The Omega Project

by Ernest Dempsey

  After passing some gas stations and fast food restaurants, the signs of civilization dwindled, and soon Adriana was surrounded by never-ending forests of pine, oak, maple, and poplar. With the leaves gone from most, she could see between the rows of tree trunks and spotted a few deer loitering near the edge of the road. There was a buck and two does, along with a younger fawn. The animals perked up at the sound of the passing car and then immediately darted away from the road, bounding into the woods to find safety.

  Adriana allowed herself a moment to admire the beauty of nature and the fearful white-tailed deer before returning her focus to the road ahead and behind.

  It took another fifteen minutes after leaving the interstate before she reached the long gravel driveway she’d visited on several occasions in the past.

  There was a mailbox next to the driveway. The receptacle was surrounded by mountain stone, a common tactic for homeowners who both appreciated a more rustic design and also wanted to protect their mailboxes from mischievous vandals with baseball bats.

  Adriana turned into the driveway and felt a hint of calm touch her senses as the sound of gravel crunching under her tires filled the sedan’s cabin.

  She drove slowly along the winding path, leaving any view of the road behind. Within twenty seconds she was deep into the forest. She steered the car around a bend in the road, and the outline of the cabin appeared between stands of trees. The vehicle emerged from the cover of the woods and rolled into the clearing that surrounded the modest home.

  A thin trail of smoke trickled out of the chimney, a signal that at least one of the cabin’s occupants was home.

  That was a good sign. Adriana had hoped someone would be there. The last thing she wanted to do was have to break into a friend’s house and steal a car, but she also knew they would understand if it came to that.

  She pulled up close to the cabin, put the car in park, and turned off the engine with the press of a button.

  Adriana stepped out of the sedan and was greeted by a cold blanket of wintry air. The smell of smoke drifted into her nostrils. She enjoyed the smell of campfire smoke or, in this case, smoke from the hearth within the cabin. It was a comforting scent, one that always caused her to relive some of the more enjoyable moments from her childhood when her mother and father would take her camping.

  For the briefest of moments, Adriana was overcome by a sense of peace and comfort, even serenity. When she’d woken up this morning, everything was fine in her life. Now it was all turned upside down, and the only thing that had offered a sense of calm in the storm was the smell of campfire smoke. Funny how the little things in life are the most important.

  Adriana walked toward the steps leading up to the wraparound porch. When she set her foot on the lowest step, the front door opened, and she was greeted by a familiar, welcoming face.

  “Adriana? What are you doing out here?” Helen McElroy stood in the doorway with her arms folded against the cold of winter. Her face was tight, though she wore a smile. Her green eyes and pale, freckled skin were framed by auburn hair that dropped down around her ears to her shoulders.

  Adriana skipped up the steps and reached the woman within seconds. “Mind if I come in? I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

  “Sure, honey. Come on in. I was just making some coffee.”

  Helen stood to the side so Adriana could pass and then stepped in to close the door, taking one wary look back out onto the driveway, perhaps a habit that had formed long ago.

  She closed the door and motioned for Adriana to have a seat on the leather couch near the fire. “Get yourself warmed up, girl. You want some coffee?” Helen went to the kitchen to her right while Adriana found a seat on the sofa to the left.

  The cabin was cozy, and the fire in the hearth was doing more than enough to keep it toasty warm. A quilt hung over the back of the sofa. The colors of the fabric mostly featured green, red, and white, all tributes to the upcoming Christmas holiday. The exposed logs that made up the walls gave the cabin a rugged feel, as did the smell of the fire and even the coffee in the kitchen. There was a lingering scent of sausage in the air, too, probably from a breakfast Helen had eaten not long before Adriana arrived.

  “Where’s Joe?” Adriana asked, striking up a little friendly conversation before she got into the nuts and bolts of why she had inexplicably shown up on Helen’s doorstep unannounced.

  “Oh, he’s gone into town for some things. Groceries, mostly. They’re saying we may get some snow tomorrow night, so we just want to make sure we have enough to get through the weekend. Although we don’t usually get much snow here. Personally, I think he just wanted to get out of the house.”

  Adriana chuckled.

  Helen walked around the counter separating the kitchen from the living room and sat down in one of the leather club chairs, a steaming cup of coffee held carefully in her right hand.

  “So, hon, what brings you here? I woulda cleaned up a little if I’d known we were going to have company.”

  Adriana waved a dismissive hand and shook her head. “That is never necessary with me. You know that. And I’m terribly sorry to show up uninvited.”

  “You’re always invited, sugar.” Helen’s sweet Southern accent melted any reservations Adriana might have still been clinging to.

  “Thank you for that.”

  “Sure thing. So, what’s going on?”

  Adriana swallowed. She rubbed her palms on her knees and then began telling the story. She told Helen about how she’d managed to escape the house in Buckhead, how the cops had shown up, and what was being said about Sean in the news, she assumed, across the country.

  Helen listened intently, taking intermittent sips of coffee now and then during the story. When Adriana was done, the calm look on the woman’s face hadn’t changed much.

  “I don’t watch the news much,” Helen confessed. “So, I didn’t know any of that was going on. Now it makes me think I should watch more often.”

  “Truthfully, I don’t, either,” Adriana admitted. “But I do check it now and then.”

  “It’s a good thing you did, honey. You might be in an interrogation room right now. Do they think you had something to do with all this?”

  “Probably,” Adriana said.

  “That is…if it’s a legitimate investigation.”

  Adriana had had the same cynical thought, that everything going on with this entire kidnapping and subsequent manhunt was all just some kind of manufactured conspiracy to cover up something else, something much bigger. If that was the case, who was pulling the strings?

  “I wondered about that,” Adriana said.

  Helen gave a slow nod. “You were right to. You and I both know Sean wouldn’t do something like this. He and Dawkins go way back. Dawkins trusts Sean completely.”

  “Some would say that was the president’s mistake that led to what happened.”

  “Yeah, but that can’t be it. Have you heard from Sean?”

  Adriana shook her head. “No. I don’t expect to, either. He’s probably on the run.”

  “You don’t think they caught him?”

  “No. Not according to the reports. There’s a nationwide search going on for him, which means he’s still on the move. Where to I have no idea.”

  “Curious,” Helen said. She thought about the dilemma for a few seconds. “If Sean didn’t take the president, then who did? That’s what you need to find out. If you can track down the people who really did take him, then maybe you can stop all this.”

  “That’s the plan, but…” She hesitated.

  “But what?”

  “I need a vehicle. The one I drove here is Sean’s, and the cops will be looking for it. I don’t want to put you out, but I’m desperate and don’t really have any other play here.”

  “Not a problem,” Helen said. “We can hide Sean’s car in the shop out back, and you can take my truck.”

  Her easy answer wasn’t unexpected, but it was still generous nonetheless.

&n
bsp; “Are you sure?” Adriana’s tone was humble. “I don’t want to be a pain.”

  “It’s no pain at all, honey. You take whatever you need. You have a gun on you?”

  Adriana shook her head. She wanted to slap her forehead with her hand. In her rush to get out of the house, she’d forgotten to grab one of her firearms, though she was fairly certain there might be one in Sean’s vehicle.

  “That would be great. I hope I don’t need it, though, especially considering the circumstances.”

  Helen understood what she meant. Sean was being pursued by government agents, cops, and who knew who else. Getting into a gunfight with any of them would not only be a bad idea; there was no way that could end well. There was, however, the possibility that the authorities weren’t the only ones pursuing Sean, and in that case Adriana knew she might need a little firepower.

  “A gun would be good. Maybe a hunting knife, too.”

  “You got it, sister. Let’s get you fixed up.”

  Helen stood with coffee in hand and walked over to the coatrack near the door. She set down the mug on the corner of the dining table and grabbed one of the coats, stuck her arms through it, zipped it, and resumed drinking her morning beverage.

  “You…could finish your coffee,” Adriana offered. “I wasn’t followed.”

  Helen squinted. “I figured you weren’t followed, sugar. You’re good like that. I don’t mind taking the cup with me. Come on. I’ll show you to the collection.”

  Adriana raised one eyebrow. Collection?

  Helen saw the question in her guest’s eye and flashed a sly grin. Then she motioned for Adriana to follow her and led the way past the kitchen and down the hall to a door in the back of the cabin. It opened up onto the other end of the wraparound porch. Behind the cabin were a couple of buildings. One was an old barn. The red paint had faded through the years, and the tin roof looked like it was in need of repairs decades ago. Huge, rusty holes punctured the metal roof; some were the size of a basketball. Others were smaller, maybe the diameter of a quarter. Adriana didn’t see or hear any animals inside, but it looked like there was fresh straw flowing out of the side of the barn where a slot opened to feed horses.

  Helen seemed like she might be a horse person. She was outdoorsy, adventurous, and had an appreciation for the old ways. She was also one that liked to be prepared, as was Joe, her husband.

  The pair now worked for the IAA doing much the same kind of work that Sean and Tommy did: retrieving artifacts, hunting down missing relics, and occasionally getting into trouble.

  Helen had been a government asset for many years, which—like Sean—provided her with a wealth of talents that proved useful in the field. It was a secret her longtime husband hadn’t even known about until one fateful night when a group of henchmen attacked their cabin.

  Then Joe found out everything about his wife and her past.

  Joe, or “Mac” as everyone called him, was no slouch when it came to survival skills or fighting his way out of a tough situation, but Helen was the real deal. Adriana couldn’t help but wonder what the woman meant when she’d said “collection.”

  They walked across a crushed gravel path that cut through the green fescue in the backyard and veered to the right toward the second of the two buildings. The shop was a long garage with four bay doors on the front and a gray metal door on the left end closest to the path leading to the cabin. The building was painted white and featured the same tin roof as the barn, though it was in impeccable shape, the polar opposite of its sibling. There were no holes, no signs of oxidation anywhere. Maybe, Adriana figured, they were letting the barn stay like that for historic appeal?

  Helen reached the door to the shop, withdrew a key from one of her pockets, inserted it, and opened the door. It swung open with a loud creak, the hinges protesting their rude awakening. Fluorescent lights flickered on automatically in the ceiling above, running all the way to the other end of the shop in two rows.

  Two vehicles were parked inside. One was a Nissan Titan pickup, the other a GMC Yukon Denali. Both vehicles were black with dark window tinting.

  Helen turned to her friend as she closed the door behind them. “You can have either one of those,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Adriana said.

  Helen motioned to the back corner at the opposite end of the long room. There was a corner with a black rail made from metal tubes. “Guns are over there.”

  “Over where?” Adriana looked but didn’t see any weapons. The back wall was lined with shelves and racks full of tools and reference materials for working on various mechanical things. There were no guns.

  “Follow me,” Helen said, her tone laced with mischief.

  The two women strode across the garage to the back wall and then pivoted, making their way along the gap between the parked trucks and the cinder blocks. The smell of rubber and oil filled the air, scents Adriana remembered from her dad’s garage so many years ago. She fought off the memories, willing the thoughts from childhood to exile in the back of her mind. She had to stay focused.

  They reached the railing, and Adriana saw it was shaped like the letter L. She also realized what Helen was talking about when she said the guns were over here. The rails wrapped around a somewhat hidden staircase. The metal-grated steps went down into a basement that might have otherwise gone unnoticed to someone not curious enough to check.

  Helen grabbed the rail on the corner and whipped around to the stairs. Her feet moved rapidly as she deftly descended the steps.

  Adriana followed, and when they reached the bottom they were greeted by another metal door. This one was newer. It was painted gray but looked to be fire rated, able to withstand high temperatures to keep safe whatever was on the other side.

  An entry access panel was just to the right. Helen pressed in a five-digit code and stepped back. The keypad beeped, a green light flashed, and a heavy click came from within the doorframe a second before the door swung open automatically.

  “Impressive,” Adriana said, “although I half expected you to have a retinal scanner or a fingerprint reader.”

  Helen tugged on the door to open it faster. Lights blinked on in the room beyond. “We thought about it,” Helen said. “But then if someone wanted to get in they could just cut out an eye or remove a thumb. Keypad information can’t be cut out.”

  It was a macabre point, but one Adriana understood, especially considering the careful nature with which Helen approached so many things in life. The woman was prepared, but Adriana didn’t know exactly how well prepared until she stepped into the next room.

  The poured concrete walls were lined with gun racks, each filled with almost every assortment of weapon known to mankind. There were shotguns, pistols, katanas, grenades—both the smoke and explosive varieties—and a wide assortment of rifles and submachine guns.

  Adriana’s eyes were wide, like a child who’d just stepped into a candy store for the first time. A table in the center of the room had a vise block on it and parts for at least ten more weapons arranged neatly across the surface.

  “Do you make these?” Adriana asked, her voice mirroring the wonder in her expression.

  “Some of them,” Helen said. “Joe and I find it somewhat calming. It also satisfies that need to make stuff.”

  Adriana nodded. “Sean enjoys the same thing, but not to this extent. Remind me not to let him see this place. He’ll want one of his own.”

  “He might already have one that you don’t know about,” Helen said, her voice climbing to reflect the mischievousness of her statement.

  “True. That’s certainly possible.” Adriana didn’t act like it would bother her if Sean did have something like that back home. For now, it didn’t matter anyway. She needed to get moving and had taken longer here than she planned.

  Helen walked purposefully over to a rack on the left and picked up a black gear bag from the counter under a column of AK-47s. There were four AR-10s next to those.

  “Let’s get you
all set up,” Helen said in a cheery voice, as if she was putting together a bag of toys from a theme park gift shop. “Then you can get a move on. Based on what you told me, you need to get going soon. Where do you think you’ll go?”

  Adriana’s head turned from side to side. “I don’t know, but I need to figure out what’s going on. Maybe then I can get the truth out there and clear Sean’s name.”

  “What about him? Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

  Adriana shook her head. “No. And right now there’s no way to find out. I’ll have to do what I can from here, at least for now.”

  Helen nodded. “Let’s get you set up, then.”

  10

  Baring, Washington

  John Dawkins sat on the thin cot in the corner of the basement. There were two fluorescent lights fixed into the drop-down ceiling. The floor was bare concrete and cold to the touch. Fortunately, he had socks and shoes on, but they were the same ones he’d worn since the day he was abducted. His clothes felt dingy and grimy. They were soiled in spots from dirt or grease or some other substance he’d been forced to lie in or sit in during his abduction and subsequent imprisonment. The tiny room smelled of dry dirt, which was a strange blessing in a way. He’d rather it be dry down here than damp. That would make things more difficult, especially if his captivity turned out to be prolonged in any way. The fact that it was perpetually chilly down here didn’t help, but it could have been worse.

  The men who’d taken him had provided little in the way of food, water, and accommodations. The cot was an old military surplus variety, made from green canvas and aluminum rods. The thing creaked every time he rolled over in the night, rousing him from his tenuous slumber. It wouldn’t have made a difference if the cot was the quietest one ever made. Dawkins barely slept, though the night before he’d finally found some semblance of rest, at least for three or four hours. Sheer exhaustion had taken him then, snatching him in its claws and pulling him down into dreamy darkness until a sound at the door had roused him.