The Curse of Medusa

CHAPTER EIGHT

Klaus Kiefel sipped at the tequila as he watched his men push America’s Commander-in-Chief across the expansive car park toward the deserted processing plant. It was rough stuff, but it was all the now-dead security guards had thought to bring on their shift. Perhaps he should send the one remaining guard to buy something more appropriate for his sophisticated palate, but he had a feeling she would come in much more useful than that as the evening progressed. For now, she could stay tied to the side of distillation unit.

He’d heard there were nice tequilas, but this was a mixtos — the cheap plata kind where you used lime to hide the taste. The thing about deserted processing plants, the German considered, was that there was rarely a decent selection of citrus fruits available when you needed one. He grimaced as the foul, musky liquor burned its way inside him, and casually tossed the glass over his shoulder. It struck the hood of an old abandoned Ford truck and shattered over the cracked, weed-strewn asphalt.

Kiefel and several other men armed with suppressed Heckler & Koch submachine guns had taken less than five minutes to take out the security guards of the plant. It was a professional paramilitary operation — comms lines cut, no witnesses left standing. Easily achieved by the men, all ex-members of former Iron Curtain countries’ Special Forces — but it was just the beginning of a night of terror.

Now, he watched his master-plan come to fruition before his very eyes. Flanked by his liebling Angelika and the ever-loyal Jakob, Grant drew nearer to the plant. Kiefel studied his body language and thought he already looked vaguely dejected, but he also saw anger in his eyes.

With no words spoken, Kiefel opened the door and they moved inside, leaving the hot sun to climb higher in the Louisiana sky.

They walked for some time along cool corridors and sections all lined with industrial piping and conveyer belts. Eventually they arrived at a large room at the center of the abandoned plant.

The German glanced briefly at the set-up in the room — cameras, lights, MacBook Pro. All was going to plan. His dark eyes crawled momentarily over the sole remaining security guard — a young woman with a chipped, laminated name badge reading Sanchez. She was gagged and bound against a large distillation unit. She had seen her last sunrise, Kiefel considered without emotion, and then his attention turned to his new guest.

He straightened his black roll-neck and dusted himself down. “Guten Tag, Mr President,” he said calmly.

“Just who the hell are you, and…”

Before he finished his sentence, Kiefel nodded and Jakob knocked the President to the floor of the room. He struggled to get up off his knees but Jakob’s hand gripped his shoulder and held him down. Partridge tried to come to the President’s aid but Angelika smashed him in the back of his head with her pump-action shotgun and he collapsed to the floor unconscious.

Kiefel sighed and nonchalantly adjusted his hair in the reflection of the distillation unit’s shiny metal panel. “Not a very good way to introduce yourself, Mr Grant.” He turned his sharp eyes to the President and stared at him hard. “I suppose I do have the advantage, however, so let me introduce myself. I am Oberstleutnant Klaus Kiefel of the National People’s Army of the German Democratic Republic.”

Grant looked up at him, confused. “The German Democratic Republic? That country hasn’t existed for over a quarter of a century.”

“A regrettable historical oversight, Mr President.”

“I don’t understand…” Grant glanced at the lights and camera. “What is it you want?”

Kiefel nodded in sympathetic understanding of the President’s confusion.

“Want… desire… need. What would you do, I wonder, if I told you that I want you to relinquish to me the gold codes?”

The look of horror on Grant’s lean face was quickly replaced by a smile and then a shallow laugh. The President shook his head. “You must be out of your mind if you think you can get your hands on the gold codes simply by kidnapping me. The United States is more important than one man, Kiefel, even if that person happens to be the President.”

Kiefel maintained his composure and stepped closer to Grant. “So you would not relinquish the gold codes, Mr President? How long do you think the world — the American people… your wife and children — will be able to watch you suffer in this plant?” Kiefel glanced around the old, broken down building.

“Mr Kiefel, as you well know, the gold codes are the launch codes for the entire United States nuclear arsenal. They allow me to authorize a full-scale nuclear attack against anywhere in the world, without the approval of Congress.”

“I know all this, Charlie. Why are you telling me?”

Grant bristled once more at the use of his first name. Only his wife called him Charlie. “I just thought if maybe you heard it out loud you’d realize how insane it was. You can do whatever you like to me, but believe me — you will never get those codes. As we speak, they are already being changed and the power the use them will be handed over to the Vice President, under the terms of the twenty-fifth amendment to our Constitution.”

“What do you mean?” Kiefel said, playing dumb.

“It means,” Grant continued proudly, “that I strongly suspect you are no longer talking to the President because that office will now be in the hands of Mike Thorn, my Vice President. If the twenty-fifth has been invoked, you are currently standing in a processing plant talking to plain old Mr Charles Grant, a regular citizen with less political power than the mayor of Sandy Springs, Georgia.”

Kiefel laughed for a moment, but his face snapped back to deadly serious a second later. “Mr Grant, I am perfectly aware of the twenty-fifth amendment, and we both know you are of great symbolic value to the United States whether or not that amendment has been invoked.” He paused and a mischievous smirk crossed his face. “But I am not interested in your gold codes, or your little nuclear football.”

Grant looked confused. “Then what game are you playing, Kiefel?”

“This is no game, I assure you… it is all very real. Soon, Angelika here will help me broadcast our first horror movie to the world. Oh — and if your hopes are resting with Vice President Mike Thorn they are sadly misplaced. Mr Thorn met with an unfortunate accident this morning outside his official residence. He is dead.”

“You’re lying!”

“No, I am not.” Kiefel gestured casually to the camera and then to the guard, still struggling in the corner.

“And let that woman go at once!” Grant shouted.

“I think not.”

“Whatever you do, I will never negotiate with terrorists!”

Klaus Kiefel nodded his head and smirked as he cast a casual glance at his watch. He had expected this.

“You will find out what I want soon enough, Mr Grant, but in the meantime — perhaps some entertainment while we wait?”

Kiefel snapped his fingers and Angelika spun a laptop around so Grant could see the monitor. A moment later a blurry image of Washington DC appeared on the screen. Everyone recognised the famous dome of the Jefferson Memorial.

“What the hell is this?” barked Grant.

“Alles zu seiner Zeit, Herr Grant.”

“Huh?”

Before Kiefel could translate, they both watched — Kiefel in delight and Grant in abject horror — as a missile tore away from the camera shot on the screen and raced toward the memorial. A second later it struck its target and exploded into the right-hand side of the dome.

Grant lifted a trembling hand to his mouth as a fireball whited-out the screen for a second, then the image returned to reveal an enormous plume of black smoke rising into the air over the city. When the smoke cleared he registered with a mix of terror and revulsion that a quarter of the building’s magnificent historical dome was now missing.

“You son of a bitch!” he spat. “That memorial is over two hundred years old! I swear to God you’ll pay for this.”

Kiefel sighed. “Hmm — this must have been the Viper, don’t you think, meine Liebling?”

Angelika nodded. “Ja.”

“We must try one of the Hellfires — they are much more powerful, are they not, Herr Grant?”

The rage coursing through Grant had rendered him speechless.

“A marvel of American engineering, the Hellfire missile. Yes — Angelika, instruct Pauling to use a Hellfire next — and make sure the target is equally as impressive.”

Grant shook his head. “They’ll blast that thing out of the sky in minutes after this!”

“Of course they will,” Kiefel replied calmly. “We have factored it into our strategy. That is why we are acting so fast — ah… here we are — let us see what treat Mr Pauling has for us now.”

They watched the monitor once again as the drone flew toward its next target.

The Washington Monument.

“Listen,” Grant said, panic rising in his previously steady voice. “You can’t do this… you have to stop!”

Kiefel raised his finger to his lips. “Please… hush, Mr Grant. You are interrupting the broadcast. It is educational.”

Before another word could be said, a second missile ripped away from the drone, leaving a horribly twisted gray smoke trail in its wake. The next second it struck the monument and the screen once again whited-out. When the image flickered back on the monitor another wild cloud of black smoke and fire was at the center of the screen.

Grant reacted with horror when the smoke cleared to reveal that the entire top third of the Washington Monument was now missing, turned into an enormous pile of rubble scattered around the monument’s base.

“You must stop this attack, Kiefel!” Grant paused for a second, staring wide-eyed at the screen. “All right… all right, damn it all! I’ll talk with you about what you want.”

Kiefel grinned. “Of course you will, but first let us see what a Hellfire can do to the Lincoln Memorial.”

Grant shook his head in disbelief as the drone swung left and flew toward the Reflecting Pool west of the now burning and destroyed Washington Monument. He knew that all hell must have broken loose in the capital by now, and that the twenty-fifth would have been invoked, putting Mike Thorn in the Oval Office — but… if Kiefel was telling the truth then that meant the line of succession would pass to the Speaker, Todd Tobin.

He had chosen Mike not only for his ability to secure votes all over the Deep South, but because he knew he would be a safe pair of hands if anything like this nightmare ever happened. Mike was a Navy vet with twenty years’ command experience, including nearly a decade commanding an aircraft carrier battle group.

Mike Thorn could handle a cheap, two-bit merchant of terror like Klaus Kiefel. He was less sure about Tobin — he was a solid, decent man with a deep love of his country, but Grant wasn’t sure about his ability to command a nation in a time of grave crisis.

But before he could consider the matter further, Kiefel cleared his throat and spoke again.

“Say goodbye to Mr Lincoln, Charlie.”

President Grant could scarcely bring himself to watch the nightmare that was about unfold on the small screen right before his eyes.