“EXCUSE ME FELLAS ” she shouted at them. “NEED SOME HELP WITH THAT?”
“Yeh” one of them replied “I need the keys to your car”. With that, he pulled a knife out of the waistband of his trousers.
“Don’t you know that little girls shouldn’t be out after dark in places like this” laughed one of the men as he approached her.
“Don’t worry” she replied, “I’m sure I’ll be fine with you fellas.”
She placed her coffee cup on the ground and walked towards the first male. He lunged at her with the knife but, without him even seeing her move, Mia struck him as hard as she could in the windpipe. It was like being hit with an iron bar! Struggling for breath, the man dropped to his knees and fell face-first onto the hard tarmac. She looked at the next male who was still by the driver’s door. Mia looked him straight in the face. The sense of panic she could feel emanating from him was almost laughable.
With a smirk on her face, Mia said to him “I hope you’ve not damaged my car. I will be very unhappy if you have.”
In a panic, the male lunged towards her and shouted “Give me the keys you b….”.
Before he could finish the sentence, Mia caught his arm and twisted it around and up his back. As he bent over in agony, she delivered a perfect knee-strike to his face, smashing his nasal bone straight into his skull. She let him go and he slumped to the floor. Without acknowledging that anything had actually happened, Mia walked over, picked up her cup of coffee from the floor and took a sip. She looked around at the two men lying on the floor and then around the rest of the parking lot. She was still alone. No one had seen anything. She went to the rear of her car again and opened the trunk. From the same place as the others, Mia retrieved another set of number plates and attached them to the car. She put her coffee into the cup-holder in the car and headed off out of the estate back towards the turnpike. Just before she got to the turnpike, on the opposite side of the road, she was passed by two police cars with lights flashing and sirens blaring, heading in the direction of the fast food outlet. As the lights disappeared in the distance in her rear view mirror, she smiled to herself and headed onto the turnpike and south towards Washington DC.
The traffic had lightened up so Mia managed to hit a bit of speed on the way down. She arrived in DC with thirty minutes to spare. She parked a block away from the Arena in another underground parking lot, which specialised in long term parking. She retrieved her suitcase from the boot, grabbed her handbag and headed towards the Arena building. It only took her a few minutes to get there but instead of going in the front door, she went in the side entrance. Once inside, she got into a small service elevator and punched in the numbers 9, 0, 3 and 8 into the keypad. The elevator once again went down, and then started moving sideways. When it stopped, the door opened and she walked into the clean sterile area and was instantly surrounded by doctors and nurses. Through the cluster of medical staff, a tall man approached. Mia knew him as Doctor Cooper.
With his deep commanding voice, he said to her “Well Mia, any problems?”
“None to report” she replied.
Before she could say anything else, Doctor Cooper nodded at one of the medical team and in the blink of an eye, she felt a sharp prick in her upper arm. The room started to spin and Mia slumped into unconsciousness. The medical staff caught her fall and placed her onto a gurney. They wheeled the gurney through the corridors following Doctor Cooper into an auditorium.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, as we said before, mission accomplished” boomed his voice.
Chapter 6
The Phlebotomist
Blairstown was rurally quaint, and off the beaten track. The route there was scenic and Hank enjoyed the winding country roads to reach Cobblewood Road on the outskirts of town. He noticed how peaceful it was despite the large detached properties, each with at least four acres; there were probably one hundred houses in the street but there was no one around. No kids playing in the gardens, no adults sitting in the sunshine on the porches, nothing. Hank was actually quite relaxed when he started to pull into the driveway, which was about one hundred yards long and lead up to a large bungalow. He could see that behind the house to the right was a large barn and what looked like a stable. As he drove Laura slowly along the driveway, he noticed there was a strip of old police crime scene tape hanging from a bush near the front door which was blowing in the breeze that had picked up.
“Well, I think I’m at the right place at least” thought Hank.
He turned the engine off and smiled to himself as it was apparent that, for a community street like this, Laura stuck out like a sore thumb just on the sound from her engine alone. It was funny, with the engine off, the place became more eerie. Hank could hear the birds in the trees, the occasional chipmunk burrowing in the bushes around the house but still no people around. Strange.
From the crime scene photos that Hank had studied prior to his arrival, he located the spot where Constance McDonald was found. The elements had, over time, washed away any markings left at the scene. Standing on that spot, he looked around the estate. There was a high tree line to his left and he looked back towards the street he had just driven down. This was the line of sight from impact. The reports he had read about the investigation said that the elderly couple in the house opposite had been unable to provide any information as they hadn’t seen or heard anything prior to the circus of police and coroner's vehicles arriving.
As Hank looked at their house from where he was standing, he estimated that it was no more than one hundred and fifty yards away. From his discussion with Fitz about the research and development of the rounds involved, he knew that the shooter would have been a damn site further away than that. As he looked to the left of the opposite property, he could see that the land was flat and there were other houses in view, however these still weren’t far enough away. As he looked to the right of the neighbour’s house, he could see that the ground gradually inclined up into a large wooded area. Hank walked back to Laura and pulled a small pair of binoculars from the glove box. Through them, he had a better view of the wooded area. As he scanned the tree line, he couldn’t make out any properties or clearings. The only thing for it was to take a walk up there and see for himself if he could find anything.
After about 30 minutes of walking up through the trees, Hank had pretty much had enough. He had torn his shirt on some thorn bushes, his shoes were no longer in the pristine polished condition that they usually were and he was cursing himself for not bringing any water. The bright sunshine had made the forest baking hot. There was no breeze even to take the edge off. “There really needs to be something up here” Hank said to himself out loud. He stopped and paused for a minute to get his breath back and take in the view from where he stood. Not only could he see beyond the town to the forest in the distance surrounding the Delaware Water Gap, he had a perfect view back to the victim’s house.
Hank took a minute and sat on a fallen tree, soaking up the atmosphere around him. He enjoyed the tranquillity, but it wasn’t long before the past started creeping in. His first thought was of enjoying driving in the country, but this soon changed to memories of his late wife. He had met and married the love of his life when they both worked as field agents for the NSA. On different teams, she went out to follow a lead one day and never came back. It was something he would never get over, and he moved to his current desk job with the FBI shortly after the accident. He missed her terribly.
Once the moment passed and Hank got his breath back, he noticed he had stopped just short of the top of the hill. He double checked that he still had line of sight to the victim’s house and then started to look around where he was standing. It was a small open area, with clumps of bushes and a pile of boulders covered with overgrown weeds. The rocks seemed out of place at the top of the hill, and Hank saw there was a rough trail worn into the ground nearby which he realised he must have unwittingly followed. He went over to the boulders to have a closer look and in a heartbeat he fo
rgot about the discomfort of the hike. He could see that between the gaps in the rocks there were glimpses of wooden planks. He started pulling the rocks away and within a couple of minutes found himself staring at a wooden structure with a dilapidated door. From first appearance, it would appear to be an old minor’s storage shack. Hank pulled the door open and took a look inside. There were a couple of unlit lamps hanging on the wall, almost camouflaged by cobwebs. Venturing in slowly, he could make out a few shovels rusting in a far corner and what looked like a long, low wooden table on the dirt floor. The whole shack was thick with dust and grime. Hank turned his back on the table and looked through his binoculars. From that point, he had a straight line of sight back to the driveway of the house. He estimated it was eight hundred and fifty yards vertically down to the front step of the porch.
“This is it” he thought. “This is where it happened.”
Hank took a closer look at the table. It was covered in dust but he could see that there were various points that were less covered than the rest. Near the front, he could see that there were two square indentations roughly twelve inches apart.
“Tripod” he thought.
Hank then looked across the rest of the dust and could just make out a large irregular shape. He would need more help before he could be sure this was the imprint of a person.
Using his cell phone to find the GPS coordinates of where he was, Hank noted them on his hand and called into his office for a CSI team to attend. He knew that they would, in turn, dispatch a team from Scranton, so he had a good couple of hours prior to their arrival. Since he felt he now had the start of an investigation, he decided to have a look inside the house and see what he could find. Motivated by his discovery, he managed to steel himself for the walk back down the hill to the house.
When he got back down, Hank was relieved to see Laura still sitting on the driveway. He returned the binoculars to the glove box and then went into the trunk, retrieving a suit carrier with a change of clothes. Making sure there was still no one around, he quickly changed his shirt and made himself presentable again as the climb of the hill had taken its toll. It was good to feel clean clothes on his back. Hank then approached the house and found that the front door was locked. Thankfully it wasn’t a particularly good lock, and with a little pressure it popped open for him to enter. It was clear that no one had been in there in a long time; most of the furniture was covered with sheets but there was an inch of dust on everything. Hank cautiously walked through the property making mental note of the rooms. Though all the curtains were still drawn, it looked like a normal home. Apart from the dust, it looked like it would have been clean and kept well with nothing major out of place. On a sideboard, there was a group of photographs that weren’t covered in dust sheets. Knowing what he did about the victim not having any family, he knew they had to be pictures of ancestors or friends. Most were old pictures taken with a film camera rather than digital photos, and the subjects were sombre. However, there was one that stood out from the crowd. It was a picture obviously taken at a hospital, of her in a nurse’s uniform, with a doctor standing either side of her and she was smiling. There was no date and nothing in the picture to give away its location, but Hank deduced they must be work colleagues.
After he had finished looking around, he went back outside to Laura and pondered what he had seen. He couldn’t stop staring at the hillside opposite. Time had obviously passed quicker than he thought as within a few minutes of staring, a white van pulled into the driveway. The CSI team was here.
Hank briefed them on what was required and how urgent it was. They said they would have the report to him by the morning and with that, he sent them off in the direction of the shack. They had a sophisticated mapping system in their van and worked out they could get their van and equipment nearer to the location to save them hiking all the way. By this time it was late in the day and since there was nothing more he could do at the site, Hank decided he would leave it in their hands and await their report. He jumped back into Laura and headed off back to the office.
After an hour or so, Hank was back at his desk looking through the files he was given earlier that morning. The briefing he had been given by the boss at the handover preyed on his mind and thought that he had better let him know about today’s developments. Since it was passed five o’clock, there was no way the boss would still be there but he took the time and wrote him an email with bullet points on what he had done for the day. That should keep him happy.
With the email sent, it was gone six. Hank would usually have headed home for the day but, rather than heading home for another night in front of the television, he chose to carry on re-reading the reports about the Blairstown incident for a while. When he got about half way through again, he noted that all the neighbours spoken to had seen nothing and reported nothing. Given the landscape of the area, Hank figured that anyone wanting to get around up there would need a vehicle, particularly if they had a weapon and equipment to transport. As his systems access had been upgraded by the boss, he logged onto the local police databases and checked calls made around the Blairstown area on the date of the shooting. When he got no hits of anything interesting enough to pursue, he changed the search dates to the day before and day after and searched again. This time, it brought up one job that wasn’t even attended by the local police department. The day before, pharmacy staff a mile away from the location had reported a suspicious vehicle remaining in their parking lot as they were closing. It was a high value Mercedes which most people don’t leave abandoned in communal parking lots. The day after the shooting, the pharmacy rang again saying not to worry as it had now gone. Thankfully, on the initial call, the licence plate of the car had been given. A footnote on the report caught Hank’s attention; the Virginia state plates were reported stolen by the owner following a day trip to Washington DC two months before the shooting.
Hank’s mind started racing. He logged onto the traffic cameras for the New Jersey area and punched in the plate. The data returned and showed the vehicle heading south from Blairstown towards Newark however, once it hit the camera at the junction of Newark International Airport it vanished and wasn’t seen again on any of the systems. Frustrated, Hank looked closely at one of the still pictures taken by the camera at Newark and held it next to one taken by a camera close to the Blairstown location. Although not the clearest of pictures, it was obvious that the driver of the Mercedes was female. Jumping back on to his email account, he emailed the field office in Virginia and asked them to conduct a check with the registered owner of the licence plates to see if they were in the Jersey area a year ago. He got a message back within a few minutes saying they would conduct the visit as soon as possible in the morning and get back to him.
It was getting late now and Hank suddenly realised he hadn’t eaten, so he decided it was time to call it a day and head home. As he drove, he mulled over the events of the day in his head. There was something about the Mercedes that didn’t feel right. He couldn’t explain why as it could have been nothing but, on the flip side, it could have been everything. These thoughts were short lived as just as he pulled into his parking spot outside his house, his cell phone rang. From the caller ID he could see that it was the boss.
“Why at this time of night?” he thought.
He answered the call and was greeted with “Hank, I got your email earlier, good work on the first day. Hopefully that’ll provide a good avenue for you to pursue however that’s not what this call’s about. I need you to pack an overnight bag and get to Morristown Municipal Airport as soon as you can. There’s one of our planes waiting there to take you to Boston”. Hank tried to get a word in but the boss just kept talking. “We’ve just had another case come in and I need you on the ground as soon as possible so we can get the jump on the investigation. Same circumstances, same MO and fragments of a carbon fibre pulled from the victim. I need you on it”. Hank was a bit taken aback as, with that final statement, the boss hung up.
; “Damn it” he thought, “I hope that plane’s comfortable and has food on board”.
Chapter 7
The Debrief
The Arena was cold and quiet. There were several nurses working around Mia, plugging various monitoring machines into the wall and then attaching sticky electrode pads all over her body. This was the norm after a mission, and nobody spoke. All her vital signs were checked by the team while she lay on the state-of-the-art medical bed. The officials who watched her at the beginning and the tall man had all left the Arena. Mia just lay there staring at the ceiling. Before long, the medical team had dwindled away as well with only one nurse left with her. As it was quiet, she could hear a set of footsteps drawing closer.
“Mia, I’m Dr Campion. Do you remember me?” said a quietly spoken male voice.
She couldn’t see the person speaking as he stayed behind her and didn’t come into view. Mia hadn’t noticed but she was actually restrained to the bed with a couple of buckled straps. She tried to turn her head to see who was speaking but she couldn’t move far enough around. He was standing just in the shadows and out of view. She gave up trying to see him and replied
“No, I don’t remember you”. She could hear him pacing up and down behind her.
He asked “What can you tell me about your last mission?”
Mia took a moment and replied “The target was acquired, it was a clean open shot, mission completed”.
Unknown to Mia, Dr Campion was watching all of her medical scanning machines when she talked. He made mental notes as he was looking but as with the last few debriefs he had completed with her, her heart rate and other body vitals didn’t alter when she replied. The nurse who stayed with Mia after the others had left the Arena was now sitting at the side of the bed.
The Arena: The Awakening (1) Page 3
