The Fusion Cage (Warner & Lopez Book 2) Read online

  Jarvis, a former Marine, did not need an explanation of how much devastation would be caused by the detonation of such an enormous volume of high explosives. An airburst of fourteen thousand pounds would create a truly immense blast that would shatter windows for miles around. A below–terrain blast would cause shockwaves sufficient to level major structures and would be detected by the USA’s Advanced National Seismic System and the Seismological Service.

  ‘I saw nothing on the news, and there’s no way anybody could conceal a detonation that large.’

  ‘That’s because there was no detonation,’ Nellis explained.

  ‘What about laser pulses or other directed energy weapons?’ Jarvis suggested. ‘Could the B–2 have simply been in direct line–of–sight to a smaller energy beam that made it look much larger?’

  Nellis grinned. ‘A great idea, but we already checked it out. There’s nothing out there that could have emitted such a pulse and besides, we have a secondary detection that confirms the magnitude and location of that made by the B–2.’

  Nellis handed Jarvis a photograph that had not been in the file, and this one was clearly taken from orbit. Jarvis instantly recognized the data stream across the bottom of image identifying a NAVSTAR satellite, normally used for GPS navigation systems. A little–known secondary role of this satellite array was its ability to detect both surface and nuclear detonations via the disturbances they caused to the Earth’s ionosphere, which in turn created minute alterations in the signals relayed to and from the orbiting satellites. Part of the USA’s Integrated Operational Nuclear Detection System, the photo in Jarvis’s hand was backed up by a visual image captured by an orbiting KH–12 Keyhole spy satellite.

  In the center of Missouri’s mountain territory, where deeply forested hills surrounded a network of creeks and rivers, a bright blue–white flare of light was clearly visible that matched the NAVSTAR’s time anomaly data.

  ‘Something went bang,’ Jarvis said finally. ‘Do we have any imagery post–blast?’

  ‘Yes we do,’ Nellis said as he handed Jarvis a final image. ‘We sent a B–2 over the sight the following day to take a single optical shot, and that’s where things got really interesting.’

  Jarvis looked at the second image and frowned. This one, in full color and high resolution, showed the town of Clearwater in the aftermath of the intense blast. What bothered Jarvis about the image was that the town was entirely intact. He looked up at Nellis.

  ‘Has anybody spoken to the inhabitants of the town?’

  ‘We sent two agents down there yesterday to ask a few questions,’ Nellis replied. ‘When they got there they said that the entire town was deserted, that it looked like nobody had lived there for fifty or more years.’

  Jarvis stared down at the photo in his hand and he saw flash through his mind the brief description of Clearwater in the original file that Nellis had handed him.

  ‘The US Population Census recorded Clearwater as having a seasonal maximum population average of three hundred or so residents,’ he said. ‘That census is only a few years old.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Nellis said, ‘and yet apparently within forty eight hours of this blast being recorded the entire population of Clearwater vanished and the town now looks like it was abandoned half a century ago. I checked the current Census records, and they’ve been altered: Clearwater is listed as abandoned. That would be odd enough, were it not for the fact that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.’

  ‘Amelu Alam, Nigeria,’ Jarvis recalled from the file as he set it down before him on the table. ‘An entire village of nearly two hundred people vanished overnight, after witnesses in a nearby village reported seeing bright lights so powerful they couldn’t look directly at them.’

  ‘And Royenka, Siberia,’ Nellis added. ‘Eighty nine people disappeared after what was presumed to be an explosion of some kind. By the time emergency services were alerted and able to access the remote town, there was nobody there any longer. None of them were ever seen again.’

  Jarvis sat back in his seat and thought for a moment. ‘Your two agents weren’t able to make anything of this, so why call me in?’

  ‘This is what your people specialize in, Doug,’ Nellis explained, ‘and there’s something going on here that I’m not being informed about. You and I both know that when it comes to matters of the highest security, both the DIA and my own office are being kept out of the loop.’

  ‘Majestic Twelve,’ Jarvis said. ‘You think that they’re somehow behind this?’

  ‘People don’t just disappear in their hundreds without a reason,’ Nellis said. ‘In Nigeria it could be put down to the actions of rebel factions slaughtering innocent villagers and in Siberia anything goes, even severe weather. But what interests me is that in all of these cases there has been an absolute and complete media blackout. Again, I could perhaps understand it in Saharan Africa or high in the Siberian wastelands, but here in the United States?’

  Jarvis nodded his agreement.

  ‘These people must have had families outside of the town, friends, acquaintances – there must be a trail, but I don’t sense any reason to suspect a connection to Majestic Twelve.’

  ‘Look more closely at the first image, Doug, just outside the town.’

  Jarvis peered closely at the photograph and after a moment he saw it. Barricades on the roads, what might have been jeeps alongside them.

  ‘Ours?’ he asked.

  ‘No deployment of military personnel to that location is recorded by any unit at the time that image was taken, meaning they’re under the Black Budget or paramilitary. And that’s not all.’

  Nellis folded his hands beneath his chin as he spoke.

  ‘After my meeting with the president, he and his entourage are departing for Holland, as are the leaders of dozens of countries and a fair proportion of the CEO’s of the largest corporations in the USA and overseas.’

  Jarvis raised an eyebrow. ‘I wasn’t aware of any major governmental gatherings scheduled for this month?’

  ‘That’s also because of a similar rigidly–enforced media blackout that occurs once every single year,’ Nellis explained. ‘The president and the rest are all attending an annual conference known as the Bilderberg Meeting.’

  ‘Bilderberg,’ Jarvis echoed. ‘You think that MJ–12 are involved with it?’

  ‘I’ve come to believe that Bilderberg is to some degree the vessel through which Majestic Twelve coordinate their activities.’

  Jarvis was aware that few people knew of the existence, let alone the relevance, of the Bilderberg Group. Members of the Bilderberg, together with their sister organisations – the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, were charged with the post–war take over of the democratic process. The measures implemented by the group provided general control of the world economy through indirect political means.

  Bilderberg was originally conceived by Joseph H. Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Prince Bernhard, at the time, was an important figure in the oil industry and held a major position in Royal Dutch Petroleum, also trading as Shell Oil, as well as Societe Generale de Belgique, an influential global corporation.

  In 1952 Retinger approached Bernhard with a proposal for a covert conference to involve NATO leaders in general discussion on international affairs. The meeting would allow each participant to speak his mind freely because no media representative would be permitted inside; nor would there be any news bulletin about the meeting or the topics discussed. If any leaks occurred, the journalists responsible would be “discouraged” from reporting it.

  In 1952 Bernhard approached the Truman Administration and briefed them about the proposed conference. However it was not until the Eisenhower Administration when the first American counterpart group was formed. From the outset the American group was influenced by the Rockefeller family, the owners of Standard Oil. From then on, the Bilderberg meetings reflected the concerns of the oil industry in i
ts meetings.

  Bilderberg took its name from the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, where the first meeting took place in May, 1954. The concept of Bilderberg was not new, although none attracted and provoked global myths in the way that Bilderberg did. Groups such as Bohemian Grove, established in 1872 by San Franciscans, played a significant role in shaping post–war politics in the US. The Ditchley Park Foundation was established in 1953 in Britain with a similar aim.

  Around a hundred and fifteen individuals attended each conference, each chosen based on their knowledge, standing and experience – just like the members of the rumoured Majestic Twelve, a cabal of shadowy, powerful figures whom Nellis was trying to expose.

  ‘What does Bilderberg have to do with Clearwater, Missouri?’ Jarvis asked.

  ‘The president’s briefing of this morning,’ Nellis replied. ‘It includes reference to major projects ongoing in the area, requested directly by the president himself. If what I’m sensing here is true, whatever happened in Clearwater is of interest to those attending this years’ Bilderberg Conference in Holland, and I want to know why. I need you to send your best two agents into Missouri and find out what the hell is behind those disappearances, and you need to be extra careful with this one Doug.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Three hundred people cannot just disappear in the United States without the involvement of at least one major government agency. Even if Majestic Twelve does have the influence to initiate such an event, they won’t have access to the kind of manpower required to complete the task.’

  Jarvis nodded cautiously.

  ‘CIA, or maybe FBI,’ he replied.

  ‘They’ll be watching you,’ Nellis agreed as he stood up. ‘Watch your backs.’

  ***

  III

  River Forest, Chicago,

  Illinois

  ‘I’m just saying that it doesn’t have the same kind of ring to it, you know?’

  ‘No I don’t know, and besides it’s not up to you any more is it?’

  Ethan Warner folded his arms and shrugged as he looked up at the new sign his partner, Nicola Lopez, had installed above the door to their office. Lopez was beaming as she surveyed her work, her dark and exotic eyes sparkling with delight as she set an electric drill down on the sidewalk and pulled a band out of her pony tail to release a fall of dense black hair that reached half way down her back.

  The original faded paint of Warner & Lopez Inc had been replaced with a brand new Lopez & Warner Inc in polished aluminium plate that shone in the dawn sunlight as Ethan surveyed it. The change of name had been Lopez’s idea – her insistence, when they had agreed to reform their partnership. After Ethan’s prolonged absence from the business, during which Lopez had struggled on alone, he had found it difficult to justify denying her the indulgence.

  ‘We’re going to have to buy new paperwork, business cards and register the new business name change with the IRS,’ Ethan pointed out.

  ‘Already done,’ Lopez replied, still admiring her handiwork.

  ‘You’re enjoying this.’

  ‘Yes I am,’ she said. ‘Things get done when I’m in charge.’

  ‘Speaking of which, what’s next on the list of jobs? Do we have much work coming in to this brave new empire of yours?’

  Lopez’s studied delight deflated somewhat and her shoulders slumped as she led him into the office.

  Ethan Warner pulled off his leather jacket and tossed it onto a couch beside the door. The small office contained little more than two desks, some filing cabinets, a security safe, a cooler and a small television. Posters on the walls portrayed numerous bail–jumpers in the Chicago area, right out as far as the border with Michigan. Bail bondsmen wasn’t a glamorous part of their work, and nor was being hired as private detectives, but it paid the bills.

  ‘Seventeen cases as of this morning,’ Lopez informed him as she surveyed their current case–load. ‘All bail jumpers, none of them high value and all likely in the Chicago metropolitan area or within easy reach of it.’

  Ethan nodded as he gave the walls a cursory glance. ‘Not quite what was here before I left. Have you cleaned up Chicago’s streets single handed?’

  ‘It’s tough trying to do a two–person job on your own, case you hadn’t noticed,’ Lopez shot back with a dirty look. ‘Our reputation for speed and success took a hit for the year you were hiding out in the middle of nowhere, and the competition picked up the slack.’

  Ethan raised his hands, not wanting to provoke Lopez into an argument.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Let’s just get onto the best–paying case we’ve got and go from there, okay? Any word from the DIA?’

  In recent years Ethan and Lopez had been fortunate enough, or unfortunate enough depending on how he looked at it, to have been contracted by the Defense Intelligence Agency to investigate cases the rest of the intelligence community had rejected as unworkable. The connection to a high level agency like the DIA had come from a former colleague of Ethan’s named Douglas Jarvis. The old man had once been captain of a United States Rifle Platoon and Ethan’s senior officer from his time with the Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their friendship, cemented during Operation Iraqi Freedom and later, when Ethan had resigned his commission and been embedded with Jarvis’s men as a journalist, had continued into their unusual and discreet accord with the DIA where Jarvis continued to serve his country.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lopez admitted. ‘They’ve been quiet since Argentina.’

  Ethan thought back briefly to their last investigation that had reached its conclusion high in the mountains of South America, when they had first encountered armed forces deployed by an unknown but extremely well equipped organisation that seemed to operate entirely outside the US Government. The discovery that he and Lopez had sought to protect, the remains of an alien species excavated from ancient Incan tombs high in the Andes, had been confiscated by the mysterious group in return for them escaping with their lives.

  ‘I suspect the DIA has their work cut out for them right now,’ Ethan surmised as he flopped down into a chair. ‘Whoever went up against us represents a huge threat if they can operate with impunity from the government. Jarvis won’t want to face them in open battle again without further investigating just who the hell they are.’

  Lopez winced as she leafed through a case file. ‘Jarvis doesn’t face anybody in open battle, Ethan. He just sends us in to do the shooting for him.’

  ‘He’s in his sixties, Nicola,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘Hardly an age for crashing through doors.’

  Lopez shrugged, munching on a donut as she read from the file of an alleged Mickey Cobras killer by the deceptively impressive name of John Valiant, who had skipped bail out of Cook County a month earlier. Like most members of the Cobras gang, Valiant was an African American operating out of the Fuller Park area of the city, the gang’s collective operations involving drug trafficking, extortion, robbery and murder. Arrested for the homicide of an enforcer from the rival group Gangster Disciples during a drugs dispute that turned into a gunfight on the corner of West 35th Street, Valiant had been sprung on bail and vanished.

  ‘He could be anywhere,’ Ethan pointed out as he observed the file. ‘The Cobras have enough cash behind them to tuck him away anywhere around the country.’

  Although smaller in number than most of their rival gangs, the Cobras were successful enough to command the title of super–gang according to the US Attorney.

  ‘You said to start with the highest value target,’ Lopez pointed out.

  ‘Highest profit is what I meant,’ Ethan replied. ‘There’s not much point in us tracking Valiant down if it takes us two months to do so.’

  Lopez dropped the file as if it had vanished from existence as she looked across her desk at him.

  ‘Then you should say what you mean,’ she informed him. ‘This is why I’m in charge now.’

  Lopez popped the last morsel of donut into her mouth and smiled as she ate.

&nbs
p; ‘Okay then, go for your life,’ Ethan suggested. ‘What’s our next target?’

  Lopez was about to reply when a new voice interjected.

  ‘Missouri.’

  Ethan turned in his seat to see Doug Jarvis standing in the office doorway, his hands in the pockets of his neatly pressed pants as he leaned against the jam.

  Lopez almost coughed out her donut as she shot to her feet.

  ‘Change of leadership,’ she said hotly. ‘You’re dealing with me, now.’

  Jarvis raised an eyebrow at Lopez as he glanced questioningly at Ethan.

  ‘She’s the boss,’ Ethan explained with an airy wave in Lopez’s direction. ‘Humor her, for both our sakes.’

  ‘It’s not about humor,’ Lopez insisted. ‘This business gets things done when I’m at the helm, and I’ll decide what cases we’ll be taking on.’

  Lopez stepped out from behind her desk and perched on the edge of it as she folded her arms and raised an enquiring eyebrow at Jarvis. ‘And how can we help you?’

  Jarvis, his elderly features sparkling with bemusement, moved across to a spare seat and sighed as he sat down.

  ‘The DIA has detected an anomaly out in forest country in south Missouri, and wants us to check it out.’

  ‘You mean,’ Lopez corrected him, ‘you want us to check it out for you.’

  Jarvis glanced at Ethan again. ‘How long’s this been going on?’

  ‘It feels like years already.’

  ‘Hey, grandpa!’ Lopez snapped as she clicked her fingers in Jarvis’s face. ‘I’m standing right here, so state your case or take a walk.’

  Jarvis was unable to prevent his mirth from spilling over and he laughed. ‘Ownership of business deeds doesn’t a drill sergeant make, Nicola. Take it easy.’

  Lopez smiled without warmth. ‘I’ll take it easy when I’m happy that any work we take on for you benefits the people concerned, and not just you or the government.’

  Jarvis inclined his head in agreement as he replied.