Book of Souls

Two weeks later

Aracas,Venezuela

The earthquake struck AT 11:05 A.M. The epicenter of the 7.8 mag event was twenty kilometers east of Caracas along the El Pilar Fault. At the moment the first tremor hit, the day was sunny and windy, the sky, hazy blue with wisps of fast-moving clouds. Forty seconds later, the sun was blotted out by plumes of concrete dust rising above pancaked apartment blocks, high-rise offices, municipal buildings, and schools. Then ruptured gas lines started fires, which were wind-whipped into conflagrations that roared through the historic Altamira district and the Parque Central Complex.

Eighty percent of the 220,000 casualties occurred within seconds of the first shock-men, women, and children mercilessly crushed to death by steel, glass, and masonry. Most of those trapped under the rubble would fall victim to slow dehydration. Others would be killed by the serious aftershocks and fires which plagued the city for the next seventy-two hours.

Incoming telemetry lit up the Global Seismographic Network like a Christmas tree. At the USGS monitoring site at the Albuquerque Seismological Lab, the Caracas quake was immediately classified as a Major Seismic Event, and, per protocol, hot-line calls went out to Homeland Security, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House.

In the C Ring of the Pentagon, deep within its inner core, the Secretary of the Navy got the news from a minor aide to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Lester listened, grunted an acknowledgment, and hung up. He’d been consumed with the planning for this day for two years, and this was not the way it was supposed to go down.

The Mission Plan stipulated that at the moment the Caracas Event occurred, Lester would descend to a command bunker in a Pentagon subbasement and authorize the US Southern Command to signal the Fourth Fleet. The fleet would be positioned north of Aruba, engaged in a mock joint exercise with the British Royal Navy. They would be ordered to proceed to Venezuela as the spearhead of Operation Helping Hand. Key Venezuelan opposition leaders and senior dissident army officers would be standing by with their families in Valencia, out of harm’s way. They’d be choppered into the capital city and under the protection of a US Marine expeditionary force, the government would be tilting toward Washington within twenty-four hours.

None of that happened.

Will Piper single-handedly blew up Operation Helping Hand.

After the Post story broke, the Vice President urgently convened a Task Force meeting and shut Helping Hand down: no adjustments, no modifications, just ash-canned. There was zero dissent. Anyone with a brain in their head would connect the dots between Area 51 and a military operation that looked in retrospect like it was preplanned to coincide with the disaster.

The humanitarian supplies would be airlifted, and the prompt US response would be cordially received by the shell-shocked Venezuelan president, who vowed to rebuild Caracas and continue the country on its socialist path.

Two years of work, down the drain.

Lester sighed, checked his day planner, and told his secretary he was going out. His afternoon was wide open, and he decided he’d head over to his club and pick up a game of squash.