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“But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.”
Daniel 12:4
Bill “Wild Willy” Briggs, Jeff’s buddy from long ago, had been in Israel working with Senator Russell and Mossad on the new, almost microscopic, Spybots.
They were designed to look like small bugs, flies, mosquitoes, whatever, and were powered by a small, invisible-to-the-eye and almost weightless nuclear power plant. The Spybots could fly indefinitely. If the world still existed in the Spring, small bugs would be flying through the Korengal Valley on a routine basis and into the cave dwellings of al- Qaeda, Taliban and other jihadists, those bent on destruction of the West, as well as their own neighbors.
Mossad, the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, was Israel’s national intelligence agency, reputed to be the world’s best. It was Mossad who verified that Saddam Hussein’s missing WMDs were actually moved to the Bekaa Valley just prior to the Iraq war.
A few weeks before Christmas, Mossad conducted a trial run with two of the Spybots. They lost communication with one of the bots almost immediately, but the other one sent a live-feed and the sound of wind as it maneuvered from beneath the Predator drone flying over the Valley of Death. The Spybots were tiny and made of carbon fiber, protecting them from destruction by the force of the Predator’s surrounding turbulence. NATO soldiers had long ago pulled out its forces, the Valley of Death too dangerous for troops.
When Wild Willy wasn’t working with Mossad or some other intelligence service, he was a high-classed repo man. He planned a trip to Grand Cayman Island the week before Christmas, just ten days to the future. There he would repossess a $4,000,000 Learjet, hoping he could fly away without the angry past-owner chasing him down the runway in a Lexus, like happened last time. He would fly the plane to Miami and then return to Grand Cayman for another repo, this time a Hatteras 80’ motor yacht.
If the yacht repossession proved successful, Bill would be able to spend some time with his dear friends Jeff and Melissa, once married but no more. Then he would divulge to Jeff the interesting conversation recorded in a cave by the trial Spybot, something about a missing fish and Diego Garcia.
Ricky made it to Atlanta, making only throne-stops along the way. He arranged to meet Nimrod through a clandestine website that was allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court due to privacy laws.
Ricky and Nimrod met for breakfast at an IHOP in Suwanee, a small town just north of Duluth and just as pretty. The downtown area was revitalized and gorgeous. Suwanee was only about twelve miles from Lake Lanier Islands, the home of Bubba’s new luxury submarine port. Nimrod had become very familiar with the lake and felt he had a better idea than that promised by the Christmas surprise.
They spoke in Arabic, their native language, while others spoke in Spanish and Korean. It was, after all, the International House of Pancakes.
“Aboud, can I please make a suggestion?” Nimrod was cautious because he knew of Aboud’s temperament.
“Of course, what is it?”
“I believe a New Year’s Eve surprise would be a better choice than Christmas.”
“Why do you think that?” Aboud would not be an easy sell and was suspicious, initially.
“At Christmas, everyone will be home with their families. They won’t be at the lake. However, on New Year’s Eve, Leon the Jew has been granted special permission to take the submarine out. He plans a late night fireworks cruise.
“I can pilot the sub as close to the dam as possible without raising suspicion. The guests won’t know we are supposed to stay on the surface, so I will suggest we dive and check out the Buford Dam just before the fireworks. If anyone disagrees, I will kill him. I have a gun already hidden in the pilot’s compartment, and the compartment can be safely locked and sealed from the guests.
“Do you see my point, Aboud? New Year’s Eve will have many revelers participating in their decadence. There will be much more death and destruction with a New Year’s Eve blast.” Nimrod took a sip of coffee. He loved the coffee at IHOP and would truly miss it; but within a few days, he would be in paradise, sipping coffee with the seventy-two virgins the hadith promised.
Ricky liked the idea. The Christmas surprise would become the New Year’s surprise. His conscience liked it even more. He had been a little hesitant to kill thousands of people over Christmas. Jesus was, after all, a great prophet. Not as great as Muhammad, but great at any rate. When Muhammad and Jesus returned in the Last Days, Muhammad would teach Jesus how to pray and seek glory from God.
Ricky and Nimrod finished their breakfast and departed. Ricky headed north. They had eaten breakfast, exchanged pleasantries and briefcase nukes and now the fun would begin.
He would be in New Jersey tomorrow. There he would meet Jamal the Jamaican, a relatively new convert to Islam but eager to share his life for the cause. In Jamaica, Jamal had been the senior pilot with the Montego Bay Helicopter Tour Service. He had many hours of flying experience. Since his wife and two children had been killed in an auto accident caused by an American on the way to Negril, Jamal had remained depressed and suicidal. He wanted revenge and sought out an old friend who was a Muslim convert. His friend believed in voodoo one day and Islam the next. Jamal would’ve laughed had he not been so angry, and depressed.
Jamal was now a helicopter pilot for Life Care in New York City, flying donated organs to hospitals in need, just trying to save another life. He never failed to feel the irony, saving others just to be blown up later; and it reminded him of the crazy Americans. Their legal system mandated that a convicted murderer, a serial killer, would be provided with the best medical care should there be the need. Just so they could cure him, and then kill him.
As Ricky headed north, leaving the Suwanee IHOP a distant picture in the Dodge truck’s rear view mirror, he reached back and removed the Confederate Flag from the rear window. It would not get a good reception where he was going.
Merging onto I-85 North, Ricky passed within seven miles of Jeff’s home in Duluth where Melissa was getting his stuff together, just like she used to do. Ricky didn’t know Jeff, but Jeff was in his future.
“Did you call Wild Willy?” Melissa had given Jeff the message, but lately he seemed a little confused and forgetful, probably still blast exposure. And Willy wasn’t nearly as wild as he used to be.
“I did. I reserved him a room at Cayman Grand. I also reserved a room for Abe, though I may let him stay in my suite if I can put up with his snoring.”
Cayman Grand was the crème-de-la-crème of older hotels, a light-peach stucco façade with open-air restaurants galore. With 4 floors, the Cayman Grand was one of the loftier structures on the island and sat on eight beachfront acres at the less-developed end of Seven Mile Beach, an exaggeration.
The Cayman Grand also housed Come On Down, a dive shop of distinction owned by Jeffrey Ross and Associates, only he had no associates. Because of Jeff’s lease arrangements and friendship with the Cayman Grand’s owner, Jeff always got his choice of any rooms that were available, even the $ 2800 a night Presidential Reggae Suite, either at no cost or heavily discounted.
“So did you decide to stay with me?” Jeff knew the answer before he asked, and Melissa obliged.
“Jeffrey, we talked about this. I am staying at Rum’s Point with Gray and Andi. I will see you plenty while we’re there, but not every night. Can you deal with that? We’ll do some diving.” “Yep, I will deal with that. Just have a few Bloody Marys on the beach with Abe and Bill. Then the asteroid hits, and we never see each other again. I hope nobody thinks Abe, Bill and I have anything going on, know what I mean?”
“Just flex those muscles Navy Boyvy.” She smiled, thinking about the nickname she had given him when he was just a young, buff Navy man. Now he was an old buff SCUBA man. She shared the thought and they laughed together.
A kiss on the cheek later, Melissa was gone, making her way back to Sandy Springs with a quick stop at Church of the Apostles to drop off some clothing for Haiti. They would be leaving in two days. The kisses seemed nicer in some way, more sincere maybe.
Eight thousand miles eastward, the K-155 Nerpa made its way, slowly and silently. There was no need to rev-up the engines, the Commander thought to himself. No hurry. Time was on the side of Allah.
The advanced sonar perfectly projected the surface of the Indian Ocean onto a plasma flatscreen. The Indian Ocean was deep with a twelve thousand foot average depth, but the surface began to rise as the Nerpa approached the Chagos Atoll, a U.S. Military base leased from Great Britain. The Commander knew if the sub could make it around the atoll without being tracked, the mission would be half accomplished. And they did make it.
The robotic launch pod exited the submarine escape hatch and deployed noiselessly and automatically, the robotic appendages silently climbing and balancing, its sensors seeking a thirty-foot depth for deployment.
After stabilizing on a coral reef off Nelson Island, 250 miles north of Diego Garcia in the central Indian ocean, the 5-megaton ICBM pod, though it wasn’t actually an ICBM and would not be going intercontinental on this journey, remained at the ready, pre-programmed for midnight, December 31.
While Ricky drove northward through South Carolina, the Nerpa K-155 continued to move slowly and silently toward the Gulf of Mexico; and Melissa entered her Sandy Springs three- car garage. Ten minutes later she was packing and thought this might be the last packing of her life. Her faith was strong and rarely shaken, but what if… what if life was destroyed by a single hit from an alien world. That did not fit in with God’s plan, at least as described in The Good Book.
She entered the kitchen and opened a fresh bottle of Duckhorn.