The Great Deception Page 4
Way up above about forty feet or so the ventilation system noisily purged the system and circulated the air per its pre-programmed cycles. A very prominent desk, more like a slab of rock from the local quarry, made it hard to get past without being noticed and stopped for questioning. Seeing as how Azriel was the only soul in the near vicinity walking the halls, all eyes were on him as he approached the front desk.
--
Two hundred miles off the coast of S6...
A crew-wide announcement on Scorpion's AirCorvette let everybody know that the craft started approaching the targeted drop zone for the underwater submersible which was destined to dock with a Harpoon class submarine that waited for it below the depths.
Members of the Elite Guard for Scorpion were on standby to assist the VIP guests into the capsule. They wore exoskeletons that had transformer-like wings that popped out of their back when they needed them. Their face masks were multi-faceted, very much resembling a fruit fly's eye. Overall these men looked more like bipedal insectoids than humans. To further round out their sinister presence a vocoder in the mandible disguised the men's real voices.
One of the six Elite Guards approached the German chancellor and British prime minister. Two more of them rounded up the Russian leaders. The remaining three stood sentry at the exterior hatch to the capsule.
"Good heavens!" Prime Minister Jasper
Turpin cried in alarm. He was riveted by the dress of the guard that waltzed up to where he and the German leader sat. He thought the Scorpion soldier looked more like a grim reaper than someone who was there for his personal protection and service. "This is just a dress rehearsal for the really weird things you'll see at the war room, prime minister," Lothar whispered into the startled man's ear. "I thought you would've grown accustomed to this by now though. You said you've visited Vandenberg several times." "Indeed I have," the British PM retorted, feeling a little indignant.
"What are our instructions soldier?" Lothar Kirsch demanded, his jaw set. "I must escort you two into there," he pointed a mechanical ligament in the direction of the vehicle that sat atop the bomb bay doors. "We only have five minutes to get you harnessed up."
Both men immediately lifted themselves from the bench they had occupied for the majority of the flight from Tokyo. Lothar was especially eager to enter into the compartment destined for the deep blue. Out of the corner of his vision he observed the Russian President Igor Orloff and Grigory
Sliva walking in a four man formation-Scorpion Elite Guards flanking them. Lothar's thin lips formed a tight smile.
"Are you looking forward to this as much as I am?" he asked President Igor as soon as he was within earshot.
The Russian president anticipated such a
question. "They had better make it worth my time."
Jasper Turpin vigorously nodded his head at the Russian's words. He too kept a busy schedule; there had better be a darn good reason for a summit at
Scorpion's war room at such an early hour in the morning.
…
Five minutes later, down to the second, the submersible hit the waves and promptly sunk to a depth of a thousand meters. The much larger Scorpion submarine swam over like a shark eager to discover the source that disturbed the water with its upward trail of bubbles it created as it descended.
The Harpoon class sub that would take the foreign leaders the rest of the way to the War Room weighed in at a whopping seven thousand tons. Its length: five hundred and seventy feet...clearly the top of the food chain in the Pacific Ocean.
It moved quickly through the water in its gas bubble that the super-cavitation drive created. This allowed the large behemoth to move at speeds in excess of a hundred
knots. As it approached the capsule, its intense flood lights turned on and illuminated the vessel in the murky depths of the ocean.
--
Israel's syndicate intelligence agency had its tentacles wrapped up in the affairs of governments the world over. After World War III the world looked very different. No longer led by a superpower (i.e. the United States), several very divided people groups were controlled by Germany, Britain, China, Russia, the United Islamic Caliphate...and in the West there were the six sectors in North America.
At the crux of it all were Scorpion's Skynet surveillance systems. An army of drones, cameras, and computer chips...a whole arsenal of technology which harvested data on the world's population. The makings of this world-wide police state had its test-bed in America. After the world's only superpower fell, the Big Brother surveillance proliferated. All major cities had little white boxes in them. Inside these little harmless looking boxes were quantum computers. Their capabilities, what they could do...unknown. Anybody curious enough to come by and see what was under the box wouldn't live to tell. An invisible dome of lethal energy protected the quantum computers that ultimately were left alone to do Lord knows what.
It may be buzzing by you. Maybe on your window...splattered on a fly swatter even. Insects--natural ones, too came under the dominion of Scorpion. They were more watchful in the urban environment than a man with the big game on. Birds and foul punched the clock for many hours of service to the agency, also.
Privacy? It didn't exist. The whole world was being watched. Forget governments spying on each other, which, consequently still happened rather frequently. The watchful eye of Scorpion noticed everything though. She took the ambition of the NSA and pushed it to another dimension. What's more, Howard and his underworld organization controlled the world's markets: anything could be achieved.
--
Barcelona, Spain
The glaring sun on the Iberian Peninsula filtered through the polarized lenses of Agent Marcello's shades. He was engaged in the typical observe and report duty assignment for the agency, Mossad.
A random business person walked by his bench in the park. The stranger dressed in an expensive suit complete with the manly jewelry: a Rolex. Alfonso wondered what time it was. He had a smartphone, but he had to assume he was being watched by several governments...and Scorpion. Instead of pulling the device out of his pocket, the street bum scooted off his seat and grabbed the man's wrist--the one with the shiny time piece on it.
The guy protested.
Alfonso ignored him. He got what he had wanted. It was eleven fifty-five.
Time to book it.
His muscular legs took him on a slant that led to a bike rack with scooters chained to it. None of them were his. No matter though.
Alfonso looked around and was satisfied he had a green light to choose the red one and go to work on it.
First, a pair of powerful wire cutters snipped through the chain that had once tethered the moped to the bike rack. In less than thirty seconds he had the two wires from the ignition reversed, and the loose end where it needed to go. There was a spark and Alfonso throttled it. He quickly returned his tactical knife to its sheath near his right armpit: he was left handed.
And off he went into the hustle and bustle of Barcelona traffic.
Alfonso had to be at a drop-off. These occurred so often that it was like second nature to him. An agent would hand off an envelope to him--never the same person. As he drove along at a conservative speed of seventy kilometers per hour Marcello acted out his paranoid nature with constant glances over the shoulder. If anybody was tailing him, they did a very good job of it. Nothing made him want to drive any faster or in a zig-zag pattern to lose a shadow. One could never be too cautious in his line of work. In ten years with the agency, he only had two chance run-ins. Both times it didn't fare so well for the aggressor.
Ten blocks later, two rights and a left, Alfonso pulled over to the curb and put the kickstand down. He knew he had time to spare before the drop-off. Until then he had to suffer with intense hunger pains at the mouthwatering smells coming from a steakhouse in the area.
Blending in was the name of the game. He did not want to make it any easier for his enemies to spot him. What better way than to get lost in a crowd? I
n Barcelona one didn't need to be in a mall for there to be crowds. Every street and thoroughfare in the city simply teamed with people.
Satisfied his cover was sufficient and that no cameras could get a good angle on what he was up to, that's when the phone came out. There was a new text. It read: "Come in after dark. We have a lot to go over." There was a picture message too.
Alfonso looked hard at the screen. What he was looking at appeared to be a forty-sevenyear-old woman, a German high-ranking official...and she was in town on a diplomatic trip to German-controlled Spain.
Sofia Keller held the title Minister of the
Interior. She didn't wind up on Chancellor Lothar's cabinet for nothing. Her trim appearance, shoulder-length blonde bobbed hair, upturned nose, and dimpled cheeks weren't menacing by any means, yet from the reports he had heard about the woman, she knew how to pull rank. Sofia Keller, aka "the enforcer" wouldn't be leaving her post in the Interior Ministry anytime soon. Today she was in town to carry out an inspection of the local government and to meet with leaders on her findings.
Alfonso's phone vibrated. That was his signal. The agent quickly made haste to get to a bus stop and wait there. He wasn't looking for somebody that didn't belong, that's not how Mossad operated. Women dressed in high fashion strutted by, men in business suits talked on their phones, families walked together to get lunch. Where are you?
Just then a woman nearly tripped over Alfonso and that's when he felt something that wasn't there before. It was wedged under his right arm. Agent
Marcello casually slipped it under his floral shirt and tucked it into his pants.
Next up, find out the best way to stalk Sofia Keller and her cohorts. He would need to take inventory on all the places of interest they might be at. Entry and exit points. And ways he could make himself scarce in case any of the Germans became wise onto his spy game.
--
Chapter 3
Westover Ventures, Lost Angeles
Nine out of ten heavy-lift cargo aircraft were able to land. The tenth had two engine fires that brought the beast down in an ugly wreck, its cargo undoubtedly damaged and the crew more than likely dead.
Nine of the planes landed though, one after another, down the boulevard from the gigantic factory and office complex of Westover Ventures. Each of them measured longer than a football field, a hundred feet wide and six stories tall. The cargo ramps of the planes lowered like drawbridges. Loadmasters unloaded twenty tanks, ten personnel carriers, and UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles).
All of these deadly machines of war trundled out of their cargo planes and onto the battlefield, ready to set up a perimeter. Along with the heavy-duty camouflaged military vehicles, nine platoons with forty soldiers each marched to the directives their assigned lieutenants gave them. Medevac personnel didn't need to be told to conduct search and rescue on the downed craft: they were already on it.
The sergeant NCOs (non-commissioned officers) coordinated logistics with the members from their platoons that made up the three companies that ultimately were responsible for insuring the success of the team of Viper agents that would go inside to retrieve the priceless equipment and blueprints on future weapons.
...
It was hard not to think about what was going on in the skies above. The enemy mercilessly pounded the FRN. Undoubtedly the twenty brave men going into Westover Complex to extract the assets felt the burden to see the mission through.
Who needs security clearance creds?
They didn't even ring the doorbell. Planted explosive charges blasted the men's way into the cavernous interior of the gigantic building. Ding-dong. All the Viper units were equipped with thermal imager cameras in their helmets, along with night vision, and an entire integrated network suite for staying connected with the rest of the team. Two of the Viper agents were positioned near the entrance of the five story office building the team had just entered into. They would stay in contact with the outside world and interface with even the president himself if need be. Meanwhile, the rest of the detail would separate into smaller forces: one to the west wing or weapons division while the other headed to the energy nexus located in the east wing.
The building appeared hollowed out and lifeless. The two guards standing sentry in the lobby gripped their rifles tensely. Through the huge triangular glass curtains that made up the building's walls they could see giant eightwheeled military vehicles speeding by. Soldiers scurried along at a frantic pace to set up check points with machine gun nests.
…
"Do you really believe we're alone in this structure?" one of the guards asked his buddy.
The other dude grabbed a protein bar from a pouch on his chest and nibbled off the front end of the bar. In between bites he answered, "Scorpion would be stupid not to come here. Either they already have...or we've got company, we just don't know it yet." "But that's not possible! We've done a full sweep of this place. No life signs." Only halfway through his snack, the other man didn't want to be bothered for an immediate answer. He held up a finger in the darkness. "Coated sapphire cloaks work beautifully against our sophisticated cameras, rendering enemy operatives invisible. Just like that," he snapped his fingers.
The figure who wasn't munching was freed up to swear at the revelation. "Why do I get the feeling this is a trap? The alien ships or whatever the heck they are in the skies...it's like they were expecting us. Now the potential our team is walking into an ambush...."
"I know," his partner agreed. "Stand alert, ready for anything. We are Viper agents, just remember that."
"Hooah!"
--
Scorpion War Room: Vandenberg, CA
The underwater entrance to the agency's strategic war room wasn't like Atlantis...no to the dazzling, mythical buried city. Instead it took the approach of concealment, blending in.
According to the harpoon class submarine's advanced sensors, the foreign leaders were nearing the front door to the base. Unless something happened quick though, a six hundred foot long missile would slam into pilings along the shore.
The captain of the sub ordered a full stop. Bubbles churned as if water jets had been turned on in a whirlpool tub. The heavy mechanical doors to a tunnel entrance groaned but eventually complied. Sediment kicked up from the ocean floor. It was an amazing thing. A submarine over ten thousand tons, five hundred and seventy feet long literally drifted into the tunnel with the ocean currents.
The captain guiding the large vessel likened this little exercise to a trip to the car wash: you just had to get the wheels on the track and put 'er in neutral. In a way, that's what the Scorpion sub did.
A full detachment of ten Scorpion Elite Guards stood on the wharf next to the looming cylindrical metal whale that decided to port there. The forerunner for the Lord of the Ages traveled with them. Maxwell was Maxwell. A cloaked, hooded, mysterious stranger.
The hatch popped open on top of the submarine's deck like a bottle cap under tremendous pressure: its contents dying to escape. Russian President
Igor Orloff was first to disembark, followed by the German leader, and finally Jasper Turpin of England.
Igor's aide, Grigory Sliva who brought up the rear paused on the bridge between the vessel and solid ground. He noticed strange lights off in the distance closer to the mouth of the tunnel where they had just come in. Something else swam among the waves which looked like shark fins to the Russian. Grigory dismissed it with a head shake. He continued his advance more cautiously than ever into the world of the unknown. A stray glance of his to the left gave way to curiosity about the length of the sea tunnel. It seemed to go on forever. But perhaps that was the darkness’s hidden talent in the strange world-making things seem different than what they really were.
"Step right this way," Maxwell instructed. He took the lead with his guards and the foreign leaders following not too far behind.
"I like what you've done with the place," the German chancellor joked. Jasper Turpin looked horrified at Lothar’s lack of
discernment. Just to be on the safe side the British PM stood at a distance from the German (he didn't want to be part of the splash damage when Maxwell had enough of Lothar’s cockamamie talk).
Igor and Grigory on the other hand exchanged looks of amusement. Who needed a court jester when Lothar Kirsch was in the building?
The German chancellor walked at a snail's pace, his neck snapped back in a fixed position with eyes staring straight up at the ceiling and his mouth gaping. "When was this
place built?"
No one in the group expected an answer to the question...this was not a tour. But to everyone's shock, the False Prophet provided one. "The war room was built in the sixties. This area that we walk through presently actually predates the war room."
"A natural formation? A sea cave?" Lothar said incredulously. "Yes, that is correct." Maxwell hid his dislike for Lothar Kirsch under the cover of darkness. "Now, if there be no further questions, shall we board the train?" All aboard.