The expansion of the Coalition Properties facilities in downtown Los Angeles had begun as a way for the mega-corp to park enormous amounts of cash with the least amount of scrutiny.
As the Coalition took more and more market share from its traditional business sectors—war, defense weapons, energy, banking, Internet services, computer hardware and software, and more recently, revenue from off grid dark money sources like unregulated products, human trafficking, and drugs—profit margins for the conglomerate began to grow exponentially into hundreds of billions per year.
The company was piling up American dollars so fast that it was literally running out of safe places to put it. The firm already owned several banks all over the world, including in places like Cyprus, a country where many considered the small island nation’s banking system to be the money-laundering capital of the world.
At this point, buying up more banks to park untaxed cash would only succeed in getting more unwanted attention from U.S. Federal authorities, which had eager and aggressive investigative branches that could easily trace abnormally large wire transfers or deposits, regardless of their origin.
The least regulated and most stable investment option currently available for large cash sums was therefore real estate investment, and it was in this area that the Coalition was more than happy to take advantage.
All it took was a purposefully complex array of shell corporations to make scrutiny of the transactions too difficult to pursue by the Feds, which when combined with the reality that not many agencies were in fact looking to scrutinize these real estate acquisitions to begin with, made it the smart play.
Regulatory bodies looked the other way because cash hungry state and city legislators were happy with the investment, as it boosted the local economy and tax base, allowing them to keep both liberal and conservative campaign promises. With lobbying to grease the wheels, legislators made the deals easy, as everyone wanted the deals to happen, and this allowed the world’s largest defense contractor to quickly become one of the world’s largest real estate holders.
In Los Angeles alone, the Coalition had purchased all the high-rise buildings that surrounded its west coast headquarters, known as Coalition Towers West. The real estate purchase in its entirety consisted of a tight cluster of six structures, the smallest of which was fifty stories, and in a first ever deal of its kind, it included all the connecting streets and power grid. The deal even included taking over the maintenance of water pipelines.
The firm paid well over market value for this all-inclusive patch of real estate, price not being a concern, which in turn sent surrounding real estate prices soaring. Between purchase price and the relocation costs of the previous tenants of the newly acquired buildings, along with all the interconnecting roadways, the tab of the downtown Los Angeles purchase was north of two hundred billion dollars.
The Coalition made it clear before the acquisition process began that they had no interest in keeping former tenants in the high rises that they bought; they fully intended to use the office space for their own corporate needs, and any cost to make that happen would not be prohibitive.
The total cost for the project was of no concern to the Coalition because costs, no matter how high, would be inconsequential against the super-conglomerate’s gross revenues, not to mention the tax advantages the deals created, which reduced the true cost to nearly zero when amortized over the next twenty years, all based on real estate tax laws that the Coalition itself had a hand in creating.
For the Coalition, it was top to bottom monetization. The firm helped craft the rules that allowed their meteoric rise in profits, and they crafted the rules to monetize their attempts to park all the loot. The Coalition literally could not stop making even more money from their attempts to stash the enormous amounts that they already had.
And the Coalition did not limit its real estate acquisition binge to Los Angeles. The company was purchasing large swaths of metropolitan property all over the world, including New York, Miami, Dallas, and Chicago in the United States, as well as Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Paris, Beijing, Dubai, Frankfurt and countless other cities around the globe.
Metropolitan real estate acquisition was quickly becoming the “new Swiss Bank” for the uber-rich, corporate or private, and Coalition Properties was once again the world leader as it continually parked its endless cash flow everywhere it could, as fast as it could.
But Los Angeles had always been a special place to the Coalition board of directors, away from the scrutiny of New York, and with far nicer weather. So, with a unanimous vote, it was the City of Angels that the Coalition board chose to make their personal homes as well as their corporate headquarters.
They all adapted to Los Angeles quickly, with the excitement of Hollywood, the constant sunshine, and beautiful beaches all serving as the backdrop to some of the prettiest people in the world. Every board member of the Coalition had a luxury penthouse apartment located at what was recently dubbed “the Fortress” to go with his or her Malibu beach home.
And since the Fortress was both the home of the Coalition’s top executives and the epicenter of its business, the sophistication of its security systems that guarded the Fortress were state of the art, with military-grade technology. In order to comply with civilian laws, the technology that went into the security system was labeled “proprietary” instead of “classified,” but the difference between the two now was only in the name.
The system would also prove to be a test bed for the Coalition’s latest civilian surveillance techniques and technology, with the plan being to monetize and export that technology worldwide. Governments would soon be able to monitor their citizens’ every movement, extrapolate their every thought even, down to the last detail. And it would all be done with Coalition systems, with all the data stored on Coalition servers.
As such, every movement throughout the Fortress grounds was monitored and recorded for testing and analysis. Every surface had an array of sensors to track contact, motion detection to detect movement, thermal and infrared imaging to detect life, as well as stride and gait analysis to detect identity, with all of it piped through the CCTV systems.
This all-encompassing surveillance had a range that extended throughout the courtyard and connecting streets. The audio systems could record and identify different audio tracks from a growing library of over thirty thousand different sounds. It could even distinguish between individual heartbeats, and with the microsecond it took to access medical records from Coalition Healthcare, identify whom the heartbeat belonged to instantaneously.
The cost for this technological upgrade was “proprietary” but rumored to be in the hundreds of billions. But if the Fortress Beta-test of full-scale surveillance proved successful, the Coalition had every intention of selling the system to governments worldwide, governments that the Coalition had also helped form, as a way to keep their populations safe. Like all things that the Coalition touched, it would eventually turn an enormous profit.
The Coalition Fortress weapon defense systems that backed up the surveillance were state of the art as well and mostly hidden from public view. In addition to the Black Hawk helicopters on each of the helipads that every Fortress building had, the private, well-guarded garage systems below street level had rows and rows of pristine and heavily armored BearCat transports, as well as military grade Humvees, including several that were mounted with fifty caliber rifles.
Building Four of the six was the home of both the armory and Coalition Assurance team, which at any given time housed up to seven hundred ex-Special Forces soldiers, ready to go active at a moment’s notice, to any Coalition launch point facility around the world. On the floors just below the barracks was where the armory was located. It included Coalition-made RPGs, M-16 rifles, as well as 9mm handguns, KA-BAR knives, Kevlar armor, night-vision goggles, with hundreds of thousands of rounds of the necessary ammunition.
There were enough men and combat equipment in the Coalition Assurance Building to overturn all but a handful of countries. And the Los Angeles Fortress facility was only the beginning.
The third floor of the Coalition Assurance Building was also where the containment apartments, or holding cells were located. Under heavy guard, there were twenty-four containment apartments, ranging from bare-minimum prison cells designed to approximate those in Leavenworth to the more luxurious accommodations like the one that currently held Alex Luthecker.
The domineering presence of the Coalition Fortress complex in Los Angeles had encountered its share of political opposition, but it was nothing that a few million dollars of lobbying money couldn’t take care of.
The Coalition’s long range planning for not only the Los Angeles center but for all of its Fortress hubs around the world was an interconnected nation-state status, using Vatican City as a model.
It was the board of directors’ hope that the Coalition Fortress Los Angeles, along with its other worldwide holdings, would be politically connected and recognized as one entity, with its own economy, and subject to only its own rules and regulations. Over time, they would even require passport level identification to enter or exit. The Coalition had more than enough money to make this happen, and they controlled more natural resources than any other business entity, more than many nations even, and they had their own army.
In the mind of the board, why should they be subject to rules that were not of their own design? Why shouldn’t they be their own country?
It was with all of this in mind that Glen Turner felt perfectly comfortable holding Alex Luthecker for as long as he wanted. With the level of security and power the CEO had, there would be little that Luthecker or the outside world could do that would interfere.
And when Turner had gotten all that he could from Luthecker, squeezed everything useful from the irritating soothsayer, he would then have him executed.
Luthecker had been a nuisance for the Coalition long enough, and the Fortress was more than capable of disposing of a body, particularly that of someone who lived off the grid.
The Coalition Chairman had avoided dealing with Luthecker for as long as he could, considering him only a minor annoyance, but fate had seemed to intervene, and now Turner would finally have to deal with the young man. So be it. But at least Turner could accomplish what his two predecessors could not—kill Alex Luthecker.
But first, Luthecker would be a very useful tool for Turner—first in getting Luthecker’s hacker girlfriend to shut down her renegade program, then getting rid of the traitor, Ivan the Barbarian, and then finally in disposing of the intransigent nuisance that was Doctor Mark Kirby.
Turner had to admit to himself that Luthecker’s storied abilities seemed to be real, and watching him work was indeed fascinating. And in regards to destroying the Barbarian, the goal was nearly complete.
“You think your words matter to me?” the Barbarian asked Luthecker. Tears ran down the big Russian’s cheeks, and his voice echoed throughout the luxury cell. “Yes, my father beat me. That is not so strange in this world. And did you know that my mother tried to poison me? Perhaps more strange than most, but who cares?
“This is the way things are, the way things have been since mankind crawled out of a cave. For most in the world, suffering is all that there is to know. I’m sure that you are aware of all of this, about not only myself but also many others, although I do not know how it is that you know. Nor do I care. It does not matter.
“They were brutal people, my people, and I am a brutal man because of it. And you probably know that I killed them both. As you say, I made that decision early on, that I would be stronger than them. And I have killed many others along the way. So what?
“Look at all I have accomplished. Look at all that I have. I have lived a life full enough for a thousand men. It is what I wanted all along. I do not regret it, and there is no other why. If today is my last day, so be it.
“Your end will come soon, demon. No different than me. There is no plan or reason to life. And when it comes to death, all men are equal, and both horrible sins and works of grandeur are all equally vanquished.”
The Barbarian got within inches of Luthecker.
Luthecker did not move.
“As I said, I do not fear you. And if I chose to, I could break you in half right now. Maybe that is what is supposed to happen next, no?”
“No,” Luthecker responded. “You killing me will not be what will happen next. If you tried, you’d fail, and your battle-hardened instincts know this, otherwise, you’d have done so already. And isn’t rage only a cover for fear? Wouldn’t you attacking me only prove that you do, in fact, fear me?”
Both men stood unmoving for several seconds.
Finally, the Barbarian backed off.
“Whether or not you fear my abilities is not relevant to the reason you are in here with me,” Luthecker continued. “And if you do not wish to know more of who you really are, that is your choice. But I promise you that before you breathe your last breath, you will know.
“As you admit, your death is imminent, and with it will come the answers that you cannot escape. At this stage, the momentum behind your collective choices is too strong for me to intervene. You will die slowly in a cell and not in a burst of violence like you think you will, and it will also not unfold how you think it will. That is not the reason you’re here. And you know this already. You’ve planned for it.”
“Oh? What do you know of my reasoning? What reason am I here, according to your wizardry?”
“You think you’re here because others fear you, and you intend to confirm that fear, in what you believe is grand fashion. But the reason you are here is because I need you to be. Make no mistake, none of this is by chance or by your design.
“And what those who fear you don’t know and I do, is your plan. The one card you have left to play, that you intended to play all along, if all else failed and you ended up being held captive by your more powerful adversary. It has to do with the nuclear warhead-equipped Russian submarine that you recently purchased from the Russian Navy that is headed this way at full speed.
“It will be in range of this facility very soon. It’s the reason you’ve been reminding us all again and again that you don’t fear death. You remind us of this because you believe it’s coming. It was your final card. It’s always been your final card, and it’s one that you displayed to me the moment you were put in here with me.
“This facility, and all within it, will be reduced to ash, unless you choose to stop it. And you will only stop it if you’re released and properly compensated for your inconvenience.
“But you are also tired of it all. And at this point, you are unsure if you even want to be released. You believe that you are sincere with your fatigue over it all, but that is your denial, your inability to face who you really are, because deep down you are very afraid, and the machinations of fear and denial are exhausting.
“Because of all this, you stay quiet. You’re willing to let things end, here and now. You are torn between survival and wanting your final act before leaving this world to allow you to be remembered as the man who set the world on fire.
“But now that I’ve given voice to your darkest secret, that scenario won’t unfold now, will it?”
“You truly are a demon. But no matter, I win either way,” the big Russian replied.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
“I understand more than you know. You have yet to make your move. Now I see what Lucas Parks saw in you. Now I see how you could bring the world to its knees.”
“Son of a bitch,” Turner said. “How the fuck could I miss that?”
He turned to Kirby, who continued to watch the exchange between Luthecker and the Barbarian with complete fascination.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth about the nuclear sub? Or do you think he’s bluffing?” Turner asked.
The tone in his voice revealed that, for the first time, he felt he was not in control of the situation. Kirby did not miss it.
“I can’t say. But the point is you really can’t take that chance, now can you?” Kirby answered. “He played you both, and it was awesome to watch.”
“Wipe that stupid fucking smile off your face, or I’ll have you shot,” Turner said before he hit the intercom.
Turner understood that either Luthecker, or Ivan, or both had played him, and now he couldn’t kill either one until he knew for sure.
“Get Ivan the hell out of there and bring him to my office, now.”