THE WARNING A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series Book 2) (29 page)

        
Satisfied at the General’s answer, the Senator said, “The
coded offshore bank account that you have been using, General Toussaint, for
your planning expenses will be enhanced Monday with sufficient funds to acquire
everything you need. All I ask is that you give me a twenty day out alert, for
obvious reasons. I know I don’t need to tell you, of all people, General….but
….‘loose lips sink ships’
. One person
could sink our ship. I’m not so concerned about the two of us. Our families
would survive our passing. I just don’t want to see loose talk destroy what is
probably the
one chance
we have to
save our ship of state.
An entire nation
is in the balance.”

Offices
of Century Banker Realtors

New
York, NY

“But while they are aroused,
I will set out a feast for
them and make them drunk,
so that they shout with
laughter—
 
then sleep forever
 
and

not awake, declares the
 
Lord
.”
(Jeremiah
51:39 – NIV)

        
For big hitter realtors there was no better field of
commerce than the Big Apple - New York City. It’s where it’s happening. Century
Banker Realtors was the leading commercial realty firm in a city of many large
commercial realtors. Melissa Saunders occupied the most prestigious corner
office at Century Banker’s Fifth Avenue offices. She enjoyed, every year, sales
totaling multiple millions of dollars. Two and half percent of large office
leases and towering building sales in the commercial center of the universe
added up after a while. Over time Melissa had become so accustomed to earning
huge commissions on real estate transactions that when something arose to
decrease her estimated income she didn’t take it kindly.

        
“Melissa here, Kendall.
What
?….Of
course, it’s Melissa
Saunders
….how
many
Melissas
do you know? Here’s the
deal, and I’m only going to say this
once
….Got
it?....
Once
….Ready? Kendall, you can
tell that Arab sheik, or whatever his title is that he’s not in Saudi Arabia on
this lease. He’s here in New York City. Not out in the sand dunes. So, tell me
again, slowly, so I can write this all down…..why is the robed wonder walking
away from the lease?”

        
Kendall was not a newcomer to New York realtors who yelled
to make their point, but, he thought, Melissa is over the top, “Look, Melissa,
crank it back a notch,
okay
? I’m not
any happier than you are about this? I could lose over seven hundred thousand
in commissions if we can’t make this lease work.”

        
“Ken, I’ll lose twice that, as you know. So, which part of
agreed deal
does this guy not
understand? We spent a small gazillion on prepping and presenting this deal.
The owner threw in a quarter mill to design the space. And….now….this jerk wants
to move
higher in the building
? Don’t
you think we should have known all that before we all spent so much in time and
coin?”

        
“Look, Melissa, I’m
with
you on this. This building isn’t a Lego structure with inter-changeable parts
and floors. Even if we had forty thousand square feet available twenty plus
floors higher, which we don’t, the configuration is different the higher you
go. I don’t have to tell you, that with the cut-ins, insets and towers, the
floor space at that height is at least thirty percent less than where we had
him before this lease blew up.”

        
“Kendall, I know all that….
Boy
,
do I know
that. I’m
looking at the schematics on my PC. There’s
no
way
we can make this work….
No way
….So,
how firm is the Sheik on moving up stairs? Is this, by the way, just about
a better
view? I can get him a better
view over on Park.”

        
“Here’s what I was told. They have to stay in central
Manhattan. No deviation. They have to be within a few floors, no more than two
or three, of the highest buildings on the island. When I asked why....Was it
just a view thing….or a prestige thing….or what? All I got back was they just
want it, and
don’t ask why
. I frankly
thought was kind of creepy, to be honest about it. I woke up in the middle of
the night last night worrying about this, and guess what?”

        
“”You had an epiphany?”

        
“Maybe. Kind of.
I
hope not
. I had a flashback thought of my neighbor’s cousin in Florida who
gave the jet airplane pilot instruction to three of those guys who flew the
plane into the World Trade Center. I thought why is the height over Manhattan
that important
? Then I turned over and
went back to sleep.”

        
“Kendall. You’re a bundle of joy, you are. Just figure out
what we can do to move this guy to a higher floor and
make this thing work
. I’ve got an offer pending on my new villa in
Tuscany that I don’t want to back out of.
Got
it
?”

Mazah
Highway (Route 7)

Damascus,
Syria

        
Colonel Vladimir Nikolaevich was not a happy Russian. As the
responsible officer for maintaining Russian armaments stored southwest of
Damascus he should have been the first person notified of the Iranians’ plans.
Instead, when he arrived at the storage facility he was overwhelmed with the
large number of troop carriers. There were hundreds of vehicles, possibly as
many as five hundred, parked on the roads leading to his covert facility, with
one soldier driving each troop carrier. The vehicles, he could quickly discern,
were obviously owned by the army of Iran, based on the identifying markings and
the Iranian flag on each carrier. Colonel Nikolaevich lost no time in finding
the Iranian army officer in charge. Upon pushing for information from the
officer he soon learned that he spoke no Russian, nor did he have a translator
with him.

        
The Colonel contacted Moscow on his secure link line. It
took him over an hour, but eventually he was informed, with abject apologies,
that the Iranian army vehicles were at the Russian storage site in Syria with
the direct approval of the highest authorities in Russia. His Moscow superior
officer advised the Colonel that he was to have been notified of the arrival of
the carriers a week ago, but someone failed to do so, apologies, apologies.
Now, Colonel, he was told, please make appropriate arrangements to store under
cover, where possible, all of the carriers for future use. The Colonel was not
amused, nor did he feel like accepting anyone’s apologies even his commanding
general in Moscow, but, of course, he had no choice. He seriously doubted if
his twenty acre covered facility could hold all of the troop carriers. He also
knew that if he couldn’t place the carriers under cover at his facility he
would have to expeditiously locate space where he could hide the vehicles from
satellites. The Colonel suspected that the Americans were using their satellites
to detect the mass movement of the troop carriers to his storage facility. The
carriers’ forward deployment meant that they were now within a few miles of the
border with Israel.

        
Though unhappy, the Colonel would nevertheless obey his
orders and secure the vehicles as best he could. As he called in his staff to
get them busy working on what would undoubtedly take several days, he wondered
when he would finally hear from Moscow that his Russian equipment was released
to head southwest to Israel, apparently now to be accompanied by hundreds of
Iranian army troop carriers. He was just glad that someone else was tasked with
providing for housing and food support for the thousands of Russian and Iranian
troops which would man the vehicles now under his protection. Someone in
Israel, he mused, actually several someones in Israel are going to be very
surprised some day to look north and see thousands of heavily armed troops
headed their way. They must be fools, the Colonel concluded, to have thought
that signing a peace agreement and giving up some of their land would somehow
guarantee Israel that the nation was safe from its radical neighbors. Blood
will flow, he knew.
A lot of blood
.
 

E
Street at its Intersection with West Executive Drive

Washington,
DC

        
Motorists on E Street in Washington, DC have a great view up
the South Lawn to the gleaming pure white government facility known worldwide
as the White House. One vehicle driving on E Street on this sunny afternoon was
a Potomac Power and Light repair truck. Its driver pulled up and stopped at the
curb on E Street just west of its intersection with West Executive Drive. Three
appropriately uniformed power company employees exited their truck and set up
traffic barricades, narrowing traffic to just one lane. An employee pulled the
manhole cover in E Street and lowered a ladder down into the space beneath the
street. At the same time a second truck from the same utility, also manned with
three uniformed employees, did exactly the same thing, also on E Street. The
second truck’s location was further east on E Street approximately an eighth of
a mile from the first truck. Thus the trucks bracketed the south end of the
South Lawn.

        
Both crews were doing what utility crews do. One worker
appeared to be working. One was on his cell phone. The third was directing
traffic allowing seven or eight cars at a time around the blockage they had
created on E Street. Occasionally a motorist in a hurry would sound his horn.
Some gave the universal middle digit message expressing their anger at losing a
few seconds on their busy, important schedule. The two men on the two crews who
were on their cell phones were also carefully watching their synchronized
watches. When the second hand sweep confirmed what the minute and hour hands
showed, that it was now two in the afternoon, the two men signaled the workers
directing traffic to move their barricades fully across the street, not
allowing any further vehicles into the space between the two trucks. There were
already a few vehicles along that stretch of the street, which resulted in
their being halted for a time. Of the dozen vehicles trapped on E Street by the
utility crews, three were auto delivery trucks with canvas sides to protect
their cargo. The signage on the trucks revealed that all were from the same BMW
auto dealership in Bethesda, Maryland.

        
OOMPH! OOMPH!
Several distinct sounds of muffled explosions were heard from the direction
north of the workers and the stopped vehicles, towards the White House. Smoke began
to rise but didn’t appear to be coming from the White House itself, instead
coming from the other side, the north side. The utility workers on their cell
phones nodded to the workers directing traffic, who then lifted their
barricades and allowed the vehicles that had come to a stop to exit the
barricaded area. The utility worker directing traffic at the west truck, near
the intersection with West Executive Drive continued barricading any traffic on
E Street, motioning for upcoming vehicles to turn around and head west on E
Street, not allowing them into the barricaded area.

        
The vehicles previously stopped had now exited the blocked
section of E Street, with the exception of the three BMW dealership vehicles.
They were stopped near the eastern utility truck. The drivers of the three
trucks simultaneously pulled off light jackets covering their US Army uniforms
and put on battle helmets. Each then dropped his truck into gear and
accelerated west on E Street. Immediately before coming to the intersection
with West Executive Drive the three drivers wrenched their steering wheels hard
to the right. The accelerating trucks jumped up over the curb. The two most
westerly trucks were about five feet apart. The most easterly truck was about
thirty feet away from the other trucks, as its driver had trouble steering once
he jumped the curb. All three trucks drove across the short strip of grass in
front of the fence. They violently collided with the metal fence, taking it
down and driving onto the South Lawn of the White House.

        
The drivers of the three trucks did not notice disturbed
grass on the other side of the fence, under which had been buried high impact
explosive devices along several feet of the fence. The center truck and the
truck to its left were thrown up in the air by the explosions. They toppled to
their sides spilling out the men in the trucks, many of whom were now on fire.
The force of the explosions killed several of the troops outright. Though the
truck to the west had been violently rocked by the explosions, it was spared
immediate destruction by its distance from the implanted explosive devices. The
driver punched down on the gas hurtling his truck north on the South Lawn
towards the West Wing. He saw that the other two troop carriers were torn apart,
burning and out of commission. His truck offered the last hope for a successful
assault. He needed to get his cargo of fighting men to the southeast windows
and doors of the West Wing as quickly as possible. His right foot was flat to
the floor.

        
As the assault truck was hurtling up the South Lawn, about
halfway from West Wing, the driver saw a figure standing on the roof of the
White House. At first he thought that he was seeing a federal agent holding an
assault rifle or a large gun. Behind the standing figure he could see the smoke
from the drones still swirling around the front of the building. Then, looking
more carefully at the armed protector on the roof, his heart sunk as he
realized that the standing protector was aiming what could only be a Stinger
missile at his oncoming truck. ‘Oh, well’, he thought, which was his last
thought in this world, ‘ya’can’t win ‘em all’.

        
The Stinger missile entered the truck’s cab, exploded and
took the lives of the driver and the fifty seven men closest to the front of
the BMW dealership vehicle, including General Douglas Toussaint, retired. The
President was several miles away in a secure federal facility.