The phalanx code, p.21
The Phalanx Code, page 21
“Do you have any proof of these allegations you’re making against my father?” I asked. My tone was defensive, and I wasn’t sure why. The man had never even reached out to me when I was in prison. Sometimes we blindly defend our family even when there is no worthwhile defense.
“Why don’t I conference Evelyn in, and we can walk you through what we know?”
My phone buzzed.
“Jake, what’s going on?”
“Boss, we have a problem.”
22
VALHALLA IS THE NORDIC concept of Heaven for warriors, simply put.
It also was a code I had established within our team to be ready to fight, like a safe word. When I had left Mahegan and the team, I had done so with the hope that Drewson and company were authentic, but I had not been convinced. My handshake and mention of “Valhalla” was the first signal of alarm to my team that they were to always be armed and never leave any one team member alone; not that they needed reminding, but I wanted them to know I was concerned.
Even though the presence of Misha had dulled my normally sharp instincts, I had remained wary. And now I had two angels, one on each shoulder, chirping in my ear about saving humanity and bettering the world. Were they both dark angels, or were Blanc and Drewson representative of the classic showdown between good and evil? It wasn’t clear to me who might be telling the truth. Now, perhaps too late, I didn’t discount that Evelyn could be deceiving me. Was she to Blanc as Misha was to Drewson? Her apparent purpose being to filter my view?
My time with Evelyn had seemed genuine and sincere. There was nothing fraudulent about it. Right?
I looked at the phone in my hand.
“What’s going on?” I asked Mahegan.
“Yeah, that earlier call? My gut was right. I’ve got Joe and Randy trying to open what looks like a hatch in this pod. Drewson’s got something planned and it isn’t good.”
“Where are Brad, Reagan, and Misha?”
They were the only ones in the group who didn’t have combat experience. A few years before, even Amanda Garrett had fended off Rwandan and French commandos to protect her orphan boys and the medical cure that they had developed.
“They’re with us,” he said. “No issues there. I’m telling you, though, that we might have to take direct action here from inside the compound.”
“I believe you, but why? What are you seeing?”
“In the bench seats of this pod are some of the uniforms and equipment that we found on those Phalanx guys we killed near Denver,” he said.
“Could it have been from them?”
“No, sir. These are new. Never been worn. Stacks of them that say ‘Phalanx’ on them.”
This was not a promising discovery.
“Does Drewson know you’ve found it?”
“To the extent that he’s not monitoring this call, no, but no guarantees there. We’ve got your entire world right here, so I decided to violate protocol and call you without encryption.”
He was right about that.
“What’s your plan?” I asked.
“Find a way out of this pod and then find some high ground,” he said.
“Do that. I’ll be inbound shortly. Stay up on comms,” I said.
“Roger,” Jake replied and hung up.
My mind was spinning. Everyone I cared about was locked inside Drewson’s Wyoming hyperloop? Drewson was deploying the assassin squads? If he could kill his own people, then what would he do to mine? And my father? How did he factor into this and what was his role? I felt I needed to call him, but if he was truly on the side of evil here, something I had a hard time believing, then did I want to tip my hand?
I turned to Blanc and said, “We need to move fast to help my team. Show me what you’ve got.”
He nodded and said, “Of course. I’m dialing Evelyn right now.”
The large monitor to my front clicked on and Evelyn’s face filled the screen. Sunlight was pouring in through the den window and the brown husks of tangled grapevines wound their way into the horizon.
“You left out some key information,” I said to her. For the moment, I wasn’t telling anyone about Ximena’s rhombus flash drive.
“Yes, well, Garrett, some things are better discovered by oneself than lectured by another. You know the old saying, ‘Show, don’t tell.’”
“Did you know about my father?” I asked.
“I just learned that he has become Mitch’s senior military advisor for global affairs.”
“He has an official role?”
“It seems that way,” Evelyn said.
She showed an engagement letter signed by Drewson and my father, with Drewson compensating him at a hundred thousand a month to be his strategic advisor. Over a million dollars a year to help him develop strategies to do what? Take over the world? My dad was a good soldier and general, but he was no strategic genius.
“Last year, he signed on with Optimus in a private deal. After Aurelius’ dark web letter to me got hacked by Drewson’s team, Ximena started digging back through their servers and found Drewson Enterprise’s data room full of contracts and other business documents. She was vetting you and searched Garrett Sinclair and found this.”
The document looked authentic, but I didn’t know what information I could trust anymore. In the digital age anyone could create a fake video and make it look real, much less a fake document.
“When last year?” I asked.
Blanc paused, thought about it, pursed his lips, and said, “It was about thirteen months ago, to be precise.”
I had never heard from my father after the Eye of Africa fight. At first, I rationalized his absence in my life as not knowing how to approach me in prison, or simple embarrassment at his son’s fall from grace. Could it have been something more? Contrary to Coop, Dad was always focused on the money. Flag officer friends on the Theranos board of directors convinced the company to offer him a million-dollar private placement in 2012, all of which he lost in 2018 when the company dissolved. He scraped together some money and had built a decent savings, which he invested in the stock market. He sold his portfolio in early 2020 before the Covid outbreak based on a tip from his contacts in the intelligence community, which preserved his capital. Then he unwisely invested at the peak of the Covid rebound and held on to his portfolio, getting crushed. I only knew this because he was calling me screaming that he was broke and asking his son for consulting contracts when I was an active-duty general. I didn’t need any consulting and, of course, ethically would not hire my own father.
I had never understood his anger toward me or my kids. Was the answer at hand?
“Do you have a copy of Coop’s will?” I asked. “I didn’t think twice about it. I was deployed immediately after the funeral. He always lived in a modest home in Fayetteville. Never seemed to live outside his means. Sure, he traveled a lot … for now-obvious reasons, but I have no idea what he was worth and, frankly, until now, didn’t care.”
I still wasn’t saying anything about the file on the flash drive. I wanted to hear what Blanc had to say. Because Blanc had not mentioned it, I assumed that Ximena was a lone operator and that Blanc did not know about the flash drive.
“Yes, I have a copy,” Blanc said.
“Aurelius, should you do this?” Evelyn asked.
“Evelyn, I have to,” he said.
Split screen with Evelyn’s face on the monitor was a legal document that had all the usual markings of a will with Garrett Sinclair I, aka “Coop.” Blanc scrolled down to the meat of the language, which was all formal legal text.
“Cut to the chase,” I said. “My team is in danger and you’re throwing me hundred-mile-per-hour curveballs right now. Get to it.”
“Bottom line, Garrett, is that Coop left everything to you and me, save a small sum of one hundred thousand to your father.”
It still didn’t register with me. A hundred thousand was a lot of money and maybe a large part of Coop’s estate. I shrugged. “Seems reasonable.”
“Five years ago, when he died, Papa’s estate was worth close to twenty million. In Papa’s will, the lawyer was forbidden from telling you anything about me or Sharpstone, or the sizable inheritance. I believe Papa wanted you to focus on your career and, of course, the revelation of a bastard child in the bloodline could have tarnished your image, not to mention what the allure of unknown riches might have done to your motivation to remain in the military.”
I stared at him in disbelief but remained silent.
“Your father, on the other hand, was informed that he received less than one percent of papa’s estate. By contrast, upon your retirement, you are set to receive close to five million. Papa put two point five million each in trust accounts for Brad and Reagan upon their graduation from college and upon the one-year anniversary of starting their first job. Whether Brad’s band counts as a job, I think is up to you. Once the lawyers are done, you’re the executor, along with the attorneys of record, of that decision. That leaves five million for you, with the only stipulation that you are honorably discharged from the military upon your retirement. Seems that has occurred. My portion of the will is simply giving me his investment in Sharpstone, which does about fifty million in revenue annually, clearing about ten million in profit, which accounts for the other half of the money. I must give fifty percent of that to my mother, which I will gladly do, once it is settled. Your father is gumming things up a bit. Also, there is a clause that I must offer you right of first refusal to lead Sharpstone, which I would do even without the clause.”
“If what you say is true, I’m sure my father has contested this,” I said.
“He has and he lost. He appealed and he lost again,” Blanc said. He scrolled to the bottom page where several attorney signatures were affixed. “He had an entire legal team, to include representation in France, sign the document. The document is indisputable. The probate is about to order disbursement any day now.”
“Is there any scenario where he gets the ten million set aside for me and my children?” I asked.
Blanc paused. Evelyn said, “Aurelius.”
“He needs to hear this from us, Evelyn,” Blanc said.
“There is an arcane law that affords your father a path to your share if you, Melissa, Brad, and Reagan are … deceased.”
I turned away and looked out the window into the blackness. Lights burned in the distance, but I saw only my reflection. My jaw was set. My eyes were ablaze. My mind spun with the calculations. Coop died five years ago. Melissa died three years ago but was diagnosed closer to four years ago. My commander’s mind analyzed every possible scenario. Was it all a coincidence? Was my father an evil monster willing to kill off his son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren to get at ten million? Financially destitute people have done stranger things. Was there some middle-ground explanation where he contested the will because he never knew he had a half brother in Aurelius Blanc? Maybe he figured with Blanc’s wealth, Blanc wouldn’t want the money, but wealthy people didn’t get wealthy by giving away large sums of money, especially when they were growing a business.
“But why?” I croaked.
“Papa brought your father to Normandy to meet me a year or so before he passed. I think Papa knew he was not well and wanted to right some wrongs, one being isolating me from the rest of your family. He told me that if he could do it all over again, he would have immediately made everyone aware of the situation. But he didn’t, and of course we get no do-overs in life. Your father didn’t handle it well and made a demand to Papa that he write me out of the will. As well as you know your Coop and I know my Papa, your father’s lack of acceptance and outright greed compelled Papa to do just the opposite, which was leave his entire estate elsewhere. To take care of the people he loved and the people who genuinely loved him.”
After a long pause, I said, “I don’t care about the money, Blanc. I care about my people. Whatever Coop’s will says is what I’ll do. I’m trusting you and Evelyn. My children and my team are inside Drewson’s maze of tunnels in Wyoming. I can’t even fathom my father’s role in this, if any. Regardless, it’s irrelevant to the tactical situation and the need to move quickly. There is nothing I can do about my father now, but I can get moving to save my people. I have questions. For one, Evelyn, why you didn’t at least hint to me that you were closer to Aurelius than you initially let on? Your involvement with Sharpstone? So many questions that I frankly don’t have time to deal with right now.”
Evelyn said, “Drewson was jamming our communications so that Aurelius and I couldn’t talk. Now that he’s got everything in place, I imagine we’ll be hearing from him soon. We’ve been played. Your father is an unknown entity in the grander scheme. Being pissed off about a will is one thing. Killing your family is another. We’ll deal with that as time permits.”
“I think, Evelyn, we can get some of our Sharpstone troops moving in that direction immediately,” Blanc said. He turned to me and said, “General, would you like the use of some of my commandos to go and secure your family and friends?”
“I’ll need somebody. Drewson’s compound is a defender’s dream. If you can have a team ready at the nearest airport, I’m ready in five minutes,” I said.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“Godspeed, Garrett. I’ll be available to assist as necessary,” Evelyn said.
Less than an hour later, I was at Teterboro Airport boarding a Dassault Falcon 10X, a medium-sized business jet with nineteen seats and a top speed of almost Mach one, over seven hundred miles per hour. Most of the seats were filled, and my quick count told me I had twelve commandos, two pilots, two crew, and a communications operator sitting in the back. The front cabin was left open for me. Someone had placed a kit bag filled with weapons, goggles, ammunition, radios, and other means of war on the bench seat across from the facing captain’s chairs. A box with a sandwich and two bottles of water was next to the kit bag. We taxied and were airborne within ten minutes of my arrival.
The only thing that mattered now was saving the people I loved.
23
ONCE WE WERE AIRBORNE, I used the time to meet the team that would be assisting me in securing the safety of my people, should they not be able to do so themselves. This new team and I had no real plan, were unaccustomed to operating together, and knew little about the facility we had to infiltrate other than my limited time spent in the compound.
I walked into the rows of comfortably spaced seats. Some of the troops were sleeping. I counted ten men and two women. All were dressed in black or olive tactical clothing with outer tactical vests filled with ammunition, medical kits, and communications gear. A few of the men eyed me warily while the others nodded off with their mouths hung open. I approached Maximillian, who had led the team that met me upon my arrival at Stewart and protected me during our movement to Evelyn’s Upper West Side condo in the Dakota building. Sitting on the chair in the opposite row, I leaned forward and held out my hand.
“Bon soir,” I said. “Garrett Sinclair.”
He looked at me, then my outstretched hand, nodded, and we shook.
“Maximillian Pelletier,” he replied. Then added, “You are a lot of trouble, you know that, right, General?”
Maximillian’s grip was ironclad. He had a shaved head and a scarred face that bore the remnants of hand-to-hand combat. A couple of his front teeth were chipped. He was wearing a black T-shirt that was filled out by his muscular frame. On his arms were two dagger tattoos running along the top of each forearm with the tips pointing toward his wrists. Each one had blood dripping from the edge. The handle was elaborate and familiar to me, though I couldn’t place where I knew it from. On the blade of the right arm were hieroglyphics and on the blade of the left arm were the words PIERRE TRANCHANTE: Sharp Stone. Above the daggers on each biceps was an open parachute with the number 2 inscribed on the canopy.
“Second para?” I asked.
He nodded. The French Foreign Legion had one parachute regiment, which was based in Corsica. It was the most elite unit of the Legion.
“I commanded it and then got an offer I couldn’t refuse from Blanc,” he said.
“How are the wounded Sharpstone men from the bridge?” I asked.
“Edgar is fine. The doctor’s still working on Louis, but he should be okay. He’s been through Iraq, Afghanistan, Senegal, DRC. Nothing will stop him. He was the one who took you over the railing,” he said.
“I appreciate your team’s sacrifice.”
He shrugged. “It is their job.”
“Why didn’t you just take me to meet with Blanc straight from the airport?”
“I work for Ms. Champollion. She insisted that we go to her place to make sure Optimus did not follow us or plant trackers on you. She has a de-digitization chamber that we never got a chance to run you through with the chaos and your … departure. They would like nothing better than to get to Blanc in our draft. We were to transfer you the next day to meet with Mr. Blanc,” he said.
“But why not just tell me that?” I asked.
He smiled. “You of all people should know that information remains compartmented for as long as necessary. Our survival depends on deception, among other things. Optimus has copied us in every way. They use our uniforms to kill their own people. It’s a false flag operation. Drewson wants to destroy Blanc more than anything in the world. He has convinced your president that we are the enemy, not him.”
“But why would Drewson want this?” I asked.
He smiled a gap-toothed leer at me and said, “Why does anyone want power? Fucking ego trip.”
I met a few of the other men and women who weren’t sleeping. There was a group toward the back of the airplane that looked away when I strolled through the aisle. Some soldiers didn’t take to generals or leadership of any sort. Most were at least curious, but these men, all with shaved heads and tattoo sleeves, were distant.
