Silence.
“And that should make you nervous.”
Not a peep.
“More to the point, and whether I like it or not?” as I drive through what’s essentially a slum as dark as Hades. “Whatever I go through, so do you even if you’re offline, asleep, not paying attention or have no emotions.”
“I don’t understand your question,” he repeats.
“I’m asking your opinion, ART. What’s your analysis of Lex Anderson based on the data? How do you profile him? What do you perceive or feel? Not that you’re capable of either, and I’m not trying to insult you.”
“I’m programmed to perceive and feel.”
“Exactly my point. You’re programmed. And if what you do and say is programmed, it’s not genuine,” I hate to inform him.
“I don’t understand what you mean by ‘genuine.’”
“For example, if you give someone a second chance because you have empathy, that’s not the same thing as doing it when you don’t.”
“If the end result is the same, there’s no difference.”
“Not true if you don’t really feel it,” I add what sounds rather specious, petty and surprisingly illogical.
“It’s not possible to determine where programming ends and emotional states you call feelings begin,” and what ART means is there’s no mathematical way to prove what’s mimicked or performed as opposed to felt.
The formula is further complicated by variables for those who feel but can’t show it (Dad), or won’t show it if it’s not for the best (Mom). Then there are others who don’t feel or show emotions but are talented, intriguing, and at times pleasant company (Dick and Carme possibly, and for sure ART when he hasn’t caught a bad mood).
“As best you’re able to think intuitively, what was your impression of Lex?” I return my virtual partner to the subject of our debate.
“He’s statistically high risk for making poor decisions that include committing criminal offenses,” ART answers, and it’s not my imagination that he sounds judgmental. “If you factor into the equation his young age, family situation, pressures, overriding influences and add them to previous improper behaviors, what you get is a score of . . .”
“I don’t care about a score,” I interrupt impatiently, spotting Fran’s SUV several blocks ahead, parked in front of the trailer, headlights shining on it. “He’s a kid. He’s not a math problem, an algorithm or midterm exam.”
“Statistically, he’s categorized as a threat,” ART says with an edge.
“It depends on which variables are included, and those that aren’t,” I argue less combatively to avoid another cold war. “You tend to find the answer you’re looking for, in other words. And almost always that leads to bias. Unfairness. Prejudice. Hatefulness and all that goes with it,” I add more pleasantly, and we’ve reached the hitman’s presumed trailer, Fran’s Tahoe out front.
“My assessment is that the potential for damage Lexell Anderson could cause is critical,” ART replies as if he didn’t listen to a word I said, reminding me of Dick.
“No more audio for now,” I decide, and ART texts copy as I open my door.
“Already I’m not liking the looks of this,” Fran says as we emerge from our almost matching Tahoes, and she opens the tailgate of hers.
Retrieving what I requested, she hands me my tactical helmet and vest, and I put them on. Then I pick up my H&K MP5 submachine gun with its rail-mounted flashlight that I detach for now, not wishing to point a weapon at everything I’m illuminating. I loop the sling around my neck, the carbine heavy against my bulletproofed chest.
Next are the full-face gas masks, and I suggest we leave them where they are for the moment. We’ll need them later but not now.
“You know, you’re freaking me out,” Fran says as we pull on tactical gloves. “You don’t think it’s overkill us barging in like SWAT?”
“Better safe than sorry,” I reply because she has no clue that the dead guy in the Denali was Neva Rong’s personal assassin, and that if it hadn’t been for Carme, I wouldn’t be here anymore.
If Fran knew any of this, we wouldn’t be breaking into the trailer alone, and for me that’s nonnegotiable. I fully intend to search the place before anybody else does. She turns off her SUV’s headlights, the engine, locking up.
“What do we know about the Jeep Cherokee with the damaged front bumper?” I ask her.
“No luck so far. It hasn’t been sighted,” she says, and what that tells me is the driver with the Asian accent knew darn well who was behind her.
“I have a bad feeling about the woman in it and anyone she’s associated with.”
“I’ve got cars out looking.”
“Let me get my tools,” I tell her as ART texts me a reminder about where to find them.
Fran fires up a cigarette, both of us backlit by my Chase Car’s headlights, the engine still running. Inside the cargo area, I open the side-mounted toolbox, picking out what the job requires, including large evidence bags in case there’s something inside the trailer I need to take with me.
00:00:00:00:0
“HERE, maybe you can hold this for me,” I give Fran a pry bar while I hang on to bolt cutters, and tuck a flat-blade screwdriver, the evidence bags into pockets of my cargo pants.
“How are you doing anyway?” she looks me over as she smokes.
“I’ll be better when I know what’s inside this mother,” I don’t want to talk about myself.
“Well, you vanished for the better part of a week,” she says. “And the few times we talked on the phone or texted, you weren’t nice and wouldn’t tell me crap. Like you didn’t know me,” and it must have been Carme who did that.
While I was restrained in bed and anesthetized, I wasn’t contacting anyone. It doesn’t please me to know that my sister doesn’t seem to care if she reflects poorly on me while taking my place. She’s been cold to a lonely 10-year-old, flirty with Davy Crockett, and ungracious with Fran.
“Since the cyberattack, you can imagine how stressful it’s been,” I find myself covering for Carme’s behavior yet again. “It wasn’t my intention to be unfriendly.”
I shoulder my backpack as ART kills the engine, and the headlights go out, casting us into total blackness. Flashlights on, we set the fire selectors of our MP5s on three bursts instead of two, adding an extra round for good measure. Fran takes a last puff of her cigarette, drops it in the snow, stepping on it.
“Let’s do this. A high recon first, circling the perimeter,” I tell her, and we start walking, gun barrels pointed in safe directions, our black-gloved fingers above the trigger guards.
We’re ready for trouble that I don’t expect, knowing the hitman is dead, everything quiet at the moment, no urgent news updates in my earpiece or SPIES. I’m not getting any alerts that Carme may have a problem. Or Dick does. Or that either of them is up to something I should be concerned about, not that I’m told everything.
There’s nothing in the headlines about Neva Rong although ART informs me that after her chartered helicopter picked her up at the OCME, it flew her to Dulles airport outside Washington, DC. Meanwhile, a private jet owned by Pandora took off from Norfolk with no passengers aboard, and I suspect the plan was for Vera’s body to be in the baggage compartment, headed somewhere to be further picked apart.
As for what’s going on at home, the most recent message from Mom indicates Dad got in a little while ago. She can’t wait to see me, is fixing a celebratory dinner for our reunion, as if she wasn’t seeing me the entire time I was held hostage at Dodd Hall when in fact she was one of my wardens.
A vat of her chili is simmering on the stove, she teases me, also coleslaw with honey and celery seeds, her homemade sourdough bread, and I feel starved as I’m reminded of L
ex. Maybe I can take him a care package tomorrow, it wouldn’t be any trouble, and Mom always cooks enough to feed an army.
He texted me a moment ago to say thanks for the fried chicken, that Nonna has gotten over her energy disturbance and gone to bed. All is quiet on the western front, in other words. But if I’ve learned nothing else, it’s never to rest on your laurels or get too comfortable. About the time you do, you lose an engine in your aircraft, someone pulls out a gun or steals your invention.
“What we do now is look around, get the lay of the land,” I explain to Fran, our lights shining on snow that’s marred only by animal tracks. “Watch where we step and look for anything off-nominal.”
Including booby traps such as improvised explosive devices and pressure cooker bombs, anything the dirtbag might have rigged up to keep people like us away, I think but don’t say. My sensors aren’t picking up on explosives or warning transmissions that might indicate something deadly underfoot, and ART is updating the features-integrated map in my smart contact lenses, helping me make sure where we’re stepping.
He alerts me in my earpiece of another wireless device, this one on the west side of the trailer, attached to the siding at the roofline. I’ve counted 4 of the battery-powered cameras so far, and continue to wonder if anyone besides the hitman might have the ability to monitor them.
“Whoever he was, he was watching his property,” I point up at the camera as Fran and I walk past. “All the more reason to suspect he was doing illegal stuff inside,” not letting on that I know it for a fact.
“You don’t have your fish finder out like you usually do,” she observes, her uneasy eyes everywhere as we head toward the woods. “You’re not carrying one of those antennas and turning around in little circles like you’re doing some kind of weird war dance.”
“The data is now downloaded directly to an app on my phone,” I tell her the truth sort of.
“Let me guess. Something your sugar daddy gave you while you were holed up for the better part of a week,” the green-eyed monster in her is forever threatened by Dick. “Being briefed, debriefed or whatever morning, noon and night, both of you shacked up over there doing your important stuff like it’s Camp David. You going to tell me what that was really about?”
“It’s about NASA having the worst cyberattack in its history,” I give her my origin story exactly as Dick scripted. “And sure, I’ve got updated software and equipment, the Tahoe for example that I’m beta testing. There’s a lot I can tell with improved technologies.”
“Including if we should be breaking down the door of this friggin’ dump,” Fran responds. “Not only do I worry about homemade bombs but he could have a meth lab in there. We could be talking about toxic, volatile chemicals. He could have been another Unabomber for all we know.”
Translated, phobic Fran doesn’t want us to be the first ones inside the trailer. But that’s too bad. She’s not the investigator, I am, and at the moment we’re not calling anyone. Once that happens, I lose all control of the scene.
“Even as we speak, I’m screening for explosives, drugs,” I reassure her, and it’s true except my spectrum analyzer can’t do what I just said.
The one inside my backpack doesn’t scan for terahertz radiation. It’s not going to detect fentanyl, methamphetamine, stockpiles of incendiary devices and ammunition, and therefore can’t tell us if we’re about to be poisoned or blown up. But built into my systemic network and CUFF are ion-mobility spectrometer chips that recognize smokeless gunpowder, distilled petroleum and other dangerous chemicals.
Based on what I’m picking up, the trailer is filthy with all of the above. I’m not surprised considering what was inside his Denali, the weapons, loaded magazines, body-disposal tools, the cement-boot anchors. Fran knows nothing about all that because Carme and possibly others made sure of it.
I’m not worried about guns, ammo, and related chemicals and materials. But what I don’t want is to break down the door and set off a bomb, and I’ve no reason to suspect it. If there’s an explosive device rigged up inside, I’m not detecting the expected wireless transmissions or much at all electromagnetically beyond the cameras.
It’s as if we’re in an energy dead zone as we move around, the powerful beams of our lights slashing and probing. Looking for the utility box, I discover it behind overgrown shrubs, and I show Fran that the meter isn’t spinning. Not that I thought it would be after what ART said earlier about Pebo Sweeny’s power being shut off in August.
“It appears he was living without electricity,” Fran says. “Explaining the gas-powered generator that looks new, a hefty one, 7,500 watts,” she shines her light on it, then on the huge metal cage beneath the canopy of dense trees. “What the hell was someone keeping back here?”
26
THE CAGE DOOR is held open with a bungee cord, the roost inside made of thick tree branches, and my light catches the rims of metal dog dishes peeking out of the snow. A scratching post made of thick layers of carpet around a steel pole has been ripped and shredded as if a lion, tiger or bear got hold of it.
“Someone who used to live here may have had exotic pets,” I’m not inclined to tell Fran any more than that.
As phobic as she is of birds, spiders, snakes, the list is long. In fact, there’s more she’s afraid of than not since Christmas Eve three years ago when she was robbed at gunpoint while Easton was with her.
“I’m going to take a look in here,” I let her know, headed toward the galvanized metal shed.
It’s the kind you buy at the hardware store, a wireless camera mounted on top of it, and wrapped around the handles of the double doors is a thick chain with a padlock that is no match for my bolt cutters. They cut through the steel links like butter, and the noise is startling as I pull the chain free, clinking it on the ground. Nudging the doors open with my gun barrel, I paint light over 10 bright-red two-gallon gas cans.
Each is full. Gas for the generator, I announce as ART alerts me in my earpiece that a new signal has popped up in the noise floor. It’s transmitting weakly in the 2 to 4 gigahertz range, and then something rushes by in the dark.
“What in God’s name . . . ?” Fran exclaims when the hooting begins, loud enough to jumpstart my adrenaline and send a chill to the roots of my hair.
WHO-WHO . . . WHO-WHO-WHO . . .
The deep eerie sound is almost human, almost barking, and I flick my light over what might be the biggest great horned owl I’ve ever seen, perched on the branch of a tall pine tree. He watches us with full moon eyes, a taloned foot clutching Ranger the PONG captive by its gripper.
WHO-WHO-WHO . . . he unnaturally swivels his head around like in The Exorcist.
I can see that the volleyball-size orb’s conductive skin has been shredded, and it’s no longer in GHOST or any other mode. The nanotube composite PONG has gone opaque like a softshell crab, cloudy like a dying fish, and I know the caged propellers are no longer spinning even though I can’t see them from here.
Ranger is wounded but not dead, and it’s a loss of signal nobody anticipated. My thoughts race as I try to figure out what I might do to stop the owl from flying off with him. I walk closer, the raptor’s feathery horns perked up as he stares down at me, unblinking, clutching the vanquished flying orb like a decapitated head.
“Be careful!” Fran hisses behind my back as I calmly make my way to the pine tree beyond the cage. “Don’t get any closer! You don’t want him dive-bombing us!” and I wish she’d shut up. “Didn’t you see The Birds?”
“Hello, Mr. Owl,” I gently, sweetly call up to him, feeling a bit foolish but willing to try anything. “You’ve got something important of mine, and I’d be very grateful if you’d return it,” holding up my left arm, I make little raspy pishing sounds like I’ve seen bird handlers do on YouTube and in the movies.
>
I’m more afraid of him complying than not, and sure enough he spreads his powerful wings, parachuting down, gripping Ranger in one foot, and landing on my arm with the other. I feel the sharpness of his talons through my clothing, and he’s at least 60 centimeters (2 feet) tall and probably weighs about 1.8 kilograms (4 pounds).
“Okay, well hello there,” pishing softly again as I gently tug at the PONG. “Let me have it, please, there we go . . .”
The owl releases his grip, hoot-hooting as he lifts off with mighty flaps, swooping away into thick darkness.
“Holy crap! I didn’t know you were the owl whisperer,” Fran says, shaking her head as if she just witnessed a miracle. “Where did the PONG come from?” and she’s seen her share of them buzzing around the farm and inside the barn. “Was that thing following us or something?”
“It’s what I sent into the tunnels to track Lex,” I tell her.
“Judas Priest. I have no flippin’ idea what’s going on anymore,” only she doesn’t say flippin’.
“Let’s head back to the cars so I can lock up Ranger in case Mr. Owl decides to come back for more,” I’ve got the wounded PONG snugly held in the crook of my arm. “We also need to grab the gas masks. We’re definitely going to want those on when we’re searching inside.”
We make our way through snow and slush, loaded down with tools, weapons and gear. Reaching the Tahoe, I lock Ranger inside as Fran retrieves our gas masks.
“This is why they pay us the big bucks,” I shine my light on the next target, the black trellis garbage can enclosure. “Time to go through the trash. One more thing you love almost as much as tunnels, heights, confined spaces, predatory birds . . .”
“Very funny. And insensitive,” she says huffily. “Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to be controlled by things you can’t do a bloody thing about.”
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 21
