Twisted Cross by Maloney Mack

Author:Maloney, Mack [Maloney, Mack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480406704
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-04-24T16:54:00+00:00

Chapter 36

COLONEL FRANKEL HAD JUST finished his second cup of tea.

“So that’s the story, Colonel,” the High Commander was telling him. “We think that we may be able to make a deal with the United Americans and we think you’re the guy who can do the job.”

It had been a very strange few hours for Frankel. The High Commander, who Frankel thought looked like some pre-war American politician whose name escaped him, couldn’t have been more congenial to him. He had systematically laid out nothing less than the Twisted Cross’s entire strategic plan—from occupation of the Canal to the plundering of the ancient Mayan sites and everything in between, using several charts and an overhead projector to illustrate his talking points.

“It’s all business,” is what the High Commander had said to Frankel over and over. “The Canal, the revenues, the protection money we get from the surrounding countries, the gold recovery units out in the field. Even the gold panning operation. It all flows back to one thing: Business.”

Frankel hadn’t uttered a word once during the presentation. Instead he just sat back, amazed at the charts showing not only the Cross’s troop strengths, number of airplanes, tanks, gun emplacements, and SAM sites, but also projections for the organization’s expansion for the next year, the year after that, five years hence and a full decade in the future. By that time, the High Commander had made it quite clear that the Cross would be running the entire world.

A chart showing the Twisted Cross’s projected revenues for the next five years wrapped up the presentation.

“We hope that, five years we’ll have a gold reserve totaling one hundred and forty-one tons,” the High Commander told him. “It will be at that point that every working country in the world will have to deal with us. Not as manufacturers or agribusinessmen, but as the world’s financial brokers. When we control almost half the processed gold in the world, we’ll control how much the rest of the world’s gold is worth. So, Colonel Frankel, when you hear all this talk about ‘The Cause’ and ‘Our Cause,’ well, hell, now you know what we’re talking about.”

Frankel was still speechless.

“And if anyone gives us any static,” the High Commander went on. “And I mean at all, we come down on them like a ton of bricks. Because, along with our financial growth, we expect a simultaneous growth in our armed forces. If all goes according to the plan, the day we reach one hundred and forty-one tons, we will also have the world’s largest standing army. Am I going too fast for you?”

“No, sir…” Frankel said, by force of habit. “But if I may, where do the nuclear mines in the Canal come in?”

“Well, Frankel, they’re our ace in the hole, you see,” the High Commander answered. “They provide leverage. We want their existence to be the worst kept secret in the world. Get it? No one in this hemisphere will screw around with us if they know we’ve got this nuclear underwater capability thing.

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