Imhotep's Key Chapter 5
By Joseph Black
Disclaimer: Red Storm and Tom Clancy own Rainbow and Characters. Joss Whedon owns Buffy and Characters. Any one else you recognized belongs to whoever owns them. Any original character belongs to me. I make no profit off the following except to have a little fun.
Spoilers: Buffy to present. Rainbow to Bear and the Dragon.
Authors note 1: I am adjusting the Buffy time line slightly, this fic starts just after "Never Leave Me", moving things back about a month.
Authors note 2: I can't seem to get Fanfic to except my special formatting. So anytime you see this '{*} anything inside is in a foreign language. And if you see this [*] it's some ones thoughts.
Authors note 3: This is a continuation of the story started in 'Rainbow Over Sunnydale'. It would be helpful to read that fic first.
Notes to Reviewers:
JA Baker: Sorry to here about your computer woes. Hopefully the gremlins have been successfully exorcised. Giles refusal to except aid went over better than I thought it would. I expected a lot more grumbling.
Catlimere: Willow would research the heck out of it sure, but could you imagine Andrea's reaction of having Jack and Willow in the same room?
Ed: Thank you.
John: I'm not sure if Congress would have to approve of his appointment to the position. Though they would have to approve his promotion. Why it is remaining secret will be explained momentarily.
Paladin Steelbreaker: Thank you. Buffy's chat with the SPD will be next chapter.
Dorothy: You know it!
Warren: Thanks!
Thanks to all that reviewed. Constructive criticisms always welcomed. Flames cheerfully ignored.
General Marion Diggs thought about it for second, and when he couldn't come up with a credible threat asked, "Who's going to be invading us Martians?"
With no humor in his voice Tony Brentano said, "Close."
"[Okay…]" Diggs thought to himself. "I'm a little light up here," He said instead, pointing at the two stars on his shoulder boards.
Mickey Moore smiled and reaching into a shirt pocket he took out and slid a small jeweler's case over to Diggs. Picking it up and opening it Diggs found the collar insignia of a full general in the US Army. He stared down at the two sets of four stars. Looking back up at his superiors he asked, "What about Pat?" General Patrick Auslander was the current CinC-CONUS.
The JCS replied, "Pat is probably the best administrator and logistical person in the Army. Unfortunately the largest combat command he had was a company in Vietnam. You are the best general officer that has recent command experience in combat.
"Right now we don't know if this is going to brew all the way up. If it does we need someone who we know can think on his feet and the best we have is you. What we want you to do is to put a command staff together and look at the situation and make recommendations. If nothing happens then it was just an exercise and no harm done. On the other hand if the balloon does go you put on the extra stars and you'll be in a position to move right in and take over. In that case Pat would be your logistics officer."
"What's the situation then?" He finally asked.
In reply, Brentano pushed the button on his intercom and said, "Could you send Major Decker in please?"
Major Sheila Decker entered the room and was surprised at the brass that was waiting for her. She wasn't overly nervous, she had been stationed at The Pentagon for eight months now and Generals, Colonels, or even The Secretary of Defense didn't hold the same awe that they once had. Still this was the first time she had been called into a meeting with him. She wondered why General Diggs was there; last she heard he was in Germany commanding the First Armour Division.
"Major please take a seat. Mary, if Sheila will take the job we're going to offer her then she will be the CO closest to the problem area. We thought it would be easier to just brief all of you in at the same time," The JCS explained. Diggs nodded that he understood.
"Before we start the formal briefing we want to show you a video, so just hold your questions." Tony Brentano the Secretary of Defense was more comfortable around computers than the JCS so he started the presentation. The three newcomers watched as it began playing on the screen in the room. It started abruptly, with whirling chaos of a hand-to-hand combat. Diggs managed to pick out that there seemed to be two sides. Side one was dressed in green non-descript uniforms favored by black-op troops, their assortment of weapons also supported that hypothesis. The other side though, no two were dressed the same. Most seemed to favor leather of some kind, the one thing Diggs couldn't figure out though were the masks, so he asked, "Why are the bad guys wearing Halloween masks?"
"Those aren't masks," Mickey Moore said bluntly.
"What?" The three officers that were being briefed said almost simultaneously.
Tony Brentano stopped the playback and turning to the three newcomers said, "What you are looking at are the final moments of a black-op operation that went wrong. The group was called The Initiative." He then went on to explain about The Initiative and what it was all about. At first none of the briefee's wanted to believe what they were being told, but they kept looking up at the screen.
When the briefing finished Diggs finally said, "Well I guess that answers why I was getting such crappy Intel from the guy.
Turning more serious Diggs then asked, "Before I answer yes, I got to ask, is there any chance that Billingsly is right about NCA?" (National Command Authority, The President.)
Brentano shook his head, "No, If you knew Jack you'd know it was ridiculous. Plus there is a group that specializes in this stuff that looked into it and they gave him a clean bill"
"What group was that?" Masterman asked.
"They were called The Watchers Council. They specialize in supernatural threats. They had quite an organization set up too.
"Were?" Major Decker asked.
"That explosion in London was their headquarters. There was only one survivor," Brentano said grimly.
"Are we in contact?" Diggs asked.
"Yes, our on site forces are Rainbow, plus Initiative team that didn't bolt. They contacted the locals Friday and have a base they are setting up in Sunnydale."
"Okay how soon can I get with these Initiative people who didn't take off?"
"The Locals have some of their own problems so they might not be able to take time off to meet with you. We'll try to set it up though."
Masterman asked, "How good are they?"
Brentano smiled. Hitting a key on his computer he ordered, "Watch."
Everyone turned back to the screen, for a minute or so it was just the same gut-wrenching action. While it was clear that the Initiative soldiers were giving a good accounting of themselves, it was equally clear that they were slowly losing. Suddenly from the bottom corner of the screen a "V" of people charged into the melee. In the lead were two blonds, a guy wearing a black duster and black pants, and a girl in a white top and black pants. Behind them came a redheaded young woman, a black haired young man, and an older man. The two blonds in front pushed the demons back while the other three ducked back out of camera. The male in the duster was amazing, when he turned back to the camera the three newcomers were surprised when they saw his facial distortion and realized he must be some kind of demon that was helping out. Whoever he was he was a vicious fighter, not quite a berserker, but that kind of a fighter. The small blond woman though was out of this world. They saw her doing things that didn't seem possible for someone that size.
Diggs like many military men was a history buff. Though his own area of interest was mainly the American Civil War he had studied a little of all military history. He had read of warriors that armies went around rather than trying to go thru. He had never really believed that such a person could be real. Watching the small blond in action he changed his mind. While the bad guys didn't know she was there they just tried to take her on like anyone else. As they began realize she was there she actually started to push the demons back just by her presence, as she moved they tried to get away from her. A funny moment came when a demon not realizing her proximity suddenly noticed her, even though the demon had at least two feet of height on her, and probably weighed at least three times what she did, none of it fat, he actually turned and looked like he was tiptoeing away. A stream of soldiers began to file behind the two blondes and off screen following the blonde's companions. The last soldier to file past was also a blond who called to the two fighters and they began falling back too. The group exited the screen with the surviving demons just standing there watching them go.
"The blond girl is Buffy Summers, she was the Watchers Council's big gun. She's what's called a Vampire Slayer. She's the leader of the Sunnydale group. The other fighter goes by Spike; he's a vampire that helps them out. The Initiative caught him and put a chip in his head that prevents him from hurting humans. I'm not sure how he got hooked up with the Slayer and her group but he's helpful enough that they did a mission last night to get him out of an enemy headquarters. That soldier who was the last out is Riley Finn, he's the CO of the Initiative team that didn't desert." The Sec-Def explained.
"Okay now that you know the basics here is what I want you to get started on." He went on for about another fifteen minutes explaining and going into more detail, when he was finished he asked, "Any other questions?"
"What limits are there on me for picking my command staff?" Diggs asked.
"Effectively none. It would be good if you could spread your choices out a little to avoid raising suspicion, but if you need them they're yours." Brentano answered.
"How about retirees?"
"If they agree they are in."
"Promotions?"
"What ever you need to do, do," Brentano told the general.
Diggs nodded, those were orders that he liked.
"When am I going to take over command of this base?" Major Decker asked.
"Probably not for at least two weeks. We want Rainbow and Team 3 to both be spun up before we affect the change of command."
When the others indicated that they had no further questions Brentano dismissed them, "We set an office up for you to use, the yeoman outside will give you the information. I'm afraid you won't have much of a staff at the present, but we'll get them to you as quick as we can. One other thing, Colonel McCloud is being put under your command, he'll report directly to you."
"How far can we trust him?" Masterman asked.
"If we didn't think he was trustworthy he would be in Leavenworth," the JCS replied.
Diggs and Masterman exchanged a look; they would both keep an eye on the CO of the Initiative.
Brentano then dismissed the officers and the meeting broke up. Walking to their offices Duke Masterman grew steadily paler. Diggs noticed and asked, "Are you all right Duke?"
"No," Masterman answered truthfully. "I've never been real religious, it's a funny feeling finding out you were wrong about something like that."
Diggs stopped and turned to his operations officer, "I'm going to need you Duke, are you going to be alright? If not I need to know soon."
"I think I'll be fine, If not I'll let you know," The Colonel replied.
The trio continued down toward their new office. Diggs turning over what he had just learned, he had never been real religious either…oops.
The
Situation Room
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington DC
Jack used the remote to turn off the TV and turned to his Secretary of the Interior and the Director of the INS. Both men were visibly shaken and looked back at their president. "Okay, what I want from you two is for you to go thru your agencies and make sure that there isn't someone in a small basement office that handles this kind of stuff. If there is someone like this then I want to talk to them."
The Secretary of the Interior spoke first, more that he got himself under control first than his superior position. "Mr. President, I assure you that there isn't any secret office in my department. The only thing that comes close is that situation out in Nevada, but we have confirmation of fossilized remains of the creature in Mexico so it's prehistoric not demonic."
"My information suggests that demons have been around that long so that doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't a demon of some kind."
"Twitchel, the man we have monitoring the situation would probably agree with you." The Sec-Interior agreed.
The Director of the INS spoke up, "Sir as far as I know we have nothing to deal with this kind of situation. With our borders it would not be hard for things to pass into and out of the country unnoticed."
"I understand Gentlemen, you might not find anything, but I want to KNOW that there is nothing there rather than just guessing."
Both men nodded that they understood and Ryan thanked them for their time and dismissed them. On the way out Gordon Sellby the Sec-Interior turned and asked, "When are we going to inform Congress of this?"
Ryan looked and replied, "I want to wait till after the Mid-terms, see who we are dealing with."
The Secretary nodded that he understood and left the briefing room. Ryan looked at the stuff on his desk and judged he had about three hours worth of work to do, a light night. Which was good after his weekend."
The
Washington Post Building
1150 15th St. NW
Washington DC
28Oct2002
1740 hrs
Bob Holtzman headed for his office. He had to finish his story on the President's trip quick because his wife had managed to set a dinner meeting with her Mexican contact and he needed to get home in time to make it to Falls Church, VA by eight PM. As he came around the corner he saw two people waiting for him outside his office. One was Tom Messenger the head of The Post's IT department and Oscar Opgood the intern that Holtzman had gotten the Rosenberg lead off of. Messenger simply handed him a stack of printouts and said, "This is what I could find out about the people you asked me to check out." Holtzman thanked the retreating back of the computer expert.
Turning to Oscar he quirked an eyebrow. "Do you have a minute? I found some stuff on the Watchers Council you might want to check out."
Holtzman considered a second then nodded. He opened the door to his office and waved the other man in. Once inside he pulled a chair out to indicate where the intern should sit then sat behind his desk and started leafing through what Messenger had given him. It wasn't much. Rosenberg seemed to be known in hacker circles but she wasn't that active. She had been pulling down Suma Cum Laud grades till last year then she dropped three classes at the end of May last year. Holtzman made a note to talk to Messenger about crawling thru people's private files; The Post didn't need that kind of scandal. Looking up at the Intern he asked, "What did you find out?"
"The Brits put a lot of their archives up on the net. It's mostly as scanned jpegs so it's a pain to go thru. I took a chance and looked thru around the date of the founding of the Council and I got lucky," He pulled out a printout and passed it to Holtzman, it was however in Latin so Holtzman didn't have a clue to what it said. "William and Mary granted the Council the land their headquarters sat on in perpetuity and gave it to them tax free."
"They say why?" Holtzman asked, interested.
"For services to The Crown by The Slayer, The Slayer was capitalized," Oscar, explained.
"I don't know much about English History but weren't William and Mary considered to be good guys? I wouldn't think that they would have a professional killer on the payroll."
"I wouldn't think they did either. So I also checked to see if maybe this Council provided royal executioners but I couldn't find any relationship between them and the Tower of London. So I did a net search on "The Slayer" to see if I could find anything. I got a lot of hits for the Rock Band and one that was interesting." He pulled out another download and handed it to Holtzman, "I have to say before hand if you didn't like the conspiracy page you are going to absolutely hate this one."
Holtzman looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand and read, "They Walk the Night!" It was the screen shot of a web site supporting an occult bookstore in New Orleans. He gave the intern a very dubious look.
"I know," Oscar agreed, "But it was the only hit I got so I checked it out. According to the guy who does the page he swapped a 'Gwendolyn Post' for this info, She was supposedly a Watcher. Now I checked and there was a Post family associated with the Council so I figured what the heck. Brother Rimply, the guy who runs the store is something of an expert on artifacts and the like that supposedly has mystical properties. Ms. Post swapped him the information on The Slayer for the location of something he called the Glove of Myhnegon. Gwen told Rimply that the Slayer was a chosen warrior of good, one girl in all the world with the strength and skill to hunt the vampire and stop their spread. She then went on to explain training and stuff. I'm not saying that I believe this stuff but I thought it was an odd coincidence that of all the names he could pick he managed to tag one that had Council relations."
Holtzman wanted to dismiss this out of hand. Vampires? Get real. But then he remembered the small blond woman that met with Jack last night and the hesitation he thought he saw when Andrea went to shake her hand. "See if you can dig anything else up on this stuff," He ordered the intern. "This is probably nothing, but see were it leads." Oscar nodded and collected his stuff and left.
Holtzman looked at the file that Messenger gave him; he should really get his story done before he dived into that. He decided he had to make a phone call first though. Grabbing his Rolodex he fished a thru to the 'S's' and then found the number he wanted. Glancing at the time he decided that she would be at home so he called her there. She answered on the third ring and said, "Yes?"
"Sarah Jane? Bob Holtzman."
"Bob! Lets see, it's not my birthday, and Christmas is still two months off, so what do you want?" The voice on the other end of the line asked jokingly.
"Now couldn't I just call to say hi?" Holtzman returned.
"You could, but you don't," was the reply.
"Okay you got me," Holtzman conceded. "I need a favor of the research kind."
"Okay just let me get a pen and some paper and let me know what you need," Was the reply.
"I need you to find out why a Rupert Giles left his curatorship in the British Museum to take a High School Librarian job in California about seven years ago."
"He didn't give a reason beyond family business," came the immediate reply.
"You're working on the London Bombing too?" Holtzman was impressed that she had turned that information so quickly.
"I'm working the bombing yes, but this isn't the first story I've done that Mr. Giles was the center of," was the reply.
"Oh?"
"About five years ago we had a series of murders were the body of the deceased disappeared. In one case there was a pile of goo found next to the victim that tested positive to one of the previous victims DNA. Well you know how it is; if a weird case comes up I get it. My editor says I have a better survival rate than the other reporters and he doesn't want to have to break in any more new people. I did a little research and found out that they were all part of a group in collage. They were apparently into some dark stuff, drugs and some told me magic. One of their number died from an apparent overdose and that seems to have done it for the group. About twenty-five years later they started dying under strange circumstances. From what I found the only two to survive are Giles and a chap named Ethan Rayne. When I went looking for him I got a visit from Interpol asking me what my interest in him was. It seems that Mr. Rayne is an international operator, and not a nice one either.
"Giles apparently went straight after his friend died. He bore down and managed to graduate Magna Cum Laud from Oxford with a dual major in Ancient Cultures and Mythology. He got a job at the British Museum and was quite happy there, even up for a curatorship when he walked into the office of the curator and turned in his notice."
"That makes no sense," Holtzman complained.
"Tell me about it," Sarah Jane agreed.
"Could you dig around some more and see if you can find out anything more?" Holtzman asked.
"Why the sudden interesting Giles?" Sarah Jane asked.
"Not over the phone, do you still have that encryption key I sent you," Holtzman replied.
"Sure,"
"Okay I'll send you an email explaining this. It'll probably be tomorrow sometime I have a lot on my plate right now."
"All right I'll see what I can find out in the mean time," Sarah Jane said as she made her farewells.
Holtzman hung upon his end and turning to his computer he started to type. He finished his story in about thirty minutes then went back and proof read it. Making a couple of minor corrections he saved it and set if off to his editor for tomorrows addition. He then called it a night and headed home.
Libby his wife met him at the door with a kiss and a hug. As he jumped in the shower Libby sat outside the shower curtain and asked, "Are you going to tell me what this is about?" So he filled his wife in on what he had discovered in the last couple of days. She snorted at the conspiracy and supernatural stuff. She asked him since he was out there why he hadn't gone and talked to this Rosenberg girl, so he sent her to look over the printout of headlines that he had kept. That kept her busy till he was out of the shower and getting dressed. "Are these real?" she finally asked.
"As far as I can tell, yes."
"Then I think you did the right thing staying away." Libby was an old school reporter, very little got in the way of her getting a story, but those headlines put a shiver thru her.
Libby finished getting dressed and they took off for Falls Church. Holtzman easily found the restaurant that they were meeting at and pulled in and parked. The place called the "The Malibu Grill" was a chuprascaruia style Brazilian restaurant. The parking lot was packed so it took Bob a couple of minutes to find a parking place. Holtzman helped Libby out of the car and they went to the door. The Maitre de met them and asked, "Yes?"
"Reservations for three, Holtzman," He told the other man.
Scanning his list he found their names and said, "Very good sir, your table is ready, your guest has arrived and he is in the bar."
Holtzman nodded and headed for the bar with Libby since she knew what Pedro de la Hoya looked like. It turned out that it was easy to find him. He was at the bar with a stool on either side of him, and it turned out that Holtzman did know what he looked like, because he had seen him before. Right next to Riley Finn watching Samantha Weber being wheeled into the emergency room of a Mexican hospital.