Mr. Hecht rolled his eyes and rubbed one of his temples, “Sam, I appreciate you having me on. I will not sit here any longer and engage with this kind of finger pointing and name calling. I know that for ratings you guys like to get the most extreme cases to come on and bait the other side into a heated argument. They come on for shock factor, but this man has gone one step too far. Our Country was attacked without warning. Our men and women in uniform deserve our utmost respect. They put their lives on the line defending his freedom to come on television and behave like a jackass. But thanks to those same sacrifices, I also have the freedom to leave,” and with that said, he got up from his seat on live TV and walked out of the camera shot.
She was absolutely amazed. She had never seen anyone storm out in the middle of a segment before. These politicians, on both sides of the political aisle, espoused thoughts that made her feel physically nauseated. The correct answer to most of the problems were usually in the middle of the two larger political parties, but it seemed that the magical middle ground no longer had any presence in Washington D.C.
She changed channels in an attempt to find that horrific footage again. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Something wasn’t right. No part of her wanted to believe the US military would go on an organized killing spree of defenseless women and children. She found another news station showing the same footage, the nurse in her looked at these dead people with a trained and experienced medical eye.
Something wasn’t right.
Then it hit her like a bus.
Despite the fact that the bodies were sitting very near where the explosion had occurred it looked like the people in the video had been killed by bullets, or some other cause, but not by some explosion. They had no sign of any kind of trauma that would be typical of whatever blew up and caused the crater.
Even those with missing body parts it seemed like those body parts were cleanly separated with knives or cleavers. Something other than from an explosion. The wounds were just too clean, almost surgical in nature. They almost looked like they might have been postmortem.
If they had been placed near the site of an explosion after they died there would still be additional tissue damage from the bomb and it would not be clean. Even if they had died before the detonation.
Was it possible they were killed and then moved into that location?
Would the Iranians do that? Would they go that far?
No assassination squad would bother with staging a scene like that. Maybe she was wrong, but she did not think she was. Frank would be able to tell her if she was right, or just crazy. She hadn’t seen conventional combat wounds before, but it seemed to make medical sense to her. Perhaps he had seen combat injuries first hand and he would know.
She hoped Frank, wherever he was, had seen the news. She really wanted to talk to him now. Knowing she had to wait for him to call was going to become more and more excruciating the longer she had to wait. Not only was this his area of expertise, but she also missed the sound of his voice.
Waiting was not something she did well. Not knowing something was also an area she didn’t deal with very well. Patience was certainly not her strong suit.
She had to think.
With breakfast finished, she changed into her exercise clothes and sneakers. On the way out the door she grabbed her keys, cell phone, and iPod. Maybe if she went for a run she could figure out for herself if she was just overanalyzing the pictures on the news, or if there was really something wrong.
AP NEWS FLASH: Today Iran announced that CIA kill squads have been inside their borders, killing innocent civilians in an attempt at retribution. They are calling these actions inhumane. This is a seemingly bizarre claim for a country that recently used nuclear weapons to kill large numbers of civilians. The White House denies these allegations. The President was unavailable for comment. All calls to the Central Intelligence Agency have gone unanswered. <STORY DEVELOPING>
AP ECONOMIC NEWS FLASH: Food prices around the country appear to have stabilized. Futures on various food related items remain at historic highs but have stopped increasing. Defense stocks, for the most part, remain at historic highs and continue to rise. Lockheed Martin has presented plans for rebuilding their destroyed facility in a closed-door session at the Senate Defense Subcommittee. No timetable for this rebuilding or a location for it has been released. How soon their existing orders for aircraft or spare parts can be filled is unknown. The company is currently undergoing bankruptcy procedures and it is expected to come out of these proceedings within six weeks. Lockheed Martin manufactures critical components, if not the entire platform, for many of the aircraft used in the recent counterattacks in the War against Iran.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Captain Banner and Warrant Officer Choi looked at their “cargo” through a one-way mirror. He had barely spoken a word since being taken as a prisoner of war, but then he also hadn’t been uncooperative at all.
Frank thought the man had to be pushing at least seventy years old, so if he had put up a struggle they could have gotten him out of Iran easily by overpowering him. But, instead of struggling he had been a model prisoner. Neither of the two soldiers knew exactly what to make of this man, but they didn’t really care that much. Their job was complete. He was now the concern of other people.
“I didn’t know we had holding cells here in the Pentagon sub-basements. I guess you learn something new everyday. What do you think Chief, will he talk?” Frank asked.
“Well, Sir, we have some pretty good interrogators both on the Army side of the house and with the Agency over in Langley. I am sure they will get the right guy in here to figure something out. Those guys are going to have a problem though. The only words this guy has uttered since we nabbed him have been in prayer.
“He will be difficult to get much, if anything, useful out of. I am not sure how they will get through to him. But if he is running, or even involved in their development program, I would much rather have him here and not talking to us rather than where he was continuing to work to find new and more efficient ways to kill us,” Peter said.
“I bet you are right. He probably won’t give ‘em much besides his lunch order. I didn’t notice that laptop you grabbed along with him until we were off the helicopter and on the plane. Good thinking on grabbing that by the way. I am betting that once the IT guys get that thing pulled apart we will learn a lot more about their program than he will ever volunteer. That asset alone might make the whole mission worth the trouble. Although, I have to say as far as our normal assignments go, this one was just in and out. It was as easy as can be. I wish they were all like that,” Frank said with a measure of disbelief in his voice.
While on the ground Frank kept thinking something was going to go wrong, but it had been a cake walk. On the way back he had thought that perhaps this guy wasn’t really all that important due to how easily the entire mission had gone. Could there be others like him they were unaware of? Was there some kind of duplicate program?
“Computer equipment always pays off. Every time I have been on a mission when we have a chance to nab it, the payoff has always been worth the challenges. This time, he had it in a laptop bag beside his bed so there really was no big challenge,” Peter smiled.
The Warrant Officer couldn’t help himself anymore. Their mission was done, and the package was delivered. He smirked at the young Captain, “Sir we delivered him safe and sound. That ends our official responsibility for him. Now, I am going to go call my wife. I suggest you call that smoking hot nurse you go all gooey eyed over whenever she calls and ask that woman out on a date. Then fly down there and buy her dinner. With all due respect, don’t be a pansy this time, Sir.”