Grabbing her chemistry notebook from the locker, Heather pushed the pride of Los Alamos High School’s cheerleading squad from her mind and headed toward her next class.
A small group had gathered just outside the classroom, and to Heather’s dismay, she saw that Paulette and the kitty cats were among them. Just as she was about to put her head down and duck by the cluster into the classroom, Heather caught a glimpse of the person at the center of everyone’s attention.
Jennifer Smythe stood smiling and chatting amiably, the group around her as enthralled by her presence as if Elvis had just walked into the building. Heather stopped to stare. Even the cheerleaders appeared to be trying to crowd nearer, as if they couldn’t bear to be excluded from Jen’s inner circle of admirers.
Unable to believe the evidence presented by her own eyes, Heather edged closer, ignoring the sound of the bell calling her to class. Suddenly, Jennifer’s laughing eyes caught her own and a feeling of gentle longing filled her mind. As Heather watched Jennifer turn that sparkling gaze from person to person, a chill spread through her body.
With the probability equations forming a torrent in her head, Heather understood. Her shy little friend was in the midst of becoming. The only question was…becoming what?
76
“Coach, I’d love to go out for the football team, but I can’t.”
Mark knew that the words sounded false as they passed through his lips. Coach Crawford’s eyes locked him in place.
“I want you to listen to me, son. I would never talk to you like this if I hadn’t already had a discussion with your parents. Your father told me he had encouraged you to try out for the football team. I’m sure you know that he was an all-state defensive end when he went to high school in Albuquerque.”
Mark nodded. Oh crap, here it comes, he thought.
“Now I know that you see a future for yourself in college basketball, and I understand why Coach Dickey doesn’t want you to risk injury playing football, but the truth of the matter is that high school is what makes a young man. If you look at the great athletes, the greatest among them excelled in multiple sports. They never let fear make their decisions for them. Not fear of failure. Not fear of injury. Hell, not even fear of a tough coach.
“They believed in themselves. It’s that kind of belief that makes a winner. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mark?”
Mark swallowed hard. “Yes, Coach. I believe so.”
Coach Crawford slapped his shoulder firmly enough to be heard across the hallway. “Good. I’m not going to ask you to make a decision right now. You made your initial choice when you didn’t come out for summer tryouts and two-a-day practices. Your muscle definition says you have a great work ethic and self-motivation. If you give it a chance, football will give you the confidence and belief in yourself it takes to be a real winner.”
Coach Crawford patted him on the shoulder once again. “Think about what I said.”
Before Mark could respond, the coach turned and walked down the hall toward the gymnasium. Mark stood by his locker, watching the coach disappear into the crowd of students hurrying on their next class.
Great. He was being spied on by some Rho Project anomaly. He had made Heather so angry that she wasn’t even looking at him, much less speaking. Now the high school football coach had implied he was a coward for not trying out for the football team. Could the first day back at school get any better?
The real pisser was that Mark wanted to play football, wanted it more than he wanted to play basketball. He wasn’t the least bit worried about getting hurt. What worried him was that he couldn’t control his adrenaline. In the rush of excitement, he might hurt someone horribly.
A year ago, he would have gone for it, figuring that his enhanced reflexes would allow him to keep from hitting anyone too hard. That was even truer now. What scared the crap out of him was that, in the heat of the moment, he might want to hurt someone. Shit. All it took to send him into an adrenaline stoked rage was for Heather to smile at some boy down the hall. And it didn’t seem too likely that the referees would let him call time-out after every play so he could meditate.
“Mark Smythe!”
The authoritative tone spun his head in the direction of the sound.
Principal Zumwalt stood three feet away, his gaze locked on Mark’s face. “Come with me, young man.”
Without waiting for a response, the principal strode away down the hall toward his office with Mark in his wake, the students parting around them like the Red Sea for Moses. As they stepped into his office, Principal Zumwalt motioned for Mark to take a seat and then closed the door behind him.
The principal moved around his desk, seating himself so that he stared at Mark across steepled fingers. As the silence dragged on, Mark began to wonder if he was expected to be the first to start talking. However, since he had no idea why he was even sitting here, he resisted the impulse to speak.
“Mark, I know that Coach Crawford spoke to you about trying out for the football team. I want you to know that his approach was out of line and I will be speaking to him about it.”
“Sir, I appreciate it, but that’s not really necessary.”
“In my mind it is. And I wish that was the reason that I called you to my office.”
Principal Zumwalt paused again, and with each passing second the oppressive atmosphere of the closed office deepened.
“There are times when being a high school principal is unpleasant in the extreme. Although what I am about to tell you affects your sister and Heather McFarland as well, I called you in first since you are the most deeply impacted.
“The Los Alamos school board met last night to discuss proposed sanctions for the alleged plagiarism that led to your team’s disqualification from the National Science Competition.”
Mark inhaled deeply. Oh Jesus, not that again.
“Even though no formal finding was issued by the judges, the school board felt obliged to reexamine the facts of the incident to see if you violated school standards in a way that brought dishonor to this institution and to the community as a whole.
“Mark, I want you to know that the board was split down the middle on this one and that many people, including myself, came forward in support of you three. However, in the end, a couple of key votes on the board were influenced by the strong statement provided by Dr. Donald Stephenson, who argued that failure to harshly punish all three of you impugned the intellectual integrity of this school. He also emphasized that star athletes across the country are granted immunity from academic standards all too often and that such a thing has no place in the elite boundaries of Los Alamos.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the board has decided that all three of the members of your science team will be banned from all extracurricular activities for the entire school year.”
Mark was too stunned to speak.
“That means you are banned from participation in high school clubs, band, or high school athletic teams. For you that means no basketball.”
Mark swallowed hard to clear his throat. “But, sir, surely there is something we can do, some appeal we can make.”
“I’m afraid not. The school board is the final authority in this matter, and they have spoken. I’m sorry.”
Unable to remain sitting, Mark rose to his feet. For several seconds he stood there staring at Principal Zumwalt, feeling as sick as if he had just been kicked in the groin. Unable to find anything else to say, he merely nodded, then turned and walked out of the office into a suddenly alien hallway.
Rage at the injustice of it all rose up within him until he found himself shaking. Desperate to get outside before he did something he would regret, Mark stumbled through the front doorway and began running along the highway toward home.
If they didn’t want him playing basketball, fine. He didn’t want to play for that God damn intellectual snob high school anyway. As the ground swept past beneath his feet, a single thought hammered the inside of his skull.
Screw them. Screw them all.
77
Indian Summer. Janet had grown up in the northeast where that term meant a late fall return to warmer weather. Here in the high desert of New Mexico it had taken on a whole new meaning. Late summer storms had become a daily occurrence, their arrival presaged by towering thunderheads trailing curtains of rain, stabbing at the ground with their jagged spears of lightning and shaking the canyons with the heavy rumble of thunder. The wall of thunderheads building in the distance showed every indication of delivering another of the violent performances that made her wonder if the small hogan could remain standing.
Janet loved the storms for the diversion they provided from the strands of loneliness with which her isolation bound her. Jack had been gone for three weeks. Like some great crocodile sliding into the Nile, he had departed, leaving her alone. And although she had not heard from him directly, she knew he was out there somewhere back east. He had given her specific instructions to stay put and stay focused, correlating the pieces of the puzzle as she hacked her way through secure networks around the globe.
So Janet had stayed, making use of the quantum twin link to their source's magical Internet gateway. She still had no idea what technology enabled her to enter a precise coordinate and then connect to any network at that location. The systems that attracted her interest were all highly classified networks, physically isolated from any type of external access and protected by the best shielding that could be constructed.
But, despite their layers of protection, the classified networks she targeted might as well have been broadcasting an open Wi-Fi signal. It was as if she had just plugged a Category 6 cable into the remote hub. Once she was in, the data access was easy. Hardly anyone bothered to encrypt data on the network, so confident were they in the protection provided by the network itself. Unfortunately, that was where the easy part ended. There was so much data to search, so many subnets to access, that finding the clues she needed was daunting.
If Janet hadn't been quite as good as Jack knew she was, the task may well have been impossible. It was one of the reasons he had left her here, in the most secure location available to them, a place that provided no distractions from her task.
Janet pushed back from the laptop and glanced down at her stomach. She was starting to show. Somehow, Jack had seen it weeks ago. He had actually seemed pleasantly surprised that she was pregnant, a response that had shocked her to her core.
Not that she had expected him to fly into a rage or anything like that. Jack never lost control. Janet wasn't really sure what she had expected, just not happiness. But then again, maybe she had misread him.
Standing up, she moved outside the small hogan that had become her home, at least for the indeterminate future. The wooden windmill spun in the gusty afternoon breeze, the rise and fall of the pump shaft producing a rhythmic thumping sound as it performed its dual duty of filling the tank with water and driving the small electric generator, which provided the trickle charge to the batteries.
“Ya’at’eeh.”
The Navajo greeting turned Janet toward Tall Bear as he stepped out of the juniper thicket some thirty feet east of the hut. Over his shoulder, he carried a large burlap bag.
“Tall Bear. It’s good to see you.” Janet smiled as she moved toward him. She doubted if anyone else besides Jack could slip up on her unnoticed the way Tall Bear could.
“I figured you would be getting low on groceries,” he said, pausing just long enough to return her hug before ducking into the hogan to set down the heavy bag. Straightening once again, Tall Bear nodded. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”
Janet’s laugh brought the hint of a smile to his lips.
It had become a standard joke on these delivery visits. The hogan was a typical eight-sided female hogan with log walls, dirt-covered roof, dirt floor, and no windows. Its single door opened to the east in order to welcome the dawning of the new day. At one time, it had been the principal type of Navajo family abode, and although still common, they were rarely used for housing anymore. This far back on the reservation, the old building, the accompanying small mud sweat lodge, windmill, outdoor mud oven, and water trough might as well have been invisible, so well did they blend with the rugged canyon country that surrounded it.
The only furniture was the small square table, four wooden chairs, and a wood-post double bed. Janet had taken a couple of the tanned deer hides from the walls and spread them out as rugs. She had also fashioned a lampshade of sorts for the bare bulb, which dangled on a cord from the ceiling. A large pottery water basin and pitcher sat atop a crate against the north wall, the closest thing this place had ever seen to running water.
A refrigerator was out of the question. Even a small one would drain too much of the precious electrical supply that the windmill generator could produce. That was dedicated to her laptop, the single light bulb, and her one luxury, a small oscillating fan.
“So what goodies have you brought me today?”
“Well, let’s see.” Tall bear dumped the contents of the sack onto the floor.
“Hmmm. Meals ready to eat. Beans. Freeze-dried entrees. The works.”
“Don’t forget the toiletries. You know the elders didn’t have the luxury of those things.”
Janet raised an eyebrow. “Much as I love roughing it, TP is high on my priority list. But where are my manners? Thanks again for hauling all these supplies up here. Have a seat while I get you some water.”
Tall Bear slid onto one of the chairs as Janet grabbed the pitcher, filling a tin cup and setting it on the table in front of her friend. It was odd to think of him that way, but that was exactly what he had become. The tall Navajo cop, with his long raven hair hanging below his shoulders, had proven his reliability time and again. Not only had he guided them to this remote hideaway, but he had been their only means of getting critical supplies from town. While she and Jack were capable of sustaining themselves off the land indefinitely, Tall Bear’s help had given them a base of operation.
Besides that, Jack trusted the man, and Jack’s intuition about such things was never wrong.
“So what’s the news from civilization?” Janet asked, sliding into a chair across from him.
“Internet down?”
“You know what I mean. What’s the local gossip?”
Although she had access to all the news sites, Janet had found the Navajo a font of information. For one thing, he was a cop and a damn good one. More importantly, he was privy to a network of sources that stretched across the country and beyond, a web of communication links between native communities dotting North, Central, and South America. Despite all her years working with the CIA, DIA, and NSA, Janet was stunned by the true reach and capabilities of that network. As tightly secretive as was the cell structure within Al Qaeda and its affiliates, the cellular nature of these native communities put that to shame. And, invariably, within each grouping of native people there was a subgroup in which the old longing for independence ran deep.
Tall Bear leaned back in his chair, rocking it back until it balanced precariously on two legs, his hand interlaced in his long, black hair.
“It’s not good. This nanite goo is the new meth, only the world is addicted to this stuff even before they’ve taken a hit. Shit. Everybody wants it.”
Janet nodded. “From what I see on the net, the UN is pushing pretty damn hard to speed the public release. Luckily the president seems to have had a change of heart on how fast he wants to push it out the door.”
“Only because some of his right-wing base is in rebellion. But he won’t be able to hold back too long. There are whispers about a new black market source for the stuff, distribution through the drug cartels, that sort of thing.”
“It’s gonna get ugly.”
“Already is. Beheading has become the preferred gangland method of execution. They don’t know who’s on the juice, and they just aren’t taking chances.”
“So is the new source real?”
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“Hard to say for sure. At first, the stuff was only available from the blood of someone who had undergone the treatment. But it seems like there is just too much available on the market. Of course, a lot of the stuff is probably fake.”
“It’s pretty easy to check whether someone got the real stuff or not. Just stick a knife in them.”
“And that’s the trouble. There are way too many reports of freak healers to think they are all false. For there to be a second source, someone might have reverse engineered the formula.”
“Or there is a leak in the Los Alamos security.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Tall Bear frowned. “But I think something else is going on. I just can’t quite put my finger on it. This has the feel of powerful sponsorship within our own government.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Call it a hunch. The way this is being investigated by the FBI and Treasury feels wrong. The whole thing feels more like a cover-up than a real investigation.”
The rumble of thunder echoed through the canyons outside the hogan. Tall Bear rose from his seat.
“Well I better be getting back to the Jeep. It’s a two-mile hike, and it sounds like I might get wet if I don’t hurry.”
“You could wait out the storm here,” Janet offered.
“Can’t. I go on duty at six o’clock, and there are a couple of other errands I need to run before then.”
Janet followed him outside and hugged him again. “Well thanks for the supplies and the company.”
As Tall Bear stepped back, he glanced down at her stomach. “How’re you feeling?”
Janet patted her stomach and smiled. “Everything seems to be progressing normally.”
“Morning sickness?”
“Not yet.”
For just a moment, it seemed that a shadow passed across Tall Bear’s features. Then he smiled. “Not all women get it. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones.”
“One can only hope.”
“Have you heard from Jack?”
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