The Dying Time (Book 1): Impact Read online

  “What about our troops?” Pete Capelli asked the other two Generals present.

  Army Chief of Staff, General Arlin Senecot glanced at Marine Corps General Frank Rabson and got a reluctant nod. “We’re recommending the President bring’em home, Sir. Put as many as we can in secure shelters and deploy the rest in the interior where they have the best chance at survival. Our psychologists think as many as 60% would desert to be with their families so we have to move their families to safety also. Besides we’ll need those boys to help with the evacuation of civilians from the coast and to restore order after things go to hell.”

  Peter Capelli ran his hand over his bald pate and said, “I never thought I’d see the day when the mightiest nation on earth would be reduced to riding it out. Do we have a plan for the absolute worst case scenario?”

  “If by worst case you mean all human life on Earth is wiped out, we do, Sir,” Roland Mabry said. “Space Command calls it Project Genesis.”

  *

  California

  Doctor Raoul Garcia was hard at work in a lab jammed with state-of-the-art electronics--his left hand bandaged and aching from his most recent stumble over the tangled mass of wires and electrical cords that transformed the floor into a dangerous maze. A short, wiry, intense man of pure Castilian decent, whose family had settled California generations before the Gold Rush, Raoul betrayed his aristocratic bearing by routinely tripping or slipping and wounding himself. Emergency medical was on speed dial.

  His wife often accused him of being a cliché--an absentminded professor--and there was too much truth in her words to make him comfortable. His mind was simply too focused on more important things to pay attention to where he was going--focused on things like the object on the workbench he was leaning over.

  A long, rectangular, metal and glass box was fastened to the bench. Raoul brushed a strand of thinning white hair away from his eyes as he made a series of adjustments to the dials on the control panel of the box. With brows knit and lips pursed he slipped the neck of a large glass tube into an aperture in the box and secured it, then attached a hose to a nozzle in the tube. He twisted a valve and with a slight hissing noise the tube began to fill with a cloudy mist. Next, he placed a disk of shiny titanium steel in line with the tube, and behind that a chunk of hardened concrete.

  “Raoul?”

  His eyes lit at the sound of his wife’s voice.

  “Ariel,” he said. “We're ready for test firing. I was just about to call down for you.”

  “I thought we wouldn't be ready until tomorrow?”

  “This is tomorrow, brainy lady. After that last seventy-hour stint, you slept straight through.”

  She glanced at her watch. “I thought I'd only slept a couple of hours.”

  “Fourteen,” he corrected gently. With no windows in the lab building, not even in the wing that housed their living quarters, there was no sunshine or starlight to clue them to the passage of days.

  “Then the General--”

  “Is on his way, along with the Secretary,” he completed.

  She patted her graying hair. “Then I'd better make myself presentable.”

  “Not until after you've pushed this button,” he said, indicating a bright red button on the control panel. She glanced at him, eyebrows raised.

  “We deserve a private show,” he shrugged. The test firing would be the culmination of four years work by the two scientists. “Besides, there'll be plenty of time for it to recharge before the VIP's arrive.”

  Her hazel eyes sparkled and her lips widened in an impish grin as she stepped forward, taking the pair of darkly tinted safety goggles he offered her and putting them on. She nodded at him, unable to speak, and he placed his arms around her somewhat stout waist, giving her a gentle hug. She pushed the button.

  Instantly a megawatt flashbulb blinded them, popped, sizzled, and dimmed. The ozone stench increased dramatically. “Team Garcia,” as they called themselves, whipped off the dark glasses, blinked away afterimages, and examined the targets. A quarter-inch diameter hole sliced cleanly through the two-inch thick titanium steel plate, and the concrete block, and, Raoul leaned close and sighted through the holes, through the wall of the lab.

  “Oops,” he said, his bright eyes seeking Ariel. “I guess you know what this means.”

  “Prototype?”

  “Full scale prototype,” he answered, self-assured.

  Ariel sighted along the aim point, through the holes in the plate, block and wall. “Maybe we should turn down the gain next time.”

  He nodded agreement.

  They were more right than they knew.

  Outside the lab, in line with the tiny hole in the wall, was another that went through a parked Humvee. Beyond that, a piece of concertina wire that surrounded the ultra-top secret lab was nicked. In the flat, California desert, more than a thousand yards from the laser, a saguaro cactus sported a smoking hole in one of its upright arms. And in the foothills, twenty miles away, ants were already investigating a small tunnel that bored five feet into the granite before ending abruptly.

  Sergeant Carswell, whose overweight body launched three feet in the air at the sound of the shot, was now examining the hole in his Humvee, less than three inches from where he'd been leaning against it. He'd heard rumors about an ultra powerful laser. Rumors abounded on a top-secret base like this. But wow! He wondered what Joey the Giant would think.

  *

  Los Angeles

  “AAIIIIEEEEE!” The man's shriek was absorbed by the sound-proofed walls.

  Joseph Scarlatti, aka Joey the Giant, seven feet four inches tall, 360 pounds of rock solid muscle, smiled as the man's arm came out of its socket with a wet, sucking pop. A little extra effort, nothing for one of Joey's freakish strength, and the tendons parted, the arm came free of his victim's body. Crimson sprayed, splashing Joey and pissing him off.

  The man's eyes bulged out. His mouth was open and the cords of his neck stood out stark, but he had no breath left to scream. Instead, all that came out was a kind of squeaky whine. He was still conscious and though slipping into shock, Joey could see he was full of horrified knowing. He liked that.

  “Cauterize it,” Joey barked.

  John Scarlatti, youngest of Joey's twenty-four year old twin sons, stepped forward and bent to the task. In his enormous hand was the same type of electrical cauterizing device used by surgeons.

  Joey caught his victim's eye. “By the time the others in your organization collect enough pieces of you to bury, they'll know better than to trespass on my turf again, don't you agree?”

  “Please,” the man gasped. “Please!”

  Joey chuckled. This asshole just didn’t get it. His cold blue eyes gleaming, he took hold of the man's other arm. This time, mercifully, the man passed out, frustrating Joey and spoiling his fun.

  Later, after a shower, after the man's parts had been distributed to his associates homes, in clear plastic bags thrown onto their lawns from speeding automobiles, Joey sat down to relax and put the day's events in perspective.

  “Fucking moron,” he muttered to no one in particular. He turned a page in Virgil's Aenid, his thoughts not on the text. How could the idiot have figured to muscle in on Joseph Scarlatti? Joey was keenly aware that he thought of himself in the third person; always as Joseph, not Joey--though he was careful to keep the fact that he had thoughts of any kind from his own boss, who believed that because he and his sons were huge, they were stupid. It was best to allow them to think so, especially now that he'd added a profitable gunrunning venture to his territory. Not sharing profits was a cardinal sin, and Joey, a minor mobster with major ambitions, was a survivor first and foremost.

  His stomach growled, so he laid Virgil’s Aenid on a table next to Voltaire's Candide. Joey, a voracious, if secretive, reader of classical literature was currently working his way through the Vee's.

  He stood and stretched something he could only do in this oversized room or outside and headed for the dining r
oom to see what his current woman, Tanya, had fixed for supper. Maybe after he ate he'd go to a movie, see “Revenge of a Mafia Wife” again. That Lola MaDonna could jump start a corpse. It sometimes bothered him that his taste in films wasn't up to his literary standards.

  The phone rang and he heard Tanya answer. A second later she sang out, “Joooey! It's for yoooou.” The lilt in her voice irritated him, but then lately everything about her irritated him. He’d have to replace her soon.

  He picked up, waited until he heard the click of her getting off the line, and grunted, “Yeah.”

  “You know who this is, Mister Scarlatti?”

  “Yeah,” Joey said. He knew Sergeant Carswell’s voice and was glad the man was smart enough to be careful over the phone.

  “I got something you need to know about. Can we meet?”

  Joey paused. Carswell’s contacts in the armaments trade were proving valuable and Joey always had his eyes open for opportunities. “Okay,” he said. “Macaroni Grill at 8:33.” He hung up.

  He and Carswell shared a list of restaurants. Carswell would now check his list and count up three restaurants from Macaroni Grill and know the meet was at Camachos. He also knew the meet would happen at 5:30, not 8:33. The FBI was always a concern with the BATF running a close second. But if what he’d heard was true the NSA was spying on everybody’s calls, so a guy trying to get ahead just couldn’t be too careful.

  *

  Santa Monica

  The sun was just poking over the San Gabriel Mountains and streamers of light filtered into the L.A. basin through the dirty, yellow morning smog. Another hazy, smelly day in the City of Angels.

  Jamal Rashid, Joey’s most trusted henchman, scanned his surroundings with deep-seated suspicion as he closed his car door and picked up the Arabic newspaper lying on his cracked concrete stoop outside his apartment. For once no one had stolen it. Plastic trash bags and other litter decorated the neighborhood like a landfill, snagging on wilted bushes and piling up against rusty chain link fences. He glared at the debris, the crumbling brick buildings with sagging, leaky gutters and faded, peeling trim paint, at the mostly colored neighbors who dared look back at him. Most didn’t, put off by his hostile, hatchet face. More than a bit paranoid, he even thought stray dogs peed on his car tires deliberately.

  So tall and lean he put most people in mind of a child's stick-figure drawing, he fumbled briefly with the keys to his apartment door before getting it open. He glanced swiftly over his shoulder before entering, certain someone who meant him ill was watching. They always were. He knew this--felt it deep inside--though he could never quite catch them.

  Inside, he slumped onto a bar stool at his kitchen counter and poured himself a cup of thick, sweet, middle-eastern tea, from his Mr. Coffee machine. Praise be to Allah for timers. He brushed his well-oiled, long, black hair back behind his ears, then cupped his hands around his mug of tea, fixing his beady black eyes on the rising steam, inhaling a little peace along with the honeyed scent of his drink, relieved his task was done.

  Sure, the guy's parts had been in plastic bags, and sure, he hadn't had any problems ditching the stolen delivery car at LAX, but...well, Jamal was a worrier, and besides, handling the bags made his skin crawl. Maybe next time he would try to talk Joey into using Fed Ex. He was also concerned about what Joey's boss, Benny the Bug, would think about the way Joey “negotiated” with the competition.

  *

  Beverly Hills

  “Fuckin' Joey,” Benny Bonificio muttered when he heard the latest. “Probably the dummy's idea of subtle.”

  Still, he had to admit the tactic was an effective way to teach rivals respect. And speaking of respect, it was about time Joey got a lesson. For unknown to Joey, his boss Benny had already learned about his gunrunning sideline and was planning to take “corrective action.”

  In his youth Benny Bonificio had earned the nickname The Bug by dispatching his enemies in a spectacularly gruesome manner. Rumor had it he staked his victims out in the desert, sliced them just enough to get them bleeding freely, and watched while the ants ate them alive, a process that took days. He had actually only done this once, many years ago; but he had forced a couple of his subordinates to witness the scene. Thereafter, people shuddered when they heard Benny had taken someone into the desert; shuddered, and took pains to stay on his good side.

  *

  Hollywood

  Lola MaDonna, aka Irene Walker, sat patiently while the makeup man, Will Benton, applied the finishing touches. Her exquisite beauty was most fortunate, since her talent as an actress was only average. She was intelligent enough to recognize both truths and honest enough to accept them, along with the fact that her latest film, “Revenge of a Mafia Wife Part Two” promised to be even more forgettable than Part One. But at least it was work, and female leading roles were hard to come by, even in B movies.

  “All done, Lola,” Will said, and stepped back to admire his work. One half of Lola's face was goddess flawless while the other half bore a jagged “scar” from forehead to jaw.

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” He handed her a note. “Your sister called.”

  “Thanks, Will,” Lola/Irene said as she headed for the shoot. She thought Will was a sweet man, never grabby like so many Hollywood types, or gay like the rest. Of course, he was happily married. She sighed. All the good ones were taken.

  The note brought a smile to her face. Jill wanted her to come to the Colorado Freeholds for a visit. Maybe she'd do that. It was beautiful there, and she could use a rest.

  *

  Kansas

  “I don't suppose this could be a false alarm?” Sheila Garrison asked into the phone.

  “Not a chance,” her husband replied.

  “So what's the latest?”

  Dr. Harold Garrison, fresh from his latest meeting with the President said, “We’re pretty sure it will hit somewhere between Europe and the eastern US. The destruction will be…” his voice faded to silence.

  “God, that sounds awful.”

  “It will be sweetheart...it will be.”

  “Oh,” she said in a very small voice.

  “Are you calling from your dad's place?”

  “Yes, Robby and I got in early this morning.” Her father lived on a farm in southeastern Kansas, away from potentially chaotic major cities, away from large fault lines, and far away from the coast. Her mother had died years ago. They could have had a spot in the caves but Sheila was so intensely claustrophobic she couldn’t even abide being in the mountains, much less a cave, so Harry had opted for the next best place.

  “When are you coming out?” she asked.

  He hesitated briefly. “As soon as I can.”

  She heard the pause and guessed at the reason. “Don't let the President keep you there too long.” She knew he was working to pinpoint geological safe areas, so the President could make plans for the Nation to survive the emergency. But from what Harold was saying, she suspected no plans could possibly comprehend the reality of the coming disaster.

  “So, do you know when it will happen?”

  “August 21st. Happy birthday.”

  Oh God! “Harry? Please come soon. I don't know what I'd do without you.”

  “I'll try,” he said, and she knew he would, but she also knew he had a job to do.

  *

  New York

  The music swept through Carnegie Hall, lifting the crowd and carrying them along in its magic.

  “But you can sure get hungry workin' minimum wage,

  With the house, and the car, and congressional raise,

  It's so hard, to earn, a dime, when you need, a buck”

  Listeners smiled as the lyrics speared Congress, ignited memories, and set their hearts free. As the last notes faded the crowd greeted the silence with a stunned silence of their own, then burst into wild cheers and applause.

  Up on stage, Jim Cantrell, wearing a black silk shirt, dark blue jeans and a red bandanna headband to keep the drenching sweat o
ut of his eyes, stood for a moment with his arms outstretched. He shifted his left hand on the neck of his Gibson J-45, trying to ease the cramp he always got playing bar chords on the bridge. He loved the acoustic guitar, but damn! That F# was killing him. Next performance he’d use the Martin.

  He paused a moment longer, basking in adulation, then blew his fans a kiss. He stooped to pick up a few of the flowers that were raining down on the stage. The smile on his face gave no indication of the relief he felt now that the performance was over, or the joy with which he looked forward to getting back home to Colorado and his wife, Jill.

  Behind him Jacques and Denise Lachelle, and the other members of the Troubled Land Band were waving to the crowd. It had been a long, hard road-trip, and they too were anticipating a rest.

  On his way back to his dressing room Jim grabbed a cold beer from a stagehand and sucked it down. The rest of the band would soon crowd into that room to review their exit strategy.

  Promoting their hit CD was exhausting work, but after nearly two decades of struggling in dark, smoky bars, overnight success had found them. Their music was a unique blend of rock, country, and R&B, that put many in mind of the Eagles, or, since some of their numbers were orchestrated, the Moody Blues. Wildly successful, they garnered fans from all age groups.

  The downside was having to run the gauntlet of fans from their dressing rooms to the limo. This time Jim got to the car with only a torn shirt pocket. He made a mental note not to wear shirts with pockets.

  “You got off lucky,” Denise said. Her blouse was ripped, and some maniac had managed to clip a lock of her lustrous, black hair. The scissors had scared her to death before Jacques kicked the man in the stomach and security guards wrestled the idiot to the ground.