“Blasted?” Chris said.
“Don’t think I don’t know how crazy that sounds,” Reynolds said. “But like I said, I’ve been investigating crime scenes like this for a very long time. One more thing: The physical shape of the cast off was wrong too. Every piece we found in the vestibule, lobby, and against the walls was tiny and round, like marbles. Furthermore, the channel that secured the glass within the frame was completely smooth, no breaks in it whatsoever. It was like the crystal had been raised to its melting point and then blasted right out of the frame. Scientifically, I can’t explain it.”
“Thanks, Steve,” Jordan said.
“You got it,” Reynolds replied. He turned his attention back to the cryptic information on the computer screen.
Inside the Mobile Command Unit television monitors tuned to local stations reported on the tragedy that had befallen the citizens of the quiet street. The story was gaining traction, due in large part to the tony Hollywood Hills community in which the murders had occurred and the social and philanthropic prominence of the victims. News anchors shared the story with their viewers.
Jordan and Chris watched the replay of an interview in which FBI Special Agent and public relations spokesperson Janet Lynch fielded questions from reporters. Following the live update on-air news personalities conducted roundtable discussions and speculated to extremes on the events that had transpired in the early hours of the morning: Who had killed the Rosenfeld’s? Why had they been murdered? What could have been the motivation for the killings? Were they targeted simply because they were among the world’s super-rich, the one percent? One reporter went as far as to propose the erroneous and unsubstantiated theory that this was a case of “murder-for-hire gone terribly wrong” and that the murder of the Rosenfeld’s might well be “the first of more to come” and “the start of a killing spree the likes of which Hollywood has not seen since the Manson murders in 1969.” The media’s desire to sensationalize the grisly murder details further disrespected the dead. A picture of the Rosenfeld home appeared beside an FBI booking photo of Charles Manson, the convicted leader of the murderous ‘family’ of the same name. Manson nor any of his deranged followers had anything to do with the death of the Rosenfeld’s, of course. This was pure sensationalism and an outright debasement of journalistic integrity, wholly motivated by the network’s desire to win the highest share of evening ratings. They had already determined that the viewing public could not possibly be satisfied with the minimal details being spoon fed to them by the FBI. They knew their audience salivated for more.
Chris listened to the lies being broadcast to the masses and offered a commentary of his own: “Assholes.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Jordan agreed.
The door to the Mobile Command Unit opened. A warm rush of incoming air brought with it the exquisite fragrance of frangipani from the dozens of red, yellow, white, and pink flowering trees which flanked the driveway leading up to the mansion. Forensic Specialist Mike Coventry entered the vehicle wearing a white Tyvek body suit which covered him from head to toe and strained to contain his generous belly. On his hands he wore latex gloves. A pair of disposable slippers covered his shoes. He pulled back the hood of the suit. Beads of sweat streamed from his brow. He looked less like a crime scene expert than a snowman who had discovered, too late, that the climate in Southern California was hot, not cold, and was about to expire into a puddle. In his arms he carried two large boxes filled with evidence collection bags.
“The first of many,” Coventry said, acknowledging Jordan and Chris with a nod. He set the boxes down on a work surface beneath the television monitors. The agent removed the bags, wrote down a description of their contents, and assigned each an item number. To ensure against the threat of evidentiary loss or contamination he taped each of the envelopes closed, initialed and dated the lot, placed them inside a plastic container marked SEALED EVIDENCE - DO NOT TAMPER, then locked the bin with nylon zip ties. Coventry then locked the box in the EVIDENCE STORAGE cabinet under the table.
He nodded in the direction of the mansion. “We’re still processing biologicals, ballistics and trace. Weapons and computers have been boxed. We’ll run additional tests on them at the lab. Vic’s should be ready for transport within the hour.”
“Good work, Mike,” Jordan said.
Coventry nodded, turned to leave. “Gotta get back. We’ve still got a couple of hours of work in there.”
“Find anything useful?” Chris asked.
“As a matter of fact, yeah. You know the computer you found in the panic room? The password was written on the inside of the battery compartment. Brilliant, huh? Hawkins and I both thought that was a bonehead move for a smart guy like Rosenfeld. The doc had a couple of interesting files on there labeled Account 1 and Account 2. Both were password protected. But you’ll never guess what the good doctor did.”
“Used the same password for both files?” Jordan asked.
Coventry smiled and shot two fingers at her, gunslinger-style. “Exactly. And both files revealed he had a thing for the ladies.”
“Meaning?” Jordan asked.
“They contain hundreds of photos. All women. Very risqué poses. The kind of pics you’d see on dating sites but with a lot less left to the imagination. No names, just numbers and letters under each picture. The files look like they had been ordered according to age. The girls in Account 1 are young, I’d say eighteen to twenty. The girls in Account 2 are twenty-plus.”
“Has Hawkins packed up that computer yet?” Chris asked.
Coventry shrugged. “As far as I know he's still working on it. You know Hawk. One-part techno-geek, the other Sherlock Holmes. Give that guy a computer problem and he’s like a dog on a bone. He won't let up until he’s cracked it. Kid’s smarter than all of us on our best day.”
Jordan turned to Chris. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yeah,” Hanover replied. “We need to see those files.”
70
DIAMONDS DANCED IN the sunlight. Commander Ben Egan blinked the sleep out of his eyes. High above, dust particles floated past grime-baked windows on lazy air currents and glittered like twinkling stars, exposed by the penetrating rays of the midday sun, only to disappear into shadow the next.
The mind assault that had occurred hours ago had left him drained. When he awakened out of his deep slumber he bolted upright, straight-backed against the wall, his finger positioned on the trigger of his weapon.
Although his physiological and metabolic requirements were unlike those of ordinary men, rest was still a requirement, as too the need to eat. He had not consumed any food in the last seventy-two hours. Although the factory had served its purpose and proven to be an ideal hiding place, he would need to be on the move again very soon. He would steal what he needed to survive.
Though the specifics of his assignments were sent to him via Channeler’s neural download, less important decisions such as when and how a target would be assassinated, the optimal points of ingress, egress and escape, and the most appropriate weaponry with which to carry out the termination were left to his discretion. Having successfully completed the Dowd, Harper, and Rosenfeld assignments he would receive the next target instruction set shortly, namely name and location. To receive any additional information he believed to be vital to the successful completion of the assignment he simply had to think his request. Confirmation data would be downloaded to his brain the second arrangements had been made.
Egan wasn’t concerned about being tagged or identified by public security monitoring systems when he moved about in public. His biometric enhancements extended beyond his neural augmentation to the energy signature of his physical body. His aura - invisible to the naked eye – could become illuminated at will, making him appear as if he were an entity consisting of pure light energy, blurring the contours of his body to such a degree that he would be wholly unrecognizable by even the most sophisticated biometric detection systems.
Be
n Egan had been required to give up everything in his life to become DARPA’s most covert operative. The official cover story reported him as being killed in action during a black-ops mission in Kandahar; the sole victim of a rocket-propelled grenade. He accepted that lie to become the first scientifically augmented soldier in US military history; an opportunity that had proven impossible to resist.
As a career soldier, Commander Egan had learned to deal with the mental, emotional, and physical stress of evaluation testing. For most candidates, the grueling elimination protocols of the Project Channeler selection process had proved to be insurmountable. For Egan, they had been a walk in the park. As fellow members of Delta Force washed out of Channeler’s Critical Evaluation Process he sailed through it, often to the disbelief of the medical team, his fellow soldiers, and his superiors. Ben Egan’s ancestors had gifted him with a DNA of inconceivable genetic pedigree which had been recognized, harnessed, and refined early in his military career. During physical endurance evaluations it was suspected that his heart and lungs might be oversized; a theory later confirmed with the aid of magnetic resonance imaging. His heart could beat at a near impossible two-hundred-and-fifty times per minute and push an extraordinary volume of blood and oxygen throughout his body to feed his extremities. This seemingly inhuman advantage capitalized on muscle efficiency so greatly that it permitted him to achieve incredible feats of physical endurance with ease, such as the ability to traverse even the most inhospitable terrain at record breaking speed. His body was remarkably resistant to physical and cellular stress. He could not recall a time in his life when he had been ill; a fact substantiated by both his civilian and military medical histories. His high hypertrophy cell expression provided a significant advantage in physical strength. Even when faced with the duress of the battlefield he remained unnaturally calm. His body functioned at such a low metabolic rate that he could go for days without the need for food or sleep yet remaining quick-witted and mentally sharp. Quantitative sensory, cold pressor and pressure threshold testing confirmed his ability to withstand pain at levels exceeding five times those of the most elite-level soldier. He had proven himself to be devoid of fear and emotionally immune to even the most horrific conflicts encountered during his tenure with Delta Force. Ben Egan took immense pride in knowing that his God-given gifts, coupled with his ground-breaking neural interface augmentation, made him virtually unstoppable. He had been transformed into the ideal soldier, the perfect killing machine. His field trial handler, Dr. Jason Merrick, had warned him to be prepared to experience minor annoyances such as random physical or sensorial shocks - experiences that to this point in his life had been utterly foreign to him. These were to be considered normal responses to ‘high range’ remote testing; part of the three-stage Initiate-Measure-Evaluate study being conducted by the scientists at Dynamic Life Sciences in order to learn more about the field readiness of the Channeler technology and his response to it. Being the first of his kind, the scientists had even given him an acronym - GENESIS: GEnetic Neurally-Enhanced Subversive Intelligence Supersoldier - and reminded him that the successful completion of phase one field testing would qualify him for advancement to Channeler’s sister-study, code named LEEDA: Life Extending Epidermal Defense Augmentation. Controlled by the fight-or-flight response of his sympathetic nervous system, LEEDA would be automatically deployed when his brain confirmed a physical threat was imminent. The epidermal cells of his skin would be flooded with a compound DARPA scientists invented; a derivative of spider silk, similar in structure to nano-cellulose and Kevlar, yet organic and a thousand times stronger. When released, his skin would be rendered virtually impenetrable by any known weapon. Post-assault, his cells would instantly purge themselves of the chemical, reverse the process, and return his skin to its normal state. The LEEDA project would also slow his aging process to a rate significantly less than other humans, thereby extending his usefulness as a military weapon for decades to come. The promise of further enhancement to his already genetically superior body and computerized mind with near superhuman abilities fed Egan’s ego like methamphetamine to a drug addict. Channeler field testing would soon be complete. He was anxious to advance to the LEEDA project as quickly as possible.
He was pleased with his progress.
He hoped his superiors were as well.
The old furniture factory in which he had taken refuge was the largest of the dilapidated buildings occupying the abandoned business park; crypts of concrete and rusted metal left to die in an asphalt cemetery.
Decades earlier, before the sounding of the industrial era death knell bell which announced the end of their usefulness, businesses such as the old factory had thrived. Theirs was a time when pride of workmanship still mattered and a company’s ability to supply its community with stable jobs at fair wages was as much a source of corporate pride as its requirement to turn a profit for its shareholders. However, years of steady economic decline soon favored price over quality, and the day finally arrived when the last of the company’s chesterfields, dining tables, chairs, bookcases, and china cabinets were transported away in railcars on tracks that had served the companies within the abandoned park for decades, never to return. Doors had been closed; windows shuttered. For many of the former employees their small piece of the American Dream had decayed and died along with the building.
Egan rose to his feet from behind the cover of the shipping pallets and elicited a furious response from above. Startled out of their sleep, dozens of pigeons took flight from the steel rafters. The zealous expenditure of energy lasted only a few seconds before they soon circled back and resumed their resting place on the metal beams.
Needing a better understanding of the factory layout in the event a quick escape should become necessary, Commander Egan climbed a rusty iron staircase to what had been the second-floor offices.
The first and largest office occupied half the north-east section of the building. Judging by its furnishings, he assumed it had been the production manager’s office. A massive calendar, its pages yellow and brittle with age, corners curling outward from its wooden frame, was mounted on the largest wall of the room. Boxes for each day of the month were marked with notations referencing the production requirements for the coming weeks and months. The final notation, dated October 4th, 1962, read CLOSED.
Three filing trays on a wooden desk spoke to the last days in the life of the once grand plant. The first, labeled FORWARDING, overflowed with work orders identifying the items scheduled for manufacture and the various stations through which the raw materials would pass: wooden components to the kiln for drying, then on to the sanding, gluing, and varnishing departments; sofa spring assemblies to the fabrication shop; fabrics, cotton batting and leather to upholstering stations; completed pieces ready for final approval to the Inspector’s benches. Detailed notes accompanied each of the work orders. Testifying to the pride the company had taken in its work, the forms bore the approval signatures of each station manager before the piece was permitted to move on to the next stage of the manufacturing process.
The second tray, marked COMPLETED, contained twenty such work orders, each stamped and dated, with authorized signatures and rail pick up dates scrawled on the bottom of the forms.
The third tray, labeled FIRST QUARTER 1963, was empty.
Like the factory walls on the first floor, this room too had been vandalized. Water-damaged blueprints, musty trade journals and accounting ledgers lay scattered about the room. Smashed out spun-steel fluorescent fixtures hung lopsided from the ceiling on broken metal chains. The cancer of decay that had metastasized throughout the building had claimed this room too, with terminal results. Painted floorboards had peeled, buckled, turned black with mold, and rotted away in places. The front legs of a wooden drafting table stood precariously close to a gaping wound in the middle of the floor. Egan stood beside the yawning maw and looked down upon the serpentine conveyor system that snaked its way through the factory. The floor sighed and moaned underfo
ot, then cried out as it surrendered to its diseased state and gave way, taking the doomed drafting table with it. Egan jumped back, aware that even his unique gifts might not permit him to recover from a twenty-foot fall resulting in impalement. He heard the old wooden table hit the floor below and smash into pieces.
The close call served as a reminder that securing the van was his immediate priority.
From the top of the staircase, Egan surveyed the production floor below. The massive steel door of the wood drying room had been left open. The faint effusion of pine, cedar, poplar, and maple still redolent in the old room created a perfumery of sorts: a pleasant aroma in stark contrast to the damp, musty air of the building. Along the west wall, exhaust tubes from the cutting, tooling, sanding, and varnishing rooms rose to the ceiling and connected to the central air exhaust and filtration systems. The rooms along the east wall were fewer in number and significantly larger. Judging by the discards of fabric and plastic wrap on the floor these areas had been dedicated to fabrication, upholstery, and shipping preparation. The southernmost section of the factory, once the staging area for the shipping of orders and receiving of raw materials, remained largely unencumbered.
The Jordan Quest FBI Thriller Series: Books 1-3: The Jordan Quest FBI Thriller Series Boxset Book 1 Page 29
