Perfect Killer

by Lewis Perdue

  "I have a bad feeling." Jasmine sat silent as I continued northeast. We crested a gentle rise. In the distance, police vehicles and an ambulance crowded in front of a small A-frame house. Closer, CHP worked traffic control.

  "Oh, hell."

  "What?" Jasmine asked.

  I accelerated slowly down the hill toward the CHiPs.

  "That's Chris Nellis's house."

  At the traffic control point, I showed my sheriff's reserve ID to the CHP officers

  and they informed me then that Chris Nellis had been killed, shot multiple times, apparently by a sniper. They waved me on through, but I turned around instead. "You have got to get out of here," I told Jasmine as we drove back to PCH.

  "Take me back to the hotel. I'll pack and get the next flight to Jackson."

  I thought about this as I made the left at the beach, suddenly convinced someone was watching us, certain now my phone call to Chris was what had killed him.

  Suddenly I realized there could be a tail among any number of vehicles in the surrounding traffic, that my truck might even have a tracker. I shook my head at Jasmine and put my index finger over my lips. "Good idea." I shook my head.

  We drove in silence for another minute. I turned into a beachside parking lot, watching for a tail.

  "But before you go, you need to experience the beach at least once."

  Jasmine gave me a questioning look, but followed me out of the truck.

  At the water's edge we walked the firm, moist sand, and I told her my suspicions.

  "No time for you to go back to the hotel. They'll be expecting you to do that. I'm taking you straight to the airport."

  "But my clothes, my—"

  "Give me your key. I'll take care of it, pay the bill. Ship your stuff back"

  "Are you sure..."

  "You may be in as much danger as your mother. Get on the first plane out of terminal one. It doesn't matter where... Phoenix, Sacramento—wherever. Just so you're gone faster than they can track you. Work your way home on whatever flights you can get."

  We walked through the sand toward a concrete bench beneath twin palm trees, then made a U-turn back to my truck.

  "I'll get there myself by tomorrow," I promised.

  "But your practice, your work."

  "Unless you and I can get to the bottom of this, those won't be worth a damn… not to mention your life and mine."

  CHAPTER 31

  Once the largest building in the world, the Pentagon hunkers down in a former Virginia swamp always in sight of Arlington National Cemetery, a constant reminder, too seldom heeded.

  As he always did, Lieutenant General Dan Gabriel paused at the top of the north Pentagon steps, looked toward Arlington's graves, and said a silent prayer of thanks to the men and women buried there and around the world. Then he pushed his way through the heavy brass-and-glass doors into the lobby.

  The sergeant at the duty desk snapped to attention when he spotted the three stars on Gabriel's shoulders.

  "Sir!" The noncom issued a swift, precise salute. Gabriel returned the sergeant's salute with a great deal less formality. Despite his rank, Dan Gabriel no longer had an office here and needed to show his identification and sign in with his intended destination. Three-star generals didn't simply just drop in for a visit. This created a flurry of phone calls, consultations, and the appearance of little beads of sweat on the sergeant's upper lip and forehead. Gabriel noted the man's campaign ribbons from Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the Middle East and realized this decorated vet was a lot more comfortable facing incoming RPGs than an unannounced general.

  "No sweat, Sarge," Gabriel said. "I'm not in a hurry."

  The sergeant gave him a look of disbelief. Generals were always in a very important hurry.

  Less than five minutes later, Gabriel made his way into the claustrophobically cramped, linoleum-tiled corridor of the Pentagon's outer ring, heading for Laura LaHaye's office.

  As he made his familiar way toward LaHaye's office, linoleum floors, metal and plastic furnishings, and walls covered with GI-issue paint gradually gave way to hardwood paneling, thick carpet, and expensive furnishings for people of rank and importance who believed others should bleed instead of them. A corrosive atmosphere of personal power and ambition corrupted these corridors and reviled those who came to serve their country and not themselves.

  Gabriel's refusal to accommodate this political snake pit had propelled him into what many viewed as career suicide when he headed to West Point. But their opinions held no water; he knew that living up to the ambitions and expectations of others led only to misery.

  Predictably, Gabriel found Laura LaHaye's office on the third floor of the inner ring with ankle-deep carpet and designer lighting. He opened the polished solid-mahogany door and found himself face-to-face with LaHaye, bent over the reception desk in conversation with a uniformed woman sitting behind it.

  LaHaye looked up. "Dan!" She tried unsuccessfully to hide her annoyance. "We were rearranging my schedule to accommodate your unexpected visit." She stepped from behind the desk and extended her hand.

  "Sorry." Gabriel shook her cold, dry hand. "I can come back another time if that's better."

  LaHaye shook her head. "No. No, that's not necessary. Jenna's used to the dynamic state of my schedule." LaHaye nodded toward the tall, blond woman behind the desk. Gabriel noted she wore the rank of an Army chief warrant officer.

  "Thank you," Gabriel said to the receptionist, and to LaHaye, who had already turned and headed for her office. Gabriel followed her.

  Bright sunlight flooded into an office sized like a handball court, filled with highly polished dark wood furnishings and carpeted with plush navy-blue pile embossed with the U.S. Army seal. The Stars and Stripes, along with other service and regimental flags, stood behind her massive desk. Expensively framed photos covered the walls, all with LaHaye alongside presidents, senators, congressmen, and a scattering of world leaders, Nobel Prize winners, and a lot of military brass Gabriel recognized as mediocre soldiers and superb political manipulators.

  A conference room table dominated the corner to his right. LaHaye made straight for a sofa in the left corner by the windows.

  "Have a seat." She directed him to a chair facing the window glare and sat on the sofa. Gabriel seated himself at the nearest chair instead, facing away from the glare.

  "What can I help you with?"

  "I was in town tying up the loose ends, briefing the new Academy superintendent, that sort of thing."

  "I read about it in the Post," she said. "Quite a talk you gave to the House Armed Services Committee." Gabriel detected political envy in her voice. "The General is fortunate to have you on his team." She might be envious and annoyed, but she knew when to kiss a politically important arse. "You'd have quite a career in politics if you set your mind to it."

  He shook his head. "Only the General could drag me back into politics."

  "So what can I do for the next Secretary of Defense?"

  CHAPTER 32

  Gabriel found LaHaye's remarks pretentious and off-putting but figured he'd play along.

  "The excellent briefing you and Dr. McGovern gave in Napa made quite an impression on me."

  LaHaye smiled at the compliment.

  "The more I struggle with budget projections, the more I have grown to appreciate the significance of your work."

  "Bang for buck," she said.

  "It's always bang for buck," he agreed. "And because Project Enduring Valor promises to reshape the military's future, I'd like to know a little more about it—you know, some of the history, how it came about—you know what a history buff I am."

  She nodded enthusiastically. "I'm a big fan of your most recent book." She pointed to a set of shelves near the door. Gabriel quickly spotted the red-and-gold-foil dust cover of his latest book on American Special Forces operations beginning with Revolutionary War guerrilla tactics. He also noted the raw ambition on LaHaye's face, no doubt sizing up her role in one of his
future books.

  "So, how did it begin?" he asked again. "Who got the idea? It would make a great new book." Gabriel waited for the pieces to shift beneath her gaze, for the blocks of ego to topple her caution.

  "Would you like coffee or something else to drink?" she said, reaching for the phone on the end table beside the sofa.

  "Please."

  After she hung up, she gave him a big ass-kissing smile.

  "You're very perceptive," LaHaye said. "Dr. Frank Harper started it all."

  "I remember him," Gabriel said. "The doctor who got Braxton back on his feet."

  "We owe Frank a heavy debt of gratitude. Think of what the future would look like had the fates clipped the General's cord back then."

  In the ensuing silence, the muffled corrugated hiss of a commercial jet on final approach to Reagan National Airport filtered in. When it faded, the distinctive thwack of a Blackhawk chopper thumped persistently against the window.

  LaHaye broke the silence. "Enduring Valor's genesis began in the late 1930s when Frank trained as a neurosurgeon. Back then, opening up the cranium led to death as often as not. Like many aspiring physicians interested in the nervous system, Frank learned about Phineas Gage in med school. But unlike most of them, the implications obsessed him."

  "Gage? Who's that?"

  "A twenty-five-year-old railroad construction foreman transformed by an industrial accident in 1848. Gage's employers, coworkers, friends, and family unanimously praised him as an intelligent, responsible, honest, polite, disciplined—moral—man. Then late one hot summer afternoon in Vermont, Gage made a near-fatal mistake using a four-foot steel pike to tamp explosives into a drilled rock hale. The powder exploded, driving the steel pike into his left cheek, through his eye socket, and the frontal lobes before shooting out the top of his head."

  A polite knock came at the door.

  "Come in," LaHaye answered, and moments later the blond warrant officer entered the room, all six-foot-plus of her, carrying a tray with a coffee carafe, cups, saucers, sugar and cream. She was a big woman who carried herself with a strong physical assurance. Gabriel was ambivalent about lowering physical standards to allow women in certain military units. They were fine for fighter pilots and other positions where they were unlikely to be called upon to perform with any degree of raw physical strength. But, he thought, as the warrant officer placed the coffee tray on the table between him and LaHaye, he'd certainly feel comfortable having this one covering his backside.

  "I'll take it from here, Jenna," LaHaye said of the tray.

  "Sir," the warrant officer said then retreated to the reception area.

  LaHaye sat down and sipped at her cup before continuing.

  "After having the steel pike blasted through his head, Phineas Gage recovered, remarkable given the state of medical care at the time. After his recovery, doctors found his intelligence unaffected and no physical incapacitation other than losing his left eye. But the steel pike changed his entire personality. Instead of the former Sunday-school teacher, the physically healed body housed a profane, venal, violent brute with no selfcontrol or sense of responsibility. Call it self-control or free will, Gage had become a victim of his new biological configuration. The ‘bad' Gage had evicted the 'good' Gage."

  She took another sip, then held the saucer and cup in her left hand. "Gage fascinated Frank Harper, who had treated more than his share of head wounds, so he kept a notebook containing the names and serial numbers of the patients he treated along with fairly precise descriptions of the wounds and treatment. The War Department funded him to follow up on these men, to interview friends, family, and work associates on personalities before the war and after.

  "He found many unchanged." She gazed out the window. "But he also found some startling differences in those who had specific wounds in the frontal lobes. Some had become violent like Gage and wound up in jail." LaHaye turned back toward Gabriel. "I know of at least two cases where Harper's notes and medical records and testimony kept men from being executed for murders they committed.

  "'Harper's work prompted the Army to fund a major research effort and essentially gave Harper a recently vacated POW camp in Mississippi. From about 1947 and well into the 1960s, Harper's people brought in patients for study and sent out teams to prisons and mental hospitals to treat those who were confined and unable to travel."

  "General Braxton was one of these?"

  LaHaye nodded. "One of Frank's biggest successes."

  "Thank God."

  "Absolutely. Anyway, Harper's biggest successes came after he abandoned the surgical route and began experimenting with psychoactive drugs. Harper structured joint development ventures with private pharmaceutical companies—with some success, I might add.

  "At any rate, Harper's public-private partnership evolved into the operation I now head. Harper's people and a core of researchers who founded Defense Therapeutics looked at the mechanisms of treating ‘Bad Gage' injuries, and as they developed new formulas, they realized it might be possible to produce a nondepleting neurotrop which temporarily produces useful combat behavior modifications in warfighters to increase battle efficiency and performance. In addition to the focus and stamina, the ideal nondepleting neurotrop induces the warfighter to surrender a large portion of their free will to the command structure, allowing them to better function in a cohesive fighting unit rather than as an individual."

  Gabriel frowned.

  "Imagine the huge time and cost savings," LaHaye offered. "Instead of weeks and months to create units out of individuals, we can accomplish the same thing pharmaceutically almost overnight and at a tiny fraction of the cost. As long as they're in the zone, they're perfect killers."

  Perfect killers. In the zone. Gabriel saw killing zombies in his mind and struggled to keep his horror from showing on his face.

  "You talk about the ideal nondepleting neurotrop," Gabriel said. "That makes it sound like there are a lot of them."

  LaHaye nodded. "There are. We thought we had the perfect one back during the first Gulf War."

  "You mean you actually tested one?"

  "Not officially. But just in a few units. We deployed buspirone II in a few units and it worked brilliantly for combat effectiveness." She hesitated.

  "But?"

  "Gulf War syndrome. I would think you'd know about that given the writings of your cousin."

  "Rick Gabriel's a fairly distant cousin," Gabriel said. "I've not read much of his work. Should I?"

  "He does strike a lot closer to the truth than I'd prefer." She paused, then changed the subject. "Anyway, we've built on the buspirone work and hit pay dirt."

  "How do you know?"

  "We've done tests with perfectly adjusted doses and formulations," she said vaguely. "We've had none of the long-term side effects from Iraq, unlike the Gulf War syndrome, which continues to plague us, or the rash of murders and assaults by special ops after returning from Afghanistan."

  Gabriel worked to control the unease squirming in his belly and sensed this was not the time to ask further probing questions because he guessed she had already told him more than she should have.

  "Have you been reading about that old murder case down in Mississippi? Talmadge, I believe."

  "Who hasn't? It's been a running sore on the national news for months now."

  "Does it have anything to do with your work? Or Harper's?"

  "Not that I know."

  "Right. That's good enough for me." Gabriel paused. "But, you know, it's truly amazing that we as a people and our justice system can look at two men who committed identically horrible crimes and send one to execution and spare the other because there is a physical scar we can see."

  LaHaye frowned. "Maybe, but I fail to see how it matters."

  "Well, it does raise some interesting philosophical implications about right and wrong and free will. The religious views of 'good' versus 'evil' take on new meanings if good or bad behaviors are controlled not by some sort of extrahuman spiritu
al realm, but by the physical world of neurons, brain physiology, and neurotransmitter molecules," Gabriel said. "Perhaps of relevance to your research?"

  Her frown deepened as the lines in her face branched into a mask of annoyance.

  "Really," Gabriel persisted. "Seeing the scar, knowing about the wound which turned a 'good' person into a 'bad' one, motivates us to treat that person differently than another person without the wound. Presumably we do that because we recognize the person with the visible wound has a physical impairment to their free will. So, for one we have treatment, and for the other we have punishment.

  "But suppose the punished person actually has a physical wound in the brain we can't detect—perhaps genetic or from some sort of development problem in the brain," he continued. How can we tell? Suppose there are physical wounds resulting from DNA damage? Shouldn't society treat them the same as one who has a scar that can be touched? Do we have to touch the scars to believe? Don't you see? Your research has great philosophical implications for the military, and society as a whole."

  She shook her head aggressively "It's not my table." LaHaye waved her right hand dismissively. "It has no operational significance."

  "Of course you are right." He nodded sagely. "But that's precisely the sort of speculation obviously a book author would be interested in." He smiled as engagingly as he could muster.

  Her face brightened. "Of course! It will make for some fascinating reading."

  Gabriel stood up. "Thank you for your time and patience with me dropping in unannounced. I definitely see the beginning of a new book here."

  LaHaye's face beamed. She stood up and walked him through the reception area to the door. They shook hands. Gabriel opened the door to the corridor, then suddenly stopped and turned back to LaHaye.

  "Do you have Frank Harper's contact information? I think he would be a good place to begin the history."

  "Of course." LaHaye said pleasantly. Gabriel let the door close as she turned to the chief warrant officer behind the reception desk.

  "Jenna, please make General Gabriel a copy of all my contact information for Dr Frank Harper."