Dark Coup (32 page)

At a few minutes after 10:00 they heard a noise in the tunnel.  A minute later they saw the first face, and it wasn’t that of a child.  A well-coiffed woman in her mid-thirties, who had obviously been trying to maintain the standard of living and lifestyle she’d enjoyed above ground, stood at the bottom of the ladder, looking up.

The effect of the makeup, clothes, and hair that had obviously recently been styled was only slightly spoiled by the fact that she hadn’t seen the sun or the inside of a gym in over a year.  Under the makeup she was startlingly pale, and while not overweight by any means, all sense of muscle-tone was long gone.

“Ma’am,” the Sergeant responsible for taking charge of the children once they came up said, “step back and stay away from the ladder.  The orders were clear.  Only children, and only under the age of eighteen.”

“But he’s my baby,” the woman wailed.

“Then keep him with you,” the Sergeant said, “but only one of you is coming out and it’s not you.  Now stand back,
now
!”

The woman slowly moved back, but she took her son, who looked to be about nine, with her.  It wasn’t clear if he wanted to go with her or not.

After that, there were some heartbreaking goodbyes in the tunnel and some children came up the ladder.  In a couple of instances, older children were carrying infants in slings in order to get them up.  Some of the children were sullen or shivering from shock once they reached the top, others hugged the first person they encountered like they had just been rescued, which might be how they viewed what was happening.

About two thirds of the way through the group, a tall, heavily-built ‘young man’ started up the ladder.

“Stop!” The Sergeant said.

“What,” the boy asked.

“How old are you,” the Sergeant asked.

“I’ll be eighteen in two weeks,” he said.

“I’m going to need some proof of age,” the Sergeant said.  “That was the requirement.”

“Can I give you my driver’s license from before the power went out when I get to the top,” the boy asked.

The Sergeant paused for a second, since he was over halfway up the ladder.  “Ok,” he said, and then yelled down to the tunnel, “but nobody else starts up until he’s taken care of.”

It turned out he was, in fact, still seventeen–barely–he was just big.

About ten kids later, the same thing happened, and the Sergeant let him get to the top to produce his pre-power-outage license when he asked the same question.

The boy got to the top and reached behind him to get his license.  It never occurred to anyone to wonder why these boys might still be carrying their licenses in the first place, much less in their back pockets, or how much their looks might have changed in the last year.

The boy, who had said he was within a month of his eighteenth birthday, missed his back pocket, drew a 9mm from an in-waistband holster, and aimed it at the Sergeant’s head.  At the same time, the first boy did the same thing as he reached out and picked up one of the younger kids, who looked to be a six or seven-year-old girl, and held the gun to her head.

“Now,” the one with the gun to the Sergeant’s head said.  “This is what’s going to happen.  A couple dozen of our guards are going to come up in a minute and take control of this exit and then we’re all going to go away.  As long as you don’t get in the way, you won’t grow a third eye.”

…

“Problem,” Sergeant Simmons said to his sniper.  He was acting as spotter and watching the location where the children were coming out.

Sergeant Allen turned just in time to see the second boy pick up the girl he would use as a hostage. 
“Which one first,”
Allen said to himself.

“Take the one with the hostage,” Simmons said, reading Allen’s mind.  “The other one will flinch when his buddy’s head explodes and that’ll be before the sound even gets there.  Top’ll understand.”

…

Half the kids were crying, but none as loudly as the one with the gun to her head, and nothing would shut her up.  Threatening her hadn’t worked, and even if he’d wanted to hit her she was over with that other guy who, somehow, he still didn’t know after a year.

Then, all of the sudden, everybody was quiet. 
“What the,”
the boy, who was actually one of the security guards for the complex, thought as he glanced over to where the boy holding the girl hostage was standing…
should
have been standing.  He was toppling backwards, and he was missing the majority of his head.

That split second of inattention was all the First Sergeant needed to take his gun away and pistol whip him with it.  Eventually, he would wake up in the infirmary, back in the complex, after receiving the worst beating of his life.

…

“Tango down,” Simmons said as Allen brought the rifle back under control from the recoil, in case another shot was necessary.

“Nice shot,” he said, “and Top is pissed.  That guy’s gonna need a nose job.”

…

The guards from the underground complex arrived less than a minute later to find the top of the tunnel opening ringed with the muzzles of U.S. Army issue M-16s and two outstretched hands, each holding a hand grenade.

“New plan,” the First Sergeant yelled from behind the rifle barrels, “all ID comes up before the person on the ladder, and if I feel the need, I’m dropping the maximum age to sixteen.  Any more shenanigans like we just had and I seal this entrance; I don’t care how many people are still down there.  Oh, and I thought it went without saying, but no weapons.  Clear?”

“Roger,” one of the guards in the tunnel yelled, and there was a mad dash away from the opening.  A grenade or two in the tunnel would have been a bloodbath.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Returning to Fort Rucker without the Colonel, and after locking down the airport in Denver, had been an… interesting experience.  One of the biggest concerns that Sanford had going into this was how his and others’ bases would react to the Colonel being stripped of authority.

The first, and potentially largest, problem was going to be West.  Lieutenant Colonel West, technically Sanford’s new commanding officer, was more than a little curious about where Sanford and the Colonel had gone and why the Colonel hadn’t come back.

“Sir,” Sanford said, “if you’ll give me an hour or so to put a few things together, I’ll explain everything.”

“One hour,” West said, “no more.  And if it doesn’t make sense then, you get to keep explaining until it does.”

“Understood,” Sanford replied.  “I don’t think any additional explanation will be necessary.”

“Now if Tuttle can just finish getting everything set up in time,”
Sanford thought,
“I may just be able to sleep with both eyes closed tonight.”

Hodges and Tuttle had been editing together the more important parts of the recorded conversations between Olsen and his handlers while Sanford was gone.  He’d been adamant that they only be edited for length and not meaning, however.  He refused to start down the road the Colonel had been on by creating fake conversations to further his agenda.

The most important conversation, though, would be the one he’d had just a few days ago in which the Colonel explained everything–or at least as much as he could–to Sanford, in his own words.  That had been pretty damning, and he hoped it would be enough.

His radio squawked. “Sanford,” he said.

“Ready when you are,” Hodges said.

Sanford looked around and decided to head to one of the briefing rooms so he could lock the door.

“How will I know it’s live,” Sanford asked.

“You’ll hear a little bit of white noise, or static, from the base P.A. system,” Hodges said.

“Let’s do it then,” Sanford said.  “Showtime.”

Once he heard the P.A. system turn on, he took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves.  It didn’t work. 
“Now or never,”
he thought, and pressed the send key on his handheld.  The sound coming from the P.A. system changed, and he knew he was broadcasting live.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Sanford began.  “This is Major Sanford speaking.  I need your undivided attention for the next few minutes.”

“What you are about to hear is a collection of recorded conversations,” Sanford began.  “These conversations took place between this base and individuals at a location that was, until very recently, hidden and unknown to us.  They were intercepted, decrypted, and an investigation was initiated based on their contents.  I will leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions as to whether or not appropriate actions have been taken.”

Tuttle began playing back the set of recorded conversations between Olsen and his handlers, which would take about fifteen minutes.  Hodges and Tuttle had whittled things down from when he had played them for Major Jensen at Promised Land as well, adding a few of the newer transmissions.

Sanford set his radio on the table and leaned back in one of the briefing room chairs. 
“Please let this go well,”
he muttered to himself.

A couple of minutes into the playback someone tried the door knob and then began hammering on the locked door.

“Well,” Sanford said as he got up, “that took less time than I’d hoped.”

Sanford took out his sidearm, and ejected the magazine and the round he had been leaving in the chamber for the last several months.  With all three sitting on the table and pointed in a safe direction, he unlocked the door, opened it, and took a couple of steps back.  West was at the door with a half-a-dozen MPs.

“Wow,”
he thought,
“six guards for little old me?”

“What in the
HELL
,” West started, but was interrupted when the playback changed to a different conversation.

“I thought you could rely on your people’s sense of duty and honor.  I thought you said that they would obey and get the mission done.”

“There’s obedience,” Olsen said, “and there’s blind obedience.  We cultivate at least some sense of critical thinking in our men.  They aren’t going to jump off a cliff just because I say so.”

West stopped and his eyebrows knitted together.  He remembered making the same argument to the Colonel not that long ago.

“Then your people need direction,” The voice said.  “They need an enemy they can see, touch and feel.  You say you have been holding the threat over them for too long with nothing to show for it.  Give them an enemy.”

“Who,” Olsen said, almost plaintively.

“Haven’t you been listening,” the voice asked, scorn obvious even over the radio.  “It doesn’t matter who.  It doesn’t matter how.  All that matters is how you present it.  Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?  It doesn’t matter.  Was the U.S. Government complicit in the attacks of 9/11?  It doesn’t matter.  Are there UFOs at Area 51?  It…doesn’t…matter!”

West turned a pale face to the MPs.  “Dismissed,” he said, and closed the door.

…

The rest of the playback was more of the same, all just as damning, with the final recording being the last conversation between Sanford and Olsen in Olsen’s office, before they left in the Black Hawk.  Sanford picked up his radio as the final recording finished.

“Colonel Olsen has been relieved of command,” he said.  “He is currently awaiting trial at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston.”

As Sanford was saying this last bit, West stood up and drew his sidearm.

“I’ve done my part,”
Sanford thought, wishing he hadn’t cleared and disabled his own firearm. 
“Do it if you really think you have to.”

Sanford was willing to die for this, although he didn’t really want to.  West had always been the wild card, and now it looked like the base was going to come to blows with itself.  Surely they wouldn’t just fall back in line if West took him out now, would they?

West surprised Sanford by grabbing his sidearm by the barrel and presenting it to Sanford grip first.  He didn’t bother clearing it, and Sanford could see that the safety was on, but the .45 was cocked, which meant there was one in the pipe.

Sanford and West looked at each other for several seconds before Sanford accepted the pistol.

“For the time being,” Sanford said into the radio, “and potentially only for the time being, command has fallen to me.  Additionally, though we don’t have any recordings to play back, the group that has been handling Colonel Olsen, as well as at least a dozen others for the last year, has been contained.  I’ll be holding a briefing about
that
later today or tomorrow.  Sanford out.”

…

Sanford escorted West to the on-base brig, without needing to call for the base MPs.  Neither of them had said anything, but West had surrendered his sidearm and hadn’t corrected him about who was in command of the base.  West may or may not be released in the future, though, and if they could keep rumors to a minimum it would be best for all involved.

Once behind bars, West finally decided he had something to say.

“How long,” he asked.  “How long has it been going on?”

“Since a couple of days after the power went out,” Sanford replied, “the communications between Olsen and his handler that is.  As for how long he’s been under their thumb, nobody knows, but these were
very
patient people.  They didn’t create this situation, but they had a plan to take advantage of it, or any of a hundred other crises, as soon as they happened.  If Hodges can be believed, they’ve been waiting for over a hundred years.”

Sanford shook his head, still somewhat in disbelief himself.  “Haven’t you ever wondered why the Government had a plan for
just such an event,
but didn’t implement it,” Sanford asked.  “Or where all the leaders ran off to immediately afterwards, or even the fact that
everything
was being funneled through the Colonel and not one person has heard the President’s voice in over a year?”

Sanford chose not to mention the fact that he’d actually spoken with the President less than two days ago.  “We were played,” West said.  “And it was so easy for them to do.”