Operation: Intelligent Design Retribution Part One

It was a quiet afternoon in a Kalamazoo coffee shop as two old retired one-star Generals were sitting down to iced coffee’s decaf of course their wives would have demanded that and even without them present they obliged.  They sat quietly drinking staring at one another before one reached down and pressed a button turning on a jammer in case of any bugs in the area or video recording audio.

“Aces, nice to see you again.”

“Bingo, what is wrong with you?  We aren’t supposed to be meeting anymore since we lost those two.”

“We need to find out who killed them I was there to protect them and I failed drastically” Bingo just about grinding his teeth from the anger he was struggling to hold back, “I want payback.”

Air Force General Phillip “Aces” Thomas retired, sat there staring at his old college roomie, “I know but do you have any idea whom we are about to mess with?  These guys can make us disappear and we both are black-op legends.”

Army General John J. Bingo retired still grinding his teeth most of which were falsies anyway obviously didn’t care anymore.  He was assigned to keep them safe their whole life even though they had no idea he was there to watch out for them.  He personally picked the parents who adopted them for one reason; they were all trained operators with years of field op experience fully capable to protect those kids at any cost to themselves.

This was all about the loss of Major Michael Hart and Major Mandy Oetman, of the Air Force and Army respectively.  The two founding operators of Operation: Codex.

Bingo was starving for blood and he could only imagine this operation going smoothly, he had vetted the Marine General who married Mandy quietly only to find out that he was working for a rogue outfit who was trying to break an NDSA code they wrote as children but wasn’t able to get them to cooperate so he killed them.  Bingo had only seen him once in the last year and that was at a secretive security conference for industry insiders only.

He walked up and made a polite apology for his loss of his dearest spouse and all he got was, “It’s alright, she’s in a better place” with a deadpan response.  Bingo knew then he was involved in her death and his mind was made up, he had to get even for both Mandy and Michael at all costs including his own life.  He shook his hand and walked away looking in a mirror on the wall watching Marine Major John T. Morrison retired glaring at him if his eyes were daggers he would be bleeding all over the lobby floor by now, obviously the feeling was mutual.

Bingo and Aces made up their minds something had to be done and they began making phone calls on burner phones to unlisted numbers, one by one, they had assembled a team to bring down John T. Morrison at all costs.  None of the volunteers was exactly a spring chicken many had served in the early to mid-1980’s in their late 40’s and arthritic but still had minds sharp as a tack.  

When they got together, there was the following reporting for duty:

Staff Sergeant Michael “Demon” Richards –Sniper retired

Captain Dawn Maxim-Intel retired

Chief Petty Officer Brian T. “Grizzly” Bear-Navy Seal retired

Sergeant Brandon R. Oetman –Ranger retired also the cousin of Mandy Oetman

General Phillip “Aces” Thomas-Air Force Black-Ops retired

General John J. Bingo-Army Black-Ops retired

This crew either knew or interacted with Mandy or Michael and agreed they deserved payback.  If they only knew, what they were getting into it might have appeared like a bad idea and all decide to stay home.  But there they were digging into an NDSA closed classified file looking for a connection to the deaths, to the twins, to John T. Morrison.

Dawn found a blacked out file that mentions Morrison by his nickname, The Chameleon.  It cites in several readable areas that he was known to attach to women whom the agency saw as an enemy of the state and remove the threat over a matter of time to make it look like a form of cancer or sexually transmitted disease whatever fatal that would not come back to them.

Grizzly found information from his in-house security guys who served under him at the end of his career that were loyal to a fault.  Most of them owed their lives to him for one reason or another and would gladly return the favor.  They informed him the Morrison was working with a rogue agency out of his security company, Intelligence Security that was a front for his black-ops he had been doing on behalf of the NDSA and CI without a presidential finding of any kind.

Just another reason the crew wanted him gone they knew of his operations through the scuttlebutt and all agreed he wasn’t good for business since a few of those operations cost children and women their lives that had nothing to do with anything except they were related to the person who was the primary target.  Often they would kill entire families making it look like a murder-suicide or as if a serial killer had taken their lives.  This was both brutal and unnecessary and since the NDSA and CI wouldn’t rein him in someone had to.

They knew where to find him and they weren’t waiting around to make a move rather they were probably moving too fast forgetting about the NDSA and CI who would likely protect Morrison from them despite his rogue activities.  Two weeks into their investigation and surveillance, it was proving to be a factor as each time they got close to figuring out his pattern he somehow knew they were there and changed it up.

Soon they were just about getting at him and forgetting subtle tactics.  But when they got an envelope that provided them with information that NDSA was on to them and to cease and desist before they were eliminated as a threat.  That meant one thing; they were close to the reality of why he killed them.  That only spurred them on and when they had a chance the Sniper grabbed him without as much as losing a hair off his head.  He was bagged and gagged, told to be quiet or lose his tongue and based on how easily he was grabbed Morrison wasn’t going to test that warning at all.

“What the hell did you do to the twins?” whoever asking the question was clearly holding back their temper but was still raising their voice in anger.

Morrison smirked but said nothing, this pushed Bingo over the edge and he had him in his fingers about ready to snap his neck when Aces grabbed his arm, “Easy killer, we need information from the chameleon before we kill him.  And make no mistake John we will be killing before its’ over.  There is no NDSA operator to save you from us.”

“They know you have moles inside, they have been feeding you false information to throw you off, and I’m just the bait.  You are all going to die by next week trust me.”  Morrison said smugly a bit of a smirk on his face.

Dawn smacked him across the face, “Wipe that smirk off before I cut it off your face.”  She rubbed her combat knife against his skin making sure he felt it as it sliced his cheek ever so slightly.  Grizzly grabbed her arm just as she got close to his eyes shaking his head no as she glared at him, “that’s what he wants you to do Maxie, don’t do it babe.”

Brandon Oetman walked in and walked up to Morrison punching him in the face knocking him and the chair he was tied to across the room.  “I want you to know who hit you John, you killed her and I’m going to kill you before this is over one way or another, you die by my hand.”  Rubbing his arthritic hand that now ached severely his knuckles were long beaten to a pulp by bare knuckled fighting as part of his obsession with Cage Fighting as an amateur despite Mandy’s begging him to stop long ago.

Demon sat in the corner filing his rounds hoping for a chance to take out one of the rogue operators working with Morrison. He knew one of them personally who had worked with him and was now working against everything he believed in when they were both Navy Seals.  He was the one who gave him his nickname after they killed another sniper working for a foreign enemy who trained in the states.  Michael Richards could have shot him from a mile away but he snuck up on him and slit his throat in the dark, then disemboweled him as retribution for killing a female Intel officer he fell in love with.

Dawn was the only one on this crew with hands that hadn’t felt the warmth of blood on her fingers.  That didn’t seem to stop her from wanting to exact pain on Morrison for killing her best friend, her West Point roommate, her love of her lifetime.  Dawn was a lesbian but Mandy wasn’t that didn’t stop her from falling for her and wishing she could spend the rest of her life with Mandy.  Now she was there with the man who shot her dead because she wouldn’t give him what he was demanding of her. 

Retribution was at hand but she had long agreed to let Brandon take him in the end.  Sgt. Oetman needed to close this out; Mandy was his protector growing up in Michigan.  She never let anyone hurt him going so far as to cut his father who was physically abusing his own son leaving him to bleed out on the kitchen floor.  After his death, Brandon lived with Mandy and her parents, being treated like her little brother rather than a cousin.

The only one who seemed to not know either Mandy or Michael as far as the teams were concerned but that wasn’t entirely true.  Grizzly had met both of them when they were small children when he was working with Bingo as part of a security team that shadowed the kids.  He spent nine months watching them grow; become the people the government had bred them for.  It made him sad knowing what they were being raised to do without having a clue what was about to be their lives.

Aces was pushing buttons on the computer searching a private database Dawn had hacked into through the backdoor she programmed into it when she wrote it.  He was seeing documents about Intelligent Design stuff he had never seen in his days when he was the watchdog extraordinaire overseeing the damn thing.  He didn’t like what he was reading it appeared that as they were shadowing the kids, they were being shadowed by the same rogue outfit Intelligent Security run by Morrison’s father and uncle at the time.

He got up and charged into the room where they were interrogating him, walked up charging and slammed his hand into Morrison’s throat causing him to choke.  “Why was your family watching the kids all that time?  Answer me or I swear to god you will die right now!” Aces pushed his 9mm Glock into his mouth as he struggled to breathe from the blow to the throat, his nose bleeding on the gun.

Bingo got up from where he was sitting in the corner resting from the exhaustive interrogation they were using to accost Morrison.  “Easy Aces, we need him alive no matter how much I think we all want him dead.”

Just then a phone in the drawer they placed Morrison’s possessions in, ringing out an old Rickie Martin song, “Living La Vida Loca.” 

“Wonder who that could be?” Grizzly picked up the phone they forgot to turn off and remove the sim card.  “Let’s see where this goes what do you say?”

He pushes the phone next to Morrison’s ear, “you answer sounding off and your head will hit the floor before you can say the second sentence.  Do you understand me?”

He nodded with a 9mm still inside his mouth, which Aces pulled out to allow him to answer holding out his combat knife against his throat instead.  “Hello yeah this is Thunder, what do you need Molly?”

Bingo popped up pushing Aces knife deeper into his throat causing it to bleed as Morrison was trying to carry on the phone call, something in what he said that didn’t sit right with him.  Demon got on the laptop looking for code words they had logged from previous transcripts of Morrison’s calls and there it was Molly was a code word for distress.  “Cut the phone off now! We need to get the hell out of here kill him.”

Brandon didn’t wait to hear it again he walked up pulled his 9mm and slammed one round into Morrison’s forehead splattering the back wall and Dawn with brain matter.  “Sorry Maxie let’s get you cleaned up on our way alright.”

She grabbed a towel got it wet on their way out of the safe house cleaning herself off.  Wishing she was the one to put a bullet in the piece of…rather she watched as Mandy’s cousin got retribution for her this left her feeling both hollow and melancholy as they drove away a single tear ran down her cheek.  Now all she could think about was being with Mandy, which made her, think about swallowing her own gun.  But she knew the mission wasn’t over they needed to know who else was involved.

Demon stayed behind in a hide to see who came to the house and within five minutes, they were there.  Six men in total carrying submachine guns, extra clips and wearing swat gear.  They blew the hinges on the door and rushed in to clear the building finding and removing their man, laying him in the driveway poured gasoline and some other liquid on him, setting him on fire.

Demon had seen this before overseas when a trained operator was found out CI would come in and destroy any evidence as quickly and dirty as possible.  Usually lighting them on fire though most of the time they would burn down the entire building.  They wanted the building checked for some reason and he had to figure out why.

When they were cleared, he waited until dark then searched with night vision saw no movement nearby and slowly, methodically moved into the building to search for whatever they wanted someone to find.  He had to move quickly by now someone had to have seen the smoke from the fire and called the authorities, Dawn wouldn’t be able to sidetrack the response time for much longer.  He kept thinking about how good of a hacker she was working Intel seemed to defeat her best talents as an analyst when she clearly was capable of so much more.

He knew about her love for Mandy and never once did he question her devotion to her West Point roomie, her best friend and colleague.  Dawn didn’t need to be on this mission she wasn’t even out of the service yet, she took leave for this Op and was risking more than her life on this one.  She could be charged for treason if the CI or NDSA get wind of her involvement.

He found it, under the chair they had Morrison sitting in.  The only way that could have got there was someone on the team did it.  It was a tracer that the NDSA designed and put into operation in 2012.  He was familiar with it since he had one implanted in his arm during black-ops when he worked on the fringe for presidential finding missions making foreign dignitaries our government wanted to disappear.

He sent a text to Aces to give him a heads up but he got an unexpected response, “Yeah I know I put it there.”  He was struggling to grasp what has happened when the house lit up like the fourth of July.  Suddenly he was surrounded by flames trapped in the kill box room where they had killed Morrison.  He sent one more text, “Molly was a twin.”

The van stopped and everyone was tense and Bingo was visibly shaken having lost his only source to what they were looking for.  He went in and headed for the bar, swallowing half a bottle of Jack without taking a breath.  “I don’t understand what just happened.”

Aces sat quietly not saying anything and Brandon had a look on his face as if he was about to burst.  He didn’t say anything but he kept glaring at Aces who was patiently cleaning his 9mm off scraping at the dried blood from Morrison.  Dawn saw that Brandon was visibly upset.   “Take it easy Brandon let’s go get something to eat and clean up a bit.”

She pulled at him and he followed still glaring at Aces who was now staring back at him.  A little smirk just like the one Morrison had on his face that’s when he knew what was going on, the text now made sense.  Demon sent it to Brandon knowing full well he would be certain to be the only one who wasn’t going to turn on Mandy.

Brandon handed his phone to Dawn when they entered the kitchen; she looked at the text and knew what had to be done.  She texted Bingo on her secure phone she didn’t want this one caught by the NDSA or CI.  Bingo texted back I got Molly, come back into the livingroom area now.

She grabbed Brandon and they headed back into the livingroom, there sat Aces tied up sitting in the chair in the middle of the room.  He was bleeding from the nose and Grizzly was rubbing his knuckles again.  “We knew Molly was in our midst the whole time and the code word was just used to set in motion what was supposed to be our demise.”

Brandon was done glaring at him he just walked up and used his 9mm as a hammer hitting Aces in the middle of his forehead.  Aces was dazed but Brandon wasn’t finished he took out his knife and began carving into his forehead the word “Molly” he got to the O before Bingo grabbed his arm, “That’s enough Brandon I need answers first, then he’s all yours I swear.”

He backed off him, Dawn grabbed at him and Brandon almost punched her trying to get her hand off him.  “Let go of me, this guy needs to die and we all know it.  He set out to have them killed all along and I imagine whatever they decoded had something to do with him.  It all leads back to Aces and he needs to die now!” Brandon was again pointing his weapon at him shaking trying to stop himself, to will himself to let him livelong enough to answer for his crimes against Mandy and Michael. 

“Brandon baby, not yet.  We will I swear we will but we can’t do it now.” Dawn was shaking and crying knowing how much he needed to end this traitors life.

“He needs to die!  He needs to be bled out and left for dead so his buddies can burn him down like they did Morrison.” Brandon dropped his weapon to his side but wouldn’t holster it.  He tried texting Demon and got one response, “fire.”

“Demon is dead, they burned him down too.  How long do we let this piece of crap keep tearing us apart from the inside?”  He was raising his weapon again, striking Aces in the bloody forehead right on the “M” causing it to bleed more than seep as it was doing.

It was dead silent as they all sat quietly on tables and chairs around the room watching Aces bleed.  No one said anything but they all knew what had to happen; they needed to beat him to get the information they needed.  The motion alarm went off suddenly and they all moved into the kill box, sealed the door and waited.

They heard one gunshot then dead silence.  They all knew what was going on and they locked and loaded braced for the next move of Intelligence Security.

Bingo got a secure text, he read it aloud, “Round One.”  At that moment, he knew they weren’t going to have to fight to the death, at least not today.  They waited for hours before releasing the door lock and entering the rest of the safe house again.  Aces was missing but they could smell burning flesh, they didn’t look around for the body they checked, then entered the vehicle and left another house behind.

Dawn was looking at Bingo as Brandon drove with Grizzly at shotgun.  “What do we do now?” she asked almost whispering.

“Nothing for now, but we will do something soon.  Round two has to begin soon.” Bingo said bluntly staring at a map on the opposite wall past Dawn as if she wasn’t even sitting there.

And they drove on…