The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE (14 page)

“What do you think of that, Joe?” the Congressman asks.

“I think Christians are to Agent Cooper what commies were to McCarthy,” Joe answers.

“So you don’t believe they’re Christians?” Lamar asks.

Joe Corelli shrugs. “The country is so up for grabs that it could be anyone, Congressman.”

“Including a cabal of Christians,” Annie insists.

“Sure, I’ll go along,” Joe says. “As long as when we are done considering the possibility of Christians within the military launching a coup, we give equal time to the notion that it might be the ever emboldened gays in the military. Seeing as we have as much evidence for one group as the other, we should, in the interest of fairness, balance and political correctness, consider them both.”

“Ease up there, Joe,” Reed says. “I’m open to all suggestions.”

“Well, then I say it’s the queers,” Joe says, bringing his fist down on the table top for mock emphasis. “It’s a diabolical conspiracy to force straight America to redecorate and wear Speedos. And it just ain’t natural, I tell you!”

“We know,” Annie reasserts herself into the conversation by pointing at the television over the bar. “They are all up in arms over the ACLU victory.”

Reed and Corelli turn their attention to the T.V. A split shot fills the screen. On the left, rows of people kneel in prayer facing the White House with beads and candles in their hands. On the right, a reporter talks to a camera in front of City Hall.

“I would hardly consider Rosary crusades and candle-light vigils to qualify as ‘up in arms.’” Joe scoffs.

“Sure, they’re peaceful now,” Annie replies. “Wait until midnight and we’ll see how they change.”

“If the Mayor doesn’t do anything stupid, it will be a quiet night;
a silent night
, even.” Joe counters. “And besides, the evidence we have clearly proves that the conspiracy predates the law suit.”

“It does,” Lamar agrees. “Still, if the conspiracy is made up of disgruntled Christian soldiers, as Annie suggests, then the court battle could have added fuel to their fire. It might explain the growing frequency of encrypted posts since the law suit.”

“I agree, Congressman,” Annie says. “And more than that, I think I might have figured out the identity of Caesar X.”

Lamar and Joe both lean forward with interest.

“Colonel Miguel Pereira,” Annie says, looking from one to the other.

The name is familiar to Congressman Reed.

“Why do you say it’s him?” Joe asks warily.

“He fits the profile,” Annie answers.

“Profile?” Joe asks with an exaggerated cock of his head. “Since when do we have a profile?”

Annie Cooper ignores him. She reaches across the booth to tap an icon on the reader’s screen. The congressman reads the name atop the new page.

Colonel Miguel C. Pereira, US Army Rangers,
retired
.

Beneath the name and photo of the Colonel follow a ten page, single spaced account of the man’s life.

“Colonel Pereira?” Even as Congressman Reed pronounces the name aloud, memories of the man return to him. The Colonel was only a Captain the last time Lamar heard his name. It had to be ten years ago since he dropped out of the public eye.

“The Butcher of Baghdad,” Annie offers as a prod to their memories.

“Saddam Hussein was the Butcher of Baghdad,” Joe insists.

“A city can have more than one butcher,” Annie says.

Captain Pereira, Lamar remembers, was one of the twelve military officers charged with war crimes by the Department of Peace. Under orders to separate the populace along ethnic lines, Captain Pereira was helping to escort Iraqi Kurds from Baghdad to Kirkuk in the north when legions of Iranian Martyr Brigades attacked his defensive lines. He called in air support to help his forces hold their positions. The videos circulated after the fighting were some of the most disturbing of the war. Reed recalls watching them on campus television. From the outskirts of Baghdad to the distant, desert horizon, the cameras swept slowly across every detail of the carnage. Nearly fifty thousand lay dead in the field, all of them young, teenagers mostly and some, tragically, even younger. It was then that the media stuck Saddam Hussein’s moniker on the Ranger Captain. When he was ordered home by the DOP, crowds of war protestors, outside the Senate, burned him in effigy during the proceedings. For his part, Pereira was unrepentant; his confrontation with the Senators, particularly with California’s representative, was the fieriest of all the very many heated exchanges at the trials.

The DOP war crime trials were denounced by the left as a sham because none of the many charges stuck and; they were denounced by the right as a dishonorable exercise in political correctness. The right’s response was echoed
throughout the rank and file of the military. Their commentary at the time denounced the whole affair as a media circus held at the expense of their honor. Motivation to overthrow the government, Reed thought, could easily be imagined among the soldiers brought before those courts or among the many troops that had to run the gauntlet of feces-flinging mobs chanting ‘baby killers!’

“Why do you think it’s him, Annie?” Lamar asks.

“For starters, he fits the profile,” Annie answers.

“She means that he fits
her
profile,” Joe says.

Annie ignores him and continues. “He is a regular church going Catholic. He has a whole lot of high level contacts in industry, government and, of course, a whole slew of active military connections.”

“He’s a national hero,” Joe protests. “He’s going to know a lot of influential people.”

“He’s not my hero,” Annie shoots back. “No one who drops bombs on fifty thousand kids…”

“They weren’t kids,” Corelli scoffs. “They were bloodthirsty killing machines who got what they deserved.”

“Enough,” Lamar interjects, raising a palm to them. The congressman doesn’t want them falling into one of their pointless and all-too-frequent, ideological head-butting exercises. The subject is a landmine with a hair trigger. The country is still as bitterly divided over the tragic end of the war as are the Congressman’s two analysts.

“Your profile and theory is interesting Annie,” Reed continues. “But it needs something more if we’re going to charge a decorated officer with treason.”

“I’m not finished yet,” Annie says. “There are three more things I’d like you to consider. One, among the accusations the DOP confronted the then Captain Pereira with was a charge of selling weapons; illegal arms-trading. The charge was dropped and the missing weapons and supplies were written off as stolen during the confusion at the hurried close of the war. Considering what’s happening we may want to revisit those charges. Secondly, the website for Caesar X was created in 2004 during the time that Captain Pereira was home on leave. Thirdly, there is the matter of his middle name, Cesar. It’s the Spanish spelling of Caesar. I didn’t think anything of it when we ran the name Caesar X against the military rolls and his name popped up among hundreds of others. We originally ran it against the rolls of active personnel and the inactive who served
in the Iraqi and Afghan wars. When I expanded the search beyond those rolls, however, I came across a, Cesar Xavier Pereira.”

“Caesar X,” Reed whispers.

“Yes,” Annie nods vigorously and pauses to see that even Joe Corelli is intrigued by her find. “The Colonel’s middle name, as it turns out, is in honor of his uncle, Cesar Xavier Pereira. He too was an Army Ranger and a devout Catholic. And a militant, I might add, one of those firebrand, anti-communists so common among Cuban-Americans. He was part of the Bay of Pigs invasion and spent a couple of years in Castro’s prison for it. When released, Cesar Xavier Pereira joined up to fight in Vietnam. He was killed in combat in 1968.

“Discovering him, it occurred to me that our Colonel might naturally be tempted to honor his uncle with the nom de guerre through which he runs his operation, be it the funneling of weapons to his faction in Cuba or a coup d’etat, here at home.”

“Well, well, well,” Joe says. “I may actually owe you an apology, Agent Cooper.”

“Then cough it up, desk jockey,” she says.

“Alright, seeing as it is Christmas and all, I’ll gift you with an apology,” Joe says with a grin. “I’m sorry, Agent Cooper. It appears you may not always be wrong.”

Annie shakes her head. “You know Joe, one day we’re both going to be civilians and on that day I’m going to give you such a beat down.”

Corelli raises his glass to her and grins wider. “Here’s to retirement.”

She leaves him hanging and turns her attention back to the congressman. “He’s in town, sir. He booked himself a week at the Washington Hotel.”

“You think we can arrange for me to bump into him, accidental-like?” the Congressman asks. “I’d like to get a measure of the man before I suggest he be brought in on a treason charge.”

“Sure, I took the liberty of tagging him,” Annie says, reaching again into her purse and pulling out her PalmPal portable computer. She thumbs through a few menus and looks into its small screen. “He’s still in his hotel room.”

With the colonel tagged, his hotel line, cell phone and computer would be tapped. Every camera in the city and beyond, if necessary, would train and focus on him as the Colonel passed them. Pereira was now under the tightest, 24/7 scrutiny in the world. There was little that he could do that would escape
their attention. Lamar didn’t know if Annie was right about him, but the Congressman felt good all the same about his tagging.

“I’ll try to connect with him tomorrow,” Reed says. “The President would like to move on this after Christmas break so we’ll also approach Judge Mead and have him draw up subpoenas on the Colonel and the CEO’s of all the companies that have used the cypher. The President will decide which ones to serve. It’s not a lot, but it’s all we have. We’ll start shaking the tree and see what falls out. Agreed?”

Corelli and Cooper nod their assent.

“Good,” the Congressman says. “It warms my heart to see the two of you agree on something. So, enough shop talk. Let’s go join the party already in progress.”

22:32:
57

Morton Gallagher, the Special Agent in charge of the President’s Secret Service detail, knocks and enters the Oval Office.

“We’re ready, Mr. President.”

President O’Neill closes the folder that contains Earl Forrester’s recommendations for prisoner segregation. Out of his desk he withdraws the box of cigars that the vice-President gifted him for Christmas. He places the box and Forrester’s report into his brief case.

“Let’s go, Mort,” the President says. “We don’t want to be late.”

“No sir, we don’t.”

22:18:15

Carlton Quinn sets his crosshairs on the window of the back, passenger side door of Box Car, the Secret Service code name for the armored presidential limousine. His boss, Morton Gallagher is the first one out of the Limo. His fellow agents, Jennifer Fernandez and Bradley Smith step out next and take their positions on Morton’s flanks. The President is the fourth one out. O’Neill is then followed by the agents Ian Hendricks and Carla Beam. The latter carries the transmitter for the nation’s nuclear arsenal in the briefcase handcuffed to her wrist. The President waves at the few news crews that turned out to cover his boarding of Air Force One. Carlton Quinn is supposed to have the cluster of reporters in his sights, looking for any suspicious activity among them. Instead
however, Quinn sweeps his crosshairs across the Presidential party coming to rest at last on his target.

22:17:44

Morton Gallagher and his team are looking forward to this trip as much as the President. While they will still be working through the Christmas break, their duties in Cincinnati will be light relative to those that consume them in Washington. Morton’s taste buds stir to life just thinking about the meals waiting for them at the end of the short flight. The President’s wife is a world renowned gourmet cook.

Gallagher is about to rebuke himself for letting his thoughts wander from the mission at hand when the shot rings out.

Morton and his squad spring into action immediately. They lunge at the President, covering him with their bodies. Boarding the plane is out of the question. Gallagher doesn’t know whether the President is hit or not. There is only one place to go that will not expose the President and his team to more fire.

“Back into Box Car!” Gallagher orders.

They have O’Neill shoved back inside in seconds. Carla and Jennifer pile on top of him. Ian and Bradley stay outside, their weapons drawn. They sweep them in wide arcs, looking for any immediate threats. Morton Gallagher leaps between them and into the limo. The door slams shut behind him.

“Let’s go!” he barks at the driver. “Go! Go!”

22:17:36

Carlton Quinn scrambles off his perch. He is not afraid to die, but neither is he in any particular hurry to shed his mortal coil. There is still a good deal of spring left in it. If he kept his position on the hanger roof, his comrades will have no choice but to assume that he is not done shooting. There is no need to expose himself to fire from his fellow snipers. He has done his part. He got his shot off.

The rest, Quinn knows, is in God’s hands.

22:16:23

One moment the Georgetown bar is filled with the chatter and laughter of friends and the next it is brought to silence by a gasp and a scream.
Everyone turns to the waitress who stands transfixed before the television set, her hands cupped over her open mouth. On the screen they watch the Secret Service shoving the President into the limousine. The bartender retrieves the remote control from beside the tip jar and raises the volume. The news anchor’s voice fills the silence that has hollowed out the bar.

“… fired… Again, we have had at least one shot fired at President O’Neill… At this time we do not know whether the President has been hit or not… The Secret Service…”

Congressman Reed bolts up off the bar stool. “Let’s go!”

Joe Corelli and Annie Cooper follow in the wake their long-legged boss cuts through the stunned crowd. The three are out the door before their first co-workers gather enough wits to drain their drinks and file out after the trio. Within minutes the bar is emptied of all but the bartender and two waitresses, all still glued to CNN’s live coverage.