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by Ed McEneely, Mon, 5 Feb 2001
Doc left the room.
The electronic impulses left the photosensor at high speed,
attracting the attention of a lazily orbiting satellite posessed of
scanning equipment that was beyond the ken of man.
Unless, of
course, the man in question belonged to Majestic.
The satellite
relayed the data to a highly-modified AWACS jetliner travelling at an
altitude of 45,000 feet. The information bounded about the
limited-capacity crystal matrix supercomputer that was linked to the
communications aerial, and began a FLASH packet transmission to an
ADAMANTIUM-secure phone line in Nevada.
The modem picked up the
call, ran the information through the computer, and sent a routine
SANITIZE order via secure fax to a NRO DELTA team ensconced safely in
their van en route to Doc's home.
Their orders are short and to
the point. The modern day spartans read them with nary a second
glance, calmly cleaning and assembling weapons in the practiced
manner of one who feels they have a special relationship with guns.
At 11:10 PM, the van pulls into the back lot of the building, and the
team exits it in a calm and efficient manner.
Across the street,
someone has seen the van, and mutters into his throat mike.
The
team enters the building, which seems almost abandoned this late at
night.
Their first clue that it is not is when Doc plugs one with
an ancient Colt Army M1911A1 automatic and vanishes back into the
unlight hallways. He does not run far.
The other four soldiers
open fire, the soft stuttering of their silenced weapons nearly
deafening in the stillness of the building, and eleven neat little
holes open up in the Doc's back. He stumbles and falls to the ground,
and one of the team puts a pullet in the base of his head, out of
professional instinct, more than anything.
Thermite explosives
are carefully placed, and the timers are set so that the team will be
long gone by the time that Doc, his knick-nacks, and all his patients
and their secrets have vanished in a fiery pyre. There's just one
hitch.
As the team steps out of the building, four soft rumbles
sound briefly, and their heads erupt like bloody snapdragons
blooming. Had they lived long enough, they would have seen that the
van's driver is also dead.
The watcher's radio crackles. "All
units, this is General Fairfield. Good work, boys.
"Let's
see what secrets they had in that van of theirs."
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