Eyes Only Ch. 04

"Whaaa?" gasped a whole lot of people.

"Ohhhhh." said Cindy. "This is how you knew another crime was going to happen."

I sipped some water, then continued. "Yes, Crowbar 2. The only reason to kill Collins was because when they killed Chen, which was still to happen in the future, they realized Collins might hear or see news of it and would know of the threat to Energy Dynamics and the nuclear power plant. So they eliminated him simply as a precaution. I didn't know all that at the time, but I was already seeing that Collins's' death did indeed have purpose with respect to future events."

"Four hundred years ago..." whispered Jack Muscone as he shook his head.

"The scary thing," I went on, as everyone struggled to digest what I was telling them, "is that they knew a lot about the people in this project, not to mention the security arrangements, and enough to know that Collins had to be eliminated."

"Yes, we at the very highest levels consider that a very scary thing." said the FBI DepDirector. My wife nodded in agreement.

"So, everyone," asked Chief Griswold, his cheeks rosy as he sipped his third glass of bourbon, "who besides the Iron Crowbar is sharp enough to figure that out?"

"I am sure," I said, "that they employed someone to help them in this: a... Consultant of Crime. And their Consultant is definitely sharp enough, and thorough enough, to see the little things and leave no hanging threads."

"Or so he thought." said Cindy. "Except for that little thread with a Red Crowbar." An acclaim of agreement followed.

"Okay, so that's the Collins killing." I said. "And from it, we had Velasquez, who suddenly went all missing. And because Velasquez was associated with Whippet's, we had a BDSM connection after 'Punk' didn't seem right. So I knew that something was up, but I didn't have the full details. Even so, I acted too slowly. If I'd acted with more speed, I might've found out that Chen was our person of interest. But the Perps got him before I could figure it out. Another death on me."

"Bullshit!" said Tanya, not liking my self-recriminations. "You're not a psychic, Don."

"But I'm the nephew of one." I said, making Cindy smile. "I was just a little bit slow, and we even had Reynolds and therefore Whippet's in our sights, even though he's innocent in all this. We were close, so close."

"Even so," Cindy said, "there was no guarantee that Whippet's was the right answer, and you'd have to get the names of the clients -or- we'd have to run undercover operations. We didn't have that kind of time, so you can't blame yourself." There was general agreement by everyone... except the redhead with the Red Crowbar.

"Maybe." I said. "But what I did know was that when something happened, they would be ready to act fast with their plan. I had contacted the State, and had them call for new night crews for all of their guarded facilities, which included the prisons, the power plants, and State Government buildings. The State does this on occasion, but this time our bad guys were looking for an opportunity to insert some perps, and took it."

"Which undoubtedly saved lives." said the FBI DepDirector. "They very likely planned to kill the night guards normally on duty and substitute themselves. That means they knew who the night guards were, and therefore knew they could substitute for them when the State called for a new crew."

"I get the feeling that Federal forces were cooperating with the State on this." I said.

"You might not have been the only one that called the Governor, Don." Laura replied.

"Whew!" gasped Jack. "I almost lost another hundred there." I just gave him and his boss looks as everyone else broke out laughing.

"All right, Don," said Cindy, "keep going. I'll spank the gamblers with the Blue Crowbar later."

"O-kay." I said. "I think I told some of you that the next crime would be the important one, and it was. Roy Chen was a regular at Whippet's, as was the woman Shimono... she probably had Roy go to the parking lot, and right into the arms of his kidnappers Velasquez and Marcus. Bad day for Chen: thought he was about to have a hot night with a hot Asian babe, and got something completely different."

"Any idea where she is?" asked Sandra Speer.

"No. And I suspect we won't see her at Whippet's again." I said drily. "So they got Roy Chen. Now the bad guys knew that the security at Energy Dynamics and the nuclear power plant was the same. People from Energy Dynamics frequently worked with and conferred with the power plant people, and of course they had very high level security clearances. So they used the same security, which is a retinal scan as well as fingerprints and entering a four-digit keycode."

"Ohhhh," said Joanne Cummings, "so that's why they tortured him, to get the keycode."

"Yes." I said. "They took pliers and crushed his knuckles, then ripped out a fingernail before he finally talked. I would even venture to guess he gave them the number after the knuckle crushing, and they still ripped out a fingernail to make sure the number he gave was the real one."

"Once they had what they wanted, they killed Chen, took his eyeball with some of the optic nerve--"

"Why do that?" asked Martin Nash. "The optic nerve, I mean..."

"The eyeball had to be upright for the scanner." I said. "Imagine a picture of an eye looking right, the lens on the right side. The optic nerve is at left, slightly below center; west-south-west on the picture. Squeamish stuff, to be sure. But it allowed them to orient the eyeball for the scanner."

"Anyway," I continued, "once they had the data, they dumped the body and planned to hit the power plant the very next night. They also killed Velasquez, whom they no longer needed, and hung him from the Stadium bleachers. I have no idea why they would do that in such fashion."

"And then you contacted us." said the FBI DepDirector. "We thought they were going to hit the Energy Dynamics lab, and take the project. When you came in and said you thought they'd hit the power plant and explode the core, I realized that this was something far bigger. But how did you know?"

"The fire at State Tech." I said. "I might add that this was the same reason they didn't take Chen's eyeball and go straight to the power plant that night. They needed a polonium ring to breed the chain reaction that would make the reactor into a nuclear bomb and explode it. They got it from State Tech the next day. That had to be the very last stage of their preparations, for obvious reasons--"

"Maybe we should not go into detail on any of that." said the FBI Deputy Director. He was right.

"You're right, sir." I said. "So they set the fire at State Tech, got what they needed from the evacuated building next door, then transported it across the State to the nuclear power plant. And I came to you Federal guys, who already had an idea of what was going on but needed your suppositions redirected to the actual threat. So, like General Andrew Jackson in 1814, we took a little trip downriver, and we didn't fire until we saw the whites of their eyes, pun fully intended."

"I've got a question." said the FBI DepDirector. "Why didn't you come to us earlier? We may not have saved Chen, but we might have prevented the attack in the first place."

"Ah, but then we never would've caught all these mercenaries they hired, as well as Marcus." I said. "Kind of like the Corrigan Cell, we had to flush out as many of them as we could. And I was hoping to get more information on their... Consultant."

I continued: "Well, we didn't catch them, as they took cyanide. Ergo, my plan to trap them in the anterooms was a poor one." I said. "I failed to think about the possibility of them committing suicide by cyanide ingestion when they were going to be captured. I left a thread hanging, Crowbar 2, and as a result we got no live prisoners to interrogate and lead us to the bastard behind this god-awful crime attempt."

"Still, you stopped it, and they are no longer a threat to anyone." said Cindy.

"Any questions?" I asked.

"Velasquez." said Martin Nash. "What was his role?

"I would imagine..." I said, "that our Consultant of Crime knew Velasquez was in deep financial trouble, and offered Velasquez a way out by paying him well to do a few things. Velasquez hired Marcus as his muscle and did what he was told: butcher Collins, then kidnap Chen. Once they had Chen and his information, Velasquez was also the recipient of Marcus's knife in the back; in fact, he might have been killed in front of Chen to show Chen what was about to happen if he, Chen, didn't talk and give up the keycode."

"Who called in the Chen crime scene?" asked Joanne Cummings, who continued to impress me with her astuteness. "I mean, why do that and alert us that that crime had happened?"

"That is a damn good question, Joanne." I said. "It is possible that it really was someone innocent that called it in. Or it could be our Consultant being just a little bit too cute. Maybe he thought that we'd keep looking in the Other World, the Punk and BDSM scenes, having no idea that we were so close to solving his actual intended crime. He does tend to get a bit cute and overdo it sometimes, and that right now is our only advantage against him and our best shot of getting him."

"Or it could be someone else." said Cindy. "Someone who is no friend of our Consultant, and who wanted to help us, albeit quietly and secretly."

"That could well be." I said. Hmm, I thought, does Cindy know something? Was that a good guess? And who is our secret friend? Rita? Someone else?

"I have one question," said the FBI DepDirector before I could go into a reverie over Cindy's comment, "and it is a questioning baffling the highest leadership of the entire Federal Government, including the White House's best counter-terrorism experts: why in the world did they want to blow up the nuke plant? By that, I mean yes it would do tremendous damage, kill people, scare the Nation and the World. We thought it might be a ransom once they took control of the plant, but there were no notes or communications equipment, or anything to suggest they were going to stay. It looks like they simply intended to turn the plant into a nuclear bomb and set it off. In addition, the NSA reports no chatter from any cells, no activity in the United States or overseas, so we don't think this was a coordinated attack with anything else. So the question is: Why?"

"Gosh, if the entire Federal Government has no idea, then l'il ol' me certainly would be at a loss." I said. "But I can theorize without data--"

"Whhhoooooooooaaaaaaaa!" came a chorus. My fellow officers were messing with me.

"Yeah, I know." I said, grinning. "But I'll indulge here. First, maybe they would've taken the plant hostage, and then you would've gotten a communication from someone. Second, this would've been disastrous, but I can think of worse things that would kill a lot more people. Third, maybe they wanted to see if they could explode a reactor core, so they can try again later, elsewhere. Fourth, in my mind I'm putting myself in the perpetrator's place, and what I come up with is that he was doing it as a demonstration of his sheer power, of what he is able to accomplish. Just sending his calling card, if you will."

"Maybe they wanted to take out 'The Vision'?" Cindy queried. "It's upstream, but the fallout might've reached them and forced their Headquarters to evacuate."

"That's Iron Crowbar thinking, there." I said. "I'm not sure if displacing 'The Vision' would affect a group of young people that are taught to 'roll with it' and would just move elsewhere, but yes, they could've been a target, too."

"Just pure Evil at work, sir." said Joanne Cummings with righteous anger. "Just pure Evil for the sake of Evil. I think I need to go pet Bowser before I head home..." She headed upstairs.

"She loves that dog more than she loves listening to you, Don." quipped Laura, getting a laugh out of the FBI people.

"Bowser. Chick magnet." I said. "He restores order to Nature, and makes everything right with the world..."

Part 18 - Aftermath

Just about everyone else was gone. Laura and the FBI DepDirector were talking in the front room. Tanya was upstairs with my mother, chatting as the children (and Bowser) slept. Jack Muscone and I were on the back deck in the chilly air of the night. The lights of the Town twinkled below us, and I saw the light of a train as it came out of the west and made the curve south just before the River.

"They tried hard to keep that information from you, Don." said Jack. "I saw you were looking into Roy Chen, but my boss cut me off when I tried to look into it myself. Then I was told that Les Craig was handling it. And they told me that if you called and asked, I was to not to say anything. I didn't understand any of it, until you told my boss and your wife more about it than even they really knew."

"Yes." I said. "And I can tell they're not happy about something, either. Not my knowledge, but I think even they were kept out of the loop on some things. But I still appreciate you giving me that heads up."

Jack Muscone and I had long since worked out a series of code phrases that we could use to communicate if there was trouble. We had phrases if we were captured and forced to call the other person, and we had phrases if something was wrong but we were unable to speak freely.

So when Jack had said that he had to lay off the double cheeseburgers, I understood that it was his code phrase that he was muzzled and that someone was keeping information from me.

"I need to tell you this, also." said Jack, "Almost every one of those perps was drugged up. Amphetamines and other stuff, stuff we know is used by Islamist armies in the Middle East when they go into battle. Amped 'em up. Made 'em fearless in battle, made them feel no pain."

"Where can I get some of that?" I quipped.

"Heh." replied Jack. "By the way, some of those guys were drug addicts already. Looks like they were all hired for this work as mercenaries. And the drugs also made them compliant; they followed orders readily, including every last one of them taking cyanide instead of being captured."

"What were their ethnicities?" I asked.

"Mixture of Black, White, and Latino." said Jack. "Nearly all served in the American Armed Forces in Iraq or Afghanistan, or both."

"Hmmm... interesting." I said.

"Don, something is wrong here." said Jack. "I trust my boss, I trust my team. I don't trust Les Craig nor just about anyone else in the Bureau. That may be unfair to a lot of them, but there is something going on, some.. unrest. Maybe corruption, even. My boss is totally focused on Superior Bloodlines, so much so that he almost completely overlooked this threat that you, thank God! figured out. All I can say is that you should keep your head on a swivel."

"I appreciate your warning... and I agree with you." I said. "The Consultant of Crime has all of us as nervous as cats in a room full of rocking chairs. He can strike at any moment, and God only knows what his next attempt to devastate us will be."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Only one small lamp lit the master bedroom of The Cabin, bathing it in a warm glow. The curtains were drawn. Laura and I were naked, lying on the bed. My wife was sitting on top of me, my cock sheathed to the hilt in her warm, sopping wet pussy.

I sucked Laura's hanging breasts, enjoying the flow of warm milk, swallowing my late-night snack until her udders were drained. She was moaning, grinding her cunt on my throbbing cock... which remained throbbing due to the gray viagra I had taken.

"Unnh!" I gasped, feeling my wife's cunt clamp hard on my cock. She was coming. I pushed up hard into her, making her gasp loudly. My hands slid down her sides to her waist just above her hips, and I held her tightly as she rode me in her orgasmic bliss.

"Mmmmm, that was sooooo good!" she whispered. She leaned over and kissed my mouth deeply, then settled onto me, her breasts pressing into my chest. "I love you, darling."

"I love you, too." I said. I felt the tops of her feet on my thighs as she slid them up back and forth, knowing how I enjoyed that. I let my hands slide past her hips to grasp and knead her asscheeks.

"Soooo," she said, stroking my hair as she looked down into my eyes, "there were some questions I could not ask you in front of everyone..."

"We do have the most amazing pillow talk, don't we?" I asked with a grin, making Laura smile and chuckle.

"Yes, we do." she said. She kissed my mouth then asked "So why didn't you come to me right after getting that first 'Access Denied', 'Eyes Only' message, when you first looked into Collins's past?"

"I was caught up in the murder side of it." I said. "I'd have gotten around to you about it eventually."

Laura looked at me with something of a knowing smirk. "Darling, we have been together over three years, and I can tell when you have ulterior motives for something."

"Well then," I said, "I'd better plead the Fifth. But seriously, when Collins was killed I didn't have enough data to warrant coming to you, nor to the FBI. And when Chen was killed, I did come to you."

"Fast work there, stud." Laura said sarcastically. I felt her squeeze her pussy around my cock as she kissed my mouth, then began nuzzling my neck.

"Well," I said, "I also wanted to capture the entire gang of mercenaries. And if I'd told you and especially the FBI too soon, you might've moved too fast, and prevented the attack, instead of catching them in the act."

"Now that sounds a little more believable." Laura said. "But it was really too bad you didn't think about the possibility of them taking cyanide... though you've seen that happen more than once now, and you never forget a damn thing..."

"You are as brilliant as you are beautiful." I said, chuckling. She had realized that I had thought of the possibility... and I had let them kill themselves.

Yes.

Why? Because Jack's boss was trying to move too quickly. The Consultant of Crime was behind this attack, and I knew there was no way we'd ever prove it nor tie him into it. And he'd slip away if they'd been captured alive, or if the crime had been prevented instead of allowed to happen.

Laura settled down onto me again, letting her head rest on my shoulder and upper chest. My cock was still in her pussy, but we were tiring and I would soon lose my erection and it would slip out.

"Pretty risky to let it go that far." Laura said.

"Honey," I replied, "how much do you know about how nuclear weapons work?"

Laura said "I know the basics. I know how to deactivate the triggering devices, or at least I did know when I was an Agent in the field. And I'm one of a dozen people that can confirm the codes if and when the President releases nuclear weapons for use."

"But the physics of it?" I asked. Laura said she wasn't so familiar with that.

"Well," I said, "I can tell you this: a nuclear weapon, at least a uranium or plutonium fission device, is a ball of the material with a cylindrical core cut out. That cylinder is separate from the ball, and when the weapon activates, an explosive rams the two parts back together so that it exceeds critical mass. At the end of the cylinder that is rammed into the ball is a polonium ring, which gives off the particles to start the chain reaction."

"Yes, I know that." said Laura.

"But that could not have set off a nuclear reactor core at a power plant." I said. "Those are not built as masses of material,but as rods of fuel with other rods to control the reaction. At worst, we would've had another 'Chernobyl', which would be disastrous, but not a nuclear explosion. And reactors in this country are pretty safe; we would not even have had a 'Chernobyl' or 'Three Mile Island' incident out of it."