Majestic Read online

  She was fascinated with his story about leaving the United States decades ago out of his opposition to war and the draft.

  Willy had been a little reluctant to tell her about that because southerners tended to be the most patriotic of all Americans. Conservative as hell, and hawkish as a person could get. But, Nancy was different—she seemed more worldly than most southerners he’d met, more open-minded. Maybe it was her high level of education, or perhaps even because of the extent she’d traveled around the world, that made her more in touch with alternative attitudes. From what he could tell, she seemed to agree with what he and others had done way back in 1970.

  Willy walked through the bustling terminal for about fifteen minutes until he finally reached the rental car wing. He was just about to walk up to the Alamo counter when he saw Nancy sitting on a bench against the far wall.

  She looked up as he approached, and smiled.

  “Well, fancy seeing you again!”

  Willy sat down on the bench beside her. “It’s a small world, seat-mate, even here in Atlanta.”

  “Are you picking up a rental?”

  “Yep. You, too?”

  Nancy frowned. “I didn’t intend to, but the wait for a cab is at least an hour long. Apparently, a dozen flights came in at the same time. Very busy day here. Now, I’m waiting for a rental.”

  “You didn’t drive here?”

  “No, I left my car at work. And, I just phoned my husband and he’s tied up for a couple of hours—so, a rental it will be. But, no cars available right now, so I’ll have to be patient.”

  “I reserved a car. Why don’t you let me drop you off?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to take you out of your way.”

  Willy shook his head. “It’s no problem. I don’t really have a set time today for where I have to be, so it would be my pleasure.”

  Nancy smiled. “We were so busy talking about other things on the plane, I forgot to ask what you’re here for.”

  “I’m going to a clinic at the CDC for a medical check-up.”

  Nancy’s eyes widened in surprise. “Well, isn’t that a coincidence? The hospital I work out of is almost right next door. Emory University Hospital—only about ten minutes away from there.”

  “Great, so it’s not out of my way at all.”

  She turned sideways to face him. “Willy, a personal question, if you don’t mind—why are you going there? Do you have a unique illness of some sort? Forgive me, but I’m a doctor as you know, and my curiosity can get the better of me sometimes.”

  Willy laughed. “No, don’t worry. You can breathe freely around me. There’s some clinic in there that a hotel chain that I’m working with uses for medical checks. They want to look me over before I become a spokesperson for a new hotel up in Canada.”

  Nancy looked puzzled. “That place is locked up like Fort Knox. I’m not aware of any general health clinics there for the public to visit.”

  Willy reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “It says here that I’m to go to the……and that someone will meet me in the lobby.”

  She nodded. “That’s the only part of the CDC that the public can visit. The CDC is a huge complex—a campus actually—and that museum is in a separate building. But, I’m still not aware of a clinic in there.”

  Willy shrugged. “That’s where I’ve been told to go. I guess I’ll find out when I get there.”

  “Well, if it’s a bust, you can take a tour of the museum. I’ve been there—it’s actually quite fascinating. Gives the entire history of the CDC and the many virulent strains that they’ve discovered and prevented from spreading. You’ll garner new respect for the U.S. medical system once you finish the tour. And, that museum isn’t just a part of the Centers for Disease Control, it’s also associated with the Smithsonian.”

  Willy stood. “Interesting. Well, I’ll get the car. How far a drive is it to your hospital?”

  “Not far—about half an hour, then ten minutes more for you to the CDC. We just go north on I-85, then northeast along US-278. It’s a breeze, even with Atlanta traffic. I’ll talk you through it.”

  Willy bent down and picked up both of their duffle bags. “Let’s go, Doctor. I feel better about Atlanta traffic now that I have you with me!”

  * * * * *

  Chad Powers was sitting at the head of the boardroom table on the fortieth floor of his Atlanta office building. The headquarters for American Armaments Inc., the company that his family had held a controlling interest in for about 100 years or so. Famous for manufacturing some of the evillest weapons ever concocted by human creativity. Hiroshima and Nagasaki never knew what hit them and they still didn’t know, more than half a century later.

  Sitting around the table were the ten members of his executive team. All capable people. And, all as mean as hell.

  You had to be mean to be in the munitions business—because every business goal accomplished resulted in mayhem and mass deaths. Balance sheets had a deathly halo surrounding them and income statements were driven by how much conflict existed around the world. And, if it didn’t exist, that’s where the marketing department had to step in—to help create the conflicts, lobby the politicians who were solidly in their pockets. Remind them about who really buttered their bread. Campaign donations and bribes were done for a reason, and payback was expected.

  Without enemies, American Armaments Inc. would cease to exist. Executive bonuses depended totally on how much paranoia could be created around the world, how much fear could be instilled in politicians and the American people. Because, without fear, there would be no need for bombs, missiles, and rocket launchers.

  Chad glared at his Vice President of Marketing, Vince Tomlinson. “So, what you’re saying is that orders are going to start drying up?”

  Vince raised his hands in frustration. “What else can I tell you, Chad? You read the papers, too. The Russians are involved now. America is starting to back out of Syria, and rescinding on their promises to arm the terrorists. This year-long conflict has provided a good forty percent of our revenue in this fiscal year. We’re pretty vulnerable.”

  “Well, we still have the Saudis. They’re bombing the shit out of Yemen.”

  “Yes, we’ll still be supplying them, but that war doesn’t have the staying power that we predicted Syria would have. With the Saudis having shot themselves in the foot by driving down oil prices, their precious royal reserves are starting to run dry. One of two things will happen—they’ll have to allow oil prices to rise on world markets again, or they’ll have to retreat from their Yemen adventure. There’s no margin in it for them, and the Saudis don’t have the fortitude to continue a stupid war if they can no longer afford their Mercedes limos. God forbid they’d have to get real jobs—they have no idea what those are.”

  Chad jotted down some notes on a pad. “We still supply the Israelis.”

  Vince nodded. “Absolutely, thank God for them. But, they’ll just maintain their same level of orders. Nothing extraordinary going on there that will increase our plant activity.”

  “They might still attack Iran.”

  Vince shook his head. “All that bluster was just to help scuttle the Iran nuclear deal. None of it had any weight behind it. And, they sure won’t attack Iran now, not with them helping Russia in Syria. They’re bona fide allies now, and the Israelis won’t want to piss Russia off. In fact, they’ve been talking together in back channels. In a bizarre way, we may be seeing an unholy alliance between Israel, Russia, and Iran.

  “Publicly, the Israelis will continue to bluster and demonize Iran, but, privately, I think they see that Russia is a better source for their security now than the U.S. is. They hate us for entering into that nuclear deal, letting Iran off the hook and all that bullshit.

  “So, now, I think they’d like to stick it to us—begin cozying up to Russia if Russia can guarantee that Iran won’t attack them. What we’re seeing is a power shift in the Middle East, from America to Russia, and a lot
of countries may start jumping off our bandwagon and follow the new leader. Everyone loves a leader, and right now that’s Russia.”

  Chad started tapping his pen on the table.

  “So, what we are seeing is a real danger to our future revenue growth. If the power shifts, we’re out in the cold. All of the clients we could count on in the past, we won’t be able to count on anymore. And, if America gets cold feet and backs off from starting these pesky little wars, our revenue dries up from that, too. Peace could be a real killer for our balance sheet.”

  “Yep, that’s the strategic outlook, boss. We will have to re-forecast our five-year revenue plan and get the board to sign off on it. It won’t be a pretty picture, and it won’t be a pleasant board meeting.”

  Chad slammed his pen down hard on the table, causing all of the executives around the table to jerk to attention.

  “No, not yet! You’re the marketing guy. There are things you can do. If the landscape is changing, we can change with it. We’ll have to change with it. We can sell our missiles to the Russians, the Iranians, and the Syrians. If this conflict is going to continue on without America, they will still need weapons. With Russia’s economy in such sad shape from the sanctions and oil prices, their plants won’t be able to keep up with demand.”

  Vince Tomlinson stared at him, mouth hanging open in astonishment.

  Chad stared back. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Chad, we can’t sell weapons to the Russians. It’s illegal. There are sanctions in place, and even before that it was taboo for us to even consider, what with the Cold War being still fresh on everyone’s minds.”

  Chad dropped the pen and smashed his massive fist down on the boardroom table.

  “We have a business to run, and it’s your job as our Marketing VP to find new markets for us! They’re a new market!”

  “But, how could we get away with it?”

  “Easy, peasy. We’ve always sold to the Israelis, so with their new cozy relationship with Russia we can broker the sales through them. Russia bankrolls them, we sell to the Israelis, and they simply transfer the weapons to Russia. And, Russia can use those to re-supply Iran and Syria. We can easily re-tool our plants in Europe and Israel to comply with Russian specifications. No one in Congress will be the wiser. We’ll just be supplying the Israelis as we’ve always done, and, let’s face it, that’s one of the reasons we opened a plant in Israel a decade ago. Hides it quite nicely. We’ll kick back a commission on the sales to the Israelis for their trouble.”

  Vince wiped beads of sweat off his brow. The other members of the executive team just listened to the exchange without interjecting. Chad knew they’d keep their mouths shut. This was Vince’s turn to be on the carpet; from time to time they all had their turns. There was no margin in jumping in to defend a colleague.

  Vince took a long sip of water, then he stood. “Okay, I’d better get started. I have a few phone calls to make.”

  Chad stood as well, his sudden movement signalling that the meeting was over.

  “Yes, do that—and with our usual utmost discretion. Use the standard cryptics.”

  He looked around the table at the other executives, who were also now standing. “I don’t have to say to any of you that this is all very confidential and stays in this room—but I’ve said it anyway. You’ve all been warned.”

  He turned back to Vince. “Be the hero, Vince. Find us some new markets. The bonuses will be substantial for all of us, needless to say.”

  Chad walked over to the coffee machine as the executives quietly filed out of the room. Poured himself a cup and then resumed his seat again.

  As he sat in the cavernous room all by his lonesome, staring out the window at the gleaming glass skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta, he subliminally changed hats. Now, he was going to be the head of Majestic 12 for the next few minutes.

  He had problems and, right now, no solutions. Charles Farmington’s death went off without a hitch, but somehow Senator Hartford had escaped his snare. The three assassins who had been sent had disappeared.

  Into thin air.

  And, so had Hartford.

  He must have had help, and the first name that popped into his mind was Allison Fisher. Had she warned him off? Had Hartford then hired extra bodyguards to protect his precious ass?

  Hartford was in possession of the explosive material Farmington had slipped to him and, if the opportunistic politician used that material to launch his presidential campaign, all hell would break loose. Which would mean that Majestic 12, under Chad’s leadership, would have failed in its one and only mandate—‘to keep a lid on things.’

  It was a simple mandate in principle, but had always been so difficult in execution. Chad had lost count of how many scientists and astronomers he and his team had ordered killed over the years he’d been in charge. Yet, now, the most important execution had failed. And, he had to rectify that before it was too late.

  The administration was working hard to justify confiscating guns from the population, but even that was moving too slowly. The damn Republicans insisted on their 2nd Amendment rights, even with the horrific slaughters that had occurred at schools and theaters. The NRA was stronger than anyone had ever given them credit for.

  But, that was a different problem entirely and not his concern. The White House would have to deal with that. Chad’s responsibility was the control of information.

  He opened his briefcase and pulled out several files. He studied the oldest file first—the one that contained the very first images of something that was terribly wrong. This file went back to the 1980s—the images had come from the Hubble Space Telescope, and were grainy, abstract, and hard to decipher. But, they all knew what they were looking at.

  Then, he opened up the other files, one by one.

  First, from the 1990s.

  Then, from the turn of the new century.

  And, finally, from the last decade.

  He absorbed the general progression of the thing. The larger it got, the clearer it got. The more distinct it became decade after decade. Unmistakable. Still not much detail in these images, but enough evidence to tell them it wasn’t going away. In fact, it was getting closer.

  Then, he opened the most recent file, which he’d already studied at length. It was so morbidly fascinating he was compelled to look through it again.

  These were the images sent back from the New Horizons spacecraft, the Trojan horse that had sent useless photos of Pluto to justify the craft being up there. Now, it was well past Pluto, out in the Kuiper Belt, finally doing what it was really meant to do in the first place.

  Its 3.5-billion-mile journey to Pluto was just the tip of the iceberg, and simply a clever diversion.

  Even though Chad had already seen these photos, he couldn’t help but gasp once again. The photos were much clearer now, with the New Horizons being much closer to the thing than the Hubble Space Telescope.

  The thing was a sight to behold, and it was massive. The vague details that had been seen on previous images weren’t so vague anymore. The canyons, mountains, and tunnels were now more distinguishable.

  The size of the thing was what astonished Chad the most. It was beyond comprehension.

  He knew that Earth’s heatwaves were going to get worse as the thing got closer.

  The magnetic pressure was scientifically undeniable; it would begin pulling the Earth apart at its seams.

  Earthquakes and volcanos would become more severe, and winters more brutal. Tornados and hurricanes would pop up in areas that had never seen them before.

  Sinkholes that were now common around the world would spread, causing entire neighborhoods to disappear.

  New havoc was also being triggered on the Sun by this thing, and that fact was being kept from the general public. Majestic 12 had done a great job downplaying it, while at the same time giving orders to increase chemtrail activity in the sky.

  The public didn’t know that the Earth’s precious
magnetosphere was no longer protecting them the way it had in the past. It was weaker, because the solar energy from the Sun had been stimulated by this…thing.

  Radiation was getting through to Earth at rates never seen before. Sunburns today meant something a lot more serious than sunburns had decades ago.

  Radiation. The invisible killer.

  Citizens were complaining about artificial clouds being formed by special planes in the sky, ruining their beautiful clear days. But, there had been absolute silence from governments in response. Complaints were ignored, because they just couldn’t be answered.

  These artificial clouds, called chemtrails, contained substances—metallic pollutants, really—that actually protected people a wee bit more from the radiation they had no idea they were being exposed to.

  One of Majestic 12’s jobs was to continue to make sure the public didn’t know they were being unsafely exposed. Because, if they knew they were being slowly radiated to death, who the hell would do essential work in the great outdoors or spend gobs of money on vacations?

  The economy would collapse from frightened people cocooning themselves.

  All of this was just the start.

  It would get worse.

  But, they still had some time.

  Time to still enjoy the fruits of labor and riches. For some, anyway.

  And, maybe some time to just figure it all out.

  Maybe there was a solution.

  For now, the only solution was control of information.

  One incident at a time, one person at a time.

  Chad picked up the phone and called his chief physician, Doctor Phillip Lansing, at the Majestic 12 clinic in the CDC museum building.

  “Lansing, here.”

  “Phil, is Willy Carson there yet?”

  “No, we’re expecting him any minute now.”