The Expedient American Panopticon
NSA Operations Center at Joint Base McGuire in New Jersey is like a big bowl of intel candy for Heinlein and Leeds. Military hangers full of supercomputing towers, blinking lights, monitors, skilled technicians, intra-agency liaison officers. It’s like one gigantic, combined CIA-NSA-US Army, Navy Intel and Air Force WalMart where everybody is looking at and listening to everything and everybody and tagging it all for future use. US Constitutional Civil Rights and Privacy issues? Fuhgeddaboudit! Welcome to New Jersey.
Like magic there’s video feed of every plane that has taken off from Teterboro Airport for the past year. Want two years? Yeah – it’s possible. How bout’ an airplane that took off five years ago from Rocky Cross Airport in Bucks County, PA? Sure thing.
Tail numbers on planes, dates of departure, service histories, pilot manifests, pilot complaint logs – you name it, and these boys can get it. After Heinlein and Leeds study hundreds of hours of Teterboro Airport flight traffic, one plane stands out. A Brazilian Embraer short-hop jet taking off and returning on successive days this month, last month and the month before that. There’s something odd about its rear tail section – and the pilot looks swarthy. Swarthy, like in French swarthy. More footage is examined. More hours of digital images of this guy are assembled. Finally, a full-face image is complete enough for US Military computer recognition software keyed to CIA, FBI and NSA data banks to put a name to the man.
It’s Aleah al Sacrede.
French Aeronautical Engineer, Pilot and frequent traveler at Teterboro engaged in short-hop flights to Longport, Virginia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Always in the same plane. An Embraer Praetor 600 registered to OncoLogics of Bedminster, New Jersey – a research pharmaceutical start-up. And a contract research arm of NordPharma.
The plane is in the air right now. McGuire AFB dispatches an F-16 Air Force fighter plane to intercept it. Heinlein and Leeds watch in real time satellite coverage of the Fighter Jet closing in on the Embraer Praetor and signaling it to land. The Embraer’s wheels emerge from its fuselage within fifty nautical miles of Atlantic City Airport. It touches down without incident twenty-minutes later. Military MPs from McGuire AFB take the pilot away in restraints. The plane is impounded and installed in a secure hangar at Atlantic City Airport where US Air Force and NSA Agents start examining every inch of it – and especially the odd configuration of its rear vertical fin. Comparing the vertical stabilizer fin of this jet to Embraer blueprints from the Sao Paulo, Brazil Manufacturing facility that built the plane one year ago reveals a subtle anomaly – aerosolization ports custom installed into the fin superstructure by persons unknown.
Heinlein and Leeds consult with Simon Magus on the QT. Special phone. Encrypted. Deep Web interfaces. Onion layers of satellites. As confidential as can be.
The Master is decisive.
“Deliver him to a BratvaVarang hand-off in Nova Scotia. Halifax Stansfield CYHZ Airport – South Shore. Tonight. We’ll take him to Zurich – to the secret research facility where our captive NordPharma eggheads are working on reconstructing ASTRA and trying to piece together the Antidote. Forcing them to watch Vampyre “Interrogators” work on Aleah al Sacrede will serve two purposes: get us answers about where the stockpiled aerosolized ASTRA cache is – and provide inspiration to our researchers to put their best foot forward.
Watching Vampyres at work tends to sharpen an observer’s commitment to the task before them. When the Demons finish with al Sacrede, we’ll see amazing progress in Zurich. Vampyre motivation…it seldom fails. Tempus Fugit. Tick Tock…”
The hand-off and transfer in Nova Scotia go off without a hitch. Somewhere, off the English coastline, the BratvaVarang Gulstream G700, flying at Mach .935 (536 knots) executes a steep dive into a satellite coastal blind spot, precisely timed to block out NSA monitoring. It hugs the Atlantic waves until a bay surrounded by high cliffs opens up before them. Connaught Old Town. It’s an old pirate’s smuggling cove from the Seventeen Hundreds – the water is calm and waves are minimal.
The Gulfstream pilot expertly dumps the new 81 million Dollar aircraft into the cold North Atlantic water, landing it without killing everybody on board. He and two other ex-Spetsnaz compadres quickly inflate a raft, load their passenger on board and blow the plane to smithereens – just in time for an NSA satellite overpass to record a plane crash at that precise location.
By the time live feed of exploded, burning Gulfstream wreckage is being seen at Joint Base McGuire Headquarters, Aleah al Sacrede and three other men are in a Land Rover being driven deep into the English countryside towards their next rendezvous. They cross the English Channel in a small, beat-up fishing boat that’s seen better days. They’ll change vehicles and – and, ultimately, airplanes, three more times before they safely land at a secure (BratvaRus-owned) DHL packaging facility in Gstaad, Switzerland. Then, under cover of night, they’ll be sealed inside a steel Shipping Container and delivered by a nondescript commercial tractor trailer truck (Zucker Chocolade!) to the outskirts of Zurich. From there, it’s shoe leather until they get to the secret NordPharma research facility.
Like every operation Longinus plans, it’s complex and multi-faceted; multiple switchbacks and fail safes are his forte. Civilian-clad spotters monitor the operation at every step. The old fox has not lost his edge.
Zurich – NordPharma Secure Research Facility
1:00AM. Sub-Zero temperatures have once again gripped Switzerland. Some kind of “Polar Vortex” that’s dipping deep into the bowels of Europe and churning icy winds and back-to-back blizzards.
In the Captive Scientist’s barracks a howl erupts – a fire claxon shatters the nighttime silence and flashing red-yellow-and red again wall signal panels warn of some emergency.
“ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO MAIN AMPITHEATRE – ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO MAIN AMPITHEATRE. FIVE MINUTES. FIVE MINUTES. ROSTER SIGN-IN REQUIRED. ROSTER SIGN-IN REQUIRED. FIVE MINUTES. FIVE MINUTES”.
The scientists shuffle out of their sleeping quarters, foggy and exhausted from their daily work schedules. Their clothes are rumpled and disheveled. Hair is mussed, Beards are matted and greasy. They look like they haven’t washed in days.
As they enter the main amphitheater, they’re already muttering among themselves what this unannounced assembly could mean – have they reached the end of their usefulness? Are their lives about to be snuffed out? Their faces betray a lard-complexioned terror as their eyes squint and strain in the shadowy and murky lighting. It’s almost dark inside the large room – only a few overhead recessed lighting ballasts are illuminated, and even those are dialed up to barely half-power on the adjustable rheostatic wall switches.
“PLEASE BE SEATED. MOVE ALONG, PLEASE. YOU MUST BE SEATED WITHIN FIVE MINUTES”.
Finally, everyone is sitting down. One particularly outraged and mouthy scientist makes his feelings known in a stage whisper everyone can hear.
“This is like the Nazis herding us in here and announcing we will all be taking showers….”
A weak light just barely illuminates the dais in front of the room. Standing in the center is an extraordinarily tall man in a full length cloak, cape and hood ensemble. His face is almost completely shrouded. Two shadows move closer to him from the dark sides of the elevated platform. They, too, are clad in a similar combined cloak, cape and hood garment. The beings are dressed completely in black – which makes it even more difficult to make sense of their proportions or facial features in the dim gloom that permeates the place.
They move aside and reveal a man strapped to a chair in their midst. He’s naked and obviously bleeding – from somewhere.
The tall entity starts saying words – uttering them, at first, then forcing them out as if each syllable causes physical pain. Under his hood at his neckline and just above where his cape is fastened together there’s a suggestion of a deformed jaw and mouth with large protrusions behind his lips. These “prognathian” structures are huge, almost megalithic – they are canine teeth pointed upward like medieval spears. His voice is gravelly, viscous and soon wafting its way throughout the room, penetrating everywhere on a wave of feculent stink.
“I AM VAMPYRE ARCHON ALIUS. YOU WILL TONIGHT OBSERVE THIS MAN SHARE SECRETS THAT HE PREFERS TO KEEP HIDDEN. WATCH CAREFULLY BECAUSE EACH ONE OF YOU MAY SOON BEFALL A SIMILAR FATE”.
The tall Vampyre pushes forward the man strapped to the chair, facing him to the learned audience.
He’s bleeding from his eye sockets. Eyeballs dangle down his cheeks by his optic nerves. Each eyeball has been squeezed and collapsed. Crushed like grapes. Blood runs down his jaw from inside his mouth. His teeth are gone. What appears to be a cap on his head – in the weak light – is nothing more than skull bone devoid of flesh and hairline. The top of his head has been trepanned – scalped – down to his cranium’s white osseus crown. He’s moaning. Coughing and spitting up large blood clots, waving his head from side to side saying one phrase over and over.
“I DON’T KNOW….I DON’T KNOW….I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING…”
The tall Vampyre continues his fractured speech and nauseating erudition.
“YOU RECEIVED THREE MILLION DOLLARS US FROM ISLE SONNERLUND TO PREPARE AIRPLANES TO DISBURSE AEROSOLIZED ASTRA VIRUS. TELL US WHERE THE AEROSOLIZED VIRUS IS NOW STORED. TELL US WHERE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DISBURSE IT AND WHEN. ANSWER MY QUESTIONS BEFORE I DISMANTLE YOU PIECE BY PIECE”.
The other shadowy figures move in and around the seated victim. One reaches down and violently castrates him with a hooked knife. He throws the bloody pieces of genitalia into the audience. They scream in terror and revulsion.
Another commences to flay him alive using a box razor. The man screams uncontrollably as the Vampyres hold his head still and rip long strips of epidermis off his neck and chest, peeling him like a large bloody orange. These pieces of flesh they also cast into the audience.
The amphitheater is now filled with muffled screams and people passing out, hanging over chairs or falling onto floors. Those that are still aware are so overwhelmed with dread and abject horror that they start babbling and drooling. People start to soil themselves as they lose control of their bowels. The smell from this entire scene is overwhelming. Blood is leaking and splattering everywhere.
The flaying continues. The victim keeps screaming. Soon the ligaments and viscera of his entire right arm are exposed. Then the left arm. More flesh is hurled into the audience. White shoulder bones poke through – and a Vampyre actually reaches inside his neck and crimps off his jugular vein at intervals to toy with him.
The tall Vampyre rams his hand into the victim’s chest cavity and with an audible CRACK snaps off a rib. Another Vampyre leans over and starts to deglove the victim’s right foot. He completes his operation with practiced ease and flips the jagged “boot” away like garbage. It collides with a scientists’ face, who promptly faints dead away, slumping forward into a woman seated in front of him. Her right eye is smeared with crimson sludge by the guy’s face. She instinctively wipes her eye, then looks at her hand and spontaneously vomits. Screams continue like uncontrollable body spasms in people who cannot cope with the reality they’re caught up in.
Finally, the tormentors stop in unison. Three words are spoken by the victim that can barely be heard.
“I WILL TELL YOU……PLEASE……PLEASE, NO MORE!”
The tall Vampyre looks out over the chaos that has enveloped the amphitheater. He speaks one last time.
“THIS CONCLUDES YOUR ENTERTAINMENT FOR TODAY. NOW GET TO WORK AND SUCCEED – OR YOU ALL WILL SOON BE ON THIS DAIS RECEIVING OUR LOVING MINISTRATIONS”.
Copyright 2026, Jon Croft
www.bogironslav.com
Email: vlchek1@gmail.com
