Ghost of the Gods - 02 (4 page)

At the sounds of boots crunching in snow, she turned to see Carl Green trudging his way from the cabin where he and his new bride lived. Carl stepped up onto her porch and tromped the snow from his boots. A mug of coffee was in his hands and an M16 was slung over his back. Carl had been her boss at the BVMC lab before the old world had ended.

“Expecting visitors?” asked Carl with a hint of nervousness.

“I don’t know,” said Kathy. “I thought, maybe Mark… My phone’s out. Is yours working?”

Carl checked his phone, then shook his head. Now Kathy was scared. A third black shape jounced down the same incline in the road, then a fourth and a fifth. Her world became surreal. Whatever was coming no longer sounded like Humvees, but more like powerful truck engines or maybe construction equipment. Kathy looked back at her door and thought about going inside and locking it. A vehicle reached the entrance to the ranch. Its roofline was the first thing she clearly saw, then a squat rectangular body with a wedge shaped snout that looked like it belonged on an amphibious craft. It was a Stryker armored fighting vehicle with four huge tires on each side and an evil looking Gatling machine gun mounted in an electric roof turret. The camouflage paint was a dark mixture of black and smoky grays.

“Shit,” said Carl as he dumped the remainder of his coffee into the snow and unslung his rifle.

“You don’t know,” said Kathy.

“What, are you crazy?” he snapped. “They’re here because of Mark and Sarah. We knew this would happen one day. Word they live here had to leak out sooner or later.”

The lead armored vehicle came to a stop. Its engine idled like a purring monster. No hatch opened. No greetings were offered. As the other vehicles arrived, they formed an offensive formation with a combined firing position over the entire settlement. This was not a standoff. The settlement was heavily armed, but their odds were poor against this kind of armored force and the airpower they could call in for support. Kathy felt like her world had been quietly slumbering and a bad dream was about to begin. The vehicles had Peacekeeper insignia. The Peacekeepers were a despised branch of military law enforcement that patrolled the Outlands. The name
Peacekeeper
was Orwellian. The only peace they kept was that of the grave. If any kind of resistance was encountered, Peacekeeper rules of engagement were to respond with overwhelming firepower. Entire towns had been erased with the aftermath broadcast on government run television as victories of civilization.

Kathy knew she had to quickly take charge of this situation before it veered fatally out of control. She took in her surroundings. Almost everyone was standing outside their homes or places of work. Many of the men and women were armed. They had riot guns, M16s, and other military hardware. For now their weapons were pointed down. Kathy thought about her lookouts stationed in the surrounding high ground of the canyon walls. They had to be aiming their shoulder fired missiles at the Peacekeepers right now, including a prized
Javelin antitank missile
. With luck they could take out one of the Strykers, but what would happen next? In addition to the remaining wolf pack of Strykers, Kathy knew Apache helicopters or even worse would be unleashed. A-10 Warthog ground attack jets might come screaming out of the sky to murder them all. She was subconsciously praying in a repeated whisper to her friends and neighbors,
“Hold back, don’t fire….”

“What?” said Carl.

“Nothing,” she said. “I have to do this!” She started walking toward the lead vehicle. “Everyone, put down your weapons,” she called out. “We can’t fight them. It would be suicide.”

She repeated herself louder and with more authority in her voice. Looking around, she saw some of the people doing as she ordered, then more. As she kept walking, behind her she heard the sounds of weapons being laid on the ground. A rear hatch on the lead vehicle lowered like a drawbridge. Six heavily armed soldiers came out, followed by a pair of corporate mercenaries who had officers’ rank. In this new upside down world, the corporate mercenaries were the officers. All the Peacekeepers wore their standard full body armor and helmets, which many believed made them impervious to most weapons. Hatches dropped on some of the other vehicles with more heavily armored troops emerging. The two officers from the lead vehicle strode toward her as the storm troopers fanned out, confiscating weapons and body searching people for anything concealed. The ranking officer, a major with a badly pockmarked face, took her picture with his tablet. He stared at the tablet, not acknowledging her presence. She knew he was checking her against a database.

“Kathy Morrison. What a pleasure to meet Mark Freedman’s wife,” said the pock faced man. “I am Major Kohl and this is my second in command, Captain Hillman.”

“A pleasure,” said Kathy. “Just for the record, Mark and I are not married.”

“A legal technicality, I’m sure.”

“What do you want?”

“I’d have thought that was obvious. Are you playing games with me?” Kohl turned toward Hillman. “It’s time to clarify ourselves. Captain, why don’t you make it clear what we want.”

Hillman spoke softly into a boom mic suspended in front of his lips. Distant weapons echoed in rapid fire. Kathy defensively dropped to her knees while glancing around in shock. Everyone she could see was doing the same, except the Peacekeepers. No one appeared injured. She stood and faced off against Kohl. The man had a smirk on his face.

“There are armed surveillance drones circling far above us right now, watching everything,” said Kohl. “We have authority to engage with lethal force anyone pointing weapons at a Peacekeeper. Your perimeter security on the canyon walls have been neutralized by our drones.” Kohl sounded like a judge reading a verdict he particularly enjoyed. “Why the surprised look?” he asked. “Did you honestly think we don’t have a strategy and just stumble around looking for trouble?”

“You’re fucking monsters!” shouted Kathy.

“Thank you. Coming from a terrorist’s wife, that’s a compliment I accept. Now, I am going to ask only once. Where are the terrorists Mark Freedmen and Sarah Mayfair?”

From behind her a strong pair of hands clamped over her wrists and pulled them back brutally. She felt plastic handcuffs being applied. As they were cinched up, the bands cut into her skin. She tried to yank free and ended up facedown in the snow with a sharp pain in the back of her skull. The bastard had hit her with something hard. With her wrists cuffed, she was unable to get up and barely able to turn on her side in the snow. Rough hands grabbed her. As she was hauled away, she saw her own blood smeared into the snow where she’d fallen.

Kathy felt exhausted. She and a select few of the others has been strip searched as a group and then separated into different rooms. Still naked, her arms and legs were secured to a chair by plastic cuffs. She knew she’d been stripped to humiliate her. She knew the reasons for everything they did, but knowing provided no advantage. Their tactics were working. Her head ached from what she suspected was a mild concussion. The outside windows were open and the room was freezing. She could not stop her teeth from chattering. She felt humiliated and wretched. So far, in escalating severity, she had been questioned, threatened, and then beaten. She knew the sadistic blows had not left any lasting damage—so far. A doctor’s black bag had been set on a nearby table. She imagined all kinds of surgeon’s tools and drugs inside that bag. A drawn out animal cry of pain came from one of the adjoining rooms.

Moments later the door opened, and Kohl walked in, followed by a woman who was dressed like a medic. A cruel looking man carrying a towel with bloodstains on it came in behind them. Once again Kohl’s eyes slowly examined her nakedness. She wanted to look away but refused to give him that small victory. She was breathing rapidly. The door was closed and locked. She kept glancing at the bloody towel and wondering whose blood was on it.

“Why are you making us hurt you?” asked Kohl. “Just tell me where Mark and Sarah have gone. Let’s end this before permanent damage is done.”

The cruel looking man removed a long dissecting knife from the black bag. Something broke deep inside Kathy. She was terrified in a primitive, uncontrollable way. Yanking at her restraints and crying, she felt the blood draining from her head. The room was spinning.

The next thing Kathy knew, her face and hair were dripping with cold water. Someone had drenched her. She realized she must have fainted. A large gauge IV line was tapped into her arm and connected to a bag of saline. The windows were still open. She did not feel as cold as she should have. Her thinking was sluggish. The doctor inside her made a diagnosis of hypothermia.

The cruel looking man was holding the long dissecting knife and staring at her chest. There was a terrible thirst in his stare. The woman medic had turned her back. Kohl was gazing at her with pitiless black eyes. He leaned in close to whisper into her ear.

“We will keep at this, you know.”

His breath was stale, and she felt the warm moisture of his words on her face.

“We will not stop. We will keep you alive with fluids while we cut deep into you again and again. At some point you will tell us what we want to know. Why sufferer permanent damage? You’re a doctor. You know what losing too much blood can do to the organs. Just tell us where Mark and Sarah are hiding.”

Kathy felt something cold against her skin and knew it was the knife. Kohl turned away.

“Wait!” sobbed Kathy. “I’ll tell you everything! Everything!”

She knew she was broken. God help her. She’d imagined she was tougher than this. Her entire body was on fire. She was terrified of feeling the sting of that knife and at the brink of fainting again.

“Go on,” said Kohl.

He sat down in a chair facing her, then motioned to the medic and her day blanket was draped around her. The smell of the soft wool made her cry. The IV line was removed. The medic clipped the plastic cuffs from her body and handed her clothing to cover herself. The windows were closed. Kathy felt wrenched and defeated. She was babbling everything she knew. It came out of her in torrents as if she were vomiting out inner secrets along with her soul. She was afraid to stop talking out of fear of what might happen after she was of no use.

Kathy Morrison – Pueblo Canyon, Arizona – January 23, 0002 A.P.

It was morning outside. Kathy was locked in her bedroom. She knew a guard was stationed just outside her door. From the windows, she’d seen guards patrolling the grounds. Even though she was exhausted, she’d been unable to sleep more than an hour or two at a stretch. She knew she was headed for life in a prison work camp run by some corporation. She was about to become low cost labor for the machine. Again and again in her mind she’d gone over the secrets she’d given up last night. None of it would be much use in hunting Mark down. She heard a helicopter approaching. The sound grew deafening. The windows were blanketed with a whiteout of snow as if a blizzard was raging outside.

A few minutes later her door opened and in walked a face she recognized, accompanied by Kohl and Hillman. The face looked more haggard than she remembered it. General McKafferty glanced at Kohl and then stared directly at her. His half-moon shaped face was an ugly visage with a mouth that formed a kind of crack that was pretending to be a smile.

“You deserved the treatment you received,” said McKafferty. “We will find the traitors and that will be the end of it. Your information was helpful and for that your government thanks you. I honestly think you believe you did the right thing by helping terrorists. You really don’t understand what they’ve become or what they’ve done. Do you?”

“I know what you’ve become,” said Kathy.

“Understand this,” growled McKafferty. “I will do anything to keep these terrorists from launching another nanotech plague.”

“Are you’re insane!” shouted Kathy. “You know the truth!”

“Kohl, Hillman, leave us,” ordered McKafferty.

The room emptied and the door was closed.

“You can make all the noise you want about that one state secret you think you know. No one will believe a prisoner. But I want to be very clear, Morrison. If you have left anything out of your confession, held even one detail back, then I will personally see to it that you stand before a military tribunal with the traitors. I will see you executed. Do you understand me?”

Kathy nodded while looking away from the man.

“Fine, get dressed in something warm. There’s no need to pack. You’re leaving. Oh, by the way, your journal was very interesting reading. I especially enjoyed the part where you described me as a professional thug and what was it? Ah… that’s right. The ugliest bastard you’d ever seen.”

McKafferty was grinning with a hideous display of self-satisfaction. Kathy’s mind raced to her computer with its encrypted drive. That journal was lost but not an older backup copy. That one had to be safe. McKafferty and his jackals couldn’t have found it too. The backup was stored on an encrypted waterproof thumb drive called an IronKey. The small metal fob was hidden in a crevice at the base of a red stone formation known as Indian Foot. Mark knew the spot and what she would want done. She was about to become one of the disappeared
.
Her journal was now her life’s purpose. Mark would retrieve it and send it out over the Internet for everyone to read: dangerous truths from a missing and possibly dead unsung hero.

The late afternoon’s stormy sky cast its pall over the settlement. Kathy was being frog marched toward a black unmarked helicopter. On either side of her, a firm, large hand gripped each arm. She could see faces in windows while others were outside watching as she passed. The faces were unreadable. She could tell deep feelings were being masked out of fear. Only their eyes were saying good-bye.

The helicopter door opened as she approached. She was bodily lifted up and in by her escorts. More hands seized hold of her inside the cockpit. She was maneuvered into a seat next to a window. A safety harness was pulled too tight. She looked at the seats facing her and was surprised to recognize McKafferty.

As the chopper lifted into the air, feeling lost, Kathy looked out across Pueblo Canyon. She knew she would never return again. This was her first step toward becoming one of the
disappeared. As the helo banked, she saw a smoke trail lance down from a canyon wall toward her. The helo jinked hard. Her world shook violently. A second missile smashed one of the Strykers, swallowing it in an orange fireball. That had to be the work of their only Javelin. Through the window she saw a firefight had erupted. Her fingers tightened into fists. The Peacemaker machine was rolling into motion, creating their hideous brand of peace. With mechanical precision they began grinding Pueblo Canyon underfoot. In a maelstrom of Gatling machine gun fire and explosions she saw people running and falling as they were torn apart. She was screaming at the Peacekeepers to stop while hitting the window with her fists, her eyes blurred with tears of rage.