Medora Wars (3 page)

Rambert took out his cell phone. “Can’t believe my phone hasn’t rang in the last five minutes.” At that moment his phone rang. “Shit.”

*****

The helicopter ride over to the White House was brief and without conversation. Both Stark and Rambert’s minds were running within a fog of despair about the endless road of work that stretched out ahead of them. Looking out, Stark saw the small helipad in the middle of yellowing grass behind the White House as the helicopter lightly descended and touched down. The obtrusive whirring of the blades slowed into a quiet hum as Rambert, Stark, and several agents exited and walked across the lawn onto the back patio and into the building.

The hallways were busy with people darting in and out of doorways, and balancing coffee while talking on the phone. Rambert remembered back when he visited the White House as the Secretary of Health before the outbreak. All of the employees would at least stop for a moment out of respect whenever the President walked by. Now most people didn’t even notice when he came down the hall, and when they did, it was typically a small nod and smile as they carried on with their work.
The paranoia is everywhere
, he thought, remembering how his secretary Denise called in sick for a week, with only a cold.
Everyone thinks they’re going to be next
, he thought, now looking around for her.

“Denise?” Rambert found her straggling at the back of the group. “Do I have time to go to my office?”

“No, they’ve been waiting a while now, Mr. President, and are getting antsy,” Denise replied.

“Of course they are. Reg, I want you in the meeting, too.” Rambert looked at Stark.

“Are you sure they’re going to want me there?” Stark said impatiently, looking for a way to get out of going.

“Of course!” Rambert yelled, walking ahead of the group.

They walked upstairs and down a dimly lit hallway, until arriving at double wooden doors that led into a modest conference room with a row of windows looking out over a dirt mound where a garden once grew. Rambert entered the room as four men simultaneously got to their feet around the long conference table. “Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming, and I apologize to keep you waiting. We were just at the dedication of the statue of our very own Dr. Reginald Stark.” Rambert motioned to Stark who was bending over to set his briefcase down by a chair.

The Secretary of Defense, an older, wrinkled man with puffy eyelids offered Stark his hand. “Congratulations Dr. Stark, you absolutely deserve the honor.”

“Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I appreciate it.” He shook his hand and sat down, pulling his chair toward the table while the rest of the group remained standing. “Oh, I’m sorry.” He wheeled his chair out and stood back up, looking at everyone as they watched him.

“Okay, let’s get started.” Rambert took his seat as the rest of the group did the same. “I believe everyone here has met before, we have,” he motioned to the two men on his right, “CIA director Chuck Mayberry as well as our Secretary of Defense, William S. Houser, along with his assistant. Also joining us is our newly appointed Secretary of the Army, Donald Novak. Alongside me is my White House chief of staff, Dr. Stark.” There were nods all around. “Thank you again for coming.”

Rambert took out a tablet and pressed on the screen. “Okay, we have a few points to go over today, most of which we probably won’t get to, so I’d like to first start with what I consider to be the most important. I want an update and strategy plan for our sleeper cell. Chuck?” Rambert turned to the CIA director, Mayberry.

Charles Mayberry was leaning back in his chair with one leg crossed over his knee exposing pink socks with small pigeons running up the ankle. He looked up at Rambert. “Yes of course,” he said as he fumbled in his briefcase and produced several manila folders and a book, which he placed on the table.

“Galapagos, huh?” Rambert asked, pointing to the book.

“Yeah, I’ve always been a Vonnegut fan. I’ve been trying to get through all of his books lately.” Mayberry said as he picked a thick folder from his briefcase.

“Hmm, never read him,” Rambert said.

“Okay, gentlemen,” Mayberry said as he laid out several documents on the table. His face had the rough skin of a man in his mid-sixties and the skin around his eyes tightened into crow’s feet beneath his gray hair. “As you are aware, our man has recently moved positions from the small city of Nurek in Tajikistan over to a suburb of Seoul.”

“Right, and how exactly did he manage to pull that off?” Defense Secretary Houser asked.

“Well, he had plenty of help from our agency in regards to crossing borders. It was mostly by plane,” Mayberry replied.

“Is anyone else with him at this point?” Rambert asked.

“No one that he was working with in Nurek. None of them were able to come with him on the trip to Seoul.”

Houser interrupted. “Do you think any of his compatriots are a little suspicious of how easily he was able to fly from Tajikistan to South Korea?”

The rest of the room looked at Mayberry, in silence. “No, no nothing that he has been able to tell. Nothing that we have been aware of from our end.” Mayberry waited for Rambert’s response.

“Okay,” Rambert said with a drawn out, sarcastic tone.

Mayberry continued. “He has finally been in touch with the terrorist contacts there but only by phone.”

“Have they given him any sort of plan yet?” Rambert asked.

“No, he still has no idea why he’s even there.”

“Why are they being so careful? We’ve had him in their core group of leaders for two years now.” Rambert shook his head.

“I know, sir. But it’s been interesting, not what they’ve been telling him, but what they have not been telling him.” Mayberry finally broke from his plain expression and raised one eyebrow.

“Let’s not speak in riddles, Chuck.”

“Well, typically at this point, they start instructing a cell member to collect materials for bomb making, or make contacts in any particular country to acquire firearms.”

“So what’re they telling him?”

“Stay put and to stay indoors. Someone brings him his food and whatever else he needs, but he hasn’t left his one bedroom apartment for two weeks.”

“What’re they trying to do with him?”

“We don’t know, sir.”

Rambert let out a sigh. “What’re we doing here, guys?” Mayberry looked over at Houser, who returned a vacant stare. He looked back at Rambert with a worried look. “I mean, what’re we doing, just wasting this guy’s life away, while he rots in an apartment working with a terrorist organization that is too paranoid to ever use him or just flat out kill him?” Rambert said. “And what do we even really know about this agent? Is he even qualified to be doing all of this?”

“These things take time, Mr. President. And the more time we invest, the more they will trust him,” Mayberry replied in a rushed tone. “And, yes, I have full confidence in this particular agent’s ability. He is qualified in every special skill that we train in: interrogating, combat, weapons… the guy could fly a helicopter in between a field goal if he wanted.”

“How many people does he even talk to?”

“Only two. One of them is an Iranian named Atash Yekta, who is well known to the CIA. This guy has been involved with both the Jundallah in Iran and also the Al-Shabaab in England. Yekta has been followed for many years for his involvement in several embassy bombings in the eighties. He also may have had some periphery leadership in the nine-eleven attacks, which has never really been confirmed. The guy is real bad news, and if we could nab him and him alone, it would be well worth the two years of waiting, even if we don’t stop future attacks.”

“Has our agent ever met with him in person?”

“Yes, extensively in Nurek, but only by phone now that our agent is in Seoul.”

“Who is the other person he’s in contact with?”

“We have no idea. The man only goes by the name, ‘Sirr,’ with two ‘r’s.”

“Sirr?”

“Sirr, or sometimes
the
Sirr, depending on where the information comes from.”

“Who is the Sirr?”

“This Sirr person is most likely very high in the leadership, or is even
the
leadership, and is only using this name when he communicates with Atash Yekta, probably to remain anonymous. He or she is probably just using the name as a new alias but has likely been operating for many years. I suspect that this Sirr is already a well-known person to the CIA.”

“What exactly is the nature of this organization? It’s so confusing to me. Who are they tied to?”

“They’re not tied to anyone as far as we can tell. The organization obviously has radical Muslim connections, but there are other influences as well, particularly Buddhist. We have evidence of possible groups that have formed in South America, Europe, and Russia, too. The organization has never made any sort of manifesto and has largely remained quiet. They have nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or even Islam whatsoever from what we can tell, but they use similar techniques for recruiting. We have no idea where the central leadership is located and how far their influence even spans.”

“All right, anything else you don’t know?” Houser asked.

Mayberry was about to continue until he realized the slight from Houser. “Unfortunately, no.” He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, running his fingers through his silvery hair. “We’re not planning on giving our agent any active instructions at this time. It’s a waiting game.”

Dismissing Mayberry, Rambert turned to Houser. “Mr. Houser would you mind giving me a general report?”

“Absolutely, Mr. President. If I may lower the lights and turn on the overhead projector.” Houser clicked on a remote, which lowered a screen from the ceiling.

“Diane?” Rambert motioned to his secretary who turned down the lights. “Thank you.”

Houser tapped a key on a laptop in front of him that projected an aerial view of dense green forest with scattered gray structures spanning a large mountain range. “This is a shot of an unknown military installation in the jungles outside of a city called Guiria, in Venezuela, by the Gulf of Paria.”

“And what’s going on at this installation?”

“We don’t know, and that’s what is so damn interesting,” Houser said.

“Another upper level government leader who doesn’t know something,” Rambert responded.

“Sir, it is a massive structure spanning the length of a small mountain range by the town. The interesting thing is that it wasn’t there two years ago, and the Venezuelan government blatantly denies that it exists.”

“Venezuela?” Rambert stated. “Well, they’re not being very secretive about it if our satellites can just look right down on it.”

“No, sir, they are not, which is actually quite alarming that they would be so bold about lying right to our faces when we asked about it. We have no idea why they built it and what exactly they’re using it for, but it is a massive complex, larger than any other military base in all of South America. There’s also something else.” He clicked on his laptop, which switched the image on the projector to another aerial view of green coastline with long, boxy structures positioned in the ocean.

“What’re we looking at now?” Mayberry asked.

“The small happenings of a navy assembly.”

“Where is this?” Rambert’s eyes stared at the screen.

“Right off the coast of the same town, Guiria, where the military installation has popped up.”

“Why didn’t I know about this sooner?” Rambert asked.

“We only recently confirmed the veracity of these images. It is a small navy of one aircraft carrier, one destroyer, and two anti-aircraft cruisers. It’s a small part of the entire Venezuelan Navy.”

“Well, I suppose I will be talking with Venezuela right after this meeting is adjourned,” Rambert stated.

“Yes, I think that would be a good idea,” Houser said.

“I’m still trying to figure out how China got such a gigantic navy, and now we’re dealing with Venezuela playing war games?”

Houser hit a key on the keyboard. “There are also various other installations that look militarized in several regions of Venezuela. Here,” he used a laser pointer to highlight a small huddle of buildings within a dense green forest, “and here. It is completely unclear what these structures house or if they are manufacturing anything.”

“Okay.”

“I would also like to show you a disturbing trend that has been popping up in various countries, sir.” He flipped up another slide showing a satellite map of the Earth, with several markings in various locations. “Do you see the locations that I’ve marked on the map?”

“Yes… one in Venezuela , one in Iran, one in Germany, Jerusalem, one in England, France. South Korea. One in…”

“That’s Kyrgyzstan,” Houser answered. “There are eight in China as well. There might be one in North Korea, but we’re not sure.”

“What are they?”

“They are locations of ATLAS-Ms.”

“Like the ones we’ve built to defend against another outbreak?”

“Yes. Exactly like them.”

“Looks like those countries have been preparing for another outbreak just the same as us.”