Russian Doomsday Page 3

  How do you look friends in the face when the shit hits the fan and tell them, Sorry, can’t help you, you’ll just have to die because you didn’t plan?

  “That is just typical ambivalent Americana. The only thing, at least at this point, I can suggest is to move away from the coast. You’re a realtor, right?” Sayer asked, trying to remember what Pike’s page said about him.

  “Yeah, I am,” Pike said.

  “Then you can probably get a job anywhere. You might have to get a new license depending on what state you end up in. It’s something to think about. It’ll be difficult and expensive to just pick up and move, but in all seriousness, getting away from the coast sounds like your first step.” Sayer took a drink of water. He couldn’t think of any other suggestions. It would be a bold move to relocate away from the coast. At least the United States was a massive place with plenty of options.

  “That actually sounds like a good idea. I work with some real jerks. Leaving them behind would be a pleasure,” Pike said. “Geez, I don’t know why I didn’t think about that. Thanks, Sayer. I’ll keep in touch with you, if that is okay? I’ll let you know what Margo says.”

  “No problem. Thank you for making me aware of this. I had no idea at all. It’s a lot to process, but I’d rather know what is going on than not,” Sayer said.

  After they hung up, Sayer sat thinking for a while. He needed to talk to Joy. In the light of this, he needed to step up his prepping. He’d become a little lackadaisical lately, but the week of survival training had revamped him. This POSEIDON scared the hell out of him. It was time to get serious. He’d hate himself if everything went to hell and he wasn’t as ready as he needed to be.

  He’d been critical of others not preparing. To him, it only made sense. If it wasn’t preparing for the end of the world, then it should be preparing for any kind of disaster. Hurricane Katrina had been a big wakeup call for him. Each year he watched the news reporting on some kind of disaster. The latest had been in Puerto Rico, where they’d lost the power grid.

  The power grid in the U.S. was archaic and certainly wasn’t hardened. It wouldn’t take much to nudge that over. The ability to come back from that kind of disaster was hampered because it was so antiquated. Congress didn’t like spending money on it, but they really should. Usually it was only when all hell broke loose that anyone jumped. But by then, Sayer was sure, it would be too late.

  Though it was years after Katrina, he’d always had it in the back of his mind. Then he’d gotten into prepping. He had first started putting money aside, as he knew that getting ready would cost. But he also knew that doing a little at a time made a big difference.

  Slowly he’d started buying extra food and water. An extra bag of rice or a few boxes of pasta. He’d buy maybe an extra couple bars of soap or some duct tape and paracord. He’d also moved his important documents into a safety deposit box. If there was a disaster, and not the end of the world, he’d be able to retrieve his documents. If it was the end of the world, then it wouldn’t matter.

  Each step he’d taken in his life had brought him here. His pantry was always full, he had spare food placed in different locations, dry and secure. Though he couldn’t prepare for everything, he thought he was a lot better off than most Americans. Joy was generous; she handed over money each month so he could get things done around the farm. He was thankful for her trust and humbled by it.

  He sat back in his chair, thinking. He had started building a bunker in their basement, more or less fortifying it. He’d had steel framing fabricated for a door jamb and wall. He’d built it into the back of the basement. He was planning to drywall, then brick it up. The steel door would be secure against intruders. The bunker was roughly two hundred square feet. It had shelving and an area for toilet and bed.

  Because he was building it in their basement, it wasn’t overly expensive. He wanted to ensure a safe place to go in any emergency. He did the work himself, not wanting anyone knowing what he was doing. He’d told the fabricators of the steel framing, that it was for his garage. He sure as hell didn’t want them knowing he had some kind of bunker. They’d look at him like he was a nut.

  He laughed at himself and shook his head. He really was grateful for Pike’s info. This was something to really take a look at. It was a viable threat. After all, why make a weapon like that if you didn’t have plans to use it?

  CHAPTER THREE

  St. Marys, GA, 14 July 2018

  Pike sat for a moment after hanging up with Sayer. Sayer had been right about the ambivalence of American. The United States had adopted a culture of entitlement, and very few people knew how to take care of themselves any longer. Even fewer knew how to grow their own food. He knew he himself was woefully ignorant, but he meant to teach himself as fast as he could. He had so much to learn. He wanted to be able to take care of himself.

  He chuckled quietly to himself; he really should have thought of that. He was a realtor, after all. He was used to talking to people about relocating. Too close to see the forest, he guessed, and shook his head, snickering.

  He dialed up Margo. When she picked up, he smiled. He could feel his mood lightening. Her dog, one of those yappy things, was making a noise in the background. She hushed it, and it did; now that was impressive.

  “Hey Pike, how are you?” she asked, her voice light and sweet.

  He could feel the heat begin in his chest and bubble up pleasantly into his heart. His hand went to his hair and he grinned. “Good. I just got off the phone with my prepper friend. I sent him the information you’d sent me.”

  “Oh good. So, what did he have to say?” she asked.

  “He was pretty shaken up about it. I think it scared him too. But he did have a good idea. He said I should move away from the coast. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself. I feel like a double dumbass.” He laughed self-deprecatingly, shaking his head.

  “You know, the forest. I didn’t really think about it either.” She laughed, and his heart rate went up.

  “Yeah. I guess when you’re in mild panic mode, it is tough to see the bigger picture. He has a point, though. Now all I have to do is figure out where is the best place to go,” Pike said.

  “Why don’t you come here?” Margo asked.

  Pike almost fell of the couch. He dropped the phone. He picked it up quickly and, clearing his throat, tried to sound normal. “That’s a good idea! You’re about in the middle of the country, miles and miles from either coastline,” he said, swallowing hard, his face on fire.

  “Sure. You can come here and get your realtor’s license, or get another job if you don’t want to do that anymore. And we can start working on a plan together.”

  His heart leaped up in his throat. She had said we and together.

  He tried not to read too much into it. Easy boy, easy, he told himself. You might be like a brother to her, the kiss of a thousand deaths. Oh, hell no, not the friend zone. Never that.

  “You know what? I’ll do it. Come Monday, I’ll go to work and start the process. I’ll also start looking for a place there,” he said, excitement filling his voice. The prospect of seeing Margo after all these years thrilled him beyond belief. He wanted to just jump up now and run to her.

  “There are loads of apartments around here. The tourists usually stay in hotels or bungalow rentals. Once you get here, we’ll get together and start our plan,” Margo said cheerfully. She laughed, the sound like music to Pike.

  We’ll get together. He shook off the thought. “Okay. I’ll keep in contact until I’m on my way, keep you updated. Oh, and you might want to think about building a new profile. Sayer said you don’t want people knowing who and where you are. I’d not thought about that,” Pike said, shrugging helplessly.

  “Oh crap, you’re probably right. I’ll get on that and delete all the prepper crap and the POSEIDON article off my page. Okay, I’ll talk to you later. I’ll keep looking for any more articles too. Let me know when you are on your way. Take care,” she
said, and hung up.

  Pike let out a long breath. He was going to see her. He was going to live near her. His heart raced at the thought and he wanted to shout with joy. He wanted to run outside and throw his junk into his truck and peel out of there now and drive straight to her. He felt as though he were going to jump out of his skin.

  He took deep breaths to calm himself. The adrenaline was pumping through him, and it had absolutely nothing to do with nuclear weapons and everything to do with Margo. He felt as giddy as a kid on Christmas morning. It took considerable effort to bring himself down from off the ceiling.

  He was getting way ahead of himself. The friend zone came to mind once more. He cringed. That crashed him neatly back down to Earth. He had to plan carefully for this move. He didn’t want to waste a minute floundering. He needed to pull his shit together for both their sakes.

  He also needed to put his romantic inclinations on the backburner. Or at least try to put them out of the picture. That would be difficult, he knew. Keep your eye on the prize, keep your crap in one sock, buddy, he told himself.

  St. Marys, GA,16 July 2018

  Pike headed back to his desk. He’d just given his two-week notice to headquarters and the front office. He was now going to start looking for something decent in Maryville, MO. What that would be, he wasn’t sure, but he had a feeling they were going to need something more than an apartment if the shit really did hit the fan. “Plan for the worse, hope for the best,” his grandfather used to tell him. In this case it was certainly true. And it would be expensive to try to move residences more than once.

  He wanted to work smarter, not harder, and not waste his hard-earned, hard-saved money. With all the things they would need to purchase to set themselves up, throwing money out the window wasn’t an option.

  There was a small part of him that wondered if he weren’t going over the deep end. Was he panicking over an imaginary threat? He was literally changing his life, pulling up roots, for a supposed threat.

  He came to a stop in the hallway. Was he being foolish? Was he only motivated by the thought of seeing Margo? A wave of uncertainty washed over him. He leaned against the wall, the air knocked out of him. He’d seen lots of articles and news about North Korea and their threats, yet none of those had hit him so viscerally. What was it about POSEIDON that scared the living shit out of him? Was it the fact that Russia had made the weapon specifically for the U.S. coastline? Perhaps that was it. Maybe the threat felt real because his coastline was the target.

  If he’d been living in Kansas or someplace in the Midwest, he doubted he’d have even turned a hair. But here on the coast, it felt personal, this idea of Russia to send a nuclear weapon to their coast. Who the hell does that? Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm his runaway heartbeat. He wiped his and across his face and closed his eyes. Get a grip man.

  When he got to his desk, there was a small paper Russian flag. It looked like they had printed it out and cut it to size, and placed it by his computer. He looked over to Johnny, who busted out laughing. “Why Comrade, do you not recognize our flag? You look so surprise, but as I understand it, you are head of propaganda division, no?” Johnny said, smiling from ear to ear, in a heavy fake-Russian accent, his face a bright red glowing ember of jocularity.

  “Da, you shtoopid, you must give the proper salute. You must bow and scrape to our Fatherland, or we put you in the gulag.” Beverly laughed in a falsetto Russian accent, bits of doughnut flying out of her open mouth. She picked the crumbs off her heavy bosom and stuck them in her mouth, her watery blue eyes disappearing into the folds of her face. Her heavily dyed hair was an unnatural red and piled high on her head, but it tilted sideways as she rocked with laughter.

  Pike just stared at them. They reminded him of sheep. He almost felt sorry for them. Almost, but not quite. They were assholes. He didn’t mean them any bad luck, but he knew they’d just laugh at him even more if he went on about it. He decided he’d not tell them he was quitting. They’d figure it out on their own, or they wouldn’t.

  He rolled his eyes and played along and laughed, though it never reached his eyes. He sat down at his desk and pushed the Russian flag aside. He’d keep it there on his desk to remind him just how motivated he needed to be. And, for the first time in his life, he was very motivated. Motivated to leave, motivated to make money, motivated to survive.

  Washington, D.C., 16 July 2018

  Hamish McCloud stood at attention. He was one of many attending the historic meeting of the President and Orlov. Hamish was positioned well back from the two men, but watched their faces intently. By his location in the room, he was deemed unimportant. Many of the occupants of the room jockeyed for closer seating. The closer you were, the more important you were. Status.

  It was his job to stay in the background, to blend in and be invisible. He was an innocuous stranger, a man no one ever looked at twice. Those around him simply guessed at who he was, if they noticed him at all. He had that kind of forgettable face: bland, neither handsome nor ugly, neither symmetrical nor irregular. He wasn’t overly tall or overly short. He likened himself to a grain of sand on a beach. You couldn’t point him out, and you certainly couldn’t remember him.

  There was nothing remarkable about Hamish McCloud’s appearance or demeanor; he was simply a fly on the wall. He wore brown-rimmed glasses, neither too dark nor too light. His hair was an indeterminate dirty blond. Sometimes it appeared as though there was lots of gray, other times, almost sun-bleached.

  The glasses were unnecessary, since his eyes were 20/20. They were, however, an affectation, a way to distort his face when he was in public around high-profile individuals. He’d been instructed to observe the meeting. He was merely a cog, albeit an important cog, in the ongoing and perpetual machine called intelligence.

  Intel about a new AI weapon had surfaced two years ago. How the information had come to light was suspect. It had been erroneously leaked, but Hamish knew better. Russia never leaked anything by accident. The new weapon, POSEIDON, was pushed up on the need to know list, and since then, Hamish had deployed assets at various levels. Intel had been spotty at best. It was frustrating, but he could do nothing but keep pushing. Hamish had been tasked with the investigation and intel gathering. It was Black Ops, so unofficial.

  He answered to Caroline Jenson, though not directly. In his line of work, there were never any direct lines to anyone or anywhere. His people in the field had been working very hard over the last five years on getting close to Alexei Borin, a person of interest for U.S. intelligence groups. For years intel had been passed and received. But with the advent of POSEIDON, focus had been aimed at the contractor heading the development of POSEIDON.

  Hamish had had key personnel in place for the past five years, but upon receiving the information about POSEIDON, he’d shifted his players around on the chessboard. They were in place and making progress. Tom Clancy had nothing on me, he smiled to himself. He was poised to set another play in motion.

  Hamish watched the presidents chatting quietly. Both men had benign façades, but their smiles never quite included their eyes. Hamish watched Orlov especially; he wished he could see into the man’s soul. People like Orlov fascinated Hamish. If only he understood what made them tick.

  Everyone was abuzz on the Hill following Rhy’s article about POSEIDON. Hamish felt like no one ever listened to the man. He was a brilliant tactician and ran a tight ship. He made many of the Ivy Leaguers look like bumbling idiots, which really wasn’t so difficult these days.

  Quality sure had gone downhill in recent years, and it was a disturbing trend. He listened to conversations around him and was always horrified that the politicians seemed more interested in their own agendas than in the people whom they served.

  Rhy’s article about POSEIDON had made some of those same politicians nervous because of the impending meeting between Orlov and the President. Rhy’s right-hand woman, Caroline Jenson, had been keeping everyone apprised of all threats against the
U.S. for years now.

  Some of her colleagues, the real sleazy ones, called her Chicken Little behind her back. Hamish laughed internally. Not one of those characters had the balls to say it to her face. They were afraid of her. Probably because they knew she was right. Not to mention, she’d served for over twenty years in the Army. She knew her stuff, and was not to be provoked.

  If she looked at you with those deadly green eyes, you knew your goose was cooked. She wielded a lot of power, yet she was very personable. Until you opened the lion’s cage. Then all bets were off. And when she had you in her sights, she never forgot you. That was never ever a good thing. Some said she was a spider like that, waiting patiently for you to become mired in her web.

  He’d read the article himself, and agreed with Dr. Rhy. The American people needed to wake up and become aware of what was going on around them. It had got his own mind working. The threat level to the U.S. was always high. Nothing new there, but this weapon changed a lot of things. The AI part was what concerned him.

  He surreptitiously flexed his legs; he hated standing for so long, but there was no help for it. That Orlov sure was a charismatic son of a bitch, he’d give him that. But anyone who was fooled was an idiot. The man was a tyrant, and Washington would do well to remember that. These meetings were mind-numbing. It was all staged and rehearsed, following a certain protocol. His mind began to wander.

  One of the assets he was going to set in motion in Russia was a woman, codename Mermaid. She had been assigned to the research and development division at Alexei Borin’s shipbuilding headquarters. She’d been sent there two years ago, taking a low-level job, but had since worked her way up. She was a sleeper, and was not to go active until given orders.