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The Last Of The Titans
The Last Of The Titans
The Last Of The Titans
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The Last Of The Titans

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A former Air Force Captain discovers hidden journals and the covert world of his father; a good man drawn into a struggle that could lead to nuclear annihilation. He enters the murky world of a rogue CIA Group Chief, his deranged associate, and foreign entities, as they race to find the one remaining nuclear-tipped Titan ballistic missile. All have different motives, all have different goals.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherDarryl Bowman
Release dateNov 7, 2013
ISBN9781311133571
The Last Of The Titans

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    The Last Of The Titans - Darryl Bowman

    Preface

    The manuscript was complete, finally. To ensure classified infor-mation was not released, the CIA Publication Review Board examined every word. With minor modifications, approval was granted allowing forward movement toward publication. Cold winter days were best for writing but the sole remaining creative task was selecting a cover from several possibilities. Satisfied with my decision, I added additional wood to the fire to battle against winter's cold advance then dozed on the couch content with the progress. The phone rang in my dreams before it rang in my reality.

    Hello.

    The last of the titans....Are you the author?

    Yah, I responded, shaking the sleep from my voice. Last of... yes...yah....who's this?

    The decision to approve its release...it wasn't unanimous.

    "Ahhh, OK... It wasn't? Who is this?"

    They just couldn't find enough justification to keep the infor-mation buried any longer. All those program details...the history...you worked hard....did your research....we were surprised, that's all.

    I...ah....I appreciate the favorable review. Can I put that on the back of the book? What was your name? I wanna attribute your review correctly.

    "Well...it's more advice than a review. There was a large amount of work done to hide these events, the ones you describe, the special actions. Lots of effort. There are people who fought the decision to allow you to release it. Years ago the answer would have just been No, you can't publish, and you'd have been chastised, or more, for even looking into the entire mess. It's not like the old days, but this place has changed. The CIA Old Guard was not too keen on allowing you to dig up the past....allowing release of the information in your book.

    The Old Guard? How were they convinced?

    "They weren't...oh no, not the Old Guard. There's just less of them now. He still has friends....Donner Bly still has friends....he still has supporters."

    You mean fans? Like a....rock star?

    "Yah. In a way he is a rock star within this organization. He still has powerful friends, even after so many years."

    "You mentioned advice. What exactly is that... advice?"

    Watch your back.

    Prologue

    What day is it? she suddenly asked, as she quickly sat upright in their bed, eyes wide open and alert.

    Thursday. His response was mechanical. His head, propped up by two pillows, did not move. His eyes remained focused on the magazine held open by one hand and supported by his chest.

    "No, no...what time is it?" Her head frantically began twisting from side to side, eyes searching each of two nightstands, left then right, then surveying the entire bedroom.

    A little after ten, he replied, his concentration broken, the magazine falling against his chest. He looked at her with mild annoyance. "You want the date too? October 16th 1997......for about two more hours. How about a weather report? Darkness until morning then getting lighter."

    She ignored his sarcasm, threw the blanket and sheet away from her body, and spun out of the bed, her feet slapping against the hardwood floor. Where's the remote? she demanded. She then moved about the room resembling an animated chicken, strutting and pecking and searching. The remote...do you see the TV remote?

    She looked anxiously at the clock, winced at the time, and mumbled her frustration. She searched the room in a circular motion resembling a lighthouse beam, eyes finally focusing on the space between the bed frame and the floor. She dropped to her knees and pressed her body flat against the polished hardwood floor. "There it is." She began to slide into the cramped space, and with each pull forward sensed her body becoming compressed. She considered large breasts an asset, however this situation had her cursing them. Only the darkness witnessed her face cringe. Her mouth blew out air with a puh puh sound attempting to dislodge dust tumbleweeds sticking to her lips. Her brow pulled downwards in an attempt to focus and her eyes moved side-to-side searching for whatever else might reside under the bed and hoping it wasn't moving toward her. She put that thought aside and with desperate resolve exhaled deeply creating temporary space. Her body stretched the final inch allowing her to grasp the prize. She quickly realized she could not go forward or backwards and a required inhalation allowed her compressed body to cry out for assistance.

    He begrudgingly responded, again putting down his magazine, rolling back the warm sheet and blanket, and laughing as he encountered just the lower torso of the woman he married. For a second he thought maybe her lower portion was all he really needed. Two legs kicked and flailed about without achieving any reverse movement. He sighed and through his laughter inquired what she was doing.

    She managed short responses. Clooney, followed by labored breathing. CLOONEY!!!!....E...R.....on TV now....pull me out....it started at ten.....I'm missing Clooney.....pull me.....

    He placed a hand around each ankle, instructed her to fully exhale, and slid her out like a doctor delivering a breach baby, this one birthed with a television remote control in hand. She sat up and with her free hand brushed away the cobwebs and accumulated dust from her shirt, face, and hair. She plopped onto the bed and began to bathe in the warm glow of the television's light. He returned to his magazine catching a passing glimpse of George Clooney materializing in his bedroom. Just as she began to think of the exam she'd like the television doctor to administer to her, the medical heartthrob was whisked off the television screen, replaced by a news alert appearing throughout the Washington D.C metropolitan area.

    This just in......breaking news. One man is reported missing after an apparent explosion and fire engulfed multiple acres in Virginia's Prince William County. The explosion occurred approximately twenty minutes ago and the source of that explosion remains unknown. The incident occurred in a mostly wooded area along Aldie Road in Catharpin, Virginia, approximately five miles north of the Manassas Civil War Battlefield National Park. Initial reports describe a large explosion shattering windows of nearby homes, downing trees, and leaving many in the area without power. Local officials are assessing the situation. Stay tuned to News4 for additional updates and tune in at eleven for the full story. We now return you to regular programming already in progress.

    PART I

    Chapter One

    Kirk watched the large man sweat and his nose detected the smell of chewing tobacco carried on the quiet breeze of a hot Virginia spring. Lemual Lem Davis stood just over six feet tall and Kirk wondered whether he wore those same overalls and T-shirt every day. Am I smelling the cow-pie I just stepped in, or is it him?

    Lem didn't care much about what people thought of him. He enjoyed sitting around with friends, holding a cup, and catching the spittle he expelled from his mouth, the result of a large wad of chewing tobacco hidden between his cheek and gums. He liked to chew tobacco and didn't care who was disgusted when he delivered his spittle into the cup or to the ground in the form of a spit-soaked projectile. With advancing age he often missed his intended mark, occasionally spattering brown goo on his overalls. On a dare he once spit twenty feet, right on target hitting Old Man Dingle in the back of his head. That was fifty years ago, but his childhood friends still recall that feat of aerodynamic targeting each time their dwindling group of boyhood self-professed hell-raisers assembled over a cold beer. Using chewing tobacco as a young boy was considered a rite of passage, but Long Shot Lem made it a life-long passion.

    Lem also loved to fish. He knew the feeling when a fish took the bait and now his fish was about to be reeled in. He was anxious to sell his home and property on bucolic Aldie Road but wouldn't let this potential buyer know just how anxious he was. It would be sold on his terms and at his price. Kirk Cule wanted this property and had his own reasons for being anxious regarding purchasing this specific location. Negotiating in the middle of a cow pasture was a new experience for Kirk. He brushed away the flies as they bounced into his forehead and used his other hand to shade his eyes from the mid-afternoon sun. 1995 was predicted to be cooler but this May was already ushering in a hot spring and his lack of a hat amplified the effects of direct sun. Lem was prepared for battle and wore an old John Deere hat, but streams of sweat still ran down his forehead from under its brim. Each time Kirk maneuvered out of the sun, Lem would walk around and maneuver Kirk's eyes directly back into the hot bright light. This negotiation would be a hard contest. He was on Lem's turf, but he was determined.

    Along with fishing, Lem knew dairy farming. He was the son of the son of a dairy farmer and he certainly could milk a higher price out of this braniac college-fly-boy engineer. The property consisted of twenty acres, a home, and a barn. It was all that remained of a four hundred acre farm originally owned by Lem's grandfather, Cloyd Davis. Lem had fond memories of playing on the property as a boy, working the property with his father, and then working it throughout the past thirty years as his concern. But farm life took its toll and it was time to sell.

    In his prime he had been muscular from years of hauling hay, distributing feed, and responding to other labors as required. At age sixty-five he was now almost as wide as tall, and most of the physical work was completed by hired hands. He took it in stride when the local Parent Teachers Association first asked him to play Santa Claus at a fund-raiser ten years ago, his once brown hair and scruffy beard having turned white. Aside from donning the red suit, he required little physical adjustment. He felt his age and more and more began reminiscing about past events in his life, much to the boredom of his friends. On multiple occasions he related how his grandfather fought the federal government in 1957 when twenty-five acres of prime land was forcefully purchased for some type of communications tower. Lem always embellished the actual event by stating his grandfather resisted and held off the government with a shotgun. There was resistance, but not armed resistance, and the land was eventually taken by the Feds invoking eminent domain and National Security.

    Anyway, those twenty-five acres had too many trees to be suitable for cattle grazing and Grandpa Cloyd was quietly happy with the fair price paid by the government. But Lem could still hear his grandfather's southern voice sounding like a confederate rebel whose property was just overrun by damn northern Yankees. Invaded ......invaded and taken, just like Richmond. Our independence stepped on without any real way to fight. A few years later, Grandpa Cloyd updated his rants regarding the lost property to reflect the cold war. Invaded...invaded and taken, like we was in commonist Ruskie-land. His southern drawl modified words as if they were funneled through a vocal prism. Included in the purchase agreement was the under-standing that his Grandpa, or heirs, could reclaim the property through purchase once the government was through with it, as if to add Hey friend, no hard feelin's. His family never expected the government's need for the land to end so quickly, and never really knew why the government, after only a few years, abandoned a site it worked so hard to obtain and constructed what was believed to be something, although no one could ever figure out exactly what that something was. Curiosity overwhelmed some local people who walked and crawled through the surrounding woods to glance through the perimeter fence only to see.....more trees. There were rumors and speculation. The most widely distributed story was of a landing pad for alien visitors. Some locals claimed to have penetrated the perimeter fence and offered descriptions, but each story was never the same and no one ever really knew what was behind the trees. If it was there, no communications tower was visible, however the presence of armed guards and posted Trespassers Will Be Shot signs squelched the curiosity of many.

    Well, what's it gonna be, boy? Fish or cut bait. Lem was pleased with himself, although standing in a field negotiating with this stubborn kid was beginning to take its toll. He could see Kirk sweating and squinting as a result of his Hot Sun tactic. Lem knew he could get his asking price either before or after Kirk suffered heat stroke.

    Listen, let's seal this deal young man and then head on into the house for some ice cold water. I even have some sweet tea if that's more to your likin'.

    Kirk wanted some water, but wanted the property more. He vowed to himself he would persevere and was comforted by thoughts of his father who, if Kirk was correct, once worked and almost died on this property.

    During the years of government ownership, multiple trucks made their way up and down Aldie Road and the various sounds of construction could often be heard, although the secluded fenced property yielded no visual clues to curious neighbors. On one occasion a local crop-duster had over flown the site and upon landing at a nearby airfield the pilot was promptly interrogated by three government men, referred to by the pilot as G-Men. As a younger man Lem and friends covertly peered through the barb-wired topped fencing but they too saw little except for the occasional armed guard making perimeter rounds. For about a year straight late night trucks would be heard and some people saw larger trucks with cargo shrouded in camouflaged tarps slowly moving up Aldie Road, disappearing into the site. An occasional helicopter dangled large containers slowly disappearing as they descended below the tops of the tall pine trees. A large quantity of material went in, but after the government left, no material was observed coming out. It was as if everything just disappeared.

    In the early 1960's the government relinquished its claim on the property and, per agreement, Lem's Grandpa Cloyd was given the first opportunity to repurchase the land. He described it as a fire-sale price and them gov'ment boys sure were stupid and anxious to get rid of a property they originally were dead set determined to possess. Upon inspection there was no evidence the government had ever been there. All that remained was a cleared field surrounded by tall trees. They did leave an electrical connection running to the main junction pole on Aldie Road saving Grandpa Cloyd some expense when building a house and large barn for Lem's father.

    When the government purchased this section of the property they planted a seed in Grandpa Cloyd's head that was periodically harvested by each Cloyd descendent. Why work so hard doing all this farming and cow milking, thought Grandpa Cloyd when I can make money selling off pieces of the property. It didn't take any eminent domain or legal leverage for him to begin parting with additional parcels. By the time Grandpa Cloyd died, the four hundred acres had been whittled down to two hundred. Lem's father reduced the farm to seventy-five and Lem took it down to twenty.

    From Aldie Road heading west those twenty acres flattened then gradually rose to a flat plateau. The house Grandpa Cloyd built was less than appealing and thirty years of neglect by Lem took its toll. In the For Sale ad Lem described the property as Improved although based on Lem's lack of home maintenance skills a more applicable description was In Need of Improvement or Once beautiful property left neglected could be brought back to life with very hard work and lots of cash.

    Kirk previously inspected the property and listened to the tall tales of its history as related by Lem. The road front and perimeter of the property appeared to almost guard the interior with a thick treeline rising sixty to eighty feet. Meandering up the stone driveway, Lem's neglected home appeared on the left amongst the trees and brush. Years of rust and cow incursions left the government's outer perimeter fence almost unrecognizable. Remnants of the old steel mesh fence and dan-gerous broken sections of barbed wire ran along the ground like a dragon's tail waiting to strike and remained hidden amongst the underbrush. The fence line deterioration was hastened by Grandpa Cloyd's yearly celebration marking the reclamation of the invaded family property. This celebration included the forceful removal of fence poles by attaching them to an old John Deere tractor originally used for multiple farm applications. They weren't removed from the ground easily but Grandpa Cloyd and Lem's father were stubborn and determined. The yearly celebrations soon stopped and resulted in only an approximate two hundred foot breach in the fence line; just enough destruction to highlight the now mangled mesh and toppled multiple poles exposing the cement foundations which now looked more like upside-down mushrooms impaled by metal toothpicks. The remaining fence line was almost unrecognizable due to thick over-growth of intertwined trees, weeds, and collection of thirty years' worth of decaying windswept leaves. For Kirk, the house would be temporary. It was the property, and what he believed was buried beneath, that he needed.

    "Fish or cut bait," Lem repeated, anxious to end the dance. Kirk had postured long enough. The line was drawn and he stepped over it.

    I'm not much for fishing, Kirk said and quickly added, "How about Shit or get off the pot?"

    Kirk Cule smiled and was not going to be deterred. As a former engineer at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), he was a quick and innovative thinker but calculating rocket launch details, orbits, and reentry vectors for end-of-life national security satellites was different than calculating or predicting human responses. He was up to the challenge but there was one disadvantage in his negotiation plan he refused to reveal; he really, really, wanted this property.

    Diff'rent car, same destination, Lem calmly responded. He was not going to be out-clichéd by some snot-nosed smart college boy and let loose another cud-chewed tobacco gob. "It's a good price for this country.... estate."

    The only context in which the asking price was good was that of Lem's and he allowed no outward confirmation of his desire or need to quickly sell. His down-payment on a Florida condo was soon due. He tired of the boring farm life and icy cold Virginia winters. He now longed for a warmer climate, seducing social security check-laden widows with his tall tales and, of course, his abilities with chewing tobacco.

    Property values flat-lined and Lem's price was a premium. Even though Kirk was currently unemployed he had more money now than he ever had during his years at the NRO or during his previous life as an Air Force pilot or astronaut trainee. His savings, mixed with the proceeds from his father's estate, his wife's life insurance money, and equity he'd realize once he sold his existing home, would be sufficient to achieve his goal. Even if he was unsuccessful in lowering the high asking price, his remaining funds would be enough. Kirk played the game, stared Lem straight in the eyes, and made a low-ball offer, a cash offer. That was the lightning.....he waited for the thunder.

    If I wanted to be insulted......I'd get married, responded Lem. Boy, look at what you've got here. Lem raised his hands, slowly twisted his body from side to side, displayed a look of puzzlement and began. "This property is prime, the trees are mature, the air is honey-suckle sweet, and the home is....."

    A dump. Kirk finished the sales pitch. Lem was stunned mid-sentence; his face became long and his eyes wide. "Mr. Davis, the house is a dump, the property overgrown with weeds, and that isn't sweet honeysuckle we've been smelling. It's cow shit. I'll meet you half way."

    Lem's arms fell to his side and his mouth tightened. "A dump? Boy, this is my father's home, my ancestral property, worth every penny of the full price."

    Kirk turned and walked away. With each step he hoped to hear the sounds of agreement. It might have been Lem's high blood pressure, or maybe it was the heart murmur, or just divine intervention, but Lem suddenly heard the sounds of the beach, felt the warm wind on his face, and smelled suntan lotion.

    "Boy....did you say cash?"

    Kirk smiled.

    Chapter Two

    The closing documents were signed two weeks later. Kirk drove the five miles from the title company office in downtown Manassas, under Route 66, through the Manassas Civil War Battlefield along Route 234, and made the sharp right turn onto Aldie Road. After another two miles his car bounced at the transition from pavement to gravel. A quick left turn, one thousand feet through the arching pine trees, and he was home.

    He came to a stop. The cassette playing Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run was silenced mid-grunt as Kirk turned the key cutting off both the music and Ford truck engine. He opened the door and as his left boot compressed the blue-stone driveway gravel he felt the warm breeze hit his face. The Colonial-style house sat along the south center of the property. The light tan wooden clapboard siding had long since turned a darkened brown and in some sections almost black. Eight decaying shutters, several of which awaited a mild breeze to release them back to Earth, and their paint so peeled and wood pitted as to make their former color anyone's guess, guarded each side of the four multi-pane windows. A barely affixed screen door hung at an angle in sympathy with the shutters and obscured the center entry door. The roof's front edge held what appeared to be a copper rain gutter, so darkened with age and filled with old leaves and pine needles that even a knowledgeable thief couldn't ascertain its scrap value. It disconnected from the downspout and drooped, angling to three feet below the roof. Most of the surrounding shrubbery was dead or dying, the once colorful foliage never to be resurrected. Remnants of a brick entryway stoop lay broken and discarded to either side of a one-piece cheap cement replacement, its two stairs cracked and about to fall away from the house. Kirk knew the home's condition and in many ways they were alike; both reflecting wear and tear, both in need of regeneration.

    He stood and held the truck door open. He savored the moment and just listened. The silence was broken only by the sound of the wind across the brush, birds fluttering, small animals rustling about, and pine trees reaching past sixty feet swaying and crisscrossing, playing like squeaky violins; wooden bows sliding against wooden strings. They encircled the deteriorated home as well as the acres making up the cleared interior. Kirk closed his eyes and in that darkness imagined the secret installation once occupying this space. He reached out his arm as if to touch his father as he walked by. Although his father was an Air Force officer, at that time he would have been dressed in civilian garb as mandated by his Central Intelligence Agency supervisors. He imagined how proud his father had been when being awarded the hard-earned Missileer's Badge, referred to as a Pocket Rocket due to the design depicting a silver missile and stars worn near his Air Force uniform shirt pocket. It was given to the specialized personnel skilled in the art of national missile defense.

    Kirk felt pride and sadness as he mentally pictured that badge, once relegated to a closet within his father's house and now in storage with the remainder of Kirk's worldly possessions. He thought of his young son and his wife, of how he loved life, but of how he loved them more. With a deep sigh he exhaled his enduring grief. His lips quivered as he mouthed his wife's name...Gabriella. He felt her presence beside him. We will be reunited. He had not openly sobbed since the symbolic dirt was sprinkled over her lowered coffin resting in the open grave two years earlier but his eyes welled with tears on uncountable private occasions. Ashes to ashes....dust to dust. He closed the truck door. The heavy feeling emanating from deep inside began to roll upwards into his throat. He raised his left hand to his face allowing his index finger and thumb to sweep inward across his closed eyes eventually pinching the bridge of his nose, as if the pressure would redirect the gathering emotional storm. He swore to himself he would no longer break down, that his misery would be replaced by his mission. He longed for focus, the focus he lost when he lost her...when he lost his son...when he lost everything.

    As his hand pulled away from his face the sun reflected a platinum beam from his wedding band and misery overtook his resolve. He didn't recall closing the truck door but did so while deep in remembrance. Kirk slumped backwards against that door, his body weakened by emotion, until he was sitting, then lying, on his side atop the gravel. The property took note and wrapped itself around him in an embrace. He was numb to the jagged stone edges as they pressed through his shirt and into his side but he was acutely aware of the pain of his lost family and lost life, and the pummeling reaffirmation of his loneliness.

    Chapter Three

    Before construction of the CIA's Langley Virginia Headquarters facility in 1960, it was housed on E Street in Washington D.C., a few blocks to the west of the State Department and east of the Potomac River. Tucked behind non-descript federal office buildings, the rectangular facility encircled a central yard and rose upwards from its northern pedestrian entrance. Visitors and staff passed through its unlocked gate ascending approximately twenty-four cement steps with four evenly spaced landings. The stairs were bordered on either side by six-inch raised cement edges intermittently pierced by upward-rising rounded metal supports connecting to rounded metal hand railings. Entrance to the facility was accomplished through two side-by-side glass-centered metal-framed doors with the front facade of the facility adorned with multiple evenly spaced Greek Ionic columns rising two stories supporting the over-hanging roofline. Inside, CIA senior management was still reeling from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's We Will Bury You pronouncement when the 04 October 1957 news headline announced the successful Soviet space launch and operation of their Sputnik satellite.

    "I can hear....that damned communist beep, coming from that damned communist piece of space junk....and I don't like it," exclaimed Donner Bly, the CIA's Chief of Special Actions Group. He was at the head of his conference room table, standing behind his black leather high-back chair, his hands holding its top, as he addressed the Group's upper management. One hand intermittently emphasized his message by slapping the leather top.

    What's wrong with our scientists...that we can't even beat a country of illiterate farmers into space?

    Donner Bly rose six foot four and cast a long shadow. By 1957, at age 43, he was the youngest CIA Group Chief and its most ambitious. His CIA file listed his eyes as blue, however his staff, and certainly anyone who dared cross him, would describe them as deep black. The rumor amongst subordinates was that looking directly into his eyes would result in being instantly turned to stone. Medusa was but one of his nicknames. His hair, equally black as his eyes, was cut razor short when he was operational, but grew a bit longer during his time in management and was held in complete control by application of Vitalis hair tonic. His starched white shirt was the backdrop to a thin black tie secured by a U.S. flag clip and his black suit was without wrinkle. He was clean and crisp and ordered. His face rarely required a shave and he considered that a benefit towards his time management. When he moved, he did so with purpose. As he walked, he did so to maximize efficiency. The cut of his pressed trousers sliced the air like a knife cuts flesh, and his subordinates, as well as his associates, stood clear when he traversed the space between where he was and where he was going to be. He hid it well, but over fifteen years earlier his leg had been impaled by a well-placed Nazi bayonet while serving as a covert operative within the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), leaving him with an intermittently recurring painful reminder which he refused to outwardly acknowledge, fearing being viewed as weak.

    "Dammit.....illiterate farmers...how could they beat us into outer space? His staff wondered if his questions were rhetorical or if an answer was actually expected. Before anyone could react Bly blurted, They don't even have flush toilets. We are in the ring with some bad mother-fuckers and we take punch after punch after punch. Won't be long until we're down for the count. I told Patton to keep going to Moscow. But no. 'They're our allies,' said Ike. 'They're our friends. Stop at Berlin.' General Donovan knew at that time, but he couldn't do shit. Well our friends not only give us the finger from East Berlin, threaten us with nuclear missiles, but now they threaten us from outer space. Communists, fucking beeping us the finger from outer space. Dammit."

    His staff was silent, their eyes followed their now pacing leader like prey watches a hungry lion. They experienced Bly's rants on a variety of occasions on a variety of topics and learned not to interrupt. Except for a few changes in personnel, the Special Actions Group had been under the control of Donner Bly since 1950; originally formed under the OSS, the CIA's predecessor. They cut their teeth by blowing up Nazi rail lines, gathering intelligence, slicing throats when required, and generally conducting miscellaneous covert activity. When the OSS was dissolved and the CIA was chartered in 1947, Donner Bly was an up and comer. No reason for him not to be. He risked his life in the service of his country and personally worked under OSS Director General William J. Donovan. A previous Bly rant in December 1950 went on for thirty minutes and somehow managed to link Columbus' journey to America, William Wallace's Scottish resistance of England, his mother, the signing of the Magna Carta, Pontius Pilate, the weakness of Woodrow Wilson, his first date, Roman Emperor Claudius, and other topics all ending with how U.S. policy towards communism was as soft as the scrambled eggs he received in a downtown D.C. diner that morning. Select staff members marked the anniversary on subsequent yearly calendars with Rant Ceremonies held with trusted coworkers at a local watering hole. That rant also included how Bly wished the U.S. had nuked North Korea and China after the battle at the Chosin Reservoir. Bly ended with "Leaving Communists in place anywhere was only postponing the inevitable fight."

    Bly dismissed his full staff and sequestered his closest advisors, Associate Chiefs Marty Beemer, Devon Bronstein, and Gerson Lawler.

    Alright. I've been thinking about this for a while. We need an ace in the hole against these communists, a sure thing. I don't think they'll actually do it...I just...I just don't think they have the resolve. He was now sitting in his chair at the head of the conference table, elbow firmly planted against its polished surface, hand cupping his chin, and his eyes appearing to drift off, deep in thought.

    Resolve? asked Marty Beemer.

    Beemer had known Bly since 1943 after working multiple OSS missions in tandem and together entering Berlin on the heels of the Soviet Army. Their mission at that time was to shadow the search for Hitler. Unfortunately, they were too late arriving at Hitler's bunker, getting there hours after the Soviets carted off what remained of a burned out Fuhrer. Their personal joke had been "Is the Fuhrer tired? No, not tired....just a little burned out." Beemer always admired Bly's cool-headed decision-making ability in both planning and execution but noticed instances of extreme enthusiasm followed by extreme activities. Marty Beemer never questioned Bly's capabilities but sometimes questioned his level of sanity.

    Bly now hated communism as much as he previously hated Nazi's and exorcised that hate in fervent mission execution through the end of the war. He was brutal and thorough, endowed with an ability to remain distant from his actions. Although during the war Bly disliked and distrusted the Soviets, he, like many at first, saw them as allies against Hitler. He now hated them, the Soviet imperialistic intentions and expansion, their suppression of freedom, and their threat towards the U.S.

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