“Have you lost your mind?” Baker countered.
“No sir,” Javiera sneered. “I do know that I’m going to go on the six o’clock news tonight and tell them that you – by name – are concealing a major outbreak of Anthrax in China. I’ll let the political vultures do the rest, Mr. Baker.”
“Blabbing about an on-going federal investigation carries stiff penalties, Ms. Castello,” he fought back.
“I’ll be practicing law long before… you son of a bitch,” she suddenly snapped. “You are embarrassed because Havenstone swam beneath your radar until now,” she put some pieces together.
“You seem to think that is a reason to cut them some slack, Ms. Castello,” Baker reposted.
“Yes, I do,” Javiera defended her position. “They reached out to us. We had no case – 15 dead bodies in Chicago and no motive for the crime. We had professional mercenaries on US soil killing US citizens. Mr. Nyilas and Ms. Love gave us multiple leads and they didn’t have to.”
“They were attacked. Of course they came crawling to us,” Baker said. Javiera shook her head.
“Sir, as I put in my report, they are a vengeance-based society. They were more than happy to hunt down those gunmen: BY-THEM-SELVES,” the federal prosecutor drilled her point home. “You can’t accept that there is a war on the horizon and we need each other as allies.
As insane as their background sounds, the current global situation is bearing out their warnings. You are not only showing them egregious disrespect, Mr. Baker, you are insulting everyone on the team that has interacted with Havenstone. This is something you are going to have to answer for,” she finished.
“Ummm,” Captain Moe spoke up. “Mr. Nyilas, do you have any technical data on this Anthrax outbreak?” I looked at him yet held silent.
“He can’t answer you,” Virginia spoke for me. “But I can tell you that thirty-six hours ago, that man charged eleven well-trained Special Forces operators with only one young woman at his side.
Then, after those enemies were killed, he and another combatant charged the end of the attacking column and destroyed the end three vehicles (the two Hummer-types and the last truck), trapping al the rest. I don’t think any of you get it. These people are born warriors – every last one of them. They’ve only surrendered now because they have already planned out their escape.
That’s how they think. The security at their outdoor summer camp rivaled that of the NSA. There, kids as young as seven are trained in hand-to-hand combat, archery and knife-fighting. I saw a fifteen year old girl kill a man at thirty yards with a bow by moonlight. They burned over a hundred men alive in pre-prepared traps… and in the middle of all that, I’ve never felt safer in all my life.
And that’s because of how these people think. They’re not here for the U. S.!” She was turning red in the face as she yelled at Baker. “I was safe because Cael vouched for me. Cael vouched for me because Javiera told him I could be trusted. Their word is their bond. Their code of conduct is that basic. You’ve just broken Javiera’s word and the consequences of the betrayal will be quite severe, I have no doubt.”
“Consequences?” Baker mocked.
“Oh yeah, ya Douche,” Delilah counter-mocked. “Give ’em time. They are going to kill everyone on your – eh, Katrina and Cael, please note we Brits are not part of this fiasco.” Katrina and I nodded. “Everyone on your taskforce and your families too. You are all dead. Virginia?”
“Pretty much,” Virginia agreed.
“Where is Ms. Pile?” Chaz looked around. “Bloody Hell.” Pamela was nowhere in sight.
“Don’t sweat it,” I looked to the two martial Brits. “She likes you both.”
While this had been going on, Riki had been busy with her own phone games. “Mr. Baker,” she finally spoke up. “Secretary of State Kerry would like to talk to you.” Blink. Baker took the phone rather reluctantly. That Cabinet member wanted the information he was supposed to be getting immediately. Once Jonas blithely informed Mr. Kerry that he had placed those individuals under arrest, the conversation took a turn for the worse – for Jonas.
Three quarters through his ass-reaming, his own phone rang.
“Pardon me, Mr. Secretary,” Baker looked at his own device and paled even more. That was his boss’s boss’s boss – the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. That guy seemed pretty livid as well.
What none of us knew then was that there had been a massive shootout in downtown London a little more than an hour before our meeting began. It was a sanguinary catastrophe of startling proportions, in and around “All Hallows by the Tower” – one of the oldest churches in England. At the moment, the US intelligence apparatus was dealing with some really bad mojo.
Six factions had shot it out in one of the most famous sites in London in the late afternoon. Among the dead were a senior British Member of Parliament (MP) from the Labour Party and one of Russia’s biggest arms dealers. The Deputy Director of Intelligence for the DGSE (the French external intelligence service) was still in surgery, fighting for his life.
He wasn’t the only one. There were also nineteen dead and seventeen wounded at the church. The London Metropolitan Police were running around, highly incensed. One of their female constables was dead at the scene. Five more were in serious condition.
For reasons still unknown, former Russian Spetsnaz, active duty French paratroopers, former British Special Forces operatives, personnel of a Dutch security firm, and a large group of professional killers masquerading as Ukrainian immigrant laborers opened fire on one another in the abbey of All Hallows by the Tower.
The Metropolitan Police (the sixth faction), responding to the automatic gunfire and explosions, became involved in the firefight. The Ukrainians fled the scene and the police gave chase. Three more civilians were killed and forty-two wounded during the pursuit and the resulting car crashes as well as the THREE firings of an RPG at police cruisers, which caused two more constable deaths and left seven more officers wounded.
How had that managed to salvage my diplomatic mission? Before passing on, a Ukrainian uttered one small sentence: ‘Did we kill the Illuminati Factor?’ Through NSA intercepts and cross-Atlantic intelligence exchanges, the US intelligence network revved up into high gear; they punched in the key words – and all fingers pointed to the taskforce. As Homeland Security analysts tossed it upstairs, the State department began to fidget nervously.
What were they nervous about? A crucial individual at Foggy Bottom just happened to know where Riki was, who she was meeting with (the sources that had given the US current information on the Illuminati) and they wanted any information she could pry out of us concerning the goings-on in London. Instead, Riki had just called them first and sent up warning flags about bio-terrorism in China…
Oh, and she informed her boss that the Taskforce head had just shut down that information conduit on the Chinese AND the Illuminati by arresting the individuals that this independent group had sent to discuss security issues with the United States government.
– Charges: Terrorist threats.
-Complications: The FBI and Federal Prosecutor working the case were siding with the assets – codename: Penthasilea.
The authorities were getting two conflicting accounts of our current circumstance. Baker swore he would have us singing in half an hour. Riki Martin claimed Baker had his head up his ass… and there were three British Intelligence operatives watching all of this go down.
All of this DC bullshit was making our NYPD cops antsy. Baker came up with an action plan.
“The first one of you to talk gets blanket immunity,” he addressed me and my fellow captives. No one said anything. Delilah responded by laughing richly and loud.
“You wanker,” Delilah derided the Fed. “Clean out your damn ears. The Amazons ain’t telling you shit. I thought that would be obvious to you by now.”
“Ms. Castello, do something,” Baker turned on the orchestrator of this meeting.
“I am,” she gave him an evil grin. “I’m thinking of what descriptives I’m going to use when I tender my resignation, you presumptuous buffoon.”
Baker turned back to us, alternating between threats and promised leniency, to no avail. I was the one to crack, not because of him though. Time meant lives right now – innocent lives.
“May I talk to the Captain in private?” I requested.
“No,” Baker barked.
“Fine, can I go to the bathroom?” I asked. Another ‘no’. “Can I apply for asylum?” I inquired of Delilah’s ‘other’ boss. He seemed to be mulling that over, not that he could pull that off this very moment.
“Mr. Baker,” the Captain stepped up. “I really think I should talk to this man.”
“If he has something to say, he can tell both of us,” Dirt-bag Baker grumbled.
“Your information could be saving lives, couldn’t it?” the Captain looked at me. I looked away which was its own kind of confirmation. “You have got to tell me if lives are at stake,” he appealed to my better nature. Good try.
“Agent Maddox made our position perfectly clear,” Katrina answer for me. “Cael cannot answer you because your actions, or lack of action, has revealed your word to be worthless and your motives suspect. He has no guarantee that giving you any knowledge he may possess will be used to save any lives. Personally, I was opposed to this meeting, but Cael thought you deserved a chance.
You can thank Mr. Baker for proving me right and Cael wrong.” Katrina sternly stated.
“Mr. Nyilas,” the Captain made one more end run around Katrina.
“He won’t answer you,” Katrina said after allowing me a chance to not answer. “He is the only one here with Havenstone that feels one iota of guilt for any part of this disaster.
I attribute that to him being a kind-hearted and forgiving individual. He is alone in feeling that way, believe me,” she added.
“How bad is this information?” Virginia’s eyes welled up.
“I wish I had never come out of that coma,” I replied.
If I hadn’t, maybe Temujin would have been killed by the Seven Pillars and this wouldn’t be happening… except the Earth & Sky had this in place way before Temujin was on the scene. This calamity was inevitable.
“The van for their transport has arrived,” Skylar informed Baker.