replied, with the pompous smirk of the victor on his face.
At that moment, Dalton’s phone began to ring.
‘You better answer that, SAC Dalton,’ Higgins said.
Dalton looked at Higgins, incredulous. He had not identified himself to Higgins.
‘Dalton,’ he curtly answered the phone. ‘Sir?’
He turned and left the room, making is way back into the accommodations end of the facility.
‘Now, when Dalton returns, he will be instructed by the President of the United States to release us from our restraints, and surrender unconditionally,’ Higgins crowed, wear a big, shit eating grin. His bald headed comrade had recovered enough to gleefully concur.
‘Just you wait,’ the bald-headed Russian said, his voice pained, yet smiling, the contours of his face bunched up around the points of his eyes. Eyes fixed malevolently upon Carson.
‘I’ll drill you in the head before I cut you out of those ties. Don’t you worry about that, sunshine!’ Carson said acidly in response.
AARON REED WAS HUNKERED down in the emergency shelter, sealed from within. He hadn’t known fully what he was getting himself into.
But it wasn’t this. That was for damn sure.
It had all began around two and a half years or so ago, when his world view was turned completely upon its head. Out of the blue, one breezy fall morning, he was approached by someone in a suit. He’d knocked on the door of his modest home on the outskirts of Vegas one afternoon, where he had lived alone since, well, since the war on terror had taken his son in Afghanistan. Hollowed out by grief at the loss of their only child, his wife had laid the blame fully upon him. She had wanted their son Alan to be a doctor, or a lawyer, something along those lines, often beseeching Aaron to encourage their son to pursue such a career. But after nine-eleven, Alan was set on nothing but the good old CIA, and there was no dissuading him. So, Aaron had supported him.
Consequently, after his death, his Susie had never forgiven him. She had left him, remarried, and some five years ago, he had received word from her sister that she had passed on, breast cancer. Her funeral had been and gone, so he was asked not to make any contact with his ex-wife’s family. She just thought he should know. And that was that.
As far as Aaron had known, Alan had been killed on active duty by a roadside explosion. He and his ex-wife had taken some very small solace of comfort when the officials assured them that he wouldn’t have known a thing about it. That he wouldn’t have suffered at all.
Oh, how he soon bitterly wished it was so. After he had admitted that man into his home.
Aaron had never bought into any of the deep state conspiracy theories. All those purporting them also bought into all the whack job conspiracy theories surrounding the so called Area-51 conspiracy theories. And hell, he had work there since 1993. He knew firsthand that it was, at least for the most part, complete nonsense.
But there it was. The man had shown him footage of his son, his own boy, going through what was referred to as enhanced interrogation. Essentially, a refined and more sanitised term for what it really was. Torture. At the end of the recording, a cloth bag had been placed over his son’s head, and Alan had cried out in anguish as the barrel of a pistol appeared in frame.
And blew his brains out.
After he had recovered, the man in the suit had initiated a webcam conversation with someone Alan had recognised from television, but couldn’t quite place the name. The man said, from one father to another, that he was deeply sorry about what had happened to his son. That he had been in charge of a number of agency assets in Afghanistan at the time, and that when the reports came through that he had died in a roadside explosion, he had believed them. It wasn’t until some years later, that he had fully uncovered the truth. That truth being, that the global enterprise of shipping heroin, cocaine, weapons, and even human trafficking was not being combated by the collective powers that be. But were in fact perpetrated by them. For their own gain.
They were taking kickbacks from the criminals at the top of the pile, while making bank upon the various arms deals to equip various police and military units to counter what kept those at the top of the pile, at the top. Not to mention the private security companies that often had politicians at the top table of the business, to supposedly combat these criminal enterprises. Alan had stumbled upon something he shouldn’t have, and powerful men had simply made him disappear. His life no more to them, than that of an irksome bug, to be squashed underfoot.
