The Nuclear Option Ch. 03

"You were also on the verge of losing your security clearance." I said. "Some classified material had been left unsecured, and found in the lab where you were working. Now I'll say right here and now that that was not your fault... you were being framed, set up. But still, it was what your superiors were looking for in order to destroy your career and separate you from the Service."

"And then you were approached by a man, who said he would take care of your problems." I said. "Your bad OERs would disappear or be changed, you would pass every PT test you took from then on, if barely, and your career would progress. This man said he liked you because you had what he called the 'correct' attitude towards blacks, and he wanted you to help him in his 'great crusade' to restore the white man to his natural authority and dominion over blacks."

"How did you know..." MG Just gasped. Then he realized he'd spoken, and he clammed back up.

"I'll tell you in a minute." I said. "To continue the story: all you had to do in exchange for your career being saved was to turn over some classified research you'd been a part of, and from time to time you'd be asked to provide information that would help what he called 'The Cause'. That man... was Pastor Raymond Kyle Westboro."

"Him again?" muttered Jack Muscone.

"Jack, you have no idea how often we're going to be hearing that man's name as we stumble across strands of his webbing." I replied. "Yes, General Just, you were one of the Consultant of Crime's first recruits in his huge organization. You succumbed to the temptation, handed over the classified research, a project that was canceled just a few months later."

"My God..." whispered General McFarland.

"And Westboro kept his promises." I said. "He pulled some other strings he'd developed to get your OERs changed to look like you were a standout Officer, and you were promoted to Captain and given some really good assignments. And you subsequently got your shit straight and became a good Army Officer... good enough to be noticed by General McFarland, who wasn't a General yet at the time. You were his marked card in the nuclear program, especially when he got you transferred to the Ordnance Corps, and he rode you to his own first star as a Brigadier General. He repaid that by bringing you along with him and getting you your first star."

"Oddly enough," I said, "despite you being in some positions of great knowledge of some of the Army's most classified secrets, Pastor Westboro did not contact you again and you were not asked for any more information. But by then you were being drawn into a circle of people within the military's Officer Corps, men and women that, like you, saw the use of Affirmative Action as a tool to deny white Officers promotions and positions, positions that were filled by blacks that you thought were inferior, and were promoted not because of the content of their character but the color of their skin."

"Yes, your own OERs were good," I went on, "but you went out of your way to destroy the careers of black Officers and NCOs that were under your command. One black Sergeant had some minor issues with tardiness and a bar fight, and he got a company-grade Article 15... but BAM! you put that in his permanent file instead of his local one."

"What does that mean?" asked Jack Muscone.

"Soldiers have two files kept on them." I said. "One is kept at their local Company or Battery level, and may or may not travel with the soldier when he or she is reassigned. The other is the permanent file, which follows the soldier for his career. An otherwise good soldier with a hiccup, such as a bar fight that gets him an Article 15, usually would not have that hiccup travel with him. But when Just here saw the chance, he ruined a promising NCO's career by putting that nonjudicial punishment in his permanent file."

"It's your opinion that he was a promising NCO." snarled Just. "He was a dirtbag, and I did the proper thing."

"Fortunately for him," I said, "other Officers in your unit did not agree, and one of them made sure to mitigate the damage you tried to do. That Sergeant... made Sergeant Major. In spite of you." Just looked disgusted at that.

"But I'm beginning to digress." I said. "The point is that you're a White Supremacist with ties to Superior Bloodlines, simply one of Westboro's dormant Sith Lords that he could activate if needed. But he never needed to. And then, I'm extremely happy to say, Raymond Westboro died."

"Unfortunately for you, General Just," I said, "Westboro's knowledge of your past came to the attention of someone else. And they came to you with an offer, a 'carrot and stick' approach: they offered you money, a lot of money, if you helped them with their plan, but it was an offer you couldn't refuse: they threatened to expose your earlier dissemination of classified information as well as the doctored records in your files."

"That plan," I said, "was to steal a nuclear weapon, and use it to extort the Mutanix secrets from BOW Enterprises and their partners, and then detonate the weapon and destroy BOW Enterprises, as well as this entire County in revenge for my termination of Pastor Westboro with extreme prejudice, pun not intended."

"Jesus Christ!" General McFarland whispered, his face ashen and denoting outright disbelief. "Just, is this true?"

Just did not answer. His eyes were firmly affixed upon me, possibly trying to gauge how much I was saying was true, and how much was bluff. I called it.

"I do not bluff, General Just." I said, seeing his face wilt as he realized I was reading his mind. "The FBI has the proof of what I've said. They have your doctored records, as well as contacts made with you in the last year and money paid to you, which you deposited into an account in City & Counties Bank, and to where other money was transferred to you."

"Who's behind this?" asked General McFarland. "We're going to get the information out of Just, one way or the other, but paint the full picture for me, would you?"

"Sure." I said. "As you may know, a little over a year and a half ago the FBI dismantled the Superior Bloodlines white supremacy group, and a rogue CIA cell was utterly destroyed, as well. Since then, a group of Crony Capitalists, Establishment Elitists if you will, led by the late Mitt Bain Willis, attempted to coalesce together into a new but more deeply hidden Superior Bloodlines. Some of them have been rooted out and properly dealt with, but some of them held back, staying in the shadows. It would be outright slander of me to name some of the names, but I've given the FBI a big clue: follow the connection between Jerry Barsbane and Dick Granger, a VP of State Parcel Service."

"Ah yes." said Muscone. "And not only in this County, but in a little 'backwater' town far, far away from here."

"Yes, exactly." I said. "But back to the here and now. Keiko Shimono... that's Tomoko Shimono 2.0... is a rogue Intelligence Agent of two nations. She and her mirror-image twin sister were disavowed by the CIA, and Keiko was also disavowed by the Japanese Intelligence Services, which she'd penetrated while Tomoko was penetrating the CIA."

"They both may have been working with the Red Chinese," I went on, "but I haven't found that link yet. I do know Keiko was working as a Freelance Agent, and came to the attention of Mitt Willis and other Big Boy Elites, such as BigRoadAndRailCorp's Clarence Weatherby and MegaTech Industries's Elliot Sanders and Kara Zorn."

"But you're not dropping any names, of course." said Jack Muscone. "Wouldn't want to commit outright slander."

"They are free to bring suit against me in open Court." I said. "Seriously... the Guardians of Justice released purloined information that BigRoadAndRailCorp would be the beneficiary of a nationalized railroad system. Both OBT Rail & Shipping and the Midwest & Pacific made calls to their U.S. Senators to complain about it, the nationalization plan, that is... and, Lo and Behold! the Midwest & Pacific was made to look like their rail car was being used, and that they were complicit in this nuke theft."

I continued: "And MegaTech has been deeply envious of BOW Enterprises, Zion Dynamics Technologies, and Ichimoku Industries over their Mutanix collaboration. They called the politicians their lobbyists have been wining and dining, such as U.S. Senator Samuel Russell, and Zion Dynamics was suddenly and illegally targeted by the CIA. Yes, the 'Mutanix' is what May Cialis was after when she and her husband investigated Zion Dynamics in Florida, and tried to infiltrate BOW Enterprises here." (Author's note: 'Midnight Shadow'.).

"So," I said, "as I was saying, someone contacted Shimono 2.0, who brought in Paco Domingo and his team, of which Trent Ridge and Quint Starr were members; and more importantly, she brought in Jerry Barsbane. But there is no way they could've pulled off stealing a nuke and transporting it here... without significant inside help. And that's where you came in, General Just."

"If I may divert with a little bit of history, here." I said. "When I was in Army ROTC at (Wildcat School), my Professor of Military Science must've seen the future Detective in me, because he gave me extra assignments. He had me write him reports on the situations of Lieutenant William Calley in Viet Nam, and of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in the 1980s."

"In the so-called Iran-Contra scandal, which was ginned up by a rabidly biased and hatred-filled Media," I said, and with some emphasis, "Lt. Col. North was given immunity to testify against President Reagan. But LTC North's testimony did not help the Democrats's cause, and indeed he became something of a folk hero."

"What I learned from that," I said, "is that there was no way a Lieutenant Colonel could have done what they said LTC North did. O-5s just don't have that kind of power. My Police Chief was a Lieutenant Colonel when he retired, and while he had serious authority, he did not have the capability to do things at a national level. What really happened in Iran-Contra was that Air Force Major General Richard Secord was the man behind all of that. He was a General, and Generals Officers DO have the power to make things like that happen. And they covered up for him by focusing on North and away from Secord."

"Likewise," I said, "someone in a position of considerable authority and power had to be in on this. And as a two-star general with longtime connections to the nuclear programs of the U.S. Military, you had the power. And someone knew it, and came after you for it."

I continued: "They had the goods on you, from what the Consultant of Crime had you do, and his doctoring of your records. They proceeded to blackmail you into being part of their operation. You went along, and they paid you handsomely every step of the way. You were the one that was able to put in Paco Domingo's team as the follow car team, and was able to keep the team in place after Paco most fortunately died. You were able to get the frequencies of the tracking devices and the satellite pass-over times, and could help get the equipment to help the perps jam the signals. And, of course... you controlled the search for the nuclear weapon, and was able to attempt to mislead us with red herrings."

"Ohhhhh." General McFarland groaned, bowing his head as it became clear to him. He then looked at Just and said "You bastard."

"Yes, General." I said. "You can now see what I was seeing all along. So! Let's now shift gears a bit, and I'll tell you how I came to suspect General Just, and how everything fell in place after that."

"I'm going to give you credit, Just." I started. "You called my Captain of Operations a day before the 'EMPTY QUIVER' event happened, and asked about our evacuation plan. You at least had enough conscience to think, or to hope, that we could evacuate the County and save a hundred thousand lives. At the time, of course, we had no idea of the significance of that, but it came back to haunt you later."

"I actually first became a bit suspicious of you," I said, "when my wife introduced us. She mentioned your radiochemistry work and that you'd been in the Chemical Corps. She then told you that I was a chemist before getting into Police work. Your reply? You asked 'You were in the Chemical Corps, too?'."

"Now that struck me as odd." I continued. "My wife never said to you that I had been in the military. But you seemed to know that I had been. Of course you might have been checking up on me... but if you had been, you'd have known that I was commissioned into the Military Police Corps; ergo, you would not have asked if I'd been in the Chemical Corps like you were. So in and of itself, nothing big... but it was a 'strangeness'." Laura nodded vigorously in agreement.

"There is an excellent book by Dame Agatha Christie, called 'The Hollow'." I said. "In that book, her Detective, Monsieur Hercule Poirot, realized that all the clues being left were designed to lead him away from the truth of what happened. And in a like manner, as things unfolded, I was watching you, General Just... and I noticed that everything you did was designed to lead us away from what had really happened."

"You just about went off on me when I brought up Edward Blassingame's name." I said. "You made sure to sound skeptical when I brought up Shimono, Barsbane, and Paco, though we can see now that you were probably rocked inside that I was onto the right thread, and so quickly. And you hastened to agree with the FBI's BAU unit, when they were working hard to lead everyone astray, also. But they were doing it because they wanted the credit for busting the perps. Your motives... were different."

"When I brought up trains, due to my knowledge of Barsbane," I said, "you presented counter-arguments, again knowing I was right but trying to lead everyone away. When I first brought up potential ransom, the first word out of your potty mouth was 'money'... again, leading us away from the true ransom, the Mutanix."

"There were the disparaging remarks about my sister," I said, "possibly designed to get me riled up and throw me off my game. And then you took advantage of that poor young Second Lieutenant, and got him to report that stolen Midwest & Pacific boxcar... and you immediately hopped in and attempted to divert our attention. To Southport."

"And then... the biggie." I said. "It was like that great Sherlock Holmes tale, 'Silver Blaze'. Mr. Sherlock Holmes went into what some here would call a reverie, when he realized what he called 'the significance of the curried mutton', that only the criminal could have caused curried mutton to be served for dinner that night."

"In a like manner," I continued, "you made a raid on the Midwest & Pacific railyards in Southport. Very abusive of Constitutional rights, very public, got the Press and the U.S. Senators and Congressmen all involved... and paying attention to Southport, not here. And only you could have ordered that raid made and the reasons for it. Well... General McFarland also could have, but you were taking credit for it, so I indulged you."

"And I freely admit I was slow to glom on to it, but I finally did realize over breakfast that that raid was totally meant to lead us away from the truth." I said. "And one reason I didn't see it immediately, is because it was a double-decker con job, and I was seeing the other part of it: you were also diverting attention of the true target, BOW Enterprises, around whom Major Martin was flying drones upon your orders."

I continued: "I went and confirmed that the target was the Mutanix, and then I realized why you were trying to say Mutanix itself was classified: since it was the target, all discussion of it had to be suppressed. And because I was already watching you, I saw your silly actions for what they really were."

"And so," I said, "I had my case against you, but the Constitution requires proof, so I asked Mr. Muscone and... others... to help acquire information about you. It was not particularly hard to find the money transfers, and ultimately all your old records. And I knew we had the proof when the FBI's Supervisory Agent for the local Resident Agency suggested you retire. That was her code signal to me, right under your nose."

"There remained, however," I continued, "the method of you extracting yourself from this location, lest ye be vaporized by the nuke yourself. You did attempt to convince General McFarland to evacuate the Town, and for right or wrong he declined to do so. But you had another ace up your sleeve. The perps asked for you to deliver the Mutanix. And despite General McFarland saying 'no', you repeatedly begged to be allowed to go."

"Well I'll be damned." said McFarland, as it hit him.

"Yes, General." I said. "He was going to deliver the Mutanix, but not to the BigAgraFoods warehouse. That was a red herring. And he was not going to drive to the red warehouse, either. He probably would've picked up Barsbane and Shimono and headed out of the County with them. And you'd be left holding the bag, not receiving any call on how to shut off the timer, and the bomb would've detonated."

"No, we would've called it in." said Just. "I would've insisted they did." The room suddenly went completely silent.

"Do you realize what you just admitted to?" asked Jack Muscone, breaking that silent tension in the room..

"Yes." said Just. After a pause, he said "I knew Commander Troy had me when his Captain called from right behind me and asked about the evacuation plan. And I'll say that the goal was not to kill a hundred thousand people. Barsbane isn't a killer, either. One reason he left the Southport Mob was because he could never become a Made Man; he would never kill anyone in cold blood." McFarland and Muscone exchanged a glance over that one, remembering the BAU's false report on Barsbane.

"And Shimono?" I asked. "And Raji?"

Just shrugged. "I don't know any 'Raji'. Shimono had no compunction killing, but she didn't revel in it, either."

"Why don't you just tell us everything you know and did." said Laura, speaking for the first time. "It will go way lighter for you if you do."

"In exchange for what?" Just asked. "Death off the table doesn't mean much."

"There are far, far, better places than Leavenworth to be." Laura replied, then added "And far worse."

"Okay." said Just. "Here's the story. Commander Troy basically has it right. I was caught in Raymond Westboro's massive spider web years ago. He did occasionally give me a phone call. It would be friendly, like a pastor calling a member of his Flock. That's what he called us... his Flock. And he'd just ask casual questions, as if the conversation were innocent, like where I was going the next week. I didn't think too much of it, but I always feared the day he'd ask for something big, or the M.P.s would knock on my door. And one M.P. finally did knock on his door... you, Commander Troy." I nodded.

"When Westboro died," continued Just, "I thought I might be free of his clutches forever. I should have known he'd have left some record behind, or given someone the information on me. And that's what happened: last year I was contacted by a man named Trent Ridge. I'd heard his name; he'd barely escaped being nailed for torturing civilians in Iraq and maybe Syria. He said he was a 'friend of the late Pastor Westboro', and suggested that I meet him at a hotel in northern Virginia, not far from Langley."

"So, I went." I said. "And I found out the bastard had all my old records, the bad OERs, the EEO counseling statements. He also put $10,000 in cash in an envelope on the table, and as the Godfather movie said, he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I accepted his offer, put the cash and a burner phone in my pocket, and left."