“In U.S. politics, compassion means giving money and privileges to well organized interest groups at everyone else’s expense.”
Reaction from various Texas state politicians was predictable. Even the Democrats had a hard time explaining away how Bartlett could provide a pardon to the man responsible for ordering the raid that killed a very popular governor and his wife.
Instantly, there were demands among many state legislators for the governor to call a special session of the legislature immediately. They knew the governor had a minimum amount of days to call for the special election to replace murdered Senator Milsap, but most thought one vote in the state Senate was not critical for the ultimate passage or defeat of an independence referendum.
When Zach Turner pulled up to the Bunker at 5:45 a.m. for the 6:00 meeting with Beard and Will, their trucks were already there.
“Damn, boys, you must have good news,” said Zach as he strolled in and dropped his backpack on the nearest table.
Beard had three laptops, with multiple large computer screens opened and USB cables going everywhere.
Beard looked at both of them with a dire face, “Guys, this is some crazy stuff, that’s all I can tell you. We are sitting on a nuclear tinderbox of information.”
“Okay, take us through it. Hang tight while I pour some coffee,” replied Zach.
“I’ve got mine already. Ready to go,” added Will.
“This first set of data is from one of Ottosson’s cell phones. It shows text messages with three prepaid cell phones and I have only been able track down who bought one of them.”
Beard pulled up messages on one of the screens.
The text message read:
Operation Walrus on track, set for Ft. Myers on rendezvous date
Replacement Crew Set
“Okay, what the hell does that mean?” asked Zach.
“Let’s see if you’ll begin to connect the dots when you see more related texts. This next one is the day after,” answered Beard.
Walrus successful. Undetected. Perfect.
“Look at the date of this last text,” said Beard flatly.
“Not sure if I see what you’re seeing yet,” Will stated.
“Okay, look at this one,” responded Beard.
Tail #N56732 Back with McCray tonite on CIS, Pick Me up
“CIS? That’s an aircraft tail number. Look it up,” said Zach, somewhat frantic.
“Already did. That’s a CIS private Falcon 900. I hacked into the private executive flight base operations (FBO) at Reagan. Here is the manifest for this flight. The same set of passengers, plus one, went to Fort Myers the day before, but came back less one passenger,” noted Beard, who was eager to provide the important name that was missing on the return flight.
He pulled up the manifests for both flights on the screen.
“Oh, my God,” Will said quietly.
Zach sat silently with little emotion. He knew where this was headed now, but waited for Beard to give him more.
“There’s a ton of text messages on this particular date to these three phone numbers. They are all in this type of code referring to the Walrus moniker. But I think I need to show you this next, from the laptop in the hotel room.” Beard pulled up a screen from one of the connections made to a laptop. “There was an awful lot of research on this laptop done on this particular chemical.”
“Tetrodotoxin?” asked Will.
“Instant death, usually within minutes. Typically, an organic compound from a puffer fish, blue-ringed octopus or sea snake. He also had a lot of information about the presynaptic neurotoxins from the Inland Taipan, the deadliest snake in the world, as well as adrenaline. Apparently, he was in touch with black-market providers of the two poisons, one from Russia and another from Senegal.”
“This is out of character for the Russians. They usually want to use polonium, a radioactive poison,” offered Zach.
“So this isn’t KGB?” asked Will.
“I have actual dosing instructions,” said Beard. “This concoction was mixed with adrenaline to speed its absorption throughout the bloodstream.”
Both Zach and Will now stood, both with hands on hips.
“Here it is. You can see here, they mix the two poisons with adrenaline. Look at how low of a dosage is needed, less than one-tenth of a milliliter,” said Beard matter-of-factly.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Holy crap!” exclaimed Will.
“How is it administered? You would have to inject someone, right?” asked Zach.
“Well, yes but look what the toxin was loaded in.”
“An Epipen? Am I reading that correctly?” asked Will.
“It’s an injector similar to an Epipen. I picked one up.” He showed it to them. He then stuck it quickly into the fatty part of his bicep. “Look how quick that was. I didn’t even feel it. I just jabbed it in and pressed the injector. Not even any blood and, honestly, I didn’t feel a thing.”
Both Zach and Will sat back down as the sheer immensity of the moment overtook them both.
“Okay, so if I had an Epipen injector loaded with this cocktail, I could essentially scratch someone or inject this tiny needle from the pen and that someone would have some very serious problems within minutes?” asked Zach.
“Probably within seconds,” Beard said. “Those two toxins are the fastest acting natural toxins known to exist. The adrenaline would help the toxin move through their system quickly.”
“And their immediate symptoms would be what?” asked Will.
“Cardiac arrest, partial paralysis, foaming of the mouth, loss of motor control, hyperventilation. A really bad scene,” Beard told them.
“Enough to fall out of a boat into the Gulf of Mexico?” asked Will.
“Under the right circumstances, certainly,” answered Beard.
“United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Noyner was obviously Walrus?” said Will.
“The chief justice of the Supreme Court was assassinated,” answered Zach.
“I’ve got more,” claimed Beard.
“Geez, this isn’t it?” asked Will.
“Not hardly,” Beard replied.
“What else do you have?” asked Will.
“I wish I could say this was the worst.”
“You can’t be serious,” Zach exclaimed. “His weakness is women. Who entrusted this guy to do something this diabolic?”
“Tip of the iceberg, sir.”
“How so?” asked Zach. “Are there others? What is the immediate danger?”
“From what I can tell here, sir, our constitutional republic as we know it,” answered Beard.
“This stays right here,” Zach ordered. “Nobody knows this but us three. We will need to call our team in, but only the bare minimum staff we need for research and recon.”