The interior of the plastic bag was smeared with blood, some of which was darkening now as it congealed. In the center of the blood smears was a thin, ragged looking sliver of metal an inch long, from the top of which were two wiry coils that appeared to have decayed.
‘What the hell is that?’ Jarvis asked.
‘That’s exactly what Doctor Shrivener said out loud on the autopsy recording,’ Nellis said, ‘when he pulled this out of the general’s skull after detecting it in an X — Ray. Our labs are running tests on it now and trying to determine what it’s made of and what the hell it was doing inside his body. I can tell you what they’ve figured out so far.’
Jarvis looked up at Nellis expectantly, and the general continued with an almost reluctant tone.
‘Given the object’s length and the position the doctor found it in the general’s nasal cavity, it would appear that the coils you can see on one end would have penetrated the frontal lobes of General Thompson’s brain, reaching some way into his cerebrum. The material used is some kind of advanced semi — conducting alloy.’
Jarvis stared down at the tiny device and then up at Nellis.
‘You’re thinking that he was somehow driven to do what he did by this, thing?’
‘Like I said, I don’t know for sure,’ Nellis replied, ‘but Doctor Shrivener’s opinion is that given Major General Thompson’s otherwise immaculate physical health and the lack of any mental issues that could have driven him to snap and open fire on his own people, this device may be the key to explaining why he did what he did. Thompson joined the army on his eighteenth birthday and served his entire career, so any medical procedures would have been conducted by the army’s Medical Corps or privately at the army’s expense. Needless to say, there’s nothing on the record about him having this contraption shoved into his head.’
Jarvis picked up the plastic bag and was surprised when he saw the needle — shaped metal object bend and break in even a gentle grasp.
‘It’s okay,’ Nellis said as he saw Jarvis’s concern at the break. ‘The object is heavily decayed. Doctor Shrivener managed to X — Ray it and obtained a three dimensional scan.’
‘This isn’t the work of some lunatic on the street; this is high technology, something that only a country like ours could create.’
‘Which is why you’re here,’ Nellis said. ‘I want Warner and Lopez in on this.’
Jarvis looked up at Nellis again as he set the bag back down on the desk. ‘Majestic Twelve?’
‘It’s possible they’re involved,’ Nellis said. ‘As you said, this kind of technology doesn’t just turn up out of nowhere. Wherever it came from and whoever inserted it into the general’s brain, we’ve got about seventy two hours to figure it out and bring it to an end because as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, if a four — star general can end up killing innocent recruits in the middle of one of the largest infantry bases in the continental United States…’
‘There could be more of them,’ Jarvis acknowledged. ‘And they could be anywhere.’
‘We’ve already enacted a protocol, quietly,’ Nellis said, ‘and X — Ray scans of all military personnel are underway, but even so it will take weeks to clear our entire staff, and as for civilians there’s no way we can scan three hundred fifty million Americans without causing a major panic. This has to be done under the radar Doug, and it has to be done fast. Your people excel at this kind of thing.’
Jarvis nodded. ‘I’ll get right on it. Will we have support?’
‘From the top, just like I said,’ Nellis confirmed. ‘The FBI’s Director may well attempt to oppose you, but with presidential backing he’s going to have to figure out another way to carry out MJ–12’s bidding, and if he does, this time we’ll be there to catch him.’
III
Fear.
Kiera Lomas sucked in a mouthful of dusty air and coughed, her head bowed down so tight that her chin jabbed her chest as she choked. Her wrists were bound with coarse hemp rope that sheared the skin from her wrists, her hair hanging in limp fronds and her ankles shackled to a chain in the concrete floor of the cell.
She had been taken four days before, or that was as close as she could guess her abduction had taken place. The market district, strolling among the stalls, the smell of fresh goods on the air, warm sunlight, smiles of greeting, a rare break from the monotony of the next breaking report from the remains of a country that the rest of the world was trying to forget.
Then the looks of concern on the market traders’ faces, the sudden scurrying away of other shoppers, shouts of alarm, and then they were upon her. A dusty looking truck or 4x4, she couldn’t really be certain, had careered into the market and smashed its way past several stalls, braking to a halt within ten yards of where she stood. She had known then of course that she should run immediately, but her legs had betrayed her and the doors of the vehicle had burst open to reveal masked men armed with Kalashnikovs who swarmed upon her like demons upon a fallen angel, dragging her into the labyrinths of Hell.
Keira knew that she was underground, concealed in a pit beneath the floorboards of some old building likely bombed — out years before by her own countrymen. Basra had been the site of some of the war’s most vicious battles between the forces of Al — Qaeda and both American and British infantry, alongside their fledgling Iraqi comrades. The masked abductors had bundled her into the vehicle despite her protestations that she was a reporter and not a spy or soldier, and within half an hour they had shoved her into a building that she presumed acted as some kind of safe house.
She had not immediately been placed into her underground prison, although now she wished that she had been. Instead, she had been dragged into a small room wherein a thin, stained mattress adorned an iron — framed bed. There, she had been bound to the headboard and her clothes sliced from her body using long — bladed knives that were frequently waved in front of her face to dissuade her from any opposition. Lying naked before the masked men, she had been forced to watch as they bartered cigarettes for the rights to her body, sniggering and jostling and arguing until a hierarchy had been accepted. One of her captors had placed a blindfold over her eyes before the men removed their masks.
She did not care to recall what had happened next, the memory buried somewhere deep inside a neural tract that she hoped she would never, ever revisit. Cut free from her bonds afterward, she was hastily dressed in a burka and then dragged into incarceration in the pit in which she now huddled in her own filth, her mouth dry from dehydration and her mind filled with terrifying hallucinations of what terrible fate awaited her at the hands of the captors whose identity she now knew.
Islamic State. They had been known to burn people alive at the stake, a fate so unbelievably barbaric it had not been witnessed since it had been routinely practiced by Christians in medieval Europe hundreds of years before. Islamic State, along with the Taliban and Al — Qaeda had beheaded Western journalists live in front of television cameras and broadcast the grisly videos to the world, shot schoolgirls, seemingly competing with each other in order to increase the barbarism they enjoyed inflicting on the innocent around them.
And now Kiera was in their hands.
A noise from somewhere outside sent shockwaves of fear pulsing like writhing snakes through her shivering body and she tried to stifle her sobs as she heard heavy footsteps stomping toward her amid angry bursts of Arabic and Urdu. A heavy latch was slid through its mounts and the trapdoor above her hauled open.