CHAPTER 2:
The next morning, Ryan woke much earlier than usual.
Even for a president.
"What the hell is going on, Tony?"
"Mr. President, as your Secretary of Defense, I'm the one who has to tell you that you're going to Area 51."
"Now?" I need some aspirin.
"Your chopper is waiting, and it has orders to lift- off in fifteen minutes. It's hard to have that thing out there for too long without someone, especially the newsies, noticing it."
"Does my family know?"
"About your trip? Hell, no! Easton, Arnie Van Damm, me and agent Price. That's it."
"Okay, it'll be out in fifteen minutes."
The helicopter lifted off from the South Lawn of the White House with as little noise as possible. In it were Ryan, along with his chief bodyguard, his Secretary of Defense, and Ryan's National Security Advisor.
"Mr. President", Beranto said, " we will arrive at the Area 51 base in about four hours..."
"What does this have to do with September 11? I asked Easton, but he wouldn't say a damned thing."
"Good, he's not dumb after all. You know about Usama Bin Laden?"
"CIA was ding an investigation of his group in '91, when I was DDI. Was he behind this whole fucking thing?!"
"Cool it, Mr. President. We have four tapes, sent to Langley yesterday, all say the same thing. We'll release them... maybe."
"I'll sign for that. But what does me going to Area 51 have to do with all of this?"
"sir, you probably don't know this, but Area 51 is the top facility for military tactics, way higher than the Pentagon. We have some plans to... well, you'll have to follow me." Sec Def stood up, and Jack followed him as he moved to different seats. When Tony spoke next, in was in a voice that Jack could barely hear.
"Joint chiefs have a plan that they want to present to you. It's to... bomb Afghanistan." Jack's head snapped forward, and Ryan stared Beranto in the eyes.
"I am NOT authorizing an attack! Fowler tried, and I won't do the same! Anyway, we couldn't send enough nukes over there, remember? We're trying to dismember those." Tony ignored the sarcasm, and continued.
"Did I say 'nuke the place'? What I meant was that we could target paticlaur Taliban areas, and destroy them." the president did not answer, just looked out the window of the oversized black helicopter.
None of them knew what was inside the container.
They were in the slums of Moscow, a frightening and disgusting thing for the men to behold. Until 1991, the year of the Soviet Unions collapse, citizens that saw the homeless in the streets or alleys were encouraged to report them to the proper authorities. Usually, the drunks were executed. Most in the Union pretended that the only homeless ones were the drunks.
This of course, was not true. Russia, being a communist country, had a difficult time doing trade with most countries. They could, but it was almost always limited.
This made them a very poor country. Although there all thousands of housings that are vacant, they are almost all too expensive for the average Russian. So, many became drunks. These were the targets of the terrorists, although they didn't know it.
The group contained a Californian man named John Walker, two former KGB (or Committee for State Security) officers, and another terrorist from America named Derek Fyfe. They cared not what was in the thermal, only that they would get their $35, 000 that had been promised.
They each opened up their canisters, and filled it's powdery substance into the nearest, still- full beer bottles. They each left, having no idea about what they had just done.
"Aumm, today I went to an American market."
"And did you like it, Jerrizaa?"
"Yes, very much so. Perhaps these Americans are not so bad, after all."
"But, they give no money to places in need, like our homeland."
"You are right, Aumm. I was foolish to think so. Anyway, Queda and Bantaili are preparing for the mission. Do you think the others in Moscow had similar success?"
"Time will tell, my friend."
The man's name was Kiev Kredivich Roranov, his name coming from his birthplace that was now Ukraine. He had been born in 1950, at the height of the Cold war. By the time he was thirty, he was chief of the Kiev KGB policing unit. But the darkest day of his life had come in 1992, when the KGB had collapsed. as with many former government agents, Roranov was not welcome in the new Russian intelligence agency (the SRV), and was then deported from his homeland in Ukraine because they no longer wanted communists in their mists. So, he had wandered Belarus, Lithuania, where he had wedded, only do see her die in a skiing accident days later. After that, he had snuck back into Russia. When he had trouble finding an apartment, he spent the night sleeping in hijacked cars, ehick Roranov had rarely seen before.
Russians are known internationally as tolerant drinkers, for their national drink was vodka. But, Roranov had been a light drinker, and when he started to indulge in both strong vodka and American beer, he quickly became a homeless drunk.
It is not a good to be a homeless person in Russia. It is bitterly cold year- round, and Kiev often found friends dead in the snow, sometimes frozen solid inside a dumpster. But now, Kredivich hardly cared. Every day, he had to steal money and food. All the money he used towards alcohol, and he drank so much that he often forgot to eat at all.
Today, the beer tasted... different. It was the same beer that he had left in his sleeping area, but it tasted like chalk dust. Not caring, he drank the rest of his bottle, then fell asleep drunk.
From above, Area 51 does not look like much. A few bunkers, and not much else. Ryan knew that this had to be misleading.
The black presidential helicopter landed in the middle of the desert. The aircraft shifted, and the engines turned off.
The president got out, and groaned.
Today is going to be a shitty day, Jackie- boy. "I can't do this." His head was throbbing, and felt like vomiting. Four unmarked, black government cars were waiting for Jack Ryan and his entourage to enter. But they were impatient.
"Mr. President, we have to move quickly. It's almost time."
'For...?"
"Satellite. If a commercial or foreign one catches the President of the United States of America heading towards Area 51, there would be hell to pay."
"Okay." Jack got into the middle car, and it spun around, driving off.
The road was paved, but had not been touched up in over ten years. This was mainly the result of the government buying a large portion of land around the Groom Lake dry bed.
"When was this place built?", Ryan asked Tony.
"After the Soviet airplane incident, we knew that an air base to detect Soviet airborne objects coming at us, and the test new aircraft. It was finished in 1959. It doesn't look like much on the outside, or anywhere above- ground. Almost all of it is 7 stories underground."
"The Twin Towers are 7 stories above ground..."
"What?"
"Nothing. Do any UFO fanatics camp out around it?"
"They would if they could. In '90, we bought a lot of land around Area 51, to make sure that we weren't being spied on. But, the Russians can now fly over it. Under treaty, of course."
"No shit." That surprised 'Sir John'. This was a sure sign that the USSR was no more.
"When will we be there?"
" 'Bout an hour. Until then, I would get some rest. it's gonna be a busy day for you, Mr. President." Before Beranto could even finish that sentence, Ryan was asleep and snoring.
He started to feel the first symptoms a week later. At first, he assumed that it was just the cold, but as it became worse, he felt that he needed to go to a hospital.
On October 13, the drunk entered, intoxicated, a Moscow hospital. he walked up to the smiling nurse.
"Can I help you, Comrade?" Even after a decade of capitalism, there were some things that Russians would do for years to come.
"I... feel sick, real sick. Sick, sick, sick..." he rambled on, then became coherent again.
"Excuse me, comrade?" the young nurse replied. He didn't speak English, especially Drunken English.
"I need help from a doctor, you bitch!", he screamed in Russian.
I have to keep my cool with this drunk, the nurse thought.
"Do you have any papers?"
"What?" He coughed.
'Papers, do you have any?"
"No."
"You mean, 'you have no home'?" Take that, you slug head.
"No!"
"Then I am sorry, we can not help you here. It is the law of our country. But, I will give you something to help the pain." He fished through her trouser pockets, finally pulling out a small bottle of aspirin. He knocked it out of the pretty nurses' hand, and walked out of the door.
He sneezed hard enough to make him trip on the icy ground.
I need another drink.
Little did Kiev Kredivich Roranov know that all over Western Russia, twenty people had all ready died of what had been identified in their autopsy reports as phenomena. Among these were citizens of St. Petersburg, Rzhe, Velikiy Novgorod and Tver. Out of these, one morgue officer in Velikiy Novgorod decided to run a check on diseases, among them Smallpox, Hoof and Mouth (you never know, he thought) and Anthrax, using new equipment.
The test results took a while to test for, but they came in.
"Negative for Hoof and Mouth, negative for Smallpox... what the hell?" The paper dropped to the floor, and his hands began to shake. "Anthrax, in Russia?", the man asked himself.
The components of Anthrax can be naturally found, mainly in and around dead animals. It is estimated that many victims of Anthrax, mostly farmers, contracted the virus from their livestock.
But in Russia? He collected his senses, and called the front desk.
"Nurse, I need to ask you something. Has anyone feeling sick come into the hospital on your watch?"
"Not that I know of. Why?"
"There is a major health hazard here in Russia. I just found out that a man named Saragey Gerishnov died of Ancillis Bachillis... Anthrax."
"The natural form?"
"No, most likely military- grade."
"Could it of been a factory?" She knew what had happened in 1979.
"No, I don't that. You must send a message to as many hospitals as you can, let them know to check all patients for Anthrax. Clear that with the proper authorities, and hurry!"
"Yes, Comrade Morgue Officer."
"... time will tell." Aumm finished his speech. "Have you prepared the letter?"
"Yes."
"And were you careful?"
"Very much so, Aumm."
"Good. Send two today. The others can wait."
"Yes. I will be a moment." Jerrizaa got up, and walked towards the bedroom. He was excited, adrenaline pored through his veins. He put on latex gloves, and carefully picked up the letter.
As he walked towards the nearest mailbox, he made sure that no one saw him along the way.
The entrance to Area 51 wasn't glamorous by any means. There were four armed officers at the gate, but that was where the human security ended. The three others cars following POTUS had veered off during the ride, one containing all of his staff. This tour was met for Ryan only.
An old fence blocked the one real ground entrance, and on it was a grimy sign that read: DEADLY FORCE PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT. NO PHOTOGARPHY ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT.
Discreetly covering the surrounding hills were camouflaged cars, whose only purpose was to kill any unwelcome visitor that had somehow passed the motion sensors and infared cameras. Ryan got out of the stretch automobile, only to be pushed back in.
"what?"
"Can't risk going out there now. wait a minute." This came from one of the guarding officers. The gates opened, and Ryan's car drove into a place that never existed.
Also all of it was underground, as Jack had suspected. The only thing of importance above ground were a dozen hangers, half of which were decoys.
As Ryan's door was opened, he saw an airplane flying right towards the area, aiming right for his car.
The next morning, Ryan woke much earlier than usual.
Even for a president.
"What the hell is going on, Tony?"
"Mr. President, as your Secretary of Defense, I'm the one who has to tell you that you're going to Area 51."
"Now?" I need some aspirin.
"Your chopper is waiting, and it has orders to lift- off in fifteen minutes. It's hard to have that thing out there for too long without someone, especially the newsies, noticing it."
"Does my family know?"
"About your trip? Hell, no! Easton, Arnie Van Damm, me and agent Price. That's it."
"Okay, it'll be out in fifteen minutes."
The helicopter lifted off from the South Lawn of the White House with as little noise as possible. In it were Ryan, along with his chief bodyguard, his Secretary of Defense, and Ryan's National Security Advisor.
"Mr. President", Beranto said, " we will arrive at the Area 51 base in about four hours..."
"What does this have to do with September 11? I asked Easton, but he wouldn't say a damned thing."
"Good, he's not dumb after all. You know about Usama Bin Laden?"
"CIA was ding an investigation of his group in '91, when I was DDI. Was he behind this whole fucking thing?!"
"Cool it, Mr. President. We have four tapes, sent to Langley yesterday, all say the same thing. We'll release them... maybe."
"I'll sign for that. But what does me going to Area 51 have to do with all of this?"
"sir, you probably don't know this, but Area 51 is the top facility for military tactics, way higher than the Pentagon. We have some plans to... well, you'll have to follow me." Sec Def stood up, and Jack followed him as he moved to different seats. When Tony spoke next, in was in a voice that Jack could barely hear.
"Joint chiefs have a plan that they want to present to you. It's to... bomb Afghanistan." Jack's head snapped forward, and Ryan stared Beranto in the eyes.
"I am NOT authorizing an attack! Fowler tried, and I won't do the same! Anyway, we couldn't send enough nukes over there, remember? We're trying to dismember those." Tony ignored the sarcasm, and continued.
"Did I say 'nuke the place'? What I meant was that we could target paticlaur Taliban areas, and destroy them." the president did not answer, just looked out the window of the oversized black helicopter.
None of them knew what was inside the container.
They were in the slums of Moscow, a frightening and disgusting thing for the men to behold. Until 1991, the year of the Soviet Unions collapse, citizens that saw the homeless in the streets or alleys were encouraged to report them to the proper authorities. Usually, the drunks were executed. Most in the Union pretended that the only homeless ones were the drunks.
This of course, was not true. Russia, being a communist country, had a difficult time doing trade with most countries. They could, but it was almost always limited.
This made them a very poor country. Although there all thousands of housings that are vacant, they are almost all too expensive for the average Russian. So, many became drunks. These were the targets of the terrorists, although they didn't know it.
The group contained a Californian man named John Walker, two former KGB (or Committee for State Security) officers, and another terrorist from America named Derek Fyfe. They cared not what was in the thermal, only that they would get their $35, 000 that had been promised.
They each opened up their canisters, and filled it's powdery substance into the nearest, still- full beer bottles. They each left, having no idea about what they had just done.
"Aumm, today I went to an American market."
"And did you like it, Jerrizaa?"
"Yes, very much so. Perhaps these Americans are not so bad, after all."
"But, they give no money to places in need, like our homeland."
"You are right, Aumm. I was foolish to think so. Anyway, Queda and Bantaili are preparing for the mission. Do you think the others in Moscow had similar success?"
"Time will tell, my friend."
The man's name was Kiev Kredivich Roranov, his name coming from his birthplace that was now Ukraine. He had been born in 1950, at the height of the Cold war. By the time he was thirty, he was chief of the Kiev KGB policing unit. But the darkest day of his life had come in 1992, when the KGB had collapsed. as with many former government agents, Roranov was not welcome in the new Russian intelligence agency (the SRV), and was then deported from his homeland in Ukraine because they no longer wanted communists in their mists. So, he had wandered Belarus, Lithuania, where he had wedded, only do see her die in a skiing accident days later. After that, he had snuck back into Russia. When he had trouble finding an apartment, he spent the night sleeping in hijacked cars, ehick Roranov had rarely seen before.
Russians are known internationally as tolerant drinkers, for their national drink was vodka. But, Roranov had been a light drinker, and when he started to indulge in both strong vodka and American beer, he quickly became a homeless drunk.
It is not a good to be a homeless person in Russia. It is bitterly cold year- round, and Kiev often found friends dead in the snow, sometimes frozen solid inside a dumpster. But now, Kredivich hardly cared. Every day, he had to steal money and food. All the money he used towards alcohol, and he drank so much that he often forgot to eat at all.
Today, the beer tasted... different. It was the same beer that he had left in his sleeping area, but it tasted like chalk dust. Not caring, he drank the rest of his bottle, then fell asleep drunk.
From above, Area 51 does not look like much. A few bunkers, and not much else. Ryan knew that this had to be misleading.
The black presidential helicopter landed in the middle of the desert. The aircraft shifted, and the engines turned off.
The president got out, and groaned.
Today is going to be a shitty day, Jackie- boy. "I can't do this." His head was throbbing, and felt like vomiting. Four unmarked, black government cars were waiting for Jack Ryan and his entourage to enter. But they were impatient.
"Mr. President, we have to move quickly. It's almost time."
'For...?"
"Satellite. If a commercial or foreign one catches the President of the United States of America heading towards Area 51, there would be hell to pay."
"Okay." Jack got into the middle car, and it spun around, driving off.
The road was paved, but had not been touched up in over ten years. This was mainly the result of the government buying a large portion of land around the Groom Lake dry bed.
"When was this place built?", Ryan asked Tony.
"After the Soviet airplane incident, we knew that an air base to detect Soviet airborne objects coming at us, and the test new aircraft. It was finished in 1959. It doesn't look like much on the outside, or anywhere above- ground. Almost all of it is 7 stories underground."
"The Twin Towers are 7 stories above ground..."
"What?"
"Nothing. Do any UFO fanatics camp out around it?"
"They would if they could. In '90, we bought a lot of land around Area 51, to make sure that we weren't being spied on. But, the Russians can now fly over it. Under treaty, of course."
"No shit." That surprised 'Sir John'. This was a sure sign that the USSR was no more.
"When will we be there?"
" 'Bout an hour. Until then, I would get some rest. it's gonna be a busy day for you, Mr. President." Before Beranto could even finish that sentence, Ryan was asleep and snoring.
He started to feel the first symptoms a week later. At first, he assumed that it was just the cold, but as it became worse, he felt that he needed to go to a hospital.
On October 13, the drunk entered, intoxicated, a Moscow hospital. he walked up to the smiling nurse.
"Can I help you, Comrade?" Even after a decade of capitalism, there were some things that Russians would do for years to come.
"I... feel sick, real sick. Sick, sick, sick..." he rambled on, then became coherent again.
"Excuse me, comrade?" the young nurse replied. He didn't speak English, especially Drunken English.
"I need help from a doctor, you bitch!", he screamed in Russian.
I have to keep my cool with this drunk, the nurse thought.
"Do you have any papers?"
"What?" He coughed.
'Papers, do you have any?"
"No."
"You mean, 'you have no home'?" Take that, you slug head.
"No!"
"Then I am sorry, we can not help you here. It is the law of our country. But, I will give you something to help the pain." He fished through her trouser pockets, finally pulling out a small bottle of aspirin. He knocked it out of the pretty nurses' hand, and walked out of the door.
He sneezed hard enough to make him trip on the icy ground.
I need another drink.
Little did Kiev Kredivich Roranov know that all over Western Russia, twenty people had all ready died of what had been identified in their autopsy reports as phenomena. Among these were citizens of St. Petersburg, Rzhe, Velikiy Novgorod and Tver. Out of these, one morgue officer in Velikiy Novgorod decided to run a check on diseases, among them Smallpox, Hoof and Mouth (you never know, he thought) and Anthrax, using new equipment.
The test results took a while to test for, but they came in.
"Negative for Hoof and Mouth, negative for Smallpox... what the hell?" The paper dropped to the floor, and his hands began to shake. "Anthrax, in Russia?", the man asked himself.
The components of Anthrax can be naturally found, mainly in and around dead animals. It is estimated that many victims of Anthrax, mostly farmers, contracted the virus from their livestock.
But in Russia? He collected his senses, and called the front desk.
"Nurse, I need to ask you something. Has anyone feeling sick come into the hospital on your watch?"
"Not that I know of. Why?"
"There is a major health hazard here in Russia. I just found out that a man named Saragey Gerishnov died of Ancillis Bachillis... Anthrax."
"The natural form?"
"No, most likely military- grade."
"Could it of been a factory?" She knew what had happened in 1979.
"No, I don't that. You must send a message to as many hospitals as you can, let them know to check all patients for Anthrax. Clear that with the proper authorities, and hurry!"
"Yes, Comrade Morgue Officer."
"... time will tell." Aumm finished his speech. "Have you prepared the letter?"
"Yes."
"And were you careful?"
"Very much so, Aumm."
"Good. Send two today. The others can wait."
"Yes. I will be a moment." Jerrizaa got up, and walked towards the bedroom. He was excited, adrenaline pored through his veins. He put on latex gloves, and carefully picked up the letter.
As he walked towards the nearest mailbox, he made sure that no one saw him along the way.
The entrance to Area 51 wasn't glamorous by any means. There were four armed officers at the gate, but that was where the human security ended. The three others cars following POTUS had veered off during the ride, one containing all of his staff. This tour was met for Ryan only.
An old fence blocked the one real ground entrance, and on it was a grimy sign that read: DEADLY FORCE PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT. NO PHOTOGARPHY ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT.
Discreetly covering the surrounding hills were camouflaged cars, whose only purpose was to kill any unwelcome visitor that had somehow passed the motion sensors and infared cameras. Ryan got out of the stretch automobile, only to be pushed back in.
"what?"
"Can't risk going out there now. wait a minute." This came from one of the guarding officers. The gates opened, and Ryan's car drove into a place that never existed.
Also all of it was underground, as Jack had suspected. The only thing of importance above ground were a dozen hangers, half of which were decoys.
As Ryan's door was opened, he saw an airplane flying right towards the area, aiming right for his car.