49. Checkmate!
Francois opens the door and they look at four men with listening devices and bullet proof vests and pistols ready in their hands. The man in the middle shakes his head slowly from side to side and speaks with his heavy American accent in a sarcastic tone of voice: “You don’t come out; so we come in.”
He is short and sturdy with short, black hair and resembles a wrestler without a neck with cauliflower ears. He looks at Jack contemptuously. “I see Jack the trigger happy chappy is with you. Relax, Jack, leave that Parabellum or I’ll push it up your ass personally.”
Morrison steamrollers his path open and rams through between Francois and Jack.
Come, Heinrich, Marco and Alex. Keep the fort at the front door. The lengthy German ducks with his head at the entrance and follows Morrison while the English and the Portuguese guys stay behind and close the front door.
Heinrich doesn’t follow them into the sitting room but positions himself with his back against the wall and his hand on his pistol while he watches them all. Jack turns to his left and goes to the open kitchen where he leans against the counter, then turns to Heinrich with his right hand on his pistol behind his back. Francois walks to the sofa and takes place next to Jane. Morrison looks and finds the remote and takes one of the table’s chairs and sits down with his back to them all in front of the TV and switches it on.
CNN is still broadcasting the same news. Morrison switches from channel to channel while shaking his head. Overall the news is the same and eventually he switches it off, turns around in his chair, folds his arms across the back of the chair and glares from Nico to Francois. “The whole fucking world knows! Where the fuck were you up to now? You fucking vanished down the steps and the all of you fuck off.”
He angrily gestures with his hand from one to the other. “What fucking meeting is this?”
Hunter answers: “It has fuck-all to do with you! Who the hell invited you? I think you’d better lift you bloody ass and get the hell out of here.”
Nico quickly intervenes: “No wait, Major, you must understand we owe the colonel an explanation. Colonel, meet Major Frederick Hunter. He is a veteran operational ex-soldier who inter alia received the Honoris Crux medal for bravery form president PW Botha. Major, this is Colonel Joss Morrison, in charge of our international anti-terrorism unit …”
Morrison rudely interrupts: “And if I want something, presidents jump to attention. Old Fart, your medal now means fuck-all to us.” He points with his thumb to the silent TV behind him. “What are we going to do about this shit? When are you going to tell us what the fuck is going on?”
Nico shakes his head from side to side. “We lost, the task team is too late, the spiders have been delivered and will attack people all around the world this Friday at midnight …”
Hunter this time interrupts: “Thus, you can remove yourself with all your presidents and all their shit from here because you are worth fuck-all now. Your Illuminati controlled world ends on Friday, and I thus think it is time to move your ass and remove yourself. We have more important things to discuss and you are not welcome!”
Morrison looks at Hunter angrily: “Are you trying to be serious, Fart; do you really want to challenge me? There are, including today, five days left until Friday and if I play my jazz on my blues guitar you will rock and roll to a disco beat.”
Morrison looks at Nico. “If this old Fart opens his trap once more, you will all sleep tonight in Gitmo.”
Nico quickly tries to prevent a crisis: “Please, Major, he means what he says. He always has a few gunships with teams of navy seals and can remove us in eye’s wink to Guantanamo Bay and then everything is lost. He is serious. He’s not playing games. Not another word, please!”
Hunter nods. He understands.
Morrison smiles satisfied and looks at Francois. “Francois, Nico is babbling much too much and I don’t like his friends Jack the Terrible and Major Dumb Dutchman. Who is that whore sitting so close to you?”
Emotionless Francois answers: “Jane is a student friend of mine I met in the gymnasium, Colonel. She is definitely not a whore.”
“Your whore is sitting so close to you still in your underpants and she wears your T shirt. Tell me Jane, are you wearing anything beneath Francois’ shirt?”
Jane frowns. “This has nothing to do with you.”
Morrison grins. “You know, you are right. There are more important things than making love all night. The world will be coming to an end on Friday. Now tell me, Francois, to where you have vanished after you walked down the steps and also why we lost your signal.”
Francois answers very calmly: “We went via a tunnel to the adjacent smallholding.”
Morrison shakes his head up and down: “Interesting, and Francois, why have we lost your signal?”
“The underground tunnel cut the signal.”
Morrison frowns: “But Francois, we also went via that underground tunnel to the adjacent smallholding and we didn’t find you there and we had signal to our control room all the way. How do you explain that?”
Pretending to be extremely baffled Francois answers: “I wouldn’t know, Colonel, maybe the signal was weak when you lost us.”
“Bullshit! You all are a lot of bullshitters! To where have you vanished and what do you know? I want to be informed right now or else it is Gitmo for you.”
Nico quickly steps in: “We found a planted smartphone of Johan there and he warned us via a video call about the distribution of the spiders. They would use the city lights to distribute them and the spiders would scurry to their nests where they are now multiplying and hibernating to emerge on Friday and attack all the people in the cities and towns, rendering them insane and sick. You can, in the meantime, send people into the sewerage systems to find out if there is a method by which you can destroy them before midnight on Friday, but according to the professor, it is impossible. The professor suggested that we call a meeting last night so that people we want to save could see the plague coming from the sky and believe us and join us to make a plan. We want to establish a community, away from city lights, that can take care of themselves.”
Morrison smiles and mockingly slowly claps his hands. “Very nice, Nico, at last we got a little bit of truth out of you. We are aware of the Eastwood Estate and this Fart really wants to be their Sheriff. This is why you are meeting here because the Sheriff will need firepower. Weapons, ammunition, explosives and more, not so? We eavesdropped on your meeting last night in the conference hall, gentlemen and whore.”
Hunter has been silent for too long: “Thus, you know what is going on! Why do you play games then?”
Morrison puts his finger on his lips and speaks utterly sarcastically: “Trust! You don’t achieve anything by distrusting one another and your trust in us really is very little thus our trust in you is even less. We now know a bit but not everything, for example: where have you gone on that smallholding. It is still a secret. I know the story of the planted phone is bullshit and you don’t want to tell us the truth and that is why we are going to watch every step of you like hawks.
“And, by the way, we sent experts down the drains and what they saw there is very interesting. Those things aren’t spiders. They only look like spiders. They are nanotechnology and genetic manipulation that has no equal on earth. It really is impossible to get rid of these things. It looks like a thick rubber layer clinging to the drain walls and they multiply by an unbelievable rate. In that, you are correct. It is too late and we’ve already informed the elite and we are constructing army camps on strategic points where there are no city lights. We are going to evacuate the elite to those camps.”
Jane finds Morrison’s words quite upsetting. “Who are the so-called elite? What about the rest of the world? Are you not going to warn them?”
“Goodness, no! Imagine everybody listens and flees. It will put the elite’s rescue in danger. But luckily most people won’t believe any warning in any case. Your group has something up your sleeves and hides the full truth from us. Our task team thus is going to take over the Eastwood Estate. You are looking for weapons and security and we are your answer. Our team will from now on be your security and law and order.”
Hunter protests: “No thanks, we will organize our own …”
Morrison frowns scornfully in Hunter’s direction: “Old Fart, you can be the police, okay? We are the army and I am the president. You will report to me; end of story. We will have our own small army with choppers, army vehicles, fuel and so on. We are going to erect watch towers that will be manned by sentinels 24/7. Admit it! Your security will be out of this world with us! At the same time we will be watching you permanently because we don’t trust you at all!