The Extinction Code (6 page)

Wilms did not respond to Lopez’s smug smile, as though he occupied another universe and was merely looking in. Ethan eased his way forward and sat down.

‘Your friends in high places have forgotten about you, Victor,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing left to fight for.’

Victor sighed, his shoulders slumped and narrow. ‘I’m alive.’

Lopez snorted. ‘Call this alive, Vic’?’ she said as she gestured at the walls around them. ‘You got a hundred forty years, no parole, no appeals. You’re already deader than my great grandparents. How about you open up and give us the low–down on the creeps that left you here?’

Ethan winced. Victor may be defeated, but Lopez’s arrogance gave him leverage, the sense that he still had something that the Defense Intelligence Agency did not. He saw the thin little line of Wilm’s mouth crease into a weak smile.

‘I had a good run,’ he replied. ‘I’ve nothing to gain by turning snitch.’

‘They turned coat on you Vic’,’ Lopez insisted. ‘I didn’t think you were the type to huddle in a corner and weep yourself to sleep?’

Ethan felt a tingle of interest as he realized where Lopez had been going with her charade. She leaned on the table next to him and peered at Wilms.

‘Guess you’ve only got the cajones for this game when you’ve got money and muscle to hide behind, right Vic’? Cornered and on your own, you’re just a limp–dicked nobody afraid of the bad guys in the cells all around you. Tell me, what’s it like being somebody else’s bitc…?’

Wilms shot up out of his seat, the chains cracking as they were pulled taut.

‘I could still have you iced Lopez!’ he seethed, spittle flying from his dry, thin lips. ‘All I have to do is ask!’

‘That’s my point,’ Lopez smirked, ‘you’d have to
ask
. You’re a spent force, Wilms, you’ve got nothing left in the tanks. MJ–12 won’t come anywhere near Ethan or me because they’re too wrapped up in what happened to LeMay, got their fingers burned and now they’re worried about every cop who passes them in the street. And as for you…? You don’t get calls, you don’t get visitors, you don’t got nothin’!’

Wilms’ rage withered and he slumped back into his seat.

‘She’s got a point,’ Ethan said. ‘MJ–12 have gone into hibernation since LeMay’s murder, they can’t afford the exposure. You know it Victor, just like I do: you’re done and you’ll never get out of here alive. You can choose to die on your knees because MJ–12 abandoned you after years of dedicated service, or you can die on your feet and help us ensure that they too end up where you are.’ Wilms looked up at Ethan, his eyes rheumy with age now, robbed of the vitality and confidence that had once resided there. ‘You can bring them down, Victor, right here, right now. All you have to do is testify.’

Victor chuckled, and shook his head.

‘You think that they’ll take the word of the man who killed the director of the FBI?’ he challenged. ‘They took my money, my homes, my boats, left my family destitute.’

‘Doesn’t mean that they won’t use your word to do the same to the remaining members of MJ–12,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘Or are you okay with the idea of them still living in luxury, sending their kids to private schools, cruising in yachts around the Bahamas?’ Lopez leaned in again. ‘Think about your replacement, Victor. I guess he’s having a real good time right now.’

Victor glared up at her, his jaw set. ‘I’m no snitch.’

Lopez shrugged. ‘Then I guess you’re all set to go here. You just think about that replacement of yours next time you’re on your knees in front of one of the other cons in general population.’

Wilms did not respond for a moment, but then his features collapsed as he stared in horror at Ethan.

‘Afraid so,’ Ethan forestalled his protest. ‘You were put in maximum security here because of the nature of your crime, but you’re just not considered dangerous enough to warrant your place. You’ll be transferred to Colorado State Penitentiary tomorrow.’

Wilms’ already pallid skin turned even paler as Lopez smiled at him.

‘No more solitary confinement for you, Vic’. You’ll be walking among the murderers and rapists and armed thugs. They’re real violent men, Victor, but then I guess you know that already, right?’

Lopez whirled away and headed for the door. Ethan took his cue and stood to follow her. He’d reached the door and was almost walking out when Wilms’ voice reached them.

‘Wait.’

Ethan hesitated at the door. ‘What?’

Wilms did not look at Ethan as he spoke, his bony hands clasped together, his knuckles white and his jaw taut as though he were being forced to spit the words out.

‘Varginha,’ Wilms uttered, and then slowly looked at Ethan, a hatred of everything he was being forced to do and perhaps of himself shining like a cruel star in his expression. ‘That’s all I’ll give you.’

‘That’s not enough,’ Ethan shrugged in reply as he left the room and pulled the door shut before Wilms could protest any further.

‘Who’s Varginha?’ Lopez asked.

‘I have no idea but if it’s important enough for Wilms to spit it out, it’s important enough for us to check it out. C’mon, let’s get Wilms checked out of here.’

***

VII

Florence, Colorado

The sun was not yet above the horizon, the empty deserts laced with blue shadows and only the peaks of the mountain ranges bathed in a golden glow. The air was brittle with the chill of the night, but he knew that within an hour the searing heat would return. Still, he did not move, utterly motionless on the steep hillside and crystals of frost glistening on the thick blanket that covered his shoulders.

The valley ranged before him for endless miles, the small town of Florence to the north little more than a scattering of twinkling street lights against the wilderness. Between that town and his position on the hillside was a series of geometric buildings set against the nearby highway, glistening razor wire and smoked–glass watch towers.

Aaron James Mitchell watched the facility through the powerful magnifying scope of the rifle before him, cradled in his grasp and set onto a tripod wedged into the rocks. The bolt–action AWM was the world–standard in sniper rifles, chambered with .338 Lapua Magnum cartridges and equipped with a Schmidt & Bender Mk II military scope and suppressor. A British rifle, it had gained a fearsome reputation in the hands of the Royal Marines in Afghanistan and held the record for the longest sniper kill in history with two confirmed lethal hits at over two thousand, seven hundred yards by a British sniper in Musa Qala, Helmand Province. For Aaron’s purposes, the weapon was perfect.

Through the scope he had identified the block in which he was interested, and for two days prior he had been encamped out in the desert, watching and waiting for the perfect moment. One had come the previous day, but the tremendous heat rising up from the desert floor had prevented him from taking the shot that he so desperately desired, the thermals sufficient at such range to affect the flight of the bullet and render what otherwise would have been a confirmed kill a miss.

Now, he had received good enough intelligence to make the shot and even better he knew the precise location from which his target would appear because he had once made the same walk himself. All had been planned, all had been carefully organized, and soon would come the time to strike.

*

‘Wilms, Victor!’

The bellicose shout of the guard jerked Wilms like an electric shock and his guts plunged within him as he realized that Warner and his team had carried through with their threat.

Outside his cell door, through a narrow slot at eye–height, he could see a guard glaring in at him, two more faces behind his, could hear the jangling of the chains and manacles into which he would be forced. Suddenly, despite the Spartan cell in which he lived and the radical collapse of his world, he felt as though he were leaving home for something even worse. Which, he knew, he was.

He dragged himself up off the thin mattress and shuffled to the cell door, then turned and placed his hands behind his back. A second shutter opened, and strong hands cuffed him before the cell door was opened and the guards barged their way in and began manacling his ankles, and linking them with the heavy chains to his wrists. Within moments, he was weighed down by the steel and turned forcefully to march out of the cell.

‘Where am I going?’ he asked the nearest guard, hoping against hope that he was not being moved from the security max to a general prison.

‘Where we tell you. Move!’

The guards hustled him down the sterile corridor outside; plain walls, no windows, other cells locked and their shutters closed. The doors were sufficiently thick to deaden all sound, and all of the inmates spent twenty three hours per day locked behind them.

Wilms cried out inside for the power that he had once wielded; the ability to end the careers of all three of the guards escorting him with a simple command; the financial power to sway government with a single gesture; the fear and respect that had enabled him to strike terror into the hearts of men far stronger than he. One of the guards shoved him from behind and he realized that his power, his strength had been a mere illusion, Wilms the same thin and fragile man he had always been. He had been abandoned, his assets stolen, his fortune ripped from his hands like candy from a child, no trial, no media coverage, nothing. Victor Wilms had been cast into a pit of despair that he knew he would never escape from, but worst of all was the fact that he had been abandoned by his peers – Majestic Twelve and the Bilderberg Group had watched him fall and laughed as they had done so.

Tears pinched at his eyes and he realized that he was thinking of his parents, of the quiet Ohio town in which he had been raised.
Crying for his momma.
That’s what the jocks had sneered at him back in high school, the geeky, bespectacled Wilms no match for their strength and courage. In later years, he had revelled in destroying their careers one by one from afar, and watching them succumb to suicide, prison, drink or drugs. Now he realized he would perhaps encounter them again, in the general population, angry, embittered, aggressive men with nothing left to lose…

His betrayal by Majestic Twelve suddenly burned bright in his mind and he knew that he no longer had a choice. If he was truly to fall, then he would damned well take them with him.

‘I want to talk to Douglas Jarvis of the Defense Intelligence Agency,’ he announced.

The guards did not respond to him. Wilms, cultivating some of his recently lost superior–air, glared at the man to his left.

‘Did you hear what I said?!’

The guard whirled, twisted on his right boot as he brought his left knee up with a brutal jerk into Wilms’s guts. The blow ejected the air from Wilms’s lungs in a great rush as his legs folded up beneath him and he slumped to the polished floor with a cry of agony. The guards lifted him bodily, twisted his arms painfully up behind his back and dragged him toward the exit gates.

‘You’re done talking,’ the guard sneered into his face as he was hauled out of the cell block. ‘By this afternoon you’ll be in general population, and by tonight you’ll either be in the infirmary with a shiv sticking out of your guts or you’ll be in the morgue. Have a nice day.’

The guard shoved Wilms through the gates and he collapsed onto his knees, his aged bones cracking on the unforgiving floor as he finally wept openly. The guards ignored him and dragged him toward the next exit gate, with every step bringing him closer to his doom.

*

Mitchell lay in the silence and ignored the cold that seeped it seemed into his bones, aching there as he waited. Most men his age would have long ago retired from field work, but Mitchell was driven by forces far beyond his control, his desire for not just revenge but the utter annihilation of Majestic Twelve and its Bilderberg representatives of far greater importance than his own wellbeing.

Members of the Bilderberg, together with their sister organizations – the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, were charged with the post–war take over of the democratic process. The measures implemented by the groups provided general control of the world economy through indirect political means. Originally conceived by Joseph H. Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, they formed a proposal for a covert conference to involve NATO leaders in general discussion on international affairs. The meeting would allow each participant to speak his mind freely because no media representative would be permitted inside. If any leaks occurred, the journalists responsible would be “discouraged” from reporting it. From the outset the American group was influenced by the Rockefeller family, the owners of Standard Oil – competitors of Bernhard’s Royal Dutch Petroleum. From then on, the Bilderberg business reflected the concerns of the oil industry in its meetings. Around a hundred and fifteen participants attended the meeting, coming from government and politics, industry, finance, education and communications. Participants were invited to the Bilderberg meeting by the Chairman, following his consultations and recommendations by the Steering Committee membership. The individuals were chosen based on their knowledge, standing and experience – just like the members of Majestic Twelve.

Although MJ–12’s origins could be found much further back in time in the wake of World War Two and the flight of the leaders of the Third Reich from Germany to South America, Mitchell knew that their agenda was reflected in the Bilderberg meetings, especially now that the west’s obsession with oil was being replaced with a keen desire to develop alternative fuels that would render the relevance of the Middle East’s powerful royal families a thing of the past. Mitchell was well aware that a paradigm shift was coming, a drastic alteration of the balance of power around the world, all of it engineered by the heads of state at the annual Bilderberg meetings and influenced directly by the members of Majestic Twelve.

Until now.

The work of the Defense Intelligence Agency had begun to unravel the vast network of informers and employees of Majestic Twelve, and in the course of several investigations they had succeeded in blowing wide open some of MJ–12’s most ambitious and secretive programs, agenda so classified that even the President of the United States was completely unaware of their existence.