John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

Retrieving his suitcase, Elias followed the instruction provided by Rogan and took the route to the left. He was, once again, impressed with the size and scope of Aegis. As he traveled the corridor, proceeding cautiously and stopping to repeat his method of entering each intersection, almost an hour transpired before he encountered anything but emptiness.

Ahead of him was another barrier across the wide corridor, yet this one was different from what he had encountered at Walden. It was also made with concrete blocks, but instead of there being a solid floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall blockade, there was a full-height wall in front, which began at the right side of the corridor and stopped approximately five feet short of the opposite side. Only a few feet behind it was another wall, attached to the left side of the corridor and disappearing behind the first.

Another difference was that this front barrier also had several narrow slots integrated into the masonry, the purpose obvious as he heard a voice ring out from behind the wall. “STOP WHERE YOU ARE!”

Elias froze.

“PUT DOWN THE SUITCASE AND RAISE YOUR HANDS.”

Complying, Elias asked in a voice deliberately shaky, “What do you want?”

Ignoring his question, the man behind the wall authoritatively shouted, “MOVE AWAY FROM THE SUITCASE AND LIE FACEDOWN ON THE FLOOR.”

Elias crab-walked two steps to the right and dropped slowly to his knees while keeping his hands raised. Then, slowly, he lowered his arms, and placing his palms on the floor, lay facedown down and said nothing. As soon as he was down, he heard two sets of footsteps approach. Judging by the sound, one of the two stopped several feet away, no doubt positioning himself to guard the other. Elias assumed they were armed.

He heard the other guard circle around and approach from behind, reaching down to begin searching him, and finding the Beretta almost immediately. After taking it from Elias’ pocket, he resumed the frisk until satisfied that there was nothing else of concern on the newcomer’s person.

“All right. Stand up.”

Despite his excellent physical condition, Elias rose from his lying position with feigned difficulty, including grunts and groans as he lifted himself. The two men, dressed in green cargo pants, black T-shirts, high-laced boots, and sporting an assortment of tattoos on their arms and necks, both carried Glocks holstered on their hips. Elias guessed they were in their mid-twenties. One of the two was pointing a 12 gauge shotgun at him while the other was down on one knee, rummaging through the contents of his suitcase.

As Elias stood, automatically raising his arms above his head without being told, he looked more closely at the tattoos on his guard and said, “So, 4-1 or 1st Cav?”

The guard grinned instantly. “Yeah, 1st Cav. Are you infantry?”

“Doc Charon. I was in the 4-1.”

“Medical Corps, huh? Afghanistan?”

“Iraq and mostly Germany.”

“Attached to which unit?”

“I was with the Big Red One.”

The smile broadened. “Pussies. You ‘prolly’ spent all your time treating STIs.”

Before Elias could reply, the second man flipped the suitcase closed and rose, nodding at his partner, who lowered the shotgun and took three steps forward, extending his hand.

“I’m Sweezea. This is Crabill.”

Elias shook Sweezea’s hand, then Crabill’s.

After removing the clip from the Beretta and checking to make certain the chamber was empty, Crabill handed Elias his pistol and said, “Welcome to Madison.” He turned over the clip to his partner.

“Madison?”

“As in James.”

They turned and walked toward the entrance to the barrier. Elias asked, “Madison, Walden. Do the punks by the entrance have a name for their territory?”

Sweezea laughed. “Yeah, ZooCity. You had the pleasure of making their acquaintance?”

The three men turned to the right as they passed behind the first wall, and Elias saw another man stationed there. He had been watching through one of the view slots and held an AK-47 at the ready, in case his two partners needed help.

“This is Hutson,” said Sweezea.

The third man turned to face Elias and, dropping his rifle down to the rest position, stuck out his hand. As he did, Elias read aloud the tattoo on his forearm, “Screaming Eagles.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me. I worked for a livin’. Just a medical corpsman. Charon.”

As Elias said this, he noticed the firmness of the grip intensify slightly and the handshake itself become more enthusiastic.

“Good to meet you, Doc.”

Hutson resumed his vigil at the slot as the two others led Elias behind him and around the first switchback. The corridor barrier was a series of offset walls with five-foot openings at alternating ends. When they came to the final offset wall, Elias saw that this walkway was shorter than the others, and built into the end of the aisle was another block wall, also with gun slots facing them. He could see the barrel of what he deduced was an automatic rifle of some type projecting through one of the slots and, at the moment, trained directly on the center of Elias’ chest.

“Nice defensive setup,” he complimented.

“It works,” Sweezea acknowledged. “So how’d you snake past the ZooCity denizens?”

Elias shrugged to communicate that it was no big deal. “A little difference in orientation. They seemed to think that sidearms are for pointing at people. I was always taught that guns were only good for one thing.”

Both Crabill and Sweezea were amused by his comment, and Crabill added a facetious “Bang, bang.”

“So there’s a body back there?”

“Two.”

“Cool!”

They cleared the defensive maze and entered the wide corridor.

“I’m going to stay on post,” Crabill advised.

Sweezea nodded. Crabill held out his right hand to Elias and said, “See you around, Doc.” Elias once again shook his hand.

As the two of them set off down the corridor, Sweezea asked, “You mentioned Walden. You met those guys, too?”

Elias kept pace next to his escort as he answered, “I did.”

“Man, you get around! Why are you at Madison? From what I hear about that bunch, they would’ve snatched you like you were the last whore in town.”

“My choice. The second I walked in, I realized that I’d have to leave my testicles at the door if I was gonna live there.”

His companion laughed again. “Boy, you nailed that, all right. Still, I can’t believe they didn’t give you the full-court press to stick around.”

“I didn’t tell them I was a doc.”

“What’d you tell them you did?”

“Accountant.”

“Good call.”

“Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly. So where are we going?”

“To meet the Chief.”

As they walked, Elias noticed that the environment behind their entrance was, once again, different. ZooCity had been a chaotic mess. Walden had appeared neat in comparison, but had a casual, worn look and feel. Madison, by contrast, was spotlessly clean. Where there had been no placards of any kind in Walden, Madison had an abundance of crisp signage everywhere he looked, mostly filled with indecipherable abbreviations and directional arrows. There were also lines painted on the floor, each a different color. Elias determined that the color of the lines corresponded to the font color on individual signs. As they reached each minor intersection of hallways, some of the colored lines continued straight, while others turned to the right or left. This place, he thought to himself, was set up by someone with a bad case of OCD. The overall feel created was one of regimentation and structure.

As the two of them walked, they passed a man in his late fifties or early sixties, down on one knee, with a drop cloth spread out over a four-by-four area, a bucket of white paint on the cloth, and a paintbrush in his hand as he touched up a small section of wall adjacent to a door. Mounted on the door was a handmade wooden sign, engraved with the legend, “Chief of Staff — Milton Pierce.” Sweezea stepped over the drop cloth and knocked twice. A male voice immediately responded, “Come in.”