The Last Gasp, page 43
Out in the parking lot, the Dodge Ram performed three complete rubber-shrieking pirouettes before Bud Keiser brought it to a halt, slammed into reverse and put his combat boot hard down on the pedal. The vehicle accelerated backwards fast and, true to its name, rammed its tail-gate into one of the SUVs blocking the exit, forcing it sideways and nearly overturning it, before heading off at high speed down Oak Ridge Drive in a haze of blue exhaust smoke.
9
It was the third item in the routine daily bulletin from the North Las Vegas Police Department that snagged Russ Trambo’s attention. The news editor of WNRB-TV read it through twice and got that tell-tale prickly feeling on the back of the neck that forty years of print and TV news gathering had bestowed on him. He wasn’t always right, but he was rarely wrong.
#03
OCTOBER 09, 2025
UPDATE ON INVESTIGATION: (MNF/T2834/25) OFFICER P CLAYTON (DET)
SUBJECT: DISAPPEARANCE OF — STEVEN BRANDO FAZIOLI (AGE 34)CHARLES (CHUCK) STOCKTON BRANT (AGE 31)
Investigation renewed when two (2) horse-riders [see Appendix 1a] reported finding the burnt-out shell of a Jeep Renegade in a dry creek along the Valley of Fire, situated approx. seven (7) miles southeast of Mount Grafton, on the lower elevation of the Muddy Mountains Wilderness Range.
Officer Clayton attended the scene with forensic support and identified several human body parts in an advanced state of incineration. These have been sent to Fulmar Biopsy Solutions for lab analysis and possible identification.
This discovery has led to renewed investigation into the disappearance of Fazioli and Brant (brothers-in-law) who were reported missing after failing to return from a hunting trip in the Wilderness Range, which covers more than nine (9) thousand square miles, making it a formidable task for search teams.
Police request circulation of above details to facilitate eye-witnesses to come forward with information re sightings of named individuals and their vehicle. Further reports to follow.
A faint bell kept ringing insistently that he couldn’t ignore. The only route that went anywhere near Mount Grafton was Highway 604, which passed by the Nellis Missile Range. Beyond the base was nothing but the Wilderness the godforsaken terrain was named after. As it stood, there was hardly anything in the police report to qualify it as a bona fide news item. Should he run it anyway, as a goodwill gesture to the North Las Vegas Police Department?
Pouring himself a glass of ice tea, the editor had a light-bulb moment when he suddenly remembered what was niggling him: it was the young reporter, Jack Chang, who was the connection. Chang had been gone three years now, so it must have been that length of time – at least four years, nearer five perhaps – since he tried to interest Trambo in the Jesus freaks story. Groups of soberly dressed young men had arrived in town and been trucked out up Highway 604 to . . . well, where exactly?
Chang had speculated that they were members of a doomsday cult – End-of-the-Worlders. Russ himself had wondered if they were anti-war protesters picketing the missile range. They definitely weren’t the latter, because he would have heard about it. But the real mystery of where they were heading for had never been solved.
Sitting at his desk, gazing out through the venetian blinds at the downtown Strip, Russ let his mind idle at its own pace. Something in the report, bland as it was, had bothered him. Was it the fact that the Jeep and its occupants had gone up in flames? If the driver had lost control and swerved off the trail, plunging them down the hillside, then the vehicle catching fire as it hit bottom would be the expected outcome, certainly no surprise.
So the fire of itself wasn’t the niggling prickly thing.
But in an open Jeep, why would the two occupants also be incinerated? They’d have been flung out, wouldn’t they, on the way down? Unless, Russ qualified to himself, they were wearing seatbelts and couldn’t release themselves in time.
Finishing his ice tea, he moved to the whiteboard and took up the magic marker. Under the general heading ‘5 p.m. Digest’ he added the item to the end of the running order, giving it the title ‘Blazing Jeep Puzzle’.
It would make an intriguing little story, and folks liked to mull over a mystery.
10
CLIMATE ALERT
Issued by MIDNITE-NET [September 2025]
Subject: “The Tipping Point”
The dramatic shrinking of the Antarctic Ice Cap became known in climate science as the Rignot Effect, named after Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California. The retreat of the ice was unstoppable, and as early as 2013 Rignot concluded that its melting into the warming ocean ‘has passed the point of no return’.
Rignot and other climatologists found the most severe effects were taking place on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Should this vast body of ice melt entirely, it would increase global sea levels by ten to twelve feet.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the oceans of the planet have risen by eight inches. They continue to rise in this century, monitored daily by satellites, which bounce radio waves off the ocean surface. Because seawater expands as it warms up, higher temperature increase the volume, leading to rising levels.
It was predicted that very soon we would arrive at ‘the tipping point’
Many scientists believe this took place when a NASA surveillance aircraft spotted a twenty mile-long crack across the Pine Island Glacier, which widened at an alarming rate. The glacier split apart and gave birth (‘calving’ as it’s called) to a giant iceberg of 450 square miles: eight times larger than New York’s Isle of Manhattan. This gave Pine Island the unique distinction of being the most rapidly shrinking glacier on record, causing sea levels to rise faster than any other glacier on the planet.
This wasn’t the only bad news. There are dozens of glaciers, some smaller than Pine Island, some larger, along the West Atlantic Ice Sheet. Could the same Rignot Effect be happening to them? Nearby lies the truly massive Larsen Ice Shelf. Measurements and calculations showed the rates of ice depletion to be increasing there also. An American-led scientific team recorded the disintegration of Larsen B, an ice plateau measuring 1,250 square miles (bigger than Rhode Island). They were the last human beings to see it intact: two months later, satellite images showed Larsen B had collapsed – ‘shattering like the safety glass of a car’s windshield’ as one team member described it.
In the nine years since then (2016), the process has accelerated to the point where the entire Riiser-Larsen Ice Shelf is in danger of disintegrating and sliding into the sea. Should this happen, the volume of water released would raise sea levels by at least fifteen feet.
This aftermath of this process has brought unstable weather patterns and violent storm surges – dubbed ‘Superstorms’ by the media. Storms of such ferocity are classified by scientists as ‘century events’, meaning the odds of them happening are once every hundred years. These are now occurring seven times more frequently than before – Florida averaging a Superstorm every two years instead of once a century.
Florida happens to be at the highest risk of any state in the US due to rapid climate change. Eight of the top ten US cities likely to suffer flooding are in Florida. When accompanied by tidal surges, most of the southeast of the state will be three feet underwater, with Miami-Dade having the most homes at risk: thirty billion dollars’ worth of taxable property.
Florida might be under threat, but it’s not alone.
States on the eastern and western seaboards are also vulnerable to rising sea levels: California on the west coast, New York State, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia on the east coast, all the way down to the Florida Keys, which will vanish beneath the waves.
Across the country, nearly five million people live in 2.6 million homes at less than four feet above high tide. Forecasts based on climate records and future trends show rises in sea level between seven and fifteen feet by 2036 to be conservative estimates.
Eleven years from now.
8
1
Chesney Poulton studied the photograph of the woman lying naked on the stainless steel trough. Even in death, and with her head attached to her body by just a few tattered threads of pale tissue and torn bloodless ligatures, it was evident that she was – or had been – an example of womanhood in its prime. Even Poulton could see as much. He tossed the print aside. ‘Who was the fucking bitch?’
‘We haven’t I-Deed her as yet,’ Burt Mueller, his chief of staff, admitted.
‘What?’ Poulton hunched himself forward over his desk. ‘Goddamnit, Nevison must know! He fixed the fucking meeting with her. Make him spill his fucking guts.’ There was a purplish tinge in his jowls and his wide neck was throbbing and red.
‘He’s doing that as we speak with Specials Ops,’ Mueller said. ‘The minute they have a coherent narrative, Mitchell will call me.’
‘Mitchell?’
‘Conrad Mitchell, in charge of interrogation. He and his team are specialists. They worked on Julian Assange.’ Burt Mueller checked the time. ‘I’m expecting his call within the hour.’
Poulton lit up a Cohiba Behike. His hands were trembling. He blew out a vast cloud of smoke.
‘Makes my fucking blood boil when I think of it – the future I had planned for that boy. I thought he was a real prospect, genuine talent, that he’d go far. I was even prepared to help and nurture him, invest in him personally. And then this cheating and treachery.’ He leaned his head back on the leather rest, plumes of smoke issuing from his nostrils. ‘To think – for chrissakes! – I trusted the fucking deceitful bastard!’
‘I didn’t,’ Joe Quarles put in quietly.
Burt Mueller shot a warning look at him which said, Now is not the time to score points and big yourself up . . .
‘You were his head of section,’ Poulton said, taking out the cigar and glaring at Quarles. ‘If you knew he was unreliable, gonna leak like a fucking sieve, why didn’t you say something? Bragging about it after the event is not a smart career move.’
‘Excuse me, sir, but I didn’t know it for a verifiable fact. I didn’t have proof.’ The whining note in his voice made plain how suddenly anxious Joe Quarles had become. ‘It was just a feeling I had, he was so stuck-up and superior. But then he was assigned to the Midnite investigation, which meant he had Level Five security clearance. So I kinda assumed . . .’
Burt Mueller closed his eyes in quiet desperation. That particular decision had been made by the director-in-chief personally; to remind him of the fact, with the implication that it was he who had made a fatal error of judgement, was not a wise course to take.
But Chesney Poulton was sidetracked by something Joe Quarles had said. He jabbed his cigar at the print on the desk. ‘Burt, this bitch on the slab: could she be connected with the Midnite operation? Quarles is right about that – Nevison was on special assignment to track them and close them down. How far did he get?’
This was Joe Quarles’ domain. Burt Mueller looked to him for a response.
‘There’s no indication of a Midnite connection at this time,’ Joe Quarles said carefully. ‘What we do know is that Nevison extracted a large cache of data and then tried to cover his tracks by corrupting a number of files.’ The director-in-chief was seated at his desk, with his chief of staff seated opposite him, while Quarles was left standing in no-man’s land, like a servant grovelling before his superiors.
‘Which files specifically?’ Burt Mueller asked.
Joe Quarles sorted through a dozen or so sheets of paper, swapping them from hand to hand. ‘Er, yeah, uh . . .’ He shuffled his feet uneasily. ‘Environmental activists death toll in South America and southeast Asia is one. Financial transactions with the Church of Charmed Baptist Brethren. Something called the ascendancy programme, which is new to me. Donations and pledges to Common Sense Coalition UK. Register of social meetings with members of the Senate and Congress—’
Chesney Poulton whipped out his cigar and held it above his head. ‘Wait. Stop. Hold it. Are those pages you’re holding a list of all the files that’ve gone missing and been corrupted?’
‘Not all of them, sir. We’re still in the process of checking and verifying them—’
‘So how many so far? How many you got there, for instance?’
Joe Quarles riffled through the sheets once more. Finally he found the one he was searching for. ‘Um . . . 284,366.’ He sounded quite pleased to have produced so exact a number. He looked up and smiled helpfully at Poulton and Mueller. ‘That’s as of . . . oh, about one hour forty minutes ago, say two hours.’
‘Holy Shite and Corruption.’ The words were muffled because Poulton had laid the cigar in the ashtray and was speaking through his large hands, which covered most of his face. To no one in particular he mumbled, ‘That’s just fine and dandy . . . the ascendancy programme, the Messengers, the Brethren. Fish in a barrel.’ He removed his hands. ‘And at the end of the line there’s us, wrapped up neatly with a fucking pink bow and blue ribbons.’
He drummed his fingers. ‘Burt. Talk to Mitchell. We need to know – I mean this minute, now – who this data was leaked to. We have to come up with a counter-revelation strategy before any one of us leaves this office.’
Mueller spoke on his phone. Poulton beckoned Joe Quarles to step nearer the desk. ‘Which tech operatives worked with Nevison on the Midnite project?’
‘I don’t know right off the bat, sir. I’ll have to check.’
‘It never occurred to you that these highly qualified operatives might have just the tiniest clue what this scumbag was up to? Which direction the investigation was heading in? What kind of progress he’d made? Tell me, Quarles, I’m interested in exactly what you do all day. Stare out the window and play with yourself?’
‘Allow me a moment to look into it, sir. I’ll have the answer immediately.’
He started to move away when Burt Mueller said, ‘Mitchell’s ready. He’s on the CC link, sir.’
Chesney Poulton touched a button and swung his chair round to face the large screen suspended from the oak-panelled ceiling. A middle-aged man in black-framed spectacles with a heavily lined forehead and thinning grey hair was standing in front of a white ceramic-tiled wall. In the background could be heard the dry crackle and faint hum of electricity.
‘We have you, Conrad,’ Burt Mueller sang out.
Mitchell nodded to show he’d heard and consulted a clipboard. ‘Nevison is being co-operative,’ he began. ‘I think it’s genuine. But he’s not contrite – he doesn’t regret what he’s done.’
‘And what has he done?’ Poulton broke in impatiently.
‘Nevison made contact with a media activist outfit called Midnite-Net,’ the head of interrogation carried on in the same clipped, unhurried tone. ‘His idea. Arranged to meet an unnamed person at the Dormez-Bon Motel in Hagerstown. He was expecting a guy, but a woman showed up. The name she gave was Micki Vargas. That’s the person terminated during armed interaction with our agent. We have her corpse in storage. Nevison handed over a data-drive containing one hundred gig of classified information from AAAV digital storage and archives. He also included the encryption codes. That’s the equivalent of two million pages, or 75,000 volumes of printed material. The files he selected—’
Poulton interrupted, his voice a peremptory bark. ‘Was the data-drive recovered?’
‘Not with the Vargas corpse, no sir,’ Mitchell said.
‘Then where the fuck is it? Who the fuck has it?’ Poulton looked from the screen to Burt Mueller, who shook his head to signify he had no idea. Poulton addressed Conrad Mitchell again. ‘What does Nevison have to say? Chrissakes, man, he was there! He must know what happened to it.’
Mitchell was unfazed, his tone and delivery no different than before. ‘Nevison claims he was confused at this point. According to Nevison, a male accomplice of Vargas’ entered the coffee shop. Nevison believes – but he can’t accurately recall – that the accomplice took possession of the data-drive. We surmise that this is the same man who drove the Dodge truck and absconded the scene. As the data-drive hasn’t been retrieved, we must conclude that the accomplice took it with him.’
‘The vehicle was found abandoned,’ Poulton said. ‘No sign of it there either?’
‘Outside my field. I’m not forensics,’ Mitchell said.
‘No, sir,’ Mueller answered, ‘the Dodge had been set on fire. There was a corpse inside, male, unidentified as yet. He was the guy first seen driving the Dodge in the parking lot, we reckon. Well, we know for a fact. He was dispatched by three high-calibre rounds compatible with the firearms deployed.’
Poulton sat in thought for a while, then looked to the screen. ‘Mitchell, two questions. Both vitally important. Does Nevison know the geographical location of the Midnite operation?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve asked him?’
‘We have, yes sir. He says not.’
‘Apply more pressure, Mitchell. More coercion. My guess is he does know and the bastard won’t say unless we force it out of him.’
Mitchell raised his eyebrows, slowly, almost wearily, as he did everything. ‘Nevison is wired up for respiratory and glandular function, hyper-medicated and under continuous MRSI brain-mapping. We know from neurological and physiological scans when a subject is lying and when he’s telling the truth. Nevison is telling the truth.’
‘You believe him?’
‘I have just stated so, yes, sir. In my professional opinion. Second question?’
‘You’ve already answered it.’
‘Good. Thank you, sir—’
Chesney Poulton snapped off the link and the image vanished. With his big hands curled into fists on the desk in front of him, he sat and stared straight ahead at nothing. A pulse was beating in his temples. Burt Mueller and Joe Quarles exchanged looks. Neither one was going to break the silence.
