TWIN DEMONS by Georgia Kennedy

Author's Notes

The phrase, "in the loop," means having access to information about high-level policy decisions, or otherwise participating in the decision-making process.

The State Department's headquarters is located in a section of Washington, DC called "Foggy Bottom."

The reference to General Ross knowing Colin Powell comes from: Peter David, Hulk - The Official Novelization of the Film, (New York, Random House Publishing Group, 2003), p. 123.

A quick word to clear up confusion regarding some common U.S. government acronyms. NSC refers to the National Security Council, which is in the White House. NSA stands for "National Security Agency," an organization within the Department of Defense responsible for intelligence-gathering.

The flashback of the conversation between General Ross and Dr. Ross is taken, verbatim from: Peter David, Hulk - The Official Novelization of the Film, (New York, Random House Publishing Group, 2003), p. 335.

In the United States Congress, the appropriations committees of the House and the Senate are primarily responsible for funding the government. Hence, the importance, and influence, of those committees cannot be overstated.

The "Iron Triangle" is a term used to describe the symbiotic, albeit some would say incestuous relationship among the military services, the big defense contractors, and the congressional committees having oversight responsibilities for the armed forces. See Hedrick Smith, The Power Game - How Washington Works, (New York, Random House Publishing Group 1988), p. 173.

ROTC stands for "Reserve Officer Training Corps." See goarmy dot com, slash rotc.

"Top Secret" is the highest level of classification in the U.S. Government. It covers information, the unauthorized disclosure of which could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security. See Executive Order No. 13292 (March 28, 2003).

USAP (Pronounced "you sap") is the acronym for "Unacknowledged Special Access Program," a classifed government program, the existence of which is known only to properly authorized personnel. See National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual Supplement, Section 1-107(b) (December 29, 1994).

SCI (Pronounced "sky")is the acronym for "Sensitive Compartmented Information." SCI includes any information concerning intelligence sources, methods, or processes that is required to be handled within formal systems of access control. See Director of Central Intelligence Directive 1/19 (March 1, 1995).

A presidential finding confirms that the President of the United States has personally authorized a covert action, "finding" it to be in the national security interests of the nation. See the National Security Archive website.

Disclaimer

This is a derivative work of fiction featuring characters copyrighted and trademarked by Marvel Characters, Inc. It is based upon: Spider-Man, copyright 2002 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., all rights reserved; Spider-Man 2, copyright 2004 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., all rights reserved; Daredevil - Director's Cut, copyright 2004 by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc., all rights reserved; and Hulk, copyright 2003 by Universal Studios, all rights reserved. The author is not connected with nor is this work authorized by Marvel Characters, Inc., or any of the aforementioned motion picture studios. This work is intended solely for posting on Fanfiction, for the benefit and enjoyment of its intended audience. No commercial or financial benefit accrues or is intended to accrue to the author as a result of said posting. Any unauthorized copying or redistribution of this work might subject the party responsible for such unauthorized copying or redistribution to legal action by the owners of the aforementioned copyrights and trademarks.

XXIV

BLACKEST OF THE BLACK

"Welcome General Ross." The Secretary of State's receptionist stood to greet the CIA Director-designate as he stepped off the elevator at the headquarters of the State Department. "General Powell is waiting for you. You can go right in."

"Thank you, ma'am," General Ross acknowledged as he entered the enormous suite on the top floor of the venerable Foggy Bottom fortress. He saluted as the Secretary of State stepped out of his office to greet him. They had known each other for close to four decades, since they first saw action together in Vietnam.

"You don't have to salute me, Thad," the Secretary joked. "I've been out of uniform for over ten years now."

"Force of habit, sir." Ross replied with a tight smile. For this occasion at least, he had exchanged his army uniform for a business suit, which he wore as well as he had thirty years earlier. At his confirmation hearings the next day, however, he would be in full dress uniform, medals and all.

"I've arranged for dinner, just the two of us." the Secretary said as he escorted his one-time commanding officer toward his private dining room. On the walls of the elegantly appointed foyer were mounted portraits of former secretaries of state, going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson. Ross could not escape the feeling that every single pair of eyes in those paintings was bearing down on him.

Ross's eyes widened a bit as he entered what could easily have passed for one of Washington DC's finest restaurants. "I assume this is official business, sir?"

"It is," the Secretary informed him. "I've penciled this session in as a briefing, to prepare you for your confirmation hearings." The Secretary paused, then added with a grin, "You might want to save the 'sirs' for the senators."

Dinner was a subdued affair, more so than the Secretary would have expected on an occasion when two old friends got together. The Secretary was not surprised, however. General Ross was a man of few words, even among his closest friends. He always had difficulty beginning a conversation with informalities.

But the salt began to fly soon enough. "I'd like to shoot the son of a bitch who recommended me for this job," Ross grumbled good-naturedly, suspecting that the culprit was sitting across the table from him.

"Well then, Thad, I expect you'll have to shoot the whole lot of us."

"Us?"

"The President asked his entire national security team who they thought was best suited to lead the CIA during this rather difficult transition. Yours was the only name that showed up on every list." The Secretary reached over and clapped his hand on Ross's shoulder. "You should feel honored."

Ross picked at his Beef Wellington. "I would've thought that my lack of tolerance for bullshit would've rendered me unsuitable for such a 'politically sensitive' post."

The Secretary ignored the sarcastic edge in Ross's voice. "You modernized NSA's satellite intelligence-gathering system during your tenure there. Human intel needs a similar overhaul."

"Someone's obviously got their head stuck up their ass," the general retorted. "I'm just an old artillery grunt. I have no idea how to run a civilian agency."

"Let me tell you what the difference is," the Secretary lectured. "In the military, when you tell a subordinate to jump, he'll ask how high. Give the same order to a civilian, and he'll ask, 'just what do you mean by jump'." The Secretary looked his old comrade straight in the eye. He suspected that Ross was holding something back. "Come on, Thad. You and I could always shoot straight with each other. Tell me, what's on your mind."

Ross turned from the Secretary and looked out the window. "I was filling out the paperwork for my retirement when the President called."

That piece of news caught the Secretary by surprise. "I didn't know that."

Ross gazed at the floodlit Washington Monument, off in the distance. "I have fewer days ahead than behind, Colin. I was hoping that in the time I've got left, I could finally be a father to my daughter, maybe make up for all the times that my responsibilities got in the way of our relationship." His voice trailed off as he recalled one of his last conversations with Betty, just before she received her appointment to Columbia University's medical school . . .

"I love him. I always will; And I pray to God every night and every morning that he never tries to see me or talk to me again for the rest of my life."

"I'm so sorry Betty, I am so sorry . . ."

"It was over a cell phone, Colin. I haven't seen her in months."

The Secretary could sympathize deeply. He knew that Ross could not decline the President's call to service anymore than he could. To do so would have been a breach of the military ethos bred to their very bones. They were soldiers who placed loyalty to their country above everything else in their lives, even their loved ones. When the Commander-in-Chief called, Ross's only acceptable answer was, "yes, Mr. President."

But there were other issues on the general's mind. And Ross was not shy about airing them. He turned back toward the Secretary.

"A lot of things have happened since you retired, Colin. The iron triangle's becoming a noose around the necks of all the services."

The Secretary was not sure what the general was driving at, but he was sure it had something to do with Ross's last active duty assignment. "Go on, Thad." he encouraged.

"Rumors are flying around that Oscorp's gonna swallow up Atheon and Quest." Ross began uneasily. "If that merger goes through, nearly forty percent of our defense infrastructure will be under the control of that dumb-ass kid who almost blew New York City to smithereens. And nobody's raising a stink about it."

The Secretary still had his contacts throughout the iron triangle. "Actually, Thad, that's not what happened. The Defense Department objected vigorously, but was overruled by the Vice President's office."

"For God's sakes, why?"

"Politics, plain and simple. Oscorp is one of the largest defense contractors in the country, if not the world. It employs people in every state. It has enormous clout in the Administration and on Capitol Hill, especially in the appropriations committees. With an election coming up, nobody wants to piss off a major campaign contributor."

"So, more of our troops are going to get killed because a bunch of Congressmen and Senators who don't know their asses from a hole in the ground keep pushing these so-called 'state of the art' weapons technologies that aren't worth a pile of horse dump. Godammit, Colin, our people need armor. They need spare parts for tanks, supply-line protection, not radioactive green giants running around wreaking havoc."

So, that was it, the Secretary realized. "Are you afraid that Angry Man might still be out there somewhere?"

"He is, Colin. I'm goddamned sure of it."

"But he hasn't been seen since that explosion."

"He takes a ride to the top of the world, where he should've froze up and shattered like glass. It didn't even faze him. Then he survives a thirty-mile free-fall. But the worst part of it is that we could have more angry men on our hands."

"What makes you think so?"

"After my men took Banner's father into custody, I gave orders that his lab and everything in it be destroyed — notes, computers, equipment, the whole barrel. The team that went into that place found rats the size of chimps and God only knows what else. Three months later, I find out that certain unnamed personnel from Atheon countermanded my orders behind my back, apparently with NSA's blessing. They took everything, and I'm damn sure that stuff isn't gathering dust somewhere in their basement. Who knows what they'll do with it, now that they've got access to Oscorp's money."

The Secretary did not have an answer. In earlier administrations, he might have been able to use his influence with the president to stop a questionable merger.

But not in this administration.

"I'm afraid there's nothing I can do, Thad," he said. "In fact, I don't think I'm going to be asked back for the second term, assuming that the President gets re-elected." He did not have to ask Ross to keep that news to himself.

"I suppose I'm going to be the new fall guy," the general lamented, the realities of politics becoming all too apparent.

"Are you going to resign your commission?"

Ross shook his head and allowed himself to smile, something he rarely did. "Didn't they teach you ROTC guys about strategic retreat?"

From knowing Ross for so long, the Secretary was able to pick up his ex-commander's train of thought right away. "You want to keep the option of requesting national command authority override."

As a four-star general, Ross was one of only a handful of military officers who, in the event of a national emergency, could assume operational command of all or part of the nation's armed forces. NCAO had given him command authority over a squadron of Air Force F-22 fighter jets in the battle against the Hulk.

It was a trump card that he had refused to part with when he was first approached about taking over CIA. He would have had to relinquish it if he had retired or resigned from the army.

"I hope it never comes to that, Colin," he said. "But I don't have to read the budget to know that Atheon's in bed with CIA. They've probably got black ops contracts that I'll never know about. If one of those programs fouls up on my watch, I'll want access to whatever I'll need to clean up the mess."

"I see your point, Thad." The Secretary said. "And I concur."

Together, the two old soldiers looked out the window, contemplating an uncertain future.

XXXXXXXXXX

A meeting that officially never took place had convened in a secured region of cyberspace. The participants, all seasoned Atheon operatives with decades of experience in ultra-secret government projects, conversed in a code inaccessible to everyone but those who possessed the highest security clearances. Thanks to an extremely complex and constantly changing compartmentalization scheme, none of them even knew each other's names; they addressed each other only by aliases.

"I just got the word from our man at CIA," the team leader, known only as Coach, informed the others. "The President just greenlighted Operation Archangel."

"Will we be getting the contract, Coach?" one of the participants asked.

Coach rolled his eyes. A greenhorn, no doubt, he thought. "We already have it," he replied patiently. "It's a no-bid." No-bid contracts were awarded when there was only one company who could deliver the requested services, and Atheon had more than its share.

"What's the timetable, Coach?" another participant inquired.

"Now that the merger with Oscorp has been approved, we'll have all the resources we need to execute the program within three years."

"Classification?" a third wanted to know.

"Top secret," Coach informed her. "You sap sky."

Everyone at the meeting knew what that designation meant. Operation Archangel would carry a classification so high that even denying its existence would be regarded as a security breach. No one outside of the contractor personnel charged with developing and implementing the program would be in the loop, not the CIA Director, not the contractor's CEO, not even the President of the United States himself. And even within the program, each operative would be given only enough information to complete his or her assigned tasks.

In short, Operation Archangel would be among the blackest of black operations.

XXXXXXXXXX

CIA Case Officer Carlos Menendez raised his eyebrows as read the highly classified national security finding bearing the President's signature. A grizzled Intelligence Directorate veteran who had grown up in Puerto Rico, Menendez had earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Pennsylvania, and was recruited right out of school. He had served in the Office of Latin American Affairs for many years prior to being appointed to his current post in the Office of Terrorism Analysis. Menendez was one of only ten case officers throughout the entire agency whose security clearance was high enough to allow him to at least be made aware of the existence of ultra-classified programs.

The presidential finding described the administration's foreign policy objectives in benign, lofty-sounding language. Phrases like, "optimizing intelligence assets," "neutralizing hostile elements," and "spreading democracy" peppered the document. But anyone who could strip away the euphemistic cloak would quickly discern that this finding had nothing to do with intelligence-gathering. In reality, the President had authorized the creation of an elite corps of operatives whose sole purpose would be to identify, track, and eliminate threats to U.S. national security, wherever and whenever they might arise. The terrorists will be wiped off the face of the Earth, Menendez thought, along with their backers and their sympathizers.

Through a highly-secured channel, Menendez transmitted the finding to his counterpart at Atheon. Although he was nominally the CIA's contract supervisor for Atheon, he would have no knowledge of the operational details of the program that the company would develop to implement the finding. The labyrinth of security protocols encountered at the top-secret classification would render practical oversight all but impossible. Menendez's real job would be to devise a "white" cover for Atheon by scattering its program elements throughout the agency's public budget. It was a time-honored way of hiding classified programs in plain sight. If he did it right, then not even the most savvy congressional auditors would be able to connect the dots, and the program would never see the light of day.

Menendez was sure that the almost-successful attack on New York City's subways had prompted the President to sign off on the finding. He was also convinced that the CIA's senior leadership was too hidebound, too steeped in the romantic myths about the glory days of the agency's clandestine operations to appreciate how time-consuming, costly, and dangerous this mission would be. And, like the political appointees over at the Defense Department, they had been seduced by dubious promises of performance-enhancing technologies from companies like Atheon and Oscorp. In his view, taxpayer dollars would have been better spent on equipping agents with the language and cultural skills they would need in order to do the top-flight intelligence-gathering necessary to win the fight against terrorism. Faulty intelligence had already resulted in one foreign policy debacle, and if something went wrong with this program, there would surely be another.

Menendez did not like working with contractors, particularly from Atheon. From prior experience, he found Atheon's people to be rude, arrogant, and often reckless in their handling of dangerous operations. That Hulk business out at Desert Base was a case-in-point. He had other concerns as well. When his supervisor had asked for his input on the proposed merger between Oscorp, Quest, and Atheon, he gave it a thumbs-down, citing the Hulk and Octavius incidents as well as the mental breakdown of Oscorp's chairman. His chain of command had approved the draft memorandum, all the way up the line, until it reached the Deputy Director. A few hours later, the draft was returned with directions that the merger be approved. The normally even-tempered analyst nearly had a fit. "They can't be serious, Valerie. How do they expect Osborn to get a security clearance?"

"I agree with you Carlos," the supervisor replied sympathetically. "That was exactly the point I tried to make. But do you know what the deputy told me?"

"I can only imagine."

"He said, and I quote, 'With his track record, Osborn could leak classified data until his heart's content, but who'd believe him?'"

"¡Esos idiotas!" he had muttered under his breath when he left his supervisor's office. He hoped that General Ross and the rest of the incoming leadership team was of a different ilk.

Menendez could tell from the finding that Atheon's new program would require a special breed of individual, the kind that the agency always craved, but could never get enough of. In spite of his misgivings about the mission, he could not help but be impressed. In the entire world, there were probably fewer than one hundred people who could make the first cut. And he knew all of them.

Or so he thought. Unbeknownst to him, the first Archangel had already been recruited.

XXXXXXXXXX

Assistant District Attorney Jean DeWolff was on track to become a career prosecutor, remaining with the Manhattan D.A.'s office long after most of her colleagues had departed for private practice. A strawberry blond with angular cheeks and an athletic build, DeWolff held a fourth degree black belt in Tai Kwon Do and had been a varsity soccer player in college. Since the beginning of her legal career, she had displayed a flair for litigation, having easily won the prestigious Jessup International Moot Court Competition in her third year at N.Y.U.'s law school.

As an up-and-coming assistant D.A., DeWolff made her mark early and often. She jumped right into narcotics prosecutions and expanded her portfolio to include white collar crime. The Kingpin trial had marked the pinnacle of her career. As lead prosecutor, she was a tigress in the court room, using finely honed cross-examination techniques to tear the credibility of the defense's witnesses to shreds. It had taken the jury barely an hour to reach its guilty verdict.

Jean DeWolff was not intimidated by the defense attorneys from the old-line Park Avenue law firms. She relished every chance she had to do battle with them, so that she could prove the irrelevance of law school grades as predictors of professional success. And most of the time, she left her opponents with the feeling that they made a mistake in not hiring her.

In fact, there was only one member the defense bar that had impressed her. Early in her career, she was prosecuting a suspected drug dealer. The man had entered a plea of not guilty at the urging of his defense counsel. Thinking that the case was open and shut, she had seriously underestimated her opponent's skill and tenacity. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, this blind attorney had proven his client's innocence.

At six forty-five on Friday evening, DeWolff took a call from the deputy warden at Ryker's Island.

"Okay. I'll let her know right away." She promptly dialed her boss.

"What is it?" Pat Hamilton snapped at her subordinate. The Manhattan D.A. was obviously still reeling from the body blow her office had taken when the grand jury dropped the city's case against Oscorp.

Unfazed, DeWolff got right to the point. "That contract assassin that Fisk hired to kill Nicholas Natchios and his daughter — he succumbed to his injuries this morning."

But to DeWolff's surprise, the D.A. almost seemed relieved. "It doesn't really matter, Jean. We got the big fish, or should I say, the whale. Call Ryker's back. Tell them to send over the autopsy report and the death certificate so we can close out the case."

"Yes, ma'am."

DeWolff breathed a small sigh of relief as she hung up the phone. She was afraid that Pat would drop another case on her at the last minute.

"You seem a bit jumpy, Jean." It was her office mate, Assistant D.A. Cheryl Thomas.

"I've got a date," DeWolff said as she gathered up her things and put her coat on.

"Never thought I'd hear you say that. Do I know him?"

"You've seen him around."

"You're not going to tell me who it is, are you Jean?"

"I'm superstitious," DeWolff answered. "See you on Monday, Cheryl."