Chasing echoes the falle.., p.40
Chasing Echoes (The Fallen Republic Book 3), page 40
Disco did one circle around the building he and Matt had checked out earlier in the day. Nothing seemed to have changed. Cincinnati Sign & Lettering read the very colorful sign above the front pedestrian door. Beside it were three narrow overhead doors, and while cruising the neighborhood earlier Matt had noticed one of the rolling doors had a six-inch gap at the bottom. The door turned out to be unlocked. Matt had gone in, shotgun up, and checked the place out—unsurprisingly, there wasn’t much call for sign work in the middle of a pandemic, and from the dust it didn’t look like anyone had been inside for weeks.
They spotted no changes to the place, and Jack and Leslie hopped out and checked it while Disco idled the Camry at the curb. Then the door rolled up and Leslie waved. Disco pulled the car into the narrow bay, and Jack yanked the metal door down behind them. They got out and surveyed their accommodations for the night. With weak moonlight coming in through one grimy window, the interior was very dark. They waited for their eyes to adjust.
“Couch,” Richardson called out, spotting it in the customer waiting room. Leslie frowned, but didn’t say anything.
“I think the back seat of the car will be more comfortable than that thing,” Jack said, eyeing the thinly padded couch dubiously.
“And ladies outrank uninjured jackasses,” Matt told him, glancing at Leslie.
“I think anyone not on that couch is going to be in the car, unless you want to sleep on the floor,” Disco remarked. “One on the couch, three in the car, and one on watch.”
“Do we have any food?” Richardson asked. He’d eaten one energy bar, two candy bars, and one small bag of Doritos for the day.
“Not much,” Jack said. “Why don’t we save it ‘til morning.” He walked into the front office section, where the couch was, and looked out the front window. The exterior was covered by metal bars. Across the street a low building of red brick and gray wood siding stretched along most of the block. He leaned close to the dirty window and looked left and right. There were only a few weak streetlights, and the block was very dark. He turned to Disco. “We can go foraging,” he suggested.
Disco thought for a few seconds, then nodded. He looked at Leslie. “Me and you?”
Jack threw up his hands, the Honey Badger hanging from its sling across his chest. “I’m standing right here.”
“Yeah, and have you ever had any formal room-clearing training?”
Matt piped up. “Yeah, those Beretta trainers spent half a day teaching him to go through a doorway without sticking a loaded gun in his mouth, remember?” Jack shot him a dirty look. Disco snorted.
“I’ve been learning on the fucking job,” Jack said defensively, but then added, “I’ve done live-fire and Simunition shoot-house training at Gunsite. I mean, I’m not an expert, but I actually have done it. And you and I are the only ones with suppressed weapons.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Disco looked at Leslie. “Okay, you babysit. This shouldn’t take too long.”
“You’re taking the baby with you,” Leslie quipped, eyeing Jack. Matt clapped a hand over his mouth to quiet his laughter.
Leslie had a small handheld flashlight and turned it on at its lowest setting, and used it to explore the building as Jack and Disco checked their gear, then headed out slow and quiet. She found a small, grimy bathroom. She set her flashlight on the small shelf, and it was bright enough to light up the whole room. When she turned the handles she was pleased to discover the sink had running water, although the pressure was very low. The paper towel holder on the wall was half full as well. She stuck her head out the door. “I’m going to clean up,” she called out softly to Matt, undoing the buckle on the side of her plate carrier.
“Yeah, go for it,” he said. Richardson was already settling onto the couch in the small lobby. Matt made his way around the counter, looked around, then pulled open the drawer under the counter. Pens and scraps of paper, a tiny stapler, and—“Ohh, hey,” he said, quietly.
He grabbed the Snickers, then looked across the counter at Richardson. The computer expert was lying on his uninjured arm, facing the wall, seemingly already asleep. Matt walked around the counter, to the back of the building, where the light was spilling out the half-open door of the bathroom.
“Hey, are you hungry?” Matt said, knowing it was a stupid question. “You want half of a—” He pushed open the bathroom door, and Leslie was there, back to him, washing up using paper towels and the tepid water in the sink. Her plate carrier was sitting on the toilet seat, and her shirt and bra were on top of that. Her back was to him, but her eyes met his in the mirror above the sink, in which he could see everything. They stared at each other for a few long seconds, then he tore his eyes away and turned around. He felt his face get warm.
“Sorry,” he said. “I, ah. Shit. I found a Snickers,” he finished lamely. She didn’t say anything, then he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“You’re a great guy. But you’re happily married. And even if you weren’t, I smell like the livestock tent at the state fair.”
“Yeah,” Matt said, his voice tight. “I mean, no, uh, you...” It wasn’t just his face that was unexpectedly, uncomfortably warm. He couldn’t help but notice she hadn’t reflexively covered herself. Yeah, he’d definitely noticed that. And she’d noticed he’d noticed. And still not made a move to cover up.
She squeezed his shoulder, then the hand dropped away. “Get out of here, before we do something both of us regret,” she said. “Or maybe don’t regret, which might be worse.” He could hear the smile in her voice.
“Yeah.”
As he walked away, she called out to him. “And save me half that Snickers, Peepshow.” He heard the bathroom door close behind him, and he took a deep, ragged breath.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats
The Second Coming
Chapter Thirty-Four: Dez
The expressions on the faces around the conference table were drawn. Angry. Scared. Tired, and not just because it was the middle of the night. Dez waited, arms crossed.
It was General Amos Brown who spoke first. “This nation is hanging on by a thread,” he said, staring down at the maps and computer screens before them. He looked up and met her eyes.
Dez shook her head with surprising ferocity. “No,” Dez corrected him, “this federal government is hanging on by a thread.”
“Fine, Yes. And this will snap that thread.”
Dez stared at him unflinchingly. “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, then loudly blew out a breath and looked around the room. Dez uncrossed her arms, and stepped closer to the table. She gestured at all of the material before them. “Before we get into the ‘what are we going to do’ portion of this evening’s discussion, let’s finish the ‘what can we do’. What are our capabilities? Hammer might have known, but I’ve only been governor for the blink of an eye, and I’ve been kind of busy.” As Governor of Texas she was the Commander in Chief of the Texas Air National Guard, but other than deploying some air assets to the southern border, she’d had no interaction with the TANG command structure.
She thought she heard Teddy make a small noise—impressive, considering her hearing was still mangled after the gunfire in the theater—and looked over at him. He was positioned by the door, fully geared up. Seemingly half the Rangers were guarding this meeting, forming a heavily armed perimeter around the location, a random meeting room in the underground Capitol Extension. No one had been allowed to bring their phones or any other electronic devices which could connect to the outside world into the room.
Texas Air National Guard Chief of Staff Brigadier General Amos Brown was accompanied by half a dozen staff, and Dez had everyone from her administration there as well, despite the late hour. It hadn’t just been a long day, it had been a long three days. President Diaz’ death just over forty-eight hours earlier had been one more complication in a situation that was laughably convoluted, delicate, and dangerous.
Brown sighed, worked his neck, then said, “In regards to the kind of aircraft we’ve got on hand, the Texas Air National Guard has F-16 C/D Falcons, and both the Air National Guard and Customs and Border Patrol have MQ-9 Reaper unmanned combat aerial vehicles. The F-16 Falcons are armed with various ordnance including cannon and missiles. The Reapers, while they can be outfitted with missiles and bombs, they are almost exclusively used for surveillance purposes in the continental United States. Border Patrol in particular likes their thermal imaging capabilities, and they can stay on station for extended periods. We also have a number of Black Hawk helicopters, which are either unarmed or lightly armed. At the risk of sounding condescending, as I know you’re a former Marine, helicopters are what you’d need for retrieving people from the field, but have shorter range and much slower airspeed than fixed wing.”
“I’ll try not to chew on crayons during this briefing,” Dez said drily. “What are we talking about here, nine hundred miles, direct line? What is the maximum range of any of these aircraft?” Dez asked.
“Being former military, you know that’s not a question with a simple answer. Fully loaded with fuel and armament and people, or empty? Headwind, tailwind? Flying in a straight line, nap of the earth, or fuel-intensive combat operations? Maximum, one way, for a Falcon or a Black Hawk, is somewhere between a thousand and thirteen hundred miles. And that’s showing up with fumes in the tank, not able to fight. But there are Air Force bases all around the country for refueling. Although the situation is, I admit, not as clear-cut as I would like. Some bases are only operating on skeleton crews. Some might not be operating at all. We could land and have no way to refuel.”
“What about aircraft traversing the country? How monitored would their passage be?”
“On the commercial side, the air traffic control system is basically a non-functioning entity. They have closed up shop and gone home until the President turns everything back on. On the military side, it depends. Right now I believe there are huge gaps in the coverage due to lack of personnel. There are automated systems that throw up alerts, but how many of the radar systems have operators and are being monitored is anyone’s guess. And if they spot something…” He shrugged. “I have no way to gauge what their response could or might be.”
The dozen people stared down at the table, most of their eyes on the large map of the continental United States. They heard someone clear their throat loudly. Dez turned, and saw Q staring at her. The clandestine operator was still dressed like a Texas Ranger, in part to conceal his identity from people who didn’t need to know who he really was. Which included a number of people in that very room.
“You’ve been in contact with a dozen other governors, right?” Q said, his voice soft. “Not wargaming, but…let’s just say discussing worst case scenarios.”
Dez nodded. Nineteen governors, in fact, at last count. While no one seemed to be able to offer any proof whatsoever, nothing but rumor and suspicion, the talk all around Washington D.C. was that Diaz’ heart attack was anything but natural. No one seemed to know who had started the rumor, and of course, the White House spokesperson was refusing to even acknowledge the whispers, but everyone was on edge, and Diaz’ highly suspicious death had prompted the governors of West Virginia, Utah, and North Dakota to reach out to her. And that was only one small part of a whirlwind few days—
Bill Codell, on his Twitter show posted twelve hours earlier, had stated he’d been told by Secret Service agents that an unidentified man—dressed like a Secret Service Presidential Protection Detail agent—had been caught on camera leaving the President’s quarters an hour before the man had retired for the night, and shortly thereafter suffered a massive heart attack. A video clip purporting to show that had been provided to Codell, who’d shared it in a broadcast that now had over one hundred million views worldwide. Codell, a former Secret Service agent himself, said “I got this information, this video, from current Secret Service agents, who are actually violating federal law by doing so. So you have to wonder why they’re willing to do it. I don’t know if it’s real, but I know these guys are actually on the job right now in the White House, so I felt I had to share it.” The video was short, but the digital quality—as you would expect from a White House security camera—was excellent. “I will say this,” Codell commentated, “having done the job, having spent months in the White House—that sure looks like the door leading into the President’s bedroom. The carpet is right, the doors are right, the molding’s correct, everything’s spot on. And then there’s this bland, forgettable white guy in a dark suit just walking out. If I was going to conceal my identity, without looking like I was trying to conceal my identity, I’d do exactly what this guy did—glasses, likely fake moustache, and maybe even pads in his mouth to change the shape of his face to throw off facial recognition software. That might be a wig, too. Whoever he is, nobody knows who he is. He’s not on any of the logs. He’s dressed like a Secret Service agent, but he’s not, and they don’t know who he is. And folks, you don’t just get into the White House. It is the most tightly controlled building in the country, if not the world. If you’re in, someone let you in. You’ve got government ID that’s been scanned, unless you go in through the family entrance—which is also covered by cameras. And yet no one knows who this guy is. The White House spokesperson has said very clearly the video is a fake, so I’ll ask you this—forget why you’d fake a video like this, a video that actually doesn’t show anything, but it makes you think. We’re in the middle of the worst disaster our country has ever seen. Who actually has the capability to manufacture a video like this, in such a few short hours? Hollywood? Hollywood’s been shut down for weeks. So if it’s a fake, who made it? And why? Like I said, having been there, in the White House, it looks authentic, door, carpet, camera angle, everything. And this unknown man, keeping his head down a bit because he knows he’s on camera, leaves the President’s bedroom in the west wing—and then nobody knows where he went. That doesn’t happen. That can’t happen, nearly every square inch of the White House is under video surveillance. Unless….”
Dez still didn’t know what to make of the video, and the implicit accusation that someone had Diaz assassinated. Someone in the administration. Someone very high up in the administration.
Dez kept looking at him, and Q shrugged, still on point. “Well, maybe it’s time for those governors to put up or shut up. Talk is cheap. Every state governor can call up the National Guard. Ninety-five percent of all military aircraft this country has, from pocket drones to C-17 Globemasters to B-2 bombers, are sitting idle on military bases around the country. Just waiting.”
So if you’re wondering why our country seems so dysfunctional, this is a big part of the reason—nobody knows what’s happening. A small group of people control access to all relevant information, and the rest of us don’t know.
Tucker Carlson
June 6, 2023
Chapter Thirty-Five: Cooper
Colonel Chris Cooper (USA-Ret.) recently (and perhaps still, when this was all over) of the CIA’s Ground Branch, now appointed Head of Operations for Task Force November, directly under the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, André Parks, felt like shit.
There was no mystery as to why he felt like shit—since he’d been TDY’d to the task force he’d been eating crap food, barely sleeping, hadn’t worked out at all, and had absolutely nothing to show for his efforts. Richardson and his group had seemingly vanished after leaving the deadly debacle that had been St. Louis.
November was up on the phones, computers, TVs, any and every internet-capable device belonging to Richardson, Gray, Haley, Gorman, Scott, and anyone they were related to, friends with, or even fucking talked to more than once in the past year. Monitoring in real time their social media and email accounts. Using facial recognition software to process any and all images captured by surveillance or city cameras in every city between Newark and Las Vegas. Using the supercomputers and voice monitoring programs to key on relevant words. Voice recognition software, which could compare captured audio to snippets obtained of Haley and Gray—Haley from various media appearances promoting his book, and Gray while doing segments for the Guns & Ammo TV show. And…nothing.
It had been almost an entire week since they’d disappeared from St. Louis, and November was running ragged. Not the operators—Val and the remaining members of the St. Louis assault, plus three additional Ground Branch teams, all stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in southwest Ohio, were doing what they usually did in-between missions—working out. Working out and waiting for the green light, for word that the intelligence analysts of November had finally tracked down the fugitives. They were impatient and frustrated, but waiting to jump on an aircraft and head into danger was nothing new to them; they were handling it as well as they ever did. Cooper also had a supplemental raid group on standby in Columbus made up of federal law enforcement agents—mostly SWAT-trained FBI, but also ATF and IRS.
The nerve center of Task Force November, however, wouldn’t inspire confidence in a visitor. The room reeked of sweat, overheated electronics, cigarettes, and bad gas from a steady diet of processed foods—most of the denizens of the SCIF were subsisting on vending machine snacks. The mood was as foul as the air, as the data analysts continued to run up against dead ends.
