Voyager

by Carl Rackman

  Alex smiled another engaging grin. “If I could get my stuff back, that would be real nice.”

  Real nice? Brad would’ve been laughing if he wasn’t trying to play the stern-faced G-Man.

  The nurse’s wrinkled nose showed she wasn’t buying it, but the doctor caved in.

  “Sure, ma’am, we’ll return your things as soon as we’ve had the green light from the OOD,” he replied.

  Alex touched his hand lightly. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  He grinned back. “Keep getting better. You’re my star patient!”

  She was very good at this. Brad was irritated he’d missed this side of her when they’d been together in New York. Things might have happened differently between them, he was sure. All he got for his trouble was a lot of attitude and a bullet in the head. Still, things had improved dramatically. He felt an ache in his gut when he looked at her.

  When the medical staff had gone and after the nurse gave Alex a final warning look, Brad asked her the personal question bugging him.

  “When I was in the hospital – at Bethesda, I mean – the nurse said my fiancée came to visit.”

  “Oh c’mon, Brad. I needed to see you were okay. I was just playing the grieving fiancée. I had to lay it on thick for the medical staff.”

  His heart fluttered at this, but the agent in him wasn’t fooled. “Alex, were you sent to finish the job on me?”

  “Brad, don’t spoil it. We were just getting on.”

  “I need to know. I want to trust you.”

  It was awkward again. He was very grateful when she rolled onto her left side, preserving her bruised collarbone, to hide her face from him.

  “I couldn’t do it, Brad. You looked helpless. And…I used my discretion. The doc said you were going to be out for four to six months. I figured by the time you woke up, it would all be over.”

  Brad said nothing; he caressed her shoulder gently.

  She took his hand in hers but still didn’t look at him.

  “You’re the first target I didn’t kill, Brad. And I had two chances. Either I’m going soft, or we’re in love.”

  He couldn’t help laughing out loud again. She was good at breaking tension. “I think it’s a good time for a break, Alex. I’ll be back later.”

  She turned back around. “Where are you going?”

  “What, are we married now?” he teased.

  “I mean it. Where are you going?”

  “Back to the wardroom, I guess.”

  She smiled, dazzling him. “Okay, Barnes. Take your time. We’re not getting off this tin can until Tuesday by the looks of it. Hurry back, won’t you?”

  She got up from the bed, without a single outward sign of pain, and stretched, presumably for his benefit. “See you round, partner.”

  “See you round, Alex.”

  She appeared to have brushed him off. Brad found it confusing; he decided it was time he ran his new knowledge past Ferguson.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tuesday, 17th January 2017

  Point Loma, San Diego Naval Base, California

  The US Navy’s schedule keeping put every other transportation service in the world to shame. The angular grey warship, bristling with antennae, radar and weaponry, stood off Point Loma at the mouth of the inlet to the San Diego Naval Base at exactly 0100 hours.

  The sky was black, streaked with the reflected glow of the city lights playing on the few clouds obscuring an otherwise spectacular blanket of stars.

  Brad took in the scene and paid particular attention to the stars. Could it be true? Visitors from outer space coming to Earth?

  Alex was dressed in the Navy’s standard working uniform: speckled, camouflage-patterned fatigues in shades of blue. She carried the collar insignia of a lieutenant and a SEAL badge over her left breast pocket. Brad had arranged an expedient cover in the circumstances.

  She worked under the gaze of several admiring sailors on the flight deck of the Dewey. She moved normally and hefted her equipment without any apparent discomfort into the waiting helicopter.

  Brad clambered inside the chopper and watched Alex finishing her formalities as he strapped himself in. She appeared to have fully recovered from a broken collarbone within forty-eight hours. I heal almost miraculously, she’d told him, and wasn’t kidding.

  She shook hands with the Officer of the Deck, a female lieutenant who saluted smartly. Alex snapped a return salute with her supposedly injured arm and stooped into the helicopter. She was strapped in with the help of the crewman and replaced her cap with a flight helmet. She gave one last, quick appraisal of her equipment and made the okay signal. The flight deck was cleared of all personnel apart from the Flight Deck Officer who signalled with a pair of glowing wands. The helicopter pivoted away from the ship towards the brightly lit shoreline of North Island.

  Brad watched the ship recede into darkness, imprinting it on his memory as a place where only good things had happened. He felt his proximity to Alex in the tightly packed racks of the helicopter and realised he was truly happy for the first time in fifteen years.

  Forty minutes later he found himself inside a corporate jet. He and Alex sat alone in the spacious cabin. She was comfortably ensconced in one of the large seats with her long legs stretched across the aisle. She still wore her Navy uniform fatigue pants, but had kicked off the boots and stripped off the jacket down to the thin black crew-neck T-shirt. She was definitely on her down time, languorously sipping whisky from an iced tumbler.

  Brad watched her face. Her eyes were on her drink, held in both hands, but then her gaze met his.

  She pulled up her knees and sat cross-legged on the generously padded seat. Sitting back into the plush upholstery, she drained the drink in one and let the ice clink to the bottom as she replaced it on the polished side table.

  “You’re desperate to say something, aren’t you, Barnes?”

  “Alex – I’m sorry but none of this makes sense to me. You, Supra, the Triumvirate. Even you and me. How does it all fit together? I’m struggling to believe any of it. How do I know you’re not just making it up to get yourself out of custody?”

  She sniffed and let herself sprawl again. Her bare foot reached all the way across the cabin to gently brush his calf.

  "I have to leave Supra, Barnes. As soon as we get to New York, I'm getting out."

  "Somehow I don’t think the government laid on all this just to let you walk out of their hands."

  "I don’t care what the government thinks. They can’t keep hold of me. I can disappear whenever I want. But I am worried about Supra. They’re not exactly the kind of organisation that gives you a gold watch and lets you sail off to write your memoirs."

  "Alex—"

  "Brad! You don't know anything about me! If you knew a fraction of what I've done-”

  "Have you forgotten who you're talking to? If I can forgive you, you don't need any more forgiveness."

  She stopped, and pressed her lips together. She sat up in the seat, but kept her hands clasped in front of her, looking at the floor. "Forgiveness." She spat the word.

  Brad was shocked to see a flicker of emotion cross her beautiful features, her amber eyes glistening and her lip trembling slightly; but she breathed deeply to regain control Her voice, when it came, was almost a whisper.

  “Do you believe in God, Brad?”

  Brad was immediately defensive. He had once believed fervently. But Helen’s death and the other grisly events of 9/11 had changed him. “I did. Maybe I still do. But he’s not someone I particularly trust.”

  She nodded. “I grew up in Israel, Brad. I was born there, and I lived there till I was about eight. I dreamed about God when I was a child. I dreamed a lot. Me and God used to talk. We walked together and spoke. Only in my dreams.”

  Brad moved closer. He saw every flicker of her lashes as she blinked to maintain her composure.

  “In my dreams, he told me I would be special. I would save people. That I would save everybody.” She stared
at her hands clasped at her chest. “But then I was sent to the special school in America, and I never saw my mom again. I was still just eight years old.”

  Brad knew better than to ask about the school. He felt it would come out in time.

  “It was near Rutland, Vermont. An old colonial estate set way up in the hills. A beautiful snow-covered valley, skiing, mountains, a postcard of a perfect world. But that was as far as it went.

  “There were only twelve students when I arrived, and only three others joined the school the whole time I was there. I was the younger of just two girls. The other one was maybe eleven. I didn’t know it then, but we were all chosen because of a certain genetic makeup. Something to do with some Nazi research. I never found out exactly what it was – and to be honest, I never cared.

  “We spent months undergoing gene therapy and other procedures. They were making us all tough as nails, and they made my life hell from the moment I walked in.

  “The teachers and instructors were all mean. Real nasty, Brad. We were constantly beaten and abused. But the worst of it wasn’t just the instructors. They made us brutalise each other. They pushed us to our physical limits, then they pushed us way beyond. I was beaten unconscious so many times, but I kept bouncing back. I was raped and assaulted by the other boys and men, and I was trained to fight back and brutalise them in return.”

  Brad was appalled. “Do you know who ran the school?”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “Of course, Brad. It was the United States government.”

  Brad was silent yet again. She had more to tell him, though she was now teetering on the edge of tears.

  “I lost track of the years. I know I must’ve been sixteen when the military training started because one of the supervisors told me my age. We were trained to use every kind of weapon. The training never stopped. We were pushed to be better, and faster, and stronger.

  “At the end they told us individually that we were on the graduation program. Once a week, we were thrown into sealed rooms and forced to fight with whatever was in there – guns and knives, or household objects, or just bare hands – whatever we had. And we fought until one of us was dead.” She said this with finality.

  “They made you kill each other?” Brad had to be sure what she meant; it seemed unthinkable.

  She nodded. “I had a few really close calls, but one of my unexpected enhanced abilities was accelerated regeneration. Eventually I was the last one standing. I graduated and was given a special commendation. There were some generals and assorted brass. One of them was my dad. I guess he must’ve supervised me all those years, the sick sonofabitch.” She gave a twisted smile more in disgust than humour.

  “And I got sent up to Supra. Back then it was called ESP, the Enhanced Soldiery Program. I reckon I was about nineteen or twenty.” She sniffed loudly and rubbed her nose. Letting her feet drop to the floor, she turned to pour another drink.

  “I don’t know exactly how old I am, Barnes, but I know what year I joined the ESP. It was 1972.”

  Brad was profoundly shocked. She looked to be in her early to mid-thirties at most. “That’s impossible!”

  She shook her head. “Seriously, Brad? How much of what you know today was ‘impossible’ three days ago?”

  Brad clamped his lips; she had a point.

  “There are seven people in Supra. All the recruits attended schools like mine; they all graduated the same way.” She swirled the whisky in her glass. “I was ready to fight the other graduates, if that’s what it took. But, instead, they put us through even more training. I was mad, but I wanted to win.

  “They tested us out in Vietnam. We went in after the withdrawal in 1973. That was when I really began to get off on how good they’d made us. There were no more beatings, and any guy who tried to rape me would’ve had a short but extremely painful life.

  “We were ghosts. They put us to work interdicting North Vietnamese troop concentrations. We would go in silent but hard. We killed their commanders and beheaded them. The trick was where to leave the head to cause maximum distress.” She remained impassive as she recounted her gruesome past.

  “I was so proud of myself. War became a game, where I couldn’t get hurt. Killing people became so easy – it was fun. Seeing how good I could be at doing it was the only motivation. I was hardened against pain, pity or conscience. My only regret came if I thought I could’ve done better.

  “As time went on, the game began to change. It became less about war, and more about terror and espionage. We began doing nasty little intelligence jobs instead of trying to be super soldiers – and that was the beginning of Supra.”

  Brad was as fascinated as he was appalled. It was chilling how easily she adopted different personalities. If she was telling the truth she was infinitely more dangerous than the FBI suspected.

  She still had more to tell. “It all started going wrong in the Eighties. The politicians and generals had a major beef over communism. It was getting very tense, so they authorised a committee to take over the direction of Supra. We began working directly for the Triumvirate. We took out several players on each side to pave the way for the political big shots to make their move. They used us to even the playing field in order to bring down Soviet communism while boosting the new European state. You know the rest.” She paused to look directly at Brad again.

  He found her ability to skewer him with her intense amber gaze both unnerving and comforting at the same time.

  When she spoke again, it was with a soft edge he hadn’t heard her express honestly before. “Brad, I never thought about God again. He died with my childhood, and I never mentioned the dreams again. They were gone. I never again felt mercy for anyone or anything – until I saw you in the ICU.” Her eyes glittered as fresh tears sprang into the edges of her eyes. “I don’t fully understand why I didn’t just kill you – it was probably the easiest job I’d ever had. But I didn’t do it, Brad, because I remembered a childhood memory. I remembered his promise that I would save people. So I made a choice to save you. And I never gave it another thought until I heard your voice in my ear.”

  She inhaled deeply, her breath catching in her throat as she did. “I think I needed to know that someone would forgive me. Because I know everything I’ve ever done has been wrong. I never saved anyone. I just killed people instead.”

  Brad felt conflicted by these admissions, but the force of her remorse was tangible, even for him. “I forgive you, Alex. Because…I… Well, I think I—” He thought better than to continue. If she noticed him falter, she didn’t mention it, but smiled across at him again.

  She swirled the glass, listening to the ice tinkling, and then put down the half-finished drink. “We’ve got two hours before we land, and I’m betting we won’t be talking for much longer.”

  Brad couldn’t agree more.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tuesday, 17th January 2017

  Federal Plaza, New York City

  Ferguson watched the woman sitting calmly in front of him, known to him only as ‘Ms Jones’, with deeply mixed feelings. On the one hand, he felt a deep antipathy because of her actions; but on the other, he was intrigued by the fanciful tale she had just woven. He was frustrated that it seemed plausible enough to be true, but sadly there was a fantastical edge that kept him on the verge of incredulity. It wouldn’t have taken much to send him over it.

  “Why would your employer want to kill the President? It seems to be against logic. If POTUS is already sold on the idea of the ‘Visitors’, they would be removing an ally helping them to destabilise the people?”

  Alex locked eyes with Ferguson. “I’ve told you, Agent Ferguson, your affairs are like a game to them. They’ve played it for decades. Killing him makes the likelihood of chaos increase. It weakens your country further. It puts a huge question mark over how the nation or even the world should approach the so-called Visitors, increasing social division. Chaos works for them far better than it works for you.”

  “The
inauguration is in less than three days. Are you suggesting we cancel it?”

  “No, Mr Ferguson, I insist it goes ahead. It gives us a chance to take out the other Supra members and expose the conspiracy.”

  “Us?”

  “Me and you guys, if you want in on this.”

  “Ms Jones, I’m closer to having you arrested than joining your little mission. I’m still struggling not to think you’re crazy. I’m wondering if I’m not crazy.”

  Brad said, “You’re not crazy, sir. You’re actually the sanest person in the Bureau right now because you know something that no one else does. We’re giving you the inside track on this. It’s a chance to make everything right.”

  Ferguson looked sharply at Barnes. ‘We’? You’re supposed to be on our side, buddy. He considered this for a few moments. Ultimately, he would love to put the whole mess right. But this opened up a lot more trouble. “Let’s suppose you could stop this. Then what?

  Alex smiled, playing the role of reassuring salesperson. “Then we take the fight to the Triumvirate. They have grown too strong and are threatening to overthrow the democratic government of the United States. This isn’t some banana republic. We have to take them down while they’ve given us this chance.”

  “What makes you think this is our chance? It sounds like they’ve thought this through pretty thoroughly. The Voyager job wasn’t exactly planned on the fly.”

  Her smile dropped and she leaned forward, looming large in Ferguson’s space. He didn’t flinch.

  “I’m not so sure. The Voyager operation was very last-minute. That’s why it almost didn’t succeed. But you have something new this time, Mr Ferguson. Something you’ve never had before. Inside knowledge, forewarning and surprise. And you have me.” The boast fell innocently from her lips. She really meant it. “It’s an unprecedented advantage,” she asserted.