“Change of plans,” General Stone quickly said to Lisa. “We need a change of plans.”
Lisa didn’t panic. She had anticipated something like this happening. She sent another ping to the Effort leader.
“You guys keep working,” he suddenly ordered in a sharp voice. “We only need one more rock and then we can get the hell out of this godforsaken place. We’ll take turns peeing and I’m going first. Anybody disagree?”
All the men grumbled, but eventually went back to scanning the ground while the leader turned and headed back towards the boulder.
As soon as the leader came around the corner, Kaley pounced. She leaped into the air and karate chopped the unsuspecting Effort leader on his right shoulder. The blow caused him to drop his machine gun. Before he could recover, she chopped him across his throat. The damaged windpipe prevented him from crying out a warning to the other men.
But he was big, strong, and very fit. He recovered quickly and pulled out a lethal looking serrated knife. He took a defensive stance and jabbed at Kaley. She kicked out with her foot as she anticipated where he would thrust it and the knife went sailing into the sand. Next he threw a left hook, but Kaley ducked before it connected.
“Who the hell are you?” Kurt Hunt demanded. It came out in a very weak and gravelly voice caused by Kaley’s throat hit.
“I’m everything you don’t want to see in a woman,” she spat back. “Do you want me to continue with the beatings? Or do you give up?”
“If I get my hands on you, you’re dead,” he croaked in threat and then made an unexpected move by dropping to the ground. But Kaley was already standing right next to where his head landed. She kicked him right in the ear. He rolled over on his side in pain, but managed to grab a handful of sand. He tossed it to where he thought she was standing. But she had moved and now kicked him squarely between his legs. She wanted to do more damage and next chose a kidney to pummel. She had suddenly turned into a feral animal. She was savage and uncontrollable. The Effort leader curled up into a ball to protect his body and tried to cry out.
“You ready now?” She hissed into the ear she had kicked. She had a crazed wild look in her eyes. She gulped air as her chest rose and fell at an alarming rate. Simon Stone knew that she could lose all control and become a wild animal, a Tasmanian devil, when she was in a fight. He had overruled Malcolm so he could be there to pull her back into reality. But now he wasn’t sure if he could.
“Lisa, send the next one,” Kaley said in a blood thirsty voice that sent chills down Simon Stones spine. She wanted to hurt more people.
“Check that order Lisa,” the general ordered.
Kaley was standing with her arms at her side and acting very primordial. There was an evil grin on her pretty face. A low growl came from her throat. She looked like a creature that had lived in a time and place where fighting and killing was the answer to any confrontation. Survival of the fittest was the only law.
Simon Stone knew that it was at least partially true. He had known about her condition for some time and also her history.
Part Six
The First Goal
Chapter Thirty-Nine
September 30th, 2005
Colonel Simon Stone walked into the conference room at the pentagon. He had been called into the meeting because he was judged as the Air Force’s most knowledgeable expert on extrasensory perception. In actuality, he was not only the most knowledgeable, but he was also the most experienced paranormal practitioner in the military. Only the Air Force brass didn’t know that he actually had ESP. He had developed the extra senses while on a government mission and under some very strange circumstances.
***
The mission took place ten years earlier in 1995. Simon Stone remembered it well. At the time, he was sent to check out a strange unidentified flying object reportedly circling over the city of Phoenix, Arizona. Simon Stone was a captain and an F-16 Falcon fighter pilot stationed at nearby Luke Air Force Base at the time. He and his wing man were ordered to find the object and force it to the ground.
When they arrived at the coordinates where the object had been spotted, they saw an odd-looking round ship that appeared to be made of shiny metal and able to hover in mid- air. Before they could report their sighting on their radios, a seemingly solid beam of white light shot out from the object and passed right over Captain Stone’s jet. His wing man’s jet was spared for an unknown reason.
The object suddenly reared up like a horse and shot off like a bullet into the atmosphere. Captain Stone reported what he had seen over the radio. He also reported that his wingman had gone missing. When he landed back at the base, he was immediately put under arrest and sent to an interrogation room where a couple of men in black suits were waiting. Their interview style was very hostile and accusing.
Capt. Stone wasn’t sure if they questioned whether he was spreading an alleged hoax, or whether they were verifying an actual sighting? The thing that upset him the most was that they said he had been missing for over fifteen minutes. His plane had just disappeared. They wanted to know where he had gone. He told them he didn’t know.
During the interrogation — when he concentrated — Captain Stone suddenly found that he could read the mind of the man across the table from him. He could tell what he was thinking and going to ask. Soon he was able to put words into his interrogators mouth and within minutes he was dismissed from the interrogation room because he had nothing more to offer.
Within a month, he was invited to lead a task force studying ESP. The facilities were located in Denver, Colorado. The NSA delivered potential ESP candidates and the facility studied them. He never knew where they came from. It also gave the then Major Stone a chance hone his own ESP skills. He had developed the new ability to move things around without touching them. The process was called psychokinesis.
Soon, some people who counted knew that he had ESP, which was why he was invited to the fateful meeting in 2005.
***
The reason for the secret meeting was the uncovering of a young teenage girl who seemed to have an extraordinary sense of Precognition and self-preservation. She had just recently been discovered in a Russian gulag in Eastern Siberia.
The Russian government had recently decided they didn’t need the facility anymore so they closed it and let all the people inside go free.
All records and documents for the gulag had been burned by the inhabitants for warmth. And since there were no records of why the people had been imprisoned there in the first place, it was the logical thing to do.
When exit interviews were conducted, the authorities found that most of the inmates were political prisoners who were sent to the gulag just before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. The existence of the gulag had been completely forgotten during the collapse. The inmates there fended for themselves and lived off of what they could find to eat in the remote Siberian forest. They knew there was no hope of walking out of the tundra, so they just stayed there for almost fifteen years. It was that remote.
To the amazement of the Russian government officials, they discovered that one inmate was a teenage girl who claimed she had been born in the prison. She spoke perfect English and also claimed that she was an American.
Colonel Stone was immediately put in charge of the girl. Soon she was brought to the Denver facility where he attempted to uncover her hidden secrets and prepare her for as normal a life as she could handle.
The Russians had claimed that they had no knowledge of how she got into the prison and doubted that she had lived there very long as everyone else in the gulag had turned into primitive animals and would kill for a scrap of food. She was a fit, but small girl.
When Colonel Stone questioned her about that, she claimed she was able to keep her distance from the other prisoners and fight back because she could read her attacker’s minds and know what moves to expect. She said that she had been able to fight the other inmates off since she was ten — when her parents died. They
were American citizens she uttered.
“Do you have a name?”
“They called me ‘The Devil’,” she explained through narrowed eyes. “I often had to fight off men who wanted sex as well. I learned how to lure them in close and then put them down.” She demonstrated a knife thrust. “I can be very sensual when I want to be. Want to see?”
The young girl came off of the couch where she was sitting and began swaying her hips erotically right in front of the colonel. Her hand went to the smock she wore and began raising it before Colonel Stone was able to stop her. He told her to stop by telepathy and discovered that the girl had a very dark and disturbing side inside her mind. He was horrified by the lusty violence he saw in in there. He realized she was capable of doing anything to get her way.
“What’s your real name? What did your parents call you?” he suddenly asked. He knew the answer, but wanted to hear what she had to say.
“I have no other name, just the Devil,” she casually replied. “My parents talked to me mostly through my head and they never needed a name. So the Devil was what I was called. The other inmates were all afraid of me in the Gulag,” she replied proudly and smiled.
“Okay, so how did your parents wind up in a gulag?” the colonel next asked.
“Mother used to tell me that we were special — that we had extraordinary abilities. I just see them as survival impulses. But she told me that it was the reason we were in prison.”
“What extraordinary abilities did your parents have?” Colonel Stone asked to interrupt.
“Well, father could throw things by just moving his eyes, even heavy objects. He kept piles wood, rock and other stuff around the house to use as weapons if someone attacked us. Mother could understand what people wanted before they came inside our home. She would flick her wrist and they would lose the ability to breathe. She would then search their minds before giving them their breath back. I learned to fight. Not many people in the gulag wanted to mess with us, at least until my parents died. But I could never understand the people in the gulag — they were a different people.”
“Explain that?”
“Mother said that she and father came from Iowa. The others in the gulag were Russian peasants. Father was a pharmacist in a place called Des Moines.”
“So how did they land in a gulag?”
“It happened one night while they were out for a drive through the cornfields of Iowa. Mother was pregnant with me then. An intense white light suddenly appeared and dragged them up into a round metal ship of some kind. She said that she couldn’t remember anything after that until they both woke up on the street in a city in Eastern Russia. It was called Yakutsk.”
“An intense white light, did you say?” Simon Stone immediately interrupted her story. He had perked up when he heard about the white light. He also decided that he would always be connected to this perplexing young girl because he had faced the same white light. They had a connection. He needed to know more about her.
“Remember I wasn’t born yet,” the girl explained. “It was what my mother told me.”
“So they woke up in the Soviet Union, but how did they wind up in a Gulag?” Simon Stone asked with a perplexed look on his face.
“My parents only had the clothes on their backs and some American money in their pockets. When they went to a store to buy food, they were arrested for being spies. They were immediately taken to the gulag.”
“There was no trial?”
“It was a military town,” the girl explained. “No trial was necessary.”
“So were you actually born in the gulag?” Colonel Stone asked.
“It wasn’t as bad as you think back then,” the girl said. “Father was able to secure a cabin just outside the walls. It was where the warden of the gulag had lived. We lived okay, but we were afraid to leave. The forest was that scary. No one knew where we were.”
“What happened to the guards?”
“The government stopped paying them, so they just up and left. They unlocked the gate before leaving.”
“So you lived seven years before your parents died? Is that correct?”
“There was a fever going around in the gulag. My parents had become too weak to fight it off. They died a few days apart.”
“And then things got tougher for you, right?”
“Well yeah,” she said in agreement with an evil smile. “But there now was no one to tell me not to fight. I did a lot of fighting. And when I wanted food, I could pick any man to get it for me. I survived.”
“And what did you think about after your parents died? What were your desires?”
“I thought about how many ways there were to torture a person before killing them. It made me happy inside.”
“So you like to fight, right?”
“When I’m fighting, I am able to let my feelings go. I feel free, it gives me stimulating pleasure and I love inflicting pain,” She remarked with a smile. “Don’t you feel it too?”
“Wanting to inflict pain is not a normal emotion for most people.” Colonel Stone explained.
“But it’s the only happiness I know,” the girl cried out. “What am I going to do?”
“You’re going to stay here for a while and work with me. I’m going to help you.”
“I’d like that,” she replied and jumped onto his lap. She immediately began to wiggle.
“We’re going to have to teach you to stop doing that too,” the frustrated colonel said and stood up so she slid off his lap.
“But I like doing that,” she countered.
“It’s another form of torture,” he shot back.
“I’ll try to learn for you Simon, just for you,” she cooed.
“I have to go for today,” the colonel stated. “But first I want you to know that I actually believe your story. I did some checking earlier and found out that a couple did disappear in a Des Moines cornfield in 1990. The car was left abandoned. The wife was pregnant.”
“I already told you that,” the girl said with a huff.
“But what you don’t know is your real name,” Stone offered. “Your parents had already named you.”
“What is my real name?”
“It’s Kaley, Kaley West.”
Chapter Forty
Kaley West stayed at the Denver facility for eight years. During that time, she studied archeology and learned how to live and survive in the modern world. She was a very quick learner. Simon Stone retired and bought an insurance business in Atlanta, with the intention of bringing Kaley there to work. Everything seemed just fine until Simon Stone was brought out of retirement and given a special assignment to develop a secret paranormal strike team for the President. He could not come around as often to see her. Kaley wanted to be on that special team to be near Simon, but her new handlers said she wasn’t ready.
She became unruly and destructive and only stopped when Simon came to visit. Eventually her handlers realized that she could enter society if she had a sponsor. It was shortly after each of the handlers got a personal visit from Simon Stone, who “persuaded” them. She was eventually declared a minor since there were no records and she became Simon’s charge. That had been a little over two years ago and it was when she came to work at the insurance agency.
***
Now in the desert Simon watched her with a careful eye. He was afraid that she had gone over the violence edge. She had become like an uncontrollable raging fire. She was an amazing hulk like character inside a tiny frame that was hell bent on total destruction. As he tied up the injured Effort leader, he wondered if he could bring her back from the brink. The only thing he knew that might calm her down was a hug from him — it had worked many times in the past.
Simon Stone stood up and moved in front of the now vacant-eyed beauty. She stood like a stone statue and didn’t seem to even know that she was deep in the Sahara desert. He threw his arms around her and began to hug her tightly, but suddenly she pushed him away.
“I want Malcolm r
ight now,” she said in a dead voice that sent a chill down Simon Stone’s spine.
“He’s stealing the Efforts Land Rover, Kaley. I’ll bring him here to you as soon as possible,” General Stone reasoned with great apprehension. He had never seen her act like this before. He wasn’t sure of what to do.
“I want Malcolm,” she repeated in a monotone. The way she spoke made it an order and not a request. The general could see more violence in her eyes.
“Guys,” Simon Stone suddenly heard Lisa scream into his earpiece. “Another Effort man is heading your way. I can’t seem to stop him by using my telepathy. I think he really has to go badly. He’s almost to the rock.”
“Kaley, I need you back right now,” Simon pleaded and shook her pliable body. “Please, we have to capture these men. I can’t do it by myself.”
“Kaley, I’ll be there in about five minutes,” Malcolm suddenly broadcasted into everyone’s earpiece. “I’ll give you a big hug then, okay.”
A change in her unusual posture indicated that he had gotten through to her. “Hurry Malcolm, I’m heading into a very bad place in my mind. It’s very scary there,” she revealed. “Only you can save me.”
“Kaley,” Malcolm said urgently. “Can you still help Simon? I need you to fight off the Effort people?”
“Yes, fight,” she whispered in a dreamy voice. There was a ray of hope on her face. “I will help. I can fight for you Malcolm.” And suddenly she was back to her old self.
Simon grabbed her by her shoulders and looked into her once again cobalt blue eyes while he scanned her brain. The darkness had retreated to a small corner of her mind. He hoped she was, once again her usual obnoxious and yet cheery self. The Effort man was only a few feet away.
“Thanks, I owe you, but don’t expect anything in return,” she uttered as she assumed a fighting pose just as the Effort man came around the corner.
The fight only lasted a few seconds. As soon as the Effort man came into view, Kaley leaped high into the air. She opened her legs and locked them around his head. She then used her powerful thighs to pull him to the ground face first. She spun out of the hold and jumped onto his back while using her right foot to push the Effort man’s face further into the ground. General Stone was on the man immediately and began cuffing him and then tying his legs together. Kaley punched him in the face and quickly gagged him. The whole process had taken less than a minute.
The Oracle Philon Page 15
