[Author's Note: I realize that the pace of this story has been a bit of a slow burn, but there's more action to come, that I can promise you. Also, in case some or all of you were wondering, Sheriff Harrison, Deputy Xander, and Deputy Michaels' past of working at a police department "out West" is somewhat of a reference to another video game. I didn't get more into it because one, I don't want to go off on a tangent about their pasts "out West" more than I already have and two, I didn't want to make this story too much of a crossover. Although the earlier "Shenmue" stuff was cool, making obvious references to the other game just to flesh out a tiny subplot would be too much, in my opinion. Thanks for all your support and for hanging in there with me so far!]
Chapter 6: Ominous Warnings
Sunrise Farm
Holland Valley Region, Hope County
7:30 PM
After a long twelve hours of either waiting at a speed trap in the Henbane River region, handling intoxicated and/or belligerent inmates at the jail, and fairly peaceful, uneventful patrols in the Holland Valley, all Hope County Sheriff Troy Harrison and his deputies wanted to do was go home and sleep. However, this mutual plan shared by Sheriff Harrison, Deputy Joey Hudson, and Sergeant Abigail "Abby" Asher was sidetracked after Willis Huntley, a CIA agent who the sheriff once crossed paths with and thoroughly disliked, had requested a seemingly clandestine meeting with the three of them at Sunrise Farm, a small pumpkin farm and farmer's market just outside the town of Fall's End.
Harrison, Hudson, and Asher rode to the farm in the sheriff's personal vehicle, a blue 2018 Dodge Charger outfitted with off-road wheels of which he was very proud. The three drove up the farm's small dirt driveway and almost immediately took note of three unmarked black Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs with very darkly-tinted windows parked in a pristine formation behind one another near the open entrance of the farm's proverbial red barn.
"What is this?" Hudson asked, "a goddamn sci-fi movie?"
Troy Harrison smirked as he stopped the car and put it in park. "Looks like it, huh?" he humorously replied, "All I know that if the CIA is involved, you guys better get ready to interact with a lot of eerie, smartly-dressed folks who aren't exactly fully accustomed to telling people the whole truth."
Abigail Asher gave a smirk of her own at that. "Oh boy", she sarcastically said, "I can't wait."
The three got out of the car and walked toward the barn entrance. They were soon greeted by a very tall bald white man dressed in a generic-looking black business suit who seemed to just appear from out of the barn. "Identification, please", he flatly said.
The three reached into their pockets and produced their badges and identification for this impromptu guard. "Sheriff Troy Harrison", Harrison said, "Hope County Sheriff's Department." He then motioned to Hudson. "This is Deputy Joey Hudson", he continued before motioning to Asher, "and my Sergeant, Abigail Asher. Willis Huntley's expecting us."
The very ominous-seeming door guard thoroughly eyed each of their badges and IDs before gesturing for them to follow him inside the barn. Inside, the three took note of eight folding metal chairs set up in front of a large projector screen with what looked like a very high-end projector set up nearby. This barn's interior had apparently been completely stripped and set up for whatever kind of viewing Willis Huntley had planned.
Just then, the three were startled when an overhead light suddenly came on, illuminating five sharply-dressed people, four of them men and the fifth a woman, standing just to the left of the projector. The first to speak was senior CIA agent Willis Huntley, a petite white man in his early sixties clad in a black business suit with his ever-present Fedora hat.
"Thank you all for coming", Huntley said, "and we apologize for the cloak-and-dagger routine."
Harrison took his opportunity to speak up. "No problem", he sarcastically said, "So what if we've all just come off of a twelve-hour shift and are all major exhausted. We love taking time away from our valuable sleep schedules to entertain the good folks at the Central Intelligence Agency. Right, ladies?"
Hudson and Asher nodded with just as much sarcasm as their sheriff. "Ladies", Harrison continued, "I'd like to introduce Mister Willis Huntley, senior CIA pencil pusher who likes outsourcing local sheriff's deputies to intercept Russian sleeper cells and stick them in the firing line of twelve wild Peggies."
Huntley smirked. "It's great to see you again, too, Mister Harrison", he said condescendingly, "Congrats on your promotion, Sheriff."
"Thanks", Harrison replied before motioning to the five others on either side of Huntley, "Now would you mind introducing us to your backup singers please?"
A tall man in his mid-forties stepped forward. He had a telltale Marine buzzcut and an FBI seal pin tacked on his necktie. "I know it's been a while, Troy", he said, "but one would think you'd remember me, bud."
It took Harrison a quick second, and the small gasp and wide smile signified his remembrance. "Denny?!", he inquired, "Denny Donovan?!"
FBI Special Agent in Charge Dennis "Denny" Donovan promptly came over and hugged his old friend for a minute. Harrison and Donovan had known each other for years, having been in the same FBI Academy training class and later working together for two years as rookie Special Agents in the Bureau's Seattle Field Office. "How've you been, big man?" Harrison asked.
"Can't complain, buddy" Donovan said, "Glad to see you've faired well after leaving the Bureau. Hope County Sheriff, huh?"
Harrison looked briefly at Donovan's clip-on FBI ID card. "Look who's talking", he said, "Special Agent in Charge, man, cool! Where'd they post you?"
"I've been running the Bureau's resident agency over in Butte", Donovan replied, "Since I made SAC about three years ago."
"I hate to interrupt this touching reunion", Huntley said as he motioned to the three others standing beside him, "but I would appreciate if you other folks could introduce yourselves, please?"
A towering tan-skinned gentleman stepped forward. "My name is Anatoly Borshev", he said with a heavy Russian accent, "I'm the CIA's Moscow, Russia Station Chief."
Then, a short, very dapper-looking man with short white hair stepped forward. "My name is Richard Pedwick", he said with a very proper British accent, "I'm the Station Chief representing the Agency in London, England."
Harrison, Asher, and Hudson were then surprised to see a woman step forward following Pedwick's introduction. She was an attractively tall blonde woman appearing to be in her mid-forties, and she would have seemed out of place if it weren't for the fact that she was wearing a black pant suit that looked very similar to her male counterparts. "My name is Ingrid Strousberg", she said with a very well-defined Dutch accent, "CIA Station Chief representing Amsterdam in the Netherlands."
Huntley then motioned to the eight metal chairs. "If you wouldn't mind taking a seat over here, please", he said, "I'd be happy to get to the point of why we're all here, and why we asked for you folks."
The eight attendees promptly took their seats, after which Huntley stepped to the front of the room and stood beside the projector. He produced a small remote control from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and pressed a button. With a high-pitched beep, a very large image of Faith Seed appeared in high definition on the projector screen.
"I suppose you all know who this is?" Huntley asked.
Just the thought of the late Faith Seed made Sheriff Harrison's face sour with anxiety. "You know we do Huntley", he said coldly, "That's Faith Seed, one of the so-called 'heralds' for the Project Eden's Gate cult, adopted sibling of the Seed brothers, and all-around manipulative, drug-crazy, psychopathic bitch. Her designer drug 'Bliss' killed three friends of ours, two of whom were fellow law enforcement officers, and almost killed me and my predecessor, Sheriff Whitehorse…"
Willis Huntley put his hand up to try and put a stop to the sheriff's rant. "Sheriff Harrison, please…"
A now increasingly angry Harrison ignored the CIA agent's request and opted to continue his ranting just to prove a point. "…Not to mention being used to brainwash a bunch of really good people in this county, people we all deeply care about and would give our lives to protect. Thankfully, the military aid that the governor brought in saved everybody and was instrumental in getting some semblance of normal back here. Oh, and dare I mention, the aforementioned bitch is dead. I took her down myself earlier this summer."
Huntley sighed. "Are you done?" he asked.
Harrison shrugged his shoulders and smirked. "I guess that about sums it up, Mister Huntley", he said.
Huntley then gave a knowing smirk of his own. "As much as I enjoyed that very informative rant of yours", he replied, "I have to respectfully disagree with you, Sheriff. That's not all there is." He then turned to Sergeant Abigail Asher. "Sergeant Asher, I presume?"
"Yes sir", Asher replied.
"You are a longtime friend and colleague of Sheriff Harrison here, correct?" Huntley asked.
Asher nodded. "I am", she said, "He and I have been friends for about twenty years, and we also worked together at the same Chicago Police district station for two years."
"Were the two of you detailed to uniform together in the early morning hours of February first, two-thousand-eleven?" Huntley asked.
Caught off guard, Asher shot Harrison a confused look before replying. "Yes, we were", she began to explain, "There was a bad snow storm that week, and the entire Chicago area got roughly twenty or so inches of snow dumped on it. To make sure there was enough manpower on the streets while the city workers dealt with the storm, our CPD district commander temporarily pulled several detectives, including Troy and I, from our regular assignments and ordered us back to uniformed patrol to answer calls and assist those affected by the storm."
"I see", Huntley said, "And does any particular call stand out from any of the others you responded to that morning?" he asked.
"Where's this going Huntley?" an irritated Harrison blurted out.
With that, Huntley again pressed the button on the projector remote. When the slide changed, the image of Faith Seed was replaced with that of an adorable baby girl laying in a hospital bassinet. "Recognize this baby?" Huntley asked.
Asher and Harrison both gave nods of recognition as soon as they saw the baby. "Yes", Asher said, "All the Chicago area media outlets dubbed her 'Baby Augustine'. She had been abandoned and left in a box and blanket outside Saint Augustine's Church during the snowstorm. Troy and I were the ones who found her that morning."
"What if I were to tell you that this beautiful little girl has a connection to the cult", Huntley asked, "specifically to Faith and Joseph Seed?"
"Alright Huntley", Harrison said, "Enough with the damn questions, okay?" He then turned around and addressed the others in the room. "How about you guys hit us with the facts, please?"
Dennis Donovan stepped to the front of the room and stood beside Huntley. "As you know", he began, "When the governor's Martial Law order was imposed on Hope County, the FBI took custody of any and all evidence relating to the Seeds. This included what was left of Faith Seed's remains following the explosion that killed her."
Harrison nodded. "You of all people know I was an FBI agent for ten years, Denny" he said, "I know all the procedures. You sent her remains to the Quantico lab for examination, right?"
Donovan nodded. "The Quantico pathologist confirmed the identity of the remains as that of twenty-four-year-old Rachel Jessop", he continued, "which as you know, was Faith Seed's true birth name. Postmortem examination of her uterus determined that she, at one point in her life, had gone through a full-term pregnancy and given birth to a child."
Asher's jaw dropped. "Are you saying that Baby Augustine was hers?" she asked.
Donovan sighed. "I'm afraid so", he said, "A saliva sample was taken from the baby at a Chicago hospital and submitted to the CPD Crime Lab database, where it remained for several years. That is, until our lab personnel found partial matches to the known DNA profiles of both Joseph Seed and Rachel Jessop, a.k.a. Faith Seed. Baby Augustine is their biological daughter."
Harrison put a hand over his mouth for a minute. "Holy shit", he softly said, barely able to get the words out.
Joey Hudson then raised her hand politely. "That's certainly a big surprise", she said, "but what does this 'Baby Augustine' case in Chicago have to do with the state of affairs here in Hope County nowadays?"
"I'm afraid that's the kicker Deputy", Donovan said with a very detectibly regretful tone in his voice, "As much as we in the nationwide and international governments are truly afraid to admit this, we believe that there are still remnants of Project Eden's Gate lingering in other locations around the world."
"Wait a second", Asher chimed in, "You're telling us that the cult that Troy, Joey, and all those other people fought earlier this year is still in business? Didn't you FBI guys work with the National Guard to bust Joseph Seed and take out any other Peggie that stood in your way?"
Donovan nodded. "That we did, Sergeant", he replied, "And, actually, it was an international joint effort between us, the CIA, and all law enforcement agencies around the world."
"But you're saying there's still a flaw in that armor?" Asher asked.
Just then, Russian CIA Station Chief Anatoly Borshev stood up from his seat and made his way toward the projector. "It appears that unfortunately, there is, yes", he said. He politely took the projector remote from Huntley and pressed a button, advancing the slide. This new image was that of a vehicle caravan consisting of what appeared to be four sedans, but it was hard to tell due to the vehicles being blown to Kingdom Come, leaving black, burnt, soot-covered shells of what the vehicles used to be in their place.
"This was a security caravan flanking a transport vehicle containing 22-year-old Russian actor Mikhail Vasiev", Borshev began to explain, "He may not be very well-known to those of you Americans, but he's gained a lot of notoriety in my home country of Russia. He was a pornographic actor who, after an arrest for heroin possession, decided to try and repair his image by switching to mainstream films."
"He was killed?" Harrison asked.
Borshev shook his head. "No", he replied, "Starting about three months ago, he began receiving letters which essentially were threats on his life." Borshev switched the slide once again, this new image showing a copied image of one of the letters that Mikhail Vasiev had received, the letter's typed text being written in Cyrillic, the written language common to Eastern European counties such as Russia and Ukraine. One thing stood out to everyone in the room, however: the bottom right-hand edge of the letter showed the unmistakable logo of the Project Eden's Gate cult.
"You said this guy Vasiev used to be a porn star, right?" Harrison asked.
"Yes", Borshev asked.
Harrison took a second to think. "So therefore", he said, "he'd be someone the Peggies would consider as a 'sinner'. What did happen to him?"
"Six weeks ago," Borshev continued, "Vasiev and his security team were on the way to the Bolshoi theater in Moscow. Vasiev's girlfriend is a ballerina with the theater's dance company who was due to perform in a show later that afternoon. They were slowing the cars down to stop for a traffic light in the city's Theatre Square when both pairs of vehicles on either side of the car containing Vasiev seemed to simultaneously explode. Four security agents were killed, while Vasiev and his only remaining bodyguard survived with concussions and injuries from flying glass."
"What made you so sure the Peggies were involved?" Hudson asked.
"The police bomb technicians were able to reconstruct the explosive devices attached to each car's gas tank", Borshev said, "which were apparently C-4 charges detonated by remote. Each charge had the Project Eden's Gate logo on them."
Dutch CIA Station Chief Ingrid Strousberg then stood from her seat. "There was a similar explosion at a subway station in Amsterdam a few weeks after that", she said, "Mister Borshev, do you have that slide available?"
Borshev cycled through the slides until he found the particular slide to which Strousberg referred. By this time, Strousberg had made her way to the projector beside Borshev and Huntley. The slide's image was of the very burnt and badly charred interior of a subway station. "Six people died while waiting for a commuter train at around nine-thirty in the morning", Strousberg said, "The bomb consisted of the same remotely-detonated C-4 charges with the cult logo on them. However, there was one thing that differentiated this particular case from the others."
"You guys were actually able to catch the bomber on this one", Harrison said, "I heard it on the radio. He called himself 'a prophet of God' or something like that, right?"
"That's correct, Sheriff", Strousberg said, "There was an off-duty Amsterdam policeman waiting for a train on the opposite corner of the station when the bombs went off. When the initial shock subsided, he was able to see a short white male subject in a white hooded sweatshirt running away from one of the station's pillars. The subject had positioned himself too far away to have just been merely reacting to the explosion."
"Were you able to properly ID him?" Asher asked.
Strousberg switched the slide over to a suspect identification sheet. The suspect appeared to be a gaunt bald-headed white man in his early to mid-twenties. "He refused to identify himself to the local police", she said, "but a comprehensive international fingerprint identified him as twenty-one-year-old Damien Ivy."
Just then, British CIA Station Chief Richard Pedwick chimed in as he stood from his seat. "Damien Ivy is a person of interest to the British federal authorities", he explained, "and has been for some time now. The police in London were investigating him for blowing up the building where his own flat was located roughly a year ago."
"I'm sorry", Hudson interjected, "his 'flat'?"
Harrison smirked. "it's what British people call 'apartments', Joey", he said. The entire room momentarily erupted in laughter. "Any other intelligence on this Ivy character?" he asked Pedwick.
"The London police constables discovered he has ties to an obscure church that's apparently nothing more than a clever front for these Eden's Gate buggers", Pedwick replied, "or…'Peggies' as you all so colorfully seem to want to call them."
"Is your agency surveilling this church?" Hudson asked.
"The CIA cannot confirm or deny the status of any ongoing surveillance operations", Willis Huntley said, "But we can tell you that the counterterrorism branch of the London Police has the church listed as an 'active target'."
"One last thing", Dennis Donovan added. He took the projector remote from Ingrid Strousberg and pressed the button. The slide advanced to an image of the photographed fleet of white Eden's Gate vehicles. "I take it you all recognize these various vehicles", he said.
"Yeah", Hudson replied, "the cult had a whole fleet of them. They arrived in the county in them. According to our old sheriff, Earl Whitehorse, the FBI took custody of pretty much all of them in accordance with the Martial Law order."
"That's correct, Deputy Hudson", Donovan said, "We took all fifty-seven vehicles we found into evidentiary custody and had them sent to our lab in Virginia for processing. However, records kept by the Seeds indicate that three vehicles, two pickup trucks and an armored gun boat, were missing from the fleet we found. We suspect they're still out there somewhere."
Sheriff Harrison put two and two together. "So, you want us to keep a look out for them and report back to you if we see them", he said.
Donovan stepped away from the projector and went to Harrison's seat, handing him a business card. "Please do", he said, "That's my direct number to my office in Butte. I'm reachable day or night, twenty-four-seven." He extended a hand to his old friend.
Harrison graciously gave him a handshake. "Thanks, brother", he said, "we'll keep in touch."
With that, everyone filed out of the barn and dispersed to their respective vehicles. Hudson, Harrison, and Asher piled into Harrison's Dodge Charger. "So", Asher said, "An old case of ours from Chicago comes back to bite us in our asses and it seems that this whole Eden's Gate thing isn't over just yet."
Harrison smirked as he started his car's ignition. "That sounds about right, kiddo", he said, "If I were you, ladies, I'd fasten my seatbelts…and I'm not just talking about for right now."