She flipped it off, wondering how India had handled the pre-Wormwood meteor storm. Had the detritus prelude to the comet done serious damage? She also wondered (not for the first time) if Wormwood was somehow connected to Mr. Dorl. It seemed ludicrous, no matter the man’s measure of power. But tossing aside a theory just because it seemed far-fetched was no longer an indulgence she could afford.
“What?” Westin asked.
Did I say that out loud? “Am I allowed to talk yet?”
“Is it possible?” muttering to himself. A few moments later he seemed to realize that he was not alone. “I need to search the rest of the files, but I think I have a better understanding of what we’re dealing with now. And mind, I can barely wrap my head around this, and there’s probably not more than five other people on the planet that could follow me. I’ll try and keep it simple.”
“Gee,” Lexi snorted, “thank you.” Eventually she could no longer restrain her sarcasm and impatience and gestured for him to continue. Her middle finger stood alone.
“That partial ETCA you found in the box factory was a miniature version of . . . this is like Star Wars shit , I’m telling you . . . a collider capable of transporting it’s discharge to wherever he places another ETCA, assuming he’s fixed the flaws.” He stared at the screen and spoke as though alone again. “It’s like a suped up version of the Very Large Hadron Collider, and it seems to work on the same wavelength as satellites. This shit is out there, man.”
Chapter 32
Colorado - Two Days Earlier
Five fat hoses slithered down the escarpment like anacondas. The FBI man was using them as a guide to the fallen facility still flanked by pines too wet to have fallen to flame. He tripped only once, coming up quick to swipe off dirt that left brown reminders of its victory. A hundred feet below the ground leveled out. He spotted the first uniform since the road.
It was a policewoman who looked fresh out of high school. Special Agent Frank Nielson nodded and continued past a pair of officers before meeting his junior partner at the foot of the smoldering facility.
“So what do we know, Jackson?” he removed his glasses.
Jackson, a short agent with the stubble of a young man trying to appear older, nodded and gestured to a man standing in the ruins, bedecked with a black leather fedora and sporting a silver cross. “He’s not with the Bureau or the BPD.” Jackson’s brown eyes said the rest.
“I’ll be damned,” Agent Nielson groaned. “It’s Earl Grey himself.”
Jackson tittered. “Is that his real name?”
“No,” Agent Nielson pointed at the steaming cup of tea in the man’s hand. “His name is Cotes. He’s an upper level spook in the Company. Very hush-hush stuff. Heard he was the last man to be handpicked by the Director. And he always has a cup of Earl Grey tea. I’ll deal with him.”
He sighed and slapped Jackson on the back before shuffling over to the man under the fedora. Cotes, a burly black man, was speaking into an earpiece, his posture erect with a vacant expression, all while sipping the tea. A puckered old scar arced from his left ear to the bottom of his chin. In this light it looked like a mouthpiece for a headset. Agent Nielson stood before him, hands together. He was about to speak but Cotes beat him to it.
“FBI, right?” Cotes asked the question with the manner of a man who knows the answer. “What took you so long? You missed the reaping.” Cotes stared at Agent Nielson without blinking. He told the earpiece “No.”
“We have eyes in every known former facility of the Tower,” Nielson pointed out. “We know your man was here and that Dorl’s men took him.”
Cotes shrugged, spoke in a neutral tone, “Dorl’s men took him.”
Agent Nielson threw his hands up. “Doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you know what happens to agents when the Tower takes them?” A squirrel in the trees overlooking the ruins clicked in running dialogue with a second squirrel, drawing Agent Neilson’s attention upwards.
“Perfectly, Agent . . . whatever. We are monitoring the situation,” Cotes spoke as though just cataloguing facts. He walked to a felled support beam, Agent Nielson shadowing him. “If the Tower becomes a threat, we will intervene.” He picked up a .38 smeared in liquid ash. Dropped it and stood back up. In all his movements, Cotes never spilled a drop from his teacup.
Agent Nielson considered the words of the agent, looking at the exploded hallow tanks. “You have a tracking device on Agent Lewis, don’t you?” He waited as Cotes sipped and stared, unblinking. “That’s deplorable. Do all of your agents suffer this breach of personal freedom? What about the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act? Don’t you—”
“Shh,” Cotes bore down on Agent Nielson, a large shadowy figure filling the space with authoritative heat. “One would expect the FBI to be more inclined to show respect. After all, we know where Dorl’s main facility is located.”
Agent Nielson took a step back, reverentially lowered his head. The air was chill with the threat of snow, but there was only heat in the presence of this dark man. “Tell me.”
“No.”
Agent Nielson harrumphed. Trying a different tack, he said, “You are aware of the hacker who stole our files. Tell me where he is.”
Cotes stroked his frictionless chin, his face and hand unadorned. “Tell you what. If you can give me assurance that the Bureau will focus on the hacker and quit its monitoring of Miss Montaigne, then I will give you the location of the hacker.”
Agent Nielson gazed across the floor to where Jackson stood stooping over a pile of glass, handling a bloody piece with gloves. “Agreed,” Nielson said to Cotes. “Call the Director in two hours, after I’ve had a chance to update him, and you will have your affirmation. Now tell me, who is this hacker?” He waited, staring up at the scarred face.
Cotes set down the teacup, clasped hands behind his back, closed his eyes. “He has many names. He is a former associate of Michael Montaigne. Back then he was known as Harry Durden. His current handle is Vortex. We’ve been watching him for years, thought he might contact Miss Montaigne. But until a week ago he was curiously uncooperative.”
They were walking toward the twisted spiral staircase, mangled now into a modern art deco piece. Agent Nielson busied himself with writing down every word. “What was the nature of their contact?” He looked back at the squirrel, still clicking every time he spoke.
“Online, at first, then they met F2F in Iowa, where we believe he gave her something.”
A stray sunbeam darted into the ruins, a lone sprig of light that wavered, skittish, as though unsure of its place, before disappearing behind the clouds. “Is it your belief that this Durden, this Vortex fellow gave Miss Montaigne our files?”
Cotes looked up at the trees surrounding the ruins. “No. He still has the files.” He headed for the exit—a six-foot wide opening now.
“Can you tell me anything else? Is there anything I should know about Miss Montaigne?” Agent Nielson followed Cotes back up the hill, struggling as he watched the man take confident steps, find solid holds and propel himself upward with seemingly little effort. “Is it true that the Company is in league with the Tower? That you are assisting him in his endeavors?”
Halfway up the hill Cotes stopped, stared down with his first real expression as sunbeams failed to affect his gaze. “The Tower is . . . complicated. But he is not a terrorist.” He continued climbing.
“What do you know about him that you haven’t shared with us?” Agent Nielson panted. “We are supposed to be on the same side, policing states, monitoring intelligence.”
“Well you have Edgar to thank for the dissociation. His legacy was one of secrets and lies. The Bureau still hasn’t recovered from him.” Cotes sighed. “Listen to me, the Tower is our jurisdiction. Do not get in our way.”
Agent Nielson followed Cotes to his car, panting.
From inside his tinted Caprice, Cotes rolled down the window and said, “Look, I can tell that you’re just the type of man who would shed y
ours or anyone else’s blood to keep the stripes on the flag red, so I’ll give you something. Durden has a contact in Utah; a so-called theoretical weapons specialist. This man has a long list of priors; anti-government propaganda, armed robbery, conspiracy theories. You know the spiel. He even added a rape for good measure. We believe he’s been constructing weapons for Durden.”
He then wrote down an address near Richfield Utah and handed it to Agent Nielson. Cotes started the car and slid on sunglasses. “His name is Westin Dodge. Find him, take him out and let us worry about the Tower.”
Agent Nielson watched Cotes disappear down the road. Jackson came up to him then, a look of triumph on his face. “What did you find?” Agent Nielson grumbled.
“Two dead Johns, no ID’s and nothing to tie them definitively to the Tower. Looks like Agent Lewis is in deep shit.”
“Yeah, probably even deeper and browner than he expected,” Agent Nielson mused.
“No,” Jackson said, turning to face him. “I mean there was a significant amount of blood, but there was this as well.” He held up a three and one half inch metallic finger, complete with mechanical knuckles and wires.
“What the hell is that?”
“One of the uniforms, an engineering major,” Jackson said, pointing at a thirty something agent, “told me it’s a pinky. You think the Tower has begun experimenting on humans?”
“Disgusting,” Agent Nielson spat. “That’s just great.” He looked back at Cotes’ taillights. “Damn spooks. Can’t believe anything they say. Okay, here,” handing Jackson the address. “Organize a raid. I want Westin Dodge in custody by ten-hundred hours tomorrow.”
Jackson started to leave, stopped when Agent Nielson called back, “Small, Jackson. Two agents and a sharpshooter. We don’t need another Waco on live TV. Go. I’ve got a call to make.” He steeled himself for the call by hacking and spitting. Then he snorted Cotes’ name. “What kind of a name is Cotes, anyway?”
Chapter 33
“Let’s talk over here, away from the crowd,” Westin offered. Lexi followed him as he headed for a pavilion outside the traffic of the eatery and concealed by trees.
Wind whipped at their clothes and stole their breath. “Why don’t we stay in the truck?” But she sat down beside Westin anyway, on a cedar bench. He pulled out a notepad so choked on mangled words that it looked written by a righty using his left hand.
Light caught the corner of her eye. Lightning striking somewhere in the distance, a threat, she knew, that was not empty. Westin flipped through the pad in a frantic manner.
“Okay, see this?” He pointed at a linear drawing of the Ethnologic Transverse Conveyance Apparatus. “This is only a miniaturized version of the one I think he’s building in Arfion. It also seems to be a part of a much more complex machine.” He pulled out another page and set it beside the other. “Separate, these two devices are . . . science fiction, theoretical. Combined, they create a device like nothing else. I think it has more than one purpose.”
Her skin began to crawl as she caught him stealing glances at her chest. Lexi read his eyes, his fingers and his expressions. That was the great thing about kinesics; body language never lies. She didn’t want to think about Westin’s intentions. She wanted to know about the machine, what it all meant and that Westin was someone she could trust. But the dungeon’s prickled warning to run was loud and clear.
As he spoke, explaining theoretical weaponry, Westin whisked aside stray strands from Lexi’s face. She pretended not to notice. “The kind of power we’re talking about here would make Chernobyl look like a fireworks display. He could use this device to wreak havoc, and then use it to simply escape the damage it’ll cause.” He smiled and closed the pad.
The wind was slapping their hair and clothing around and screaming through the spaces between trailers, but Lexi and Westin were both very quiet and still.
When she could no longer tolerate him molesting her with his eyes, Lexi stood up and turned for the truck, its glorious paint job gleaming under the parking lot lights.
Run!
The sudden rush of coldness struck her first, piercing flesh and bone and morrow. Why was it always like this? Why the fear? She was weary with it. She whipped around to confront him, to demand that they part ways. But instead, she slammed her face into his grungy shirt and jerked back, getting the instantaneous sensation of blood curdling.
She turned to run. Westin grabbed her long locks and yanked back, catching her mid-fall with his other hand so she wouldn’t slam too hard. He hunkered down on top of her, his limbs like tentacles, encapsulating her body, his face inches from hers. One spindly hand clasped over her mouth, covering most of her face.
“Shhh.” His eyes were almost white. “I’m sorry, but I never could resist the crazy ones.” She found his apology genuine, as brutally honest and despicable as his intention.
Squirming was pointless: Westin was shockingly powerful. This wasn’t happening. With all the rest that had gone wrong, God could not be so cruel as to allow this. She gave up after a few moments, wiped out by weeks of running and psychic stress. Still, the logical portion of her mind, the schizoid personality, the dungeon, demanded to be heard.
She listened. In the quiet, dark recesses the answer came: His gun. She relaxed.
Seeing he had her apparently subdued, Westin busied himself with the unbuttoning, unzipping and unclasping which are parts and parcels of such proceedings. Lexi saw her opening. As he turned his eyes to look down and remove her jeans in an awkward tangle of limbs, she maneuvered her right hand to his jacket pocket. It hung from his gaunt form, raking the ground as he shifted. She reached in and, exercising great care not to be noticed, explored its recesses.
It was empty. Damn. She withdrew her hand and began the same process with the left.
Westin yanked her jeans down to her ankles. His own grease-slicked denim was already unbuckled and pulled down. He yanked out his member and tried, with the same hand, to remove her panties. Lexi looked down, searching his other coat pocket, and screamed through the stink of his hand.
The scream was a solemn lonely sound here in the middle of nowhere.
Her left hand continued its harried search in Westin’s pocket. It found pay dirt in the form of the small gun he had used against the sniper near his shop. Fingers grappled for the trigger but fumbled with the papers he had jammed in there. Come on!
He found her there on the frozen ground in the dusk of the border town. He leaned in close enough for her to smell the rancid peanut butter breath. “Hey crazy chick, tell me if this is real,” plunging inside of her.
She resumed the struggle, panic welling and seeping, mouth vainly trying to scream and all the while fingers searching for the trigger. The final trace of reason vanished.
“You don’t even know the difference between reality and fantasy. You’re fucked, girl.”
“What about the machine?” she mumbled through his fingers.
“Just some hacker screwing with you,” his laughter broke something inside her. “You actually think those are FBI files about some immortal terrorist?”
Somewhere Beethoven’s third Symphony was beginning, slow at first but building as always to its inevitable climax. Lexi’s left hand found Safety, flicked it off, found the trigger and maneuvered the slender gun. She eased back on the trigger. The resultant pop was surprisingly muted, like her screams under Westin’s hand. The dry burning in her groin eased as Westin grimaced, his expression of shock as potent as his previous expression of enthusiasm.
Spittle drizzled out and down over her cheeks. She roared and fired again. Westin spasmed, pulled out. She thrust him off. In that moment, something rattled in her mind.
Sitting up and looking over at Westin clutching his gut, Lexi resumed breathing. Her hand weaved through the intervening space until it reached his left temple. The insignificant barrel of the little gun pressed against greasy flesh, with her finger coiled around the trigger.
Another explosion.
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With surprising aplomb Lexi watched the right half of Westin’s face disintegrate. She dropped the gun and pulled up her panties and jeans, then took a moment to slam her booted foot against Westin’s shriveling member. Leaving the gun but grabbing the notebook, Lexi ran for the sanctuary of the truck, inhaling the night air as though for the first time. It was clean.
She climbed into the truck, removed the perfume from her purse and doused Westin’s seat before pulling her jeans and panties forward to dribble some Lucky 6 inside. She bit her lip at the burn of the fragrant liquid, banishing the dark recollection and the lingering stench of Westin. Her head cleared at the rush of pain. It was Good Pain, and there was a world of difference between this kind and the other.
She drove.
What day is it? Where am I? A thousand images flew before her mind’s eye in a jumble, nothing solid, nothing distinct.
Colossal green signs unveiled by headlights informed her that she was now leaving Utah. Later, somewhere in the maze of night, she passed more signs warning of Arizona. There seemed no difference between the two. The roads were the same stream of black, punctuated by yellow and white stripes, the signs detailed, terse, devoid of opinion.
Hours later, as a Couperin harpsichord piece murmured over the XPlod speakers in the sauna of a cab, the Dakota suddenly veered to the right, trampling the strip of miniature speed bumps. Lexi flexed awake and yanked on the wheel. With heart racing and sleep violently dispelled, she slammed the dash.
“Stupid!”
It was still dark out, but it was the wavering kind of darkness, the obscene early morning darkness. The gas gauge wailed a warning. Lexi slapped the fatigue out of her eyes and watched for signs. A full-service station—an endangered species among stations—arrived within twenty miles, near Mesquite Nevada, adjacent the Arizona state line and 80 miles northeast of Vegas.
Dakota strode under the station lights with the confidence only yellow trucks like her can display; curvaceous and elegant and flashy all in one sleek body.
The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne Page 20
