“Even if the subsurface is America’s subsurface?” Remo growled. “Even if the cave folks are nothing but inbred hillbillies who wandered into a cave during Civil War days and were too dumb to find their way out again?”
Mark shrugged.
“Can’t somebody do a test to prove they are inbred hillbillies, and not their own race?” Remo demanded irritably.
“Of course they can,” Smith said reasonably. “Their tests will include evidence that the Albinoids have no blood-grouping distinctions that signify racial uniqueness. What will it prove? Once Fastbinder riles the extremist antiracist, no scientific data will turn the tide.”
Remo glowered at the floor. “Yeah. If Jesse Jackson decides to throw his weight behind the Albinoid cause, no amount of facts or common sense is gonna shake him loose.”
Smith sighed. “What we need to keep in mind is that, if we reach the stage where Fastbinder goes public, it’s already too late. The U.S. would have an intransigent foe literally underfoot and no way of fighting him. It may be necessary to wipe out the subsurface dwellers before their existence becomes known.”
“You mean Fastbinder and his evil henchmen?” Remo demanded warily.
“I mean all of them. The entire subsurface population.”
“You’re talking genocide, Smitty.”
“A last resort, of course.”
‘It is not a resort at all. Forget about it.”
Smith looked squarely at the Reigning Master. “Remo, Albinoids have attacked and killed innocent human beings indiscriminately. I know it was Fastbinder who goaded them into it—”
“So we get Fastbinder.”
“Then what?”
Remo looked at Smith. “I finally get time off?”
“Then the cave people are unguided. They are without a controlling influence. They’ll be a continuing threat.”
“Maybe we’ll never hear from them again.”
“They have discovered treasures and endless food supplies aboveground,” Smith asked. “Quite frankly, the humans they’ve encountered haven’t put up much of a fight. What would keep them belowground when Fastbinder and his son are removed? Remember how difficult a time we had tracking al-Qaeda in the tunnels of Afghanistan? The Albinoids have a thousand times as much territory, maybe a hundred thousand. Tracking them will be impossible. No one who lives in the vicinity of their exits to the surface will be safe from their raids.” Smith allowed those words to settle. “We’ve made projections.”
Mark Howard brought out a printout of a United States map. He sketch a ragged border in pencil that included the entire southwestern states, up to the San Andreas fault, then east to the Mississippi River. “The subsurface system extends as far as this, roughly, from what we’ve ascertained from the raid patterns.”
“There’s not caves under all that,” Remo scoffed. “We don’t know where they are for sure,” Mark said. “If we had attacks on the same scale as the recent attacks, if they continued at only half the current frequency, then we’re looking at about two or three thousand dead every year. Our estimates, based on the suspected subterranean population, and the mounting savagery of their attacks show the average dead doubling by year’s end. We also believe our population count is low. We might be seeing much higher victim counts, on the level of five to ten thousand per year. The resulting panic would send populations fleeing toward the coasts and the major metropolitan areas.”
“Come on,” Remo said.
“Some states would likely be vacated. Kansas, Texas, New Mexico. Those who remained would be picked off or create autonomous military communities”
“Like in
“It’s happening already,” Dr. Smith said. “Kansas. A whole town emptied out in ten hours, but a local militia moved in and took over the buildings. White supremacists. They claimed to have formed the independent Nation of God Almighty. That was at noon today. This was taken from the NOGA Webcam at 3:00 p.m.”
Mark Howard’s next picture showed a lot of dead people, and one live albino, who was eating a cat. Well, after nothing but human for breakfast, lunch and dinner, day in and day out, who wouldn’t want a little variety in their victuals?
“They were gone before the National Guard arrived, but the NOGA militiamen were wiped out or missing. I think this illustrates that my projection of the future is not at all outlandish.”
Remo nodded. “Guess not.”
“If this continues, if the death toll rises, if they continue to pose an ongoing threat to the very existence of the United States,” Smith said, “then extermination is not out of the question.”
Remo stared at the photo. “You’re right Let’s just pull a Final Solution on ’em. Makes perfect sense.”
“It might make sense, eventually,” Smith said somberly.
The President didn’t ask for war. Not for this one, anyway. It came and got him.
The second invasion came at one o’clock in the morning, and it came silently, with the darkness, starting in Wichita.
