Jade Sky

by Patrick Freivald

  "But he's still our boss."

  "Maybe you screwed up," Garrett said. "Maybe we should have followed orders in the first place. Maybe Jeff knows what he's doing, and we're grunts for a reason."

  "Shit, guys," Akash said, palms pressed to his temples. "We got him. Nailed him to the wall. He's in custody. The good guys won. We can be happy about that, eh?"

  Chapter 11

  Matt dropped his keys on the table next to the door and picked up the note.

  At Kate's. Call when you get in. —Monica

  He grabbed a Coke out of the fridge, filled Ted's water dish, and went into the bedroom to change. He stripped off his undershirt and looked at himself in the full-length mirror behind the door. The raw gash where Dawkins had plunged the knife into his shoulder had faded to a pink line. There'd be no trace of it by morning.

  He worried about Akash. The tactically smart decision to dive on the grenade, and thus shield the rest of the team from the blast, could well have killed him. Matt thanked God for the miracle that instantaneous trauma of that magnitude hadn't, and cursed Akash for his recklessness. Heads-up Boy Scout heroics had their place, but on an all-augged team they weren't necessary in most situations.

  He sighed and emptied his pockets onto the dresser. Some loose change, two pens, his wallet . . . and a flash drive that wasn't his. Frowning, he picked it up. Etched on the back in tiny letters, it read, "Disconnect your network, then watch me. Use headphones."

  Matt snatched Monica's netbook off of the kitchen table, sat on the bed, disabled the WiFi, and plugged in the drive. It held two files, a spreadsheet and a video entitled "Watch Me First." He took a swig of Coke and popped the ear buds in, then helped Ted up onto his lap. The antivirus software gave the okay, so he opened the video. A window popped up with a question. "What is Ted's birthday? MM/DD/YYYY"

  He scratched Ted behind the ear, then typed in "11/26/2011" and hit "Enter."

  He grunted when Dawkins appeared on the screen. How the heck would he know that? Without a single brown hair out of place, Dawkins looked like a businessman in an Armani suit. He didn't smile.

  "Sergeant Rowley, ICAP is lying to you. To everyone. There are no safe levels of Gerstner Augmentations, and they know it. The technology is . . . ." He sighed. "Parasitic. It feeds off of life, off of sanity. It breaks people, consumes them. There's something . . . I don't . . . ."

  He ran a hand through his hair. So much for the perfect look.

  "The chemistry doesn't make sense. I mean it works, but there's no reason it should. And ICAP. They own it, they control it. Not me. Every gram of Jade, every boost, every aug, the Gerstner carbon comes from them . . . and all they have to do to stop it is get rid of the source. But they don't. Instead, they flood the market and make it easy for monsters like me to poison people for money. They created you and pretend that you and people like you are the solution. You're not. You're just a puppet."

  The camera panned out to reveal Dawkins's IPI office on Idjwi, his desk piled with bags of Jade.

  "I don't know their end-game. Why do this? Why not just shut it down? When they find out you didn't assassinate me, they're going to kill millions to destroy my computers at Kivu, just to keep what I know from getting to the wrong people. You, for example." He folded his hands and rested his head on his knuckles.

  "I had to kill a lot of people to get this information to you. Some of those people were your friends, and you're right to hate me. But understand this: they were dead anyway. So am I. So are you. They made sure of that, the day they gave you your first aug. Gerstner-Induced Psychosis is inevitable, only a matter of time and who you kill on the way out."

  He sat back. "So before you die, I'm going to use you to bring the whole game crashing down. And you're going to do it, because it's the right thing to do. You don't have a lot of time, so make it count."

  Dawkins reached toward the keyboard, then pulled his hand back.

  "And one more thing. Things are about to get very bad for you. I'm sorry. You'll have my help where I can give it."

  He hit a key and the video stopped.

  Matt stared at the frozen screen for a long time, then looked at the date on the file. Dawkins had made the video two weeks before they'd landed on Idjwi, before Onofre Garza had even told them about it. So either Dawkins had access to much better precognitive therapies than Matt did, or he blew up the lake himself and wanted Matt to think ICAP had done it. Does he think I'm that dumb, or does he know I'm not?

  He looked at the other file. Scrolling through the mass of numbers, he looked for anything that made sense in the jumble of columns and blank spaces. He found his ICAP ID number, and next to it a string of dates—the dates of each augmentation. Using his own information, he figured out that the top row showed codes for the type of augmentation, which explained the gaps in the other rows. Not every agent had every aug, and he confirmed his suspicion with Akash, Garrett, Blossom, and Conor's entries.

  The last column in his row held a date thirty-nine months out. He deleted the date for his late-second precognitive therapy, and it increased to eighty-four months. He put it back, and the date reverted.

  He logged into the ICAP servers using his smart phone, and pulled up the employee numbers for his team and for several agents who'd bonked out. Mark Carroll went bonk fourteen months after his first augmentation, two months before the final date on his entry. Liam Salt succumbed to GIP fifty-four months after his, and the spreadsheet read fifty-one. He checked another eighteen bonked agents, and only one erred by more than four months. Connor Flynn wasn't set to bonk out for another year and change.

  He checked Blossom, Garrett, and Akash. Eighteen, forty-one, and twenty-two. He checked his own again. Thirty-nine months. Just over three years. If it's true.

  He jumped as his phone rang. Hannes, Jeff. He hit “Send.”

  "Rowley."

  "Hey, Matt. What's up?"

  He hesitated. "Not sure what you mean. Just winding down. Monica's at Kate's, I'm having a Coke and kicking back."

  "So that's not you poking around our employee files?"

  "Uh, yeah, that's me. Just looking up some employee numbers."

  "May I ask why?"

  Matt looked at Ted, at the screen, and back at the dog. Ted wagged his tail and licked Matt's stomach. "We know Dawkins knows way too much. I have a hunch on where he gets his information."

  "You think there’s a mole?"

  "I'm not ready to share yet. I'll let you know if it pans out to anything. Hey, when's the interrogation?"

  "Sorry?"

  "I assume we're interrogating Dawkins sometime soon."

  "Let us handle that. I need you to supervise the Garza transfer. His brother's getting out of Supermax tomorrow, and Onofre wants you there. Says he trusts you to make the delivery."

  "Who the hell cares what Onofre Garza wants? He's getting his brother, which is more than either of them deserves."

  "We've already booked you a flight—"

  "So cancel it. I'll be in D.C. tomorrow for the Dawkins interrogation."

  Now Jeff hesitated. "Dawkins isn't in D.C."

  "Well, where the hell is he?"

  Nothing. Then, "Capturing him was more than we could have hoped for. You did a great job. Now let other people do their jobs."

  "You can't be serious."

  "I am. You're a field team, and he's no longer in the field. We'll get you a new assignment once we're done with operational debriefs on the Kivu operation."

  "Begging your pardon, Jeff, but this is a steaming pile right here. Did you see his tattoos? At least one matches Conor—"

  "I know, buddy. It's messed up, but we'll get to the bottom of it. We want to figure this out just as badly as you do. But it's not your skill set. Let it go."

  Matt opened his mouth, then thought better of it. He thought he trusted Jeff, but not necessarily over the phone.

  "I want your report by the end of the week," Jeff said.

  "You'll have it."

  H
e hung up, logged out of both systems, and pocketed the flash drive. Lying back on the bed, he wrapped his arms around Ted. "What now, Ted?"

  Ted whined and licked his face.

  * * *

  Matt spent the flight from Mexico City to Washington in a black rage. The congratulatory hug between Hernando and Onofre Garza brought bile up his throat, and the thought that he had brokered the deal brought him nothing but anger and sorrow. The Garzas were killers, as bad as Dawkins in their own way.

  No. In his mind's eye he relived the mushroom cloud that immolated or suffocated two million innocent Africans, and he refused to believe that ICAP would do that. The joint UN-NATO venture would never sacrifice that many people for any cause, not after the lessons of the twentieth century. Dawkins killed those men and his team in the Keys, not ICAP.

  Matt didn't like being toyed with.

  By the time the plane touched down he hadn't slept a wink. Even the fact that he didn't feel any fatigue enraged him. He should be exhausted, from lack of sleep, from the mental effort of keeping the "What ifs?" at bay, from the numbing emotional hell of millions of dead clawing at his conscience. Hours on the plane should have left him stiff and sore. And yet, physically he felt great. He could do an Iron Man in record time without even stretching first.

  A black Lexus met him outside baggage claim. Funny how that always happens in D.C., but everywhere else I get a rental. He carried his own travel bag over the weak protests of the overdressed chauffer, tossing it on the back seat as he got in. "Take your time," Matt said. "If you get lost or stuck in traffic or accidentally drive to Orlando, that's cool, too."

  All too soon he arrived at the ICAP stateside offices, an imposing brick building appropriated from some government agency or another after they'd outgrown the UN headquarters in New York. He flashed his badge on the way through the metal detectors, but instead of turning right toward the Operations offices, he took a left and followed the beige marble tiles toward Data Management.

  Matt ignored the protests of the desk flunky, walked around the reception area and knocked on Janet LaLonde's door.

  "Come in," she said.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. Janet pulled her feet off the desk and swiveled to face him. Her legs quit at her neck, and her mid-thigh candy-stripe dress violated dress code, but the powers that be tolerated her antics because she knew her way around the ICAP network like nobody else. Her straight, brown hair hung down to the desk, and she smacked on purple chewing gum with exactly the right amount of low-class sexy that made her Mensa-level IQ dangerous. The aroma of artificial grape flavor permeated the office.

  "'Sup, bud?"

  "Hey," Matt said. She knew his name, and he presumed that she chose to keep all of her coworkers at a distance. "Can I bother you a minute?"

  She scanned her sparse, neat-freak desk, then shrugged. "You already are. So why not?"

  He pulled up a chair and sat down. "I'm trying to find a file with some specific data strings." He handed her a flash drive he'd bought at the airport kiosk, which contained fourteen randomly-selected fragments of Dawkins's spreadsheet.

  "How soon do you need it?" She blew a bubble, punctured it with her tongue, and sucked it back into her mouth.

  "Before I walked in would be nice."

  She plugged the drive into an already packed external USB hub, hammered on her keyboard for a minute, then looked up. "What's this for?"

  Matt shrugged. "I have a hunch." She didn't move so he took a chance. "It involves some ICAP personnel. Could be sensitive."

  "Mmm-kay, so where'd you get it?"

  Matt should have been prepared for the question, and wasn't. "Um, Santa. I got it from Santa."

  Her eyes floated from the monitor to his, and she stopped chewing. "Well," she crossed her legs, "this bad boy's past your payroll, if you know what I mean."

  Matt decided to play dumb. "Not really. You mean I can't have it?"

  She shot him with her fingers. "Bingo. You're cleared for Level Four. This file is Eight. The freaking POTUS is cleared for Seven." She ejected the drive, rolled it over in her hands for a moment, and tossed it to him.

  Still playing dumb, Matt pursed his lips, then nodded. "Fair enough. I'll ask Jeff." He put his hand on the doorknob and turned around. "Keep this between us, yeah?"

  She smiled, gum between her teeth, then resumed chewing. "I only report what I have to."

  "Thanks!" That could mean anything.

  He closed her door behind him, waved to the desk flunky shooting daggers out of her eyes at him, and stalked down the hall to Operations. Jeff's office stood in stark contrast to Janet's, with piles of paperwork that threatened avalanche at any wrong move. Jeff had his desk phone to his ear, a smart phone in his lap, and basked in the glow of his desktop monitor. He pointed to a chair when Matt walked in, so Matt moved the stack of papers to the floor and sat.

  Jeff, in a gray suit indistinguishable from any other that Matt had seen, backed out of a call from “Bill,” fielded another from “Tim,” and a third from “Angela.” When he finally hung up, his phone rang. He let it go to voicemail and gave Matt an apologetic smile. "What's up?"

  "Job's done," Matt said, even though Jeff already knew that. "That wacky Garza family . . . ." He ran out of funny halfway through the comment, so he let it die with a scowl. "I hope it was worth it."

  Jeff's grin vanished. "It was."

  Matt frowned. "Is his organization crushed? Is Jade off the streets?"

  Jeff rolled his eyes. "You know it isn't. But this is huge. Pablo Escobar huge. Huger."

  Matt's smirk held no humor. "So, just like Escobar, we can expect rival cartels to pick up the slack, then?"

  "Don't be an asshole. There's still a lot of work to do, but we showed them that no matter how big they get, we'll nail them. Nailing the Garzas would be a good next step."

  "I'm not interested in—"

  "—baby steps," Jeff finished. "I know. Your job sucks. So does mine. There are a bazillion bad guys for every one of us, they don't have rules to follow, and every time you whack-a-mole one, another dozen pop up. But we can at least be happy that we whacked this mole."

  Matt said nothing, then closed Jeff's door with his foot.

  Jeff raised an eyebrow. When he didn't speak, Jeff did. "What's up, buddy?"

  Matt chose his words carefully. "I think this might be bigger than Dawkins." He wasn't sure if Jeff realized how fake his patronizing smile came across or how much it made Matt want to punch him in the face. With a chair. "Much bigger."

  Jeff steepled his fingers. "We seized fifteen billion dollars of Jade in a single operation. If there's such thing as bigger than Dawkins, it isn't much bigger. We're half a pube from nailing the entire global operation. We could price most junkies out of the market for years." Jeff smiled.

  Matt didn't. "So what's next?"

  "Good question," Jeff said. "It might take a while to tease out the necessary intelligence."

  "Dawkins," Matt said.

  Jeff held up his hands. "Yeah. Dawkins. He's not an easy nut to crack, but we'll squeeze out of him whatever there is to squeeze." With the UN strictures on enhanced interrogation techniques, Matt doubted they could squeeze his Laundromat address out of him. "When we know more, you'll know more."

  Matt scoured his brain for the right thing to do and came up empty. "What if I could talk to him?"

  "Not going to happen," Jeff said. When Matt opened his mouth to protest, Jeff cut him off. "Look, we talked about this. It's not my call. Your job was to bag him, my job was to help. You bagged him, I helped. The guys upstairs are happy. I'm happy. You should be happy. You'll get a new assignment sometime this week."

  Matt set Dawkins's flash drive on top of a pile of papers. "What about this?"

  Jeff raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"

  "A couple of files. I think Dawkins slipped it into my pocket while we were fighting."

  "No shit?" Jeff said. He stared at it for a moment, then reached behind his desk
, pulled out the Ethernet cord, and disabled the WiFi. That done, he took the drive and popped it into a USB port. "Can't be too careful."

  They watched the video together. Jeff grunted, then opened the spreadsheet. "Holy fucking numbers. What is this?"

  "That's what I was looking at the other night." Matt showed him and explained the correlation with bonk timetables.

  "You realize that Dawkins could have access to the GIP data and just made all this up to fuck with you? You know he's got an inside line somewhere."

  "Yeah," Matt said. "That's why I checked with Janet LaLonde. That file is on our servers, behind confidentiality firewall."

  Jeff's smirk vanished. "Janet told you that?"

  Matt shook his head. "Not on purpose. I gave her some snippets of the code and asked her for the whole file. She told me it was past my pay grade. Level eight or something. So I told her I'd ask you."

  "I see." Jeff sat back.

  Matt exhaled. "It's not her fault. You understand that she didn't know what or why, only that I wanted it. But note that she didn't say that no such file existed. She said I couldn't have it, and by doing so admitted that it's there to have. So if Dawkins has a mole, it's a Level Eight mole. Who's got Level Eight clearance?"

  "Weird," Jeff said. His smirk returned. "Tell you what, buddy, I'll look into it, see if I can get a better handle on that file. I'm Seven-cleared, so I should be able to sort this out, and if I can't I'll pass it up to Frahm." He stood, walked around the desk, and shook Matt's hand. "Thanks for bringing it to me. I can't overstate how much I appreciate the trust you've put in me. Go home, spend some time with Monica. I'll keep you posted."

  "But you'll keep my name out of it."

  "Of course," Jeff said. Matt didn't leave, so Jeff leaned back on his desk. "Something else?"

  "Conor Flynn was my friend. Or I thought he was." Jeff nodded. "And I want to know what happened to him. Dawkins's tattoo matched Flynn's—"

  Jeff cut him off with an upraised hand. "Enough, Matt. We've got good people on it, but it's not something that makes sense for you to be working on. First, you're right. Conor was your friend, so you're emotionally compromised. Second, Dawkins is probably screwing with us, and you're letting him get in your head with this bullshit. Third, you've got a bazillion dollars of Gerstner Augmentations that make you a superhuman ass-kicking machine, and this is desk work. Let the research weenies do their jobs while you go out and kick superhuman ass, and when they know, I'll know. And once I know, you'll know."