Black Hawk Day Rewind: An action packed spy thriller (Mark Savannah Espionage Series Book 1)

by Dominick Fencer

  "See you soon, Anaïs," replied Reed. He hung up and handed the phone back to Green.

  "All we need is Anaïs here during this mess. I don’t want her to know anything about what is happening, Jago. So keep her away until the situation is resolved. In any case, she must find Savannah, so she has to stay out of the way."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Thanks Jago, you can go. See you tomorrow."

  90

  At midnight Mark made another coffee, drank it and got dressed to go out for a walk in the night. He’d had no sleep at all and needed to get his brain working, and a walk of a few miles would definitely get his gray matter in motion. He had got into the habit in London and he did it every time he had to prepare a mission in detail.

  When he returned home after a couple of hours, he wrote a detailed report on the analyzed data on 35 patients at the Southwestern County Medical Center. He decided to talk to David the next morning face-to-face and not to put the document in the department’s important communication archives.

  At 4:00 am, exhausted, he fell asleep on the couch still dressed.

  Mark felt the tension rise, people were running through the streets screaming, he heard loud explosions and gunfire very close by. There were Bravo rangers, Delta Force and Navy SEALS in action, the confusion was total. It was no longer a simple operation by raiders, but a real battle against militants.

  His mission in Somalia was over and he just had to get to the base as soon as possible and take off from what had become a fiery hell. A U.S. helicopter was veering over his head; all of a sudden, Mark realized that the helicopter was falling to the ground. He saw the propeller shatter, kicking up dust, dirt and rocks that obscured his view, next the tail broke and sent dangerous fragments everywhere.

  He remained close to the wall, trying to figure out what he could do: he saw the fuselage flexing under the force of the impact, he felt the vibrations that shook the metal as if they were a hi-hat. He could see the bodies of the aircrew whipped by the safety straps that cut into their skin, while the noise of the rabid turbine marked a tempo that seemed to never end.

  Mark then opened radio contact and heard an incredulous and excited voice say, "The Super 6-1 was shot down! I repeat, the Black Hawk was shot down, the Super 6-1 is on the ground!" But where was his father, Turner C. Cooper?

  Mark Savannah suddenly awoke sweaty, sore, his heart pounding: the same nightmare that haunted him again and again had come back clear, after a very short latency period. This time he had seen Richard Reed, carrying an RPG on his shoulder, as he ran to the side of the road to hide.

  It was 7:30 in the morning and Mark took a shower to wash off the sticky nightmare that prostrated him when he least expected it.

  By 8:30 am he was already in Marshall’s office.

  "Hello David, how did it go yesterday?"

  "Coffee? Cake from Mario and wife?"

  "Sure, thanks. I need to talk to you. I’ve analyzed all the data."

  David Marshall called the bar and, as usual, Mario answered and was only too happy to send the breakfast. Finally, David turned to speak:

  "They replaced the faulty batch of Neuroxenia, and then Harris and Bain visited the patients and wrote the report."

  "Outcome?" asked Mark.

  "I closed the procedure; in effect, the waves have stabilized and the frequency hasn’t increased further. Only three states received a bad batch that was to be delivered to another project."

  "Let me guess: Texas, Colorado and California."

  "Yes...but how did you know?"

  "David, they are the ones that you called the other day to see if they had any problems and, curiously, Harris was also the investigator. Believe me, you have been deceived really well."

  "Mark I don’t think that..."

  "Listen to me, they’re carrying out a trial involving a large number of people, they have patented a neuronal tissue that allows the complete psychomotor recovery of those who have suffered major trauma, the scaffold that they have developed gives no rejection phenomena, and in addition the molecule that supports the therapy comes from their research and development laboratories.

  “But come on, you also have to consider that it is a project they are industrializing and exporting abroad and not least that it is being followed very closely by the media.

  “Suddenly one day all the patients, except one, undergo an increase in frequency and intensity of their brain waves, they become aggressive towards their own kind and don’t respond to pain stimuli, but do you know that all, and I repeat all of our patients don’t react to pain and are not afraid of anything?

  “Do you know that they eat almost twice the amount of food that they used to eat and that putting them through an ECG stress test yields almost the same results as a baseline ECG? And, I haven’t finished, do you know that all of the scientific directors of the accredited centers are part of the Department of Defense with the exception of Harris, who, however, works for the CIA?

  “How do you explain all this? And how did you end up on the project, since you don’t work for either of the two institutions?"

  "I don’t know what to say,” David was flustered by Mark’s long angry speech. “I was Ronald Barth’s deputy, I took his position when he died in a car accident a year ago."

  "Good heavens! David, do you realize what kind of situation this is? And perhaps it wasn’t even an accident! The truth is that Reed has lost control of the situation, he doesn’t know which way to turn and is trying to gain time to find a solution and prevent fatal leaks."

  "What do you intend to do?" asked David.

  "I want to understand what is really going on before..."

  "Mark, I'm not convinced."

  "Davis knew about this in advance or he suspected something."

  "You know that I cannot contact Davis," Marshall replied annoyed.

  In the midst of the discussion, Mark’s pager began to ring: it was the emergency room.

  "Hello, this is Stearman, Did you call me... I'll be right there."

  "Marshall, there’s an urgency in ER, I gotta go. If you don't mind, we can continue later."

  "I'll wait for you to come back, but you have to know that your idea doesn’t please me at all."

  Mark quickly went to the emergency room: a man was lying on the bed waving and speaking in incoherent sentences.

  "Dr Stearman! He’s a car accident victim. We have found a mild traumatic brain injury and a few bruises, but the patient has tried to attack us several times. He keeps insisting we have taken the form of doctors but in reality we want to kill him! We had to give him a sedative to calm him down, but with little result."

  Mark approached the man: he was about thirty-years old, and he had dog tags around his neck.

  "Good morning George, I'm Dr. Stearman, you have been lucky. Can I speak to you for a minute?"

  "Captain, why the fuck disguise yourself as a doctor. Shouldn't we start the training in the jungle?"

  "I'm not your captain, George. I'm a doctor."

  "How the fuck were you able to replace my battalion with doubles that fucking do nothing? Answer me, Captain!"

  "Ok George, that's enough, let me take a look at you. How the hell do you not remember that I’m both your captain and a medical officer?" replied Mark, who was interested in understanding his state of health.

  "You are right. I'm sorry, sir."

  "Hold still. I must probe your vertebrae, beginning with those in the neck. Don’t move."

  Mark began the visit and lingered on a point in the neck that was thicker as if it had a large cyst.

  "Do you feel pain here?"

  "No, have you finished?"

  "Now take a deep breath."

  "You are a pain in the ass, captain, and I don’t care if you put me in isolation. Haven’t you finished probing me, fucking hell!"

  "Adam," Mark said, turning to the doctor on duty. "We have to carry out an MRI quickly. Call a nurse, and I'll be right there”.

  While Ada
m went in search of a nurse, Mark took the gum he was chewing out of his mouth and applied it to the dog tags without being noticed then he put the gum in his pocket.

  Mark stayed with the soldier during the entire MRI then, when the radiologist left the room, he sent a copy of the file directly to his device.

  "What do I have?" George asked seriously.

  "I checked the cyst that you have in your neck."

  "You also took a blood sample, didn’t you? Do you think I'm under the influence of drugs or bloody alcohol?"

  "These are routine examinations, George. As for the cyst, we’ll know in a couple of hours. You can rest for the time being; fortunately, I have not seen anything serious."

  The patient was taken to a room to keep him under observation.

  "Adam," Mark said to the doctor in the emergency room, "I saw something strange, but I need to see the scan before I can be certain. I think this man has symptoms of Capgras syndrome, which may have been caused by the accident. I would like to keep him under observation for at least 24 hours to understand his mental state. The peculiar thing is that he hasn’t used drugs and is not in a daze. I'll be back in half an hour, after reviewing the MRI for a possible therapy."

  Mark had seen a strange image on the patient’s MRI and decided to analyze it in peace in his office. There was also something wrong in the soldier’s reactions, he was under sedation but was still talkative and aggressive.

  Mark sat down at the desk and took out the gum with the imprint of George Turner’s dog tags, then he transcribed the identification number of the department along with the patient’s name and surname, then he threw the gum in the trash.

  As he was about to examine the MRI, he heard someone knocking on the door: it was Adam Murray, the emergency room doctor.

  "Dr Stearman!" he said in a shaken voice. "Look at this, I'm going home but I had to show you this..."

  Mark read the paper that Adam was giving him and then asked: "So presumably he’s taking an experimental drug that is not on the market, and you haven’t been able to determine what the drug is?"

  "Exactly! And as if that were not enough, ten minutes ago, four soldiers came to my office, they demanded all the medical records including copies, all the analysis and the MRI. We had to hand over all the information regarding this George Turner. Then they picked up the patient and took him away."

  "But you just let them to do it?" asked Mark incredulous.

  "I couldn’t do anything but run a check on one of them at Fort Bliss, and the feedback was positive. I had to release the patient to a medical officer. I'm sorry, you won’t get the outcome of the MRI."

  "At this point it doesn’t matter, he's gone. He was sure strange. Adam, leave me the analyses please. This question intrigues me anyway."

  "You can keep them. I don’t need them anymore, goodbye Dr. Stearman."

  At that point, Mark was sure that the Fort Bliss Armored Unit Training Base officials were hiding something, so he opened the file with the images of Turner’s magnetic resonance by connecting his device to the screen that he had in his office.

  "Holy shit!" Mark exclaimed to himself, reflecting on what he was seeing.

  The images showed a thin scar that had healed between the frontal and parietal lobes and what looked like a metal object stuck under the skin of the neck.

  Mark enlarged the picture and for the second time he let out a colorful exclamation.

  "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!! Yes, it is an RF-ID micro-transponder tag, and the scar, the aggressive behavior..."

  He picked up the phone and dialed David Marshall’s phone number.

  "David? This is Mark, can your team analyze a sample of Neuroxenia, please?"

  "Your voice sounds different,” said David in alarm. “What’s happened?"

  "I'm not sure for the moment and I don’t want to worry you. Can you please arrange the analysis? It's very urgent. I'll tell you about it as soon as I clear my ideas."

  "I’ll send you the file immediately. Bain brought me the analysis of the samples from Harris and Baker and compared them with the normal dosage of the drug. He wanted to show me that even the samples we have in stock have the same problem because they belong to a mistakenly sent batch. You should have received it in your private directory, call me as soon as possible."

  Mark opened the file and it didn’t take long to realize that it was the same molecule; and at that point, he thought of Pavel, he must still be awake.

  "QRV Digitrevenant69?"

  "QRV, hello, Mark."

  "I’m afraid there’s a parallel project covered by military secrecy, the twin of "Transtem 1.1", and this would explain the involvement of the Defense and the CIA. It also explains why both institutions have pushed the media to take an interest in the project: they want to give social significance to the activities of Biosketch Technologies Inc. If I give you a code and a name, do you want to have some fun and do a little digging into the Defense archives?"

  "Of course, just me, no one else can be involved, too dangerous."

  "Payment for success."

  "As usual. Goodbye. Is it OK in a day?"

  "Run like the wind, Pavel! I have the feeling that time has already expired. Thank you, my friend, see you soon.”

  91

  "Jago? It's me, I'm wasting my days going around in circles, any news from the informants or Interpol?"

  "Hi, Anaïs! Absolute zero, nothing. Where are you?"

  "I’m still in Fort Smith, but I scoured the city, there is not even a hint of Savannah here. I have to come back and reconsider all the evidence again and try another strategy; the current approach is time and money down the drain."

  Green knew very well that Skylinep92 was right, but the Colonel had been clear: Anaïs could not come back to Biosketch Technologies Inc. at the moment. On the other hand, he couldn’t cancel her mission as she would be suspicious if he didn’t allocate her another higher priority assignment.

  "You know that I cannot make these decisions,” said Green. “I'll connect you to Colonel Reed. I've just seen him, he’s not busy at the moment, and it’s better that you speak with him directly."

  Green switched the call to Walton I. Reed’s line.

  "Hello, Anaïs. Jago told me that you are running into trouble."

  "I'm not in trouble…Good morning, Colonel…I'm just wasting my time here, I should come back and reconsider the set of events and clues from another perspective. Savannah cannot have vanished into thin air, he definitely has operational support and this is making it more difficult to find him. Either that or he has taken the risk of crossing the border into Mexico on foot, but I doubt it. In fact, it is not only the U.S. border police that hits hard and over there in Mexico they make you disappear without much fuss, unless he’s being protected by someone, as I think."

  "You are right to be frustrated, but I'm convinced that the best solution is to probe the bus route to Texas thoroughly as you are doing right now. You have almost finished, and at least we’ll know that despite travelling through several southern states he hasn't stopped in Texas and presumably hasn’t entered Mexico."

  "Sir, I don’t think that's a good idea, I think it is better to reconsider the evidence we have collected so far."

  "Anaïs, if it wasn’t you, I'd say you're moving along an inopportune path of insubordination. I know your hot spirit, we’re on the phone, with no witnesses, and I loved your mother, but don’t argue with me. The decision is mine alone, and you are an operative agent!" Then, softening his tone, the Colonel continued, "I promised you that you would direct Mayer’s astrophysics laboratory after this job, it is waiting for you. Everything is already arranged and agreed."

  "Okay, sir,” replied Anaïs. “I’ll continue the investigation. I’ll head to Oklahoma City, then Dallas. I’ll keep in touch with Green. See you soon, sir. Do you happen to need a pilot again?"

  "Sorry, I already replaced Anderson with a new pilot, and besides that's not your job. Goodbye, Anaïs, now find that bastard Sava
nnah."

  Anaïs angrily ended the communication, she hated Walton I. Reed; even after all this time she could not understand how her mother had been able to maintain a relationship for twenty years with a man who was so arrogant, cynical, presumptuous and fond of power.

  She got back into her car and set the navigator for Oklahoma City, she would have to travel about 182 miles, about three hours driving.

  Anaïs decided to make a detour near the Oklahoma City. She was demotivated, tired, and she didn’t understand why Reed had been so insistent. She had a feeling that he didn’t want her in the way.

  She drove in the direction of the Wiley Post airport; it was time to get airborne for a while.

  She rented a Cessna 172 R, a newer model of the 172 M in which she had flown over the Grand Canyon with Green. The fuel injected engine of the 172 R, along with the internal noise suppression systems, made the flight softer and more pleasant. At that moment she didn’t care where she went, she was only interested in taking her feet, soul and thoughts off the ground and chasing the horizon, pretending she didn’t know it was unattainable.

  Alone, she looked over at the seat next to her and its emptiness hurt her, reproached her for being like a large cloud generated by a rotor that she saw in front of her: it was static in the sky, only a small portion was visible, illuminated by the fading sun, otherwise the cloud merged with the darkening sky.

  Anaïs got to Oklahoma City late that evening. She felt restless and jumpy. She got a room at a hotel and then went out for a walk. That evening she wouldn’t call Jago C. Green, let alone Colonel Reed.

  92

  "Good morning, Brad, how did it go with your friend yesterday? I’m told that you were with her for a couple of hours," Mark Savannah asked while visiting him in the late morning.