THE GENERAL'S QUARTERS

On getting there, he found two navy soldiers clad in white uniform at the entrance of the tent. One of them nudged the other when he discovered that the colonel was approaching the tent and quickly saluted before his companion could react in time to pay his significant respect to him.

"Don't bother about it, fella"

The colonel said when he saw that the young man had failed to follow his companion who did it first before he could.

"Forgive me affront, sir"

"Don't mention it. There's no need to apologize"

"Alright, sir if you say so"

"Good lad"

The colonel said patting the shoulders of the two men with a friendly smile across the face that eased tension around them.

"Thank you, sir"

"No worries. Is the Admiral inside? I heard he came to pay a visit"

"Yes's he is inside with the General and we were ordered to wait outside"

"I guess it must be something important that he wants to discuss"

"That's right, sir"

The taller soldier responded.

"Hmm. Alright, boys. Keep to your post",

"With all pleasure, sir"

"Right this way"

The middle-weight soldier replied swinging open the door that led inside the tent while the colonel walked inside leaving the two navy soldiers behind at their post and saluted immediately his eyes fell on the General as well as the Admiral sitting on a garnet couch by the left side of the strait room which the tent provided for the General to use as his main office for relaying orders to the rest of the troops while the General himself was seated behind a furnished desk with his head near a fairly large opening on the walls of the tent which served as the window and the only source of light for the fairly dark room. His attention was first arrested by that of the Admiral's natty white uniform decorated with medals he was awarded for his brevity in the navy and the fancy ribbon attached to his left chest from his left shoulder. o

"Greetings, Admiral Jones"

"You too, Colonel"

"At your command, General"

The colonel saluted after paying his respect to the visitor.

"Welcome, colonel Donald. How did the chase go?"

The General inquired and waved at the colonel to stop his salutations. The colonel obeyed and quickly took his seat beside the Admiral who shifted aside for him to seat down.

"It didn't go well as planned"

"Are you saying that he got away?"

"Unfortunately, yes. He did outran our trucks and managed to slip out of our fingers"

"Quite remarkable and disappointed"

"It is, sir. So, before we talk about solutions to solve this problems, I suggest we talk about why the Admiral came all the way here to the main base"

The colonel replied and succeeded in changing the topic of discussion.

"Should we, General?"

"It's fine with me if it pleases you for us to continue our discussion"

"Alright. I got limited time to spend here anyway, so, let's continue"

"Let's start with the message you got from the President"

"No, General. That'll be the last thing we'll discussed before I leave"

"Fine. Suit yourself"

The General sat upright and cleared his throat before placing his hands on the desk, clenching his palm in a form of fist. He was careful enough not to push aside any of the things that crowded his desk especially a container that housed three ball-pens while some files were neatly arranged at the left flank of the desk. It hadn't been a few years since he was installed as General of the arm forces particular a field marshal in charge of field operations in times of war and he had long knew the Admiral ever since they were recruited in the army many years ago before the colonel attained his rank much earlier than his forgotten comrades who have died in battles over the years. He adjusted his beret which was darkish green in color, a color more similar to the outfit of his greener uniform and fondled the edges of his thumb with his index finger. He looked at the colonel's expectant face as well as that of the Admiral who was anxiously waiting for him to resume their discussion which the colonel interrupted few minutes ago.

"Like I said before the colonel came in…..it was out of luck that the T9 program pushed through"

"How so, General?"

It was the colonel who asked, fixing his gaze on the centre of attraction.

"There were quite a few terrorist groups of Afghanistan and Iraq origin, who wanted the classified information for themselves"

"Terrorist are always a threat to every nation's security, How did they find out?"

"I'll come to that but first, you need to know some hurdles we had to overcome before we made the program a success"

"Perhaps, perpetrated by this terrorists you speak of"

"Yes, Admiral. At first, the project seemed impossible with many failed test from different angle but thanks to a German Scientist named Dr. Karl Brunswick, his breakthrough in his research on how to make the human skin cells impregnable and indestructible while retaining its flexibility achieved what seemed incredible to the team from the NAS agency and to the President himself"

"Let me get this straight...the NAS team in charge of the program didn't mention the involvement of a German Scientist, how on earth did this man do this without being authorized?"

"His profile and his existence was top secret and not all the team knew him actually"

"You mean he carried out the research alone?"

"Yes, he remarkably did"

"I'm sure that his location was also safeguarded as well"

"Of course, we had to keep him safe. He was an important asset to the program and we couldn't afford to lose him. In fact, the President personally ordered his entire research be done at an isolated camp in the jungle of the Amazon forest in South America"

"His work must have been highly valuable for the President to be involve"

"That's right, Admiral but we weren't the only ones who wanted to get their hands on his works"

"I sincerely believe that the Americans and Chinese had their eyes on him"

"Of course the world powers clearly showed interest in the project after the President discussed with trusted international bodies but far from all these other people, other terrorist groups also wanted to his experiments"

"Groups like?"

The Admiral questioned getting a bit more curious to know what the General had in mind.

"The Taliban forces from Iraq and other fewer related groups led by a notorious terrorist name Amar raq"

"Seems like we did have a lot of enemies"

"Yeah but this group led by Amar raq, specifically posed a greater threat to us than the Taliban forces. It was highly fortunate that our undercover agent gave us intel of their planned attack on the Dr. Brunswick secret hideout prior to their second unexpected attack. If he hadn't, we would have lost everything to them"

"This terrorist group sounds to be more dangerous in its operatives than the Taliban"

The colonel commented resting his back fully on the sofa.

"You are quite right there, colonel. According to the spy we had feeding us intel concerning their operations, they had sleeper cells in every continent and this same spy told us that they were trained with sophisticated weapons and to provide coded intelligence for their suicide bombers they have on the field"

"By sleeper cells, you mean…?"

"Highly trained terrorists that can make use of any combat weapons but are specifically ordered to keep a low profile and their identity a secret. They could be living near your home like normal neighbors but in actual fact, they are there to carry out deadly instructions from this secret organization. This same spy I mentioned earlier, was trained to become one and his insights on their activities greatly enhanced our knowledge on how they contacted each other in different countries around the globe but…."

"But what?"

"He was caught at the final stage of the undercover mission"

"That's terrible"

Colonel Donald remarked.

"It was indeed. Not only was he tortured severally, but a video recording of how they brutally killed him was sent to us"

"So unfortunate"

"It was a great loss but his findings helped us to curtail future dangers"

"Dangers that involves the T-9 program, I presume"

"Yes. It was through him that we got to know of their interest in building a bio-weapon similar to our own and that's when things got tougher for all of us especially their primary target—"

"Dr. Brunswick"

The Admiral rejoined.

"How they got to know about him we really don't know but he was the only one they wanted to work for them…."

Colonel Donald sneezed cutting the General short.

"Pardon me for intrusion, General. Please carry on"

He said wiping his thin nose with the handkerchief he took from his front pocket.

"As I was saying.., Dr Brunswick was the only researcher that had the means to get what they wanted"

"Sounds like he was going to help them succeed"

"Plausible. He sometime had intentions of sharing his research with them but our offer made him changed his mind"

"Of course. There must have been a bargain"

The Admiral retorted and shifted his hands from his thighs before placing it on the couch.