Last War (35 page)

    
That gave him a bit more wiggle room for his head. After wiggling his head and shoulders around, the chips began to fall and loosen above him.

     A slither
of daylight peeked through; he was deep under the pile, but close to an edge. He squirmed, kicked, and finally got his right arm loose enough to reach out side of the pile in order to put forth a single-armed effort to dig himself out of the woodpile.

     Soon, thereafter, the side of the pile collapsed dumpi
ng him down the side and rolling him onto the fresh playground dirt.

     Exhausted, scraped, scratched, in
jured and miserable, Czyra didn’t want to do the task anymore. He vowed that as soon as he were to see Jason, he was turning the mission immediately over to him—whether Jason was under surveillance or not.

     He rested on his back
for one minute before noticing that he was looking up at the back of a tall building.

     There was a sign at t
he top that required him to stand up to read. So, he struggled to his feet. At the top of the cream-colored exterior building sat a large concrete sign. “B”. 

     H
e had, in fact, made it onto the Brendenhall Hotel property.

     He was in the back of the building in a park surrounded by a gate. As he walked around the huge pile, he saw the door wide open.  

     A tall, skinny, clean-shaven faced man in a suit walked out.

     “Sir, a
re you OK?” The man asked.

     “Yeah. I’ll be OK. I had a mishap with the guys who dropped of these woodchips not to long ago.”

     “Who was the company? The normal?” The man asked.

     “Oscar and Sons. The usual.”

     “Oh, OK. Are you sure you’re going to be alright?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     “Are you the maintenance on duty? I was told to look for you. We have a problem in one of our conference rooms. The sound’s not working for the main auditorium.”

     “Yeah. I’m the janitor and maintenance. Sure.”

     “OK. I’ll show you where the problem is.”
 



Bowie, MD

     Christine had awakened early to begin her very elementary effort in searching for Jason. Her first stop was going to be the local library. She needed to do as much research on government and politics as possible. She had always heard of very strange mysteries surrounding the government, but she had never dealt with personal mysteries as big as this one.

     She pulled books on the DHS and the NSA. She searched the internet for a few news stories and the commentary on them, and printed them out. She wanted to try to piece everything together, herself. Thirty minutes into her search, Clareese called.

     “Girl, where are you? You’re up to no good, aren’t you?”

     “I’m at the library.”

     “Oh, you’re a bookhead, now?” Clareese laughed.

     “No. I’ve gotta learn about…” Christine thought about the fact that she may be being tracked. “What are you doing, today?”

     “Oh, lord. Why?”

     “I could use your help.”

     “You’re going to get me into more trouble, aren’t you?”

     “I might
be getting myself into trouble.”

     “So clever. You know I can’t let you go alone.” Clareese sighed. “Alright. Let me get myself together. I should probably wear sneakers, huh?”

     “No. Six inch stilettos.”

     “Good bye, fool. I’ll see you in an hour.
”
   



Brendenhall Hotel

     Czyra was led to a room which appeared to had been occupied not too long ago.

     “So, we’re thinking the problem may be here in the control room?”
The man said leading Czyra into the room.

    
“Were you guys in here before going out to the main auditorium?”

     “Yeah. We were.”

     “OK. Um.” Czyra thought hard. He was stumped. He had no intuition telling him what to do next. He didn’t want to ask where the panel was, or which panel to look at. He just stood in an empty room with no clue as to his next move. He walked up to the wall and began knocking on it.

     “Um. What are you doing?” The man asked.

     “Sometimes there’s a rodent in the walls disrupting things.”

     “Really? Even the best chain of hotels in the world have rodent issues, huh? Wait until I get on Mr. Brendenhall about that.” The man laughed.

     “Don’t tell him I told you. He may get mad.”

     “So, what does knocking do?”

     “It scares them.” Czyra said moving along the wall looking for some sort of passage way.

     “You know,” the man interrupted. “the control panel is over there in that small quiet room. You’re not looking for that, are you? Are you new.”

     Czyra laughed. “Nah. I’m not looking for that. Although, I am slightly new. But, yeah, I know. I was just checking some of the other things.”

     A man walked into the room and gazed directly into Czyra’s eyes. Czyra knew the man. He was a guy who Czyra harassed
driving into most of these meetings outside of the gates with a bullhorn every year.

     The man stormed into the room. “How did you get in here, crazy man?”

     Czyra’s skin tightened. “What do you mean? I work here.”

     “Did you let him in here?” The guy asked the small fair skinned man.  

     “Well, I – he’s a janitor.”

     “Janitor my—go get security.”

     “Sir, truthfully. I work here. My name is Czyra, and I’m just trying to make an honest living.”

     Within minutes security, Michael, Wilford Mince and Mr. Brendenhall entered the room.

     Mr. Brendenhall laughed. “Well, would you look at what the cat drug in!” He walked closer to Czyra. “So you call yourself breaking in here, huh?” Mr. Brendenhall calmly asked while moseying over to Czyra. “You must really hate fingers – and your life. What is it you have against fingers, boy? I mean, what is so important to you, that you keep weaseling your way into these hotels. What is it you’re looking for, son?”

     “I’m not looking for anything but a bug in your equipment.”

     Mr. Brendenhall laughed. “Ha! A bug, huh? A bug is what got into our equipment. Of all the times you’ve tried to get into our meetings, we’ve caught you. Now, you want to tell me that you’re an employee here? Just like your good ol’ girl was, too. Hey, you ever find her?” Brendenhall laughed again. “A bug. I’ll tell you what, son. I can’t make up my mind as to how smart, or dumb, it is to kill you or not. I’m gonna guess because you’re here on this property that it’s not that smart at the moment. So, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m gonna go send one of these security guards to find an employee, and the company roster. If things don’t add up, I’m going to kill you, anyway, son. Right now. I’m going to kill you.”

     Mr. Brendenhall motioned to a security guard. “What I need is paper; a paper document of this
hotel’s work roster. And along the way grab one of the maids.”

     He looked back at Czyra. “Man-O-Man. I’ve gotcha now. The thing is: The people you’re trying to save, are not savable. They’re like fish in the water. Everything we do here at these meetings create the water-like environment they live in. But, like fish, they’re unaware of the water. You can try to tell them all you want – but, the bottom line is, we control the volume, temperature, and the contents of the water. Look who I’ve got here, son. This is Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Young. That, over there
, is governor, and 2008 presidential candidate, Wilford Mince. Out there in that auditorium, is every and anybody else it would take to tear you – conspiracy theorist, Czyra whatever-your-last-name-is – down.”

     The security guard walked back into the room with a maid and a few leaflets of papers.

     The maid was trembling. Her sheepish squirm gave evidence to an uncomfortable vibe.

     “Let’s ask her
, first. Cause I know you’re not on this list. And once she says what she has to say, we can just save ourselves the headache. Bring her here.”

     The security gua
rd very subtly jerked her arm, leading her to Mr. Brendenhall. He looked through the records.

     “Miss. Yugerway’s your name, right? You’re the maid on duty. Look at this man.” Mr. Brendenhall said. “Has he been working here since you’ve been here?” He asked.

    She looked Cyzra deep in her dark-brown eyes. Very silent she looked back at Mr. Brendenhall. “No.” she said in a strong foreign accent.

     “Thank you that’s all I needed. Take him away.”

     As security began to ambush him the lady called out, “Las mon.”

     Czyra yelled out, “Wait! She said something.” Everyone calmed down.

     She said again. “Las mon. I work tree mon. Him one. I see him las mon.”

     Mr. Brendenhall flipped through his papers to see Miss. Yugerway had indeed only been there for three months. As he flipped back a few pages he saw Czyra Michaels’ name. Next to it, it indicated that he had one month of work put in at the hotel.

     “Who let him work here? Who could have dared to…”

     Czrya stood tall. “I tried to tell you. After you folks sent me my cease and desist, I did just that.”

     “Get her out of here.” Mr. Brendenhall said. “Go get doctor Layer, tell him we’ve got a subject in here.” He looked at Czyra and smiled. “I’ve got something for you. Strap him down, fellas.”

     The security guards grabbed a hold of Czyra’s small frame and pinned him to a chair
. The guards burly bodies rested all of their force against Czyra to the point where he couldn’t move. As they strapped him in, a doctor walked in the room tightening acrylic gloves to his hand before disappearing out of Czyra’s view behind him. Cyzra’s kicking and screaming continued for another ten minutes before he was met with a sudden powerful sting in the top of his right arm. He looked over to see the doctor holding something in his hand that he couldn’t make out. It was half-rounded and hollow. The doctor put it into what looked to be a sterile box.

     Czyra’s vision began to fade.



XXVII

Bowie Library

6:30p.m.

     With the Evening sun setting in through the library windows, Clareese and Christine had pulled any file they thought could be important to what she needed to find Jason.

     She felt the most important part of their research was the unresolved cases surrounding 9/11 and the people involved.

     “So, what are we going to do?” Clareese asked. “Look up every single one of these people and ask them questions?”

     “If that’s what it takes.”

     “There are probably 20 mysterious deaths tied to 9/11 here. Then, after that, look, we have… one, two,… three or four dozen more deaths that aren’t
listed
as mysterious but tied to 9/11 some time after the date. Then we have hundreds of other indirect—“

     “Look, Clare, we’ll start with the 20 people. OK? Cause likely there will be a connection. I see one name here already that I know for sure is connected. Tameka Washington. She worked under him. Any decisions he made, she was a part of the team on the assembly line, so-to-speak, making it happen. I sat next to him when the news announced her death, and he was clueless. After that, I never saw him again. He sent me a text telling me not to go home, and then that was it.”

     “I remember that. That was a few years back. So, then why do we have all these other people’s names and newspaper stories?”

     “Cause, Clare, if it gets ugly, they’re going to cut us off from everything. In the case that that happens, we’ll already have a library of names and stories to thumb through.”

     “Ah. You’re a regular detective, aren’t you?”

     “I do a lil sum’n sum’n. Let’s get back to your place and start looking for this woman Tameka and see what we can find.”



     Clinched to the side of a mostly flat wall, Czyra searched for a place to grab. The hard, dusty, wall in front of him only gave him enough space to stick the tip of his fingers in a crevice to gain some leverage.