Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 65 (Garamond & Hadlock Celebrate)
Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 65 of the my online book “Excited Delirium”. Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index .
“It’s time we congratulate ourselves, my friend,” Garamond said calmly as they received reports from the Tesla team in China.
Garamond and Hadlock had spent the night listening in to reports from their team and checking the news for updates about what was happening in China. They had a bird’s eye view with a number of private connections to security cameras and other surveillance that one of their dummy companies had installed.
Neither flinched as they watched people getting tossed by the earth in a rage. Both were smug in their satisfaction that the Chinese deserved everything they got, included the virtual extermination of their capital city.
“It’s about time these people realize that they are not the ones in control,” Hadlock said in a daze as he watched the dozens of screens in the main boardroom.
“Have you confirmed that Greyrock is already there, waiting for the nod from the President to provide ‘security’ services?”
“We’ll launch Phase II as soon as the Beijing government responds to international cries to allow our forces, I mean, ‘support teams’ to provide assistance,” Hadlock answered, still in a state of psychotic calm.
“And then Phase III: pave the way for our Church members to get in with ‘humanitarian aid’, all the while focusing on conversion and spreading the word of God,” Garamond added confidently, admiring their seemingly perfect plan.
“This uh … this earthquake seems to be a little more severe than we originally predicted, don’t you think?” Hadlock asked, with a hint of worry on his voice.
“I certainly hope so. These Godless pricks should suffer a front row seat to suffering after everything they’ve tried to do to us here in America,” Garamond replied tersely.
His comments were interrupted by the chirp of Hadlock’s cell phone ringing. He looked at his phone and then looked at Garamond to get his non-verbal approval to respond. Garamond nodded and Hadlock pressed the ‘Talk’ button.
“Right, OK. Tell me then, what are you waiting for?”
Some scratchy tones on the other side.
“Shit. Give me an update every 30 minutes so that I can keep the boss updated, OK,” he insisted more loudly into the phone. He loved trying to increase his authoritarian style when Garamond had the opportunity to listen. Anything less and he’d worry that his boss would think he was spineless.
He hung up and gave Garamond an update: “It seems we’ve been too successful with the fatalities.”
“What do you mean,” Garamond answered, shifting closer to Hadlock, concern growing in his eyes.
“Most of the government’s senior officials were either at the Olympic Stadium, which crumbled like a sand castle in a hurricane. The unofficial word from my contacts is that there will be little to no decision making in the next 48 hours until they’re able to get someone to lead the country out of the mess.”
“Don’t we have any puppets to guide into the blank spots? This is a ripe opportunity to install some ‘friendlys’ over there so that we push things through a little more quickly,” Garamond offered, intensity growing.
“That’s the thing. We thought we had them protected. They were all set to jump in, but the building they were in isn’t there any more and none of them can be found.”
“Oh shit,” Garamond groaned. “This is going to get ugly!”
“The other update I got is that the military is the only organized force in China right now. It won’t be long until all the borders are closed and they declare martial law.”
“Let’s get busy then. I’ll get on the phone to my friends and you get this thing organized. We must have someone on the take in the military that can act in our best interests. It is the most corrupt country in the world after all!”
“Only after ours,” Hadlock said under his breath as he started dialing.
[Author’s Note: I conceived of this plot component in 2006 and wrote most of these chapters into the story of ‘Excited Delirium’ during the course of 2007. I was stunned like the rest of the world when a tragic earthquake struck the province of Sichuan on May 12, 2008. Please believe me that I do not want to ‘profit’ from the suffering that the hundreds of thousands in this quake experienced. I remind all readers that this is a work of fiction and that my goals are to speak to the symbolic reference that’s used in the numerology along with the viewpoint of one fictional cult concerning the fate of the Chinese. When Tom Clancy wrote “Sum of All Fears”, was he just imagining a scenario that could happen and convert that to a warning to Americans or was he hoping that serious harm would befall the people of Baltimore? I feel quite confident it was the former.]
(Note: “Excited Delirium” is a work of fiction. Any person, place or thing depicted in this work of fiction is also a work of fiction. Any relation of these subjects or characters to real locations, people or things are an unintentional coincidence.)
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Excited Delirium by Liam Young is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License .
Based on a work at www.exciteddelirium.ca .