He was seething mad as he ordered the soldier with him to take off to the south and make best speed anywhere but here. The Colorado compound would be poison now that Hall had been in his mind, but he would find another base soon enough. He would heal and regroup. Live to fight another day. Build the legend of Troy Browning, which would be told for hundreds and thousands of generations to come.
“Leaving so soon?” taunted Nick Hall directly into his mind as his helo began picking up altitude and speed.
Hall was speaking to him telepathically, Browning realized. Fascinating. So he and Hall could read what they wanted from each other, but could also have directed telepathic conversations that were more focused.
“I thought leaving was a good idea,” replied Browning. “There’s about to be an infestation of hero types in the woods. Since I’m sympathetic to our men and women in uniform, I called a retreat as I’m sure you know. To avoid a clash. Limit unnecessary deaths.”
“Didn’t seem worried about limiting our deaths.”
“You and your THT colleagues fall into a category I call, ‘necessary deaths.’”
“I doubt what I say will matter to you,” sent Hall, “but you’re a very delusional man. Consider this, you insisted you were on the right course because fate’s been so kind to you. Then when fate turned on you, as it did today, you still took this as a sign that you’re the chosen one. You can’t have it both ways. You’re a scientist. You must see that you’re fitting the data to match the conclusion you’re after.”
“I don’t expect you to understand. But sleep with one eye open, Nick Hall, because I’m coming for you.”
“Good luck with that,” replied Hall. “If you’re close enough to read me, I’m close enough to read you. And now I’m the one with access to the highest level of resources.”
“You had access to the president during this skirmish and it didn’t help you.”
“If it didn’t help me, then why are you fleeing?” asked Hall. “And we were caught off guard this time. We didn’t know you were out there. Trust me, we won’t be caught with our pants down again.”
He paused. “How are your ribs, by the way? And your leg? Even the residual trace of pain I’m getting from your mind is pretty nasty. Every nerve in your body is begging for mercy.”
“I can take it. It’s a test. And I pass tests.”
“Victor was right. Not just that you’re clinically insane, but that your plan will do the exact opposite of what you think.”
“I’m afraid you won’t be alive to know that I was right,” replied Browning.
“Look, you’re almost out of range,” sent Hall. “I urge you to rethink your life. It’s not too late to change gears. Make amends. But go up against me and you’ll lose. Because it’s not just me. I have a team around me, people who care about each other and have each other’s backs. You have no one. And you don’t want to save humanity. You just like the idea of seeing your own glory reflected in the eyes of others. But at the end of this tunnel, there isn’t an adoring flock of transcendent human sheep who will adore you. There is a pack of vicious wolves that will tear you to pieces.”
Browning attempted to send a reply, but he was now out of range.
No matter, he decided. He would get the last word yet.
68
Hall directed the surviving members of THT’s core leadership to meet at a point roughly equidistant from the three locations they hailed from, which turned out to be a grouping of oak trees about a mile from Victor’s compound. When they arrived at this gathering point, Hall verified that Browning’s men had double-timed it back to the closest of their two remaining helicopters, crowded on board, and fled.
He also explained that Victor was long gone, having taken off in a helicopter of his own. As Victor had predicted, Browning had bigger fish to fry, and hadn’t diverted men to stop him.
“Where are our forces?” said Altschuler in confusion. “They should have been here five minutes ago.”
Hall grinned broadly. “You want to tell them, Megan?” he said.
Megan’s eyes widened. “You can’t read my mind,” she said. “So what makes you think I know?”
“Because I figured it out,” he said simply.
All eyes were now on Megan. “Here’s the thing,” she said with an impish smile, “since I was the only one who didn’t register on Browning’s personal radar, I went off on my own. I thought I could kill him, but when that didn’t work out, I had to come up with Plan B. I was really freaking out,” she admitted. “I had to come up with something fast or it was all over. I knew reinforcements would never get here in time to save us.”
She paused for effect. “But then I realized . . . so what?” She arched one eyebrow. “Phantom reinforcements could work just as well.”
“Phantom reinforcements?” said Drew Russell. “I’m not following.”
“Nick, why don’t you tell them how Victor managed to capture us,” she said.
Hall did as she asked, as efficiently as he could.
Girdler turned to Megan with a look of admiration. “So you took a page from Victor’s book, didn’t you?” he said.
“Exactly,” she replied proudly. “Victor was able to use Nick’s strength—mind reading—against him. He demonstrated that the only way to fool a mind reader is to fool the person he’s reading. In this case that was you, General. I contacted the president and told him I needed an emergency bluff. Browning couldn’t read me, so he had no idea I was discussing this with the president. And he couldn’t read him, of course, since he was far away in DC.”
Russell nodded excitedly. “Ingenious!” he said in admiration. “You had the president call and tell the general that massive forces were converging on our position. Didn’t matter that this was a total lie. The general had no reason not to believe it. So when Browning read this from the general’s mind he bought it hook, line, and sinker. And he panicked.”
“That’s right,” said Megan. “You know what they say, you can’t always believe everything you, um . . . read.”
There were groans all around.
Hall gazed adoringly at his fiancée. “A brilliant strategy,” he said, looking more smitten with her than ever. “Brilliantly executed. And not a moment too soon. But it was even smarter than you’ve told us. It wasn’t an accident that you had our phantom forces arriving from the north, was it?”
“I thought you might catch that,” she said. “You’re right, of course. Browning was several miles south of his men. If our forces were coming from the south, and were so near to arriving, he might wonder why he didn’t detect a wave of incoming minds.”
“But coming from the north,” said Hall, “it was more likely he’d just assume they were still out of his range.”
“Exactly,” said Megan, beaming.
“Truly extraordinary,” said Girdler. “You’re a civilian with a background in graphic design, yet you came up with a plan that our most accomplished PsyOps agents would envy.”
“I’ve learned from the best,” she said.
“I think you meant that as a compliment to me,” said Girdler with a smile, “so I hate to remind you that you learned this particular trick from Victor.”
Megan winced. “And yet you were still able to outsmart him to establish THT,” she said, looking relieved to have thought of this reply.
“Nice save,” said Hall with a grin.
“Don’t mean to change the subject,” said Russell, “but any reason we’re still standing here?”
“Good point,” said the general. He turned to Megan. “Can I assume no real forces are coming for us now?”
“They aren’t,” she replied. “I told the president not to bother, that this bluff was our only chance. So let’s return to where you guys parked the helo and get out of here.”
The general sighed heavily. “We need to retrieve Mike’s body first,” he said, a pained expression on his face. “He’ll be given a hero’s funeral, along with the others who have f
allen today.”
The euphoria the group was feeling from escaping certain death vanished. How could they have forgotten, even for a moment, the losses they had suffered. Mike Campbell was gone, a devastating blow to them all, but especially Justin Girdler. His only solace came from knowing that his friend’s sacrifice had not been in vain, after all. He had bought them exactly the amount of time they had needed.
But Mike Campbell was only the last in a series of heart-wrenching losses. Chris Guest. Floyd Briarwood. Herschel Trent. Tim Herman. Eddie Ontiveros.
All of them gone.
“THT is in a shambles,” said Girdler grimly as they walked, unable to keep the gloom he felt at bay. “We’ve been taking a beating lately. And Victor and Browning both got away.”
“I wouldn’t look at it that way,” said Megan, ever the optimist. “It wasn’t as though we had these two in a net, and they escaped. The opposite happened. They didn’t get away. We did.”
“We were lucky,” said Hall. “If Browning hadn’t intervened, we’d be at Victor’s mercy right now.”
“It wasn’t all luck,” said Altschuler. “The team performed brilliantly. Especially you and Megan.”
“Not to rain on our parade,” said the general, “but yesterday, we thought Victor was dead, and Nick was the only mind reader in the world. So while we made it through today, our tomorrow is looking very bad. Worst-case scenario bad.”
“What’s the deal with Browning, anyway?” said Russell. “Last I knew he had been thrown out of the NSA. How did he become involved? How is he a mind reader? What’s he after?”
Hall blew out a long, unhappy breath. “When I tell you that, our tomorrow is going to look even worse,” he said. “A lot worse.”
PART 9
THT
69
Hall felt like hell, still having only partially recovered. But after sleeping for almost eighteen hours straight he was ready to take part in a meeting the team had hastily arranged after he had awakened. There were pressing matters to discuss.
They would have insisted that he join them in the debriefing right after they landed the night before, but they all knew how much he had exerted himself, and all remembered the coma he had been in after the sarin gas operation. So they had convened the initial meeting without him, knowing they would have to retill much of the same soil with their most important asset in attendance at a later time.
This later time had now arrived.
Six members of THT’s senior leadership were seated in the main conference room in Utah, while the president and Admiral Siegel joined them virtually from the Oval Office. But this time, instead of using the secure communication channel developed by Troy Browning, they used another system that Browning didn’t have intimate knowledge of and hadn’t yet bothered to crack.
Alex Altschuler and Drew Russell had been urgently assigned to develop secure communication protocols that were Browning-proof as quickly as possible. There were only a handful of people in the world skillful enough to accomplish this, and THT was lucky enough to have two of them.
But even when they succeeded—which they would—if they couldn’t discover how to keep information from a mind reader, secure communications would be the least of their worries.
“I know you’re still pretty spent from yesterday, Nick,” began the president, getting the meeting underway, “so I promise to keep this as short as possible.”
Hall didn’t respond. He couldn’t help but read the surface thoughts of the minds around him. In many ways this was a meeting between him and Cochran, and the others in attendance knew it, thinking of themselves more as witnesses than participants.
The president took a deep breath. “For what it’s worth,” he continued, his eyes locked on Hall’s, “I confessed my sins to the team while you were recuperating. They filled me in on what you discovered at Victor’s compound. That he and Browning somehow worked together to steal a copy of the data I had Dennis Sargent smuggle out. I owe you an explanation, Nick. And I owe you an apology.”
Hall knew from speaking with Megan that the president had apologized to the team the night before, but he felt he owed this to Hall most of all.
“You think an apology will cover it?” he replied icily.
Cochran sighed. “No, I don’t. I know how much of a betrayal this was. And what an unmitigated disaster it has become. I also know that you saying, ‘I told you so,’ wouldn’t even begin to cover it. Everything you feared came to pass—with a vengeance. You were right to be as protective of the data as you were.”
The president paused. “But I at least want to tell you why I did what I did. And describe the fallout, good and bad.”
“I’m listening,” said Hall, his tone still chilly.
Cochran described the situation in Iran he had faced, one spiraling out of control, and that he felt he had no options that didn’t end with mushroom clouds in Israel and America. The only option with any chance of success was putting ESP into play, and after much soul searching he had felt he had no other choice but to take it.
He went on to describe the operation in Iran, which had gone flawlessly. At least until it was over. At least until Craig Bostic had disappeared into the night.
“Are you kidding?” shouted Hall, unable to believe things were even worse than he thought. “Let me make sure I have this right. Victor now has thousands of sets of implants and a copy of the recipe for ESP. Browning also has the ESP data, with grandiose plans to use it. Not to block ESP, but to release it into the wild. Which, in case anyone has forgotten, has been our doomsday scenario all along. And now we have a member of SEAL Team Six—a trained killer to put all other trained killers to shame—who has psionic abilities, unknown motivation, and who is presently unaccounted for.”
The room was as somber as a funeral. At least his colleagues had had some time to digest the bad news. Cochran simply nodded. “I’m afraid that’s where we are.”
Hall shook his head. “That’s not where we are. Where we are is a whole lot worse, as hard as this is to believe. There are a few items I haven’t yet had the chance to share. First, Browning isn’t done with us. He’s on the loose and made it a point to tell me he’s coming after me, coming after us. And he’s worse news than you can imagine. I’ve been in the minds of countless lunatics, countless zealots, but this guy is something special. He’s as brilliant as he is demented, which is a bad combination even before he’s armed with implants and mind reading.”
Hall paused to let this sink in. “I give us some hope of holding him off,” he continued, “but only because I’m a Troy Browning early warning detection system. But we’d better come up with some way to protect ourselves. And not just from Browning. Craig Bostic is out there too. And Victor can turn anyone he wants into a mind reader. We have to get Nessie involved even more. Step up facial recognition of Bostic and Browning to stratospheric levels. Even a mind reader can’t read or defeat a machine, as long as its programming can’t be altered.”
“I’ve been working on methods to stop mind readers since we returned,” said Girdler. “I’ve elevated it to our top priority. Our focus has been on blocking ESP, not learning how to defeat mind readers. For good reason, Nick. You were the only mind reader in the world, and you were on our side. But we’re changing gears in a hurry. Every day that passes we’ll be more prepared.”
There were several nods of approval around the table.
“I hope you’re right, General,” said Hall, “but I’m not finished with the bad news. You’re all aware of the ruse Victor used to capture me and Megan. But to set this up, he needed an assist. So he told Sayed Nazry about me, the head of ISIS. He told him about my abilities and my interrogations of terror suspects at Hill. Nazry is well aware that his efforts in America have been decimated recently, and now he knows why. Does anyone doubt that we’re now the number one target of the caliphate? You know, just in case we don’t have enough enemies.”
This news was met with alarm all around, and pained
disbelief. Just when the team thought their wounds couldn’t be deeper or more raw, salt had been rubbed in. Their backs had already been up against the wall, but now the wall had sprouted daggers.
Cochran’s expression was stunned, horrified. “There are no words,” he said. “Sorry isn’t nearly enough. I did what I thought was right, and it couldn’t have gone more wrong. Everything we’re now up against has stemmed from this one decision. Victor and Browning’s partnership. Victor learning of the location of THT and enough information to capture you. ISIS learning of THT and your abilities. So many good men dead, including Mike Campbell.”
“I need to make it clear that the president didn’t make this decision alone,” said Bob Siegel. “I admire him for not pointing a finger my way, but I’m every bit as much to blame for where we are as he is.”
“I appreciate that, Bob,” said the president. “But I’m the commander-in-chief, as much as I wish this weren’t true at the moment, and I made this call. I don’t expect anyone here to ever forgive me for that. But THT needs me and Bob in the loop more than ever. All I can do is apologize and do the best I can from here on out to help clean up some of the mess I’ve caused.”
There was a long silence and all eyes were on Hall, wondering what his response would be. Their thoughts were so powerful he couldn’t avoid them. Would he start frothing at the mouth? Would he scream? Would he slam the table and then the door on his way out of the conference room? Would he curse at the president? Threaten him?
Hall took several deep mental breaths and tried to calm himself. They had all been through hell recently and he was in a foul mood. But he couldn’t let this cloud his judgment. It was true that the president had betrayed them, with catastrophic consequences. But his recent ordeal had expanded his perspective on the matter.
He now had a greater appreciation than ever before that what seemed like bad luck could eventually end up being good luck in disguise. Hard to imagine how this could be true of their current predicament, but that remained to be seen. Maybe fate did exist, and it liked to play the long game.
MindWar (Nick Hall Book 3) Page 37
