Tom smiled and held out his hand. She took it, and returned his firm grip as he shook her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Emily. If you’re half as good as Ralph said, you’ll be a valuable member of the Order and of our team.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too, sir. I’m just happy to help however I can.”
“Did you set up all of the surveillance for tonight’s operation?”
“Yes, sir. I wired the area around the park, and I placed half of the cameras on the house after the targets arrived.”
“What did you use to record the video?”
Emily pulled out her video viewer. It was something that she had developed herself. “This is what I used. All of the cameras transmit their images to this device, which records everything on a flash drive – audio, too. You can scroll the images forward or backward, or you can switch between the inputs and see what each camera is transmitting at the same time. You have to be within two hundred yards to get a clear signal, though, but I’m working on a new transmitter for the cameras that will have a range of over a mile.”
Tom was impressed, both with her work and with her easygoing and confident manner. “Where did you learn to do this?” he asked.
“I have a degree in electrical engineering, but I used to work in a camera repair shop and loved taking things apart and putting them back together again. It started as a hobby, but now I do it for a living. I’ve owned my own production company and video studio for just over a year.”
“How did you become part of the Order?”
“A friend from school is a member and recruited me. He thought my skills would come in handy, and he knows I like to help people.”
“Well, give my thanks to your friend.”
“I will. By the way,” Emily said as she handed Tom and Ralph copies of the surveillance audio and video, “here are copies of everything from tonight. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks, Emily,” Tom said. Turning to Ralph, he said, “I’ll let you know when the Grand Magistry can meet. I think they need to see all of this, and I want your entire team there to answer questions.”
“We’ll be there,” Ralph replied.
Tom turned off the lights as the three of them walked out of the conference room and left the office. The rest of the team had already gone. Tom looked at his watch. Even though it was late, he felt he needed to call his father anyway. He said goodnight to Ralph and Emily, and turned to get into his car to make a phone call. Ralph thanked Emily again for all she had done and waited until she had gotten into her car before getting in his own and driving off.
Emily looked at Tom sitting in his car, and then she started her car and followed Ralph out of the parking lot. In spite of everything that had happened that night, as she drove home she was thinking that she really liked Tom.
When Tom arrived at his parents’ house, it was well after midnight. He parked in the circular drive in front of the house and walked around the edge of the house to the large glass double doors outside his father’s study. His father was there already, wearing a dark blue and green plaid robe over his pajamas. Tom gently tapped on the door, and his father got up and let him in.
“Good evening or good morning, son,” his father said sleepily.
“Good morning, Dad,” Tom replied, shaking the older man’s hand. “I’m sorry to wake you, but this won’t keep.”
“What is it?” Tom’s father asked.
“It’s surveillance video from an intervention operation that had an unexpected ending tonight,” Tom said as he plugged the storage device Emily had given him into his father’s computer.
Tom and his father sat down and watched the images on the computer screen. Tom told his father what the team had discovered and forwarded the video to show the key events. Tom’s father reacted much as Tom had when he saw what happened to the girl and what happened when the HSF arrived. “You mean they’re government agents?” he asked Tom as the implications of the video sunk in.
“Yes. They were responding from a tip on the HSF hotline, looking for subversive materials. When they found some, they let the HSF know, who arrived and took the family into custody. From what we know, the family was placed on an airplane and flown to some sort of ‘internment facility,’ but we don’t know where. They’re gone, and the targets were sent to Dallas. We can only imagine what they’re going to do once they get there.”
“Tom, this is the United States! This is the cradle of freedom and democracy for the world. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen here!”
“I know, Dad. But it’s happening. I want to show this to the Grand Magistry and have Ralph’s team there to answer questions. This is tyranny, and the Order needs to decide what, if anything, it’s going to do about it.”
Tom’s father agreed and promised to convene a special meeting in the next day or two. Tom disconnected the storage device and stood up to leave.
“I never thought this could happen here,” his father said as he gave Tom a hug.
“Neither did I, Dad,” Tom said as he turned to leave. “Neither did I.”
9
Lt. Colonel Frederick (“Fred”) Burkhart strode down the hallway that led from his temporary office to the hanger area. He passed at least a dozen guards who snapped to attention as he passed. He acknowledged each of them without breaking his stride.
Lawson Army Airfield, Ft. Benning’s base airport, wasn’t as busy as it once was, now that troops had been recalled to the United States to participate in border protection. Burkhart’s project had taken over the largest hangers on the base, and for the moment, it was among the most secure facilities in the country.
Shortly after the terrorist bombings that occurred all around the country a few months after President Sanborn was sworn in, Burkhart was called into the office of the Commander of the Criminal Investigation Command (CID) at Ft. Benning, Georgia. A joint military-FBI task force was being assembled to review evidence and investigate the bombings. They wanted Burkhart to be involved as senior Army investigator. He was allowed to pick his own team and given access to any resource he might need at any time. This was highest priority.
Burkhart accepted the assignment and selected his team. They were all seasoned investigators, and Burkhart knew and trusted each of them. They were each paired up with an FBI Agent and sent out to do crime scene inspections and evidence gathering. All of the evidence, including bomb and car fragments, broken glass from buildings, mangled road signs, wreckage from the downed airlines, even a couple of dump trucks that happened to be passing one of the bombs when it went off, was photographed, tagged, catalogued, and shipped back to Ft. Benning. The human remains of the bombing victims had also been sent to Ft. Benning and wouldn’t be released for burial until after the investigation was concluded.
For the past several months, teams of scientists and investigators had been going over every inch of each piece of evidence to see what could be learned about the bombings. The floor of the hangars where the evidence was laid out was a strange mixture of evidence, life-size photographs of before-and-after images of the bombing sites, and dozens of investigators in protective clothing scurrying around trying to discover any clues about who was responsible for the attack.
Burkhart stopped at the hangar entrance to put on his protective clothing, which was required due to the decomposing human remains that were still being separated from some of the debris and the possibility of toxic biologic agents present in the bomb fragments. He needed to talk to several members of his team but refused to do it in his office or conference room. A week earlier, he had discovered that his office was bugged. Someone wanted to keep