“Okay, Mr. Under Secretary… present your case.”
Reaching into the interior jacket pocket of his windbreaker, Adam removed the folded copy of his report and handed it to his brother.
“Royal Ops… Cosmic Ops… Maj Ops? How would you even know what these projects are? Most of the stuff you handled at Kemp was way above your shitty little douche-bag clearance.”
“There still has to be a paper trail if funds are coming out of the U.S. Treasury.”
“Not if they’re being funded by the CIA.”
Adam felt his face flush. “Is that conjecture or fact, Senator?”
“Let’s just say I recognize a few acronyms.”
“Like MAJI?”
“Who told you about MAJI? Steven Greer?”
“You spying on me, Randy?”
“Just doin’ my job as big brother.”
“Boy, if that’s not a Freudian slip.” Adam pushed past him and flopped onto the wrap-around couch. “Are you a gatekeeper?”
“Fuck you and your conspiracy theories. I don’t have time for this bullshit.”
“Eighty to a hundred billion taxpayer dollars a year in Unacknowledged Special Access Projects? As Head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I think you’d better make the time.”
“Is that a threat, Adam?”
“I don’t threaten family. But I’m also not going to shit in my pants like the Defense Secretary did this morning. That copy of my investigation you have in your hand — it’s addressed to Senator Hall, not Secretary Denny. Consider my report officially submitted.”
Randy glanced at the first page. “Son of a bitch…”
“So what happens now?”
“Now? Now you get the fuck off my boat.”
His heart pounding, Adam left the unopened beer on the coffee table and exited the salon to the stern. Climbing over the rail, he limped across the pier, following it around the two-story red brick house to his car.
Randy Hall watched the 2011 silver Jeep Grand Cherokee drive off before dialing a memorized number on his cell phone.
“It’s me. I’d say we have a problem.”
Adam arrived at the five-story apartment building at 9:47 p.m. Parking in his reserved spot in the private lot, he turned off the engine, grabbed the still-hot pizza box, and exited the car. He hobbled to the front entrance and keyed in, never noticing the black Ford Mustang that had been following him over the past eight hours as the driver parked across the street.
Apartment 208 was a one-bedroom dwelling on the second floor, the view from its living room balcony overlooking the parking lot and the dumpster poised beneath the building’s garbage chute. While the view and its associated trash collection sound effects were less than desirable, Adam had signed the two-year lease because he liked the fake hardwood floors, affordable rent, and the building’s location, which was within walking distance of a 24-hour gym and the Metrorail’s Greenbelt Station. Having all but moved in with Jessica, it was rare that he ever used the apartment or the gym. He was only here tonight because the Skype call with his fiancée was scheduled for 10:00 p.m. EST and he didn’t want to miss it.
A musty scent greeted him as he opened the door and turned on the lights. The living room was just large enough to hold a couch, coffee table, and a recliner. Chocolate-brown drapes had been left drawn to cover the balcony’s sliding glass doors. To his left was a small kitchen, to his right a short hall which led to a bathroom and his bedroom.
Piled behind the sofa were cardboard boxes filled with his personal office belongings and two prosthetic devices he had been working on before he had resigned from Kemp Aerospace.
Tossing the pizza box onto the coffee table, he hurriedly relieved his bladder and washed his hands and face, the cool water reviving him a bit. He looked as tired as he felt, but he missed Jessica, and the call was important.
Duane Saylor, Steven Greer’s attorney, had explained it when the two had met in his Maryland office earlier that afternoon.
“A Dead-Man’s Trigger only works if the people who are a threat to kill you know it exists, and are convinced the information that will be released upon your death is far worse than anything you can deliver alive. When is the press conference scheduled?”
“Wednesday afternoon at 5:15. That way, I can go live on the evening news.”
“And the call with your fiancée?”
“Tonight at ten.”
“Then we’d better get busy, you have a lot of documents to sign.”
“Hey, babe! Oh my God, it seems—”
Adam waited several seconds for the frozen image of Jessica Marulli to re-animate.
“—so long since I’ve seen you.”
“I know. Jess, this is a bad connection… the image is freezing up.”
“It’s security… there’s a seven second delay. So don’t say anything about our sex life.”
The image froze on her mid-laugh.
“Jess, I need to speak to you about something important.”
For the next several minutes, Adam spun a tale about how his meetings with defense contractors had motivated him to perform an audit by cross-checking the last decade’s worth of projects subcontracted to Kemp Aerospace.
“Jess, nine of our projects could not be accounted for by the Pentagon. Based on what we were paid just for our share of the work, we’re talking about tens of billions of dollars worth of contracts. When the Secretary of Defense asked two of the defense contractors to brief him, they refused, and the blowback was enough to soil Jordan Denny’s underwear.”
“Adam… what are you planning to do?”
“Denny’s letting me run with the ball.”
“You’re opening an investigation?”
“The president wants accountability. Kemp’s share of these projects is nothing. We’re probably looking at $100 billion a year secretly being channeled into these Unacknowledged Special Access Projects.”
“If these are CIA—”
“They’re not. It’s something much bigger… something unbelievable. Jess, if anything should happen to me… I made arrangements for the evidence to be released to the public.”
“Adam, what did you just say? I couldn’t hear—”
The image of Jessica froze mid-sentence.
Adam waited, only this time the transmission didn’t clear.
“Jess, can you hear me? Jessica?”
The screen went black before returning to the Skype logo.
Okay, Shariak. You’ve tossed enough shit for one day; let’s see how long it takes for it to hit the fan.
24
The twenty nano-crystal zero-point-energy generators, and their four armed escorts from Delta Force, arrived at Lab-3C at 1:35 p.m., each device secured within the padded foam confines of an aluminum case. Sarah Mayhew-Reece wasted no time in dividing her technicians into pairs, assigning Chris Mull to work with Jessica at Station-3.
Swapping out the man-made zero-point-energy units for one of the far more powerful nano-crystal devices required removing a section of each satellite’s electromagnetic shield in order to access the circuit board.
Wielding his power ratchet as if the tool were an extension of his hand, Chris Mull had the internal workings exposed before Jessica had donned her orange jumpsuit.
“That was fast.”
“Your predecessor taught me well.”
“I take it you and Dr. Hopper were close?”
“We grew close because of our politics.” Using a flathead screwdriver, Mull pried open a plastic control panel, exposing two columns of buttons. Pressing the third one down caused a horizontal drawer to slide out like the tray of a DVD player.