by Trevor Scott
“You should be able to guess that,” she said. “The Agency keeps track of every patent application to make sure it’s not a weapon that could have an impact on national security.”
He knew that, but he didn’t know she would know that.
She continued, “But since I talked with you last, something has changed.”
“What’s that?”
“One of the professors was shot and killed last night in an apparent home invasion in Corvallis, Oregon,” she said, her tone sounding skeptical. “The second professor was shot superficially in the. . .buttocks.”
“Ouch. Been there. Let me guess, you don’t think this was your typical home invasion.”
“No, Jake, I don’t. Their lab was also trashed and their computers stolen.”
Jake hated to think this, but if he had to bet, it sounded like some intelligence agency. “Who do you suspect?”
“That’s the problem, Jake. It could be anyone.”
“It sounds like you need to make sure the FBI investigates this,” he said.
“They’re not even looking at it,” she muttered, a lowering of her head as she shook it back and forth. “They consider it a local law enforcement problem. And, of course, the Agency doesn’t operate within our borders.”
Not officially, he knew. But the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence seemed to be fading with each year.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked her.
“I want you to find this other professor, James Tramil.”
“Find him?”
“Yeah, he went missing,” she said. “He’s a smart guy and came up with the same conclusion I did. Reported the link between his shooting and the lab destruction to the campus police and the Corvallis cops. Of course they didn’t see it his way. I think he’s on the run with his research.”
Jake thought that over and had to admit this technology could be significant, assuming it worked as advertised. “You’ve read the patent application,” he said. “Do you know the significance?”
“I think so,” she answered. “It sounds like they can take a small projectile, launched from anywhere in the U.S., and have it hit with GPS accuracy anywhere in the world.”
It was even better than that. “Exactly. It’s a nanotech weapon sent at hypersonic speed. The actual warhead, if you want to call it that, could be the size of a bullet, but could take out a tank. . .or an individual, depending on needs. This would make our strategic Air Force obsolete, our nuclear arsenal a relic, our overseas basing unnecessary. Some Air Force captain sitting in a bunker could assassinate the leader of Zimbabwe with a push of the button.”
She seemed to sink deeper into the Town Car leather seat. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Why isn’t the military all over this?” he asked.
“DARPA has been trying to recruit those two professors for years, but they were both staunchly independent.”
Suddenly a muffled sound started coming from the back of the car, followed by more vehement pounding, startling the congresswoman.
“Is that my driver?” she asked.
“Yeah, we should probably let him out.” But he ignored the pounding for a moment and continued. “What do you want me to do with this professor once I find him?”
She looked puzzled. “He’ll have to be debriefed by our military intelligence and the Agency.”
What she meant was detained for his safety and stashed away to do his research in seclusion. He would be no better than a prisoner punching out license plates, and lose all rights to profit from his patent. Well, that and his ability to kill one despot or millions of people with the press of a button. Jake guessed the guy had first started off by trying to eliminate the need for nukes. But in the end he would simply replace the unthinkable with the possible.
“What are your current rates for consultation?” she asked him rather sheepishly.
He hated this part of his consultation business. After the past few deals, he really didn’t need the money. But to keep things legit, he needed to be compensated in some way. “Let’s worry about that at a later date. You don’t want me to be linked to you in any way at this time.”
“Right. Especially after that video from your testimony.” She gave him an endearing, contemplative glance that made her look even more stunning than before.
If Jake had not noticed this beautiful woman when she was a freshman in high school, either she was a late bloomer or he had been a complete idiot back then. He was trying his best not to notice her crossed legs right now, along with the crucifix dangling in her ample cleavage.
The pounding from the trunk got louder.
“We better let that guy out before he pees his pants,” Jake said. He got out of the back of the car and held the door open for a moment. “Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”
“Do you have my private cell number?” she asked.
He smiled. “Yeah, no problem.” He slammed the door and walked off down the snowy residential sidewalk, the sound of pounding on the trunk muffled more with each step he took.
A few blocks down Jake caught a cab back to his hotel and rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. When he got to his room, he hesitated for a couple seconds before sliding his key card into the slot. Something felt wrong. And his senses were rarely wrong. Instinctively he felt for his gun under his left arm, but it wasn’t there. He needed to change that in a hurry.
He smiled and shook his head, ran his card through the slot, and opened the door. Just as he switched on the light, he simultaneously saw the danger and felt the electrodes strike his chest, sending ten thousand volts of energy shooting through his body, collapsing him to his knees. The second jolt had him flopping around the floor like a fish out of water until he passed out.
6
When Jake woke up the first thing he noticed was he was not in his hotel room any more. How did he know this? Well, first of all, he was immersed up to his neck in acrid water that smelled more like a combination of jet fuel, human feces, urine, and rotting animals. In this case a dead rat, which floated just a few inches from his mouth.
He swiveled his head around as far as he could, considering his arms were lashed behind him and his feet were equally bound. He was in some sort of metal tank. The only light in the room came from emergency lights against a far wall, revealing high ceilings with rusted metal rafters. No windows. It was an old warehouse of some kind, Jake guessed.
Those who had taken him had strapped him to a chair, but he couldn’t tell how solid that was. As far as he could tell, the only item of clothing he still wore was his black jeans and hopefully his underwear. His chest was bare, as were his feet.
Suddenly a door opened and he could hear muffled voices approach the tank. Then a man’s head, covered by a rubber mask of a devilish creature, appeared above him.
“I see you didn’t drown, Mister Adams,” said a gruff voice from behind the mask.
A second mask popped over the edge. This one was a princess with blonde hair. But Jake guessed it was not a woman.
“Are you two with the chamber of commerce?” Jake asked. “If so, I’m not sure I like this city.” A small amount of water got into his mouth when he spoke, which he quickly spit out toward the rat.
“I heard you were a comedian,” the ghoul said. “And I must admit that I enjoyed your performance before the House committee. I must have watched it ten times today on the internet.” Just after his last words, his gloved hand smashed down onto Jake’s head and shoved his face under water.
Out of an implied respect for this potential interrogator, Jake pretended to struggle. In reality he could hold his breath for at least three to five minutes under water, a feat that he had learned again during his training with the Agency. He had first practiced this, though, in the lakes and rivers in Montana during his youth. He struggled more for effect, pretending to choke and on the way to drowning, which forced the man to let his head up.
Jake spit out some water and noticed the
rat had slipped to the edge of the tank. He coughed and said, “You really should ask a question and wait for me to answer or not answer before you punish me. What do you want from me?”
“I’m just trying to set the parameters of my patience,” the ghoul said. This time an accent seeped out. What kind?
“Understand,” Jake said, coughing for real this time. Yeah, there was some kind of fuel mixed with this crappy water. Great.
This back and forth and up and down in the water went on for another hour. The entire time, mostly while Jake was pretending to struggle under the water, he was also working on the ropes that bound his hands and discovering that the chair he sat on was wooden and not very sturdy. The entire interrogation was like water-boarding, only this would actually be considered torture under the Geneva Conventions—something these thugs had no inclination to follow.
The questions had been equally illuminating for Jake. For some reason the interrogators asked many specific questions about his past, which gave Jake more information about who they could possibly be than revealing anything important that Jake knew. They were skirting the issue, working around the edges. Other than this blunder it was obvious that their training, disturbingly, had most likely come from American or other intelligence services. Yet, Jake was sure they were foreign nationals. Slavic. Russian or Czech or Bulgarian or Ukrainian. If he had more time in the tank, he could figure that out. But this was getting old and his hands, although shriveled and cold, were getting close to freedom.
“Hey, guys,” Jake said. “Could we take a little break? I really need the bathroom.” He hesitated with a serious look on his face. “Never mind. So, you know all kinds of good things about me.” Actually, they only knew the misinformation that the Agency’s counterintelligence operations wanted foreign sources to know about him, most of which was total nonsense. “We could be here all night.”
“Do you have a dinner date with your favorite congresswoman?” the ghoul asked him.
Finally, they had slipped up. They had seen him with Congresswoman Freeman. And, as suspected, that’s what they really wanted to know. What was a former Agency officer doing hanging out with a member of the subcommittee that had just finished grilling him on Capitol Hill? Damn it. That meant that his fellow Montanan had not covered her tracks entirely. It also meant that he had not watched his own back like he should have, either. Well, his current situation in a metal tub of water, fuel and dead rodents pretty much confirmed that. Even an old pro could slip up.
“Have you seen the congresswoman?” Jake asked. “They don’t get much hotter than that?”
The ghoul shoved Jake’s head under water again. This time Jake lowered himself further into the tub as he released his hands and quickly untied his feet, all the while struggling against the man’s firm hand. Just as he felt the man release him to rise, Jake thrust his feet against the bottom of the tank and raised himself out.
Water flew in all directions, but Jake was able to grasp the man with the ghoul mask behind the neck and shove his face into Jake’s knee, which knocked the guy out and gave Jake time to jump from the tub of filthy water.
The second man backed away and considered his options.
Jake didn’t give him a chance to run. With a flurry of punches and a final roundhouse kick to the head, the man also dropped to the cement floor.
Now Jake assessed his escape. Before leaving he saw a small table that contained his wallet, passport and cell phone. He scooped those up and hurried out the room as fast as his cold body would take him. But his synthetic left knee made him limp in pain.
He had to believe there were others involved with his capture and interrogation. As he got to an outer door, he could hear voices outside. He needed to hurry. Those two men he had knocked out wouldn’t stay down for long.
Then he saw a narrow stream of light off in the distance at the other end of the warehouse. He quietly ran toward that. It turned out to be a wide loading dock door lit by a street light in the distance. He skirted through that, barely glancing back at the two men down the street next to a dark van.
It wasn’t until he got safely away from the warehouse that the chill of winter started to set into his body. He needed to get somewhere warm in a hurry.
7
Amtrak Train, Empire Builder
Western Montana
Professor James Tramil couldn’t sleep. After leaving Portland, he had traveled east along the Columbia River before heading north toward Spokane, where the train had stopped briefly, crossed the dense forests of Idaho’s panhandle, and was now somewhere east of Libby, Montana. The constant movement and clicking should have let him sleep, he knew, but since he had not gotten a sleeper cabin, he was trying to make the most of a partially-reclined chair. Not exactly sleep worthy.
Yet, all around him most of the others were doing just that, with some snoring and a few still reading on lit eBooks or with the annoying personal overhead lights.
Tramil checked his watch, which was synchronized to the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. It was six forty-four a.m., less than an hour before their next stop in Whitefish, Montana at seven twenty-six. He had been in that region of Montana a few times on trips to Glacier National Park, but it had been a couple of years.
The sun was trying to break through heavy clouds toward the front of the train, while snow started to fall like fluffs of cotton.
He knew that his inability to sleep had everything to do with the murder of his good friend and colleague Professor Stephan Zursk. That and the constant throbbing in his right butt cheek from where the bullet had grazed him. He had been forced to change the four-inch dressing in the middle of the night. The dermabond was holding fine, but with the shifting in the train seat the bandage had curled. It might help if he changed it again, he thought. Bandages were cheap and available and he still had a stack of them left in his backpack.
Getting up as quietly as possible, he slung his backpack over his shoulder, stepped around the person in the aisle seat, a young woman who had said no more than a dozen words to him since she got on the train in Spokane, and moved down the aisle toward the back of the train, shifting his feet as the train moved somewhat.
Inside the small bathroom he pulled his pants down and looked at the curled bandage. It too had shifted from the train chair. He knew it would be a constant battle. But he was thankful to be alive. The bullet could have just as easily struck him in the side of the head or his chest or stomach. That was now the least of his worries. He knew someone was still after him. This train ride was only going to give him time to think out a more permanent plan.
He slapped a new bandage onto his butt and pulled up his pants. Then he splashed some water on his face and headed out the door.
As the door collapsed another man stood there ready to enter, startling Tramil. The guy had a buzz cut and birth control glasses.
“Sorry,” the professor whispered.
The man said nothing. Instead, he thrust his right fist into Tramil’s gut, taking his breath away and hunching him over. Then the man pushed into the bathroom with him and locked them inside.
“You can live,” the man said with an accent, as he pulled a folding knife from his pocket, “but only if you keep your mouth shut.” He shoved the knife under Tramil’s chin.
“Who are you?” Tramil forced out, still trying to catch his breath. “What do you want from me?”
The man grinned through cigarette-stained, yellow, crooked teeth and said, “You know what I want. You run from me. But now I catch you.”
How had this man found him? Could it be the man who had killed his friend, Stephan?
“You killed Stephan,” Tramil said, his body stiffening but retreating once he felt the knife dig into the soft tissue under his jaw.
“That’s right, professor. And I will kill you if you don’t give me exactly what I ask for.”
“Can you put the knife away? It’s not like I can go anywhere.”
The man considered this and took the kn
ife away from his chin, but kept it alongside his leg. One quick thrust and Tramil would be dead.
“Thanks,” Tramil said. “Now, you should have gotten all my research when you stole our computers from our lab at Oregon State.” He was testing the man.
“There was nothing there, but you know that. You’re too smart to leave your work on university computers.”
Something was bothering Tramil. “Why did you kill my friend before we could give you the research?”
“He was playing with us for months,” the man said, his jaw tight with anger. “Stringing us along. Taking money and giving us useless garbage. In the end he didn’t have what we wanted. That became abundantly clear. So, we knew we had to get it from you.”
“But then why did you try to kill me?” That was a problem with the man’s logic.
He said nothing for a long minute. Finally, he said, “That was a mistake. I didn’t realize it was you when you came to the door.”
That was a lie. This guy had forced Stephan to call him to his house that night. Who else would he be expecting? It was more likely that this guy had jumped the gun, literally, and tried to kill him before getting the research and now his boss was having him make up for his screw up. That gave Tramil some leverage.
“What do you want?” Tramil asked.
“I’m guessing you hid the research off-site,” the man said, his accent still unclear.
Tramil could play this game. “That makes sense. How could I trust a university computer system? But I don’t understand why you want my research. It’s not done. We haven’t even discovered anything significant.”
The man laughed internally and shook his head. “Don’t try to play poker, professor. We know all about your research.”
