Trade-Off

by Trade-Off (retail) (epub)

  The combined weight of the entire United States of America’s law enforcement machinery had been directed against two men – only two, for Christ’s sake – and they’d just walked into wherever they wanted to go, and done whatever they wanted to do. Hunter’s ability to avoid detection he could maybe understand if he was, as McGrath at the FBI suspected, some kind of a British spook, but Dick Reilly, sheriff of Hicksville, Nowhere U.S.A.? That was something else. Heads, Ketch had already promised himself, were going to roll. Lots of heads.

  He glanced at the clock at the front of the desk. He calculated that the 737 should land in about ten minutes or so. Then he noticed that the amber light on the grey console on the left hand side of his desk was glowing again.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he murmured. ‘We’ll get the system running in a few minutes.’ Then he smiled, remembering the identity of one of the occupants of the caskets downstairs. ‘And we’ll have a little fun as well,’ he added.

  Two minutes later, Ketch closed his office door behind him and walked down the staircase towards the large room located in the middle of the building. He took a key from his pocket, opened the access door and stepped inside.

  He walked first to the table positioned in the centre of the room, and looked closely at the equipment which was located on and around it. Knowing exactly what the system was designed to do, he always experienced a thrill of almost sexual excitement when he stood close to the table.

  The very first time he’d been present in the building when a processing run was carried out, he’d actually stood beside the table and watched the operation, but he’d found it just too much to take. Then he’d begun watching it on the monitor screen in his office, but after a while he found he couldn’t stomach even that. But he still occasionally turned the monitor on and watched for a few minutes, and he always looked at the occupants of at least some of the caskets before each run.

  Ketch walked around the room, looking in through the faceplates of some of the caskets. His progress appeared random, but actually he knew exactly where he was going, and precisely at which casket his inspection was going to finish. He’d left very specific instructions about the placement of that one casket.

  ‘Janet’ flight Boeing 737, above Shoshone Peak, Nevada

  A little over twenty minutes into the flight, the co-pilot left the cockpit and began walking slowly up the centre aisle towards the rear of the Boeing, scanning faces as he did so. The aircraft was far from full – only about a third of the seats were occupied.

  He stopped beside Reilly and looked down at him. ‘You Harris?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Reilly said. ‘I’m Morgan. He’s Harris,’ and he jerked a thumb to his left, where Hunter sprawled in his seat, apparently asleep.

  ‘OK, whatever,’ the pilot said. ‘Got a message for the two of you from Groom Lake. There’ll be a car waiting for you at the dispersal to take you down to –’ he looked at a piece of paper in his hand ‘– Rolver Systems, wherever the hell that is.’

  ‘Mighty civil of them,’ Reilly said. ‘Much obliged.’

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  With one exception, all the caskets were lying horizontal on the complex conveyor belt system that ran around almost the whole floor area, and the occupants were deeply unconscious.

  The single exception was a casket supported by a frame which held it upright against the left-hand wall. The occupant was conscious, breathing normal air, and the front of the casket was placed so that the faceplate looked directly at the vivisection table. Ketch had also instructed that two small speakers and a simple amplifier were to be placed within the monitoring equipment section at the head of the casket, and a microphone had been taped to the front of it, directly above the faceplate.

  Ketch was quite determined that Doctor Richard Evans would both see and hear every subject go through the processing system before his turn came around.

  ‘Good evening, doctor,’ Ketch said, as he walked up to the casket and peered in through the faceplate, an ironic smile on his face. ‘I hope you’re not too uncomfortable. Still, if you are, at least you know it won’t be for too much longer. We’ll be starting the processing run in a few minutes.’

  At these words, the sides of the casket began vibrating as Evans made further futile efforts to break out.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Ketch said. ‘The casket’s virtually soundproof, and it’s certainly strong enough to hold you. We had a conversation, if you remember. Last year, I think it was. Your principles got the better of you, and you wanted out of the program. I told you then what would happen to you if you talked to anybody about Roland Oliver, and I even let you watch the processing so you’d know what we’d do to you if you tried to leave.

  ‘And now,’ Ketch swung his arm expansively to indicate the whole room, ‘you’re here, an hour or so from death, simply because you couldn’t keep your fucking mouth shut.’ Ketch’s voice rose steeply as he enunciated the last three words, and in the casket Evans actually flinched.

  ‘It might interest you to know,’ Ketch went on, his voice returning to normal, ‘that the people you talked to aren’t FBI or CIA or whatever they claimed to be. They’re just a couple of bums who’ve been lucky so far, but their luck is just about to run out. So, if you were expecting some kind of eleventh hour rescue, forget it.’

  Ketch turned away, then swung back for a final jibe. ‘Once the doors close, we’ll start the processing,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be thinking of you. In fact, I’m even going to watch your last couple of minutes in my office, on the monitor. Pleasant dreams.’

  Evans suddenly stopped struggling. His body, limp from his exertions and covered in sweat, seemed to sag, and he closed his eyes. There was, he realized at last, no hope, no hope at all.

  Ketch closed and locked the door behind him, then walked over to the grey box fastened to the wall at about eye level to the right of the door. The box was secured with a combination lock and a keyhole. Ketch inserted the key he always wore around his neck in the lock and turned it counter-clockwise for half a turn to unlock the guard on the combination lock wheel.

  He seized it and swiftly ran through the sequence of numbers which released the door lock. Then he turned the key fully counter-clockwise, listened for the click as the lock released, seized the handle on the left hand side of the door and pulled it open.

  The three green lights met his gaze, each located above a gated switch. The three had to be activated in sequence, and were the last actions that had to be performed before the processing began. Ketch flicked the first switch and waited for the red light to illuminate, showing that the sound-proof wall shutters were in place. Then he activated the second switch that controlled the ceiling shutters and switched on the floodlights inside the room.

  Once the second red light switched on he tripped the third and final switch. The red light illuminated almost instantaneously and transferred control of the room away from Ketch and allowed processing to commence.

  Ketch shut the door of the grey box, turned the key clockwise one turn and removed it from the lock, spun the wheel to scramble the combination, and walked back towards the staircase and his office.

  Inside the processing room, the gas mixture being breathed by the subjects closest to the processing table began to change, as the concentration of nitrous oxide was gradually reduced to zero and was replaced by nitrogen. Within fifteen to twenty minutes, the first subject would have regained consciousness, and processing could start.

  * * *

  The Boeing 737 touched down with barely a bump, and pulled off the runway having used only a fraction of its six-mile length. Five minutes later, the Boeing was parked on the hardstanding to the south of the Flight Operations Centre building. As the noise of the engines died away, the front and rear passenger doors were opened and sets of steps were positioned outside the aircraft.

  When Hunter and Reilly reached the bottom of the forward steps, they looked around and noticed a USAF van parked about fifty yards
away.

  ‘Not a car,’ Reilly said, ‘but it could be our transport.’

  The two men walked over to the van and knocked on the driver’s window. ‘We’re Harris and Morgan,’ Reilly said. ‘You waitin’ for us?’

  ‘You going to Rolver Systems, right?’ the driver asked.

  ‘Yup,’ Reilly said, and he and Hunter clambered into the rear compartment of the van.

  Three minutes later, the van drew up outside a secure compound, and both men got out. As they walked towards the closed and locked gate in the perimeter fence, the USAF van drove away.

  ‘Here we go,’ Reilly muttered. ‘Sure hope Harris was giving us a true bill.’

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  ‘I’ve just remembered something,’ Templeton said. ‘There is one thing we could do to check this out. Harris gave us the number of a car – a Dodge – that Hunter and Reilly are supposed to have stolen. Run the number through the Las Vegas PD and see what you get. I’ll take another look around the perimeter.

  Templeton was making his way through the undergrowth at the back of the parking lot, his flashlight swinging steadily from side to side, when he stumbled over something long and dark. He pointed the beam of the flashlight downwards and followed the cone of light with his eyes.

  A couple of minutes later Grant looked up from his mobile phone as Templeton came jogging back to the Lincoln.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Morgan,’ Templeton said, panting slightly, ‘shot to death and dumped back there. They must have dragged him into the undergrowth so he wouldn’t be found too quickly. I guess you were right after all.’

  ‘Damn right I was,’ Grant said, and held up the mobile phone. ‘Las Vegas PD just got back to me. That Dodge that Hunter and Reilly are supposed to have stolen? According to Motor Vehicle Records, the registered owner is one Richard Reilly, resident of Beaver Creek, Montana. These bastards have just been playing with us.’

  Templeton reached over, took the mobile phone from Grant, and searched in his pocket for the piece of card on which he’d written Roger Ketch’s telephone number at Groom Lake.

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  Hunter reached out and pressed the button on the communications panel. After a few seconds, the speaker grille crackled and a voice asked him his name.

  ‘Harris and Morgan,’ Reilly said.

  ‘OK. Insert your ID card.’

  Hunter fed Harris’s Omega card into the slot below the speaker grille, and watched as electric lock clicked open and the gate swung wide. He retrieved the card and they walked the twenty yards or so to the Roland Oliver building itself. As they got to the access door it swung open. A man dressed in a dark grey coverall beckoned them inside.

  ‘Best you hurry,’ he said. ‘Mr. Ketch, he don’t like to be kept waitin’. His office’s on the second floor. There ain’t no lift, and the stairs are round the corner.’

  Reilly and Hunter climbed the broad staircase side by side, up to the second and top floor of the building. A short corridor opened in front of them, at the end of which was an office door, standing slightly ajar. The sign on the door read ‘Officer In Charge,’ and underneath that ‘Roger Ketch.’

  Through the door they could hear the sound of somebody talking on the telephone, then heard the receiver being slammed down into its cradle.

  ‘Fuck,’ the same voice said, as Reilly eased his Colt Commander from his shoulder holster, and pushed open the door and walked in.

  Ketch was sitting behind his desk, his face black with fury. He had the internal telephone in his hand and was in the act of dialling the number of the Flight Operations building when he heard the door open and Reilly’s footsteps.

  ‘You’re not Harris,’ Ketch said, looking up.

  Hunter walked in immediately behind Reilly, Morgan’s Smith and Wesson, with the bulbous black silencer fitted, held steadily in his right hand, and Reilly’s black leather bag in his left.

  ‘No,’ Hunter said, ‘and I’m not Morgan, either.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Saturday

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  ‘Ketch is really pissed,’ Templeton said, pressing the button on his mobile phone to end the call, ‘and he’s scared shitless as well. Seems he authorized Harris and Morgan to fly out to Groom Lake on a Janet flight in case Reilly and Hunter somehow got into the base. He even had the flight held on the ground at McCarran to give them time to catch it. And as we know Morgan was lying dead in a ditch here in Vegas when Ketch approved the flight, that means it was actually Reilly and Hunter who climbed onto the aircraft. My guess is, they’re already out at Groom Lake, probably in the Rolver Systems’ building.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘There’s almost nothing we can do – at least for Ketch. There aren’t any other flights out to Groom Lake until Monday, and even if we get Ketch to authorize a special aircraft, it’d take at least two hours to get it prepped and actually make the trip. If we drive it, we’re looking at maybe four to six hours.’

  ‘And by that time,’ Grant finished for him, ‘Either Reilly and Hunter will be dead or they’ll have killed Ketch and trashed Roland Oliver.’

  ‘Exactly. All we can do is call Groom Lake security and let them know a couple of intruders are on the base, and run through the Omega Level One Contact List until we find somebody who’ll tell us what the hell they want us to do.’

  Templeton fished in his pocket and brought out a small red leather-bound book with an Omega symbol embossed in gold on the front cover. To an outsider, the information it contained would be meaningless, as the whole text was enciphered, and could only be decrypted by the use of two randomly-chosen keywords, which were known only to the holder.

  The book contained the private telephone numbers of every senior official who had been indoctrinated into Roland Oliver, as well as overt and covert recognition procedures, dead letter box locations and abort signals

  ‘Let’s go get a coffee somewhere,’ Templeton said. ‘This could take some time.’

  ‘Remind me,’ Grant asked. ‘Who’s on that list?’

  ‘About half a dozen people,’ Templeton said, ‘starting with the Director of the FBI and finishing with the President of the United States.’

  ‘In view of what’s happened,’ Grant said, ‘I’m real glad it’s going to be you making those calls, not me.’

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  Ketch wasn’t dead, but he was looking more than somewhat like a corpse. His face had gone grey as he realized the identities of the two men standing in front of him.

  Reilly was feeling the strain from his wounded chest, and had settled himself as comfortably as he could in an armchair on the far side of the office from Ketch’s desk. Hunter was standing opposite Ketch, but automatically keeping clear of Reilly’s line of fire, and looking straight at the man he’d been pursuing over half of America.

  ‘One question, Ketch, before anything else,’ Hunter said, his voice cold and clipped. ‘Have you completed the processing of the latest batch of subjects?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ Ketch demanded.

  Hunter said nothing, just raised the Smith and fired one round through the corner of Ketch’s desk. The cough of the silenced weapon was barely audible, but splinters of wood flew everywhere.

  ‘I’m asking the questions,’ Hunter said. ‘You’ll live a little longer if you just answer them. I’m waiting,’ he added, raising the muzzle of the pistol.

  ‘No, no, it’s not finished,’ Ketch stammered. ‘In fact, it’s only just started. There were some delays.’

  ‘Good,’ Hunter said. ‘So stop it – right now.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Ketch said. ‘Once we hand over control, we’re not permitted to take it back until processing’s complete.’

  What he’d said made little sense to either Hunter or Reilly, but the inference was clear enough.

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Hunter said. ‘Any operation can be
stopped, if there’s sufficient incentive. I’m going to provide you with all the incentive you need. Dick, are you OK to walk, or do you want to stay here for a few minutes?’

  ‘Reckon I’ll come with you. I’ve come this far, ain’t I?’

  Hunter nodded. ‘OK, Ketch, take us down to wherever it is this processing takes place.’

  Prodding Ketch in front of him with the pistol, Hunter walked down the stairs, alert for signs of interference from any workers in the building. Reilly was three or four paces behind him and just as alert, but they saw nobody. Ketch turned left at the foot of the staircase and walked across to a solid wooden door. Reilly stayed a short distance away, keeping an eye on the corridor.

  ‘It’s in here,’ Ketch said, ‘but the door’s locked and there are steel shutters on the insides of the ceiling and walls. You can’t open the door with the shutters in place. Here,’ he added, pointing at the frosted glass internal windows in the wall above him, ‘you can see them. It’s a completely sealed room.’

  ‘So unseal it,’ Hunter said, raising the Smith and Wesson.

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ Ketch said. ‘It’s never been done before.’

  ‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Hunter said. ‘Just do it.’

  Ketch looked at Hunter and realized that discussion was useless. He produced the key on the chain around his neck and inserted it into the lock on the wall-mounted box. Then he spun the combination lock wheel. Whether through nervousness or simply sweaty fingers, he failed to get the sequence right the first time, and had to do it all over again.

  The second time, his fingers felt the usual resistance in the lock, and he turned the key and opened the box.

  ‘You have to make these in sequence,’ Ketch said, pointing at the gated switches below the three glowing red lights. ‘When they’ve finished processing these go back to green.’