The Cosega Sequence: A Techno Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “Booker is a little too brazen for his own good,” Barbeau said. “He’s got a warrant out for his arrest, the FBI and Interpol are hunting him, but that’s not good enough. Now he wants to tangle with the NSA.”

  “Tangle? They may just terminate him.”

  “So, Booker’s people took Asher to New Mexico?”

  “We used satellite imagery to track one of those pricey Augusta Westland helicopters from the location of the skirmish in Flagstaff to Taos.”

  “Impressive. Do we know where it landed?”

  “We just got the address; it’s in Taos,” the agent hesitated.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The NSA could be hours ahead of us on this intel.”

  “And I’m the closest agent?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I’m on my way.” He signaled to the agent acting as his driver, and then jogged over to the senior New Mexico State Police officer at the scene, and gave him additional instructions.

  Back on the road, Barbeau called his DIRT contact. “I need to speak with the Director, urgently.”

  “I’ll let him know. What should I tell him is the reason for your call?”

  “How about, I’ve got a crazed Vatican agent chasing Gale Asher into the night, and I’m on my way to a property where Booker Lipton may or may not be, and if he is there, he may already be the victim of an NSA assassination.”

  “I’ll tell him, but you should try again, when you learn something the Director doesn’t already know.”

  Barbeau hung up, his feelings of isolation more intense than ever. He missed Hall, and although he understood that the Director was juggling a hundred flaming daggers in the ever-increasing crisis; his inability to speak with him made Barbeau fear the situation might be hopeless.

  In Arizona, Jaeger left the command center to catch some shut-eye in the adjoining sleeping quarters. He had a new book on the tactics of Pancho Villa, the prominent Mexican revolutionary. They would wake him if the NSA assassin hit Booker in the night.

  He expected it would take at least a few more days to track and kill Booker, but he felt confident. And although he was frustrated by not being able to see inside Gaines’ room yet, the place was surrounded and under every kind of surveillance in existence. He’d be able to see inside soon and get a first-hand look at what progress Gaines was making. In any case, and in spite of Gaines talking to some invisible entity; things were going very well.

  Chapter 31

  Rip had fallen asleep, trying to hear the whispering voice in the midst of the wind’s noise. The Eysen had dimmed, and shut down soon after his eyes closed, but in that place between waking and sleep; he still heard the pulse.

  A few hours before dawn, he woke to music. After a few groggy moments of wondering why Elpate and Dyce had music on in the middle of the night, he realized that the music was coming from in his room. Inside the Eysen.

  It was something between a whispering voice, a Gregorian chant, and a slow, sad classical violin concerto. And most of all, it was real and all-consuming. Rip broke into tears, unable to think about anything but the music. It beckoned him and he would gladly surrender to it forever. The beauty of what he heard moved him like the birth of a baby, the death of a loved one, a miracle, the stars themselves. Tears streamed down his face as he listened to the sound of creation itself.

  Then, parting the trees as if they were silk curtains, a man emerged. Rip had seen him before; he knew him from the Eysen and, he realized, from his dreams. It was the Crying Man he and Gale had first seen in Asheville. The Crying Man walked from the trees, closer and closer to the crystal that enclosed the Eysen, until his face filled the entire sphere. He stared at Rip; the two of them cried together and the shared sense of loss and churning emotions took Rip’s breath.

  “Who are you?” Rip asked.

  The music grew louder.

  At the NSA’s Phoenix command center, a technician pushed a button, and an analyst was sent to wake Jaeger.

  As soon as Jaeger got there, they replayed the audio. “Who are you?”

  “Someone is in that room with him!” Jaeger said. “What do we have?”

  The technician pointed to the house. Elpate and Dyce were asleep in their rooms. Only one body in Rip’s room. “We can’t get anything else, the music is too loud.” The tech played the song for him.

  “Can’t we break it apart. Get under the layers and find the conversation.” Jaeger paced. “Damn it, does Gaines know we’re listening?”

  Another operative spoke up. “Or does the person he’s talking to?”

  Jaeger had a sinking felling. “Booker. Somehow Booker is communicating with him.”

  “Why would he ask, ‘Who are you?’ Gaines knows Booker.”

  “Where are we with Booker’s hit?” Jaeger asked, trying to find some information on which he could rely.

  “If he’s in Taos, we should have his location isolated by the morning.”

  “Break that audio down. Tell me who Gaines is talking to. How is he communicating? Where did he get a device?” Jaeger started doing jumping jacks. “Get me caffeine.”

  Someone ran for green tea mixed with coffee, his preferred beverage for all-nighters.

  “Sir, we could move satellites.”

  Jaeger knew the operative meant that they could request all communication satellites go dark over that part of Mexico. It would allow them to test where Gaines’ call was going. The process wouldn’t drop the call; it was more like volleying it, allowing them to trace it. The move was advanced, and risky in that it could also disrupt surveillance of other targets and, most importantly, Gaines.

  “Call Washington.”

  Chapter 32

  Gale drove in a trance-like state, unable to recall most of the drive from Las Trampas, and tragically unaware that Nanski had been behind her since she got on Highway 518. He purposely did not get too close or do anything that might arouse her suspicions. He had everything – the artifact, and a pile of Clastier documents. All that was left to do was kill Gale Asher; then he could call Pisano, and rejoin the hunt for Ripley Gaines.

  He would have done it already, but he was curious as to where she was going. His suspicions said San Cristobal and so far it looked as if he might be right. He risked getting closer as they drove through Taos on a busy summer Saturday night. Only one car separated them. At the traffic light near Taos Plaza, he even considered walking up to her window and shooting her. He could be gone before anyone realized what had happened and if they caught him, he’d get off, of that he was sure. But the lure of learning just how much she knew, and what he might glean by following her to San Cristobal, held him back.

  Gale, distraught by Larsen’s death, which she knew was real this time, and the loss of the priceless papers and Clastier’s Odeon, brightened briefly when she realized she still had the chip from inside the Odeon in her pants pocket. Feeling the damp blood on her blouse brought her down. “His writings were the treasure,” she said to herself. At the old blinking light intersection north of town, she yanked off her blouse and found the only other one she had in her pack. After wiping the blood off with the old one, she pulled the other one on, and then noticed the light had changed. Relieved there was a patient driver behind her, she drove north on Highway 522.

  Just south of Arroyo Hondo, she got paranoid. There was only one car behind her, the same one from the intersection, and did she recall seeing it in town, too? Hard to say in the dark. She took a sudden left onto county road B007.

  Nanski was shocked by her last second, no signal turn, and reflectively yanked his wheel hard to avoid losing her. His car squealed on the pavement and slid on the loose gravel on the shoulder. He narrowly avoided crashing into a cattle guard, before righting the vehicle.

  “Oh my God,” Gale yelled, as the car rumbled in behind her. She stepped on the gas. Her SUV hit a surprise speed bump and she bounced in the seat and lost her grip on the steering wheel. Dust and rocks sprayed, as she got the vehi
cle back on the road.

  Nanski saw her hit the speed bump and slowed just in time to avoid bottoming out. It had been an hour since they’d left Las Trampas; how long had she known, he wondered. It didn’t matter; she had to die. He floored the accelerator.

  His car rammed into the back of hers; jerking Gale forward. At the same time they both hit a second speed bump. Gale’s heavier vehicle came down even, and she held on this time. Nanski skidded into another side road. By the time he caught her again, two more speed bumps had been negotiated. On the fifth bump, he tried to use it to his advantage by hitting her bumper, just as it bounced. Besides startling her, the move did nothing. Soon, the pavement gave way to gravel and mostly dirt.

  Gale’s speedometer moved steadily past seventy, leaving Nanski twenty feet back in a troublesome spray of pebbles, grit, and dust. She looked ahead, saw only blackness beyond her headlights, and jammed on the brakes. Somehow her vehicle stopped just before the end of the road. A smaller dirt road ran from right to left. Right looked easier to navigate, and she pulled out; just before Nanski’s car would have impacted. Instead, he overshot and slammed into a barbed wire fence.

  He was lucky and untangled quickly, but she had a lead as the road wound along a sloping edge and two sharp turns. He caught her again as they descended down a steep, narrow road, colliding into her, losing a headlight in the process. They were in the middle of nowhere, no lights in sight; a perfect place to kill her.

  Gale suddenly realized they were driving down into the Rio Grande Gorge. “Damn it!” she yelled, sure there would be no way out.

  Crunch. He plowed into her again. This time, the terrain aided him and she went left, up a slight bank, and almost rolled. But she came back down and clipped the front of his car hard, knocking him in the other direction. His remaining headlight showed the cliff.

  She slowed a bit, and next time he came against her, she hit the gas, cut her wheels sharply right, and sideswiped him hard.

  Nanski lost control and his car flew over the edge. The single headlight, like a minor’s helmet descending into a deep mine, shone into the blackness. It looked bottomless to him. He said a prayer, “I serve the Lord . . . ”, his words unfinished, as the car smashed into the rocky Rio Hondo River, a hundred yards before its confluence with the Rio Grande.

  Inside her SUV, crunching on the gravel, the impact had barely been audible, but she’d seen him take the dive. Gale skidded to a stop and jumped shakily from her car. She nearly collapsed but stumbled to the edge. It was impossible to tell how deep the ravine was, but it was deep. Nanski’s car wasn’t visible. Gasping, panting, she jerked to look behind her, fearing he might still be there. Then the flames started. Her relief lasted only a moment. Then Gale realized that inside the burning car, so far down the cliff, were Clastier’s letters to Flora and Padre Romero, as well as the only copy of his Papers not in Vatican hands. The fire grew. “My God, Clastier’s Odeon is down there,” she said out loud. If it had been light, she would have tried to climb down; instead she cried. “What have I done?”

  Chapter 33

  Jaeger studied the green glowing images of the house in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and imagined the glow was coming from the Eysen, instead of the night-vision effect. Of course, he wished they had interior cameras already in place, but there were other means of getting what he needed.

  “Sir, we have approval from Washington to move satellites,” an operative told him.

  He could not suppress his delight. “Excellent; begin it.” Jaeger sipped his tea-coffee combo and explored tactics in his mind, grateful not to be bound by laws. The NSA’s secret mandate allowed him to do whatever was necessary to protect the nation. And in this case, the Scorch And Burn directive meant he could wipe out the entire village surrounding the house, if needed.

  Booker might have a ton of money and all the power it afforded, but he was no match for the treasury and the might of the United States. The all-powerful Vatican was also in over its head. Even all the saints of the Catholic Church couldn’t help them this time. “Unless God himself comes down to get his hands dirty, and even then . . . ” Jaeger smiled.

  “Sir.” An operative interrupted his thoughts. “There’s noise in New Mexico.”

  “Asher?”

  “Possibly. An old Catholic Church in Las Trampas was the site of a shooting earlier this evening.” The operative looked at her iPad. “One dead. One critical.”

  “Shooter?”

  “At large.”

  “ID on the victims?”

  “A priest in Albuquerque ICU, named, Józef Augustyniak Kowalkowski.”

  “That’s one person?”

  “Yes, sir. The fatality is Larsen Fretwell.”

  “My, oh, my. Is he really dead this time?”

  “Multiple bullet wounds. Died at the scene. Confirmation from NMSP.”

  “And no sign of Asher?”

  “No one saw her. But there is something else. The FBI was there within minutes, and the agent in charge, Dixon Barbeau.”

  “I’ll be damned. Get us all over this,” he said turning to another operative. “If Booker and Barbeau are in New Mexico, most likely Asher is, too . . . it sure sounds like something messy is going on in the land of enchantment. Either that, or there is one hell of a party about to happen and my feelings are hurt – no one has invited us.”

  “Yes, sir,” the operative said, smiling at his superior’s odd way of viewing the disturbing development in the crisis.

  “Make sure we crash that party.”

  Barbeau looked at the map of New Mexico, as his driver pushed the speed limit, and they raced toward Taos. Everything was marked; blue crosses at Taos Pueblo, San Francisco de Asís, and Chimayó; a red circle at Grinley’s house. He added a cross to San José de Gracia Church, and studied San Cristobal. “She’s going there,” he said to himself. The agent driving glanced over, trying to decide if a response was expected. Barbeau felt as if he were chasing ghosts; Larsen dead, alive, and dead again; Gaines was even dead according to the media, and then there were Conway and Clastier.

  His phone rang. The Director was in midsentence when he picked it up, but wasn’t talking to Barbeau. He was giving orders to people, something about Larsen.

  “Dixon, are you there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Keeps getting worse, huh?” Barbeau didn’t attempt to respond to the Director’s rhetorical question and waited for him to continue. “We tried to keep Larsen’s identity quiet, but someone down there exposed it.. We even tried the next-of-kin notification rule, but Cable News told us that his kin had already been notified; the first time he died! Do you believe this stuff? Now we’re fielding about a thousand press inquiries. Who were those brave law enforcement officers trying to apprehend, when they died on the hotel catwalk in Atlanta?”

  “Next they’re going to ask if Gaines is really dead,” Barbeau said.

  “That’s the NSA’s quagmire. I still don’t know why they went to all that trouble, when he was about to leave the country.”

  “They didn’t want anyone looking for him.”

  “I know that but we’re all still looking, aren’t we?” The Director almost sounded amused. “Speaking of which, we just missed Asher, huh?”

  “Yeah, I’m working on it.”

  “Well now, you’ve woken up the entire Eysen-seeking world. A beloved priest in ICU, shot by an unknown assailant; an already dead archaeologist, who happens to be Ripley Gaines’ right hand man, gets killed again. The media is not going to let this go until they get to the truth.”

  “What is the truth?” Barbeau asked.

  “I was hoping you knew. Call me back when you find it. I have to jump, the President’s on another line.”

  Barbeau didn’t get to ask the Director the twenty or thirty questions he had, nor had there been a chance to run his theories and hunches past him. Still, he felt better having heard his voice, if for no other reason than to know that he was still alive.

 
; Chapter 34

  Moving satellites, the term for testing and tracking the source, or sources, of originating signals, was rarely done. However, there didn’t seem to be a choice in this case; they could not figure out with whom Gaines was talking and even more problematic was his method of communication. Jaeger jumped rope while waiting for the results. He knew the NSA had some exposure during the maneuvers, namely the loss of surveillance, but it would just be a few minutes of darkness and then they’d have an answer.

  In a solar-powered bunker located on the same Taos property where he’d met Gale, Booker sucked down a yerba mate power smoothie, filled with one of his special blend of herbs; he needed to stay up all night and this would do it. Two aides assisted him in handling the fast-breaking situations.

  “The helicopter is on the way to pick up Kruse and Harmer,” an aide began. “More AX agents will arrive in the next thirty minutes. Evacuation plans are in place, should the NSA assassin locate you.”

  “We still have not been able to locate Gale Asher,” a second aide said. “The tracking device in her car has been spotty. Our last ping, from near Rio Lucero Road in Taos, showed her heading north. At normal traffic speeds, she could be anywhere in this radius.” A map appeared on one of three large screens in front of them.

  “Okay. And any luck on the witness in FBI custody?”

  “Happening as we speak,” the aide responded.

  “Good,” Booker said. “And the assassin, do we have an ID? An ETA? Any data?”

  “Not yet.” The aide shook his head.

  Booker picked up his ringing phone. “Incredible! Why would they do that?” he asked the person on the other end. “That’s our in, it couldn’t be more perfect.” Booker hung up and informed his aides that the NSA was moving satellites, explained what that meant, and told them what he needed them to do.

  He set a timer for five minutes, then again immediately worked the phones. One minute, twelve seconds, and two calls later; he reached for his smoothie and pulled up a map of Mexico on another screen.