Amid the Shadows (29 page)

55

The XB-70 Valkyrie had
the honor of being labeled one of the most
exotic
airplanes on the planet.
 
First conceived in the 1950s for the
Strategic Air Command, it was a bomber prototype capable of traveling at a mind
numbing Mach 3.
 
But in the end, only two
were built due to funding limitations, and they ultimately served only as
research aircraft.
 
Their hulls, still
unique to this day, were made of stainless steel and titanium and their design
allowed the Valkyrie to drop its wingtips by sixty-five degrees, radically
improving stability during supersonic flight.
 
They were also the fastest way to get two people all the way to Chile in
time for another flight.

In contrast, the C17
was much slower and served as the primary means of transporting one of the
world’s toughest and deadliest Special Forces teams, the U.S. Army’s 82
^nd
Airborne Paratroopers.
 

While many Special
Forces teams were well-known to the public, paratroopers were more obscure and
trained in conditions that many could not even fathom.
 
Put through every stressful environment and
every mission challenge conceivable, paratroopers were the result of numerous
secret military programs, all with the same goal: to create a truly and utterly
fearless fighting force.

One such program, and
the Army’s most controversial, was termed COHORT, short for Cohesive
Operational Readiness and Training.
 
First documented by James Pulley in 1988, the
COHORT program was designed to regain a fighting ability not seen since the
United States’ Civil War, where a soldier's ability to fight and resist was in
the realm of legend.
 
Nowhere in history
was that ability found to be stronger, and after studying it for over a
century, the Army finally knew why.
 
Resistance ultimately came down to a single underlying factor…the
strength of the
group,
and the COHORT program was America’s modern
equivalent.
 
Yet, while official records
showed mixed results in other brigades, the results in the 82
^nd
Airborne were very different.

Captain Daniel Clausen
stood at the back of the giant Boeing C17 transport plane, packed with exactly
half his company.
 
Men filled both
“sticks” of the fuselage, with their ninety-pound packs wedged between their
knees.
 
The second plane with the other
half of Clausen’s team followed directly behind the first, both racing just 800
feet above the ground to avoid radar.

Clausen’s COHORT
company was as tight as any in the Army.
 
No one had rotated in or out of the company since it formed, which meant
his men had spent nearly every waking minute together for years.

Clausen eyed the two
strangers at the front of his plane with disdain.
 
He didn’t know who they were or why they were
aboard, and he had no intention of finding out.
 
As far as he was concerned, they were on their own.

Near the front, Bazes
watched Rand slide back and forth as both aircraft flew along the nap of the
earth.
 
Thundering along at 180 mph, they
constantly dipped in and out of canyons like a giant roller coaster, sending
Rand back and forth against the cold metal wall.
 
He did look a little better than when they
left, but Bazes could still see Rand grimacing with every sudden jolt of the
plane.
 
This flight was much worse on
Rand than the supersonic Valkyries.
 
Their rides to South America on the Valkyries was a dream compared to
the C17.

Bazes turned to look at
the rest of the paratroopers.
 
They sat
quietly with their heads and helmets bobbing along with the movement of the
plane, patiently waiting.
 
The
paratrooper maxim was “anywhere in eighteen hours” but Clausen’s company had
been in the middle of high altitude maneuvers in the Chilean Alps.
 
This put them just over 400 miles, or two
hours, from Argentina and the identified target.

The White House had
managed to get a forensic team on the ground immediately after shooting Zahn’s
757 down, only to find far fewer remains than they expected.
 
But Benecke already had his team working around
the clock and found Zahn’s old aircraft before their ruse was complete.
 
Just thirty minutes before landing in Buenos
Aires, Benecke found the old ATR-42 airplane.
 
He watched from a satellite feed as Zahn’s team exited the plane and was
whisked away by several Argentinian military trucks.

Clausen’s paratrooper
company was immediately called upon, but they were instructed to sit tight
until Bazes and Rand arrived.
 
Fortunately, it gave the men more than enough time to restock their
supplies and ammo.

The giant plane dropped
again, causing Rand to lurch forward.
 
Bazes instinctively reached out just as Rand caught himself.
 
They were less than an hour from the drop,
and he was having serious doubts about Rand.

56

Zahn stared at
Christine and grinned.
 
“So, how do you
like the place?”
 
he asked looking around
the room.

Christine followed his
gaze but remained silent and defiant.

“Do you know what this
place is?
 
It’s a tad outdated as you can
see.”
 
He picked up a magazine from a
corner table.
 
It was seven years
old.
 
“This, my dear, is a genuine Nazi
bunker.”
 
He enjoyed watching her try to
suppress her surprise.
 
“You may not
know, after World War II ended, many high ranking Nazis managed to escape
Europe and relocate to Argentina where President Peron offered them
sanctuary.
 
Discretely, of course.
 
But you see, the Nazis, while demented, were
not stupid.
 
They knew many people would
never forget and would never stop looking for them, people like Simon
Weisenthal who found many of them.
 
So
the Nazis, never much for accountability, built this bunker as a place to hide
if and when that time came.”

Zahn dropped the
magazine back onto the table.
 
“It was
built to house dozens of people for years without any communication to or from
the outside world.
 
Alas, I had to make
some modifications.
 
And since all of
those good Nazis are now dead, I found it an ideal place to watch my
finale
.”

Zahn watched Christine
with a tilt of his head.
 
“Still not
talking?”
 
He shrugged and walked toward
her, suddenly grabbing the back of her chair and picking her up with it.
 
Christine slumped forward, almost falling out
of the chair, and was caught only by the ropes that bound her.
 
She hung forward as Zahn demonstrated his
incredible strength and carried her across the room with one hand.

When he reached the far
side, he opened the large, metal door and carried her into a hallway, then
turned right into another brightly lit and much larger room.
 
With a jarring impact, he dropped Christine
back onto the chair and its four legs, causing her to rock momentarily from
side to side.
 
She gritted her teeth hard
but made no sound.

In front of her was a
wall of monitors with several desks before them.
 
On each of the desks were large computers and
even larger screens showing a myriad of video camera angles around both the
complex and what appeared to be the darkened jungle outside.

However, it was the
wall of monitors where Christine could not help but look.
 
On each of the four-dozen monitors were live
news videos from all around the world, covering scenes which Christine could
only describe as chaotic.
 
Huge crowds of
people from Spain to the United States to South Africa, all rioting and
destroying cars and buildings.
 
Reporters
cowered behind large objects and continued to film from a distance.
 
One monitor caught Christine’s attention as a
giant department store window was smashed into hundreds of pieces and people
surged inside, grabbing any merchandise within reach.

She was shocked.
 
She shook her head in disbelief as she watched
the carnage on a global scale.
 
After
several moments, she noticed a different set of channels broadcasting from the
streets somewhere in China.
 
The people
looked different, but the panic in the crowds was the same.

“Behold,” Zahn said,
spreading his arms out wide.
 
“My
vengeance!”

Christine blinked
hard.
 
“What, what did you do?”
 
Her eyes caught sight of giant pictures of
the Pope held high over the crowds, and she gasped.
 
“The Pope!
 
What happened?”
 
No sooner had she
finished the sentence than she stared at Zahn in horror.
 
“You did this?
 
You…you
killed
the Pope?!”

Zahn turned and looked
at the same monitor.
 
“I sent him back to
god!
 
If I could have put a bow on him, I
would have.”
 
He quickly stepped forward
and pointed at another monitor.
 
“And
there is the nexus of it all, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.”

“What?”

Zahn turned back to
Christine.
 
His eerie expression had
returned.
 
“It’s where it all began, so
very long ago.
 
It was only fitting that
the end of the world begin where this all started, where young Ryan Kelly was
trampled to death, and where I was denied my destiny.
 
Irony at its best.”

“Ryan Kelly?”

“He was my mission,”
Zahn said almost in a whisper.
 
“The
young boy who I was supposed to protect.
 
A boy with a gift of intellect the world had not seen in a hundred
years.
 
Killed right before my eyes.
 
At the very steps of where Saint Patrick’s
was being built.”

Christine couldn’t
believe her ears.
 
She was in total
shock.
 
“So you killed the Pope?”

“Oh, you’ve missed so
much,” smirked Zahn.
 
“The Pope was
merely a favor.
 
A gift to those who have
given so much to help make this happen.
 
I owed them that much.
 
And while
they are fierce, my Middle Eastern friends are not exactly the sharpest tools
in the shed.
 
They haven’t given much
thought to what comes next.
 
To them, the
Pope was their mission, the end goal.
 
To
me, he was merely a stepping stone.”
 
He
paused.
 
“I was the wrong person to
abandon, wouldn’t you say?”

Christine was beginning
to shake.
 
“What are you going to do?”

Zahn took a slow, deep
breath.
 
Oh, how he was enjoying
this.
 
He had waited so long.
 
It was all decades in the making.
 
Now, all of the anticipation, all of the
anxiety, the frustration, the excitement, it was all bubbling out…and it was
intoxicating.

“Observe China,” he
said, pointing back to the Chinese news feeds.
 
“Surely, you don’t think they’re rioting because of the Pope.
 
They’re not Christian; well, at least most of
them aren’t.
 
No, China is under
attack.
 
After years of Chinese hackers
attacking other countries, they now get a taste of their own medicine.”
 
Zahn watched a huge crowd of people screaming
and throwing rocks and bottles in downtown Beijing.
 
“I’ve always found it fascinating that with
so many different human emotions available to them, you people will inevitably
act the same way under various types of extreme stress.
 
You panic.
 
Which, I can see, is precisely what
you
are starting to do.”

Christine closed her
eyes and tried to control her shaking.
 
She could feel the fear and hopelessness edging inward.
 
There had to be something she could do.
 
There was always something.

Zahn could barely
contain his gloating as he continued watching the carnage on the screen.
 
Oddly, he had no particular ill will toward
the Chinese as a people; in fact, in some ways he admired them.
 
But, unfortunately, they were the country
that served his purpose best.
 
“The
Chinese,” Zahn continued, “have been in such a hurry to catch up with the
modern world that they’ve progressed too fast.
 
Too fast to establish sufficient protocols and manual safeguards to
protect themselves against the very technology that will destroy them.”

Zahn knew, due to their
explosive growth over the last few decades, China’s nuclear arsenal and their
Command and Control systems were more modern than those of the other super
powers.
 
This meant, in China, technology
was more relied upon to maintain and control certain safeguards with their
nuclear missiles.
 
It was, therefore,
more vulnerable to Stux2, which had already found and circumvented safeguards
for 22 nuclear warheads.

“In just a matter of
hours, the most insidious computer attack known to man will overcome and change
the programming behind China’s nuclear system and make it fully
reactionary.
 
Our virus will assume
control of their early detection and warning system and convince it that a
full-scale nuclear attack is occurring.
 
And when China launches their missiles in an automatic response, the
United States and Russia, who have very clear protocols after verifying real
missiles are airborne, will retaliate in kind.
 
Then comes Germany, France, Israel and India.
 
And in case you haven’t picked up on the
irony, most of the world’s nuclear warheads are both located and targeted
within the Earth’s northern hemisphere, which is why we’re in the southern
hemisphere.
 
And no,” he smirked, “I
don’t expect to survive, but I do intend to live long enough to enjoy watching
the end of it all.
 
Unlike those in the
North, down here we won’t simply go
poof!”

Christine’s mouth hung
open.
 
She was speechless.
 
It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t be true.
 
No one could do that.
 
No one
would
do that.
 
But the longer she stared at him, the more
she began to believe it.
  
“My god,” she
said, “you are completely insane.”

“Insane?” Zahn
scoffed.
 
“Mengele was insane.
 
I’m unforgiving.
 
God left me here.
 
I never got to go home.
 
So now, as my revenge, I’m going to send
billions
home.”