The Nightmare Unleashed

by J. J. Carlson

  Daron frowned. He took a cautious step toward his desk and lifted the phone from its cradle. “Hello?”

  There was a brief lag as the signal traveled to a communications satellite, connected with Eugene’s phone, and traveled back. “Hey, Daron, it’s me.”

  Daron glanced at the nightstand. “Eugene? It’s not really a good time.”

  “It never is for workaholics,” Eugene said. “But after what I’ve been through, I feel like you owe me a couple of minutes.”

  Daron clenched the phone tighter. “How did you get this number?”

  “Oh my gosh it was brutal. I had to talk to at least a thousand people, answer fifty different security questions, solve a Rubik’s Cube, donate a blood sample, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance backwards. Twice.”

  Daron closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Listen, Gene, I’m not in the mood for games. What do you want?”

  Eugene fell silent for several moments. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its trademark playfulness. “Janson told me the role you had in, uh, digging me out of that hole. We have our differences, and we haven’t always gotten along, but I want you to know I’m grateful.”

  Daron didn’t speak, so Eugene continued, “I joke around and act like nothing gets to me, but down there with those people…I was scared. They were going to do something terrible to me. There aren’t many things worse than death, but you saved me from one of them.”

  Daron’s throat tightened. He took a deep breath and tried to keep his voice level. “I’m glad you made it out. And thanks for calling, but I really need to—”

  “We’re over the Atlantic,” Eugene cut in, “should be there in a few hours.”

  “Alright. Have a safe flight. We’ll have someone pick you up at Andrews.”

  Eugene paused, then lowered his voice, “Daron there’s more to this than we let on during our initial debrief. A lot more.”

  Daron’s response was hollow. “Okay, sure.”

  “It’s Emily. She’s alive.”

  The ground seemed to shake beneath Daron’s feet. He steadied himself and pinched his eyes shut. “Say that again?”

  “She’s alive. Jarrod helped her escape.”

  None of this was making sense, and Daron cursed himself for drinking so much liquor. “Why would he do that?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I think she might be pregnant.”

  Daron’s shoulders sagged. This was typical Jarrod bullshit—to spare a woman who’d killed dozens, maybe hundreds of innocent people just because she’s pregnant. “Alright. Thank you for telling me.”

  “And Daron?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Daron hesitated. “About what?”

  A tormented thickness entered Eugene’s voice. “I’m sorry about Trent. I know you two were close, and I’ll never be able to repay the sacrifices he and the other team members made.”

  Daron clenched his teeth and squeezed the tears from his eyes. He tried to think of the words Eugene might want to hear, but his mind felt like a giant knot. Finally, he said, “Goodbye, Gene,” and hung up the phone.

  Pushing away from the desk, he stumbled to the bed and sat on the mattress. He propped his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his hands. The tears streamed down his calloused palms and ran down his wrists. Everything he thought he knew just a few minutes before had been blown straight to hell. His emotions raged like a pair of ancient armies, and a loud sob escaped his lips. He glanced at the nightstand through blurry eyes, then knocked the pills and pistol onto the floor.

  44

  Arlington National Cemetery

  Arlington, Virginia

  The explosion shook the air, and Santiago Torres couldn’t help but flinch. Moments later, the guns fired again. San plugged his ears and breathed in the scent of gunpowder.

  Though they were technically civilian contractors, Trent and CJ had been given a funeral with full military honors, and the families gathered at Arlington National Cemetery to pay their respects. Hillcrest staff members, including scientists and the wounded members of the rescue team, stood behind the families and watched the twenty-one-gun salute.

  With his fingers in his ears, San searched the crowd. Everyone was present except Daron Keeler. San hadn’t seen him in days, not since the night Katharos fell. He’d assumed the big man had chosen to grieve alone, but he was starting to wonder if Daron was okay.

  The guns stopped, and a single bugler began to play taps. The crowd grew still at the sound of the long, somber notes, and some of the family members began to cry fresh tears. When the song ended, a stone-faced man in a pristine uniform asked the families to take their seats. Brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents settled into rows of aluminum folding chairs. When everyone was seated and the noise died down, the Casket Leaders and two other members of the Honor Guard began to fold a pair of bright American flags, tucking the triangular folds with mechanical precision. When they finished, they pressed the starry triangles into the chests of two awaiting officers and saluted. The officers returned the salute, dismissing the Honor Guard.

  The Honor Guard marched away, their arms and legs perfectly synchronized. When they disappeared behind an awaiting hearse, the officers stepped forward and presented the folded flags to the next-of-kin. CJ’s mother accepted one flag, and Nicole Hersch—supporting herself with a pair of crutches—accepted the other. The women voiced their thanks and shakily returned to their seats.

  A military chaplain approached the microphone. He thanked everyone for coming and led the assembly in a prayer. San bowed his head and closed his eyes, then flinched as someone started whispering in his ear.

  “Mr. Torres, could you please come with me?”

  San turned to see who it was, and the look of irritation on his face vanished. “Y—yes sir,” he stammered. He followed the gray-haired man away from the crowd and into the shade of a gnarled oak tree. A quartet of Secret Service guards appeared, then formed a wall around San and the Director of National Intelligence.

  “I take it you know who I am,” the elderly spymaster said.

  San smiled. “Your picture is on the wall in Hillcrest, Mr. Buchanan. You used to be...” He stared up at the tree branches. “My boss’s boss’s boss.”

  The man gave a wry grin. “That’s right. And if you accept my proposal, I’ll just be your boss. Would you mind following me to my limo?”

  San blinked. “Of course, sir.”

  Lyle Buchanan waved a wrinkled hand. “Don’t worry about the ‘sir.’ Please, come with me.”

  The Secret Service agents led the way across the serene, tree-lined cemetery to a row of parked cars. The guard in front opened the door for the DNI, then strode around the vehicle to open the door for San.

  San settled into the plush leather seat, feeling more than a little intimidated.

  Buchanan pressed a button on his armrest, and a whirring sound emanated from the trunk. “There,” he said, “now we can speak openly and frankly. Mr. Torres, do you have any suspicions about why I asked you here?”

  San shook his head. “No sir. But I can only assume it has something to do with my work at Hillcrest.”

  “You are correct. And I know you are intimately familiar with the…difficulties Daron Keeler has had over the past few months. Tell me, do you know where he is right now?”

  San shrugged, and his eyebrows knitted with concern. “No. Why, is he in trouble?”

  The Director of National Intelligence took a deep breath. “He probably would be, if he didn’t have me to cover his back. Daron is on a jet, headed to Moscow as we speak. He has resigned his position at Hillcrest and has been reassigned to field work.”

  “With whom?”

  “No one.” Buchanan intertwined his fingers and looked down at his hands. “Daron will never lead a team again. At least, not for the U.S. Government. The full scope of his actions has become clear to me, and I can’t adequately describe my
disappointment. However, he has foreign contacts and intelligence sources that are irreplaceable. For the time being, his sole responsibility will be to work with these contacts to track down Emily Roberts.”

  San blanched. “Emily is…alive?”

  Buchanan studied San’s face for a moment, then grinned. “They haven’t told you, then? That’s a good thing; it speaks to the discretion of the people you’ll be working with.”

  Shaking his head, San said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. Whom will I be working with? And in what way?”

  “My apologies, I’m getting ahead of myself.” He opened a tiny refrigerator near his feet and pulled out a crystal tumbler. “Care for a drink?”

  San respectfully declined, and Buchanan poured himself three fingers of Scotch. He swirled the dark spirit in the tumbler, then took a sip.

  “San, the future has arrived sooner than any of us expected. The first domino tipped the moment Emily fled the country with Project Lateralis. Since then, we’ve been scrambling to keep up.” He took another sip. “And we’ve been failing miserably. Our only saving grace has been the actions of a lone vigilante you know as Jarrod Hawkins. And he’s finally leveled the playing field.”

  “What do you mean? I thought the fight was over. Katharos is gone, isn’t it?”

  “They’ve been dealt a fatal blow,” the DNI admitted, “but we haven’t finished them off. Not yet. There are several hundred agents still out there, all of them united by a singular cause. We don’t know what their capabilities are, and we don’t know where they are.”

  Buchanan shook his head and swatted at an imaginary gnat. “I’m getting off track again. You’re here, Mr. Torres, because of your leadership potential.”

  San chuckled, then flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m an engineer, a scientist, or maybe a physician, but I’m no leader.”

  “Your operatives seem to disagree. I asked for command recommendations from Agent Janson, Agent Ford, Eugene Carver, and the entire Hillcrest Security Team. They only gave me one name: yours.”

  “But…I don’t know anything about military strategy or undercover operations.”

  Buchanan patted San on the knee. “That’s what you have me for. And don’t forget, our last black-ops commander was a retired marine and spymaster himself. It’s not your brain I’m after, Mr. Torres, it’s your heart. We have the most skilled and best-equipped team in the world, and they need moral guidance.”

  San blushed again, this time in humility. “I…I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say yes,” Buchanan said. He reached past San and opened the door. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours to think about it.”

  San stepped out of the limousine and bent over to look inside. “How will I get ahold of you?”

  “Use your phone,” Buchanan said, as if the answer was obvious.

  San smiled and shook his head. “No, I mean, which number do I dial?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Buchanan grasped the door handle. “I look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Torres.”

  With that, the Director of National Intelligence pulled the insulated, bullet-proof door shut.

  45

  Wellsboro, Pennsylvania

  Compared to evading the all-seeing eyes of Katharos, hiding from the NSA had been simple. With enough cash and the right official documents, Audrey could do anything, be anyone. She had rented a car under one alias, booked a cheap hotel with another, and accessed the U.S. Immigration Records database with a third. The false identities had been digitally created by one of Emily Roberts’s supercomputers, and though it appeared the supercomputers had been destroyed, the identities remained intact.

  Audrey sat on a twin-sized bed with her legs crossed. She sipped a mimosa with one hand while she copied names and addresses from the federal database with the other. She entered a command into a spreadsheet and instantly compared the names to known aliases of Katharos agents. The results came back with more than five hundred agents that had traveled to the United States within the past year.

  Leaning over, she set the mimosa on the floor, then rested both hands on her laptop. She copied the addresses into a global map program and sorted them by distance from her hotel in northern Pennsylvania. There were two dozen agents with official addresses less than fifty miles away. The agents would never have remained at the address listed with the immigration office, but they would be somewhere nearby.

  Next, she needed to find out which, if any, of the agents were still alive. Retrieving her mimosa, she began the tedious process of searching obituaries. She crossed every dead agent off the list until she was down to just three names. Her eyes narrowed at the last alias, and she brought up the spreadsheet. She typed the name into a search box and pulled up the agent’s details.

  A smile spread across her face. It wasn’t an agent at all. It was someone much, much higher in the chain of command. Or at least, he was.

  Lukas Woodfall, she thought, how the hell did you end up here?

  A plan began to form in her mind, and she slammed the laptop shut. She stuffed it into a backpack, then packed the rest of her belongings and walked out the door. After loading everything into her rental car, she started the engine and pulled onto the street. She held down a button on her phone and said, “Search for universities near Mansfield, Pennsylvania.”

  The phone responded a moment later with an address for the Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and asked if she would like to navigate to it. She tapped “yes,” then set the phone aside. She had no doubt she could find Lukas Woodfall, and probably before sunset, too. In an age when private investigators and law enforcement officials used technology almost exclusively to track a missing person, Audrey stood apart. She relied on one key fact when stalking her prey: humans are predictable.

  Lukas Woodfall was a man of science and ambition. He craved power and knowledge equally, but some twist of fate had landed him at a field position in the United States. Audrey knew his general location from the Immigration Records database, but his actual residence would be a Katharos safehouse, which she had no hope of finding. In order to track him down, she needed to catch him outside the safehouse. Her first idea had been to search the nearest university for someone Lukas could relate to. Cut off from Katharos, he had been thrust into a world of simpletons and would crave conversation with someone who “spoke his language.” But he couldn’t travel to a prestigious Ivy-League university; as a field agent, Lukas would need to be at his safehouse for check-ins. This left one possibility—the Mansfield University of Pennsylvania.

  She traveled east on U.S. Route 6 from Wellsboro to the quaint town of Mansfield, then turned left onto College Avenue. She stopped in the visitor parking area long enough to search the university website, then put the car in gear. She drove past the sprawling Mansfield University Library and navigated toward the green copper dome of the Grant Science Center. Tapping the brakes, she crept past the building until she reached the staff parking lot. She pulled into a space that faced the street, then got out and made her way to the nearest entrance. She followed the signs to the faculty offices and flashed a bright smile at the receptionist.

  “Can I help you?” the young woman behind the desk asked.

  “I’m not sure…” Audrey said, trying to sound flustered. “I’m actually looking for an old friend.”

  “What’s his name? I can check the directory to see if he’s listed.”

  Audrey squinted one eye a little. “Well, he doesn’t actually work here. But I heard he comes to visit from time to time. His name is—” She stopped, shook her head, and tapped her phone. “Never mind, it might be easier if I just show you a picture.”

  The receptionist took the phone and studied the photo, and her face lit up. “Oh, you mean Doctor Hodgkin. Yes, he comes in here a couple times a week, but I haven’t seen him today.”

  “That’s too bad,” Audrey said, taking her phone back and glancing at the screen. “You see, I
lost his contact information a few years back, and I’m in town for a seminar. I thought it’d be nice to say hello.”

  The receptionist thought for a moment, then stood and waved for Audrey to follow. “I’ll introduce you to Doctor Stephens. He’s the chairman of our department, and he usually spends his lunch hour with Doctor Hodgkin.” She paused next to a door and knocked softly, then opened it a crack. “Doctor Stephens, I have a friend of Doctor Hodgkin here. Do you have a moment?”

  “By all means,” the man said.

  The receptionist opened the door, and Audrey stepped inside. She extended her hand and said, “Good afternoon. I’m Doctor Tiffany Benson from Princeton, and I’ve heard we have a mutual friend.”

  Stephens shook her hand and offered her a seat. “Indeed. Welcome, Doctor Benson.” The chairman’s eyes lingered on her low-cut shirt as she sat down. “Can I offer you something to drink?”

  “No, thank you. I won’t bother you for long.”

  The chairman grinned. “It’s no bother at all. What can I help you with?”

  Audrey crossed one leg over the other and didn’t bother to pull her skirt over her knee. “I spent a semester working with Doctor Hodgkin at the University of Cambridge. By chance, I heard he had moved to this area. I’m in town for a few days, and thought I’d look him up.”

  Stephens grinned. “Well, you came to the right place. Doctor Hodgkin and I have been joined at the hip for the last few weeks. He’s a brilliant man, and I’m fascinated by his theories in molecular biology.”

  Audrey nodded. “He has an inspiring mind. You wouldn’t happen to have his phone number, would you?”

  Stephens reached for his phone, then paused and glanced at his watch. “I can do better than a phone number. I don’t know if you’re free at the moment, but Hodge and I were going to meet at his house for dinner and chess. I could leave work a little early and take you to his place, if you’d like.”

  Woodfall, you idiot, Audrey thought. She smiled and said, “That would be wonderful.”