Foreign Enemies and Traitors (95 page)

                Ira Gersham turned around with the garment bag over his left arm.  A Glock pistol was in his right hand, with a suppressor attached to its barrel.  After letting Bullard see it, he jammed its muzzle hard into Sidney Krantz’s back, and then he said, “Jimmy couldn’t make it.  Why don’t we go inside?”

                Boone Vikersun and Phil Carson, dressed in jeans and windbreakers, opened the rear doors of the Suburban from the inside.  They had helped to subdue the driver sent to pick up Krantz, and thereafter they had remained hidden in the cargo area behind the third seat.  They dashed toward the front door of the house before Bullard had gotten over his initial surprise.  In seconds, they were all inside and the door was closed behind them.  Other members of the Special Forces working group were already concealed around Bullard’s property, to prevent any of his men from potentially coming to his assistance.

                Carson said, “Hey, Bob, guess what?  You hit the wrong house this morning.  I don’t know who you killed, but it wasn’t us.”

                “And here we are,” said Boone, “just in time to meet your friend Sidney.”  All three intruders were carrying pistols with sound suppressors.

                Bullard was momentarily speechless, and then all he could ask was a bewildered “How?” as he was pushed and prodded across the living room with Sidney Krantz. 

                Boone said, “You actually thought that you could just set up shop on Fort Campbell, and we wouldn’t know every move you were making?  Or that we wouldn’t care?  You actually thought that you would be
safe
because you were on an Army base?  Like we’re all just robots who only follow orders and don’t notice what we’re not supposed to notice?  Bob Bullard, if you thought that, you are one stupid son of a bitch!  Oh, and by that way, that pitiful mall-ninja you sent to pick up Sidney is still alive.” 

                “Snappy dresser, though,” said Ira Gersham.  “Just my size, and I absolutely love all the pockets.”

                They reached the basement door, which opened into the hall on the way to the kitchen.  Colonel Spencer had attended social functions in several of the generals’ homes, and had briefed the team on their layout.  Boone opened the door and said, “Now, let’s all go downstairs and get properly acquainted.”

                “Reacquainted, in my case,” said Carson.  “Bob and I go way back.  We’ve never met face to face, but we have some history together.  Maybe we can talk over old times and catch up, eh, Bob?”

                ****

Half of the basement was finished like a clubroom,
with a pool table, a wet bar, a leather sofa and a big-screen television.  The walls were wood paneled and the floor was carpeted.  The other half was left rough, with block walls, a cement floor and exposed pipes and ducts running along the bottom of the ceiling beams.  An interior wall with a door in the middle separated the two main basement rooms.  The unfinished side was the laundry and storage area for the house, and it was very cold. 

                Five minutes after the home invasion, Bob Bullard and Sidney Krantz were dressed only in their underwear shorts, without undershirts or even socks.  Bullard wore red boxers, while Krantz wore black briefs that were mostly covered by a roll of pale belly flesh.  A single hanging light bulb illuminated the room, and revealed that their pasty skin was covered by goose bumps from the chill air.  Their hands were manacled over a steel water pipe that ran along a ceiling beam.  They stood a few feet apart from one another, with their bare feet elevated on rough cinderblocks.  There was one block beneath each man, so that their wrists would reach the pipe with their arms stretched straight up.  Their ankles were bound together with green parachute cord, to prevent them from even attempting a kick.

                Coming down the steps, Bullard had tried to play the tough guy for about ten seconds, but that show of bravado ended with a casual punch from Boone Vikersun’s oversized fist.  Carson thought that up close, Bob Bullard almost looked like Robert De Niro.  Sidney Krantz had offered no resistance at all, from the moment that he had seen the armed men at the front door.  The home invaders had pushed their two captives down the steps to the basement, the logical place to conduct a rapid and possibly noisy interrogation.  Carson found the overhead pipes and the cinderblocks.  Ira Gersham had brought the steel police handcuffs.  Both men stripped off their clothing when they were ordered to.  Bullard was silent but glaring daggers, Krantz was blubbering with fear. 

                There was an old-fashioned square laundry sink in the corner of the basement past the washing machine.  Boone filled a galvanized bucket with cold water from the tap.  It was the temperature of the ground outside the house, just above freezing.  He walked over to Bullard, swung the bucket back and doused him from the head down, leaving him sputtering and then hyperventilating.  Then he repeated the process with Krantz, leaving both men drenched in the already frigid air.  Both prisoners had to stand straight up on their cement block perches, with their arms stretched upward, to prevent the steel cuffs from digging into their wrists.  It was not a posture designed to maximize their comfort or instill a feeling of safety and well-being.

                Once their prisoners were properly secured and soaked with cold water, the three home invaders left the rough side of the cellar, closing the door behind them.  They spread their prisoners’ clothing on the pool table and searched through it.  Carson emptied the black leather grip bag that Krantz had brought from Washington.  Inside a casserole-sized Tupperware container was a large Ziploc bag, and inside that was a wide-mouthed plastic jar, similar to the ones that held peanut butter or mayonnaise.  Inside that jar was a layer of bubble wrap and another Ziploc, and inside that protective padding was a small glass vial with a green rubber top. 

                This vial was only about two inches high.  Inside it was a resiny brownish-black liquid, with the viscosity of blood.  A paper label on this vial was marked “YP-12D.”  These letters were hand printed with a black marker.  Carson set this glass vial on the pool table, away from the other items.  Also in the Tupperware was another plastic bag, containing about twenty disposable syringes, and a small cardboard box containing disposable blue rubber gloves.  He placed the bag of syringes and the gloves alongside the vial.

                Carson said, “I think I know why Krantz wanted Bullard to catch some rats.”

                “YP-12D,” said Gersham, leaning over the vial and studying it closely without touching it.  “YP.  That’s got to be
Yersinia pestis
.”

                “Okay, you guys,” said Boone, “speak English.”

                Carson replied, “
Yersinia pestis
is the germ that causes the bubonic plague.  The Black Death.  That’s why Krantz wanted rats.  Rats carry the plague, and they spread it to humans.”

                “No shit?” said Boone.  “And I thought I already hated those jokers.  How long have they been chained to the pipe?  You think they’re softened up enough for round two?”

                “Let’s go see.”  Carson pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, took the vial and a syringe, and the three went back into the rough side of the basement.  Bullard and Krantz were as they had been left, but now they were shivering almost uncontrollably.  Bullard was in decent shape for a man in his fifties, with just some love handles, but the nearly obese Sidney Krantz was shaking like a bowl of white yogurt.

                Carson said, “Okay, boys, we’re going to play a new reality game.  It’s kind of like
Survivor
.  It’s called ‘Who Knows the Biggest Secret?’  The winner will live, and the loser will die.  Now, to start off, who wants to tell me about this bottle?  I’m assuming that the ‘YP’ stands for
Yersinia pestis
, the friendly little bug that causes the bubonic plague.”  He held up the glass vial for the prisoners to see.

                “I don’t know anything about that stuff,” Bullard blurted out, shaking his head while staring at the little jar.

                “What about you, Sidney?  This stuff was in your bag.  What do you know about YP-12D?”

                Krantz just shook his head and looked down.

                Boone said, “Sidney, do you want another bucket of ice water to refresh your memory?  It was in
your bag
.  And wasn’t that you on the phone yesterday, asking Bob here to collect a dozen rats?  Right after you asked him how many FEMA camps were in West Tennessee?  Yeah, that’s right, Bob—we’ve been tapping your phone.  Hey, don’t look so surprised; I mean, it’s
our
base
.  Come on now Sidney, remember the name of the game.  It’s called ‘Who Knows the Biggest Secret?’”

                Finally Krantz spoke, his teeth chattering, his body shaking both from cold and from fear.  “It’s not what you think.  It wouldn’t cause a major epidemic.  It was really just for psyops value.  After a few cases, people would panic and leave West Tennessee.  That’s what it was for, to make people leave.  And when the weather turned warm, it would disappear completely.”

                Carson said, “Psyops value, huh?  Well, for the people who got infected, I think it would be a little more than psychological, don’t you think?”

                Ira Gersham had gone back to the other basement room, and returned with a large blue textbook, already opened in his hands.  “There’s an old set of
Encyclopedia Britannica
over there.  It must stay with the house; I sure can’t see Bob Bullard bringing along a set of encyclopedias.  Am I right, Bob, it was already here?”  Bullard barely nodded yes.  “That’s what I thought.  Now, let’s see what it says about the bubonic plague.  Okay, here we are.  I’ll just hit the highlights.  It’s an infection of the lymphatic system, typically resulting from the bite of an infected flea.  The fleas are usually found on rodents such as rats, and they move onto humans when their rodent hosts die.  Well, that explains the rats that Sidney wanted. 

                “Let me skim ahead a little…oh, this is nasty stuff.  Listen to this:  ‘
As the disease progresses, the lymph nodes can hemorrhage and become necrotic.  The most well-known symptom of bubonic plague is swollen lymph glands, called buboes, which are commonly found around the armpits, the groin and the neck.  Other symptoms include red spots on the skin that eventually turn black, continuous vomiting of blood, aching limbs and indescribably terrible pain.  The pain is caused by the actual decomposition of the flesh and organs, even while the infected person is still alive.
’ 

                “Wow!” said Gersham.  “That sure doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, even for a ‘psychological operation.’  Hey, this is interesting.  Did you know that the Japanese actually used bubonic plague as a biological weapon in World War Two?  Yep, it says the Japs filled special dispersal bombs with millions of infected fleas, and dropped them on Chinese cities.  I guess Bob and Sidney were old school.  They were just going to use infected rats and turn them loose in the FEMA camps.”

                “No, no,” Bullard insisted, “I had nothing to do with it!”  He was standing on his tiptoes, trying to relieve the pressure on his wrists.  “I wasn’t going to get him any rats or do anything else like that.  I had
no
idea
about this plague stuff.  I never saw that stuff before, I never even
heard
of it!”

                Ira asked Boone and Carson, “Well, what do you guys think?  Do you believe him?”

                “I don’t know,” said Boone.  “And personally, I don’t care.  I’ve heard enough.”

                Carson said, “I’ve got an idea.  Why don’t we just inject both of them with some of this YP-12D?  If one little flea bite is enough to infect a person, I wonder what a couple of needle sticks will do?”

                “But isn’t that shit contagious?” asked Boone.

                Gersham set the open encyclopedia on top of the laundry dryer and read some more.  “If we inject them now, they won’t be infectious for a few days.  Even then, nothing will happen unless some fleas bite them and then the fleas bite somebody else.  That’s how it works, unless it turns into pneumonic plague.  That’s even worse.  That’s when the lungs are infected, and they can cough the plague germs onto other people.  But you know what?  There’s a good side too.  You can cure the bubonic plague real easy with regular antibiotics—if you catch it soon enough.”

                “Well then,” said Boone, “why don’t we give them both a little jab with that YP-12D?  Then they’ll be motivated to help us out.  They’ll want that medicine real bad when they start getting those black bumps.”

                “And if they still won’t help us,” said Ira, “we can just drive them way out into the country and leave them handcuffed to trees.  Then they can watch those nasty black buboes start popping out all over.  You should see the pictures in here.  Those buboes look like rotten plums coming right out of the skin.  Talk about zits from hell!”

                Boone said, “I kind of like the idea of them vomiting blood, as they decompose from the inside out.”

                “You can’t possibly think you can get away with this!” Bullard said in a raspy voice, summoning up his nerve.  “I’ll be missed by tomorrow morning, and then whole teams of my men will come looking for me.  You’d better think twice about this—you can’t get away!  And
he
reports to the president himself!  If he doesn’t call in, they’ll send the Secret Service and the FBI.”

                “Oh, save it, Bob,” said Carson.  “By tomorrow morning, you’ll be twenty miles out in the forest with your arms handcuffed around a tree, checking your skin for red and black spots.  That is, if you don’t win this game of ‘Who Knows the Biggest Secret?’  And so far, I’m not very impressed with what you know.”

                Bullard looked down, his legs clamped tightly together.  “I’ve got to use the bathroom.”