Madness (6 page)

“Are you ready to jump?” the chopper pilot said
, as Peacock steadied herself. “We’re at 2,300 feet, ground speed 130 mph, you’re good to go.”

“Looks like crops and fields down there.”

“We’re over Harperdean now. Don’t fret. There’s a hospital eight kilometers northeast.”

“Ha, ha, President Monroe isn’t looking for publicity now is he.”

“I’ll pick you up where you land in three hours, no more, no less.”

“Got it.”

Peacock checked her watch and her compass and tumbled out of the chopper. She pulled the cord at 1600 feet and floated serenely toward the ground. She wished she could hit a pause button and stay suspended above the earth forever, but that was not to be. Her feet touched down at seven p.m. on a clear April evening. Her position sat four-tenths of a kilometer to the southwest of Reed’s home. She ditched her chute and jumpsuit, strapped her weapon belt around her waist, and headed for a footpath that ran northeast. If she had the time when she returned, she’d bury her equipment.

Dusk brought with it a chilly breeze. The scent of fertilizer and fresh cut grass seemed strangely familiar. Three glances at her compass and fifteen minutes later
, she topped a hill and glimpsed Reed’s house. A sudden shiver filled her. Memories of racing through a tunnel, an explosion, and the communications device in her head malfunctioning flooded in on her. She knew the layout of this house.

The only difference between the Lasswade home and this one was the seclusion element. Here the woods were thinner and the approach open. Nowhere could she hide.
She sat down on the top of the hill and ran possible scenarios in her mind. There was one vehicle and no garage. He had to be home.

The British were no longer America’s
allies. There would be no friendly release if she were caught.

“Any signs of life inside?” she asked command.

“Satellite’s been watching the house for ten hours. There have been two deliveries and no one has come outside.”

“All right, I’m ahead of schedule. I’m going to observe for a few minutes. Then I’m going to walk down and pay Mr. Reed a visit.”

“You’re just going to wander up?”

“I’m dressed in jeans. My weapons are inside my belt. No one’s going to tip Reed off. As far as he knows, this place is a secret. Besides, if I wait until dark, I might miss my ride home and have to hitch my way to London.”

“You’ll be in the open.”

She didn’t answer. There was a set of windows along both the floors on the east side of the house. If she backed down the hill, walked over to the path going around the left side of the hill, and followed the path down to the house, she’d appear to be a native on a walk.

No sense wasting time if she wanted to see her son. This was the way to earn that right. Five minutes later, she executed her plan and moved down to the house in full sight of anyone who might be looking. There was no movement by a window, no sound, only the chirping of birds and the rustling of the trees in the wind.

She reached the steps and rang the bell, wondering why she knew she was safe. There was no answer, not a
movement or a light on. She checked the door again for a bomb. There could be a trigger weapon readied if she opened the door. She tried the knob and the door creaked open as she rolled sideways off the porch. Nothing happened.

Peacock
rose and slipped inside. She heard someone say. “Who did Pendleton send?”

The voice came from upstairs. “I’m not armed. Is that you Van Meer? You would be my choice.”

Peacock’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. She slipped up the stairs, pulled out her gun, and flipped on the lights as she entered Reed’s communications lab. A man sat facing away from her.

“Are you Thomas Reed?”

His hand twitched. “And you must be Laverna Smythe Pendleton. So the Americans got here first.” Reed swung around as Peacock placed the muzzle of her gun against his temple. “I’m no threat to you, Laverna. Please sit down. Before you kill me, I have some things to tell you.”

“Stand up,” she
yelled. She searched his pockets, pulled out his cellphone, and checked his recent calls. “Why were you sitting here in the dark?”

“I’m a doomed man. Indirectly, you’re the reason. Please, let me fix you a cup of tea.”

“Why are you so calm? You were shaking when I came upstairs.”

“Resignation. Once I’m dead, I won’t have to worry about someone killing me anymore.”

He didn’t look like the mastermind of the Sons of Tiw. Thin, immaculately clean, and soft spoken, Thomas Reed under impressed her. Tea wasn’t on her agenda. Information, however, was.

“Sit back down.” She grabbed a chair and pulled it up in front of him. “When you’re dead, I’m going to search you
r house. You can save me a lot of time if you tell me what I want to know now.”

“The total organization of The Sons of Tiw is in my cabinet to your right. Take it. The list makes no difference
now. Pendleton’s already put his plans into action.” Reed smiled a warm friendly smile. “Looking at you, I can see why Arthur loves you. He’d give up everything for you, my dear. Why did you betray him?”

An agonizing pain almost split open her head. Her breathing quickened to a panting. “I never betrayed him.”

“But you did. You killed Philip Martin. You gave the secrets for the assassination of Monroe to Hercules.”

The headache increased. Reed was right. She had betrayed Pendleton.

“Helen of Troy was the face that launched a thousand ships.” Reed reached out and brushed back a few hairs from her forehead. “Yours, my dear, is the face that will launch a thousand missiles. Without your betrayal, Monroe would be dead now, and America would be marching with us.”

Her mouth dropped open
. She stared at her hand, the gun still pointed at Reed. Madness raged within her. Images and emotions, not thoughts, swirled around. Missiles fired, world capitols disintegrated, her mind cried out.
There’s still time to stop this.

Then Reed’s kindly face reappeared in front of her.
“You’re here to steal our secrets again. Even knowing you’ll betray him, Pendleton instructs me if I harm a hair on your head, I will die. I hope you sleep well.”

Her mission was to find out what the assassination plot was and stop it. Yes, Ursa and Monroe put her there to betray Pendleton. Pictures flashed throughout her mind of happy times with her husband, riding through the German countryside, laughing on a hill at Balmoral. The pain increased. The more she remembered the more pain she experienced.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Let me share a little wisdom. I vowed on my life to defend The Sons of Tiw. I believed in Pendleton’s solution
to the world’s problems. I still do. However, I’ve lost my team. I presume you killed Lytle and the information you stole killed Morgan and Dunn.”

S
weat trickled into her eyes. She quickly wiped the sweat off. His next statement caused nausea and acid belched into her throat. An explosion rocked her mind mightier than Kolb’s device could handle.

“I’m dying as I lived,” Reed said, “
believing a dream. Yet in the end, no one’s right. No one’s wrong. He who executes his plan wins, and all other dreamers vanish. When Arthur Pendleton saves you, my dear, spend the rest of your life thinking of those who. . .”

She pulled the trigger
repeatedly even after the chamber was long empty. Then she grabbed the blade from her belt and stabbed at Reed’s lifeless body until she couldn’t raise her arms. In her final act, she snatched The Sons of Tiw list out of Reed’s cabinet.

Screaming like the
lunatic she was, she ran down the stairs and out into the night, her head pounding and her heart racing. She reached the drop site and buried the chute and jumpsuit. The chopper arrived on schedule and she boarded.

“Have a successful trip,” the pilot
asked.

She glared at him and said nothing. Peacock knew what she had to do. Once back home, she’d do it.

Five hours later, the plane sent by the president landed in Washington D.C. Peacock disembarked. She scanned the hanger area and the position of the limos waiting for her. She handed Reed’s list to the agent at the foot of the steps. Instead of heading for the limousine sent for her, she bolted straight for the follow-car.

“What’s she doing?” she heard someone yell.

Peacock opened the follow-car’s door and hurled the driver out before anyone thought to act. She leaped behind the steering wheel and floored the accelerator. She sped out and away from the airport.

“Peacock, abort your plan.”

She ignored Polaris’s voice in her head. Instead, she slammed the scar tissue at the back of her ear with her fist, until Polaris’s voice turned to faint static. She wasn’t going back to Hercules. She wasn’t going back to Monroe, or to Pendleton, or to her home in Bethesda. All she wanted to do was kill. Not for Pendleton and not for Monroe, she was going to kill her enemies and stop the missile launches—every one of them.

“The device is firing at random,” Polaris
yelled. “She’s not responding to the shocks. Her mind’s subconsciously selecting her pathway, and she’s following along by instinct.”

Kolb’s tampering
ran contrary to Polaris’s beliefs. Freedom of personal choice ranked at the top for him. Freedom topped the ideals America stood for. He loved dealing with Peacock when her implant acted only as a communications device, but Kolb crossed the line with neurological stimulation.

As Polaris
evaluated what was and wasn’t working, Nyugen put a call in to Kolb.

She’s with Major at his home, Polaris thought. She won’t respond.

“All right, Polaris.” Nyugen grumped after his unsuccessful attempt to talk to Kolb. “Can you track her?”

“Negative. I
am able to monitor the sections of her brain that are firing off. I can’t hear what she hears anymore, and she’s not responding to me.”

“What was the last thing she said with her sound unit working?”

Polaris played back the tape.

“Why are you telling
me all this?”

“After the shots, all I hear is screaming, gasping, and the sounds of her leaving the house.
She doesn’t say a word until she arrives back in Washington. Then she must have somehow disabled the sound unit.”

“Not a word since then?”

“No. She’s done something to the audio mechanism. But even with the speech implant destroyed, we should be able to control her with brainwave signals and force her to return here.”

#

Nyugen trembled at the idea of a rogue agent with Peacock’s capabilities. He examined her brain monitor and shook his head. The recorder drew a picture of what he never thought possible, “She exhibits amazing cognitive flexibility. Her abstract thinking. . .” Nyugen hesitated. “By her actions, Peacock and the probe are thinking in unison, neither ruling the other, hence the increased activity in the frontal lobe, the hypothalamus, and the hypophyseal portal system.”

Nyugen’s cell rang. “Yes.”

“This is Kolb. Why the hell are you bothering me?”

“Our train has run away. Without a blood test I can’t be sure, but I believe Peacock’s hypothalamus is malfunctioning, and our implant and her id have bonded to allow that to happen.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Her emotions fly off the scale, anger soars, and her sex drive runs wild. She fights resetting back to normal. Her heart rate is 115. Yet she’s cognitive and thinks abstractly. You tell me.”

Only the sound of Kolb hyperventilating hissed in Nyugen’s ears. He continued, “What happens if we shut our equipment down?”

“Two things—both bad,
” Kolb said. “The backup sensors will deteriorate in forty-eight hours. She’ll continue with whatever her plan is. Second, we won’t be able to help bring her down from the extremes as we did when she was screwing Pendleton. We need her back in the lab, alive and subdued. We need to help her remain as normal as possible for the sake of the research.”

“All right, are you coming to work?”

“Not yet, I’m calling Ursa Minor.”

#

The city of Tabriz smoldered around him as Latovsky trotted down the steps of the helicopter that had transported him there. He played nice with the media, hoping to appease the people of Volgograd by his quick action.

“The Russian people fully support our efforts,
” he said. “The conflicts within the region from India to the Mediterranean Sea have too long unsettled our world. We’re putting an end to the struggle of those who want freedom in this area.”

He waved reporters away and strolled amidst the rub
ble along a major highway in Tabriz. A Russian soldier, head wrapped with a bloody bandage and his arm in a sling, hopped up onto the back of a medic unit truck as Latovsky approach and waved to him. “How were you injured?” Latovsky asked.

The soldier cocked his head. “I’m ashamed to say. Three women armed with kitchen knives attacked my team during a house search. I shot people armed with broken bottles, hammers—one man killed our communication officer with a sledgehammer. Everyone is my enemy.”

Latovsky hugged the man. “I am not.”

T
he man saluted.

“We have enough pictures, Serge,” his Chief of Staff said and led him back to his helicopter. As they boarded for the flight back to Russian territory, he added. “
According to Intelligence, Tehran is burning, and al-Sistani has fled.”

“He may
be in hiding with his people in southeastern Iran,” Latovsky answered as the chopper lifted off the ground. “How are our forces doing after the missile attacks along the Caspian Sea?”

“When new equipment and men arrived by way of the Caspian, we cleared the earthquake area and moved on.” He opened a map. “Our main force is heading toward Ahvaz and the Persian Gulf, The other is joining with our forces south of Tabriz and heading to Baghdad. We expect the same heavy resistance and severe numbers of casualties.”

Casualties—Latovsky remembered Afghanistan as a young man. Russian casualties ran high. Yet today he’d received good news. War weary and impoverished, Pakistan and India declared neutrality under pressure from Pendleton. Latovsky would not have to look east for trouble.

Keep pressing ahead, he thought. Israel and Jerusalem were only a week away.

#

Arthur Pendleton’s London
headquarters sparkled. He had the furnishings replaced and the office cleaned for picture taking. Handpicked staffers photographed his Zurich and London locations for viewing when he delivered his speech to the world introducing the Global Realm.

Pendleton waited for Sir Jarvis Franks to take his seat.

“Sorry, old boy, the control team and Professor Cline were arguing about coordinate settings.”

Pendleton bit
down on his lower lip. “Another problem, Sir Jarvis?”

“Nothing major
. Directing the missiles to new targets requires precision, and Cline speaks above the heads of most of our people.”

Pendleton nodded. He didn’t need another problem. Loomis had reported his wife suspiciously absent. Calls to Reed went unanswered. Neither of the two situations endangered the mission, except in his ability to focus on
the now.
“Let’s review the timetable.”

He pointed at Milton Rogers, who stood and addressed this group. Present were Rogers, Franks, British Prime Minister Lodge, and Victor Romanoff representing both Latovsky and Pendleton’s group of twelve administrators.
“Everything proceeds tomorrow night, eleven p.m. Eastern Standard Time.” Rogers checked his watch. “Thirty-two hours from now.”

“The timing must be precise,” Pendleton said. “The watches you have are programmed to run in sync. Press
Adjust
every eight hours to reset the few microseconds’ difference. Press
Adjust
now for a starting point.”

“The first target is Monroe
.” Rogers adjusted his watch. “He met with members of Congress today behind closed doors. He is supposed to go before the nation tomorrow and make a speech. If he agrees to Arthur’s offer, Arthur will meet with him at the White House and include him in our plans.”

“If not?” Romanoff asked.

“Agent Loomis will kill him tomorrow at eleven in the evening.”

Pendleton politely raised his hand. His Lovey was in the United States. Levi had a team prepared to operate on her after a thorough medical evaluation. Loomis was the last person within Pendleton’s circle to see her. “I’m leaving after this meeting and heading to the States. As the next part of our plan unfolds, I will control it from there.”

“And that next part is critical.” Rogers handed out a set of maps. “Sir Jarvis, could you do the honors.”

Hand to his moustache, Franks rose and said, “As of today, the spy networks of Europe, including MI6 and the Russian Secret Service, have joined with The Sons of Tiw to form one unified agency.”

He opened his set of maps. “The unified Global Security team will simultaneously strike heads of state clearly in opposition to our plans for peace, specifically, the United States, as mentioned, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Jordan, South Africa, and Israel, to name a few. Latovsky is destroying Iran and Iraq.”

In tune with his friends, Pendleton discerned both anticipation and fear in the room. Human psychology said the closer one c
ame to taking a necessary, but dangerous step, the stronger the desire to delay taking that step.

“Serge
is making a mess of destroying the others.” Prime Minister Lodge’s face morphed red. “I’ve met with Parliament—a nasty discussion, but effective.”

“Jolly good reason to feel upset,” Rogers said with a lilt in his voice. “Those boys love their politics. And politics will be a thing of the past.”

“Politics—a word hopefully never uttered again,” Pendleton said.

“What about China?” Romanoff asked.

“For now I’m working out a silent truce,” Pendleton answered.

“The rest of these maps show why I was late.”
Sir Jarvis cleared his throat and shot a glance at Pendleton.

“They have a need to know
,” Pendleton said.

Franks nodded. “The United States has, as part of Operation Prompt Global Strike, almost a thousand non-nuclear missiles
. Each possesses the capability of reducing five city blocks to rubble. These missiles orbit the earth in banks of twenty-five units each.” He pointed to the first of twenty pages. “The first column shows the type of missile, the second shows the target, the third and fourth show the time to fire and the time to impact. Once Monroe is neutralized, Professor Cline and our people will switch the targets and fire the missiles to the locations seen in Column Five.”

“My God,” Prime Minister Lodge yelped. “Look at the shift. Missiles aimed at China and Russia shift to Iran,
Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, Yemen, and North Africa.” His finger pointed to the original U.S. targets. “And what’s this? The Americans originally had forty of those missiles aimed at targets in Europe, England and Germany, specifically, bloody hell.”

Pendleton ignored Lodge. “Mr. Romanoff will give us the aftermath report.”

“The day after the missile firing, Mister Pendleton will address the world with an ultimatum. The new leaders of the Global Realm will surround him. The message will be simple. Join us or face isolation. Ships en route as we speak will deliver life-sustaining supplies to the hungry in the nations supporting us. He will implement his plan to remove waste, rebuild cities, and re-educate the population on how to improve themselves and the environment.”

“Not all in one speech, one hopes,” Lodge said.

“I’ll lay out the plan, yes. But the implementation will take years.” Pendleton rose. “I have an urgent call to make. Keep in mind, Gentlemen, we’ve been preparing this change in government for over a decade. We have materials and supplies in place beyond what you’ve ever dreamed. The whole earth will be transformed in a decade to a paradise unrecognizable today—all for the better.”