The Identity Mine (Warner & Lopez Book 3)

  THE IDENTITY MINE

  © 2015 Dean Crawford

  Published: 10th August 2015

  ASIN:

  Publisher: Fictum Ltd

  The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Dean Crawford Books

  Also by Dean Crawford:

  The Warner & Lopez Series

  The Nemesis Origin, The Fusion Cage

  The Identity Mine

  The Atlantia Series

  Survivor, Retaliator

  Aggressor, Endeavour, Defiance

  The Ethan Warner Series

  Covenant, Immortal, Apocalypse

  The Chimera Secret, The Eternity Project

  Independent novels

  Eden, After Life

  Revolution, Soul Seekers

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  I

  Fort Benning, Columbus,

  Georgia

  Major General Frederick J Thompson drove south along US Highway 27, the dawn sunshine flickering through the trees in a hypnotic dance that usually caused him to squint but now merely mesmerized him. The whisper of the tires along the asphalt hummed in his ears, a gentle lullaby that numbed his thoughts and caused his limbs to relax until he was barely holding on to the steering wheel as he eased down the off ramp toward the massive US Army training base nestled in Georgia’s rolling hills.

  A veteran of two Gulf Wars, Thompson was an iconic figure in the US Army, his square jaw and bright blue eyes framing a wide, silvery moustache that adorned his upper lip like a pair of twisted bayonets. Without conscious thought he followed the Old Cusseta Highway to the security checkpoints at the entrance to the base, saw two armed soldiers awaiting him, their rifles gripped at port–arms. One of the soldiers raised a gloved hand and stepped out into the road before a set of barriers, and Thompson slowed his vehicle and eased his window down.

  Thompson glanced briefly at a photograph pinned to the dashboard of his wife, three children and extended family, all of them smiling back at him as though they understood. He was sure that they understood. Such a shame, that he’d had to kill them all.

  The soldier stepped forward, his eyes concealed behind designer wrap around shades as was the fashion these days among the younger troopers, many of them battle hardened in Iraq’s brutal deserts. Despite the shades Thompson was vaguely aware of the soldier’s surprised expression as he leaned down and peered into the vehicle.

  The trooper jerked upright and flipped a rigid salute at Thompson.

  ‘Good morning, sir! Proceed to the main gate please, sir!’

  Thompson slipped his vehicle into drive and crept forward as the barriers raised and he passed through without further interruption. He crossed 8th Division Road and cruised toward 7th Cavalry Road, then turned right toward the Brave Rifles Parade Field. There were no other vehicles on the camp’s roads at this early hour, but he knew that new infantry recruits would be out in force on the parade ground, unarmed.

  Thompson glanced again at the picture of his family. It had been pinned there since the birth of his first daughter Ellie, twenty eight years before, and he had simply updated it every once in a while as new children, and then grandchildren, were added to the family. Smiling faces, blue skies, their Colonial style house on the Alabama border, rolling fields and sunshine. The image blurred as he stared at it and he realized that he had stopped breathing. He knew that the image was important but suddenly he could not quite recall why.

  Thompson blinked as he came upon a gentle curve in the road and followed it round, and his mind went silent again as he drove toward a parking lot on the parade field’s south side and pulled in, then killed the engine.

  Two squads of troops were marching up and down to the bellowed screams of two drill sergeants that marred the perfect dawn. Clouds of dust kicked up by their boots glowed in golden whorls as they paraded, half a dozen of them doing press ups in the dust nearby for misdemeanours or poorly timed manoeuvres, a third drill sergeant shouting at them. The roaring bluster of the sergeants’ was at odds with the gentle lullaby of birdsong echoing through ranks of trees surrounding the field. Thompson reached for his car door and methodically stepped out, closed it carefully behind him and locked it. As he did so he caught his reflection in the window glass, resplendent in his dress uniform, ribbons and medals emblazoned across the dark fabric, his beret adorned with four stars denoting his rank, his parachute wings vivid on his right chest.

  Pride surged through him but it faded rapidly until it felt distant, vague, like a dream.

  Thompson blinked again, then turned and marched toward the parade ground, heard the cries of the drill sergeants take shape in his ears.

  ‘Your left, your left, your left right left…’

  The drill sergeants saw him coming long before the exhausted recruits, and their bellowed commands changed tone as they ordered their charges into parade formation. The drumming of boots on the hard earth slammed to a halt and the billowing clouds of glowing dust drifted away in the sudden silence as the drill sergeants stomped into position before the three squads of recruits and snapped to attention.

  Thompson liked the silence that greeted him. As a recruit so many years before at this very camp he had learned to hate the sound of a drill sergeant’s screaming; so unnecessary, so forced and uncompromising. He had often wished that he could pull a gun and blast their twisted, gruesome faces away, until over the months of gruelling training he realized how important they had become to him, how essential their hard work was in shaping he and his fellow recruits into the hardened soldiers they had become.

  ‘Attennnn – shun!’

  The squads slammed their boots to the earth and stood as rigid as telegraph poles, staring through the general as though he were no longer there. Thompson, his hands behind his back as he approached, nodded once. His lungs felt numb, his chest constricted it seemed by steel bands, his throat dry. He called out a single command.

  ‘Comp’ny, about turn!’

  Infantry training at all US Army camps was about breaking the recruit down and rebuilding them as the army required them to be. Utterly in the thrall of their commanding officers, they were conditioned to accept and obey orders without the slightest hesitation.

  In an instant the three drill sergeants repeated the command and then the entire recruit company made a hundred eighty degree turn on their heels so that their backs were turned to Thompson. Their boots slammed down onto the earth once more in perfect time like a mortar round going off, the report echoing off the nearby barracks behind the general.

  Thompson reached into his pockets and without conscious thought he retrieved a pair of M67 fragmentation grenades, pulled the pin on the first and lobbed it overarm into the nearest of the three squads. The second followed silently a moment later, and Thompson watched as the two weapons arced through the clear blue sky and plunged into the soldiers’ midst.

  Even as they landed he lobbed two more, and then as the first cry went up he pulled a ceremonial pistol from its holster at his side.

  The drill sergeants turned first as they spotted the grenades plunge into the recruit formations and they opened their mouths to shout a warning, their faces stricken with the same kind of panic and horror that they inflicted daily upon the recruits under their instruction. But this time their voices were drowned out by the sudden blasts as the four grenades detonated with ear–splitting blasts.

  Thompson did not flinch as he saw the grenades expl
ode, though he felt the shockwaves from the blasts as they scythed through the platoons of recruits and cut them down in a hail of metal fragments like a thousand bullets. Screams of terror and pain screeched into the morning air as Thompson became aware of the three drill sergeants sprinting toward him, converging on his position with fury and hatred in their eyes.

  Thompson did not flinch or panic as he lifted the pistol and fired at the first of them, the bullet smashing into the NCO’s chest and hurling him to one side. The remaining two did not deviate from their charge and Thompson fired a second round directly into the screaming face of the second drill sergeant. The bullet smashed into his upper jaw and exited his right temple in a spray of bright crimson blood as the soldier tumbled to the ground in a cloud of flailing limbs.

  Thompson turned to the third drill sergeant and fired again, this round hitting the man low in the belly at close range. The drill sergeant howled in agony and crouched over the wound but he kept coming, and Thompson fired again. The soldier’s skull split as the bullet smashed through bone and sent the soldier sprawling across the ground to land at Thompson’s boots, his shattered skull glistening with bright blood in the sunlight, pink bone protruding from his wound.

  Thompson felt something wet on his lip and he tasted blood on his tongue as he licked at it. He briefly wondered whether it was his or that of his victims.

  Thompson looked up to see the recruits in disarray, heard screams of agony and cries of alarm as a distant siren began wailing across the camp. Major General Thompson stepped over the bodies of the dead drill sergeant toward the platoons and began firing his pistol into their dense ranks even as many of them fled in terror. In his mind he instinctively counted down his rounds even as he saw dozens of recruits sprinting toward him with utter, desolate rage ingrained into their faces.

  Thompson fired into them, saw men and women tumble to the ground as bullets impacted their bodies with dull thumps as though they had been punched. Five, four, three, two…

  Thompson turned the pistol and pressed the searing hot barrel to his temple. He realized vacantly that he was smiling as he pulled the trigger once more.

  ***

  II

  Defense Intelligence Agency,

  Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling,

  Washington DC

  ‘He did what?’

  Douglas Jarvis sat in a comfortable leather chair in one of the United States’ most secretive locations just inside the District of Columbia: Anacostia–Bolling Air Force Base and the home of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s DIAC Building.

  Lieutenant General J. F. Nellis, the Director of the DIA, sat opposite him, both men scrutinizing files in their laps.

  ‘He drove into Fort Benning two hours ago, discharged four hand grenades into recruit formations beating the parade ground and then shot dead three senior NCOs and nine recruits before turning the gun on himself. That occurred approximately two hours after he rose early and executed his wife, three children and his own father. His mother was injured but survived the incident. She’s being cared for by the army and will be interviewed soon.’

  Jarvis closed his eyes for a moment as he struggled to match the new information with what he knew about Major General Thompson.

  ‘I met him in Kuwait in 1991,’ Jarvis replied. ‘He was a lieutenant back then and a damned fine soldier, a patriot through and through. He’s climbed the star ladder like it’s been going out of fashion. This just doesn’t jive with the man I knew.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Nellis replied. ‘To point out that this is out of character would be an understatement to say the least.’

  Nellis was a former United States Air Force officer who had recently been appointed DNI by the current president. Jarvis, who was a former Marine Corps officer and later an intelligence analyst with the DIA, had been selected by Nellis to run a small investigative unit designed to root out corruption within the intelligence community while remaining beyond the prying eyes of senior figures on Capitol Hill. Jarvis had been chosen due to his prior success in operating a similar unit within the DIA that had conducted five investigations into what were rather discreetly termed as “anomalous phenomena,” which had attracted the attention of both the FBI and the CIA and eventually been shut down. Jarvis had spent some twenty years working for the DIA and been involved in some of the highest–level classified operations ever conducted by elements of the US Covert Operations Service. Most of them he would never be able to talk about with another human being, even those with whom he had served. Jarvis knew the rules and had obeyed them with patriotic fervour his entire career.

  ‘How many did we lose?’ Jarvis asked finally.

  Nellis sighed.

  ‘As well as the three drill sergeants, nine recruits have died in total and a further nineteen are in hospital, several of them with life–changing injuries that mean their army careers are over before they’ve even really begun.’

  Jarvis rubbed his temples wearily. ‘Media?’

  ‘They’re all over it,’ Nellis replied. ‘We’ve initiated a ten mile no–fly zone over Fort Benning’s existing borders to limit the amount of footage the news crew helicopters can obtain, but right now we’re not even going to begin to conceal the core event. The US Army on site are handling the reporters, and for now are simply informing them that there has been a major incident and that details will be forthcoming.’

  Jarvis knew what that meant: the public crucifixion of Major General Thompson’s reputation, attacks on what was left of his family, his friends, those who might speak out in his defense, the law suits from the bereaved families of the dead recruits, the law suits from the victims maimed or otherwise injured for life.

  ‘How long do we have?’ Jarvis asked.

  ‘The president has given us seventy two hours to figure out what the hell happened down there,’ Nellis replied. ‘After the investigations that you and your people have conducted in Peru and Nevada we have his ear and his support over and above any intervention by the FBI, CIA or NSA. He’s keen to find answers to what happened so that he has something to say to the press and the people when the inevitable announcements are made. Right now, all he knows is that one of our most decorated soldiers committed cold–blooded murder and then killed himself. What he needs to know is that this isn’t a case of domestic terrorism or the complete mental breakdown of one of our toughest and most senior military officers.’

  ‘Why do you want us in on the case?’ Jarvis asked. ‘Surely this is straight forward enough, no matter how appalling? Thompson went off the rails even though none of us saw it coming? It happens sometimes – even the media know that.’

  Nellis said nothing as he opened a drawer on his desk and lifted out a small, sealed plastic bag that he kept in his grip as he replied.

  ‘Part of the rationale for involving the DIA, and yourself in particular, is the unusual nature of the case.’

  ‘Unusual, how?’

  ‘Firstly, the general had presented no outward signs of discontent with his role, his life and his future. In fact, he was extremely upbeat and looking forward to a position on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which given his career success seemed highly likely to be approved by the Senate. We’ve spoken to members of his family who weren’t present at the home, and believe me they’re not only beside themselves with grief but are utterly unable to understand why he would have done something like this.’

  ‘Mental breakdown?’ Jarvis suggested. ‘Post–Traumatic Stress Disorder or some other form of mental distress that he kept from them?’

  ‘No evidence of that,’ Nellis replied, ‘and in fact he routinely sought advice after serving in combat theatres. He wasn’t afraid of talking about his experiences and frequently encouraged other officers to do the same. He just doesn’t fit the profile of somebody bottling up rage.’

  ‘There must be something,’ Jarvis insisted, ‘a trigger action of some kind?’

  ‘US Army Doctor Gordon Shrivener conducted an emergency autopsy of Major Ge
neral Thompson within an hour of the shooting,’ Nellis explained. ‘During the attack, several witnesses reported noticing that the general was suffering a nosebleed.’

  Jarvis thought for a moment. ‘Maybe some kind of brain event, a stroke or something?’

  ‘That’s what the doctor thought, until he found this.’

  Nellis slid the plastic bag across the table to Jarvis, who leaned forward for a better look at it.

  The interior of the plastic bag was smeared with blood, some of which was darkening now as it congealed. In the center of the blood smears was a thin, ragged looking sliver of metal an inch long, from the top of which were two wiry coils that appeared to have decayed.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Jarvis asked.

  ‘That’s exactly what Doctor Shrivener said out loud on the autopsy recording,’ Nellis said, ‘when he pulled this out of the general’s skull after detecting it in an X–Ray. Our labs are running tests on it now and trying to determine what it’s made of and what the hell it was doing inside his body. I can tell you what they’ve figured out so far.’

  Jarvis looked up at Nellis expectantly, and the general continued with an almost reluctant tone.

  ‘Given the object’s length and the position the doctor found it in the general’s nasal cavity, it would appear that the coils you can see on one end would have penetrated the frontal lobes of General Thompson’s brain, reaching some way into his cerebrum. The material used is some kind of advanced semi–conducting alloy.’

  Jarvis stared down at the tiny device and then up at Nellis.

  ‘You’re thinking that he was somehow driven to do what he did by this, thing?’

  ‘Like I said, I don’t know for sure,’ Nellis replied, ‘but Doctor Shrivener’s opinion is that given Major General Thompson’s otherwise immaculate physical health and the lack of any mental issues that could have driven him to snap and open fire on his own people, this device may be the key to explaining why he did what he did. Thompson joined the army on his eighteenth birthday and served his entire career, so any medical procedures would have been conducted by the army’s Medical Corps or privately at the army’s expense. Needless to say, there’s nothing on the record about him having this contraption shoved into his head.’