5. Chapter 5
Chapter five
Day 2 Washington, D.C.
Clark Nantz braced his right ankle on his left thigh, repositioned his laptop closer to his torso, and leaned forward in the elephant chair. His heart pounded harder than normal as he clicked the first small window on the screen. Finally, after months of preparation, his new weapon had come out to play. The aftermath of its testing, which was about to play across his laptop screen, would change the landscape of human conflict and propel him to the top of the world’s billionaires list.
The video—which came from Aiden Winchester’s camera, according to the name below the feed—was jerky, alternating between a wintery dark night, snow crusted road, and shadowy hills. Suddenly, it steadied and zeroed in on a lump in the middle of the road. The lump got closer.
The breathing on the video was calm…even…barely discernable.
Clark scoffed. Winchester didn’t have a clue what he was walking into. His breathing would turn choppy soon enough.
He glanced across his penthouse office toward his desk, his African Blackwood desk—created from the most expensive wood in the world. A Pininfarina Xten Chair accompanied it. The desk and chair were more comfortable than his thirty-million-dollar elephant chair, but not nearly as satisfying. He scooted backwards a bit, trying to ease the ache in his back. Watching Winchester’s and his SEAL team’s reaction from the Art Deco chair, surrounded by what the antique represented, was worth any amount of discomfort.
Nothing was more thrilling than watching the aftermath of the testing of his new cash cow from a priceless antique made possible by his previous successes.
“She was stabbed. Repeatedly,” one of the SEALs said, as he used the tip of his rifle to lift a torn section of the woman’s dress.
“If someone killed them and left, they’d leave bloody footprints behind. There are none, and the knife is next to him. Looks like he used the knife on her first and then slit his own throat.”
Ding, ding, ding. Give the SEAL a reward. He’d read the situation correctly. How long would it take them to realize what had happened in Karaveht, and fear it happening to them?
The SEALs moved away from his weapon’s first set of victims. While Clark waited for them to stumble upon more fatalities, he idly skimmed his fingers down the antique chair’s elephant tusk armrest. The ivory slipped beneath his fingertips, dipping and rising with each intricate carving. The tusk felt like satin beneath his hands, luxurious and timeless.
The elephant chair was one of his touchstones, physical proof of how far he’d climbed since those long-ago days in the homeless camps. From nothing to billions, thanks to the brilliance of his mind. Although his willingness to venture into territory most people—those too pious, or lazy, or mired in morals—refused to dwell had a lot to do with his success too.
Territory like the one scrolling across his laptop’s screen.
Winchester squatted next to a child and turned her over. “Fuck. She’s just a kid.”
Clark leaned forward again, studying the scene through Winchester’s video feed. So, the weapon bypassed the parental impulse to protect their children. Excellent. The earlier testing had showed as much. But it was nice to have that potential borne out in the field.
“Base,” Winchester said. “You see this?”
“Affirmative.” The responding voice sounded baffled.
“You know anything about this?” Winchester’s voice was tense, even critical.
“Tsk-tsk.” Clark smiled. So much drama, with so much more to come.
He gazed out his fifteen-floor office window as the SEAL team proceeded through town. The huge, floor-to-ceiling windows offered an unparalleled snapshot of the city. A billion-dollar view. The obelisk known as the Washington Monument speared the sky to his right, along with the towering white dome of the Capital Building and the pillars of the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials.
The view from his office was another touchstone. Visual this time. Proof that he’d escaped the poverty and shame of his childhood. Escaped a life of dumpster clothing and homeless camps, where he’d sweltered in the summer and froze in the winter and fell asleep listening to his rumbling belly.
“No more touching them,” Winchester snapped.
And why, yes—the team leader’s breathing was noticeably louder. Clark smiled.
This new weapon was quite a departure from his earlier patents. The first of which had come some thirty years ago—a revolutionary anti-sand, anti-heat, laser guided firing system for anti-armor missiles. Over the past thirty years, many other patents followed, all of which were innocuous compared to the weapon he’d just tested in Karaveht. His new baby would make the old-fashioned war machine of infantry, missiles, tanks and fighter jets obsolete, while simultaneously making him the richest man in the world, by billions upon billions of dollars.
“Golden Eagle.” Winchester’s voice echoed through the video feed. “Our target is cold.”
Clark frowned over that statement. It had to be code for something. Maybe the drone? Maybe the arms dealer they’d been sent to find? If so, then yes. Their targets were cold. But then, they’d been sent to find targets that didn’t exist.
At least, not in Karaveht.
So far, every inhabitant of Karaveht on the video was dead, which gave his new weapon a perfect score. One hundred percent fatality. Excellent.
He was so focused on the images streaming across his laptop, he didn’t hear the door to his office open.
“Sir? Dr. Nantz?”
He jolted at Bernice’s, his administrative assistant, tentative voice and quickly hit the button to shut the screen off. The footage was being recorded. He could go over it at his leisure, as many times as he wanted.
“I know you said no interruptions,” she continued, her voice diffident, “but Admiral Hurley is on line one. He’s demanding to speak with you.”
Of course, he was. Right on time, too. It might be 3:30 a.m. in Karaveht Tajikistan, but it was 6:30 p.m. at the pentagon. Hurley probably hadn’t left his office yet.
“Of course. Put him through.”
He breathed in the gardenia scent of her perfume and preened. She was wearing the perfume he’d given her for Christmas. Proof that they both had excellent taste. He rose and stretched as the door closed behind her. With the laptop beneath his arm, he headed for the desk, set the laptop down, and dropped into the Pininfarina Xten Chair. It gave beneath his weight with a hushed whoosh. He picked up the phone receiver and hit the button for line one.
“Nantz, are you—”
“Admiral,” Clark broke in, doing his best to impersonate someone in the throes of frustrated annoyance. “What the hell’s going on over there? I’ve seen no evidence from the camera feed that Kuznetsov is in Karaveht, like your people predicted. Nor have I seen the A7 Drone’s prototype or any of its schematics anywhere on the video. This op of yours has been a complete disaster. We must get that drone back” He inserted confused horror into his voice. “And what the hell killed all those poor people?”
A hoarse huff came down the line, followed by a gravelly voice.
“From what we can tell, the whole damn town slaughtered each other.” Hurley sounded winded, like a pin had just pricked and deflated his righteous fury. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? The timing of this test on your new cameras is suspicious as hell.”
But Hurley didn’t sound accusatory, more frustrated and confused than anything.
“How the hell was I supposed to know that your men would run into problems on this mission? We weren’t even supposed to be testing the cameras today. They were scheduled for testing last month. Remember? Only your supply chain lost the damn battery packs, which—I’ll remind you—was your crew’s fault, not mine.”
The missing batteries had been easy enough to set up. A bribe here, another there, and the batteries had become separated from the cameras. Hell, he’d even gotten paid for the second shipment.
“Look, I have no idea what happened in that village.” Clark leaned back and swiveled his chair until he could look out over the lights of Washington, D.C. below. “You’re the one who tracked Kuznetsov to that place and assured me he’d set up shop there.” All of which was true. “How the hell would I know what went down there?”
Except, of course, he knew exactly what had happened in that doomed town. Hell, he’d instigated it. Not that anyone would ever know that. He had no intention of being brought up on charges of crimes against humanity.
“Our CIA team is still insisting their intel was solid, and that Kuznetsov and the A7V02 Drone prototype were there.”
“Obviously, your analyst was mistaken,” Clark snapped. “There’s no evidence the drone was ever in this town.”
Because it hadn’t been in Karaveht.
Hell, it hadn’t been stolen. Kuznetsov had done an excellent job of planting the fake intel throughout the dark web, to catch the CIA’s attention and lure the DOD into sending a retrieval team.
“Our analyst thinks Kuznetsov chose Karaveht to run a test using a biological or psychotropic agent. We’re mobilizing a full biological and chemical team to investigate.”
Clark smirked. By the time Hurley’s teams arrived, there wouldn’t be anything to investigate.
He had proof, on video no less, that his weapon had activated the civilian population. Too bad he didn’t have footage of the violence taking place. Kuznetsov had installed cameras throughout Karaveht for just that purpose. Unfortunately, the satellite upload link had failed. Footage of the inhabitants going crazy and attacking each other had never made it out of town. No matter. When his cleanup crew arrived, they’d retrieve the cameras, along with the dead villagers. If his luck held, the video on the cameras would still be accessible. But then, the footage of the villagers going crazy wasn’t nearly as critical as phase two of his test.
SEALs were a breed apart. Hell, a breed above. They were practically superheroes—physically stronger, mentally resilient. If his weapon affected them—which Clark fully expected it to do—and they turned on each other, as the townspeople of Karaveht had done…then he’d have proof that his baby could take down any military organization in the world.
It was only a matter of time before the infected SEALs tore each other apart. Only this time, the carnage would be caught on film. And the footage of Hurley’s mighty SEALs slaughtering each other would sell his new weapon for him.