The farm
Phillip Farragut poured himself another tall glass of bourbon, his third this afternoon. Sitting down on his moth-eaten couch, he turned on the television and then sat back for an afternoon of drinking and mindless entertainment. He didn’t really care what was on. He preferred police shows to anything else, but they usually didn’t come on until after supper. Flicking his remote, he found an old war movie on TV. He took a deep sip of bourbon. Farragut still couldn’t believe his luck. He had more money than he knew what to do with and more on the way; he began to think about selling the farm and moving into Beaumont and spending the last of his days living in a trailer park.
Over the sound of the TV Farragut never heard the front door opening. A figure crept stealthily through the house, a silenced automatic weapon held firm in the shoulder.
Thinking that he would like some ice, Farragut muted the TV and then stood up. When he turned about, his heart skipped a beat. Farragut’s eyes widened when he saw a small woman standing in front of him, dressed in camouflage fatigues with a weapon pointed at his heart.
“Listen carefully to what I have to say,” said Sam. “I want you to pick up your phone, call 9-1-1, and tell whoever answers who you are and that there is a man in your house with a gun and then hang up.”
Farragut, his hands shaking, picked up the phone and placed the call just as instructed.
“Jesus, girl, please don’t kill me,” pleaded Farragut.
“I’m not going to kill you. Now, I need to know if there is another way down inside the cavern.”
Farragut was confused. She looked like she was one of them. Why would she want another way down?
“I asked you a question,” said Sam, her patience fading fast.
“Yes, there are a couple of other ways down below. We used to use them when we were kids. But I haven’t crawled down into them tunnels in years, miss.”
Sam lowered her weapon slightly. “Sir, I need you to trust me. I’m with the authorities. The men on your land intend to detonate a bomb that will kill thousands of people. Can you lead me to the nearest tunnel entrance?”
“No, you have it all wrong. It’s just a movie. There’s no bomb down there.”
“Sir, please, we are wasting time. I must get below before it’s too late.”
Although his mind was hazy from the bourbon, Farragut could see that Sam wasn’t fooling around. There really was a bomb. Nodding, Farragut walked over to the table and picked up the keys to his truck.
“How far away is it?”
“Not too far, but we’ll have to drive past all those people out there to get to the nearest tunnel if I can still recall where it is.”
“Are you sure you can drive?” asked Sam, seeing Farragut stagger from side to side on his feet.
“Sure, I’m really not going all that far.”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” muttered Sam under her breath. “Let’s go.”
A minute later, Farragut waved over at the men guarding the entrance to the cavern as he slowly drove his beat-up truck down the dusty path. Sam lay in the backseat, covered by an old blanket, her silenced weapon tight in her hands. Bouncing up and down like a bucking bronco as it hit every rock in its path, the truck turned a slight bend and came to a stop behind a small grove of trees.
Farragut glanced over his shoulder and said, “We’re here . . . I hope.”
Carefully raising her head, Sam peered back toward the farm. It was quiet. So far, no one suspected a thing. She got out of the truck and looked over at Farragut. “Where is the entrance?”
“Jesus, I told you, missy, it’s been forever since I was a kid. Give me a minute to collect my thoughts.”
Kicking dried brush and rocks out of his way, Farragut tried to find the long-forgotten tunnel entrance.
Sam had called Donaldson the instant the Hummers had turned onto Farragut’s land. After confirming her location by GPS, Sam parked her jeep, dug out an old green army duffle bag, and then changed her clothes. Sneaking back onto Farragut’s land, she made her way straight to his home.
Now looking back at the rows of vehicles parked behind the farmhouse, Sam was starting to grow nervous that she was going to be seen when Farragut let out a whistle. She saw Farragut get down on all fours and begin to clear away a couple of old rotten wooden boards.
“I remember my father getting mad at us for crawling around down in the cavern, so he boarded it up.”
Sam helped him remove the last of the old boards. She peered into the narrow rocky entrance. Sam was happy that it was she and not Jackson about to go down into the tunnel.
“Now what, missy?”
“Sir, I want you to drive to the entrance of your farm and wait for the police to arrive. When they do, tell them that armed men have a bomb on your land.”
“That’s all?”
“Sir, with the amount of liquor on your breath, if you can convince them that you’re not making all of this up, that will be good enough for me.”
With a quick wave of her hand, Sam lowered herself into the tight, rocky channel and then began to climb down into the earth.
Farragut got back in his truck and began to drive. A thought crossed his mind. He was still owed money. If the police came and arrested everyone, he would never see the rest of the money coming to him. He decided to see if Miss Tam, his favorite, was with the others down in the cavern. Perhaps she could pay him before the police arrived.
“So what do you think, Mister Mitchell?” said Cypher proudly as he looked up at the tectonic device hanging from heavy metal chains underneath of the derrick.
“It looks more like a high-tech torpedo than a bomb to me,” said Mitchell as he studied the device. It was smooth, about eight meters long. Along its surface protruded a series of slender probes. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. He looked down at the base of the derrick and saw that it had been built over a wide fissure in the rock.
“It goes down over three hundred meters. That is what you are thinking, isn’t it?” said Cypher.
“Yes, it is.”
“I only need to lower it down to just over two hundred meters to get the desired effect.”
“Which is?”
“As I intend to leave nothing behind for the authorities to tie me to the blast, I have programmed the device to go off like a shaped charge. The destructive power of this bomb will destroy this cavern and the surroundings area while the electromagnetic pulse wave aimed at the Big Hill installation will surge through the rock will like a tidal wave. When it hits, it will destroy the petroleum reserve and everything around it for about twelve kilometers in a blink of an eye.”
“So, I take it my friends and I will be here when your device goes off.”
“Yes, that’s the plan.”
Mitchell was about to ask to be taken over to Jackson when a fit, bald-headed black woman came bounding down the stairs. The look on her face told him that she knew him, but he couldn’t recall ever laying eyes on her.
Like a large cat, she moved over beside Cypher and whispered something in his ear.
Smiling, Cypher locked eyes with Mitchell. “You know, Mister Mitchell, there’s something I think you should see. I’m sure it will amuse you.”
“Well, if I’m going to die, it might as well be with a smile on my face,” replied Mitchell facetiously.
A few seconds later, a slender Asian man with salt-and-pepper hair made his way down the stairs; he looked to Mitchell as if he was in a hurry.
As soon as he stepped onto the rocky floor of the cavern, he called out in Korean. The workers stopped what they were doing and quickly congregated around the man.
“Good afternoon, Colonel. Is there something wrong?” said Cypher, looking over at the men standing behind Colonel Hwan.
“Mister Cypher, my government has instructed me to inform you that we are no longer interested in continuing our arrangement. As of this second, we are no longer in business together.”
“Colonel, why would your government invest so much time and money into something they now wish to abandon?”
“Our reasons are our own. You are to cease your operation here, surrender the device to me, and inform me where the other three bombs may be found so I can have them flown out of the country to Mexico, tonight.”
“And the remainder of my money?”
“As per our agreement, you can keep the money we have already paid you. As we are terminating our operations you are not entitled to any more money.”
Cypher let out a chuckle. “That’s very kind of you, Colonel, to let me keep the quarter of a billion dollars already sitting in my back account in Zurich; however, I am still owed three-quarters of a billion dollars.”
Hwan stared at Cypher for a moment. The mood inside the cavern grew tense. “I see your point of view. I will ask my government to release the remainder of the money owed you for the bombs.”
“That sounds acceptable.”
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, my men and I are leaving. I need to make arrangements to smuggle them out of the country.”
Cypher smiled and then raised his hand in the air. The chilling sound of dozens of weapons cocking filled the air.
“My dear, Colonel, do honestly think that I knew nothing of your orders to kill me and my people?”
Hwan’s face betrayed him. He had been caught in a lie.
“Seriously, Colonel, how hard do think it was for me to eavesdrop on all of your communications with your superiors in North Korea?”
“Obviously too easy,” said Hwan, through gritted teeth.
“Your encryption technology is years behind anything in the West. Your room was bugged and all of your calls were monitored. I’ve known about your orders to kill me and all of my people for days. I know that hidden in the back your rental truck parked behind the farmhouse are enough weapons to equip all of your men. Colonel, just so you understand your predicament, I should inform you that the extra men you smuggled across the border last night to assist you won’t be arriving anytime soon. Unfortunately, they were intercepted and are all lying facedown in the desert with a bullet hole in the back of each of their skulls.”
“How much to let us go?”
Cypher smiled. “Colonel Hwan, there isn’t a sum of money you could pay me to let you go free. After the blast, I need you and your men to be found in the wreckage of this farm as the true culprits of this heinous crime. For you see, Colonel, I intend to inform the Americans that I was duped by you and your superiors. I thought I was only helping you work on software in my factory in Mongolia. My motives were purely altruistic. Only, you lied to me and used my factory to build a tectonic device that you then used to level my factory to cover your tracks. Luckily, I managed to escape and hunt you down. Unfortunately, I arrived too late to stop you from detonating this device. Regrettably, you didn’t realize the power of this bomb and were killed while trying to make your escape.”
“And the other bombs?” asked Mitchell.
“This is the best part. I intend to tell the American government that I managed to discover where Hwan had hidden the three other devices, thereby saving the remainder of your precious reserve of oil. With all of the clues leading back to North Korea and not me, I suspect that there will be a massive demand for new arms and armaments, which my family’s company will naturally provide as the new favorite in Washington. I conservatively estimate that we will make at least ten billion in sales to the U.S. armed forces this year alone. Why settle for a measly one billion when you can have far more?”
Mitchell clapped his hands. “Atsuko said you were clever. But if you pump the North Koreans full of holes, your clever little scheme will fall apart. An autopsy will show that they didn’t die during the earthquake.”
“Oh, Mister Mitchell, please. Do you take me for a fool? I already thought of that. All I need is a couple of them along with Colonel Hwan to be found amongst the wreckage to prove that they were behind everything.”
With a loud bark from one of Cypher’s guards, the North Koreans were herded to one side of the cavern to await their fate.
With a pleased look on his face, Cypher turned to face Mitchell. “Unfortunately, your remains will never be found.”
“Too bad for me, I guess; I always thought that I would make a great-looking corpse.”
“Your feeble attempt at wit is lost on me, Mister Mitchell,” said Cypher dryly. He then ordered one of his men to lower the device into the crevice.
With a sense of growing dread, Mitchell stood rooted to the ground, impotent to stop the coming cataclysm. Grinding his teeth, Mitchell watched as the bomb slid down into the rocky crevice, quickly disappearing from sight.
Cypher saw the look in Mitchell’s eyes and smiled. He had beaten him. He glanced down at his watch and said, “My ride will be here soon. Please do enjoy your last fifteen minutes alive, Mister Mitchell.”
“I suspect it’s more time than you have left,” replied Mitchell bluntly.
For a brief moment, Cypher hesitated, not sure what to do or say. A second later, he looked over at his assassin. “Tara, please escort Mister Mitchell over to his friends and then bring Atsuko to me.”
“With pleasure,” replied Tara.
Cypher reached into his jacket and dug out a memory stick, placed it into the side of his laptop on a table near the derrick, and then began to type.
“Let’s go,” said Tara to Mitchell, waving her machine pistol in his face.
“Sure, why not,” replied Mitchell, his mind a blur as he tried to figure a way out. Walking as slowly as he dared, he tried to delay the inevitable when out of the corner of his right eye Mitchell saw a dark blur move between a nearby generator and the rock wall. With a cocky grin on his face, he knew that it could only be one person. A plan gelled in his mind. He saw the two guards covering Jackson and Daniel standing there with bored looks on their faces and knew exactly what he had to do. All it would take was split-second timing and a catalyst to set everything in motion. Where that was going to come from, he had no idea; He just needed a distraction. He needed it in the next ten seconds or he, and his friends, would soon be dead.