| 1
Three gunshots ring out and the driver of the limo turns with a .45 caliber nickel-plated pistol in his left hand and shoots the President in the head. Kennedy rocks backward in his seat from the impact and slumps over onto his wife. The first lady scampers away from the gunman and crawls over the trunk. A secret service man stumbles ahead and climbs onto the still moving vehicle and shoves Mrs. Kennedy down into the back seat. The killer slips his weapon back into his sport coat, looks into the rearview mirror and sees the bloody president with his brains all over the plush seats and the first lady screaming hysterically about the killer driving the car. The driver finds the secret service man’s eyes in the jumpy reflection of the mirror and receives a knowing nod. He drives on as the calamity of the day is recorded on a home movie camera.
The dream is always the same, it plays out in his mind’s eye just as it had on that black day in Dallas. Kennedy didn’t want to play ball with the old boy network. The President wanted to end the Vietnam War, this was of course unacceptable. The Jesuits had an agenda to annihilate the Buddhists heathens and the war had put the US Government $220 billion dollars in debt to the Jesuits’ Federal Reserve Bank. Not to mention the fact that the President was ready to give the CIA the axe and expose to the American people what the clandestine Agency was really up to. So, those in power did away with the popular president and everyone who saw the driver kill Kennedy were dead within two weeks.
The American branch of the Knights of Malta controlled the press at the time and squashed the only hard evidence left of the assassination, the Zapruder film, a grainy videotape showing what appeared to be the driver of the car turning with a pistol and shooting the Chief Executive as snipers filled the limo with bullets.
The President’s family was fed a large amount of hush money and threatened with more violence if they didn’t tow the line and do what was best for America. And what was best was to galvanize the country with the death of a martyr. Occasionally the Kennedy’s had to be reminded of the blood oath they’d sworn to their country, Bobby and John Junior were the most notable of those reminders.
General Benitio bolts upright at his desk and exhales sharply. The dream always seems to haunt him at times when he needs some extra motivation. Times like now. Benitio has a full day ahead of him and a task that he has dreaded and at the same time, looked forward to for many years. He hauls himself out of his leather office chair and lumbers to the door.
Benitio strides down the hospital white corridors to his secure lift. Saluting the two armed guards at the entrance to the elevator, the general places his meaty hand on the built-in scanner and it traces his hand print while an electronic laser floods his right eye.
"Mr. Secretary," the guards chime.
Benitio nods as the elevator door pings open. He has been the Secretary of State here at Mount Weather for 18 years and he still can’t get used to the red light that flashes in his eyes every time he uses this blasted elevator.
It is a quick, silent ride down to the Situation Room and when the doors slide open with a soft hiss that always reminds him of the Star Ship Enterprise, the most powerful room in the world comes into view.
Often times, Benitio finds himself in the Situation Room here in the base’s nerve center. The Situation Room is a war room that connects the White House and Raven Rock, an underground Pentagon sixty miles north of Washington, as well as every US military unit around the world. The Situation Room runs a constant series of war games, accounting for every possible global scenario. Even domestic situations are watched and run through a constant stream of simulators so that appropriate "measures" can be thought out and planned in detail well ahead of time. So in many respects, the man overseeing the Situation Room is someone with an enormous amount of clout and influence. And so if it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of Benitio’s predecessor who had been overseeing the Situation Room during the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, the installation would have declared martial law and placed the United States solely under the control of a parallel government-in-waiting housed within the bowels of Mt. Weather. Unfortunately, Benitio had not been as lucky because he could not save Kennedy on that sunny day in Dallas and history had been written.
"Mr. Secretary," an aide says, coming over to him.
"Has my guest arrived yet?"
"Yes sir, right this way sir."
The aide is a machine, no emotion, no family, just layers upon suffocating layers of military training, hardening and molding. Benitio almost feels ashamed to think that way about the young aide, but Mt. Weather is not just any military installation, it is the military installation in the world. No one stationed here is anything less than perfect, the cream of the crop, the best and most importantly of all, Mt Weather is their home, its inhabitants are their family, there is no outside world to those who live and work here, there is only Mt. Weather.
"Director Tatum," Benitio says to the thin man standing near a bank of monitors.
"General Benitio, it’s a pleasure to see you again."
"You ready to get going, Robbie?" Benitio says to his guest.
"Anytime you are, sir."
"You’re the director of the FBI now, Robbie. I don’t think you need to call me sir anymore" Benitio says with a crooked smile.
"Well, what should I call you? General, Mr. Secretary . . ."
Benitio chuckles a bit, "Call me crazy, Robbie. But I’m just ready to get out of this hole in the ground and breathe some fresh air, aren’t you?"
Director Robbie Tatum grins, even though inside, his stomach is churning in knots. "Like I said, I’m ready when you are, sir."
Benitio and the director weave through the waves of technicians, aides, suits and uniforms back toward the secure lift. They ride smoothly up and are deposited inside a large control tower. A golf cart with a driver and an armed guard motor up to the tower and pick the men up. They ride along lush green grass, a little too green, Benitio thinks to himself for the thousandth time and the cart glides out onto the black tarmac of a helicopter pad.
As Benitio’s helicopter is being run through her pre-flight check list near the installations main gate, the director takes in the beautiful grass fields where a dozen buildings with antennas and microwave relay systems stand around him. Just outside, the facility is protected by warning signs, 10 foot-high chain link fences, razor wire and armed guards. Near the installation’s front gate is a control tower and the helicopter pad where he and Benitio now stand.
Few Americans are aware of the existence of Mount Weather as was the Director of the FBI until only very recently when he was contacted by Benitio. Tatum did what little homework he could given his access to information as Director of the FBI prior to arriving at the installation for the first time this morning.
The underground military base known as Mt. Weather is buried deep inside a mountain near Bluemont, Virginia on the border of West Virginia, just 46 miles from Washington DC. Mount Weather contains a working duplicate of the Executive Branch of the Federal government, a shadow government. In the event of nuclear war, declaration of martial law, or other national emergency, the President, his cabinet and the rest of the Executive Branch are to be relocated to Mount Weather.
The government has owned the site since 1903; it has been used as an artillery range, was even a hobo farm during the Depression, and spent time as a National Weather Bureau Facility. In 1936, the U.S. Bureau of Mines took control of the property and started construction.
But that was pretty basic information, when Tatum stepped inside the massive complex this morning he couldn’t believe his eyes. General Benitio’s aide lead the FBI Director on what Tatum knew was nothing more than the nickle tour. There was so much more that seemed to be happening just behind the scenes that he found himself looking for the stage hands just off in the wings handling some great writhing dragon.
"Mount Weather is, in effect, an underground city," the aide said non-commitally.
And he was right. They walked down paved sidewalks. Cars drove by on six lane streets. There were apartment buildings and eateries. Tatum and the aide had a quick breakfast at Burger King. There were beautiful gardens and parks fed by fresh water from underground springs. A man and his son were fishing from a wooden bridge. It was perfect Tatum had thought at the time. A little too perfect. It was like a TV show, like the Twilight Zone with its evil undercurrent. Even the man and his boy fishing seemed wrong somehow. Something in the boys eyes, a tint to his creamy skin. Something.
"Our industrial park houses an on-site sewage-treatment plant and state of the art water purification system, with a 450,000 gallon-a-day capacity and ten tanks holding 1,250,000 gallons of water able to last 1000 staffers more than a month. We’ve also tapped into a network of underground ponds for additional water supplies if need be."
"Amazing," the director had muttered. "Power?"
"Everything used to be nuclear, we’re in the process of switching over to solar now. That’s the vibration you can feel under your feet. They’re still blasting underground a few miles west of here to install the solar batteries. That way we can store as much power as we need. You know just in case North Korea sends us into a nuclear winter we’ll have plenty of juice for my wife to use her hair dryer in the morning." The aide actually cracked half a smile, "Let’s take the trolley over to SR."
The Situation Room.
"Mount Weather has been a self-sufficient underground command center for FEMA for many years now. We’re the operational center for over 250 Federal Relocation Centers located across the country. Most of them are concentrated here on the east coast, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. All together the relocation centers are a network of underground computer facilities making up the backbone of America’s intelligence database of suspected terrorists and other domestic threats to national security. We give you your Intel, Director Tatum," the aide said with a grin. "We can pull a file from the database and know the entire life history of any American in a matter of seconds along with their suspected terrorist level."
Tatum had browsed the database later that day when the aide had excused himself to the restroom. On a whim he looked up his wife and mother and was shocked. Their life histories scrolled across the screen in front of him. Everything that they had ever done in their entire lives was laid out before him. Everything. There were pictures of his mother, one was of her high school graduation photo in the paper with a wedding announcement under it. There was a snapshot of her at the age of 18 at a lake. Where had that come from? There was a grainy looking shot of her talking to a man in an elevator. There was a satellite photo of Tatum’s childhood home. There were bills. It looked like every bill his mom had ever gotten in the mail in her entire life; electric, phone, cable. Incredible. Everything was documented. Beside her vital information; age, race, and sex, was her terrorist level classification. Elevated.
Tatum wife’s file was even more thorough. He found a copy of a term paper she’d written on carnivorous monkeys in college. There was even a recording of she and her brother singing some silly song as kids, some nonsense rhyme about Brutus the Booger Boy. Amazing. Where could they have gotten that, why would they want it in the first place? It just didn’t make sense. He checked her classification. Elevated.
Then Tatum feverishly checked his brother-in-law. Suspected. His sister. Elevated. His buddy Ron from the bookstore. Possible Terrorist. Possible terrorist? Ron Brooks the bookstore guy who was goofier than a pet coon and just as nice as he could be? Impossible. How sick and twisted and incredibly paranoid that no one he checked was listed below an "Elevated" classification of possible terrorist activity.
Tatum remembers G. Gordon Liddy speaking openly about the days when his responsibilities included keeping tabs on potential detention camp internees. Every three months, Liddy said that he determined the various locations of "political agitators" on his watch list so that government agents could find them easily. But this, this is an incredibly advanced evolution of Liddy’s job at the FBI.
When the aide returned, he showed Tatum that the database also boasted exquisitely detailed information of the world’s military and government facilities. There was also every conceivable statistic in regards to domestic and foreign communications, transportation, energy and power, agriculture, manufacturing, wholesale and retail services, manpower, financial, medical and educational institutions, sanitary facilities, population indexes with racial cross sections, housing, shelter, and stockpiles of anything and everything you could possibly think of. Mt. Weather knew where everything on the planet was and what it could statistically do.
"How does the hierachy work down here?" Tatum tried.
"Well, we have each of the Federal departments which are headed by a single person who has the rank of a Cabinet-level official and is referred to as ‘Mr. Secretary.’ Each Cabinet member is appointed by the White House and serves an indefinite term. I think General Benitio has been here through several Administrations."
"Which Federal departments do you have?"
"Agriculture; Commerce; Health, Education & Welfare; Housing & Urban Development; Interior; Labor; State; Transportation; and Treasury. We also have agencies for Communications, Selective Service, Federal Power, Civil Service, the Veterans Administration, Federal Reserve and the U.S. Post Office."
It didn’t seem right that Americans had no idea what was happening just outside Bluemont, Virginia. It didn’t seem right that a government for and by the people had an entire unelected government-in-waiting just chomping at the bit to take the reigns.
Tatum looks back over at Benitio’s chopper. He shakes the images of Mt. Weather, the underground city-fortress from his mind. Something has to be done to protect the American people from their own government, something has to be done to protect America from herself.
"Having any second thoughts Robbie?"
"No sir."
"Good."
Benitio flips open his secure satellite phone. He hears a series of electronic beeps and clicks as the encryption codes lock into place.
"Yes?" the bass-filled voice says from the other end of the line.
"Seven up, Pearl."
"Confirmed. Seven up, General."
The line goes dead and Benitio turns to his old friend. "We’re in play, Robbie. God help us, we’re in play."
2
The old man creeps through the woods. His hands are ice cold and his face feels like hard plastic. His ancient shotgun is pointed ahead at the boney trees whose ashen forms point toward the slate colored ceiling of overcast clouds. The old man coughs up a throat full of phlegm and spits it onto the leaf covered ground. A cold wind cuts through the trees and chills him under his thin denim jacket. His old eyes, still full of life, dart around as he makes his way toward Margaret’s once abandoned place. Damn his old bones, this is taking far too long. It’s risky enough coming through the forest by himself, hell at all, but here he is trekking slowly along and risking his life for . . .
There it is, that grinding sound. It knew he was out here. It knew what he was up to. It was always there, always watching. He was an old fool for coming and now it had sent them after him. He hears the grinding, hears the gnashing. He’d survived this long, had outlasted many of his friends and neighbors. They were all mostly gone now, many of them too old to fight anymore. If those who were left were to have any chance, then he has to get going.
Images of cold green scales flood his mind’s eye. The screaming of bloody infants fill his ears and during it all is that same horrible grinding sound. The old man tries to look everywhere at once, but it is of no use. He drops his gun and begins to run.
3
One year ago, Special Agent Tyrone Wheatley was working on the I-95 serial killer case. And after a few hairy twists and turns, he’d found himself guarding the life of fellow agent, Mary Provo, whom their killer had targeted as his next victim. The serial killer arrived as he said he would and put a well placed round in Wheatley’s chest.
Thank God for body armor. His hand moves to his chest, rubbing the phantom wound and the scar doctors said would fade over time. Wheatley can still see the sweaty face of the Hunter bearing down on him, can remember the look of pure evil and thinks nothing can be worse. Tyrone Wheatley will soon learn differently.
After he’d been shot, Tye recalled coming to in Provo’s apartment, she was sitting in the corner, quietly rocking back and forth on her haunches. The most unsettling part was Tye felt that he and Provo were not alone, that the Hunter was still there, still watching them. Provo had not spoken for another month. Finally, Robert Tatum, at the time only the ADIC, encouraged her to tender a resignation and Tye agreed.
It was funny how life worked out because now Tye Wheatley was ready for a change. He’d spent the last year of his life investigating former FBI profiler, Mary Provo. The media had had a field day, they splashed so many gory accounts of Provo’s exploits across airwaves and print that Tye wasn’t sure what was truth and what was fiction any more.
It was said that Provo had used her position as a profiler with the Bureau to hunt down and kill serial killers in order to fulfill her own sick, twisted desires. Provo had been a loose cannon, many thought a murderer herself; but Tye wasn’t so sure. He had worked the case with Provo and thought her as normal as you or me. Still, the question remains, was Provo a serial killer of serial killers? Had she enjoyed hunting them down a little too much? Had there been more than just an ounce of satisfaction coursing through her when she let the killer called the Hunter fall toward his death in a rocky stream bed one year ago? And did that make her a bad person? Hell, Provo had been fighting for her life, right? Could Tye say beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would have behaved any differently in the same situation? He still wasn’t sure.
But then again, Tye considered, was Provo no better than the criminals she brought down? The Smokey Mountain murderer, The Santa Slayer, Jones Malloy, Ice Cream Carter, Angel Terry of the Ministry of Forgiveness and the Hunter, they all had one thing in common. Of course they were all killers, all ruthless and exacting in their crimes, but most importantly, Provo had a hand in each of their deaths. Make no bones about it, she had hunted them all down and their collective blood was on her hands and no one else’s. No one knew this better than Tyrone Wheatley. During his investigation he’d torn every single aspect of Provo’s life apart.
But now the case had grown cold, the media had lost interest long ago, and besides, it wasn’t his job to care anymore. Tye is on his way to meet the new director of the FBI, and his boss for the past 3 and half years he’d spent with the Bureau, Robbie Tatum, for his next assignment. The director had assured him that the re-assignment had nothing to do with his work on the Provo case. He personally wanted Tye in charge of this new assignment. Tye would report to the director personally, it was all very hush, hush which suited Tye just fine. Most of his life with the Bureau had been spent under Tatum’s watchful eye and more often than not, Tye’s activities had been kept well below the radar. Even so, Tye can’t shake the bad feeling he has about driving to his meeting with the director.
Tyrone Wheatley has a stop to make first and he stares at the address on the post-it note again. It’s an address he knows all too well. It’s the address of a modest beach house in Rodanthe, North Carolina, along the string of barrier islands known as the Outer Banks. It is owned by one General Anthony Benitio and it’s lone resident is his daughter, alleged serial killer and former FBI profiler, Mary Provo. | 
