The Great Deception (4 page)

The six-foot-one, two hundred and ten pound
jack-of-all-trades fighting machine sat undisturbed in peaceful
reflection. He was so still, to anybody watching, Seth looked like
an inanimate GI Joe doll. It was nearing 23:00 hours and the
helicopters were still a good journey away from Moldova.

The trivial occupation of playing cards
didn't hold anything for the rough character. Everyone he worked
with knew better just to let the warrior brood. That's what he did.
His social skills weren't too good anyway; his attitude often was
as snappy as a black bear smarting from a shoulder wound. Seth wore
a snarly twisted scowl with battle scars marking his chiseled cheek
bones. During exfils, Seth suited up for maximum readiness. Even
though it was just a transfer from one safe house on to the next,
the hardened Mossad agent treated it like it was his most dangerous
mission. In an emergency he came ready with liquid body armor and a
hang-glider system on his back in the extreme case the helicopter
was compromised.

All of the seemingly unnecessary precautions
he took came from losing colleagues in the field due to a lack of
preparedness. Never would that happen to him if he could help it,
he determined. Ultimately, what Seth wanted most was to destroy the
enemies of the state until there were no more. And then maybe, just
maybe he could tell his son Azriel one day who is daddy really was.
Seth knew he'd be old and gray and his son, married with kids
before Azriel would ever know the real story about his father. Then
again, there was a very real possibility he might never get that
opportunity: coming back home, wherever that was, couldn't be
guaranteed.

--

The Ozarks

Damion's heart palpitated more than he was
accustomed to. The situation was such: in a jail cell belonging to
a female inmate who was a little more than mildly attractive to
him. However, Christophe his loyal friend and chief scientist
shared the same view.

Heather's question of why they had been
brought to the Ozarks facility still rolled around in his brain,
having not yet found the answer he thought she would want to hear.
He lowered his chin and looked up at the ceiling. "We, um--we're
POW's. Scorpion had it in for us so they ordered the hit. Bada
bing, bada boom, we're here, like magic."

Heather analyzed the billionaire. It didn't
take long for the follow-up question to the first: "What makes you
so valuable to the agency that they'd wanna take you in alive?"
Christophe stepped forward and appeared ready to talk. His first
words came out more French than American.

Anglais s'il vous pla
î
t.
“
English,
please,
”
Heather said cracking a smile.
"Yes, of course," Christophe apologized, turning red in the
process. "We work for the FRN. We hold lots of major military
contracts with their security forces that Scorpion is very
interested in."

"Yeah, wouldn't they love to know what we're
capable of," Damion bitterly quipped. Heather held up a hand and
squinted. "Wait a minute, do I--know you?" she was addressing
Damion.

"I don't know, do you?"

The proverbial light bulb lit up in
Heather
’
s mind. "You're that guy who
started the nuclear fusion revolution in the transportation sector.
Right?" Damion was flattered.

"Yup, I did that," he replied modestly.
"You
’
re so kind to take all the credit
kid," his partner in innovation needled him in the side.

"Sorry," Damion mumbled back.

"Look, fellas, I'm not really in a talking
mood, but a lot has happened to me in the past twenty-four hours
and I've been dying to share it with someone."

Both men's ears burned with curiosity
now.

"Make yourselves comfortable?" Heather was
trying to play the part of hospitable host. Damion plopped his
weight down on the concrete floor rather hastily. He was eager for
a story. As Heather continued to talk, the fonder he became of
her.

Kara was now a distant country from his
vantage point on an island surrounded by a sea of question marks.
He had no clue if being held in isolation would be his new
permanent residence.

So much for those dang Viper agents
coming to our rescue,
the thought slipped into the
billionaire's head as he listened to the British woman's strange
accounting of her last day before waking up to her present
reality.

Christophe asked questions, but Damion
remained silent, transfixed. Every now and then he would remember
he had been staring; his eyes would then dart to some random object
in the room. So inconspicuous.

Heather noticed the extra attention the
good-looking stranger with the green eyes and perfect tan gave
her....She reached out and took it, folded it up, and put it in her
back pocket. Distractions would be distractions.

She had actually hoped to turn down the
charm just enough to hold a meaningful conversation with both the
faces that watched her every move.

...

"....And that's when I woke up. I presently
realized I was not dead, yet regrettably very much alive and
staring straight into the gaze of the very cheeky warden of this
prison." Christophe chuckled. A devious little grin played across
his face. "Them bobbies are cheeky fellows, eh?"

Heather laughed. Christophe's attempted use
of British parlance with its accompanying accent was most humorous
to her.

Damion ignored his friend completely. That
laugh. If only she knew what it did to him. This was getting
ridiculous. He had to get out of there before he did something
really stupid.

"Er, Heather. It was really nice to meet
you," he stepped forward to force the awkward handshake, "but I'm
afraid my friend and I must be going." He cocked his head in the
direction of the adjacent cell while he said this.

She nodded with understanding. "See you
again?"

"Yes!" Christophe uttered without a pause in
his voice.

The blonde gave him a big smile and
said,

"Good."

--

Tel Aviv, Israel: circa 2036

There was no big yellow bus that waited
curbside in front of the restaurant La Shuk for a boy that needed
to be in school. His uncle's Mercedes ended up being the shuttle
instead.

The uninviting nippy spring breeze hit
Azriel with full force as he walked out the front entrance of La
Shuk with uncle Ephraim nudging him as they went along at a fast
walk. It was only a cool sixty degrees--the sun hid behind cloud
formations to boot. Not a word was spoken between the two of them.
As they neared the parallel parking spot the vehicle revved up and
its gull-wing doors let the passengers mount up. The white interior
was cast in a blue glow with silver accents all over.

"Nice ride," Azriel murmured after he
had

climbed into the front passenger seat. "Does
it fly?"

Ephraim balked. "Only the top one percent of
society have those, kid. Uncle

Ephraim didn't get so lucky."

The Jewish boy understood.

The engine made a whooshing sound as its
electric motor sent power to the wheels. It was a smooth
acceleration--sporty, but not jerky. Azriel took in the blur of
colorful pedestrians strolling along the sidewalks of Israel's
biggest hub. The old architecture mixed in with the new in the
city. Art Deco buildings abounded; ubiquitous single-story European
homes topped by a red tiled roof crawled all over the landscape;
and two to three story sandstone residences also proliferated.

Ephraim did a hundred and fifty kilometers
per hour on the Ayalon Highway which fringed the eastern section of
downtown. There was no posted speed. In the age of fully autonomous
vehicles, car accidents were simply unheard of. Cars had really
gotten that smart.

Uncle Ephraim still drove manually though,
no matter how capable his vehicle may have been. He refused to let
his skills go to waste in exchange for convenience. That was an
extremely bad trade-off in his mind. Every once in a while if there
had been something on his mind that would require him to take his
hands off the wheel, eyes off the road, and give his full attention
to the person he wanted to deliver a message to he would make an
exception and push the button for the vehicle to take over.

Today was a day for expediency, however.
Azriel would go to school and make fourth period...on time.

"But I don't have any books, uncle," the boy
said out of the blue, breaking down the wall of silence.

The driver went ahead and adopted a
mischievous look in his expression.

"Ah, so you think. I actually spoke with the
school superintendent recently. It has been arranged for. Books,
school supplies, transportation every day....Done."

Tall skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and
offices loomed large on the left. Ephraim's tunnel vision wandered
to observe the central business district. "I never get used to that
sight," he commented on Tel Aviv's modern architecture.

"It's all I've ever known," Azriel
responded, his voice muffled. The Mercedes weaved through traffic
very aggressively with the goal in mind of being on time.

"We're nearly there."

Azriel looked confused. "But, the school
I

went to wasn't on the northeast side of Tel
Aviv...."

"This is your school," his uncle cut him
off, not giving his nephew a chance to question. "The teachers here
are excellent. You will get an education, I assure you." Well, it
was of no assurance to the boy fresh off his bar mitzvah. To him,
an education wasn't a part of the rite of passage

to adulthood. It didn't interest him. Azriel
would much rather have been a wanderer, a passerby in the game of
life. He wasn't willing to put in the hard work to get anywhere.
But his wellmeaning uncle was hoping to change all of that.

The stylish black Mercedes slowed down to a
stop behind a school bus that had its amber lights flashing. A
ringtone suddenly filled up the cabin of the SUV. It played over
the car's speakers, but Ephraim took the call on his inear
headset.

"Yeah..."
he answered a question. His
eyes shifted sideways to the boy. His mind was quickly made up as
the call continued. Before long he was making shooing motions for
Azriel to get out and walk the rest of the way to class.

"But I don't even know where to go!" The boy
protested.

"Just go! I'll be there shortly, "Ephraim
whispered, his eyes rising over the top of his glasses which
perched at the end of his nose. The boy shrugged.

Azriel gingerly got out in his own time,
casting one long last look over his shoulder at his uncle who was
still on a phone call. His sneakered feet took him towards the
rotunda entrance of the grand school building. Security cameras,
always on the swivel, perked up at his arrival. Azriel didn't like
the feeling of being watched. But he needed help, direction on
where to go. As he got up to the door he sensed his body undergoing
a scan. To the right of the door frame at waist level was a digital
display. It pulled up Azriel's national ID card on the screen.

An artificial voice sounded and said,
"Welcome, Azriel Markov. Please walk to the front desk to report
for further instructions.

Thank you."

Thank you,
the thirteen-year-old
parroted back.

After the shutter-style doors parted the
next thing he noticed was a big area rug carpeting the floor of the
turnstile: Welcome to Thelma Yellin High School was stitched into
it in blue letters.

There was momentary confusion. "But I'm
still in Middle school," escaped his lips. A motion detector sensed
the human approaching and correspondingly opened the next set of
doors.

Way up above about forty feet or so the
ventilation system noisily purged the system and circulated the air
per its pre-programmed cycles. A very prominent desk, more like a
slab of rock from the local quarry, made it hard to get past
without being noticed and stopped for questioning. Seeing as how
Azriel was the only soul in the near vicinity walking the halls,
all eyes were on him as he approached the front desk.

--

Two hundred miles off the coast of S6...

A crew-wide announcement on Scorpion's
AirCorvette
let everybody know that the craft started
approaching the targeted drop zone for the underwater submersible
which was destined to dock with a Harpoon class submarine that
waited for it below the depths.

Members of the Elite Guard for Scorpion were
on standby to assist the VIP guests into the capsule. They wore
exoskeletons that had transformer-like wings that popped out of
their back when they needed them. Their face masks were
multi-faceted, very much resembling a fruit fly's eye. Overall
these men looked more like bipedal insectoids than humans. To
further round out their sinister presence a vocoder in the mandible
disguised the men's real voices.

One of the six Elite Guards approached the
German chancellor and British prime minister. Two more of them
rounded up the Russian leaders. The remaining three stood sentry at
the exterior hatch to the capsule.

"Good heavens!" Prime Minister Jasper

Turpin cried in alarm. He was riveted by the
dress of the guard that waltzed up to where he and the German
leader sat. He thought the Scorpion soldier looked more like a grim
reaper than someone who was there for his personal protection and
service. "This is just a dress rehearsal for the really weird
things you'll see at the war room, prime minister," Lothar
whispered into the startled man's ear. "I thought you would've
grown accustomed to this by now though. You said you've visited
Vandenberg several times." "Indeed I have," the British PM
retorted, feeling a little indignant.

"What are our instructions soldier?" Lothar
Kirsch demanded, his jaw set. "I must escort you two into there,"
he pointed a mechanical ligament in the direction of the vehicle
that sat atop the bomb bay doors. "We only have five minutes to get
you harnessed up."