The Great Deception (5 page)

Both men immediately lifted themselves from
the bench they had occupied for the majority of the flight from
Tokyo. Lothar was especially eager to enter into the compartment
destined for the deep blue. Out of the corner of his vision he
observed the Russian President Igor Orloff and Grigory

Sliva walking in a four man
formation-Scorpion Elite Guards flanking them. Lothar's thin lips
formed a tight smile.

"Are you looking forward to this as much as
I am?" he asked President Igor as soon as he was within
earshot.

The Russian president anticipated such a

question. "They had better make it worth my
time."

Jasper Turpin vigorously nodded his head at
the Russian's words. He too kept a busy schedule; there had better
be a darn good reason for a summit at

Scorpion's war room at such an early hour in
the morning.

…

Five minutes later, down to the second, the
submersible hit the waves and promptly sunk to a depth of a
thousand meters. The much larger Scorpion submarine swam over like
a shark eager to discover the source that disturbed the water with
its upward trail of bubbles it created as it descended.

The Harpoon class sub that would take the
foreign leaders the rest of the way to the War Room weighed in at a
whopping seven thousand tons. Its length: five hundred and seventy
feet...clearly the top of the food chain in the Pacific Ocean.

It moved quickly through the water in its
gas bubble that the super-cavitation drive created. This allowed
the large behemoth to move at speeds in excess of a hundred

knots. As it approached the capsule, its
intense flood lights turned on and illuminated the vessel in the
murky depths of the ocean.

--

Israel's syndicate intelligence agency had
its tentacles wrapped up in the affairs of governments the world
over. After World War III the world looked very different. No
longer led by a superpower (i.e. the United States), several very
divided people groups were controlled by Germany, Britain, China,
Russia, the United Islamic Caliphate...and in the West there were
the six sectors in North America.

At the crux of it all were Scorpion's Skynet
surveillance systems. An army of drones, cameras, and computer
chips...a whole arsenal of technology which harvested data on the
world's population. The makings of this world-wide police state had
its test-bed in America. After the world's only superpower fell,
the Big Brother surveillance proliferated. All major cities had
little white boxes in them. Inside these little harmless looking
boxes were quantum computers. Their capabilities, what they could
do...unknown. Anybody curious enough to come by and see what was
under the box wouldn't live to tell. An invisible dome of lethal
energy protected the quantum computers that ultimately were left
alone to do Lord knows what.

It may be buzzing by you. Maybe on your
window...splattered on a fly swatter even. Insects--natural ones,
too came under the dominion of Scorpion. They were more watchful in
the urban environment than a man with the big game on. Birds and
foul punched the clock for many hours of service to the agency,
also.

Privacy? It didn't exist. The whole world
was being watched. Forget governments spying on each other, which,
consequently still happened rather frequently. The watchful eye of
Scorpion noticed everything though. She took the ambition of the
NSA and pushed it to another dimension. What's more, Howard and his
underworld organization controlled the world's markets: anything
could be achieved.

--

Barcelona, Spain

The glaring sun on the Iberian Peninsula
filtered through the polarized lenses of Agent Marcello's shades.
He was engaged in the typical observe and report duty assignment
for the agency, Mossad.

A random business person walked by his bench
in the park. The stranger dressed in an expensive suit complete
with the manly jewelry: a Rolex. Alfonso wondered what time it was.
He had a smartphone, but he had to assume he was being watched by
several governments...and Scorpion. Instead of pulling the device
out of his pocket, the street bum scooted off his seat and grabbed
the man's wrist--the one with the shiny time piece on it.

The guy protested.

Alfonso ignored him. He got what he had
wanted. It was eleven fifty-five.

Time to book it.

His muscular legs took him on a slant that
led to a bike rack with scooters chained to it. None of them were
his. No matter though.

Alfonso looked around and was satisfied he
had a green light to choose the red one and go to work on it.

First, a pair of powerful wire cutters
snipped through the chain that had once tethered the moped to the
bike rack. In less than thirty seconds he had the two wires from
the ignition reversed, and the loose end where it needed to go.
There was a spark and Alfonso throttled it. He quickly returned his
tactical knife to its sheath near his right armpit: he was left
handed.

And off he went into the hustle and bustle
of Barcelona traffic.

Alfonso had to be at a drop-off. These
occurred so often that it was like second nature to him. An agent
would hand off an envelope to him--never the same person. As he
drove along at a conservative speed of seventy kilometers per hour
Marcello acted out his paranoid nature with constant glances over
the shoulder. If anybody was tailing him, they did a very good job
of it. Nothing made him want to drive any faster or in a zig-zag
pattern to lose a shadow. One could never be too cautious in his
line of work. In ten years with the agency, he only had two chance
run-ins. Both times it didn't fare so well for the aggressor.

Ten blocks later, two rights and a left,
Alfonso pulled over to the curb and put the kickstand down. He knew
he had time to spare before the drop-off. Until then he had to
suffer with intense hunger pains at the mouthwatering smells coming
from a steakhouse in the area.

Blending in was the name of the game. He did
not want to make it any easier for his enemies to spot him. What
better way than to get lost in a crowd? In Barcelona one didn't
need to be in a mall for there to be crowds. Every street and
thoroughfare in the city simply teamed with people.

Satisfied his cover was sufficient and that
no cameras could get a good angle on what he was up to, that's when
the phone came out. There was a new text. It read: "Come in after
dark. We have a lot to go over." There was a picture message
too.

Alfonso looked hard at the screen. What he
was looking at appeared to be a forty-sevenyear-old woman, a German
high-ranking official...and she was in town on a diplomatic trip to
German-controlled Spain.

Sofia Keller held the title Minister of
the

Interior. She didn't wind up on Chancellor
Lothar's cabinet for nothing. Her trim appearance, shoulder-length
blonde bobbed hair, upturned nose, and dimpled cheeks weren't
menacing by any means, yet from the reports he had heard about the
woman, she knew how to pull rank. Sofia Keller, aka "the enforcer"
wouldn't be leaving her post in the Interior Ministry anytime soon.
Today she was in town to carry out an inspection of the local
government and to meet with leaders on her findings.

Alfonso's phone vibrated. That was his
signal. The agent quickly made haste to get to a bus stop and wait
there. He wasn't looking for somebody that didn't belong, that's
not how Mossad operated. Women dressed in high fashion strutted by,
men in business suits talked on their phones, families walked
together to get lunch.
Where are you?

Just then a woman nearly tripped over
Alfonso and that's when he felt something that wasn't there before.
It was wedged under his right arm. Agent

Marcello casually slipped it under his
floral shirt and tucked it into his pants.

Next up, find out the best way to stalk
Sofia Keller and her cohorts. He would need to take inventory on
all the places of interest they might be at. Entry and exit points.
And ways he could make himself scarce in case any of the Germans
became wise onto his spy game.

--

Westover Ventures, Lost Angeles

Nine out of ten heavy-lift cargo aircraft
were able to land. The tenth had two engine fires that brought the
beast down in an ugly wreck, its cargo undoubtedly damaged and the
crew more than likely dead.

Nine of the planes landed though, one after
another, down the boulevard from the gigantic factory and office
complex of Westover Ventures. Each of them measured longer than a
football field, a hundred feet wide and six stories tall. The cargo
ramps of the planes lowered like drawbridges. Loadmasters unloaded
twenty tanks, ten personnel carriers, and UGVs (unmanned ground
vehicles).

All of these deadly machines of war
trundled out of their cargo planes and onto the battlefield, ready
to set up a perimeter. Along with the heavy-duty camouflaged
military vehicles, nine platoons with forty soldiers each marched
to the directives their assigned lieutenants gave them. Medevac
personnel didn't need to be told to conduct search and rescue on
the downed craft: they were already on it.

The sergeant NCOs (non-commissioned
officers) coordinated logistics with the members from their
platoons that made up the three companies that ultimately were
responsible for insuring the success of the team of Viper agents
that would go inside to retrieve the priceless equipment and
blueprints on future weapons.

...

It was hard not to think about what was
going on in the skies above. The enemy mercilessly pounded the FRN.
Undoubtedly the twenty brave men going into Westover Complex to
extract the assets felt the burden to see the mission through.

Who needs security clearance creds?

They didn't even ring the doorbell. Planted
explosive charges blasted the men's way into the cavernous interior
of the gigantic building. Ding-dong. All the Viper units were
equipped with thermal imager cameras in their helmets, along with
night vision, and an entire integrated network suite for staying
connected with the rest of the team. Two of the Viper agents were
positioned near the entrance of the five story office building the
team had just entered into. They would stay in contact with the
outside world and interface with even the president himself if need
be. Meanwhile, the rest of the detail would separate into smaller
forces: one to the west wing or weapons division while the other
headed to the energy nexus located in the east wing.

The building appeared hollowed out and
lifeless. The two guards standing sentry in the lobby gripped their
rifles tensely. Through the huge triangular glass curtains that
made up the building's walls they could see giant eightwheeled
military vehicles speeding by. Soldiers scurried along at a frantic
pace to set up check points with machine gun nests.

…

"Do you really believe we're alone in this
structure?" one of the guards asked his buddy.

The other dude grabbed a protein bar from a
pouch on his chest and nibbled off the front end of the bar. In
between bites he answered, "Scorpion would be stupid not to come
here. Either they already have...or we've got company, we just
don't know it yet." "But that's not possible! We've done a full
sweep of this place. No life signs." Only halfway through his
snack, the other man didn't want to be bothered for an immediate
answer. He held up a finger in the darkness. "Coated sapphire
cloaks work beautifully against our sophisticated cameras,
rendering enemy operatives invisible. Just like that," he snapped
his fingers.

The figure who wasn't munching was freed up
to swear at the revelation. "Why do I get the feeling this is a
trap? The alien ships or whatever the heck they are in the
skies...it's like they were expecting us. Now the potential our
team is walking into an ambush...."

"I know," his partner agreed. "Stand alert,
ready for anything. We are Viper agents, just remember that."

"Hooah!"

--

Scorpion War Room: Vandenberg, CA

The underwater entrance to the agency's
strategic war room wasn't like Atlantis...no to the dazzling,
mythical buried city. Instead it took the approach of concealment,
blending in.

According to the harpoon class submarine's
advanced sensors, the foreign leaders were nearing the front door
to the base. Unless something happened quick though, a six hundred
foot long missile would slam into pilings along the shore.

The captain of the sub ordered a full stop.
Bubbles churned as if water jets had been turned on in a whirlpool
tub. The heavy mechanical doors to a tunnel entrance groaned but
eventually complied. Sediment kicked up from the ocean floor. It
was an amazing thing. A submarine over ten thousand tons, five
hundred and seventy feet long literally drifted into the tunnel
with the ocean currents.

The captain guiding the large vessel likened
this little exercise to a trip to the car wash: you just had to get
the wheels on the track and put 'er in neutral. In a way, that's
what the Scorpion sub did.

A full detachment of ten Scorpion Elite
Guards stood on the wharf next to the looming cylindrical metal
whale that decided to port there. The forerunner for the Lord of
the Ages traveled with them. Maxwell was Maxwell. A cloaked,
hooded, mysterious stranger.

The hatch popped open on top of the
submarine's deck like a bottle cap under tremendous pressure: its
contents dying to escape. Russian President

Igor Orloff was first to disembark,
followed by the German leader, and finally Jasper Turpin of
England.

Igor's aide, Grigory Sliva who brought up
the rear paused on the bridge between the vessel and solid ground.
He noticed strange lights off in the distance closer to the mouth
of the tunnel where they had just come in. Something else swam
among the waves which looked like shark fins to the Russian.
Grigory dismissed it with a head shake. He continued his advance
more cautiously than ever into the world of the unknown. A stray
glance of his to the left gave way to curiosity about the length of
the sea tunnel. It seemed to go on forever. But perhaps that was
the darkness
’
s hidden talent in the
strange world-making things seem different than what they really
were.