Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 01 - Flapjack

by Daniel Ganninger

  Galveston sat up in his bed. “You think he’s involved in this thing more than we’ve been told?”

  “I don’t know, but he has connections to most of the players in this fiasco. It just doesn’t make sense. Does he know we found Dr. Sloan? Did David tell Dr. Blout that we found Dr. Sloan?”

  “No, I don’t think so. David told Blout the Feds hadn’t located him.”

  “I don’t know why Chase would be so interested in Sloan. I just figured he wanted to make sure the battery would be in the hands of Global Energy, like they had agreed.” Galveston looked at me, and a worried look popped on his face. “I just can’t picture a guy like that not having an alternate plan for this thing,” I said.

  “I agree with you, it is sort of weird.” He swung his legs over the bed and reached for his phone. “I have an idea that will help answer this question.” Galveston dialed the phone and waited for the other end to pick up.

  “Hello, what is it Galveston?” May said groggily on the other end.

  “David, sorry to wake you. I know it’s late, but we need you to do something when you talk to Chase and it’s going to be strange. I need you to tell Chase that Dr. Sloan was found dead in San Diego.”

  “What? But why?” May asked, still half asleep.

  “Tell him he was found last night, shot to death. Tell him the prototype wasn’t found in his hotel room. Don’t tell him anything else. Can you do that for us?” Galveston asked.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess. It is kind of strange, but I’ll do it. Where are you going with this?”

  “We have some suspicions about Chase. Get back to me as soon as you know something.”

  “Alright, I’ll call you tomorrow. Goodbye.” May said hanging up his side of the line.

  “Bye David, sleep tight.” Galveston set his phone down. “We’ll see how much Chase wants this battery.” Galveston slumped on the edge of the bed. “You and your night thinking. Just go to sleep. I can’t think anymore.”

  “Alright,” I said putting my head back on the pillow.

  But we wouldn’t be getting much sleep. The thoughts continued to race through both our heads. What was Weston Chase really out to do?

  -Chapter 55-

  Our wakeup call was 6 A.M. I needed some coffee, but not before I snuck in a wakeup kiss and goodbye kiss to Jane in her room. I gave her a wad of money to use as she liked because we weren’t sure when we would be back.

  We were the only thing standing in the way of these mercenaries’ success, and we must be the ones to succeed. I parceled it into good and evil, right and wrong, and the just versus injustice. I felt better, stronger, and more courageous, with increased confidence and vigor. Maybe my kiss from Jane this morning had something to do with that.

  “You ready?” Galveston said to me from behind. I turned around with steely eyes with a coffee cup in hand.

  “You bet, let’s go.”

  “Well aren’t you an eager beaver,” he joked.

  The flight from Sao Paulo went without incident, no emergencies, and thankfully, no pesky passport problems. We approached the sprawling and congested city of Sao Paulo and landed safely on the ground.

  Sao Paulo is the hub of commerce and finance in Brazil, and boasts a population of 21 million people. It is an extremely congested city with a developed metropolitan center and vast suburbs of slums. It has also been known for its extraordinary crime rate and dangerous areas, but this had waned in the previous years. The difference in the socioeconomic status of the people was evident, but they had a decidedly content air about them.

  A young boy approached us on the concrete sidewalk, and motioned that he wanted money to carry our bags. He was dressed in dirty, ruddy clothes, and spoke only in Portuguese. I reached for some money to give him, but Galveston stopped me, and politely shooed the boy away. I looked at him in horror.

  “Sorry about that, but if you start flashing money we’ll have twenty kids around us in seconds. That’s not the attention we need right now.” Galveston said. I understood his point. We already stood out like a sore thumb, and the last thing we needed was a scene in a public place.

  Galveston began scanning the area and noticed a sultry lady standing next to a car with tinted windows. It was Elizabeth dressed in a mild black dress, a large flowing hat, and sunglasses. Galveston nodded his head to her, and we went to an awaiting car.

  We weaved our way across the street with our bags, dodging the heavy traffic coming from both directions. Galveston ungraciously took the front seat as I grabbed the back.

  “Morning love,” he said to Elizabeth in a mock English accent and kissed her on the cheek.

  I hadn’t noticed that the boy outside the terminal had followed us across the road, and was standing at the back of our car. As Galveston and Elizabeth were exchanging pleasantries and swooning over each other, I rolled down the window and motioned for the boy to come to the car. He came up to the window, and I pushed a few dollars in his hand before we began to drive away. I peered back as we left and saw a smile cross his face as he turned and ran back across the road. At least I may have made someone happy in this city, if only for a short time.

  As we made it to the center of the city things began to change and well developed areas with shops and quaint apartment buildings began to emerge. Elizabeth focused skillfully on the road, never taking her eyes off the clutter of traffic weaving its way around us.

  “Where are we headed?” I asked toward the front of the car.

  “We’re going to Dr. Patelo’s home. Elizabeth found out where he lives,” he said turning forward again. “It should be close.”

  We pulled up in front of a large high-rise, brightly decorated from the outside. It was an upscale building with a beautiful glass exterior, and noticeably one of the newer buildings in this part of town.

  Galveston decided to check if Patelo was home and left Elizabeth and I steaming in the car from the hot summer sun. He returned after thirty minutes.

  “He hasn’t been home in a while, but I did find this,” Galveston said as he got back in the car.

  “You broke in, didn’t you?” I stated seriously.

  “Of course,” Galveston said smiling daftly. “That’s a no brainer. Check this out and see what you can find.” Galveston handed me a neatly bound notebook. “It has his entire timeline. I even saw pictures of him and Espinosa in his apartment.”

  I flipped the notebook open and read back through his writings. He had entries for mundane items he was working on and a to-do list of things to accomplish. Then an interesting entry struck my eye that he wrote about a month ago. It read:

  Contacted by Jorge Morales of Ecomax about a new research

  opportunity in an energy transfer system.

  I pulled out a pen and ripped out a piece of paper from the journal, and wrote the name down. I flipped the notebook to the next page.

  Dr. Morales gave me the information about research conducted in

  Sao Paulo. Received design parameters. He wants prototype during

  week period at end of month. Needs personal staff of fifteen and

  project will be tightly controlled.

  I flipped the page again and read on.

  Talked to Morales today and received contract for work with Ecomax.

  If successfully completed will receive grant money of $1.5 million

  toward my current research projects as well as $100,000 personal

  compensation. Project is very secretive due to corporate espionage

  concerns. Morales asked me to get in touch with my contacts in

  Mexico. They need security to transport design. Called Alfonso who

  agreed to do the work.

  I then read the next day’s entry.

  First payment received for staff. Project named Adamanthea, and the

  work location will be Summit Hill“. I again wrote down the pertinent

  information and flipped the page again. The next entry was strange,

  and the last one
entered into the journal. It was a full two weeks

  later. “Summit Hill no longer the location, now going to Santa Rosa.

  No personal items allowed, and Morales no longer my contact. Work

  to begin tomorrow.

  I recalled the date from the letter we had from Colonel Espinosa and it fit perfectly with Patelo’s timeline. What and where was Summit Hill and Santa Rosa? I pushed the journal and my handwritten notes to Galveston, but as I was handing them to him I noticed some scribbled words on a few of the back, mostly blank, pages. I could barely make out the words, but they seemed to be quickly written. They were directions to somewhere. I read through them carefully and near the bottom I saw words that I had previously read. “Turn left at Evangelista de Souza station”.

  “I think we have where he went,” I told Galveston excitedly. Lucky for us, Dr. Patelo was a man of excruciating detail.

  “I’ll call Alex and have him check it out,” Galveston said to me, already dialing his phone. He began to talk to Alex who plugged in the directions I had found.

  “It’s a dead end, just a railway station, nothing else. It’s surrounded by jungle” Galveston said to me.

  I skimmed the journal again. “There had to be more details,” I thought to myself. On the last page of the journal, scribbled at the bottom of the page was 23 55 48.13, and 46 38 27.08.

  “Have Alex find exactly where these coordinates are,” I said showing him the numbers. He gave me a confused look, and then realized these were the same type of numbers we had seen before.

  Galveston read off the coordinates as Alex plugged them into his computer. “It’s way outside of Sao Paulo, south of the city, and in the jungle. There is nothing around for miles, except for this train depot. He’s going to send the directions,” Galveston stated, continuing to hold the phone to his ear. “Get back to me on those other things as quick as you can,” he said to Alex before hanging up.

  “I think you just found where they took the device, Roger. We need to check it out.”

  I smiled at our good fortune, but I had a queasy feeling that we would find something unsettling.

  -Chapter 56-

  A ring came from Galveston’s phone. Alex was forwarding the directions to the location at Evangelista de Souza.

  Galveston had turn by turn instructions and began to read them out to Elizabeth as she raced to the outskirts of the city. We proceeded from one road to another until nothing but jungle surrounded us on either side.

  We drove for hours until we arrived at the Evangelista de Souza railway station. It was a dilapidated building that saw little traffic either by road or rail and was nestled on flat land between the jungle. Just beyond the station we found our last turn.

  Barely showing through the dense brush was a small road peeking out. Elizabeth swung the car onto the new road. These were old logging roads that hadn’t been used for years, but this was a newly grated dirt road.

  We slowed our progress and began lurching and bumping along the winding road. We traveled up one hill to another and then back to the valley floor.

  We drove through more jungle until the canopy opened up to the sky, and the trees disappeared from the side of the road as our destination came into view. I gasped at the site. It looked as if a bomb had been dropped on the area, flattening everything around it. A twisted, burnt metal shell sat lonely in the open land and a burned out car lay beside it. Everything was blackened and as we got closer we could tell this was no normal destruction. Galveston’s and Elizabeth’s mouths were agape as we arrived.

  “Oh my God,” Galveston muttered under his breath.

  We got out of the car and walked to the edge of the burned out building. The steel frame structure precariously stood erect, but leaned awkwardly. Elizabeth immediately dialed her phone, and waited by the car, as Galveston and I walked to where the building once stood. We didn’t say a word to each other as we examined the wreckage. I had no idea what I was looking at, but Galveston did.

  “This was no ordinary explosion,” he said to me peering in the hole that was left by the blast. “It’s much too uniform in shape and is spread out equally. Notice the charring on those steel struts. It was concentrated from the inside out. Either they had one nasty accident or this was intentionally set.”

  I noticed the pattern he indicated. The remaining steel had black encased on the inner portions and was deformed, causing the structure to fall in on itself from one concentrated, violent blast. “There was a basement too,” he said, pointing to the middle of the building as he walked into the interior. Debris filled a hole where a basement would have been, and I noticed stairs descending into the lower level. Everything was destroyed beyond recognition, but one thing was noticeably missing, bodies. Galveston had already noticed the same thing.

  “No people,” he said softly, almost relieved. “Even with an explosion like this we would see some bodies, unless they were all in the basement.”

  I shuddered at the thought.

  We gingerly stepped back to the perimeter. The area was still very dangerous, and a misstep could send hanging metal crashing around us, or more importantly, on top of us. I walked over to the burned out wreckage of the car ravaged by fire, now just a shell. As I closed in on it, I noticed an object that was different than the surrounding debris and it lay well away from the building. As I moved closer my throat began to close up and horror crossed my face. It was the charred remains of a person. I tried to yell out, but couldn’t. It appeared to be a man, badly burnt from head to toe, but whose features appeared clearly at least on one side. It was then that I got my first odor of a poorly decomposing body. I immediately began to heave, and I doubled over onto the ground. I pulled myself back from the body and put my shirt up to my face to try to stifle the smell.

  “Roger!” Galveston yelled, seeing me on the ground.

  He raced over as I waved a hand. He came up to me and noticed what I had already found, turning his head from the sight. Elizabeth heard the commotion and came over. She saw the body and helped me back away from the stench.

  Galveston moved to the body with his shirt over his nose and mouth, and began to look it over methodically. The body lay near the car, crumpled over, but away from the building. The blackened skin revealed where the man had gotten the brunt of the blast. He probably had been thrown toward the car, killing him instantly, or so we thought. The blackened areas preserved the features on one side of his face, but the rest was badly decomposed under the hot and humid conditions of the jungle, prime catalysts for quick decomposition. Galveston peered over the body, moving it slightly with his foot. The body had a coat on at one time. It was mostly missing now, with the charred side burnt into his body. I managed to sit on the ground far enough away to not smell the odor, or get the full sight of the body. Elizabeth stroked my head to calm my shattered nerves.

  Galveston turned towards us. “This man’s been shot in the head with a single gunshot wound.”

  I mustered some strength and held my shirt over my nose and mouth, and walked to the body, as Elizabeth followed.

  “Right here.” He pointed at the skull and the entry of the fatal bullet.

  A small round hole about the size of a penny was clearly visible. I managed to look at the face and studied the remaining features. Suddenly, a realization hit me like a brick, and I turned and raced to the car.

  “Roger? You okay?” Galveston yelled at me, expecting me to stop and vomit. I grabbed my notebook from the car and returned to the body. “Roger? You alright?” Galveston asked, concerned.

  I pulled out a picture from my notebook and held it close to the face of the lifeless man’s remaining features, while I continued to hold my shirt to my face. I looked up at Elizabeth and Galveston.

  “I think we just found Dr. Patelo.”

  -Chapter 57-

  Galveston stared at me with a horrid look plastered on his face.

  “It can’t be,” he stammered, but realized the truth in my statement when he saw
the picture.

  I too felt his horror. We had traveled thousands of miles in the last few days to arrive at this, a wretched, disfigured, shell of a man. Elizabeth excused herself to call the Brazilian authorities. It was now a homicide. Galveston turned to me while I moved the dirt below my feet.

  “Why do you suppose they killed him? I mean, if a guy is in charge of getting the battery to the production line, why would they go ahead and kill him? Why not just keep him happy and move him to Ecomax?” Galveston inquired aloud. I shrugged my shoulders trying to figure out the mad reasoning.

  “Obviously they wanted the evidence gone,” I said, pointing to the obliterated building.

  “I think they just want anyone who knows what this device is capable of to be out of the way, and permanently.” Galveston knelt down next to the body again and began to check the severely charred pockets of the man’s clothing. I stared in disbelief.

  “What are you doing?’ I exclaimed.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m not coming this far without making sure we’ve checked everything.”

  “But this isn’t respectful.”

  “Respectful or not, I’m sure he would want us to nail these suckers.” He continued to check the pant pockets and then the coat pockets, grimacing and holding his breath as he did. “Hello,” he announced as he reached into the frayed and blackened front pocket of the formerly white lab coat.

  Galveston pulled out an interestingly shaped circuit board with a small metal loop at the end, about the size of a large postage stamp. It had been partially melted at one end. He handed it to me as if I could decipher what it was. It had, from my best recollection of circuits, a few resistors and two small rectangular connectors. The board itself had a number and two small letters inscribed on it. It appeared to read 5MS.

  “My team will be here in twenty minutes, and I’ve contacted the local authorities. I would suggest that we leave here quickly,” Elizabeth said after using her satellite phone.