The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE (13 page)

“And that, my friends, is their ultimate end, to create an amoral quagmire from which every monstrous appetite of man can be summoned.

“Secularism’s dirty little secret, the reason it is so hostile to Christianity is that for all its protestations against faith, secularism is a religion. Oh, yes indeed is it ever. Secularism is a false and dark religion wherein man gets to worship his own wretched self. It is a masturbatory idolatry that tells its faithful
that they need not look beyond themselves for the justification of their appetites. You men want to bugger each other? Go ahead, says secularism. We won’t judge you. We’re open-minded secularists. What’s that? You want to bugger little boys and girls? Well, that’s alright too, secularism now says. If it feels good do it, it tells them. There’s no God out there to judge and punish you. We certainly won’t. We’re secularists and we believe in tolerance.

“Make no mistake about it. This is what the President means when he says America must be an open, secularist society. Our way of life has suffered in every measurable way since the ascendancy of this hell-spawned religion. Homosexuality, sadism, masochism, pedophilia, prostitution, bestiality and every evil that Christian society once rightly condemned and justly fought to stamp out are now protected and openly practiced, praised and promoted under the aegis of secularism as alternative lifestyles. And they are alternative alright! They are
un
natural and
im
moral alternatives to the natural and the moral laws of God which Christianity upholds.

“So no thanks, Mr. President. You can keep your secular state. We want none of it. We will keep our nation under God and His law! We will keep our country as it as was founded, Christian! Pull the troops or unleash them. It makes no difference to us. We are America. We are Christian and we will not hand over our country to godless fools like you to destroy.

“If Caesar wants his due, Caesar best remember his place, Mr. President. Caesar best remember that he too owes God His due.”

The masses burst into applause again and the Reverend steps away from the podium.

Elmer Kidd turns his head slowly from shoulder to shoulder, taping the frenzied reaction of the faithful. He then turns in place, recording a 360
^o
view of both camps of demonstrators. The counter-protestors are booing but they are drowned out by the cheers of the larger group. Other counter-protestors have dropped their pants to moon the Christians. Some are urinating on Crucifixes and statues of the Madonna.

Elmer keeps panning through the crowd until the cheers and roars die down. He wonders what the Mayor will do, now that he can’t count on the National Guard troops and the demonstrators have been riled up.

Kidd finishes his hot chocolate. He drops the cup in a trash can and pulls out his flask.

“Ooh, give me some of that,” someone yells out from across Independence Avenue.

Elmer turns to see a young man behind the police barricade looking at him with an outstretched hand. His face is both pierced and tattooed. Another proud member, Kidd notes, of the twenty-first century’s first counter culture, the
Maxists
. Behind him, some of his compatriots are dancing around a stack of burning bibles.

Elmer’s third book,
Generation Riot
was written about them. In it, he traced the roots of the neo-nihilist movement to a toxic blending of environmentalism and Saul Alinsky radicalism in the beginning of the century. The movement thrived to its viral vitality during the social upheavals of the last decade in both America and Europe. They occupied the centers of hundreds of cities around the globe, turning parks into human pig stys and the streets into war zones.

“We put sacred cows through the grinder,” was how one
Maxist
put it to him in an interview. “We push people and society to the max, to the edge of the cliff and off it wherever and whenever we can.”

In his early days as a correspondent in Iraq, Elmer Kidd witnessed a great deal of evil, but even the most ghastly of acts were always, if often only dimly intelligible because they were committed by people whose psyches were twisted beyond human recognition by years of war. It was not the same with the Maxists. The bulk of them were young and well fed. The majority of them came from families well off enough to strike envy in the hearts of third world children and even many American middle-class kids. Their struggles were few and light. The only combat they engaged in was usually through X-Boxes and Play-Stations and maybe an occasional real life skirmish with cops under strict orders not to kill them.

Elmer flips the bird at the young punk demanding some of his whiskey. The boy yells a string of obscenities at Kidd in response but quickly retreats behind the barricade when confronted by a pair of soldiers. He slinks off and joins his friends dancing around the small bonfire of burning bibles. Elmer stares after him for a few moments, imagining that the uneasiness stirring in him is not unlike what a Roman citizen might have felt looking at the distant fires of a barbarian encampment on Italian soil.

22:43:58

Congressman Lamar Reed looks up across the crowded floor to see Annie Cooper and Joe Corelli walk into the bar. He is glad to see them as they will take his mind off the poor reception the President’s plea for civility is receiving from demonstration leaders. Reed watches as his analysts make their way through the crowd of coworkers and friends exchanging season’s greetings and well wishes. Lamar presses his thumb down on the center of his booth’s table. The glass top lights with the bar’s menu and, with a few taps of his finger, he orders each of them and himself a cocktail. He finishes off his third as he waits for the duo to reach his booth.

Annie Cooper is six feet tall svelte of build with a blond bob she parts down the middle. Her bangs curl like parenthesis around her large, deep-set, blue eyes. She has a pointed and delicate nose centered above lips so full and perfect a man could easily wreck his life on them. That, however, is not something she would ever allow to happen. Annie is a lesbian with, what a lot of people considered, though never mentioned in her presence, a militant, feminist streak. She sports a Venus tattoo on her right bicep, centered in a ring of cursive script that proudly proclaims,
‘Untouched by man.’
The story of the Mississippi congressman who tried to become the exception to Annie’s rule was still a legendary and cautionary tale in DC three years after the fact. The since disgraced people’s representative was selling used cars again in Biloxi, the winning smile Annie wrecked repaired with a set of dentures.

Cooper is both a loyal, Democratic Party grunt and a hard as nails, FBI agent. She is Congressman Reed’s liaison to the Bureau, their chief analyst assigned to the joint investigation into the military malfeasance.

Joe Corelli is her counterpart at the NSA. He is five-five, brown-eyed with dark, long and thinning hair tied back in a ponytail. At twenty-seven years of age, he is as old as Annie, but he is nowhere near as fit. Joe is already developing a pouch around the middle. Too much time in front of the computer, Lamar thinks; too many pizzas and liters of Coke during too many nights spent shackled to his workstation at the agency. Corelli is a talented analyst as well as a hardworking public servant. At the same time, Joe is one of the biggest cynics that Lamar has ever met. There seems to be little he does not have some contempt for. Politically, Corelli likes to describe himself as an ‘Apathist’ which he defines as ‘the ultimate independent.’ He doesn’t vote, he claims, because he
does not want to ‘lend his legitimacy to the farce that is modern democracy.’ His command of seven languages, including Farsi and Arabic makes him a valuable asset in the intelligence community. Joe knows well his value to the government. He uses it to ride roughshod over protocol and people’s feelings, particularly those in positions of authority over him. Reed’s predecessor warned him about Joe’s ‘attitude.’

So far the two of them have gotten along fine. The only time Lamar had to reprimand Corelli was when he, to the Senator’s face, accused Duke Gordon of being ‘an inbred imbecile.’

Reed called Corelli out on his views and attitude a year or so into their working relationship.

“How can you get yourself to work so hard for people, for an administration and a government you so obviously despise?”

“Hunting down psychos,” he answered. “It’s the only government work that doesn’t leave me feeling soiled when I get home from the office. And besides, a man has got to eat and the government is the only one hiring thanks to the mess you screwballs have made of the economy.”

Annie and Joe made for an interesting pair. Seeing the world differently as they did, heated exchanges between the two were pretty common. Lamar was often forced to play referee between them. The two had been at odds even before they formally met, while they worked three thousand miles from each other. They both tried to get out of having to work together when the team was first assembled. Cooper and Corelli were yet another microcosm of the seemingly irreconcilable world views straining civility to the breaking point. Annie is the idealist who believes tenacity and the right ideas can still save the world. Joe has long ago given up on his fellow man. He only wants to take out as many ‘psychos’ as he can before they get him.

The two reach the congressman’s booth as the waitress arrives with their drinks. They thank the young red head in the red mini skirt and green Christmas witch’s hat as she places their cocktails on the table. Lamar trades his empty for a fresh one and thanks her as well.

“Merry Christmas,” Reed offers them, raising his glass.

“Merry Christmas, Congressman,” Joe says, lifting his Macallan and soda.

Annie raises her dirty, Gray Goose martini. “Happy Holidays.”

They tap their glasses in toast.

“And to a happy new year,” Lamar adds.

They all take large swigs of their drinks.

“So,” Reed begins. “What have you got for me?”

“You’re not going to like it, boss,” Joe says.

Lamar shrugs. “I haven’t liked any of it so far.”

“Yes well,” Annie starts. She pulls an electronic reader out of her purse, taps its’ thin, chrome-framed and frosted screen to life with a freshly, French-tip manicured nail and hands it to Reed. “We’ve managed to confirm even more civilian participation in the whole affair. We have so far identified a total of 312 companies that have received and/or transmitted messages using the cabal’s cypher.”

Lamar arches an eyebrow in surprise. The last count he had was a mere fifty-five companies. And that was at lunch. The Congressman reads through the summary quickly and then proceeds to scroll through the short profiles of the suspect companies. No one can tell by looking at him, but Lamar’s sense of apprehension swells with every word. There is no immediate pattern to the long list of companies in Annie’s report. They are businesses of every size, stripe and industry. The only thing they have in common thus far is use of the
Caesar X
cypher.

The encrypted messaging is the conspiracy’s smoking gun. Or rather, it is just the smoke. The gun is the cabal’s
shadow internet
, and it has thus far proved impossible to know who wields the ghostly gun. Their shadow internet is an alternative, portable, wireless web that has no need of the centralized hubs of
I
nternet
S
ervice
P
roviders through which web traffic is normally channeled. The government funded the prototypes of just such an ‘internet in a suitcase’ a decade ago. They were commissioned to help dissidents in nations like Iran, Egypt and Syria communicate with the outside world when their governments shut down traditional cyber media during the uprisings at the beginning of the century. The project was terminated almost immediately after it was begun when the Department of Peace deemed it to be in violation of their Non-Intervention Mandate. Abandoned by the feds, the cabal seemed to have picked it up and altered it for their own purposes. Their shadow internet allows them to communicate through narrow band, ad-hoc mesh networks. Their messages hop from one collapsible node (a laptop or even a cell phone converted to a make-shift server) to another. Eschewing the use of
ISP
’s, the government’s
multi-million dollar, top of the line, Carnivore IV Intelligence Analysis program has nothing to sink its teeth into. The cabal is practically invisible. It has, in fact, operated so for years. How many years is the subject of much conjecture and worry.

It was only by sheer luck that they stumbled across the cypher when the cabal piggy-backed one of their signals across the Indian Ocean through one of the navy’s networks. The find, however, led them to a web page with the nondescript header,
Caesar X
. It was set up in 2004 with a bogus Social Security number. It went unused for a long time. In recent years, however, the site was being used as a posting board for encrypted messages. It was being accessed from all over the world, including general use terminals in the 312 companies listed in Annie’s report.

“This could easily be more than just an illegal arms trading operation,” Reed says, looking up from the reader.

Joe nods. “What are you thinking?”

Annie puts her glass down. “We should seriously consider the possibility that there is a military coup in the works.”

“Yes,” Reed agrees.

They are silent for a spell as the possibility becomes palpable to their minds. It doesn’t take long. History of late was filled with plenty of examples of nations toppled from within.

“It certainly is possible,” Joe says.

“Well then,” Congressman Reed asks. “If that is so, who do we think is behind it?”

“Christians!” Annie offers immediately and emphatically.

Lamar Reed notices that Joe rolls his eyes at the suggestion. Annie notices it too and shoots Joe a short but sharply pointed look.

“It’s not at all inconceivable,” she goes on. “There are precedents. We know that Christian fundamentalists tried to turn the Air Force Academy into an indoctrination camp back in 2005. The media exposed them in great detail. It is not so far-fetched a notion to suggest that having failed at that soft coup attempt they might then be willing to try something more assertive.”