Robert Doherty - The Citadel

Suddenly he pulled the pistol back. "Most people consider you a terrorist. If it didn't violate my orders, I could turn you over to the Americans, dead or alive, and get a nice bounty. But then I would be dead also. Still, it is tempting."

Fatima muttered something under her breath.

"What was that?" the man demanded.

She whispered to herself again. The man knelt next to her and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her to her knees. "Talk louder."

Fatima leaned forward, pressing her chest against his.

"That's not going to work," the man said, but he didn't pull back.

Fatima moved her body up and down slightly. She could feel him beginning to grow hard. "Not in the head," she said in a low voice.

"What?"

"Please don't shoot me in the head."

The man laughed. "Why not?"

"Please. I'll make it worth your while not to."

The man pushed her back roughly and stood up. He moved a few feet away and stared at her, his eyes flashing. Fatima forced herself awkwardly back to her knees and shuffled toward him. He backed up until he was against the wall. She felt the skin on her knees tear as she moved, but tried to keep a lustful look on her face.

She pressed her head into the man's crotch.

"I asked you about this," he said. "I know what you like."

Fatima gave what she hoped was a good approximation of a sexual moan. With her teeth, she unzipped his pants, not an easy maneuver. He reached down and grabbed her head as he entered her mouth.

Fatima bit down with every ounce of energy she had. The man screamed and doubled over. She whipped her head out of his grasp and rolled away from him. As she did so, she brought her knees to her chest and slipped her hands over her feet to put them in front of her body. She jumped to her feet and ran at him then, swinging her hands like a club as she did. The blow knocked him sideways, still doubled over. She leapt on his back, looped her manacled hands over his head and pulled back tight on his neck.

He gasped for breath and tried to shake her off. He twisted the hand with the gun and pulled the trigger, the round ripping through Fatima 's shirt but not hitting her. He fired again as she kept the pressure up. Then he straightened and threw himself backward against the wall, slamming her into it, but she didn't let go.

He dropped to his knees, finally letting go of the gun. Fatima kept the pressure tight. He fell forward, taking her with him, but still she didn't let go. It was too quick. Sure enough, after a couple seconds of playing dead, he suddenly rolled, pinning her beneath him. But she sensed his strength weakening.

Then he was still.

Fatima counted sixty to herself as she kept the chokehold with the cuffs. Slowly she let go. Awkwardly, with her bound hands, she searched his pockets until she found the key for the cuffs and maneuvered it out. Then, holding it in her teeth, she unlocked herself. Hands free now, she searched his pockets and found a United States diplomatic passport, which she kept. His name meant nothing to her. The fact that it was a diplomatic passport confirmed what she had suspected: once more the long hand of the United States was after her. It was a good thing she was leaving the Philippines for a while.

Without a backward glance she left the room and headed out of the abandoned warehouse.

Washington , D.C.

The Intelligence Support Agency was a branch of the Pentagon that tried to coordinate the massive flow of data that poured in from all the various intelligence subdivisions of the military. Hundreds of analysts sat in cubicles scrolling through data on their computers, trying to separate intelligence from information. The former was usable data, the latter not. They also handled intelligence requests from the various parts of the military trying to coordinate with the rest of the military-industrial complex so that the right hand could at least have a clue what the left hand was doing.

Bob Festoon was a third of the way through his in-box when he came upon an encrypted request from Majestic-12 Area 51. It caught his interest because rarely did anything from Majestic come through here. So rare were its communiqués and so little was known about the organization that there were some who said it didn't really exist-that it was just a cover-up for something else.

Festoon had even tried accessing data on both Majestic and Area 51 and discovered little even in the ISA's highly classified database. Area 51 was a place whose real purpose was unknown and whose existence was officially denied, yet there had been shows on A &E about it. Majestic-12 was shrouded in even more secrecy.

There were many theories, and Festoon was familiar with most of them. There were those who claimed the government had contact with aliens at the site and they were trading for information and technology. The more radical theorists stated that the items of barter from the human side were allowing the aliens to conduct mutilations on cattle and other livestock and also to abduct humans for various experiments. There were some who even claimed that the aliens were interbreeding with the humans.

Another theory was that Area 51 was the place the government was testing its own latest supersecret aircraft. Festoon knew for a fact that the F-117 Stealth Fighter had been test-flown out there for years before being revealed to the public. The latest "secret" plane that was being tested was called Aurora, and estimates had the plane flying anywhere from Mach 4 to Mach 20 and capable of going high enough to place satellites into orbit. Festoon had seen three references to Aurora in official top secret message traffic, so he was confident that it existed. However, the official government line still was that Majestic-12 and the Area 51 complex didn't exist.

Festoon finished decoding the message and then stared at it for a few seconds before turning to his computer:

Request all information on Antarctic Base, code-named Citadel.

Established 1949 by military during Operation High Jump.

ASAP

He accessed military records and quickly searched the database. After twenty minutes of fruitless effort he was convinced of one thing: there was no record in the ISA's classified database of the Citadel.

Which made it likely, Festoon thought, that this Citadel didn't exist. The Intelligence Support Agency was lavishly funded by the Pentagon's multi-billion-dollar black budget and accountable to no one but the National Security Council, its tentacles reaching into every domestic and foreign source of information. The ISA was more than a gathering agency, though. It also acted on the information it received, implementing numerous covert actions in the name of national security both in the United States and overseas.

The ISA had numerous contacts throughout the business world, men and women in critical places that the ISA worked with, also forwarding the interests of the military and, concurrently, the massive industrial complex that supported the military. It was the covert arm of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower had so feared, and its power was far greater than even those briefed on its existence dared believe.

Festoon encoded the information given by the computer and its conclusion that the Citadel didn't exist and electronically dispatched it to Majestic-12. He also filed a routine report on the request and put it in the massive pipeline of such reports that circulated throughout the ISA. He picked up the next piece of paper in his in-box and went to work on that.

Oahu, Hawaii

Royce listened to the satellite phone ring and ring and knew that things had gone wrong in the Philippines. The initial call from his agent after capturing Fatima had been succinct, and the news about her going to the North Koreans was startling and troubling. The fact that she also knew about the bombs was just as bad.